Heinz groaned at the knock on the door. He looked at Tara and they rolled their eyes together.
The safe house that the Innishannon bridge guards recommended worked a treat last night as they got to sleep. For the first four or five hours that is. After that blissful period of quiet, the house had become a hive of activity. At the start the human voices and background noise could be ignored. It grew more difficult over time as people moved what sounded like drum kits. It became impossible when word got around that Kinmore reclaimers were staying in one of the rooms upstairs. This was the fifth knock so far.
“We’ll be out in a couple of minutes,” Heinz called in annoyance. He turned back to his breakfast cube. The cube was no different than any other but categorising them made him feel better somehow.
The door opened behind him with a click.
Heinz turned, ready to politely tell whoever it was to shove off and if that didn’t work, swear until they did. He had a lot less patience for adults and it was starting to run thin after the multiple disturbances by people wanting news.
“Just me,” Louise said, closing the door behind her.
Phil waved absently as he scribbled something in that notebook of his. Shane grunted an acknowledgement.
Louise took a seat by her bag and pulled out a tupperware with a food cube of her own.
“The plan has been finalised,” She began between bites. “They’ve started preparing the burn area and expect to start in about two to three hours. All that noise earlier was the empty fuel canisters being thrown around.”
Phil looked up and let his notebook drop onto his lap. “How do you know? Did you overhear someone talking about?”
“No Phil,” Louise said with a long-suffering tone. “I’ve already told you that that’s not how the sound augment works.”
Phil clicked his tongue and frowned. “It just doesn’t make sense. Every augment has done something.”
“And so has this one. I told you my balance was better.” Louise sighed. “Watch this.”
Louise set her tupperware aside and moved into the widest free space in the room. She knelt down, placing both hands flat on the ground in front of her head. Leaning forward she kicked off the ground. Smoothly but with a slight stiff Louise moved into a handstand.
Heinz grinned and set his fork aside to give a clap. His amusement turned into actual astonishment as Louise shakily lifted one of her hands off the floor.
“Woah. And you were able to do that before?” Tara asked, eyes wide.
Louise steadied herself in the one handed handstand before slowly turning her head side to side. “Never. I haven’t even tried this until now.”
“But sound? Nothing about noise?” Phil muttered as he began to write something into his notebook.
Heinz waited a beat for Louise to come back down but instead she began to move her legs and hips in the air, testing her balance.
“Are they carrying the fuel through the wall?” He asked when it became clear she would be like this for a while.
Louise shook her head, the rest of her body remaining perfectly in motion. “Just empty containers. They have the petrol station in Bandon going now.”
“I guess we help with that then?”
Shane let out a grunt of agreement and packed away the wrapping he kept his food cubes in.
“We’ve already been included in their plan.” Louise said with a grimace. She placed her hand back down and awkwardly brought her legs back down to the ground. She spun around on the ground and grabbed her food before speaking again. “They want us on that bridge we crossed over yesterday. It’s the hardest spot to blockade so they aren’t going to. Instead they will fill it with Reclaimers and let the Monkeys come to them.”
“They want us to be what? An anvil? The rock to match the hard place?” Phil asked in disbelief.
Louise nodded and took a bite of food. “Not alone, Luke’s squad and a mix of Courtmacsherry and Innishannon reclaimers will be with us, but yes. The swarm will likely come to us.”
“Shite.” Heinz summarised for them all. Again a victim of their own success.
He wasn’t sure how to feel about the placement/ their job. He wanted to help but didn’t like that they didn’t get a say in how. The job itself didn’t help much either. The idea of standing in front of a horde of Swarm reminded him of bad memories. Aiden’s farm without a barricade to block for him. Playing chicken with that Rhino Swarm and the flock of birds.
Heinz clicked his tongue. At least this time they’d have Luke’s team with them. Their table shields would be the next next thing to an actual barricade.
He glanced at the others. Were they up for a large fight like this already? Heinz followed Louise, Phil and Shane to look at Tara and specifically, her arm.
“I’ll be fine.” Tara said, closing her eyes and breathing out to try to ignore them. “I’ll see if I can find a shield for my broken arm and stay back.”
All four of them looked away.
“Right,” Heinz said. “Shane, do you want to go with her? You’d know what will work with her arm.”
Shane let out a grunt and Louise volunteered to go too. She wanted to find out more about the zones on the other side of Innishannon.
That left Heinz and Phil to help prepare Bandon to be burned down.
Heinz twitched his nose and wished he had nose plugs. At this point he would settle for any kind of clean cloth to stuff up his nose.
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He stank. Everyone else stank. The town stank.
Diesel and petrol had been liberally sprayed, tossed or poured over everything in sight. Anyone with any sense of smell, however weak, was suffering. Heinz wasn’t even the worst affected either. He and Phil did only two fuel tank runs before being pulled aside to help with demolition. There were only so many fuel tanks you could carry with two hands, no matter how strong you were. The damage you could do to a building on the other hand, scaled with strength.
The fact that they could double up as the guards for the demolition crews was an added bonus. Everyone in the Bandon zone may have been a Reclaimer but that did not mean they were ready for a fight.
Guards weren't required for most of the buildings set to be demolished. These were the firebreak areas at the edge of where the Swarm could be found. The burn zone/ fire pit/ Irish oven/ entrance to hell was another story.
In the last two hours Heinz had heard the Bandon main street called everything but what it was. People kept coming up with new names as they worked. Heinz wasn’t sure if they were bored or eager to pretend they weren’t doing what they were. If he never had to hear another ‘aBandon all hope’ joke he would be a happy man.
The smallest crews consisted of 20-30 reclaimers. True to the Innishannoner’s word, the gangs of Monkeys did not approach them at the start. The unease truce with the Swarm wavered as the smell of accelerant grew stronger. The last few buildings to fall gained watchers.
Luckily for the plan, most of the main street of Bandon was built or renovated in the 1960’s or 1970’s when fire regulations weren’t really a thing. At the time, materials were chosen based on their price and availability without thinking about how quickly they could go up in flames. The demolition crew disabled more modern fire safety features and in the older buildings, cleared heavy stonework that could block the fire.
It was rather terrifying how quickly a dedicated and organised crew could gut a town that had stood for hundreds of years.
“Here.”
Heinz just got his hands up in time to catch a tiny cylinder. He turned it around to examine the lipstick - no, chapstick.
“Rub it under your nose. Under alright? It’ll help with the smell. And any allergies if you have any.”
Heinz was desperate enough that he’d try anything. He pulled off a glove, lifted up the grate on his hurling helmet and applied. It worked. The strong honey smell was incredible. He couldn’t smell anything other than honey now but currently that was a good thing.
He sighed in relief and held the tube back out to Kate. “Thank you.”
“Could I..” Tara asked.
Kate sighed and handed it over. Tara was the first of many and a queue began to form. Kate didn’t complain, but the way she tapped her hammer against her metal armour while it was passed around dissuaded several onlookers. Heinz recognised her armour, it was the same kind that Aisling wore but less polished. Kate’s hammer was also new. He was certain it hadn’t been that big before.
Only when Bella, her teammate’s took the lip balm did Katie speak up. “Oi! I know you have your own. I saw it yesterday.”
Bella scowled back and flicked her large metal table shield to the side with an unnerving ease. “But you didn’t see when I dropped it in the river did you?”
They both groaned.
Heinz raised an eyebrow. “The river?”
Kate made a face. “Kelpies. Great for energy but fighting in the water all day is awful.”
“The crocodile things?” Tara asked.
Kate nodded. “Think of a small horse with giant crocodile jaws.”
They all shuddered.
“What were you up to?” Kate pointed at Shane’s shield and the four furrows carved down the hatch door. “Was it the Slashers that did that?”
Shane shifted the shield to his side and Heinz grimaced. “No that was the malignant.”
“Oh.”
The conversation died as the members of Luke’s team took that in and cast glances around at the other, lower threshold, reclaimers milling around. None of them reacted to the announcement.
“Bad business,” Cian said to end the conversation.
Of all of them, Cian looked the most at home amongst all the Innishannon reclaimers. He didn't wear the metal armour that Luke's team's front line fighters did. He carried far more knives and sharp items than seemed necessary, including two large new additions to his arsenal. The square, flat blades looked like they were taken from a shop shutters or turbine of some kind.
Thankfully neither Heinz’s group nor Luke’s team had lost any members in the five days since they had last met.
Bella and Adam, the two chefs, still wielded the tall metal table shields. Nicky’s shield had been crushed by the Slaad in the caravan park but like Phil she had built a replacement. The cut out section of a steel shed wasn’t as big as the tables but it wasn't as battered either.
“How do you think this is going to go down?” Trev, the other teacher and spear user in Luke’s team, asked. Unlike Luke, Tara had not been his student at any point which seemed to make both of them more relaxed around each other. “Anything particularly bad about this kind of swarm?”
Kate and Cian shared a look. “We’ll end up fighting.”
At the resulting groan, Kate continued. “If it wasn’t likely they wouldn’t have put most of the fourth thresholds in one spot. I know that rugby team is on the other end but there's only seven of them.”
“Great. I’ll bet the monsters will all be on fire too. Can’t ever make it easy on us.” Trev rubbed his face and focused on where Heinz, Shane and Tara stood. “You’ve run into them haven’t ye? What do we need to look out for?”
Heinz shrugged. “We didn’t fight them. We ran from the horde.” At Trev’s pinched expression, he racked his brain. “They have an extra limb and the stronger ones have twice as many limbs as the small ones. Expect them to throw things at us. I wouldn’t touch them either. One left scratch marks all the way down-” Heinz pointed across the street at the damaged lamp post. “-that.”
The group broke up to either inspect the lamp post or the broken tile projectiles littering the street.
“How have you been doing then?” Heinz asked Kate as they were left alone.
Kate held up her hand and wobbled it side to side. “We’ve slowed a bit. I'm getting closer and closer to the fifth threshold but a lot has been happening. Yourselves?”
“Lots of injuries.” Heinz admitted, rubbing his shoulder. “But we’re about 70% of the way to the fifth threshold.”
“Oh crap. We really have slowed then.”
Heinz shook his head. “No, we’ve sped up. The types of.. swarm we’ve fought gave a lot of energy.”
Kate shivered. “Ugh. No regrets about not joining us?”
Heinz hummed. “A little. I can’t think of how the past few days would have gone if I wasn’t about though.”
Everything had happened in a landslide. One thing leading to another until they were buried in work and unable to catch their breath. How would it have happened without him?
Louise would have still pushed to get to Cork. Shane too. He wasn’t sure if Phil and Tara would have stayed with them. Mike, Dick and Sean wouldn’t have been in the I38-Z4 if he didn’t have that conversation with Mike. Without the three of them, Louise, Phil, Shane and Tara might not have ended up at the horse riding centre. Four people wouldn't have survived that ambush if they did. And someone had to trigger and live through that ambush to clear the zone.
If Kinmore and Courtmacsherry didn't join together to search the clear zones, how strong would the Malignant have become? How long before the other Stalkers were discovered by the boatyard?
“No. I think I made the right choice.”
Luke’s group had done fine without him. He couldn't say the same about his group.
A murmur spread through the waiting reclaimers and Heinz turned, seeking the source.
Louise, Luke and Phil had returned. There was a short conversation between the three of them and Robert before Luke stepped forward.
Luke climbed onto the car that had hindered Heinz’s escape the day before to address them all. He held up a VHF radio.
“In twenty minutes we start lighting fires.”