Unmasked

by Kevin J. Anderson

  The war had been raging so long I wasn’t sure who we were fighting. Or why. But then, I was just an orphan girl, barely fifteen, sent out to scavenge in the rubble, so what did I know?

  Tinned goods, mostly; that’s what I knew, and what we scavenged for. From the look, from the feel, I could tell if the contents were still liquid, still edible. I could hazard a guess as to what was inside, even if the label was ancient history. Then there was the occasional miracle of an unopened jar or bottle that hadn’t been smashed. Or something shrink-wrapped, tightly sealed. Anything the air, and the badness, or just time and water and rats and little grey moths, hadn’t got into. But who can blame us if the odd book, puffed up and the pages needing to be carefully sliced apart, or a toy, painted metal or eternal plastic, found its way into our sacks as well? There was always plenty of room.

  Avoiding the wide roads, skulking through back alleys, through tangled remains of once-proud gardens and yards, over fallen fences and crumbling walls, some still topped with shards of glass, I picked my way through the ruins, trying to guess where the kitchens might once have been. It always amazed me that anyone had ever lived above ground. To be so exposed, with only the thinnest of walls to shelter behind. Even more bizarre when I stood beneath one of the sisters, those skeletal fingers stabbing the tortured skies. The lift shafts fringed with concrete gills were all that remained of the floors of buildings many stories high, fragile homes for hundreds.

  I was alone in the wasteland. Alone, with a half dozen other scavengers scattered far and wide and equally alone. It was always girls, only ever girls; the boys too busy being taught to be the next generation of soldiers. Boys like my older brother, Marcus, though he’d graduated to active duty four years back, the last time I’d seen him. I wondered where he was now. There had been letters, at the start; always out of step with birthdays or Christmas as if they’d taken months to arrive, which presumably they had. But there hadn’t been one of those for almost two years and I was beginning to think I wouldn’t recognise him if I should ever see him again.

  Nothing official, neither. No “We regret to inform you …” Nothing to tell me either way how he fared.

  We girls were told never to forage alone. Told to hunt for our scraps in pairs or in groups of three. But we never did. You covered more ground alone, made less noise. And being alone …

  Down below, in the dank, dark subterranean bunkers, we were never alone. Not in the dorms where the youngest girls slept on the floor beneath and between the lowest bunks. Not in the classrooms, where harried teachers did their best as kids lined the walls and sat in each other’s laps, the young, and the almost adult, alike. Kaitlin, our dorm leader, said it wasn’t that there were all that many of us, more that the bunker had never been designed for our number, for this long. Even the time in the dining hall was rationed, the bell ringing to chase us from our benches, making room for others to shovel in whatever was on the menu as fast as they could, the watery stews merging into one not very appetizing memory.

  Oh! I forgot the spices! If we found something like that, something sealed, brightly colored, still capable of making one of the cooks sneeze, then we’d get an extra portion that day and perhaps the food wouldn’t be quite so bland. Perhaps. But spices, from peppercorns to bright yellow turmeric, didn’t turn up very often, or not in any useful quantity.

  I threaded through the gap in a half-tumbled wall, a rope of brittle bramble snagging at my tough work trousers, forcing me to stop and untangle the thorns before continuing on. Dead bramble, of course. The gas saw to that. But, amazingly, a few things did manage to grow, even out here. Ragged plants with little blue flowers, pollinated by who knows what, and something waist-high whose hairy leaves you had to be careful not to brush against, that would leave a red, maddeningly itchy rash if you did. Our teachers said these plants were new. Never-before hybrids, something miraculous filling an ecological niche, rapidly evolving over the decade and a half we had been busy destroying everything else, everything they had once competed against. Whether left to its own devices or not, they said, life finds a way. Even in the face of choking, toxic, man-made poisons, the green gas being the most common though not the most deadly.

  In our childhood tales—the ones we’d been told when we were younger, the ones we older girls now passed down, quite literally, from the top bunks to those below—the green gas was the bogey man. It was cunning, mischievous, and wicked. It punished you if you were bad, if you ignored the rules, if you failed to do your daily chores. But, if you were strong and silent and good, then maybe, just maybe, it would let you be.

  In reality, it was just a gas, an indiscriminate chemical weapon, driven by the wind and gravity, blind and senseless. Today, like most scavenger days, my mask hung at my side, the padded pouch protecting the fragile lenses and the charcoal filter. We were a long way from any front and, despite the oft-repeated rules, it was so much easier to search for anything that had been overlooked by dozens of previous scavenger missions if we didn’t have to cope with narrowed vision and scratched and grimy lenses.

  Kaitlin, held back an extra year to be in charge of the younger girls and itching to move out of the kids’ dorm, to move on, her head-girl duties meaning she didn’t even get to scavenge any more, though she was always there when we left the bunker and always there when we returned, counting the girls back in like a mother hen; Kaitlin claimed you could tell the difference between our gas and the enemy’s. That the enemy gas smells like the grey soap that makes eyes sting in the showers, and ours smelled like boot polish.

  I’m not sure that was in any way reassuring, and I didn’t exactly get to compare fragrance notes. By the time I noticed the green tinge gathering in the air around me it was too late. I’d been scrabbling in the dirt, trying to unearth a mannequin’s arm I’d at first taken for a corpse. And of course I was in a hollow, a crater surrounded by earth banks and shattered concrete, into which the mannequin and perhaps whatever it had been wearing had fallen. The next moment I couldn’t see anything at all, or even breathe, my lungs on fire as I spluttered and struggled with the clasp at my waist, frantically trying to free my mask.

  Strong blunt fingers pushed mine aside and for a moment I really did think the mannequin had come to life. But the fingers were gloved; black leather rather than smooth pale plastic. The straps of the gas mask were pulled roughly over my face and everything went dark as I huddled there, curled up and trying to remember how to breathe.

  When I could finally sit upright again, tears catching on the mask’s fabric at my cheek, I did my best to peer through the film that coated my eyes. Slowly my vision cleared, though I could feel the gunk pooling in the corners of my eyes, a sticky clump that smeared every time I blinked. I had to fight the urge to remove the mask to wipe it all away.

  My rescuer sat with his back to me, hunched halfway up a mound I couldn’t remember, gloved hands cupping combat-trouser knees, staring at nothing. He must have dragged me there, up and out of the hollow in which the heavy green gas probably still lurked. Maybe if I had been on my own I would have removed my mask, getting a second lungful, despite what I had just been through. Maybe that would have been the end of me. But the man still wore his, a hooded one tightly laced behind, a glimpse of the snout-filter that rendered his profile inhuman. I followed his example and wisely left mine on.

  I sat there a moment longer as my breathing and my heart returned to some semblance of normal, inspecting his cobbled-together outfit. He was so still he might have been a mannequin as well, an end-of-the-world fire-sale, dressed in heavy gear that didn’t let me see anything of him. There was nothing to tell if he was friend or foe. Nothing to tell me if I had been rescued from one terrible fate, only to be preserved for something even worse. He was outfitted in such a way that even without the mask he would have been hard to identify. Those black gloves, heavily taped at his wrists, the hooded gas mask, plunging into the high neck of his bulky jacket, baggy trousers firmly tucked into his dull black bo
ots. They say there are worse things than the green gas, chemicals a single drop of which could stop your heart or freeze your lungs. This soldier looked ready for them all.

  I pushed myself up on wobbly legs, sending a few pebbles skittering down the slope, and he turned. I was convinced it was a he, with boots that large. The glass over his eyes was mirrored, against flares and flash-bangs, I supposed, and all I saw reflected back was a young girl, covered in dirt, hair like snakes, tangled with snot and vomit, her face hidden behind the gas mask, scared eyes just about peeking out.

  He nodded, rose to his feet, handed me back my sack. I was wary taking it. And then the thought came to me: when I had last seen Marcus, my brother had been a skinny runt, fifteen, just as I was now. But sometime in the last month he’d turned nineteen. He’d be a man, tall and strong.

  A man like this one?

  It was ridiculous to suggest, to even hope, that it was my brother who had come to my rescue. But the thought that it might be, however unlikely, overcame my fear of this dark stranger, this guardian angel.

  Besides, what did I have to lose? He could have killed me as I lay there, helpless. Or he could have left it to the green gas to do the job and not even dirtied his gloved hands.

  I took the proffered bag, swung it over my shoulder, wincing at the fierce sting from a previously uncatalogued graze, before switching the weight to the other side. And then I slowly turned in a circle. I had no idea where I was. No idea even which direction I was facing. No idea where home was.

  When I’d left the bunker there had been a brittle afternoon sunshine, half shadows that I had kept to my left as we six girls had fanned out. But the day had closed in, sullen clouds that threatened torrential rain, and worse. And it was nearing dusk; if the sun was going to put in another appearance and help guide me home, it had better do it soon.

  I re-scanned the jumbled horizon that blurred through the gas mask lenses until I caught sight of the nearest sister. There were five of them in all. Kaitlin said there had once been seven, but two had fallen in the long years of the war. They were the tallest of the remaining buildings, pockmarked and shattered, only glints of broken glass left in their lofty, vacant heights. But each had a name, a distinctive shape, and each told me—roughly—where I was.

  The hooded man was waiting. I thought for a moment, guesstimated how long I’d wandered, plotted the path back in my mind and then pointed into the murk. Mimed walking and flashed my hand four times. Twenty minutes.

  I hoped. Assuming dark didn’t fall first and slow us still further. Assuming we didn’t hit any unexpected and unwanted obstacles. Assuming the rain didn’t descend, turning the ruins into a treacherous mud-bath, making it impossible to see through the glass portholes of our masks.

  A small doubt lingered. Was I leading the enemy to our bunker? Was I betraying our position? But what could I do?

  He nodded and, without any further silent communication, began to head down the slope in the direction I had pointed. He was certainly sure-footed. I nearly stumbled, twice, on the loose gravel, slamming my hand into the rubble to halt my fall so that grit bit into my palms. He looked back each time, and I expected a rebuke, an urgent command to keep quiet, for all there were no signs of life anywhere around us.

  As we hit level ground I had to rush forward, hopping over a tangle of loose razor wire to tug him back. His combat trousers bunched in my hand and he peered down at me, mirror lenses picking out the fading daylight. I hadn’t realized quite how tall he was and couldn’t somehow imagine Marcus ever topping out at over six feet.

  I pointed along the road. It was easily identified as such, the relatively straight lines, the dip between collapsed buildings. Though it was far from clear of rubble, it was a lot less jumbled than the ground on either side. I could even see the shattered remains of a lamp post, trailing flex. I held out one hand, flat, palm up. My other hand I cupped over it and then flung outwards, spreading my fingers.

  A pantomime explosion. Mines.

  He nodded and waited for me to go ahead of him, to lead. I skirted the edge, where front gardens might once have been, careful not to crunch on the scattered roof tiles. I had to keep looking back, so silent was he, at least while I was wearing my gas mask. And soft-footed though he might be, I couldn’t understand how he didn’t know about the mines. They weren’t just limited to the roads. I guess that’s what happens as soon as people learn one hard lesson; the rules of the game change. But everyone knew that if the way looked easy then it was almost certainly dangerous, and if it wasn’t mines, then it was snipers. Best to take a less convenient route and risk the natural hazards of torn metal and shattered glass.

  The road wasn’t quite the direction we needed to go anyway, so, after a couple of hundred paces along its edge, we branched north, clambering over tin sheeting to reach the hinterland between houses, between streets. I thought I half recognized the way, which was reassuring, though the light was fading fast, the dreary colors leaching from the bruised sky. In the distance, thunder, or maybe artillery, rumbled. I quickened our pace, zigzagging towards where I thought our bunker must be.

  And then I glimpsed a dim light ahead, and instantly I was flat against a still-vertical section of wall, the soldier crouched beside me. A patrol? Ours, or theirs? Looking for me, or looking for him?

  I wondered for a moment if, should they come this way and get close enough to be identified, the soldier would stand and greet the enemy like long-lost friends. Or would he lie in wait, in deadly ambush?

  But he couldn’t have done that, and I was dumbfounded to be so slow to realize. He wasn’t carrying a rifle. He didn’t even have a hand gun. Not even, as far as I could tell, a knife. Even I had a knife, short and ugly though it was.

  A soldier without any weapons could only, as far as I could see, mean one thing. A deserter. At risk of being shot by either side and so deliberately divested of any overt threat, as if that would do him any good.

  My heart sank. No hero, then? No brave, gallant warrior from the front? It had always seemed odd that he was in our neck of the woods to begin with. Odd enough that there was even a patrol …

  Cautiously, I raised my head back over the wall. Squinted through the eye glass, cursing the way the light was scattered by scratches and grease.

  As far as I could tell, it wasn’t moving. And as I watched, my eyes adjusted to see the dim bulkhead lamp and the darkness beside and under it. I realized where we were: it was the bunker! They’d put the entrance light on—presumably for me. A risk, and one I doubt they’d run for long. Not when it got to full dusk. Not when, if I was still out there and had any sense, I’d have holed up until morning and hoped to survive the cold night.

  I led the soldier around the corner of the wall, the landscape becoming more and more familiar with every step, despite the gloom. Each boulder, each patch of dirt, screamed home as I headed towards the dark cave of the bunker entrance.

  When he saw where we were going, he stopped abruptly, shaking that hooded head of his. I grabbed his arm, pulling him on, though still he resisted. But I didn’t—couldn’t—let him escape. See, I’d worked it out, on our hike back to the bunker. I trusted him, sure I did. He’d saved my life after all. But to be sure, to be absolutely one hundred percent certain, I wasn’t going to let him see where our bunker was and then just wander off. No. That’s why I dragged him into the airlock, despite his protests, even as the heavens finally opened and the rain drummed down all around. I hoped he’d be happy; everyone would be glad he’d rescued me and eager for news. He’d get a slap-up meal, kind of, and a dry cot for the night. And, if he still wanted to leave in the morning—after his papers, his name and serial number had been checked out by people more knowledgeable and less trusting than I—then well. Can’t say fairer than that.

  “You can take off your gas mask now,” I said, having done so myself, my voice croaky and alien sounding. But he was standing by the extractor fans, so maybe he couldn’t hear me. I turned away, running my
fingers through my hair, screwing up my nose at the stink, trying to loosen the worst of the knots, embarrassed. It was stupid, but I almost didn’t want to see him unmasked. Because until then, there was always a slim chance. Until then, I wouldn’t know for certain he wasn’t Marcus.

  Behind me there was a sharp clink against the concrete floor, and I snapped around in time to see his bulky clothes deflating into a black heap, far too flat to hide a body.

  The air was suddenly full of the pungent smell of boot polish, of carbolic soap, and my breath caught in my throat, but the smell cleared as quickly as it had come, and I felt the pressure on my ears ease as the airlock cycle completed.

  The inner bunker door swung open and there was Kaitlin, holding a rifle, a gas mask in her other hand. She peered around, sniffing the air, clocked the pile of clothes on the floor, and frowned.

  “What did you bring all that junk back for?” She prodded at the jacket with the business end of the rifle, flipped over the gas mask until the cracked, mirrored eyes stared emptily upwards. “Well … I suppose we can find a use for some of it. Bit large for me, mind!”

  I stood rooted to the spot. “Did …?” I wanted to ask if she’d seen the man I’d returned with, the man I’d entered the airlock with, the wearer of all that junk, the one who had just vanished into thin air. But how could I? So I asked instead: “Did … everyone else get back okay?” Only now realizing that they might not have.

  “Over an hour ago.” Her frown turned into a grin and a shrug. “We were beginning to think we’d lost you, Saskia. Glad to have you back. And I hope there’s something edible in that sack?”

  I was about to tell her there wasn’t, that I’d only just begun my search, when I realised an empty sack doesn’t weigh as much as the one I was miraculously still carrying, slung over my good shoulder. I eased it off, felt where the cord had bitten, felt bruises on my stiff upper arm. I untied the drawstring at its neck, opened it wide for both of us to see.