Survival Game

by Gary Gibson

  I felt the anger rise within me like some great kraken from the depths of a still ocean. Perhaps it was the stress of fleeing for our lives, or the horror of anyone thinking the man who had killed Tomas might be my lover.

  ‘The very idea makes me want to vomit,’ I shouted, my voice ringing far through the trees. ‘He is chertov ubludok. A piece of . . . of fucking shit.’

  I screamed my rage at the world around us, sliding from English to Russian, employing the foulest gutter language to describe a number of anatomical impossibilities, all of them featuring Borodin as the central motif. Jerry, clearly nonplussed, came to a halt, staring at me in shock.

  ‘I don’t understand anything you just said, but it didn’t sound too nice.’

  I pulled my respirator off and threw it onto the grass as I stepped towards him.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what the hell are you . . . ?’

  I yanked his respirator over the top of his head and threw it down next to mine, then grabbed him by the ears and kissed him.

  Kiss is perhaps too civilized a word. It was perhaps bordering on assault, the way I pushed my tongue into his mouth. He struggled to say something, his words reduced to an incoherent mumble, his face full of shock and surprise.

  When I let go of his ears, however, he did not pull away. I slid my hands down until they pressed against his chest. He took a breath, sucking down the rich, strange-tasting air.

  ‘What is it with you crazy fucking Russians?’ he shouted.

  Then he slid both hands around the back of my head and kissed me back.

  We fell against the slick trunk of a tree, mouths still pressed together. My heartbeat grew to fill the sky like distant, pounding thunder.

  He pushed me away, staring hard over my shoulder. I had a moment of freezing terror at the thought the beasts had finally tracked us down. But then I turned and saw a single point of brilliant pink light falling across the sky in the direction of the mountains.

  ‘They’re still looking for us,’ Jerry croaked. ‘Goddam, they’re still looking for us! That’s a flare, Katya!’

  ‘Where is it coming from?’

  ‘The same way we’re headed,’ he said. He gripped my shoulders and for a moment, I thought he might kiss me again. Then I saw his expression change, and he took a step back, his face sobering.

  I realized then that with the appearance of the flare, everything had changed. A moment ago, we had been far from sure if we would live. But now . . .

  ‘We’d better keep moving,’ he said abruptly, without meeting my eyes. ‘At least we know where they are – although they still don’t know where we are.’

  I nodded. Then I reached down to pick up both our respirators from where they lay in the grass, and hesitated. ‘Are these things really necessary? I’m covered in shit and mud and slime – surely if anything here is capable of infesting me, it’s already feasting on my flesh.’ I nodded at him, equally greasy with filth. ‘And you’re no better.’

  He looked at me, then gave out a small laugh that somehow eased the sudden tension between us. ‘I guess you’ve got a point.’ He squinted at me, and I thought I saw more than a hint of regret there. ‘Ready to move?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  After that, it was as if nothing had happened at all.

  We picked up our pace and soon emerged into open country, sighting a herd of animals off in the distance. They had, Jerry assured me, been studied and found to be harmless.

  As we grew nearer, I saw them more clearly. They looked comical, with huge eyes on either side of a piscine skull, and mouths that gaped permanently open. Their heads constantly swivelled from side to side beneath hunched shoulders, their bodies balanced by long and powerful-looking tails that swept the ground behind them. They were feasting, I saw, on the fronds of the whiplash trees.

  There were other animals that looked like nothing more than toy balloons gone adrift from their owners, trailing their strings along the ground. Closer examination revealed rudder-like tails that flicked from side to side, allowing them to steer in the prevailing wind, and the string trailing from beneath their bellies proved instead to be a multitude of rope-like tentacles that dragged along the ground, occasionally curling back up and toward their bodies, presumably to carry some morsel into their mouths.

  We entered more dense woodland, and it grew quickly dark beneath tall and spindly trees that reached far, far overhead, swaying slightly in the breeze. Then I looked down and saw we were walking on a smooth, hard surface, hidden beneath a dense overlay of growth. I bent down and brushed some of the vegetation away, revealing cut stone.

  ‘Let me see that,’ said Jerry. He grabbed up a fallen branch and used it to brush away more of the dense vegetable matter.

  ‘It’s a road,’ he said at last. He dropped the branch and looked around.

  We came across the first buildings half an hour later. The forest now formed a dense canopy far above our heads, and at first the buildings looked like nothing more than great mounds growing up out of the earth, cloaked in thick vines and weeds. It was only when I sighted stone steles erected here and there throughout the forest, their smooth sides indented with strange and inexplicable designs, that I realized they were the product of intelligent minds.

  ‘You know,’ Jerry muttered, ‘I think we might just have found ourselves a lost city.’

  ‘I thought you explored this whole area with drones,’ I said. ‘Ruins were mentioned.’

  ‘That’s true, but not in this direction.’ He nodded up at the canopy. ‘Mostly we did aerial mapping. The drones wouldn’t have been able to see too well through all of that. And this is definitely bigger than anything else we’ve seen so far.’

  My eyes picked out glints of metal and glass scattered all across the gloomy forest floor. We arrived at a wide glade illuminated by fading sunlight, streaming down through a hole in the canopy, and found ourselves confronted by an enormous, metal-lined shaft, descending far into the earth at a steep angle.

  I stared into its depths, speculating on what might be down there.

  ‘I wonder what happened to them all,’ said Jerry.

  ‘It’s getting dark,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know how much longer I can keep going.’

  Jerry stared down at something in his hand. ‘That’s not all. Something here’s making my compass all screwy.’

  ‘You mean you don’t know where we’re going?’ I asked in alarm.

  ‘Well, it’s going to be hard, but as long as we keep aiming for those hills, we’ll be fine.’

  I sank to my knees, exhausted. ‘But we can’t even see them from in here!’

  ‘Hang on,’ he said. He stepped over to a tree and peered up its length, rubbing his hands together as if to keep warm.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I just had an idea, is all,’ he said.

  I watched as he reached up and took hold of a branch, pulling on it as if to test whether it could take his weight. Then he got a foot up on the trunk and started to climb.

  The tree trembled and swayed as Jerry scrambled with remarkable agility from branch to branch. He climbed with care, but also with impressive speed, and before long he was almost at the roof of the canopy.

  I could hardly bear to watch. I clutched my belly and moaned with fear as the top of the tree swayed from side to side as he scampered yet higher. I reminded myself that this was a man who had survived a global extinction event alone; he was undoubtedly of considerable resourcefulness.

  I heard a shout from above and for one terrified moment feared he had lost his grip. Instead he waved to me, then worked his way back down over the next several minutes.

  The tree had to be at least sixteen or seventeen metres tall, yet he had scaled it as if it were a fraction of that height. When his feet finally touched the ground, he collapsed onto the weedy soil, wheezing and gasping, his face gleaming with sweat.

  ‘If we keep heading that way,’ he said, pointing off into the darkness, ‘we’
ll be fine. Except I saw something much, much better.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Smoke. They’re letting us know for sure exactly where to find them. Think I maybe even saw a couple of aerial drones, back the way we came. I tried to signal with my mirror, but I’m far from sure their cameras picked it up.’ He grabbed my arm and chuckled. ‘Even better, the smoke’s coming from just a couple of kilometres from here. Which means we don’t have to make it all the way to Site B! They might even have transport waiting for us to take us the rest of the way.’

  ‘Then we keep going,’ I said, grinning back at him.

  He nodded with enthusiasm. ‘We keep going.’ Soon the last of the light faded, and I caught occasional glimpses of unfamiliar constellations through breaks in the canopy. I started to feel as if I had been walking my whole life; that for the rest of eternity there would be nothing but escape, one foot in front of the other until the sun turned cold and dark, while screams echoed through the forest behind.

  ‘Stop,’ said Jerry.

  I kept moving past him in a daze. He reached out and grabbed me by the arm.

  I stumbled to a stop and blinked at him.

  ‘Look,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘We’re there. We nearly walked right past it.’

  I looked around until I saw it: a campfire, just ahead in the next clearing.

  We started to run.

  I fell, exhausted, at the edge of the clearing. Flames rose from within a circle of carefully arranged stones. Damp heavy branches and leaves had been laid over the burning logs to maximize the smoke belching upwards.

  And yet there was no one around. Jerry turned this way and that, calling out names. His voice echoed around the hills, with no reply.

  I saw something near the fire and picked it up. A battered leather hat, with a wide, flat brim. I turned to show it to Jerry. His grin faded, and he stared at the hat as if it were a venomous snake.

  Then I looked past him, seeing a shadow undulate down the length of a tree at the edge of the clearing. I opened my mouth to yell a warning, but he must have seen the look on my face, for he whirled around immediately.

  The shadow leaped towards Jerry – and so did I. Without thinking, I flung myself at him, sending him crashing to the ground. He let out an oof as I rolled on top of him, and felt a rush of air as something passed directly over me.

  The monster crashed headfirst into the fire, knocking away the leaves and branches and letting out a monstrous roar as the flames rushed up around it. In the next instant, it had jumped back up, trailing bright sparks as it sprinted for the trees on the opposite side of the clearing.

  Jerry scrambled out from under me and ran towards the fire, grabbing hold of a thick branch, one end of which was ablaze. ‘Grab another one,’ he shouted.

  I reached past the circle of stones and snatched up a burning branch. I turned my back to the fire and stared out at the surrounding darkness, Jerry by my side.

  ‘Listen,’ Jerry whispered. ‘I think it’s over there.’ He nodded towards a puffy, mushroom-like growth. ‘Can you hear it?’

  I could; rocks and twigs crunched and snapped under its paws as it prowled unseen in the shadows. Then I heard a low growl from deep in its throat.

  Then something extraordinary happened: streaks of bright fire slashed through the night, accompanied by a prolonged staccato thudding. The streaks moved from left to right, the trees shaking as something slammed into them again and again with tremendous force.

  Then came a terrible, inhuman scream, and I momentarily caught sight of the creature, fleeing deeper into the woods. The streaks of bright fire followed it, then came to an end.

  Wood crunched and snapped, and an engine roared. A huge armoured EV truck with caterpillar treads came crashing through the trees towards us. Its twin headlights nearly blinded me.

  It ground to a halt next to the fire, and I saw its windscreen was also badly starred. Armoured or not, it had long jagged tears along one flank. A huge machine gun mounted on its roof swivelled this way and that, and I guessed it was under the control of someone inside.

  The rear airlock door slammed open and an unfamiliar face leaned out, looking down at us where we still stood next to the fire with flaming sticks in our hands. I saw a tall, rangy-looking man with a beard and close-cropped hair, in his late forties or early fifties, his face partly obscured by his respirator. He wore a holster strapped to one thigh, gunslinger-style.

  ‘So you managed to find your way here after all,’ he yelled in a pronounced Australian accent. ‘Now hurry the fuck up and get in before that bastard comes back with all his mates in tow. And – hey, you must be Jerry, Jerry Beche, right?’

  Jerry stared, apparently speechless, at our saviour.

  ‘And you’re Katya, right?’ asked the man, next turning to me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am.’

  ‘Well . . . be a good girl and bring my hat back over here, will you?’ he said, nodding at the hat where I had dropped it. ‘I knew I’d left it some damn place.’

  Jerry didn’t move: instead he continued to gape open-mouthed at the stranger, as if he had entirely forgotten how much danger we were still in.

  I took hold of his arm and tugged him towards the truck. ‘Come on,’ I said, wondering why he was behaving so strangely. ‘Time to get out of here.’

  Inside the truck, I found two Authority soldiers in combat armour and comms helmets, seated before a brightly lit dashboard. Yuichi, the Japanese–American Pathfinder I had met briefly some days before, sat in the rear next to a small, compact-looking woman with short dark hair and fine crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes.

  ‘This is Katya,’ Yuichi said to the other woman as Jerry and I sat across from them. ‘One of the Russians.’

  The woman looked at me and nodded curtly. ‘Nadia Mirkowsky. Saw you at the meet ’n’ greet, though I don’t think we spoke.’

  I nodded back. ‘You’re a Pathfinder too?’

  She nodded again, then glared with contempt at the Australian as he climbed aboard, slamming the airlock door shut behind him before turning to look at both myself and Jerry.

  ‘I meant to ask,’ he said. ‘What happened to your respirators?’

  ‘We threw them away,’ I said.

  He frowned, then brightened. ‘Knew the damn things were a waste of time,’ he said, pulling his own respirator off and tossing it into a corner. He took a deep breath. ‘Of course, if I wake up with a mushroom growing out of my head, it’ll be my own damn fault.’

  Jerry turned to the two other Pathfinders and gave them both a long, searching look. ‘How . . . ?’

  ‘He was already here when we arrived,’ said Nadia, her expression funereal.

  Our rescuer either failed to notice the tension caused by his presence, or chose not to acknowledge it. The throb of the engine grew, and I grabbed a handhold as the vehicle suddenly lurched forwards.

  ‘Think we can outrun them this time?’ the Australian asked the driver.

  ‘We can definitely outrun them.’ The soldier shook his head. ‘Still can’t believe how much damage that thing did to our armour.’

  ‘Resilient fuckers, no doubt about that,’ the Australian replied, then turned back to me. ‘Sorry, I didn’t have the chance back there to introduce myself properly.’

  I handed him the hat and he pulled it on, touching one finger to the brim in mocking deference.

  ‘Casey Vishnevsky at your service,’ he said, with a toothy grin.

  THIRTEEN

  Site B, once we reached it, turned out to be the wreck of an enormous aircraft. Weeds and trees grew up through its torn carapace, much of which was in an advanced state of decay. Scattered all around its ruined hull were numerous artefacts that must have spilled out of its hold upon impact. I watched through the windscreen as we drove past several supply tents, then straight up the ramp of a transfer stage erected in the shadow of the derelict.

  We materialized back in the island’s main hangar and found ourselves s
urrounded by chaos. I followed Nadia, Jerry and Yuichi down the ramp and past several dozen people either shouting orders and directions at each other or standing in tight clusters while deep in conversation. Vishnevsky walked behind us.

  Winifred Quaker, one of the Pathfinders, came to a dead halt when she saw Vishnevsky and stared open-mouthed at him.

  The noise of conversation dropped noticeably and I looked around, seeing more and more eyes turn to regard the Australian.

  Art Blodel came charging in through the hangar entrance, salmoning his way past a gaggle of technicians headed in the opposite direction. Kip Mayer followed close in his wake.

  Blodel grasped one of Vishnevsky’s hands in his own and shook it. ‘Looks like you got everyone back safe,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ said Vishnevsky. ‘I, uh, had the chance to meet some of the Pathfinders.’ He nodded at Yuichi, Nadia and Jerry, and they all stared stonily back.

  ‘I don’t understand what’s going on,’ I said into the sudden silence. I was tired and hungry and exhausted and lucky to be alive, and I was in no mood for guessing games. ‘Why are you all behaving so strangely?’

  ‘Goddammit,’ yelled Nadia, her pale cheeks flowering red as she stepped up to Blodel, ‘you brought him back, you son of a bitch!’

  Blodel’s expression became flat and hard. ‘Maybe we should take this somewhere else, without making a scene.’

  ‘A scene?’ Nadia bellowed. ‘That’s what you’re worried about?’

  ‘Nadia,’ said Yuichi, stepping up beside her. ‘Nadia.’

  She ignored Yuichi and kept her eyes fixed on Blodel. ‘Do you know what that cocksucker did to me, before you turned up?’ she said, pointing one trembling finger at Vishnevsky. ‘He – he fucking murdered me! And not just me, but Rozalia, Jerry, and—’

  ‘Nadia!’ Yuichi grabbed hold of her shoulder and she spun around with a snarl, one hand raised and bunched into a fist. ‘Look at him.’ He nodded at Vishnevsky, who looked as if he would rather be in some alternate a long, long way away. ‘He’s dead too, Nads. He’s dead too.’