Shattered buildings. Rotten, dead trees. Countless signs of destruction, and no evidence of rebuilding. There would be bodies, the skeletal remains of those who had once called this place home. Sometimes, some of those bodies would be piled up, the remnants of great bonfires. Occasionally he would find their sad bones hanging from trees, sacrificed by those few roving survivors who had come and gone following the great fall.
There was no plant growth. Very few animals, and most of those that did still exist were vicious hunters, changed over time from whatever they might have been before to single-minded monsters—hunt, kill, eat.
He was surprised he hadn’t gone the same way.
“Come on,” he said, turning to pack up his tent and collect Old Bob. “We’re here.”
He had no idea where here was, or why he had come. That internal voice had urged him this way. It was a whisper on the breeze, and at night when he slept and dreamed it was more insistent. He took down the tent and folded it, tying the frayed lines and forming it into a roll he could carry slung beneath his backpack. As he worked, he heard the crackle of breaking ice to his left. Old Bob was waking.
A crust of ice broke and angled up. The sound was loud in this silent landscape. He existed within a great white silence that he was familiar with but had never become used to. Somewhere in his past—long lost now, little more than suspicion and rumor, barely even there in his dreams—he thought there was noise and laughter and singing, and that trace memory made the silence he now lived with heavy. He sometimes sang, although he knew no songs. He had to make up the tunes and words. Sometimes he tried laughing, but the sound of his laughter echoing across plains of snow and ice and decayed forests frightened him more than anything.
“Good morning,” he said.
A hand protruded up through the snow. Naked, clawed, wrinkled, the skin a deep brown like old, old leather, the fingers slowly unfurled as if the faint touch of sunlight thawed tendons and muscles. The claws tipping the fingers were long and blunt. The middle finger was missing, leaving only a stump.
The hand and forearm lowered down across the snow and pressed, heaving the body below up into sunlight. Old Bob emerged naked and shriveled, groaning as he crawled from the hole he had slept in. His head was hairless, ears small as if worn away, eyes deep-set and a deep, glimmering black. His nose resembled a gnarled knot of wood, and his mouth was lipless, parted as he drew breath to reveal two rows of sharp teeth. His skin was mud brown and lined so deeply that he looked like a mosaic creature, a composite of many parts held together by some invisible means. The man often thought that if he dropped Old Bob he might well break apart. But Old Bob was tenacious and strong. He had survived much more than being dropped.
“I think we’re almost there,” he said, and Old Bob’s eyes glimmered even more. He writhed on his side, eager to be hoisted onto the trap the man pulled behind him everywhere they went.
With camp broken and the trap secured to his belt, the man started walking toward the drop down into the valley. To begin with, the weight tugged at his hips, but he was used to it, and the trap was well made. It slid efficiently over the frozen snow. He could hear Old Bob’s labored breathing behind him. He had never heard Old Bob speak but suspected that the inner voice might belong to him.
Though the man wandered this landscape of desolation and destruction, and witnessed the palette of apocalypse painted across the sky, he had no memories from before. They were like his recollection of song and laughter—mere rumors, like forgotten whispers echoing in the most hidden corners of his mind. He knew that there must have been a before, but it was so long ago in time and experience that his mind had blotted it out. A few snapshot recollections flashed at him on occasion—inspired usually by the waft of a smell, or a blink of déjà vu in the falling of a snowflake or the shape of a cloud—but they were rarer than ever nowadays. He was content with wandering, scraping a meager meal from dying soils, sleeping, and waking again to a brand-new day that was exactly the same as the last.
Now, though, something had brought him here. It didn’t feel mystical or even mysterious, but he was aware that his random path had been steered toward this valley, and this ruined settlement.
Starting down the hillside, the weight of Old Bob on the trap threatened to push him down. He dug in his worn boots, easing down the slope slowly. Old Bob breathed harsher behind him. The wizened naked thing had been with him for as long as he could remember. It never ate or drank, never defecated or pissed, and he had never heard it speak. Still, it provided a shred of company in this empty land.
It took a while to reach the valley floor. He stumbled a few times and rolled in snowdrifts, and the layers deeper down were gray and stinking, as if even the snow carried rot. He often thought it was the case. People were gone, and now the world was slowly dying.
Approaching the first huddled ruins at the edge of the small town, he saw that it was something far different from what he’d first believed.
“This is no town,” he said to Old Bob. “It’s a compound.”
Old Bob groaned, breathed heavily, rolled so that he could see.
The man started circling the ruined place. Here and there were the remains of a heavy fence, and strung up on its rusting steel sheeting were skeletons. Many of them had fallen apart, but some were whole. Skulls betrayed fractures from weapon impacts. Ribs were splintered. Spines severed. They had been tied high on the walls as a warning, but now there was only the man to heed it.
“It didn’t work,” he said. “This place fell as well.”
Old Bob grunted. The man glanced over his shoulder and down at the ancient creature, whose origins he still did not know. Maybe he pulled a monster behind him. Perhaps an angel.
“Every place fell,” the man said. “So why have we come here?”
Old Bob ceased twitching and writhing and stared up at him. It was rare that they made eye contact, and if they did, it was fleeting and almost embarrassed. Now Old Bob glared right at him, his oily black eyes unreadable and mysterious. He placed both hands on the trap’s framework, and the man saw muscles twitch beneath his leathery skin.
“Do you want me to go—” he began, but then Old Bob heaved himself from the trap and into the snow.
The man held his breath. Old Bob landed on his feet, the snow up to his knees. He swayed a little, like a tree in an unseen breeze, hands swinging back and forth by his side.
Then he ran.
The man gasped. He’d only ever seen Old Bob stumble a few steps before falling, but now he bounded through the snow, too fast to catch. He fumbled at the straps securing the trap to his belt, drew the sharp knife from his boot, and took off after his strange companion.
“Wait!” he shouted. “What about me?” It was a strange thing to say, but the man knew where it came from. It was fear of being left alone.
Old Bob reached the fence, dived through a gap behind a fallen panel, and then he was gone.
The man stood there in silence, breathing heavily, shivering as sweat cooled on his body. As his shock faded and he started running toward the compound, an intense rush of memories bit in and he—
—was running toward the compound, his belt rubbing his right hip, left boot leaking, a fallen tree to his left leaning against part of the perimeter fencing, fencing that must have been built to keep something out—
—Or keep it in, he thought, and then he reached the fence. He looked through the gap where Old Bob had disappeared, scanning for movement. There was none. Buildings lay beneath a blanket of snow, some of them reduced to rubble, others with parts of tumbled walls still standing, slumped roofs visible.
Old Bob’s footprints disappeared between these ruins, and the man slipped through the narrow gap in pursuit.
Something screamed.
He froze to the spot, breath held and mouth open. The sound faded to nothing, vanishing so quickly that
he wondered whether he had heard it at all. He looked around, searching for the source of the scream, yet hoping not to see it. The cry had scored his soul.
Silence hung over the deserted compound.
The man moved on, following the disturbed snow, wending left and right between buildings and feeling with every step that he had been here before. The familiarity was a distant thing, like scenes from a past life. A waft of smoke caught in his nostrils, though he could see no fire, and the smoke carried a mouthwatering hint of cooking food. A snatch of laughter rose and fell, the combined joy of many voices. None of them were real, but all of them might once have been.
Rounding one of the larger buildings fallen to ruin, he came to a wide-open space, at the center of which stood the stump of a tall tower. It must have been a grand sight once, but it was now a broken spire. There was no way of saying how tall it might once have been.
Old Bob stood close to the tower’s base, staring up.
“Old Bob,” the man said. The wizened shape, no taller than his hip, gave no indication that he had heard.
The screech came again, louder this time, and it was taken up and carried from other mouths in different directions. The man turned left and right, wielding the knife. His heart hammered. Blood pumped. He could not remember ever feeling this warm before, but it was the heat of terror.
Old Bob turned to look at him just as the first of the shapes darted at them from between the buildings. It scampered across the surface of the snow, spiked limbs flicking up showers of ice behind it as it came. It moved incredibly quickly, and the man struggled to make out what it was.
It was only as it slowed to confront Old Bob that the man saw.
Old Bob grabbed the smaller version of himself, swung it around, and ripped its serrated jaws wide open. It whined, then fell into the snow, squirming its last and bleeding black into white.
“What the hell…?” the man asked, but Old Bob gave him no easy answer. His shriveled, silent traveling companion was preparing for more attacks, and as the man crouched with his knife held wide, they came.
Two rushed in from the left, skittering across the snow. One went for Old Bob, the other for the man. He swung his knife, catching the ravenous creature a glancing blow. There was something painfully human about its cry of pain, but there the comparison stopped. It was even less human than Old Bob, a spitting, snarling thing spilling blood as it came at him again. Its hide was thick and knotted, features vaguely human but blurred by disfigurement and mutation. Though their origins were unknown, the creatures’ aims were clear.
The thing the man had cut jumped up and leapt for his leg. Its teeth clamped on tight, jaws sawing as it struggled to bite through his thick clothing. It was only the old animal hide material that saved his leg from being bitten right through, and three hacks from the knife parted the creature’s head from its body.
Panting, staggering, the man drew closer to Old Bob. His companion had killed the other attacker with his bare hands, and now three of them lay dead upon the snow. Their blood was so dark it was almost black, and so hot that it melted down into the snow and out of sight.
“What are they?” the man asked.
For a moment he thought Old Bob was going to reply. The creature looked up at him with obvious intelligence, dark eyes shining, but he said nothing. Instead he started across the square away from the tower, moving slower than before so that the man could keep up. He had always believed that he was leading the way, and Old Bob allowed himself to be carried along. Now he was following Old Bob.
They entered a low doorway to one of the buildings that still remained half-standing. Inside, several bodies were piled in one corner, the smaller creatures’ features evident. There was a faint musty smell, but any stench of rot had long since vanished. These things had been dead for years.
Old Bob passed them with hardly a look, threaded his way through a series of corridors and small hallways, and the man followed, realizing that Old Bob knew just where he was going.
And have I been here before? he wondered. There was something about the compound that seemed familiar. A sense of being inside, while the outside was a different place. The idea that whatever happened beyond that fence belonged in another world, and that the world within would survive.
That hadn’t worked out so well.
Old Bob paused by a broken doorway, a stairwell beyond leading down. He sniffed at the air, tilted his head to one side as he listened. The man heard nothing.
“What is it?” he asked.
Old Bob glanced at him before jumping down the staircase. One moment he was there, the next gone. The man followed him down the staircase with caution. Even though by his reckoning they were headed underground, there was still some form of illumination coming from ahead. Listening for any sign of those fierce things, hearing nothing, he reached the bottom of the staircase. He was in a small hallway with several doors leading off, but only one was open. He walked to the doorway and peered inside.
Every time I come here, he thought. Every single time I see this for the first time, and for the thousandth, and maybe the millionth, because everything here is as familiar as my own hand.
Beyond the doorway was an expansive basement area. Lit by glowing windows set in the high ceiling, the place was a mess, with smashed furniture and equipment strewn across the floor and piled into corners. There were two more bodies close to the door. These were fresh, their blood still seeping, and he saw Old Bob hobbling toward a pile of refuse to the left, dragging his heavy clawed hand on the floor beside him.
“Old Bob?”
The creature glanced back, then carried on walking. When it reached the pile of rubbish—heavy furniture broken and smashed, and other mechanical items ripped and rusted—it sat down with a sigh and started sorting through some items.
The man looked around the large underground area and heard singing, and laughter, and he smelled food roasting. When he blinked he was back in the ruined room.
“Where are we?” he asked. The small shriveled creature ignored him. He seemed immersed in this new activity, no longer alert to dangers, away from this world and into another.
The man sat on a fallen storage unit. It was made of wood, and sitting upon it he could see how intricate the carvings on its surface were, even though a spread of gray mold smothered most of them. It gave slightly beneath him but did not come apart. He tried to make out what the carvings depicted, but saw only random patterns and symbols that might once have meant something more.
“We should go,” he said. “It isn’t safe here. There might be more of those things.” Old Bob ignored him. He was doing something with the items he’d found, twisting and folding, using shards of metal to scrape and screw, and the activity seemed to change his whole aura and appearance. Still wizened and old, there was a fluidity to his movements that belied his deep age. Still wrinkled, his leathery skin shone with a vitality the man had never seen before.
Never seen and remembered, at least.
I’m so old, the man thought. Sometimes I can’t remember yesterday, but I have a past so deep. He watched Old Bob working and felt like he had done so many times before. It was like breathing—he couldn’t recall any breath he had taken in his life, yet he knew he had taken millions. Soon, Old Bob had finished his task. He carried a small object with him and darted around the large room, searching for something. The man remained seated, letting him look. The room was silent and empty but for the two of them, and those ghostly memories pricking at the edges of his consciousness.
At last, Old Bob seemed to find what he was looking for. He approached the man with a strange reverence, and perhaps that really was a smile on his face. He held out the object for the man to take. It was the size of his fist, wrapped in a shred of folded, holed cloth, and with a loop of discolored plastic circling it both ways, finally tied in a neat bow.
“For
me?” the man asked, and he had asked countless times before.
Old Bob nodded, again.
The man slipped the knife into his boot and took the gift, and déjà vu struck again, rich and full as—
—he opened the gift, scratched his finger on some of the coarse wrappings, remembered countless other times like this all bleeding into one—
—and Old Bob had fashioned him a model of a reindeer out of a piece of charred wood, some wires, and several shards of sharp metal. It was basic. It was beautiful.
“For me,” the man said, and he nodded his thanks at Old Bob. The creature smiled, shy, and held out his hand. The man took it and, still holding the model reindeer, let Old Bob lead him across the room.
With light bleeding down from translucent ceiling tiles, he could make out some of the piles of refuse they passed. And with each ruined thing he built up a picture of what this place had been, an image layered upon countless forgotten layers from the past, like an oil painting gradually emerging from a blank canvas.
It was a workshop. Some of the rotting junk was the remains of tools and benches, stools and boxes, and mixed in were raw materials that had once been formed into something less raw.
“Old Bob?” the man said, because he had a question. But however many times he asked, the creature he called Old Bob would never be able to reply.
Instead he steered the man across the workshop to another door at the far end. The door was closed, and Old Bob took the key hanging around his neck and unlocked it. He pushed it open and urged the man inside.
This place was much smaller, also lit by daylight filtered down from above. Many years ago it might have served a different purpose, but now it was something else. Something personal, and revealing, and not so much of a shock as it might have been.
He knew that he was very, very old, after all.
Hark! the Herald Angels Scream Page 27