After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1)

by Mark R. Healy

  At the tenth floor I exited the stairwell and stepped out into the crooked hallway. The elevator doors were slightly parted here and, by applying some pressure, I was able to open them all the way. I leaned inside and peered up, my hands clasped on the stainless steel door jambs. The jaunty angle of the shaft was immediately disorienting. I felt dizzy and unstable just at the sight of it disappearing upward, the cables loosely hanging to one side as gravity pulled them vertical. Far above I could see light punctuating the darkness, possibly another open elevator door. Creaks and scrapes echoed down worryingly as the building seemed to sway.

  “Max?”

  My voice seemed even more hollow and empty here than it had out in the streets. Maybe Ol’ Trembler was the epicentre of the desolation that pervaded all of Perish, the place where even sound could not escape. A black hole.

  Back in the stairwell, more levels went by. The going was tough in places, the stairs either blocked by clutter or damaged and incomplete. One section in particular was completely shredded, opening out to the exterior of the building where a great chasm awaited the slightest misstep. I had to reach up for a handhold to bridge it, leaving my legs dangling out precariously with nothing to steady them. Half way over it, I looked down and considered what would happen should I let go. I imagined myself bouncing and tumbling hundreds of metres downward, cannoning off concrete and metal and then being flung out into the air, spinning helplessly in my last few seconds before being dashed to pieces far below. Finally an end to my misery.

  Maybe that was the reason I was here in the first place. Maybe I wasn’t looking for Max at all, but instead seeking the same thing that he’d desired: an easy way out. A painful, but mercifully quick exit out of Perish, and out of this world. It would be so simple, to just let go. Right now. Taste the emptiness of the sky, feel the air rushing over my limbs, see the ground hastening toward me with the crushing finality of its brutal embrace. There would be no more effort required than to just... let go. That was all it would take.

  I held on, pulled myself up, set my jaw in determination. The summit was still a long way to go.

  It seemed like days that I climbed, but judging by the light outside it was more like hours. At times I would stop to step out of the stairwell and cry out in futility for Max. The higher I went, the more the angle of the floor seemed to increase. In the upper reaches I had to hold onto doorways and walls just to keep my feet from slipping out from under me. The creaks and groans, too, got worse. Undoubtedly the building swayed more up here in the wind, creating more lateral load on the structure. The impression that the whole thing was about to tumble down only became stronger the higher I went.

  It was afternoon by the time I came to the end of the stairwell at the top level. I braced one hand on the wall and tugged the door open with the other, and, moving through, I found that the floor sloped away from me at what seemed an alarmingly steep angle. This level had the appearance of a studio apartment or a penthouse, but it was so badly damaged now that it was hard to tell. The windows lower down had been smashed apart, shards of jagged steel around their edges like teeth encompassing a gaping mouth. Down through that void in the wall I could see the diminutive and ruinous shapes of buildings across Perish, as small as children’s toys. At my feet, tracks on the floor indicated that furnishings once contained inside the apartment had slid down, through the windows and into the calamitous drop outside.

  I white-knuckled the wall, knowing that if I lost my purchase I’d be following the same path as they had.

  “Max?” I called. The wind here was furious, gushing in the broken windows and swirling around me, pushing and pulling at me with invisible hands.

  There seemed no sign of him.

  “Max! Are you there?”

  I began to struggle along from one handhold to the next, grabbing at whatever was within reach: a kitchen bench, a doorway, a corner of the wall, a cupboard. From one room to the next I crept like a mountaineer, placing one foot securely in front of the other, settling each time to ensure my balance and grip, trying not to look below. At one point I clasped a doorframe that splintered and fell apart, and had to reach desperately for another hold. As I clung there I watched the fragments of wood slide and tumble downward, slipping soundlessly over the edge.

  In time I made my way through the entire floor this way, inch by inch, wondering which handhold would betray me next. Somehow I made it through. Although I completed my search without falling, my objective still eluded me. Max wasn’t here.

  Defeated, I shrugged down against the wall and looked out morosely across the city far below. Even in this pursuit of Max I had failed. Most likely, he had never even come here. I was chasing ghosts again, making the wrong choices. Following the wrong path. It seemed that this was to be my only legacy.

  I sat there for a long time, not quite sure where to go next, or what to do. The shadows in the city grew longer and the twisting shape of the river more obscure. The wind did not abate, incessantly howling and whipping about and causing grit to lodge in my eyes.

  Eventually I clambered to my feet again. It was time to leave. There was nothing more to see here. It was time to return to the wasteland and start again, forget that I’d ever made the stopover here in Perish, go on as if the whole episode had never occurred.

  I felt the tremors before I heard the sound. At first I thought it was a tremble in my hand, the result of gripping the wall for so long, but then the intensity increased. The floor and the walls were shaking, the movements getting stronger. The building groaned, but not like the creaks I’d heard before. This was the terrible, guttural sound that I’d heard across Perish before, the noise that emanated in the depths of Ol’ Trembler’s foundations and were flung out across the city like a beastly roar. I cried out and pressed myself to the wall. The building was moving. I looked to the window, and, terrifyingly, I saw the city quavering from side to side.

  The sound was deafening. Louder than thunder, louder than an earthquake, it was the voice of death finally speaking to me.

  Then it stopped. Abruptly, the shaking ceased, and with a final creak the building settled again. Dust filtered down from the ceiling in little pockets and swirled about in the wind. From somewhere deep below I heard the echoes of straining metal coming to rest. In moments everything had stilled, as if the old edifice had simply yawned and stretched it limbs before settling back to sleep.

  Today was not the day that Ol’ Trembler would meet its end. And nor me.

  I gave the room one final look and then, on shaky legs, worked my way back to the stairwell.

  41

  I drifted through gloomy streets on my way out of town. The moon was out, shedding just enough light for me to find my way. With no destination in mind I wandered aimlessly, knowing that I would never walk these streets again. Perish was now a place like my home in the west, a place with too many memories, too many scars to pick at. Too much hurt lurking beneath the skin, ready to burst out at the slightest provocation.

  Good riddance, you piece of shit.

  Out on the sands I could feel the pull of the wasteland again, and I not only welcomed it, I hungered for it. Strange how perception could twist and flip with such alacrity, taking a thing once horrible and turning it into something desirable. I stopped to feel it resonate through me, the closest thing I could approximate to an actual emotion.

  I found myself facing the pre-dawn horizon, watching the last of the night’s stars slowly dissolving in the sky. The desert chill was sharp on my skin, the sands calm and still, caught in a kind of peaceful slumber in those early hours of the day. I wiped the grit from my eyes as I lifted my head to the heavens to see the gradient of black, to blue, to the faintest pink out in the east. I’d once felt something when looking up at those stars, those tiny dots of light, but that was another time. Another life. All of the magic, the lustre had been lost to me. In my heart I knew why, but it did no good to dwell on it. Things like that just didn’t matter anymore.

  I
started forward again, pulling my foot from where it had sunk in the sand. As I looked back, I saw something glint softly from a short distance away. It appeared almost like the remains of a spindly branch protruding from the ground, but as I neared I realised it was the unmistakable shape of a metallic arm.

  Something happened to me at that moment. That wall of unfeeling, the crusted cocoon of the wasteland that had wrapped me up for so long felt like it was about to crumble, to blow away like a thousand years of dead skin flaking off my body. Something glimmered underneath, something raw and vulnerable, something I’d almost forgotten.

  The hand was inhuman. It had lost all its skin, stripped back to bare alloy and tattered synthetic muscle, appearing like some ghoulish limb rising from the crypt, ready to snare and entangle unwary passers-by and pull them down into the depths of hell. The alloy was mottled black and green and criss-crossed with gouges, making my own injuries seem insignificant in comparison.

  Stirring those strange feelings was not the arm itself, but what I knew lay hidden further beneath the sand.

  Trembling, I reached down and curled my fingers around the cold metallic hand. Some part of me imagined it suddenly coming to life, a crushing grip yanking me down inexorably into the cool darkness beneath. I closed my eyes, calming myself. Steeled myself for what was to come.

  I pulled gently at first, but it didn’t budge. It was either extremely heavy, well buried, or it was snagged on something else below. I scooped at the sand with my free hand to try to uncover it, but every load I shifted seemed to be filled in by another from above. I braced my feet, clasping both hands tightly on the arm, and pulled again with all my might. I felt it move, ever so slightly, then move again, and all at once it came free, the broken body of a synthetic sloughing out of the sand, sending me sprawling backward with my hands still entangled in its own.

  It lay staring up at me, sightless.

  Even before I’d brushed the sand away from its face I knew. The milky eyes and the crushed left side of the skull were distinctive and all too familiar.

  “Max?” I whispered, horrified. As my fingers brushed at his face his head lolled to the side, and what seemed like a river of sand gushed out of his gaping mouth. His eyes dull, body still, there was not a trace of life within him. “Max,” I said, forlorn. “What happened to you?”

  I shifted back and looked down across his sand-choked frame. Little rivulets of silt cascaded away from him and through the vicious rents in his skin. There were so many cavities within him that he looked like he’d been completely hollowed out and his insides turned to dust. His left arm was draped across his torso, bent at an awkward angle and disappearing at the wrist inside his own chest.

  “Oh, no... Max.”

  Delicately, I probed at the hole in his solar plexus with my fingers and began to ease his hand outward. I could see evidence of his breastplate being bent aside, the synthetic muscles there crudely torn and hacked. Sand that had rushed into the cavity spilled out, and as his hand came free I could see the three remaining fingers clasped around a dull little disc surrounded by dozens of strands of filament. His power core.

  I could piece it all together so easily. Max had tried to escape the city, or just thrown himself at the mercy of the wasteland, crawling out here into the open ground where he’d been consumed by a sandstorm. Trapped underneath the mass of sand, he had finally found his crevasse. Faced with spending the rest of his days in an impenetrable darkness, he had done the unthinkable - piercing his own skin and muscle with his bare hands, he had bent apart the alloy of his chassis, digging inside himself and ripping out his own core. A ghastly, unimaginably torturous ordeal that could only be likened to a human stabbing inside their own chest in order to cut out their heart.

  “No, Max,” I said through gritted teeth. Suddenly my own problems seemed remote and unimportant. “You didn’t deserve this.”

  I shook my head helplessly, rueful of the tragic circumstances that had led to his demise. I saw so much of him in myself. It was so easy for me to understand how it would have felt to expire out here in the nothingness, with no one to notice I’d gone or to acknowledge my passing. I couldn’t be angry with him for giving in, for finally finding the courage to end it. In a way I was glad that his suffering was finally ended.

  Now it was done. It was over, and there was nothing I could do to change what had happened. I couldn’t turn back the clock and prevent him coming out here, nor could I take back any of the things I’d said. But there was one thing I could do. And that was to show him that at least one person had cared that he’d lived and that he’d died.

  I gripped his hand and heaved, swinging him part way around. I looked up at the city to get my bearings, then heaved again. He was so heavy. This was not going to be easy.

  I struggled with his inert frame for hours, dragging it along through the sand one step at a time, lunging and straining, striving to reach solid earth. Not once did I consider giving up. I would rather have continued to lug and pull at him until I tore myself in two than to leave him behind again. I would do this right. This one thing, this tiny and insignificant gesture - this would be something to look back upon with pride.

  When I reached asphalt I released my grip on him and slumped to the ground. My muscles were crying out for rest, but I wouldn’t listen. I got back up and trudged off, finding my way back through the city to retrieve the wheelbarrow. While I was there at the apartment I scooped up the copper coins that were spread out around the courtyard and placed them in my pocket. Up in the apartment I went through his things, but there was nothing else I could find that might signify something to him. Looking back on it, worldly possessions had meant nothing to him anyway. He hadn’t needed them in life, and he sure as hell wouldn’t need them in death.

  As I left, I positioned the chair neatly in front of the window and gently closed the door, its shattered edges resting crookedly against the door frame. Descending to the courtyard for the last time, I gathered the wheelbarrow and got moving.

  I wove my way back across the ruins, realising I should have marked my way. I spent an extra hour searching up and down streets where I thought I’d left him, bouncing, shoving and carrying the wheelbarrow through the debris. All of the streets in this part of town looked the same. There were no buildings intact, so the place was reduced to row upon row of disintegrated brickwork. Eventually, I found him again, lying on his back, motionless amid the clutter, just as I’d first seen him all those months ago. Gathering my strength, I secured my hands under his armpits and levered him up off the ground. It was an awkward process. The barrow kept slipping aside and falling over as I attempted to slide him into it, and in the end I was forced to wedge it into a corner, from there half lifting, half rolling him up into the tray. Once I had everything balanced I began to push it along the road again, careful to avoid bumps where possible.

  It was late in the afternoon by the time we arrived at the foot of Ol’ Trembler. Leaving him in the barrow, I searched the area for anything I could use to dig into the earth. I came back with a jagged piece of wood and an iron rod, poor tools for the job, and began to hack at the ground. It was difficult work, and I ended up using my fingers and hands as much as the other tools, scraping and scratching and scooping away dirt as I made a shallow trench. The earth was cooler the deeper I dug, and the smell of it pungent, but not in an offensive way. The work seemed to get harder the further down I went.

  Finally, I decided the hole was deep enough. With as much care as I could manage, I brought Max down out of the barrow and dragged him into the pit. I eased his left hand out of his chest, laying it by his side, the power core still clasped between his fingers. He lay there silent and still. Peaceful.

  To see him there reaffirmed to me that I was doing the right thing. It just seemed appropriate.

  I pushed and scraped at the earth I’d displaced and he disappeared gradually from my view, once again swallowed up by the darkness. The task of putting the dirt back in the hole
was almost as difficult as it had been taking it out. I wondered if perhaps this was just my mind and body reaching the limit of its endurance. How much exertion could I put myself through? I’d staggered around in the desert for weeks without rest. I’d climbed the immense heights of Ol’ Trembler and back down again. I’d hauled Max’s mighty frame across the sand and ruined city streets. I’d thrust these blunt tools into the hard earth. It was a wonder I had anything left.

  When it was finally done I straightened, shaking and covered in muck. I lifted my gaze from the little mound of earth to look up at the form of Ol’ Trembler soaring above.

  “I hope this is what you would have wanted, Max.” I lifted a heavy arm to the sky. “One day when she comes down, you’ll be buried in her ruins.”

  I didn’t have flowers or a fancy headstone to lay on the grave, and, in reality, he would never have wanted that. Instead, I scattered the copper coins over the mound. They were really the only things he’d owned. It seemed such a sad little gesture, but, I decided, better than nothing.

  “I’m thankful to have met you, Max,” I said sorrowfully. “I’ll remember you. For what it’s worth, I’ll remember you.”

  With that done, I turned to walk away. I only made half a step before crashing heavily to my hands and knees. I was spent. I had nothing more to give. On all fours, I stared at the ground, trembling. I tried to push myself back up, but couldn’t. That weight on my shoulders felt like an insurmountable burden. The trembles became shudders. I was shaking so hard I thought I might fall apart. I didn’t know what was happening. Was I finally going to die? Was this what it felt like when the body and mind caved in, with nothing more to give? Were these the final tremors of a dying machine?