The Memorist

Chapter 96

Thursday, May 1^st-8:12 p.m.

Tom Paxton stood in front of the monitors, not consciously paying attention to the music. He was about to ask Bill Vine about how the underground effort was going, when he suddenly felt as if the air was pressing down on him. A terrible pressure behind his eyes forced them closed. The images he was envisioning made no sense.

While his soldiers set fire to the village, William Moore entered the hut. Inhaling a stink that permeated the small room, a stink that was ripe with sweat and warm, fresh blood, he choked back bile. Two pairs of eyes were staring at him from under the table in the corner of the shack; a woman and a small boy who cowered and whimpered. A half-dozen apples knocked over in the melee were strewn at their feet, red like blood against the gray stones. The fire in the grate smoldered. The room would soon grow cold as the winter winds blew through the thin walls, but the woman and the boy wouldn’t care, they wouldn’t even know; Moore wouldn’t be leaving them alive. The boy was too small to be of any use and the woman would only be trouble but first…he’d been fighting this war for King Henry IV for a long time and hadn’t had a woman in weeks.

Ripping off her pathetic shift, he was disappointed by the small, flat breasts and the pale nipples. He wanted handfuls of flesh and rosy red buds to squeeze, not this meager offering. Her fingernails raking his cheek were more surprising than painful. Not many women fought back, and he laughed.

The boy was crying loudly so Moore kicked him, sending him sprawling. Despite fear of reprisals, the woman shouted at him to stop, not to hurt her son. He slapped her hard across the face, leaving a red welt, which excited him. An instant later wet spittle landed on his chin. He would fuck her and strangle her at the same time just for that, and made a move to mount her when the acrid and harsh smoke from outside caused him to start coughing. Cursing, Moore ran out of the hut, abandoning the woman and the child, not looking back.

Outside, his soldiers were setting fire to more huts and laughing as men, women and children, chickens, dogs, horses and pigs ran from the flames. A crippled woman grabbed hold of Moore’s arm and screamed, “Save her, save her!” pointing to a young child crawling out of one of the huts as fiery beams came crashing down around her. The life of one child was of no importance to him. They had to take this town and move on to the next. Casualties were expected. He tried to deflect the woman but she wouldn’t give up. She clung to his leg, trying to force him to help. “Save her.”

William Moore laughed, kicked her off and moved on.

“Tom? Tom? Something’s happening!” Kerri shook Paxton. Trying to get him to focus on her. To answer her. But his eyes were fixed on some distant point. He clearly didn’t hear what she was saying or feel her fingers digging into his flesh.