After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1)

by Mark R. Healy

  I lifted the little iron ring on the catch and it opened, spilling dirt inside as I pulled it upward. Therein lay a shard of charcoal and a small brown journal with a stylised owl carved into the leather on the front. I pulled it out and flicked it open. The pages were brittle with age, darkly yellowed around the edges and in places difficult to separate.

  Many leaves had been ripped out of the front of the journal, their serrated edges bunched down the spine. I ran my finger over them gently, causing little fragments to shred apart and trickle down the page, and then I blew at them, sending a cloud of dust and slivers of paper into the air.

  On the first page were simply the initials KB, drawn in thick strokes of charcoal. The next page contained the first entry.

  Date - March. I think.

  I guess I should thank Mary for this journal up front. She was an aggravating old bitch while she was alive, but at least she turned out good for something. I’m not one to keep a journal myself. Didn’t think to bring one. But what we’re going through out here needs to be recorded. I’m sure of that. Kids who come later, who have it easy, need to know what we went through just to stay alive.

  Sorry Mary, but I decided to get rid of the recipes. That would have pissed you off I’m sure, but what the fuck are we going to do with a recipe for chocolate fudge brownie out here anyway. I’m pretty sure I made that clear to everyone - pack essentials only. No clue, some people.

  Someone yelling in the kids’ tent. Back in a minute.

  There were a couple more entries like this - meandering, disjointed thoughts that contained no real information. I flicked a few pages ahead.

  Date - May? Getting colder, not sure.

  Our crop yield is going ok so far from our little veggie patch. Probably better than I expected. It’s tight, but most days we’re getting at least one decent feed. Potatoes especially seem to be doing good. Getting pretty sick of them but at least it’s food.

  Been buzzed by gunships a few times, one of them even decided to take a closer look. Landed over by the stream and had some grunts come and give us the once over, thought we might have been a camp of insurgents or something. I told them myself, we’re just people trying to survive. We’re not trouble-makers. The cities aren’t safe, so we left. Simple. I guess nowhere’s safe, not even here. But we have a better chance here at least. They left us alone, anyway. That’s the main thing.

  There’s been a lot of cloud cover around lately too. Can’t be helping the crop. Will hopefully clear up soon.

  I skipped ahead again. There were some sketches in amongst the entries but they were poorly rendered. I could only make out what was being depicted in the most vague sense. A trio of children, a garden, tents, a cot with someone lying on it. A woman’s face.

  Date - No idea anymore. Must be the middle of winter. Very cold.

  It’s really dark most of the time now. The clouds won’t go away. What’s happening? Not much is growing at all.

  I found Stip trying to connect up to the Grid yesterday morning. Fucker smuggled his flip out here even after I’d told them - absolutely NO Grid capable devices allowed. We need to be invisible out here, don’t they understand that? Completely invisible. I don’t give a shit if they want to know what’s happening back in the real world. The war isn’t over. We’d know if it was. And that’s the only information worth hearing. Till then we stick it out.

  He yelled at me and said he was going to leave. Said I didn’t know what I was doing. Maybe he’s right. I yelled right back at him though. Told him to get the hell out, if that’s what he wanted. He stayed. They all stay. There’s nowhere else to go.

  The handwriting was becoming more ragged now. I could almost sense the vibe, the desperation seeping out of the page without even reading the words. From here, the ‘Date’ convention had been discarded. Entries were just haphazard scribblings.

  We lost two of the elders and one of the kids last week. It’s falling apart. Food is gone. Just all gone, there’s practically nothing to eat. Have to keep reminding them all to drink plenty. Can’t remember the last time I was warm.

  I haven’t doubted myself until now. Won’t admit it to them. But now I know. We might not make it.

  We almost imploded yesterday. Edd and Schmidt wanted to eat the dead. Cook them on the pit and eat them. Said we’d starve within the month if we didn’t. Don’t think Caz liked the thought of them eating her little dead girl. Not one bit. Threatened to kill them if they touched her. Went pretty close to a full uproar. There’s divisions appearing everywhere. Little alliances. I don’t know who to trust anymore.

  I didn’t want to step in. I’ve lost the will. Why did I choose to lead these people? Stupid. So stupid. But I did it. I separated them. I said to bury the dead. Bury them out with the crops. Let them be fertiliser. Came up with some poetic bullshit about how their deaths would give nourishment to the rest of us that way. They swallowed it. For now. It won’t last.

  And I know we can’t grow a thing if the sun doesn’t show itself soon, rotting bodies in the field or not.

  I continued on to the last entry. It was little more than scratchings, very difficult to decipher. I hovered over every single word as if they were hieroglyphs.

  Can’t feel my fingers or toes. Tips have gone black. Haven’t shit in a couple of weeks. Couldn’t make it outside the tent today.

  Two walked off last week. Headed into the woods. Crazy. No supplies. Trying to make it back to the city. They’re dead already. I know it.

  Can’t blame them. Die here, or die somewhere else. No other choices.

  Only three of us left I think. I just

  The last sentence was left unfinished. I turned through the rest of the journal, finding page after page blank, and then closed it delicately. I returned it to the little chest and placed it back where I had found it. There was nothing else to salvage in this tent but these desperate memories of a long dead wretch.

  The pattern was repeated throughout the camp. Empty quarters, some containing remains, others not. The possessions these people had brought with them were either buried or blown away by the wind, gathered up and made one with the wasteland.

  I found the remnants of their fire pit, and within charred human skulls and other bones. It seemed that argument had eventually been settled. Either that, or the last to die had decided to perish in flames rather than wait in the cold and dark to starve to death.

  With nothing to scavenge I kept on the move. There would be other opportunities to gather supplies before I got home.

  With my compass pointed north I made good progress across some fairly flat terrain. In less than an hour I could see the outline of something broad and tall on the horizon. I lifted my binoculars but it was too far away for even the magnification of the lenses to reveal any details.

  I set my sights on it, curious to discover what it was.

  23

  The closer I got to this thing, the more perplexed I became.

  The first thing that struck me about it was its enormous magnitude. Although not as tall as a Grid spire, it nevertheless soared as high as any city building I’d ever seen and was far wider. I initially perceived it as two buildings rising up side by side in formation, however as I bridged the distance I saw that this was not the case. It was in fact a single, vaguely horseshoe-shaped structure, the southern section of the complex smaller and thinner, flaring out at its base and forming a sweeping curve that blended into the larger section on the northern end. This bulkier formation shared many of the characteristics, dominated by long, powerful lines that swept upward, angling inward toward the peak.

  But it was the sheer scope of it that was most impressive. It must have been several hundred metres across at its base, and many times that higher. And yet it was stuck out in the middle of nowhere.

  Notably, it appeared to be unfinished. Far above in the upper reaches I could see a cluster of monstrous cranes blooming from its summit like thick, rigid hairs growing from its scalp. These were situated on both
the southern and northern sections of the tower and looked primed and ready, waiting for the arrival of workers who never came.

  I kept a good distance at first, wary of Marauder activity, but it was obvious this was not something that belonged to them, or which interested them. They did not have the resources to build something like this, and it certainly wasn’t a base. In fact, there was no sign of life within at all. There was not even a scattering of construction vehicles or building materials at its base. It was as if this behemoth had simply sprouted from the wasteland of its own accord and now sat, unfinished and untended, its only purpose to create an enigma for slack-jawed passers-by.

  A chain-link fence marked a perimeter about a click out, and that was as far as I went. Even at this distance I could hear the lonely sound of a loose pylon banging against the ramparts like a forlorn monk tolling on his bell. It was indeed, as far as I could tell, an abandoned construction site. But a construction of what? And abandoned by whom?

  I had no recollection of this tower from my travels, nor did I recall hearing about it before the Winter. Granted, I hadn’t been this way for a long time. This was too far north, too close to home for me to have visited in my time in the wasteland. But surely if this project had been initiated before the Winter it would have been publicised and discussed. It would have been all over the Grid, the place where everyone knew everything about everything. I should have known about it while it was still just a concept, let alone a tangible thing of steel and iron and jaw-dropping immensity.

  I began to drift west along the fence, keeping my focus on the tower all the while. Through binoculars I could see more detail, such as the join of steel plating, sections where the cladding had not been finished, revealing uneven jigsaw pieces of the dark interior, suspended scaffolding and platforms clinging to the exterior like cobwebs, and platforms that jutted outward and ended in mid-air.

  Perhaps the most intriguing facet of the structure was that it moved away from the conventions of modern architecture. Gone were the glass facades and overly accentuated curves of contemporary skyscrapers. In their place was the almost industrial feel of metal casing and a robust exterior, an altogether more pragmatic design. It gave the impression that whoever built this place had more concerns for its strength than for its appearance.

  Or, they wanted to hide whatever was inside.

  So the question remained, what was it?

  A few possibilities came to mind. Firstly that it was some kind of walled fortress, but that didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. What would be the point of building it so high? Surely there would be more strength in building lower to the ground where a collapse would be less likely to cause catastrophic damage. Perhaps they planned to include offensive capabilities and believed the altitude would give them greater range or visibility for their weapons. I wasn’t a military strategist, but this didn’t seem like a reasonable plan to me. If purely for protection, surely building underground would have been a better option. It certainly would have attracted far less attention.

  Could it have been some kind of spaceport, designed to fling refugee ships into space with greater speed and efficiency than through conventional means? Space launches were still a relatively expensive and difficult procedure and perhaps this was seen as a way of conveying more people off-world and to safety in a more timely manner. But where would they to go then? Would they simply be left to orbit the earth until their oxygen ran out? Or were they also building ships capable of longer range flights?

  It was then that I recalled talk of plans for a kind of ‘space elevator’, a gigantic tower that would be capable of lifting people and cargo into low space altitude, thereby diminishing the expenses associated with space launches. But those discussions had taken place years before the conflict, and only in a conceptual phase. The specifics of such an enterprise were still being calculated and theorised, and the cost-benefits weighed up to evaluate if it was even a potentially profitable enterprise.

  So, could this have been the makings of such a device? I tried to imagine the time and effort required to bring the construction even to this point. It would have been massive. To do this in a short time frame would have required an army of clanks working non-stop for a year. By the end of the Summer, clanks were in short supply, so who would have been left to do it?

  In the end, I couldn’t know. I shrugged the satchel higher on my back and, with the sun getting lower in the sky, didn’t even bother checking the compass to set me on my course west.

  24

  Down the slope, the sleepy little town lay nestled between the folds of hills like a baby tucked away in a crib. The tentative rays of morning light had not yet fallen on the valley and the cluster of houses appeared grey and inert under the scrutiny of the binoculars.

  I’d already made up my mind to pass through it. I was so close to home now that I could almost smell it in the breeze that drifted out of the west. I recognised this valley and the one before it too. Another day or maybe two of travel and I was home.

  I’d come across the town late yesterday and made my camp here, spending a night of vigilance as I monitored the place. There had been no lights, no campfires, no sound of voices or of inhabitants moving about. And now as morning broke there was still no sign of activity.

  The hills on either side of the valley were not a straightforward hike. They were thick with rocky outcroppings and boulders and there was no doubt they would delay my passage significantly. Alternatively, turning back would mean trekking back out of this network of valleys and then heading quite a distance either north or south, probably adding another day or two of travel and increasing my chance of running afoul of the Marauders.

  The pull of home was intoxicating. Heading directly through the town would only take a few minutes. I could be past it in no time at all and then I would be on the final stretch. I found that to be a most enticing proposition, and with my impatience growing by the second, I was running out of reasons not to do it. In the end, the best way for me to avoid the Marauders was to take the shortest and quickest route home, and therefore making my way through the town was a good option at this point.

  That was how I rationalised it at least.

  Without dwelling on it further, I stood and got on the move.

  Padding down the chalky powder of the slope and onto the edge of the first street, I could see that this wasn’t much more than a two or three street town with maybe a hundred houses scattered in the centre and a few other outliers in the shadow of the hills. This was one of those places that had remained in a kind of time warp. While the Grid moulded and stretched at the boundaries of larger cities, ones like this had been left behind. It had probably looked just like this for a hundred years, untouched by the breakneck pace of the world outside, happy to remain a simple place full of simple people. It was also relatively untouched by the Summer, the buildings showing signs of age and neglect, but not the ferocity of the conflict.

  I wiped the grime away from a sign that stood by the road. Although rusted, I could still make it out.

  Town of Carthen.

  Yes, I knew of this place. Home wasn’t far away. Not far away at all.

  I stayed off the main thoroughfare and crept through back yards and side streets. Wooden houses, sunburnt and parched, sat with their paintwork peeling away, revealing the desiccated boards beneath. Children’s swings sat glistening with condensation in the pre-dawn light, and swimming pools lurked like pits for the unwary, half-filled not with water but with dirt that had blown in over the decades. Picket fences that had once been a meeting place for neighbours to enjoy a morning chat were now sagging and broken, affording me an easy passage across the way.

  Amid all of this was the green of vegetation. Not just the weeds I had seen elsewhere, but grass as well, a broad-leafed variety that grew in thick clumps, making an odd patchwork of the landscape, a mottled green-brown tract that couldn’t decide whether it was a desert or a lush suburban field. I stopped to kneel beside one such
clump, running my fingers across it, savouring the texture. Rubbing my thumb and forefinger together I felt the dampness of a light morning dew. Then, allowing myself one moment of indulgence, I plucked a single strand of the grass and crushed it in my hand, breathing in the fragrance. It brought back memories of Sunday mornings and mowing the lawn, of pancakes and coffee and warm sunshine.

  Maybe those rolling green hills in my imagination weren’t so far away after all.

  Feeling buoyant, I quietly made my way inside the nearest house and moved from room to room, checking cupboards and drawers with a minimal amount of noise. The place was dusty but relatively untouched, and I was able to find supplies in the bedroom: a cotton shirt, two spares, and a pair of dark denim jeans. The jeans were a little too large around the waist, but I cinched them tighter with a leather belt I found in one of the drawers. I continued to search through another bedroom and the living room, avoiding photographs that were framed on walls, not wanting to know who or what these people had once been. Today, in the mood I was in, I couldn’t bring myself to look at those ghosts. On into the kitchen I found the gruesome remains of a skeleton, the white tiles beneath it stained the colour of rust and a carving knife nearby. I decided there was no point searching further. I’d found what I needed, and with these replacement clothes on my back I would at least return home looking like I hadn’t just crawled out of a blender.