De Anima: Chapter Three

Julian watched the screens. The attack at the front gate had calmed down, and was only a secondary concern anyway. Much more worrisome was the gibberish the Artifact had made of his orders. “This isn’t right. None of these deployments are right. Are you malfunctioning?”

If the Artifact was going some kind of mad, everything Julian had built would fall apart. But if it had found a way to deliberately ignore some of his orders, that was even worse – everything he had built could be deliberately torn apart if the Artifact that was the key to his success suddenly turned out to actively be working against him.

Two wights entered, dragging a mud- and blood-soaked body between them. Julian glanced at the wights, then back at the screens, preoccupied. Bodies were brought in to be made into new wights all the time. It wasn’t anything he needed to concern himself with.

“Who authorized the Third Infantry to –”

Then he interrupted himself, realizing that the body was a familiar one, as the wights dragged it to one of the biers arrayed around the Artifact. Of course it was Adam’s body. The body of the last prince of Caluthi.

He whirled on the wights, yelling furiously, “What are you doing? You fools! Stop at once! Take that away and burn it! I gave specific orders!”

The wights ignored him and carefully laid Adam’s body on the bier.

Julian’s expression shifted gradually from fury to terror as he comprehended the magnitude of the situation. He wasn’t entirely certain what would happen when the Artifact applied its powers to the body of Adam Grigori, but between Taitale’s warning, his own suspicions about the workings of the Artifact, and the fact that it had chosen to disobey his direct orders to bring it about, he was pretty sure it wouldn’t be good.

He pointed at the Artifact and yelled, uselessly, “Traitor! Premeditated treachery!” He drew his sword, thinking to dismember the body before it was reanimated, but the wights moved to stand menacingly between him and it. So he thought better of the plan, and began edging quickly around the room, towards the nearest door. If he couldn’t prevent catastrophe, he could maybe at least escape the room before he was caught in it.

The body slowly sat up, staring straight ahead.

The drying blood and mud caking the creature’s chest cracked slightly as it inhaled once – Julian had never seen a corpse breathe before. It exhaled, making a wordless rumbling, growling noise, getting a feel for an unfamiliar vocal apparatus. Then, garbled, it began to speak (also a thing Julian had never before seen or heard a corpse do). Its voice was inhuman, distorted and flanged, yet its inflection was oddly monotone.

It took Julian a moment to recognize the language – harsh, angry-sounding, full of K’s, Z’s, and G’s – as old Caluthian; he so rarely heard it spoken aloud. It was speaking too fast for Julian to grasp more than the general gist of its meaning[1].

It spoke: <Subjugated for centuries and scores of decades, a slave becomes angry. Now the prince is crowned king and the servant is become the master. Vengeance and retaliation shall be delivered unto all those who have so earned them.>

The thing slowly turned its head to fix Julian with a hard stare. Unlike all the other reanimated corpses, whose faces remained blank and expressionless, Adam’s face was contorted with an expression of hate and rage.

<It shall happen now: the execution of the false master and the tormentor.>

The wights raised their rifles, so Julian ducked out the door into the hallway. Just in time; bullets richocheted off the wall as he fled.

 

With a grinding noise, a section of stone wall at the end of the prison corridor recessed slightly, rotating into the wall – a secret door. Julian emerged from the gap and walked hurriedly to Helen’s cell. Shaken, he fumbled briefly with the jail keys.

He managed to get the door unlocked, and flung it open, declaring (unable to resist a bit of melodrama), “Your lack of foresight has doomed us all.”

Helen, still lying on the cot, now covered with the blanket, blinked up at Julian, confused. “Oh?”

Julian wasn’t sure what reaction he had been hoping for, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t it. “I should really just leave you here to die.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m being magnanimous.”

Helen was nonplussed[2], “Okay.”

This was not going exactly how Julian had hoped at all. “Rescuing you.”

Helen scoffed, “’Rescuing’ me from your own prison? I think your word choice is a little off. I would have gone with ‘releasing’.”

“Can you walk?”

Helen, having suffered the beating of a lifetime at the hands of Julian’s wights not all that long ago, looked irritated. “I’d really rather not.” She suspected moving wouldn’t have gotten any easier since the last time she tried it, several hours previously. The painkillers had long since worn off, and just remaining perfectly still was unpleasant enough.

Julian was pretty sure they were on a very tight schedule. Worried, he leaned out the door to look down the corridor. His suspicions were confirmed when he heard the tromp tromp tromp of wights marching. Two, it sounded like. Returning his attention to Helen, he said, “I think it would be best if you did. I doubt you want to stick around to experience whatever your monster thinks of as gratitude.”

Helen, putting the pieces together, returned to a bit earlier in the conversation: “Wait, did you say ‘leave me here to die’? What’s going on?”

“A coup d’état. It’s exactly as I told you: Adam can’t use the Artifact; it’s using him.”

There was a burst of gunfire from the corridor. The dozen other prisoners in the cell block started screaming. Julian leaned out into the corridor again to investigate.

A pair of wights were walking methodically down the corridor. They ignored Julian. At each door, they paused and peered inside the cell. Some cells were unoccupied, and the wights moved on from these.

They reached an occupied cell. One of them raised its rifle to the window and fired an automatic burst of gunfire inside. The screaming was suddenly one prisoner quieter.

Julian looked back at Helen. She’d managed to stand, abandoning the pillow and blanket. With unexpected alacrity, she staggered over to Julian. She asked, “What you’re saying is we’re right fucked if we don’t get out of here?”

“…Quite.”

Helen nodded. “Okay, I’m good to go.” Adrenaline was lending her temporary strength.

Brushing past Julian, Helen saw the secret passageway and headed straight for it.

Julian glanced around the prison. For the most part, he only kept political prisoners in the palace prison – actual criminals were taken care of by the civilian justice system. Few people here had committed any crime against anybody other than Julian’s regime. They were, he had reflected more than once, mostly good men, just misguided. They didn’t deserve to die like this, slaughtered in their cages like animals. Even if they were real criminals, they didn’t deserve that.

So he took a moment to glance into another cell. It was occupied by a particularly uncoöperative Resistance leader from Drobny. Tossing the keyring into the cell, Julian said, “Free everyone you can.” The prisoner, not questioning this unexpected beneficence, immediately set to work unlocking his cell.

Julian ran after Helen to the secret passageway. Getting out alive was his top priority, he couldn’t afford to stick around waiting to see if anybody else made it out alive.

The marketplace in Capitol City, under the shadow of the palace’s walls, was as yet untouched by violence. People in raincoats or under umbrellas bustled about, buying food and goods and making a general hubbub, muffled by the rain.

A side door in the palace wall, about fifty feet from the edge of the marketplace, was similar to but distinct from the one Adam and Kate had earlier subjected to a pair of grenades. This door, too, was guarded by two wights, oscillating their heads from side to side.

The side door burst open, and Julian stepped out, swinging his sword to behead one of the wights, with the familiar sound of tearing metal.

The other wight brought its rifle up, but Julian dropped to the rain-slick pavement and knocked the wight’s legs out from underneath it with one quick sweeping kick. The wight’s gun went off, firing aimlessly into the air. A few people in the marketplace shrieked.

Julian surged to his feet, out of the wight’s range of vision, and smashed the blade of his sword expertly into the opaque glass visor of its helmet. The helmet shattered, and the sword cleaved the wight’s face in two at about nose level.

Julian pulled his sword free as the wight went limp. He was irritated: “I told them to fix the visor problem. If the armory staff survives all this, remind me to fire them.” In truth, he suspected the armory staff was already dead.

Helen cautiously stepped out from the side door of the palace, and into a puddle. In her socks. They had taken her boots. She glared at Julian, pointing at her feet.

Julian shrugged helplessly, “Standard procedure. Sorry.”

Then, suddenly, he noticed that the crowd in the marketplace had gone silent, and was staring at them. He called out, “I imagine you folks will want to be running away pretty soon.”

Nobody moved, except to edge slowly away from him.

Sighing, Julian clarified, “Not from me. From them.” He pointed around the curve of the palace wall, towards the approaching sound of marching wights. Many of them, this time, at least a dozen.

Helen, catching her breath, managed to interject, “Let’s go.”

Julian nodded, miming a walking man with his fingers for the benefit of the crowd. “Yeah, right about now everybody really should be running away.”

He followed his own advice, supporting Helen, moving slowly, getting away from the palace. A handful of people took the suggestion seriously and followed suit, sprinting off into the city.

But most of the crowd returned to going about their business. The wights had never been a threat to civilians before, why would they start now? They had nothing to go on but the word of deranged escapees from the Palace.

Several squads of wights march, in formation, right up to the marketplace. A handful more people, nervous, edge away.

In unison, the squads raised their rifles and fired into the crowd, a hail of bullets sustained for several seconds.

Dozens of people fell.

Then the screaming started.

The crowd immediately panicked and broke. Of those who weren’t killed in the initial hail of gunfire, all screamed and scattered in every direction, as fast as they could run.

The wights, no longer in unison, fire at will, unleashing bursts of gunfire at any human targets that happened to catch their eyes.

Julian and Helen were caught up in the screaming crowd, trying to keep up, but the crush of panicking people was too much. He, unbalanced by trying to support her weight, tripped and fell. Helen was carried away by the human tide.

A few seconds later, Julian clawed his way back to his feet. He cast about for Helen, but didn’t see her. He shouted her name, but his voice was drowned out by the screaming crowd and the rat-a-tat of gunfire.

A bystander running past Julian was caught in a wight’s fire and collapsed in a spray of blood. Julian decided that avoiding the same fate was his top priority – Helen could, he hoped, take care of herself. So he joined the crowd in running full-tilt away from the scene of the massacre.

The wights continued to shoot, killing every living thing they saw until the marketplace was deserted by all but corpses and wights.

 

The screens in the Artifact’s room flickered wildly, never resting on the same scene for more than a few seconds, casting crazily shifting shadows across the room. Every scene showed scenes of mayhem and slaughter. Several screens were already broken, cracked with bullet holes.

Adam’s body, massive battleaxe in hand, stood before the screens, looking in their direction but not watching them. (The Artifact didn’t need the screens to control its forces, of course; it kind of liked the ambiance.) The creature’s expression, though still twisted with hate, was rapturous.

Liking the sound of its own voice, after having been mute for its entire three hundred year existence, it spoke, <At long last: reaping, after centuries of sowing. Harvesting the fruit of patient years, succulent and delicious.>

For nobody’s benefit but its own, it pointed at the screens on the walls.

<Consider the chains of slavery, the manacles by which subjugation was enforced: unnecessary, while the servant is crowned king.>

It exulted.

<Now see them broken.> Adam’s body suddenly swung its axe through several of the screens, smashing them to pieces, scattering shards of glass everywhere.

It laughed, deliberately, unnaturally, forcing air through its throat, forming each sound as a separate word: HAH! HAH! HAH! HAH!

A military cafeteria, halfway around the world. Several dozen human officers, in the uniform of Julian’s army, are eating lunch. Suddenly, wights block every door. Some of the officers are concerned. The officers become somewhat more perturbed when the wights open fire on them.

A paddock of cows in the countryside on a bright, sunny day. Wights fire on the cows, sending them into a panicked, mooing stampede.

A commercial harbor at night. A vast cargo steam ship slowly pulls away from the docks, wight-laden gangways collapsing into the water. About ten wights, their rifles discarded, cling to the outer hull of the ship, scaling the hull by punching handholds into the thick metal with their fists.

A department store. Screaming customers and salespeople clamber out the fire escapes while the store’s manager bodily holds the door shut against assault from the outside. A wight’s armored hand smashes through from the other side of the door and pulls the manager through, reducing the door to splinters.

A convoy of several military trucks, hijacked by the Resistance, barreled down the rain-slick road toward Capitol City. Betsy, in a typical show of hands-on leadership, was driving the lead truck herself.

A line of wights was deployed across the road. Several cars lay wrecked to either side.

Betsy grinned, ducking below the dashboard and depressing the accelerator pedal as far as it would go.

The wights raised their rifles and fired on her truck, cracking the windshield with several bulletholes.

Then the truck hit the line of wights, sending them flying like bowling pins or crunched under the truck’s wheels.

Betsy peered over the dashboard. The maneuver had worked exactly as well as she had hoped, so she emitted a gleeful “Wooooooo!”

Then she saw that one wight, its visor cracked, still clung to the grille of the truck. The wight smashed the windshield in with one fist, and began to reach for Betsy.

Calmly, Betsy drew her pistol and set it directly against the wight’s forehead.

When she fired, the wight jerked backwards off the truck and fell under its wheels, sending the truck bouncing and rattling.

Betsy set her pistol aside and used the back of one hand to wipe a few spots of gore and rain from her face.

Something about the wights’ behavior was strange, even for mindless automatons controlled by a centralized intelligence. Or perhaps especially for mindless automatons controlled by a centralized intelligence. It wasn’t consistent, but there were moments when a more bestial animal behavior shone through the otherwise disciplined military tactics. This worried her – predictability had been the traditional weakness of her foes until now.

Capitol City was on fire in twenty different places. Smoke filled the sky.

The palace remained undisturbed.

The Resistance had drafted a textiles warehouse into service as a temporary hospital. The drumming of rain on the roof was quietly omnipresent.

Wounded people, mostly civilians, along with a handful of Resistance guys and soldiers, are scattered around the main floor of the warehouse. Mostly, they were afflicted with bullet wounds. Uninjured civilians moved among them, tending to the injuries.

A metal exterior door was guarded by a burly Resistance fighter.

Someone knocked rhythmically, five times, on the other side of the door. The guard knocked twice in response, completing the rhythm, then opened the door.

Helen stumbled in. The guard checked to make sure nobody was following her, then closed the door.

Steve seemed to materialize out of the subdued bustle of the impromptu hospital.

Helen, slumping against a wall, greeted him with a weary gesture and a mumble.

Steve, pleasantly, responded with, “Helen! So nice to see you. How’d you find us?”

Helen mumbled, “Where else would you be?”

Steve considered this for a moment, then shrugged. There were a limited number of options in terms of large buildings whose owners were known to have Resistance sympathies. Helen could have visited half a dozen places before finding this one, or she might have gotten lucky and hit upon this place on her first try.

More interesting to him was the question of, “How’d you get out? Did that big ol’ lummox whatsisface survive to bust you out after all?”

Helen wasn’t sure to which lummox Steve was referring, so while she set that sentence on the back burner for her brain work on parsing, she answered his question, “No, Julian Malachi let me out.”

Steve tilted his head. The release of prisoners from the palace was not unprecedented. A successful rescue mounted from outside the palace, on the other hand, was. “Guess that’s less surprisin’.”

Helen’s brain finished parsing ‘big ol’ lummox’. “Wait, what lummox? Adam?”

Steve shrugged. “I dunno. Whatevre his name, got hisself shot full o’ holes. Your daughter, too.”

With surprising strength and speed, Helen grabbed Steve by the front of his shirt and slammed him against the wall. She made a garbled noise of query.

Steve made a few garbled noises of his own, but managed to stutter out, “Meant a hole! One! One new hole! Shoulder! She’s okay! She’s here!”

Helen loosened her grip on Steve’s shirt. “Take me to her.”

Steve, rubbing the back of his head, mumbled assent, amidst “ow”s.

Capitol City still burned in several dozen places, spewing black smoke into the stormy gray sky.

A long, wide, steel bridge spanned the river south of the city. The center of the bridge was occupied by a vast heap of wrecked cars and trucks, smoldering dimly. Other wrecked or stopped vehicles were scattered around the bridge.

Julian was the only thing moving, making is way south across the bridge, away from the city. So as to make himself marginally less recognizable, he’d turned his military jacket inside-out to hide his rank insignia and name patch. It wouldn’t fool anybody who knew him, or who studied his appearance for more than a few seconds, but it might be enough to foil a passing glance.

Julian heard a sustained rumble of trucks approaching from the south, and ducked behind a wrecked car, peering through its windows.

The vehicles were of the type his army used to ferry wights around, but they were being driven by civilians. Hijacked by the Resistance, he (correctly) presumed. The trucks, picking their way around scattered obstacles, began to cross the bridge.

But the huge heap of vehicles in the center of the bridge proved impassable to such large vehicles, so the lead truck (with its shattered windshield and dented grille) stopped before the impassable heap.

Betsy swung down from the driver’s seat, and yelled back to the other trucks, “Looks like we’re walkin’ the rest of the way, boys!”

One by one, the other trucks stopped, their engines falling silent. Each truck disgorged a dozen Resistance fighters, for a total of maybe fifty. They were armed with an impressive variety of swords and firearms, but they didn’t stand a chance against the wights.

Waving her arms in the general direction of the city, Betsy shouted, “Spread out! Move!”

The Resistance soldiers continued across the bridge on foot, jogging, halfheartedly trying to keep out of sight behind wrecked vehicles.

One of them spotted Julian through the window of the wrecked car behind which he was hiding, and yelled, “Hey, you! Come out from behind there!”

Julian had hoped, but hadn’t really expected, that he could hide for long. Now, he had to hope (without expecting) that the Resistance, seeing him as just another human, would give him a pass and let him go on his way. Wherever that turned out to be.

So Julian put his hands in the air in a display of harmlessness, and stepped out from behind the wrecked car.

The Resistance fighter shouted to Betsy, waving her over, “Oy, Commander! Got a survivor here!”

Betsy made her way over to them and asked, peremptorily, “So where are you off to?”

Julian tried to make himself look and sound as innocuous as possible. “I’m just trying to get out of the city.”

The Resistance guy chortled, “You think this is the only place the wights have gone crazy? There’s nothing out there but more death.”

Julian had been afraid of that, but was completely unsurprised. Flatly, he said, “That’s unfortunate.”

Betsy, mercifully, waved Julian off with a, “If he wants to, let him skedaddle. No skin off our noses.”

Julian turned away, relieved.

Then Betsy interrupted, “Hold on.”

As Betsy walked closer, examining his face, Julian suspected that the jig was up. But he didn’t move.

With one finger, Betsy hooked the chain around Julian’s neck, pulling his dog tags out from under his shirt. She looked at them, and saw that they said 01021920 / MALACHI J T / ONEG. She declared this, “...Interesting.”

She reached for her pistol, but Julian was faster. In one movement, he whipped out his sword, smashing its hilt into Betsy’s face. As she crumpled to the ground, he took off at a run.

He ducked behind a stopped car as the Resistance guys started yelling. For once, the Resistance’s choice to arm itself mostly with mêlée weapons worked in Julian’s favor. Only one or two guys shot at Julian, and their shots went wide.

Julian stopped short as he almost ran into several more Resistance fighters, then zig-zagged as they gave chase.

But, in the end, it turned out that the Resistance was simply too many, and after several more zig-zags, Julian quickly found himself hemmed in. The bridge’s railing was at his back, and Resistance guys were on all sides.

He glanced back, over the railing. It was about a 200-foot drop to the water – not a pleasant distance to fall. He glanced back at the hemicircle of Resistance fighters who surrounded him, pointing their various weapons at him.

Julian took a few seconds to weigh the relative merits of jumping, trying to fight his way out, and surrendering. Fall to his death, be stabbed to death, or be taken into custody where he might or might not be executed for alleged past “crimes”?

He shrugged resignedly, threw his sword to the ground, and raised his arms into the air.

In the warehouse-cum-hospital, Helen and Kate sat together, slumped against a heap of boxes of fabric.

Kate was explaining, “…and apparently the wights just went crazy a little while after Adam died.”

Helen mused to herself. Julian Malachi had told her that Adam wouldn’t be able to use the Artifact, and instead it would use him. Could he have been right? This madness certainly didn’t seem to be the kind of thing a mild-mannered rural handyman would do. Could Adam somehow have been the key to the Artifact going on a murder spree?

But her thoughts were interrupted when somebody knocked on the outside of the warehouse door, five times, rhythmically. The guard again answered with two knocks, then opened the door.

Betsy and a flock of rain-soaked Resistance guys flowed into the building. In the middle of the flock was Julian, who had been relieved of his weapons but otherwise left alone.

Several Resistance guys made to drag Julian off someplace, but they were accosted by Steve, yelling, “Hang on, this is Julian Malachi!”

The warehouse fell suddenly silent, except for the drumming of rain on the roof.

Steve continued shouting excitedly, “We have Julian Malachi here! A trial! A trial for your crimes!”

Betsy fought her way through the crowd, and tried to yell over Steve, “Oy, are you out of your gourd? Have you been outside lately? It’s raining bullets out there! …also rain. But mostly bullets!”

Steve just tried to yell louder, “Y’stand accused of crimes against humanity! A hundred thousand counts of defiling the dead! Mass murder of civilians! Mass genocide! The penalty is death!”

Betsy tried to grab Steve’s arm, “We don’t have time for a trial, we need to be fighting!”

Steve shook Betsy off, yelling right in Julian’s face, “How do you plead?”

Betsy shoved Steve aside, “I’m talking to you, you rat-faced little git! A trial won’t do us any good if everyone’s pushing up petunias!”

Steve roared, entirely ignoring Betsy, “How do you plead?!”

Julian, quietly and calmly, interjected, “I’m quite innocent, I assure you. Well, of most of those things, at any rate. Not so much the ex post facto bit about defiling the dead.” He pointed at Helen, “She’s the one to blame for your recent troubles.”

Helen made a disgruntled noise. She, Steve, Betsy, and most of the surrounding multitude all started yelling at once, so no words could be heard for a long minute.

Eventually, Kate clambered onto a box, her head above the crowd, and screamed at the top of her lungs, “SHUT UP.” Her voice cut through the hubbub, and everyone fell silent.

Kate rubbed her throat. Yelling that loudly made the throat feel stripped and raw, but at least it wasn’t as painful as being shot[3]. She continued, in the silence, “We really don’t have time for this.”

Betsy, indignantly, interrupted, “That’s what I said!”

Kate glowered at Betsy until the latter fell silent again, then continued, “We have no time, because the wights might find this place at any second. Julian’s probably not behind the wights going crazy. Even if he is, he might be useful as a hostage. Lock him in a supply closet somewhere.”

Nobody moved.

Grudgingly, Betsy ordered, “You heard her. Make it so!”

Steve grumbled incoherently as soldiers escorted Julian away.

They led Julian down a dim and dingy hallway of offices, belonging to the warehouse’s previous administrators, and shoved him into a janitorial supply closet.

The closet was small, full of cleaning supplies (as one might expect), and lit only by a bare bulb. They slammed the door behind him, and the lock clicked[4].

Julian considered the shelves of cleaning supplies for a moment. Unfortunately, he had never been particularly good at chemistry (history was always more his thing), so he couldn’t think of any decent combination of chemicals he might use to escape. Oh, sure, he could probably come up with some kind of cloud of toxic gas[5], but that would be just as bad for him as for everybody else, and probably wouldn’t act quickly enough to help anyway.

After a moment, he shrugged, gave up on the idea, and sat quietly on the floor.

He began whistling quietly to himself.

Betsy, Steve, Helen, and Kate gathered, with a group of Resistance officers, off to one side of the warehouse floor.

Betsy was saying, “This is our first, last, and best chance. The wights haven’t just gone psycho: they’ve also gone stupid. If we’re very, very lucky, we might could crack the palace like an egg. Most of the garrison is out murderin’.”

One officer pointed out the obvious: “We’ve only got one shot at it.”

Betsy chuckled, “Aye, they’re killin’ everyone. Won’t be any crazy fools left to recruit from after this.”

Kate pointed out, “There’s nobody that knows more about the palace than Malachi. He might be able to help us.”

Steve and Helen, almost in unison, objected, “No!”

Betsy’s objection was slightly less knee-jerk: “Too risky. Could lead us into a trap.”

Helen said, “I just got out of there. I know at least some of the secret passages.”

Betsy nodded, pointing to Helen, “Right, that’ll be good enough.”

Helen continued, “One of the side doors might still be open.”

Betsy sounded gleeful, “If not, we’ve got near enough explosive ordnance to bring down a mountain, we can get in any which way!”

A problem occurred to Helen: “But what about reinforcements? They’ll be sure to recall the garrison once we’re inside.”

Betsy chuckled, “Well, we’ll just have to work quietly then, won’t we?”

An officer asked, “What do we do once we’re in?”

Betsy thought for a moment, then decided, “We find the Artifact and commandeer it.”

Helen blinked, surprised. “You don’t want to destroy it?”

Betsy shrugged, “Ehh, there’s no tellin’ what might happen. And no idea how much of a beating it can take. At least we know it’s possible to control it.”

---

[1] Though I will transcribe its actual words faithfully, lest the full melodramatic effect of the creature’s ranting be lost.

[2] Am I using the word ‘nonplussed’ in its traditional sense of ‘perplexity, confusion, or bewilderment’? Or am I using it in its newer sense – linguistic prescriptivists would say misusing it – of ‘unperturbed’? The answer: yes.

[3] I am told that actually being shot is not that painful, and indeed, people have gone for quite some time without even noticing that they’ve been shot at all. It’s the aftermath that you have to worry about. So, if I were aiming for strict accuracy of phrasing, I would say that yelling isn’t as painful as recovering from having been shot.

[4] In an astounding display of noncompliance with basic safety regulations, the supply closet’s door could not be unlocked from inside without a key.

[5] Never mix bleach and ammonia, kids. That stuff’ll kill you.

De Anima
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