Part 12: The House of Broken Dolls
12.1
As they drove, Luna, Woody and Timmy the Grimmy saw the full extent of the carnage in their beloved Freelands.
A dozen Grims were slumped around their fire, their dark robes riddled with bloody bullet holes.
One of them was smiling a grin that went all the way to the back of his skull as bullets had chewed away the remaining flesh and bone.
Others were blackened, charred and still smoking, where the holy napalm from Serenity’s weapons had fallen upon them like the fiery wrath of God.
It was distressing for them to see people they had considered friends – family in some cases – in the state they were now, but Luna was numb to it all.
She was still thinking about Tia, the blood and steaming entrails pouring from the skull-sized wound in her belly.
She shook her head to remove the image but it stuck there as though branded.
One of Cross’s other dozers came over, approaching fast from the left.
‘Fuck,’ Woody said, turning the wheel fast.
His speedy reactions meant that the dozer just clipped the side of them instead of being a head-on collision.
The dozer turned slightly to the side.
Timmy the Grimmy was on top of the dozer, manning the gun.
He spun fast, his movements surprisingly balletic for such a big man.
His finger squeezed the trigger, a grim smile on his lips as his bullets tore through the torso of the gunman on the other dozer.
Grinning, face illuminated by the incessant muzzle flash, he flipped them the bird.
Woody put his foot down, steering hard left then right, trying to negotiate the maze of logs that King Solomon had set up when he’d first created the Freelands.
One of Cross’s followers jumped out in front of them, a smug grin on his lips and a shotgun in his hands.
Woody put his foot down.
The dozer hit him hard enough to turn his head into bloody mush on the front of the plough.
‘Fuck me!’ Woody shouted.
The dozer bucked like it was going over a bump in the road.
He steered hard right, just missing another of Cross’s dozers which was barrelling through the log maze towards them.
Three of Cross’s dozers slammed into the outer side of the wooden wall, smashing it in at a forty-five degree angle.
Smoke began to come from under the bonnet of the other dozer.
Its inhabitants bailed, armed to the teeth with nasty-looking assault rifles. Glinting bullet belts were hung across their chests.
Timmy the Grimmy took a couple of them down with his wild shots, but the rest continued their charge into the Freelands.
‘Onward Christian soldiers… marching off to war!’ a distorted voice proclaimed through a distant loudhailer.
Another explosion rocked the very ground beneath them.
It saddened Luna that something as everyday as an explosion had become terrifying.
What had once been a symbol of fun, of freedom, was now a sound of oppression and cemented the realisation that their friends were dying all around them.
Her heart began to slam into her ribs so hard each beat made her want to puke.
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It felt like the world was collapsing in on her.
*
‘Deep breaths, Luna. Deep breaths,’ Woody shouted from the driver’s seat. ‘We’ll make it outta here, I swear to ya.’
Woody put his foot down again and the dozer jumped over the muddy ground, spraying a hail of mud up behind it.
Timmy the Grimmy spun from side to side like some deadly windscreen wiper, spraying death every way he turned.
Woody saw something in his peripheral vision.
He jammed on the anchors as something heavy and deadly landed on the ground a few feet in front of them.
Plumes of mud and blood sprayed up into the air.
Grims fell, missing arms or legs or heads.
Blood soaked into the dirt beneath them.
Woody winced and put the wipers on full blast.
It was like spitting on an earthquake.
He waited.
After a few seconds it had cleared.
But the dozer was stuck in the crater that the explosion had created.
Woody revved the gas hard, bellowing curses as he desperately tried to work the dozer free.
Serenity’s armed attackers converged on the trapped vehicle.
*
A grinning man raised an assault rifle.
‘Forgive them Lord for they know not what they do,’ he uttered.
He made the sign of the cross in the air with a blood-smeared hand. Then his gun spat fire.
Bullets clanged off the paintwork.
Timmy the Grimmy crouched.
He popped up a few seconds later and fired off a burst of rounds.
Woody kept flooring and releasing the gas pedal, trying to rock them over the lip that prevented them getting out of the crater.
More mud began to spray up.
Another hail of gunfire came from the other side.
Luna began to cower as the bullets clanged off the dozer’s chassis. She scooted backwards into the corner, hiding her head in her hands. Her entire body trembled.
‘Hey, it’s ok,’ Woody said, looking at her for a second.
She looked up briefly and her anguish hit him like a sledgehammer blow.
‘How the fuck is any of this ok?’ she spat.
He reversed slightly then took a run up.
They moved a little up the side of the crater then rolled back.
‘Cos I’m here and I won’t let anyone hurt you.’
Luna rolled her eyes. ‘Now where have I heard that shit before?’
*
Timmy the Grimmy took a peep from behind his hiding place.
He saw at least five of Serenity’s folk.
Their rifles were aimed right at him.
‘Surrender, heathens, and you may live to one day see the light,’ one of them shouted.
Timmy the Grimmy looked around for inspiration.
His disbelieving eyes fell upon a grenade lodged right underneath the arm of the machine gun.
He raced over to it.
Cupped it to his chest like a newborn baby.
He tried to gauge from which direction the majority of the fire was coming.
He failed.
It seemed to be coming from everywhere.
Again, the distorted, loudhailer biblical verses came, along with commands for them to surrender.
This time, Timmy the Grimmy answered it with a flash of his dirty middle finger.
Then, a split-second later, he followed it up with the grenade.
Two of Cross’s followers were blown clean in half.
Timmy the Grimmy took his chance and rose, firing the gun around as fast as he could.
The motion of the dozer took him off his feet, just as the return fire came.
The dozer came over the crater.
‘His grenade cleared the lip that was stopping us,’ Woody grinned. ‘See, I told you we’d be ok.’
The sound of gunfire from up above was reassuring.
They made it out of the side of the Freelands, heading off towards the river.
‘We don’t want to go that way,’ Luna said.
Woody yanked the wheel hard. The dozer veered away from the direction of the river where Luna and Davey had almost been eaten by the aquatic mutants.
They left the Freelands and everything they’d known behind them in a sea of blood and flames.
*
The dozer ate up the ground beneath it, the muddied earth no match for the tracks.
The Freelands were just a memory behind them.
They passed over dry ground, ruins of buildings and fallen bodies, and eventually came to the edge of what looked like farmland.
The dozer made short work of the wooden fence, scattering it across the surrounding area with little effort.
Grasses almost as high as the dozer’s windows appeared.
‘Ain’t this motherfucker heard of a lawn mower?’ Woody muttered, drawing a grim smile from Timmy the Grimmy.
Luna didn’t acknowledge it; just continued blankly staring at the wall.
Timmy the Grimmy was crouched in a hard stance, eyes scanning the horizon.
But there seemed nothing to shoot.
Roughly an hour later, the dozer rolled to a stop against a low stone wall.
‘Fuck, we’re outta petrol,’ Woody said, trying and failing to restart the engine. ‘I hate to say this… But I think we’re going to have to get out.’
*
Luna’s wide eyes flicked across their surroundings.
‘I don’t want t’,’ she said.
A severe sense of foreboding gripped her.
‘Trust me, it’ll be alright,’ Woody said, tilting her chin up so she was looking him in the eye.
‘Why don’t we just get out and keep walking?’ Luna said. ‘I don’t like the look of this place.’
‘We’re here now,’ Woody said.
‘I’m getting a real serial killer vibe from here, like,’ Luna said.
‘For the record, I think this is pretty freaky looking too,’ Timmy the Grimmy said.
A sudden gust of wind blew through the trees, making it sound as though bones were rattling against the trunks.
They all looked at each other.
‘We’ve got guns,’ Woody said.
‘He’s right,’ Timmy the Grimmy said. ‘I vote we go in too.’
‘Fuck that,’ Luna said, shaking her head frantically.
‘Well you can stay out in the dozer if you prefer,’ Woody said.
Luna grabbed desperately for Woody’s arm. ‘I can’t be on my own right now,’ she said, for once looking her actual age instead of the age she usually acted. ‘Please don’t leave me on my fucking own. Please. You can’t leave me on my own.’
‘We’d never leave you if you didn’t feel safe.’
‘Thanks Woody,’ she said. ‘But I really don’t think we should go in there.’
‘It can’t possibly be worse than what we’ve left behind.’ Woody said.
‘Can’t it?’ Luna said, shivering as a chill ran down her spine.