The Circus of Machinations

by Chris Ward

  There was a dead man in the adjacent room. How much longer it would be before the council or one of the companies took notice, Leov couldn’t tell. The bodies of disillusioned, out-of-work miners and factory workers were stacking up like flies. Leov had found one swinging this morning in one of the bare rooms upstairs. A man whose face he recognised from another shift, come down to play one afternoon with a child’s skipping rope in his bag, and here he was swaying in the chill morning breeze. Did he have kids? A wife? A home? Did it matter? No wife would stay with a man without prospects if there was a city councillor with an empty bed, not if she still had the looks to pull it off. Otherwise they might come down here hand in hand and swing that skipping rope together.

  A shadow fell across the entrance. Leov tried to lift his head, but the stuff was taking over now and with his chin only a couple of inches off his chest he gazed up past his own brows at the cloaked figure standing in the doorway.

  Stooped like an old man, the hood hanging low, claw-like hands holding a cloth bag containing something that made angles through the material. Leov gasped, or thought he did, as the Reaper’s head swung towards him. The hood slipped back and a gnarled, ancient bird’s beak poked out, surrounded by scar tissue that encircled two shadowed eye sockets.

  Something was stirring in Leov’s gut, a strange hurricane of force that had once held his arms steady behind the cutting machines in the dark places below ground, kept a stoic grimace on his face as the air filled with dust and the deafening roar of machinery. With a gasp that was nearly, but not quite, a war cry, his fingers clenched over the knife and he guided it through the air towards a placement in the Reaper’s body.

  The air filled with a banshee wail as the knife fed between folds of cloth and found a home in the meaty area above the creature’s left hip. Leov twisted the blade as he felt it strike something hard, plunging it deeper through fat, muscle and sinew until the cloth handle came to rest against bone.

  His fingers opened to release the knife, but those claw-like hands had closed over his wrist, holding him tight. Leov stared at the back of the Reaper’s hand, at little tufts of what resembled feathers, at the hard scales in between, and the scar tissue that ran rivers through both. It was the strangest hand he had ever seen, certainly belonging to no human. There even seemed to be pieces of metal moving about beneath the skin.

  Blood was pooling around the Reaper’s left foot, which was shoed, Leov saw now, by several twists of a filthy cloth bandage which had turned copper brown and glistened in the shards of light sliding through the boards over the window. The Reaper still held Leov’s arm by the wrist, as if the creature was planning to return through the doorway to its own world, dragging him behind.

  Leov wasn’t ready to go yet. He twisted his arm and slipped out of the Reaper’s grip, turning to crawl away. The floor suddenly seemed impossibly close as his hands fell out from under him and his chin struck hard stone.

  He felt something crack near the left corner of his mouth. He hoped it was just teeth breaking, but when he tried to grimace a sharp pain raced around the inside of his skull.

  Something was holding on to his leg, twisting him over. It was hard, as strong as the metal pincers he had once used to break up lumps of rock in search of their valuable contents. He grunted as he was flipped over on to his back, the breath knocked out of him. The Reaper stood there in front of him, hood fallen away to reveal a monstrous face, like some ugly bird thrown into a fire to burn. One single eye glared at him and a crack opened beneath the lumpy beak to give him a smile.

  ‘Goodnight, sire,’ the Reaper said, a dry, crusty cackle that lacked any of the humour suggested by the smile. ‘I’ll enjoy you.’

  Leov saw his own knife in the Reaper’s hand, and as the creature squatted down between his legs he almost laughed. In his hysteria it looked like the Reaper was sitting down at a banquet table to eat.

  Then a sharp pain carved up the inside of his thigh, jolting his hips and making him arch his back to scream. The Reaper’s knife had opened up a major artery, and Leov’s own blood warmed his freezing legs. The world began to go blurry and faint. The last thing Leov saw was the knife slicing into the flesh of his leg in neatly spaced incisions like a butcher slicing up a joint of meat.

  Kurou staggered back through the snow, his bag dragging along behind him, his left leg slick with his own blood.

  He had berated himself a thousand times already, but it made no difference. He had got sloppy. After all these years, the prankster in him still lifted its ugly head at the most inopportune of times, and now it might cost him his life.

  It had been a lucky thrust, but it could have been avoided with a little caution. Now there was a knife wound in his side and he had lost a lot of blood. With each step his vision grew fainter, and he worried that he might not reach the safety of his basement lodgings before he collapsed in the snow.

  Something howled behind the whistling wind. It was far off, but coming closer. He cocked his head, letting his keen ears work for him, identifying the sound.

  Wolves.

  They got bolder in winter, he thought. Here, too close to the town limits, they had picked up the scent of blood on the wind. What power, he marvelled. Even now, perhaps soon to become a meal for a hungry pack, he couldn’t help but feel impressed at their skills. God had taken his face and in return given him the eyes and ears of a hawk, but his sense of smell was no different to any other man.

  He dropped the bag of human meat on the ground. It was his only chance. He’d taken little anyway, his knife hand too unsteady and his need to leave escalating with every stalling moment. The man’s corpse lay where it had fallen, in the abandoned building back in the Lenin District, to be discovered cannibalised sometime tomorrow, he expected, after which a manhunt might ensue. After so many years of meticulous caution his very survival now lay in the balance.

  Leaving the bag of human remains behind him, he staggered ahead into the snow as the howling of wolves rose above the crying of the coming storm.

  5

  Stolen drugs and bad brothers

  I’m hungry. Bring me food. And I’m sick. I need basic medicines. Especially antibiotics. Tonight if you can.

  * * *

  There was a hint of desperation in the note. The Cyrillic script, previously so neat and tidy, was skewed as if written in a hurry. And there was no mention of the missing items.

  Victor took a pencil from his bag and scribbled a quick reply.

  I’ll come back as soon as I can. I hope it’s not serious. I’m excited to meet you someday soon.

  As he headed back towards the town, he wondered if he had time to return to the café again tonight. With the weather on the turn again, the temperature after dark would drop into the killing zone, minus thirty Celsius or lower. In the snow he would easily become disorientated, and even the shelter of the café wouldn’t save him.

  He hadn’t been back through the Lenin District since the gang of kids had damaged the cart, but now he found himself heading towards it as it offered a short cut home. For half an hour he had been following the tyre treads of the military vehicles, but now he left them behind and found himself trudging through several centimetres of fresh snow. The blizzard was getting worse, and soon he was surrounded by curtains of cascading snowflakes, the houses to either side of the street barely visible, their hazy lights his only comfort. From time to time other people appeared out of the snow, walking quickly with their heads down.

  As the houses and old company buildings became more dilapidated, so the streets lost their people, until Victor was walking alone through a shadowy dystopia of broken windows and smashed doors, collapsed fire escapes and roofs fallen onto the road. As a child he and his friends had dared each other to go inside these buildings, a rite of passage that had ended abruptly when a boy named Eric Devolov, a year younger than Victor and pretty in a cherubic way, had not come back out. The police found his body the following morning in the alley at the back of the building,
thrown from one of the upper floors. He had been beaten and raped, his neck broken before he fell.

  No one was ever arrested, but the suspects had all assumed the faces of the two greatest enemies of Brevik’s townsfolk: unemployment and poverty.

  He turned a corner and blinked. A flashing light called to him out of the snow. As he stumbled closer he saw a police car parked at the side of the street, outside one of the houses. The tracks of its tyres were the only ones he had seen since those of the military vehicles.

  A police officer stood outside the door. From inside the house came the sound of a woman screaming and someone else shouting for calm. Whatever had happened, too much interest might make him a suspect. Victor gave the house a wide berth, unsure whether to worry more about what had been found or the gangs that might have been displaced by the police presence. He could only hope that the snow would keep them inside.

  He reached his home a few minutes later. He filled a bag with food and as many medical supplies as he could find, mostly basic items like gauze and bandages. He had some ointments, but no antibiotics. They were hard to procure without cause. No doctor would prescribe them without ample evidence they were needed, so his only option other than robbing a pharmaceutical store was to ask Isabella. He wasn’t sure which was easier.

  With his bag slung over his shoulder, he headed back out into the snow, warier than ever as darkness fell. When he reached Isabella’s house he was pleased to see that her father wasn’t yet home. The man was far more terrifying than his daughter, and there would be no way past him. Isabella might be talked into helping him, but Mortin would likely throw him back out into the snow.

  When she opened the door though, instead of berating him she rushed out and pulled him into a tight embrace. ‘I’m so glad you came,’ she gasped. ‘It’s so thoughtful of you to think of me at this time.’

  Aware that asking what she meant would give him up, he said instead, ‘I had to see you, to make sure you were all right.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she sobbed. ‘They’re abandoning us to die.’

  Victor was desperate to ask who, but Isabella needed him to be strong. He held her tight, stroking her back as she cried against him. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be all right.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just do. It’ll all be okay.’

  ‘We’ll be cut down like wild dogs when those bastards come through here,’ Isabella said. ‘They’ll string us up and flay the skin off our backs. They might even rape us. Do you know how it feels to be raped by a robot?’

  As often with Isabella, Victor felt that the best answer was silence. He tried to um and ah in the right places, all the while hoping she would let him into the house before he froze to death on the front step.

  Finally she pulled him inside and shut the door with a theatrical slam. She excused herself to go and freshen up, so Victor wandered into the living room where a radio was broadcasting news reports. Isabella’s brother, Esel, was sitting with his feet up over the end of a sofa, smoking a cigarette. The boy, tall and broad for a fourteen-year-old, gave Victor a quick contemptible glance, then turned back to a magazine he was reading.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Victor asked.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The war.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you know, robo-boy? Lying to get into my sister’s pants again?’

  Victor would happily see Esel fall off a cliff or be torn apart by wolves. He would hold a camera and then upload the video to the internet with a huge grin on his face. ‘I’ve been busy,’ he said. ‘I work. You should try it.’

  ‘Go and eat yourself a dick.’

  Victor knew from experience that getting sucked into an insult-throwing contest with a teenage asshole was a waste of time. Taking a slow, deep breath, he asked, ‘I saw some military vehicles come into town.’

  Esel flapped a hand towards the radio without looking up. ‘They just made an announcement on the radio. Moscow has fallen.’

  Victor gripped the edge of the nearest chair to stop himself stumbling. ‘Are you serious?’

  The boy looked up. ‘Of course I’m serious, what do you think? Who cares? It’s been on the cards for weeks. And it’s not like they were of any help to us, were they?’

  Before Victor could reply, Isabella came bustling into the room like a sudden squall out on Lake Baikal, her hands flapping in the air.

  ‘They’ll nuke us,’ she shouted. ‘The army has refused to surrender. We’re all going to die.’

  ‘Shut up, you dumb whore,’ Esel shouted, throwing his magazine across the room. He jumped to his feet and looked about to slap his sister. Victor hung on to the edge of the chair between them in a position that could be either confrontational or neutral, depending on how he angled his body. Esel was several inches taller than Victor and had inherited his father’s broad shoulders. In a fight to defend Isabella’s honour, Victor was destined for a distant second place.

  It was lucky that Isabella was more fearsome than her brother. ‘Sit down, you little brat!’ she screamed at him. ‘You know nothing! You think we’re safe here? We have no choice but to leave.’

  ‘And go where? I like it here.’

  ‘Vladivostok, and then to Japan.’

  Esel laughed. ‘So we can live in some tent village eating uncooked fish? No thanks. I’d rather stay here.’ He turned to Victor. ‘You’re not going to leave, are you, robo-boy? Why don’t you build us some weapons to fight with?’

  Victor glanced from one to the other, unsure what to say. He felt like an ice cube in the middle of two fires, and tried to remember he’d only come here to ask if Isabella had any antibiotics she could spare.

  ‘Well?’

  It was Isabella who was looking at him. He shrugged. ‘I’m not sure if I can.’

  ‘See?’ she cried, throwing her hands up in the air. ‘We’re all going to die.’

  Esel pushed past her to the door. ‘Well, in that case, I might as well go and get drunk with my friends. Could be the last time, couldn’t it?’

  As the front door slammed, an uneasy calm fell over the house, punctuated only by Isabella’s sobbing. Victor, feeling like a man who’d just survived a vicious storm, sat down on the edge of the sofa. A moment later Isabella joined him. She took his hands in hers and looked up at him out of eyes bloodshot from crying.

  ‘I don’t want to die,’ Isabella said.

  ‘You won’t. I won’t let them touch you.’

  ‘The radio reports said we’ve been abandoned, that an army is on its way here to take over the region. It’s all lies. They’re just going to nuke us, I know it.’

  Victor shook his head. ‘They can’t. They destroyed all the nukes and even if they did still have some it’s too dangerous with cyber-warfare.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Hackers. Wars are fought online these days. You can’t launch anything without a hacker coming in and taking over its systems and redirecting it back at you. That why the second Moscow siege happened. They have to use soldiers because men can’t be hacked.’

  It was a layman answer, but it seemed to satisfy her. The truth was that Victor didn’t really know how powerful hackers were in war, other than being a pain in the ass. As far as he knew, localized systems worked fine, it was just long range technology that was at risk, anything with a signal that could be intercepted by satellite.

  ‘We should still leave. Vladivostok isn’t so far.’

  ‘It’s five thousand kilometres. If there are no more trains, it’s a long walk.’

  ‘Now’s not the time to joke, Victor.’

  ‘I’m not. Have you seen a car anywhere in town that could survive a journey half that long? Most of them are too unreliable to get from one end of town to the other.’

  ‘So what do you suggest we do?’

  ‘Well, the first thing would be to not panic. Don’t believe everything you hear. Moscow might not have fallen at all. It could all be hackers planting fake reports.’r />
  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘It’s as likely as not. We can’t prove anything unless we see it with our own eyes.’ He wanted to add, ‘There might not be any war,’ but thought better of it. The drone strike and the military vehicles were evidence of some upheaval at least.

  Isabella slowly began to calm down. After Victor promised to stay the night, she went to make them a simple dinner. Her father, she said, was working the night shift at the mine and wouldn’t be back until some time tomorrow. As for her brother and sister, they would come back when they chose, if at all. She seemed to have it in her head that a platoon of distant soldiers would come bursting through the door at any moment. If there was one thing that Victor wanted to make her understand, it was that wars never moved as quickly in real time as they did in history textbooks and television documentaries. Most wars, like most jobs he thought, consisted of more hours of waiting than of anything else.

  It was already late by the time they had dinner, and afterwards they retired to Isabella’s bedroom for some unfulfilling sex. The girl clearly had her mind elsewhere, while Victor was thinking about his promise to the stranger. As soon as Isabella had fallen asleep, he got up and crept downstairs. He felt bad about stealing from her, but he had no choice.

  In a kitchen drawer he found a jar of what looked like a basic antibiotic, prescribed to Isabella’s father. The date printed on the label was from six months ago, so Robert had probably stopped taking them after his ailment had healed. He wouldn’t miss them.

  Victor was just closing the drawer when he heard the kitchen door open.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  He turned to find Esel leaning in the doorway, eyes bleary and bloodshot, hair ruffled. He was still wearing his jacket.

  ‘I said, what the fuck are you doing?’

  ‘I had a headache.’