Vivian's War

It had been written, in a book that Vivian had not read, and would not have understood if she did, that war is the practice of sacrificing the future to save the present. Had she been cognisant of those words, she would have found them fitting.
The red fox had been enrolled in civilian education when the catch-men came. She'd been eleven, and while aware of the civil war that burned her society around her, her youth had sheltered her from its full reality. No longer.
They had taken her, along with the rest of her class, to “The School”. It was a military training academy for child soldiers. Here and there, beneath the sandbags and the barbed wire, Vivian had sometimes glimpsed hints of a time when The School had been just that, a school; discarded desks left to rot in a corner of a yard, the rusted ladder from a slide, the boundary marker of a sandpit. It seemed there was no place for such things in this world now.
She had graduated in a class of thirty, drummed through a swift, crude training regimen designed more to beat obedience into the children than provide true combat acumen. The will and skills to fight were to be hard won on the battlefield. After their first deployment, their squad was reduced to nine children. After the second, it was three.
Come nightfall, the third would begin.

Their remnants were an unlikely batch. Aside from Vivian, the other survivors of Deployment 12-30-44 were Lilian, a white rabbit who somehow clung to a childish streak; and Rozelyn, a once warm hyena girl who had, since their initial skirmishes, increasingly withdrawn into herself.
“Sundown in fifteen.” The voice of their operator crackled in their ears. Each child wore cameras and communications gear to keep them in contact with their commander, the only adult left in their lives.
Vivian looked up from her soup tin. Rozelyn was off in the corner, a grey shape amidst a pile of rubble and smashed furniture. Her rifle, too large for the tween to comfortably handle, was aimed out and up the street. “See anything, Roz?”
“Nah,” the girl answered, her voice low.
“Lil?” Vivian turned her focus to the rabbit, likewise dressed in grey urban camo. She was stacking shoeboxes they'd found amidst the debris of the abandoned shop, building a crude little structure out of them. “What are you doing?” the fox asked with a lifting lilt in her voice.
The bunny giggled. “I'm building a house for Mr and Mrs Shoe!”
A short slipped out of Viv. How Lil held on to that silly streak, she'd never know.
“Form up, girls.” the voice in their ears commanded. Roz rolled off her firing perch, kicking up a thin mist of masonry dust as she came. “Your patrol route for the evening begins as Hlodin Plaza. Follow the river south to Chapel Common. Report any hostile forces. Repeat the patrol until relieved.”
“Aye,” Roz acknowledged. The other girls went for their weapons.
Their hiding place was a short walk from the plaza. The last rays of the sun eased down beyond the broken towers of the once-proud city as they reached the wide, battle-scarred bridge that had been their blooding ground. Two teenage boys guarded it now, hunkered down behind sandbags. Rozelyn exchanged monosyllabic conversation with them to explain their movements and receive updates. Vivian's focus drifted to the shoreline. She crept over to the old iron railings and peered down into the murky gloom. Despite the dying light, it was possible to make out the mound of disturbed earth by the riverside; a mass grave where half her classmates now rested.
“Gear check.” Vivian turned at Roz's cold words. The hyena girl stared at her, stone faced, watching as Viv went over her gear; weapon, spare ammo, helmet, communicator, body armour, rations, drugs. “All good.”
“Good to go!” Lil piped up. Though she tired to sound chipper, there was an unmistakable tremble in her voice.
The sound of gunfire rattled like far off hail, bouncing off the buildings to make its point of origin impossible to discern. The river, slow and stagnant, wafted foul vapours that made the girls want to swerve away from it, but they knew it was safer to walk in the open. The half-collapsed buildings and the rubble they'd strewn across the road were littered with booby traps to kill or maim the unwary. They passed under the shadow of a burned-out bus and ducked inland to avoid walking through the line of fire of a gun nest. Seven children, five boys and two girls, watched them silently as they passed. The building they occupied had been a bakery once, its windowed frontage now a wall of flak boards. Glass shards crunched under their boots as they went.
“Those kids were younger than we are,” Viv sighed, speaking to no-one in particular. “The way they looked at us... like they were scared of us. Like we were the enemy.”
Lilian fell into step next to her fox friend. “Were we any different? You remember how scared we were that night.”
Vivian tried not to dwell on it. Her right shoulder was covered in bruises earned that night from the rifle's fierce kick. She hadn't settled it correctly, Roz said later. The whole skirmish, fought in the dark, was a blur of noise and screams and flashing lights. Vivian had aimed her weapon at the shapes moving in the dark and held the trigger, wrestling with the recoil to keep the barrel from jumping about. She wasn't certain she'd actually hit anyone.
A dark red haze settled over her mind's eye. Oh, but she'd seen those who had been hit! She recalled their screaming, seeing classmates struggle to bandage bullet wounds or dig shrapnel out of chests. But worse were those who didn't scream; boys and girls who simply rolled over and curled up as if falling asleep, never to wake. Come the morning, the entire bridge was crimson. It was hard to believe a body could leak so much blood from so small a wound.
Seeing the morbid haze settling over Vivian, Lil added a bounce to her step. “How about we sing a marching song?”
“No!” Roz shot back.
“It'll keep our spirits up!”
“It'll get us killed, now shut up!”
Both Vivian and Lilian fell silent. They liked Roz a lot better back when she knew how to smile.

Continuing in silence, the trio emerged into the darkened square of Chapel Common. An old church, built of light brown stone, stood mute on the eastern side of the public space. The dessicated remains of a market day lingered here; the booths and stalls lay broken and forgotten, their ragged, sun-bleached awnings draped like burial shrouds over the remnants of brighter days. The girls' night vision systems painted the space in monochrome greys.
“Nobody's been here in a while,” Viv whispered.
Rozelyn's gloves creaked as she tightened her grip on her rifle. “This is wrong. Someone should be here.”
All three girls fell silent, ears prickling for sounds of life. A strip of broken tarpaulin rattled against its threadbare binds as a firm wind rolled in. Grit danced lazy spirals in the breeze before falling back to the ground.
“Maybe we're in the wrong place?” Lilian suggested.
Roz pointed sharply at the church. “That's the chapel.”
“But maybe there's another chapel?” the rabbit pulled out a wax paper map and studied it. “Gah! I can't read it!”
“Let's just go,” Vivian said. She had butterflies in her stomach, born of a rising dread she had no source for, yet wished to listen to.
Lilian snapped up her visor. “Gimmie a sec, let me read this.” She pulled out a small torch, despite Rez' protests, and peered at the square of paper. “Okie-dokie, this says... oh, wait! We might be on the wrong side of the common! Look, the church is in the middle of the Common, so I bet our friends-”
The child never got a chance to finish her thought. A high velocity round punched through her right cheek at a sharp angle, burrowing into her neck before exploding. A dark, violent spray of blood, meat, and bone fragments sprayed across the abandoned market, flashing bright white in Vivian's night vision. Lil was tore off her feet by the impact, tumbling sideways, her body given an awkward, painful spin by the explosive round. Her eyes widened as she hit the floor, the remains of her jaw dangling slack on stretched, exposed ligaments. Vivian could only stare, struggling to understand what had just happened. The rabbit's blood trickled across her visor. “Lilian?” she stammered, a question born of shock. There was still life in the girl's eyes; she looked startled, but confused, as if she hadn't yet realised what just happened. “I-it's gonna' b-be okay....”
She took a step forward, and Rozeyln tackled her to the ground. Another round ripped the air where her head should have been, instead spanking of a flagstone and sending needles of shrapnel flying in all directions.
“Lilian!” the fox cried out, the reality now setting in.
“She's gone!” the hyena screamed back in her face. “Lil's dead!”
“No she's not!” Vivian tried to wrestle free of her friend's grip. Roz relented enough to let Vivian see for herself.
“She's dead, Viv! We will be too if we stay!”
Vivian met her friend's eyes for the last time. They were glassy, stripped of the life they'd possessed a moment ago. One arm was outstretched, reaching for her friends in her final moments. The fox blinked back tears, then threw back her head and howled in pain and rage at the injustice of the world.
“Viv!” Roz tried to snap the girl out of her grief, but Vivian smacked Roz' paws aside.
“I'm going to kill them!” she shrieked, fumbling in her pouches for the combat stimulants each girl had been provided. “I'm going to kill them for this!”
“We need to-” Rozelyn's protest ceased as movement caught her eye. She threw herself against the brick wall of the nearest building, pressed her rifle against the drain for a semblance of additional support, and fired. Four rapid flashes lit up the Common, and two small shapes dove for cover. “Contact! Contact! South-east!”
Vivian wasn't listening. She plunged the needle into her neck, and liquid fire consumed her. The world turned red. Her grief and fear melted away, replaced by a feral urge to snap bones and rend flesh. She charged, darting past her friend and sprinting headlong for the church. A muzzle flash from the bell tower confirmed the sniper's location. The bricks behind her burst, thudding shrapnel into her flak vest. Hard rounds, though not explosive ones, bracketed her as she ran on, their fire patterns weaving in serpentine patterns up the walls. Behind, she heard Rozelyn popping off two- and three-round bursts. The bullet spray ahead of Vivian stopped. Off to the south, someone screamed.
Her foot stomped down on a mound of old vegetables that had rotted away to mulch. Her boot whistled as it swept back and sent her tumbling. The sniper's shot caught the back of her helmet as she fell and deflected, striking a stall fifty paces back and blowing a hole through it. No follow-up came. The training kicked in; the sniper's rifle was a bolt action, forcing him to pause between shots. If he was good, he'd keep his eye on the scope to work the bolt. If he wasn't, he'd pull his head away entirely. Vivian scrambled right, heading for the centre of the market in defiance of all common sense. Roz wasn't shooting now. Someone in the dark ahead of her was crying for their mommy, but the night vision revealed only dark, bullet-pocked buildings. She wasn't dead.
Jinking left, she made a full sprint for the church. The sniper finally found her, but the angle was steep by then. The bullet slammed into the ground to Vivian's left. She barely registered the stone fragments that sliced her leg. She ran headlong into the door, slamming into it and bouncing off, then hauling the iron-wrought oak doors open. Only then did she consider there might be traps. Too late, but as it turned out, an unwarranted fear. It took her only a few moments to find the spiral stair leading up to the tower. She took them two at a time, the thin wooden structure shaking under the bounding gait, before coming to the squared-off tower proper.
Survival instinct kicked in as she reached the halfway point. The sniper knew she was here now, and if he was smart, he'd be watching the stairs. She raised her rifle, studying the hollow square of wooden boards above. The heavy brass bell stood motionless above. Where would he be?
The stillness was unbearable. The drugs pumping through her system demanded she act. With a primal scream she surrendered to the beast, clenching the trigger and letting the rifle roar. It was not set correctly in her shoulder, slamming painfully against the ball joint and guaranteeing a bruise, but she was beyond caring now. Splinters rained down as hard rounds tore the wood above her. Then a vulpine snout emerged from the corner of her vision. She swung the kicking, bucking rifle towards it, hard rounds striking the bell and drawing forth a sonorous, discordant tone. The sniper flinched, dropping back as bullets chased him, his own retaliatory shot punching through the narrow shuttered window of the tower and detonating in the street below.
Vivian's magazine clicked dry. She charged rather than reloading, making a half-lap up the shallow stairs before her sanity returned. She was directly below the boy now, and he'd seen first hand the floor was not bullet proof. Plus, she had no bullets of her own. She reloaded, a clumsy process as her hands were shaking from the adrenalin. Or was it fear? Hard to tell now. Harder still to think of anything but how sweetly that boy's neck would snap...
The boards above her creaked. Sheer instinct made Vivian jump for the window. The shutters were long gone and she sprawled onto the lead roof of the church as the platform she'd stood upon exploded, a head-sized hole blown through the boards. How many rounds did this sniper have? Rozelyn would have counted them. Lilian... the name made Viv shudder, but the drugs wouldn't let her feel true grief. Lilian had been the first. Then two... no, three in the street. Now two in the tower. He's out!
As she went to climb back through the window, a memory sprang forth in the fox's mind. A boy whose name was lost to her, and who she'd last seen in a body bag, returned from the grave. He had been a sniper, and shown off his rifle. He'd opened the bolt, loaded the magazine, and then put one round in the chamber. “For luck”.
The sniper had six shots!
She pulled back from the window and considered her options. The tower wasn't all that tall, and the inward face had seen better days. In the dark, she could see the glint of metal tongues that had once held scaffolding, likely for the unending maintenance work that churches always seemed to need back home. Her paw clutched the first, letting it take her weight. It held.
Up she went, slow and careful. Gunfire rattled back and forth from in front and behind. Who was fighting, and where, Vivian did not know. Nor did she care at this point.
She reached the open bell tower. Her means of ascent left her pressed against the stone corner pillar, supported by rusted pitons and prayers. Every move had seemed deafeningly loud to her; the drugs were wearing off as well, making her limbs feel heavy, and filling her with nausea. Now was not the time to throw up!
There was no way out of this but forward. She hauled herself up, put a foot upon the lip, and heard the creak of the boards as the sniper moved. Without thinking, Vivian jumped sideways, her paw flailing for purchase and, quite by chance, finding an old support strap still tied to the underside of the roof. She swung around and came in via the other window. The sniper boy was looking the wrong way, but he turned at the sound of her striking masonry. She fell, rolled, and came up shooting. The sixth explosive round flew out of the tower window, striking nothing but sky. Her mad salvo, on the other hand, was perfectly placed.
Vivian's first shots broke his shin. The third bullet blew his knee-cap off, all but snapping the limb. As his leg buckled, more rounds tore the flesh of his thigh, then ruptured a kidney, tore holes through his stomach, and finally, tested his body armour. It was a flak jacket like hers, meant more to stop shrapnel than a point-blank rifle round. Ribs cracked, meat tore, his death-scream whistled from the holes Vivian punctured through his lungs. He went down, then overbalanced, and tumbled through the centre of the tower.
The empty rifle thudded onto the blood-slick boards. The world came back into shades of grey, and with it, a creeping understanding of what had just transpired. It seemed to Vivian that it had all been someone else, as though she were possessed, forced to watch another steer her into killing. She dared peer over the edge. Below her was a fox, a boy of twelve. He wore the quizzical brown-and-grey camouflage of the Enemy, but that meant nothing to her now. It was his face she couldn't look away from; eyes scrunched tight, muzzle open, frozen forever in a final, silent scream of agony.
He was dead because of her. The rage that had brought her this far burned away in the face of this unfathomable reality. He had killed Lilian, yes, but then he had just been a faceless 'thing'. His final moments played through her mind on an unending repeat; the look of terror in his eyes as she'd caught him off-guard, the way his maw opened as if to say something, perhaps to beg for his life.
She cast her rifle down the tower, and wept. When a voice in her ear tried to speak to her, she cast that away as well. She was done with this, done with the war. She wanted her childhood back.
It was in this state of grief, and loss, and hopeless despair, that the Enemy found her. A blow to the head sent her down into the darkness.

Upon regaining consciousness, Vivian had a brief window to perceive the world before the pain came flooding in. She was underground, that much was clear by the exposed iron girders and old cladding of the low ceiling above her, traits typical of the cellars in the war-torn down. That was all she got before the pulsing agony in her head made her clench her eyes shut, drawing a long groan from her dry, cracked lips.
“She's awake!” the voice belonged to a young boy, one of her own by his accent. Vivian eased her eyes open to see, sure enough, a cat of eleven wearing her colours. But behind him was a grey squirrel in the fatigues of the Enemy. Confused, Vivian tried to rise, only for her wrists to meet resistance as she pulled her arms close. She tried to move her legs, meeting the same resistance. The fox looked down at her self, seeing only her bare fur. She was bound, spreadeagled to an old bed frame someone had dragged down below the house. Half a dozen children from both sides gathered round her, their faces a mixture of anger and confusion.
“What do we do with her now?” the cat asked.
Another boy answered. “She's the one who killed Alex! We should kill her!”
“Not yet,” the grey squirrel replied, her tone cold.
“Why not, Ash?”
“Because she might know something. Give me the room.”
The other children hesitated, then one by one they filed up the narrow stairs, leaving Vivian alone with the squirrel girl. She was only tall by comparison to her companions. Now able to study the girl in more detail, she could not be older than thirteen. Her body, at least what was visible of it, was covered in shallow scars. Half her tail was gone, and her stubby snout was askew, as if the bones around her nose had broken and set incorrectly. Perhaps she was even younger, Vivian thought in a brief moment of lucidity. Perhaps she looks older only because of the harrowing life she'd led. “What do you want?” Vivian whimpered.
Ash did not reply. Her slow circling took her to the corner of the room, where with a grunt of effort she retrieved the bulky black shape of a car battery. The squirrel huffed as she hoisted it onto a rolling workbench, which shifted under the blow. Then he added two cables, double-ended with crocodile clips. “Your people have provisions we need,” she said.
“I... I can help you get them.”
Ash seemed not to hear Vivian's timid reply. She attached one wire to each node of the car battery, then holding a clip in each paw, pinched between finger and thumb, she tapped them together. A sharp crack echoed through the cellar, leaving a negative afterglow in Vivian's vision. “Your people also have traps, ambushes, patrols. I want to know about those as well. What defences are in place on the north end of Queen's Road?”
“I don't know where that is!” the fox squeaked. She watched in horror as the squirrel bit the clamp down onto her right toe, flinching as its sharp teeth dug into her toenail and the soft pad with equal fury. The clips were small, but the springs were strong. “I'm telling the truth! We were at Hlodin's Bridge! Today was the first time we'd been as far south as the church! We've never been anywhere else!” As the bound girl pleaded, Ash calmly wheeled the battery to Vivian's midpoint. There was no compassion in the teen's eyes.
“We'll see,” she said, cold as a glacier. Despite Vivian's frantic protests and desperate attempts to pull away, Ash leaned in and clamped the crocodile clip onto the girl's ear. The right side of Vivian's body clenched as electricity arced through her. She wanted to scream at the sharp, crushing agony as half her muscles contracted, many pulling with such force they tore themselves. The fat, yellow marks across her right shoulder flared in pain and red and purple pinpricks blossomed within the bruises. Her ear was filled with a tinnitus whine of such unbearable volume she thought her eardrum would burst. Her right eye blurred as the fluids within began to boil.
The clamp pulled away. Vivian fell limp, filling her lungs to let out a long-delayed scream of agony. Every muscle throbbed with exhaustion, but the sharp bite of the clamp snapped Vivian back to terrible reality. She hadn't noticed the clamp removed from her toe, but there was no mistaking the sharp, biting pain on her nipple. “S-stop it!” she wailed, thick tears streaking down her cheeks as the squirrel circled round to Vivian's left side, holding the clamp over her left nipple. “Defences of Queen's Road,” she said again.
“I d-don't kn-know!” the fox spluttered, and with an uncaring shrug, Ash fixed the clamp in place. A choking gasp burst from Vivian's lips as the electricity arced across her still-forming breasts, searing  the tender flesh with its touch. Her back arched, whole body trembling as she tried to breathe in with lungs that would no longer respond. She could feel the shock pulsing through her limbs in waves, while her heart burned as if wrapped in barbed wire. It must have only been seconds, but it seemed a lifetime before the left clamp came away and Vivian's body could fall limp once more. She was too hurt to cry. Her tiny hard slammed against the inside of her chest in a rapid, arrhythmic beat.
“I'm losing my patience,” the squirrel snarled, her cold visage finally slipping. She took the clips away and wheeled the battery down to the far end of the bed. Vivian hadn't any strength left to lift her head, but she felt the bed frame shift as Ash leaned upon it. Then came the sharp bite of the clip, fastened to one of her labia. “I need to know what's defending the Queen's Road stockpile! You will tell me, or I swear to God I will fasten this other clip on your clit and leave you here all night!”
Vivian tried to arrange her thoughts. What did she know about that place? She tried to picture it, or even a map of the road, but all her imagination could conjure was the bell tower, and that fox boy. Alex. Someone had said that was his name, hadn't they? Having a name made him more real. She could make out every strand of fur upon his muzzle, every pore of his nose. Every fleck of his eyes. Her mind's eye chose a moment, just as those eyes closed for the final time, and froze it for her. That tortured grimace, that soundless scream... it would never leave her. Even if she lived for a thousand years, Alex would always be there.
“Do it,” she whispered. “I deserve it for what I've done.”
The pain did not come. Vivian's eyes eased open to find the puzzled squirrel looking down at her. Outside, gunfire pattered like rain. “What do you mean by that?”
The bound fox bit her lower lip to try and stifle the sobbing. “I see him. Every time I close my eyes. He killed my best friend and I wanted revenge, but when it was done I... I hated myself even more. I wish I'd never hurt him. I didn't want to hurt him, they made me do it!”
A tear welled in the corner of Ash's eye. “We-” she stopped to wipe the weakness away, but her voice was flat and tired. “We need food. And medicine.”
“I'll help you. I don't know how, but I'll try.”
Doubts wrestled behind the squirrel's eyes, but she relented. The bindings fell away, allowing Vivian to sit up. Perched on the corner of the bed, she found herself locked in an unexpected embrace as the squirrel girl leaned in for a fierce, heartfelt hug. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. “We told Alex not to go, but he was so angry!”
“He was scared,” Vivian corrected her former captor.
Ash pulled away. “I think I can make the young ones understand. They'll be upset for a while, but given time I'm sure they will-”
the confessional stopped. There was a loud thud against the door above, unseen by the messy brickwork of the cellar's partition wall. Vivian heard the gentle groan of hinges. Ash drew a pistol and looked at Vivian, pressing a finger to her lips in a deliberate, forceful gesture. She crept against the wall and listened intently, eyes turned to peer through a gap in the joists towards the hewn-stone steps. “Jonah?” she called out.
The bricks erupted in a cloud of red and grey dust. Vivian clutched her ears in pain at the cacophonous roar of rifle-calibre rounds in the confined space. As the dust cleared she saw Rozelyn storming down the steps and turning into the room proper, bent low with weapon ready. “Roz? Wait, stop!”
Vivian's cries went unheeded. She turned toward Ash, down on all fours in the dust. Blood leaked from half a dozen bullet holes ripped through her. Rozelyn added a seventh, blowing out the back of her skull in a spray of pink mist and bone fragments. She pressed two fingers to her left ear. “Building secure. I found Vivian.”
“You didn't have to do that!” the fox shrieked. She jumped from the bed, only for her weakened legs to buckle and cause her to tumble into Rozelyn, who caught her by the shoulder. “She wasn't the Enemy! She was on our side!”
“She was helping defectors.” the hyena girl growled back. Rozelyn took a moment to study the room. “What did you tell them, Viv?”
“Nothing! They just wanted to be left alone! They just wanted food and medicine!”
“You told them where to get it?”
Vivian took a step back. A creeping sickness rose within her, new thoughts she barely had the words to express began her mind. The girl in front of her looked like Rozelyn, spoke with her voice, even answered to her name. But it wasn't Rozelyn; something fundamental was missing, something that had been dying away since they all first took up arms. “I don't know who you are,” she whimpered.
Those words would have stirred emotion in Rozelyn. Instead, the stranger remained indifferent. “You've defected.” The words were spat like venom. “Move, traitor.”

Vivian was marched back to friendly lines in bare fur, not that she cared about that any longer. They reached Church Common at dawn, now occupied by a flat-back six-wheeler painted in military olive. A pair of arctic wolves, fifteen years old at most, barked instructions at the soldiers that filed out of the covered cargo space. Vivian looked up at them, her stomach sinking as she realised how young they all were. The oldest was nine, the youngest might have been half of that. Most were so small they couldn't even manage a rifle, instead armed with pistols. Their fatigues were made for older furs, and while they bore the urban puzzle-patterns of Rozelyn and the wolves, Vivian spied tell-tale details. “Those are cadet uniforms,” she mumbled. “You're not even giving them armour.”
“Form a line!” one of the wolves snapped at the tiny children. Few had helmets, and none who did had helmets that fit.
The other wolf grabbed Vivian and dragged her over to the church, slamming her against the wall as the tiny soldiers lined up opposite. She looked over at Rozelyn, who had that mid-distance stare she always wore when command was speaking in her ear. The subtle change in cadence told Vivian her former friend was speaking someone else's words.
“For dereliction of duty, for abandoning her post, for betraying her sworn duties to the State, the soldier before you has been found guilty of treason. Soldiers, raise weapons!”
“My name is Vivian,” she said. “You can't even say my name?”
“She said raise weapons!” one of the wolves barked. The line of children eased their mismatched pistols and submachine guns.
Rozelyn turned, meeting Vivian's eye. For a brief moment, there was a flicker of life in those cold, mechanical motions. But just for a moment. “Any final words, traitor?”
Vivian closed her eyes. Her right paw curled half shut, and in its embrace she felt the familiar warmth of Lilian's touch. In her left, she felt the touch of another. A voice she had never heard whispered in her ear. “I'm sorry.”
“I'm sorry too, Alex.” Her eyes opened, and she looked into the frightened faces of her executioners. “I forgive you.”
There was a ripple of thunder. A gut-punch blow knocked the air from her lungs. Vivian fell to her knees, an icy cold seeping through her flesh, and was embraced by oblivion.