Ever Winter

by Hackshaw, Peter

  Hepburn had told him he wasn’t just battle-fit; he had the strength, dexterity and fitness levels that would legally permit him to fight in the harshest environments on Earth. Hepburn had named places that Henry had never heard of, but in the end, Henry supposed the only environment that mattered was the one they all lived in.

  Henry could throw kicks and punches continuously without tiring. He could block and parry blows dealt to him under a continuous assault, without needing to drop his guard at any time. Henry had balance and movement. He could read the terrain and the environment about him. In the training sessions, whenever Hepburn projected assailants, Henry knew instinctively where to take cover and how to get close to them without being an open target. He understood the anatomy of a human body; the areas to strike that would disable someone, or render them unconscious. He knew where and how to kill someone in theory, and in theory, he could do it.

  Panthera had also become a master on the projected battlefield and a true partner to Henry in training. They understood each other and had developed signals between them – originally designed for military attack dogs – for different commands and maneuvers.

  Henry got up early as usual. He no longer needed Hepburn to summon him for training. He desired to be better, and he was. Father had never been as fast, or as strong, or as skilled in combat. Henry knew this just by what he had learned from the robot and his arsenal of training projections.

  When he reached the slanting deck of the MV Greyhound, he was surprised to find Hepburn at the bow, staring into the distance. He called to the robot, but no response came and so Henry made his way to where his companion and teacher stood.

  Hepburn wore a digital frown, more serious than usual, yet when it spoke it was monotone and absent of fear or concern.

  “There was a fire in the night, not far from here. An encampment, set by humans, who are now mobile and heading this way.”

  “An encampment?”

  “Six adult humans, five male, one female. Primitive weaponry bar one handgun; right-handed Browning 9mm Hi-Power MOD 1935. Take a look.”

  The robot pointed into the distance. Henry followed its arm with his gaze but could see nothing, not even on the horizon. Then he allowed his vision to travel forth, his lens taking the lead to bore the distance between the vessel and those who were heading toward them.

  “Three kilometers,” Henry said, seeing what Hepburn had been looking at already.

  Six from the Favela laughed and joked as they packed their belongings into an otherwise empty sled, pulled by a pack of disfigured animals. Henry could not see a gun upon any of them straight away, but recognized two of the group immediately. Erasmus, the woman from Lanner’s group who had been there when he’d been hauled from the ice. She who’d tossed a limb from the long pig to the paupers in the lanes. She who’d been there when Father and Mother died. Now she wore a black leather coat that flapped in the wind like a black flag. And there was Skindred, the betrayer, wearing a fur tunic Henry hadn’t remembered him wearing before.

  “It’s as if they’re right in front of me. They don’t know I can see them,” Henry mused. “They’re so far away, but still...”

  “By installing your new optics, you were improved.”

  Henry paused and focused in on Skindred, feeling annoyed that he’d imagined him so many times as he was on the day Martin died. Seeing the boy in a fur tunic, different from his memory, made Henry feel like his mind had betrayed him. What else had changed?

  “Skindred. He’s a big part of it. If he hadn’t told them – if Lanner hadn’t been waiting for me by the ice – how different might that day have been?”

  Henry turned from the robot and walked toward the funnel ramp, holding his weapon upon his shoulder.

  “Where are you going, Henry?” the robot asked.

  “My morning training. They won’t be here for a couple of hours,” he replied, realizing that he was about to have his first real test. Nothing would be projected. Every blow would be dealt with intent to kill him. And he would respond in kind to each of them.

  The first sign was a black vulture, soaring high above the terrain. It followed the humans, no doubt hoping they would leave some pickings, or that at least one of them would expire and become the very morsels the great bird craved.

  Henry stood before the ship, practicing the kata he had mastered already. Panthera watched from the roof of the Duesenberg, parked neatly between two containers.

  Henry felt both calm and exhilarated at the same time. He was excited about what was to come. The fear was there, but it was muted by his surety in what he could do. As one of the training projections had said, Henry had become a weapon.

  As the vulture neared, six dots on the horizon appeared with the rolling mist as pack dogs dragged their sleigh toward the vessel. Henry paid them no heed and continued training, ready for what was to come. He noted a shift in the dots that approached. No longer a rabble, they had collected themselves all of a sudden, walking an equal distance from each other, with tighter grips upon their weapons and more purpose in each stride. Henry allowed his eye to take him to them once more. He saw how their expressions too had altered. First, they had seen only the ship, but then they had spotting a human figure casting shapes and movements in the snow, along with the imposing figure of Hepburn, still watching from the deck of the vessel. The invaders proceeded with caution, clearly uncertain how many people awaited them inside the superstructure, or how many lay in wait around the containers, ready to ambush.

  The pack dogs were secured and the sled left with them. Only the humans proceeded. The vulture flew higher, perhaps sensing that blood was about to be spilled.

  Henry ceased his training, for that time was now over, and he knelt on the powder snow with his weapon laid at an angle before him. He waited for the invaders to get closer. He waited for recognition, for he was no doubt assumed by all to be long dead.

  “What is your strategy?” the robot asked.

  “Skindred’s gun. He was probably given it for doing some bad chub, or took it from someone.”

  Hepburn scanned the approaching group once more in silence. It focused on the weapon that Skindred had armed himself with, the Browning pistol he’d already identified. But this time he looked closer, beyond the outer casing, through the metals it was constructed of, studying the firing mechanism up close and the chamber where the bullets would be held.

  “It is unloaded,” ascertained the robot.

  “I know. You did a good job on my eye. I peeped it up close. Through and through. He brandishes that thing like a tool. I think, even if he had bullets, he couldn’t ever fire it like a Great-Great. That took more skill than he could get.”

  “What is your strategy?” the robot asked once more.

  “You said six. Six with primitive weapons. Six that won’t have any idea that I’ve trained for so long to outfight them. To outlast them.” Henry nodded, agreeing with his words as he spoke them out loud. “My strategy is to let them think of me as the boy they dragged to his fate. The boy that screamed for life, then death. When they see him, their confidence will grow and they will expect nothing that follows.”

  “You plan to fight them in the open, all at once?”

  “No. I’m going to use the ship. I know it well. It’s ours. They can’t all attack me at once in the hallways.”

  “From a military perspective, that is your best option. Henry, you are a well-trained soldier. I wish you great stealth and victory.”

  “Thanks, Hep. Those are not the Great-Greats. If I can’t deal with six here today, then going to the Favela is nothing but folly. I need this test,” Henry said.

  The group drew closer, having left their pack dogs tethered together on the ice behind them.

  Hepburn remained silent and became a spectator and it looked to Henry that it was simply waiting for the battle, waiting for a call to provide medical aid to his unit of one serving soldier.

  He wondered, had Hepburn been a human, whethe
r he might’ve shown signs of fear, expectation, or even excitement. Yet, the robot was perfectly still and his pixel smile matched it effortlessly.

  It was Skindred who recognized Henry first and announced with relief that an unseen army wasn’t waiting in the wings to resist them.

  “It’s the boy. The brother. Henry!” he exclaimed, waving the gun in his hand like a club. His dreadlocks hung over his face and he tried to blow them out of his eyes. “Done him once. Get to do it all over again!”

  “The dead brother lives? Let us do him proper this time!” Erasmus held her claw hammer aloft and quickened her pace. Her leather overcoat trailed behind her, whipped up by the wind like a black flag.

  “What about that thing up there?” one of the invaders asked, looking to Hepburn. None of them had seen the snow leopard on the Duesenberg.

  “It moves, use your cutters. We got enough to sort all here. Then we look for the loot the sister promised.”

  The sister.

  The invaders approached in an arc, no doubt intending to close a circle around Henry. Panthera sat up on the roof of the car and mewled, but Henry spoke to the creature and he too relaxed his stance and waited for the invaders to move in. On seeing the car finally, the invaders halted and stared in awe, reminding Henry of the time he’d first seen the original Duesenberg with Father and Mary. Yet it was just something else for the invaders to take in, a prop alongside the majestic form of an ancient container ship. It was all new to them. All promised treasure.

  “Ain’t ever spoken to the dead before. Can you hear me, dead boy?” Erasmus spoke when they were close enough for Henry to hear. She spun the hammer in her hand continuously, clearly eager to use it. Henry raised his head slowly, displaying his shorn hair and altered face.

  “Cunk! What done to him? Dayum!” said one of the invaders, a tall yellow-haired man with a plaited beard.

  “Looks like some diablo,” added another, looking as uneasy as Skindred, who seemed unable to meet Henry’s gaze. Still Henry remained silent, calculating the moves he would make to deal with the imposing threat closing about him.

  “Leave me alone,” Henry spoke finally, his voice fragile, cracking, to the delight of those that faced him.

  “Don’t see a devil. This just a scared, dead boy we gonna put under. Done and dust. Slim, go an’ fetch him so we can make him double-dead,” Erasmus ordered the yellow-haired man, who nodded and approached Henry.

  The man held a weapon that had been fashioned from antlers; an impressive fork with a handle that furled around his lower arm. He took several steps toward the boy, who remained perfectly still, a statue of himself. Henry felt his heart race in his chest, knowing his months of training would either get him through the moments that were to follow, or not. Outwardly, he gave nothing away. It was all part of the wider plan. Stealth and victory.

  Henry let out a whistle – a command they’d rehearsed during the many training modules – and Panthera sprang up from the roof of the car and fled the scene. The group facing Henry smirked and sniggered, assuming the creature had deserted the boy and further reduced the threat toward them.

  “Seems it knows when it’s time to roll over. Vergonha. Shame you don’t, boy. We’ll teach you,” one of Erasmus’ men, a short man with a flat face, his nose stubbed short from frostbite, spoke for the first time.

  “Please. Don’t hurt me again,” said Henry with sincerity. Then, without waiting for a response, he ran, turning the corner of the first open container, where he was out of sight.

  “Oh, that pup gon’ get hunted. Slim, Skindred, bring him back here,” Erasmus ordered and the boy and the man set off after Henry, each taking a different route around the first container, into the maze of rectangular prisms.

  “Here, cunk,” called Skindred as he searched for Henry, his gun held as a truncheon.

  Slim joined in from several containers away. “Come out, pup.”

  Then there was the sound of clawed feet sprinting on the ice and Panthera appeared in front of Slim. The man raised his arm and readied the antlers, unaware that Henry was behind him, having quietly lowered himself from the roof of a container. Panthera stood unmoved, obedient to his unseen master.

  Henry smashed Slim hard on the back of the head with a blunt end of his weapon, sending the man crashing into the side of a container. The noise echoed around the metal maze and it was unclear exactly where it had originated from. Henry tried to imagine what was going through Slim’s mind. Surprise at the suddenly changed odds? An idea of what might follow? A fleeting sense of helplessness, like when a boy had an eye taken from him in a room full of adults?

  Kill. “Matar. Double-dead, Slim,” Erasmus bellowed from where she waited with the rest of her crew, clearly imagining an outcome only in her favor.

  Slim had time to turn and see the effigy of the boy before him as Henry, in a single arachnid movement, flipped his body back on the ground and used his legs to kick the yellow-haired man’s knees at the same time, sending him head-first onto the ice, flat out before Henry.

  Henry was in a new position then, crouched over the bewildered invader with a speed that none would have expected from him. He took hold of Slim’s arm and smashed him over and over in the face in quick succession with the man’s own antlers, reducing it to a pulpy mess that only the vulture would appreciate. It was a horror to behold, but Henry did not intend to wait for the others to arrive and marvel at his creation.

  Looking at the snow leopard, it was clear to Henry that the smell of blood was intoxicating to the animal and it pressed a paw on the man’s chest and another on his skull before burying his head in the meat of him. Yellow hair was then strawberry blond with crimson streaks.

  Skindred turned the corner and Henry enjoyed that the boy was met suddenly with the view of the animal wrecking his companion and Henry covered in much of the man’s blood. Their eyes found each other. The smile faded fast from Skindred’s face and he was rooted to the spot, transfixed. To Henry, he looked like he was wishing he was somewhere else.

  “Over here! Quick!” Skindred yelled the alarm to Erasmus and her crew, seemingly not able to take his eyes from Henry.

  Panthera continued to feast on the remains of Slim, but kept a watchful eye on the dreadlocked boy.

  “You look frightened,” Henry smirked, but rather than attack Skindred, he picked up his weapon, whistled to the snow leopard, who ceased his meal, then fled the scene with the beast, side by side at equal pace. They zig-zagged the maze, with Henry letting Skindred catch eyes on them every now and then through the gaps in the containers. Then Henry and his cat scaled the funnel that led to the deck of the vessel beyond.

  Twenty-Six

  Underbelly of a Dead Dog

  Erasmus swore when she arrived at the scene where the remains of Slim were opened up for an intimate view.

  “I just got here,” Skindred lied, pointing at the ramp that led to the deck of the ship. “Think he went up there, with the beast.”

  Erasmus screamed and ordered her crew to follow her, charging out of the labyrinth of containers, up to the superstructure of the MV Greyhound, where the dimples of portholes could just be made out in the rime.

  The deck was silent apart from the wind. The gratings they all stood on were a frozen grid of squares, no longer giving any grip to those that trod the deck. In front of them, the door hatch was wide open, inviting them into the dark unknown. Traces of Slim’s blood dotted the walkway in between.

  “Skindred, you wait for us here. If he comes out before we do, kill him. You fail to do that, you get my cutters.” Erasmus spoke with authority, clear with her intentions, yet she added, “Entender?” Understand?

  The boy nodded, relieved to be left outside with a view of the panorama. Then a shiver went up his back. “Esperar.” Wait. “Where’s that thing that was up here? The metal creech?”

  “Must be in there with the boy and the animal. We’ll get it. We’ll get them all, and no quick death either.” Erasmus didn’t wait fo
r a reply this time and she led the way through the open hatch, into the narrow corridor where the corpse of a Great-Great lay under a tangle of frozen cobwebs thirty feet from the entranceway.

  The corpse, a female, was clothed in a once-red all in one suit and had her hair scraped back from her face. Her face was illuminated by the faint green glow from strips that lined the corridor. Her skin was taut, glistening with a sheen of ice, and only the eyes – gray and congealed where they should have been white – really gave it away that this wasn’t a person that had just fallen asleep. As they looked on, a tiny spider emerged from the corpse’s mouth and disappeared around the side of her neck, looking for something it hadn’t yet found.

  “Dead girl in man-mades. Is she a—”

  “A Great-Great. Si,” Erasmus interrupted her cohort.

  “Escute.” Listen. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  “This relic makes Moonbird look like a speck.”

  The four of them moved carefully past the well-preserved body, each of them off-balance and unsure of their footing, as the vessel had listed at an angle before it had frozen so long ago. Each struggled to see in front of them as they went deeper into the ship, where no portholes dragged light into the superstructure. The corridor opened into a stairwell and gave them a few choices: go up, go down, or proceed straight on where the tilted walkway was flanked by door hatches leading to unknown rooms.

  Erasmus signaled for them to stop. They listened to the silence of the ship. Nothing moved, or creaked.

  She knew that somewhere, Henry waited, finding comfort in the familiar darkness to him.

  Erasmus called to him loudly, letting her voice travel the corridors of the ship ahead of her, “Pup. Come out and it will be done quick.” When so response came, she carried on, “Bem, we come then. For Slim. We will take your other eye, then the rest of you. Cut by cut.”