by Tim Curran
As they reached the outskirts of the town, both of them felt a return to peak fitness, but mentally, they were shattered.
“I can’t do this again,” said Mai.
“You can and you will,” Kerys said.
“How can you be so brave? How can you bear it?” Mai said.
Kerys knew the hinges of Mai’s mind were at breaking point. Her own was teetering on the brink of insanity. It would be a blessing when they both finally snapped.
“We didn’t burst,” laughed Mai realizing belatedly that she had survived. “We spewed out their brats and we didn’t burst.…”
Kerys looked at the food in the cart. It seemed meager for the effort. But they would live another month. What other choice was there left to them? It was live or die: the Old Ones ruled, darkness consumed the light, and their offspring brats forced a new breed from the bellies of any remaining women willing to sell their souls.
Death might be a better alternative, Kerys thought. Others had taken that road.
“We’re already in hell; nothing could be worse on the other side,” Mai said.
Kerys barely noticed that her friend often spoke aloud her own thoughts.
The docklands were a fair distance from the town, but they reached them just before full darkness came down. The potion was starting to wear off, and Mai’s energy was failing. Kerys took over pushing the cart herself.
They arrived at their hovel to see the door wide open.
Kerys pushed the cart inside, then closed and locked the door. The former warehouse was full of dust and filth brought inside by the wind coming in from the sea.
Mai was on the brink of collapse now, and Kerys set her down on the floor beside the cart.
“I’ll check on the others,” Kerys said.
She hurried away. Inside the former offices Kerys found the children. They were all sitting nicely around the table, just as they had left them.
“Food is here,” Kerys said.
The children didn’t reply. They waited as Kerys went away again and returned with Mai, who had recovered her breath, and the cart full of food.
Kerys helped Mai to a chair. She opened one of the cans, which contained some kind of meat. Then she spooned it onto Mai’s plate.
“You have to eat,” Kerys said.
Mai glanced around at the children. They all stared at her with glassy eyes. Then she began to eat her food. It was all for their sake, after all.
Kerys went from one to the other, feeding them scraps of food.
“They are always so quiet,” Mai said. “It’s just not normal.”
Two more children had joined the group in their absence.
I hope the food will last, Kerys thought.
Then she sat down and lifted her t-shirt. One of the new arrivals latched on, its long black appendages wrapped around her, pulsing like a boa constrictor. Mai squirmed as the second newborn crawled towards her, its slimy arms clawing at her chest. But she, too, lifted her top and let the monstrosity suckle.
After that the other children took their turn, though some now ate scraps of protein from their plates.
Kerys sang a lullaby as she nursed the last one. She placed a small kiss on the creature’s cheek. The flesh was soft and squishy, its head like the bulbous body of an octopus. Bottomless black eyes stared back at her from an expressionless face that vaguely resembled a small child’s. Kerys smiled. A mother’s love was a strange thing indeed.
She looked up at Mai and saw the other woman staring at her as though she were insane.
“We are never going to be free, are we?” Mai said.
“Why would you want to be?” Kerys answered, the smile back on her face as she rocked the child in her arms.
She had been to breaking point and beyond.
THE ALLCLEAR
Edward M. Erdelac
Two hundred and fifty six Scouts had come and gone since the Pox Eclipse, when the enemies of Usgov walked the Path O’Jen and brought the Bleeding Cough, and Potus of Usgov and the Joint Chiefs of the Staff called the sky bullets and planted the holy mushrooms to try and burn the sickness from the Upper World. But the mushrooms turned the enemy into Ray Dio, and the Upper World became the Hellabove.
Baxter, the last of the Scions of Tist, had led the people down to the bunker, to Greenbriar; two thousand all told, and they’d buttoned up and waited there in the gray steel rooms, eating cans and sleeping through the endless horrors of the New Clear Winter, the riots of the idiot blind, and the raids of the gutmunchers and all the ones burned by Ray Dio.
But Baxter had prepared. He’d known the cans and the jugs would run out one day, so he’d taught the gardeners the sacred ways of the Hydraponix and Ree-Sigh-Clean, and he gave the people a way to live without killing.
Then Baxter had burned the books and papers, and smashed the old idols of Teevee and Ray Dio, them whose worship he said had brought about the Pox Eclipse as much as anybody, and he taught them the Ways, and appointed Alberta first Scout.
The Scout was the offering to the Hellabove. Baxter knew that it was in the nature of man to be discontent even with the paradise of Greenbriar; that eventually they’d unbutton and go see the Upper World, to try and find Potus of Usgov.
The Hellabove, Baxter said, was a place of fire and cold and Ray Dio’s sickness and black darkness. It was not a place a man could go and return from, at least not until the Allclear day came, that prophesied time when the ash clouds blew away and the snow melted and the poison of Ray Dio was no longer active. Only then could they venture out and reunite with Potus of Usgov.
Baxter had known he would not live to see the Allclear day, so he had begun the tradition of the Great Reckon in the year of Alberta, the first Scout.
Every September a man or a woman was elected Scout. All that year, Scout was more important than the Scion of Tist who kept Baxter’s writ, even. More important than the Lord of Ops or the High Gardener, or the Armsmaster. The Scout could eat and drink as much as they wanted. They could fuck whoever they wanted. They were Vee-Eye-Pee. The year itself took its name in their honor.
Because come next August, the time of the Great Reckon, what some called the Reckonnaissance, would come due, and Scout would write his or her name on the wall, and take the ride up Elly Vader. Scout would unbutton. Scout would sacrifice him or herself to Ray Dio, so that the people wouldn’t unbutton and abandon Greenbriar to die in the Hellabove for want of the Upper World and Usgov.
In the morning, Nougat would go up Elly Vader. She would see the Upper World, smell it, feel it. Probably she would taste the poison of Ray Dio, the last communion.
She wasn’t too scared. She had prepared for a year, a very good year. The year of Nougat. She had filled her stomach with the best spinach and avocado, she had drunk as much wine as she liked. Yet though she knew she had her choice of the best of the men, men like Cannikin the Pipe Tech and Storax, the High Gardener’s apprentice, she had never exercised that right.
Part of it was that she didn’t want to spend the year of Nougat pregnant, or go to Ray Dio with a baby in her belly, or the guilt of a dead baby on her soul. But also, she knew Cannikin was Julin’s man, and she remembered the year of Plum Bob only too well, when he had barged into their quarters and taken her right on the table in front of Latchkey, and neither of them had been able to say a word against it because it was the law. Things had been different between her and Latchkey since. Colder.
She hadn’t wanted to inflict that on anyone else. Besides, despite what had happened, she still loved Latchkey, who was one of the Holy Radmen.
But old Uncle Buster-Jangle, the current Scion of Tist, claimed no favorites. He said the name of Scout came to him always in a vision on the night before the Reckon.
She had never had a vision in her life.
But as she lay against Latchkey’s naked chest, listening to his breathing and the beat of his sweet heart, feeling his sweat cool on her cheek, she closed her eyes, and had her first.
She was
standing in Elly Vader, and she knew as the doors opened that it was the Upper World, for why would she be in there otherwise?
The doors slid into their housings, and she saw before her all the Scouts she had ever known. Sculpin and Cresset, Wei Wu and Jancro, Basinet and Heathrow and a dozen more whose names she could not recall. All of them, except Plum Bob.
They were all standing in a field of green under a blue sky, like the one in the picture she had found deep in the bunker while cleaning in Uncle Buster-Jangle’s quarters.
Uncle Buster-Jangle had told her it was a picture of the Upper World, as it used to be in the Long Agone, before the mushrooms and Ray Dio and the Path O’Jen and the Hellabove. It was a sacred relic of Baxter, and on the back, he said, was written a love letter to his wife, Blessed Sheila Baxter, who had been a Scion of Tist in the faraway bunker of Pindar. It had never been sent, and it was called Baxter’s Great Sorrow. She couldn’t read the words herself. No one in Greenbriar could. Only the Scion of Tist could untangle them into thoughts. The picture though, was beautiful, so vibrant and full of colors, and she knew the Upper World wasn’t like that anymore, but in her vision it was, just as it had been in her secret hopes all this past year, when she had prayed with all her heart to Potus that she would be Last Scout and be the one to ride Elly Vader back down and unbutton the people.
But though they stood in that happy place in the ceremonial red jumpsuits and Scout regalia she had last seen them in, the Scouts weren’t happy. They looked pained and desperate, and their eyes were gaping sockets as they stretched out their hands to her all as one and said;
“Don’t let him in.”
They said it all together in one voice and then some dark shadow fell across them and they all looked up at once and opened their mouths and bared their teeth and screamed, but instead of human voices it was the loud, blaring Klaxon of the Drill Ritual that came out, the machine wail of distress that the Scion of Tist said meant that Ray Dio had found a way down into Greenbriar, the catastrophe they re-enacted every month, stripping naked and running into the scouring showers while the Radmen acolytes rushed to their holy lockers and donned their yellow rubber vestments and black masked hoods and passed their crackling wands over everything, warding the seams and corners of the bunker against Ray Dio, all to the primal song of the Klaxon.
She opened her eyes again, and flinched.
Latchkey stirred.
“Are you all right? Bad dream?”
“No,” she whispered. Because it was no dream. It had been a vision.
“I love you,” Latchkey whispered.
“I love you, too,” she said, entwining her hands in his.
“I keep praying that this won’t be our last night together,” he said.
She said nothing. What was the point?
She pretended to sleep, not wanting to face his tears or to shed her own.
In the morning he was gone.
Gone to his locker to dress early for the Great Reckon.
He had left her favorite salad on the table, with fresh cherry tomatoes and a piece of grilled corn.
She left it there.
She donned the red jumpsuit, and took from her locker the Scout regalia. The Scout bore into the Hellabove an offering from each of the Departments in the Kit of Emergence. One pistol and a clip of bullets from the Armsmasters. Four days’ worth of soy bars from the Gardeners. A thermos of clean water and a purifier from the Pipe Techs. Matches, a folding shovel, and a knife from the Lord of Ops, representing birth, burial, and commissary, the three domains of Ops. A crackle wand from the Radmen. A box of bandages, sutures, and medicine from the Medicis. And finally, a Book of Instruction, the Scout’s sacred hymnal, prepared by the Scion of Tist himself.
She donned her Scout’s mask, fastened it to her head, and opened the Book of Instruction ritualistically, though she could not actually read the words, to recite the Mystery she had committed to memory at the beginning of her year as Scout.
“The primary goal of Feema is to protect lives and reduce proper tea loss from Dizzasterse and Emergence. To accomplish this, Feema works with state and Lokullguvminz to help them deliver more effective Emergence Manijmentsurvisses across the whole spectrum of hazards both natural and man-made.”
She bowed her head, and recited the next passage in reverent singsong.
“This publication provides basic preparedness guidance combined with specific measures useful in Nash-null Secyuri-tea Emergence. Chapter one. The Effects of New Clear weapons.…”
The recitation of the Book of Instruction into the mask had left her feeling lightheaded. Euphoric. The mask had a sweet smell of frankincense, and she detected a hint of the blessed marijuana the Gardeners grew in the Grove of Joy.
She passed down the corridors on her procession to the Elly Vader room in a kind of ecstatic daze as the people of Greenbriar gathered on every side outside their quarters and cheered and applauded her, and the children blanketed her way with rose petals.
She heard people call her name, but the mask made things muffled, and she could not discern friends from mere acquaintances.
At last she came to the Elly Vader room, and Gordon the High Armsmaster, waiting at the door with his two honor guards, their machineguns held to their blue-painted chests, asked the password, which was her own name.
When she had spoken it, they saluted and stepped aside, and she passed into the room. They closed it behind her, being forbidden to enter themselves.
This was the Holy Airlock. The Porch. The door from the bunker, from the safety of the world of Greenbriar to the Hellabove.
The Radmen, all faceless in their yellow suits and masks, lined her way to Elly Vader, a silver cylinder on the other side of the room. The wall into which it was set had the names of all the previous Scouts scratched into it, with the month and day of their departure.
Uncle Buster-Jangle waited there in his pure white coat, hands folded benevolently before him, a peaceful smile on his face.
Nougat breathed in the scents of the mask and walked slowly through the lines of Radmen. Latchkey was there somewhere, and she was happy to know he would see her off.
When she came to stand before Uncle Buster-Jangle, he raised his withered hands in benediction.
“Scout Nougat, it is our intent to send you forth via Elly Vader, it is our intent to send you into the Hellabove in the hope that Ray Dio is departed. It is our hope that you will return to us the way you came, and lead us to the promised land of peace.”
“Scion of Tist,” she answered, “it is my intent to ride Elly Vader to the top. It is my intent to face the Hellabove. I look for the departure of Ray Dio, and hope that I may bring the Allclear and lead Greenbriar to the promised land of peace.”
She took out the knife given her by the Lord of Ops and put its sharp point to the gleaming wall, to etch her name beneath that of Plum Bob. Long she had studied under Uncle Buster-Jangle’s tutelage. He had taught her again and again how to make the marks that meant her. A thrill passed through her as the point ground the first mark, the ‘Enn,’ into the wall.
“Scout Nougat, look for the bright sky and the clean air, be mindful of the sores that boil, of the cough that bleeds, of the air that burns.…”
She had just moved to the ‘Jee,’ her favorite mark to make, when Uncle Buster-Jangles stopped short in his prayer and craned his neck to the steel ceiling, to the lights inset there.
The Radmen were stirring too.
Then she heard it.
The groaning of machinery.
Elly Vader was lifting of its own accord.
Uncle Buster-Jangle ran to the panel and opened it, slapping the controls in confusion and shaking his head.
Nougat stood behind him, and one of the Radmen broke ranks and came over.
She thought she recognized Latchkey’s voice as he said;
“What does it mean, Scion?”
Uncle Buster-Jangle could only shake his head.
“I don’t know.… I
don’t know!”
He stared at the controls. There was a display there, showing Elly Vader’s progress as it moved far up to the Upper World.
“I can’t recall it,” Uncle Buster-Jangle admitted.
Nougat wavered in place. What could it mean?
The light that was Elly Vader stopped.
The sound of the machinery ceased.
They stood there in silent confusion.
Nougat stared at the doors of Elly Vader. They looked the same as before, but Elly Vader was not there. How could that be?
A light changed on the panel and Uncle Buster-Jangle sucked air through his teeth.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The doors of Elly Vader have opened.”
The light winked off again.
“I’m frightened,” she admitted.
She felt fingers grip her own gloved hand, and she knew for certain the Radman was Latchkey.
She squeezed him back.
Then the drone of the machinery started up abruptly again, making them all jump.
“It’s coming back down!” Uncle Buster-Jangle exclaimed.
He backed away from the panel, stumbled, and then hurled himself at the door.
To their shock, he opened it and called for the Armsmasters to enter.
Gordon stood there dumbfounded until Uncle Buster-Jangle took him by the bandolier and pulled him in. The two guards followed, and he shut the door behind them again.
This was an unprecedented breach of ceremony. No one was supposed to be allowed in this chamber but the Scion of Tist, the Radmen, and the chosen Scout.
Uncle Buster-Jangle returned to the panel and stared at the light which showed Elly Vader descending.
“Get your guns ready,” he said.
“Scion?” Gordon stammered.
“Get them ready!” he ordered, and pointed at Elly Vader’s doors. “There. Safeties off.”
The three Armsmasters leveled their weapons at the doors and their thumbs made some kind of clicking sound. They were bound by sacred oath to obey the Scion of Tist’s every command.