by Guy Adams
Whether Adrien should have been my responsibility or not didn’t matter. He was, so I needed to try tolook after him. Now that meant doing something stupid in case he could still be helped. Probably I’d be too late, but I would have tried. What’s anything worth these days without a few principles? Survival? Yeah, well, that’s all well and good but unless you do something with your life beyond your next breath, your next meal, what’s it all for? We were all walking dead, something was likely to kill us sooner or later, accept that and you might as well die having tried to do something decent, don’t you think?
No, of course, you wouldn’t think that. But that’s because you’ve never done a decent thing in your lives. You were worthless before The Change and you’re worthless now. I don’t know why I bother trying to explain it to you. If you were a decent human being you wouldn’t need it explaining in the first place.
After a while, the others gave up and I walked with the creature alone, its skin shimmering in the torches and halogen lamps we’d strung up along the tunnels. Was I scared? Of course I was. Chances were I was walking to my death.
I guess I was. Though not quite in the way I imagined then.
Chapter Nine
BY THE TIME we were back in the open air—and no, I’m still not going to tell you where we came out, I’m not stupid and you’re getting this story on my terms, deal with it—the sun was getting low.
The creature had made no attempt to communicate with me while we’d been in the tunnels, it had just moved along in front of me, a slight sloshing sound echoing off the walls with each step it took.
Now, in the open air, it stretched itself out, long liquid limbs raised towards the sky as if enjoying the heat of the sun. It still held a roughly human shape, not bothering with features but retaining a torso, limbs and head.
Tendrils sprouted from the end of its arm-like limbs and, blossoming from each like petals on branches formed a letter. Love the light, it said. Light brings clarity.
I didn’t share the opinion, and I didn’t care what it loved. ‘Let’s just get on with it,’ I said, ‘we have places to go.’
The letters changed. No rush. You will see.
‘Are you telling me that the kids you took are already dead?’
No. Nothing changes today.
It began to move again and I noticed it was quicker in the light, its skin shimmering and changing colour as the late afternoon sun hit it. It thrived up here, no wonder it loved the light.
We joined the Rue Montmartre, heading south towards the river. The shops and cafés were deserted of course, empty, raided buildings. One small coffee table was a mass of fungal growth, the remains of a pair of lunches having been left to grow wild. Graffiti tags covered old stone, turning it into veined cheese, windows stood shattered and furniture had been cleared out into the street. Nature had taken over: a pile of wooden chairs had become the heart of a thriving vine, its green branches weaving through the wood. A solitary tendril reached for the sky with nowhere left to climb to.
Some would mourn the death of the city, the ancient buildings, centuries of history, now a rotting carcass. Personally, the city had never done me any favours, I hadn’t drunk coffee in these cafés—though I’d earned a few euros from those that had—I hadn’t browsed these shops. This had been someone else’s word and decay was welcome to it. Besides, if history has told us anything it’s that something else will come one day. Cities of the future would dig out archeological remains of this world and shove it in their museums. Nothing lasts forever, especially not civilisations.
The creature paused outside the shell of a small art gallery, its indistinct head twitching slightly as if it sensed something. Then a tendril of paint burst out from its chest, shooting into the air. It wrapped itself around a swooping pigeon, like the darting tongue of a lizard, pulling the flapping bird back into its body where the paint closed over its squawking head. Letters appeared from the creature’s shoulders. Hungry, it explained.
‘Rather the bird than me,’ I said.
Too big, it replied. Not digest.
We continued towards the river, in the direction of the Louvre. I guessed that was probably where we were going, if there was anywhere paintings would choose to live it was the Louvre.
At one point I noticed we were being watched from the windows above—a group of survivors, dressed in tatty evening clothes, wild hair crammed into top hats, strings of pearls slung around grimy necks. One of them raised a champagne glass at me and smiled a rotten smile. Even when the world was over the party carried on for some.
When we reached the Louvre other Impressionists were converging on the building just as we were. Mosts were carrying objects: vases, paintings, sculptures. One was even dragging a grand piano behind it.
‘You like a lot of stuff,’ I said.
It turned to me, its face morphing into a big pair of smiling lips. From out of the lips popped a word at a time: Museum. Need. Stuff. We. Collect. Stuff.
‘Including people?’
In. Beginning. Then. Realised. Full. Set. Not. Fit. Now. For. Trade.
‘Trade? With who?’
Tomorrow.
It took hold of my arm and dragged me through the gardens towards the pyramid entrance. Several Impressionists were climbing on the glass, apparently entertaining one another by adopting different shapes. One turned itself into the French flag, rippling in a pretend wind, another mimicked an explosion in torrents of orange and grey.
Inside, the large corridors were filled with the sound of shifting and construction.
The original displays had been augmented by The Impressionists’ scavenging. Ancient sculptures stood side by side with immaculately placed relics of the world pre-Change. There was everything from televisions to tins of food, all mounted and displayed as if they were vitally important works of art.
A long line of alcoves contained people, set in various poses as if to mimic the life they’d once had. A man in a business suit lifted his briefcase up to show passers-by; a woman in a pilot’s uniform placed a finger to her disconnected earpiece as if receiving orders from the flight tower; a small child stared up at a static red balloon hovering just above her head. Their skin shone as if they’d been varnished, but I knew they must have been living human beings once. As I passed, their eyes followed me along the corridor and I realised the horrible truth: they were living still, frozen in place but aware of the world around them.
The creature led me to the painting gallery. The frames showed blank canvases and I realised this was where The Impressionists had come from; ancient paint, somehow brought to life and given shapes and desires of their own. At the far end of the gallery a group of people were tied up with the rope that would have been used to form barriers, keeping tourists from touching the displays.
I searched their faces and finally found the one I was looking for.
‘Adrien!’ He looked up and the hope on his face at seeing me almost made the whole thing worthwhile. I hoped we would both live long enough to deserve it.
‘Loic! They got you too!’
‘I came looking for you,’ I told him, grabbing him in my arms and accepting a crushing hug.
I saw above him that not all the paintings had vacated their frames. From inside her bulletproof case, the Mona Lisa stared down at us with her usual ambivalence.
The Impressionist that had brought me here stared at her and a pair of words appeared above its head: Grumpy cow.
Then he tied me up next to Adrien and left.
Chapter Ten
‘THIS IS WHY you should have let me come on the food hunt,’ said Adrien. ‘If you had we’d both be sat in the tunnels now.’
He smiled to show he was making a joke (though, if we got out of there I knew he would use it as ammunition to get his own way forever).
It seemed that, just by being with him, I had turned the scary situation into one that wasn’t worth worrying about. I didn’t like the fact that he had such blind faith in me but it w
as better than him panicking.
‘You would probably have got trodden on by a rhinoceros,’ I told him. ‘Which would have hurt a lot more than getting picked on by paint people.’
There were about twenty of us in all, of varying ages. Other than Gabi, the other child they’d taken from the tunnels, I didn’t recognise anyone, they had all been taken from other groups around the city.
‘How are you doing Gabi?’ I asked her. She was about eight years old and prone to tantrums. Nobody blamed her, rage was a symptom of the new world.
‘I’ve been looking after her,’ said Adrien, ‘haven’t I Gabi?’
She looked at him, smiled and nodded. Gabi wasn’t much of a talker unless she was screaming at the top of her voice.
‘I always help Paulette,’ said Adrien, adopting that sort of grown-up pretence that some kids can have. ‘I’m good at looking after kids.’
‘Yes you are,’ I told him. Better than me, probably, I thought.
‘So,’ he leaned in and adopted a pinched, “let’s keep this secret, ok?” face, ‘when are we going to escape?’
Which was a good question. It wasn’t the ropes that worried me, they were well-tied but they were shiny and slipped easily, no doubt we could work ourselves free if we helped each other out. The problem was always going to be what we did next. How were we supposed to walk through the Louvre without being seen? We knew how dangerous only a couple of The Impressionists could be and I couldn’t see how we were going to get past a whole army of them.
I decided that our best bet was probably to wait. Tomorrow we were to be traded with someone, maybe then, possibly out in the open, we’d have our chance to make a break for it.
I told Adrien this and he pulled a disappointed face. ‘You mean we have to stay the night?’
‘Yeah,’ I replied, ‘we have to stay the night.’
‘Probably our last night on earth,’ said a man next to us. ‘If you really think you’re going to escape you’re kidding yourselves.’
I gave him an angry stare. He might be right but there was no need to say it in front of the kids. The woman next to him obviously agreed. ‘Shut up Jean,’ she said, ‘this is bad enough without your miserable whining.’
She was in her late forties, head shaved, with a tattoo of a rose on her bare scalp. She patted Adrien’s hand. ‘Don’t listen to him,’ she said, ‘he’s always moaning.’
The man opened his mouth to speak again but then looked at Gabi who was staring up at him, the look on her face suggesting that the next thing he said would be the most important thing she’d ever hear. He sighed. ‘Yeah, sorry,’ he rolled his eyes, ‘just had a bit of a bad day, you know?’
Gabi seemed partially satisfied and she went back to staring at her hands.
Adrien was grinning. ‘I know we’ll be alright,’ he said. ‘Loic will sort it, he’s brilliant at sorting things.’
The woman smiled but the man couldn’t quite hide his sneer. ‘Good for Loic,’ he said. ‘I’ll remember to look to him when the trouble starts.’
I didn’t argue. How could I? It’s not like I could insist Adrien was right.
I just hoped that tomorrow an opportunity would present itself.
Chapter Eleven
IT WASN’T A comfortable night; it was bad enough having to sleep on the floor tied to one another but when the statuary started screaming we really knew we were in for a rough time. I had been disturbed by the captured citizens displayed as exhibits downstairs and it seemed their fate was somehow shared by all the classical statues. Cold, marble voices moaned about their entrapment, about aches and pains they couldn’t stretch, itches they couldn’t scratch. Every statue in the place had a nervous breakdown throughout the hours of darkness. By the time it was morning, I knew how they felt.
As the first light of dawn came, silence fell, by which time it was far too late to make use of it.
Adrien and Gabi had both slept a little, leaning on me, so at least they would have some energy for whatever the day might bring.
The Impressionists came for us at about eight o’clock. There were ten of them, all adopting different shapes: some squat and fat, some thin and spindly, some all hard angles and jutting points, some like liquid clouds.
One of them stepped forward and presented words from his flat palms.
Get. Up. Trade. Now.
We did as we were told, relieved to be able to move.
They marched us back through the gallery. They’d been busy overnight installing more exhibits. There was now part of an old Citroën hanging from the roof, slung nose-down as if frozen just before driving into the floor at speed. A bank of microwave ovens hummed and glowed, their little glass plates revolving and clattering for no culinary reason. A pile of bicycles, somehow interlinked—spoke through spoke, crossbar through crossbar—towered towards the ceiling, wheels spinning, bells jangling. The Impressionists seemed determined to fill every inch of the place.
Outside, a procession of Impressionists bringing new exhibits filed past us as we walked beneath the Arc du Triumph du Carrousel and into the Tuileries Garden.
The gardens were overgrown with nobody to tend them, the grass thick and long, the bushes and shrubs blending into one another, all semblance of design lost.
As we walked down the Allée Centrale I became aware of a crackling sound and kept catching a glimpse of something bright orange out of the corner of my eye.
The Impressionist in front didn’t turn around but words sprouted from his head.
Ignore. Historical. Concepts. it suggested.
But this was hard to do once they emerged from hiding. There were four of them, creaking ancient mannequins that perpetually burned, the clothes they had once worn now reduced to dark, ash shadows on their fabric bodies.
‘There’s no point in praying,’ said one, ‘nobody’s listening.’
‘He’s Atheism,’ said another, ‘so he would say that. Personally I think you may as well give it a shot, anything that might help you get ahead in life, eh?’
‘Shut up Ambition,’ said the third, ‘it’s me they should be listening to. Not that I want to speak to them anyway, they’re not important are they? Nobody’s important but me.’
‘That’s Egoism,’ said the last one, ‘he is egotistical. Which means he only thinks about himself. Not others. Just him. Always. I am False Simplicity. Which is a very confusing concept when you think about it, which I’d rather not.’
‘We’re Robespierre’s children,’ said Atheism. ‘He burned us before the crowds when he was trying to impress. He didn’t like us very much.’
‘Which was funny really,’ said Ambition, ‘because we were quite like him in some ways.’
‘Let’s not get too philosophical,’ said False Simplicity. ‘These people may be marching to their deaths, the last thing they need is to get all confused. Just concentrate on the road ahead,’ it suggested, ‘let the more complex things work themselves out on their own.’
‘They don’t affect me anyway,’ said Egoism. ‘I’m above all that sort of thing.’
‘How did you do it?’ Ambition asked. ‘Lend a fellow concept a hand.’
‘I can’t even hear you,’ Egoism replied. ‘You’re dead to me.’
‘Just like God,’ said Atheism. ‘Didn’t stop him being popular.’
A couple of Impressionists peeled away from the procession, their hands morphing into large paddles as they shooed the burning figures away.
World. Gone. Mad. announced another, the words bursting from his back like wings.
None of us argued with that.
The garden opened up into the Grand Carré. In the centre was a large octagonal pond. In the pond a selection of verdigris nymphs frolicked. As we walked past, one swam to the edge and eyed us appreciatively. ‘Morning sexy,’ she said.
‘Which one are you talking to?’ asked another, splashing water on her smooth, unlined features.
‘All of them, of course,’ the first nymph replied.
‘But what a way to go!’ the nymph laughed and threw herself back into the water with a splash and clang.
Through the tall grass to our right a bronze crocodile appeared, its jaws stretched wide.
There was a ripple of panic through the crowd but then another bronze creature appeared: a lion, jumping on the crocodile’s back and pinning it to the ground.
‘Quickly!’ it roared. ‘I won’t be able to hold it down forever.’
‘You’ve managed for nigh on a hundred fifty years, love,’ joked one of the nymphs, ‘I doubt you’ll struggle now.’
We walked past, aiming for the Place de la Concorde beyond the garden.
In the distance, the Eiffel Tower stretched itself like someone waking from a long sleep. Even from here we could hear the creaking of girders. Suddenly, it bent forward, stabbing at the ground. When it stood upright again we could see the tiny silhouette of someone impaled on the aerial at its tip. There was a creak of metal and the summit opened briefly, like the mouth of a wading bird, to swallow its human prey.
Even the buildings had teeth post-Change.
Chapter Twelve
WE ENTERED THE Place de la Concorde, the open space filled with the shimmering figures of ghosts.
You see this sort of thing in some places. The Change has made lots of weird things happen on the streets but always, the root of it, the logic—if you can ever call it that—is based on the history of the place. It’s the geography that’s key, the weird creation of The Impressionists from The Louvre, the attacking tower, the dead in the catacombs. Sometimes places kick up ghosts. They’re intangible, misty, like projected film of the people that once existed there. In the case of the Place de la Concorde it was the bloodthirsty crowds that had gathered during the Revolution, all wanting to see noble blood spilled by the guillotine. They showed no sign of seeing us—the ghosts never did—and The Impressionists just walked right through them, the ghosts bursting and reforming as the creatures collided with them.