Afterworld

by Lynnette Lounsbury

  ‘Really? What was it?’ Dom asked. ‘Not,’ he gasped, ‘not Windward!’

  ‘Yeah – you know it?’

  ‘No way! That’s my favourite game. I love it.’ He couldn’t hide his astonishment. ‘Your dad wrote it? That’s insane. How weird that he wrote a whole game about being dead. It’s like he . . . knew, or something.’ She looked away, and he instantly understood. He filled with anger.

  ‘Windward only came out this year, didn’t it? You said you’ve been here for ages. That’s why your father wrote a game about death – because you’d already been killed. So how would you know anything about it?’ He looked at her accusingly and she glared back, climbing to her feet.

  Dom jumped up. ‘Unless you use the Glass! You rant at me for doing something you do. That’s pathetic, Eva. I thought you were . . .’ He paused, he wasn’t angry enough to accidentally admit his infatuation.

  ‘You thought I was what?’ She lifted her chin. ‘I’ve never pretended to be anything. And I never said I hadn’t used the Glass. I simply told you it was stupid and dangerous. How do you think I know that, Dominic?’

  8

  Dominic’s Hourglass

  13 Minutes

  ‘Dominic Mathers?’ A voice interrupted before he could speak again. He turned quickly and saw a girl who could be a Victoria’s Secret model standing beside him. And slightly above him. She didn’t seem too much older than Eva, but she was a good head taller than both of them. Her long hair was a pale blonde and her skin, though not as white as Satarial’s, was porcelain. She had eyes the colour of the Aegean Sea, azure.

  ‘Are you Dominic?’ She smiled a dazzlingly perfect smile at him.

  ‘Yes.’ His anger evaporated.

  The girl took his hand and held it in hers. It was surprisingly warm and it felt odd feeling such warmth in this static, dead place. She closed her eyes, and inhaled, but he didn’t feel any invasion into his mind. She glanced at Eva, seemingly oblivious to the other girl’s disdain. ‘Hello, Eva. I haven’t seen you in a long time. Are you his Guide? Lucky girl.’ She was coquettish in a way that reminded Dom of the cheerleaders at his school. He couldn’t tell if she was sincere or not. He was sure, however, that she was the most incredibly beautiful girl he had ever seen.

  ‘I am so pleased to meet you. You are the talk of the City.’ She smiled.

  ‘Why are you here, Deora? Aren’t you meant to be Guiding someone?’ Eva lifted her chin and stepped a little closer to Dom. He tried to hide his smile as he felt her behind him.

  ‘Of course I am,’ the girl said, her voice gentle, cheerful and sincere. ‘I am with Lord Albert.’ She gestured to the man in the top hat who was sitting a few feet away, who had spoken of dinner parties. ‘He’s still in denial. He comes here every day. So I walk in the Gardens most of the day.’

  ‘Where is his Guardian?’ Dom asked.

  She laughed, a soft throaty laugh. It was so sexy the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. As if she knew, she reached out and touched his hair, which had grown longer, the twisted braids tied back, but hanging almost to his shoulders.

  ‘I love your hair, so wild.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Where’s your Guardian, Dominic?’

  ‘No idea,’ he admitted.

  She laughed again. ‘That’s the way of Guardians. They do their own thing. They are there when you need them. Things are calm in the City nowadays. They don’t have a lot to do.’

  ‘Calm? Was it different?’ He could easily imagine this place as a menacing city of murder and danger. The stillness always seemed fake; temporary.

  ‘Oh yes. Hasn’t Eva told you?’ She looked at Eva quizzically. ‘Oh, but she has only been here a few years. It was a very dangerous place once. Too many people spent their days at the Glass. Nobody was working, hardly anyone moved on. Before the Trials. The Trials saved the City.’

  ‘What are the Trials? Are they like the Olympics?’ he wondered aloud.

  ‘Think more Roman Colosseum.’ Eva sounded disgusted.

  ‘The battles in the Colosseum were brutal. Are they really like that?’

  ‘I have no idea what a Colosseum is,’ Deora admitted, smiling. ‘Maybe they are. People compete, fight, race. They can win a lot of minutes. Other people pay to watch. It gives people something to do and it’s a lot more fun than, well, hiding in your room because the streets aren’t safe. Isn’t it, Eva?’

  ‘I think we might see the Trials differently, Deora. Shouldn’t you be encouraging him to get out of here?’ Eva gestured at the vacant gaze of Deora’s ward.

  ‘He’s not ready. When he is, I’m here for him.’

  ‘That could take years!’ Eva was unimpressed.

  ‘Yes, it could. But I can’t make him work or want to leave. He still has a lot to learn first. I’m here when he’s ready.’ She smiled another calm and beautiful smile which she turned on Dom. ‘I’m so happy to have met you – the youngest to ever arrive. You are somewhat famous and I can feel why. You still feel alive.’

  Eva interrupted, ‘I’m going to find Eduardo. Are you coming?’

  ‘He’ll meet you later. I want a few more minutes of his fascinating company. Please?’ Deora smiled at both of them. Dom hesitated.

  Eva snorted her disgust and turned. ‘I’ll meet you back at the apartment. Soon.’ She turned and left, and Dom watched her walk away wondering if he should follow. But he was still angry at her, so he turned back to Deora. It wasn’t hard to choose to stay. Her blonde hair draped over a figure that he was almost terrified to look at. He tried to keep his eyes on hers, but it was difficult.

  ‘She is such a beautiful girl, Eva. Especially when she smiles!’ Deora had the gracious generosity of a girl confident in her own superior beauty. She gazed back at him. ‘You know, I was the youngest once. I got a great deal of attention here for a while.’

  Dom couldn’t imagine Deora ever lacking attention. ‘How old were you? When you . . . died.’ It still felt awkward to say it.

  ‘120.’ She smiled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘People lived much longer in my time,’ she smiled again. ‘To die at fifteen would have been to die in near-infancy! For some of us older ones, you seem almost surreal.’

  ‘When were you born?’ he asked.

  ‘The Age of Ephraim.’ She saw his blank look. ‘I don’t know much of your new times. But it was before the Ice and the Great Fires and before the Great Flood.’ She shrugged. ‘A long time ago anyway.’ Her smile was buoyant. ‘Not as long as some.’

  ‘Are you . . . are you Nephilim?’ Dom was hesitant. He wasn’t sure what the protocol was on issues of race. Was it rude to ask someone if they were part-Angel? People in India asked him all the time if he was ‘black’. His skin was lighter than most of Delhi’s residents and yet they often called him ‘black’. They also called Kaide ‘yellow’. It didn’t bother him at all. It drove his mother crazy though. She was forever correcting local shop owners or restaurant waiters with words like ‘Caucasian-African-American’ and ‘Japanese-American’, both of which brought blank stares to the faces of the locals. Kaide, whose skin was a tanned olive, often joked that black and yellow must be the same colour in India.

  He watched Deora’s exquisite face and her eyes narrowed for a moment. But they brightened quickly and she smiled a little. ‘You haven’t been here long, Dominic.’

  He thought she was going to leave it at that, she paused for so long, then eventually she continued. ‘I am not truly Nephilim. There are strict rules about race among the hybrid peoples. I am the daughter of a Nephilim and a woman. So I have some of their blood. You obviously didn’t know – but all Nephilim are male. But I live within the Nephilim clan.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realise.’

  ‘All Angels are male and all their offspring are male as well. There are no females until the second generation and even then they are rare.’ She smiled again, secure in her uniqueness. ‘Will you come to see the Trials then?’

  ‘I have to work. I’v
e hardly earned anything.’ He sighed.

  ‘What are you doing for work?’

  ‘The orchard.’

  ‘You’re at the Workhouse?’ She sounded horrified. ‘Why? You could get a job anywhere and earn ten times as much. What is Eva thinking sending you there? You must talk to her about that, Dominic, you don’t have to slave in the orchards for a few minutes a day. Not someone like you!’ Her hand reached out to touch his arm as she said it, and the warmth of it thrilled his skin. It rekindled the anger he felt towards Eva who was wasting his time in what was, apparently, the worst job in the City. He suddenly wished that Deora was his Guide. She seemed patient and understanding of the fact that someone could be overwhelmed by not only sudden death, but the discovery that they had a whole new unwanted life to live. He wished he could sit in the park for a few days and think. Maybe he would. It wasn’t as though Eva could stop him. He sighed softly. But then he would be here even longer and more than anything he wanted to get out of this place.

  ‘The Trials are tonight if you would like to come. They only hold them when there is a suitable contestant so it can be quite a wait. Come with me, I’ll be your escort.’ The look she gave him was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying. He had a date with a girl who was born before recorded history. And she might be able to get him close to Satarial.

  ‘Okay. I guess so – Deora.’ He felt fifteen at that moment, young and immature, and he lifted his head to try and make himself at least as tall as her chin.

  She laughed huskily. ‘Well, let’s go then, young Dominic.’

  ‘Just call me Dom,’ he muttered, fixing his satchel around his waist and falling into step beside her. She casually draped an arm around his shoulder and while he imagined it looked a little ridiculous to be with a woman a full head taller than himself, he hoped that when the inevitable stares began, at least they would be staring at Deora, not him.

  ‘What about your . . . person?’ He glanced around for the top hat and saw only greenery.

  ‘He’ll be fine. He’ll wander back to his apartment when it gets dark enough.’ She waved a graceful hand in the air to dismiss his concerns. ‘It’s not a very long walk, we can cut through the park and cross the bridge. Have you been to the Arena before?’

  ‘The Arena? No, I haven’t. What is it?’

  ‘It’s where the Trials are held. It’s in the centre of our part of the City and it is the most beautiful building you will ever see.’

  Dom wasn’t sure of that. He had seen enough black stone to know that no matter how architecturally creative the buildings were, it still made everything seem the same. He glanced to his right and left where the park thinned and there were more black stone apartments. Some were medieval, some looked industrial and some were almost modern, but they all blended together into blackness.

  They walked through the Gardens quickly. Deora glided effortlessly when she walked, her long legs taking strides that made Dom walk at an uncomfortable pace to keep up.

  Again Deora laughed, a soft husky laugh. ‘Won’t your Guardian be sorry to miss this, Dominic? I wonder where he is?’

  ‘About three paces behind you, Deora,’ came the lilting tones of Eduardo’s Spanish accent. They both jumped and turned to see him, clad in his dark cloak with the hood pulled up. He stood almost as tall as Deora, whose eyes narrowed at him.

  ‘Your Guardian is Eduardo? You didn’t mention that, Dominic?’ She sounded as though she were admonishing him. Why would she care if the drunken, morose Eduardo was his Guardian? She turned and kept walking, taking Dom’s hand and pulling him along with her. He had a sudden feeling of unease. There was an expression on Deora’s face, of frustration or fear or something he couldn’t read, that made him think she was not completely genuine. He hurried to keep up with her.

  It took them almost ten minutes to walk along the outer, hedged rim of the great park. It was strange for such a forest to be so quiet. They walked past thickly wooded trees and vines and undergrowth and there was barely a sound, no scurrying lizards or screeching birds. Just scratching and rustling and even that was limited by the lack of wind. At the other side of the park the City changed. The buildings were vastly proportioned and ancient in their appearance. Clearly this was where the wealthiest people of the City lived. It was brighter without the apartment buildings and the streets were wider. Some of the dwellings were almost castles and intermittently there were Greek- or Roman-style villas with columns and coloured frescoes on the outside walls. They stepped onto a footpath, wide and smooth. The stone of the houses was lighter than the black stone of the rest of the City; it shone like marble. They walked around a construction that resembled an Egyptian temple he had seen in history class and finally reached the bridge.

  ‘Man!’ Dom gasped. The river was not wide or particularly fast-flowing, but the water was so crystal clear that the stones beneath were magnified and distorted. It could have been shallow or it could have been ten metres deep – he couldn’t tell. The strangest thing was that he could smell it. He would have never thought water had a distinctive smell, but as they walked towards the bridge the pure clear sweetness made his eyes water and he reached forward involuntarily.

  ‘You can swim another day, Dominic,’ Deora smiled, ‘we don’t have time today.’

  Swim. He turned to Eduardo who shrugged his shoulders and smiled. ‘It’s cold in there.’

  They walked across the bridge, which was a wide arch of carved marble. It was one single piece of stone, seamless and intricately carved. It was wide enough for several lanes of traffic, and since the only traffic here was people and the occasional cart pulled by a person rickshaw-style, it seemed vast. The detail in the carved rails shocked him. There were scenes from life, from history. Roman and Greek figures and other cultures and styles of art he did not recognise at all. Figures that were taller than the others, he assumed to be the Nephilim, but some of them rode on flying creatures – dragons. There were creatures that were clearly dinosaurs, though modern historians hadn’t quite captured the ferocity these frescoes showed. Some of the creatures had flames and sprays of water coming out of their mouths. He smiled. It made him feel strangely happy to know that dragons were real. He had believed in them as a kid only to have his mother assign them to the same category as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and God. It was a shame those reptiles hadn’t come here when they died, he would have loved to see them in the flesh. He wondered if there was anyone in the City who had been eaten by a dragon or a dinosaur. The thought made him grin. Deora gazed at him with curiosity.

  ‘Oh, you didn’t have the Big Ones did you? I had heard that. I always remember life as I lived it. It must have been very different for you.’ She gave the dinosaurs a cursory glance, but reached out to stroke a relief of a dragon so detailed it had scales. ‘They were so beautiful.’ Her voice was wistful for a moment. ‘They had their own language, you know. It was very difficult to learn, but the Nephilim could speak to them.’

  ‘That’s awesome.’ Dom was a little jealous. ‘Life must have been so different for you. No cars or planes.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She seemed confused.

  ‘I mean before the world got really, I don’t know, technological. We had spaceships – people travelled to the moon. And we could fly to different parts of the country and the world.’

  She laughed a loud, throaty laugh and Dom was surprised to hear Eduardo chuckling as well. He looked at him for an explanation, but his Guardian just winked at him.

  ‘Do you think we lived in a swamp? Or a cave?’ She laughed. ‘I’ve heard the stories. You think we crawled out of the mud and wandered around for centuries trying to start a fire?’ Her voice changed a little then. ‘We lived for hundreds of years, Dominic. My mother was over four hundred years old when I was born. We did not need to be near each other to communicate. We could speak through our minds, at least those who were not pure Nephilim. They had to use touch. My mother and I would speak to each other when she was huge distances away.r />
  ‘My world was more complex than this Necropolis, Dominic, so don’t believe this is any more like my life than it is like yours. We flew great distances too – only we used the Great Ones.’ She gestured at the dragon. ‘We had commerce across the entire planet. Leaders from across the world came together regularly to discuss trade and politics and keeping the slaves in order. My parents’ estate was almost as big as this part of the City.’ She was silent a moment. Dom was surprised by her expression. He had expected grief or some sort of wistfulness, but he saw anger, her face twisted with it as she touched the fresco with her long pale hand. When she turned to meet his gaze it was gone. He shuddered a little and had the feeling again that Deora might be dangerous; that Nephilim blood might be something he should avoid. At least he always knew where he stood with Eva. She always told him exactly what she thought.

  Someone bumped into him and jolted the thought from his mind. He suddenly noticed that a lot of people were crossing the bridge.

  Deora was also knocked out of her reverie. ‘We should hurry – the roads will get busy soon.’

  Dom looked back the way they had come and saw that this was an understatement. Hordes of people were walking towards the bridge and despite its width, the entrance was choking with the volume. He turned and kept walking, finding that Eduardo was no longer behind him, but at his right side, his hood down and his eyes wary. Dom glanced around. Most people seemed intent on simply reaching the Trials, but occasionally someone would notice him and gesture to a friend. He heard the word ‘fifteen’ and sighed. He still couldn’t believe it would be interesting to anyone that he was a teenager, though he imagined that if some of these people were from Deora’s time and were in their hundreds, it might seem very young. Then he heard someone say ‘child’ and, while it annoyed him, he was conscious again of the lack of children. There was no one scrambling lost through the crowd, no prams weaving back and forth and no high-pitched cries from babies. There were babies everywhere in Delhi. Thousands of them. It was the standard noise of the night in India to hear a baby crying. But he didn’t miss it. He didn’t know any small children and he didn’t feel any . . . connection with them. Kaide loved kids and was always carrying a snotty, grimy child around, playing some sort of skipping game in the dirt or babysitting the child of another American family on the compound. Dom wondered if it was a girl thing or just a personal thing. He couldn’t even imagine having kids. He wouldn’t know how to be a parent. Workaholic or alcoholic – that was all he knew about parenting.