Shadowplays

by W. D. Gagliani

  “I need a second,” he whispered.

  “Take all the time you need. You’re the only customer today. I can give you all my attention.”

  Her smile was kind, in that funeral-parlor way he’d noted before, elsewhere. But he felt no warmth in it and wasn’t sure he was meant to. It didn’t matter, he decided, something had happened as he’d related his story. He had reopened the wound. He could feel the raw emotion burning his eyes and drying his palate, and then a black pit yawned beneath his chest cavity. For a second he thought that if he looked down he would see it and watch his blood-smeared heart spinning away into its eternal night. Then the pit would swallow his empty carcass and he would be spared these gnawing, destructive feelings. Twas a fate devoutly to be wished for, he thought without much sarcasm.

  Suddenly he saw her more clearly, as if she’d stepped into a spotlight or someone had thumbed the brightness control on a flat screen TV. The air flickered around her as if an electrical charge were crackling off the outside surface of her skin, but the strange occurrence seemed to sharpen her image. He blinked rapidly. It was in his eyes, and as he drew a finger over his flickering eyelid he felt the charge dissipate along his knuckles, as if he had somehow closed some sort of connection on a circuit. But as he did, he noted that the aura around her also sparkled. She was as much part of the circuit as he was, but how?

  The electricity between them made the pit in his torso yawn even wider, pointing to the emptiness.

  “They were all dead!” he said, the very words painful on his lips. “Everyone and everything I cared for, and they were gone.”

  He broke down into desperate tears.

  “I can help you,” said Mnemosyne. “Your stalkers are not people, however. They are memories - memories of your friends and what you have done or not done on their behalf. They have gained weight and breath from the depths of your conscience. And my help will be costly. Your memories will cease to stalk your every step

  - but they’ll be lost to you forever. You must choose your course. Is the price too high?”

  A long and slender finger pinched her full lower lip. Almost mockingly.

  Ethan cocked his head. “Price?”

  “You are not the first to come to me with pain you cannot heal. This shop has drawn customers such as a woman named Coretta, whose memories were beyond painful. But the price was too steep for her, and she left with her memories intact - indeed they became a fortress. Years later a woman named Priscilla came through that door, but for her the price was just right and she has not looked back. Your decision will be final, but you have all day to make it - 13:13 tomorrow.”

  Ethan heard the voices, the footsteps, outside the door. Ready to step into his shadow, ready to follow him through the days of his life. His companions to the end. The ragged breathing was that of slobbering, hungry monsters waiting to tear into the tender meat of his heart. Tears coursed down his cheeks, unbidden and unhindered.

  “I’m weak,” Ethan said. “I’m tired.”

  Mnemosyne nodded, a flash in her eyes. Her lustful beauty reminded him of … He felt the circuit open, then -

  V

  Ethan stumbled into the mottled sunlight of the alley, not quite sure what he had come to do - what errand to run. He checked his watch, but it had stopped. He had better get back to work - Brian should be back from his buying trip.

  As he started off, he felt a strange emptiness tinge what otherwise had seemed a fine day. He was surprised to feel warm tears on his cheeks, but he couldn’t figure out why he was so sad. It was almost as if he had lost something, some -

  He shrugged. The sadness receded, but left behind a hole in the pit of his stomach.

  He limped to the mouth of the alley.

  * * *

  IN THE SHADOW

  OF CHINA MOUNTAIN

  Published in SHADOWPLAYS (1st edition)

  Halloran drove the bus with one hand. His other hand held his old Browning pistol. The engine skipped every few minutes, its insides still not accustomed to Harvey’s home brew. Every time he felt the engine hesitate, Halloran swore. And, more unusual, he prayed.

  Prayed the bus wouldn’t stall.

  Prayed the bald tires would hold.

  Prayed they wouldn’t need the Browning. Only eight rounds left.

  “Goddamn you!” Halloran shouted as the already uneven rhythm threatened to die. Then his tone changed and he pleaded. “Stay with it, babe. Keep those old pistons pounding.” He caressed the dash. “For me.”

  “What’s wrong, Hal?” Joanna called from the rear. She was encased in an almost round enclosure of badly-welded sheet metal, blond hair just visible through the jagged eye-level slits, which muffled her voice.

  “Nothing.” He scanned the woods on either side of the rutted road. There was little sheet metal around the driver’s seat, simply because he wouldn’t let Harvey - the amateur welder - go at it with his damned torch. The bus was Hal’s, and he felt he had the right to decide what she ought and ought not have. As he cajoled the old GMC along, though, he wished for a thin layer of armor - something substantial between his body and sudden, bloody death. Just like me, he thought. Never happy.

  “How far to go?” It wasn’t the first time she had asked.

  Hal felt sorry for Joanna, cooped up in the cage with stale air to breathe and cold metal for company. He steered clear of a boulder and fought the wheel one-handed as it nearly locked, finally managing to straighten the nose.

  “I think it’s a few miles yet, Jo,” he bellowed over his shoulder.

  Her reply was lost in a roar as he raced the engine to keep it from stalling.

  Let it be only a few miles, he thought. Please, God-in heaven-if-you-exist. This was about the extent of his religious leanings - he didn’t think they’d make it if they didn’t arrive soon.

  He didn’t know anything about the site that had been chosen for the meeting, having had nothing to do with its choice. Ryerson had worked it out with Harvey during the Second Chance broadcast. It wasn’t often that Utopia - he grimaced at the irony - was contacted by any of the other three settlements located within the area that had once been Idaho State. In fact, Second Chance, Haven, and Libertyville were downright uncommunicative - both with each other and with Utopia. So, when Second Chance had broken the silence, Ryerson had jumped at the possibility of outside contact, and perhaps even trade.

  A beginning, he’d said.

  Joanna and Halloran and the bus had been on the nearly washed-out mining road for almost two hours now, as instructed, and Hal was attempting to divide his time equally between identifying landmarks, spotting ambushes, and keeping the tired old girl firmly on the ruts.

  “There it is!” Joanna’s yell barely reached him over the ragged pounding of the engine.

  “Where?” he swivelled his head until he saw it. Damn, how had she seen it from her cage? He’d missed it - a water-rounded boulder which marked but nearly masked the turn-off onto what could barely be called a road. A twisting, narrow snake of ruts and half-buried boulders, it led swiftly down the mountainside like a length of rope cast carelessly aside.

  Hal gradually braked the yellow GMC and turned the key. The sudden silence contrasted with the echo that quickly faded away over pines and outcrops of granite mingled with alluvial deposits. He had studied the country rock, long ago, but now the boulders and rocky protrusions mattered only as hiding places and obstacles. There was no way on this damnable ravaged earth that he could maneuver onto the road, or negotiate its length even if he could. He wished idly for a jeep, or an SUV, but Utopia’s only four-wheel-drive, a battered Explorer, was now a gutted wreck, firebombed by bandits in an ambush six months earlier. It served as a constant reminder of the everpresent danger, as did his fear of switching off the engine. It was all too likely that the well neglected motor would never start again. Just out of spite for the awful home-brewed gasoline it was fed, or for the spare parts it would never see. Halloran believed this - the bus seemed to care only fo
r him. No one else could drive the old wreck.

  “Well, here we are,” he mumbled with mock cheer as he opened the doors - he had to pry them apart, because the handle didn’t work - and stepped onto the road. He surveyed the area, wondering how he would turn the bus around after the meeting. There was no room on either side. Trees grew right up to the dirt track, their ranks throwing shadows that converged into uniform darkness. He remembered a widening in the road a mile back - he could always reverse that far.

  “Joanna!” He banged on the side of the bus. “Let’s go. We’ve probably got a goddamn long walk ahead of us.”

  He heard the homemade hatch scrape as it opened, and she climbed out of the cage. Her hair was tied in a pony tail and contrasted brightly with the dark tan of her neck and arms. Her yellow T-shirt bore a faded slogan: IDAHO IS WHAT AMERICA WAS. In her hands was Harvey’s prized double-barreled side-by-side, in her pocket the last three shells.

  Hal looked away, wishing she wouldn’t wear that old T-shirt so often. Besides the distracting tight fit, it brought with it memories of things far removed and long finished, not his own life at all. It also brought a built-in lie, a lie the author of the slogan could not have foreseen back when he had coined his catchy little saying.

  The shirt was from before - before Ryerson and Harvey had formed the Council and written what they called the Utopian Constitution.

  Before the Federation of North American City-States had become slightly more than a mouthful of meaningless words.

  “We’d better go,” Joanna said gently, touching his arm. It was an innocent gesture, but he could feel she’d been watching him.

  Reading his mind? Was that even possible? Some in Utopia thought she was a C-Class Mutation, or C-M, one of a handful of people born since the Time and blessed - cursed! - with strange qualities or diseases. Halloran had always doubted it, or flat-out refused to believe it, but she was from the Midwest and the right age, barely over half his own forty-four years. In the Midwest, numerous Chinese strikes had reduced cities to rubble and contaminated earth, air, and water to the extent that few people east of the Mississippi had survived. No one had known Joanna when she’s arrived, three years before, from the dreaded Midwest. And almost everyone whispered behind her back - especially because she kept to herself in her tiny log cabin.

  Mutation was a touchy subject in Utopia ever since Ryerson’s cow had birthed an eight-legged calf that had died in agony. Utopians had always thought their lives fallout-free due to the torrential rains which had hosed the atmosphere down after the Time. Ryerson’s cow had proven different, and now Joanna’s presence made many uncomfortable. Yet, Halloran had been attracted to Joanna’s quiet sense of determination from the start. And her looks - she was one of the most striking women in Utopia. But she wasn’t aware of his interest, unless she could sense his feelings.

  Have you been reading my mind? he thought. His face he left blank, but he couldn’t tell if the slight smile was on her lips or in his imagination. No answer there. He was disappointed.

  They set off, down the mountainside. Below them the valley opened like a vast blanket of pines splattered with purplish-brown stains of occasional outcrops. The blanket was scattered three fourths of the way up the steep slope of China Mountain, the top of which was flat, barren, and dry. China Lake, an old peat enclosed pond, had also been dry for the past thirteen years. The first year after the Time had been the worst, as vegetation struggled in the strangely altered climate. The pines had done well, though, regaining their majesty and managing a rather spectacular comeback and rapidly infesting areas once ruled by their deciduous cousins, which had long since succumbed.

  Hal helped Joanna over decaying logs and sharp rocks wordlessly, thankful he hadn’t even attempted to take the old bus down the parody of a road. He knew that Second Chancers had picked the route intentionally, to avoid the possibility of a sneak attack. He almost laughed aloud - if only they knew how ludicrous that was. But, then, it was better they didn’t.

  “Can we slow down a little, Hal?” Joanna was breathing hard, and sweat stained the sides of her T-shirt.

  “Just a little,” he conceded, realizing that he was badly out of breath himself. Male pride getting in your way, Hal? he wondered. “We’re running late already,” he said, to cover the embarrassment he feared would show on his face.

  “Thanks,” She sat on the ground and gulped hungrily for air. Then she smiled sadly for a moment, and continued to gulp.

  He wondered again whether she was reading his mind and, if she were, what she thought of his attraction to her. On a different level, he wondered what she could make out of the jumbled worries and fears that threatened to overflow into his speech. He patted the butt of the pistol and tried to convince himself that it was comforting, but it wasn’t.

  “Expecting trouble?”

  Her words startled him. Had she scanned his thoughts just now? Or had she simply interpreted his motion with the pistol logically? Confusion and doubt tugged at each other, and he couldn’t think of anything to say for a long time. Or maybe what seemed like a long time.

  “I hope not,” he gasped finally, hiding his sudden fear of her in a purely physical expression of fatigue. “I don’t think we’d be much of a match for them.” It was only an afterthought - and he suspected she knew that it was - but it seemed to fit.

  *

  A dreamscape.

  Scorched, devastated, ravaged. Barren.

  A fine covering of coarse dust like a shroud.

  The sunlight is perceptibly bluer, painful for naked eyes.

  Scarred creatures move with scraping sounds through the very long night.

  Halloran feels death inside. He is well aware of the death he carries with him, in his conscience, but cannot stop moving through the night. This is the penance a human deserves. The scraping sounds he makes are deafening in his ears. He wants to stop, wants to wipe strange moisture from his body. He holds out his hands, draws them slowly across his face. He looks at them and sees raw stumps, smeared with yellowish pus and poisoned blood. He screams, and continues to scream, while other creatures merely continue their scraping, hands hidden at their sides.

  Every night at this point, Halloran awakens.

  *

  “Are you all right, Hal?”

  He became aware that he’d slowed his pace to barely a crawl. “Yes,” he said. “It’s just that I’m -”

  “Worried?”

  “Yeah, I guess that covers it, Jo.” Scared was the word his brain had supplied, the one he hadn’t quite been able to say. He squinted in the harsh light and sighed. “We both know this could be some sort of ambush, or … something else. Ryerson told us as much. He should know. Having run into them before, I mean.”

  “But?” she prodded. They had stopped near the lower edge of a recent rockslide. Large and small stones, their newly-fractured faces sharp and jagged, mixed with gravel and dry soil to form a rough talus mantle on the slope. She sat on an angular boulder and caught her breath, the shotgun cradled awkwardly in her arms.

  “Well, it’s been bothering me, Jo. Why should Second Chance offer us Macauley? What’s in it for them? We’d given up on ever catching him, had forgotten about him and - and the incident. Didn’t goddammit care any more …”

  “We care, Hal.” Her voice was soft, yet somehow rock-hard. “That’s the whole point to this, this nightmare. We do care. And I don’t think a single one of us has forgotten, or ever will. It’s one of those things we have to remember, so they won’t happen again. It keeps us human.” Her face was pretty in the harsh sunlight, not at all like a C-M’s face should have been. The scars, mental and physical, were missing. Unless they were buried deeply, hidden. Halloran thought of his recurring nightmare and shivered in the heat.

  He knew she was right, that their mission - Ryerson’s word

  - was necessary. But he didn’t have to like the implications. “Let’s get going,” he whispered, more to himself than anything, as he started dow
nward. China Mountain loomed above.

  Macauley had been his friend once, a quiet man trusted by everyone and who had earned his right to stay by brewing the first batch of usable fuel - a thin mixture of distilled wood alcohols and kerosene that was more fit to drink than it was to burn, but not by much. It had happened almost four years before, and refining had since become a profitable business in Utopia. What had happened inside Mac’s mind, Hal wondered. What had driven him to act like a man insane, a year ago? And why was Ryerson so insistent that Halloran should bring him back? Hal tried to concentrate on walking, but his mind wouldn’t release the image of Macauley - a smiling, leering, frowning Macauley.

  Finally reaching the lowermost level of the tiny valley, their walk became easier and faster. The clearing was upon them with no warning. One second they were alone, the next they were not.

  At least a dozen men and women, armed with automatic weapons and dressed in camouflage, stood in a silent cluster.

  Halloran glanced once at Joanna, feeling both frightened and completely numb. Then he approached the group with firm steps, the pistol butt digging into his stomach and plainly visible. He was aware of Joanna, following.

  “No!” his mind screamed. “Stay back!”

  He heard her stop. Smiling tightly, he continued toward the Second Chance delegation. Alone.

  They were hardened men and women, he saw, strong and well disciplined like professional warriors. Their uniforms were clean, their faces proud. Maybe some folks really had benefited from the militia movement. Halloran found himself wishing that Ryerson ran as tight a ship as theirs - no bandits were a threat to them, he was willing to bet.