Thomas Swain, Accountant

[Salacious_Angel]

Just a little piece I wrote a while back. Enjoy.


Thomas Swain,
Accountant
F*CK ‘EM. F*uck ‘em all.

The tiny red-haired woman is standing on toe-tips, barking like a lunatic at the balding taxidermist, who looks more like a hippo than a man and has somehow gotten it into his head that he’s a military person of some sort. He’s shouting some gibberish about ‘necessity’ and ‘casualties of war’, she retorts with something equally asinine about ‘morality’ and ‘sins of omission’. They’ve been going on like this for five minutes and twenty-two seconds by my count, which is precisely six minutes too long.

Somewhere west of here a party of survivors like us is making its way through the ruins of Allsfolk End, surrounded by cleanup units left to eliminate enduring ‘threats’ in the aftermath of last week’s blitzkrieg. They’re exhausted, unarmed and hopelessly outnumbered; their hunters have weapons we didn’t know existed, and I’m not entirely sure they’re human. Every so often, a small radio catches their fragmented distress call, and each time the Hippo and the Dwarf trade verbal blows.

She knows some of the survivors.

He couldn’t give a rat’s *ss.

Denying their call is murder.

Answering it is suicide.

Real men don’t run from responsibility.

He doubts she’s ever had a real man in her life.

I’m sitting under a sheet of corrugated roofing, chuckling to myself. Three swigs of vodka later, and an empty flask soars from my bleeding hand and clatters against a battered shop front wall. As far as I’m concerned, the world ended four days ago, when a man drunk on adrenaline and the kind of fear that instinct alone cannot supply, staggered through the threshold of a blasted ruin, retching at the stink of scorched flesh and calling out in idiot desperation to the phantoms of some forgotten filial devotion.

Never in eight f*cking years. You run like a coward and you hide from your own kin, but when the smoke clears and the embers glow, you’re searching for some enduring testament to that very thing you revile, and suddenly the sight of those blackened corpses makes you cry and vomit all at once.

So they’re trapped in the belly of the beast and I’m sitting with a handful of despondent souls with a helluva lot of guns but sh*t-all motivation and a burnt-out sense of desperation. They need all the help they can get, but “f*ck ‘em” is all my surly mind can muster.

It’s got nothing to do with necessity, or means, or morality. You see the beauty die, innocence and ignorance slipping covertly into the night while bombs sunder the city-scape, and you know exactly why you deserve every second of it.

F*ck ‘em all.

The dispute is escalating, and some time sooner or later the Hound is going to track the sound, then all of this ethical triviality will be rendered moot, and the crows will be picking our pieces from amongst the refuse. The violinist makes this point, and in that one sentence the fire dies in their eyes and their frantic words scatter on the shivering wind.

We all know the Hound: something half flesh and half iron, and somehow something else altogether. As big as an automobile with the movements of an ape, all blood-stained sinew and rusted wheezing gears. Face like a man, but set with rivets, and all mutilated and sewed up like a farmer after an altercation with a combine harvester. Its eyes are pale and colourless as the moon, and when it howls...

The camp is deathly silent for a long while before the woman speaks again, and when she does, her argument is incontrovertible: “They said they’re being hunted, and if the Lhazzar have anything else like that… thing at their command – and I cannot doubt that they do – then ignoring them is worse than a death sentence. It’s sending them to Hell.”

That settles it, though Hippo is definitely less than pleased.

We check our weapons and ammunition, do a body count (thirteen), and whisper a pointless prayer.

Then it’s into the belly of the Beast.

Five days ago I knew nothing about guns and even less about killing a man. Hours would piss on by like water through a faucet while the mindless click-clack of an outdated type-write signalled the calculation of yet more tithes and expenditures for slick-haired men I’d never meet and didn’t care to. Eyes would wander to grey skies beyond concrete horizons; to the chipped and murky vase upon my desktop and the sun-starved flowers therein; to Katja passing by on her lunchtime runs, arms laden with teas and pastries uncountable, pert nipples pressed enthusiastically against a yellow blouse a few layers too thin...

There wasn’t much to be said of Thomas Swain back then. An unremarkable man, quiet, closeted, maybe even a little close-minded. An inner-city apartment between a waxworks and a run-down Vaudevillian, few friends and no family he’d ever speak of. Some would remark upon his unusual music ability, and just as quickly point out that he neither sang nor owned an instrument. A man of few words and fewer actions, who as a child would rarely venture outside for fear of beestings, and who never picked up the courage to ask that pretty green-eyed girl to dance.

I don’t know much more about guns now than I did then, but I know full well the way a man’s skull opens up when an object passes through it at an unpleasant velocity, blossoming outward in a scarlet cascade and showering his comrades with what might have once been a memory, of joy perhaps, or anxiety, once sealed safely and reverently away in that imperturbable sanctum we treasure above all else, now laid bare in confrontingly visceral hues.

It’s the same way the earth recoils, parts and discharges upwards like a fountain of grit when the artillery shell challenges the sanctity of the night. Then the fire that follows and the noisome cavalcade as its siblings thunder upon the cobblestones, and suddenly the street is an inferno. Glass shatters. The sounds of violence are carried into the houses; a babe’s cries strike harmony with that militant song...

And we know that war has come.

Strange how wholly ignorant of the inevitable a man can be until it is upon his very doorstep. The rumours had drifted eastward at a lackadaisical pace: the sacking of Kreguos, the siege of Bwieth, countless estates and townships condemned to ruin as that nameless war-engine powered ever onward. What was it that kept us so sure, swathed in that shroud of our own inviobility? We sure as hell knew it was out there. The constant sputter of radios citing the steady decline in international affairs and the furious, damning proclamations of men from unpronounceable territories; posters and graffiti in alleys and side-streets detailing pre-emptive nationalist resistance… but resisting what? News bulletins gave way to infomercials and catchy corporate jingles that swiftly ushered away the cloud of unease, and the posters were always gone by morning, the graffiti painted over.

Somehow, in the face of impending conquest, we’re blind, and it’s because of that same inane mantra that keeps us buying those death-sticks by the forties, keeps us singing the praises of a madman with a patriotic air and a death wish for his nation. That stupid grin that says “of course not – never to me, never to us.” It always happens to other people, in mythical countries with preposterous-sounding names. Even when it crosses the oceans and spreads like contagion across the plains, somehow you’re still engrossed in the gossip and barter of the markets, or watching the rise and fall of those perfect tits from your surreptitious perch behind a stack of overdue files.

But then it’s upon you, and the world is shaking. The sirens blare, the wall implodes, rubble decorates the bedroom floor like confetti and you can see the firelit sky through the ceiling. There’s no escaping what you never knew you were running from, and everywhere people are screaming.

No screaming now. Silence clings to the cityscape like a nigh palpable pall, a whispering dread implicit in the crumbling terraces and ash-laden tenements, so thick as to fill your mouth with bitterness, so hollow as to drain all the warmth from this mid-autumn day and leave you shivering under the light of an insensate sun.

We’re moving quicker now, and the memory of that ominous bellow in the first hours of morning spurs our bruised and aching legs ever onward. Glass and stone crunch underfoot; a burning dirigible soars aimlessly overhead. Exhaustion and hunger gnaw at our innards, but none dare stop for fear of that mournful song.

[Salacious_Angel]

When you hear it for the first time amidst the haze of bewilderment, the acrid sickness of revulsion and despondency burning on your tongue, in your eyes and in your belly, you stumble from the husk of that past domicile and a new panic sets your heart aflutter. Like a baleful hound in the thrall of a lunatic fugue, the sound rises, reverberates, suffuses the city, and though it comes at you from every side you’re running all the same.

In the first night there was the horror of disbelief, the sickened awe in the face of man’s transgressions and the raw delirium as the air turns liquid hot around you. But this is a different kind of terror: a mindless primal panic as something animal and predatory moves unseen beyond the bricks and mortar, calling – or crying – and though this is surely Hell and the world has long since fallen, you know that somehow there are worse things than Hell itself, and one of them is close at hand, singing an elegy to the ruins.

So you run, panting, panicking, dumb and blind. The dead and dying litter the streets, but they’re as inconsequential as the broken buildings around you. They hear it is well as you; they cry, their hands clutch the air in desperation as you pass but you won’t stop – you can’t stop.

Then, when hours have passed, when all is quiet and you realise you’re still running, you laugh though you have no cause. Tears sting your face and your empty gut convulses with agonising grief.

What’s so Gods-damned funny?

Nothing.

Everything.

It’s then that the man comes: blonde hair thick with mud and grime, greying at the edges, with steel-blue eyes that might have sparkled once but now speak of nothing but fatigue. In his arms he clutches a large bundle to his breast like his dearest treasure, and from those soiled rags a blood-streaked hand no broader than my palm paws stupidly at his chest.

I retch again and clamber to my feet, wipe the sickly fluid from my jaw and try my best to smile. But a grin marred by exhaustion becomes a grimace, and he, seeing my own weariness, simply walks over to a bench which has somehow endured the cannonade and places his cargo upon it.

Without turning he speaks. “Jacob. And Jacqueline.”

“Thom- Thomas. Thomas Swain.” Speaking makes my belly hurt more, and I swallow bile.

Jacob turns and sits beside the child. "We’re from Westros, but we thought we’d try to track down her parents in Arganta. They fled the Ordha Inquisition a few years back, and we heard they were in Thaen…” He chuckles absently and looks at the girl with a mix of shame and paternal affection. “She was so looking forward to this.”

I have nothing to say to that. Love for one’s parents is something I’ve long forgotten.

He digs a hand into his pocket and retrieves a bright yellow flask, unstops it, takes a swig and offers it to me. “It’s hard stuff. A Southern brew, the best in Alta and it’ll hit you hard.”

I take it. “It smells like vodka. I’m not a fan of vodka.”

What the hell. Aristocrats drink for the taste. You’re an accountant.

Mixed with the vile aftertaste of last minute’s regurgitation, the alcohol tastes all the fouler, but it doesn’t come back up.

“What were you?”

“Pardon?”

“Before… this.” He gestures around him. “What were you? I was a baker.”

“An accountant.”

“Hmm.” There is silence for a long while, then: “Well, this sure does make a change, doesn’t it?” He smiles weakly.

“Isn’t that a fact.”

Somewhere in the distance another bombardment stirs us from our lassitude, and he sighs. “We can’t stay here. We need food and shelter and she needs to get cleaned up… you can come if you want.” He’s a big man, thick-set and in a passive way very much imposing, and while strength probably means next to nothing when bombs are falling like raindrops, any company is probably safer than none.

That is, at least, the theory. But five hours later, when the howling sounds again and the carrion birds are startled into atonal chorus, that feeling of utter helplessness is back. Jacob halts, and the look of panicked recognition tells me he too has heard it before. Then I notice the tremble of the debris, and the frenzied, hollow staccato of a distant pounding in the earth.

Suddenly, he is sprinting, and almost in response that ceaseless howl becomes a vitriolic roar that deadens the heart for one pivotal instant as the abomination comes into view.

It comes at a clumsy lope, part stumble, part sprint, all four limbs threshing the street like knives cleaving cotton. Cobblestones shatter and scatter like sand. It’s like an awkward clockwork engine, spurting fuel and toting ebon smoke, wrapped in a gruesome cloak of skin and muscle that flies from its frame in tatters and chunks as its own inner machinery churns and slices its flesh. It’s an impossible sight, and for four whole seconds I am motionless…

It is strange, then, that I’m now marching with these other misfits, a revolver clasped in one hand with a bizarre sense of familiarity, while Jacob and the girl are dead. Inexplicably the Hound had bounded past, and I turned tail and ran while for half the night Baker’s screams supplanted its own manic song.

Hours passed. Fevered exhaustion came upon me like a beast in the dark and the night cradled me into senseless slumber. Dreaming of butterflies, of all things, though I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a butterfly... maybe in a picture somewhere. The next morning I was moving again, no sound beyond the occasional rumble in the distance and the alien caw of carrion birds. I had no direction, no intent save the hope that these rambling claustrophobic streets would fade into broader suburbia, and in time give way to the sweet air of the countryside.

I don’t think I’ve ever been to the country.

And then there was always the terrifying possibility that the city’s termination would yield only more fire, more desolation. I doubt any army with its warmachines could easily navigate the tight winding sprawl of Thaen, but perhaps they still lurked on its perimeter, awaiting the careless appearance of those lucky and desperate few who’d made it to the city limits.

To the Hells with them, I’ll take my chances.

But soon the sweet and doleful sigh of a violin drifted across an empty plaza, and the violinist had unpleasant news to share.

“You’re going the wrong way then.” He was a small man, thin and balding. A pair of broken bifocals was perched on his hawkish nose, and his lips were cracked and bleeding. His voice was hoarse with a thick western affectation. “If you’re heading for the outskirts, best to go the way you came. But you won’t get far like that; you look dead on your feet and there’s… something out there in the ruins that might take a liking to your flesh. Best stick around for some food and some company, ‘cos the others’ll be back soon. In fact, you might as well come with us. Besides, we’ve got guns.”

He perched his violin and resumed playing. My Little House in the Country. It was soft and fast, something light-hearted, but the events of recent days twisted its innocent joviality into a terrible biting irony. I sat down beside him and tried not to think.

There were a dozen of them, all as dirty and disconsolate as myself, but somehow hardened, refashioned with a strange awareness and determination. Sure enough they had guns, lots of them, and they held them with what I could only imagine was an air of professionalism.

The man I would call Hippo spoke: “Who’s this? We don’t need more dead weight.” Finally, a local, albeit a rather pointed one. He spoke with the half-educated cockney of Earlester, though the accent was thin.

“He’s uh… actually, I never caught his name.” They all just looked at me expectantly.

“Sea- ahem, Thomas. Thomas Swain.” Never mind that it was my brother’s name.

“Well I can’t say you’re welcome, Mr. Swain, but you’re here. Ever used one of these?” He hefted his weapon.

I hadn’t, but I would.

[Salacious_Angel]

That very night I became especially acquainted with murder. The firefight only lasted thirty seconds: hot lead soaring invisible but lethal overhead as we took no quarter and gave even less. A woman I hadn’t noticed until then took a hit right in the eye, and the back of her skull exploded, but for some reason she didn’t stop shooting.

“Mr. Swain, are you going to hide back there like a b*tch or you going to get out here and kill something!?” Hippo was hurling hot death across the alley, and he sent a glance my way that said something along the lines of: “if you don’t kill something, I’m going to kill you.”

So I did, though I’m not sure whether by accident or intent. Drawn by the sounds of gunfire, three soldiers came hurtling around the corner, the moonlight gleaming on the pale rictus of their death masks. Reflexively I sent bullet into the first one’s forehead, and someone behind me took care of the others with a short burst from his rifle.

In the aftermath, some of us yipped like dogs. Others laughed, spat or kicked the dead, and some just collapsed in relief. I was numb. Hippo came over and slapped me on the back, “Thanks for covering the rear.”

Two nights later the stink of sweat, dirt, piss and blood clings to us like a miasma as we move silently beneath a starless sky. This is a night unlike the others: it seethes with anticipation, a nameless potentiality that has us on sanity’s edge. The signal is achingly close now, and every rustle, rumble or clatter causes us to pause and tense, the wavering timbre of our breathing shockingly loud.

The revolver stirs restlessly in my hands, nervousness and apprehension causing it to tremble like some captured animal struggling for freedom. Around me, twilight strangles the architecture like a monolithic assassin, bathing the city in dull sepia that wearies the eyes and lulls the senses. My head is swimming in adrenaline aftershock, and I haven’t slept in days.

“We haven’t been properly introduced.” It’s the red-head, smiling through a coat of grime and holding her hand out as we walk. I shake it. “I’m Moira, and you’re… Thomas?”

I nod.

“Well, Thomas, let this be your official welcome into our sorry little collective, belated and pointless as it may be.”

“Pointless?”

“We’re about five minutes away – maybe less. We have no idea how many soldiers there are, and we don’t know the condition of the survivors. I suppose you could say we’re going in blind.” She laughs. It’s soft and half-hearted, but it’s a welcome sound nevertheless. “That all sounds rather… suicidal doesn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t have used those words…”

“Well, it is. Kinda makes you wonder why we’d go through all the trouble, eh?”

“To be honest: not really.” That’s the truth.

“Ah.” She goes silent for a while, then: “You know Sebastian?”

“Who?”

“Sebastian.” She points at the Hippo, marching on like a machine at the front of the pack. “We’re married – well, we were married. Got divorced eight months ago.”

“I thought divorce was only something they did in the South.”

“No, it’s all the rage in Arganta these days.” Another laugh.

“I suppose that explains why you argue so much.”

“No, we were like that even before we were married. I guess it defines our relationship.”

“How’d you both end up here? Now?”

“Coincidence, actually. We ran into each other as we were both running away from ‘them’. We figured we didn’t hate each other nearly enough risk the city on our lonesome, so we stuck together.”

“And what about the others?”

“Them? Just people we’ve met along the way. They say that in war only the strong survive, but, look at them. They’re tired, fearful, homesick. The Lhazzar – the invaders – they’re the strong ones. Sebastian and I are leading these people because we can’t just let them wander off into death, but if we’re being perfectly honest, there’s very little chance we’ll make it out ali-”

Soundlessly, a jet of blood spurts from her chest, and a moment later the accompanying snap echoes from the end of the street. The sound of automatic fire continues, and as Moira slumps to the ground a sharp pain rips through my thigh. I scream. Dirt flies as more rounds thud into the scenery.

Trying my best to ignore the pain, I seize her under the arms and drag, but my legs give way and I too fall.

They’re all seeking cover now, and the firefight escalates as more guns enter the fray. Her lips move without words, and a crimson stain begins to seep through her blackened blouse as she gurgles.

Sebastian hollers, though I cannot make out the words.

I am crawling, wheezing, bleeding. Another bullet strikes my side, but I am not sure I feel it. A body falls, and something warm splashes across my back, then there is silence.

And darkness.

The moment of cessation is indeterminate: a single instant of bewildering quietude that stretches, bends and devours itself, casting the harsh memory of conflict into timeless past and washing the agony and fear from my quivering consciousness. There is a pounding, hard and strong, that resounds throughout the shadow like a bassy lullaby.

At first I think it is my heart, and I wonder that I am alive.

No.

Not my heart.

The light returns, and with it the gunfire. Those who are left are screaming and running, and the pounding rises as the howl stirs the night air once again. I close my eyes, welcoming the darkness, but I cannot escape the sound. A shout becomes a wail, then a shriek that endures for longer than it should. Feet scamper across the pavement, and a blade rends flesh. The guns have ceased their clatter, and there is no sound save that monstrous bellow and the futile cries of the damned.

Shuddering, whimpering, my hands clutching my ears, I do not know how long this madness lingers. But when it has finally faded, and I find that I am breathing, someone laughs.

Laughs.

There is an awful stench of rot and sulphur, and a peculiar guttural panting. Against my better judgement, I open my eyes.

My vision is blurred and distended, shapes twisting and meandering in strange dancing swirls, so that the figure before me seems to extend for miles, contorted, into the starlit sky. I blink, and for a moment there is the image of a man, swathed in black, arms folded, grinning. Beside him that hellbound beast wheezes and pants, and in its mechanical claws it is holding…

I think-

I think it is a piece of…

No, pieces of…

Someone.

Then the image flickers, and is gone.

Only the laughing man’s voice, now, a sibilant susurrus in the darkness.

“They are all dead. Let the Hunter take its spoils, and then we leave this place to the crows.”

There are sounds of movement as people I cannot see drift away, but I do not hear the ponderous plod that tells the beast has left. I wait.

Seconds.

Minutes.

Hours?

But eventually, it too ambles, sonorously and surely away, so that I am left, alone, in silence.

And my eyes are clenched tightly shut.

When I finally open them, it is daytime, and the sky is clear.

The city is quiet, the street is empty.

A burning dirigible soars overhead.

Fin