Forever After (Post Apocalyptic Romance Boxed Set)

by Rose Francis

  The room was dark, and she could barely make out shapes in the blackness. She realized that if there was an injured person inside, they had a knife now, and she didn't want them to mistake her intentions.

  “Hello?” she called out. “I'm looking for someone my friend might have hurt. I'm here to help you.” Silence. She continued to skulk through the dark until her foot hit something hard, covered in cloth. She imagined a body, first an old blind woman, than a lame boy, as her mind searched for the most pitiful victim possible.

  She knelt down, “Spirits,” she whispered gently, “I'm so, so—” She stopped as she realized the 'limb' was too hard and too heavy to belong to a human being. It was a piece of wood. She felt her way up the leg. It belonged to a broken table. Also in the pile were the shattered remains of a rocking chair. Christine had been placing them inside a square of canvas to carry them.

  “See,” she said, suddenly behind Ilsa. “Just wood. Stabbed him good, too.” She pantomimed jabbing the knife into the wood. Ilsa followed the stabbing motion and found the knife, sticking out of the back slat of the rocking chair. She tried to pry it loose, but the handle was still bloodied. She wiped it off in her dress, then pulled it clear. Before Christine could ask for it back, she slipped it into her waistband.

  Christine had found enough wood that it was hard for Ilsa to pick it up off the ground, pregnant as she was. Just as she was about to set it back down, lest she drop it, Christine was underneath it, helping her lift. They got the improvised sack onto their shoulders and managed the weight together. Both were unsure on their feet, but between them, they managed to get the wood back to their makeshift camp.

  “You should rest,” Ilsa said.

  “It's still early. The Engineers should be asleep. We can get the meat before their shifts start. Didn't cut it up to make them fat.”

  Ilsa looked at the way she swayed, and the idea of taking the woman unprotected out into the Foundation made her sick. “I'll go. You rest.”

  “You shouldn't go alone,” Christine said, standing defiantly.

  But Ilsa wasn't in any mood. “You did. And you were in lousy shape even when you left.” Christine hesitated, her lips halfway to forming another argument.

  Ilsa frowned. She realized if Christine was listening, she really was in bad shape. “Two can carry more than one,” she said limply, disliking the prospect of leaving Christine alone, if another rat came along.

  “Yeah, if I don't have to carry you back.” Christine stared at Ilsa's stomach, and the way she leaned against the doorframe while they debated.

  “I'm fine,” she insisted. “With two, we take one trip together. Only safe for one trip. Or we lose the meat.”

  Ilsa didn't know how much butchering Christine had done, but she understood that they were going to need food for several days, possibly weeks. And Christine's dry stores wouldn't last them long. The bars were already beginning to get moldy in the moist air.

  She didn't trust Christine to know her limits, but weighed against the prospect of only needing one trip... It was a gamble. If Christine collapsed, she would have to carry her back, which meant getting no meat. But if she could stay on her feet just a few more minutes, then they could both be safe, with food. And having food meant later being able to stay in and not scavenge, when it might not be safe.

  “All right,” she said. “But at the first sign of trouble, we run and head back here.”

  Christine shook her head.

  “No killing.” Christine glared, but Ilsa held her eyes until she shook her head, though the stand-down wasn't submissive enough to be convincing. “Good,” she said.

  They made it most of the way towards the carcass. Christine seemed to do better when Ilsa wasn't babying her, so she took the lead, only glancing back every quarter minute or so, to be sure they weren't losing each other.

  Then she heard a bloodcurdling cry and saw Christine yelling at the floor. Christine's words slurred together so much as to be unintelligible, and she kicked at air until Ilsa grabbed her arm so she didn't fall over. “That wooden mask looks like my uncle. Said I was going to die.”

  “Mask?” Ilsa asked.

  “Ah!” Christine yelped as a rat bounded out from behind a fallen stone, running off. Ilsa stroked her arm until she calmed enough to explain,“He, he—it—turned into the rat.”

  It wasn't the only rat. Several were stalking them, partially hidden by the rubble. “The rat meat,” Christine said, and touched her stomach, “calls out to them; they recognize their kindred.” She grimaced and immediately vomited. Ilsa held her hair back and stroked her face, but her touch sent shivers down to Christine’s bones, and she couldn’t decide if it felt sensual, or if it was a preamble to worse pain. She shoved Ilsa’s hands away. She felt so cold, and Ilsa’s touch was warm enough to set her alight.

  “We're almost there,” Christine said, and pushed herself up. She swayed, but managed to walk straight after, and took up the lead. They seemed to move faster with Christine in charge, though Ilsa couldn't be sure if that was simply because she didn't have to worry over every single step they took.

  Christine's work was a masterpiece sculpted in gore. She had chopped fat steaks out of the rat's haunches and stacked them. She had started piling the cuts atop the rat's exposed ribs, where the smaller rats couldn't get to them.

  Ilsa saw them circled around the larger rat, lapping at its blood where it pooled, gnawing the flesh out of its face; its eyes and its tongue were already gone. One particularly feisty rat reared up on its hind legs in front of Christine and nipped at her. It was larger than the others, though standing upright it was still less than a foot tall. Christine punted it, and it flew over the larger rat's face. The defiant rat shook itself off, then contritely crawled to a nearby piece of paw and gnawed quietly.

  Christine ran excitedly to the stacks of meat and started piling them in Ilsa's open arms. “Whoa,” Ilsa said, as the weight got to a point where it was starting to cause her pain. “I'm not supposed to carry too much.”

  “Right,” Christine said, and started to stack the steaks. She piled as many as she could keep from falling together. She looked sadly down at a handful she had cut that she couldn't take in one trip, then hefted them.

  Christine led the way back, swaying sickeningly. Ilsa didn't much trust her to navigate, but between the weight, which was almost too much for her, and babysitting Christine, she already had her hands full. And it didn't seem like Christine was moving in the wrong direction.

  Christine stumbled on a fallen brick. She managed to twirl, keeping most of the steaks in their pile, but one slid off and slapped right into the decaying remains of a shattered rat corpse. She looked down, and despite the offal smeared on the meat, almost picked it up. Ilsa gently knocked her hand away and nudged her forward.

  After several more minutes of walking, they found the kitchen. Christine nearly passed it by, and Ilsa was about to call for her, when she turned around, and came back to the door. “Don't know where my mind is,” she muttered.

  Inside, they heard movement. Christine silently set down her steaks, and Ilsa followed suit. Quietly they crept around the corner, to the space where they bedded down.

  A rat was in Ilsa's belongings, and had pulled the porcelain doll out. It was chewing on the last ragged piece of fabric. Christine stomped on the floorboard. The rat clenched its teeth and pulled, but when it realized the doll was too heavy to escape with, it released its grip and skittered away. The remains of several beetle bars were scattered around the pack.

  Christine took two awkward steps forward, and fell into her bedpile. “'I'll take a nap, then help cook,” she muttered.

  Ilsa peeled her out of her soiled clothes; it reminded her of tending the Aureum children. And for a moment she pictured being able to do the same for her own child. Dread over their current situation crept in at the edges, and the picturesque background of Aureum home began to peel away, revealing the chipped, stained, dying surface of the Foundation. She f
orced the paint back onto the walls and furnishings into the space, until it was a respectable Middle Level apartment, then hung Christine's clothes to dry. She shivered, wondering if the tainted air was beginning to seep through her filter after all.

  It took Ilsa far longer to start a fire than it had Christine. She was glad the other woman was asleep so she didn't see it. But eventually, the table legs began to smolder. She used a warped section of bars torn from a window to hold the meat over the fire as it cooked. Occasionally, fatty oil would boil on the slab, bubble up, then burst, ejecting hot oil onto her arm. She ignored the prickling burns; Christine needed her sleep, and her safety might depend on her getting it. That unspoken menace reminded her of caring for the Aureum children, too.

  Ilsa cooked for hours until there were no more steaks. She had pondered running back to the rat alone to get the last of the cuts of meat, perhaps even the one Christine dropped. But by the time she was done, it was all she could do to crawl to bed beside Christine and sleep.

  Christine was better when she woke. She was still hallucinating, and it was worse, but at least she wasn't sleep deprived besides. “Engineers have probably given up,” she said. “Aureum's rich, but its resources aren't infinite. Even it can't afford to bankroll Engineers this deep for very long— especially the filters,” she said.

  They began to backtrack, now that they hoped they were past the worst of the patrols, but Ilsa couldn’t remember the way out. After the fourth time they walked an hour to reach the same giant rat carcass, Christine shrugged, sat down with a muttered joke about settling in forever. She felt too passive to Ilsa; Ilsa wouldn't have thought Christine would give up that easily.

  * * *

  Ilsa lost track of how many days they were there. It felt an eternity, but even though only she could really know, they blurred together into a stream of repetitive tasks. Christine was breaking, the laughter of her shadows drowning out Ilsa's voice. It frightened Ilsa to try to talk to her, though she felt compelled to, out of guilt.

  Ilsa took to marking the halls with a coal from their last fire. It helped, but even the newer areas they found appeared to go nowhere, neither deeper nor shallower.

  Christine's nausea didn't abate, and Ilsa learned to tune out the sounds of Christine vomiting so as not to feel the meat roiling in her own stomach. After a few days more, the rat meat started to spoil, which they discovered when Ilsa threw up alongside Christine one resting period. In between ventures to seek stairs leading back to the Upper Levels, Ilsa began setting up traps again. They would already have to finish their dry stores while they waited for food to come along.

  Some part of her was proud at how far her own survival skills had come. She didn't even flinch dressing the rats anymore. Her skin itched from their blood encrusting it, but she felt dizzy after washing her hands in the contaminated puddles they drank from. Thirst was more important than cleanliness; better to save her contamination for the necessities.

  Ilsa rocked back and forth nervously. It felt like just minutes since she last checked the traps, but she was so hungry. Christine's stomach growled, and started to quake, mumbling. Ilsa guessed she took it for a menacing noise from one of her hallucinations, not an uncommon occurance. Christine was almost always jumping at some imagined noise. This noise's reality made the decision for Ilsa. She stood up and leaned over Christine. “I'm going to check on the traps. I'll be right back. Stay here, okay?”

  Christine curled up by herself, quivering, though Ilsa laid their spare clothes around her tenderly to try to warm her. “Be strong for me,” Ilsa said, combing her fingers through Christine's hair, and then kissed her forehead. It was how she had calmed the Aureum children during thunder storms. The grounds shook during them, and those nearest the outer windows could see the lightning's path. When Ilsa was a child, she had thought her entire world would tilt, crash to Earth.

  * * *

  Christine shook a bit less after that, though she refused to look up. At the recesses of her mind, she was aware that Ilsa was leaving her. She knew that moment would come. She was proud, and even started to tear up, that she had had the strength to cut her loose when the time came. She was only sad that Ilsa hadn't caved her skull in, to save her the slow agonized death from a Hal starvation. She imagined her meat and bones rotting away like the rat’s, her skin drying and caving until she was nothing more than a mottled brown husk. Perhaps she’d be discovered by some future Lower Level child on their first Hal trip.

  She felt fingers in her hair, and for an instant her spirits rose. Ilsa hadn't abandoned her—not yet, at least. Maybe that meant she had food.

  She opened her eyes to see David, smiling down at her. The edges of his smile pulled back far enough to expose rotting teeth. She screamed and sat up, as the flesh on his bones aged a century before her eyes, rotting and peeling away as he collapsed into a festering stack of bones.

  Ilsa came running. She stroked Christine's cheeks as she blubbered, unable to even describe the horrors birthing and unbirthing from moment to moment before her eyes. Tears poured down Christine’s cheeks at the futility of it all.

  The cramping in Christine’s stomach worsened. She threw up blood twice. The insects gliding across her hips sank their teeth in every few steps, and no matter how she twisted on the grimy floor, she couldn’t roll them off her, or relieve the pain. Their footsteps burned, and even Ilsa’s gentle touch couldn’t shake them. She screamed at Ilsa as an ant objected to being moved. It bit her ribs as though trying to open a hole large enough to dig itself in.

  Christine felt every tear and gash on her weakened frame sprouting lips to cry with her, a chorus of misery from a thousand mouths and one soul. Her knuckles and joints felt like eyes, staring in horror at the gashes opening on her flesh.

  Ilsa pushed her backwards as gently as she could, but to Christine, her arms seemed to stretch forever, twisting and looping through the distance between them. She surged forward, trying to tangle herself in the endless loops. Better to die, strangled in her arms, than float up and away. The ants scampered over her, and she let go, not wanting Ilsa to be covered in the bugs too.

  Ilsa sat beside her and gently stroked her temple. That seemed to calm the ants; they burrowed under her skin to sleep, but it didn't seem to hurt any more than their steps. At least she could focus on Ilsa's soft fingers. She wanted to hate her for their softness; it meant she'd never done hard labor. But so long as Ilsa used them to touch her, she figured she could let that slide.

  * * *

  Christine was mercifully passed out. Ilsa stayed with her a few moments longer. She had learned that Christine needed to get deeper into sleep before she left, or the woman would be in tears by the time she returned.

  When she was convinced Christine was resting, Ilsa gathered up her traps. She arranged piles of debris to leave a trail back to camp.

  The snatches of euphoria that hit her when she slipped food beneath her mask and accidentally inhaled were a bitter reminder of the debt she owed Christine. After all, Christine would have a mask, too, if Ilsa had listened.

  All Ilsa felt was a mild lightheadedness, for the most part, with vague shadows at the corner of her vision. Half the time, she didn’t know what Christine was seeing—the woman had given up trying to tell her—so she largely focused on the ambient noises of the building, listening for patrols. She didn’t know what she would do if one came. She certainly couldn’t shove Christine into a vent, and even if she could, there was no way she could trust Christine to keep quiet.

  A rat had gotten snagged into her makeshift trap, and she carefully shoved her hand under the box to hold it. Once her grip was secure, she shook the little container off it and snapped its neck. She wasn’t so hungry just yet, and she heard Christine’s laugh echo behind her in the corridor. Sleeping beauty had finally woken up. She started back towards Christine.

  Thirteen

  Christine had grown used to David’s presence by now. He never laughed like that in life, but then, she’d ne
ver known him to look for a Hal in life, either. At least, she assumed he was dead. The assumption was that no one lived very long in Service, or after being taken, because the resource usage didn’t reflect a large population living in captivity among them.

  A friend of hers, a somewhat paranoid worker who was in and out of hydroponics, assisting Engineers on maintenance, had explained it. There simply weren’t enough plants to feed all of the Threes he estimated had been taken into Service, let alone those with skills or powers considered a public resource.

  She tried asking David how he’d died, but he would only look towards Ilsa and shake his head. She tried not to resent Ilsa for his refusal to speak to her, but it felt worse having him watch her than if he would just speak. Besides, his face kept melting, and he wouldn’t, or couldn’t speak with his tongue in tatters like that.

  The others spoke. She couldn’t see their faces, only saw them running behind her and chasing her, laughing every time her back was turned. Ilsa had stopped turning around to check every time Christine swore she heard a noise.

  Ilsa offered Christine a fresh-caught rat. The creature was still warm, and Christine couldn’t convince herself that it was truly dead. If she ate it, the parts would wiggle in her stomach and chew their way out. She heard the Pocas used captive rats as a form of torture, trapping them against a victim until they chewed their way out. She hadn’t believed it before. Now she did, feeling the rat Ilsa had coaxed her to eat yesterday throwing itself against the side of her stomach, letting out soft chitters of agitation. She wondered if it could regenerate teeth to gnaw its way to freedom. It sure felt like it was trying.

  Fourteen

  Ilsa was afraid to eat. The dark spots in her vision had increased and started to form shapes. It was the rats. Her muscles ached, and she wondered how much of it was strain from the pregnancy, and how much was whatever afflicted Christine. She couldn’t risk the baby being affected by too much contaminated meat and water, so she limited how much she consumed. If she could find the way to the Upper Levels, even for a short time, to trap some cleaner food…