“So how are we going to sleep? I mean, do you have a blanket or something?”
Aeneas nodded towards his backpack. “I have a sleeping bag. It might be a bit small for two people. Then again, you’re tiny. I’m sure we can squeeze you in. Unless you prefer to sleep on the floor.”
“No,” Tetra hurried to say, shaking his head. “Sleeping bag sounds great.”
“All right then.” Aeneas took the sleeping bag from his backpack and rolled it out on the floor in front of the fire. He threw another big branch in the fire and crawled into the sleeping bag. Then he looked at Tetra. “Do you have to pee? Do it now. Don’t you dare wake me up in the middle of the night just because you can’t control your bladder.”
Without a word, Tetra walked a few meters into the darkness and disappeared behind a tree. He didn’t have to pee, but he decided that it was easier to pretend he did than to convince Aeneas that he was in full control of his bodily functions. As he was standing behind his tree and trying to sound as if he were peeing, Tetra felt a bit apprehensive about spending the night in a sleeping bag with a stranger he had met only a few hours before. Sure, Aeneas had saved his life, and Tetra had no reason to believe that he meant any harm to him at all, but the boy was still a mystery to him. Yet he was grateful that he didn’t have to spend the night alone. After the events of the day, especially Gordun’s account of the goings-on in Kettering, Tetra began to wonder if it had really been such a good idea to leave the relative safety of his home. But he needed to find his father, and if he couldn’t find his father, he was going to need to find a way to survive on his own.
“You fell asleep back there?” he heard Aeneas call out to him.
Tetra made his way back to the fire, wiping his hands on his sweater to keep up the impression that he did have a pee.
“Are you wiping your pee all over my sweater?” Aeneas asked with a stern look on his face.
“I … um … no. I mean …”
“You better wash that sweater before you return it.” He held open the sleeping bag. “Now hop in.”
Feet first, Tetra shimmied into the sleeping bag, making sure his sweater didn’t slide up above his private parts. When he had finally found a comfortable position, facing Aeneas, the older boy scowled at him. “What do you think you’re doing? Turn around! I’m not having you stare me in the face all night, you creep!”
Tetra sighed and turned around. “Good night,” he said. After a long moment of silence, during which he was expecting to be told off for offering Aeneas the common courtesy of wishing him a good night, he finally heard him say in a low voice, “Night.”
* * *
When Tetra woke up, dawn was breaking, although anyone would have been hard-pressed to tell because the sky was still dirty and dark with ash, soot, and dust. The air was heavy and humid, except for a cooling, oscillating stream that tickled the side of his neck. When Tetra tried to move, he found that he couldn’t. Aeneas had his left arm wrapped tightly around Tetra’s body, his chest pressed against his back, his crotch against his bottom, the caps of his knees molded into the hollows of Tetra’s. He turned his head as far as he could to look into the face of Aeneas, the half of it that was not nestled against Tetra’s neck. Aeneas’s coarse skin, on the cusp of maturity, testosterone oozing out of every pore, emanated the musky smell of a teenager in desperate need of a shower. He put his hand on Aeneas’s forearm that was holding Tetra’s flat, growling stomach. He followed the arm that was much stronger than his own up to Aeneas’s hand, bigger than his own, its skin chapped and leathery, covered in little scars and scabs from whatever it was that a boy had to do every day to survive in the forest. Tetra was eager to get up and continue on his way to Kettering so he could find his father, but for the moment he allowed himself to indulge in the warmth and comfort that Aeneas’s body exuded and enwrapped Tetra like a blanket. Being fully aware that it wasn’t going to last, Tetra tried to cherish his brief sojourn in the no man’s land between the merciful illusion of security that the unconsciousness of sleep provided and the undeniable and unavoidable harshness of reality from which the only permanent escape was death.
After a few minutes that Tetra wished would have lasted forever, Aeneas finally began to stir. His long, deep breaths ceased to graze Tetra’s neck. He withdrew his arm from around Tetra’s torso and rolled over on his back.
“Morning,” Tetra said cautiously, looking at him.
Aeneas replied with a tired grunt and rubbed his nose. Then he crawled out of the sleeping bag and got on his feet. Stretching himself, he yawned and scratched his head. Tetra couldn’t help but notice the sizeable bulge in Aeneas’s crotch. He was familiar with the concept of nocturnal penile tumescence—or morning tents, as his friends at school used to call them—although he had never had the chance to observe them on someone who had reached the physical maturity of Aeneas. He tried to catch a few surreptitious glimpses, but Aeneas didn’t leave him much time to let his imagination run wild.
“What are you staring at?” he asked in a hoarse voice. “Wanna take a picture?”
With his ears on fire, Tetra shook his head and got up. When he stretched himself and looked around, he saw something bright green and blue against the dull grayish-brown forest floor some thirty meters away from their camp.
“It’s my backpack!” he exclaimed. He quickly slid into his shoes—now dry and pleasantly warm from the fire—and ran off. When he returned, Aeneas asked, “You don’t happen to have something to eat in there, do you?”
“Do I?” Tetra said with a broad grin and produced the box of crackers. Then he pulled out his spare jeans and sweater. “And you can have your sweater back.”
“What’s that?” Aeneas asked and pointed at Isambard, wrapped in Tetra’s sweater.
Embarrassed, Tetra said in a low voice, “My dog.”
Aeneas rolled his eyes. “How old are you, five?”
Tetra didn’t reply. He was tempted to ask Aeneas why he had felt the need to sleep with his arm wrapped around Tetra and how this was any different to sleeping with a cuddly toy for comfort, but he wasn’t sure how the older boy would deal with the embarrassment, so he picked up his clothes and got dressed. He hadn’t brought any underwear, but after half a day in nothing but a too large sweater, just two of his own garments amounted to luxury.
As the two boys were sharing the crackers and a bottle of water for breakfast, Tetra was sitting by the rekindled fire, cross-legged, with Isambard in his lap. Just fifteen hours ago he’d had noting. He’d been naked and tied to a tree, and his life had been hanging by a thread. Now at least he had a few of his own clothes and Isambard, and he was grateful. It wasn’t much, but they were familiar items and provided much comfort.
“So, are you still planning to go to Kettering?” Aeneas asked.
“Of course. It’s the only chance I have to find my dad.”
Aeneas rinsed down the last cracker crumbs with a swig of water and got to his feet. “We better get going then.”
Tetra nodded. As he put on his backpack and extinguished the fire by shoving dirt on it with his feet, Aeneas walked over to Gordun’s body and searched it. In the dead man’s pockets he found an empty wallet, an electric lighter, and a mobile device. He pocketed the lighter ad held up the device as he called over to Tetra, “This yours?”
“My phone!” Tetra exclaimed and came running. He grabbed the device from Aeneas’s hand and hastily switched it on. His initial joy when the screen came to life was quickly dampened. He sighed. “Still no signal,” he said. “And the battery is down to three percent. Oh well, thanks anyway.”
Aeneas shrugged.
They set off on their way to Kettering, walking south—or what Tetra assumed to be south. With no visible sun in the sky, Tetra had no idea how to tell north from south or east from west, and it turned out that the clouds of ash and dust were too thick to even get a GPS signal. He had to rely on Aeneas’s sense of direction and local knowledge, and he happily did so. Aeneas was a
n intriguing character, Tetra thought, and beneath the rough and rocky surface lay a good heart. And yet, something seemed to be casting a diffuse shadow on his soul. Tetra didn’t know what it was and he didn’t dare ask, but he was sure he had caught a glimpse of it when he had seen the cold, blank stare in Aeneas’s eyes when he had shot Gordun in the back without a flinch. The longer he thought about it, the more it made Tetra think that maybe, just maybe, this hadn’t been the first time Aeneas had killed someone in cold blood.
They had been walking in silence for nearly an hour, when Tetra asked, “So what do you think is gonna happen now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean with the world and people and everything.”
Aeneas sneered. “Nothing new. The place is going to the dogs the same it’s always been. Only now it’s going much faster.”
“Why would you say that?” Tetra asked.
“Because it’s true,” Aeneas said.
“But don’t you think that people will have learned something from this and that they’ll come together now to survive and rebuild the world?”
“Sentimental crap!” Aeneas shook his head and laughed. “You don’t know much about people, do you? Let me explain something to you: in a time of crisis, people don’t suddenly resort to reason. It’s exactly the opposite. I don’t know how many people survived the impact, but those who did will have streaks in their panties and look for only one thing: strong leadership. I hate to think what kind of rat catcher they will fall for this time and who they will start blaming for what happened. Anyway, it’s not going to be pretty, and if I were you I’d make sure to stay away from people as much as I can.”
“You don’t like people very much, do you?”
Aeneas shrugged. “They haven’t given me much reason to like them.” Before Tetra had the time to ask what he meant by that, Aeneas added, “Look, I don’t have a problem with individual people. You seem like a perfectly nice chap. I mean, you’re a pain in the arse and you talk too much, but you’re not inherently evil, I don’t think. But you just wait until you get into the fangs of some rat catcher who panders to your lowest instincts and your worst fears. You’ll be surprised to see the kind of thoughts and deeds you’re capable of.”
Tetra scowled at him. “And you’re not?”
“Of course I am,” Aeneas said. “I’m only human, you know? I’m no better and no worse than anyone else. Look, I hadn’t had contact with other people for over half a year until yesterday. Then I met you, and within a few hours I had to kill a man. People don’t bring out the best in me. In fact, people don’t bring out the best in people, so I’m trying to stay away from them and be on my own. Let them try to rebuild the world if they want to, I don’t care. But don’t expect the result to be any different from what it was. People are still people. Human nature doesn’t change in a generation. It’ll take a thousand generations. Right now we’re still the same bloody old species that needs food and entertainment to prevent it from slipping back into pre-civilized savagery. And I have a feeling that both food and entertainment will be scarce for a long time to come, so don’t get your hopes up.”
Tetra thought about Aeneas’s words. He found it difficult to comprehend how even a week after the apocalypse a person could have such a bleak and grim outlook on life, an outlook that seemed so completely devoid of any hope. Sure, Aeneas had lost his mother and his granddad, and he’d never met his father. Tetra didn't know how exactly his granddad had died or why his father had left, but unless they had all been murdered, he didn’t see how Aeneas could blame the rest of humankind for their fate. Tetra hadn’t lost any of his parents—at least not that he was aware of—although his mother clearly was a lost cause, so maybe he didn’t have the right to judge Aeneas and his way of dealing with grief, even though it reeked of self-pity.
“Have you ever had any friends at all?” Tetra asked.
“My granddad was my friend.”
“No, I mean … someone closer to your own age?”
Aeneas didn’t reply. From the corner of his eye, Tetra watched the older boy closely. Behind the stern look, on the majestic, unyielding façade, cracks were beginning to show. He had obviously hit a nerve, and although he didn’t have the courage to pry further, Tetra couldn’t help but wonder: what had happened to Aeneas? Had there been a friend he didn’t care to mention, a friend he refused to acknowledge? And if so, what had that friend done to make Aeneas hate and mistrust people so much that he’d had to build that wall that he could hide behind all day every day so he could sulk, a wall whose purpose was as much to protect him from the corrupting influence people had on him as it was to protect other people from his wrath?
What is it? Tetra thought. What have they done to you?
“What?” Aeneas finally asked when he noticed Tetra’s surreptitious glances.
“Nothing,” Tetra said, and they continued to walk in silence.
It was midday when they finally reached the outskirts of Kettering. They stood on a clearing at the edge of the forest and looked down on the town. It looked peaceful and almost normal, if it hadn’t been for the dirty gray layer of ash and dust that had caked roofs and roads, and the odd ruins of buildings that hadn’t been able to withstand the air blast after the impact. Those ruins were surprisingly few, though, and the damage to the town in general seemed to be much less than Tetra had expected—an impression that was amplified by the sound of a church bell ringing in the distance.
“Looks pretty normal, don’t you think?” Tetra asked. “Church bells and all.”
Aeneas shrugged. “A church bell alone doesn’t account for normalcy. It could mean anything. It might be calling people to the daily food dispensation. If there’s any food left, that is.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Tetra said and started walking. After a few steps he turned his head and looked at Aeneas who didn’t seem to have any intentions to follow him. “Aren’t you coming?”
Aeneas shook his head. “You wanted to get to Kettering. Well, there it is. From here on in you’re on your own.”
Tetra’s shoulders sank. “Oh come on! You can’t leave me now! What if … what if this place is dangerous after all?”
“Exactly,” Aeneas said. “What if it is dangerous? What do you expect me to do? I can save you from three people, not from thirty or three hundred. I’m not a superhero.”
“You’re not even a regular hero,” Tetra muttered under his breath.
Aeneas scowled. “What did you just say?”
Tetra bit his lip. The remark had been meant to be only for himself, but he realized he might have said it louder than intended. But now that he had said it, he might as well stand by it.
“I said you’re no hero at all, super or otherwise,” he said, charged with audacity. “You have a big mouth, that’s all, but there’s not much behind it.”
“I’ve risked my life to save you!”
“Oh please.” Tetra rolled his eyes. “You shot a man in the back from twenty meters away. You didn’t risk anything!”
“Why you ungrateful little shit!” Aeneas said, his head turning bright red.
“Actually, I’m very grateful that you saved my life, and I will remain grateful as long as I live. But just because I’m grateful doesn’t mean I have to worship the ground you walk on or believe everything—or anything—you say!”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Aeneas stepped forward. He was close enough now for Tetra to smell his bad breath.
“I’m calling you a coward! I have no idea what happened to you or what people have done to you, but you don’t hate people because they’re evil. You hate people because you don’t know how to deal with them, and that scares the hell out of you. You live on your own. You skin a rabbit like it’s nothing. You kill people like it’s nothing. Yet you’re too much of a chicken to walk into a small town. You should be ashamed of yourself, and I actually think you are!”
“Well, go on then!” Aeneas shouted back.
“I’m not holding you back! If you’re so smart and courageous and you don’t need any help, then go, just go! Walk into your ruin if you must, I don’t care!”
“Don’t you understand? I must find my dad!”
“Your dad is dead!”
Tetra’s voice cracked as he shouted, “Shut up!” and pushed Aeneas with both his hands. The older boy lunged back, stumbled over a root protruding from the ground, and fell. Tetra pounced on him. Aeneas raised his arms to protect his face from Tetra’s small, bony fists. “Don’t you dare!” Tetra shouted as he kept pounding Aeneas’s arms. He sat on Aeneas’s stomach, putting all his anger into every single blow, landing the occasional punch to Aeneas’s face. “Don’t you dare say that! My dad is not dead!”
When Tetra didn’t relent his attack, Aeneas finally fought back. He managed to get hold of Tetra’s skinny arms, and with a wrench of his body he threw Tetra to the ground. He sat on him, still trying to contain Tetra’s ferocious arms, pinning them to the floor.
“Stop it already!” Aeneas shouted.
“Let go of me!”
“I said stop it!”
Tetra kept fighting back, wriggling his body, trying to throw Aeneas off, when he suddenly heard a familiar yet unexpected sound. He immediately stopped fighting, his face conveying a sense of urgency that puzzled Aeneas.
“It’s my phone!” Tetra shouted, trying to wriggle free from Aeneas’s weight. “Get off of me! It’s my phone! I have to answer it!”
Satisfied that Tetra was not going to resume his attack, Aeneas let go of his arms and dismounted him. As both boys got on their feet, Tetra hastily fumbled his phone out of his pocket. Holding it with trembling hands, he looked at the display. One quick glance overwhelmed him with information. For the first time since the impact, the signal bars shone brightly, and for a split second Tetra thought that maybe it had been only the base station near his home that had been taken out by the impact, and that now he got a signal because he was in the range of a different base station. He didn’t have much time to dwell on the thought because he realized that his battery was down to one percent capacity. But none of this mattered anymore when Tetra’s glance fell on the caller ID.
Eschaton - Season One Page 28
