by T. K. Malone
“Oh, God, no,” Teah whispered.
“What’s happening?” Hannah almost screamed.
“It’s the house—” but Saggers’ words were lost to the growing roar as debris crashed down about them. Teah pulled Clay even closer and rolled into a ball on the floor, her mind numb, waiting for the pain, but silence gently returned, punctuated only by the slide and tumble of rubble.
“Shit,” Trip’s voice trembled.
Shit indeed, thought Teah, noticing she could just make out the now lopsided window. Hugging Clay to her, she stumbled up and staggered over fallen timber and bricks, finally looking out through the drunken window. Through the slanted timber and heaps of rubble outside, she could just make out the Free World flag. It fluttered in a confused wind, whipping first one way then the other. She willed it to flap out straight, to aim for the city or the sea, but it just continued in its seemingly dazed confusion.
“We have to hold tight,” she said into the darkness behind her. “We can’t tell where the fallout’s headed.”
“As opposed to what, exactly?” Trip’s voice pointed out. “We’ve got the whole house on top of us. So, until someone comes along and digs us out…”
Teah grunted. She knew he was probably right.
“What the hell just happened,” asked Hannah, but no one answered. “Ray,” she then said. “What about Ray? You think he survived?”
“I’m hoping not,” Saggers said, but Hannah’s stern look confused him, “What?” he protested. “After what he did to you?”
“Doesn’t mean I want him dead,” she muttered.
The air was oppressive and the mood now as dark as the basement, so Teah just hugged Clay closer. Whatever madness had brought all this about, whatever senseless choices had been made, it mattered little now to any of them.
From here on in only survival mattered, nothing else, not Ray or Oster Prime; nothing.
“Ray’s dead,” Teah finally said.
She could hear Hannah gasp.
“It’s the truth. I killed him. He came to the bar…no, I went looking for him. I didn’t quite know what I was doing, but sure as anything, I thought I’d find him in Trip’s bar.”
“To kill him?” Hannah said, clearly stunned. “You went there to kill him?”
“No, not really. I don’t know why I went there. I just knew I had to do something, had to set him straight.”
“You…” but then Hannah heaved, letting out a wail, and began to sob. Teah had never heard anyone cry like that, as though her heart had been snapped in two, her hope all gone. Teah could hear Saggers cursing as he stumbled his way to her side. Soon Hannah’s sobbing eased and then stopped, clearly soothed by Saggers’ presence, by the soft words she could hear him whisper.
No one else said anything for some time, their black and derelict cocoon filled only with Saggers and Hannah’s whispers and the soft trickle and occasional clatter of dust and debris. “Are you sure?” Hannah eventually said to Teah, her voice now stronger. “Are you sure that bastard’s gone?”
Teah bit her bottom lip before saying she was, more tears of her own now flowing as the woman’s relief somehow filled the basement. Then Hannah laughed, but a laugh still choked with tears.
“He’s dead,” she cried, but no longer with sorrow but with relief, the relief of a burden lifted, a life regained. Hannah’s voice lifted, became easier. “He’s bloody well dead, Saggers,” and the sound of her showering him with kisses rose above the dusty silence.
“Better had be,” said Trip, relief clear in his voice, “else he’s gonna be mighty pissed when he wakes up.”
“What happened?” said Saggers, and Teah told him, toning it down for Clay’s ears, although he seemed more intent on comforting the mouse.
“Fitting,” Hannah said when Teah and Trip had finished. “He spent more time in that bar of yours than anywhere else, certainly not with me. So, I suppose it’s only fitting that he’s stuck there now. But just my doggone luck that I get to start living just when the world comes to an end.”
“Talking of which,” said Saggers. “Shouldn’t we start planning? For a start, how long should we stay in here?”
“First thing’s first,” Teah said. “Someone has to watch that flag, and all the time. If it settles down to pointing at the city, we only need stay down here for no more than a day or two. If it flies the other way, though, then we’ve got some thinking to do. Who wants first watch?”
After a moment, Trip sighed. “I’ll do it, then,” and he climbed up beside Teah, who made way for him. “Say, which way was the city?”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Teah muttered as she climbed down and settled on the floor with Clay.
“Then what?” Saggers pressed.
“First off… First off, we’ve got to figure a way out of here—once it’s safe.”
“What do you think’s going to happen out there?” Trip asked.
She could feel them all looking at her, realizing she’d somehow become their leader. She thought for a moment. “Preppers are going to be best positioned. They’ll try and take the valley first.”
“Why?” Saggers said. “Why would they bother? Surely they’re best off holed up where they are? They’ve got everything they need up there: fields, grazing, stock, mills—the lot. Why would they need to come down here?”
“Fear,” Teah muttered. “They’ll come down here out of fear, at first, then the greed’ll kick in.”
“Fear? What in hell have they got to fear from us?”
Teah fumbled for a cigarette and her lighter, lit up and blew out an unseeable cloud of smoke. “The unknown. They’ll send out scouts first, ones who’ll come across all friendly-like, but once they report back, the preppers will then come with guns, not with help.”
“But why?” Saggers persisted, clearly still not getting it.
Why indeed? Teah asked herself. “Because the world needs its bastards, Saggers; the world needs its bastards.”
21
Teah’s story
Strike time: plus 3 days
Location: Aldertown
Teah crouched by the lake and looked across at the waterfall, its curtain of silver water streaming down as though nothing had happened. The trees still grew and the fish still broke the mirror-blue surface to end the sculling of their chosen water boatmen. The world appeared exactly the same as it had three days before. She was following the route Saggers had shown her, those few days before the bombs had fallen, before everything had irrevocably changed. Although, as she looked around, nature appeared curiously unconcerned.
“What d’ya think the city’s going to look like?” asked Trip as he squatted by her. “That water safe?”
Everything was a question now, and everyone had a guess for what the answers might be. All she knew about surviving an apocalypse came down to a few thirty-minute infomercials that had aired every now and then for the benefit of completely uninterested gridders. She knew, for instance, that she shouldn’t drink from sources of surface water, like the lake in front of them. However, even the tap in Saggers’ garden had to come from one of these, probably the lake up by the preppers compound, and so with no other option, it was that or die of thirst. She knew they should have stayed in the basement for two weeks, but that had been impossible. They made it to two days.
In the end it was the stench of their own crap and piss that had forced them to scramble out into the open. In the garden, the one thing that could have told them whether it was safe or not out there was the Free World Flag, but it had only flickered unenthusiastically every now and then. Not enough to tell Teah one way or the other. In the end it didn’t matter. It was die from radiation sickness or from revulsion.
Hannah hadn’t fared so well. Her feelings for Saggers and her loss of Ray had put her on edge, unable to focus her attention. Saggers’ mood seemed equally erratic. Maybe, Teah thought, he’d gotten what he’d wanted for a long time, only to find it wasn’t quite what he’d anticipated. Trip had been
the calmest of the lot, laid back, drinking whiskey and smoking smokes. Teah had warmed to him. Not only that but she saw a strength in him that ran deep. Clay had clearly taken to him as well, now that Saggers’ attention was directed almost exclusively toward Hannah. So Teah had quite naturally chosen Trip to accompany her on the first mission: to see what had happened to the city.
She wanted to do this before revealing themselves to whoever was left in Aldertown, so she could know what they were dealing with. It was also easy to steal away from Saggers’ house and straight into the forest, up to the vantage point above the waterfall he’d shown her. At least then they could make an informed decision: join the townsfolk or strike out on their own. Even the partial shelter of the ruined house wasn’t worth the risk of being under it if it finally collapsed, which it looked like it might do at any moment.
Teah threw a stone skimming across the lake and shrugged. “Safe or not,” she said, “it’s all we’ve got. Ain’t no one feeling sick, ain’t no one covered in blisters and shit, so we’ll just have to see.”
Trip grunted, “Like Jenny? Wait for the long death.”
“Hope for the long death,” Teah corrected, and took out a smoke. She sat back. “Say, you think Saggers and Hannah are gonna kill each other?”
Trip laughed. “Cats and dogs; that’s some tragic timing. Thrown together just before the destruction of the known world, and stuck with the two folk who’d crushed her husband’s head like a big old squash, to boot. Say, you think folk are looting my stuff?”
“Your stuff, Trip? What, a few dozen bottles and a stack of old glasses?”
Trip slumped down close beside her. “Gimme one of them smokes. No,” he said, once he’d lit up, “I’ve got other stuff—useful stuff like fishing rods, tackle…and I gotta truck. You think someone’ll steal my truck? Had that damn thing an age.”
“They might. Hell, if I were in their position, I’d steal your truck.”
Trip scratched his head. “What I don’t get is why anything’s gotta change from where we are now. Why we can’t get everything to be different from before; start afresh. Stop the army coming up here and nicking the kids. I was going to do that, you know: stop ‘em, hide the kids; always planned to do it.”
“What stopped you?”
“Days just didn’t last as long as I’d hoped they would, or maybe I’m all talk. Doesn’t matter now.”
“Maybe they’ll come faster and harder. Maybe they’ll force everyone into the army.”
“If they survived. If the government survived. If not, then what have we got ‘cept anarchy? If some hairy-assed anarchist comes anywhere near me, I’ll blow a hole in his guts. No, we’ve had our wake-up call. It’s time to start believing we can all live in peace.”
“Why, Trip,” Teah said, grinning, “have you gone all idealist on me? Things can’t be different because no one really wants them to be. Most folk want someone in charge—it’s just the way shit works.”
“Guess so, in which case we’ll just have to kill ‘em all. Your bet still with the preppers?”
“Best one. Hell, Trip, I’m just guessing and messin’. Who knows what’s gonna happen. All I know is: it ain’t gonna be pretty. Anyways, what if those damn Cossacks missed? What if Black City’s still there?”
Trip pulled his legs in and narrowed his eyes at her. “I like your hair like that.”
“Trip? You hitting on me?” and Teah sprang up. “You’re picking one hell of a time.” She offered her hand and pulled him up. “Come on, let’s see if The Free World had breakfast this morning.”
“Huh?” but Trip followed her over the stepping-stones and toward the pile of rocks that led up the side of the waterfall. “Would it be so bad?” he shouted after her.
“What? If you were hitting on me or they were toast?” but Teah knew full well, and realized she’d been wondering about this exact same thing a little too much for her own liking.
“If I was hitting on you, would it be so bad?”
She jumped up onto the top of the rocky steps and looked out over their little valley. “Funny thing about this small world I’ve been living in for the last ten years.” She pointed up the slope that led to the promontory from where the city could be seen. “If this hill had collapsed down onto the plains below, well, there’d be no valley now, ‘cause there’d be no river.”
“You think it’s safe?” Trip said, looking up the rocky path that led onto the promontory.
Teah shrugged, then took the cattleman off and scratched her head before ambling on. Now she’d gotten here, she was in no particular hurry to witness what had happened, a macabre fascination her only motivation. To see her old life laid waste suddenly seemed a heavy burden, forcing the bile of true anxiety to rise in her throat and cold sweat to run down her back. “I’m not sure I can,” she said, her voice now hushed as she slowed her pace.
Trip grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Yeah, you can. You’re the bravest woman I know.”
She didn’t reply, her steps no faster. Taking a huge breath, she finally pushed herself on, nearer the edge. The once smooth rock there had been torn ragged, pushed into jagged shapes like broken teeth. The ledge where Billy had sat was gone, now no more than a sheer drop. But they were near enough the edge to see.
Gone were the vast illuminated hoardings cycling through their Free World product adverts, gone the blinking aviation warning lights that had flashed out from every high building, gone the matrices of brightly lit office windows. All gone, all now extinguished, replaced by a vast and desolate black stain, like ink spilled upon the wasted land.
Where the Black City had once stood, only dust remained. Even the sea looked tarnished, a crescent of gray reaching out beyond the tainting ring of pollution the city had long spewed into it. The zones around the grid offered hints of once proud towers, their stunted and charred remains blackly pricking up through a pall of smoke that drifted out to sea. The wasteland around it all looked a little more normal, though darkly blighted here and there, patches glowing dully where its piles of toxic waste still rose from the destruction. Teah sank to her knees.
“Guess they didn’t make it,” Trip said.
“Guess not,” and she sat there for a while and wondered what she would tell Clay.
In the cold light of day, she couldn’t see Connor having survived, nor Zac, for that matter. She doubted even Charm could have saved himself. Most of all, she mourned their loss of Zac. She comforted herself in the knowledge that it would all have been quick, though it seemed no comfort at all. But some gut instinct told her it wasn’t quite as simple as all that. Years of solving crimes, of sifting through clues and working her way around obstacles had not only honed her mind, but had instilled in her a distrust of what was plain to see. Josiah Charm, she thought, would not have accepted such a common fate.
Was he even alive after all these years? She guessed so. He’d had the ability to bring Connor back from the brink of death, way back when they’d first met. No doubt the technology he could call upon now was even stronger, more durable. No, Charm would be alive, way too selfish to die. And if so, then so could Connor, she was certain of that, and Charm wouldn’t abandon his project. So that just left Zac, Clay’s dad, the man who’d seen his own brother raised from the dead only then to turn to the bottle rather than admit what his own eyes had witnessed. Zac, the same man who’d never know their son.
“I need to find a man,” Teah whispered.
“A man?”
She nodded.
Trip held out his hand, and Teah instinctively gave him a smoke. “What kind of man needs finding a few days after that?” he said, pointing at where the city had been. “Ain’t gonna be no ordinary man.”
“No,” Teah murmured.
She thought back to that day in the wastelands, back to when she’d received the call. She’d thought it strange at first. Stiffs didn’t take emergencies out there. If a kid was lost in that land of trash and decay, he was on his own. But the call had com
e from the top, so she’d assumed the kid was special.
It had taken an age and a good few credits to find him. The last bribe to an old tramp had led her to a small network of ribbed tubes. Inside, she’d found Connor floating face down, his pulse slight and fading fast. Now she thought about it, only outrageous coincidence could have taken her to that exact spot, chance beyond the realms of plausibility. As had been the drone ambulance’s arrival just in time, and with a man called Charm in close pursuit.
She felt her heart stop. She’d always thought she’d only met Charm the once, but strange memories were coming back, vague, blurring, clearing and blurring again. No, something had been up, and something she’d subconsciously known for a long time, something crucial. She’d met Charm before that day at the hospital, she’d met him on the wastelands, and he’d said something to her that day. But what had it been? What had he said to her?
“I want you to start running, Teah, running like you’ve never run before,” she now remembered him saying. Teah took out another smoke, recalling she’d answered with outrage, but it had been so long ago. Had he said anything else? He’d smiled, his lips like wet slugs, so she must have. Then she saw his laugh, heard him whisper the words “if you live, my choice was right”. Why had he said that? For that matter, why had she been so interested in a boy she hadn’t even known?
“What is it, Teah?” Trip said, but she ignored him, put the smoke between her lips and lit it. She pushed her cattleman up and stared out, trying desperately to see that day more clearly in her mind.
Had Charm promised her something, or maybe indeed 'everything', but what had he done next? Something weird. Something strange. Then she remembered and smiled: he’d bowed before her. He’d swept his hand out in the middle of the wasteland and bowed, and then he’d said the strangest of things.