by Zara Zenia
I watch for a moment as the old woman walks away. She meets up with an equally old man and they hug awkwardly before walking off into the distance. The train starts up once again and we’re on the move.
“Ok, Voland. It’s now or never. You can do it.”
I hold the communicator so tightly that my knuckles turn white. Then, I press the big, red button that’s situated in the center of the device. It makes a peculiar buzzing sound then shrieks as if it’s in some sort of electronic pain. At last, the mechanical shrieking stops and a voice can be heard from the tiny speaker within.
“Who is this?”
It’s Saurad and he’s angry.
“You don’t know me. Not personally anyway,” I say.
I sound surprisingly calm as though I make these sorts of calls every day.
“I have a message for you, Saurad, and a message for Palzu.”
“Is that so?” his voice is miserly and high pitched. “Well, why don’t you tell me who you are?”
“The group of Orbans who escaped to Earth. I know where they are.”
Saurad goes silent. In the background, I can hear him shuffling around.
“And how do you know where they are?” he asks.
I can hear that he’s trying to sound calm but the quiver in his voice betrays him. He’s just as nervous as I am and eager to hear what I have to say. I realize I have the upper hand and torment him for a second longer.
“I just know,” I say. “I know everything.”
“You sound like quite a mysterious man,” he muses.
“I am.”
I don’t say another word. The shuffling noise gets louder then I hear his footsteps. They get faster and faster as though he’s hurrying somewhere.
“Are you still there?” he asks.
I keep quiet.
“Hello?”
He sounds desperate now with his voice coming out of him croaky and pained.
“Are you there?” he repeats. “Hello?”
“I’m here,” I say at last. “Now listen, the Orbans on Earth are heading west.”
“How do you know this?”
His voice is pleading with me for more information.
“I just do,” I say.
Then I hang up.
Chapter 3
Voland
I spent the last of my money on the train ticket, which in hindsight seems idiotic. Now I’m in a new town with no food and nowhere to stay. But I’ve come this far, traveled across the universe with nothing but the skin I was in. At least now I have some meager possessions, some clothes folded neatly into a bag I carry on my back and a few books that Benzen kindly gave me.
It’s the middle of the night now and the air is chilled. Orba is a hot place, always has been, always will be. The weather has remained the same for thousands of years with no temperature or humidity fluctuations. It is what has made Orba such a thriving planet as it means planning everything is an easy task. Here on Earth, however, the weather seems to change from minute to minute. You wake up and sometimes the sun is shining, then a few hours later it is cold and water is falling from the sky. Alison told us it is called rain, a phenomenon of water droplets escaping from fluffy, white clouds. It seems weird to me but so does everything else here. Still, the rain I think is the worst part of planet Earth. It seeps through your clothes and stays there for hours until you can’t stop shivering. It makes a good day into a terrible one and it can spring up out of nowhere. It’s starting to rain now. I can feel the small globs of cold water splatter across my face.
“Ugh… I hate this stuff,” I mumble to myself as I walk.
In the distance, I can hear people talking and looking down to my arms, I make sure that they are the weak beigey pink that most humans here are colored and not the usual blue that I usually am. The voices seem to be angry, they’re arguing about something I can’t quite comprehend.
“The drink, Dave. The fucking drink. Where’s the vodka?”
“I ain’t got your freakin’ vodka! Get your own!”
“I had my own but then you took it.”
“I said get your own!”
What are these people saying? The conversation seems so pointless and circular but that is another strange personality quirk of the humans, their conversations are mostly nonsense. They talk about fictional things they have seen on the television box and do so with such a great fervor that you would imagine them to be talking about something important.
Following the voices around a corner, I see that they are coming from a gap that is situated between two large buildings. I know what these buildings are, they’re factories. I recognize them from the long chimneys that reach out from the rooftops. Alison told me all about factories and how everything humans eat, wear and use comes from inside them. Except it doesn’t look like these factories are in use. The walls are crumbling and the windows are broken. The wind whips up and rattles through the bricks making a hideous howling sound. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would want to hang out here but as I follow the voices deep into the alley, I see that I have stumbled across someone’s home.
There are makeshift beds lining the narrow gap with glass bottles littering the cobbled stones. It smells bad like something has become rotten and sour. I pinch my nose as I walk into the alley. My gut is telling me I shouldn’t walk any further but with nowhere else to go, I don’t think I have much to lose.
“Hello?” I call out.
My voice ricochets off the factory walls. Immediately, the voices stop arguing. I hear a faint whispering, the sound of people muttering in collusion.
“Dave, did you hear that?”
“What?”
“Someone’s here.”
Their hushed tones are muffled. There’s the clink of a bottle, the sound of footsteps stumbling on the cobbles.
“Hello?” I call out again.
This time there’s nothing but silence. It’s then that I can make out the vague outline of figures crouched down in the shadows. There are more people here than I expected and suddenly, as I find myself encroaching on their den, I think that I’ve made a mistake.
“Who are you?”
A body jumps out from the shadows, swaying in front of me with a bottle in his hand. For the most fleeting of moments, his face is illuminated by the moonlight. I see the red, open sores on his face and the way his eyes appear to be facing in opposite directions. I see the way shreds of clothing hang from his bony frame and how the fingers clutching the bottle are stained dark brown with broken, yellow nails protruding like shards of glass.
“Who are you?” he repeats.
I’m too stunned to answer. He isn’t like any human I’ve met before. He must be some other species perhaps or maybe he’s an alien like me.
“Are you fr-from Earth?” I stutter.
“What did he say?” a voice comes from behind a dumpster.
“He asked if I’m from Earth,” the googly-eyed man chuckles.
There’s an eruption of laughter from the shadows. As my eyes adjust to the dim light, I start to see the other people. They’re all dressed in peculiarly mismatched clothing. There are metal carts everywhere, stacked up high with garbage and miscellaneous objects. They’re all clutching bottles of foul-smelling liquid and staring at me with dark, beady eyes that are little more than slits in their scabbed over faces. These are strange people.
“Are you a tribe?” I ask.
“A tribe?” Googly-Eyes asks as he trips over a cart.
“Hey!” a man shouts out from beside me. “Check to see if he has money, or at least take those sneakers of his. I’d do it myself if I could stand up.”
He laughs to himself, his voice wheezing out of his decrepit lungs.
“Come here!”
Googly-Eyes staggers toward me, his pungent odor getting stronger as he approaches. I leap back to get away from him but his fingers are soon tangled within the front of my shirt as he pulls me up close to his face. There’s a yellow crust at the corners of his
lips, a patch of dried blood matting the fine hairs below his nostrils and his hair is long and wet with the falling rain. I shiver and shake as his hands push into my chest. He opens his mouth, the smell of his breath somehow worse than the rest of him.
“Give me everything you got,” he says.
“Eh?”
“Your shoes, your clothes, your wallet and that nice bag of yours. It’s mine now.”
“Um, no. I think you’re mistaken. These are my things.”
He narrows his eyes and winds his fingers even tighter around my shirt. His knuckles are pushing into me, their hard nubs rubbing against my rib cage.
“Hand it all over!” he grunts.
Somehow he thinks he is brave and strong like a warrior. He is shouting in my face as though I should be afraid of him, but I’m not. After all, he is small, weak and inebriated. A gentle slap to the side of his head would make him collapse to his knees. Of course, I don’t do such a thing. I may have been a soldier but I hate to inflict pain on people, especially someone as unfortunate as this man.
“I will not do as you say. I am going to take your hands off my body now. If you are a sensible man, which I assume you might be, then I would make sure you feel lucky for the kindness of my gesture.”
“What the fuck you sayin’ kid?” he asks.
He turns to his friends in disbelief. They look up at us bleary eyed with their mouths crooked and their eyes glazed over. One of them shrieks with laughter.
“He sounds like a real momma’s boy!” he shouts at us. “I’d whoop his ass.”
I don’t know what this means but at the moment, I don’t need to. Looking at the man in front of me as I peel his fingers off my shirt, I see a flicker of anger in his eyes. Then he reaches into his pocket at lightning speed. I see the glint of something metal, hear a whooshing sound and duck away just in time before he swipes a knife in my direction.
“Get away!” I yell. “I can beat you with my bare hands if I want to. I am so much stronger than you so I suggest you stop this now or you will be hurt.”
His friend laughs even louder, hurling an empty bottle in my direction as he does so. It clatters and smashes at my feet and I do a peculiar dance to escape the flying shards of glass. Meanwhile, my assailant is lunging at me again, the knife gripped between his bony fingers as he aims it at my throat.
“Give me your money!” he shouts.
“I don’t have any!” I retort.
“Bullshit!”
With no other option and as I fear for my safety, I punch him square in the nose. A ribbon of blood flows out from both his nostrils and spreads all over his chest, dripping down to his shoes.
“Oh, fuck,” I hear one of his friends say.
Then the man falls to his knees. For a second his eyes get even more googly then his eyelids flicker shut. He collapses on his face in a puddle of murky rainwater, the knife sliding along the ground landing somewhere beneath a dumpster.
His friends look at me, then to the unconscious man, then back to me again. If they weren’t angry before, they are now. There’s a livid rage in their eyes as I watch them stand up. Although they are not as fit and healthy as I am, they sure look determined and as they stagger toward me, I realize I’m in real danger. Something at the back of my mind tells me I should leave immediately and I don’t hesitate. I turn on my heel and sprint out of the alley, running far into the distance until the crazy people behind me are nothing more than a memory.
The streets of this city are long and winding, more like a labyrinth than somewhere people could live. This city seems so different to where we lived in Virginia. I can’t explain it but it somehow seems old and ruined, like a place from a movie I once watched with Benzen and Allison. Most of the buildings are abandoned with wooden boards instead of windows and great bit holes in the roof that leak water.
I slow down to a walk as I catch my breath. I’m still in an industrial area with even more empty factories lining the streets. There’s the scurry of a small animal somewhere nearby but I can’t see a thing. All I can hear is my own footsteps and I look down at my tired feet and see the only light comes from the moon above. There are remnants of streetlamps around me but none of them work. As I squint to look closer, I see that most of them have been smashed. I wonder if a terrible war occurred here. It looks like a battle could have been lost, a terrible one that wiped out most of the population and destroyed nearly all the buildings.
I stop in the middle of the street and gaze up. The buildings loom up high and hostile like great abandoned watchtowers in the dystopian night. Then I see it, the open window where the board was pried away. I jump through, desperate to get out of the rain. It’s even darker in here and it smells terrible, like the men back there.
“Ugh!”
I pinch at my nostrils and wrap my arms around my shoulders in a futile attempt at keeping myself warm. Something crunches beneath my feet, something brittle with a squishy center. I’m too scared to look and keep walking. I regret coming in here as I realize how vulnerable I am.
A half-broken staircase stretches out in front of me. I place one foot on the first step and look up to see only the first ten steps remain, the rest have crumbled to dust on the ground floor. A flapping noise comes from above and large shadows shoot a few inches above my head. I can hear the wind rushing past my ears, can smell the feral scent of an animal. Looking up I see a pigeon resting on a rusted window ledge. It cocks its head to the side as it looks at me. I cock my head too, wondering if it’s some sort of secret code. It then turns away and flies out the window.
Then I hear something…whispering. At first, I thought it was the wind or the distant rustling of leaves, but then I hear the way the tones rise and fall and how there’s almost an emotion to the movement of sound.
I spin around and prick up my ears to detect where the noise is coming from. It sounds as though it’s coming from high above me, up past the crumbling staircase and further up still as though it’s floating down from the rafters of the top floor. I don’t like this place. It sends shivers up my spine and is somehow colder than the world outside. Walking back over to the window, I climb back out and drop down onto the street below.
“This place is weird,” I say to myself. “Weird and scary.”
And I take off, walking down street after street looking for somewhere, anywhere that looks safe enough to hide in. And when it feels as though I’ve been walking forever, I hear cars. A horn beeps and an engine revs. Human transport is so stupid and primitive. It moves slowly and has poor mechanical features that mean it must survive on fuel that is made of dead animals. Right now, I can smell the fumes and can see the plumes of black smoke that are escaping from the rear of a blue car.
At first, all I see is the stuttering exhaust pipe, coughing away like a dying old man. But as I turn the corner, I realize there’s a girl beside the car. She’s bent over with her arms resting on the open window. A man is inside, smoking a cigarette as he runs a hand through his hair. He smiles and I’m shocked to see he has a gold tooth in the front of his mouth. Why would anyone put a metallic substance in their gums?
The man seems so untrustworthy. He looks the girl up and down, his eyes moving over every single inch of her body. I look at her clothes. Despite the weather being cold with the rain now falling heavily, she’s only wearing a few garments and they barely cover her body. I can see her legs, spindly little pale things that rest on top of giant, red shoes. I watch as the man hands her some paper money and she climbs in beside him. The car speeds off into the distance leaving a trail of black smoke behind.
Footsteps sound behind me but I don’t turn to look. I’m still fixated on the image of the girl. What was she doing?
“Hey,” a female voice says.
I’m still peering into the distance, the car now a speck on the horizon.
“I said hey!”
She shakes my shoulder. I turn around and see a tiny, blonde girl. She’s dressed just like the other one with her fe
et pressed into strangely impractical looking shoes and her body hardly covered by tiny clothes.
“Hello,” I say.
“You looking for a date, honey?”
“A date…”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. I ate honey once. Alison gave it to me on some toast once and it felt as though my mouth was being glued shut. Looking down at the girl I see she’s still staring at me with wide, expectant green eyes. She blinks at me, waiting for me to say something.
“So… We hookin’ up or what?” she asks.
I still have no idea what she’s talking about.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you want from me.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Are you looking for a good time?”
“I’m always looking for a good time!”
“And do you want to have a good time with me?”
“Um… I think so.”
“Follow me, honey,” she says as she strokes my arm. “I’ll show you the time of your life.”
Chapter 4
Felicity
I step off the train, the rain and wind lashing me in the face as I struggle to haul my suitcase across the platform. If you were to look at me you’d think my face was wet from the steady stream of rain but if you were to look closer you’d see that I was crying.
The tears didn’t stop falling the entire time I sat on the train as I said goodbye to my old life. I’m twenty-five now, an adult with responsibilities, but as I leave the station and walk out into the night, I feel like a child. I think about all the people I grew up with and how some of them are married now with the perfect house, the ideal job, and a beautiful child. I, on the other hand, have nothing but a pile of debt I’m running away from and a family that have done nothing but abuse me my whole life. I remember the twisted look on my mother’s face as she yelled at me.