Tankbread 02 Immortal

by Paul Mannering

  “What is your name?” Rache asked.

  “Oh . . . I’m Mary Elizabeth Watson. My husband will be back soon.”

  “Where is he?” Else asked, looking around the church.

  “He . . . he’s at work of course. Always at work these days. So much do to you understand.”

  “I’m sure there is,” Else said, slowly sinking into one of the seats at the nearest table.

  The others followed Else’s lead, Crab pouring the orange drink from the carafe into the glasses. Else sniffed it and took a sip. The others waited until she had taken a larger swallow and then followed suit.

  Mary vanished behind the alter and then the church filled with the sound of voices raised in song. A hymn came from all four corners of the church. Everyone jumped slightly.

  “It’s a recording,” Else said.

  “It sounds . . .beautiful,” Rache said, her face shining with awe.

  “How is she powering the lights and the sound system?” Else asked, looking around.

  “Solar, connected to batteries. I saw the panels on the roof,” Pisty explained.

  Mary reappeared, and ignoring her guests she went to the piano and started to play the same music as the recording, her piano synched with it perfectly and added a strange harmony to the singing. The scavengers drank their cordial and watched her play.

  When Mary stopped playing, Else turned to Rache. “Search the building, see what you can find.” She stood up and walked over to the piano. The old woman sat there, her eyes lost in a memory.

  “Mary?” Else prompted. “Mary can you hear me?”

  “Hmmm?” Mary’s eyes refocused and she smiled at Else. “Hello, dear. Is Clive back yet?”

  “No, not yet. Who is Clive?”

  “Clive, is my husband, your father of course.” Mary looked at Else as if she were playing some kind of game.

  “Of course,” Else nodded. “Did Clive do all this?”

  “No, silly, Clive never had much to do with the café. That was always me. I loved to cook and see the people come and have a cup of tea. My scones, they’re always a favorite.”

  “I know,” Else said. “What did Clive do, for work I mean?”

  “Oh it was something to do with bridges. He was always drawing pictures of bridges and going off to build them.”

  “Clive was an engineer? A civil engineer?” Else asked.

  “I suppose. I never really understood his work. He was very proud of what he did. I just love him all the same.”

  Mary’s awareness faded and she returned to the keyboard, joining the choir without missing a beat.

  Else left her to it and went to find Rache. The salvage crew was leafing through piles of papers in a back room: blueprints, sketches, and graph-paper drawings of detailed plans.

  “What’s all this?” Else asked.

  “It’s the plans for the protection of this place. Whoever did it, they’re gone now. Unless Mary went crazy after building the fence.” Rache showed the drawings to Else. They were diagrams, technical layouts showing the flow of evols around the barrier system and out into an open area. The church had become an island with the evols flowing like a river’s current around the barrier. The simplicity and the effectiveness of the system amazed Else. It reminded her of something and a moment later she said, “Temple Grandin. This is based on Dr. Temple Grandin’s work with livestock.”

  “Huh?” Rache asked.

  “Someone worked out how to manage the movement of evols. We build square fences, walls, and the dead come to them and push against them. They are stopped and then more come and they attract others. In the end the fence is overwhelmed. But this,” Else traced a finger over the curving lines of the plan. “This makes them keep moving, they think they are going forward, when really they are being turned away, turned around and stopped from gathering. It’s so simple . . . and so clever.”

  “Cool,” Rache said.

  Else rolled up the plan. She sorted through the other papers and selected some likely looking documents, which she added to her rolled-up bundle.

  “Let’s go,” Else said.

  “What about the old woman?” Rache asked.

  “Leave her, she’s no use to us.”

  Rache hesitated, and then followed Else and the others out into the church.

  Mary was playing the piano again, keeping time with the choir as her fingers fluttered over the keys. Else walked past her without a glance, the salvage crew trailing after. Rache stopped at the front door of the church, looking back at the old woman, lost in her own world.

  Else and her salvagers met up with the rest of the group at the gas station. They had brought the SUV up on the last of its fuel and were loading sloshing gas tanks into the back. Else called out to them, identifying herself from the darkness rather than risk startling someone and being shot. Her first priority was checking on her son; he stirred in his sleep and she watched him for a moment.

  “We’re getting enough fuel to get us to Mildura,” Eric confirmed.

  “Good,” Else said without looking away from the baby. When they had finished refueling, she stowed the barricade plans in the glove box of the SUV and looked forward to the drive.

  Chapter 9

  Else never dreamed, even though everything she had read suggested that dreams were the brain’s way of processing memories. It puzzled her because she remembered everything, from the warm floating haze of her first consciousness in Doctor Haumann’s growth tanks to the time she spent with the Courier in their wild ride across the wasteland of the post-apocalyptic continent.

  Everything was there in her mind, every detail, every word, heard, seen, or spoken. Mostly she ignored the memories, compartmentalizing them into a different part of her consciousness, like closing the door on a rowdy party so she could focus on what was happening now. When she slept she would walk the endless maze of rooms in her mind, reliving events, conversations, and things that, at the time, she didn’t understand. This review was not a dream; it felt like analysis of memories, and they were legion.

  They spent the night in Mary’s café, Eric, Rache, and the others insisting that it seemed like a safe place to rest. Else agreed. The need she had to move south, to tread the ways she had come months earlier, gnawed at her and she could not determine why.

  She slept, walking the halls of memory, turning over things and rereading old books. A presence startled her. Without waking, she turned in her mind and saw the ghostly figure of the Courier again. She immediately went to the memory of what she had seen walking towards her in the rain.

  “You are dead,” she told the phantom in her subconscious.

  “Dead doesn’t mean what it used to,” the vision replied.

  “This is not a memory,” Else insisted.

  “No, it’s not. This is me and you Else. Just like it was.”

  Else felt a surge of conflicting emotions surge through her. The colors around her flared angry in red and orange shades. “You went away!” It burst out of her in a howl of raw grief.

  The Courier nodded. “You know I had to. We saved the world. At least, what’s left of it.”

  “There are still evols,” Else reminded him.

  “No shit.”

  “Why am I seeing you? Why now?” Else restored her emotions and began to analyze the experience.

  “Remember the connection you had with the dead? The way you could feel them?”

  Else shivered. “Of course.”

  “Well, I died with a bloodstream full of your genetically engineered cells. I was the poisoned chalice that Adam drank, and it destroyed him. It left me like an evol, but like you as well. Dead, but not dead, my body buried under a blank grave marker, with my mind able to access the same necrotic network that the Adam virus created.”

  “You are the new Adam?” Else bristled.

  “No. There are others, though. In other parts of the world. We won the battle, Else, but not the war.”

  “Why haven’t you spoken to me before?” Else
asked.

  “I was laying low, thinking things through, working out what I can do. I’ve avoided making contact with evols; the last thing we need is for them to be organized again. But you are close enough now, within the range of my perception. When you sleep you are more open to transmission.”

  “We made a baby,” Else said.

  “Well, kinda. I’m pretty sure Doctor Preston and her fellow Frankensteins used my sperm sample to impregnate you while they were rejigging your DNA. Which is what I wanted to warn you about.”

  “What do you mean, warn me? My son is going to be okay, right?”

  “Yeah, the kid is more you than me genetically. He’s going to be around for a long time. You’re heading towards the old convent, aren’t ya?”

  “Maybe,” Else said.

  “Well when you get there, look out for Donna-fucking-Preston. She sent an expedition back to Woomera, recovered a lot of data, computer systems, and fifteen frozen zygote clones of me.”

  “She can bring you back?” Else’s voice was filled with hope.

  “Hell no, just clones. You know, genetic copies. C’mon, Else, you’re smart. Think about why she would want to start a new cloning program . . .”

  “She wants to fulfill the original parameters of the project making super soldiers?”

  “Bingo,” the Courier’s image said. “Arrogance is an ugly trait in anyone. But in a geneticist with access to advanced cloning technology and no one to tell her it’s a stupid idea, it’s fucking scary.”

  Else frowned, “The sisters, they will help us. They were building a new community. That is why I need to take these people there.”

  “You saw how that was changing, even when we came back through. Sister Mary was beating her plowshares into swords and shit. With Donna talking in her ear about a new master race, I’m not sure you are going to find what you are looking for.”

  “There is nowhere else to go,” Else said.

  The shape of the Courier looked down at the swirling floor. “There really isn’t. Fuck, Else. If you could have you shoulda stayed in the rainforest. With this lot hanging on you’re screwed.”

  Else lifted her chin. “They are my responsibility. I brought them off the ship. The ones who have joined us since, they just don’t want to be alone anymore. They believe in Rache’s leadership.”

  “Just watch your back,” the phantom said, fading into a memory of rain.

  * * *

  By the time the road turned west, a convoy of twelve vehicles rolled down the highway. Five of them were running on salvaged diesel, three on homemade methanol, and the remaining four were cut-down car chassis drawn by horse teams. The people going to Mildura now numbered over a hundred.

  Food continued to be the biggest problem. Else wanted to keep moving, but the need to find sustenance for such a large group meant that days traveling were lost waiting for hunting parties to come back with enough meat, scrounged vegetables, and fruit for everyone.

  Else wrote everyone’s names in a book, along with what skills they had. Most were useless in the new world, office and shop workers. Some were real engineers, two were nurses, and the closest they had to a doctor was a woman who had been a third-year medical student when the Great Panic started.

  Rache’s reading improved and she took over the management of the group. Else wanted as little to do with the day-to-day organizing as possible. Her response to the endless questions was always the same: “Ask Rache.”

  Hob’s wound healed and the girl Anna watched him constantly. He tried to ignore her, but anytime he swore or was too slow to follow an order from anyone, Anna would whack him across the back with a stick.

  He tried complaining to Rache, who reminded Hob that he belonged to Anna now and she could do whatever she wanted with him.

  Else listened in on that conversation but didn’t say anything. Slavery was not going to help their future survival, but the purpose of punishment was to create aversion to crime.

  She noted that Anna never mistreated Hob. The girl let him ride in the back of a truck, usually sitting at her feet. He was allowed to sleep, eat, and squat when he needed to relieve himself. It was only when he started showing aggression that she would hit him. The training paid off. Hob stopped cursing everyone out and did what he was told, but only when Anna nodded her assent.

  The final change with Hob came one rainy evening when the group was huddled under tarpaulins and in salvaged tents. A hunting party had been out since early morning and were yet to return. The two brothers, Michael and Sam, were proving their worth by bringing back butchered cows, sheep, and kangaroos. They had moved away from rifles and started hunting with bows. Now both of them could hit a fist-sized target at over a hundred paces with deadly accuracy.

  Else was rocking the baby to sleep in a car seat. They used infant car seats for all the little ones now. Even when you were traveling at no more than ten miles an hour, it made her feel safer.

  A shout came from the perimeter, where guards were on the constant lookout for evols. Leaving Cassie to watch the babies, Else stepped out of the tent, gun in one hand, blade in the other. Eric came splashing past, water streaming from his hair and beard.

  “It’s Sam, something’s wrong with him,” Eric said, running to fetch the nurses and the girl they called Doc.

  Else found a crowd gathering around Sam and Michael. Michael had carried his brother in his arms for several hours to get back to camp. A quick examination showed no signs of evol bites on either of them.

  “What happened?” Else asked.

  “I dunno. He said his stomach was hurting, then he couldn’t walk and he fell over. I couldn’t get him to stand up again.”

  “Bring him to the big tent,” Helen the nurse called through the rain. Else helped the others lift the stricken boy and they carried him in out of the weather.

  Doc arrived. She was a petite Asian girl with a short haircut and scars on her arms that she kept covered with long sleeves. She examined Sam, looking concerned when she palpated his lower right abdomen and he moaned.

  Only Else, Eric, Michael, and Rache remained in the tent. “I think it might be appendicitis,” Doc said.

  “You can fix him, right?” Rache asked.

  Doc shook her head, “That would require surgery. I don’t . . . have those skills.” She looked close to tears. “I keep telling you, I’m not a doctor, I was just a medical student.”

  “What about the nurses?” Eric suggested.

  Else shook her head, “They never worked in surgery either.”

  “Fuck,” Eric muttered, casting a sideways glance at Michael, who stood shivering and dripping water in the tent.

  “Is my brother going to die?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Doc said. “I’m sorry, but there is nothing we can do.”

  “Sam . . .” Michael said and moved to where his brother lay on the tent floor.

  They left the two boys alone, everyone else moving out into the rain to talk about the case.

  “It’s not your fault,” Else said to Doc. The girl nodded, rubbing her sleeves in an anxious gesture.

  “Those dead things are just one of the many ways to die these days,” Doc said. “Disease, injury, a simple infection. All of it will kill the strongest of us.” She fell silent as Anna and Hob approached. Hob was on a thin rope leash, like a dog, and he didn’t look at all happy about it. Anna tugged on the leash. “Sit,” she said. Hob scowled but sank down to kneel in the mud.

  “I heard that Sam was hurt. Is he okay?” Anna asked.

  “He’s sick, appendicitis Doc reckons,” Eric said.

  Anna looked around the grim faces. “You can help him though, right?”

  “He’s going to die,” Else said.

  “He can’t . . .” Anna insisted.

  “There’s nothing we can do. He needs surgery and there’s no way we can do that,” Doc said.

  “I can save him,” Hob muttered.

  Anna whipped him with the end of the rope leash. “D
id I say you could speak?”

  “Hang on,” Else said. “What did you say, Hob?”

  Hob scowled at the mud and remained silent.

  “Make him answer,” Rache demanded. Anna lifted the end of the rope.

  “Alright, alright,” Hob said. “I can save the kid.”

  “He probably has appendicitis. How are you going to save him?” Doc asked.

  “Surgeon,” Hob muttered.

  “What?” Rache asked.

  “I’m a veterinary surgeon,” Hob said and then dropped his head to glare at the mud again, as if embarrassed by the admission.

  “What does that mean?” Rache asked, looking at the others in confusion.

  “It means he could, maybe, save Sam’s life,” Doc said.

  “Yeah, maybe I could. But I’ll only do it if you agree to my conditions.”

  “Like fuck,” Rache snarled. Else waved her to silence. Stepping forward, she loosened the noose around Hob’s neck and dropped it in the mud.

  “Stand up, come inside and take a look at Sam. If you think you can save him, then we’ll talk.”

  Hob wiped the water from his face and walked into the tent, a smirk darting around his lips.

  * * *

  Hob sat back on his haunches. “It’s appendicitis. I can operate, but not here. We need to get him somewhere clean, with supplies and boiled water and shit like that.”

  “Okay,” Else said. “We can move him, right? If we are careful.”

  “You’d better be quick, otherwise he’ll die,” Hob said.

  “Eric! Rache!” Else called them in. “Get the SUV, empty it and make room for Sam. We need to get him to the nearest town or farm or somewhere.”

  Rache slipped outside, calling to people to come and help. Within five minutes Sam was being lifted into the back of the SUV. Eric got in behind the wheel, Doc took the passenger seat, and Hob sat in the back with the patient.

  Else stood back while the vehicle turned out of the field they were camping in and headed back up the highway. Anna came and stood next to her, Hob’s leash trailing on the wet ground.