I looked around. My tube sat in a fan out of the central hub. Its display told me there was power flowing through. To my left was Alan’s tube. It was cracked and in darkness. The glass was blackened and I couldn’t see inside, thankfully. I twisted round to my right, in search of Jane’s tube.
“Oh my God,” I said out loud, as if my voice understood what I was seeing before I saw it. Jane’s tube was empty. Its lid was open, unoccupied for a period of time. “Jane?” My voice echoed in the quiet room. “Jane, are you awake?”
I was freezing, beginning to shiver. Shaking my legs to keep warm, I realised some sensation was returning to them. Eventually, I was able to climb out of the tube. Chittering on the cold floor, I found my locker on the wall. My skinsuit was wet and cold but once I’d peeled myself out that and got into my surface gear, I started to feel a bit better. However, tying the laces on my boots was a bit of a trick. I’d forgotten how to do it but I got there in the end.
There was another shock for me. When I checked the tubes, I found that the remaining ones were empty too. Along with Jane, and without poor Alan, the team had awoken and left. I was on my own. This was not the mission orders. We were all set to wake together and head for the surface. Fear pulled at me. I had to gather myself together.
After checking their lockers, which were empty of their surface gear, I left the hab dome. Perhaps they were in the other areas, I thought to myself. Calling out Jane’s name, I searched the facility, but there was no-one. Everything was as we left it, though mouldy from time. The elevator was out of power, and access to the stairwell was blocked with some kind of debris, so I had to head for the emergency exit.
Luckily, that was clear, and I climbed the ladder. When I reached the top, I was absolutely knackered. Full of regret for this much exertion so early after waking, by then I needed out. The ladder reached up to a hatch. I was in a narrow tube, so was able to lean back and use both hands. Finally, it gave way and I got it turned. It lifted easily. Light and refreshing air met me as I crawled out.
I was surprised to find neatly tended grass around the hatch. It was smooth on the outside surface, so no-one could access the facility that way, but the area had been well looked after. The hatch sat under a stone pillar, which I remembered from when I arrived. These pillars marked different points on the facility. Placing a palm on the stone, I stood up and looked across the countryside I found myself in. It was England, of course, recognisable in that way. However, I was supposed to be seeing an army base, the one I had left on the surface. What I saw was not that. I was on the grassy mound which covered the underground facility, which I recognised. Beyond that, where the airstrip should be, was nothing but a collection of ramshackle buildings, a shanty town almost.
Unsteady on my feet, I staggered a bit as I tried to move forward. Not wanting to go too far from the safety of my hatch, I got a better view of the buildings. Nothing remained of the army base I could recognise. Some people moved around the shanty town and I ducked down so as not to be seen. I was afraid of them.
Behind, from the direction of the mound, I could hear a sudden hammering. It sounded like metal on metal. I ducked down even further and started to hear a voice, a woman, and then a child’s laugh. Creeping towards the hatch, I was moving in the direction of the voices and that metallic smacking noise. I managed to get a boot onto the ladder when a woman’s head popped above the grass. She was older than me, with long grey hair which had the odd dark streak through it. Slim and beautiful, her face was weathered. As she neared, chattering away, I could see she was smiling. And she had two children with her, a boy and girl. All three wore practical but worn clothing. In contrast to me in my new army uniform, they were people of the land.
I held my position, hoping not moving would conceal me. The three of them stopped. The older woman held the children back a little. A small puff of steam rose up in front of them and the woman directed the girl towards it. She stepped forward and raised a small shovel in the air before smacking it down on the steam’s source. Metal from the shovel connected with metal on the ground. The boy laughed. Steam trickled away. Oddly, it was like they were tending to the facility’s vents.
Holding my breath, I waited for them to move off. Just as the woman began to herd the children away, something caught her attention, me, and she froze. Not for long. Lifting her own shovel, she came running towards me with a murderous look on her face. Time for me to go back inside. I shuffled forward to get myself down that shaft to the safety of the underground facility. When I did this, she suddenly stopped. With her shovel full in the air, she halted. Looking from the hatch to me, her expression went from rage to confusion to understanding.
She let the shovel fall behind her and the children jumped out the way. The woman’s eyes filled with water. “Peter,” she said. The woman said my name. I stopped moving, wondering who this woman was. “Peter,” she said again, and passed out, falling straight to the grass.
“My name is Dana,” she told me. Her accent made it difficult to tune in to what she said. South-east England, for sure, but the vowels were stretched out further, and there were other flavours in there too that I couldn’t place. “Me and another boy were there when the door opened. We were just children.”
We sat in her home, one of the brick shanty houses which sat on the old airstrip. After she fainted, the children had become so distressed I felt unable to just leave her there. I needn’t have worried. When Dana came to, I helped her back to the shanty town, the village she called it; viwadj is how she pronounced it. There were few people there, scared and awestruck by a stranger in their midst.
Dana’s home was comfortable and tidy. Her bed was some sort of mat in the corner furthest from the door. In the middle was a lit fireplace and we sat around it on floor cushions, me, Dana, and the little girl. “This is Kari, my lovely grand-daughter who will take over tending to the vents,” said Dana, before kissing the child on her head, embarrassing her.
I smiled at this, but I needed more information. “So, when the doors opened. Who came out?”
Dana looked at me, calculating something in her mind. “Three women.”
“Only three?” I was shocked. That would be Jane, Terri, and Moira then. With Alan dead in his tube and me still sleeping, there were still two unaccounted for. “Were there no men? Rezwan and Pod?”
She shook her head slowly, a serious look on her face. “Three women only,” she said again. “No men.”
It was hard for me to concentrate. Thinking of my colleagues waking up without me, the missing two, poor Alan gone, it was difficult to take it all in. Dana watched me carefully through the smoke from the fire. She had been a girl when this had happened and now she was an old woman. Not only that, it never even took into account how long we had been sleeping. Had so much changed in only one hundred years, even with a virus? I had to keep my mind on what Dana might know. “What happened? Where did they go?”
A smile spread across Dana’s face. “And you’re forgetting why I even know your name.”
“Yeah, there’s that,” I said, throwing a small splinter of wood I had been playing with onto the fire. Seeing me and the hatch, she had put something together in her mind, and called me by my name. I sensed this was the key to my understanding the events that took place in this woman’s childhood. Dana whispered something into Kari’s ear, and the girl dutifully went off to where the bed was. She dug in behind the head, into the wall. I looked away, imagining this to be some sort of secret hiding place.
When Kari came back, she was carrying a small metal box. Battered and tarnished with age, the box was handed to Dana. The girl was excused by her grandmother and she ran off outside. Dana held the box on her lap, sitting cross-legged on her cushion. She lifted the lid and reached inside. “I have something for you,” she said. “From Jane.”
It was a letter. Dana handed it over but I couldn’t take it. I was excited but to see an aged envelope with my name written on the front was frightening. Dana said gentl
y, “Do you want me to?”
I gulped. “You can read?”
Dana glanced over to the side, momentarily baffled. “Uh-huh. Don’t you? The giants from the past?”
“Giants?” I had no idea what she was talking about.
She brushed me away with the wave of a hand and ripped the side of the envelope. Inside was a single piece of folded paper. Dana opened it, read it, and then held it up to me. “It’s only two words,” she said, sounding disappointed and annoyed.
I leaned over and looked at the paper. Two words in marker pen said: First Person. Dana raised her eyebrows at me and I flopped back on my cushion. “It’s our mission,” I said, as if that explained anything. “I need to get to Edinburgh, well a place nearby. Do you know of Edinburgh?”
Dana shook her head. From here, our destination by road was over four hundred miles. Who knows what it may be now, what the conditions the roads were in. We were trained to think in miles again, instead of the metric used by the military, so we could rely on road signs if need be. Now that I had seen Jane’s message, First Person, there was really only one choice. We had spoken about the mission before I was put into hibernation and now she was reminding me of it again. Perhaps there was no way to unravel the mystery of what happened here to my team without going to Edinburgh.
I had made my mind up, and Dana saw it. She said, “Take me with you. I’ve always wanted to leave here.”
“I can’t take civilians,” I told her.
“What’s a civilian?” Dana stumbled over the word. “But I can guess what you mean. It’s a term for us folk on the surface that looked after you for seventeen generations.”
I stopped her. “Seventeen?”
She glanced at the door. “Kari is among the seventeenth generation, living and dying while you slept.”
Stunned, I pulled myself to my feet and fumbled my way out the door. I gulped in air and held the brick door frame. I was standing on the old runway, covered over with this grubby old settlement. Seventeen generations? That could mean anything up to five hundred years, if a ‘generation’ was between twenty to thirty years. These descendents of the army Engineers, who built this village, had done their jobs for much longer than they ever should. I blundered towards the end of the old runway, to the underground facility. Its massive door was closed securely. I could see it up ahead.
Behind me, Dana called out my name but I ignored her. I had to get back underground, back to the hab module, back to my tube. Wanting only sleep again, I kept going. A few faces looked at me. Dana kept shouting my name. These were not my people. Mine were gone, left behind in the past.
I reached the door and raised a hand to its surface. Little crumbles of rust pattered through my fingers onto the remains of the tarmac at my feet. Slamming my hand on the door, I called out for Jane. Shouting her name out over and over until I was hoarse.
The Last of Men
The last of men did wait upon the shore,
for their enemy to show his hand,
This final army carried shattered shields,
and tarnished swords of bronze,
after journeys near engulfed by storms,
and fearing Her nine daughters,
would steal their souls and do them harm.
For these are the wars which other men,
would have you fight,
and die and be forgotten,
Or worse, be cursed,
Like that careless King from ancient times,
who let his Queen be smashed upon the rocks,
Her name was damned forever.
Be careful when you stand below those cliffs,
To face that forlorn battle,
and escape this broken land,
you will need the courage of these men,
at this ancient place.
From ‘Ragnarok, and other Stories...’ by Wendy Beauly
First published in 1956 by Tea Bay Press & Associates
Reproduced by kind permission
Also by the Author
Eizekiel Forth: The Afterlife Detective
The Village King
In the Grotto: Elrood’s Story
In the Grotto: Astrid for Mayor
Follow Elrood:
@Elrood_the_Elf
facebook.com/ElroodTheElf
eddiemcgarrity.blogspot.co.uk
Table of Contents
Copyright
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Green Room
Timed Out
Glimmer
Angel Rhithlun
October Dreams
The Spark
Cutters
Suitcase of Dreams
Good Morning, Neighbour
Zombie Park
Giants
eSoul
Cavalryman
Joseph
Demolition Squad
A Day: In the Grotto
First Person
The Last of Men
Also by the Author
First Person Page 13
