Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF

by Mike Ashley

  I unslung my rifle and scanned the darkening city, wondering what this place might have been like fifty or sixty years ago, when the streets and buildings had been full of people going about their everyday business - before the nuclear and biological wars, before the governments collapsed under the strain of trying to hold together a dying world.

  I heard the hatch open below and saw Edvard limp out of the truck and across the sand to the nearest building. He paused before it, looking ragged and frail, staring up at the ruin before stepping inside.

  I scanned the horizon, looking for signs of life. A part of me knew it was a futile exercise. I hadn't seen a live animal for months, or other human beings for three years now. Even so, I searched the ruins with hope, and a little dread - for if we did happen upon humans out there, then chances were that they'd be as hostile as the last lot.

  "Pierre!"

  I started. "Sorry, I—"

  "Just pass me the cover."

  He took it from me and slipped it back into place. "You fixed it?" I asked.

  "For now. Don't know how long it'll last." He shook his head. "But we're lucky. If it'd been something major ..."

  I nodded, smiling. Danny laughed, trying to make light of his own relief. I backed down to the ground and, as Danny slipped into the truck to tell Kat not to worry herself sick, I waded through the sand towards the shattered buildings.

  Edvard had moved into the shadowy interior of the nearest shell. I followed his dimpled prints in the drift and leaned in the doorway, watching him.

  Edvard was Norwegian, and he'd had to explain to me what that meant, now that nations no longer existed. He'd been a doctor in Oslo before the colony died out. He was slow and wise, and as ghostly-pale as the rest of us. It was Edvard who had taught me how to read and write.

  He had aged quickly in the four years I'd known him. He'd slowed down, and the flesh had fallen from his bones, and when I'd asked him if he was okay he'd just smiled and said he was fine, for an old man. I reckoned he was in his late forties.

  The room was empty, but for drifts of sand, scattered paper, and a skeleton in the far corner. The bones had collapsed, and the skull had rolled onto its right cheek; in the half-light of the room, the empty eyes seemed to be staring at us.

  "Ed," I said. "The truck's okay. A blown capacitor. Danny fixed it."

  He turned and smiled. "That's great." He seemed distant, lost in thought.

  "What?" I said.

  He pointed at the skeleton. "I remember when I would have taken those bones, Pierre. Can you believe that? Nutrients, you see. The marrow in the bones. Boil them up, make a soup. Pretty thin, but nourishing ... " He shrugged. "No good now, of course. All dried out, desiccated."

  He knelt slowly, and I could almost hear the creak of his joints. He reached out and picked up a scrap of paper. He joined me in the doorway where the light was better and held out the old newspaper.

  "Christ, Pierre. 2040. What, fifty years ago? Look, a headline about the peace pact with China. Lot of good that did!"

  He'd told me about what had happened to China. The military had taken over in a bloody coup, overturning a government they accused of not doing all they could to feed the people. And then the people had overthrown the junta, when the military had proved as useless as the government.

  Not long after that, China invaded India, and Europe came to the aid of the subcontinent, and World War III broke out. It lasted five days, according to Edvard. And after that, the world was never the same again.

  That was the beginning of the end, Edvard said. After that, there was no hope. What humankind had begun with wars, the planet finished off with accelerated global warming.

  He stared at the scrap of newspaper. In his clawed hand, the paper crumbled.

  I took his arm. "C'mon, Ed. Let's get something to eat."

  We sat around the fold-down table in the truck and ate spinach and potatoes grown in the hydroponics trailer, washed down with the daily ration of water. Danny talked enthusiastically about the maps he'd found in Paris.

  Kat's smile was like a mother's watching a favourite child. She was sixty, grey and thin and twisted like a length of wire. There was something shattered in her grey eyes which spoke of tragedy in her past, or knowledge of the future, and Danny loved her with a tender, touching concern.

  He jabbed a finger at the map. "There's the trench, right there, just north of the African coast. I'm sure if we drill deep enough ..."

  "We could use some fresh stuff," I said. "I'm tired of drinking recycled piss."

  Danny laughed. Edvard raised his glass and examined the murky liquid, smacking his lips. "I don't know. As victuals go, this is a fine drop. Good body, a hint of mustard."

  I watched Kat as she ate, which she did sparingly. She'd given herself a small portion, and didn't eat all of that. Before the rest of us had finished, she pushed her plate away and left the table, limping to the door of the berth she shared with Danny. He watched her go, then followed her. I looked at Edvard, as if for explanation, but his eyes were on his food.

  After the meal I moved outside, taking my rifle with me, and in the spill of light from the truck I had a bath. I sat naked in the sand, taking handfuls of the fine grains and rubbing them over my body. I felt the grease and sweat fall away, leaving a fine covering of sandy powder. I dug deeper, finding the cooler sand, and poured it over my belly and thighs.

  I thought about Kat, and told myself she'd be fine. Minutes later, as if to confirm that hope, the truck began rocking as Danny and Kat made love. I found myself thinking how Kat must have been good looking, way back. But I stopped those thoughts as soon as they began, stood up and pulled on my shorts.

  I was about to go inside when a door opened along the flank of the truck and Edvard looked out. "Pierre?"

  He stepped from the truck and slowly lowered himself into the sand beside me.

  We sat in silence for a time and stared into the night sky. The storms were starting high above the far horizon, great actinic sheets of white fire.

  At last I said, "Is Kat okay?"

  He flashed a glance at me. "She's ill, Pierre. We all are."

  "But Kat-?"

  He sighed. "Cancer. I don't know how advanced it is. There's nothing I can do about it, apart from give her the odd painkiller. And I'm running low on those." He paused, then said, "I'm sorry."

  I said, "How long?"

  He shook his head. "Maybe a year, two if she's lucky."

  I nodded, staring through the darkness at the dim buildings. I wanted to say something, but the words wouldn't come. I changed the subject.

  "You think Danny's right about the Med?"

  Edvard shrugged. "I honestly don't know." He was silent for a time. "I do recall when there was sea there, Pierre, and magnificent towns and cities. The rich flocked there."

  Not for the first time I tried to imagine the vast bodies of water Edvard had described, water that filled areas as vast as deserts, and heaved and rolled ... I shook my head. All I saw was a desert the colour of drinking water, flat and still.

  He looked into the heavens as the night sky split with a crack of white light. It was Edvard who'd explained to me why, despite all the storms that raged, we never experienced rainfall: the little rain that did fall evaporated in the superheated lower atmosphere before it reached the earth. I thought of the storms, now, as mocking us with their futile promise.

  I stared around at the buildings. "You think we can rebuild? I mean, make things like they were, before?"

  Edvard smiled. "I like to think that with time, and hard work ... Like Danny, I'm an optimist. I really think that people, at heart, are good. Call me a fool, if you like, but that's what I think. So ... if we could band together, always assuming there were enough people to feasibly propagate the race ... then perhaps there would be hope."

  "But to get back to where things were ... civilized?" I finished.

  "That's a big call, Pierre. We've lost so much, so much learning, culture. We've los
t so much expertise. So much of what we knew, of what we learned over centuries of scientific investigation and understanding ... all that is gone, and can never be rediscovered. Or if it can, then it'll take centuries ... even assuming the planet isn't too far gone, even assuming that humanity can reform ..." He laughed. "And I mean reform in more than just the figurative sense."

  I thought about that for a time, then said, "But with no more oceans, no more seas ..."

  He smiled at me. "I live in hope, Pierre. There might be small seas, underground reserves. I heard there are still small seas where the Pacific ocean was—"

  "Couldn't we ... ?" I began.

  He was smiling.

  "What?" I said.

  "The Pacific is half a world away,

  Pierre. This thing might get us to the Med, if we're lucky. But not the Pacific."

  I considered his words, the barren vastness of the world, and the little I knew of it. At last I said, "If we're the last ... I mean, I haven't seen another human for years."

  "We aren't alone, Pierre. There are others, small bands. There must be." He was silent a while, and then said, "And anyway, even if life on Earth is doomed..."

  After a few seconds I prompted him, "Yes?"

  "Well," he said, "there's always Project Phoenix."

  He'd told me all about Project Phoenix, the last hope. Forty years ago, when the world governments had known things were bad and getting worse, they pooled resources and constructed a starship, full of 5,000 hopeful citizens, and sent it to the stars.

  Towards the east, where the sky was blackest, I made out a dozen faint glimmering points of distant stars. I thought of the starship, still on its journey, or having reached its destination and settled on a new, Earthlike planet.

  "What do you think happened to the starship?" I asked.

  "I like to think they're sitting up there now, enjoying paradise, and wondering what they left behind on Earth—"

  He stopped and looked up into the night sky, then fitted his hand above his eyes to cut out the glare of the magnetic storm. "Je-sus Christ, Pierre." He scrambled to his feet. I joined him, my heart thumping. "What?"

  Then, as I scanned the sky, I heard it - the faint drone of a distant engine.

  Edvard pointed, and at last I made out what he'd seen.

  High in the air, and heading towards us, was the dark shape of some kind of small plane.

  I reached out for my rifle, propped against the side of the truck, and shouted at Danny and Kat to get out here.

  "It's in trouble," Edvard said.

  The engine was stuttering as the plane angled steeply over the distant buildings, a dark shape against the flaring storm. We watched it pass quickly overhead and come down in the desert perhaps half a kilometre beyond the truck.

  Danny and Kat were out by now. "What was it?"

  Edvard told them.

  I said, "I'll go and check it out."

  Edvard's hand gripped my arm. "It's no coincidence. A flyer doesn't just drop out of the sky so close. They knew we were here. They want something."

  We all looked to Danny. He nodded. "Okay, I'll go with you. Edvard, Kat, stay here."

  Kat nodded, moved to Edvard's side. Danny entered the truck and came back holding a rifle. We set off across the sands, towards where the flyer had come down.

  "Je-sus Christ..." I said, bubbling with excitement. "Wonder who it is?"

  Danny flashed me a look. "Whoever it is, chances are they're dangerous." He raised his rifle.

  I could see he was thinking more about the flyer, and what might be salvaged from it, than who the pilot might be.

  My mind was in turmoil. What if the pilot were a woman? I recalled the images of models in the magazines I'd hoarded over the years, their flawless, immaculate beauty, their haughty you're-not-good-enough gazes.

  My heart was thudding by the time we crested a slipping dune.

  In the stuttering white light of the magnetic storm we could see that the flyer had pitched nose-first into the desert. Its near wing was crumpled, snapped into flapping sections.

  I thought of the irony of finding a beautiful woman sitting in the cockpit... dead.

  I took a step fonvard. Danny said, "Remember, careful."

  I nodded and led the way.

  We approached slowly, as if the crumpled machine were a wounded animal.

  "A glider," Danny said, "jerry-rigged with an old turbo."

  I lifted my rifle and we stepped cautiously towards the shattered windshield of the cockpit.

  "Oh," I said, as I made out the figure slumped against the controls.

  It was a man, an old, wizened man, thin and bald and stinking. Even from a distance of two metres I could smell his adenoid-pinching body odour.

  Danny cracked the cockpit's latch with the butt of his rifle. He hauled back the canopy, checked the pilot for weapons, then felt for his pulse.

  "Alive," he said, but his gaze was ranging over the craft and the supplies packed tight around the cockpit.

  I reached out and gently eased the pilot back into his seat, his head lolling. I looked for injuries; his torso seemed fine, but his left leg was snapped at the shin and bleeding.

  Danny thought about it. I guessed he was calculating the worth of the glider and the supplies against the long-term cost of giving refuge to another needy stray. "Okay, go back to the truck and tell Kat to get it over here. Tell Ed to have his equipment ready."

  I took off at a run.

  Five minutes later Kat braked the truck beside the glider and we jumped out. Edvard limped through the sand and knelt in the cockpit's hatch. After examining the pilot he did something to the leg, tying off the shattered limb, then nodded to Danny and me. We eased the pilot from the glider, trying to ignore his sourdough body odour, and carried him over to the truck.

  On the way I realized that he wasn't as old as I'd first thought. He was in his forties, perhaps, though his skeletal frame and bald head made him look older. He wore tattered shorts and a ripped T-shirt and nothing else.

  We installed him in the lounge and Edvard got to work on the leg, aided by Kat. Danny fetched the toolkit and for the next couple of hours we took the glider apart and stowed it in the cargo hold. We ferried the supplies, packed in three silver hold-alls, to the galley.

  "Water," Danny grinned as he passed me the canisters. "And dried meat, for chrissake!"

  "Where the hell he get meat from?" I wondered aloud.

  Danny shook his head. "We'll find that out when we question him. If he lives."

  I looked across at Danny. "You hope he dies?"

  He weighed the question. "He dies, and that's one less mouth... He lives, and what he knows might be valuable. Take your pick."

  It was late when we returned to the lounge. The pilot was still unconscious, his leg swaddled in bandages. "Broken in a couple of places," Edvard reported. "He'll pull through. I'll stay here with him. You get some sleep."

  In my berth, I stared through the canopy at the flaring night sky, too excited at the prospect of questioning the pilot to sleep.

  The rocking of the truck brought me awake. Outside, the desert was on fire. I pulled on my shorts and lurched into the lounge. Kat must have been driving because Danny was sitting in his armchair, leaning fonvard and staring at the pilot.

  "You don't know how grateful..." the invalid said in heavily accented English between slurps of water - a half ration, I saw. He indicated his leg with the beaker. "You could have left me there."

  Guarded, Danny said, "We reckoned it was a fair trade, the wreckage of your plane, the supplies. We'll feed you, keep you alive. But you'll have to work if you want to be part of the team."

  Edvard sat on the battered sofa against the far wall. He said, "What can you do?"

  The man's thin lips hitched in an uneasy smile. "This and that, a bit of tinkering, engineering. I worked on solar arrays, years ago."

  I said, "What's your name?"

  He stared back at me, and I didn't like the look in his
eyes. Hostile. "What's yours?"

  "Pierre," I said, returning his glare.

  He nodded, increasing the width of his smile. "Call me Skull," he said.

  It was obviously not his given name, but considering the fleshless condition of his head, and his rictus grin, it was appropriate. Skull.

  Danny took over. "The meat you had in the glider. Where'd you get that?"

  "Down south. Still some game surviving. Shot it myself."

  "South?" Danny sat up, hope in his eyes. "There's water down there, sea?"

  Skull looked at Danny for a second before shaking his head. "No sea. The place is almost dead."

  Edvard said, "Where did you come from? With supplies like those, a plane. My guess is a colony somewhere."

  I didn't like the way Skull paused after each question, as if calculating the right answer to give. "I was with a gang of no-hopers holed up in what was Algiers. Conditions were bad. The only hope was to get out, move north. But they didn't want to risk it."

  "So you stole the supplies and the plane and got the hell out," Danny finished.

  That sly pause, again. A shrug. "A man has to look after himself, these days."

  I thought of the failing colony in Algiers, confirmation that there were others still out there.

  "You're one lucky bastard you spotted us," Danny said.

  Skull made a quick pout of his lips, as if to debate the point, then said, "Where you heading?"

  Danny said, "The Mediterranean," and left it at that.

  The stranger had this way of trying not to show any reaction, as if to do so would give something away. I wondered at the company he'd kept, where he'd had to hide his emotions like this, wary and mistrustful. At last he said, "You're joking, right?"

  Danny shook his head, serious. "We've crossed Europe I don't know how many times, drilling for water. I think it's just about all dried up. My reckoning is, at the bottom of the Med, or where the sea used to be, there'll be a better chance of striking water."

  "Salt water. Undrinkable sea water."

  Danny smiled and played his trump. "So what? I have a desalination rig all ready if that's the case."

  "But south ... the Med?" Skull shook his head. "You're mad, you know that? You heard about the scum down there? The feral bands? They'd kill you for what you got, no questions asked."