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The Powers That Be
-Huskal
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Chapter 01
A sloth-like shape poked its head over Lucinda’s shoulder, its light sandy fur smeared with dirt. The small sloth licked its lips before whispering in her ear, “The patrol’s are too short. They know we’re here.”
Lucinda stroked the grimy sloth absently, “Just stay still… down!”
A figure in black stomped into the tight pocket of clear ground. Lucinda and the sloth went silent, wide-eyed. Lucinda watched the soldier, tall and lean like an athlete stretched skywards; trying to run against them would be like an arrow trying to escape lightning. He turned his face towards the muggy sunlight. The soldier had a long, blade-like nose and slanted eyes pushed high up on face with an expression that revealed nothing.
Lucinda’s eyes blurred, she remembered him from the first day, day one, on the northbound bus.
She was talking loudly to Meredith with her wavy red hair that fell past her shoulders. Lucinda’s own hair lightly brushed her cheeks. She was turned in her seat to talk to her friend, one earphone in an ear playing the Arctic Monkeys, arms dangling over the seat like they didn’t matter. The bus lurched and stopped for more passengers like it should have. The gunshot had been loud because she was sitting behind the driver when he had been shot. Lucinda had whipped around in her seat to see the watery red coating the shattered window, screaming. There was an urgent gurgling sound, the bus lurched forwards and the two soldiers standing in the doorway staggered sideways.
The soldier rustled some ferns with the nozzle of the long, black gun he gripped in his hands. Lucinda tried not to breathe, because he would hear.
Sharp sloth claws dug into the back of Lucinda’s neck and pulled at her hair. The sloth-animal leaped off her back and went flying through the air, a tail spiralling out behind it. It latched onto the soldier and started clawing and snarling.
“Marcel, don’t!” Lucinda yelled, dashing out of the bush behind him, “Marcel, get off!” The sloth jumped away as Lucinda stuck the man with a black rod she grabbed from her habitat. The taser-stick crackled and the soldier’s body seized before folding onto the forest floor. Lucinda looked at the man’s body in brief horror before checking her taser. The lack of yellow bars on the side of the handle indicated empty. Lucinda dropped the spent baton and fumbled at the waist of her spent soldier for his. She looted quickly like a nervous cicada, flitting far and fast away with any sign of danger. Marcel jumped into the pouch on her back that had once been a hoodie as the girl scampered through the uneven trees.
“Marcel that was stupid,” Lucinda growled as she felt the creatures sharp claws gripping her shoulder tentatively in the rutted motion of their flight.
“They know we’re here. He would have found you, anyway. He heard you gasp when I scratched you.”
“We should head uphill.”
“No,” the sloth-like animal shook its head, “They’ll have two agents waiting at the top of the hill, and they always have them. We should get out of the forest.”
Lucinda skidded to a stop through the pine needles; she looked to Marcel, “Go downhill? Towards the lighter trees?”
Marcel nodded. Lucinda put a hand on Marcel’s long claws; she hadn’t left the forest since she had met her small friend.
“Hurry up,” Marcel whispered, “He’s not far behind us.”
“Shit!” Lucinda exclaimed, and without looking back she plunged downhill. Tilted back with her arms sailing in the air for balance Lucinda skidded and flew down and over the unstable undergrowth; if she tripped and fell she would only be going faster. Marcel sprang off the back of her neck and seemed to gallop horizontally from tree trunk to thinner tree trunk. The bright green leaves whipping at her face reminded Lucinda of falling, like a fall from a road high up on the hill down into the forest.
The forest sloped gently and fanned out to lap the edges of what was once suburbia. Lucinda jumped over a log; breathing out heavily as she thanked her lucky stars she didn’t twist and snap her ankle. The dense bush would carry right onto the back lawn of somebody’s old house. Lucinda felt like she was falling facedown through trees.
The teen sprinted out across a boggy lawn; it seemed to be lightly raining over the houses like some fine white gauze falling from the sky. Marcel’s heavy wet mass clung to the fabric of her back. With her arm Lucinda tried to wipe the green paste off her face.
Lucinda grabbed the steel handle of the back door and twisted with all her might. To her surprise, the handle gave and the door chinked open. The girl bolted in and spun to slam the door. She needed something to block it, to barricade the soldier out. She spied a washing machine and dragged it jaggedly across the wooden floor with both her straining arms to effectively jam the back door shut. Breathing heavily Lucinda ran into the next room after Marcel, smearing mud over the white carpet, so white she supposed it belonged in a fairytale or history book. Clean, homey, ordered.
Lucinda didn’t think anyone would be living in this house when she entered it.
“Hi,” said the blonde girl, handcuffed in chains to the kitchen wall. Lucinda couldn’t say anything. The girl was really beautiful; with a face you could never really forget and thought you already knew, like that of a movie star’s.
Lucinda’s face screwed up with incomprehension, “What…?”
The other girl shrugged and swung the chains, “I’ve been like this for a while,” she explained in a sedate voice, “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.” She shifted slightly the tall wooden stool, “Could you get me a glass of water?”
“There’s a soldier coming…”
The blonde shook her head, “No, he won’t come in here.”
“You sure?” Lucinda looked hopeful.
“Yeah. There’s… glasses on the bench,” she licked her lips absently. Lucinda brought a glass to the taps with shaking hands; the mains still didn’t work but there was water left in the filtered reservoir. There hadn’t been water running through the main pipes since day two.
Day two the soldiers had started flying over the cities in large, amphibious planes. Each time it felt like a small earthquake, the plaster of the gymnasium rattling and dropping dust from weak joints. The soldiers wouldn’t care much if the roof collapsed, Lucinda thought. Her arms ached from holding them on top of her head all day. The soldiers amused themselves walking around their prisoners, one hand itching over an automatic rifle slick and black. Lucinda remembered how the cold varnish floor sapped away the heat in her legs. She felt like meat in a freezing works, strung up on a sharp hook, waiting for something heavy to fall from the sky on them.
Lucinda passed the glass of water to the girl, leaving dirty fingerprints on the outside but the blonde drank it gratefully.
“Ungh!” she doubled over and grabbed her sides. Lucinda swore.
“What is it?” Marcel was suddenly at the table; Lucinda hadn’t seen him come in.
“Nnnngh!” the blonde groaned, inwardly strained. Her arm flew up and slapped down the kitchen table with a rattling bang that ended in a hiss as ice shot across the table, looking like white dye running through wet tissue paper. She was panting; some of the perspiration on her forehead had become frozen like small jewels before melting again.
“Era, what’s wrong?” Marcel questioned urgently, leaping up onto the table to get close to eye level with the teen.
Era made a frustrated noise, “I can’t stop it, they’ve put something in me. How’d you get here anyway, Snuffles? You’re not supposed to know I’m here.”
“Snuffles?” Lucinda repeated. Marcel looked up at her. His black eyes twinkled oddly underneath his blank, sloth-like expression.
“That’s his name,” Era laughed weakly, “Well that’s what we all called you on the boat, didn’t we Snuffles?” she rubbed his matted furred head lightly. The blonde girl looked up at Lucinda, “Kinda weird and all, isn’t it?”
“A month ago I would have said soldiers walking through our cities, our island was weird. You are something else entirely,” Lucinda observed.
“They’re not our cities. I’m… not from here,” Era told her uncomfortably, “They—they put me here. They brought me here from the ship, the big one in the harbour that all the soldiers came on. Then they locked me up here,” she waved her manacled hands.
Lucinda stiffened, “You’re with them?”
The girl narrowed her eyes angrily, as Lucinda felt her own doing, “I’m not with them.”
“Era and me came here on the ship. I escaped and found you in the forest. I’m not the only one they’re after, Luci,” Marcel interjected apologetically.
Lucinda had found Marcel in the woods at night; appearing a sloth but built like a cat. He was a dangerous creature with so much energy…
“There are seven of us,” Era stated.
“Including—including Marcel?”
Era shook her head slowly, “No… Marcel’s a…”
“The soldier can’t come near the house because he hasn’t got the clearance, but he knows you’re here, Lucinda.”
The blonde twitched, “Get me another glass of water.”
Lucinda grudgingly obliged, grabbing a bigger glass. She let some tap water splash onto her hand and wiped it clean on her trouser leg. Era took the water and skulled it, dropping the glass. She started to hyperventilate, clenching her fists and choking on the air. Her chest heaved painfully and her arms went the palest shade of blue. The blue and white on her arms intensified. Water wept out of her skin and froze like glass, glistening rock. Era yelled and pulled away from the chains. Lucinda screamed sharply as she noticed the girl’s eyes had frozen wide open in their sockets. The frozen blue-tinted hands were still stuck fast in the manacles; Era brought them smashing onto the frozen kitchen table once, twice and they shattered. Era shrieked, holding her arms tense and staggering away from her post.
Marcel hopped onto Lucinda’s shoulder, curling his abnormally long tail around her arm, “Help her, Luci. We need to get out of here.”
