Road to Abaddon

by Vincent Heeringa

  He tried the first thing that came into his head.

  “Nassim. We may not be able to give you what you ask but at least we can listen.”

  Nassim re-emerged from the gloom.

  “That’s it,” she said.

  “Um, what is?”

  “That’s all I wanted.”

  “I’m sorry I don’t understand.”

  “I just want you to listen. You live in the sky, you have technology that we know nothing about – and your clothes, they’re made of stuff I have never touched. You seem so perfect. Yet there’s one thing you don’t have. Something that I can give you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The truth.”

  “The truth? The truth about what?”

  “About me. About my people. About the Landers.”

  “I’ve seen all the holohistories. I got pretty good marks in school. I don’t think I need to revisit the past, thank you.”

  “‘History is written by the victors’. Winston Churchill wrote that in 1936. Even you should know that. This time, why not hear about history as told by the vanquished? What have you got to lose?”

  “Well I guess I’m not going anywhere tonight,” he shrugged. “I’m all ears, all three of them.”

  Nassim laughed. She knelt and straightened her scruffy, brown skirt. The gesture felt civilised in this prison. At first she spoke so quietly, Jonah had to strain to hear. “I know you’ve read some histories, no doubt they’re the same as ours, at least the facts and dates about wars and governments. But behind every fact is a story. I want you to hear mine.”

  “Go ahead. I’m interested.”

  “Well, my grandmother’s name was Abassah and from the photos that I saw of her as a young woman, she was beautiful – the most beautiful of three daughters. Waqar, her father and my great grandfather, wanted them all to be successful, so he made them study: music, art, sciences and languages. She spoke four languages.

  “Life had already become difficult for her family in those days. There were food shortages and the Asia epidemic had already come to her home town of Damascus. Her family was rich and they could afford the vaccines – and avoid places of infection, like railway stations and markets. Do you now that it was only the poor at first who got sick – they called it PMP, Poor Man’s Plague. Anyway, I think it was the suffering of the poor that motivated Abassah to study science – she wanted to create the cure that would save the world.

  “In those days it was still possible to travel and she spent time in Zurich (that’s the capital of old Switzerland, you know) and in London. She earned a qualification. I think they called it a PhD?”

  “Yeah, read that once in my histories too,” said Jonah. “They called it a doctorate for some reason, but you didn’t even have to be a doctor. Things were weird back then.”

  “Weird?” Nassim retorted. “They were wonderful! In London she worked in a university! It’s where people would go every day to just study and learn and share. These days all we can hope for is enough water and food for the next day.”

  Jonah was about to interrupt to say that all Metrician children attend university once they graduated from high school. Lots of kids hated it and some even protested to the government about it. But he felt a bit embarrassed. He bit his lip.

  “A certain colleague, Dr. Juan Fernando, a handsome young man from Portugal, was the vaccine team leader. He was very serious and just as committed as Abassah – probably more. They spent hours in their lab trying out formulas and testing them, sometimes on animals, sometimes on the lines of infected people who would beg to be given a cure. They worked hard, often late into the night. Fernando was so focused on his work that he didn’t notice just how often Abassah would be the only one to stay on. Nor did he notice just how beautiful or just how interesting or how lonely she was. She told me that she might have burst into flames and he still wouldn’t have noticed. Abassah was love struck but Fernando was blinded by science. ‘I had to get him out of the lab – and I found the perfect excuse,’ she told me. Thanks to her detective work in those late nights she deduced that he was a fan of flamenco dancing – do you know what that is? No? Okay, I’ll tell you later – well, Abassah finally managed to lure him away from the test-tubes and titrations and got him into Club El Toro, where the women would dance in bright red dresses and men would click their heels like angry bulls. So romantic! Fernando hadn’t thought about anything but vaccines for so long that when he saw her on the dance floor, he melted like butter.

  “Suddenly those long nights in the lab weren’t so long – they were colleagues and lovers, working together to save the world. All over the globe, epidemics were spreading and mutating and the climate crisis was causing havoc with food and transport. But in that little lab the world was being saved every day. But then ...”

  “But then what?” asked Jonah, surprised at his own question. The plan was to tolerate Nassim’s story, but he realised that now he was a little bit curious. Nassim looked away. He could see in the darkness that she was crying.

  “But then what? They were so in love and so close to a cure, right?”

  “Well, what do you think?” Nassim glared at Jonah, her eyes wide with anger. “What do you think happened, you stupid Metrician boy? They left! You left! Scientists, doctors, academics, leaders – they disappeared! Overnight, just gone. Colleagues, friends, students, teachers, lab assistants, heads of departments, gone! Lots of people thought it was a disease but my grandparents weren’t fooled. Within hours they discovered the truth, a conspiracy to abandon the world and everything they had worked for. Fernando broke into the office of his boss and discovered files, pages and pages of detailed instructions about how and when and where the traitors would leave for another world in the sky. The conspiracy had been planned for years.”

  Now it was Jonah’s turn to be angry. “But don’t you see, they had to leave, to save the human race!” he argued.

  “By forsaking it?” Nassim spat.

  “No, by quarantining it. When you’re sick you get removed. You stay in bed, you don’t go spreading it around. But what do you do when the whole world is sick? You escape and start again.”

  “You say escape? You mean abandon!”

  “No, I mean escaped!”

  They were shouting now and Wadid stirred.

  We need to calm down, thought Jonah.

  “Look ...” he began.

  “No, you look. You asked me what happened next? Well, I’ll tell you. After they discovered the conspiracy, people went crazy. They rioted and burned the places where conspirators had lived and worked. Fernando and Abassah’s laboratory was torched and all their research, all the vaccines were destroyed in just one day of mindless destruction.”

  “Well, there you go,” said Jonah. “And you wonder why the Metricians needed to escape?”

  Nassim growled. “The Metricians caused it. They caused the Collapse. They caused the epidemics to spread and mutate without any vaccines to control them. They caused us to fall into a world of criminals and illness.”

  “The Collapse was already underway. The Metricians escaped it. They saved the human race from, from, from, from all of that!” said Jonah, waving his hand towards the mutants outside.

  “And we were left to suffer in it,” said Nassim, turning away.

  “Yes, but in the bigger scheme of things can’t you see that the human race is better off?”

  “Excuse me, better off?”

  “Yes, thanks to what my grandparents did the human race has started again, free of disease, free of crime, free of suffering.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “Like what?”

  “Me! Aren’t I a human being? Or Wadid? Or Fernando? Or Abassah? Have we stopped being human just because we were left behind?”

  “Well, no, I mean yes, I mean there will be a reason. I mean people were left behind because they were sick or disabled or were criminals or something – they were causing the corruption.”


  “Corruption, eh? And what corruption do I carry? In what way am I disabled, or criminal or sick? Tell me, I’d like to know so can hack off the bit that so offends you!”

  Jonah opened his mouth to reply but this conversation was going off track dangerously. She seemed normal and surprisingly intelligent but there would most certainly be something wrong – probably that same genetic defect that meant her grandparents were rejected. How was he supposed to know? It was three generations ago!

  Nassim turned and stalked back towards the sleeping Wadid.

  I need to recover this, he thought.

  “What happened to Abassah?”

  She stopped but didn’t turn around. “Like you really want to know.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You won’t like what you hear.”

  “Sometimes the truth hurts.”

  She turned. “Do you mean that, or are you humouring me, keeping me talking to stop me from killing you.”

  She walked back to meet him.

  “Do you really think I’m so stupid to think a Metrician might actually want to know the truth?” she said.

  “Well I ...”

  “Don’t you think I can see through your silly little story about that communicator thing. What is it? A toy? A holo?”

  “How do you know about holos?” Jonah was now getting frightened.

  “I know far more than you realise.”

  “Um, yes I can see that.”

  “I’ve gone along with your plan because I actually thought that maybe, just maybe, you might want to hear what it’s like on the Landers’ side. But I should just wake my brother and we can finish what we started.”

  “No wait,” Jonah moved towards her. “Wait, you’re right. It’s not a communicator. It’s a game pod. There, I’ve told you straight. I lied. I’m sorry. But you must admit, I had good cause. I mean, you would have strangled poor Grace to death.”

  “I still might.”

  He reached out and touched her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I tried to trick you. I’m sorry for being here. I’m sorry that we’ve ended up in this terrible mess. I’m a Metrician. You’re a Lander. I can’t change that. Not right now, anyhow. But would you believe me if I said that I want to hear more about your family, please?

  “No.”

  “I’ve said I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not as easy as simply saying sorry.”

  “It’s a start.”

  Nassim was about to reply when the wagon lurched to a halt and they were knocked of their feet. Instinctively she grabbed Jonah and the two were thrown to the floor in an awkward embrace. Voices sounded outside and footsteps approached the wagon.

  “Alright, alright enough with the luvvie duvvies,” a mutant said as he threw open the door and shone a torch on the tangled shapes. “Out you get. Dinner is served, you beauties.”

  A bonfire flickered orange light on the caravan. It had stopped in a valley of scraggy bush and the vehicles encircled a small campsite where the bandits stood waiting for a meal.

  The mutant chained the prisoners around the ankles and led them to the camp’s edge and gave them an ugly canister.

  “Drink!”

  Foul, briny water had never tasted so refreshing. Almost as good as Mets, he thought. Dinner, as it was, was protein of some unknown origin swimming in a red slop. It smelt of cloves. Grace refused to eat, tipping it onto the rocky soil. “Animal food,” she muttered. In the centre of the wagons, the mutants created a party, their hunched frames forming silhouettes against the camp fire.

  “How about this then,” said Jonah to his companions. “Moonlit dinner for four, in a quiet little corner of the desert. Come here often?” But the humour fell flat and they all sat in morose silence until the bald leader left the party and stumbled over.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t my prize catches. Having a good time, are we?”

  Grace leapt to her feet. “Where’s Hugo?”

  “Who-go?,” he laughed.

  “Where is he!” She strained at her chains.

  “Ah yes, the fat one.” He scratched his chin. “He tried to kill me, didn’t he? Lucky he’s such a bad shot.”

  “Answer my question, mutant.”

  He slapped her with the back of his hand and she fell backwards.

  “Just remember who is buying you dinner, sweetheart,” he growled. “For your information your friend is alive, at great expense to me, thank you. Medical bills, you know, they don’t get any cheaper.”

  Jonah shot a look at Grace. Was he lying? There was no way to tell.

  “No, no, don’t thank me,” he continued, holding up his hand in mock humility. “Despite what you Metrician snobs think, we Landers are not without compassion or hospitality. More than what they’d do for us, eh comrades?” and he kicked Wadid’s feet, laughing.

  “You should let us go before the rescue party arrives,” said Jonah. “They’ll be armed and dangerous. And they already know where we are.”

  “Oh, I’m scared ha ha ha ha!” and he swigged on a dented pewter mug. “Your precious Metricians will arrive alright, but we’ll see just how ‘dangerous’ they are to us,” and he held his fingers up like bunny ears.

  He turned and swaggered back to the party.

  “I hate it when people do ‘speech marks’,” muttered Grace, her fingers forming the shape.

  “Do you think he was serious about Hugo?” Jonah asked.

  Nassim answered. “Yes, I think he’s telling the truth and I think I know why.”

  “You do?” said Grace.

  “Yes. He could have killed us by now and probably should have, given how many of his men you shot. But they are keeping us alive for a reason. Like he said, it’s costing him a lot, so the reward must be great. Big enough to keep Hugo alive.”

  “Why? What’s the reward?” asked Jonah.

  Nassim looked at him thoughtfully. But before she could answer the guard shambled over and roused them from the dirt. “Get up, get up, stop ya chin-waggin’. Boss says you’re to go back to your guest rooms.”

  They all stood but he put a dirty hand on Nassim’s shoulder.

  “Not you. You Landers will stay here. Just our special little Metrician friends will sleep indoors tonight.”

  He bent to unlock the chains between Grace and Nassim. Jonah thought for a moment of kicking him unconscious, but then what? Race into the desert with leg shackles? Instead, he and Grace were led like sheep to the wagons. He turned to see that Nassim was watching them.

  In the blackness of their prison Grace and Jonah embraced. They tried to find a comfortable place to lie down, determined to save their strength for whatever lay ahead. But while the noise of the mutants’ camp settled and the dark clouds passed by, Jonah’s mind raced with fears and possibilities. The threat of execution had passed, Nassim was right about that. But what did the mutants plan to do with them? Most importantly, he couldn’t get Nassim from his mind. The girl had seen through his plan like it was child’s play. She was no fool. And Jonah had to admit that she had a point – the Great Collapse was a very one-sided affair.

  Chapter 12 - A disturbing trade

  The wagon stopped and there was a great commotion outside.

  They hadn’t see Nassim and Wadid for two days. Their prison had bumped across the desert during daylight hours. At dusk, plates of bad-tasting food were slid across the floor. It was the middle of the third day when the wagon stopped and Jonah heard a new sound. He rushed to a gap in the walls and saw that the caravan had settled outside a three-metre-high wire fence with a low, square structure far away. In the middle distance a plume of dust was forming by some kind of vehicle speeding towards them.

  “What can you see?” demanded Grace.

  A small cluster of mutants, including Baldie, were already out of the vehicle, loitering besides a gate.

  The lock on their wagon door clicked and the door flew open.

  “Only me!” laughed the guard. “Out you come. It’s ti
me!”

  Time for what, Jonah wondered as they were marched towards the fence. He squinted, adjusting his eyes to the light. He noticed there were more, maybe ten others, being pushed in the same direction. They were all kids, some hobbling, some resisting, all squinting in the daylight. Where had they been kept? In other wagons presumably, all prisoners of the mutant gang. He saw Nassim and Wadid and one large kid who was being carried on a stretcher by two bandits. Jonah had to look twice to make sure but Grace made no mistake: “Hugo!” she shouted and ripped herself from the guard’s grip. Hugo looked up groggily. He seemed barely alive, his head lifting off his blood-stained blanket for a moment, then falling again.

  A mutant grabbed Grace before she got very far and picked her up, her legs kicking in the air like a child.

  As they neared the gate Jonah saw what had made the plume of dust and it made his heart stop. A Metrician transporter had landed on the sand, with soldiers jumping out of the hatch.

  “Help! Help us!” Jonah yelled and tried to burst free. The Metricians looked towards him but then turned away and proceeded to unlock the huge gate.

  “Help! We’re Metricians! Help!”

  “Oi, shut it!” his guard said and punched him in the stomach. Jonah doubled in pain.

  The Metricians were untroubled by the punch, though he was sure they’d seen it, and slowly swung the gate open. Then, to his amazement, the Metricians stepped through and shook hands with the mutant boss. What is this? thought Jonah and he traded alarmed looks with Grace. The Metricians were now in conversation with Baldie, who was pointing to the huddle of prisoners and grinning as if he was showing off his family.

  The Metricians smiled and laughed. One of the soldiers patted Baldie on the shoulder.

  This can’t be happening, thought Jonah.

  A box was brought out of the pod It was full of gold-coloured coins.

  “Money!” spat Jonah. “We’re being traded!”