Lament for the Afterlife

by Lisa L. Hannett

  The bastards have set their sights East, she chortles, relief making her giddy. Shells clink together as she moves the basket, knees popping as she lowers herself down beside it. Scanning the yard, Jean squints at pooling shadows, looks for aurora shimmers out the corner of her eye.

  “You fuckers keep back now,” she whispers, patting the butt of her gun. “I’m quicker than I look.”

  Taunting, the brass bells on the back door jingle.

  Posture, Jeanie—

  Smooth motions—

  Cock-and-lock—

  Without hesitation, Jean whips to the right. She draws her gun fluidly. Aims. Pulls the trigger. Fires.

  The doorframe erupts at shoulder height, bullet-hole smoking. The bare bulb over the stoop blinks on, casting stark white light down on empty steps. There’s no grey corpse, no shriek of pain. Just Ann Miller in her ragged nightie, hands lifted in surrender, bleeding from the peppering of shrapnel embedded in her cheek. Crimson beads well and drip down her neck, but Ann doesn’t wipe them. ’Wind startled, motionless, she stares at Jean in disbelief.

  “Marten would go fuckin’ nuts if he came home after all this time and found his wife dead, Jeanie. After all this time. All this time …”

  Cold as Jean’s fingers, the pistol thuds on the ground.

  “Ann,” she says quietly, ’wind roiling with confusion. “Oh, Ann.”

  I missed—

  I missed—

  I missed.

  Ann softens, slumps into her housecoat. She filches a hankie from her drooping pocket, holds it up. Blood soaks into her collar while the tissue stalls a foot away from her face. Her hands and voice tremble. “The hour’s gone charcoal, Jean. Come inside. I peeled us some carrots, but you have to do the chopping.”

  Jean nods—I missed—and nods—I missed—and makes no move to get up.

  “Grab the med-kit from the bathroom,” she finally manages. “I’ll be there in a sec, promise. I’ll fix you right up in a sec.”

  Once a medic, always a medic.

  Jean winces as brass bells signal Ann’s retreat.

  Grabbing the gun, she packs the chamber full of her doubts. Things will change once VERNA calls. Everything will change. No longer a healer, she is a weapon. Taking and releasing a deep breath, she hears Len’s calm instructions, steady and reassuring.

  Posture, Jeanie. Posture.

  Shoulders back.

  Chin lifted.

  Turning to face the night, Jean widens her stance. She points the gun’s muzzle at moving shadows, grits her teeth, and empties her clip.

  The warfare heretofore waged against the demon, has, somehow or other, progressed for centuries without betterment, without gain.

  Daily, the enemy’s numbers are swelled by the additions of fifties, of hundreds, and of thousands. The cause itself is reduced to cold abstract theories—the presence or absence of voices in the ether; invisible lines on territories long pounded to dust—while its effect is a living, breathing, active, and powerful foe, ever going forth conquering and to conquer. Ancient cities, valleys, glades and peaks are daily being stormed and dismantled, daily desecrated and deserted. The blare of invading armies sounds from hill to hill, from sea to sea, and from land to land, calling millions to their standard at a blast.

  Here, now, are the ministers of human fate, of change, of conclusions.

  Here, now, is opportunity.

  Dwell no more on right and wrong, on fair or unfair, on what has or has not been done. Avoid the torment of what-might-have-beens—to have expected them to act otherwise than they have—to have expected them not to meet bullet with bullet, shell with shell, corpse with corpse—was to expect a reversal of their nature, which, after all that has and has not been done, can clearly never be reversed.

  Burst the fetters that bind to what was, to what forever has been; turn away from then, away from now; stand tall and gaze beyond the miseries once endured; observe how easily they can all be undone, once it has finally been resolved to undo them.

  Look further. Look longer. Look at what can and will come after.

  Let every last eye be raised, farseeing, fixed on that victory.

  ‘The Ministers of Human Fate’; hand unknown

  Bibliotheca 31.7833° N, 35.2167° E

  Ballpoint on foolscap, c. Evac.St.25 ±.

  Lately, Peyt finds it hard, telling the difference between ghosts and greys.

  When he’d snuck home the other night, last week, last year, the house had been full of both. Small shades in his old room had pretended to be sleeping girls. Down the hall his father’s bed was empty, a dark echo of his body pressed deep into the quilt. In the living room a spectre hovered by the window. Her cloudy hands were frigid, reaching, blind-searching his face. Such a searing cold, that touch, like ice-water trickling over his nose, his eyes, his naked brow. Frozen, he’d suffered it—until the greys started slapping. Full-palmed beatings around his ears and neck and head. Flinching, Peyt had dropped to his knees beside a set of blurred bare feet. Arms held up, protecting. Then the pounding stopped quick as it started, but Peyt didn’t trust it was over. He stayed balled on the floor, dazed and gasping, his ’wind knocked senseless. After a minute, he’d tried to straighten. Swayed. Clutched at nightgowned legs. It’s me, he’d thought. He’d mouthed. It’s me, Mrs. M. It’s me.

  She’d drifted away without answering, arms listless by her sides.

  I’m so sorry, Peyt had thought, teetering to stand. Afraid to touch the couch, the coffee table, the laddered shelf strewn with knick-knacks. He’d made himself small, clutching the twin satchels slung across his shoulders, hugging them close to his chest. He’d kept away from the walls. Kept his head low. As he’d made for the door, the greys mimicked his ragged breaths. He’d heard them panting in the hall.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Peyt had stopped. Tensed. Crushed the bags in his arms. Resisted plugging his ears. This was the greys’ favourite game, Cap once told him. The fuckers loved whispering from shadows. Taunting with familiar voices. Getting into yer head.

  “You look awful, Peytie.” The grey peeled away from the doorjamb leading into the hall. It took a single step forward, tread silent. Wan yellow light streaked in through the living room window; the streetlamp outside was mostly obscured by a new skybunker piling planted on their front lawn. Words buzzed out of the darkness, briefly glinting like firebugs before being snuffed by the gloom. “Where’ve you been all this time? No, wait. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

  “I can’t see you.” Peyt hated the whine in his tone. “I can’t hear you.”

  “Borys said you’d turned coward.” The grey shifted to its left. A hand floated into sight, a forearm. Numbers swarmed around them, serial, encoded. Grey numbers cut into the shade’s palm. Blood numbers. “I couldn’t believe it. No way, I told him. Not my son.”

  Peyt closed his eyes.

  “And now here you are. In the flesh.” The grey’s voice was even. Tired. Cruelly dispassionate. Leaning further into the light, it scratched its palm absentmindedly. “Never pegged you as a traitor,” it said. “Always thought you’d be there when the war ended.”

  Behind Peyt’s lids was an endless fog.

  “I’m lost,” he’d said. “Ma—”

  “It’s late, Peytie,” she’d said. “Get going. You know you can’t be found here.”

  Now, clad in old coveralls, camo, steel-woven leather hood, Peyt crouches in the ditch that was once Town Hall. Every few seconds he peers over the giant clock tilted against the pit’s edge. Inhales dust and word-dander off the roadside: ‘e’s and ‘o’s and long streams of ‘a’s. A few ‘r’s. A throatful of fallen sighs. Pulling the neck of his t-shirt over his nose, he rubs his watering eyes. Holds his breath, looks up, and watches. There it is again, there: a shadow flitting near that mound of wreckage across the street. Peyt follows its movements, Jean’s voice echoing in his mind. What are you doing here? What are you doing here? She’s right, of cou
rse. It’s mid-morning, downtown. Too late and too early for ghosts.

  Must be a grey, then.

  He lowers his head, clings to the clock’s II and IV, and hopes the dead Pigeon’s gear on his back will fade him from the little spirit’s sight.

  A minute passes. Acid burns in his muscles, but he holds the position, head down, cowering, arms locked, satchels pinned beneath him, parcels digging into his ribs. He waits until the trembling loosens his grip, until the gaze boring into his skull becomes solid steel, a rifle’s cold muzzle driven into his scalp, until he hears the trigger click-clicking under a thin grey finger, and he thinks, I won’t die without seeing who’s killed me—

  He looks up.

  A gentle breeze cools the red from his face. There is no gun. No trigger. The spook is perched on a raised planter, a long fast-sprint away. It’s grubbing in dark soil, piling the dirt higher and higher. Patting the conical heap with its little hands. Pouring water from a small two-handled clay jug. Tamping the muck, then digging again. Streaking its skirt with mud castle run-off.

  The sky is translucent, the cloud cover streaky and thin, illuminated white from behind. Air raids have softened the cityscape below, transformed it into something almost pastoral. High-rises and spires have blunted into hills. Sidewalks have sprouted rainbow-sheened ponds. Column-fronted buildings line the central plaza, grand shells of marble and limestone and jet. Toppled lampposts fence in the three sides of the square, confining benches and huddled corpses, their backs woolly with debris. In the middle, a twenty-foot statue looms before the museum. And over it all, a haze hangs like a sheer gauze curtain, blurring details, fooling the eye. One minute, Peyt sees herdboys gathering at the jade martyr’s base. Then it’s a platoon of grunts. He blinks and it’s neither. It’s garbage tossed on the wind.

  Vultures have ravaged this quadrant, beaked its bones clean. They spray-painted big pink circles around suspected landmines, barricaded the main roads, then ceded ground to the greys. There are no patrols here, which suits Peyt just fine. He has packages to deliver, socks and harmonicas and silencers, gold rings and worry-stones and a flak jacket he’s tempted to keep for himself. His ruck’s filled with food—some for drop-off, some for payment—and his mind’s full of messages too mundane to be written, too unimportant to warrant hiring a Whitey. It’s safer, taking this route. Regardless of what other Pigeons say. He’d rather run the grey gauntlet downtown every day than risk losing his load to dogs and soldiers and ghosts.

  Keeping an eye on the little spirit, Peyt searches his packs for a bundle of a certain shape, a certain weight… . His fingers brush sharp edges and smooth, cardboard boxes and clothing, until they encounter the hard fact of paper-wrapped metal. There’s always at least one, he thinks, taking it out and worrying at the parcel’s string with his teeth. Laying the wrapping aside—he’s only borrowing the gun, not stealing—Peyt takes a scope from his pocket. Wishes he had the Pigeon’s glock to go with it. Wishes so hard that soon he plucks a rage of bullets from his ’wind. Enough to load the pistol, with ammo to spare. He braces the gun against the clock’s rim. Balances the scope atop its barrel, cocks the hammer, and aims.

  The child’s head whips up. Through the crosshairs Peyt sees her in profile, quickly wiping hands on her skirt then lifting them, all innocence, all surrender. Her expression guilt-free. She hops down from the container, lands awkwardly. Legs buckling, she falls. Skinning knees and palms. Her face shrivels and the black hole of her mouth gapes. Five seconds later, a monotone wail ribbons across the plaza: shock, pain, defeat.

  Peyt starts to climb over the ridge to help her—then freezes. Kneeling, the girl reaches with both arms for something, someone. Panning right, he follows her gaze. Across a cobbled walkway and down a paved slope, over iron railings and along a sprint of flagstones to the museum. There: crawling out of a window well. Ducking under reams of yellow tape. A young woman with the most vibrant wordwind Peyt’s ever seen. She’s tried taming it with a blue headscarf, but as she runs the silk slips to her shoulders, unveiling a flurry of panic. Wisps of dark blonde hair get caught in the storm, words and strands spiral into a frantic beehive. Mid-stride she beckons, urging movement—but the girl has sunk to the ground, bowing, a supplicant to misery. She weeps and whines until the woman scoops her up, hugging and scolding and dragging.

  They make it halfway to the museum when the child digs in her heels, wriggles free. She dashes back to the planter—doesn’t want to leave her castle half-finished, Peyt thinks—and when the woman gives chase, the girl screeches with laughter. Dodging left and right, around benches and bodies, she turns fear into a game.

  Tessa! the older one shouts, cheeks flaming. Enough! Come on, Tess—

  “NO!”

  Both stop short at the sound of Peyt’s shriek. The girl poised on the brink of a fluorescent pink circle, the woman an arm-swipe behind her.

  “Get back,” he shouts, firing the gun skywards. “It’s a mine! Get back!”

  It’s … mine… . Get… . It’s … mine!

  Before bolting, they look around for a split-second. Spinning left and right. Trying to make sense of the echoes. Trying to guess where the next shot will come from. Ducking out of sight, Peyt fires again. Again. Again. He knows it’s a risk—the greys love the reek of bullets almost as much as they do sweat and blood and fear—but he keeps shooting until the magazine is empty.

  Let them come, he thinks. Only let the girls get away.

  They’re not your problem, he tells himself the next day.

  Forget them: you’re going to miss the train.

  Stations, Peyt quickly realised, are the best places for scoring jobs. Ship ’ports are too busy, too dangerous for someone like him—too many recruitment officers roaming the gates, too many Watchers checking bags and features and passports. Relocating landed immigrants. Detaining nomads and evacs. Re-conscripting wayward rookies, with or without their consent. Wrangling turncoats and suspected AWOLs. Peyt had tossed his red-star papers somewhere between the barracks and the open road, but the motley of his skin is ID enough. His was a hard face to forget.

  Within a few hours of enlisting, most grunts in his district had known him by reputation if not by name. They’d known him as the squadron’s cum-faced corpse-runner, the youngest, the most likely to bolt. Straight off, Cap had plucked him from the ranks and called him Atlas. Said there was a whole unexplored world mapped on his body. It seemed everyone but Peyt had heard the joke that followed; but he got it, more or less, when tongues had prodded cheeks, hands dog-slapped imaginary arses, fists whacked-off empty air. The dumbest fucks in the troop had worked up a thick foam of spit, letting it dribble down their chins while Peyt stood there fuming. They’d nicknamed him Jizz and Cock-froth and Codpiece, and thought they were so fuckin’ clever. And Daken had laughed with the rest of them. Later, lying on their cots after lights-out, he’d chuckled again and Peyt had felt like sinking through canvas and groundsheet, into the tunnels, into the dead earth. But then Dake had reached over and ruffled Peyt’s hair. Tweaked his hot ear. Called him Dalmatian.

  Now Peyt rarely works the ’ports. He does most of his pickups at velo stands, twice-a-day hubs and, when the shadows are quiet, train platforms. Business is better with fewer eyes watching, safer without so many soldiers around. Guys like Cap don’t often ride steam. Out on the front, they’ll cosy up with grunts and evacs alike—a warm body’s a warm body, after all. Never hurt a soul to be fuckin’ friendly. Off-field though, they’ll clean the curses from their mouths, trade multicams for crisp polyester suits, and play rich until their leave passes expire. Busy spending a year’s salary on cunt and glass and lexis-massages, Caps have little time for the grubs that wriggled after them out of the trenches.

  At the station, the train’s been and gone but Peyt earns a small crop of turnips and just enough change to buy a plate of hot pide for breakfast. A tear-stained girl hires him to deliver a flaking gold ring to an address in the valley. “If he’s not there,” she says,
voice wavering, “smash a window or something and just chuck it inside.”

  “That’s not how this works.” If there are guidelines somewhere, headquarters with procedures and regulations, definitions of Pigeon conduct, Peyt hasn’t seen them. What’s left of his predecessor is rotting in a shallow grave; this past year, no one has come searching for bones. No high-ups have been there to answer Peyt’s questions—or to question his taking Artie’s place. Since then, he’s made up the rules as he goes. He does what he can. “Whatever can’t be delivered is returned. Usually within three days. My bags get too heavy otherwise.”

  “Don’t bother,” the girl says. “Keep it, for your trouble. Sell it. Makes no difference to me.”

  Along with the broken engagement, Peyt collects three condolences, two apologies, and a handful of please-don’t-gos. But when a rosette vendor starts prattling a detailed order for bunting, Peyt waves him quiet. No verbal messages today.

  The man takes in Peyt’s appearance. The distant gaze. The overly-tight hood. A scarf pulled up to the nose. The boy’s hiding summat, the vendor’s ’wind broadcasts. He cocks his head, jowls wobbling. Winks and taps the side of his bulbous red nose. Been on the turps, have we?

  For all the quease in his guts, the haze in his thoughts, Peyt might as well be drunk. The little ghost’s—the little girl’s—scream has been repeating in his mind, a circular saw whining round and round his brain all night, slicing, scraping him raw. And the older girl’s face …

  I didn’t mean to scare them.

  Coins suddenly leave his hand, soon replaced by a large rosette. A boutonniere, striped in alternating colours: one row flare green, the next a perfect shade of screen-blue. Stupid to buy such a pretty, feminine thing, Peyt thinks. Without someone to give it to.