r/HFY•8 mo. ago

[The Shotgun Girl] Chapter 4 of 17

OC-Series

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The windows were filthy. Blondie stood by the least-obscured of them, wiping at it with her palm. "Can't see a thing through this," she muttered. Then, louder, "Does anyone have a rag?"

I stepped over and smashed out the glass with the shotgun butt. The shaft of crud-tainted light was replaced by a brighter, clearer radiance that brought the fresh morning air in with it.

"Thank you, Brown," Blondie said, flat enough that I couldn't tell if it was sarcasm. It probably was, but I couldn't be sure.

"That'll let the rain in later," Red chided. She was still at the trunk with Blackie, who had dug some bent hairpins out of some inner fold of her dress and was picking at the lock.

I shrugged. "So? It's not like we're planning on staying here long enough to care."

Red shook her head. "Remind me to never hire you as my housekeeper."

The window was set in a north-facing dormer, opposite from the way we'd come. The view outside showed a broad expanse of well-kept front lawn, spacious and healthy. There were flowerbeds along the front of the house, just beginning to blossom. A clump of hawthorns stood off to one side, a small fountain and bench just visible in their midst. A gravel lane wound its way through the grass and up to the house's front entry. All of it, of course, surrounded by the ever-present walls.

Houses varied one to the next, but the walls separating their grounds were always the same. Red brick, faded and weather-worn, about fifteen feet high. Ivy and other vines draped its long expanses, breaking the monotony of featureless masonry. You would expect the front lane to wend its way to a gate or other opening, but there was only brick. Brick, brick, brick. Four long sides of it. That gravel path ended in a blank patch of wall that was in no way distinguishable from any other.

But the walls themselves didn't interest us. They were simple barriers. But hardly -- obviously -- insurmountable ones. We climbed over them regularly, moving one house to the next. The vines and rough brickwork made them scalable with only moderate exertion. The height made them a little risky if you fell; we usually piled cushions or mattresses at the base before climbing. At least, we'd been doing it since that time Red broke her hip, however long ago that was. Before the time we killed each other, I'm pretty sure. At any rate, crossing a wall was no big deal. We'd tried breaking through them or bringing a section down a few times when we'd had access to tools, but that was just more work for the same end result. Pass a wall, find yourself on another lawn with another house.

No, the big choice was figuring out which wall to cross next. That was where the view from the attic came in. North, south, east, west. We'd have ourselves a peek at what lay beyond the wall on each side and set our course appropriately, based on the calculations and speculations of our navigator, Blondie, and her notions of exploitable patterns. Hoping every time that this one would move us closer to an exit, to an end, to an answer. To any kind of sign that we were making progress.

Not that I expected us to. Experience had taught me and my own theories about where we were indicated that any kind of progress, any kind of headway at all in our predicament, was vanishingly unlikely, at best. Each wall we crossed would only lead to more of the same, then more of the same, followed by yet more of the same.

'But what if...?'

I knew better than to hope for anything different. Yet hope I still did. We humans are just flawed that way.

"Can't quite make out..." Blondie mumbled, squinting off into the distance beyond that north wall. "There's some trees in the way..."

Hoping. Knowing better, but hoping. 'What if...?'

"But I can just see a roofline..."

And, there we go. The crash. The bottom of my guts dropping out because something didn't happen that I knew wouldn't happen. I'd have felt like the stupidest woman on Earth... if I believed that's where we were.

"I'd like to get a better look," Blondie was saying. "If the roof of that one is starting to fall in, then we'd need to know if it also has a shed off the southwest corner. That would indicate a correlation with iterations north of odd-numbered electrified iterations. But if there are rose trellises with no buds, that would be evidence for--"

I bashed the rest of the glass out of the window and then poked my head out, looking around. "We could go up to the rooftop for a better view, I guess," I said. Yeah, the bottom might have just dropped out on me, but that didn't mean I should just shut down. Besides, Blondie was doing. Working. And I respected that and wanted to support it. "Actually, it looks like there's some wooden slats already nailed to the roof beside the next dormer, like a crude ladder..." I trailed off, common sense and painful experience leading me to just shake my head.

"Sucker bait?" Blondie asked.

I eyed the worn, splintery boards and the rusted nails holding them on. "Total sucker bait."

She shrugged. "We can always go out on the lawn and climb up the wall for a better look after I've checked east and west." She pointed at the distant barrier. "No sense falling for sucker bait. Especially literally."

"Right. It would only amuse them."

She cocked her head and looked at me, blue eyes sharp and intense. "You're still holding to the 'zoo' theory, are you?"

I had in the past entertained various notions about where we were and why, but one that I kept coming back to was what we called the 'zoo' theory. Red might be inclined to believe we were in Purgatory and Blondie might think we were in some experimental simulation, but I gave a lot of weight to the idea that we were here because we were 'on display', if you will. Basically, that some powerful being or beings had put us in a place where we could be observed from a safe distance and under controlled conditions for their own education or amusement. Probably amusement. Yes, that seemed most likely. Somewhere beyond our perception, alien things were watching us. Cooing over how cute the red or black one looked today. Laughing at our attempts to muddle and bumble our way to the door of our cage. Pointing and snickering at our failures, our suffering, our deaths.

That's what kept me going. The idea that one day, somehow, some way, I might be able to meet those zookeepers, those gawkers, those voyeuristic bastards, and pound their smug sneers right through their faces.

But I just shrugged at Blondie. "I suppose. I mean, it doesn't matter what we think, we still have to get out of here, right? We can worry about who gets to brag that they were right once we've done that."

"Well..." Blondie arched one golden eyebrow at me. "Provided that the path to freedom lies external to ourselves, that's true. If Red's theory is correct, then--"

We were interrupted by an exclamation of triumph from Blackie. We looked over to see her tucking her homemade lockpicks back into her dress as Red undid the clasp on the trunk they'd dragged out. "That was just enough trouble that there ought to be some goodies inside." Blackie had the most enchanting voice, even when she sounded smug. "Work gets rewarded, right? Maybe some comfy boots for one of you ladies."

Red shook her head. "Eh, doubt it. I thought I heard something metallic when we moved it."

"Maybe some weapons, then. Wouldn't that be a lovely gift?" Blackie cut her eyes at me as she said this. Then she and Red grasped the trunk lid and heaved it open.

Something long and dark immediately thrust up out of the trunk and caught Blackie dead square in the chest.

Everything happened in a sudden rush. As Blackie flopped to the attic floor, her gorgeous voice now a strangled gasp, Red dodged away to put some distance between herself and their attacker. Blondie, who had probably the worst reflexes out of all of us, just stood gaping for a second. Which galled me just a little, since she'd given me grief over hesitating against the mirror-clone earlier, the hypocrite. As for me, I brought the shotgun up the moment Blackie hit the floor, using my elbow to nudge Blondie aside as I did.

The dark, pointy thing that had stabbed Blackie continued rising out of the trunk, followed immediately by a tall black hat. Then a white-wigged head with a too-wide rictus of a smile, followed by a bright blue body with yellow crossbelts over the chest. A brass key the size of a tennis racquet jutted out of its back.

A clockwork soldier.

A big one, too, nearly as tall as Red. A king among his kind, or a general, at least. Five full feet of murder in painted tin.

And in a box, too. That was new.

As it stood up out of the trunk, it raised its musket on high to thrust downwards into Blackie and finish her off. I could hear the click and whir of its gears as it moved, even over Blackie's ragged wheezing. The smile I could see above the shotgun's bead sight was painted-on and immobile, but had an anticipatory look to it, anyway.

I dropped my point of aim. Being an automaton, a clockwork soldier's head is mostly decorative, just empty space inside. I put the sight on where those yellow crossbelts made an X on the thing's chest, instead.

I took a split-second to make sure that Red or Blondie wasn't about to blunder into my line of fire. They weren't, but that was enough time for the clockwork soldier to thrust his weapon.

The blast of birdshot caught the automaton dead-on and knocked it back just before its bayonet touched Blackie again. Once again, the noise of a shotgun indoors made my ears ring and nearly pounded the sense out of me. I kept enough presence of mind to ride the recoil back down and bring the other barrel to bear.

There was no urgent need for a followup shot. At such close range, the birdshot had struck in a compact mass, most of which made it through the soldier's tin shell and into the inner workings. Which it had apparently managed to knock into disarray. The right arm, which was holding the butt end of its musket, would only twitch upward a little, then pop back into place as the other arm tried to draw up for another thrust. From past experience, there'd be a sound of stripping gears accompanying that, but I was still too deaf from the gunshot to hear it. The key on the soldier's back had begun turning much faster, either in an attempt to power through its debility or because something in its works was loose and free-wheeling. Either way, it was losing power fast. But I kept a bead on it, just in case.

"Hold fire!" Red called. "I got this!" The thrum of anger in her voice was clear even through the ringing in my ears. I lowered my gun muzzle as she stepped in front of the nearly-immobilized soldier, Blackie's croquet mallet in her hands. She flipped the mallet around, holding it toward the head, then shoved the handle past the soldier's own weapon and into the jagged rip the birdshot had torn in its chest where the yellow crossbelts came together. She rammed it in hard enough to rock the soldier back against the trunk lid, twisted it among the soldier's inner workings, then drew back and did it again.

The clockwork soldier shuddered all over as gears stripped and springs unwound, mechanical death throes. Then froze, immobile, as something seized up inside and the giant key on its back finally ceased its turning.

Yet he had laid his ambush well, this general, and we had a casualty.

Blondie was running over to Blackie's body as soon as the fighting was done, with me right behind her. My hearing was coming back enough make out the shuddering gulps of Blackie's breathing. Which made me frown a little, because it did not sound at all like someone who'd been stabbed through the lung. I'd seen Red and Blondie die that way before -- experienced it myself, too, at the hands of my own doppelganger using a shard of the very mirror that spawned her -- and knew what it sounded like. On the other hand, I couldn't recall ever seeing Blackie die that way, so maybe she was just different? But then, when was the last time I had seen Blackie die at all?

It bothered me that I couldn't remember for sure.

Blackie was lying on her back, clutching herself just under the left breast. Blondie cradled her head, telling her to get her breath under control and that it would be all right soon. I looked down at her chest, surprised by how little blood was staining her elaborate dress. I took her hands and tried to pull them away to get a look, but she resisted.

"Let Brown see the wound," Blondie cooed, stroking her hair. "We'll take care of you."

Blackie set her jaw, winced, and then slowly pulled her hands away while trying not to look. I leaned in and ran my fingers through the tear in her dress, feeling for the puncture in her flesh. Blackie grunted and twitched, but Blondie held her firmly, motherly. Frowning, I moved my fingers around, feeling only a small patch of blood, but nothing that felt like a stab wound.

"How bad?" Blondie asked me.

I shook my head. "Can't find the puncture."

"Her breathing's not gurgly, either." We both looked at Blackie, who was beginning to look a little more composed.

"It hurts," she told us. Not 'gasped' or 'wheezed' or 'sobbed'. 'Told'. Like someone who'd just sprained their ankle or smashed their thumb with a hammer. Not like someone who'd taken a probably-mortal chest wound. "Not a deep hurt, though," she went on. "And I can breathe okay." She held a hand out to me. "Help me up, please."

Red dragged over a wooden crate and between Blondie and I, we got Blackie sitting upright on it. She didn't groan much and the bloodstain on her dress barely got any bigger. It was a moment's work to get her dress unfastened and pulled down. And she must have been feeling pretty healthy, because she managed to quip, "I feel like you should give me flowers or something, first," as I got her clothes off enough to bare her chest.

There was a nasty abrasion, fresh and oozing blood, just under Blackie's left breast. The skin around it, normally as pale as moonlit cream, was starting to turn yellow and purple. Some experimental poking by Blondie produced clenched teeth, severe flinching, and a downright painful clutch at my arm on Blackie's part, leading to Blondie opining that the rib was probably cracked.

But no mortal stab wound. No real puncture at all.

"You," Blondie told her, "are ridiculously lucky."

"I don't feel lucky," Blackie complained as she tried to shrug her way back into her dress. We had to help her, since she could only stand to move her left arm so far back.

"What the hell are you made of?" I demanded. "That bayonet should have gone right through you."

"You tell me," she snarked back. "You're the one that's been feeling up my chest."

Red motioned for our attention. "Hey, girls? I see why that thing didn't kill her. Look here." She pointed at the tip of the clockwork soldier's bayonet. The last inch or so of the cheap tin blade was bent at an almost right angle. "There's a mark on the inside of the trunk lid," she continued. "It looks like when the soldier was put in here, the musket didn't quite fit. So the lid was forced down on it, and that bent the bayonet."

Blondie clapped Blackie on the shoulder. "See? Ridiculously lucky."

Yeah, ridiculously lucky. But then, Blackie always was. If there was a break to be had, it would be had by Blackie. Like this world favored her. Like she was... special.

That thought kept lurking in my mind, like a bone spider in a boot, waiting for the first unwary foot.

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