With them milling about I couldn’t make out which way they were headed, but I wouldn’t put it past them to come crashing through the forest after me. If I’d left footprints down there, they might do just that.
I lowered the binoculars and kept going, reaching the top of the incline and coming out on the edge of a small, roughly circular clearing in the wood. What I saw there almost made me tip backward down the slope.
Someone was sitting there silently just a few paces away.
18
He sat there like a statue, perched on the side of a mushroom-like protuberance of concrete and steel in the middle of the clearing. It was instantly clear that he wasn’t in good shape, for the top section of his head had been sheared off. From the place where his eyes should have been all the way back to the midsection of his cranium there were just gnarled and rusted bits of metal and plastic, effectively removing his forehead and the top of his scalp. Filthy, matted hair hung off the sides and back of his head, and from the nose down his synthetic skin was still intact, although it bubbled and peeled and gave the appearance that it may fall off at any second.
He didn’t have the markings of Marauder, but I wondered for a moment if this was some kind of trap they’d set. I could see no sign of them in the immediate area, and besides, this wasn’t the way they did business. They didn’t set traps to get what they wanted, they just relied on their greater numbers and took it, screeching and bearing down with their engines roaring. They didn’t waste time with trickery.
I took a cautious step forward.
“Hey,” I called, a little more tremulously than I’d anticipated. I cleared my throat. “If you can hear me, you’re in danger. Marauders are coming. You need to get out of here.”
He didn’t move or acknowledge me, but my experience with Max had taught me that, no matter how dead a synthetic appeared, that may not necessarily be the case. I moved forward in a circular motion so that I could approach him from head on.
His posture was that of someone at rest. Shoulders hunched, head forward, arms locked straight and hands on knees, he gave the appearance of one who had experienced a tough morning’s hike and had paused on this monument to gather his breath. His clothes told a different story, however. Little more than rags, they hung off him in great loops, not technically clothing anymore, but more like scraps of fabric drooping from his limbs. The skin on his shoulders was bare and I could see that it had become yellowed and brittle, peeling upward in great flakes under the relentless pummelling of the sun.
I ducked lower to examine his face, or what was left of it.
“Ah, screw this,” I muttered, preparing to leave.
It was only then that he seemed to sense me. Shuddering, he began to straighten his back, and I could hear his limbs grind and squeal together like a rusted old machine in need of oil. I had never heard a synthetic make that kind of noise before. As he drew himself up he made a low groaning, breathy sound, as if he were painfully exhaling a lungful of air as thick as tar.
Aaahooouuggghhhh.
It went on for more than ten seconds until he finally straightened, then he groaned again as he drew his arms back and slowly worked them up and down, trying to regain some freedom of movement.
“Whoa, are you okay?” I said, still not sure what to make of him.
He didn’t respond. He just sat there, once again still, as if processing the sound of my voice.
“Can you hear me? Are you all right?”
He cocked his head to one side as if trying to determine my position with his hearing. “Who are you?” he said in a slow rasping voice.
“My name’s Brant. I’m passing through and I saw you sitting there. Thought I’d let you know there’s Marauders coming.”
He sat there again, still with his head cocked, considering. “Marauders?” His vocal modulator seemed busted, issuing at least two distinct pitches when he spoke so that it sounded like two people talking at once: one with a low, gravelly voice and the other a falsetto. It also appeared as though the end of his tongue had been chewed to bits, contributing to the rasp when he spoke.
“Yeah. Do you need help? You don’t look the best.”
“I uh....” He moved his head from side to side as if his neck were stiff. “I don’t know if I can get up.”
I crossed the gap between us slowly, deliberately, so as not to make any movements that might startle him. “Give me your hand.”
I reached with my right hand and took his left gently, like a gentleman assisting a lady from a car. His fingers wrapped around mine and then, as he started to rise, slipped up my arm and firmly onto my shoulder.
“Brant, huh?” he grunted through gritted teeth. He sounded in great pain at every movement of his body.
“Easy now,” I said. “Don’t want to-”
As the folds of his garments shifted I saw his other hand clamped on something at his waist. Below was the unmistakable shape of a leather sheath. I began to draw back but the hand at my shoulder shifted to the back of my neck with vice-like pressure.
“Ya think I’m stupid, huh?” he grated, and with a fluid movement drew out a wickedly curved hunting knife and held it to my throat with a disconcerting amount of pressure.
“Hey, stop!” I choked, trying to back out, but he held my neck firmly and pressed the knife even tighter.
“Didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to come back here, but you’ll wish you hadn’t,” he spat. Those sightless holes where his eyes should have been pressed in close. His stinking breath was like the odour of melted plastic and car fumes.
Unlike a human, there were no jugular veins in my neck to sever, but there were some important conduits that ran through the region, governing aspects of motor control and electrical flow. He wouldn’t kill me by ripping that thing across my throat, but he would most likely cause enough damage to leave me incapacitated, allowing him to come after me and finish the job.
That being the case, I decided to play it safe.
“I think you’ve got me confused with someone else, man,” I managed to gasp. “I’ve never seen you before.”
“Oh, I’ve got the right guy,” he drawled. “No doubt about it. You’re one of them who was here a few days back.”
“Look, I’m not sure who you think I am, but I wasn’t here a few days back. I’ve never been here. I’m heading west, a long way west, and I just came upon you by chance.” My neck was slanted back as far as I could bend it as I attempted to ease the pressure of the knife. The clank redoubled his grip on my neck and fought to draw it forward again.
“Don’t try to bullshit me, huh? That’s only gonna get you killed faster. You’re one of these pieces of shit who tried to break into my Can a few days back.”
“Can?” I repeated. My eyes dipped to the concrete and steel structure behind him. “Is that what this is?”
He laughed harshly. “You play dumb real good. Real good.”
I’d heard of the term ‘Can’ a long time ago, in the early days of Winter. It was slang for a type of subterranean vault large enough to house a few dozen people. They were speculated to be self-sustaining for six to twelve months if the fuel stocks were handled efficiently, which many thought would be long enough to survive the Winter. I’d never actually seen one until now.
“You’ve got people down below?” I asked, my astonishment briefly overriding fear.
“Well, what else would I have in a Can, dumbass?” he spat. “Yeah, I’ve got people down there, people who are trusting me to protect them from scavengers like you and your buddies.”
“What buddies? I’m not with the Marauders. Don’t you think I’d have called for help by now if I had buddies nearby?”
“Oh, you can’t call for help,” he smirked. “Not unless you can talk to ghosts. I took care of the rest of ‘em. They got a good piece of me,” he admitted amiably, taking the knife away from my throat for a second to tap the metal of his skull where it had been ravaged, “but I got ‘em back. Next time I just need
to stay clear of shotguns pointed in my face and I’ll be fine.”
I craned my neck around the clearing and saw several flashes of white, human skeletons it seemed, sunken into the soil where they’d fallen and now all but swallowed up by the dirt. They looked like they’d been there a long time.
“How long ago did you say this happened?”
“You know as well as I do. A couple of nights.” He seemed to consider. “I’m not sure exactly how many. After I took that shotgun in the face and strangled the last one with my bare hands, I couldn’t see. My eyes are gone,” he said, as if that weren’t obvious. “I crawled around out there for who knows how long till I stumbled on the Can here again. Thought I’d never make it back.”
It seemed clear that this confrontation had not occurred recently. Judging by the state of the human remains, it was more likely years, if not decades in the past. This clank may have been sitting here, catatonic, unaware of the passage of time until I came past and roused him.
“Listen, this didn’t happen a couple of nights back,” I started. “Those skeletons over there-”
“Shut the fuck up,” he said menacingly, edging closer and increasing the pressure of the knife on my throat. “I’m sick of your shit. I’d cut your lying throat right this instant if I didn’t need you.”
I shifted my feet uncomfortably. “Need me? For what?”
“To get back inside the Can. I can’t do it on my own.”
I glanced down at the entrance to the Can behind him. “I have no idea how to do that. I’ve never been inside one.”
Suddenly he withdrew the knife and pivoted, forcing me down onto my knees before the Can. He stood over me with the knife poised, his hand still firmly on my neck.
“Okay, I’m only gonna tell you this once. Here’s how it works.” He gave my neck a rough shove for emphasis. “When we heard you thieves messing around up here that night, we opened the hatch far enough for me to get out. I’m the security clank for this Can, see? It’s my job to deal with fuckers like you. I’m the protector around here. Do you remember that part?”
“No.”
He continued on, oblivious. “So I took out three of you, and one ran off. That was you, I figure. Heard your cowardly footsteps in the forest, trampling around and scaring all the wildlife.”
“Wildlife? What are you talking about? There hasn’t been wildlife in this forest for decades-”
“Listen!” he screamed, shoving my face down into the dirt. “Or I’ll hack your ugly head clean off your body!” I lay still and did as he instructed. “With my face blown off, I couldn’t find my way back to the hatch right away. Like I said, it took me a couple of days. By that time those below probably thought I was dead. I banged on the hatch and yelled for hours, but there was no response. No one released the catch from inside.” He eased the pressure on my head and I straightened slightly, rubbing dirt out of my eye. “They must have thought someone was trying to trick them into opening it up. Someone pretending to be me. So I’ve been stuck out here since.”
He went quiet for a duration, lost in thought. I still didn’t understand where I came into this.
“How long ago was it?” I said through gritted teeth. Maybe if I could make him realise the amount of time that had passed he’d give up this useless pursuit.
His grip loosened as he contemplated. When he spoke, he sounded dazed, uncertain. “Well, a while now... a good while. Might be as much as a week.”
His confusion was evident. A week? That was crazy. There was no possible way that timeframe was accurate. He’d suffered more harm from that shotgun blast than just superficial damage to his face - his memory and possibly his processor must also have been affected. I decided the best way forward was just to comply with his wishes, let him play out his fantasy, and then hope that he would allow me to go on my way.
“So how can I help you?” I said warily.
His hand contracted around my throat again and he leaned in close. “There’s a way to get in from the outside. A combination lock hidden on the underside of the lip. I know the digits but, with these eyes... I can’t see what I’m doing. And believe me, I sat here clicking blindly through those numbers for what seemed like forever, but it wouldn’t open, no matter how long I tried.”
“Okay, the combination lock. I can help with that. Where is it?”
“Well, look,” he barked. “You’re the one with eyes.”
He shoved my neck again. That was getting irritating. I scrabbled around on my hands and knees, feeling the underside of the metal lip as he’d instructed, steadily making my way around the circular hatch. It was awkward work with him hunching over me like that, crawling around in the dirt. After about a minute my fingers brushed against a lump and I stopped.
“I think I found it,” I said. I got down flat on my stomach and peered up through the dust stirred by my knees. “Yeah, it’s here.”
“Good,” the clank said. There was excitement in his voice. “Now enter these digits.”
He paused, and for a horrible moment I thought he might have forgotten them.
“Yes?” I prompted.
“Five,” he began. I spun the first dial, making a small clicking noise each time the dial turned.
“Okay, done.”
“Four.” More clicking.
“Yes, next?”
“Five, seven,” he rasped.
There was a louder click as I completed the final dial, the sound of a mechanism inside the hatch moving. The clank manoeuvred above me and reached out feverishly with his knife hand, feeling around for a handle on the top of the slab, the butt of the knife making dull booming sounds on the hollow metal. He found it and jerked at it, and with a screech the hatch opened a tiny crack.
“Get up,” he instructed. He controlled my every move like a puppeteer, jerking me this way and that with his deathly grip, the knife ever poised for a killing blow should I resist his directions. “Open it.”
I reached for the handle and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. I added my second hand to the effort but there was still no give. Bracing my foot on the rounded concrete edge of the mound, I heaved with all of my might. On the third attempt the hatch’s resistance was ended, and it grated upward with another metallic shriek. A foul stench gushed outward and I staggered back, straining against the clank’s grip.
“Steady,” he commanded, as if I were a horse spooked by a snake on the road.
“There,” I gasped, “it’s open. Are we done here?”
He stood there chewing his lip as he considered. He stepped up to the hatch and reached out for the lid to steady himself and gather his bearings. “Hey! Hey, down there! It’s me. It’s Jarr. I’m back!”
The only sound to emanate from the hole was the dying echo of his own voice.
“There’s....” I began, but he cut me off with a curt gesture with the knife.
“Ssh!” He turned back to the hatch. “Arnid? Jess? You down there?” Again, silence. “Dammit. They’re scared. They’re hiding.” He turned to me. “They may not even recognise me with my face all torn up like this.”
“Why don’t you go down and find them?” I suggested, knowing it would be a fruitless search, but hoping he might leave me alone in attempting it.
“Yeah,” he mused. “Yeah, I’ll have to.” He leaned in close with the knife again. “But I need your eyes to help me find them.” He grimaced. “You go first.”
“I’m not-”
He clouted me with a backhand, the butt of the knife crashing into my cheek and knocking me to the ground. He leant down, searching with his free hand, and came up with a fist full of my hair. He hauled me to my feet and shoved me at the hatch.
“Get in there. Now.”
I clambered over the edge of the hatch, rubbing gingerly at my face, and began to make my way down into the lightless pit. I felt like I was descending into Hell one rung at a time. I didn’t want to see what was down there. I already knew there was only one outcome for these people, and I’d s
een it repeated in every house, every apartment and every shelter, in every city across the entire continent. Death. Death awaited me at the bottom of this ladder, sitting smugly in the darkness like a spider waiting for prey to descend into its web. I’d seen enough death to last a thousand lifetimes, and surely by now it had seen enough of me. And yet, here we were again, about to face off as we had so many times before.
Get through this, I told myself. Just get through this.
It was a long way down, maybe fifteen or twenty metres. I stepped off the bottom rung. Jarr was right behind me, feeling his way expertly downward. He’d made this climb many times before and hadn’t forgotten.
Ahead of us, there was just darkness. I considered hiding and hoping he wouldn’t find me, but he would still be between me and the ladder. He could wait there for me as long as he liked. I decided to keep playing along.
“So, what do you see?” he said eagerly. He lifted searching hands for me and, after locating me, resumed his controlling grip, knife at the ready.
“Jack shit,” I muttered. “It’s totally dark. I might as well be as blind as you. There was no point bringing me down here.”
“They’re not stupid. They’re hiding out there.” He patted his way down my back until he reached the satchel. “You got something you can light in here?”
“No,” I lied.
“So be it. You’re gonna have to crawl every inch of this Can on your hands and knees until you find my people.”
I sighed noisily. “Hang on.” I carefully and deliberately pulled the satchel to where I could see inside, the shaft of white light from the hatch above allowing me to see well enough to find the flashlight. I clicked it on. A wan circle of light appeared on the floor. I swung it around. The charge was so low that I could only see a few paces in any direction. It would be completely dead within minutes.
“So?” Jarr said.
“Yeah, okay,” I said miserably. “I can see a bit. Not much though. There’s hardly any juice in this thing.”
“Never mind that, what do you see?” he said eagerly.
I took a few steps forward. “I see black.”
After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1) Page 12