Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 11, Issue 6

by Deborah Biancotti

  Review of Australian Fiction

  Volume Eleven: Issue Six

  Zutiste, Inc.

  Review of Australian Fiction Copyright © 2014 by Authors.

  Contents

  Imprint

  No Mercy for the Executioner Deborah Biancotti

  Burning the Lady’s Bones Thoraiya Dyer

  Published by Review of Australian Fiction

  “No Mercy for the Executioner” Copyright © 2014 by Deborah Biancotti

  “Burning the Lady’s Bones” Copyright © 2014 by Thoraiya Dyer

  www.reviewofaustralianfiction.com

  No Mercy for the Executioner

  Deborah Biancotti

  When the world ends, it’s the Jewish guy who brings the saké.

  By then there’s only five of us left. Five executioners, that is, not Jewish guys. Not necessarily saké fans, though I guess we’re all saké fans by now. Necessity more than anything. Efran, Hubert, Angelman (who only ever responds to Angelman and claims to have no first name), Naoki and me, Soon-ei.

  When Efran arrives, saké under his arm, the rest of us are already sitting on the floor in the space we call the hole. The hole is new and well-stocked. We’re tucking into the canned goods like there’s no tomorrow. Which, frankly, there probably isn’t. We’re mixing up tinned peaches with tinned franks. Angelman is waxing lyrical about the balance of sweet and savoury, softness and bite. Naoki has even found a packet of flavoured icing and is testing which bean mix works best with Vanilla Swirl. He’s developed a kind of studious mania.

  ‘Cannellini bean and Vanilla Swirl is pretty good,’ Naoki observes. ‘Chunky bean soup and Vanilla Swirl, not so good.’

  ‘Are you surprised?’ I ask him.

  ‘Rarely, little girl. Rarely,’ Naoki replies. He pulls out a short-bladed knife and starts tapping it on his shoe.

  I start to correct him. I’m not that little. But Hubert cuts in.

  ‘Hand over the soup, man,’ he says. ‘Don’t waste it.’

  Hubert holds out tinned pineapple as a trade, but Naoki won’t have it. He licks icing from his fingers while Hubert glares. Red beans and white icing have made Naoki’s lips pink. Like bad clown make-up.

  ‘Think the eatings will be this good where we’re going?’ Efran asks.

  ‘Hell, yeah!’ Angelman replies. ‘Only the best for the last.’

  Angelman means us. We’re the last humans on the planet.

  By now we’re connoisseurs of all the world’s finest leftovers, preferably sealed to keep out the dirty air. We’ve grown to depend on underground stores, but they’re getting harder to find. The hole is good. It’s untouched. It used to be underground storage for a supermarket.

  After the garbage we’ve been eating top-side, we’re due for a rest and a good meal.

  I reach for the saké and take a swig. ‘Whoa! Paint thinner!’

  ‘Philistine,’ Efran comments.

  He drinks it straight from the bottle and makes an expression that’s part gag, part grin.

  ‘Isn’t saké from the same place you are, Soon?’ Hubert says.

  ‘Saké is Japanese, idiot,’ I correct him.

  Hubert just looks more confused. He doesn’t understand that I’m not Japanese and it’s getting too late in the game to explain it.

  ‘And that saké sucks,’ Naoki adds, before they can ask him.

  Efran takes another gag-inducing swallow. Then he announces that the saké is lifting the soul from his body. He must like the sensation of losing his soul, because he takes another swig before passing it to Hubert.

  Anything bottled is fine, that’s what we’ve learned. Tinned goods carry a higher risk. Sometimes the radiation levels are through the roof, but the tins this far underground are still good.

  Efran’s saké hasn’t been a hit, so we switch to the other liquors. I claim the cognac fast, despite Naoki’s grumbles. The bottle’s nearly empty. I sniff at its sweet, rich scent before downing the last mouthful. It warms my ears. Angelman sits drinking scotch and looking at the rest of us with a kind of brooding expression on his face.

  ‘Why’d they want to kill us, anyhow?’ Angelman asks us at last.

  Angelman must be feeling sentimental. This is always the first question he asks when nostalgia hits.

  ‘They’re done wanting to kill us, remember?’ Naoki says. ‘Now they want us to kill each other.’

  ‘But why?’ Angelman persists.

  ‘They’re psychos,’ I mutter.

  ‘And why use teenagers?’ Angelman goes on, like he hasn’t heard me. ‘I mean, why us?’

  ‘Because we’re cheap,’ Efran replies. It’s his standard reply. ‘We work for booze and Vanilla Swirl.’

  We used to laugh at the logic, but we’ve been doing this job too long. It’s begun to wear us down.

  Naoki says something then, something he’s never said before. ‘Because teenagers make better psychopaths.’

  It’s cold in the underground store. It’s always cold, but I really notice it then. Naoki’s playing with his knife, tossing it into the air and catching it by the handle. He glances once at me, but he never drops the knife.

  ‘How many do you think are left?’ Hubert asks.

  ‘Executioners?’ I ask him.

  ‘Humans. And executioners.’

  I shrug. Angelman used to keep count, listening to strangers’ voices on the walkie-talkies. Trying to tell them apart. But we haven’t heard any other voices in months.

  ‘I doubt there’s many left,’ Naoki says. ‘Dangerous work, this executioner stuff. So many people still want to live, even at the end of the world. They just keep fighting back.’

  Efran grunts. ‘Less executioners, more room in the zoo.’

  Hubert looks worried. Until Efran starts laughing.

  ‘Figure of speech, Hubert!’ He laughs.

  ‘Couldn’t you use a different figure of speech?’ Hubert asks petulantly. ‘I don’t want to end up in a zoo.’

  ‘Please.’ Angelman rolls his eyes. ‘There’s no zoo.’

  We’re due to be rescued tomorrow. We’ve been promised a palace each. Angelman says the aliens have been hoarding stuff from earth. He wants to be a king or god on the new world with all the riches of Earth piled around him. He says we’ll be showered with treasures beyond our wildest dreams.

  See, that’s where I think the aliens have gone wrong. I think people can dream pretty wild. I hope the aliens can live up to their promises.

  After we destroy everyone left on earth, we’re due some riches.

  Well, after we destroy everyone but us.

  The afternoon is winding down when Angelman picks up the walkie-talkie.

  He’s definitely feeling sentimental, then. He only ever does that when he wants to know what’s happening with the other executioner cells.

  He clicks through all the channels he can find. Nothing but static. No executioners bragging about their exploits, no distress calls. A week or two back we heard someone sobbing and sobbing, but even that sound can’t be found anymore.

  ‘Do you think they’ve all been rescued already?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah,’ Angelman says, stony-faced. ‘I think that’s it.’

  I look at Naoki but his gaze is fixed on the ceiling. I nudge him with an elbow.

  ‘What do you think they’ll do with Earth when it’s empty?’ I ask.

  ‘Maybe they’ll build a diorama.’ Naoki doesn’t look at me. ‘A great, big, empty diorama so they can peek inside.’

  ‘What’s the point of that?’ Hubert asks, and is ignored.

  A diorama might work. I’ve always thought the human zoo idea w
as too sophisticated for a group as gung-ho as the aliens seem to be.

  Someone’s walkie-talkie statics to momentary life and then falls silent again. We all look at each other. Nobody moves to answer it.

  ‘Anyone expecting a call?’ Efran asks, panic in his voice.

  The walkie-talkie squeals again. Efran holds the walkie-talkie out like a kind of sword.

  Angelman leans over to grab it. He taps out the code to signify the caller has reached the chosen ones, the executioners. Through whistles and squeals we hear the command.

  The aliens have one more job for us.

  ‘There’s a human. Outside. After curfew,’ they mutter and screech.

  It’s like listening to a choir, perfectly timed and choreographed to make words. But that’s just one alien talking through its multiple mouths.

  Hubert does a headcount to make sure the human outside isn’t one of us. He doesn’t need to. By now the five of us feel like parts of one whole. There’s nobody missing.

  Hubert sits back, satisfied. We’re still five.

  ‘Location of target?’ Angelman says almost conversationally.

  He’s lean and dark-skinned, unflappable in a crisis. He records the location on the floor between his feet.

  ‘Order acknowledged,’ he says. Like he might actually be part of an army and not this motley group of chosen ones. He looks around the room.

  No one moves.

  ‘Whose turn?’ he asks.

  Nobody looks at him. We all think we’ve finished our turns. This was meant to be a celebratory dinner.

  ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Either it’s someone’s turn or we have to draw straws. And nobody wants to go find straws, right?’

  Naoki looks over at Efran.

  ‘Last one in?’ Naoki asks.

  ‘Go to hell,’ Efran replies.

  Naoki’s stained lips have begun to look less like clown make-up. More like war paint.

  ‘It has to be someone,’ Angelman says.

  ‘I brought the damn saké!’ Efran shouts.

  We used to be quiet all the time, back when we were worried about other humans finding our secret underground stash. But no one is afraid to shout anymore. There’s no one left but us.

  Us, and whoever’s just been spotted outside.

  ‘Isn’t it your turn anyhow?’ Angelman says.

  ‘How is it my turn?’ Efran rages.

  Angelman always has to control things. Sometimes this works in our favour, sometimes it doesn’t. It almost always works in Angelman’s favour.

  ‘Hey, man, don’t make me say it,’ he replies, quiet and low. But he doesn’t even pause before he adds, ‘You have the lowest success rates of anyone here. Of any of the chosen ones.’

  ‘Chosen ones!’ Efran gives him a sour look. ‘Quality, not quantity, pal!’

  ‘Wrong,’ Angelman holds up a long, lean hand. ‘It’s always been quantity. You know that.’

  I stand up and give Efran a look. ‘Come on, we’ll both go. I need some air anyhow.’

  I turn my back on the others and pick up my bag. I check my guns. ‘Can I take your rifle, Naoki?’

  ‘Soon-ei,’ says Angelman softly, ‘you don’t have to go.’

  Naoki hands over his rifle without a word and I take it. I don’t even look at the others.

  Angelman radios back that there’ll be two of us on the surface. He sounds annoyed. But he still makes Efran go with me.

  We head up the stairs, Efran swearing with an inventiveness I didn’t know he had. I glance back. Angelman sits with his spine straight and his shoulders high, pretending not to hear. Nobody watches us go.

  Efran swears for about three minutes straight without repeating himself. He knows a lot of languages.

  I glance at him. ‘You’re bringing the saké?’

  ‘Why not? It’s mine,’ he grunts.

  It’s still daylight outside. Or rather, it isn’t night. The sky is a milky, blank mess above us.

  We walk for fifteen minutes in silence, picking our way over the rubble of a thousand mortar shells. Efran stops every now and then to describe the aliens in fierce invective.

  ‘You ever even seen an alien?’ I ask.

  ‘Sure!’

  I walk for a few more minutes. ‘What do they look like?’

  ‘Like bubbles of wet flesh.’

  ‘Gross,’ I observe.

  But Efran isn’t finished. ‘Like the throats of frogs. They’re like puddles that have learned to sit in chairs.’

  ‘They have chairs?’

  ‘Of course. And they can’t get out of the chairs without drying up and sliding away. They turn to ash.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I don’t know about the ash bit. I’m only guessing,’ Efran admits. ‘How’d you become an executioner, anyway?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I reply. ‘Same way you did.’

  ‘Yeah, but I mean,’ he thinks it through, ‘when you survived the bombings, and then they said you were chosen, why’d you take the gig?’

  I look at him carefully. No one’s ever asked me before. It seems too simple to say ‘so I could survive’. Now, with the world turning over in its grave, new answers are needed. Not only why I took the gig, but why I kept taking it. Every day. Why I kept saying yes to the killings.

  ‘Didn’t everyone take it?’ I ask.

  Efran shakes his head. ‘My sister didn’t.’

  We’re quiet again. I didn’t know Efran had a sister.

  Efran’s rifle is over his shoulder, butt out in front, his wrist resting on top.

  ‘I took it for the same reason as you,’ I say softly.

  Efran makes an exasperated noise. ‘Forget it.’

  We don’t talk until we reach the perimeter marked by rubble piled so high it’s almost a wall. Here, the city buildings have been swept sideways like broken toys. It’s impressive, the first time. Then it’s depressing. Sometimes it scares me to think how easily all the civilisations of the world were wiped out. Not cleanly, but completely.

  We follow the rubble around to our right, targeting the spot Angelman marked out on the floor between his feet. Sometimes we have to climb over wreckage and waste from offices or apartments. Efran stops now and then for a swig of grimace-inducing saké, or to look at a piece of junk he might like to keep. There’s no hurry. The deadlines have always been pretty loose in this job.

  ‘Who knew we’d be this successful, eh?’ Efran says.

  ‘We’? He’s talking like we’re part of the aliens already.

  It was always going to be successful, of course. Couldn’t be anything but, with the bombings followed by the gassings, followed by the executions.

  I say, ‘Hubert’s theory is they’re creating that perfect state, like right before God made humans. He says it’s in the bible.’

  ‘Which bible?’ Efran asks straight away.

  ‘I dunno. Are they different?’ I say this because I know there’s nothing Efran loves better than a good theological disagreement.

  Efran grunts. He squats and pulls a piece of old plate from the bricks and dust. ‘It’s kind of important to know which perfect state they’re after. Are they looking for seventeen virgins, or a garden of Eden, or what?’

  ‘Paradise on earth,’ I say, like that explains it.

  ‘Wonder what paradise even looks like for an alien,’ Efran replies.

  ‘This is it,’ Efran says.

  We stop and look around.

  ‘I don’t see anyone,’ I reply.

  But even as I say it, a movement catches my eye. Someone’s climbing the wall of rubble, hesitating a metre from the top.

  Efran lets out a quiet swear word, but it’s a sound like wonder.

  ‘That’s a little girl,’ he says.

  We haven’t seen an actual kid in months. She must be about four. She’s small and grubby, a short dress covered in dirt and pink stars above a dusty pair of puffy pants. Her hair is caked into blonde ringlets and she carries, of all things, a doll. The doll
looks just like her.

  ‘No way,’ I say, and I shudder. ‘I can’t do kids.’

  Efran doesn’t reply. We watch as the girl climbs one-handed sideways, looking for a new hold. Her doll is cradled by the chin against one small shoulder.

  ‘It’s our job,’ Efran says, but he sounds sick saying it.

  I can’t look away. I watch the girl’s progress along the wall.

  ‘To hell with them,’ I say fiercely. ‘They’re going to kill us anyhow, right? I say let them do this one themselves.’

  Efran turns to me. ‘What are you talking about? They’re not going to kill us.’

  ‘Oh, come on! What else are they gonna do? Put us in petting zoos so their slimy alien freak-children can play with us?’

  ‘Whoa!’ says Efran. ‘Where’s this coming from?’

  ‘Efran, be real. There are no castles where we’re going.’

  If I’m honest, I’ve thought this a long time. Maybe for the whole time I’ve been an executioner. The killings were just a way to prolong the inevitable.

  Surely we’ve all thought it, I figure. But I look at Efran’s stunned expression and the doubt creeps back in.

  ‘We’re the last humans on Earth,’ I say, testing it out. ‘Why would they keep us?’

  My gut is all twisted up and I have a sense that this is how the truth is getting out of me. It’s being squeezed out.

  ‘Go to hell, Soon-ei.’ Efran shoulders his rifle. The saké bottle already lies forgotten at his feet.

  ‘They’ve laid waste to the entire world, Efran. You never wondered why?’ I ask desperately, trying to distract him from the girl in the dirty pink dress. ‘Look! They’re not aiming to live in our apartments or work in our offices!’

  It’s too much for Efran. He hoists the rifle on his shoulder and reaches for the saké again. He raises the bottle to his mouth but he can’t seem to swallow. He spits bitter plum-flavoured liquor on the ground and all over his boots.

  I look at the girl. She’s abandoned her climb and is heading down, into the ruined city. When she reaches the ground she almost disappears behind a fallen building.