by Andy Remic
“It’s up ahead,” said Zoot.
“The deserted village?”
“Yes.”
“Is it safe?” said Svool, frowning.
“As safe as anywhere else in this jungle,” said Zoot, voice neutral.
“That doesn’t answer the question,” said Svool.
“It’s not terminal,” said Zoot.
“Good.”
“Well, not short-term, anyway.”
“You’re not filling me with confidence!”
Zoot gave a machine buzz. A kind of digital sigh.
“Shh,” said Lumar, who had moved up ahead and crouched behind a fallen tree. She parted sap-sticky fronds and gazed at the village ahead.
She could make out three buildings and part of a deserted roadway. The buildings were small, rough-built from some kind of amber stone filled with tiny, glittering minerals that caught the early sunshine and sparkled. The roadway was dust and still contained tracks and ruts.
“It’s not been deserted long,” said Lumar.
“Why do you say that?”
“The jungle would have reclaimed it by now. The jungle needs to be kept at bay; cut back.” She looked at him. “The jungle invades like an unwanted pervert. It has to be fought off. Slapped down. Put out of its misery. Time and time again.”
Svool averted his gaze, instead watching the deserted village.
“Zoot. Do you detect anything?”
“No movement. No life.”
“So it’s safe?”
“Ye-eees, but I’d still err on the side of caution, Svoolzard. This world is alien to me, also. Potentially, there are factors I could never comprehend. You must be careful.”
“But no big pussy cats?”
“No big pussy cats,” said Zoot.
They crept through the thinning jungle, and Lumar had been right. There was still evidence that the jungle was being cut back using blades. Trees and vines still showed scars.
They walked out onto the roadway, looking around themselves as they turned slowly in the dust, surveying the angular stone buildings. Windows and doorways were bare, black holes. Each building had a gently sloping roof made from... Svool frowned.
“What is that? Up there?”
“You mean the roofing tiles?”
“Yeah.”
They all stared.
“That one,” said Lumar, slowly, pointing, “is made from pan lids.”
“Cooking pans?”
“That’s how they appear. Look, you can see the plastic handles on the lids.”
They stared again. “That’s fucking weird,” said Svool. “Who makes a roof out of pan lids? And anyway, they wouldn’t interlock. They wouldn’t form a protective barrier against the rain. It just... it just wouldn’t work.”
Svool turned. “Look at that, there.”
“The walls?”
“Yeah. They’re made from... glass bottles. Kind of fused together.”
Sunlight glinted on different colours of glass. “And the roof is, well, it’s made of interlocking panels this time. Only each panel is a TV screen. Bolted together with straps made from old belts.”
They stared some more.
Svool moved to the house with the pan-lid roof. Stooping, and wrinkling his nose at some incredible stench, he peered inside. Glancing up, he saw chinks of light glinting through the badly fitting roof tiles. And yes, it was confirmed, pan lids made possibly the worst ever roofing slates imaginable to man.
“It would appear these buildings have been repaired,” said Zoot, as Svool emerged from the building. He was carrying a pair of pants and boots, a shirt, and an old, tattered felt hat.
“What you got there, soldier?” grinned Lumar.
“Some clothes.”
“What’s the matter? Tired of being a stick-naked savage?”
“Let’s just say I’m tired of you staring at my ass,” he snapped.
“Touchy, touchy. Go on, then, dress up in your curious alien clothing.”
And Lumar was indeed right. The pants, although only down to Svool’s knees, had thigh panels reinforced with suede. The boots were black and battered, with spurs on the heels which jangled as Svool pulled them on. He threw his battered, homemade palm-frond sandals away into the jungle in disgust. He struggled into the shirt, which was too small for him, and coarse against the burns - fire- and sun— that covered his shoulders and back. But at least it was protection from the sun. And finally, he pulled on the broad-rimmed felt hat. He felt foolish, standing there in his new, worn, oddly-stained clobber; but it beat being naked.
“How do I look?”
“Like an idiot?” suggested Lumar, with a giggle. She composed herself. “Sorry. Sorry.”
“Fuck off.”
“What’s that?”
“What?”
“That badge, there.”
Svool looked down. There was a silver badge with five points attached to the shirt. It read: SHERIFF.
“Whoo har, Sheriff Svoolzard,” cackled Lumar.
“Fuck off!”
“Hey, Law Maker, don’t be using offensive language like that!”
“Well, you’re just taking the piss.”
“You’re giving it away, mate.”
“Listen, I need protection from the sun! Another day like this and I’ll have no damn skin left on my shoulders; understand?”
“Just our luck to stumble into a weird jungle tribal village.” Lumar grinned. She glanced at Zoot. “What do you think has been going on here, Zoot? Hmm?”
“This is an old village. The construction style and materials - original materials - date back several hundred years. But the buildings have been patched-up, repaired by an incompetent using whatever junk they could find to facilitate such repairs. Or indeed, in their eyes, probably enhance the quality of the buildings.”
“Is it junk they’ve found in the jungle?”
“Possibly. It is common knowledge that occasionally junk containers crash, be they airborne or land- and sea-based. I believe the philosophy of the Greenstar Company in these situations is to leave any crashed vessel where they lie. Effectively, the vehicle becomes just another dot on the chart of waste recycling.”
“Recycling?”
“Yes,” said Zoot. “Recycled from working vehicle to non-working vehicle, and left there until such passing strangers see fit to recycle it further.”
“That would explain that, then,” said Svool, stopping in the dust and pointing at another building which had been repaired with car body panels. It looked like a third-rate Transformer. Wings and doors had been patched onto random sections of the house, and several buckled car bonnets made up the roof. Headlights were mounted above the door. The windows had been filled with old tyres, then concreted around, so that the house had round rubber portals.
“That is depraved,” said Lumar, knuckles tightening on her sharpened stick.
“Yeah, let’s hope nobody’s home, eh?” said Svool, grinning weakly.
“That’s not even funny.”
“What makes you think I was joking?”
“Come on, sheriff, let’s check it out. See if your pardners are here.”
Svool stared at Lumar. “Any more jokes and you can sign in for a stand-up slot at the Pig & Perkin.”
“Well, you certainly provide me with enough raw material,” she said, giving him such a dazzling smile and a toss of her green dreadlocks that his heart fluttered. She strode towards the door of the car/house and peered inside. She turned back to Svool and Zoot. “It’s been inhabited. Recently. Very recently.”
“How do you know that?”
Lumar pointed with her sharpened staff. “The bubbling pan on the stove.”
“You call that a stove?”
“I call it a radiator grille, but hey, who am I to criticise a mad car-gobbling lunatic?”
They moved into the house. “Hello?” called Lumar. “Anybody home? We were just passing through; any help with directions would be most helpful.”
Svool sniggered, and Lumar gave him a sharp look. “What?” she hissed.
“Any help with directions would be most helpful.”
“And?”
“Your lack of poetry stabs me through the heart.”
“It’ll be my sharpened staff that stabs you through the heart in a minute.”
“I bet you say that to all the boys.”
Lumar stopped, and glanced around, and then stared at Svool. “You really are a dick. The minute you get within spitting distance of a bed, you start flirting again. There are possible hostiles in here, and you’re making jokes about sex.”
“Ahh, that’s because all life is a joke...”
“And all sex is a joke?”
“That isn’t what I was going to say.”
“Svool, shut the fuck up, will you?”
Lumar stalked off, checking the other rooms were clear, whilst Svool poked around the chamber containing the stove. There was a bed in the corner, covered with thin blankets, all of them the kind of muddy brown of once-were colours, used and washed and soiled for decades. There were lots of holes, some of which had been carefully repaired. A single wooden chair, one leg shorter than the other three, so it wobbled when Svool leant against it, stood next to a table made from... Svool squinted. Beaten-flat food tins which had been flattened and pop-riveted together. It looked like something that had been through a crusher. Still, mused Svool, at least I suppose it’s functional.
He moved to the stove, where the pan bubbled, and traced rubber hosing to a gas canister. He turned the canister off, and stared into the pan. It was full of beans and... eyeballs.
“Urgh!” Svool leapt backwards as if shot, and he brandished his jewelled sword and looked around the room, carefully, searching every corner, as if some hidden dwarf might leap out at any moment.
“Lumar, I think we should go. I don’t like it here.”
“Just wait a minute...”
“No, Lumar, whoever was here was cooking beans and eyeballs.”
“What?”
“I have to say, I am accustomed to far more civility than this!”
Lumar emerged, and she was pushing something into the inside pocket of her shirt.
“What you got there?”
“Nothing.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing.”
“It’s something. Feminine. Private.”
Svool looked at her aghast. “You found something feminine and private - in this shithole?”
“Just leave it!”
Lumar stalked from the building, and Svool followed, still checking for the occupant, still shivering at the thought of beans and eyes.
As they stepped out, Zoot spun into view. “There’s something over here I think you should see.”
They followed the PopBot, around another corner of weirdly-repaired houses, many containing plates and bowls, old bottles and flapping trashbags as part of their building construction. Zoot led them down a narrow street, then turned right onto another. Here, the buildings were leaning at crazy angles; some had actually collapsed, leaving nothing but piles of rubble. There was a fetid, stale aroma in the air, like something had died under the stones.
“Down here,” said Zoot.
They followed him, noses wrinkled, even by the standards of Toxic World. Then they came to a clearing, and they stopped, and they stared.
“What, exactly, am I looking at?” said Lumar.
“It’s cars, obviously,” said Svoolzard.
“Ye-ees, I can see that. But what am I looking at?”
There was a large clearing, leading off into broken jungle. And arranged at the edge of the village from which they had emerged was a horseshoe of broken, bent, smashed, damaged, rusted, battered cars and vans. Their panels were buckled and dented, broken and sheared. The car arc numbered perhaps sixty or seventy vehicles in total. All the headlamps were smashed, as were all the windscreens, except for a couple which were simply holed and webbed with cracks. They had been peppered with gunfire. They had obviously been here for some time, because the jungle had, to some extent, taken over in patches, vines and creepers and ferns winding their way up through battered, crumpled bodywork.
“Is it a salvage yard?” said Svool eventually, for many of the cars were stacked two high. Some had obviously started out that way, but in places the top vehicle had fallen to the ground, leaving a gap like a missing tooth.
“No,” said Lumar, slowly, looking behind herself, then around. For some reason she’d got the creeps. “No. This is something different.”
“It appears to be a protective shield,” said Zoot, his digital voice soothing; the voice of reason in a world of chaos.
“Like a wall?” said Svool.
“Yes. A barricade.”
“A barricade against what?” said Svool, unease growing.
Lumar had moved forward, and was fingering several of the holes. “These are bullet holes. 8mm. Whatever was firing them, and there’s a hell of a lot of holes, was coming from the jungle.”
“So an attack, then?” said Svool as the scene clicked neatly into place. Attackers from the jungle; a barricade to protect the village from attackers. But who was attacking who? And more importantly, where had they gone?
“You tell me, sheriff,” said Lumar.
“No longer funny.”
“Was it ever?”
“I am beginning to seriously miss my academic comrades aboard the Titan-Class Culture Cruiser, The Literati. I miss their wit and comradeship. I miss the poetry, song, literature and sculpture. But most of all, I miss the...”
“Drugs?” said Lumar.
“Actually, I was going to say security. Security in which to work, in which to create, in which to be creative. I recognise now that I was in a bubble, and that my bubble burst during the crash - quite literally. I had forgotten what the real world was like. A world of hardship and pettiness and pointlessness. I have been a pampered - although deserving and much loved - literary genius. I have so many fans I need to please; and I can’t do that whilst I’m crashed on this shithole!”
“Come back down to Earth, Captain Kirk, we’re talking about this place, this shit, these bullet holes. We’re talking about what could have happened here, and the possible proximity of possible bad dudes. You know, ones with guns?”
“Ach, tsch and nibble,” snapped Svoolzard, his eyes clouded, his face hard, and Lumar clenched her jaw muscles as she watched his arrogance return with a vengeance. He was away, in his mind, away in another place; a place of dreams and memories, a reservoir of self-love and narcissistic extravagance. How quickly he had forgotten being punched and smacked and clawed at; how swiftly the cannibals and feral jungle cats had slipped his mind, along with the bottom burns and wearing of fern flip-flops. It was a terrible and saddening thing for Lumar to watch; for it did indeed mean Svoolzard had a brain like runny butter dripping from his ear holes. “That’s a lot of idiot talk. Look at the cars! Rusted to bugger and buggery. And with the grass and weeds growing between the alloy wheels. Look. Just look. You’re being paranoid, woman! You’re being a total flapping histrionic psychedelic love-honey.”
“What?”
“Hey!” Svool hummed a few bars. And sang:
“You’re a flapping, histrionic, psychedelic love honey,
Hmtnmm, mmm,
Flying on her way to Mars,
Hmmmm, mmm,
I know you really want my money,
Ooooh, ooh,
And a slice of all my superstar cars,
Yeeeah, yeah.”
He stopped. Looked at Lumar. She was staring at him. Hard.
“What?” he said, reddening a little.
“Fuckwit,” she said.
“Hey! Come on, stop being a prize turkey idiot at a village gala for idiot turkeys. There are no mysterious attacking gun-toting enemies bearing hot an’ blazing six-shooters! There are no hordes of ravenous jungle attackers intent on our current demise! Just relax! Chill! Chillax, bitch! Stop being a parsnip!
”