Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

she’d not keep.

  v

  The pilot scrambled over the side, her dress sodden and her palms bleeding, the pursuit outnumbering her initial estimate by ten to one. In a host of sailed craft men and beasts pointed and cried like excited children, weapons rattling and buttocks glossed to a sheen. She floundered ashore through the choppy shallows, the cavern vast and possessed of a muggy light. In the distance a city shone, traffic visible above its streets, buildings lopsided and windowless. Making dry ground Johnson ran toward the urban sprawl, hoping to lose the toad’s voracious minions in its confusion. The place was some futurist’s idyll, a playground of floating mobiles and snub-nosed cars, its atmosphere heady and rippled with applause.

  Self-congratulation?

  She tripped and fell, shattering the illusion before her. Anger throbbed in her muscles. Maintaining a firm grip on the string-pull bag she gathered herself and began to climb, slipping and sliding on the wet rock. The city conjured here, that fantastic realm, was cast in a patina of jellied liquid. What life existed was green and algal, no more complex than mould. But it wasn’t complexity that mattered, Johnson realized, it was suitability, adaptability. These elemental life-forms had achieved their goal.

  She almost envied their serenity. She gritted her teeth and concentrated on the ascent, scrabbling up this conurbation of her ancestors with those calling her thief close behind.

  In the sunshine, holding tight to her prizes, her growing bag of treasure, Johnson paused for breath in a cornfield whose outer reaches could be seen to oscillate with the gold-smothered approach of goblins, their spear points like silver stalks catching the rays, white hairs in a blonde crop through whose bursting grains she moved once more. The ground undulated, the horizon leaning first toward, then away. It was useless to think she could lose them. This was her chosen reality, the pursuit a consequence of it. Life from now on promised to be one big adventure.

  Whooping, cajoling herself, she pumped her long legs and swung her thin arms, elbows flaying corn, disturbing rodents and butterflies. She could hear the small army crashing in her wake, their gurgling abuse travelling ahead of them, their weapons dragged behind or getting under their feet. She pitied them in a way. What would happen if they ever caught up? Would they have served their purpose? What she needed was a plane, a loud-engined flyer.

  The cornfield stretched on, reaching into hills, dipping into valleys, broken only by her rush. Clouds hung low, grey and immobile, scuttling in to obscure the sun. She crossed a harvester’s path.

  Stopping amid cut stems, fresh air surrounding her ankles, Johnson peered left and right. To the left, nothing. To the right, a tiny red speck. Biting her tongue she chased it, the harvester growing slowly, the pursuit temporarily thrown, confused by the airy swathe gouged out of the susurrous landscape. But she was easy to spot in the open and they were soon back on track.

  The pilot closed on the huge threshing machine, its blades gyrating, its metal body resonant. Grain was pumped skyward in a golden haze that seemingly melted. All that remained was chaff, vegetable debris. She clambered onto the vehicle’s rear and glanced over her shoulder. There they were, an unknown number of ugly squat shapes, chests heaving and arms jangling, spewing colours. Johnson opened the string-pull on a hunch and fished about for a diversion. Her hand closed round the tiger’s eye. Perfect.

  Swearing loudly at the determined pursuit she pulled her arm back and threw. The stone climbed its arc, gravity competing, the cut field waiting, unprepared for another seed. Would a tiger blossom? Three or four to disperse the sweaty horde. It seemed an age before the tiny jewel tumbled down.

  The harvester shook, nearly dislodging her. The cornfield rose and fell as a giant corkscrew burst from under the soil, distributing it like shrapnel. The pursuit fell back, shocked and disarrayed. The corkscrew revolved at speed, whining shrilly, its note dropping as it slowed. Huge steel claws and creeping caterpillar treads could be seen heaving a long scuffed cylinder from the earth. Brass portholes held muddy windows. Levers cranked and a hatch popped outward. A figure appeared, swathed in black. The pursuit, now regathered, spilled either side of the intrusive craft. Johnson thought they would attack the crew, but they seemed in awe of the digging machine, or indifferent to it. A second figure emerged, the glint of a copper brooch at his throat. The goblins had lost their earlier momentum, however, and Johnson, riding the harvester, left them trailing farther behind in the field.

  She decided to locate the driver.

  He was a fat man among levers in a cab too small for both of them, although he invited her to join him. Made uncomfortable by her refusal, he next insisted the pilot take over. This Johnson was pleased to do. She got in one side while he got out the other, pulling the window down in order that they might talk, a beefy arm hooked round the frame. He introduced himself as David Fenmore, adding, ‘Don’t worry, I’m on your side. I knew the killing had to stop.’

  Johnson requested no explanation and none was given.

  Fenmore looked like an overgrown schoolboy, a middle-aged man who was rediscovering old haunts and how to have fun. He reminded Johnson of her father. Of her homeworld, Amy’s Cupboard, his rural diocese.

  He growled and spat insects.

  The pilot, right foot on the floor, gazed forward at the queue of golden, quivering stalks as they blurred amid the cutting blades.

  Swelling on the horizon was a slat barn, doors agape. Two camels stood tethered to a post, snarling at each other like drunks in a bar.

  ‘Do you ride?’ Fenmore asked, indicating the beasts.

  ‘Is it far?’ she replied, idling up.

  ‘Depends where you get off,’ he rejoined, leaping down to tackle the nearest animal. White foam dripped from its jaws.

  Johnson descended from the cab. No sign of the pursuit, she saw, not so much as a cloud of dust.

  Fenmore cracked the animals’ knees with a stick and both kneeled clumsily.

  ‘Climb on,’ he instructed. ‘Trust me, it’s easy. Just don’t fall off.’

  She stuck her left foot in the stirrup, swung her right over the hump. The camel lurched and she patted her stomach. The cornfield became suddenly fluid, an ocean of yellow stretching in crests and troughs. Out there goblins floundered, terse and argumentative.

  ‘Follow me,’ Fenmore said. He flapped his heels, goading his mount to a trot.

  Johnson did likewise, crushing the thin leather reins as the animal rose and dipped sickeningly before settling into a deceptively smooth gait. It carried her past the barn, beyond the corn, out into the spacious reaches of a world gone mad. Or so she imagined, sitting aside this locomotive sack. Corn gave way to dust, dust kicked into squalls by hooves, hooves padded and silent as if wrapped in blankets.

  Blankets, she thought, now that would be nice. And a place to lay your worries for the night. But what worries did she have? The beast stumbled, its foot in a rabbit hole. She gave Fenmore a despairing look. Craving tobacco, he had none.

  By the time they reached the oasis the pilot was asleep. Nodding aloft, he tapped her thigh and she opened one seeing orifice, the subtle odour of fresh water slithering through her nostrils.

  The animals drank and the man bathed, his gut floating above his knees as he lay hands behind head.

  ‘Join me?’

  He was harmless, she decided, losing the dress. ‘I don’t suppose...’

  He passed her soap.

  ‘You think of everything.’

  ‘It’s necessary sometimes to be a step in front. As you’ll appreciate.’

  ‘The harvester?’

  ‘Yes - I arranged that.’

  ‘Why? Why rescue me?’

  Fenmore feigned an injury to his gallant. Struggling from the shallow pool he rolled like a dog in the grass.

  There were dates to eat, served by him on broad green leaves she later used to fan herself.

  Evening brought a chill and he piled vegetation on top of her.

 
A bird shot past with folded wings, black and sleek.

  The next morning they set off early, the pursuit a cloud of dust in the distance, fifteen or twenty kilometres behind.

  ‘They’ll never give in,’ he pointed out. ‘They have no other purpose, no option but to chase.’

  ‘Then I’d better not let them catch me,’ Johnson said, used now to the camel, trotting without discomfort over rusty dunes like piles of cinnamon.

  She wondered what lay beneath this desert, what it might in future shape.

  ‘We’ll be into woodland soon; a cooler climate,’ said the fat man, indicating a dark line on the horizon, trees inky and shaded. ‘From there we travel on foot.’ He made no mention of a destination.

  It didn’t matter to the pilot. She enjoyed travelling, the unpredictable nature of this adventure, or instalment thereof.

  ‘There are those,’ Fenmore told her, referring to an earlier, abrogated conversation, ‘keen to get their hands on certain items which, rightly or wrongly, they perceive as a means of control, of exerting perhaps irresistible pressure on specific individuals to whom said items have a relationship.’

  She couldn’t have put it better.

  He took a deep breath.

  ‘You are remarkable, Roman Johnson, in that you possess the ability to deny, to freeze out such devices as the parties in question employ. In that mundane carrier, my dear, is the means to alter worlds. You might, if you wished, exploit it for your own