“No! No, I have to help Thomas!” Anna screamed in a voice broken with tears as she tried to pull away from Shazza once the gag was torn from her mouth.
Riddick and Shazza shot a wide eyed look at each other. They needed to get out of here, to get back to the Moorglade, and probably even farther. That Old Thomas might be here injured, or worse, changed everything, at least for now.
“Where?” Riddick crouched down and held the girl’s arm gently to get her attention. He first noticed that her eyes were clear, and weren’t glazed with shock, just tears. He noticed that she had no fear of him. She had pulled away because she wanted to find Thomas, not because she was afraid. Like Jack, Anna looked him in the eye.
Anna looked behind her to the room that she had been taken from and her expression broke, her tears and fright came to the fore. “Please?…” She had no idea what she pleaded for, a simple child’s wish for everything to be all right. Riddick looked up to see that Shazza watched him; they both shared the same thought, it was clear in their eyes.
He wanted to take them both out, to just leave, but knew that he couldn’t. The old man had touched him too and he couldn’t leave, even if he thought that the man was dead and there was nothing they could do for him any longer. “It’ll have to be quick, we need to get out of here.” With that he stood and crept closer to the door; they still didn’t know if there was anyone else here. He didn’t think there was but he had been cautious his entire life, he wasn’t about to get himself, and those in his care, killed by being stupid now. He thought of Imam, who had trusted him to care for them.
He scanned the room, not only with his eyes but with all of his senses. No one crouched in the dark, there was no sound of a breath, or a heartbeat. There was no click, no sound of a weapon being readied to fire. There was however a heavy scent of blood in the air; blood was a scent he knew well, something he could taste not only in the air. A primitive awareness that he had honed in Slam as a matter of survival, either to kill, or to eat.
The body lay broken and slumped on the floor before the low bench by the window and Riddick sighed. He had known that he would not find Thomas alive here; there was no way that would happen. The small amount of time he had spent with Thomas let him know that the man would die to protect Anna, that he would fight to the death, and clearly he had.
Riddick’s wounds burned briefly underneath his re-bandaged hands, a reminder of what he didn’t know. Another scan of the room and he stepped towards the still body of the old man. He knew that he was dead but rested his hand at the man’s throat anyway, before he pulled the blanket from the bench and covered him with it. It wasn’t something he would have done with anyone else; in fact it was something he had never done before. Dead was dead and the dead would be cold soon enough no matter what they were covered with.
Standing quickly he scanned the room again, before crossing to a rustic desk against one of the walls. Riddick didn’t have time, or even the ability, to read them to see what they were but he felt he had to take them; Theo would know what to do with them. He bundled them together and put them into a sack he had emptied out onto the ground.
It was hard to leave the room and look into the expectant eyes of the little girl as she silently pleaded with him. A tiny shake of his head, while he looked only at Shazza. He wanted to leave, he wanted to run, but Anna reached out and tugged at his pant leg and he was forced to look down at her. Her eyes begged him and she cried silently; she knew too, she had to know. Riddick started to shake his head and then stopped himself; his hand trailed over her tangled hair. He didn’t know what to say or even how to begin; he had killed so many people that one more death shouldn’t bother him and yet he couldn’t look at this one little girl and tell her that her friend was dead.
—
Duncan was quiet when he left the building and rejoined the mercs that he had left outside; he had taken one hell of a chance when he had left Riddick alive. There would be a price to pay for it in time, everything had a price.
He stepped out from under the overhang and back into the rain again. Took a look around at who was left. Johns took a step closer to him, it was a small movement but enough to let Duncan know that the tech officer was with him. They had lost nine men in the fight against the villagers, whether lost or dead he couldn’t say. They were eight now; Johns and himself and six other mercs, one injured. Duncan didn’t know if the man would survive the trip back through the fields and to their ship in the forest. So five men and Johns.
He should have just shot Bishop in the ship before it had ever gotten this far, but it was too late for that now. He had gotten so used to the game of cat and mouse that he and Bishop had played over the years that maybe it had blinded him. Things had been set in motion and now they would just have to be dealt with.
“Are we taking this…” One of the mercs asked, his weapon waved at the building Duncan had just left. Duncan looked back and thought about the three inside; they would likely escape through a back door, he hadn’t seen them enter the village after all, but he didn’t want to risk a confrontation with Riddick, not just yet. Right now they defended the life of a child and he didn’t want to risk that now any more than he did then.
He noted that the merc waited for his response; these men would follow him now. They had stopped the raid on the village and gathered where they were told to; all of this would make things easier. Duncan didn’t rule by fear, he didn’t need to, he wasn’t Bishop. But if he had to, he would have killed them to put an end to it, and was glad it hadn’t come to that. He turned back to the merc, “No, we’re returning to the ship, now. What we came for isn’t here, and the mission has changed somewhat.”
“We’re here to get paid!” Another merc called out from Duncan’s other side. Duncan turned to face him and watched as the man shrank under a hard gaze.
Pay. With some it was always going to be about the fucking pay. Even when Duncan had been a merc much the same as these men here, it was never about the money for him. He had embezzled millions from Bishop and even then it wasn’t about the money. He had given almost all of it to Bishop’s fired secretaries over the years. Sometimes for information and sometimes for no reason at all. It was another way he played with Bishop. But for some, all they would ever see was the money. It made them dangerous because all someone had to do was pay them more money and their allegiances would turn in a heartbeat.
His voice dropped an octave as he stepped into the big merc’s space, no fear of his size, or of the weapon he carried. Out of the corner of his eye he caught another merc raise his weapon and level it at the big merc’s head. “In three days a Company ship will show up. Anyone that wants to leave can leave. You’ll get your pay. Unless…” Duncan eased even closer to the man, and Johns swallowed hard as he thought to how Bishop had died, how fast it had happened, and that same sensual quality in Duncan’s voice. “You don’t live those three days. The choice is yours.”
Even the rain seemed silent as the men stood and decided how it was to be. They could live, and leave in three days, or they could cross Duncan, and die now. Johns didn’t want to leave and as he caught the eyes of some of the others he didn’t think he was alone in that. Johns blinked and Duncan had stepped back again; all of the sound seemed to come back at once. The merc that held the weapon didn’t lower it until Duncan nodded and they set off across the field, towards the ship.
—
Anna shivered against the cold and the rain and Shazza wished she had something to cover her with but all they had in their favor was speed. Riddick adjusted the strap on the sack that he carried so that it wouldn’t interfere if he had to fight and they set off for the ship, with Shazza in the lead this time. She couldn’t see, but Riddick knew that any danger they faced would more likely come from behind. From the men in the village, either the mercs or more of the team that had snatched the girl.
Anna pulled at Shazza’s hand every once in a while as they ran through the dark. Shazza had wanted to hold her, but the girl seemed to know the terrain better than she did and Shazza took her hand and let her lead them. “What happened, Anna?”
Riddick crept closer and loped just behind the two women so that he could hear their conversation. The sooner they found out how deep this ran the better. Every once in a while he would stop and listen to everything around them, but they weren’t being pursued, he would know it if they were. Nothing moved out there, he would almost take more comfort if they were followed.
“We had stayed with Old Thomas…” Anna’s voice cracked again when she mentioned the man’s name, but her breath huffed out as though it hurt her and she continued. “After you left.” Riddick heard those words as though they had been uttered for him alone, but pushed it back down. There was nothing that could be done about it now, and maybe if they had stayed it would have been even worse.
“Some of the others, the new villagers, they disappeared afterwards and it made Thomas upset but he wouldn’t say why. He just said that we had to stay together, and that we could get down the river to the next village if we had to.”
Shazza looked back at Riddick; just a quick glance over her shoulder but it was enough. There were more people here. Shazza faced forward and they continued, out of the village now, and into the high grass, where it was harder to keep their footing.
“How many were there?” Riddick asked quietly, so that he wouldn’t startle her; he needed to know how many they faced. He and Shazza had killed seven men between them, and the merc had shot the eighth; if there were more somewhere, they would have to be dealt with soon. Riddick crouched lower and moved even closer to the others.
“Maybe nineteen or twenty; they were new, they came to the village about a month or so ago. Just after the raids started.” Anna stayed quiet after that; even at the age of ten she had put that together, that these men might be connected to the raiders.
Nineteen or twenty. Shazza shot another look across her shoulder at Riddick, as she slipped her finger through the trigger guard, from where it had rested alongside it before. That left eleven or twelve, at least. There was no way to know if any were killed when the mercs raided the village. Anna had said that they had disappeared before it happened, so those men could be anywhere now.
“My Mom….” Anna had stayed quiet for a few minutes; the tension was thick in the air between Riddick and Shazza and she almost hadn’t wanted to ask. Her mother had been pulled away from her and Thomas had tried to fight with the men to prevent it and had been hurt. She had heard her mother scream in the other room, and had heard a fight, and then she had heard nothing. Later one of the men had said he would go out after her and the men had fought amongst themselves briefly.
Shazza answered her before she could finish and Riddick listened to the steel edge in her voice, everything in her alert and aware. “Your mother’s safe, Anna, that’s how we knew to come get you. She’s safe.”
Riddick thought about Shazza’s life as a settler, and wondered if these were the kinds of men she had to deal with in her life. Before this, before him. It made him value her trust in him and want to protect her even more.
Riddick saw the lights of the ship first and grinned up at the sight of Jack, his Jack, loaded for bear up at the rail, before he helped Anna up onto the deck to join her mother. He held Shazza’s hand a second longer before he helped her up too.
—
It was hard to move across the field in the rain with an injured man whose leg was shattered. There wasn’t much they could do for him. Several times the merc asked to just be left there; on each of those occasions Duncan would look at the two men that carried him. They would pick themselves back up and pull the dying merc with them. He was dying, of that they had no doubt, but they shook their heads quietly at Duncan’s unspoken question, they would carry him all the way, whether the man died or not. No one else questioned it either; even Johns held his hands out to take a weapon handed to him, to make up for the loss of the two mercs that carried the third between them.
The forest wall was a dark mass up ahead, shrouded and ominous in the driving rain. They were halfway to the ship. Johns felt the electromagnetic field first, as he was a few steps ahead of Duncan, and let out a soft ‘oh’ as he moved forward. Duncan was about to ask what was wrong when he felt it too; all of the soft hair on his body rose at once, in spite of the pelting rain. They all stood within the field, as they had before, the rain, the cold, and the dark ignored.
Everything slowed down as it had before when he stood within the field. Duncan could feel individual drops of rain. He could even hear them, without the need to try. His face turned up and he closed his eyes against the rain and just…felt. Before he had felt a part of everything, but this was stronger, this was different. Maybe Bishop had affected it before, to let him see, but now he saw himself here. Forever.
Suddenly it changed, so quickly that it made him scream and brought him to his knees. Everything was gone, a desolate dust bowl. The ground beneath him parched and cracked as the trees burned in the distance. The pain was unbearable, as though he himself burned.
Arms pulled at him, he could offer no resistance but allowed himself to be led. He retched dryly down on all fours until Johns pulled him up, outside of the strange field. “Fuck!” Duncan hated that his voice shook, that anyone could see how deeply he had been affected, but Johns said nothing, just held onto his arm until he could stand on his own.
Gone, everything had been gone, wiped away by something powerful, something awful. He shuddered again and felt Johns tighten his grip. He looked around to see that the other men watched him, their faces pale and shaken, and wondered if they saw what he had seen. Maybe they had; maybe not the exact same thing, but something close.
“It can’t happen, Johns, it can’t.” He watched Johns swallow hard, and felt his hands shake on his arm. “That ship will be here in three days and we don’t have enough people to fight them off, to fix this.” Duncan spoke quietly, only to Johns; he wanted him to understand, as he looked back toward the village and thought of Riddick. Duncan knew that the man had a military background, and knew some of what he had done before he had ended up imprisoned. He didn’t know what Riddick would think of it, but that one look that they had shared had told him that Riddick was, if nothing else, an honorable man. They might need his help before it was all done. “I have to find him, Johns, make sure they get back to the ship.”
Duncan didn’t wait for an answer, he just squeezed Johns’ arm once, and loped off back the way they had come, to track Riddick.
Copyright © November 2006 xxxevilgrinxxx