by Kage Baker
“Let us bear one another’s burdens gladly. It’s in the Bible. So I’m glad. Where shall I take you?”
“I wanted to get to London. It’s where everyone’s going.”
“I’ve heard it’s about the only place which is still open. What will you do when you get there?”
“Find work. There must be work.”
“Of course there must. Shall we go?” He started pushing her again.
“Diane. My name’s Diane.”
“Owen.”
They worked as a team. As she had said, everyone was heading towards London, and they had left almost everything behind. Looting was illegal, punishable by death; but all the lawgivers had gone to the capital, too.
They only took what they needed. Vegetables from a garden, eggs still warm from a chicken’s feathers, paraffin from an unguarded tank in a farmyard. They ate, without fear. If they had been whole and able and scared of contamination, they might have hesitated. But they both knew that hunger or infections would kill them quicker than cancer might.
One night, drinking bottled beer around Owen’s ridiculously small paraffin cooker, she offered him her sleeping bag.
“I’m fine,” he said, cupping his hands closer to the meager heat.
“That’s not quite what I meant.” She looked around her, at the tiny pool of light they inhabited inside a vast, empty warehouse.
“I . . . Diane.”
“You do love me, don’t you?”
“Yes. Dear God, yes.”
“Then come and lie down with me. There’s nothing on telly tonight.”
He laughed a quiet sad laugh, because she reminded him of everything that was momentarily lost but feared forever gone.
“I’ll hurt you.”
“It’s only my leg.” She reached out and touched his arm. Through the layers of rough, dirty fabric, she could feel him trembling for her. “I know you’ll be gentle with me.”
“I’m filthy.”
“Then let me wash you.” She took off his hat, which was the last thing he did at night—putting it on was the first thing he did in the morning—and pressed her fingers into his thick black greasy hair. With careful maneuvering, she sat behind him and, with a pair of tiny nail scissors, started to trim along the collar line, above the ears.
She blew the shorn hair away, and he shivered at her breath.
She reached around in front of him, and unbuttoned his topcoat, unzipped the fleece he wore underneath. He shrugged them off, slowly. They fell behind him and she pulled them away.
He had a thick sweater on, and two T-shirts. Owen seemed to make up his mind. He took his glasses from his blind eyes and gave them to Diane to put somewhere safe. While she did so, he crossed his arms at the waist and pulled the rest of his top garments off in a single pull.
He smelled of the road, just like she did, but he had the bruises to prove it. His back was marked with a dozen circular bruises, fat and purple, obvious even in the dim light.
“What are these?” She touched one with the tip of one finger, more a caress than an examination.
“Stones. They didn’t break my bones, but they drove me off. I don’t know where I was when it happened: I don’t even know who threw them. Children, I think. There seem to be so many children, and not enough adults to go around.”
She bent over awkwardly and kissed his bruised back, once for every injury. There was hot water in Owen’s little kettle. She mixed it with cold until she could stand to dip a piece of cloth in it and wring it out. She started to wash him, just as she had promised. When she had done his back, he turned towards her.
His fingers found her hair, her ear, her cheek, her neck, and lower, lower.
They made love, slow and serious, to the sound of the wind catching the high warehouse roof, and the murmuring of pigeons sheltering from the night.
They moved on, traveling a little at a time, taking bites out of the distance so that it wouldn’t seem so far. His shoes were worn through, and she found him some new ones. She hesitated to ask him how far he had walked, because his life had started when he had met her, and before that moment there was nothing.
Of course, there were other people on the road, too. Some, like them, were travelers with a purpose; they had either a destination or a loved one to find. They clutched their maps or their photographs like life itself.
Others just drifted, following this rumor or that. There was food and water in a town. There were trucks going to a transit camp. There was a train taking refugees all the way to London. They wandered, despondent, becoming tired and ill for no discernible benefit.
Still more were mad. It was difficult to tell whether they had been driven insane by the things they had seen since the start of Armageddon, or whether they had always been that way. They had nuclear dreams, and shouted and screamed whilst awake.
And then there was Fox.
He was already waiting for them in the prefabricated hut they had chosen for the night. It was in the grounds of a village school, and had been bought as an extra classroom. It was full of little wooden desks and chairs, still set out in orderly rows.
None of the windows had been broken. It was perfect.
Owen carried Diane carefully up the steps to the door. She opened it with her free hand, and guided him in. He felt her stiffen.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“There’s someone else here.”
Fox lit a cigarette, and leaned back in the teacher’s chair. “Plenty of room. I don’t mind sharing.”
“You weren’t here earlier.”
“True, true. Not when you first came in, but what about the night before, or the night before that? I’ve almost been here forever. Not quite true, but places like this, and this place in particular for the past week. But welcome anyway.”
“I’ll get your chair inside,” said Owen. “Is the floor clear?”
“It’s fine. Put me down.”
Owen lowered her gently to the floor, and went back outside to retrieve her wheelchair and their latest scavengings.
“You’ve been in the wars,” said Fox. “But haven’t we all, in the most literal sense?” He leaned forward and opened some drawers at random, riffling through the contents of papers, books, and pencils. He produced a fat black marker pen, and strode down the central aisle towards her. He wore a long weather-beaten leather coat, and brown leather driving gloves, and dusty brown boots.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He knelt down before her, and scribbled “Fox” on her leg cast, just above the bulge of her knee, on the inside of her thigh.
“There,” he said. “It’s done properly, now.”
She looked at him, and pushed his hand away. “You could help Owen.”
He snapped the lid back on the pen. “I could,” he said, tapping his chin, “but that would make you think you owed me something. Do you want to feel obligated to me?”
“No,” she said, and was surprised about how small her voice sounded.
Owen struggled in through the door with her chair. He set it down on its wheels and felt for the brake, to make sure it was properly on.
Fox wandered slowly back up to the head of the class, spinning the pen between his fingers like a majorette’s baton, and Diane hauled herself back into her chair.
He waited until Owen had gone back outside for the bags. “He’ll never see how beautiful you are. Doesn’t that make you sad?”
She looked at her leg, to remind herself of the name. “Fox. Shut up.”
“It makes me sad. A beauty like yours ought to be admired, cherished, worshipped even.” He put the pen back in its drawer. “I’d worship you.”
“You’re a madman.”
“Touched by the heat of a man-made sun? I know perfection when I see it.” He put his finger to his eye. “I see.”
Owen came back up the stairs, carrying two bags. He might not have offered if he could have seen Diane’s body language. “We’ve food enough for three. Will you
join us?”
“I’d be delighted to, old chap. Just like the days of the Savoy and the Ritz; we shall have silver service and a bottle of the finest premier cru champagne. Candles will light our faces, and a string quartet will discreetly play Schubert.”
“I . . . don’t think so. Diane says it’s meatballs in some sort of sauce, and some potatoes we dug up.”
“Then meatballs it shall be. Put the champagne back on ice and crack open a bottle of Bordeaux. Instead of Schubert, we’ll have some robust Romany songs.”
Diane peeled the potatoes, while Owen opened the cans and slopped the contents into one of the integral pans that came with the cooker. She wanted to tell him about Fox, and his strangeness. Every time she thought they were alone, she started to warn him, but Fox would reappear suddenly, startling her and making her clam up.
It transpired that they were never alone for the rest of the evening. She was quiet, almost to the point of rudeness. Owen asked Fox about news of the rest of the country.
“It’s gone to hell in a hand basket, my good man. The stout yeomen of England have abandoned ship, and the stink of fear spreads like a contagious disease. Our blessed government has fenced in London, all the way around the M25. Every soldier who can carry a gun—cooks, bandsmen, the lot—stand shoulder to shoulder behind the wire. There would be a queue from Heathrow to Cardiff, if there was still a Cardiff to queue to, just to get through the gates they’ve built.”
“How do you know this?”
“Know it? This isn’t some third-hand scuttlebucket. I’ve seen it myself. There are three ways into London: the interchanges of the M25 with the M4, the M11, and the M2, and they’re all guarded like they expect Satan himself to try and break through. They strip you, X-ray you, search everything you own, go through every seam of your clothing. They check your identity so thoroughly that some people have confessed to crimes forgotten for half a century. It takes hours, and not everyone gets in. Oh no.”
“Well, we’re heading for London.”
“The whole country, south of Sheffield, is going to London. I wish you luck. I prefer the open road, the clear sky, and the freedom of being at no-one’s beck and call.”
“What about water contamination? And the food will run out eventually.”
“The politicians don’t have a country to run anymore, but they still need subjects to order around and give their lives meaning. So they cram as many as they can behind the barbed wire and the guns—which are there not to keep the Armageddonists out, but to keep their slave population in. They tell you that there will be no police, no hospitals, no bins emptied, no streets swept, no festivals or flower shows, no shops or offices or pubs outside of the M25, and we like sheep follow them as if we can’t exist without such things. People lived off this land for ten thousand years without someone wiping their nose. There’ll always be people outside, people like me, who won’t do as they’re told.”
“Well, I for one like hot baths and penicillin.” Owen yawned, and rested his head in Diane’s lap. She pulled off his hat and stroked his hairline, and soon he was asleep.
Fox sat opposite them, staring.
“They won’t let him in, you know.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. He’s a burden to them. Someone who won’t give, but will get. He’ll take food and shelter away from someone who can see. He’ll be turned away at the gates.”
“And what about me? You think they’ll turn me away too?” Her voice was defiant.
“Not you. You’ve broken your leg. It’s in a cast. It’s probably set by now, strong enough to take your weight. You’re a professional, aren’t you? You’ll be on their favored occupations list. You’ll get in. Easy. You’ll start a new life in London.”
“But not Owen.”
“He’s blind. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
“He’s a physiotherapist. He’s got a better chance of getting in than me, a mere teacher. So you’re wrong, Fox. And in any event, I’d never leave him. We’re going to London together, and we’re going to get in together. I’d do anything for him.”
“Would he do anything for you?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Best thing he could do is just walk off into the night and disappear. He knows you’ll never leave him. He knows he’ll be turned back at the gates and you’ll go with him. He wouldn’t want that. He wants you safe. He’ll tell you, even as they’re pushing him away with the barrels of their guns, that he doesn’t love you, that he used you to try and get him in. Your love for him will finish you both.”
“How can you say such things? That’s hateful.”
“He wants you to live. How long do you think you’ll last outside, away from your hot baths and your penicillin?”
“I’m not going to listen to any more of this. I will never leave Owen. We didn’t find each other by chance. It was destiny. As if the whole of Armageddon had been arranged to throw us together. And now we are together, we won’t let go.”
Fox rubbed the palms of his gloved hands together, then spread them wide.
“I’m just telling you how it is down at the gates. He’ll be the death of you. That would be a not just a shame, but a crime.”
“We’ll be fine. Whatever you say.” She looked down at Owen, his head cradled in her lap. “We’ll be better than fine.”
“You’ll learn,” said Fox, and wrapping his coat around him, he retreated back to the teacher’s desk.
Softly, she whispered to Owen. “I’ll never leave you. Never, never, never.”
When she woke up, Owen was gone. Her head pounded with pain as she sat up. Her vision was blurred and her tongue so thick in her mouth that she could only croak out his name.
He was gone. His bag was gone. Her first thought was that he had been awake during her conversation with Fox, and had been taken in by his ridiculous argument.
He must have heard her say she would stay with him no matter what.
She found a bottle of water, and drank half of it.
“Fox? Fox? Where’s Owen? He’s gone.”
But Fox had gone too.
“Owen?” she shouted, her voice cracking with panic. She pulled herself over to the windows where the bright sunlight streamed in. The sun was well up. She stared at her watch. It was late morning. A fresh surge of anxiety rose up in her throat.
There was no one outside either.
Diane crawled to her chair and clambered in. She’d have to negotiate the steps herself. She’d open the door, push herself out onto the wide landing, then hang on to the guardrails and cast the chair down the steps. She’d follow, easing herself down on her bottom. That’s what she’d do.
She got to the door, and it opened before she could put her hand to the knob.
“Owen!”
It was Fox. “What? I heard a commotion, and I came as fast as I could.”
She swallowed hard on her disappointment. “Owen’s gone, and it’s because of you.”
“Me? I didn’t do anything? How can you blame this on me?”
“Shut up and help me find him. He can’t have gone far.”
“Yes, yes of course. I’ll bounce you down the steps.”
It felt wrong to have Fox behind her, and not Owen. He didn’t know how to handle the chair, his heavy-handed touch betraying his inexperience. He rushed her to the road outside the school. Owen wasn’t there, tapping his way with his white cane.
“How did I sleep so long? He could be a mile away, or more by now.” She took a deep breath and shouted for him again.
“Let’s try left first,” said Fox. “That’s the way to London.”
“No. Go the other way. Go right. If Owen doesn’t think he’s going to get in, he’ll turn back.”
Fox swung the chair around and started north and west at a brisk pace. She kept on calling his name, hoping that he would answer, and she could explain and cling to him with all her might and make him come with her.
They rolled all the way thr
ough the short village, and there was no sign of him. They came up hard against “Westbury welcomes careful drivers,” and she put her head down in despair and wept.
“He’s gone. It’s so stupid, but he’s gone.”
“Gone? No. Stupid? Not that either. It takes someone with brains to pull something like this off. I’m not stupid. I’m cunning. Just like a fox.”
She almost heard him, couldn’t quite make out what he had said through her gasps and sobs. “Why did I have to sleep so late?”
“Because I poisoned the pair of you, you silly cow, that’s why. A bit of ground-up Mogadon in the evening repast, and you slept like babies. Him first, because he was tired, you later because you weren’t.”
“What’s that? Fox?”
“God almighty, don’t you get it? Aren’t you listening? You’re just like the men on the gate. You’re just not listening to me. Your precious Owen’s not gone anywhere except to the toilets at the school. I promised him a real flush loo, and he was so bloody grateful. I imagine he’s washing and shaving, and he’ll wait for me to come and find him.”
Her tears dried on her cheeks. “What have you done?”
“Done? Nothing yet, except get you out of the way. You could scream until your throat bled and he wouldn’t hear you from down here. Why do you think I was in such a hurry to get you away from the school? But when I get back, that’s when I’ll do it. I’ll tell Owen you’ve gone. To London. On your own. That you’ve abandoned him. Oh, he’ll be upset, he’ll want to follow you. I’ll point him down the right road, maybe even go with him for a while. But you won’t be there. You’ll be back here.”
Fox’s voice was hardly his own. He spoke in a harsh growl that was more animal than human. His eyes burned, his skin flushed, his fingers clawed at the air and his feet crushed the ground.
“But I love him.”
“I hate love! I hate it. I can’t bear to see it, sickly sweet, foul and base and vile.” He pulled off one glove and pressed his tainted palm into her face, forcing her head back until her neck ached with the strain. “Do you see that? Do you see? I was turned away at the gate. Rejected, spat out, vomited and shat upon. If you’re rejected, they stain you with an indelible blue dye. That’s it. You’re out. Never coming back. You won’t waste their time again.”
