“Quick, bolt the door, don’t make a noise”.
Ardel heard the shout coming from outside and knew immediately what was happening. They had come. They always did in the end. He should have known he couldn’t hide.
Two weeks ago, he had stumbled upon this small farmhouse. The two, poor farming families that lived inside had let him in, cared for his hurts. Their kindness not even touching the surface of his tortured soul.
The two families, he didn’t even know their names, were now all out in their fields, closed off from the potential shelter of the small farmhouse by the bolt he had just drawn. They had been preparing for this ever since they had first seen Ardel.
Peering out the hole drilled in the wall for just such purposes, he spied the now all too familiar sight. The advancing dust cloud; coming ever closer at a speed that shouldn’t have been possible for anything beyond a machine. In this case, he reflected, that was partly true.
The two families made a pitiful sight. The two sole adult males in the group, a father and his son, had reacted swiftly. Pushing the other members of the family together, they stood facing the soldiers, both wielding what had become the essentials of any household in these times. Their pockets were bulging with what could only be shells. As Ardel watched, the approaching dust cloud stopped, revealing a large group of what were apparently men, yet couldn’t be.
The young famer was shaking visibly as the group approached, looking like his stomach was about to reject the pitiful meal it had eaten hours earlier. Bending down, the father whispered soothing words in his son’s ear. The boy held fast. They had been preparing for their deaths ever since they had first seen Ardel.
The approaching group of soldiers stopped. The leading man, in a gravelly voice, barely above a whisper, spoke “Where is he?” His words were oddly distorted by the masks the whole group wore. Each painted individually with hideous parodies of smiling, laughing faces.
The old man maintained his show of bravery. “Who? Surely I don’t know what you are talking about. Now go away and leave us in peace, we cause no trouble for the empire.”
The soldier was chuckling, a repulsive, hissing sound. “Oh but we know he passed through here. Now tell us, where is he?”
The man realising all was lost, abandoned all pretences. “You’ll never catch him”, he snarled, “He’s long gone. Your will never win”.
Still smiling, the soldier calmly unhooked his blade, a thin circular thing with a smooth edge. Without pausing he gave a quick jerk of his arm, launching it at an amazing speed.
Seeing his son’s head coming to rest at his feet, the old farmer screamed, a wordless howl of pure rage and agony. Springing forward, drawing up his shotgun, pumping round after round at the object of his misery. His kills had little effect on the group however; they advanced on the huddling families at an amazing pace. The wave fell on the old man, savaging him with their long, jagged knives until his body was but a vast pile of gore spreading across the hard dirt. The wave of soldiers tumbled on, quickly covering the remainder of the two families. Their laughter rung out like knells of death.
Ardel huddled in the corner of the house, forced to listen to the horrible sounds by his apparent sanctuary. Yet though the small group cried out for help, he never uttered a sound, never moved a muscle. Tears streamed down his face like unnoticed raindrops.