Chapter 18: Angel With An Attitude

It was night. Russell and Melanie had taken advantage of the kindness of a solitary old man who had taken them in for the night. His kindly face, battered by wrinkles and the ravages of age, smiled widely as he peered through skin folds at them as they got ready for bed. “Is there anything else you need?” he creaked. Russell smiled warmly at the man. “No, thats all, thankyou!”
The old man eyed Melanie appraisingly. “I still can't believe it!” he muttered. “An actual child! Human! Flesh! Living!” he leant in closer to Melanie, and smiled still wider. “So pure! So unpolluted!” he looked at Russell. “You take care of her, sir. I'll do my best but this child...” he beamed at her. “This child could be the hope of this island!” And with that, the old man bowed deeply at them, wrapped his dressing gown around himself and shuffled off into darkness. Russell was left with his daughter, who yawned and burped loudly.
“Mel-!” he began but she looked sharply at him and he stopped himself, remembering who he was talking to. She arched her eyebrows at him and then when Russell looked downhearted she smiled and walked up to him.
“I know it must be hard, Russell.” she said, placing a comforting hand on his which felt entirely wrong. “I know you were looking for your daughter, and you almost got her. Almost!” She turned away.

“I'm sorry, I really am, but its only temporary, I swear. Soon your daughter will have her body back and everything will be well.” She grinned at him over her shoulder. “You'll be able to go home!” Russell smiled weakly, trying not to imagine returning to his swamp of a house, with its decay and terrible memories. He went to his sleeping bag and tried to curl up in the ragged cloth. It was cold, and he shivered. He could hear the wind whistling through the piping of the house and he felt it in his bones. Soon enough, however, he had dropped off to sleep. After all, the most comfortable bed was the one which took you by surprise – the ones which were so uncomfortable that you thought that you'd never sleep, so when you did it was always without trying and it lasted a long time. He curled foetally and dreamed of the bullet which ran through his wifes guts and imagined how her guts spilled out over him, so he drowned, intestines pressing against his mouth till he could hold his breath no more and they fell into him, gall bladders, pancreas, small intestine, choking.

He awoke to burning stinging his nostrils. He wrinkled his nose, and wondered what was going on. He twisted over, and tried to get back to sleep, but the musk of melt permeated his nostrils and forced his eyes open. They stung with smoke. He twisted over and Melanie was gone. He looked to the left and so was most of the wall. Piping had burst open and the wall was a gaping maw into the village. He stumbled forwards, his eyes burning, tears dribbling down his face, and saw Melanie, smoke curled around her like a snake. It pulsed and pounded around her like a drumbeat made manifest, and it pounced like a panther. The primal smoke ripped into the floor like a giant spike, tearing out massive chunks of flooring and building. The village they had landed in was called Steamham and it lived up to its name, as plumes of steam burned hot out of the ground to join the smoke. Melanie cackled a high, cold cry and threw a hand to a wall of speakers which made up a cliff on the left, and they crackled into life and started chugging rockabilly. Melanie danced and pranced, skanked and shot and the village burned into nothing around her. The music reached a peak and she leapt into a pose in the sky as the ground collapsed at her feet. She landed lightly on the ground next to Russell, who gaped at her. She looked at him sweetly. Her eyes had no pupils.

Then she collapsed.

Russell stared out at what she had done. The water leapt out of the hole in the middle of the village like a geyser, spraying on everything and staining the ground with liquid death. He saw houses collapse and fall into the widening chasm. Melanie slept on.

Sebastien didn't sleep. Him and Belle had found footprints in the rust, occasional misplaced things on the ground, footprints, which led to Steamham. They had him. They knew he was there, somewhere in the distance. Sebastien reached out a hand and crushed the air in front of him. “He's there...” he looked back at Belle, who looked at him quizzically. “He's in Steamham. We can get him before he causes any more harm.” She nodded glumly.
“Whats up with you?” he asked, squatting down next to the sitting Belle. He brought her chin up so he was looking at her properly. “You alright?”
She tugged her face away from him. “Fine.” she muttered.
He kept at it. “C'mon, whats up, are you ok? D'you need anything?”
“I'm fine! Jesus!” she snapped, and stalked away to gloom at a different corner of the valley. She watched a pipe spit steam into the sky and waved her hands through it so it fell apart in the air. When more steam kept on coming out of the pipe she kicked it.
Sebastien looked away, and then back at her. “Shall we? Carry on, I mean?”
She stared through him, and then through the ground to the cogs and gears crunching beneath her feet. “You go ahead, Seb. I'll just be a minute.”
Sebastien looked concernedly at his friend, but thought better of trying to provoke her and went ahead.

Belle looked back the way she had come. She was feeling awful. Morning sickness did that to a person. Her hands ran over her stomach. It had worked – she should be happy, by any measure. She had managed what no woman on the island had managed for over 20 years, and she had propagated the species. Humans would continue on this island... she looked over what she could see of the island. She saw the metal floors rusted, the cliffs split, rivets busted, water dribbling out of the seams. The island was like a too-full water balloon and it was finally choking. This was what she was going to bring her child into. This broken island. This rotting corpse of a hometown was all that was left of where she was brought up. Her hands tightened into fists on her tummy. “No...” she murmured. She couldn't let it happen. She couldn't let her child, her future, die in this wasteland. There was only one solution, and it was a desperate one. It could be seen as, she thought, despicable in some peoples eyes. But her child... her mind and thoughts returned to the embryo squirming into life inside her. She had to do it for her kid, so it could carry on. This was a sinking ship, after all, and women and children had first boarding rights to life-rafts. “Sebastien!” she cried as she stood, her mind made up. “Wait for me, Seb! I'm coming!”

When Melanie awoke, she rubbed her eyes to get the eye bogeys out of the cracks in her eyes. She stretched her arms wide and yawned loudly. She noticed that she was wearing a new dress. She wasn't in her normal bed. She looked out left and saw a couple of rusty (she'd never seen a rusty sleeping bag before) sleeping bags, a brown door hanging off its hinges and a glass, cracked floor. She looked right and saw a landscape of twisted metal and soot-black skies, of chains, pipes, engines, cogs, gears, grinding, churning, clunking, broken, spanners in the works. Rivers wove through the hills of rusting girders and steel floors and... It looked like a robots imagination, she concluded. As she looked harder, she concluded, 'a broken robots imagination.' She heard a scuffle behind her, and turned to see her father – the only thing she recognised in this place. “Daddy!” she beamed and toddled towards him, dress stirring gently in the wind running through the house.

Russell stumbled backwards from where he had lain in stupefied semi-sleep, too terrified to drift off properly and too scared of whatever was in his daughters body to wake her in the night.
“S-stay away from me!” he cried, scuffing his feet on the glass floor as he tried to get away from it. His back hit the wall and he could go no further, so he dragged himself to his feet and put his hands in front of his face, shielding his eyes from whatever was about to happen.
“Daddy?” Melanie queried him. “Daddy, whats wrong?”
“Y-you- what did you do, Mel?” Using the name of his daughter calmed him down a bit. His daughter, that little five year old in front of him, couldn't possibly have... he looked out over the village and shuddered. Never... he looked back at his daughter, bit his lip with worry but decided to go for it anyway. He breathed in deeply, and ran over to give his daughter a hug. He lifted her up and he could feel her little heart pumping through her breast and he closed himself in around her and they were alright again. He couldn't feel the electric twist and snap of her anymore. It was almost like she was back to normal. His eyes closed and he leant close to her, and kissed her on the cheek. “I love you, Melanie,” he whispered soothingly, and ran his hands through her hair. “I won't let anything happen to you.” His voice was slow and melodic and sing-song and Melanie said “Russell, I don't want to spoil the moment...”
Russell snapped back into consciousness.
“But this isn't Melanie.”
Melanie, or, apparently, Lester, was dropped unceremoniously onto the floor.
“Agh!” Russell cried, and scraped his hands across his jeans, like he'd accidentally picked up something slimy. “When did you come back?”
Melanie giggled, and replied “Right about when you told me how 'you won't let anything happen to me',”. Russell felt his cheeks flush scarlet, and Melanie continued sneeringly, “it was very sweet, Russell.”

Russell turned away so Lester couldn't see tears forming at the edges of his vision. “It happened again last night.”
“What happened?” Lester asked quickly. “What?”
“Look outside.”
Lester dropped everything, and stared out the window. “Oh my god!” He ran his hands beseechingly through Melanies hair. “This is-”

“-Horrible!” Sebastien cried. He stood on the edge of the crater, peering in at the massive destruction. He saw corpses, floating putrid in the sooty water, and rust sunk to the bottom. He saw that that was all there was to this place, eventually. He saw blood, running thick, and scarlet pounded at the side of his vision. “They did this! They're going to destroy everything we... everything we hold dear!” he turned to Belle, who looked mortified as bodies skimmed the surface near her feet. The ground melted away beneath her soles and she stumbled back, so as to avoid the same fate. “You're right..” she murmured. “You're right, Seb! They're horrendous!” Her eyes sparkled as she leapt to his side. “If they can do this...”
Sebastien looked troubled. “You're right. If they can do this, I don't think theres a limit to what they can't do.” He licked his lips, slowly, as though savouring the problem before him. “There has to be a way we can get close to them...”
Belle smiled. “They don't know we want to kill them.”
Sebastien stared at her. “Are you suggesting-”
“That we lie?” She asked. Her eyes were dangerous.
Sebastien looked out over the black water, to a precipice of a house on the edge of the destruction. “I suppose...” he said, slowly, “I suppose its justified, isn't it? Its for the greater good, after all.”
“Thats right, Seb, I suppose you are right.” She looked out at the house. “The greater good...”
“We're running low on supplies,” he said. “Shall we check out that house for what we can use?” She smiled at him. “Sebastien, you've changed! Just a couple of days ago you wouldn't have dreamed of robbing!”

His smile disappeared and was replaced with a stony scowl. “Well. Needs must, I suppose, Belle. Times change.”
“Exactly. Now you're thinking a bit more. Shall we?” she asked. He nodded, and so they set off towards the house on the plinth.

“And you're sure of what you saw?” he asked Russell again, pacing back and forth on the glass floor.
“I told you already, of course I'm sure!” Russell snapped back at him. “You were there, in the middle of the village. You were levitating. You were curling the smoke around you. You destroyed the village. Can't you remember?” He rubbed his forehead furiously. “Of course I don't!” They fumed together in silence a moment, wondering what was going on. “Maybe-” Melanie began, but stopped herself. “No, that wouldn't work. Don't worry.” Nothing happened. The wind rattled the pipes beneath them. Russell was drained of thoughts. He had been absolutely exhausted by what had happened so far. He had seen more in the past couple of days than he'd seen in the rest of his life. So much death. So much destruction. This island was dying in every sense of the word, one kilometre at a time. He stared a moment at Melanie. They were helping, in a sense. He needed to work out what to do, what he and Melanie were going to do.

“Lester.” Melanie turned her head, sharply. “What?” she barked. “What are we going to do? You never told me.” Melanie laughed. “Well, isn't it obvious, Russell?”
Russell shook his head. “Maybe I'm just tired,” he said, “but I'm completely lost.”
Melanie grinned. “We're going to do what we brought your daughter here for in the first place.”
Russells mouth dropped a little. “Are you serious?”
“Thats right, Russell.” Melanie leaned forwards. “We're going back to the tower, to do this properly. Theres still a way to save this island.”

Russell laughed, for the first time, he felt, in years. “You still want to save the island?” Melanie was shocked. “Well, of course! You didn't think I'd come this far to-”
“Lester, look outside!” Russell said coldly. “Look at whats left of this place!” By the time we get to the tower, there might be no island left!”
“Don't you dare!” Melanie shouted, advancing on Russell. “Don't you dare tell me what I can and can't do!” She stomped her foot in front of him and the wind roared behind her. “I haven't come this far...” she raised her shoulders higher. “I haven't killed myself...” the wind shrieked around the house, shaking it to its foundations like it was responding to her rage. “To lose to this island! I will beat it! I will win!”

Russell stared, dumbfounded, at his daughter, at Lester. He couldn't think of anything to say. The man's determination was astounding.

He was about to reply – how, he had no idea – when he stopped himself. There were voices below, on the ground floor. Were there survivors of that localised ground torture? He threw up his hand to stop Melanie replying and pointed with his other hand downstairs. “Listen!” he mouthed.

“So we pretend to be friends?” said a voice, reverberating up through the house.
“Thats right!” said another, a female.
“And then what.. so we pretend that we don't mind that they killed Dresden and Lester, and caused that crater, and the flood, and the ironbeaks, and that genocide outside the sphere? We pretend we're cool with all of that?”
“Thats right, Sebastien!”
Russell froze. They couldn't possibly think...
“Belle, I'm not sure I'll be able to do that.”
“You don't have a choice!”
“Of course I do-”
“Listen!” she hissed, “Do you want to kill them or not?”
The silence in the little room at the top of the house was deafening in its intensity.
“Of course!” Sebastien replied angrily, pounding the wall. “Of course I do, its the only thing I can think to do in this apocalypse! I have to appease Lester, and appease myself!”
“Then keep your goddamned head and make-believe like we're all good buddies still, got that?”
“Alright.” Sebastien answered dejectedly after a moment. “Alright.” He paused, then continued. “I still don't like this. I would prefer to kill them outright.”
“No, you idiot!” she answered sharply. “You've seen the power they have! We need to take them by surprise just to have a chance to win!”
“Yeah, you're right.”

Russell stared at Lester. After a moments stunned silence he said quietly, “They want to kill us?”
Melanie seemed to recover quickly. “Of course they do. After what we've done, why wouldn't they? Even if they knew that Lesters still alive, we're still responsible for the ironbeaks, the sphere, the crater outside, and Dresdens death.”
“Thats bad grammer, Lester, you shouldn't refer to yourself in the third person.”
Melanie froze.
“I suppose you're right though. They can blame us for a lot,” Russell continued. “What should we do? How can we make it all right?”
Melanie said nothing for a moment. She seemed to be thinking, hard. Finally, she concluded “We play them at their own game.”
“What?!” Russell cried, startled at his directness.
“We need to get rid of them before they get rid of us. You can't let them know that... that I'm still alive.” She advanced on him. “They'd think you were lying, trying to assuage responsibility for your murder.”
“I didn't-” Russell began hotly.
“Well, you and I know that, but they don't need to! We can't alter their viewpoints too much or else they'll know we know!”
Melanie began pacing. “I'll have to pretend to be Melanie, I think I could do it, none of them have spoken to her before, they don't know how she sounds.” He was about to say something else when he was interrupted by talking outside the door.
“I'll just check for a moment, but you're right, I shouldn't think there was anything her-” Belle opened the door, looking away down the stairs but turned, saw Russell, saw Melanie next to him, and screamed.