by Dave Ring
Darkness falls earlier than the day before, though Awl feels certain they are in the midst of summer. He readies his bundle, filling it with fur and old Styrofoam to muffle any noise. He hasn’t left the Tower in many years—indeed, he is forbidden from doing so. If he is found, by man or by animal, he will likely be killed.
The village has not changed much since Awl was a young man, since before he gave his freedom and was confined to the Tower. He knows the old paths, can still wend his way between emaciated oak and abandoned Jeep, and his bare feet are rugged enough to find purchase among rocks and broken things.
Blessedly, he meets nothing larger than himself on the road. Twice he fends off creatures he thinks are the descendants of rats, but they are fat and snarling, their tails sharp and ambulatory. His hands are bloody after the second attack, but the package on his back remains safe.
Her home is dark, like all of the homes. But he recognizes the primitive sigils of Halligan and Scaif’s clans, and he sees remnants of an attack in the dead trees and the upturned earth. The house is a bungalow, Awl thinks. Basements are easier to fortify, to soundproof, to store food in the cool. People have relearned to burrow, and so many find Awl strange for living as he does in the sky.
He knocks, unsure if this practice is still within the culture, if Scaif will be deep underground or even still living in a place that reminds her of her beloved. He presses his mouth close to the cracks in the doorframe and calls her name.
“For someone who cares so much about moth-eaten ancient mores, you have no qualm breaking them,” Scaif says as she leads him into the house. She’s carrying no visible weapons, so she does not seem intent on revenge, or on performing her societal duty. “Speak.”
Awl doesn’t speak. He reaches, instead, through his belongings and pulls free Halligan’s actual skull. He offers it to Scaif, not on his knees, but looking to her eyes. An equal, someone who should not be deciding matters of eternity.
“Why are you doing this?” Scaif asks. She does not refuse, and she brings the remains close to herself, pressing the curve of cracked bone to her chest. “This won’t bring about more wasting? Or the apocalypse?”
“The world is dying, and so are we,” Awl tells her, pressing the bundle of other bones to her. He gestures to the world outside her door. “The worst is already here. If it’s not the wasting, then it’s beasts, or it’s each other. So we all need to think about what we do with the time left.”
“And what do you do?”
“I walk a little with the dying and the dead before they go. I listen, if they have a voice to speak. And even sometimes if they don’t.” He glances down at Scaif’s hand, the ring of rough twine around her finger. “I didn’t listen, once, and I still regret it. Your wife said what she wanted. I just hadn’t figured out how to heed it yet.”
He accepts her offer of the meagre food she has on hand, of the clean water she has stored. She does not see him out, and Awl watches her descend into her little basement tomb with the reminder of Halligan.
Awl shuts the door as he leaves, greeted by an even darker world than when he arrived. If he is quiet and quick, he can make it back to the Tower without needing to defend himself, without having to fight off the pious or the rabid. But as his feet meet the road, he realizes he is not returning to the Tower. He turns out towards the world, pulls his mask across his mouth, and starts to walk.
After “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid
Practice your aerial drills Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, even if it’s raining—you think you’ll never have to fly in the rain?; do calisthenics and sword drills on Tuesdays and Fridays; don’t fly bare-winged into a thunderstorm’s static; cook your crag deer steak just til they’re hot-brown outside and warm-red in; soak your hunting clothes right after you take them off; blood draws blood; never pinion your own fool self with your own clothes; memorize the width of your wing protrusion points; salt your extra meat and hide it; is it true you were letting the Wingless into the crags on Sunday?; always eat your food like you know where your next meal’s coming from; if you didn’t hunt the deer yourself, cook it until it’s hot-brown all through; on Sundays, walk strong like your training’s made you, not like you can barely hold your wings up; don’t let strangers into the crags; don’t speak to the Wingless, not even to give directions; all of this is their fault; drop a little food when you walk because crag mice will follow you and they make good snacks; I never bring strangers into the crags, only my friends, and never on training days; this is how to clean a wound; this is how to suture the wound you just cleaned; this is how you widen and hem the holes in your shirts so you don’t pinion your own fool self with your own clothes; this is how you guard your wingmate’s back without getting tangled; this is how you guard your wingmate’s underside without getting tangled; this is how you gut the crag deer—far from your nest because blood draws blood and fresh meat draws false friends; when you attack from above, don’t get fancy and spin or else you’ll get vertigo and lose your sword; this is how you choose a gender; this is how you cast one off; this is how you mark your own nest; this is how you mark the borders of the crags; this is how you hold your wings near someone you don’t like too much; this is how you hold your wings near someone you don’t like at all; this is how you hold your wings near someone you like completely; this is how you set up camp as a scout; this is how you set up camp as a wingsquad; this is how you set up camp for someone who outranks you; this is how you set up camp before a fight; this is how you set up camp after a fight; this is how to hold your wings in the presence of the Wingless, like your training’s made you strong enough to drop them off the crags like they deserve; sun your wings everyday so that you don’t get mites or wingrot; don’t climb everywhere—you’re not Wingless, you know; don’t pick the crag flowers—the bees might come back; don’t throw stones at crag birds because they’ve been gone for decades and we want them to come back; this is how to make a nest; this is how to line a nest; this is how to make medicine for wingrot; this is how to make medicine to throw away a fledge before it becomes a fledge, and don’t tell me you won’t need it—we learn things that help other people, too, you know; this is how to catch a fish from the air; this is how to throw back the perfect fish so that the crag birds have food when they come back to us; this is what Wingless gunpowder smells like; this is how to bully the Wingless; this is how the Wingless bully you; this is how to choose a nestmate; this is how to love a nestmate and this is how to touch their wings; this is how to do an aerobatic loop if you feel like it and this is how to steady yourself so you don’t get vertigo; this is how to stretch crag deer meat through lean summers and leaner winters; this is how you dispose of bodies you can’t eat; but what if my nestmate has no wings? You mean to say that after all that you are really going to be the kind of person who won’t lift them up with your own wings?
Five miles outside Hope City West, the vultures came for me. Even though their silhouettes on the ridge were barely visible against the smoke and ash of the noon-day sky, I could hear their self-important laughter and feel their eyes upon me.
I was tired and sweaty. I had been tired and sweaty since before my transmission died back along the trail, and trudging along the skeleton of the old eight-lane interstate hadn’t served to fix that. To either side of the cracked, uneven asphalt stretched dark sand with darker reddish lumps of scrub, straight to the ugly line of sulfur yellow at the horizon. Overhead hung the ash cover, imposing as a coffin-lid, each of the vultures lurking in the dark just aching to become another nail.
They wanted to destroy what I had, in the way of vultures. But these weren’t going to wait for me to lay down and die before they came for it.
My pack was heavy as hell, and bulky in that way that large flat things were, smacking against my bones with each step. But I’d be damned to live through twenty more apocalypses before I let these graspers stop me from making my delivery.
I was a courier. That meant something. My honor lived and died by
the safe arrival of my parcels. People who chose to do more than survive—the communities, our friends, my daughter—needed what I carried. We’d come together to move past the unfairness of living with ash filters and skies too dark for solar arrays.
And people like me became couriers. I didn’t have the power to make the future, like those who contracted me. I had the power to be stubborn as hell. To ride, walk, or crawl, and to come away from a vulture ambush like this one with my burden intact.
I believed in this, mind you. I was no mercenary. I’d met my partner and our daughter in this post-ash world, and though I grew hard, I did my damnedest not to grow cold. When everything went to dust, you either found something to believe in or you wasted away. You either found a community or became a vulture.
I heard their poorly maintained bikes and ATVs rattle to life. They knew I’d seen them and they were never much for subtlety anyway.
Their pack peeled away and wormed down to head me off along the main road. I shifted my burden to access my belt. I felt safer with the weight of my crowbar in hand, but I was realistic about the odds. If it came to swings, my precious cargo wouldn’t withstand the beating that crowd would likely bring at me. They didn’t understand it, couldn’t appreciate what it meant, so they would try to destroy it and keep it from those who could.
The hills chomped on the horizon ahead of me. At their base, Hope City West’s artificial lights and fires glowed, a beacon of gold and pink light urging me on. Their knighted watch would be ready to escort me through the gates. If I could just get close enough.
Too late now. I knew I couldn’t outrun a pack of vultures on their motors. I found a cleft along one side of the ridge line, where the shadows were deeper than black, and tucked my load inside. By the time the vultures reached me on the main road, I was standing back at its center, crowbar drawn back and muscles aching to swing.
Behind their infrared goggles and dirty bandanas, it was easy to imagine they weren’t people. Just dark shadows, the nightmares of children. They may have traveled in a pack but they had no idea how to work together. They came at me one at a time, which is exactly what I’d hoped for.
I swung at the first, bringing the crowbar around so they charged into it. The impact screamed in my shoulder, but it separated them from their seat. Their dirt bike skidded onto its side and sent up a circle of dust around me. I didn’t have their IR goggles. Couldn’t see where the next attack would come from.
I yanked the abandoned bike upright. It had a torn-out seat and bent handlebars, but it looked like a chariot to me. The engine had stalled and I killed the fuel as I wheeled it over to my hiding spot. A vulture appeared out of the settling haze, swinging and just barely connecting with my temple as reflex sent me stumbling back. Glass shards along the knuckles of their glove still raked across my skin, though, and immediately burned.
Adrenaline answered that rush of sensation with its own and the world around me seemed to slow and sharpen. Blood trickled, wet and dirty, threatening to flood my right eye. The dirt bike had fallen against my waist but it wasn’t as heavy as my street bike had been. Instead of pinning me to the ground it only freed my hands up to swing the crowbar again.
There was little to be gained by a fight, and so much at risk, but they were persistent. They wore gray and black and covered their faces, and by that style they made it slightly easier to defend myself with brutal force. They were just vultures, I told myself. If I let them get to my pack, they would not only destroy the few objects within, but the futures of those they were destined for.
I fought, and bested them, because I had to.
By the time I reclaimed my cargo and hit the road, I’d fractured or broken bones in at least four of them. They made their choice, I told myself.
Their injuries inspired enough caution in them to let me get out ahead. Not by much, but unless one of them had a rifle (and if it was loaded, which was even less likely these days), all I had to do was stay ahead of them until I reached Hope City West’s walls.
The dirt bike had other ideas. No surprise that a vulture didn’t keep their ride well-tuned. If I’d been able to do any better, I wouldn’t be in this predicament. Just when I was starting to think I might make it, just as I was near enough to see the guards moving along the outer wall of the city, the engine sputtered, as though it had just tried to swallow a plate full of nails. The whole thing seized, tossing me over the handlebars. I felt something snap, and wished it had been me and not my cargo.
I climbed to my feet and pulled the load off my back, clutching its broken shape against my chest. I threatened the remaining vultures with my crowbar, dropping my weight into my legs and coiled to strike as soon as one of them dared come for me.
A horn sounded, startling echoes from the waste around us. The city’s knighted watch had spotted our approach. Bouncing lights flooded the darkness and hooves drummed against dirt and ash.
The vultures slowed and seemed to shrink as I gained the long shadow of the watch at my back. The knights knew me. Knew my clothes, knew my face. Knew a wasteland hunt when they saw one, and how to turn it around. My rescuers overtook me, scattering the vultures into disorganized retreat.
Once inside the city gates, I accepted a clean rag for my scrapes, but refused to see their doctor until after I’d hand-delivered my charge to the Hope Gallery curator.
As I followed the familiar path to the gallery, the warm lights of the city were everywhere I looked—in windows, strings of paper lanterns lining the streets, and fire pits that chased back the barren chill. Raucous colors decorated every surface. Our communities had preserved the color we knew about from books and what vids had survived. The ash-choked sky didn’t know rainbows, but we wouldn’t let the world go without them.
The gallery was below ground, given prime space in the city’s evacuation bunker. The curator, a trans man in a gorgeously patterned kimono, met us at the bottom of the steps, his long slender hands fluttering in eagerness for my parcel.
I winced as the wraps came off to reveal cracked frames and creased canvases and posters. I didn’t curse but I think I turned red with anger.
The curator put a pale hand out onto my dark-skinned forearm, risking the dirt to comfort me. “These are beautiful pieces. The frames can be repaired, the canvases will lay flat when they are stretched again. You have, once again, broadened our collection. We remain in your debt.”
He removed the white cotton gloves of his station and gestured to a sitting area at the back of the gallery. There was an audience already waiting.
“Come, please. Your delivery is not yet complete. Tell us about the artists.”
And I did. First was the former wedding videographer’s paintings of flower arrangements, corsages and bouquets against backdrops of folded satin. This artist also worked in the gardens back in my home, Fish City, to ensure future generations remembered not just the color but the smell and texture of these flowers. There was the hairdresser who had brought their knowledge of pigments and dyes to carded wool, learned to spin the fibers, and then crochet them in day-glo webs over wooden frames. He was also responsible for the curls of neon green in my hair. Next, I told them of the guild of autodidactic printmakers who pressed riotous colors in blocks and gradients onto sheets of fabric, depicting city scapes and remembered family photos of vacations at national parks, vacation sunsets, and runway models. All memory inspired color to paper. One man had been a former courtroom artist and his husband a sketch artist; together they worked with residents to recreate their memories for the city’s records. There were recycled papers made by a former laundromat attendant from the masticated pulp of bright cotton rags, where the paper itself was the medium and the art. My audience was silent and reverent as I spoke, but I was as attentive to their smiles and wet eyes as they were to the stories and art I brought them. I had carried all the colors from before the ash, a stack of canvases and prints, because we refused to let the vibrance of life fade from the world.
After,
I was exhausted but light, barely staying awake to crawl into the fur-padded bed in the couriers’ quarters.
After a night’s rest, a patch up, and two generously portioned hot meals, I went to the curator again. He had transformed the gallery overnight, displaying the paintings I had brought with me, all repaired and beautiful.
There was a low table in the center of the gallery for me, covered in artwork. A dozen of the city’s artists mingled, but though it was their art on display, they treated me like the guest of honor.
It was hours before I could sleep again, and I tossed fitfully, anxious that I might forget the stories that went with my new burden, or that the vultures might get me before I could get these pieces home to Fish City. Before I could see my partner and our daughter.
When it was time to leave, I mounted a gorgeous Hope City West horse, a brown and white paint mare, given to me as part of my payment. Its saddlebags were filled with the precious bundles of packaged artwork for Fish City’s museum.
“We trust you to see our creations safely across the colorless waste.” He made no mention of how the sculptures in my packs would not survive the same abuse the paintings had endured. He didn’t have to. I refused to learn that lesson twice.
I patted my mount’s beautiful patterned neck and squeezed my knees. The city’s folk lined the path back to the gate, waving colorful scarves to bolster me for the desaturated road I was about to travel. Children risked the horse’s hooves to tuck bright silk ribbons into my hands or beneath the straps of my saddle. I saw dozens of small, joyous faces, all raised in this post-ash world, but who still knew love and joy and art and color. This, more than anything, would see me home to my own child.
