by Luke Kondor
“What have I done?” he muttered to himself, sloshing his spirit on his lap. The statement unheard above the raucous of music.
*
In one of the lake-view cabins at the far side of the lake, Joanna sipped from her broth of water and noodles and watched as Sunny slept. His eyes, hidden beneath those soft lids, danced to their own tune as they flitted left to right, up, and down.
It was a relief to not see the glowing embers of green anymore. For a while, as Sunny had settled down to doze, they cast an eery light upon the dark room. Every time she looked at them she could see the Scarred Man. Could hear the words as though he were sat in the corner of the room.
“Yes, yes, yes.”
She stared at him now, sleep evading her, wondering what a child like Sunny dreamed about. A child who had grown up in this savage world. Born after the TVs stopped producing shows. After the radios were silenced. There were still books and comics, sure, but they told stories of a world that wasn’t his own. If he were to read about the Amazing Spider-Man swinging through the skyscrapers of New York, saving pedestrians in the streets from the Green Goblin or Doctor Octopus, what kind of reference point did he have? For all they knew, New York wasn’t there anymore.
So what does the boy dream of? If his dreams were anything like her own, they would be of running. Of being chased. Of death and loss and the rot. Of a bunker below the Earth’s surface, taking orders from emotionless drones with loud mouths. Of chemicals in bottles and silver instrument trays. Bubbling liquids and—
Sunny’s eyes flickered. He rolled onto his side and snored.
No. For then, who would ever sleep again?
“Oh, Sunny,” she said, leaning over and feeling the softness of the boy’s hair in her palm. “If only I could understand you. If only they had really told me what you are…”
She sat back against the cold wall and closed her eyes.
*
He viewed Hope as a pilot might view the town from a helicopter. A small circle of cabins lost amongst a sea of greenery. Sunny was high up right now. Several hundred metres above the surface of the world, looking down like a bird, observing the intricacies of the land. The way the roads danced up and down the hills, winding as a thick ribbon of darkness. The way the clusters of houses comprising the old villages and hamlets stood isolated and abandoned. He knew they were once live with polka dots of yellow artificial lights, bathrooms, living rooms, bedrooms. Yet now they were voids of blackness. Dead zones in the otherwise breezy countrysides of grey-green shimmers.
There were pockets of fire somewhere far in the distance. Nothing humongous. Not here anyway. Little three-person campfires, silhouetted survivors warming hands and cooking food.
But that wasn’t what Sunny was looking for. That wasn’t where the disturbance he felt lay.
Sunny continued his trajectory, flying ever higher. Reaching altitudes higher than his body could ever feel, but never once feeling the physical bursts of the wind, the cold, or even the lack of oxygen. For he wasn’t using his own faculties to reach this view. This was something much different. The viewpoint of some networked consciousness.
He couldn’t remember at what point he had earned this gift. It was just a part of him. Something that he did. Something that happened without explanation and occurred at times when the pull from within became so strong that it could no longer be ignored. The pull of the others.
He soared ever onward, arriving above a large hill dotted with bodies. Men and women were screaming, tears hot on their faces. Children stood frozen to the spot, fear paralysing them.
And there, directly below now, a woman, a ruler. Proud and strong. Pulling on the arm of an old man with silver hair.
The man stumbled along, his breath shallow and hurried. From deep within his body came a glow of something foreign to the man, but familiar to the boy. They ducked into a brick house. She sat him on a chair, kneeling in front of him.
You see him?
A voice.
The same as always.
The voice of the many.
And he did see the man. Of course, he did. But it was the woman who drew his attention. Beautiful, dark. She carried a bow over her shoulder like that of Robin Hood, of which he’d read many stories lying in the cold room of his former underground home. The sides of her head shaven with a line of scarring, and hair only slightly longer on the top. Her eyes were focused, but sad. She grimaced and it didn’t suit her face. He didn’t know her, not one bit.
But still, he loved her.
You see him?
Sunny turned now to the old man. He was screaming, his mouth now gagged behind the beautiful lady’s sleeve as she tried desperately to quiet him. There was no doubt in Sunny’s mind that this was the warrior-lady’s father. The same hue of ice-blue in his eyes. The same sharp jawline, even with his aged skin obscuring it.
Focus. You see the man?
Yes, thought Sunny, I see the man. Of course, I see the man.
Sunny’s consciousness watched the man with great curiosity. One minute the man’s eyes were screwed tight in pain. The next, they snapped open, looking straight up into the air and through the roof, at Sunny. An unspoken communication travelling between the two. The man calmed.
Very good, said the voice. And he sees you.
*
Five kilometres east of Hope, Ria arrived at the lookout point on the hill. She was exhausted. Barely able to breathe in through the freezing winds at the top of the hill. Although the dogs led her to the door, she stumbled and fell through when they immediately stopped.
“Mutts!” she slurred. She had fulfilled her promise – to check on those who had fallen radio silent at Picnic Hill. But not before she had attended the start of the feast and drunk enough to sufficiently place her in that happy haze where life floated by and thoughts were slowed. “Come on you two. In!”
The dogs advanced slowly, hackles raised. It wasn’t much warmer inside the lookout. In fact, it seemed as though the door hadn’t been closed at all. The dogs reached the doorway and bared their teeth, growling deeply.
“Pack it in. Come inside with mama, get yourselves out the wind.”
She let out a shallow laugh until she turned, and the laugh cut as though someone had pulled the needle from a record track.
Hanging from the centre of the room were two men… one tall and the other small. They were both naked, splayed like spatchcock chickens. Their arms pulled back and tied with tight ropes around their legs, deep gouges cut out of their necks, so deep it seemed impossible for their heads to still be hanging on like that, like even the faintest whisper could topple them like Jenga pieces.
Ria let out a scream, only now realising her hands were slick with the blood. She pushed herself back against the wall, the dogs’ growls louder now, threatening to explode in a bark. One of her hands felt something cold and for a moment she panicked, until she saw the small radio set the two had been given to keep contact with those at Hope.
Without a second thought, she reached for the radio and flicked it on. Static crackled into life as she grabbed the microphone. She wasn’t sure if the damn thing was even on, but she was already crying for help. She needed to talk to someone. She needed to let Hope know. She couldn’t let Henry down again.
She heard footsteps outside. The door creaked open. She froze to the spot as the face of a young man leant down close to her, his breath rank and foul. A bow slung over his shoulder. In her drunken haze she forgot all about the small pistol at her side.
“Don’t yer be panicking now, missy. We don’t want yer hurt yer. We don’t do that ter the ladies.”
Another laugh. Across the room. She saw the silhouette of another man who had watched her the entire time. Her anguish at seeing the two dead men distracting her from his presence.
“That’s right,” the second man said. “Not the ladies. Oh no. What we’ve got planned fer you and yer town is much, much worse.”
~ 15 ~
A face emerging fr
om a bath of warm water. Lines of steam rising up from popping foam atop the water’s surface. Candles. Tealights that danced with the scent of vanilla and candy floss. A gasp of air as the face surfaced from the water, a violent eruption that destroyed bubbles, took out a couple of candlelights and splashed up in Colin’s face. Some of the sud-water finding its way into his mouth.
God, she was beautiful.
The water glided down the middle of Rachel’s back as she brushed the sopping wet hair away from her eyes. She laughed. A papery chuckle escaping her mouth as Colin leant over and pressed his lips to hers and whispered, “I love you, sweetie.”
She laughed, reaching for a glass of red wine sitting dangerously close to the side of the bath. She sipped and the mere sight of her wetting her lips and tongue was arousing. Oh to tear his clothes off and just climb in with her, escape it all and just spend all his remaining moments with her.
She smiled and wrapped her arms around herself. “You’re going to be late. Darren’s going to call soon and I don’t want my chill-night ruined by your fucking boss.”
Her voice was sexy. The alcohol only adding to her natural raspiness that he adored so much. He kissed her again, stood up and looked down at the smooth, naked form of his wife as she rolled onto her back, her bare breasts glistening in the candlelight, the water rolling off of her chest and down to her stomach. He struggled to tear his eyes away.
She smiled at him, well aware of the battle within his mind and he laughed, placing his hand on the bathroom door.
“What are you waiting for?” she said.
“You know what.”
She sipped more wine.
“I love you, too, Colin Bolton. I love you—”
Suddenly a hand touched his shoulder, dirty fingers clasping him. He grunted, taking his own gasping breath. Panic fired up as he turned to see the man staring at him with white in his hair and mud in his beard.
“Bolton, wake up. We’re moving out.”
It seemed he’d only just dropped off. He wasn’t sure when sleep had come, but already a purple dawn glow was working its way through the tent in which he’d been sleeping alone. Byron withdrew from the tent, the other sleeping bags had already been neatly folded away and stowed in the car. The sound of birdsong twinkled all around. Tiny creatures rustling amongst the fallen leaves. If he had to guess, he’d say it was about patrol time back on the farm, but his body ached something rotten and he was sure it was the all the running from the last few days.
Colin rubbed his eyes and clambered outside. Anton was on the other side of the road with Keaghan’s arm around his shoulders. He was helping the poor boy to piss in the trees. Byron was next to the car, stretching his arms above his head, shaking his fingers like some forest yogi. Once again Colin couldn’t help but notice Byron’s decision to stretch whilst topless. Was this just a thing that he did? The ultimate way to become one with nature, to bare his flesh to the gnats and things that bit?
Whisper trotted over to Colin, tail wagging.
“Hey, girl. You ready for our little mission? Yeah?”
She licked his hand and wandered back to Byron, taking a seat beside him, tail slapping the floor. Colin was about to call for Dylan when he turned to see the dog was already sat by his side.
“Morning,” Colin said, reaching down and patting the damp fur on his back. “How d’ya sleep?”
“Probably better than the rest of us,” Anton chipped in. “They had the warmth inside the car with the snoring stranger.” Keaghan offered a weak smile at that. He looked better, less pale. But nowhere in the zone of ‘fine’. “Now, come ons everyone. Gets the tent up. We’re moving out in five.”
A quick rinse of their mouths and a guzzle of water to remove the taste of dirt and they were away. The roads seemed exceptionally quiet. The only sounds were the wheels and engine rolling as the sun began its ascent, lighting up their way with a lazy golden glow. The roads became smoother and smoother as they passed signs with listings of villages and hamlets. They were clearly making their way now into increasingly built-up areas. They passed farms and houses and post offices with boarded-up windows and crumbling frames. They passed a petrol station, an industrial estate, and what looked like an office for Marks & Spencers. Each of them still with abandoned cars decorating their parking lots.
For the most part, they sat in silence. Whether it was the early morning or the fact that they were all mentally preparing themselves for what they might find, each were deep in their thoughts. Only Keaghan could be heard grunting as Anton clipped a pothole, or shifted gear too quickly causing the car to jolt.
When they turned a corner and emerged into what appeared to be a small town centre, it was Byron who spotted the military jeep laying on its side.
“That seems ominous,” he grumbled.
The tyres had deep slices in the sides and it looked like the inside of the jeep had been set on fire at some point in time. They passed too quickly to see much else (Anton still playing with the accelerator), but Colin was almost certain he saw the charcoaled face of a body welded to the seat.
As they journeyed further into the town, losing sight of the surrounding fields as the houses took over the landscape, old cobblestone buildings morphing into red-brick council estates with kids parks and swings, they began to notice a thin fog developing. A dark haze seeming to thicken with every passing mile.
“I didn’t know you could get fog like this in the centre of a town. Ain’t it usually the water from the fields as it gets hit by the sun? Trans… trans-something?” Anton asked, leaning closer to the steering wheel.
“Transpiration. But it’s not fog,” Byron said.
“What is it?”
“Can’t you smell it?” Colin asked, staring out the window at the crumbled remains of three houses which looked to have been hit by a small bomb. He saw another darkened object with its back against the wall. Dead body number two. “It’s smoke. Anybody else paying attention to the waxworks?”
“How many have you seen?”
“Two.”
“Lucky.”
“Whats are you guys talkings about—”
Anton stopped talking. Splayed in the centre of the road was the charred remains of a man and a woman, faces frozen in horror. Arms embraced around each other. Parts of their faces crumbled and warped from God-knows how many rainfalls.
Keaghan leant forward. “If you think this is bad, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
Anton manoeuvred around the poor couple, careful not to disturb their eternal sleep. A few metres along the road he swerved to avoid another. And then another. And then another. Before long he was playing slalom and the corpses were the cones.
“What the fuck happened here?” Colin asked Keaghan, unable to take his eyes off them. They weren’t just adult men and women. In gutters and in the smashed bay windows of houses he saw little-blackened figures that could have once been spritely children, waiting for the ice-cream man to chime their bells so they could run out with their pocket money and grab a 99 with a flake.
But now…
“We don’t know,” Keaghan said. “But the town is littered with these things. Old bodies. All bullet-riddled and burned. It was as if the government swept through and tore the place down. Beckett started a cleanup crew around the time he settled down on King’s Hill with the others. But it turned out there were too few of us who had the stomach to hack the job. I mean, think of it. Shifting and moving the burned remains of an entire town, so we can populate and make it our own again. Talk about selfish.”
“Talk about the smell,” Byron said, looking pale.
“Why woulds they do that?” Anton asked. “Why woulds the military shoot hundreds of these innocent peoples?”
Colin looked out the window to see a woman and a baby stroller on their side as if they had been cardboard cutouts blown over by the wind. The woman’s fluffy pink jacket (now a deep shade of brown and purple) was punctured with holes and the stroller completely empty.
“Because they were scared.”
Very soon they were crawling along in the Ranger, running off the biting point of the clutch alone, rumbling along at a snail’s pace. They had to. It seemed that every single human in King’s Hill had been mowed down by government enforcers and even those that made their break for it hadn’t made it too far before finding a bullet in their guts. The presence of absconded military jeeps and machines increased, some looking as though scavengers had already picked the carcasses clean for parts. Bonnets wide open like dead monsters with gaping mouths.
When they reached what appeared to be a four-car-pile-up (or a ‘man-made barricade’ as Byron pointed out), they were forced to pull the car over and proceed on foot.
“No time like the present, eh? We need to get out now. It just gets denser from here on out and you’ll just get your motor stuck.”
“How far are we from your camp?”
“Maybe an hour’s walk from here.” They all looked at Keaghan. “Don’t worry about me. I’m tough. I’ll make it somehow.”
He looked better, that was for sure. His skin looking almost back to a usual colour than the pasty version it had become. The bandage around his leg was tight, with little sign of any further blood coming through. But still, to be extra safe, Byron disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a hand-crafted crutch composed of the wooden beam from the wreckage of a house, tied together with some kind of rope he had found in the back of a nearby car.
“How many of them were there?” Colin asked, watching the boy as, even with the crutch, he struggled to limp along.
“I couldn’t tell you exactly. Maybe ten. Maybe five. Twenty. All I know is when the rifles started firing they made short work of our tents and we all fled. We were like lice in an upturned rock, scurrying away. I remember Susie telling stories of the people of Hope, and so I automatically just set out to find you all. It wasn’t even a thought. It just happened. I just kept going until I found our regular cache drop.”