Memesis Read online

Memesis

  Jon Jacks

  Other New Adult and Children’s books by Jon Jacks

  The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

  The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

  A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

  The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

  Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll’s Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

  P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

  Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

  Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

  Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

  Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

  Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

  The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

  Text copyright© 2016 Jon Jacks

  All rights reserved

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

  Thank you for your support.

  Chapter 1

  ‘It’s said that she will come when you least expect her.’

  As she spoke, the girl’s eyelids were closed yet flickering rapidly, as if she were accessing other levels, other worlds.

  ‘She will come out of the sun, it will seem. And afterwards it will be sworn that she did, for how else could she wreak such havoc?’

  The men casually seated on the ground about her laughed.

  One leapt to his feet, kicking the crouching girl so hard on the shoulder that she was sent sprawling into the dust, her head almost falling into the edges of the fire.

  ‘Now aint you the pretty little thing,’ he sneered irately, ‘coming over all shaman like in the hope it scares us!’

  ‘It’s said that all this, this apocalypse of man,’ the girl continued, forcing herself to rise back up onto her knees despite the pain and awkwardness of tightly bound wrists and ankles, ‘has all been brought about not by a war, as some presume, but by one single girl.’

  The men all harshly chuckled again, one throwing his dregs of poteen into the fire and grimacing with delight as the flare up threatened to set the girl’s ridiculously long hair alight.

  ‘I’ve heard of this girl: Nemesis,’ one of the men declared, a touch of wariness intruding into his tone.

  ‘Memesis,’ the girl corrected him, ‘for her lethality increases with every telling.’

  There was a frightened whimpering from the darkness lying beyond the campfire’s dim circle of light.

  No one paid any attention to it, least of all the bound girl.

  It was the whining of an even younger girl, one too young to provide the men with any evening sport. She was tightly bound too, of course, for some men would still pay a good price for even the youngest of girls.

  The only question on the men’s minds was how much fun they could have with this slightly older girl without affecting the sale price too much.

  ‘I’ve also heard of this girl,’ one of the men announced with a disbelieving smirk. ‘A destroyer of cities: but called Afro-deity, from what I hear.’

  The girl nodded in agreement.

  ‘She goes by many names, depending on the mood that takes her.’

  ‘Wiping out whole legions of armed men, as I’ve heard it,’ another man grimly chuckled. ‘Fairy stories!’

  ‘She is less forgiving of those who – as foolishly as Ahab’s pursuit of his own end – deliberately hunt her down, flattering themselves they will survive their encounter.’

  Yet another man irately rose to his feet, this time to scornfully spit a mouthful of poteen directly into the girl’s face.

  ‘Me, I don’t believe a word of all this bull, about this girl who makes a H-bomb seem all cuddly and caring!’ he snapped furiously.

  ‘Wiser men don’t believe,’ the girl said, undeterred. ‘Not that they are wiser because they know the truth; but because their disbelief prevents them from seeking out an early death.’

  ‘And you?’ the man snarled, grabbing her hair, violently pulling her head back, her face up. ‘Do you know where we can find this girl? Is she out there now, in the darkness, preparing to save you? Is that what you’re hoping?’

  He peered out mockingly into the surrounding darkness. The little girl whimpered in terror as his wandering eyes briefly, tauntingly latched onto hers.

  ‘She’s here,’ the girl kneeling by the fire insisted, ‘she might yet spare you–’

  The man grabbed her so fiercely by the jaw that she found it difficult to continue.

  – ‘if you answer her question.’

  ‘Question?’ the man snorted. ‘What question might that be?’

  ‘Naseby; do you know where I might find a place called Naseby?’

  ‘Naseby?’

  He glanced back and around at the other men, exchanging puzzled looks and guffaws.

  ‘There’s no such place,’ one of the men confidently declared. ‘And if there ever had been, it wouldn’t be standing now.’

  ‘That’s a shame, that you couldn’t help me,’ the girl said sadly.

  ‘A shame?’ The man had at last released the girl’s aching jaw, but he still maliciously glared down at her. ‘Why woul–’

  *

  The girl kicked out the last remnants of the fire.

  She didn’t want any of the surrounding animals to be scared off by the flames. She was relying on them to dispose of the bodies.

  Man might deserve to starve, to suffer; but the animals were guiltless; and so the girl took delight in providing them with a feast of fresh flesh.

  She had already made a quick search of the men’s belongings, including the saddlebags on the scrawny horse they’d somehow managed to acquire. There was nothing of use to her.

  Of course, she had destroyed their weapons. She didn’t want them falling into the hands of any other men.

  ‘What about me?’

  The little girl hobbled out of the darkness into the last of the fire’s quickly dimming glow. She had managed to loosen the ropes binding her ankles enough to allow a modicum of movement.

  The older girl stared back at the little girl in surprise.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ she said bluntly.

  She didn’t add, ‘You were supposed to be dead.’

  The little girl pleading held up her bound hands.

  ‘I can’t survive out here; not with my hands tied.’

  The other girl glanced about herself at the surrounding, forbidding land with pursed lips.

  ‘Hands tied or untied: you won’t survive out here anyway,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Not if you leave me here,’ the little girl agreed.

  ‘You saw what happened here?’ the other asked in surprise, indicating the men’s shattered bodies with nothing more than a disparaging glance. ‘And yet you still want to come with me?’

  The little girl nodded.

  ‘I’ll be safe with you: if you don’t kill me too.’

  The older girl chuckled lightly.

  It did seem – well, a shame to kill the poor little mite.

  ‘Do you know where Naseby is?’ she asked.

  The younger girl shook her head.

  *r />
  ‘What should I call you?’

  The little girl was holding firmly on to the waist of the older one, her only way of ensuring she wouldn’t fall off the back of the horse.

  The other girl sighed regretfully, as she had when she had relented and agreed that the little girl could accompany her until they reached an area where foraging might be easier.

  She wasn’t supposed to show mercy. It was a worrying precedent.

  Had she been living amongst these people too long, too closely?

  ‘Call me whatever you want.’

  ‘I heard you say you go by many names,’ the little girl said, ‘but which do you prefer?’

  ‘You heard too much.’

  ‘I always wanted an older sister,’ the little girl persisted, undeterred. ‘I’ll call you Sis.’

  For the first time in what had been an exceptionally long life, Sis laughed and shook her head in disbelief.

  *

  Chapter 2

  Even Sis frowned in puzzlement as, coming out upon a high outcrop of rock, they found themselves looking down on the most curious fight either of them and ever seen (and they had both seen a great many fights, not one of which could be described as fair or straightforward).

  This fight, however, was unusual because it was impossible to determine whether it involved two men or two animals.

  One could have been a hybrid of a lion, the other of some bird-like creature, possibly a further cross between an eagle and a vulture. Identifying exactly where human became animal was impossible, their dress and armour being a complicated mix of skins and furs, while other pelts appeared to hang loosely from their waists.

  The weapons they used were crude, constructed as so many were these days from metal scavenged from the rusting car wrecks that could only be uncovered after a few days’ diligent digging beneath the all-conquering undergrowth. Yet the weapons were wielded fearsomely, expertly, neither of the beasts giving quarter, each striking out viciously in the hope of landing the killing blow.

  ‘What are they?’

  The little girl had to partially peer over Sis’s shoulder to get a clear view of the entirety of the fight that – due to the speed, strength and agility of the combatants – could suddenly move from one of close confinement to one spread out over a relatively wide area.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Sis admitted. ‘I’ve never come across anything quite like this myself.’

  The lion-man glanced up towards them, sensing their presence, catching the scent of the horse and the little girl on the wind.

  Seeing that the lion-man had been distracted, the bird-man rushed forwards, his spear levelled for the heart revealed by a slightly lowered shield.

  The lion-man abruptly brought his shield up, knocking the spear point aside. The momentum of the bird-man’s charge uncontrollably carried him forwards, his own weight thrusting him deeply upon the suddenly raised blade of the lion-man’s sword.

  The lion-man brutally jerked the blade up, cutting deeper into the bird-man’s flesh, tearing at and releasing the innards from their tightly ordered confinement.

  Clever, thought Sis: he’d only feigned distraction.

  The merciless intelligence of a man, working in combination with the heightened senses and instincts of an animal.

  The question was: did that mean these creatures had become a part of her task?

  *

  As the lion-man used his blade once more to deftly remove a long shred of feathered skin from his dying victim, he also glanced up towards Sis and the little girl again, his triumphant grin a touch gloating; he had, after all, conscripted them into helping him defeat his foe.

  With a hard, practised tightening of her legs, Sis urged her haggard mount into a fast trot along the outcrop, searching for a way down towards the lower plain where the battle had taken place.

  The lion-man grinned again, this time with a mix of bewilderment and amusement that these young girls were foolishly daring to draw closer. Sheathing his sword, slipping his shield onto his back, and securing the fresh, still bloody pelt in a loop hanging from the belt around his waist, he spun around and headed off in the opposite direction, unrushed yet still powerfully fast.

  The bird-man had already been dead for a few minutes by the time Sis drew her horse up alongside him. Even so, she leapt down from out of her saddle, causally inspecting him, particularly around the area where the lion-man had mercilessly taken a slice of skin.

  Without the need for any kind of knife, she used her fingers to softly and expertly carve into other parts of the man, pulling back flesh and muscle so that she could make a close study of it all; rubbing it between her fingers, smelling it, even tasting it.

  ‘Grafted: parts of the animal – a live animal, too, I would suspect – have been grafted onto this man long ago, probably when he was even younger than you, Lil.’

  Sis glanced up at the young girl, who had remained seated on the horse.

  The young girl had chosen her own name, having no clear memory of her parents (although she believed they might have been killed many years ago, doubtlessly in a fight over food with people who had their own ideas about sharing) other than that she believed they had called her Lily. The shortened version also carried a sense, she had declared happily, of Little Sister.

  Sis hadn’t liked that at all, but apart from that couldn’t see any other reason to argue against it.

  Lil watched Sis’s butchering of the hybrid man distastefully, but couldn’t see any other reason to argue against it.

  In this world, it was knowledge of whom you were up against that could ultimately save you.

  So he grew up as part animal?’

  Sis nodded in reply as she continued with her considered examination of the increasingly finely shredded man.

  ‘It shouldn’t work, of course; maybe they start off with an awful lot of children, knowing most of them aren’t going to survive.’

  ‘I’ve seen people do worse,’ Lil replied bluntly. ‘And it isn’t the survival of the kids that’s uppermost in their minds.’

  ‘The work of the Devil.’

  ‘The work of men, Sis.’

  ‘If you’re right, Lil, then there’s no saving them.’

  She looked down at the cut flesh of the man.

  ‘I’d almost forgotten,’ Sis said, suddenly crouching down by the man and levering away a larger chunk of the raw flesh, ‘you’ll be getting hungry, Lil.’

  Lil was aghast.

  ‘Sis, no! We can’t eat him!’

  Sis frowned in bewilderment.

  ‘I’ve seen many men eat other men.’

  ‘Not everyone, Sis: most people don’t eat other men!’

  Her eyes were wide with horror: is this how Sis had managed to survive, by resorting to cannibalism?

  Sis read the meaning lying behind Lil’s disgusted gawp.

  ‘Me?’ She chuckled grimly, casually tossing the chunk of flesh closer towards a pair of eagerly waiting rodents. ‘No, of course not, Lil: I don’t need to eat.’

  *

  Chapter 3

  For a while, they followed the tracks of the lion-man.

  Even when the marks he’d made were no longer apparent to Lil, Sis continued on as if she still remained unerringly aware of where he had headed.

  It was only when they came across the furrows left by some form of wooden cart that Sis turned off from following the lion man, choosing to see instead where these tracks led.

  Obviously, the men who had passed this way had made attempts to cover up the tracks they’d left, yet the strokes of the brushes they’d used to obliterate the furrows were themselves an unnatural feature in this otherwise untouched landscape.

  ‘Are you intending to get rid of me: to leave me with them?’ Lil asked concernedly. ‘You can never be sure what the people you meet are going to be like!’

  ‘Oh, I think you can,’ Sis disagreed coolly, ‘as long as you assume they will always be bad: always tainted by the Devil.’
/>
  *

  It was the nearest thing to what passed for a town these days.

  A group of like-minded people, gathering together to form a workable farm, with shrivelled crops growing, with wizened animals being herded: and, naturally, with a fort put together from a mix of wood and cannibalised steel, a reasonably well-stocked building into which everyone could retreat and defend themselves whenever they came under attack from any marauding band.

  It was structure whose defences had been cleverly reinforced with a surrounding of a thickly thorned climber, such that it seemed to naturally blend into the landscape.

  The forts and farms that most travellers came across were already burnt into the ground, the crops rotting in their shallow furrows, the animal carcases left for the carrion once they’d been stripped of anything edible.

  The sight of two girls drawing close on a starving horse only made the farmers wary as opposed to terrified. The ones closest to the oncoming girls gathered around them, their farm implements raised in readiness to be used as weapons; but most of the men, women and children remained toiling at the soil.

  Lil was relieved that more of the farmers hadn’t surrounded them: that would have been a sign that they were about to be taken prisoner, young girls being a precious commodity in any trading deal that had to be made.

  Still, she was also surprised that this community was so innocent that they didn’t treat every newcomer as a possible threat: just how wrong could they be about Sis, who could probably obliterate this whole farm without breaking a fingernail?

  ‘Sorry girls: we’ve only got enough food for our–’

  ‘Do you know where Naseby is?’ Sis demanded, cutting off the man’s apology.

  *

  ‘No, Sis!’

  ‘No?’

  Sis was surprised by Lil’s intervention. Her hair, which had briefly, innocently risen and curled as if in a breeze, a breeze that wasn’t really there, loosely fell around her shoulders and down her back once more.

  The handful of farmers barring their way were even more confused.

  ‘Naseby?’ one of them repeated unsurely.