Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

four hours.

  The world was serious.

  The invaders were intent on deconstructing the city. The people had largely vanished, murdered or transported, and the buildings were next. Barricades divided the metropolitan area into smaller blocks. Like drawing chalk lines on a floor, a fixed grid of squares, walls slowly rising, blanking the depleted skyline. The grid was as yet incomplete, but it was only a matter of time before Moss was entirely sectioned into individual plots.

  And then?

  An ominous rumble of expelled air swept through the sewer.

  Yalman woke, grimacing. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘it’s not such a good idea.’

  Corporal Livingstone nodded, although it was unclear if he was in agreement.

  Jakob said, ‘We could fly off the Sports Administration roof.’

  ‘Fly what, gliders?’ quizzed Hamish.

  ‘Sure,’ Yalman answered. ‘The building’s intact.’

  ‘The building’s on the far side of the barricade,’ Hamish pointed out, adding, when no one argued, ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’ said Yalman. ‘You scared of heights?’

  Jakob was. He kept his mouth shut.

  Hamish communed with the bear, its third eye milky, an empty stare in its head.

  ii

  Early evening.

  Ivan had swapped the colony two-piece for corpse-stripped army fatigues. What army he couldn’t say. In olive drab minus identifying marks, badges and emblems picked away, he sat in a tree overlooking a road fifty metres from and three metres above the ocean. The coastline was largely deserted. There was evidence of isolated skirmishes. Thus the uniform, remarkably hole free. His life seemed to revolve round situations like this. A bleak mass of dark clouds squatted over the emerald water.

  Having picked his way carefully westward, covering around twenty kilometres a day, Ivan was ready to break the peace. The war being contested had nothing to do with him, but his patience was worn, his progress slowed by the necessity of avoiding any of the disparate elements of Oriel’s manoeuvring combatants, their sporadic meetings gelled by the activities of radio-generals safely housed in some concealed position while the consequences of their tactics displayed themselves in heat, noise and light, an exchange of ideologies impressing the earth with molten footprints.

  Bodies were scarce, variously attired. It was easy to think of these skirmishes as being amplified and fed down wires, the war itself a sham, at best fought between twos and threes, employing brass bands and fireworks, cheap mercenaries whose screaming and dying was magnified, inflated like an angry balloon and stabbed with a pin. Certainly the explosions were loud.

  The sole truck to pass Ivan’s way carried a driver, a set of ladders and several large coloured sacks. Its draught wound up his trouser legs, stirring hairs. The situation, he had to admit, was perplexing. Odd.

  He sat in the tree with the screen in his lap.

  On the screen events unfolded in primary shades, a group of men wearing heavy overcoats crawling through an archway of rubbish bins, scurrying like rats, blackened and desperate as they traversed on bellies the urban concrete. The city smouldered, he saw. One of the men was known to Ivan. A face barely old enough to vote, he’d accompanied the girl Ellen that day in the park, the two of them leaving the car minutes before the shooting. What was his name? He, like his companions, was indigenous.

  Hours spent analysing such pictorial data had convinced him of the source’s four-footedness. A dog? Lately the image had started to break up. A light rain fell in the alley. He put the screen away and waited for it to rain here, too.

  Murmuring along the road was a motorcycle. Ivan disguised his shape among the branches and prepared to drop.

  As far as he knew no-one had followed him from the colony. The motorcyclist was perhaps a wholly innocent party. But might that be said of anyone? Ivan tensed, loosened, swung, boots accelerating down a radial arc and connecting at the nadir with an unsuspecting head. The rider was knocked clear of his machine, slack-necked as he rolled backward over the rear wheel and fell face first into the hard road, adding to its bumpiness. The engine cut and the motorcycle meandered to a stop on the verge forty metres hence. Ivan sucked the pain up from his feet before letting go of the branch, landed favouring his left peg, having bruised a number of toes.

  Helmetless and dead, blood purple in the failing light. A messenger? Ivan searched his clothing. Bones protruded from the man’s arms, strange angular rods. His skeleton was altered, spine ridged, boots cut open at the heel to accommodate coffee-mug spurs. His pockets housed nothing more than a length of frayed rope.

  Ivan shrugged, dragged the body off the road, sprinkled soil on the tell-tale bloodstains, and snapping the rope, an end in each fist like a crude garrotte, hobbled to where the cycle lay, braced against one of several stuffed panniers.

  iii

  He was in one of the warehouses when the news broke. His mother called; his sister had mumps. Nightmares threatened the streets. He told her not to worry, put the phone down gently, knowing their lives would cease, spilling tears on his suit and wiping them away with a borrowed handkerchief. It was cruel, he thought, just when he was coming to terms with his world it was ending. He hated himself at that moment for loving Ellen, loving her more than his mother or baby sister. It was Ellen he’d go to. He hated the old man, her supposed employer. She ran errands for Courtney in memory of Jenny, a relationship with many permutations.

  Now, approaching the barricade, all thirteen rounds in a single clip, the first in the chamber, he tuned his mind to a comforting indifference. He didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Powers had wrung his flesh, established his personality, fashioned the complex web of society, set in motion those circumstances, a whirlpool of self leading to this moment, beyond, to the moment of his non-being, his forgottenness. Jakob smiled. It was silly, yet he smiled. Silly was his father’s word. His father had fallen off a yacht. A detail. Insignificant. Who cared? Jakob could see nothing wrong with an indifferent universe. It was less painful, less of a burden. He didn’t want to be missed.

  If he had never ventured into the dusty Atlantic Tearooms that morning he would not only have died but lived in ignorance. Crushed like a bug; at least this way he saw the boot coming.

  He was fortunate.

  The barricade shimmered, oil-rings in the rain. The air smelled strongly of disinfectant. Floor cleaner? If he closed his eyes he could imagine himself back at the factory.

  Gimmicks. Special offers. Collector sets.

  There was no sign of movement. Evening loomed. Yalman glanced over his shoulder. Hamish bit his lip. Jakob smiled at them both. Smiled at Gus.

  The Sports Administration building was forty storeys high. It contained a department, Equipment Hire Ltd, on the 24th or 25th. Jakob had gone there with his parents to rent skis, a holiday in the fictional past occupied with snowballs, cabins and fir trees stooped under the weight of icicles. But they had the barricade to negotiate. No-one dared speak.

  Even the rain was quiet.

  Street lamps cast neither light or shade.

  The barricade was smooth and tall.

  Nothing stirred.

  Jakob felt his heart.

  Yalman crab-walked, gesturing the group into a tight ring, Gus included. The bear was part of the team. The sergeant used a knuckle to draw in the dirt, a map hardly visible. The buildings, reduced to twisted stanchions and sparkling rubble this side, had begun to be cleared. The barricade ran straight, bisecting the tree-stumped avenue. Yalman indicated the nearest pile of debris, conveying his meaning with a shift of his eyes. They were to raise a fire-warped beam, lean it against the wall and climb, easy targets for the most bleary-eyed of snipers.

  The bear nodded and sucked a paw.

  Hamish flexed his fingers.

  Yalman pointed to his chest and mouthed: me first.

  They watched him dodge raindrops, then roll in the grime.

  Hamish followed, g
rimacing, clutching his ribs, Gus clinging to his back like a koala, both safely crossing the divide.

  Jakob’s turn. He spooned his fringe out of his eyes and ran at a crouch. No bullets struck. If they could make it to Equipment Hire tonight they had every chance of flying the short distance to the airfield on the warm updraught of morning.

  The beam was aluminium, part melted, its latticework making a useful ladder. They raised it easily and made it over the wall, dropping out of sight, stepping into a pool of harrowing ashes. Jakob twisted his ankle, but shook it off. A small discomfort. Yalman tapped him on the shoulder and the irregulars proceeded down the empty street. All signs of life were expunged. No car wrecks. No foliage. Facades were blank and vacant, doorways missing doors, windows missing panes. Anything loose had been removed or burnt to dust. The only property was solid property. Only walls.

  Were they on a fool’s errand? Were the buildings as empty on the inside?

  Three men and a bear trotted the swept avenue as night weighed on every side, continuing up the broad fan of steps fronting the complex and entering the lightless foyer.

  Hamish breathed awkwardly, mumbling.

  Yalman gazed full circle and moved toward an elevator, discovering in time the yawning shaft minus its car.

  Behind the sergeant, Jakob’s eyes swivelled, coming to rest on the stairs. The metal banister remained, gleaming dully.

  ‘What floor did you say?’ asked Hamish.

  ‘The twenty-fourth or