Trent Jamieson - Roil

The vibrations increased in intensity. Margaret pulled into a narrow side street, stopped the carriage and extinguishing the lights. In the darkness she waited and she did not have to wait too long.

Something glowed, an indistinct light that quickly became stronger. Twin beams of light, and then more, illumining the entire road. A whole convoy of vehicles was coming.

Hope swelled within her, dying when the first carriage became visible through the murk.

The cockpit cabin had been blown open or torn apart; only tattered fragments of metal remained. Sara hunched over the wheel, her head bound with a smoky halo of moths. A Quarg Hound crouched beside her – much larger than the creatures she had seen throughout the city. Another and another carriage rounded the corner, all with cabins cracked, moth-smothered drivers and Quarg Hound companions.

By the time the first carriage passed the side street in which she had hidden, nine cars in total had turned the corner.

Nine cars, all of them heading for the Perl Bridge.

She could think of only one reason they would be travelling that way.

They were hunting her.

She waited until all of the cars had passed, then she pulled out her maps. If they were going to the Perl Bridge to the west she would take Pascal’s Bridge in the east. Margaret just hoped the bridge remained. Quickly, she worked out the fastest route, then started on her way.

David yowled and crashed into the night, hitting the soft wet ground and rolling.

The Dolorous Grey roared by. All he could hear were the carriages, its wheels but yards away. All he could feel was its rolling boiling breath.

He hit something and stopped so abruptly that his teeth slammed together, biting the inside of his cheek and filling his mouth with blood.

He lay there a moment, trying not to choke or throw up. The muscles in his legs shook as he pushed himself to his feet. He knew that much, you always got up. He fell on his arse again.

Cadell came into view, bag over one shoulder. “You right, lad?”

“Think so,” David said.

“We better get moving. They won’t let us go that easily.”

True enough, a little down the line, the Dolorous Grey shrieked and rumbled and came to a furious halt.

“I suggest we run,” Cadell said. He motioned over at the Dolorous Grey, smoke billowed from the train, wreathing the air in clouds veined with fluttering darkness.

David blinked. His head rang with all the discordance of a half dozen broken bells. He knew he should get up, and start running, but his body resisted the babble of his thoughts. He wondered if he would have taken it all so calmly if he’d not a little Carnival remaining in his veins.

And that thought had its own terrors. A little Carnival! A little wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. He could be here crooning at the moons and the rain, instead he had the spiders of his addiction crawling in his veins.

Cadell was saying something. David blinked at him. “Up now. Up.”

“What?”

Cadell grunted, bent down and gripped David by the shoulder, dragging him from the edge of the railroad and onto his feet. “Anything hurting? Can you walk?”

David nodded. He felt his body finally listening to what he required of it.

He had more aches than he could catalogue but, at the same time, fear dulled them, a short-lived remedy no doubt, but one for which he was oddly grateful.

Cadell made a noise in his throat. “Then we’d best get out of here.”

Sounds echoed from the Dolorous Grey through the dark and the pounding rain, doors slamming open, boots crunching hard on gravel and the stuttering, shrill laughter of the Roilings. From the engine room, something howled.

David shuddered, he had heard an imitation of that sound on one of the radio serials he used to listen to as a child. “Is that what I think it is?”

Cadell nodded; his face wreathed in shadows that failed miserably to hide his dismay. “Quarg Hound, and a big one. I haven’t heard that cry in over two thousand years.” There was another howl and another and another. “Three of them, time to run, Da-”

David was already sprinting into the darkness, away from the train. He turned, Cadell stood by the tracks staring at him.

“Well, hurry up then,” David said.

Behind them the Dolorous Grey returned to rumbling life, and its whistles shrieked until the Quarg Hounds shrieked back. David was not sure which was the more terrible, but he had no doubt what those hounds would do if they caught him.

So he ran, and ran hard, his breath coming fast and hot in the driving rain. The train behind him – wheels slipping loudly, whistle shrieking – continued on its journey south, down to Chapman.

David could not see how he and Cadell were ever going to make it to the city. The Dolorous Grey raced there, the Roil was down there, and all of it was intent on stopping them.

The land quickly became overgrown. Lantana and a dense and prickly scrub known as Meagre’s Knife closed in around them, but it did not stop the rain. The sodden ground sucked at his boots with every step. Twice they stumbled into overgrown streams, Meagre’s Knife tearing at their faces and hands, blood-warm water thigh high, the stones beneath treacherous. David was soon shivery and exhausted.

However, there was no stopping for them, the Quarg Hounds were always close behind, their guttural ravenous howling drawing nearer by the minute.

Cadell closed with him, glancing left and right.

“That’s funny,” he said, his voice thin and hopeful, he lifted a hand and David couldn’t shake the feeling that he smelt the air with it. “I remember this place. Vaguely and distantly. Bah, David when you get to my age things blur and each turn of the road or rise of the hill becomes familiar.”

David looked at him askance, opened his mouth to speak, and a Quarg Hound crashed into his back.

David grunted, the wind knocked out of him, he fell forward, arms flailing about.

Then he tumbled, through the tangle of lantana, the scrub giving way, cracking and scratching. David tried to hold on, but couldn’t. All he could think of was that Quarg Hound coming down behind him, David pitched headfirst into a much broader, much deeper stream.

The water rushed up and it was cold, then he was through, his head clipping a rock. He gasped with the cold and the pain, and sucked water into his nose and mouth.

As though on springs, he jumped to his feet, retching, head swinging this way and that. This isn’t good.

He raised one hand as though to point, or perhaps to ward something off. He couldn’t remember, so he lowered it again, turning in a shaky circle as he tried to clear his head. What was he doing here?

The cold stream tugged at his knees, slowly pulling him down; knees, thighs, groin and belly.

The Quarg Hound that had tumbled down after David yelped and pushed away from him towards the edge of the stream, convulsing so savagely David could hear its back cracking. David watched it die, the Hound’s shuddering limbs folding up, and it sank into the water dragged down and away by the current. He knew he should be afraid, but he just couldn’t manage it.

“David!” Cadell shouted from above.

David’s vision narrowed to splotches of light and dark and pain. He tried to focus on Cadell’s voice but couldn’t, his head pounded as though a hundred hammers were trying to beat their way out. The pain dimmed, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

He blinked.

“I’m here,” David yelled. Or tried to because no sound escaped the torpid cage of his lips.