Darrell’s done little tests before; he gave minor burns and hurts and damage to a couple of the surgeons who worked with him, just to see if it’d work. And he’s practised alone. But he’s never used it before in a fight, not like this. It’s exciting.
He has a sense, he finds, of how much he’s got left in the tank. It’s loads. More than loads. He lunges for her, and misses, and lets an excited jolt earth through his feet, and he’s still got loads. No wonder blooming Roxy always looked so pleased with herself. She was carrying this round inside her. He’d’ve felt pleased with himself, too. He does.
Jocelyn’s skein is twitching; it’s just because she’s excited. It’s working now better than it ever has, it’s been so good since Mother Eve cured her, and now she knows why that happened, why God made that miracle for her. It was for this. To save her from this bad man, trying to kill her.
She tightens her stomach and runs for him, feinting to the left, pretending to go for his knee, and at the last moment, as he’s stooping to defend against her, she twists right, reaches up, grabs his ear and gives him a jolt to the temple. It’s smooth and easy, sweetly humming. He gets her on the thigh and it hurts like fuck, like a rusty blade scraped along the bone; the big muscles just keep bunching and releasing and the leg wants to collapse. She hauls herself upright with the right leg, dragging the left behind her. He’s got a lot of power; she can feel it crackling on his skin. The kinds of jolts he gives are muscular and iron-hard, not like Ryan’s. Not like anyone she’s fought with.
She remembers her training for fighting an opponent who is simply stronger, simply has more to work with. She’s going to have to let him play himself out on her, presenting to him the bits of the body where he can do least damage. He’s got more juice in the tank than she does, but if she can trick him into spending some into the earth, if she can be faster and more nimble than him, she’ll have this.
She backs away, dragging the leg a little more than she needs to. She makes herself stumble a little. She clutches at the hip. She watches him watching her. She holds out a warding hand. She lets the leg collapse under her. She falls to the ground. He’s on her like the wolf on the lamb, but she’s faster than him now, rolling to the side so that he discharges his killing blow into the gravel. He roars, and she kicks him hard in the side of the head with her good leg.
She reaches up to grab the back of his knee. She has it planned, like they taught her. Bring him to the ground, go for the knees and ankles. She has enough. One solid blow here where the ligaments join and he’ll tumble.
She grabs at his trousers and makes contact, her palm firm against his calf to jolt him. And there’s nothing. It’s gone. Like a motor revved to a standstill. Like a pool of water drained into the earth. It’s not there.
It must be there.
Mother Eve gave it back to her. It must be there.
She tries again, concentrates, thinks of the stream of running water, like they taught her in her classes, thinks of how it flows naturally from place to place, if she only allows it. She could find it again if she had just a moment.
Darrell kicks her hard in the jaw with his heel. He’d also been waiting for the blow that didn’t come. But he’s not one to waste his chance. She’s kneeling now on all fours, gasping, and he kicks her in the side once, twice, three times.
He can smell bitter oranges, suddenly, and a scent like burned hair.
He pushes her head down with the heel of his hand, delivering a charge to the base of her skull. It becomes impossible to fight with the jolt there – he knows: it was done to him once long ago in a park at night. The mind becomes confused, the body goes limp, there is nothing to be done. He holds the charge steady. The soldier sinks to the floor, her face in the gravel. He waits until she’s stopped twitching. He’s breathing heavily. He has enough juice left to do the same thing twice over. It feels good. She’s gone.
Darrell looks up, smiling, as if the trees should applaud his victory.
In the distance, he hears the women pick up a song, a melody he’s heard them sing before but which none of them will explain to him.
He sees the dark eyes of the women watching him from the factory. He knows something then. A simple fact that should have been obvious from the first, had he not been pushing the knowledge from him. The women are not glad to see what he has done, or that he could do it. The fucking bitches are just staring at him: their mouths as closed as the earth, their eyes as blank as the sea. They walk down the stairs inside the factory in orderly file and march towards him as one. Darrell lets out a sound, a hunted cry, and he runs. And the women are after him.
He is heading for the road; it’s only a few miles away. On the road, he’ll flag down a car, he’ll get away from these crazy bitches. Even in this godforsaken country, someone will help him. He runs pell-mell across an open plain between two great bodies of trees, feet pushing off from the ground as if he could become a bird now, a stream now, a tree now. He’s in open country and he knows they can see him, and they are making no sound, and he lets himself think – maybe they’ve turned back, maybe they’re gone. He looks behind him. There are a hundred women and the sound of their muttering is like the sea, and they are gaining on him, and his ankle turns and twists and he falls.
He knows them all by name. There’s Irina and clever Magda, Veronyka and blonde Yevgennia and dark Yevgennia; there’s cautious Nastya and cheery Marinela and young Jestina. All of them are there, the women he’s worked alongside these months and years, the women he’s given employment to and treated fairly, in the circumstances, and there’s a look on their faces that he cannot read.
‘Come on now,’ he calls to them. ‘I got rid of that soldier for you. Come on. Yevgennia, did you see me? I took her down with one zap! Did you all see that?’
He’s pushing himself away with his one good foot, as if he could scoot on bum and hip for the shelter of the trees or the mountain.
He knows they know what he’s done.
They are calling to each other. He cannot hear precisely what it is they’re saying. It sounds like a collection of vowels, a cry from the throat: eoi, yeoui, euoi.
‘Ladies,’ he says as they run nearer and nearer yet, ‘I don’t know what you think you saw, but I just hit her on the back of the neck. Fair and square. I just hit her.’
He knows he is speaking, but he cannot see any recognition in their faces.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Darrell. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.’
They are humming the ancient song softly.
‘Please,’ he says. ‘Please don’t.’