An improved scene
In an earlier blog post, I shared a deleted scene from my novel Incursion, and followed that up with an explanation of why that scene didn’t work. I’ve since rewritten the scene to solve those problems (though it is now several scenes). I’ve tried to keep as much of the older version in this new one, but it is substantially different, as made necessary by the fundamental nature of the old version’s problems.
I hope this helps show how a scene might be adjusted by noticing problems and attempting to address them. It appears below.
Content warnings: Non-graphic violence, firearms, death of a child, horror.
The captain leaned over the small table and cackled as he pulled yet more chips into his already sizeable stack. Three of his men sat with him in the open tent. They made a loud show of playful regret. They were almost certainly losing on purpose, but that didn’t offend him. It was a display of submission to him. Perhaps they sought favours, and thought they could ingratiate themselves with him. Perhaps he might even grant them. Or perhaps he would simply enjoy turning down their requests, reasserting his dominance.
It was, after all, his favourite perk of the job.
His thoughts were interrupted by a distant scream, somewhere to the south. It had to be a man’s, but there was something animalistic to it, raw. He’d heard many screams, but none quite like this one; it worked its way beneath his skin and seeped cold into his bones. From the expressions of the others around the table, he could see he was not the only person so affected.
The four of them stood and walked out of the tent. There were some men by the small fire, and others spilled from the tents that circled it; about a dozen stood before him with more coming. One or two of the men looked about but the rest, like the captain, set their eyes in the direction of the scream.
It must have come from just outside the base’s loose perimeter, somewhere just inside the woods. Perhaps someone had strayed too far from safety, left to piss in privacy and had been attacked by some predatory animal for his troubles. Even as the idea formed he knew it was wrong, for there was no hint of fear in the sound.
Only loss.
The lights went out.
‘Felix,’ called the captain to one of his sergeants, ‘get on the generators.’ They had hooked into the nearby power lines, but they weren’t stupid.
‘Yes boss.’ Felix left for the shack containing the backup generators, fifty metres or so to the west, with two other men he motioned to join him.
Around the captain, flashlights and phone lights switched on. His hands drifted to his hips. Men continued to gather by him, and in clusters around the base. ‘Check your weapons. Quickly,’ he said. ‘Get lights on your rifles. Faster! This may be an attack.’ He went back into the tent and picked up his own long gun, racked a round, and slung it over his shoulders.
He was about to send a party south when a second scream came, this time from the west. Pops of pistol fire. Shouts. The shack.
‘Peter, John; on me. We check the generators. Adam, take two men and come at it from the south.’ The men nodded in return, and the captain’s group crept towards the shack while Adam’s ran south to loop around.
They’d made it a little over halfway there when the entire north wall of the shack exploded outward, a hail of wooden shards and splinters that disappeared into the trees. A dark figure stepped from the tottering structure and turned to face them before rocketing into the air.
A voice pounded down on them, oppressive, the words it boomed an avalanche, the ground shaking along with it. ‘I gave you a chance!’ It had no clear source but the men aimed their guns skyward, desperately scanning for something to shoot at.
‘What did you think I would do?’ On the final word the figure appeared in front of Peter, a black glove slamming into his forehead and gripping his skull. Peter screamed and gargled and fell, and the man in black vanished. On the ground, Peter was taken by convulsions, spasming and drooling until he lay still, eyes open but unresponsive. Absent. Broken. The captain gave him a light kick in the ribs but it didn’t seem to register.
Another scream cut through them, this one from the southeast. The guns swung in response. The captain, however, didn’t see the point. He had to get away.
He ran towards the vehicles. Others had had the same idea, but as one man reached for a door the trucks zipped skyward, crashing into each other, screeching as the metal folded and twisted and glowed hot and red as the fuel leaked out and ignited, a new star born dripping in the air above the camp.
It distracted him for a moment, before yet another man screamed, this time close. Far, far too close. He ran between the tents and out as screams and gunfire dotted the camp beyond him.
* * *
The land had grown unfamiliar, and the road devolved into more of a suggestion than anything else. He cursed himself for not going towards the village; at least then he might know where he was. Instead, he stumbled over the uneven ground, the dry clay strewn with unexpected rocks.
The screams still came but they were distant, and from a wider spread as his men surely ran from the camp in every direction. Some of them he could barely hear, but the sound of each still cut through his chest and filled his veins with ice.
He looked about. There was a light to the north. A house perhaps. Maybe he could reach it and find a vehicle. He still had his rifle. If he could steal a truck he could speed off, maybe get far enough away. There would be somewhere he could hide—abroad, perhaps. He quickened his pace. Hope could do that. Push you just that little bit more.
He might just get away.
He felt his feet yanked backwards, and his face struck the road. He turned onto his elbows and backside.
The man in black stalked towards him. There was an intensity to his presence that dwarfed the intimidating glower of the first time he came. Then, he had made threats. But the captain knew the man wouldn’t kill him, so what really could he do? That was before he’d heard those screams. He wanted no part of whatever inspired them.
The black of the man’s clothes melted into the shadows of the forest and he appeared to stretch out to fill the darkness. The captain glanced up and he was sure he would see the sky being swallowed; the stars still shone to his eyes but to his heart they were blinking out as the man in black neared. A low hum seemed to come from him, not from his mouth but from the air, and the hum only grew louder with every step closer.
The captain pulled his rifle around and despite his spasming fingers managed to snap some shots off. One bullet hit the man in the eye; the lens of the mask shattered and the captain watched as the eyeball reformed itself and, in that brief moment it sat bare before the eyelids repaired, the idea came sharp to his mind that the man’s gaze was the focused attention of a god in whose light he had been found wanting.
‘I gave you a chance!’ he yelled at the captain.
The captain pulled himself backwards. ‘What did you do to my men?’ He received no answer. ‘Please! Mercy!’
‘What mercy did you show those you attacked this morning? I gave you a chance.’
The captain wept openly. ‘Please!’ he begged.
‘I will do this every time you harm another. See. See what you’ve done.’
‘What?’ asked the captain. The man in black was at once forward then grabbed the captain’s skull, and he saw through another’s eyes.
* * *
The first sign the father had that something was wrong was the screaming. He turned and looked back, and saw a crowd surge towards them, the faces birthed from madness. Something must have happened in the town of the square. Other noises. Gunshots? Were they gunshots? He turned to flee but the crowd hit and he felt his six year old son’s hand pulled from his. He was knocked to the ground and barely dodged the trampling feet as he rolled himself into a doorway. His boy! He could see him just down the street hiding behind a garbage can. Their eyes met and the father gestured for him to keep down.
The flow of bodies became a trickle, and he stepped out and ran towards the boy. He felt something like a punch in his lower back, and his legs failed him. He flopped face-first down onto the paving stones, just about managing to get arms around his head before it was too late. When he propped his torso up he saw his son run towards him. The father tried to wave him off, tell him to get out of there, but could only watch as two bullets struck the boy. Even with the agony in his belly he dragged himself over to his son and draped himself over the body.
The captain became dimly aware of reality. His head pounded, and time seemed to have slowed. No, not that. It dawned on him that he was instead being rammed through another man’s memories, his mind straining with the effort of just keeping up.
He was submerged back into someone else’s life.
He was a long time there, so long that when someone eased him off his son’s corpse and propped him against the wall, the sky was dark. He became aware that a man had been kneeling beside them, but he couldn’t remember how long.
‘I can’t save you. I’m sorry. There’s too much damage.’ The man looked to the boy. ‘What happened here?’
‘Can you bring back my son?’
‘I’m sorry. No.’
‘I will give you anything. I will give you everything. Please, bring him back! Please.’ He had to get his words out, despite the pain. Beg this man who he had heard could do anything, to do the one thing he needed, the only thing.
The man seemed to wilt. ‘If I could do it, I would do it for free. I wish I could. It would be all I would do.’ He looked back. ‘Who did this?’
He spoke the captain’s name. The man in black nodded.
‘They cause so much pain and they don’t understand it, because it’s not their own, but I can make them. I can show them what they’ve done, by showing them your memories. If you will allow me.’
He nodded, or thought he did. Had he? He nodded again to be sure. It was getting harder to think all the time. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore, and his arms tingled. He lolled his head to the side so he faced his son again.
‘Do you want me to stop the pain?’ the man asked.
He felt his mouth flap. He was trying to say no, but he couldn’t get the word out.
The other man seemed to understand regardless. ‘I’ll stay with you, then. Until the end.’ But he had seen the end already.
His son shouldn’t have died. His son should have had more of a life, but he had failed him. He had failed his son. He felt tears wet his cheek.
‘You didn’t. I did.’
What? He hadn’t said anything, had he? He couldn’t remember. He heard himself wheeze, and his chest had grown heavy. There was someone else in the room, wasn’t there? He heard a noise, feet on the dirt, and a soft thump from the wall as someone sat beside him. How had he gotten here? Was that his son on the ground? Not dead. Couldn’t be. This must be a nightmare. Yes, that was it. He’d wake up soon. Kiss his boy. Play with him. It was okay. What was his name, though?
They sat there a while, in the hollow remains of the world, until there was just the black.
* * *
In the morning, the captain woke alone in the dirt by the side of the road.
His son was dead. No, he knew he didn’t have a son, but despite knowing that, he still felt the loss. The echo of that father’s grief still sounded in his chest, and he wailed out into the chill air of the morning.
He’d died, hadn’t he? The father he killed, or one of his men killed. That was where those memories ended, wasn’t it? That was death.
He never particularly cared about the pain he caused others, and he still didn’t. But as a threat…
He didn’t want to feel anything like that ever again.
He stood and looked out across the nearby field, out to where the sun was rising, bringing light back into the world. As he watched the light spread, it seemed greyer to his eyes, for he knew what fate awaited him in the dark.