by Tim Lebbon
“What will happen to them?” I ask.
“They’ll be put to use,” Jade says quietly. “Things are too bad now to waste anything.”
I cannot ask what she means. I don’t wish to know.
v
We travel a further three miles that day, taking it in turns on the tricycle, before exhaustion claims us. I wait by the side of the road while Jade wanders off to find somewhere to camp, trying to find some shade under a shirt stretched across the handlebars. She is gone for nearly half an hour and I am becoming worried, but this does not stop me from falling asleep. When I wake up she is standing there, looking down at me, a strange expression on her face. Yet again I don’t know whether to be frightened or excited by this unusual, confident, aggressive woman.
We wheel the trike most of the way, but for the last few hundred paces we have to virtually carry it up the steep gradient. By the time we reach the small plateau she has chosen for our camp we are both exhausted, and sleep claims us before we can erect the shelter.
I wake up from a dream of cool water, innocent nakedness beside a waterfall, greenery and fruit growing all about. Jade is rubbing cream into my bare legs where the sun has found its way through the cotton of my trousers, which I see lying in a heap beside me. Before I am fully awake I see that curious expression in her eyes once more and her hands move quickly up to my groin.
Whatever stresses had been tempering Jade’s attitude to me earlier that day seem to have evaporated with the sun. Perhaps it was the tension of knowing what was to come, but feeling unable to tell me beforehand. Maybe the fear that we could have fallen into trouble leaving Malakki Town had distanced her from me; after all, she has been this way before. She is doing all this now as nothing more than a favour for me. Whatever the cause, she seems as happy now as she was last night.
The memories of the day, the trials of the journey thus far, the twinges from my chest cause me to remain limp, even as I watch Jade strip. But she works on me with her hand, her mouth, and soon we are making love under the astonished sky.
We drift towards sleep around midnight. I see a shooting star, but Jade says it is just another falling satellite.
* * *
PART THREE: THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS
i
“I’m older than you think,” Della said to me. “It’s as if losing my legs provided less of me to age; time can’t find me, sometimes, because I’m not whole, I’m a smaller target than most. I’m older than you think.”
I almost asked how old, but in reality I did not want to know. Her age was just another enigma which identified her, an unknown that made her even more mysterious and exotic in my eyes. She scratched her stumps as I looked around the overgrown garden. I tried to appear blasé but actually felt so nervous in her presence that I could faint. She was not ashamed of her terrible wounds — seemed to display them as a badge of worldliness, sometimes — but still I hated them. It was extremely disorientating looking at the stumps of legs that should continue on down to the floor. Instead, they were cut short at the edge of the wheel chair. Sometimes, when Della scratched them all night, she drew blood. I tried to get her talking.
“So what happens now?”
It was the start of the Ruin. The Sickness was still to come, lying in wait in some distant African cave like the ghost of a wronged nation ready to exact a chilling, relentless revenge. The first nukes had fallen in the Middle East, and money markets across the globe had crashed the previous month. Britain was already threatening a worldwide ban on trade, import or export. In some areas of the country, martial law had been declared. It was rumoured that people were being shot. In London, the army was hanging looters they caught pillaging the pickings of the Numb-Skull plague in the streets; their bloated bodies became home to fattened, less homely pigeons than those that adorned Nelson’s column.
Della shrugged, rolled her eyes skyward. “Well, you heard them, kiddo, telling everyone how good it would be. The Lord Ships are mighty fine and high, ready, they say, to restore to us all that we’ve lost over the last few years: justice; law; peace; even food. In the process, where do you think the Lords live? What do you reckon they eat?”
“I don’t know.”
“Somewhere nicer and something better than you, that’s where and what.” She flinched as her nail caught a fold of skin and opened a cut. A tear of blood formed on the stump and I watched, fascinated, as it grew, swelled and then dropped like a folded petal to the ground. When I looked up, I saw that Della had been watching me watching her.
“But don’t you think it’ll all work out for us?” I asked, naive and blindly trusting. “They say it’s the answer. ‘Government from afar’, they say.”
“I think the Lord Ships will last a long time,” she mused. She sat back in her chair and stopped worrying her absent legs. I knew the signs — she was warming to the subject, not only because she loved sharing her wisdom with me, but also because it meant she did not hurt herself. At least, for a time.
“At the end of that long time,” she continued, “there’re going to be a lot less people in the world. I think the Lords’ll rule adequately, considering, but they’ll also reap any rewards of their labours before anyone else even knows they’re there. The worst thing is ...” She trailed off. This was something that Della never did, she had an angle on everything, an opinion for anyone who would listen. She stared up at the moon where it was emerging from the azure blue of a summer sky. I’m sure that for those few moments she was alone, and she had forgotten how different life had become.
“What’s the worst thing, Della?” I asked. Each time we spoke, I remembered her every word, repeated them to myself like a mantra as I drifted off to sleep. They were precious to me, in a way priceless. Some people — a few — still read the Bible. My bible was the lake of words I remembered from Della.
“The worst thing, kiddo, is that they’re going to be gods.”
Della sent me away then, complaining about her stumps, saying her legs were aching and she could only ever put the ghosts to sleep when she was alone. I knew what she meant, but sometimes I lay awake at night, imagining a pair of discorporated limbs stumbling unconnected down a straight, dusty road.
I left Della to her thoughts, knowing that I would benefit from them the next time we met. Della was a treasure.
ii
I wake in the night and hear the distant sounds of engines, protesting as if hauling a huge weight up a steep slope. Disembodied lights climb the darkness in the distance, pause for a while and then continue on their journey. Jade does not hear them, or if she does she pays no attention.
I think of the massacre, of the bodies cooling in the night, providing food for whatever wild creatures remained. I huddle closer to Jade, but sleep eludes me. The darkness is haunted by the silvery twinkle of stars, their brightness distracting and surprising at this altitude. Sometime in the night, just before the darkness flees and there is a brief lull in nature to greet the dawn, I hear a faint sound from the south. A wailing, but possessed of many voices; a calling, like the tortured grind of metal on stone. I sit up and listen harder, but then the birds start singing and their song drowns the noise. I am glad.
When Jade wakes up I tell her, but she merely shrugs and smiles. “Another Lord Ship over the town.”
“But I didn’t hear it coming.”
“Sometimes they just drift in from over the sea, then out again. Sometimes, they’re as consistent as the tides.”
I shake my head. “But they’re not manned anymore. The Lords died, or fled.”
Jade shrugs. When she has no answer, she shrugs.
She begins to prepare breakfast — a thick, stodgy gruel made from a paste in her bag and powdered milk, a few drops of water added to lighten the load on our stomachs. She looks tired, as if she was the one kept awake by the night, not me.
“I heard engines last night,” I say, watching for a reaction. She raises her eyebrows, but she does not look at me. I wonder whether she is beginning to
regret her offer of help. I wonder how sane she can really be.
Jade does not speak for the next hour. We eat and wipe our bowls clean, then roll up the sleeping packs ready for transport. I sit for a few minutes on a large rock overlooking the valley we had travelled up the previous day. The Sickness is not too bad today, the pain bearable, the growths only leaking small amounts into my already stained and caked shirt. From my observation point I cannot make out the gully where the bodies lay, nor the dried streambed, not even the wall that had hidden the terrible slaughter from our view. On the horizon, marked more by its haze of smoke than the actual outline of buildings, lies Malakki Town
Jade taps me on the shoulder and informs me that we should be going. I smile, but she is as unreceptive as before. I begin to fear that she is like this because, just as yesterday morning, there are things to be seen today that she cannot bring herself to talk of. The thought stretches the skin over my scalp with terror, but I cannot bring myself to ask. I try to remember our sex from the night before, but it seems like the memory of another person’s story, told long ago.
iii
Around midday I see the first of the birds. It is high up, almost out of sight in the glare of the callous sun. It is circling in a way that induces a vague feeling of disquiet; drifting, around and around, wings steady.
“Look up there,” I say. Jade stops and follows my gaze.
“Nearly there,” she says.
I feel a jolt which seems to trigger a rush of blood from my chest. I slump on the saddle, slip sideways onto the hot dust of the road. A groan escapes me as the light-headedness dulls my vision.
“String?” I manage to whisper through the haze of pain.
“Just over that brow,” Jade replies. I try to hear pity in her voice, but even my own yearnings cannot paint indifference a different shade. “Come on.”
She grabs under my armpits and heaves me back into the trike’s saddle. I have no strength to pedal, so she has to push me the final stretch to the top of the small hill. As we reach the summit and look down into the shallow valley beyond, I am dazzled by something in the distance. At first I think it is the sun reflecting from a body of water, and my heart leaps into my chest. Water! A wash! A bath, even! Then, while my eyes adjust to the glare and detail rushes in, I realise how wrong I am.
What I do see is far more fantastic than a deep lake in an area stricken with drought.
There is a small village in the valley. The collection of tents and ramshackle huts seems discordant with my preconceived image of String and his people, but the closer I look the more I can detect a design in the apparent chaos of the scene. The whole layout of the place is pleasing to the eye — not only providing colour in a bland land blasted by winds and heat, but also offering a geometry that seems to comfort with its very order.
Around the village is a moat. The sun reflects from something bright, hard edged, many angled. Jade turns to me and truly smiles for just about the first time that day.
“String’s lake of glass,” she says. I want to ask more, but suddenly feel the urge to find out for myself.
We start down the hillside and are soon approached by two guards. They are carrying guns, ugly squat black cylinders that could spit hundreds of rounds per second. They are both tall, muscular, fit-looking, their skin a healthy tan, clothes neat and presentable. They seem to be wearing what approaches a uniform: thin cotton trousers; khaki shirts buttoned at the wrists and neck to protect from the sun; peaked caps to keep the glare out of their eyes. They are cautious but confident as they stop a dozen steps in front of us and casually place hands on their guns. They regard us with what I can only describe as pity, and I am jolted from the grey haze that pain still holds across my senses.
Pity is the last thing I expect.
“You’re Tiarnan, right?” Jade says. The guard on the right tenses, then nods. He steps forward, swinging his gun to bear evenly upon us.
A sense of unease itches at me, tensing my muscles and stiffening my neck. No one knows we’re here, I think. No one will miss us. There are a thousand bodies back down the road, what would two more be added to it? More food for the dogs? More human detritus to leak slowly back into the soil, replacing the goodness we’ve bled from the planet for centuries? I wonder if Della will miss me. I wonder if she ever expected to see me again, once I left that final time. I had the suspicion then — and it still niggles now, even though I’ve come so far — that she sent me here to give me hope in my final days. She never really believed in what she told me; she did not have any real faith in her words of comfort.
“Jade Kowski?” The guard’s expression does not change but there is familiarity in his voice. His gun swings slightly until it’s pointing directly at me.
“Hi, Tiarnan. Who’s your buddy?”
Tiarnan waves a hand at the other guard. “Oh, that’s Wade.” He lowers his gun — but Wade, I notice, does not follow suit — and approaches Jade. “What the fuck are you doing back here, girl?” He claps her on the shoulder and ruffles her hair with fatherly affection, though I guess Tiarnan to be younger than Jade by at least half a decade: straggly beard, kid’s smile in a face already aged by the sun and the Ruin.
“Brought a friend.” Jade nods down at me where I slump weakly on the trike. “String still entertaining?”
Tiarnan shrugs. “When people make it here. Still pretty exclusive, though, y’know?” He looks me over, removing his dusty sunglasses and squinting in the sudden brightness. At first I feel like an exhibit in a museum of dying people, but then I detect the same pity in his eyes that I saw earlier. He glances at my shirt, muddied by the fluids leaking from me. He sees Jade’s bandaged hand, notices the bright redness of the scrape on her leg set against the more subtle pink of sunburn.
“Hell, Jade, you sure ain’t looking after yourself.” He looks across at his companion and some secret signal lowers his gun. “Wade, do me a favour, push our friend here down to the moat. Jade, why not walk with me? You can tell me why you’re still in this God-forsaken country after all String did for you.”
“You’re still here,” she says, but Tiarnan laughs and starts off towards the glittering moat.
Wade pushes the Trike — I could have pedalled, but I am tired and in pain and not about to pass up the opportunity of a free ride. When we reach the moat I can see what it really is. I wonder at the work that went into making it; the weeks of travelling to and from towns and deserted villages to collect all the materials; the dedication; the planning. The idea itself is sheer brilliance.
The moat is at least twenty metres across, composed entirely of broken glass. Bottles, window-panes, bowls, mirrors, windscreens, all smashed down into a sea of sharp, deadly blades. The sun glares from its multi-faceted surface and throws up a haze of light, and it is all I can do to keep my eyes open. It is effective as a thick fog at concealing what lies beyond.
I wonder how we will cross, but then I hear the musical crunching of glass cracking and shattering. Before I have a chance to see what is happening, Wade is lifting me from the trike and sitting me gently on a large, flat-bedded vehicle that has crawled across from the other side. Wade and Tiarnan help the other two men on the strange boat as they haul on a rope, dragging it across to the inside of the moat.
“Nearly there,” Jade says, bending down over me and blocking out the sun. “You okay?” As if the question gives my body a chance to answer, pain shouts and I fade out. The sun recedes, voices float away, and I fall unconscious to the grinding sound of breaking glass.
iv
“How are you feeling?”
I open my eyes. “Like I’m going to die.” It’s dusk or I’m indoors. Whichever, the torturous sunlight has abated.
“Well, I’ll see what I can do about that.” The voice is gentle, low, understated. But there is a power there, a certainty of control, a glaring confidence. Even before I see who has spoken, I know I am talking to String.
I turn my head and there he is, sitting calmly besi
de my bed, Jade standing behind him and Tiarnan next to her. String is a surprisingly small man — for some reason I had been imagining him huge and powerful — and another surprise is that he is black. It is only now that I realise I have seen no other coloured people on Malakki. The world is getting larger.
“I thought Jade, perhaps, would have told you about me?” He is trying not to smile, but there is laughter painted all over his face.
“Only what you can do,” I say. I manage to sit up, cringing as the Sickness sends a wave of shivering heat through me.
“It’s progressed quickly, hasn’t it?” he says. It is more a statement than a question, so I say nothing. “May I?” He reaches for my shirt before I can object and gently pops the couple of remaining buttons. I look down as he bares my chest, and even I recoil in disgust.
String, however, retains his composure. He passes his hand close to the ugly growths and I’m sure I can feel the subtle movement of air. It is comforting. He is frowning, his big eyes so full of a pained compassion that I cannot recognise the look for several seconds. Even Della is more concerned than compassionate, a state that I think is based upon realism rather than choice.
“It must hurt,” he says.
“You bet.” But I’m used to the pain, the burning that tears at my chest as if some rabid animal is trapped within, trying to escape. Used to it, but still it tortures me unremittingly, driving blade after blade of discomfort between my joints, into my limbs, piercing my lungs. It’s the faints I cannot conquer, the regular grey spells when my body seems to say, right, that’s it, enough for now. “But the pain won’t last forever.”