by Unknown
My hands, Steve thought.
They used to be soft, well-groomed hands of a graphics designer, hands that treated the keyboard like a second lover. Now, they were pocked with little black marks, bits of crystallized ash that had fused into his skin. And the wind kept blowing.
The world was a curtain of gray; soft gray, dark gray, hot gray, a wall of particles fine as sugar powder, others big like moths, carried by a torrent of hot air that just wouldn't stop screaming. It wasn't the scream of a cat in heat at night that you would sometimes mistake for an abandoned baby. It wasn't the howl of prairie dogs you saw on TV. It wasn't the shriek of fear. It was the sound of the world ending, a steady buzz of a rushing wind that drowned out every other detail. And it just wouldn't stop.
Steve had not imagined the end of the world to sound like white noise.
Steve had not imagined he would be too cowardly to take his own life rather than participate in this senseless agony, either.
Like every other nerd too smart for his own good, he had stashed and groomed and pampered his doomsday arsenal, using his elite knowledge of zombie movies as a golden reference. That, plus an occasional CDC comic book on disasters and epidemics. He had put away food, torches, blankets, even spare batteries for his laptop so he would never go offline (what a silly thought) and he had a first-class Rambo knife to fight off looters and bandits. The only problem was, his stash was back home.
And he didn't know where his home was anymore.
He didn't know if it existed. It probably didn't.
It was so easy to get lost in your own city when you tore down all the buildings and road signs and the familiar landscape of houses and street corners and bird-crapped monuments became a uniform desolation of concrete debris. You really lost your sense of direction when all you could see was a gray sky without a sun in it, and a storm of dust blowing around you.
Steve had gone to lunch with his work buddies when the world turned gray. No one really knew what had happened. It sure was nothing like the crap you saw on the big screen. There hadn't been a bright flash of a nuke going off somewhere. Nor the rumbling sound of a tidal wave crashing in. No earth shaking, no slow-motion explosion. Just the blanket of hot ash blowing through the streets.
He had hidden in a cellar somewhere and waited. And waited. Then, he had come out to realize the building above him was gone, eroded, blown away, picked clean, vanished. The next thing he knew, there was the wind, hot, searing, whipping into his eyes and nose and mouth. The pain came later, almost like a gentle afterthought, pinpoints of irritation budding into mosquito agony. He could only guess what his once handsome face looked like now. There was little hair left on his scalp. And his hands were raw and peeling and had those black bits of volcanic ash embedded in them.
The wind just wouldn't stop screaming.
It would kill everything eventually, he knew. Sooner or later, it would chisel the meat off his bones, the last hope from his heart, the faces off the few people still left alive. Hour after hour, the world lost its detail. Even the huge blocks of crashed masonry and snakes of warped metal were turning less, the wind working its piranha magic, nibbling away corners and lines.
***
Some said it was the Russians. Others said it was the Chinese. A nerd like him theorized the atmosphere was peeling off like an old blister, blown away by the sun flares. Steve couldn't care less. He was hungry. And the void in his belly filled him with a holy purpose. He would die one day, but not while he could still crawl through the debris and search for food.
Until a few days ago, there had been plenty of food. The doomsday experts had had it wrong. Cans of ham were more likely to survive an apocalypse than men. So the expected shortage of food had become a shortage of people to consume it. The lucky few to have outlived the first hours of the storm had not lacked in sustenance. Not for a while.
But days kept rolling, mashed into a gray paste by the never-changing landscape, and the food ran out.
Since then, most of the stragglers had dispersed. In the movies, people seemed to stick together. Not here. Not in this ruined place.
However, Steve wasn't alone. There was Lena.
She was a young girl, weak, sickly. Most of the time, she spent leaning against what used to be a wall of some sort, still showing a faded letter D grooved into the granite, leaning and weeping, coughing. A strange thing that cough; it always reached his ears, above and through the thundering growl of the wind surrounding them.
Lena had found him one day, stumbling from the gray dusty mist like a ghost, her motions slow, erratic. Steve could have sworn she was a zombie, and for a moment, he imagined himself blowing her undead head off with his shotgun. Only he didn't have one, and the emotion that replaced the thought was a pure white fear. Until he saw the scrawny thing shambling toward him, and felt deep shame in his bones.
All she had said was, "I'm Lena." And then, she found her corner in the shelter near him and started weeping and coughing. Steve resented her presence, resented her invasion of his privacy. It had taken him a while to find this granite rubble, which seemed to weather the wind's raspy caress so much better than industrial concrete. It had taken him hours of hard labor to build a short wall against the sandy breath of ash. And now she was here, in his little blob of sanity, a reminder that death awaited the few people who had outlived the first days of the end of the world. But he refused to give up.
The cough unnerved him. And so did the wind. Steve wished he could get a single moment of silence. But even if he shut his jaw real hard so that he heard little popping sounds in his ears, and squinted real hard and clamped his bruised palms over the tatters of his ears, he could still hear the rush of the wind, calling to him.
Lena's head sagged, brushing against the coarse stone. Her scalp was raw, red, scarred, her hair turned to a pale stubble. Like him, her skin was covered in those black diamonds, crusted in puss and scar tissue. But while he still could walk and think and dream of his next meal, all Lena did was lean against that granite letter D and sob pathetically, her eyes too dry for tears, her coughs pinging in resonance with his bone marrow.
Most of the time she was half-awake, but sometimes, she would raise her head, look around, see him without acknowledging him, and then sink back to her delirium. Her zombie movement eerie and frightening. Steve just sat opposite her, watching her carefully, dreading the moment she closed her eyes, died, and then opened them again, green and slitted and immortal. But the zombie never rose, and the coughs continued, even when he tried to sleep, even as the wind eroded the world to oblivion.
Most of all, Steve was hungry.
***
Counting days in the gray gloom was impossible, one dusty moment identical to every other. The ash swirled and blew. A skyline that zipped past like a rotoscope, showing patterns and shapes that his tired, food-deprived, soot-intoxicated brain spawned at random. He wasn't quite sure what he was breathing any more, fine dust, air, or just a river of some apocalyptic gas, but it was as hot on the inside as it was on the outside. Only, strangely, he didn't seem to cough like Lena. The rising of his chest was deep and even, against all the nerdy logic he could muster. His skin had been peppered with this weird fallout, his mouth and nose and eyes itched madly, but his lungs worked and pumped and refused to give in. And Steve lived, trying to figure out a timing system in a world without corners and shadows.
He believed he hadn't eaten for four days now, but he wasn't really sure. He remembered reading somewhere that the human body followed a 26-hour cycle when left without a clock, but that worked fine in a lab with plenty of good food, monitors and no wind of death to flail your hide. Four days, four fitful sleeps, permeated with the windy monotony and that soft yet utterly loud cough.
Four days without food, and he was feeling angry. Not weak. Nor was there any pain save for a dull sensation somewhere in his guts. It was survival anger that tried to propel him to rise and seek nourishment, hunt just like our ancestors did. But Steve's ancestors mu
st have liked computers no less than him, because he refused to leave his island of quiet and wander into the sandpaper sauna out there.
He didn't want to leave his bunker. He didn't want to yield the best spot the ruined town had to offer to some other straggler. Worse yet, he wasn't sure he knew how to find his way back if he left. So he hunkered down, watching Lena refusing to die, listening to her failing breath. The world of dust glided above his head, raining soft flakes, like hot snow in winter.
***
Five days, Steve counted. Five days, his senses told him. He had tried to sleep again. His eyes woke to a gray nightmare, everything fuzzy and blurry like a bad photograph. Lena was still there, her cough a trumpet of Jericho. Steve flexed his once beautiful hands and realized he was losing strength. Could it have been more than just five days? But then, until now he had never gone more than three hours without food. There was no way he could guess how apocalypse 101 really went.
He needed food. Well, he wouldn't die of thirst, for sure. His little shelter had its gold mine. A knot of metal piping, bent, cracked, and leaking precious, clean water. Whenever he woke, Steve pressed his lips to the warm length of copper and suckled on the few drops like a mythological Roman beast. Oh yes, he had the best bunker. He was ready to defend it against intruders, if they came.
Lena did come. But she was past caring. She had seen him suckle the pipe but hadn't bothered to move her body. Steve hadn't tried to help her. He felt it would do no good. He would just prolong her suffering. And in his mind, he didn't want those zombie lips touching his water source. In the movies, the infection always traveled through tainted water. Steve knew his stuff well.
But while he may not go bad trying to drink his own urine, he craved for some food, real food. He wasn't obsessed, but he realized that even the strongest and fattest of nerds would run out of bodily burgers, and he was neither the strongest nor the fattest. His mind refused to give in to this catastrophe. He refused to lie down and die. It was mad, but it drove him, made him blink his eyes open and weather his fate.
He was terribly hungry, but not hungry enough to abandon his little bunker. Not yet.
***
Six days, seven days, and he knew he would die soon. He had to eat.
Steve looked at Lena. She was dwindling away, slowly, but like the wick of an ancient candle, she kept burning and burning. It was uncanny. Maybe she was a zombie after all. But no. Still, she coughed, made the wind sound more interesting, punctured it with something other than white noise. She hadn't moved at all. She wouldn't drink, and she wouldn't die.
Steve knew she was going to die soon. And he was hungry.
Steve had no gods to pray to, except maybe his Internet idols and the little demons that lived in the computer chips. However, he knew that eating your fellow humans was a bad thing, no matter what. That's what zombies did. You could be a bunch of pilots stranded in the Andes and it still was enough of a shocker to make into a whole bunch of documentaries. Don't eat human flesh, period. But that solid, adamant pillar of unquestionable morality was losing its charm. Here, now? What did it matter? Did it?
It was dangerous. The pathogens and whatnot. You could end up having a serious allergic reaction and die. But if you didn't eat, you just died. Here was the world ending, and he was debating cuisine with his soul. Lena was practically dead. He would be doing her a favor really. Put her out of her misery. Make his and her life easier. She would die serving a higher cause.
***
Day eight. Screw the pilots in the Andes. This was the apocalypse. This was the whole world ending. He was entitled to some free grub. The wind seemed to agree, cackling madly, then it resumed its boring hot whoosh. The gray snow swirled around him, cloaking everything. He was a man in a flurry infinity, watching his own choices cascade around him.
Steve rose on a pair of wobbly feet and almost collapsed. Boy, was he weak. Was it really eight days or more? Or less? Was he such an office space wuss that he was giving in to hunger after just a few days of suffering? It made no difference. He reached down and picked a sizable chunk of granite in his pocked arm. He tottered over to Lena. She didn't raise her head. She just coughed, one last time.
Later, engorged on blood and muscle, he felt sick and ashamed, but he knew he would live. He would not let this stupid wind get the best of him. He wanted to live. Reading The Count of Monte Cristo as a child, he had always wondered how someone could survive fourteen years in a cell. And why. Mostly, why. But now he knew. He knew the brutal power of life, and it went beyond any simple human scruple. He had no bloody idea what this gray world would bring tomorrow. He wasn't sure he wouldn't die like Lena. He didn't know if he wasn't breeding radiation disease or becoming a zombie. It didn't matter. What mattered was that he was not going to give up. He would live.
Steve leaned against the wall of his bunker and let the world fly past, gray and hot and ashen. For now, he had everything he needed. Water and food and hope. He could sleep now, without that eerie cough to haunt his dreams. And when he woke, it would be another day, another struggle, but that was a distant worry. For now, he lived, and he had everything the world could offer him.
Steve slept soundly, his dreams no longer howling like the wind.
MICHAEL AARON
Julia’s Garden
Michael is a lapsed Taoist of mixed parentage and fixed abode. He can be seen riding bicycles with occasional passengers. His work has appeared in many places over the years, often on purpose. Like the square root of three, he is positive and irrational.
Julia's Garden was inspired by recent research into the human biome: Our personal collection of microbes, two kilos of bugs that science has only just come to realise is as vital to our wellbeing as a functioning liver or pancreas. Since the birth of germ theory, they've been seen as parasites and invaders. Only now are we beginning to unravel the complex symbiosis between us and our gut flora, and we disturb it at our peril.
3. JULIA'S GARDEN
by Michael Aaron
It's warm, the beginning of summer, and I'm sitting on a bench in a children's playground. Swings move in a gentle breeze, their chains creaking. I take a handful of petri dishes from my bag, and line them up beside me.
The labels are in my handwriting: Bacillus anthracis (true to form, the Anthrax spores are a brilliant white), Yersinia pestis (Bubonic Plague, not black but orange), and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (a suitably phlegmy green).
I note the time, wish them luck and open them to the air.
My stomach clenches. Infection, already! I rub my belly, feeling an almost maternal rush. But no, it's a reminder of my skipped breakfast. Couldn't face another bowl of extruded nutrient mush this morning. I crave something with taste.
I look behind me, more out of habit than need. The paranoia of the early days is ingrained. Police and other Government forces are long dead or disbanded, and the Skin-Gangs that replaced them have vanished away to nothing in recent weeks. It seems there is a limit to the persistence of organized barbarism.
Satisfied in my privacy, I dip a finger in the Anthrax dish and scoop out a taste. The layer of spores breaks with a delicate crunch, like a pie crust.
I lick my finger. It's surprisingly sweet, but with a dusty, sour aftertaste. I try them all, ending with a creamy dollop of plague. I clean out the dish, smacking my lips.
The chains jangle louder for a second. I twist my head to see the swings. Were they rocking that high before?
I examine the remaining dishes. My heart sinks to see they're already greying over, a billion little victims of bactericide. As grey as the trees and the grass, as grey as my life.
I check my watch. One minute, fifty-eight seconds. A new record.
Back to the car, which I kept in sight the whole time. Even so, I circle round and check underneath before getting in. It drives itself back to the lab while I keep an eye out, M16 on my lap. Only when we enter the underground car-park do I put the safety back on. Old habits.
I punch in t
he code and let the machine read my iris. The outer door opens and I step inside. Another code, another scan and then I'm into the bunker, home sweet home.
The first level is an open-plan office, a big spread of desks and chairs like you'd find in any modern city circa one lifetime ago. Angela stands waiting.
Unlike me, she still looks the part. White coat, black hair in a bun. She even wears her name tag, lest we forget she is Doctor Cortez.
“What happened to the test cultures?” she asks.
“I ate them.”
Her bottom lip wobbles. “You what?”
“I ate them.”
“You ate them?” She sits at her desk, takes off her glasses and rubs her temples. “She ate them. Ate them. Why would she even think to do that?”
She talks to herself a lot. I think she's going crazy.
“Doctor Mackenzie – Julia,” she says, not looking at me, “we've got to stick to professional standards if we're going to beat this.”
I stifle a laugh. Beat this? We got beat the day we engineered the first bacteriophage. She was part of the company that sold the first wave of designer viruses.
“You could go,” I say.
Her hand twitches, covers her missing right eye. No, Doctor Cortez will not be going outside.
“You bitch,” she says. “I didn't ask them to rescue me.”
I close my eyes, suppress. “I'm going to the Garden.”
“What for, dessert?”
She remonstrates with herself, hands waving in the air. Definitely crazy.
I walk on. A couple of familiar faces look up from their workstations, say hello, then put their heads down. When your electricity comes from solar panels, computer time is precious. The stairs are unlit, another energy-saving measure.
I open the door at sub-level three. Ahead are benches stacked with equipment, all dead and useless. The one bit of high-tech that turned out useful, the printer on the next level down, is busy churning out food from hoppers of chemical ingredients.