The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (35 page)

                            The Turkanschoner stood over him, his body trembling violently, jaws opening and closing as saliva flooded into his mouth. His heart pounded as adrenalin flowed into his veins. His conditioning and animal instinct urged him to tear his prey to pieces and satisfy his compulsion to eat, claim his  grisly  prize.  But  slowly his newly found being enforced its will over his naked and brutal being. He panted heavily and clenched his fists to hold back the fury that threatened to boil over inside him. Slowly the intensity of these primal feelings subsided and his rational faculties began to function again.

                            The machine was important he  knew.  He should take it and return to his task. He glanced down at the Tallman's corpse and saliva dripped from his incisors, a ripple of hatred washed again through his being. He should take the machine and go. This was important to his master. His body obeyed.

                            With his precious booty slung across his hunched back, the beast hurtled down the steps into the gloom of the corridor below. The girl's scent was still strong amongst the stench of Tallmen and with his senses concentrated through his muzzle he could follow it easily. But there was something else too, that something which followed Milly. He could not place the scent at all. Its odour was different from all he had encountered in this world, all he knew was that it hungered, hungered with a grim passion for Milly.

                            The Turkanschoner sped through the darkness. He feared for Milly. She had moved quickly and upwards at every opportunity, exploring ever upward tunnel and fissure. Her pursuer had followed her. Eventually Milly's efforts had been rewarded and she had found herself a way to out of these gloomy tunnels. The Turkanschoner followed emerged out of a filthy, broken culvert into the Upper City close to the great, eclipsing domes of the Halls of Machines.

                            From there she had sought the security of the rooftop world she was born to and had climbed up onto the domes. The Turkanschoner followed slowly, his hunched form not well suited to climbing and burdened additionally with Rislo's machine.

                            The continual vibration from great lines of engines in Halls of Machines below him set the Turkanschoner on edge and made him wary. He crept from shadow to shadow across the roof tops as he followed the Milly's airborne scent. He broke from the inky dimness and climbed slowly up to the top of the first dome and surveyed the scene ahead.

                            Before him the concrete landscape fell and rose again into the mountainous form of another dark dome. At its summit a large exhaust port poured its toxic gases upwards in a great, choking blue plume, which merged with the others from dome after dome to create a dense stagnant cloud  of  exhaust  fumes  which hung, almost motionless, above the Halls and the Upper City.

                            From where he now squatted  he  could  see  far out  across  the   fumes   shrouded   extent   of   Dubh. It disturbed him. The city was a foggy expanse of tumbling and chaotic concrete and blackened brick. No- where was a space that could support the grass and trees of the world he could remember from his past before the Tallmen had taken him. No trees, hills or mountains here - just the panorama of the domes. No sky or clouds. Just the huge smog filled ceiling above his head.

                            His access to memories was becoming easier now. He could remember open grasslands and forests, rivers glinting in the distance. He found himself yearning for the sights and smells of pine forest and dew laden grass. He was homesick for a world, which for a many years,  had  been  stolen  from  him.   He   missed people he could visualise, but not yet name. Yet he knew that he could never return  to  them.  They  were lost forever because of what he now was. He was an abomination that they would never accept as one of their own.

                            He shuddered in realisation of what this meant, and he felt an up surge of grief as he had when he had stood upon the real earth of that world which lay beyond the dimension door where Jonathon searched for Flax. He was dead. The Tallmen had sentenced him to a living death.

                            He growled angrily and tears flooded from his eyes. Then he howled as his anguish surfaced, bursting out of control into agonized cries which escaped his modified jaws to echo around the Machine halls and into the City of the Tallmen, piercing through the perpetual drone of the multitudes of machines below him. Searchlights on the in the sentry towers, alerted by the Turkanschoner's howls, slicked  into  being,  their powerful beams lancing out through the stagnant exhaust fumes and playing across the domes as their operators seeking to identify the source of the unnerving cries which penetrated the iron and steel of their refuges.

                            Although confused by the cacophony of long lingering echoes, they swept the roof top terrain of the Halls  of  Machines  with  a  practised   thoroughness and settled for a second on  the  silhouette  of  a crouched and horned form  that  stood  arms outstretched  accusingly  toward the Towers.

                            In the blink of a Tallman eye, the apparition vanished as the echoes of its anguish finally subsided. One by one the inquisitive beams were extinguished as the sentries shrugged their shoulders and dismissed what they had seen as a trick of the light and the dreadful sounds, the result of the distorted echoes from some innocent source.

                            Other    souls    had    been    disturbed    by    the Turkanschoner's howling and the explosion of light which swept through the gloom which cloaked the domes. One was Milly. Curled in tight ball hidden in the shadow between the domes, she was jolted upright from her troubled sleep, aware of the tormented cries which broke her exhausted slumber and dreams of her lost friends. She was spurred in to movement again despite the protests from her aching limbs.

                            Reality fell upon her in a cold, heavy wave. She was alone here and frightened. Dale and Tefkin  were dead and Jonathon was lost, his fate unknown to her. Those who had killed the Whisperers may have taken Jonathon too. Tears rolled from her tired eyes to her cheeks where the dirt and grime from the cities air had settled, tracing new salty tracks alongside those of earlier grief.

                            The loss of Dale and Tefkin was a heavy burden for her to bear, but she lived in hope. Perhaps Jonathon had escaped too and searched for her right now.  It was hope that sustained her. It was all she had. Without Jonathon she knew she could survive in this city, but it would be a life less than a life with one you loved and which made so many things possible. Such a life would seem almost impossible and a  short  vertical  trip  from the roof tops to ground might seem preferable, but for the moment she had hope and while it remained  she would survive.

                            As the piercing beams of the searchlights died away, she dragged herself wearily to the top of  the dome and glanced over her shoulder. Someone or something was following her, the one who had issued those painful cries which had sent a wave of empathy through her soul. She crouched low as the pursuing phantom descended the side of the dome behind her and merged with the shadow in its lightless lea. Milly did not move.

                            She searched  around  for  a  weapon  but  found nothing.              Listening              intently,              she              heard              the              metallic scrabbling              of              claws              on              concrete              as              her              now invisible  tracker made a hasty but painful ascent towards her. The sounds of movement stopped and were replaced by a harsh panting. Then a strange voice drifted up to her.

The voice was deep, guttural and made unclear by a wheezing shortness of breath. Did she hear her name?

Milly  dismissed  the  thought,  yet  she  heard  it  again. Who...?

The sound of ascent began again, slowly closing on her  position.  The  voice  drifted  up  from  the  trough  of darkness  in  which  the  identity  of  her  pursuer  was submerged. It came closer and now the voice was clearer. “Milly!” it coughed, a hint of urgency in the call to her. “Jonathon?” she whispered, her heart lifting, yet a shadow of doubt clung to her torch of hope ignited by the speaking of his name.

                            There was silence. Milly prepared to flee as the clicking and clattering feet and claws moved closer still. It was close now. Yet its shadow against the buildings below was still no more than a vague inky blur. It stopped again. Its heavy laboured breathing was the only sound now. "Who are you?” the she shouted, a tremor in her voice as fear rose in her soul. The climber began to move slowly upward panting loudly as it came.

“You not know me." he stuttered. “Jonathon sends me for you” the Turkanschoner stressed uneasily as he looked up at the figure of Milly peering down apprehensively from the top of the dome, poised to run the roof tops.

                            If she did he could never catch her in a world where she was physically and mentally his superior. Milly was preparing to flee. The climber labouring up towards her had not satisfactorily answered her question to calm her nerves, but whatever was down her knew of Jonathon and for the moment it kept her there, her curiosity overcoming her fear.

                            The Turkanschoner stopped short of venturing into the half light where his appearance might spur the girl into flight. He was also very tired. On the flat surfaces of the catacombs, caves and passageways beneath this city he was a perfect hunting machine, his body modified for short sprints  at  great  speed.  But  here  on  the  long  curving surfaces of the domes the combination of his centre of gravity forever pulling him backwards and the crushing of his already reduced lung space had taken their toll.

                            He now gasped loudly for air and, when the sense of suffocation had abated, he attempted to speak again. “Milly, not run from me." he wheezed. "I mean no harm. Friend. But am terrible. All who see fear. I monster.

Please.. Do not run." he pleaded.

                            If Milly ran from him it would have been more than him losing her and failing in his task to bring her back. When he had looked at her face peering down on him a flood of memories had returned to him, those faces of his wife his children peered down at him waiting for him to emerge from the darkness.

                            If Milly ran then he would lose them forever. If she ran then he knew that the effect of his hideous appearance  truly  would  mean  that  he  had  lost them forever.  If she ran then the tenuous strand of hope, a hope that one day he might return to his world, that wore thinner and thinner everyday, would snap completely. She was a test of that hope. Slowly he moved upwards and out of the shadow.

                            He was aware of Milly's sharp intake of breath when she saw him for the first time. But as yet, she stood firm. She was horrified by the Turkanschoner's appearance, but saw  beyond  the  initial  physical  threat of his incisors and talons. She looked at his awesome jaws, but saw also the scars of  torture  on  his  head and neck where the Tallmen surgeons had crudely modified  his  bone structure to suit their purposes.

                            She  looked  into  his  fearful  eyes  and  saw  the suffering and pain he had endured for long years at their hands and that which he had felt since he had begun to realise what they deprived him of. She stood still and another tear ran down her cheek and the beast fell at her feet and sobbed uncontrollably. She had not run  and there was hope to cling to.

                            The Turkanschoner lay on his side, sweating profusely, his reddened face glowing with a lattice work of angry scars, his temples pounding as he recovered from the effort taken to reach this place and Milly.

She  waited  in  silence  until  he  had recovered   enough to sit up. Then he glanced up at her, his eyes a picture of tired triumph and gratitude. She smiled down at him and he gave forth a short laugh. “Why  not              run?”  he  asked.              “Am  I              not  terrible."              he questioned between short intakes of breath. Milly shook her head.

"You are not terrible. Only the things you have suffered are terrible." She replied." And they don't make you what you truly are. " he put a hand on his jaw.

“Am I not ugly?” he ventured removing his horned helmet to reveal more evidence of the contemptible work of the Tallmen. Milly looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. “Only to those who seek it. You are what you are" she replied.

                            The Turkanschoner stood up and held out a taloned hand to her and replaced his helmet, his hunched form towering over her. “Must  return  now."  he  growled. "Jonathon soon  return. Must be there."

"Where?" Milly asked looking down toward the city, her heart pounding strongly in  response  to  his  name.

                            The Turkanschoner moved off down the slope of the dome as Milly waited. He stopped and looked back. “Back  to  where  you  run  from.  Giant  friend  too." he  grimaced  and  spat  realising  what  he  had said. “Come quick not safe here. Must join Jonathon"

                            Milly adjusted the yellow cloak Rislo had wrapped her in her and moved nimbly after the stumbling Turkanschoner, excited by his last words about Jonathon. She trusted the Turkanschoner completely. She had not only heard him say Jonathon's name but sensed his presence in the creature, a presence that constantly soothed its tormented soul. Part of him was there within the Turkanschoner, alive and vital and  it drew her after her unlikely companion.