Watershed

by Jane Abbott

  On the third morning, she woke to find him gone. The storm had blown over during the night and Whitey had disappeared with it, taking his broken shotgun with him. She never knew if he made it to the Citadel or not; she didn’t see him again. But she never forgot him.

  Mirage. Mir-raj. Too beautiful a word, she thought, for something so cruel. The dance of haze that beckoned and tempted and lured them forwards, promising hope: Whitey’s big water. But every dune and every flat proved false, spindles of trees and other wreckage materialising from nothing, the waterless land still lapping at their feet. Once Sarah was certain she’d seen a shimmer of camels – their loping domed shapes were unmistakeable – but as soon as she blinked they disappeared. Other shapes loomed too, dusty spirals whipped up to tease: Anna, calling to her, or old Whitey striding ahead, just out of reach, whistling encouragement before twisting and whirling to nothing.

  Other things weren’t imagined. Jon was the next to go, succumbing to a snakebite of all things, and he died much the same way as he’d lived, griping and cursing. None of them had strength to spare to dig a grave; they covered him with hot sand and marked the place with a single rock. So it was that Sarah finally got her wish, with Daniel taking the lead and the compass at last.

  But the world was changed, and with it the rules; two more were lost in quick succession. Perhaps the group had become complacent, secure in the proven strength of their numbers; perhaps it’d simply been a case of wrong place, wrong time, but when Seb crested a dune ahead of them and they heard his warning shout, all of them froze while three ragged figures rose up as if from beneath the ground to pull him down, just as Sarah had once seen lions hunt a buffalo, mobbing and pressing it to the earth, subduing its struggles with tooth and claw. Similarly, Seb’s end was almost silent, any growls and howls snatched by the wind. The rest of them scattered and ran, a spooked herd; it’d happened so quickly, there was nothing they could’ve done to help and they had no ammunition to waste with panicked pot shots. But Nat’s fate, a few weeks later, was worse; her screams, when the swarm of raiders cornered and tore at her, pinning and spreading her, followed the fleeing group, taunting their cowardice; Sarah later cried, remembering Anna, and hating her relief that it had been Nat who’d been taken, and not her or Rachel.

  And now they were five and two.

  Go careful, Whitey had warned. Coz they weren’t the only ones.

  They began walking at night, when they could, when enough faint red moonlight allowed; it was more perilous, the shifting terrain masking hidden dangers – sinkholes of sand that gave way beneath tired feet, half-submerged rubble catching and tripping them – so they trudged in single file, stepping where others had and trusting to that night’s leader to find the safest path. Better were the too-brief but more forgiving hours of dawn and dusk; once, between those hours, they’d found shelter behind a wall of skulls someone had painstakingly stacked into a crescent shape. Sarah hadn’t slept well that day, her dreams too filled with images of the wall collapsing, of suffocating beneath a pile of grinning heads, of their lipless kisses and their voiceless pleas.

  She chewed slowly, painfully. She’d already lost one tooth, the offending brown ivory loosening from bone and gum to drop from her mouth; now it seemed she was soon to lose another. But she chewed despite the ache, and Daniel chewed too, softening sinewy flesh to a grey paste, before tearing it into tiny pieces for Jeremiah to suck and swallow. If there was any miracle to be found in their misery, it was he. Ethan sickened often – at his first taste of water, and his first bite of meat, even vomiting up a bit of old biscuit that Rachel had let soak in her milk – but Jeremiah took in everything they gave him, and then demanded more. Younger than Ethan, but already bigger, stronger, more robust, he rode in a sling on Daniel’s back, bare-footed and bare-bottomed, a monkey of a boy and a child of his time, his small pot-bellied body adapting quickly to any change, his eyes trusting, his laugh infectious. It seemed to Sarah the only time she smiled any more was when Jeremiah laughed.

  Anna’s miracle child, fathered by demons.

  Whitey’s big water proved bigger than perhaps even he’d imagined: a drowned valley so vast, clouded by salted air so thick, they couldn’t sight the further shore; couldn’t even be certain there was one. Sarah tried to imagine what lay beneath: towns perhaps, farms with neat wire fences and rotting posts, old roads weighed by sunken vehicles, long dead carcasses and bones picked clean by fish. From the heights the water appeared calmer than she remembered but with no passage down the sheer cliffs, there was no way to check. Instead, they turned north to the hazed shadow of the mountains, just as Whitey had told them to, and pressed on, ever cautious.

  Thinking back, she couldn’t be sure what it was that first woke her – the grind of sand beneath boots or Rachel’s startled yelp, high and fearful. They’d sought cover from the sun beneath a straggle of grey bushes spiked with thorns and black berries – Banjo tried one but quickly spat it out – and had clumped together to wait out the heat. Daniel had taken watch but, as exhausted as the rest of them, he must have fallen asleep, and now they’d been caught out. Bleary-eyed and dazed, Sarah blinked against the sun’s glare, but felt cold. So cold. How hateful was fate, to have led them this far, only to catch them out at the last?

  She counted seven men, swathed in cloaks and other ragged bits, faces wrapped, eyes shadowed, but weapons drawn; makeshift swords and long knives; one aimed his rifle at Daniel. Hugging Jeremiah to her and trying not to think of Nat, Sarah prayed for a merciful end. Ethan snuffled and cried; Jeremiah gurgled and laughed and squirmed in her arms.

  We have children, she heard Daniel say, his voice calm but brittle.

  We ain’t blind, replied one of the men, but still none of them made a move, didn’t fall, voracious and rabid, upon the small captive group, as Sarah had imagined.

  Daniel tried again, ever reasonable, ever rational: We’re looking for the town. On the other side of the water. The town that wouldn’t die.

  A nod, and Sarah shivered as she felt the man’s piercing gaze strip her bare before sliding across to Rachel. Hearing Cutler shift behind her, Sarah willed him not to do anything. At least not until the last.

  The man’s reply was slow: Seems everyone’s lookin’ for that place. Godders, eaters. And the rest. But them on the pass are real choosy now about who gets through. So which are you? he asked, still eyeing them all. Godders or eaters? Or maybe both?

  Daniel shook his head and rose to his knees; one of the others stepped forwards, machete raised but though he held up his hands, Daniel didn’t cower. Neither, he answered. We have children.

  There was another tense silence, longer this time, even the babies quieting their fussing while the wind whooped and whistled, but Sarah didn’t hear it; her ears were filled with the beat of her blood. Then another curt nod and the first man turned to the one beside him.

  Signal ahead and tell him to hold up, he said. We’re bringin’ in five more.

  Their weapons were taken. A precaution, they were told, and they wouldn’t need ’em any more. In return, they were given water and a little food – some kind of flatbread, stale and gritty (Sarah tore a piece for Jeremiah to chew) and some strips of stiff, salted meat. Goat, the man said. When they hesitated, he smiled and repeated: It’s goat. We ain’t eaters either. He’d removed the scarf from his face; like Daniel, like all men, he was heavily bearded, and his face was lean and dark, the right side puckered, the eye closed over with melted flesh. At Sarah’s stare, he smiled again and tapped at the scar. Namesake, he said. Burns.

  Who are you? Daniel asked him.

  Scouts, he replied. Sent out through the pass to track down anything of worth: supplies, people, didn’t much matter. Some things they brought back, others they didn’t. Sarah shivered; there was no need to ask his meaning. They’d been heading back when they’d found the group. Dead lucky for you, Burns added. Wouldn’t be another party sent out for a while, and once the pass is closed there’s no way through,
’cept over the mountains. Not likely they’d have made it though, he said, staring at them with his one eye. Not with kids. And even if they had there was worse to follow.

  What do you mean? Cutler asked.

  Burns swivelled his head to better see him, and said: I mean you still got a way to go. But you’ll be in good hands. If anyone can get you to the Citadel, it’s the lieut.

  The lute? Sarah wondered. The Citadel? Daniel said.

  That place you’re lookin’ for, Burns replied. The town that wouldn’t die? Much more’n that now. When they stared, blankly, he shrugged. You’ll see, he said.

  But when they finally did, it wasn’t what any of them had hoped.

  3

  Not as big as the old town that’d once sprawled in its place, but a lot more imposing, the Citadel had formed itself like a misshapen wheel. At its centre stood the Tower, half as wide as it was tall, with just a few windows high up to break its grey-stone façade; spreading out from that, and encircled by the original wall, was the inner hub, quartered into districts by the four main roads that spoked from the base of the Tower to run out through the gates and across the plateau. The outer rim, between the old wall and the new, was some forty strides wide in places, and had been given over to an assortment of uses: the east provided for the living; the west was taken up by the dead and the dying. Aside from the Guards who were garrisoned alongside each road to man the gates and oversee any traffic in and out, the only others to live in the rim were the Pickers. And I reckoned living was a relative term.

  Southeast were the trenches, dug deep to escape the worst of the wind, some covered with bits of old glass or plastic to retain any moisture for whatever grew there. Like in-ground glasshouses, my grandmother had explained. Ingenious, she’d called it. Except there wasn’t much to grow; just the pale grain (the Godders could call it whatever they liked, but since hearing Taggart’s non-story I’d always think of it as Willow grain), sedges and flax, and more of the silver saltbush that already grew in abundance along the coast; the black, bitter berries were no good to eat, but I’d been told they made a mean spirit. Spiky cacti and aloes filled any uncovered trenches, and stunted olive trees lined the walls. Northeast were the yards and cages to hold the goats and seabirds and whatever else was brought in for market, plus a few long pens for the camels. Both sectors had big tanks to contain the water that came from the Port: shunted along by feeble windmills that were always breaking, through pipes that often leaked, it was stored and guarded in the rim, ready for irrigation or distribution; anything recycled was steamed in the main part of the Citadel.

  Southwest, the pyres were lined in rows. They smoked endlessly, the wood fires never kept hot enough for any kind of real furnace so the dead just hissed and bubbled slowly to char, the oily pall of cooked meat hanging like a fog. But it was easier, and a whole lot safer, than trying to bury them all. Every few days Guards would rake out the ashes, crush the burned bones, and cart the mess over to the trenches to nourish the soil, for what it was worth. To save themselves a bit of time and effort, a couple of execution docks had been set up alongside the pyres. Death was usually quick, depending on the mood of whoever had been assigned to the job: beheaded or run through with a sword, but a few were winched up and left to dangle and choke; bullets were too precious to waste on petty criminals. There was another dock inside the Citadel, at the base of the Tower, but you had to have done something real bad for them to make a public spectacle of you. Had the Watch not taken me on, there was a good chance I might’ve ended my days on that stand.

  Last of all, in the hot northwest sector and hidden from sight (if not from memory), lay the refuse dump, crawling with its Pickers – all the outcasts, anyone diseased enough to be considered a concern. Why they were kept alive at all was a mystery to me. It would’ve been a lot quicker and a shitload more merciful to kill them straight up, but it seemed even the diseased had their uses and the Pickers kept the rubbish from piling too high. Not much of a life for them, but never overly long either. Every few weeks the Guards would draw lots and the losers would have to mask up and go in to torch what remained of the dead and leave vats of water for the rest. And every day dumpers would push their loads over to the guarded hatches in the wall, open them up and toss the rubbish down the chutes. If you were close enough when a hatch opened, you’d hear the Pickers crying out for help; the sound of it haunted for hours. Other than that, they were left to themselves. Not allowed in, but not allowed out either, they were kept in a living purgatory for as long as it took.

  It was forbidden to climb the walls. Not because it was dangerous (which it was) but because the Guards didn’t like anyone looking down on them. Even so, kids were always daring each other to the top, willing to risk any consequences. I’d done it myself a few times. They’d get a belting or worse if they were caught, but it really wasn’t worth the effort, even for a minute, to stand on all that rubble and get a sky view of what lay outside the last wall. In fact, it was a real disappointment.

  The remains of the old town, all the buildings and roads, all the lampposts and signposts and the dead trees, all the stopped-forever cars and trucks and other machinery, had been broken up and pulled apart. What wasn’t deemed useful for anything else was piled to make the walls, any gaps in the jumble filled over time with driven sand and dust. Now, aside from a clump of old turbine stalks, silent monuments to what might’ve been had there been more of them sooner, and so tall you didn’t need to scale any wall to see them, all that remained on the surrounding plain were base reminders of what had been. Like a colony of frantic ants, we’d raided what was and carted the spoils across to build what is. Every year the cutters had to trek further and further to fetch dead wood, and if anyone had given any thought to what might happen when the last of the trees had been chopped and burned, no one said. Despite what had gone before, our survival depended on the now and few eyes looked to a distant future.

  But within the confines of the inner wall, it was a different story. Buildings that hadn’t been ransacked or burned during the raids had been badly patched and were now home to hundreds. The rest were rickety wooden structures, fire hazards that leaned precariously over narrow, twisting lanes that were shaded, where possible, by cloth or slat, keeping out the worst of the sun but trapping in the stench of unwashed misery: troughs of piss filled ready for boiling, carts of shit waiting to be rolled out and ploughed into the dust, the rich odour of rotting fish, the heavy aroma of slow-stewing goat meat, the pungent, old-sweat smell of cheese, wilted yellow and flyblown. And there was as much noise as there was stink – a deep clamour made by people living hand to hand and day to day, none of them knowing if it might be their last.

  My grandparents had called this the new world, said when the place had come together everyone had been hoping they might’ve learned enough from past mistakes never to repeat them, but having heard their stories of how things used to be I couldn’t see a whole lot of improvement. All those petty hatreds about the colour of a man’s skin or the way he spoke had, for the most part, been put aside – though that magnanimity hadn’t extended to include any kind of religion. But there were always plenty of new intolerances cropping up, enough to keep the law-makers busy, first one, then the next, then another, until no one could possibly remember them all and the only way they knew they’d transgressed was when they found themselves being hauled off to one of the garrisons to plead their case. Because, just like before, the only divide that really mattered was the one separating those in charge from those not.

  Watchmen never worked too often in the one place, and I’d only been assigned a few cullings within the walls: my first, years ago; then, after I’d made my fifty, two more, both of them small jobs and quickly over. Usually, our visits topside were for pleasure rather than work. That said, none of us were ever stupid enough to consider ourselves off-duty; our time in the compound was less about recuperation and more about replenishing weapons and tools, retraining and preparing ourselves for the ne
xt job. Coz if you weren’t ready when the time came, Garrick would want to know why. And that was a question none of us ever wanted to be made to answer.

  But for all its problems and its mess, I still enjoyed whatever time I had in the Citadel. Frequenting the odd whorehouse or wandering around the market stalls every few months, even for a couple of hours, was a good reminder of my relative fortune.

  ‘How much for two?’ I asked, holding up the waterskins, the inner bladders covered with tanned hides, sewn tight with gut and plugged at the neck. They weren’t big, but once filled they’d stretch a bit, each carrying just under a quarter. My old one had sprung a leak during the last assignment and I was glad of the chance to replace it. Added to the carrier I already had, plus whatever I recycled, there’d be enough to see me through a week.

  The vendor eyed me, judging my worth, trying to figure how much he could fleece from me. I slumped a bit, hunching my shoulders, looking deflated. Not even the Sea had been able to wash away the stains on my shirt and I made sure he saw them.

  ‘One cup,’ he said.

  I grumbled about the expense, as I was expected to, while he shrugged in answer, raising his hands in that age-old you’re-robbing-me-blind way, until I measured out the payment with a sigh, pouring it into the jug he proffered. Both of us winners.