Once the power company had blown a substation clear to kingdom come. His dad had driven all the way to Lansing to bring back generators so Waterman could keep running. Mostly, the same dull routine repeated day after day. Parson didn't know how his dad had done it without going crazy. You couldn't survive like that anymore, looking out for anyone but yourself. Maybe you never could.
His dad had proven that. And if he hadn’t, Parson's mom sure had.
But that wasn't why his dad was dead.
No, Parson had done that.
He hadn't wanted to. He really, truly hadn’t. You had to think with your head, though. Plan ahead. The water would last twice as long now.
He and his dad had come back to the plant after looking for his mom for a few days. The news was crazy, the Internet in shambles, the economy replaced by bullets and bottles of water. China was to blame, somebody said. Others said North Korea. Both of those countries blamed the West. Like it really mattered who started it.
The boogers had been everywhere all at once and that sort of thing doesn’t happen because somebody tripped in a lab and broke a beaker of apocalypse.
The crazy little things had spread like a bad idea. People had panicked, looting and killing each other for sealed jugs of water, cans of soups, anything containing free water.
The days of morons running around guns a-blazing had been mercifully short. No frontier justice or homegrown dictators had risen from the ashes. That type of survivor had lost to the few like himself who were patient enough to dig in and wait.
Metal creaked below. The woman behind the car rose, looked around and bolted for the front of the building. The man came out a second later. Parson dropped the man with a single shot to the head. The woman cried out, spun, and dashed back. The idiots always did that.
It took two shots to stop her.
Still she dragged herself toward the man, leaving a smear in the dust that would probably be bound up before he could make it to them. Hopefully they wouldn’t bleed out before he could get down there. The head-shot had been a good one. Surprisingly little blood from those. Maybe the arteries in the head were unique in some way the boogers could seal up tight before they could get too deep. It didn’t stop them, just slowed their progress. Who knew?
Dad might have.
The woman was yelling. How could she still be yelling? He hoped by the time he made his way down to ground level, she'd be done. Hearing them always made him feel uncomfortable. Not so much the men, but the women’s voices were like tiny needles poking into his eardrums sometimes. And this woman was screaming for all she was worth. She wasn't yelling for help, which was good. More like she was cursing the person who shot them.
Did she say asshole? That wasn't very nice.
At least I’m a quiet asshole. Parson really didn’t like the idea of attracting attention. The possibility of someone else out there as patient as himself was very real.
To claim the water, he'd have to take the chance. Plan ahead.
The trick was to get the generator fired up and the bodies prepared for the centrifuge before their water started binding up. The boogers didn't go for living things so much, but they sure as shooting didn't wait long once you were dead. They’d start with the mouth and eyes or any open wound. It was like watching one of the old time-lapse films of molding fruit.
No time to waste.
Precious seconds later, Parson unbarred the main entrance, scanned the parking lot one last time, and slid between the weeds.
The woman lay on her back, one hand reaching for her fallen comrade and the other clutched at her neck. Sunlight glinted, not from buttons and buckles like he'd thought from the rooftop, but from the chain clutched in her hand. A single pendant. The half-heart of silver gleamed before tendrils of dust crept over the sun.
Parson didn't need to pull his own chain from his shirt to know the pendant would match up with his own. Hammers beat inside his head trying to escape.
She hadn't changed much in the years, or days since she'd left. He took a deep breath, refusing to wipe the grit from his eyes, ozone stinging his nose and throat. The summer days of tossing the ball around were long gone and no one was going to call him in from the dark.
He'd waited too long to prepare one parent.
And that was not going to happen again.
###
William R.D. Wood lives with his wife and children in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley in an old farmhouse turned backwards to the road. His work is forthcoming from Omni Reboot and has appeared in such publications as the Lovecraft eZine, Vignettes from the End of the World from Apokrupha and Animism: The Book of the Emissaries. www.williamRDwood.com
Time Enough
Salena Casha
“Peter combusted today.”
Henry’s words hung in the air alongside the smoke from his joint. He coughed, back hunched. He hadn’t meant to say it so early, let his delivery fall so flat. But the words had slipped out with the fumes that funneled through his lips.
A lawn chair scraped against the flat-tiled roof. Henry watched the solar panels absorb the sunlight. They were vintage.
“No way,” Colin breathed, eyes wide.
Henry nodded, taking another hit. He felt hot, itchy almost. The words had left an iron tang on his tongue. He sucked in smoke to try and get rid of the aftertaste.
“Shit,” Colin said. “Peter. Our Peter? You’re sure?”
Again, Henry nodded.
“How’d you find out? I mean, it wasn’t on the local telecast.” Colin paused. Years ago, he’d shadowed Henry and Peter, chased them through the city, enamored by their haunted lives, the exoticness of their poverty, their elaborate games of make-believe. Time had changed everything.
“I saw it happen,” Henry said slowly. He could tell Colin wanted to ask him. What it was like to see another human being explode in flames and then disappear. He flicked open his lighter and pulled out a cigarette. Today was worth all the penalties.
Colin stretched. His shirt lifted, revealing a pale smooth abdomen. Henry’s gut lurched. He could picture Peter’s own, his own, with spider web veins that wove around a black timepiece whose digital seconds counted down the years, days, hours, minutes, seconds they had left. Dragging on his cigarette, he wondered what would happen if he ran out before his clock did. Maybe his body would just sit there, a corpse. Someone would have to take him to the Centre so they could deactivate the timer. Or maybe they’d do it the old-fashioned way and stick his body in an oven. Sunlight flashed off plastic arms of lawn chairs as Henry gazed over the rooftops at the stripped skeletons of skyscrapers. Useless wires hung from the metal structures in haphazard webs.
“For Christ’s sake, can’t you keep it in the ashtray?”
“Chill out,” Henry said. “We’re on your roof, not in your living room.”
“My parents’ roof,” Colin corrected. He eased himself back, hands on his thighs, his fine-thread, no-seam sweater rolled up around his elbows. It had to be nearly seventy degrees out, but he still wore his father’s alma mater, “World University” with “Class of 2115” printed on the side. Henry tapped the cigarette against the tinted cup. Sweat glistened on his forehead and droplets eased down his face and collected in his t-shirt collar.
Watching Colin try to remember what he’d been saying made Henry grimace. It was what they’d been trying to do all along. Sitting and looking down at trash-streaked alleys. They sat there and tried to figure out where they’d been all this time. Where all the time had gone.
“Where did…” Colin swallowed. “Where’d you see him?” Henry gritted his teeth.
“Outside Franklin Memorial. He’d pulled a couple of all-nighters studying or something, I don’t know,” he said. Peter being in the library was an unusual occurrence in itself. He cleared his throat and returned to watching the sun. His ear prickled and he rubbed the skin stretched across his ribs.
“And what? He just lost track of time? It sho
uldn’t happen that easily.” Colin spoke too fast now. Spittle flew from his lips. Henry closed his eyes for a moment.
“Maybe the counter malfunctioned. Sometimes they do that, you know. If you don’t go into the Center every few months to get it checked. They’re finicky,” he said. He hated how Colin didn’t understand. The boy had never been to the Center before, never felt the strange electric jolt as doctors fiddled with the electrodes that governed his life. But he kept his eyebrows arched, shoulders loose, back slouched.
He remembered seeing Peter a week ago at some club. They’d shared absinthe mixed with something bitter that had left sores on the inside of his cheek. They’d both needed it; being on the AS5 Trash Unit had left a stink on their bodies that they could never get away from. At least he was paid two hours for every one he worked. 120 minutes. All of which he’d wasted sitting here today. He dragged again.
“Wow,” Colin said. He blinked. “It’s too bad, really.” And Henry could tell the discussion was over.
Witnessing someone combust wasn’t something that happened every day. Once in a while, a homeless bum would go up in smoke. They were called Sparklers—hazardous, going off at any moment. But it was never someone you knew. Never someone you spent time with. He wondered what people did with the ashes the victims had left behind. If they were recycled like everything else in the city.
He scratched his neck. Even though his head felt light, his limbs loose by his sides, he ached all over. His fingers brushed absently across his abdomen, felt the governmental issue plastic hard against his finger.
“Let’s go out,” he said.
Colin laughed. “Your time or mine?”
“Whatever,” Henry said, shrugging. He had a few extra spending minutes, especially with all the overtime. But technically, Colin had all the time in the world. He could have anything he wanted.
Henry waited for the sunlight to bounce again across plastic, waited for the lawn chairs’ metal screws to reflect the thin, sickly rays. But it wasn’t the sun anymore. Moonlight fell and slid among them, a silver snake. He reached out to touch it, to stroke its gleaming head, but it vanished. Colin’s eyes flickered over and analyzed the recycled fabrics of his clothing, the reused soles of his shoes. Bile streaked up Henry’s throat and he gagged. The cigarette burned, the tip turned red and he saw blazing flesh.
“Let’s go,” Henry said again. His mouth was dry. It felt strange, just the two of them now. They’d never been good friends. Peter was the one who had always put up with Colin and his loud-mouth upper-class birthrights.
But now they were standing in Colin’s living room. An eco-approved chandelier swung in the background and cast white light on the floor. Henry shook Mr. Flint’s hand, smiled at Colin’s mother. Colin took them aside and whispered Peter’s death to them beneath the whirr of their air-conditioners. Henry watched. The muscles in their faces fell with predictable accuracy. He heard them say that Peter should have just come to them if he was in such financial trouble. They sighed and cried and whispered and wished. A gold chain glinted on Mrs. Flint’s wrist. Mr. Flint wore a timepiece. Yet neither of them had had their guts stapled with reminders of their mortality. To see a clock without flinching, without being reminded of their set time limit was their luxury.
“Going out?” Mr. Flint wondered.
Colin nodded. He asked for minutes, which his parents shelled into his hands. Henry’s gut turned as the plastic sheets filled Colin’s pocket. The Flints were government officials, higher ups, with salaries that they didn’t need to put toward their time on Earth. It was people like himself who had shit jobs because they hadn’t had any connections, because they’d failed out of university. But he was still around and, for some reason or maybe no reason at all, Peter wasn’t.
Moments later, they were out the door. They spilled into the streets, flitted across concrete like smoke and shadows. Henry could see others walk around them, near them, feel their bodies breathe and tick. Girls in short spandex suits, hair pulled up in high ponytails that bounced after painted faces beckoned to them. Colin nodded at a few, whistled maybe, but Henry said nothing. Neon lights blinked above them as the Pleasure Dome buzzed to life.
“We’ll have a fun night. On me,” Colin said as he slung his arm of Henry’s shoulder.
“Just like every other night,” said Henry. He wanted to tell Colin to shove his parents’ credits, he really did. He wanted to let the barista scan his own account and make Colin watch the way his minutes slipped away. Show Colin what it felt like to spend life. But he was too tired for that tonight.
Colin laughed. Henry didn’t. He shook out his shoulder. At the end of the night, he’d end up stumbling back to his shit apartment, his last refuge courtesy of his parents’ retirement. They’d been hardworking, although low-ranking, governmental specialists. They’d received benefits. They’d tried to help him. But he couldn’t take any more away from them than he already had. He scuffed the concrete and wished he could kick something, a bottle cap maybe. But he knew if he saw so much as the vintage head of a penny, he’d try to take it and feed it into his counter. His cheeks burned.
They passed Franklin Memorial. The library stood apart from the three-story apartments made of recycled plastic bottles, walls of carbon-compressed metal sheets. The ancient columns, once marbled, supported a caving archway. The tile chipped into stone glared in the moonlight. Henry felt his eyes trace the ground. It was a reflex, the way he looked for a burnt patch, any sign where he’d last seen his friend.
It was too dreamlike, the way flames devoured a body. He shook his head. No. The last time he’d seen Peter was at the bar. That was the image he was supposed to keep with him. Not the one of Peter burning before his eyes, especially just as they were getting to know each other. His tongue rubbed against the sore in his cheek. That night at the bar, Peter had told him about his parents. How at fifteen he’d seen them go up in flames and turn to ash to give him a future. How he’d wasted the minutes with Henry and Colin on booze and things that didn’t matter.
“You’ve got to understand,” Peter had said. His movements ticked underneath the strobe light to match the techno. “Life isn’t just about this place. The Pleasure Dome. It traps you, sucks you down until there’s nothing but bone left to burn when you go. We should be learning, changing the world. Finding a way so that we don’t need to have timers anymore, don’t need to constantly be adding and subtracting.”
And Henry had just shrugged and downed the drink until his lips were numb, stumbled home.
He blinked at the smooth grey concrete. He felt Colin slow beside him, felt his feet pause a half-second more before they touched ground.
“Anything I can help you with tonight, boys?”
Henry lifted his gaze. An MP, hand cocked on his hip, military uniform a dark green. The slivers of moon alighted on his stun gun.
Henry shook his head. “No, officer.” The man looked blurry to him in the moonlight. “Is there a problem?”
The man’s blue eyes blinked. “Should there be?”
“No,” Henry said. He wanted to explain himself, about Peter combusting here, but there was something odd in the MPs posture, a tightness in his gaze that pierced through Henry’s flesh. As though the man already knew about Peter’s death and was challenging him to ask what had really happened.
“Nothing, sir,” Henry said, averting his eyes.
“Good. I suggest you get a move on.”
They nodded and continued on their way. Henry shivered. Standing there for too long made him feel like he’d go up in smoke as well. Their pace increased as their lengthened stride ate ground faster. Henry could see the discotheque lights up ahead, remembered the faint smell of sweat and hopelessness that would soon sour the air.
Colin slapped Henry on the back.
“Trying to get into it with the law?”
Henry glanced over his shoulder. The officer’s dark eyes had returned to the ground, his irises searchli
ghts. It was as if the man was looking for something.
“Funny,” he mused.
“What?” Colin asked.
“It’s just. You only see MPs at bars, looking for troublemakers. You don’t think…”
“What?”
“That they’re investigating or something?”
“Why would they be investigating?” Colin snapped.
“I don’t know. Maybe Peter combusting was a mistake.” He bit his lip. Maybe the government had become all-knowing, had overheard Peter thinking about trying to change the system. A boy with little education frequenting a library could be disconcerting, could cause unease, disturbance. Maybe that was what Peter had been doing at Franklin Memorial. Following through with his idea to try and find another way to live.
Panic bubbled in Henry’s stomach. What if they thought he had been involved, an accomplice? They could pull his plug, make his timer turn to zero with the flick of a switch.
Colin stopped and grabbed Henry’s shoulder. The vein in his neck protruded.
“Henry, he didn’t have the money to pay his time tax. He didn’t ask for help.”
“We don’t know that. No one ever tells you the number, how much time they have left. It’s private. It’s not something you’re supposed to discuss.” Colin’s hand dropped. If Colin wasn’t immune to it, he would have known that unspoken rule. Henry could see his friend’s shining leather shoes, crisp jeans, brand-new Messaging Identifier. The things that said, “My parents paid for my time exemption at birth. Shelled out 150,000 credits to let me do whatever I want while everyone else scrapes their time together like loose change.”
Without looking at his timer, Henry knew his own number was five years, two months, several hours, and constantly changing minutes and seconds. But Colin didn’t.
Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 7, October 2014 Page 4