"They weren't there when I awoke."
"But the zombies? You said they are all over the ruins."
"Yes. They are now. They weren't so much back then. At least I don't remember seeing any. I eventually found this place after being scared out of my wits by the gargants."
Rudy was quiet for most of the evening. I settled into one of the chairs in the shack and read bits of some of the magazines and books.
Day 22
DogThing was back. I didn't spot him immediately. He was sitting on the top of a rock across the river, watching me.
This time he wasn't alone.
I was so pleased at seeing him again that it took me a while to even notice the others. It was only when one of them stood up, stretched, and then sat back down, that I saw them. They were huddled together under a rocky outcropping about half-way up towards the plateau, four of them, watching me.
"You seem to have gathered more followers."
Rudy was standing in the doorway to the shack.
"You think they are safe?"
"Yes. Look there is something I need to tell you about. I'm guessing that you are planning to head out again soon."
I thought about it. It hadn't occurred to me since arriving at the shack but I couldn't stay there for ever. That would never get me home.
"Yes. I have to move on at some point."
"Understood. Well you need to be wary of someone in this place; someone very dangerous."
"More dangerous than gargants and zombies?"
(Laughter)
"Yes. Much more. He is called CutterJack, at least that's how I know him."
"Odd name."
"Yes. You asked about who it was that killed me, and I was wary about voicing my thoughts about it at the time, but I believe it is he who killed me down by the river. I've only ever seen him once and that was a long time ago. I was in the city ruins fighting the zombies there, while scavenging. It was before I met Adler and at the time I was relieved to see someone else, but he came at me brandishing knives, long, sharp ones. The same ones I'd seen him killing zombies with. I ran. But he was too fast, and caught me up, cornering me in one of the ruins, cursing and ranting, spitting at me."
"And he killed you?"
"No, at least not that time. That was our first encounter and it was the Maw that saved me then. They came out of the shadows and chased him off. There were many of them, a dozen even. I haven't seen that many Maw since then."
"Sounds like a nasty piece of work."
"He is. I call him he. I don't know. It may be a creature."
"How did you know its name?"
"Adler. Oddly enough. I mentioned him to the professor once and he sang me a song about a character called CutterJack. I've no idea where the song came from, but the name stuck. Just be wary and hope your Maw sticks with you. I think it was CutterJack that caught me down by the river, when I was alone."
"Oh, I see."
"Well I'd not seen him for years after that. But every now and then when I was wandering, scavenging and stuff, I'd come across a zombie that had been slaughtered. So CutterJack was still around somewhere."
New things to note:
Swamp pods do taste like potatoes, if a bit mustardy.
DogThing and his friends don't like pod.
The other Maw look different to DogThing. Each has its own distinct look. I've named one of them Mo. She has a tuft of hair, a little like a mohawk, running along her back. It's bright green. Very odd. She has brighter eyes. I don't know if she is a she, but she looks somehow more feminine than the others.
The hole has gone.
Day 23
I'd been hanging around the shack since I arrived. This morning I decided it was time to have a look round nearby, so I grabbed the lantern and my makeshift rucksack. I swapped a few things around and added a few tools and some water bottles, and then headed out, but not down towards the swamp and the gargants. That would have been stupid. Instead I wandered up into the rocks, and the hill behind the shack, hoping to find some trace of Adler's camp.
I could only get a few hundred feet further up the rock, behind the shack, before it became too steep to climb. I was about to give up searching for the outcrop of rock that Rudy had mentioned, the professor's camp, when I noticed the rope hanging down twenty or so feet from me.
It was dangling there, hanging in the darkness. I climbed over the rocks towards it and looked up. In the gloom above I could barely make out what might be the outcrop of rock. It didn't look very big, and there was at least a fifty-foot climb upwards. Without the rope I would never have been able to get that high, not without some seriously hard work. It took me twenty minutes to pull myself up.
There was a cave about thirty feet deep cutting into the rock, ending in loose rubble, and it was there that I found some of the remains of Professor Adler's camp. There wasn't a lot left, just a mattress and a blackened fire pit that was long abandoned. How the hell had Adler got a mattress up here? I had struggled to get up there by myself, and from Rudy's description, Adler had been a lot older than I. I doubt he would have been able to put the rope up there, so it had to be there already. I wish he was still here. So many questions.
Stranger still, was where the rope had been attached. Poking out of the floor was a metal hoop about two inches thick. It was attached to the rock by a heavy metal panel and bolts.
I was about to light up the lantern, to have a look at the back of the cave, when I noticed that there was light coming from somewhere already; somewhere at the back of the cave was a faint glow of a different colour to all the other lighting in this place. Not quite so unnatural. I left the unlit lantern on the ground near the entrance of the cave with my rucksack next to it, and walked cautiously into the darkness until I reached the bottom of the rubble, still unable to see where the light was coming from.
At the top of the rubble I found my answer. The rocks weren't the back of the cave. A small gap about two feet high gave way to darkness. Darkness, except for a single perfect line of light on the ground somewhere below. I couldn't judge the distance.
A few minutes later, and I was back up at the gap with my rucksack over my shoulders and the lantern lit. The light from the lantern revealed what turned out to be a corridor below. I say a corridor because it was definitely not natural. All along the walls hung chunks of cracked plaster. The ground was littered with the stuff, as well as a heap of other junk. Bits of paper, magazines, empty tin cans, another burnt-out campfire and a pile of mattresses. Maybe the mattresses had already been up here?
It took me a few minutes to negotiate my way down the rocks without injuring myself. I put the lantern smack in the middle of the corridor to get as much light on the area as I could. It was about forty feet long, straight into the rock. There was a filing cabinet lying on its side, the drawers pulled out and full of yet more junk. Nothing worth taking though.
The corridor ended abruptly in a flat wall of solid rock. No plaster on this wall, only smooth carved rock. Dead in the middle of the back wall was the source of the light.
A door.
There was no handle, no lock, no hinges or any other visible sign of opening it, only the solid metal door covered in scratches and dents, like someone had tried many times to get through it. At the bottom of the door was a thin crack, no more than a couple of inches high, and light was shining from it. As I said before, this wasn't the same light as any I'd seen in this place so far. It was more natural and startlingly bright. I got to my knees and squinted, trying to make out something through the gap. I was greeted by a fresh, cold breeze. Not damp, not musty or humid.
Fresh air.
I breathed deep and filled my lungs with it as I squinted harder against the glare, still desperate to see what might be on the other side of the door. After a minute or so my eyes adjusted enough to be able to vaguely see. Long days of being in this dark place had changed my vision I guess. Enough that the sunlight, and it had to be sunlight, hurt my eyes.
After
more than three weeks in this dark place, I caught a glimpse of somewhere else, somewhere that lay beyond a seemingly unopenable door, a small slice of another place.
I could see grass, and among the grass was a single white flower dancing in the breeze.
Day 24
"You may as well stop now."
It was Rudy, sitting on the filing cabinet, watching me.
I stopped hammering. I'd already broken one of the two hammers I found in the house. I'd even tried prying the rusty saw into the thin gap underneath the door, but there wasn't enough leverage to cut. That knackered, old thing was never going to cut metal anyway. I stood for a moment, peering at him, and then realised he had known about the door all along.
"We tried. Me and Adler. He was more persistent than I, but in the end he gave in as well. It's at least six inches thick, that door. I guess that's what drove him away in the end. I think he went a bit bonkers realising that the only way out of here that we'd found was only a few hundred yards away, and we didn't have the means to open it."
"Why didn't you tell me it was here? It's daylight out there."
"Yes. It is. But daylight where?"
I dropped the hammer and sat down on the hard stone floor, catching my breath.
"What do you mean?"
Rudy shrugged.
"Do you know where we are any more than I do? It's alien enough down here without stepping out into daylight. Is that our world up there?"
"I don't know, but you still could have told me why Adler really made his camp up here."
"Yes, I could have told you, should have maybe. I'm sorry."
"How long was he up here?"
Rudy shrugged again.
"Probably months, I don't know. If I'm honest with you, I didn't discover it. Adler did. I was here at the shack for a long time, years even, before Adler, and I never found the door. I mean it, I'm sorry. I didn't want you to waste the stupid amount of time we did, Adler and I, trying to pry the damn thing open. I was hoping to save you from that."
We sat in silence for a while.
"There's no lock. No door handle. No hinges."
"No. Whoever put it there, put it there to keep what's in here locked away I guess."
"And it's the only way out?"
"Yes, well, as far as I know. I guess that Adler may know by now if there is, that's what he left to find. I certainly haven't found any other way."
"And you never went with him."
It was a statement more than a question.
"No. I don't know why I didn't. If I'm honest, I wish I had. I've wished that so many times since then."
"Why didn't you take off after him?"
"Fear, I guess."
I sat for a while, looking round, at the door, the junk strewn around the place, and Rudy.
"How long have you been here at the shack, Rudy? I mean how long before you died?"
He was quiet for a while.
"I don't know how long since I've been dead. I haven't been able to make the marks on the calendar for so long."
"The calendar?"
He shook his head and sighed.
"Come. Come with me."
I collected my things, including the broken hammer, just in case I could fix it, blew out my lantern, and then we made our way over the rubble and back down the rope. I was surprised to see Rudy still climb down the rope, I don't know if he had to, being a ghost and all, but he still did it.
He took me to the back of the shack and there he showed me something that I hadn't noticed in the couple of days I had been there. I hadn't thought to look behind it.
At the back of the shack was a fifteen-foot gap, before a sheer wall about eight feet high. It spanned the entire length of the shack and was covered with a makeshift lean-to made of corrugated metal and wood, much like the rest of the shack.
"You'll need your lantern, or see if one of the ones in the box over there still works."
I took a quick look in the box near the arched entrance, and took my own lantern out of my pack and lit it.
The light flickered for a moment and then glowed brightly as I turned the gauge to get as much light as possible. Across almost the entire back wall of the lean-to, scratched into the rock, was Rudy's calendar. Row after row of small marks in bunches of six, and then crossed through the middle. Every so often there was a small letter carved between the marks. J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D and then a few marks after the D came a number.
Months, and the numbers were years. My heart jumped a little when I saw the last number, with only three scratched marks after it.
31
"You were here for over thirty years?"
"Yes. Thirty-one years, as it says. I don't know how many passed after my death though. It's hard to keep count when you can't make a mark any more, and since I don't sleep, it's just been one long day to me."
"You could still leave though. Leave this place and look for Adler, look for a way out. Nothing could hurt you either."
He shook his head.
"No. Unfortunately it seems I am stuck here, and when you go I will remain here still."
"How do you know that?"
He sat down on a stump of wood that was leaning against the rock wall.
"I've tried. Many, many times I've tried. I get as far as the bottom of the plateau or down to the foot of the hill where the river from the waterfall meets the swamp, where the pods grow, and I can go no further."
I traced my hand across the lines etched into the wall. It was almost like reading Braille. Not that I could read Braille, but it was how I imagined it would be.
Except this calendar had taken him thirty-one years to write.
"How? Why can't you go any further?"
"I don't know. It gets harder to move the further I am away. Then at a certain distance I can no longer move any further forward. It's like being held by a giant leash that won't stretch any further."
"From what? Where's the middle? Have you tried to find out what's stopping you?"
"Yes, I'll show you."
We left the calendar room and I followed him down towards the river, across the small rock bridge, and over to the other side.
"That."
He was pointing at his body.
"It seems that I cannot travel far from the spot where I died, and even worse, I can't see any further than my prison."
"How so?"
He looked up and over towards the swamps.
"What do you see when you look that way?"
I followed has gaze.
"I see the river, and the swamp, the gargants over there, a line of pods on the river bank, and then more swamp."
"Yes, well, I can see where the river ends, but only a few feet of the swamp. I can see up to the cave, but I can no longer see out of the door and into the light. Darkness like a fog is all I see, even when I stand right up close to it."
As Rudy was talking something flashed in the dim light, a glimmer of some kind, shining off something on the ground. I crouched down and reached into the grass. It was metal, a chain or a necklace, but most of it was buried under the soil.
"What have you found?"
"I don't know. A chain of some kind."
I grabbed the nearest thing I could find to dig with, one of my knives, and dug the chain out of the ground. It was a necklace, silver or steel. Dangling from the end of it was a compass.
It seemed that Rudy couldn't contain his joy.
"It's my compass! I thought it was lost!"
I cleaned off the dirt and held it up so I could see it more clearly. As I turned the compass round the hand moved. It still worked, the hand pointed out over the swamp and past the gargants.
"Please. Can I see it?"
I held it up so that Rudy could look. He reached out but his hand passed through it. He looked disappointed.
"Will you keep it for me? Will you bring it to the shack?"
"Of course."
I was tired. Climbing the rope and hammering at that door ha
d worn me out. We settled back into the shack and I got the fire going. As I sat reading aloud some of Professor Adler's earlier memoir entries, Rudy stood gazing at his compass hanging on an old nail jutting out of the wall.
Day 25
It's been a long day and I have a lot to write. Right now I'm hunkered down in what appears to be the cellar of a ruined building. It's dark down here. I've got the lantern turned down as low as possible to conserve the fuel, just bright enough to be able to write. I can see the faint glow that Rudy emanates coming from the stairway. It's strange to think that so much has changed in a few hours, and I still can't think what it might have been that caused it all.
I'd been asleep, overtired from climbing up into the cave. The noise that woke me made me jump up from my sleeping place near the fire, and my heart was pounding. Rudy was there, peeping out of a small hole in the wall. Outside what could only be described as a war was raging. The screams and groans of the zombies were almost deafening, though not as loud as the growling and the howls from the Maw.
I fumbled around and finally found where my mace lay, grabbed it and ran for the door.
Rudy yelled at me not to go.
"Don't. It's too dangerous."
But I was acting on gut instinct and ignored him. Instead I flung the door open and stepped outside.
Zombies everywhere. Hundreds of them.
Littered across the ground all the way from the river to the house were the torn remains of dozens of the things. The Maw darted backwards and forwards, bringing down zombie after zombie and tearing them to shreds. The zombies seemed strangely oblivious to the demon dogs and were mindlessly intent on getting up the hill to the shack.
I know that I didn't need to join in, but something told me that my new friends were defending me, and I couldn't let them do it alone. I ran down the hill, the mace raised ready, my common sense screaming at me to stop and go back. I charged at the nearest zombie that wasn't being munched on by one of the Maw.
Crunch. Splat. That was the noise as well as I could describe it. I swung the mace, this time not throwing my whole weight into it as I had my first encounter. I'd learned a clumsy lesson that day, and wasn't going to make the same mistake again. The zombie barely saw me coming but I swore there was a brief moment of recognition before I smacked the thing across the side of the head.
This Is the End: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (7 Book Collection) Page 35