by Jon Cronshaw
When they reach the highway, the rains subside and the sky glows a bright silvery-purple. Abel shifts his weight when the cart turns right, heading downhill towards the city. The hills to the west are just visible through the haze. He clenches his fists and shudders at the tenderness of the acid burns around his knuckles. Removing his cap, he folds the umbrella material and stuffs it into the top of his backpack. He looks behind him, checking the quad bike. He squints to make out what’s behind him. The bedroll lies scrunched into a ball, its sheets yellowed and smelling of sour sweat. He sniffs at a different smell — something rotting, something dead. He stares into the darkness, allowing his eyes to adjust.
“Damn it,” he says with a start, eyes locking on a cluster of lifeless rat heads. “Mister Fluffy — we meet again.”
9. The Pit
Abel returns from relieving himself as the wizard emerges bleary-eyed from the back of his cart. “Morning,” he says.
The wizard stretches and yawns and gives a slight nod. “You been awake long?”
“Not really,” Abel says, kicking aside the cold white ash from the previous night’s fire. “I’m famished. I'm going to have a wander, see what I can find.”
The wizard gives a half-smile and scratches the back of his neck. “I'll come with you, man.”
Abel moves to the edge of the clearing and looks over his left shoulder towards the rising sun. Ducking beneath branches and brushing aside ferns, he follows a thin winding animal trail through the trees, parallel to the river on his left. A shiver passes down his spine as dew seeps through his boots.
“You ever eat leaves?” the wizard asks, after several minutes.
Abel stops and looks around at the nettles. “You can make a drink with these,” he says, gesturing to the leaves. “Some of the mushrooms can be alright.”
The wizard scoffs. “Mushrooms.”
“What?” He turns and watches the wizard push through the foliage behind him, stumbling over every other step.
“I ate some mushrooms once, and I swear I could see through time.”
Abel laughs and pushes forward through the trees. Something crunches beneath his boots. He stops abruptly. “What the hell?” His eyes sweep along the edge of a blast crater, his mouth turning dry as a deep crease folds between his eyebrows.
Thousands of skulls and bones fill the crater, patches of bleached whiteness emerging through the blanket of brownish-grey dust. The wizard joins him and they stand in silence.
The wizard swallows and places a hand on Abel's shoulder. “What is this place?”
Abel shakes his head and bites his lip.
“Want to take a look at that?” the wizard asks, pointing to a bulldozer resting at the opposite side of the crater.
“No,” Abel manages. He stares at the bones, trying to count the number of people half-buried beneath the dust. “So many,” he says, trembling.
“Let's go back, man.”
Abel nods. “How were there so many?”
The wizard shrugs and takes Abel's arm, leading him back into the trees. “Let's go.”
Abel thumbs through his copy of Moby Dick, staring at the pages but not taking in the words. He closes his eyes and sighs.
“Was thinking about those kids,” the wizard says.
“Right,” says Abel.
“I think we should try again.”
Abel closes his book and gets to feet. “What changed your mind?”
“Man...” The wizard looks at the ground and shakes his head. “That pit. There used to be a lot more of us, didn't there?”
“You mean, before?”
The wizard nods. “I've never seen so many people. I can't get my head round it...” His voice trails off.
Abel walks over to the wizard's cart and places a hand on the edge of its roof. “Life's precious.”
“But we need a plan,” the wizard says, his eyes brightening. “We can’t just go in there and hope things will just work out.”
Abel manages a smile. “We know what we’re dealing with now.”
Opening the door at the rear of his cart, the wizard takes out two tins of food. “I’ll set the fire,” he says. “You got any water?”
Abel goes round the other side of the cart and retrieves his bottle from his backpack. He shakes the bottle and frowns. “Empty. I’ll fill it up.”
He goes over to the river. Pip laps at the water. She looks back at him for a second and carries on drinking. He crouches next to her, pats her side, unscrews the water bottle's cap, and holds it under the water. An electric sting runs up his arm from the water's icy bite. Bubbles pass along his fingers. When the bottle fills, he gets up and shakes the droplets from his hands. “You alright, girl?” he asks, rubbing Pip’s head. Taking the bottle to his lips, he holds it there for a second, sniffing at the water. He takes a sip, screws on the cap, and wipes his mouth with his sleeve.
He looks along the river, following its path as it diverges from the highway, weaving between hills until disappearing out of sight. A mile or so to the east, he makes out the faint traces of buildings and concrete. He moves forward, squinting against the sun as he strains to see though the orange glare. Pulling his hat low, he turns and heads back to the wizard, now hunched over the fire.
“Any luck?”
“Yep,” says Abel, holding up the bottle. “You know there’s a settlement along the river?”
The wizard straightens up and turns to him. “You sure?”
“If you follow the river, there’s a bunch of buildings.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll show you.”
The wizard’s eyes go from the fire to the cart, to the mule, and then to the river. “Alright.”
Abel leads the way back to the riverbank. Pip circles them before taking off to hunt. Reaching the riverbank, Abel points to the east. “Over there.”
The wizard shakes his head. “They’re just ruins,” he says. “Nothing there.” He turns back and makes his way back to the fire.
“You been there?”
“I had a look once.”
“Right,” Abel says, walking at the wizard’s side. “Find anything?”
“I wasn’t looking to scavenge. I was looking to see if there were any marks for the show.”
Abel narrows his eyes and stops. “Marks?”
The wizard waves a dismissive hand and gestures to the pair of tins resting next to the fire. “You alright cooking? I need to go.” He walks over to his cart, takes out a few strips of newspaper, and heads to a cluster of tangled bushes.
Abel takes out his hunting knife, pierces the tins, flips off their lids, and lowers them into the flames.
Smoke twists up in lazy curls as the tins blacken and the beans steam and simmer. He squats, prodding the fire with a length of stick. With a sigh, he takes another sip of water from his bottle and looks around for Pip. He looks at the mule for a long moment. They stare at each other, unblinking. The mule makes no reaction when a fly lands on an eyelash above its right eye. Abel shakes his head and uses the stick to drag the tins away from the flames.
He goes over to his backpack and takes out a spoon and cloth.
“Smells good,” the wizard says, emerging from the bushes, his face glistening with sweat.
Abel grimaces and looks at the tins. “Oh, the beans.”
“Of course, the beans. What did you think I was...” his voice trails off and turns into a chuckle. “Very funny,” he mutters, taking a spoon from his cart.
Abel feels the cold through his trousers when he sits on the bare soil. He rubs his hands against the warmth and passes the wizard a tin. The pair sit in silence, eating. Abel looks around for Pip and leaves half the tin until she returns.
“We need some kind of distraction,” says the wizard.
“For what?”
“For the Family, for those kids. There’s three of them and two of us.”
“We can assume one of them is in a bad way.”
The wizard shrugs. “If he ca
n still fire a gun, he’s a risk.”
Abel picks up a stick and draws a pair of parallel lines in the soil. “We got the highway. I’m assuming they’re heading to the city.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Just a hunch. When I was at the Grid, you’d get some of the Family talking about getting shipments from the east. Someone told me they had a factory in the city.”
The wizard scowls. “How?”
“I don’t know. It’s just what I heard.”
“How they supposed to get out there?”
Abel shrugs. “All I know is that’s the best we’ve got to go with. Now, I know we can’t follow them along the highway. They’d be onto us for sure.” He draws another line in the soil, to the right of the highway. “That’s our river.” He makes a gesturing nod to the south. “We can follow alongside until we can work out a distraction.”
“They were pretty messed-up.”
“I know,” Abel says. “But we’ve got to try.”
10. The Whiteness of the Whale
Abel rocks side-to-side when the cart turns off the highway. After a few minutes, the wizard brings the cart to a stop in a clearing surrounded by trees, mosses, and crawling plants.
Abel slips down from the cart and stretches his legs, flexing his fingers against his burns.
“I saw the Family,” says the wizard.
“They’re still heading to the city?”
“Looks that way.” The wizard hops down from his seat, unfetters the mule, and leads it to some grass at the clearing's edge.
Abel goes over to the base of a sprawling oak tree and relieves himself. He looks around for Pip but sees no sign of her.
“Help me with this,” the wizard calls.
Abel fastens his trousers, heads across the clearing, and joins the wizard next to a tall thin tree, its pale bark peeling from its trunk. They push and pull at the tree, its trunk splitting and cracking against their movement, until it opens like a yawning mouth and crashes to the ground. They lift the tree to a vertical position and push it to fall the other way, prising it free from its base.
They break up the tree, its brittle wood snapping with ease. Abel strips the bark with his hunting knife and stands them up to create a roof over the logs for the fire while the wizard strips away the smaller branches.
An hour later, a campfire crackles at Abel's feet. He sits with his back against the cart, his backpack acting as an armrest while he reads. He looks up at the wizard standing over him. “You still reading that book?”
Abel looks down at his copy of Moby Dick and nods. “Yep. Got me thinking.”
“Yeah?” The wizard sits on the ground to Abel’s left, his back to the fire, scratching his wrists.
“There’s this chapter all about colours, about what whiteness means,” he says, closing the book.
The wizard shrugs. “So?”
“Got me thinking about colours, is all.” He runs a hand across his beard and looks into the trees. “Have you thought about colours?”
“You back on the plez again?”
Abel frowns. “No, no. I’ve been thinking about the way we look at colours, look at everything.”
The wizard leans back, resting on his hands, his arms straight behind him and his legs outstretched. “What kind of colours?”
“Just colours.” He points to the trunk of a dead pine. “What colour's that?”
“Grey, I guess.”
Abel nods. “See, it looks grey to me too. But what if what you see as grey is different to my grey? What if what you see as grey is how I see blue?”
The wizard cocks his head, frown lines wrinkling his brow. He drops his arms to rest on his elbows and gestures with his right hand to the tree. “You think it’s grey. I think it’s grey. What’s the difference?”
“How can we know that what we’re seeing is the same?”
“Does it matter?”
Abel tugs at his beard, pondering the tree. “I’m just saying one way of seeing the world might not be the only way.”
“So, what?”
There’s a long silence. Abel sighs. “Doesn’t matter.”
The wizard shakes his head. “I can’t believe you’re thinking about that when we had someone shooting at us earlier.”
Abel laughs. “I suppose, when you put it like that...” His voice trails off, and he smiles at Pip. “Hey, girl,” he says. “Come here.” He gets up to a squatting position as she bounds over to him. She stops in front of him and licks his face. “You’re clean,” he says, stroking her fur. “Good girl.”
“My skin’s itching like crazy,” the wizard says. “She must have taken a dip in the river back there.”
“Smarter than us, then,” Abel says.
Pip walks over to the fire, makes a circle, and then flops down onto her belly.
“We still need a plan for tonight,” the wizard says.
Abel nods and gets up. With stiff joints, he walks over to the fire and pokes it with a stick. He rubs Pip’s head and sighs.
“So what’s the plan?” the wizard asks.
Abel grits his teeth and watches the fire. “I don’t know.”
“Well, don’t you think we need to think of something?”
A grim expression passes over Abel’s face. He turns to the wizard. “If they’re going to the city, they’re not going to get out there before sunset. I can’t see them going on the water at night.”
“That makes sense,” the wizard mumbles, picking at his teeth with a broken fingernail.
“We should hit them at dawn. We can approach them in the dark, then get them at first light.” With the stick still in his hand, Abel steps past the wizard and sits next to his backpack with his back against the cart. “We can use the quad bike to create a diversion. If we point it at their van, it should stop, and we get it back once we’ve freed the kids.”
“You make it sound very easy.”
Abel takes the stick and draws a map in the soil. “That’s the highway and the edge of the water,” he says. “Let’s assume they’ll be camping somewhere around here.” He makes a circle in the dirt.
The wizard sits up, crosses his legs, and rests his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. “We can’t know that.”
“True, but it’s a decent guess.” He draws three lines resembling a fork. “If we can set the quad bike this way,” he says, pointing. “I’ll go this way, and you go this way. That napalm stuff still works, doesn’t it?”
The wizard nods.
“Good. I’ll go ahead, use your spike and free the kids.”
“What if they can’t move again?”
Abel shakes his head. “I’m hoping they’ll be okay. If they’re taking plez, they would have done it earlier.”
The wizard narrows his eyes. “Speaking from experience?” he asks, sardonically.
Abel shrugs. “Yep.” He meets the wizard’s gaze. “I’ve been there. Should be the best time.”
“Should’s a nice word,” the wizard spits.
“It’s the best we’ve got.”
The quad bike casts elongated shadows against the setting sun poking through the trees. Abel looks on as the wizard turns the ignition. The engine purrs to life.
Pip jumps to her feet, her tail tall as she bares her teeth. “It’s okay, girl,” says Abel. She ducks her head, dodging when he tries to stroke her, her eyes fixed on the quad bike.
“Step back,” the wizard calls over the noise. The wheels spin in place, sending twigs flying behind them.
“I can secure this bit so it doesn't stop,” the wizard says.
“Can you make it go faster?”
The wizard pushes the quad bike forward, bringing it to a halt at the highway's edge. He switches off the engine and turns to Abel. “This isn’t going to be enough. We need something more...” He searches for the word.
“Distracting?” Abel ventures.
The wizard nods. “Distracting. We need something that’s going to hold their attention, something
that will confuse them for long enough so we can move in.”
The pair look at each other and share a knowing grin.
The moon shines bright as stars twinkle in the clear sky. In the dull orange glow of the dying fire, Abel empties his jacket pockets into his backpack, keeping only his torch, pistol, wing mirror, and knife.
He knocks on the wizard’s cart. “Wake up,” he says.
He gazes over at the quad bike, trying not to look at the taxidermy monstrosity secured to the seat with gaffer tape. He taps his fingers impatiently against the cart's roof as nervous sweat seeps across his back. “Mister Fluffy,” he mutters, shaking his head.
The cart door creaks open, and the wizard looks around, confused. “What?”
“It’s time.”
The wizard rubs his eyes, yawns, and nods.
11. The Shore
The campervan glows ghostlike on the shoreline. Abel watches from the side of the highway, prone against the dirt. He retches against the stagnant water, the acrid stench of concentrated death and decay.
“You okay?” the wizard asks, crouching next to him and looking through his binoculars.
“It’s that smell. I feel like I’m going to vomit.”
“We’ve got worse things to worry about than some stinking water.”
“What can you see?”
“One of them is asleep in the front cabin. The other two are walking around. Both have rifles.”
“We rushed in too early last time. They’re expecting us.”
“But are they expecting Mister Fluffy?”
Abel lets out a laugh and immediately locks his hands over his mouth. A trembling sensation passes over him as the pores along his skin prickle. He flexes his raw fingers and gets up to a crouching position. “I’ve got the spike and my pistol,” he says in a low whisper.
“And I’ve got the napalm.”
“We’ll try and get as close as we can with the machine and point it towards the van. I’ll head up there.” He points to the embankment along the south of the highway. “You come out after I show myself. I’ll give you a signal.”
The wizard gets to his feet, lifts his bucket, and pockets the binoculars. He lets out a sharp breath and shudders. “You can do this,” he says to himself. “You can do this.”