“I got one and saw it go down, almost seeming to fold up on itself! Then I heard Dan yelling, ‘Oh shit! Oh shit! Bad ammunition!’ He had stopped firing…but damn it, hadn’t we always known how a lot of that old ammo couldn’t be trusted?
“And then…oh God!…and then…Dan’s yelling turned to screaming! He’d started to run, stumbling toward me, but…
“Out the corner of my eye I saw them hit him, knocking him down. Just two of them, and Dan a big lad and strong. But despite that they look thin and wispy as smoke, these creatures have this amazing, terrible strength! They held him down, their jaws extended, going at him where he kicked and jerked in the deepening mist. I wanted desperately to divert my fire from the front, to strike at these things that were sucking on Dan; but Ned and me, we already had all we could handle. And anyway, I knew that Dan was done for. Between howling bursts of fire from Ned’s big gun and the crack of single shots from my rifle, I even fancied I could hear the sound of siphoning as they sucked him dry!
“And so I kept on firing—kept missing, too, the way those monsters wove and warped—but it seemed Ned was doing okay: I saw two, maybe three fly-by-nights shredded, blown apart in his sleeting fire! And Ned was stamping his feet, shouting at them, mouthing senseless rubbish and cursing them to every hell where they were weaving, closing in on us!
“Then I saw that my original count had been wrong, or maybe more of the things had been following on close behind the first batch. Despite that we’d taken a few of them out there were now at least nine or ten, plus the two that were feeding on Dan—
“—Except they’d finished with Dan and were now coming for me!
“I prayed God my ammo stayed good, reloaded, turned my fire on Dan’s murderers. I was protecting myself, yes, but these two were the closest, the most dangerous, and surely Ned’s machine gun would take care of the rest. All he need do was stand there and let rip as they got even closer.
“Fuelled by Dan’s blood, but full of lust, too, the eyes of my two flared like lamps as they came on; and it was their eyes I aimed at. These creatures are crazed, maniacal at the best of times, and maybe their bloodlust—their success with poor Dan—had made them even more so. It seemed they just didn’t give a damn, the way they flew at me! Which was all to my benefit.
“No more than ten feet away, the head of the first fly-by-night flew apart, and the other simply shouldered the crumpling corpse aside as it came on. Its jaws gaped wide, dripping Dan’s blood, and its claw hands reached for me as I triggered off one last shot to take its head off. My last shot, yes, because that was when my rifle jammed! That bloody ammo! Dan Coulter and me, we’d both loaded up with ammo from the same batch!
“There was nothing more I could do—but I didn’t just run. Anyway, I don’t think my legs would have let me run! So instead I looked to Ned Singer to see how he was doing. And he had been doing just fine: there were a lot of heaped shapes sprawled out in the ground mist that hadn’t been there before. But even as I watched him Ned’s weapon stopped its deafening howling, and for all that he shook it this way and that—clawing at the working parts which weren’t working, cursing and yanking desperately on the trigger—still that treacherous gun stayed silent!
“Bad ammunition again? Maybe, though his was of a different caliber to mine. Or perhaps Ned’s gun had overheated, or simply jammed? Any and all such failures weren’t at all unlikely—but in his situation each of them was deadly!
“Four fly-by-nights remained, for a moment coming to a halt and as before standing stock still. But then, as Ned turned to run, they seemed to merge, flowing over him like so much vile, evil filth! Except…they weren’t going at him as the others had gone at Dan; they didn’t appear to be sucking on him, siphoning off his blood. No, they were lifting him up, one creature to each of his limbs. And big man that Ned is—that he was—they carried him away, drifting off with him into the darkness. But you know, he didn’t go easily, not Ned Singer.
“Minutes later—when my legs came back to life and I could finally stumble out of there—I could still hear him screaming however faintly, distantly. By then too most of the gunfire and other sounds of battle had ceased, and armed wild-eyed men were beginning to arrive on the scene with breathless questions that I didn’t have the strength to answer, not just then…”
As Halbstein came to the end of his report, so another man stepped forward: the sly, unpopular, scar-faced Arthur Robeson, attending the meeting only by reason of the weapon he was bearing: Ned Singer’s machine gun. “I was one of the men who went to help on the perimeter when things had quietened down a bit,” he said.
“When it was all over, you mean!” Peder Halbstein spat the words out. “I remember that, all right: that you were among the last—that in fact you were the last—of the men who showed up! You didn’t seem concerned about poor Dan Coulter, or me for that matter; you only asked after your old friend Ned. And when a handful of the men ventured forward to see if they could find any sign of him you followed them—at least far enough to pick up his fallen weapon!”
“Are you accusing me of something?” Robeson snapped, driven back a pace.
“Nothing!” said Halbstein. “Which is all I’ve ever seen you do—nothing—except maybe grease around Ned Singer, and run his errands!”
“Huh!” the other exclaimed, and: “Man, you’re babbling! And anyway, I didn’t come here to be insulted. Only to explain what killed Ned. A bullet was stuck in the loading mechanism, and it appears he never had a chance to clear it. Perhaps if he’d had some decent back-up…”
“Why you—!” Halbstein moved to face him at close quarters, but Big Jon got in his way.
“Now hold!” the leader roared. “Enough of that! Everybody’s nerves are frazzled, including mine, shot to pieces by the worst fly-by-night attack we’ve yet experienced—but not necessarily the last. We lost seven men last night, and Ned Singer was just one of them. Well, from all I’ve heard he accounted well for himself and for the clan. He wasn’t everyone’s favourite personality, but by God he knew how to fight fly-by-nights! And in that respect we’ll surely miss him. Let nothing detract from that.”
“Ned was one of the strongest, one of the best!” said Robeson. At which Garth’s father rounded on him as quick as Peder Halbstein had done only moments earlier:
“Oh really, one of the best was he? And just how would you know that, Arthur Robeson? Did you ever scav with him—or with anybody else for that matter? Have you ever ventured out in the night with a gun in your hand and a lump in your throat to face and perhaps kill a fly-by-night or two? No? Huh! I didn’t think so!”
“No, I never scavenged!” the other protested. “But I had a job, back in the Southern Refuge. I…I sorted precious salvage, and I…I helped out in the farms!”
“Aye,” Big Jon nodded wisely. “And always found good reason to stay close to home, as I recall. Well, no shame in that, not when there was work to be done down in the guts of the old labyrinth. Ah, but that was then and this is now; and there’s nothing of salvage now, and no farms along the way of the trek! But we are going to be in need of seven new outriders and watchmen; which means I’ll be looking for volunteers. So maybe you’d best hang on to Ned’s big weapon, Arthur, and get it in good working order. And I’ll thank you now for being the first to offer your services!”