Memesis

By Jon Jacks

Some have called her Nemesis, some Aphrodite, others Invidia: but whatever her name, her wrath seems to increase with every recounting of the merciless vengeance she’s inflicted on what little remains of man’s civilisation.
Humanity requires a saviour, someone who can stop Memesis while men still live.
But all they have to save them is a girl: a girl so young, so small, she’s called Lil’.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Aug 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370636143

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

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.

*

‘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