CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE DAMMED

 

 

TWO HOURS TURNED into three. Ezra Pound’s group and Oscar so Wild’s went underground at a Track Fourteen station northeast of Wittenbergplatz. They were cold and exposed, and fear and indecision drove them to seek shelter.

They posted a sentry outside to look out for Robert Browning’s party, but hope of their safe arrival dwindled over the next half-hour.

Dorothy Barker became restless.

“Them, where are they?” she asked Evelyn War.

“Ben Gun, him is with them,” said Evelyn. “Them will be here.”

Dorothy jumped off the platform where the rest were huddled, some of them dipping into their rations. She paced up and down a hundred metres or so on the track.

“Them are safe,” said Walter Sickert in his melodic tones. “Them are outside.”

Dorothy stopped in her tracks and glared up at the platform. She could not see the Hearer, but she was aghast at his words.

“The outside isn’t –” she began, but stopped abruptly.

They all heard it... the echoes of it, at least.

No one stopped to pack away rations, or to adjust the clothes that they had loosened, or to rewrap their head cloths. They stood, as one, and quickly made their way back to the surface.

They had all heard the rumours and they had all heard the tales. They had all been present when Walter Sickert had spoken of the whistling sounds Them made.

Now, they all heard the echoes of those sounds for themselves. Them were far away. Echoes travelled long distances in the tunnels and the sounds were faint, even to sensitive Aux ears, but the threat was real and mounting.

The Zoo Pack finally met three hours after its departure from Old Zoo. There were many hours of travel still ahead, and already they were dying.

The fastest stretch of the day’s journey took Zoo Pack along the old Landwehr Canal. It was unfamiliar territory, but it offered the best opportunity for the Pack to walk in the most compact group, to help each other and move more quickly.

Faster was safer. The ice was deeper, the canal forming a ridge more than a metre higher than the land around it. The ice seemed colder, too, less slick and easier to walk on.

The youngest pups were handed from one surrogate to another for carrying, but the Hearer was borne along by the same four Aux.

He was calmer, much calmer than he had been at Warschauer, but he was weak. The balance of his mind was still delicate, and he was still being treated by the tale-teller.

He was carried in a sling by two Aux, one on either side of him. They changed sides regularly and swapped out for another pair of Aux every half-hour or so. They got into a rhythm with their burden, who was still and light, but a burden nevertheless.

Ben Gun and several of the other Aux remained on the flanks of the large party, scouting the buildings they passed, watching the shadows and listening.

They heard nothing but the moan and creak of the ice and the occasional WHOMP as it fell from roofs, sometimes close by, sometimes at a distance. Once or twice they heard the skitter of rodents on the ice or the tapping of bark in the trees lining one side of their route. But Zoo Pack passed several peaceful hours on the march without incident.

Then they turned south, away from the canal, and the territory changed. They were back in the streets.

No Aux from any pack used the city centre Track Seven, not ever, not for anything. Track Seven belonged to the Mehringdamm Pack. It had always been that way. They had cut off and sealed a portion of Track Six, too, where it intersected with Track Seven between the Hacker fiefdom to the north and the Tempelhof fiefdom to the south. But Track Seven, from Richard Wagner Platz to Karl Marx Strasse, was their fiefdom.

As they approached Mehringdamm, tired from hours outside and from hours on their feet, on alert, every Aux scrapper reached for a weapon.

The Dammed were full of wrong. They were solitary, always had been. They did not barter or trade. They did not mate with members of other packs. They did not communicate or negotiate. They did not talk the same language, or any language that the other packs recognised. Something had gone wrong with them a long time ago.

No Aux crossed their territory underground. Outside, in daylight, had never been a problem before. The Dammed hunted at night; they liked the dark, and the darker the better. They were even known to avoid the nights of the full moon. They liked the ice black and the sky blacker. They thrived underground and in the winter.

Oscar so Wild was the first to see movement.

He was too late. The Aux was upon them before the lieutenant even had time to signal. It was big. Bigger than Ezra Pound, by half.

It was a great slab of hard flesh with a small head and no discernible neck. It heaved into the flank of the group, throwing its weight around. Its eyes were white pinpricks, apparently sightless, although that didn’t stop it taking down two Aux with its huge fists before it tripped over the dam it had felled in its scrapping.

It didn’t try to get up. Its body so swollen that it could only roll, it preferred to remain on its back and fight off its enemy with fists and feet.

The dam it had taken down plunged a stiletto into the place where its neck should have been, penetrating eight or ten centimetres, but when she pulled the blade out, expecting a gush of blood to follow, there was barely a trickle.

The injury was enough to anger the beast, however, and it roared as it swung out. The dam’s head was staved in, crushing her skull and killing her outright. Blood trickled from her nose and both of her ears as she crashed to the ice.

“Step away!” shouted Oscar so Wild, and the Zoo Pack instinctively followed his order. The other fallen Aux, a young male, scuttled across the ice on his hands and knees.

Suddenly, the Dammed had no targets within reach and no eyes to locate them.

Silence fell on Zoo Pack. All that could be heard was the slabby Aux’s grunting, and the shifting of his immense weight on the ice beneath his body.

Ezra Pound put a bolt into the beast’s chest from four metres away.

The Dammed Aux howled. He beat the curled thumb and forefinger of his fist against the wound, driving the bolt in still further. He howled again, and then a second bolt sank into his chest a few centimetres to the left of the first.

The Aux roared and thrashed, but did not thump his chest a second time.

It took four bolts to kill the beast. By then, more of the Dammed Aux were lurching out from between the buildings, blindly sliding on the slick ice, following the cries of their pack mate.

The air was filled with their odd grunts and rumbles and their roars of rage and frustration.

Their hearing was intact, but they were slow and fumbling. It was clear that they were all sightless.

Ben Gun had found his way quickly to Evelyn when the first Dammed Aux had appeared.

“Us, we can beat them,” he told her. “Us, we can escape them. Us, we must scatter, evade. We are many and they are few. Them cannot follow all of us. Them have only their hands to kill with.”

Evelyn ducked towards Robert Browning.

“Tell Ezra Pound, him to scatter the pups and the ancients. Tell Ezra Pound, him to make noise. The scrappers, us to make noise. Us, we must lead them in and pick them off.”

“Us, we’re exposed,” said Robert Browning. “Us, we should take cover.”

“The Dammed, them cannot see us,” said Evelyn. “Them are slow. Them cannot understand what us say, the orders us give. Us, we can fight them. Us, we can win.”

Ben Gun had already begun to spread the word and organise the pups and the oldest of the pack. They rallied.

Old Aux took the burdens of the very young. The pups big enough to run turned the threat into a game, looking for the best gaps between the Dammed Aux, and the likeliest hiding places between the buildings.

“Us, we fight!” ordered Ezra Pound, his voice ringing out over the heads of Zoo Pack. “Aux, you with crossbows prepare, tougher and tough! Zoo Pack, you others scatter, faster and fast!”

He took a breath and cast an eye around the pack at the stumbling Dammed.

“You, on my count –” the Alpha dog began, but he was interrupted by Robert Browning.

“Scrappers, you shout and holler. You make noise!” he ordered.

“One... two... three!” bellowed Ezra Pound.

As soon as he had opened his mouth on the word ‘three’, every Aux without a missile weapon began to scatter, zigzagging out of the group. They ran for the buildings and the passages between them, giving the Dammed Aux a wide berth at every touch and turn. It didn’t stop the huge Aux swinging at the air, trying to make sense of a battle they could not engage in.

At the same time, the cry went up from the Zoo Packers left standing to fight. They shouted and bellowed, and some whistled and growled. They brought their crossbows up and began to aim at the huge, lumbering targets.

The Dammed Aux were drawn to the sounds, too relieved to have a target to aim for, and too stupid to realise that they were walking into a trap.

Then the bolts started to fly.

One Dammed Aux came lurching at the scrappers with three bolts embedded in his body; the last one, loosed at point blank range, had disappeared deep into his flesh, and yet still it came.

When he finally fell, he fell forwards, knocking over one of the dams while she was reloading. He landed on top of her, his dead weight breaking her leg as they crashed onto the ice. Her scream pierced the air, but she was out cold before the corpse had settled across her chest, finally smothering her.

The Zoo Pack was using up its bolts fast. The Dammed took three or four bolts each to kill, and the dams were as big as the males and just as intent on slaughter.

“You, aim for their eyes!” shouted one of the lieutenants.

Their targets were close and slow moving, and many of the Zoo Pack were good shots. The Dammed were big and strong. Their hides were tough and their muscles as dense and hard as wood. It was proving difficult to penetrate to their organs to kill them. Head shots, if they were accurate, would be faster and more efficient.

In the side streets off Mehringdamm, the old and young of Zoo Pack were hiding in the shadows and in doorways. They kept still and quiet, listening to the battle raging. They could hear their packmates hollering and stamping, making any noise they could to draw the attention of the Dammed Aux away from them. They were grateful for it. They were scared, too.

They had given the Aux they could see a wide berth, but there were others still in the area. The Zoo Packers could hear the footfalls of the Dammed and the sounds their bodies made blundering into the buildings they could not see as they made their way towards the noise.

They could hear the Dammed Aux communicating with one another, but could not understand their grunts and howls.

Randall Flogg, a small child strapped to his body with a blanket, gasped when he came face to face with a huge, Dammed Aux. They met where an alleyway opened into a patch of wasteland behind a big old building.

At the change in Flogg’s heart rate, or perhaps the smell of fear in his sweat, the child he was carrying began to cry. The old Aux was crippled with arthritis and too slow to get out of the way as the Dammed Aux wildly swung out with a paw the size of Flogg’s head.

One lucky punch to the jaw broke Flogg’s neck, and the old Aux landed on his back on the ground. The infant’s crying did not stop.

The Dammed Aux struck out again, hitting nothing but air. Realising his opponent was down, he kicked, and when that didn’t stop the wailing, he stamped.

The crying stopped abruptly.

The Dammed Aux moved on, following the sounds of his dying brothers and the cacophony their enemies were making.

Ben Gunn did not have a crossbow. All he had was his trusty slingshot and the two blades he’d been given, one by Evelyn and one by Edward Leer. The blades were useless, but he trusted his slingshot more than he trusted anything. He was also determined that he wasn’t going to run with the pups and the ancients. He was going to stand with the scrappers.

He didn’t expect to kill a Dammed Aux with his slingshot, so he didn’t try.

He loaded his slingshot with the biggest, heaviest stone in his cache. Then he looked around at the roofs of the buildings along the street, and at the trees among them.

One of the roofs had the perfect pitch; the ice covering it was hanging low and heavy. Ben Gun whipped his arm, aimed and loosed. The stone hit the ice on the roof with a hard crack. Two of the Dammed Aux milling beneath it turned their heads this way and that, listening for the sounds, distracted.

He let another shot loose, and another. Then he aimed high up the trunk of a tree, ten metres to the left of the roof. He shot three more stones at it, hitting it with a string of resounding THOKKs. The Dammed Aux turned their heads again, this time in the direction of the tree. They were confused, weaving this way and that, not knowing which sounds to follow.

Ben Gun continued his campaign of confusion, careful to keep his targets away from any routes the fleeing Zoo Packers were taking.

He slowed down more than half a dozen of the Dammed Aux, and even saw two turn against each other. He had never seen brawling like it. One of them would be dead by the end of the scrap. The other would get a bolt through the eye or three through the chest. Ben Gun was sure of it.

Two or three minutes later, the roof that Ben Gun had aimed his first volley of shots at shed its load onto the street below.

A Dammed Aux standing beneath it was buried in tons of ice. Ben Gun kept an eye on the debris from time to time while distracting three more Dammed on the other side of the street. But the avalanche had been much more dramatic than the one that had buried Robert Browning. The angle of the roof had been steep, the fall had been almost vertical and there had been many more tonnes of ice.

Ben Gun suspected that the Aux wasn’t going anywhere. He had no friends to dig him out.

The battle raged for long minutes and bandoliers were emptied of bolts. When a Zoo Pack Aux ran out of ammunition he regrouped to the centre of the pack and concentrated on making noise, or took more bolts from those who still had supplies.

None of the Aux with crossbows left the street. No one else tried to make it past the few remaining Dammed. No one wanted to run.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the fight was over. The last Dammed Aux was taken out with a bolt to his right eye. He clutched and clawed at his face. Silence fell among the Zoo Pack as they watched the sightless beast die. It was a pathetic business.

There was worse to come.

Within minutes, the old and young Aux began to emerge from their hiding places to return to the Zoo Pack. The pups had all seen their own dead before, but they had not seen anything like this. It could not be avoided. The old had seen death, had seen carnage of one kind or another, had perpetrated it, but rarely on this scale.

Ezra Pound had stowed his crossbow, as had all the scrappers, and they were milling around, consoling one another. There was little to celebrate in killing other Aux, even the Dammed, especially now.

At the end of a battle, most scrappers wanted to eat, mate and sleep, but there was still work to be done.

The Pack was back together and everyone accounted for, including their dead. Two of the old Aux had passed Randall Flogg on their way back to Mehringdamm and carried him and the child back to Zoo Pack. The two of them and the two dams were taken underground. They were taken down onto Track Seven. No Aux had ever used Track Seven, none but the Dammed.

“Retrieve bolts,” said Ezra after he had assigned the burial team. The tone of his utterance seemed strained. His voice was as loud and deep as it always was, but there was regret in it, too.

Their crossbows on their backs, the scrappers began to walk towards the felled Dammed Aux, pulling stilettos from boots and cuffs.

“No,” said a voice as an ancient male raised his hand. He looked around, making eye contact with several of the other older Aux standing nearby. “Us, we will do it. Scrappers, you must rest.”

Oscar so Wild nodded at the old Aux.

“You, it is a noble thought,” he said. “Us, we shot the bolts. Us, we must retrieve them.”

“Not noble,” said the old male. “Us, we need the scrappers fit. Us, we can’t scrap for ourselves. Us, we can do this. You, rest. You, eat. Then, us, we walk.”

The old male pulled a blade out of his sleeve and nodded his head vigorously to several other ancients who had heard what he had said and had begun to gather around him. One reached out for the blade that Oscar so Wild was holding, not having one of his own.

“Do it,” said Ezra Pound.

So the scrappers rested while the veteran Aux retrieved the scores of bolts that had killed the Dammed. The first few cuts were faltering, but their old hands quickly remembered the skills they had learned on their own battlefields when they had been the scrappers of Zoo Pack. Blades began to flash, and the ancients were soon digging out bolts with a few expert flicks of their wrists.