Chapter 24: Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Pt. 1

Crows scattered as Lily knelt by the corpse. This one was an old man, a civilian, his throat torn open.

The thing that killed him lay a few paces away. Cold and still in the light of day it was less imposing then it had been at night, even with its black teeth and scarred face. It was just meat, now.

Oh no, don't think about meat.

Lily stopped over another corpse, a girl with her hair in two plaits. A combatant. Her rifle had some rounds left. She took the magazine, thumbed the staring eyes shut, and moved on. There were so many bodies left to examine.

She had a measure of common sense. 86 and Michael were both blonde, blue-eyed. They were the only Operatives Lily had ever seen up close, but Abbott had taken one look at Michael and known. Burnett had marked him too. It was reasonable to assume that 63 would fit the same mold.

He'd gotten away before she could check.

Last night this had been the hamlet of Bywater, wooden houses with clay tile roofs clustered on both sides of a calm, stony river. There had been a mill, an inn, and a schoolhouse. Now blackened ruins clawed at the cold morning sky.

Lily had blood on her shirt and hands. She’d burned herself. It was hard to think about.

Toeing over the corpse of a man with a rough knife still buried between his ribs, she remembered the Sergeant. Presumably he’d had a name, but no one in his home town, where they’d stopped to absorb the local militia, had used it.

He’d worn a faded blue military tunic with a rose embroidered on the right sleeve. He’d had an air of discipline about him still, and Lily had hovered in his periphery, figuring he was the least likely to shoot her while trying to clean his rifle. Luke had called him a hardass. Quietly.

They’d come up on Bywater near sunset. Reports said the enemy had camped there, but they'd found the town intact and completely empty, as if all the people and animals had vanished in an instant, leaving behind half-eaten meals, half-sawn boards, discarded toys…

Lily knelt stiffly beside the face-down body of a large man who had died in the doorway of a house. His back was charred, hair burned away. She picked up his head and turned it, gently.

An unfamiliar face. She closed her eyes a moment in relief, then moved on.

So hard to remember. It was there, but she couldn’t touch it. The blood on her shirt was the Sergeant’s. He’d died in the first seconds of the ambush.

The enemy had come from three compass points: the communal barn, the mill, and the tall grass by the river. They’d waited until the stupid, useless militia was spread thin. Their barbarity made it easy to forget they were human, but it was clear they’d been organized.

It had been a slaughter. Lily tried to make each shot count, but the enemy began to torch the houses in an attempt to funnel them to the center of town, and something inside her had shifted. Snapped, really. With flames at her back, Lily started giving orders.

That was where it became particularly difficult. That was where the problems started.

She was in the town square now, where bodies were clustered around the well in loose concentric rings. She remembered telling people to douse themselves with water from the horse troughs, but that was all she remembered.

Bodies were thick on the ground. Maybe a dozen of hers, twice as many of the enemy. If she was a soldier she’d be able to determine whether it had been worth it.

One thing she did remember, clearly: Luke had not been there at the well. So there was no point looking for him among the dead, but Lily did it anyway. She’d given him an order. What had it been? Why had he listened?

She felt unwell. Putting her back to the well, she faced the river…

And remembered. Right there, between the inn and its stable, was where she’d fired a shot at 63’s retreating back. In the confusion of battle it was hard to be sure, but Lily thought she'd seen him stumble.

Either he'd escaped into the woods or he lay dead somewhere. She couldn’t leave until she was sure.

Coming around the corner rifle first, she found a body in a black coat sat slumped against the wall behind the stable.

Lily raised her weapon to her shoulder. Her aim had been abysmal on that long-ago day by the river. Last night in the dark and smoke her aim had been passable.

Now, in the grey daylight, it was perfect. She fired a single shot and the corpse’s head snapped sideways. Then, carefully, she advanced.

It was an Operative's coat to be sure. The fine black wool was tattered and streaked with ash, but silver numbers glinted on the collar. Six. Three.

Heart thudding against her ribs, she lifted the corpse's chin with the muzzle of her rifle.

Not him.

He had the same facial scarring she'd seen on the other Wasteland raiders: parallel horizontal lines running from forehead to chin, dividing his face like cell bars. His remaining eye was a nondescript brown.

She reached for the insignia anyway.

Scorched wood snapped behind her and Lily whirled, dropping to one knee with her finger already on the trigger. She fired before she registered a weapon — all she saw was the twisted expression on the attacker's face as he sprinted headlong out of the shell of the stable.

Her round took him in the shoulder, spinning him to the ground.

She ran him down and kicked the knife from his hand. Here was the rest of the uniform, the black shirt and travel-worn boots. The eyes that stared up at her were mad and blue.

Lily planted her foot on 63's chest, pinning him without much effort. Faint stubble prickled out from his burnt scalp. He tried to speak, red saliva bubbling over his split lips. No tongue.

She jabbed the barrel of her rifle under his eye. He screamed, high-pitched and wordless, thrashing under her boot. "This is for 74.”

The rifle coughed once.

Lily turned away, hand over her mouth and nose, and picked up a knife almost identical to the one 86 had carried. She ran her thumb over the numbers engraved small and deep at the base of the blade, just above the hilt. A six and a three.

The Wasteland had eaten 63's mind, she decided. All that time looking over their shoulders, and now it was over for the cost of a few bullets.

She buckled the knife to her own belt, then went back for the insignia.

Someone threw up noisily behind one of the outbuildings.

“Don’t make me come get you,” Lily yelled, too exhausted to shoulder her rifle. “Come out slow!”

"We're friendly!" The shout came from off to the right. "Don't shoot! We’re…we’re gonna come out!"

An arm extended from behind a charred wall, waving a shirt. A young man followed, someone she didn't recognize. Four more followed him, bloody and covered in ash, holding their hands halfheartedly up around their ears. None of them were armed.

"Good," Lily said. "Any more of you?"

"No." The first one balled his shirt up. He was somewhere in his teens, pale as milk, with a square, simple face. "You shot him."

“Put your shirt back on,” Lily said, slinging her rifle wearily. “What’s your name?”

"Charlie."

Lily looked past him. "Any of you from Laketown? You know a Luke Abbott?"

Collective head-shakes. Her chest ached; maybe her heart.

Charlie was wide-eyed beneath his mask of dirt. "Who are you," he demanded, getting younger with each word. "You shot that man! You were looting!"

"He led this horde out of the Wasteland. I killed him, so I can do whatever I want. I’m in charge now. Got it?"

They exchanged uneasy looks and queasy, humorless smiles.

"Why should we take orders from you," Charlie asked.

Lily patted her rifle. "I have a gun. Where are the rest of your people?"

Charlie kept on looking at 63's ruined face and scattered brains. His eyebrows rose higher and higher until they almost disappeared.

"Hey," Lily said, snapping her fingers. "Charlie."

He looked up. "I want to go home.”

One of the others was trying not to cry. They were all very young.

Lily rubbed her eyes. She wanted to go home too. “Find some weapons. Not you, Charlie, you stay with me. You from around here? Where would people meet? Someplace everyone knows.”

“Ruins,” Charlie said, after a some compulsive thumbnail-chewing. "Out past the old road. Northwest of here."

The rest of the boys assembled, awkwardly holding their new rifles.

"All right," Lily said, planting her feet. "Anything moves, you put a bullet in it. I'll take point. Understood?"

There were no complaints.

—

The building was overgrown and weathered by years of wind and rain. It rose like a cliff face among the pines, yellowing vines erupting from its windows and a sapling growing out of the front door. A new sign had been painted over the old one. Both were faded.

On the cracked paving at its foot camped the remains of the force that had marched out of Laketown just a week ago.

Maybe three dozen people. That couldn’t be right. Between the militia and the volunteers they'd absorbed along the way they must've numbered about two hundred.

Some wounded lay on litters, bandaged and silent. Still more were ambulatory. None of them so far were Luke.
Lily moved her hands to her cheeks, then her throat. She pressed her thumbs to her lips. Maybe the others had pursued what was left of the horde. Maybe—

"Where have you been!” Ethan’s face was bruised, his hand bandaged. He strode up to her, rifle thumping against his side.

She shoved him back. “Where were you? I thought Abbott put you in charge. You been hiding here the whole time?”

Ethan scowled. “This was an unmitigated disaster. Your idea, your fault. When we get back, if we get back, I’m telling the mayor—”

“That I killed the Operative.” Lily flipped 63's insignia at Ethan's head. “Like I said I would.”

Shock flashed across Ethan’s thin face as he examined the bit of silver. “When…when did this happen?”

“This morning. In Bywater. I shot him in the head, they all saw it.”

She gestured at Charlie and the boys, who had drawn a small crowd. People were starting to look at her. Lily hated that.

Cautious relief spread over Ethan's thin face. "Then….it's over."

"No, there's still more—”

“If you killed him," Ethan said firmly, “Then it's over. They’ll scatter back to the Blight soon enough. It’s time to bury our dead and go home.”

He clapped Lily on the shoulder so hard she wasn't sure if it had been friendly or not. Then he charged off to get the others moving, shouting the good news.

She sank to the ground, unable to celebrate. Unable to do much of anything.

—

The long march home ended near sunset. All of Laketown crowded around as they marched in, weary, coated liberally in blood and mud. Amongst the kisses and embraces, however, there were tears and names unanswered, blank expressions and empty arms.

Someone screamed. A bubble formed in the crowd as a young woman folded over in grief, sinking to her knees.

Reunions unfolded all around her, but it was bittersweet. Lily hung back. This wasn’t for her. She'd known there would be no one waiting for her, that they wouldn't have let him out to—

“Lily?”

Action and language left her in a rush. Michael was alive, upright, shading his eyes against the late afternoon sun. A mirage in the desert. She didn’t know if it would be possible to touch him.

At least he seemed similarly at a loss. He half-lifted his hand towards the bloodstains on her shirt. “Are you hurt?”

Lily shook her head and pulled him into her arms. There. Finally. Now it was done.

“Luke said you were separated. He said there was an ambush. I thought—”

Weeks of exhaustion and worry bled away. There were others. They weren't the only ones who’d come back. Luke was alive.

The things Lily needed to say required words that hadn’t been invented yet. She unbuckled the knife from her belt and pressed it into Michael’s hands instead.

He read the numbers engraved below the hilt in blank, silent confusion before giving her an uncertain half-smile, like he was waiting for the rest of the joke.

“It’s over.” Not the right words, but they were serviceable. “I killed him.”

The smile faded. He looked at the knife again, then up at her, shaking his head.

“I took that off his corpse,” she insisted. “After I shot him in the head. You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

Michael embraced her so fiercely she was lifted off her feet. Lily was startled into laughter, and when he set her down he was grinning so wide and bright that she couldn’t help but do the same.

“Really,” he said.

“Yeah. The Wasteland made him crazy. He was like one of those things. Still, he was…I didn’t…”

Michael made an abbreviated gesture, as if he meant to take her in his arms again; for the sake of efficiency Lily did it herself, leaning all her weight into him. Who cared. What did it matter.

“I want to lay down,” she said, into his shirt. “I want to sleep.”

He transferred his hand to her back, and Lily leaned on him gratefully as they left the square.

Maybe she should report to someone…but no, Ethan could do it. She wasn’t ready to see Abbott's face again. She wasn’t ready to let go.