Upon a Time

by R. L. Stedman

  Afterwards, after the whole world had turned into hell, and the only things on two legs were man-eating Vay, Hunter left the apartment. The Bevan-that-was died with Mike. Only Hunter remained; a walking shell without a name.

  Next day dawned cloudy, which Hunter preferred for tracking. He ate quickly and shouldered his pack. In the old days, before the world changed, he’d used a scent disguiser that had come ready in a spray bottle. No such luxuries now. He was looking for a swamp, the stinkier the better. There was one about here; he remembered the fetid black puddle, and the flies that buzzed about its surface. Vay tended to avoid such places.

  An hour later, covered in stinking mud, Hunter came upon the Vay-path. The Vay made these crazy roads; they didn’t bother clearing away undergrowth, just walked the same route until the grass stopped growing. Sometimes they marked the trails. In the early days they’d used reflective tape, but now, lying in the grass at the path’s edge were small white stones. Easy enough to follow, even at night.

  The Colony lay north-east, toward the Hudson. Hunter stepped off the path, into the undergrowth, but kept the white stones in sight. The forest was still quiet and the air felt heavy, as though a storm was coming.

  As Hunter moved closer to the Colony he went ever slower. The place smelt tainted; fire, woodsmoke, roasting meat. Last time he’d been here the place had been crowded with Vay, coming and going like ants into an anthill. It had crept him out, watching them, because now and again they’d talk to each other: “Watch out,” “Not that way.” They never said hello. There was no, “How’s it going?” and no courtesies like excuse me or sorry.

  But now …

  What the hell had happened?

  Chapter Five

  The Colony

  Smoke rose from the colony mound. Birds, the first he’d seen all day, flew in spirals. The palisade walls lay tumbled and broken, the gates fallen into the ditch. Gods, the smell! Hunter tied his scarf about his face then, taking a tight grip on his knife, crept through the gateway. He’d never been inside a colony mound before. But now the smoke and chaos drew him on.

  The place was a spiraling maze. Holes dug into banks most likely led to living quarters or food areas, but he wasn’t going into those, no sir. Not going to be trapped like a rat in the darkness. Wiping streaming eyes, Hunter pressed grimly forward.

  Turning the corner, he spied the first of the bodies. As he neared, they seemed to rustle. He crouched, knife out. A sudden rush, and a clatter of wings. Raucous cawing, and a group of crows lifted into the air. Hunter relaxed. A murder of crows. Appropriate, given the circumstances.

  He didn’t want to look at these sprawled bodies, not now the birds had been at them, but he needed to know if they were Vay. Gingerly, hand over the scarf, he drew nearer. Flies buzzed angrily. Hunter glanced at the teeth, the nails. Three male, two female. Their gums were drawn back, as if snarling. All Vay. All obviously dead. What the hell had happened here?

  He crept down the path, keeping to the walls. The path sloped upward, and the streets grew narrower, so there was only a strip of blue for sky and mud underfoot. It was like walking through an open burrow. There was absolutely no graffiti, no carvings on the ditch walls, nothing to suggest that humans lived here.

  He’d once seen an exhibition called “Art of the Trenches”; carvings done on the trench walls of World War One. Even there, in the middle of hell, humans had made art. If Hunter had wanted any proof that the Vay were no longer human, this colony was it.

  Now and again he chanced upon bodies, tumbled out of doorways as though trying to escape. They were dressed as the Vay all dressed, in plain shifts. The Vay didn’t go for fashion. Gradually the smell lessened – or perhaps he was becoming used to it – but the place was eerily quiet; only the birds and the low buzz of the flies broke the silence.

  The path ended abruptly at a wall. Rough steps cut into the mud formed a trackway to the top of the mount. He climbed them, gasping; they were steep. A structure had been built on top: a flat platform and a rickety ladder. A lookout, maybe? Hunter, as if drawn, climbed the ladder.

  The view from the platform was surprisingly impressive. Surrounded by hills, the place seemed set in a bowl of green. To the south lay the silver-gray of the Hudson and below him, the birds, descending on the dead.

  “Hey! You!”

  Hunter jumped.

  “You! Don’t just stand there,” yelled the voice. “Give me a hand.”

  Hunter turned about on the precarious platform (if they were human, he thought, they would have had a flagstaff here, and it would be flying the colors of the Vay-Nation, whatever they are).

  “Over here!” A hand, sticking out of the mound, waved frantically. “Come on!”

  Hunter clambered awkwardly from the platform.

  “You’re alive,” he said to the hand, which he knew as soon as he said it was stupid, because the hand was waving, but it seemed so miraculous, so damn crazy in this place of smoke and death that it just had to be said out loud. In case he was wrong.

  “No shit,” snapped the hand. “You going to help me out of here?” As he neared it, he realized the hand was attached to a girl – a teenager. She seemed to be half-buried in the earth. Where the hell had she come from?

  Hunter grabbed the hand, pulled hard. She was stuck fast.

  “Ow!” she yelled.

  “Can you wriggle a bit?” Hunter mimed shaking his body. “Loosen the dirt?”

  As the girl did this the edge of the hole crumbled, and he caught a glimpse of a cavern below. The mound was hollow as an ants’ nest. He didn’t want to fall onto the ants.

  Ignoring the angry “Hey!” he got to his feet. That platform had a ladder. He tugged at it. Yep, it was lose.

  “Hurry!” She sounded panicked. “The Vay!”

  “I don’t think they’ll be back.”

  But could he be really sure?

  Using the tip of his knife, he freed the screws enough to tug the ladder free. He took it back to the girl, laid it on the ground beside her, and crawled along it.

  “It’s hollow beneath you,” he said. “No sense in both of us falling.”

  She nodded and said nothing. She looked worried and tired.

  “I’m Hunter,” he said, by way of introduction.

  “Bernice.” Her smile was lopsided and strained, but still, it was a smile.

  “Nice to meet you, Bernice. Here, grab my wrists. I’m going to pull real hard.” He grabbed her wrists, the unbreakable hold he’d used when helping clients over river crossings.

  She nodded and gripped on tightly.

  “On three, I’ll pull. Ready?”

  She nodded again.

  “One. Two. And … Three.” He pulled hard, yanking so firmly he was worried about her shoulders. She shifted, just a little, moving inch by inch from the earth. He stopped, breathing hard. “You okay?”

  She said nothing, just nodded.

  “Again?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay. On Three. And One. Two. Threeeee.”

  He pulled so hard that the ladder slid backward. She yelled but didn’t let go, shaking her body hard, like a dog shaking off water. And then, in a sudden rush, she came free, scraping from the earth like a half-buried stone.

  The ground on which he lay seemed to crumble and flake away. Desperately, Hunter grabbed Bernice around the waist, and tugged again, hard as he could. She came free with a rush. They catapulted backward and landed with the ladder on top of them. The top of the mound seemed to disintegrate and fall, cascading slowly away. They lay on the edge of a cavern for a moment, panting. Finally, shakily, Hunter got to his feet and helped Bernice upright.

  She was tall with dark skin and long, graceful legs. Her tightly curled hair was short and full of mud.

  She glared at him. “Finished looking?”

  He half smiled. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Six

  Bernice

  They reached the ’burbs and the bike by nightfall.
/>   “What happened?” he asked, once they were safely inside the garage.

  Bernice gnawed at an oat bar. “I don’t know.” Her eyes were bloodshot and strangely out of focus.

  “Looks like you got lucky.”

  She swallowed loudly. “I guess.”

  Hunter and Bernice had searched the colony, crawling through the mud, until they were covered in the stuff. All the time they’d seen no one alive, human or Vay. But always the stench of death and black smoke trailing into the sky. Vay lived underground, where the fire was.

  “You were a prisoner?”

  Bernice nodded. “I was food,” she said flatly. “There were a few of us. It was dark. Couldn’t see much.”

  This Bernice girl seemed strong. Hopefully she’d be alright, although sometimes it was hard to know. The effects of the Vay hit survivors in different ways.

  “Where are you from?” he asked. “Before they caught you?”

  She nodded north, to the hills.

  “You lived alone?”

  “What?” She looked startled. “Hell, no! Would have gone mad.”

  “So there are more of you?”

  “There were more of us. Not so sure, now.” She took a drink from the water bottle, swallowed noisily and wiped her mouth. Hunter put a hand on her shoulder. Bernice looked at the hand until he removed it. Then she sighed, shuffled over to the wall and sat, back resting against the concrete. She kept the water bottle with her, and now and again sipped from it.

  “My parents were scientists. Dad, he was, well I guess you’d call him paranoid. Had this thing ’bout the end of the world. Mom and me used to laugh at him. Look who’s laughing now.”

  “You had a survival shelter?”

  “Great idea, right? Hide underground while the world burns?” She shook her head. “Dad was never good about thinking things through. Like, what happens when you come out?”

  “He’s dead?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Ah well. Lots of other folk dead, too.” But her eyes were gleaming, like there were tears in them. They sat there for a moment, saying nothing.

  “What happened?” Hunter asked.

  “To Dad? Dumbass thing. Appendicitis.” She shuddered.

  “Your Mom?”

  “Eaten.” She pressed her hands into her eyes. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Fair enough.” Hunter searched his mind for topics of interest. Sports? The weather? The world had moved beyond small talk. “You know how that fire started?”

  She looked past him, like he wasn’t there, so for a moment he thought she’d gone into that fugue state that hit some folk, when they just shut down and give up.

  He crawled over to her. “Bernice?”

  She blinked. “I’m okay. Sorry. It’s just,” she took a deep breath in, and shuddered. “Sorry.” She turned her head, inspected the motorbike as though she’d only just noticed it. “Wow. I’ve always wanted to ride one of those.”

  “You want to go?”

  She nodded.

  Well, it was dark enough. He stood, held out a hand to her. “Okay. Come on then.”

  She sat behind him on the bike and yelled her story into his ear, like she was telling it to the world. Hunter only caught one word in three, but later he pieced it together.

  Bernice was the only daughter of two scientists, Margaret and David. Her parents had met at college; science majors on basketball scholarships. That must be where her long legs came from.

  Mom became a doctor, Dad a forensic pathologist. They lived in a nice neighborhood in New York, she went to a good school. Bernice had wanted to be a ballet dancer. So far, so middle-class normal. Until the first of the flu epidemics, when something slipped inside Dad’s head and he joined the survivalist movement. The family moved out of the city. They joined a community.

  “Not a commune though,” shouted Bernice. “None of that incest shit.”

  It was a group of people that lived off the land, stored their own foods and had underground shelters. They went to church, like regular folk, but they didn’t do anything that was weird. Except for planning for the end of the world.

  “All types of folk. Techo,” Bernice yelled to the night. “Computers and stuff. Farmers. One guy was a nurse, someone’s mom was a teacher, you know. Lots of kids. Lots and lots – we had a great time.” She stopped when Hunter took a bend and then added like she’d only just realized it, “I was the only black kid, though, but we all got on okay.”

  Bernice thought her parents were nuts. She wanted to go back to the city, and they had argument after argument about it until the Vay came.

  “Spent the last seven years apologizing,” she shouted. “They were pretty decent, all told. Only said I told you so about a hundred times.”

  “You lived in a survival shelter for seven years?”

  “Yep. One great big happy family.”

  “So what happened?” Hunter shouted, over the noise of the engine.

  “They got in.”

  “The Vay?”

  “Yeah. We’d run out of ammo.”

  He nodded. The Vay were tenacious, and kept on and on and on until there was nothing left.

  “Some of us got away. I got caught.”

  “And you were taken to the colony?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “Long enough,” she shouted into the night.

  She sounded euphoric, like she thought she was safe. Trail bikes did that; the speed and noise made reality recede. The bike sped along the dark roads, eating the miles, until they reached the tall buildings of the city, and the roar of its exhaust changed, echoing from the hard concrete.

  “Ain’t been here since I was a kid,” Bernice shouted.

  “Hasn’t changed much,” Hunter called back, pointing at the ruined buildings.

  She laughed. “Don’t you have Vay here?”

  “sometimes,” he called. “But not much food left for them. Plus, they don’t like all the concrete. You saw the colony; they like mud and shit. We’re clearing them out. Doing a trapping campaign right now.”

  “You’re trapping them?” She sounded amazed.

  “Just started.”

  “Caught any?”

  “Couple.”

  “Ha!” She punched the dark. “Humans fight back!”

  He slowed the bike. “Hardly. We’re just holding our own.”

  She released her hold on his waist and looked about at the buildings. “I remember lights.” Her voice was as small as a child’s.

  Chapter Seven

  A Final Gift

  When Hunter came in with his arm around the girl, for a crazy moment Christine felt jealous.

  Controller jumped to her feet. “Who’s this?”

  Inside the cage, Dylan stirred. He’d begged Controller to let him sleep inside the bars with Christine, and promised he’d been good in such an angelic tone that the woman had agreed, probably just to shut him up more than anything else.

  “But I’m locking the door behind you,” she’d warned.

  Dylan nodded, blue eyes wide. “I understand.”

  Christine had to admit it was warmer with her brother curled up beside her. Guard Two seemed less angry when Dylan was around.

  Hunter slipped his jacket from the strange girl’s shoulders. “This is Bernice.”

  “Hey Bernice,” Controller smiled. “Welcome.”

  Christine shook Dylan away and sat up, cross-legged on the straw. She picked straw from her hair and watched the new girl. She was so tall! Why, she was even taller than Hunter. Ha! Hunter would never fall in love with her.

  That wasn’t how things worked. Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Rapunzel, were always shorter than the prince. Except Rapunzel, maybe. Christine frowned, trying to remember if she’d seen a picture of Rapunzel and the prince together. She could only remember the prince, standing at the bottom of the tower, staring up at a long blonde plait. />
  “What you looking at, Vay?” The girl came over to the cage. The guards watched her, but said nothing.

  “Nothing.” Christine dropped her eyes.

  “How are they?” Hunter asked Controller.

  “Okay, I guess,” Controller pushed her hair back from her forehead. “Except for the boy.” She nodded at Dylan, curled up beside Christine.

  “Why did you put him in there?”

  “He wanted to,” Controller said. “Begged to be with his sister.”

  “Should have told him No.”

  “So, you tell him then.”

  Hunter hesitated. “No sense in waking him, is there?”

  “What happened, Hunter?” Controller asked. “Who is she?”

  They had turned away and were speaking softly, but Christine could hear them. Stupid Normals, always forgot about special Vay ears.

  The tall girl, Bernice, looked at Dylan and her eyes seemed to spark. Beside Christine, Dylan stirred.

  “Marie, the colony was burning,” Hunter said heavily.

  “What about the Vay?”

  “Dead. My guess, from the smell, is they were burning too.”

  Controller made a face. Then: “No survivors?”

  “Just Bernice.”

  Christine was listening so intently, at first she didn’t notice Bernice reach a hand through the bars toward Dylan.

  Christine leapt to her feet. “Keep away!” She pressed knife-sharp fingernails against the tall girl’s throat. “Don’t touch him!” Bernice stumbled backward. Only the bars prevented Christine lunging at her.

  Hunter and Controller jumped toward them; the guards grabbed their weapons.

  Dylan blinked awake. He tugged at her arm. “Christine! It’s okay. She’s a friend.”

  Christine lowered her hand, but only because Dylan was pulling at it. She shrugged him off. “What do you mean, friend?” I have no friends, she thought, and felt chilled.

  Dylan was a Normal; he fitted in. He might make some friends some day, if enough Normals stayed alive. But she belonged nowhere.