After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1)

by Mark R. Healy

  Outside I encountered a tall iron fence with decorative spikes adorning the crown. Rather than rip up my new garments I decided to take the time to walk around it. I slid my fingers along the metal rungs of the fence, making a soft drumming sound and enjoying the warmth of early morning. This must have been a nice, quiet little place to raise kids, I thought, the kind of place where everyone knew their neighbours, where people were friendly and down to earth, and where the concerns and troubles of the big city seemed like a thousand clicks away. Maybe it would be a nice place to come back to, one day.

  Out on the street, I neared the last of the line of houses and could see the highway stretching out along an incline to the west. The road was firm and solid under my feet, and I’d make good time if it remained intact from here until home. Although that wasn’t likely considering the damage that-

  Boom!

  The deafening noise, like a peal of thunder in the cloudless sky, rang out from across the road as a fence paling exploded right in front of me. I cried out and fell to the ground, my shoulder striking so hard on the asphalt that it rattled my teeth.

  Shit! I’ve been shot. They found me.

  My hands grasped at my torso and face, searching for holes or missing chunks of flesh. Nothing.

  I hadn’t taken a hit, I realised, just fallen back in shock. Whoever was shooting at me had missed. Barely.

  Get up, Brant.

  I did. I squirmed on all fours, keeping low to the ground, all the while expecting another shot to ring out and for my back to explode in pain. The short journey off the street seemed excruciatingly slow, but somehow I made it around the back of the house. Sliding my back to the wall I tried to gather my thoughts, tried to figure out my next course of action.

  Should I just run for the hills?

  They’ll chase me down on their bikes.

  The satchel was lying back there in the dust kicked up from my escape, out on the road.

  Leave it.

  That was all I had time to consider before I heard footsteps. They were coming after me.

  I looked around for somewhere to go. Somewhere to hide. Inside the house? They might corner me in there.

  There was one other option.

  I got up, moved over to the back of the house and kicked at the door with all my might. It exploded inward, sending fragments of wood everywhere in a cloud of dust. Then, as quickly and as quietly as I could, I backtracked a few steps toward the dry and dusty in-ground swimming pool, stepping lightly between clumps of grass so as not to leave footprints, and then dropped down inside and waited, still and rigid, my mind racing.

  My ruse probably wouldn’t fool an experienced hunter, but it might just trick someone who was a little too hasty to complete their kill.

  I waited. Seconds ticked away like hours. The serene blue-grey sky above was at odds with my churning insides. I considered the folly of coming this way, wishing I could reverse time to an hour ago when I’d sat perched on the hill trying to decide which way to go. I’d been impatient, and now it might cost me.

  No point worrying about that now. Just survive. Make it through this.

  I looked around for a weapon, something I could use as a club, but there was nothing. The footsteps were coming closer, and they were loud, inept, not the sound of someone who knew what they were doing. This fight wasn’t a foregone conclusion after all. I had a chance.

  They moved past me and over toward the entrance to the house, then stopped. There was silence for a few moments, and then they stepped onto the concrete landing near the house, shuffling forward.

  With all the caution I could manage, I lifted myself out of the empty pool, up onto the edge. From behind I could see he wasn’t a tall man, and that was another bonus. I might be able to overpower him.

  My foot must have scuffed the dirt for at that moment he began to turn. With a roar, I leapt forward and bridged the distance between us in two bounds. He brought up the shotgun. I swung at it with my hand, grabbed the barrel, tore it away. With the other hand I swung at his face, knocking him clean off his feet.

  Fumbling, I pulled the shotgun to my shoulder and rounded on him where he lay in the dirt, pointing both barrels at his face.

  It was a little kid.

  “What the hell?” I breathed.

  Movement to my right from the side of the house. I swung the shotgun up and my finger slipped onto the trigger.

  “No, please, don’t!” she cried. It was another kid, a girl with blonde hair. She froze, her palm outstretched. “Please!”

  I looked back at the kid on the ground. The boy lay there sobbing, clutching at his dirt-smeared face where I’d struck him. Neither of them could have been more than about nine or ten years old.

  “What’s going on here?” I gasped. This seemed surreal. “Who are you? Where did you come from?” The shotgun whipped between one and then the other as I tried to make sense of their appearance.

  “My name’s Mish,” the girl said. “That’s my brother, Ellinan.” She indicated to the boy and took a hesitant step forward. “We live here.”

  “Hold your ground,” I said, shaking the gun at her. She stepped back again and held up her arms protectively.

  “Don’t shoot!” she whimpered.

  “Just stay where you are.” I flicked the gun back to Ellinan. He flinched and let out another sob. “Get up.” Slowly, he dragged himself out of the dirt and got to his feet. I made a curt motion with the shotgun and he limped over to the girl, who embraced him and tucked his face into her neck in a motherly fashion.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, her voice tremulous, but her eyes betrayed that she didn’t quite believe that herself.

  “I want answers,” I said, keeping the shotgun level. “Where did you come from?”

  “She told you,” the boy said, turning his face as she held his head. “We live here.” His eyes registered indignation, hurt. Defiance. But his lips betrayed him. They quavered in fear and he sobbed again, moisture glistening in his eyes. It was only now that I saw the tattoo on his left temple, the letter ‘Q’.

  I understood.

  “You’re synthetics,” I said, lowering the shotgun slightly. Their eyes met, uncertain, and then they stared at me stupidly. “You’re Wards,” I went on.

  The girl shook her head. “I don’t know what that is,” she said, confused.

  I could see she was telling the truth. These kids had no idea of their origins, of what lay beneath that synthetic skin of theirs. They stood there trembling, reacting in a perfectly human way to such a traumatic situation, the way any child might respond to a stranger pointing a gun in their direction. I suddenly felt very foolish, as if I was the bully, the aggressor, even though I’d only attempted to defend myself.

  “Never mind, then,” I said awkwardly, and the shotgun dipped further.

  “Are you...?” Mish began uncertainly. “Are you going to kill us?”

  “No,” I muttered angrily, then, more gently, “no, I’m not. But you’re both damn lucky to be alive right now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ellinan said, straightening and pulling away from the girl. “I’m sorry for shooting at you. My dad told me that if anyone came around here, that’s what I had to do. Said they’d most likely want to hurt us.” He seemed to be taking control of himself again and let go of the girl’s hand, moving protectively in front of her.

  “Your dad?” I said.

  The boy nodded, wiping hair shakily away from his face. “Yeah.”

  I let the shotgun swing down by my side. “Take me to him.”

  25

  We stood before the grave. It had become indistinguishable from the rest of the yard, having settled over the years, and now it was only identified by the little pile of stones the children had laid as a rudimentary headstone. That broad-leafed grass was growing across it in places and some weeds were poking their way through the stones. The children stood before it solemnly with their heads bowed.

  “He said he wanted to be buried und
er the big old tree,” Ellinan said, looking up at me.

  The stump of the tree jutted out of the earth nearby, an old rope swing that had presumably hung from one of the branches now rotting at its base. I pressed my lips together and looked down at the boy, nodding.

  “You did good.”

  Ellinan worked his mouth as if he were about to cry again, and dropped his gaze to his feet.

  “He’s been gone a long time?” I asked. The girl nodded.

  “Not sure how long but... yeah, a long time,” she said.

  I opened my shoulders and hefted the gun by the barrel, holding it out to Ellinan, perpendicular to the ground.

  “You should take this back.”

  He lifted his eyes and reached out uncertainly, his fingers closing around the cool metal. I held it firm.

  “But let me tell you this,” I said firmly. “When your dad said to shoot anyone who came by, he didn’t mean for you to take pot shots at people out on the street like you’re shooting ducks. If you’re going to use this thing, make sure it’s only if you absolutely have to. Your first thought should be to hide. Most likely whoever it is will just pass you by, like I almost did.” Ellinan nodded. “And if they force your hand, if they try to break into your house and come after you, you make the shot count. Stick it in their chest and let them have it.”

  I released my grip and he took the shotgun into the crook of his arm. “Okay, I understand,” he said.

  “Now, let’s start this over again. My name’s Brant.” I stuck out my hand, and, with a timid grin, Ellinan took it in his.

  “Ellinan.”

  I turned to the girl. “Mish,” she said, trying to restrain the relief in her smile by pushing down her top lip, but she was unable to contain it from her eyes.

  “Pleased to meet you both,” I said. “Now we’ve sorted all that out, I think it’s time I got going.”

  The children glanced at each other. “Won’t you stay?” Mish entreated. “Just for a while?”

  “Yeah, I mean... we just met you,” Ellinan chimed in.

  I glanced from one to the other, and Ellinan dropped his gaze to stare at his filthy bare toes again. I sighed.

  “Sure,” I relented. I had to remind myself that these were just kids. “For a little while.”

  Mish gleefully took me by the hand, inhibitions forgotten, and began to drag me toward the house. Ellinan trotted ahead, turning to me as he skipped backward across the soil.

  “So um... where are you headed?” he wanted to know.

  “Hey, careful with that!” I motioned to the gun and Ellinan slowed, assuming a more mindful gait. “I’m heading home.”

  “Where’s that?” Mish said.

  “West,” I replied simply, pointing. “About a day’s walk that way.”

  They led me along a concrete path and under a wooden trellis. Leading up to the back door there were two wooden steps, their dark blue paintwork worn away in the centre by the constant passage of feet over the years. Both children were barefoot, I noted, and their clothes were in a poor state, full of tatters and holes. I felt a pang of guilt at taking the clothes from the house across the street earlier. I suddenly felt overdressed.

  They bounded up the steps and through the door, Mish tugging at my hand as if taking a reluctant dog for a walk. Inside the place was in decent condition, probably the best looking interior I’d seen in a long time. The kids had done a good job of keeping the place tidy.

  “We were just finishing our morning chores,” Mish told me. A broom rested against a wall and she plucked it up nimbly and gave it a spin. Ellinan continued on into the living room where he made an exaggerated dive at the sofa, landing neatly on his back.

  “Mine are already done,” he said smugly, linking his hands behind his head.

  A weird thought occurred to me. They were showing off.

  “The TV doesn’t work anymore,” Ellinan said morosely, casting a look across at the wall of glass which, at one time, would have been hooked up to the Grid. “I never got to finish Zip Fighter Three,” he moaned. I frowned, nonplussed. “The Star King Saga,” he added, as if that would clarify things for me.

  “Oh, right,” I said.

  “You said you hated it anyway,” Mish said from behind me, scrubbing the broom across the floor. I noted that the bristles had worn down to almost nothing.

  “No, that was Zip Fighter Two.” He rolled his eyes and shot me a look that suggested she was crazy.

  “So uh, what did your dad do?”

  Mish scuffed the broom past my feet and stepped in front of me. “Dad was a doctor in the city before he moved out here to retire,” Mish explained.

  A doctor. That might explain how he was able to afford two Wards.

  “And your mother?”

  “She died a while back,” Mish said sadly. “Long before Dad.”

  I nodded. “Well, it looks as though you two are getting along okay.” I strolled around the living room. There were family photos along the wall. One featured all four members of the family. The man looked to be in his early fifties, with a neatly manicured goatee and a receding hairline. The woman looked younger, a blonde in her thirties. In the next photo, the woman was not present, and the man no longer had the goatee. I followed the series along and came to the last photo. The man now had greying hair and looked at least ten years older than in the first one.

  Ellinan and Mish looked the same in every photo.

  “I guess we’re doing okay,” Ellinan said. “Dad left us with plenty of things to do.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, first up in the morning it’s chores. That sucks,” he added. “Then homework.” He pointed to a large bookshelf lining one wall. “We have to read books until the afternoon.”

  I crossed the room and stood before the bookshelf. There had to be a couple of hundred of them lining the shelves, classic fiction such as Dickens and Jane Austen, the science fiction of Clarke and Heinlein, biographies, encyclopaedias, atlases, dictionaries. It was unusual to see such a large collection of printed works. Most people that I knew used their flips for reading - at least before the Grid had gone down.

  “Which ones do you read?” I said.

  “All of them,” Mish replied, placing the broom down and walking over beside me. “I know most of them off by heart by now.”

  “I get through one a day, most days,” Ellinan said. “Mish does two. She’s the smart one,” he teased.

  “Shut up,” she said, and she looked up at me, embarrassed. “He’s just slow.”

  “Well, don’t let me keep you,” I said, stepping away from the bookcase. I raised my hand. “Go for it.”

  Ellinan wasted no time in grabbing Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast. It had been well loved. The front cover was gone, the title page dark yellow, and the spine showed signs of repeated bending back and forth. Ellinan curled up on the sofa with it, a contented look on his face. Mish took much greater care with her choice, glancing at me frequently as if weighing up the selection that I might approve of most. She eventually pulled down a large illustrated hardback on cosmology and sat with it at the kitchen table.

  I passed through the kitchen on my way out the back and stopped to regard them both. Wards were, without doubt, the most controversial synthetics that had ever been created. Initially designed for those people who were incapable of having children, they eventually became the playthings of the rich and privileged. For those whose careers came first, for those who were repulsed by the thought of facing pregnancy and childbirth, and for those who wanted to design the perfect child to suit their needs, Wards became the ideal choice.

  The upgrade path was flexible. Parents could start at the very beginning - a ‘newborn’ synthetic baby that could simulate basic feeding patterns, provide those sleepless nights, colic, the whole works. But synthetics didn’t grow like humans. Once created, they were static. Instead, regular upgrades would allow the illusion of growth. The newborn could be replaced by one that was six months old, the
n twelve months, two years, and so on. Each time the Ward was replaced, its memories would be transferred to the newer unit so that affections and parental attachment could also be migrated. Facial attributes were also copied and aged appropriately to give the impression that this was the same child growing older.

  But they came at a cost. Like all synthetics, the expense involved in purchasing just one Ward was beyond the means of most of the working class. To upgrade a Ward every year incurred astronomical costs that only the elite could afford. For most who used Wards, only one or two upgrades were ever done. Some purchased a teenage model and then upgraded straight to adult a few years later. Others chose their favourite age and then never upgraded at all, preferring to retain a child at the same age forever.

  And so the Wards became the subject of many protests and petitions, many heated arguments in bars and even in the halls of parliament. Many demanded that they should be outlawed, that it was unethical and ultimately damaging for parents to bring Wards into their homes. They argued that Wards had the potential to destroy the social fabric of families and that their availability should be subject to far more stringent checks and controls.

  Now those arguments seemed so trivial in the big scheme of things.

  I made my way to the back steps where I sat looking out at the hills. In the distance I could see the thin outline of a Grid spire on the horizon. I contemplated taking my leave right there and then, wishing the kids well and setting off on my way, but I knew that would disappoint them. It was obviously a rare treat for them to meet someone new, to break up this daily routine of theirs that they’d conducted throughout the years. It wasn’t such a great sacrifice for me to give them one day of my time considering the joy it would bring.

  But by the same token, I couldn’t linger. Not with the Marauders around.

  As the afternoon wore on the children made their way to the back yard, dragging me along with them into a game of chase. Their laughter was raucous, unrestrained, and highly infectious. They moved quickly for their size, and more often than not left me for dead with their exuberance.