Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop (17 page)

She mouthed ‘I’m so sorry,’
when she saw us. The Belovore who’d caught her pushed her forward.
She jumped at its touch and stifled a cry. Annalise gave no
response, and neither did I.

Chest-Plate urged us to the
group, and walked beyond us towards the other prisoners. Most of
them were crying – others were silent. One or two whispered between
each other, words of disgust and hatred. Davion would have lectured
them on the finer points of polite wording. However, Annalise, Kayt
and I smiled when we felt a distinct rumbling in the distance. The
Belovores hadn’t noticed it: the sound of an engine rumbling from
the direction of Annalise’s garage. When we looked to the house,
Lancaster’s spot in the blinds had been covered, the blinds
replaced to their original standing amongst the others. The
Belovores had no idea that it was a new sound – as far as they
knew, it was just another noise in the distance.

We were now on Davion and
Melanie’s clock.

Chapter
Eight:

Escape from
Covenant Street

Five weeks
into the semester
, I start teaching from a
novel by Arnold Richter, the author of
The
Refuge of Albion
. One of the quotes he
loved to throw into his novels, no matter the perspective, was:
‘Nothing could be more fantastic, more… full of wonder than living
in the future. It is my life’s goal to reach that day.’

My favourite part is when I
follow those discussions by asking the class to write a
conservative discussion on the following statement: ‘What do you
think Richter would say to learn that seven hundred and ninety-six
years from the year 2000, lights are still lights; food is food;
cars are still cars, albeit with entirely different propulsion
units; and revenge, fear, and death are just as prevalent as they’d
always been?’

I never got the same answer
twice. Even now, I can’t nail down the answer.

Instead, I look back at all
I’ve written and I can see that I needed a break. I wrote the last
section in a hurry. I was terrified of admitting what had happened.
The words came out, but I can’t remember writing a single one of
them. Since then, I’ve taken silence as my companion. I can think
clearly. Which I suppose is for the best considering what I have to
tell next.

The future is never as bright
as when it still exists in infinite possibilities.

With the car’s
engine idling
somewhere out of notice for
the Belovores, we breathed a sigh of relief. The ignition would
have definitely grabbed their attention. Annalise looked at me with
content in her eyes - that kind you get when you think you’re going
to die, but something else is going to make sure you won’t go down
without a fight. It was hard to believe that this was part of her
plan, and part of me still wanted to yell at her for coming up with
it when I knew – and had to acknowledge – that I
hadn’t
been trying to
come up with anything. How could I fault someone for trying where I
hadn’t?

“
Into the
group,” Chest-Plate said. The other Belovores were near carbon
copies of each other. Sheered faces, with dull, flat teeth coming
out between twig lips. Even though their teeth were flat, I
imagined they were like a carnivore’s– perfect for
tearing.

“
They seem so
nonchalant about all this,” Kayt whispered. We pushed into the
crowd, stepping away from Chest-Plate as he resumed patrolling the
group. I looked up the road leading north. The rest of the
Belovores patrolled the houses, pulling people out. A couple bodies
littered the side of the road. One had her face upturned, just a
short distance past the corner where we waited. She looked at
peace, although her body was torn ragged on the curb.

The group didn’t move for us.
Instead, we were absorbed into their shape. I couldn’t count the
numbers then, either, and I resolved to stop trying. It felt like
we were somewhere between twenty and thirty in size.

“
This isn’t a
battle,” I said. “Where’s your military? Police force? Anything
defensive?”

“
That’s what
I’ve been wondering. The attack must have been planned for a long
time,” Annalise said. She nudged into a man who leaned against a
girl that must have been his grand-daughter, and held his other
hand out as if looking for his cane. “Here’s what I figure. They
took out Sondranos-proper immediately. They flew to the south and
must have taken out the airstrip there, along with the defensive
base. They even destroyed the terminals, if what happened to the
one near the Abbey was any indication. But what about the weapons?
There must have been thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of
guns and ammo stores.”

The old man spoke up. The young
woman by his side tried to calm him by placing her hand on his
chest before he got worked up. “They found ways to track us without
showing their faces. Rotten aliens.”

“
Sondranos is
given easily into the hands of those who deserve it,” Chest-Plate
silenced us. His voice had a disturbing finality to it, like a
growl subsiding into something harsh and throaty. Chest-Plate’s
words had a slight Russian twinge to them. If we could have gotten
through this without having to hear him again, I would have been
happy.

“
You mean to
say you destroyed the entire Squadron Defensive Forces?” The old
man asked. Chest-Plate stepped towards the man, pushing Annalise
and Kayt out of the way. The girl whimpered and asked him to be
quiet. “You only won ‘cause you fought dirty. There’s a reason we
ain’t called you humans – you’re the furthest thing from
it.”

Chest-Plate didn’t care about
the intended insult. To him, ‘human’ was simply another word in our
dialect. The old man frowned at the lack of a rise in Chest-Plate.
“Sondranos has always been ours, from the day we left. Our return
was predestined. We had many years to remove the obstacles you
might think effective,” Chest-Plate said.

“
What do you
mean by obstacles? What’s the reason for any of this?” I
asked.

Chest-Plate turned to me and
sneered. His breath stank of rotting leaves. “We have always been
working towards our rebirth.”

“
That doesn’t
explain the absence of a police force, or guns, or weapons of any
kind,” Annalise said. Her eyes widened in realization. She stepped
back, knocking into me and the old man. Kayt stepped closer. The
old man acted as if he felt Annalise’s pain and gasped. He tried to
push away from the girl, and tears nipped at the corners of his
eyes. Chest-Plate didn’t move, and our sudden shift in direction
only forced us closer. I steadied Annalise and, for the first time,
saw fear and bewilderment. She looked at me. To say I was confused
is an understatement. At that moment, she was more abstract than
ever – I knew all I could know in such a short time, yet I didn’t
know enough to read the emotion behind her looks. “I may have
messed up.”

“
The
sacrifice of our brethren will not be in vain,” Chest-Plate
rasped.

The old man clapped me on the
shoulder. He let the weight of his body push forward, and used me
as a steady foundation to stand. From behind Annalise, and
continuing the conversation that was – hopefully – beyond Belovore
ears, he said: “Ya can’t get within a few thousand kilometres of
the planet without alertin’ SDF. However, if something travels fast
enough through the atmosphere, SDF can’t track it until it hits.
I’m willing to bet these things kamikaze’d their own pods just to
take the big guns out first.”

“
Fear,” Kayt
mumbled. “Why cause a panic when you think you can take on the
world?”

“
You are a
simple folk. Your ancestors once claimed we were the ones who had
become stagnant – and yet, you cannot grow enough to fathom your
own vulnerability,” Chest-Plate began to laugh. At least, I think
it was a laugh. He stepped away from our bit of the circle and
resumed patrolling. He barked something at Vertebrae and Third, who
performed the same guttural laugh.

“
But what
about weapons? Sondranos can’t have such a wonderfully non-corrupt
police force. There have to be enthusiasts or criminals somewhere
with weapons,” I said. None of this was in the brochure, and I felt
somewhat slighted.

“
The man on
the road had a pretty nice firearm,” Annalise recalled. Her eyes
told me she looked inwards, to the past. “He got taken out pretty
quickly. And then the dart flew back to the centre of the city. I’m
willing to bet anyone with a weapon is being tracked. That dart
could have hit us easily. The only thing making us different was
that we weren’t armed.”

The old man cut in again. The
girl at his side set her forehead in her palm, trying to conceal
that she was crying. Kayt moved past Annalise and set her arm
around the girl, attempting to comfort her. The girl rested her
head on Kayt’s shoulder.

“
Ain’t you
ever tried to buy a gun, son? Well, I guess not if I ain’t never
seen you in my store. I never forget a face, and I own the only gun
shop on this side of town. All projectile weapons with an explosive
power source are fitted with an ID chip,” the old man said. Then,
as if he wanted no part in what he claimed next, past or present:
“Governor Trottier passed that bill requiring a tracer for anything
that can be used to kill a man. He’s dead now, and I’m fine sayin’
I never voted for ‘im.”

“
Why in the
world would anyone want to do that?” I asked.

“
Has anyone
in your family ever been shot, and the shooter went
free?”

This was the future Arnold
Richter wanted to live in - where the only significant changes were
how to control more violence. It was easy, then, to say that the
idea was ridiculous. What the old man would have explained, in a
simpler situation, was:

The chips record the
fingerprints on the handles of every weapon on Sondranos. It
privately logs the amount of bullets or charges fired, and connects
with a satellite to link up the location when used. That same
satellite sends a dead man’s switch to these chips every three
hours. If you remove the chip, the signal doesn’t get through, and
it short circuits the wiring. It melts the inside of the barrel and
disables the weapon, making it useless. These chips had allowed
Sondranos’ only defense - short of knives and swords - to be
destroyed. I can bet that I would have never questioned that law if
I’d gone on to live in Sondranos proper.

I shook my
head and turned away from the old man. Annalise took a deep breath
and surveyed the neighbourhood. Kayt still comforted the girl, but
she seemed to be calming down. The three Belovores ignored us and
continued patrolling. It seemed we
had
bought time.

A report of gunfire ricocheted
through the neighbourhood. Two houses down from Annalise’s, right
on the corner, a man ran from his door just as a Belovore set a
foot on his lawn. Moaning and quiet sobbing came from the crowd.
Chest-Plate, Vertebrae and Third all turned to face the house. The
man was in his thirties, possibly older, with long red hair and
dirty pants. He wore no shirt and was slightly overweight for his
age. The Belovore was a shade as dark as night. Crimson lines
surrounded the Belovore’s body plates, and its face was a kind of
charcoal. It looked stronger than the rest.

“
Die,” the
man yelled, followed by a rapid succession of gunfire -
BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM
!

Someone in our crowd yelled
out, “Stop! Put down your weapon Amos, you’re going to get yourself
killed!”

Amos heard, but fired a couple
more shots. “Or die trying,” he yelled back. The sudden breakdown
of logic shifted my mind sideways. How did Amos have a working gun?
I backed up, feeling the crowd beside and behind me. I was glad
that I hadn’t allowed myself to be swallowed by the group, as I
would have certainly lost my faculties to claustrophobia.

The Belovore stopped just short
of the driveway. Amos stood on the other side. The Belovore took a
second and then trundled forward, scowling. Amos sent off more
rounds. I wondered how bad of a shot Amos had to be to be missing
from such a short length.

BLAMBLAM,
“Why won’t you
die?”

A guttural chuckle – at least,
I think that’s what it was – erupted from Chest-Plate. Vertebrae
grunted and started pushing people in the crowd away from the
scene. A couple people shoved into me, and Kayt almost fell over. I
held her by the arm. The old-man tumbled, and his girl tried to
pick him up, but got lost in the massive, neighborhood sized crowd.
Kayt, Annalise and I watched in horror as Amos continued to
fire.

“
The bullets
are hitting him,” Kayt whispered.

“
Damned
fool,” yelled the old man. Other voices mumbled and grumbled behind
him, and I felt a warm body press up against my back. “He’s rigged
up a Frankenstein gun!”

Behind that, the old man was
lost in the crowd. The last thing I heard him mutter was, “Never
should have taught him…”

I had no idea what the true
term meant – especially coming from a man who owned a gun shop.
However, my knowledge of literature told me enough. The gun was
silver along the barrel, but deep black on the handle and hammer.
The shots sounded hollow and rattled as Amos re-cocked the chamber.
I don’t know much about guns, but I was certain Amos’ hasty
creation wouldn’t last much longer.