Unlight

by Chandra Shekhar

  By the eighth morning after their arrival in town, the family had transformed their old house into a home again. The planet outside might have changed beyond recognition, but they had learned to survive in it. And they were overjoyed to be back home.

  “Travel is overrated,” said Jessica.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Meeting

  “Stock-taking time,” said Larry, on the evening of January 25, about a week after they had moved back into their old home. “How is everyone?”

  The five of them were seated on the floor on several layers of rugs, surrounded by pillows, cushions, and bolsters, all acquired from nearby furniture stores on the deferred-payment plan. It was luxurious to the point of opulence.

  “Sitting pretty,” quipped Jessica.

  “We’ve managed to make this house nice again,” said Elizabeth.

  “It almost feels like we’re back in the early days of the Shell,” said Anna. “You know, boxed-in but snug. But with a leader who’s not quite the despot he used to be.”

  “Yes, I miss the old Larry,” said Jessica. “This one doesn’t give me enough reason to complain.”

  “You silly things!” said Larry. “To get serious for a minute, let’s look at our prospects. We don’t have to worry about food and fuel for the time being. There are enough houses, stores, and petrol stations around to keep us warmed, fed, and watered for a long time. Agreed?”

  “Yes, Chief,” said Jessica. “No worries about food, water, fuel, or shelter.”

  “So we’re safe for the moment, which is wonderful,” said Elizabeth. “But what comes next?”

  “Yes, what’s the climate going to be like a month from now?” Nicole said. “Or a year?”

  The questions were addressed to Larry, but he raised an inquiring eyebrow in Jessica’s direction.

  “The temperature’s going up slowly, but steadily,” she replied. “It was minus 127 during the Shell. Then minus 50 the day we stepped out, and a week later it’s just crossed minus 45.” She gestured toward the windows, though the view was blocked by the trucks jammed against them. “It’s technically summer now, so solar radiation should remain steady or increase slightly for the next two months. After that we’ll get less heat from the sun in autumn and winter, but to compensate the Shroud may have thinned out further.”

  “What does all that add up to?”

  “Daytime should go just above freezing by October.”

  “Wow, that would be just a little colder than a normal winter day,” said Anna. “Won’t that be something!”

  “How fast do you think the Shroud is thinning?” asked Nicole.

  “The light meter readings are going up slowly,” said Jessica. “But we can’t draw conclusions from surface observations alone. We’ll need to know what’s happening higher up.”

  “But if you were to guess, how much longer will it take for the Shroud to go once and for all?”

  “At this rate, another year.”

  “How I wish I could, like, snap my fingers and make it happen,” said Anna. “Just imagine being able to step outside and soak in the sunlight!”

  “Just one problem,” said Jessica. “Thawing.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “What will happen when dead bodies—people, dogs, rats—thaw?”

  Anna, Nicole, and Elizabeth gasped, and even Larry caught his breath. This concern had been at the back of everyone’s mind, but the deep-freeze conditions had helped them avoid confronting it.

  “Good God,” said Larry. “Everything will start to rot en masse.”

  All eyes turned to Anna, who shook her head, and then to Nicole, who considered the question for a few seconds before replying. “Thawing is a concern. But the picture isn’t too bleak.”

  “No?”

  “I think not. Do you remember the lectures Anna and I gave on how organic matter degrades?”

  Larry frowned as he tried to recollect Nicole’s teaching. “Let me see. You told us that a corpse at room temperature will start to decompose within minutes by the combined action of …”

  “Germs plus their own enzymes,” Jessica finished.

  “Good to know you were listening!” Nicole chuckled. “That’s correct. Normal decay is partly microbial and partly biochemical. But I’m not sure how that will play out here. Biochemical decay will take off like crazy once the deep freeze goes. Cellular structures will break down, turning tissues into sludge. As for the microbial process, I suspect it’ll be really slow.”

  “But why?”

  “Because the deep freeze will have wiped out most bacteria and fungi. The entire microbiota of the planet might be living in our bodies right now.”

  There were gasps of astonishment and incredulity.

  “Really?” cried Jessica.

  “Mum’s right,” Anna chimed in. “Minus 100 kills all microbes—okay, maybe not all, some hardy ones might’ve survived. You know, the ones that form spores. And extremophiles, and so on. But those bugs will take a long time to, like, recolonize the planet.”

  Jessica looked unconvinced. “So corpses will turn squishy, but not foul?”

  “Exactly,” said Nicole. “They’ll look disgusting but won’t stink or breed disease.”

  Larry wiped his brow. “Whew. That’s one less thing to worry about.”

  “Yes, and something to be grateful for,” Elizabeth said, “Though it’ll be distressing to be surrounded by decomposing bodies.”

  “Dump them into the chasm,” said Jessica. “We don’t have to watch them turn to goo.”

  As with many of Jessica’s ideas, it took the family a second or two to be sure she wasn’t kidding.

  “That’s a thought,” said Larry. “It’ll be a huge effort to shift the bodies, but maybe we could clear out this neighborhood at least.”

  Anna quickly embraced her sister’s idea. “We could also find a tow truck and clear the roads at the same time!”

  Her idea found ready acceptance, and the family discussed logistics for a few minutes.

  “So much for cars and bodies,” said Larry during a pause. “Coming back to our prospects, it looks like we can expect a reasonably normal climate within a year, maybe sooner. The lake should thaw, the pipes should open up, and we can have running water again. What else could we work on?”

  “Get the local powerplant up and running,” said Jessica. “They kept tons of coal in reserve. With just five of us, it should last forever.”

  “Perhaps by next summer we could do some planting as well,” said Anna. “Won’t it be lovely to have some greenery around? Imagine seeing a coneflower bloom again, or even an apple ripening on a tree! The botany department at the Uni used to have a fantastic collection of seeds.”

  “Anything else we should do?” Larry asked.

  “What about other survivors?” asked Nicole. “Are there likely to be any?”

  Until now the discussion had been sprightly and animated, but the word survivors had an immediately sobering effect.

  Larry took a deep breath and sighed. “Yes, we talked about this a few years ago, and the picture hasn’t changed. The Scandinavians are still our best bet. Once we have our lives under control we could try contacting them.”

  “How do we say ‘hello’ to people halfway across the globe?” asked Nicole. “It’s not like we can phone or send email.”

  “Shortwave radio,” said Jessica.

  Larry nodded and turned to Anna. “Didn’t you intern at a radio station once?”

  “Yes, fancy your remembering that!” Anna smiled. “Yes, when I was fresh out of high school. I was just a paper-pusher, though, and they never let me go on air.” She pouted in mock anger.

  “It’s their loss, dear, I’m sure you’d have made a lovely host,” said Elizabeth.

  “No question about that,” said Larry. “But tell me, Anna, did they have a shortwave service?”

  “Sure they did. They had listeners as far away as Alaska.”

  There were exclamations of surpr
ise.

  “Guess where we’ll break into next?” said Jessica.

  “The radio station,” said Anna without missing a beat.

  “Wrong,” said Larry. “First we break into the university library to steal every book on radio transmission we can find for Jessica to read. Then the radio station.”

  “Trust you to create work for me and Anna,” said Jessica.

  “Yes, while the three of you relax, as always,” Anna added.

  “Age has its privileges,” said Larry.

  “And youth has its responsibilities,” smiled Elizabeth.

  Jessica made a face, but she and Anna were clearly excited about the idea.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Year One AS

  The Shellmates’ first year After Shroud was a period of hard work, steady progress, and high spirits. The knowledge that they now owned the entire continent, perhaps the entire planet, never ceased to amaze them. The freedom to go anywhere and take anything was a thrill that never waned, especially for Anna and Jessica. Larry, normally the soul of rectitude, was amazed by how quickly he fell in with their marauding spirit. Nicole too showed herself to be an enthusiastic bandit and scavenger, often finding creative ways to break laws that no longer existed. If a building she needed to get into had a locked door, she had no qualms about smashing it open with an ax. Even Elizabeth enjoyed plundering the houses and stores in the neighborhood for essential items. With an entire continent to pillage, the five survivors knew they would never again lack basic necessities.

  By the end of May, they could leave the house without their ski outfits, wearing just normal winter apparel. By mid-August it was just slightly colder than a normal winter’s day. Two trucks, one in the basement and one above, now provided sufficient warmth. The lake began thawing. Larry found an empty wine tanker that he and Anna pumped full of water from the lake. With some clever engineering from Jessica, it became their source of hot and cold running water. She also reconnected the drains to the now-thawed sewers.

  “Heavenly,” said Anna after her first shower. “Just heavenly.”

  The next major task was to start the powerplant. This proved relatively easy. Though the plant ran on coal, it was modern in other respects. All it took to turn its systems back on was flipping the main switch a few times. The ignition system, dormant for ten years, now spat out a tongue of blue flame. Lumps of coal caught fire and in a matter of hours the plant was back online. Its reservoir held a vast reserve of coal, but in the interests of frugality and safety they cut off all the outgoing circuits except the one feeding their immediate neighborhood. Only their house, the nearby streets, and the stores in their neighborhood had power. If they wanted power elsewhere—in the library or university, for instance—they could turn the relevant circuit breaker on as needed.

  Meanwhile, Nicole and her mother took on the unpleasant task of clearing the nearby streets of cars and bodies. They towed the vehicles to the curb, hauled their passengers into a salvaged garbage truck, and dumped the bodies into various spots at the outskirts. In about two months, the streets around their house were almost clear. Then began the more difficult task of clearing out the bodies from the houses and shops and other nearby buildings. Here the others pitched in as well, helping to carry the now thawing bodies down to the curb from where they could be lifted onto the garbage truck. By November, they had cleared out all bodies within approximately one square kilometer around their house. Surrounding this area on all sides was a short stretch of parkland, which had now turned brown. Everything that lay beyond this area—vehicles, buildings, corpses—they simply torched to the ground after salvaging whatever food, equipment, and supplies they could lug back to their neighborhood and store in nearby buildings. It wasn’t long before the entire town was corpse-free, except for a few well-preserved specimens that Nicole put in cold storage at the hospital for study purposes. She grew wiry and strong with the hard physical labor and could soon lift almost as much weight as Larry or the girls. Even Elizabeth, now in her seventies, became exceptionally sturdy for her age.

  The weekly calendar had no real significance any more, but for old times’ sake the family took the weekend off to explore the town and its environs. Larry found a helicopter in working condition, which he taught the others to fly, and soon they were making sorties into the desert. They flew down the chasm a few times, marveling at the awful grandeur of the geological cataclysm wrought by the Shroud. They even went back to the remains of the Shell on the other side.

  “That odd structure, ladies and gentlemen, is what remains of the Shell,” said Anna, assuming a tour-guide voice. “Can you believe this place housed the legendary Miller family during the last year of the Shroud? Designed by a crazy inventor called Larry Brandon, notorious for his weakness for whiskey and women.”

  “If only this chopper had an ejector seat!” said Larry.

  The hardships of their final year in Entry having now faded from their minds, they were able to view their old habitat with equanimity. On an impulse they decided to camp out in the dome one night, hoping to recapture a thrill of horror from the past. But it felt merely strange and oddly hostile now. They couldn’t believe that in that very place they had come within a whisker of annihilation.

  “This might become a museum someday,” said Jessica.

  After retrieving a few mementos, they left the next morning and never returned.

  During a three-week period in November, a faint odor of rotting bodies registered on the sensitive nostrils of the girls whenever the wind blew from Adelaide. Though the air then grew fresh again, suggesting that the decay process had finished, the family decided against visiting nearby cities for the time being. They had disposed of thousands of corpses in their neighborhood, but could they handle millions?

  The farthest they ventured was an hour south by helicopter to the famed wine-growing region of Barossa Valley. In the cellar of one of the estates there they were delighted to find barrels of vintage Shiraz in excellent condition and got roaringly drunk for the first and only time in their lives. They flew back the next morning carrying as much wine as they could. Then it was back to their routine of work, rest, and play.

  On weekdays, the group split up in the morning to go to their individual tasks, staying in touch by walkie-talkie. They met briefly for lunch and sat together for dinner at the end of their day’s work. Ravenously hungry from the long hours of manual labor, they demolished huge amounts of food at every meal, washed down by the Barossa estate wine as long as it lasted. All five were now as skilled at cooking as they were voracious in eating. Initially, they made do with groceries scavenged from the stores nearby. As the weather grew warmer, Anna resumed her love affair with horticulture. Using seeds, fertilizer, and equipment borrowed from the university’s department of botany, she soon covered every inch of open space in their neighborhood with her plantings. She commissioned another water tanker for her own use and made frequent trips to feed and water her saplings. Soon she brought fresh greens and herbs to the table, and tomatoes and chili pods followed a few weeks later. “By this time next year you’ll have your first cherries,” she promised.

  After a hard day’s satisfying work, a hot shower, and a huge, delicious meal, sleep was as deep and sweet as it could ever get. The house was now warm enough that they could have gone to their individual rooms, but they continued to camp together on the living-room floor—it just felt more natural. During the evening, Nicole and Elizabeth went off to one of the other rooms to meditate. Other than that, they enjoyed staying together in the living room.

  “When you have harmony, your need for personal space diminishes,” Elizabeth noted in her diary.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Doubts

  After some more discussions early in their first year AS, the group decided to wait a bit before trying to make contact with other survivors. Partly this was from lack of urgency. They were very comfortable now, enjoying their ever-increasing freedom as the planet warmed and the s
un shone brighter. Besides, they needed some time by themselves to adjust to the new world.

  Their hesitation about advertising their presence also stemmed from a fear of the unknown. If there were other survivors, what kind of people would they turn out to be? Friendly, neutral, hostile? The Shellmates hadn’t just survived their ten years of close confinement under the most trying of condition— they had emerged as better human beings. Each of them had gained something: Jessica empathy, Anna strength, Nicole peace, Larry vivacity, and Elizabeth health. They had lost none of their strengths. Jessica was just as smart as before, Anna just as delightful, Nicole just as competent, Larry just as strong, and Elizabeth just as loving. And they cherished and enjoyed each other like never before. They had all been very lucky, as Elizabeth pointed out, because things could have gone wrong for them in a hundred different ways. They could have fallen ill. They could have succumbed to rage, fear, or hate; giving in to such negative emotions would have almost certainly sealed their fate. If, despite all that, they had survived, they might have emerged from the Shell embittered, vicious, or psychotic. The shock of finding a lifeless, corpse-ridden planet would only have made things worse.

  Given these scenarios, wasn’t it possible—even likely—that other survivors would bear at least some emotional scars from their ordeal? What if they turned out to be warped or crazed? Perhaps they might have undergone some kind of brutal power struggle; the ones that survived would then be either viciously tyrannical or abjectly servile. They might have sunken into savagery, cannibalism, or worse. They might carry deadly diseases.