Afterworld

by Lynnette Lounsbury

  Eva gestured for him to join the line and she filed in behind him. Eduardo patted him on the shoulder.

  ‘I’ll be out here.’ He gestured widely to the square. Dom could see several other people settling themselves on benches in the warmth for a siesta. Guardians.

  ‘Of course you will,’ Eva said sarcastically. ‘Stay sober at least.’

  He winked. ‘I never drink liquor when I’m working, Eva. You should know that.’

  ‘Yes, I should know that shouldn’t I?’

  He wandered away across the square, his broad shoulders still a little rounded by the hangover, but nevertheless cutting an impressive figure. He had the appearance of a dishevelled warrior and Dom thought it must be quite boring for him, always protecting people from what seemed to be very limited dangers.

  As they approached the gate he noticed people were holding their hourglasses up as though they were an entry pass. There was a dark hallway with several numbered doorways. People entered one of these after they showed their hourglasses. A thin man in old baggy brown trousers entered the door closest to the line and Dom strained his neck to see inside. He caught a glimpse of a dark room with machinery and some sort of assembly line of workers. A factory.

  Everyone seemed to know what they were doing and he wondered why there weren’t more new people. Surely thousands, even millions of people were dying every day. If what Eva had guessed was right, then maybe some of them went straight back – he hesitated to even think the word reincarnation, it still felt weird to him that it might be a reality – but even so, there should be more here than just him. Finally he noticed a man, possibly in his early thirties, just ahead of him, flanked by an older woman. The man paused and spoke into a small window near the gate. The gate opened and they were taken out of sight to the left of the row of doors. It must be another new guy and his Guide. Finally it was Dom’s turn. Eva also spoke towards the dark window.

  ‘Dominic Mathers. New.’

  ‘Thank you, Eva, you can take him in.’ The voice was ancient, raspy and raw and yet the sort of voice you expected of a Santa Claus in the mall, welcoming and jolly. Dom hoped it was not an illusion. He had an equally vivid vision of Santa turning out to be another glowing Nephilim or even worse, an Angel.

  He waited silently next to Eva in the hallway. The other new man was stunned and confused and kept peering around without focusing on anything. His Guide was a round, motherly woman, who rubbed his arm supportively and made encouraging statements. ‘It’ll be fine, Rob. It’s just like any new job, you learn as you go, and whatever it is you end up doing – it’s minutes in the bank.’ She grinned at Dom and winked.

  He glanced at Eva, who seemed to have read his mind. ‘It’ll be fine, Dom, It’s like any new job. Except you’re dead. So there’s no need for workplace safety or compensation.’

  He gave her a wry smile and took stock of his surroundings. They were inside the giant hangar. It was like all the other buildings, made of black stone, but designed like something out of the Industrial Revolution, dark with low ceilings and the feeling of a dungeon. A nearby door opened and the man who’d spoken through the window walked in. He was taller than most average men, at least six and a half feet, but clearly ancient; his skin was wrinkled and darkly tanned, his hair white and long. He had an equally long beard. Despite his apparent age however, he was spry, and his eyes were wise and clear.

  ‘Good morning, Robert and Dominic. Welcome to your first day of work. Your Guide will have already explained our system of payment here in the City of the Dead. You will earn minutes. After today you will have to pay for your own accommodation and food so it is important that you earn your way here. You will also need to save enough minutes to continue your journey through the Afterworld.’ He smiled as though this was the most natural conversation in the world. ‘But, where are my manners? I have not introduced myself. I am Enoch and I run the City’s work program. You will always be able to work here. You are able to gain employment elsewhere of course, but there is guaranteed work here for anyone who wants it.’ He turned to the bewildered Robert. ‘Welcome, Robert.’ He touched his arm briefly and said, ‘I believe you would be more comfortable working inside and alone, is that correct?’

  Robert stared at him blankly. Then leaned forward, his hands outstretched in desperation, ‘I really don’t understand anything my Guide has told me.’ He watched the woman with thinly veiled horror. ‘If I am really dead, then why am I here? This doesn’t seem to be heaven and I shouldn’t be in hell. I shouldn’t be here.’ He started to sob quietly, his body retching.

  Enoch reached out and held his arms. Robert calmed a little. ‘This is not hell. There is no hell.’ Enoch looked deep into his eyes and said it again slowly, ‘There is no hell.’ Then he smiled. ‘As for heaven? Well, that may be yet to come. Or it may be here. That, as with everything in life and death, is up to you.’

  ‘I don’t understand!’ Robert’s voice cracked again. ‘I am a minister, I know what is supposed to happen after death. I know.’

  ‘You know what you believed. Do you know what everyone else believed?’ Enoch smiled. He looked at Dominic for a moment. ‘I see we have our youngest worker ever. A pleasure to meet you. I have the alternate honour of being the oldest person to ever live in the City.’

  ‘How old were you when you died?’ Dom asked impulsively. Enoch was spry, but he also resembled the pictures of Noah Dom had seen in children’s books.

  ‘Well, that’s an unanswerable question, Dominic, because I never died.’ He watched Dom’s face carefully and smiled again. ‘I was over nine hundred years old when I came here. I have been here longer than anyone.’

  ‘Enoch from the Bible?’ Robert spluttered.

  Enoch laughed. ‘Apparently. Though I have never read the Bible. People talk about it, but no one has been able to bring one with them.’ The Guide with Robert laughed along with him. Eva did not.

  Dom had never heard of Enoch. He wondered how much he had missed out on by having atheist parents. He knew nothing about any religion and, apparently, all of them were at least partially right.

  ‘That is a very good analysis, Dominic.’ Enoch looked at him deeply. ‘All of them were right.’

  Dom straightened up quickly. ‘You can read my mind?’

  ‘I am from a different time to you, Dominic. There are many things my mind can do that yours has forgotten.’

  ‘What was he right about?’ Eva spoke up.

  ‘That this place was created by all religions and all beliefs.’ He looked at Robert. ‘You have known exactly what you believe and have been taught, and you are right that what you believe in life creates what happens to you after your death. But you have not understood that you are not the only one on Earth. You are all one energy, one people, one consciousness. Very few of you have understood this. All of you have thought and understood different things, but they have all worked together as one energy to create the lives that you lived, the world that you lived in and, of course, the next world as well. This place is a product of all the beliefs of the old ways, the magicians, the Nephilim, the Earth religions, the sun-worshippers, the polytheists, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, everything. And the atheists, Dominic. Everyone’s beliefs created this place. There are things, Robert, that you will recognise from your own beliefs, but there is much that will be new to you, especially if you gave no time to the thoughts and beliefs of others when you were alive.’

  Dom turned to watch Robert’s reaction and caught the change in his face. It was as though he had just had the most terrifying realisation of his life. Or death as it were. It was the face of someone realising he was wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. Tears streamed silently down his face.

  ‘This is not happening,’ he said softly. ‘This can’t be happening. I have been responsible for saving hundreds of lives. Thousands, and this is . . . I have a special relationship with God.’

  Enoch smiled gently at him. ‘The Awe will like you, Robert. And you
are special. Just as special as everyone else.’

  He leaned towards Robert’s Guide. ‘Martha, can you take him to the third-floor packing centre? Set him up there. Are you working today?’

  ‘No, I’m just going to be here for him today.’ She smiled, nodding in deference to the old man and leading Robert towards a nearby door. Dom craned his neck as it opened and saw a brightly lit staircase leading upwards into the building. Soon he was gone.

  Enoch reached out and touched Dom’s arm. ‘And you, young man, would prefer to work outdoors, am I right? With your Guide?’

  Dom blushed immediately. He kept his eyes away from Eva, though he felt her look at him suddenly.

  ‘I – I can’t. I am just delivering him today. I have . . . something else,’ she blustered.

  ‘That’s okay, Eva. Perhaps another time, it is always good to see your lovely face.’ Enoch put his other arm around her. ‘I’ll escort him to the orchard today.’ He nodded for Eva to go. She glanced back at Dom quickly. ‘Good luck. I’ll meet you back here at dusk. And you have Eduardo if you need him. Much help may he be.’ She smiled briefly and Dom smiled back, nodding. Dom caught the tiny spark of electricity in her eyes. It almost stopped his heart and he heard Enoch chuckle under his breath. As she walked away, Dom said quickly, ‘Let’s just get to work, eh?’

  ‘Indeed.’ Enoch laughed. ‘Let’s work.’

  He led Dom towards a doorway that looked exactly like every other along the back wall and opened it for him, nodding for Dom to enter first. On the other side was row upon row of trees – a thick, lush orchard – and beyond that, a clear, greyish-blue sky. He was struck again by a sense of the supernatural in this place. He couldn’t possibly be still in the warehouse he had entered a moment ago, and he realised that the doors clearly led to completely different work spaces. He felt small. Smaller even than he had felt in the busiest parts of Delhi when he was surrounded by millions of people.

  ‘This is the orchard. It supplies almost all the fruit for the City.’ Enoch made a vast sweeping motion with his hand.

  Dom stared at the seemingly endless rows of trees and noticed the people swarming over them, on ladders, with baskets. It reminded him of a scene out of an ancient children’s book his grandmother had read to him.

  ‘Why don’t you use machines?’ he asked.

  Enoch smiled. ‘We don’t need to do things fast here and we don’t need to save minutes. This isn’t a business, this is part of the Necropolis itself. Created by the Awe. We can offer work to anyone who wants it.’ He chuckled again. ‘And there is never a shortage of people. They just keep coming.’ He patted Dom’s shoulder and became suddenly serious. ‘Be discerning in your choice of friends and workmates. You will no doubt attract attention, being so young. Be wise.’ He turned and left, closing the door behind him.

  Dom did not have time to worry about being left to his own devices. A tall, thin man in a faded pair of overalls approached him immediately. His skin was very pale and his hair a lemony white. Dom wondered if he had Nephilim blood. He didn’t glow, however, and when he spoke it was with a thick Scandinavian accent.

  ‘You will be in the fourth quadrant today. About half a kilometre down that row. The red gate.’ He nodded down a row, considered Dom with narrowed eyes for a moment and when Dom just stood there, he nodded again, moving him along.

  Half a kilometre? Dom sighed. He started to walk, wondering if this was part of his job or if he would only be paid for the fruit that he picked. As he walked the row, he felt the eyes of the workers on him. There were groups of four or five people at each tree. Some were up ladders, other scaling the higher branches, throwing fruit down. Those on the ladders caught the fruit, filled the baskets and then lowered them to the next person who loaded them onto their shoulders and carried them towards large carts. Dom wondered how they pulled the carts if they had no horses, but before the thought had even finished forming, he saw a cart further along the row being pulled by two men. He smiled to himself. Maybe life without animals was possible – people just had to do some of the heavy work themselves. He wondered how some people coped. His father would struggle. He had spent his whole working life in offices and meetings and flying first class to opulent hotels. He had probably eaten gourmet food for the last twenty-five years as well. How would he respond to the vegetarian stews and simple bread they had here? As he imagined it his smile faded. It wasn’t a hypothetical thought – his father would have to cope with this one day. When he died. Assuming this wasn’t a bad dream, or a coma, or a near-death experience – all of which he was still hoping it might be.

  He had passed countless trees before he came to a gate. It wasn’t red though. It was green. The fence ran as far as he could see in either direction and there seemed to be no end to it. He pushed the gate open and kept walking. A fresh group of workers paused to watch him go by, some whispering to each other. Again it was an incredible mix of people; all colours and races, all types of dress. He spotted a man in traditional Native American dress and he wondered if he had died at a fancy-dress party. Then the man turned to him and the proud arch of his eyebrows made Dom bow his head in respect. The man smiled very slightly and went back to work, up the ladder – picking fruit.

  To keep his mind from the staring eyes he looked more closely at the trees. What sort of fruit did the City need so much of? There were thousands of trees. And they all seemed the same. Not actually the same. They were different shapes and heights, just like any orchard. But they were all the same type of tree. Like an apple tree with darker, thicker leaves. He looked into a basket as he went past. In the basket were dozens of different types of fruit. Some of them he recognised: apples, oranges, hands of bananas, strawberries and mangoes. But there were some he couldn’t place; one looked a little like a pomegranate, another like something his mother had brought home once called a dragon fruit. He turned back to the trees again and his suspicions were confirmed. Each tree carried all the different varieties – hanging on the branches, next to each other, in clusters with other fruits. He saw a papaya and an avocado. He even saw something that resembled a pineapple, though he was sure pineapples didn’t grow on trees at all. It wasn’t noticeable at first because the trees were so thick and green, but when he examined them closely, and saw the riot of fruit that grew on the trees, it was extraordinary. He smiled and without realising how far he had walked, found himself at the red gate.

  There were still rows of trees as far as he could see, but there were very few workers out here. He opened the gate and approached the first person he saw, a heavyset woman of about fifty, in an old apron and patterned headscarf.

  ‘Excuse me. Enoch sent me down here to work. Is this the right place?’ He had to lean down to meet her gaze, she was only as high as his shoulder. She looked up at him, startled, and dropped her empty basket. She placed a hand over her heart.

  ‘So young. I haven’t seen a boy in almost a hundred years.’ She reached up to touch his face. He leaned back a little in discomfort. He hoped this reaction would stop in a few days, once everyone knew he was the youngest and got over it. He was beginning to realise though, that in a place as huge as this, probably larger than the world he had just left, he might become something of an infamous celebrity, just for being a kid. He shuddered. Before she could gush any more, another woman walked over and brushed her aside.

  ‘Leave him alone, Mariam. He’s a worker, just like the rest of us.’ The woman, who seemed reasonably young herself, was wearing a brown cloak, similar to those worn by most of the people in Necropolis, but he noticed a pair of jeans underneath that suggested she was from the same century as he was.

  ‘I’m supposed to work somewhere here . . .’ he started.

  ‘Yep. My crew. Down here. You can pack the baskets onto that cart over there. When it is almost full give us a yell and we’ll take it to the store house.’ She gave no further instructions and simply climbed up a nearby ladder and disappeared into the foliage.

  ‘Hey,’ s
aid a scrawny man at the base of the tree. ‘I’m David.’

  ‘Dom.’

  The man smiled at him, revealing a row of twisted, snarly teeth. His skin was sallow, tight and sinewy. If he had been back in the US, Dom would have pegged him as a junkie. But since there wasn’t anything chemical here, he wondered what could have caused such a jaundiced face. Most people seemed, no matter how old they were, to act as though they were in their prime. People who were sixty working beside those in their twenties, all lifting and pulling as well as each other. But David coughed and hacked regularly and every basket of fruit that was passed to him threatened to topple him into the dirt.

  The work was not particularly difficult, but after about an hour Dom wished that it was. Or at least that it was interesting. For the first few baskets he marvelled at the different types of fruit that came off the one tree. It seemed to be an endless variety. Every single basket had something new. But after carrying basket after basket to the cart he found that it was going to take them a very long time to fill the cart and the work was extremely monotonous. He also found that he didn’t even enjoy the thinking time. Two summers ago he had decided not to go back to India for the summer vacation and had worked at his roommate’s farm. The boy’s father grew strawberries and they had spent day after day bent over picking strawberries for six dollars an hour. The only thing he enjoyed was the thinking time. Thinking about Melanie, the girl he fancied at the time and who had subsequently moved to Michigan before he even got back to school. Thinking about basketball and running plays in his head until he had them memorised, and even, on a really slow day, learning the periodic table off by heart. That was the year he had aced Chemistry. He had spent his time thinking about places he wanted to travel to, experiences he wanted to have, to try, his career, his future. Now whenever thoughts entered his head he was reminded by the baskets of fruit, the bright but sunless grey-blue sky and the twitching gaze of David underneath the tree that he was dead and there was no future. At least no future he had any interest in. Everything he had heard from his Guide and Guardian made him more concerned about the future. A world where people might be out to get him, followed by a terrifying Maze and maybe, if he succeeded, he might meet up with some version of God. It was better to think about nothing. Or, he blushed at the sudden thought, about Eva.