The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (43 page)

                            The  number  of  Tans  had  been  reduced  to  two. They cowered below their barrier of overturned carts and shattered masonry awaiting the movement of the two High Hats who had been detailed to finish them off, whilst the main force moved down toward the river. The two High Hats seemed in no hurry to join their comrades. Behind the barricade the two Tans began to argue and eventually one threw down his musket and stood up with his hands above his head. The shooting stopped.

                            His would be captors called to him to walk forward from the barricade as they themselves remained hidden from view and assured him loudly of safe passage and good treatment. The   Tan   walked   nervously   forward   as   the Turkanschoner watched from above. When he had walked a few paces the nearest Hat High Hat leapt from his hiding place and sprayed him with bullets from point blank range and did not stop until he had emptied a full magazine into the bloody mass that slumped to the ground and twitched with the impact of the lead.

                            Kicking the Tan corpse, the High Hat laughed as his colleagues in arms joined him and they approached the barricade where the remaining Tan cringed, contemplating his fate.

                            The Turkanschoner shifted uneasily on the window ledge. He did not enjoy the conflict below him. It wasn't a fair fight he thought. He studied the swaggering High Hats as they passed below him and was tempted to enter the uneven contest. He had seen the power of the weapons which had devastated the Tans and paused for a while. Should he take the chance, he deliberated. Surprise speed and power  would  be  enough  to  defeat

these cowards  despite their guns.

                            At that moment the Tan remaining behind the barricade decide to take his chance and leapt from his position and sprinted down the street, zig zagging as he went, in an deluded attempt to avoid the bullets of the

High Hats.

                            The High Hats mounted the barricade and levelled their deadly weapons at the fleeing target. The Turkanschoner cringed, they could not miss he thought, but he was wrong. A single shot rang out and kicked up the cobbles at the Tans heels, the ricochet echoing around the narrow street. The second Tan scoffed at his comrade's poor marksman ship and fired himself, hitting the man in the leg and knocking him down to the ground, sprawling and screaming. He began to crawl away.

                            The second Tan blew across the muzzle of his weapon theatrically and gestured that the other fire again. He took aim again and this time struck the Tan in the shoulder sending a splash of blood and bone across the man's back. He slumped to the floor moaning and the High Hat whooped in triumph, waving his weapon at the other who chuckled and took aim again. The Turkanschoner was not amused by their twisted idea of sport.

                            The High Hat fired and missed. The Turkanschoner could take no more and leapt from the window, scrambling quickly down a drainpipe and then launched himself down onto the nearest High Hat with enough force to knock him out. The other turned in horror and stared at the beast which had appeared from nowhere and stood only yards from him, with jaws clashing wetly together. The High Hat panicked and fumbled with his weapon as he attempted to switch it back to automatic.

                            The Turkanschoner howled and drew two long daggers from his belt and prepared to strike down the High Hat who screamed and discarded his weapon in horror and began to scamper back down the barricade.

                            The purpose designed killing machine watched the escaping High Hat and grunted amusedly, his killer's instinct almost absent. The compulsion which normally overwhelmed   him   at   times   like   these   was   now  subordinated and an ancient code of honour had re- established itself.  The monster which the Tallmen had created was now under control of a compassionate mind trapped in a disfigured body.

                            The High Hat ran and the Turkanschoner shrugged and replaced the daggers in his belt; he felt whole again, another part of his past had been returned to him. He was changing, the Tallmens' conditioning of his behaviour was disintegrating fast. He no longer had to kill, he felt good, he felt powerful. He was back in control.

                            The Turkanschoner picked up the discarded automatic rifle and its magazine pouch and walked over to the unconscious High Hat. He relieved him of his weapon too, as well as his ration packs. After checking the Tan, who was now dead, he climbed slowly back to his vantage point and studied his newly acquired equipment. He paused as a torrent of explosions and  gunfire erupted away towards the river, and then aimed the weapon across the street and pulled the trigger to fire a few rounds into the opposite wall.

                            The noise brought the other High Hat back to his senses and he dragged himself to his feet and staggered back down the street. Through the guns sights the Turkanschoner watched him go, following the target as it meandered slowly away from him. A long, taloned finger wound around the trigger as something billowed inside him.

" Kill." it pleaded. "Kill."

                            The Turkanschoner watched the High Hat. Killing was so easy he thought, then shouldered his newly acquired weapons and descended to the empty street, before making his way back to the Castle of Lepers and the well shaft which led to the grim labyrinths below.

Chapter Thirty Three

              Silus Flax paced the length of the Council of Elders' chamber as he stated his terms  for  the surrender of the Tallmens' city to himself, its new Emperor. The Elders sat in a nervous silence as Flax spelled out his conditions.

                            The Tallmen who had survived the bloody capture of the Towers would continue to run their machines in accordance with his  instructions  while  he  ran  the  rest of Dubh in its entirety  Flax  informed  them.  He  would, by using his special talents as  a  Hall  Engineer, increase the Hall of Machines present  output  and stabilise the deteriorating condition of the field walls. At  the  same  time  the  Tallmen  engineers  would teach his High Hat technicians how to use the field expanders. Then Flax would allow the Tallmen to vacate his realm by any exit or means they chose. His terms where not  long  and  complicated,  it  was  a  very simple  choice,  comply  or  suffer  the  consequences.

                            The leader of the Council of Elders could do no more than nod his agreement. The self-proclaimed Emperor Flax's conditions where not unreasonable in these circumstances he decided. Their conqueror had even suggested that the Tallmen might, time and co- operation   permitting,   be   able   to    construct    all the   equipment they needed when leaving the Dubh.

                            Consequently the Elder agreed to a state of affairs other than his death, yet as he nodded, an alternative solution to this intolerable state of affairs began to take shape  in  his  mind.  “There  is,  however,  one  pressing matter which has to be resolved" the Elder concluded.  Flax's eyes narrowed expecting objection. “The              rebels have a machine which might, in conjunction      with a missing energy reservoir, threaten our Field  Walls. You, Emperor Flax" he almost spat,”… you, must resolve this problem  before our treaty has any substance. We cannot  hope  to  stabilise  the  Field Walls until  both  the  machine and the power reservoir are retrieved."

Flax stood silent for a moment and sighed to  hide the shock of the unexpected, Dubh was not yet his, someone else, and he knew who, had its destiny and his almost litterally in their hands. He felt desperately uneasy. He spoke.

"But  you  have  a  rebel prisoner do  you  not"  he asked bemused.  "Will  he  not  disclose  the  position of these devices?”

“He has stated that he will co-operate" the Elder replied. “But we cannot trust him."

                            Flax shivered as he heard the howling from the lower city penetrate the Elders' chamber walls. He shivered involuntarily, the hairs on his neck standing on end. What was going on out there he thought, for a moment distracted from the task in hand.

“These rebels - are they all of your race? “he queried, a trace of concern in the question. Abruptly, he began to pace the chamber in an attempt to dissipate the nervous energy building in his body and subdue the glimmer of realisation now born in his mind.

                            The Tallmen Elder leaned back in his chair causally and could not hide the amusement in his voice. "I cannot see a Tallman and human alliance here being possible, no human could threaten us.” His voiced trailed off as his realised what he had foolishly said. With renewed vigour the wailing from the depths of the Lower City invaded Flax's soul as the dark spirit of corruption urging its physical partner into action to dispel its dis-ease. Flax turned his attention back to the Tallman Elder.

“But  I  am  human!"  he  half  laughed, half growled.  The ancient Tallman trembled slightly as Flax's abyssal eyes bore  into  him,  afraid  he  had  insulted  this  crazed,   yet  powerful, lower form of life.

“But you are different." he responded attempting to retrieve the situation.

                            Flax went strangely silent, all colour and expression drained from his face. He moaned quietly, then roared with a triumphant laughter.

“And so is he!" he howled, becoming increasingly agitated, and hurled a chair at the Council of Elders' leader. “Can you not hear its unease! Can you not feel the presence! He is there, he's doing it!" Flax thought out loud as he countered the lingering disbelief, the unacceptable fear that Jonathon could be doing this despite all that he knew. His face was now twisted in a grimace of pure hatred, tears of final revelation welling up in his darkening eyes.

                            Now Flax was sure. The 'boy' was here, not dead, his presence starkly contrasted against the deepening tide of evil which surged from  the  deepest  labyrinths  of the Dubhian Underworld and raised its  depthless shadow over the Lower City and advanced towards the Tallmens’ Towers.

He Silus Flax, was failing in his part of this alliance. Soon It would act and the  consequences  for  him were dire. Its unfettered desire for corruption and destruction  would  shatter  his  dream   also, untempered by the consensus It accepted  in  an alliance union with him. But he felt himself failing in this compact and now moved fuelled on the despair generated by the collapse of all order in the city.

“So close." he blubbered to himself. And Flax had both  times been denied, there would be not third time. He threw back his head.

“NO,NO,NO! " he shrieked as old nightmares crept into his consciousness. He remembered the innocent waif he had beheld  on  the  street  all  those  years  ago.

                            Now his  imagination ran away with him. He  imagined  Jonathon  and  this 'machine'  which could destroy  Dubh,  poised  smirking,  as  he  threatened  to throw  the  switch  which  would  end  his  ambitions.

Flax  screamed  in  horror  and  confusion.

“But WHY? Why? Why? WHY!?" he snarled, not realising he was directing his questions to the Tallman in front of him who quaked with fear as the howling from the city intensified as Flax grew more distressed. “Revenge." said a soft voice as if out of thin air.

                            Flax  became  instantly  silent,  then  burst  out  into  an  incredulous laughter. “Reeeevenge!" he guffawed, what did I ever do to him? I never even touched him." He quietened and his eyes momentarily glazed before they drfited to Ben Santiago. Santiago stodd in the dooorway grey hair in wild disarray, his handsome Latin face streaked in with dirt and blood. Yet he was

relaxed, his own lust for violence and destruction having been sated in this alien city where he felt younger and stronger and perhaps immortal.

                            Here  in  Dubh  he  more  was  at  home  than  he ever  had  in  his  Manhattan  apartments.  True  he  had been in the midst of war and rebellion before, yet here he felt no fear.              Here              his              conscience              was              silent              and his  eyes  smouldered with the gift he had received here, the city had taken  away  his  soul  and  his  conscience and  now  the  windows of that soul showed no light at all. Flax  stared  at  him  and  Santiago  continued  his explanation. “Revenge is the most likely motive. You must have crossed him sometime in the past Silus. He seems deranged to me, no-one in their right mind contemplates the destruction of a whole world, contemplates genocide, especially if they're in it" he chortled softly and paused for a while, watching Flax scowl. “But if it is revenge, he'll have to see you suffer first or it'll take away the satisfaction. Give him time and he'll come to us before he attempts to blow this place." he finished confidently. “This thing is personal."

Flax shook his head.

“You may be right, but we don't have time! Don't you understand! This world is tottering on the brink of destruction!" he shook his head angrily and turned to Santiago." He will not deny me what is mine!"

                            He turned to the Elder who had watched fearfully as the mad human leader's composure had begun to disintegrate.