She stood in the clearing, in the middle of the military outpost with the thatched huts and guard towers burning around her. The jungle trees and canopy shimmered in the light. A slow rain began to fall, causing her white dress to stick against her body, her long brown hair slicking down and blending into the blood stains on her dress.
"I know you are watching, come out!"
A figure flipped out of the trees, leaping impossibly high, and landed in the tall grass behind her.
"I knew you would come Rourke."
"R, it's time to come home."
"Back to the kennel? I think not."
"R, High House is after you. They will find you. If I found you, they can too."
"Did they send you?"
"No. I heard the rumors. I came on my own."
"Will you tell them where I am."
"... No. But they will come after you. They will send me, send us to hunt you down, and kill you if need be."
"Do you honestly think you can take me? Do you think all of you can take me?
Rourke didn't respond. He doubted it himself. He did not want that fight. R was so beyond him now.
R turned around to face him, "You still look so young." She stood there, the wounds in her chest and arms knitting as he watched, steadily shrinking. She raised her right arm and held it out to him as a large piece of shrapnel dropped out.
"You know the world doesn't wear us down;" Rourke motioned to his surroundings, "Is this all your handiwork?"
R nodded. "It is. They set up an ambush for me and I came. I couldn't turn down their invitation."
"And you killed them all?"
"No, only the ones who shot at me. And the leaders. I think about a dozen ran into the jungle."
"R, you need to stop this. Come back to High House. You can't kill yourself out of a bush war!"
"Fuck you Rourke! You know what we've done. What they made us do. Has the White fucked up all your memories? I don't need you or High House telling me what is wrong. We all have killed for money. Money that didn't even go into our pockets. We killed for a place to lay our heads and a broken sense of home."
"No, I." Rourke shook his head.
"Yeah, that's what I thought. The Federales, and the Peoples Will Army, they're both scared now. They think I'm 'Santa Muerte Blanca'. Or the ghost of a wife out for revenge. They're going after me instead of each other, instead of the poor farmers caught in the middle."
"They have families too."
"Why do you suddenly care? You've had no qualms about getting blood on your hands."
"But this?"
"Try remembering Moscow. They point a gun at me. They deserve it."
"R, you need to come home."
"I have no home, Rourke! High House is not a home."
"R!"
"Leave!"
R flicked her right hand at Rourke; her fingers extending into long ribbon like blades, the air singing with their appearance. He leapt backwards in a high arc back towards the jungle.
Something fell in the grass with a dull thud.
She worked over to where Rourke once stood and picked his severed right arm out of the grass. She turned it over watching quietly as it turned black and flaked away. Severed from him, from a connection to The White, The Black decayed.
...
Rourke cursed as he landed on a limb twenty feet up, struggling to hold on with his left hand. Shit, he hadn't expected that; for R to be so angry. He looked at the stump of his arm, chopped off at about the middle of his biceps, the wound sealing over as regeneration started, black fibrils crawling beneath the skin, knitting new flesh.
He resigned himself to spending the next two days in the jungle as his arm regrew, then flying back to High House, in the midst of early White withdrawal.
4 AM One Week Later
It was Wednesday in capital of San Clemente , and the people were awoken by the sound of the church bells ringing in the main square. A crowd gathered and then a great commotion arose.
There on the church steps sat the heads of the President and the general of the Peoples' Will Army. Above them, tacked to the great wooden doors of the church was a simple letter in broken Spanish:
In death, we are finally at peace San Clemente! The bells ring in celebration! Pray I never return.
-Santa Muerte Blanca.
In the weeks that followed, a tentative peace accord was worked out between the People Wills Army and the Vice President. The woman in white was not seen again in San Clemente.
YOU ARE READING
The Revenants
Science FictionR doesn't know who she is. She doesn't even remember her full name. But she knows who made her; they will be made to pay a terrible price for creating her, and for the things she was made to do.
