The Brink

by Pass, Martyn J.

  “And how are you, little girl?” he said to the dog who lay curled up at his side with her enormous head on his lap. “You’re going to miss him, aren’t you?”

  Moll looked up and fixed her crimson stare on him, letting her tongue drop out of one side of her mouth.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’ then,” he replied. “Me too.”

  They waited there for a time, giving the rain a chance to spend itself on the ruins of the old world, imperceptibly wearing it down a drop at a time, promising to one day reduce those jagged stones and man-made abominations to the dirt, back to where they first came, back to where their creators lay. It was a promise that nature could keep too. It was a vengeful, angry rain that came down that day and one that offered timeless vows to anyone brave enough to have survived the destruction and who dared to try such madness again. The trees would grow back and split man’s creations with nature’s roots. Walls would be torn down by thin green fingers; metal washed away into rust and pounded back into the soil. Anything that survived would face a living death - submersion in the rich black earth that opened its mouth to receive plastic and glass and all kinds of pretentious materials made by man.

  Alan sat there, surveying all this and thinking about the last few weeks. He didn’t want to dwell on it, that wouldn’t help him carry on and do what needed to be done. Right there and then, in the dark shelter with the pain of his wounds still fresh in his mind, he thought of just walking away. He could leave the scavengers to attack, to tear down their gates and destroy everything they’d built, murder them and worse. But there was Tim to think of. Poor little Tim, now in safe hands but still at risk if he didn’t act.

  He got up and checked the rifle and the ammunition he had. It seemed none the worse for the stones that he knew had bounced off it when he’d left the camp but he did see a few chipped pieces of bodywork that didn’t matter. He made sure it was loaded and ready, and then looked at the sky, noticing that the rain had eased a little.

  “Right, let’s get this done, Moll. Then we’re going home.” The dog cocked her shaggy head at him. “Well, the nearest thing to home we actually have.”

  They walked on well into the evening, moving through the rubble like spectres that had lost their way, but with a singular purpose that might’ve terrified anyone who saw them. With the rifle in his arms and the enormous beast at his side, they tracked across the wasteland, ever looking for things unseen; signs, maybe even hope that lay buried in the decay. When they found it, the darkness had already come and there was no moon to help them dig.

  They found more shelter and sat down for the night in the last corner of a hotel, long since collapsed leaving two walls and the partial remains of the floor above to keep the rain off them. It was a dismal place with faded walls that had once been white, now dirty yellow, and the pictures on them had blurred beyond recognition, now just canvasses of sadness and misery, images of a long dead past. It was an oppressive town and the loss of its grandeur swelled in around Alan as he sat there in the darkness, looking out and hearing only the rain again. He had no light to read by - there were little or no fragments of wood to start a fire with. They were long minutes that went by. Longer hours of waiting and stuck only the recurring thoughts of his leaving the camp to dwell upon. He tried to look ahead, but saw nothing. Maybe more of this, he thought. Alone. Wandering. Picking over the dead like the vultures once did.

  He fought with these soul destroying ideas until the first light of dawn and when it came he felt exhausted, worn down, almost defeated but still holding on to hope. There would be other survivors, other camps. They’d need his help and he’d need theirs too.

  By the time the morning came he felt he’d passed through the darkest moment of his life. He sat for a time, watching the dust motes settle, realising that his constant enemy had become himself - the only thing that would kill him. But he’d done war against it and come out the victor. There’d be other nights but none as fierce, none as difficult as that one had been. The threat was to his sanity, his hope, all the things that would stop him from lying down in the ruins and giving up. He’d waged his war against them and won. He could go on now.

  When the day was bright enough, Alan walked carefully along the old pavement that ran between two burned out buildings - the result of the camp’s scavenger policy no doubt. The map that Henry had sketched for him indicated he should take a left at the end and he did so, moving cautiously down a wide alley lined with overturned blue plastic wheelie bins and stacks of mouldy cardboard. Around 4 metres from the far wall, under a tool box, was the thing he sought and as he approached he saw that it hadn’t been disturbed or activated.

  “Wait here, Moll,” he said, taking off his coat and jumper and piling his belongings up at the entrance to the alley. If his skill failed, he didn’t want them damaged by the result.

  He approached the toolbox and got down on his knees, looking under it as carefully as he could, being careful not to nudge anything that might trigger the explosive charge beneath. He could see the box and the wires that snaked their way out of two tiny holes in its side and Henry had told him that the trick to disarming it was to pull the little cord that would be facing him, down from the left hand wire that had been built into the thing for just that reason. It was there to help the recovery crew disarm and replant them somewhere else without the need for snipping wires and subsequent rewiring.

  Gently, Alan reached under the box and felt around for the cord, sweat pouring from his brow as he did so. He wondered what it would feel like if it went off. How much pain would there be, or would he simply black out until the healing was done? He had no intention of finding out and so when his fingertips fell upon the cord he was able to let out the breath he’d been holding.

  He didn’t rush to yank on it. Instead he withdrew his hand and took another look at it, making sure it was the same cord type that Henry had shown him a sample of. When he was happy that it was, he reached back inside and, holding his breath and closing his eyes, he pulled on it.

  Nothing happened. Relieved, he lifted off the toolbox and found explosive number 42, now harmless, partially buried in the rubble and dug it out with his bare hands. Then he walked back to Moll who waited patiently for him to return and set the package down on the side of one of the bins.

  “Let’s hope we don’t have to do that again,” he said, putting his clothes and gear back on and setting off with bomb 42 in his hands.

  The last known location of the scavengers had been sketchy at best. Henry had asked some of the looting parties but the only site they all agreed to have seen them on was the football grounds over on Cheapside, some three or four miles north of where Alan was standing. Again, Henry had added this information to another of his maps and it was to there that Alan now made his way.

  It was an odd sky above him, he thought, as he crossed streets that looked untouched by time or disaster and walked down roads that might be full of traffic in another hour or so. The clouds had thinned a little and he swore that once he might have even seen a sliver of a blue sky - like a strand of stray wool lost on a white dress that ruffled itself in the light breeze. It renewed his hope a little as he continued on, passing the husks of humanity that were parked in nice neat rows and which reminded him of Tim a little and made him wonder what the young man was doing right then. Was he missing him? Was he upset? He didn’t want to think of Tim in that way. He wanted the memory to be of the happy little boy with his cars and his fun, oblivious to the world around him. But his mind wrestled between those images and the memories of his illness, his tears and his sorrow.

  An hour or so passed before he could hear something in the distance directly ahead and he slowed a little, moving off the road where he stood in plain sight, and continued towards it. It could’ve been music for the rhythm it had, interspersed with sharp cracks like rifle fire, sporadic, intermittent. The closer he came to what he now believed was the football field, the clearer the noise became. Talking. Cheering. Gunfir
e and deep thumping music.

  There was a thick treeline to the left made up of tall conifers and to this Alan and Moll made their way, looking to the left and right as they went. Seeing no patrols or scouts, they pushed inwards, disappearing amongst the dense green foliage which appeared to have been untouched by the radiation or at least suffered no ill effects from it.

  They reached the opposite edge and waited, peering out into a strip of open grass land before it stopped at the walls of the football grounds themselves. Thankfully, thought Alan, the team who’d played there hadn’t been more than a local one and the building itself was all red brick and poverty, meaning that access would be easy.

  The festival-like noise was louder now, but not as loud as he’d first thought and the random gunfire had diminished, leaving only the dull, thudding music pounding the air and the occasional cry from somewhere on the other side of the wall nearest to him.

  They crossed the open space quickly, reaching the wall and skirting to the left to see if they could peer over it at a low point and get a better idea as to what was happening inside. Yet even as they walked, the music quietened more and the gunfire ceased all together. The cries had become softened moans now, like someone in pain but losing consciousness quickly. The talking had stopped too, he noticed. Whatever had happened, he’d missed it.

  They reached a fire door but found it closed. Then they continued on until they saw a window that’d been smashed by a beer bottle. It took them some time to get in but once they had, Alan realised that he needn’t have worried. Completely missing the stench that he’d become so familiar with, he nearly tripped over the pile of bodies in the shower block as he made his way to the door. They were stacked haphazardly under the rows of showerheads and the bodily fluids drained into the plug hole at one end which was now choked by solid matter. A quick examination told him that they were both the bodies of their victims but also of their own number - scavengers and survivors, both joined in death from radiation poisoning. The signs were obvious: hair loss, missing teeth, burns on the skin and jaundice. A few showed signs of torture and these appeared to be missing patrols from the camp, but the majority had died of ‘natural causes’ if death caused by nuclear fallout could be called ‘natural’.

  Now awake to the smells around him, Alan passed through the door with Moll behind, entering a long corridor that ran the length of the field with exits on either side, interspersed with motivational posters from famous footballers and various certificates associated with the training team in glass frames. He found most of the doors to be locked and a few had been kicked inwards to reveal offices and kit rooms, more changing rooms for the visiting team and even a small kitchenette that led to a larger cooking area used by the fields to cook in-game snacks like hotdogs, pies and chips. There was rubbish everywhere from empty food packages to used needles, tin foil and spoons. Half-drunk bottles of beer and spirits littered the floor and Alan stepped carefully over them as he made his way along, following the green arrows that led him to the field itself.

  The large double doors were wide open when he reached them and, peering around the corner, he looked out onto the pitch and gazed at the mass of tents and shelters, crudely erected here and there with an enormous fire pit in the middle. It brought back memories of the last scavenger camp he’d seen and he almost shuddered because of it.

  Milling around the place were a few shambling people, dressed in the usual garb of the scavenger marked by their strange obsession to wear the wealth of the former world with such pride that bordered on the ridiculous. A woman leaned on the back of a chair, steadying herself as her long gold chains, perhaps eight in total, dangled from her neck and rattled against the vast quantity of gold and silver rings on both hands. She wore the best trainers on her feet, now covered in mud from the trampled field beneath them, and the best tight fitting jeans with the label still attached and the three figure price dangling and swaying in time with the chains.

  A man approached her, bald on top and struggling to keep upright on his drunken legs, clutching a magnum of champagne in one hand and a nickel-plated pistol in the other. Where he’d got the gun from, Alan could never know but it shone almost as brightly as the gold on the woman and looked just as comical.

  “Give us a swig,” she moaned.

  “Fuck off,” was the reply. “You can’t keep it down anyway.”

  “I’m dying, aren’t I? I don’t want to die sober. Give us a drop.”

  “Suck me off and I’ll think about it.”

  “Go to hell,” she cried and doubled over, vomiting as she did so.

  Alan backed away and thought for a moment. Then, setting bomb 42 down against the wall, facing the double doors, he began to arm it the way Henry had shown him and he checked the battery levels on his hand-held detonator were still in the green. Then, cocking the rifle, he began to walk towards the field and out into the dim morning light.

  They saw him just as his boots touched the grass and squelched in the thickly layered mud, trampled down by so many since the last football game had been played there. The woman was the first to speak, trying to raise herself up from where she leaned but failing miserably.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she asked, struggling to keep from vomiting. The man gazed at him, still stunned by the fact that someone had managed to get into the field without him knowing. His jaw dropped slightly and revealed bleeding gums without teeth and eyes that rolled in their sockets.

  The first round passed straight through her skull, felling her like a tree cut down at the roots. She took the chair with her, tumbling into the mud, face downwards and lifeless.

  The man didn’t move. He wanted to, Alan could see that, but he just didn’t have it in him anymore. He walked towards him with the rifle raised and stopped a few feet away.

  “Just do it,” said the man, looking directly at him. “You might as well. We’re done for anyway. I don’t even know why he came back.”

  This produced a coughing fit that had the man doubled over, spitting blood from his dry and cracked lips onto the ground at his feet.

  “Are they all like this?” asked Alan.

  “Those left alive are. The rest didn’t last long. Thought it was a plague or something. Fucking radiation, eh?”

  “Where’s Richard?” he asked.

  “Over there.”

  Alan looked into the middle of the camp, saw the tall wooden pole sunk into the ground and the man tied to it and turned back to the scavenger.

  “He dead?” he asked. The man nodded and coughed again. “You do it?”

  “Us.”

  Alan fired. The man dropped, his skull split open at the back and the fragments painted a bloody picture on the tent canvas behind him. Something moved inside. The door opened and a young woman crawled out, her hair almost gone and her eyes yellow and sunken into a pale skull. From where he stood, Alan couldn’t have missed. He fired once and she dropped to the floor, another broken head, another blossom of crimson on the next tent along.

  One shelter at a time he moved through the camp, only firing a single round because the people there couldn’t do much else but let him. He didn’t think, he didn’t feel. He just pulled the trigger and when the magazine was empty, he loaded a fresh one and moved to the next tent, one round each, to the head if possible but sometimes they made it difficult, covering their faces as he aimed, causing him to fire through bone and flesh until the scavenger was dead. He circled the warm, tortured remains of Richard as his body strained against the bonds that held him to the pole.

  He worked through the dwellings systematically, like he was exterminating the habitat of some pest, some species of insect that’d dared to attack his home, his own space, his people. Several who had some kind of strength left put up a fight. At one tent where a piece of Richard’s uniform had been pinned to a guy-line as a trophy, a man came rushing out with a pistol in his hand and a knife in the other. Moll met him head-on, leaping upwards and landing on his chest, letting loose a terrify
ing growl as she tore out his throat with a single tug from those powerful jaws.

  Another came from behind, firing a shot into Alan’s arm which grazed the bone but passed straight through the flesh and out the other side. He turned, drawing the machete at his belt and walked towards the man, hacking off his pistol hand at the wrist and driving the heavy blade home into his neck which caused him to let out a gurgled scream before collapsing to the floor in a bloody heap.

  A woman of about 50 years tried to jump on his back but her strength failed her just as Moll clamped her jaws around her thigh. Tumbling to the ground, the beast straddled her and attacked, tearing sinewy strands of flesh from her face and hands, throwing them aside in a desperate bid to land the killing blow to her throat.

  On it went. The carnage became a rout and those who could summon their last drops of strength made for the exit with terrified cries, wondering what kind of demon had been let loose in their camp that day. Seeing them run, Alan struck down another with his rifle and thumbed the safety of the detonator free, waiting until the right moment. When it came, when at least a dozen were in the corridor, he pressed the button, blowing the whole place apart and bringing the brickwork of the hallway down upon their heads.

  When the last tent was cleared, Alan found that his ammunition had been spent and only two rounds remained in the magazine of the rifle. He approached the pole in the centre of the camp, still able to smell the sickly-sweet aroma of burned flesh, and checked the broken body of the former guard for a pulse. There was none, yet the skin was still warm enough to tell him that the cries he’d heard before had been his. Richard was dead now, betrayed by his own people and humiliated for it in the worst possible way.