White and Other Tales of Ruin

I felt something solid beneath my knee, and with a huge burst of effort I lifted a foot, let Chele give one more pull and then I was up there with her.

I felt drained. Totally, completely exhausted, like a battery flickering on the last dregs of its power. Not long until I ran out. And I couldn’t allow that yet.

“The demons,” Chele said, but it was a question that I did not have the strength to answer. I looked up at the solid ceiling through which I assumed we’d fallen, and there was still no sign of any pursuit.

“Laura.” I saw Laura’s hands still circling, still moving around each other to maintain a dip in the thick mud, at the bottom of which I could just see her nose. Perhaps she was standing on tiptoes, just high enough to be able to breathe … if she could keep the mud at a slightly lower level. If it became more fluid, or if another surge came through the window now, she’d be finished.

“They can’t let this happen,” I said, “not after what we’ve been through to save her. They can’t.”

“‘They’ are probably trying their damndest to get you out of here or kill you,” Chele said. She had her arms crossed over her chest. Her sweater was rolled into a sodden ball, resting by her feet.

“We’ll need that again,” I said, picking it up. “Is that alright?”

She lowered her arms. Dried mud came away from her chest with a crackle. She looked as if she had leprosy, but I felt that interest again, the unconscious stirring at the sight of her nudity. “Not as if I need it,” she said, but she was joking. She even smiled.

I nodded my thanks. “You’re lighter than me. You lay out straight and throw this to Laura. Once she’s got it, I’ll haul you in.” Chele nodded. I looked away.

She threw the sweater out before her and then splashed herself down across the thick mud. I knelt on the furniture — bookcase, dresser, whatever — and kept hold of her ankles. It took three more throws until the sweater landed across Laura’s twirling fingers, and I realised that we were cutting off her meagre air supply.

I could only hope that she realised what was happening … and hung on.

She did. I pulled, finding a reserve of strength I would never have believed in before, desperation tightening my muscles, excitement kicking in when I saw Laura emerge head-first from the mud like a child birthed from the earth. She was gasping and coughing up great clots of muck, her eyes still squeezed shut, and I only wanted to bring her to me so that I could hold her and help her. I hauled, pulled, strained until I could reach down and grasp Chele under the arms and lift her up with me. As she came so did Laura, and then the three of us were hunkered down on the furniture, the mud sloshing around our ankles but we were out, free, alive.

“I must…” Laura gasped, fingering mud from her ears and nose. I wiped it from her eyes, “I must … have done something really bad … in a previous life.”

I could only cry. Chele touched my shoulder and left her hand there long enough for it to matter.

We were still there, wherever there was. And they were probably still after us, whoever they were. And the only thing I wanted to do was to move, get out and away from this building and see what awaited us outside.

I held Laura for ten minutes, cleaning mud from her face, finding her again. Chele wrung out the sweater as much as she could and slipped it back over her head and arms. She stood and leaned against the wall as Laura and I loved each other and wished that none of this had ever happened.

“What do we do now?” Laura asked at last, ending the silence we adults had not been able to break.

As if lured by Laura’s voice there was a loud thumping, crackling sound outside, clear above the roar and grind of the moving mud.

“Oh no,” I said. They were here. They’d followed us, found us and now they were coming, and what fate could we expect from those demons? No slow death, of that at least I was sure. They’d hold us down and shoot us. After some of what I’d seen today, that may almost be a blessing.

“Wait,” Chele said, bending down so that she could see through the window and across the surface of the mud-river. “It’s not the same sound.”

“Then what — ”

“Gunfire,” Laura said. “That’s gunfire, yes, but it’s pad-rifles. I heard them a couple of days ago when …” She trailed off. It must have been bad if she didn’t even want to tell her father about it. It wasn’t the usual crack of gunfire, more like a whiplash ending with a heavy thud. I’d heard about pad-rifles. They weren’t nice things. They fired super-heated composite which spread out in the air to something the size of a fist. By the time it struck its target it was solid again. Being shot with a pad-rifle was like being hit by a medicine ball at fifteen hundred miles per hour.

More reports, closer this time, and then we heard the familiar crackle of machinegun fire joining in.

“There’s a battle going on out there,” Chele said, looking around our room as if contemplating staying.