by Chris Keith
“I had serious money problems,” he said, avoiding eye contact with anyone. “I got heavily into debt and I needed money. My credit card was wiped clean a few years ago and I haven’t been able to pay it off. I just wanted to get my money back. I’m sorry. All I can do is say sorry.”
Matthews could relate to stories of debt. Debt was a difficult noose to untie. Debt made a man desperate and hasty. Debt pushed away friends and family and caused hardships in all departments. And besides, it seemed so trivial after all that had happened so he released the young man, shoved him in the chest and Gable fell back onto the bench.
It had come to light that past mistakes no longer mattered. Gone was society. They realised they would never be the same people again. Fretting over the present, carefully avoiding all memories of the past and gingerly fingering the idea of any future made it impossible to predetermine the direction of their lives. They had no need and no desire for possessions or ideology. They had survived death at its prime evil, they no longer feared it.
Part 5
Chapter 33
The two wooden crosses at the top of the hill made silhouettes on the snow-ridden ground against a dark cloud-interrupted sky. The crosses spoke of suffering and of death, but also of peace and afterlife. The two men buried beneath them were in a better place and the symbols that marked their graves stood to ensure the prolongation of their existence.
The first streaks of a mournful, pallid daylight began to filter through the cloudy sky. The sun appeared on the horizon in its full but warped form obscured only by a silvery snow mist. Hennessey could see Sutcliffe’s handsome features profiled in the natural light as he stared at the hazy orb of the sun.
“Isn’t it beautiful,” said Hennessey.
Sutcliffe’s gaze was one hundred percent focussed on it. “I had forgotten just how beautiful.”
Stocked up with food and water and abundant candlelight, the crew of Fable-1 had hibernated for twelve long months while the world decomposed all around them and the weather deteriorated night by day. They re-emerged into the world – a world of sheer terror – with murky sunlight touching their faces and a great sense of freedom. Nevertheless, what they saw confronted and unsettled them – the leafless trees outstretching blackened fingers and the murderous skies above threatening further unabated destruction to the planet. The noticeable absence of human life and the two make-shift crosses on the hill was a harrowing sight. Persistent snow and ice had settled everywhere. It covered the skeletons of cars, decayed bodies and the ruins of cities, suburbs, towns and villages. Roads and fields and parks and forests all lay trapped underneath the unmerciful snowfall. Snow dunes and coiling meringues stretched off as far as the eye could see, as if a giant sheet had been pulled over the dead land to hide its wounded and disfigured appearance.
Like the land, the Fable-1 crew had changed in appearance in various ways – untamed hair, jagged nails on toes and fingers, yellowing teeth. Such minor imperfections meant little to them in a world hostile and inhuman. They were still a crew related through the aspirations of space ballooning. Yet, when the bond between them should have been strong, after all they had been through in all the time they had spent together, Sutcliffe felt as though he had nothing in common with his co-adventurers and no bond existed. It annoyed him when they argued amongst one another because they weren’t adhering to the unwritten rule of sticking together in tragic times. It made him miserable. Hennessey was also embittered by the unwarranted tension, but thought things could have been worse, relieved that her stomach had not swelled with a life a world could not foster.
She turned and took Sutcliffe’s hand. “We should get moving.”
“Okay.”
Hennessey talked as she walked, anything to take her mind off the surroundings. They had reached no more than a mile from the gravesites when they saw a skull on top of the snow, its empty eye sockets staring freakishly at them, envying the survivors in their expensive tailor-made spacesuits, hating them.
“Don’t look at it,” Sutcliffe said.
She had already turned away and was continuing on forward.
“A year ago, we were at the top of the sky and were the envy of the world,” Sutcliffe said, following a few paces behind Hennessey. “And now there is no fucking world. Where did we go wrong? I mean, why have we been put on the brink of self-extinction?”
“Testosterone,” she replied. “Testosterone and foolish minds.”
He nodded agreeably. How could anyone grasp the magnitude of nuclear war? The power of politics run by thickheads. Which was more lethal, thought Sutcliffe, the nuclear weapons or the people who decided when to use them? Nuclear weapons were meant for deterrence, not for mass execution. They had caused inestimable mental and physical suffering.
They hammered on through the snow, every step a process. Three times along the way Sutcliffe had to give Hennessey an assisting arm. She was getting tired and she often felt faint. She walked slowly, carefully picking her way forward. She stared up at the grey sky. The sun had disappeared, perhaps for another year, or for evermore. Still looking up, she wondered what had become of Faraday’s solar-wing camera in the stratosphere. As for the Akroid payload, it had to be in a million pieces, buried somewhere beneath the fallout of ash and snow.
The further inland they went, the thicker the snow and the mist enshrouding them became. They waded along anonymous trails and provisional snow-paths, with Hennessey determining the way. They skirted ruined buildings in their search for food, their hearts sinking with every step. They had been walking for a few hours. Sutcliffe watched Hennessey as he trailed behind her, tracking her footprints and the elegance she put into her stride. She had the kind of stylish walk that drew male interest her way. He wished he could have got to know her in a conventional manner. He was a more likeable person when playing at courting. Perhaps things could have been different between them. Things could have been great.
Sutcliffe’s attention was drawn to a blinking smudge of red light in the mist coming from the right of their forward path.
Hennessey concentrated while she walked. The ground and sky had merged into one creating a white-grey wall in front of her. She imagined it was heaven. Then she stumbled over something hard and the snow tumbled away exposing the body of a child, the eyes dark and astonished, the open mouth filled with snow, and she quickly realised it was anywhere but heaven and more like hell. She turned round to Sutcliffe. He wasn’t there. She stared into the snowy drizzle dusting wet snowflakes off of her visor. She realised she hadn’t seen him for a few minutes and, in the morning blizzard, how easy it was to become lost.
“Brad?”
She waited anxiously to hear his voice through her headset, panicking when he didn’t reply.
“Brad, where are you?”
She glanced over her shoulder and found him running into the misty horizon. What was he running from? She also started to run, knowing that if he disappeared she might lose him altogether. Then she saw the red light. He wasn’t running away from anything, he was running to something. Was it the emergency services? A rescue helicopter? The Red Cross finally? It seemed so improbable after so many months and she struggled to believe that they were about to be rescued. Drawing nearer to the flashing red light, she watched Sutcliffe slow into a jog, then a walk. Then he stopped.
Then she saw it.
Sutcliffe had his hands raised to his helmet.
Hennessey sighed, staring at the Fable-1gondola half-buried in snow with parachute canopies hanging off it flapping in the wind. The triple parachute system had deployed after all bringing Fable-1 safely back to Earth. The gondola was cracked and buckled and had landed hard on its side. The sight of five red bucket seats gave Hennessey a chill, her mind returning to their daring achievement in the stratosphere, memories that had shrunk into a small collection of Polaroid snapshots, making her question if it had happened at all. Amazingly, the GPS tracking beacon at the base of the gondola was still working, the red light beating
like a heart. She detected the anguish that Sutcliffe’s was feeling at that moment. The flight to the edge of space had meant a lot more to him than it had to her.
“So much for a rescue helicopter.”
The Black Hawk helicopter took off, skimming the decrepit rooftops of the old abandoned airport. The helicopter carved a belligerent path over the Nevada Desert and, as it soared to a thousand feet, Hennessey immediately trained her eyes on the barren land below.
“Now I don’t want you to get your hopes up, Miss Hennessey,” Major Helens of the Civil Air Patrol said, expressionless. “Even if we do manage to locate your parents’ plane, the chances are still slim, especially in this heat.”
The Major’s pessimism annoyed Hennessey. “Two years ago, my father was flying over California and the plane’s navigational aids and communications became unserviceable due to a sudden malfunction. He lost pretty much everything except the altimeter and the engines and still managed to land safely. My father is an excellent pilot so the chances are he made an emergency landing and he’s just waiting to be found. It has only been a few hours since they disappeared off radar.”
“I’m just saying, I have worked in this region for the last fifteen years and I can tell you there are hundreds of plane wreckages in these parts. Sometimes, if the pilots do survive the crash, they die from heat exhaustion. It could take weeks to find your parents. We might never find them. I’m just trying to prepare you, that’s all.”
As the Black Hawk headed west, she began to see what Major Helens had meant. Scattered over a large area she saw the remains of an aircraft. She pointed to it. “Down there!”
Major Helens shook her head. “We already have a record. That was an Atec Zephyr jet. It crashed in 2004.”
Five minutes later, she saw another. “There!”
“Crashed two years ago. Engine malfunction.”
In the distance she saw what looked like a white cabin and no wings. “Over there!”
“That’s an abandoned pick up. It’s been there for about six years. Please, let us do our job.”
When night descended on the desert, with optimism and hope sliding away, Hennessey was dropped off at the airport and the Black Hawk disappeared into the night to continue with the search, limited to its hi-tech aerial searchlights and special thermal-imaging equipment.
At first light, Hennessey was back up in the sky looking for her parents. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that they spotted the wreckage of a private plane not on record. The Black Hawk began to lose height before banking sharply to the west where it circled twice. It hovered above the plane ruins as the crew observed it thoroughly. The helicopter descended with predatory determination. Hennessey skipped out of the cabin as soon as it landed and ran towards the plane. She could tell immediately by the model that it belonged to her father – a Six Cessna 140. One of the wings had snapped off and the nose had grated the hard ground leaving a long scar in the soil. She peered through the window expecting to see her parents inside sheltering from the sun. Investigating, she circled the plane a few times but found the cabin was empty. She gazed at the endless steep canyons and rugged mountains and exhaled a sharp breath.
Hennessey sighed as she stared around at the endless snowy hills, deciding that there was nothing contemptible about giving up. The chances of finding food in such thick snow bordered on impossible. She teetered for a moment, then dropped to her knees and tucked her feet under her bottom with her fingers clasped together in the approach of prayer.
“What is it?” Sutcliffe asked her.
She faced him. “You know, the fear of God is the foundation of wisdom.”
Chapter 34
Sutcliffe and Hennessey had been gone for a few hours in their quest to find food. Burch had been dead for a year and was buried next to the mysterious intruder, Fred Farrell, outside on the hill. As for Matthews, he finally had the privacy he craved, having waited a year to be alone with his cousin, Claris Faraday.
Faraday was sleeping, her breathing soft and attractive. The insulation blankets outlined her lovely body. Matthews wondered if the physique beneath her clothes was as lean as he’d imagined all those months. She was very thin, all skin and bone in fact, but he still found her easy on the eye. He stroked her hair, ran his hand over her bony shoulder and down her arm, stopping at the hard beginning of her breast. Beneath the blankets, he lifted the hem of her knee-length skirt and, very slowly, slow enough to amplify his stimulation, pushed his hand towards her warm thighs. Faraday moved and gave a soft congenial moan, enjoying it and his arousal increased. Acting on his animal instinct, his hand edged a little further, exploratory, stroking her inner thigh.
Then Trev Gable burst into the room and spoilt the moment. He’d been in the toilet cubicle all night because Matthews had been snoring again and it always prevented him getting his own sleep.
“Morning,” he said sleepily.
Matthews whipped his hand out of Faraday’s skirt and grunted in annoyance, caught up by two consistent urges that both bore the same result. He wanted to be alone with Faraday so they could spend quality time together and he wanted Gable gone because Gable was in the way and because he was eating precious food, food that was diminishing so quickly it would last but a few more months. Who was Trev Gable anyway? He didn’t deserve to be a survivor, he hadn’t earned it. The only reason he was there, alive, was because he’d been stealing from the crew. He’d done nothing along the scale of flying a balloon to the edge of space. And Gable had almost cost him his life last year when he went missing. If he and Faraday hadn’t rescued him from the human cannibals, an action he had come to regret, he would have been killed. Matthews walked about the room in agitation, his presence as he stalked up and down scaring Gable because of all the people there, Matthews he trusted least.
Gable popped out to the elevator to collect a tin of tomatoes. He took a few deep breaths before going back in, sensing the tension in the air. Back inside, he skewered the lid off the tin and with his fingers began spooning the plump tomatoes into his mouth. Some spilt down his front so he set the tomatoes on the floor, pulled his shirt up to his mouth and sucked off the juice. A pair of feet shuffled up to his tin, one of them tapping the floor. He looked up and saw Matthews standing over him, fists clenched.
“What did you do to the toilet?” Matthews barked, his head twitching more than usual, as if a bug had found a way inside his head and was looking for a way out.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie. I just went in there and saw it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Right, follow me.”
Reluctantly, Gable abandoned his tomatoes tin and sheepishly followed Matthews to the other side of the room wondering what was going to happen. Matthews opened the door to the cubicle and pointed at the toilet half-filled with water.
“Look, just look!”
Gable stepped into the cubicle and peered over the rim of the toilet. “What?”
“Look closer,” said Matthews.
Gable saw nothing out of the ordinary, except for the water level, which was much higher than usual and…
Gable’s head was rammed headlong into the water. He hit his temple on the rim on his way down and struggled for air as the cold water turned pink with blood. His weak arms thrashed ineffectually against his attacker’s impressive strength. Matthews never imagined such a naked growl of terror could emerge from a human throat, though Gable’s scream for help was softened by the sound of the bubbles rushing through the water. Matthews closed the door, not wanting Faraday to wake up.
Suffocating, Gable realised that debt and his thieving ways had brought him there, right now, to his end. He had survived a nuclear war inside the toilet cubicle. Now he would die inside it. Matthews calmly closed his eyes and tilted his head back waiting for the sound of Gable’s whimper to disappear, until the young man gave up and succumbed to his fate.
A few seconds later, he was dead.
&nb
sp; Faraday awoke to a dark and silent room that was absolute, sensing she was alone.
She took her time to stir, the comfort of sleep still with her. Yet another night had passed and she hadn’t dreamt. No images. No thoughts. Nothing. Memories of her past seemed to be disappearing altogether, she feared. Incapable of finding the energy to stretch her legs, she just stayed there, empty. Her back felt numb from sleeping on the floor for so long, the blood in her body felt as though it had coagulated. She blinked away sleep before focussing again on her surroundings. Lighting a candle, she looked about the White Room to find it empty. Where was everyone else? Insulation blankets were strewn all over the floor but nobody was sleeping beneath them. One of the toilet doors was closed. Her watch said twelve, but she had no idea whether that meant midday or midnight, if the time was correct at all. She dragged herself to the toilet bringing the candle. She relieved herself and tried the flush, unsurprised when it failed. The cistern hadn’t been refilled. Someone must have gone to collect more seawater, she surmised, critically observing herself in the bath-room mirror. She studied her teeth; blemished and brown. Her skin; pale and arid. Her hair; ratty and split. Her eyes; dark pupils, but still lovely. She heard the main door open and returned to the room to see who had come back. Matthews walked in carrying a bucket of seawater in one hand and a tin of soup with the lid removed in the other.
Matthews took the bucket into the toilet to fill the cistern. When he came back, he gave the soup to Faraday.
“Where’s everyone else?” she asked.
“Brad and Jen went looking for food.”
“Where’s Trev? Asleep in the toilet again?”
“He went out for a bit.”
Faraday looked down and saw red specks in the tiled floor. She dragged a champagne bottle with a candle stabbed into it close to the marks and noticed more droplets. “Is that blood?” she asked.