by Miles Hurt
'Well, you know,' said Clarezza. 'Obligation to the Hive Mother and all.'
'Yeah, I've managed to dodge that so far,' said Nyx. 'I don't think the Hive see me as parent material. Plus my pad isn't very safe for a little one, what with all of the naked flames in my spell laboratory.'
There was something about the way he said 'naked flame' I didn't like. He struck me as the sort who got girls to come back to his 'pad' by offering to show them his Bunsen burner. Hit them with a few suggestive incantations, stroke the spines of a couple of grimoires. Then out with the wand.
There was an awkward silence.
'Well,' said Clarezza, 'we should let you get back to your table.'
'Why don't you join us?' he asked her.
'Really?' she said looking over at the busy table. 'Your friends wouldn't mind?'
'No! They're really relaxed. You should meet these guys.' He lowered his voice, cast a look at the table of workers near the window. They had their proboscises stuck into tall glasses filled with alcoholic nectar. 'Some of them have got some pretty good ideas on how to shake things up.'
I rolled my eyes. Another revolution in the works. Clarezza looked at me.
'You don't mind, do you Pops?'
I shrugged, started to rise. She put her hand on my arm.
'I'll only be a little while,' she said.
I froze, about an inch off my seat. Gary started to cry again.
'I just want to catch up on what Nyx has been up to,' she said. 'You'd be bored. Adventurer stuff.'
Nyx winked at me.
'No problem,' I managed to say. 'The pizza probably won't be long.'
'Great,' Clarezza said, slipping away from the table. 'See if you can settle Gary down to sleep.'
I smiled at her, slumping back onto my seat. Sure, I thought. Have a chat to your new friends, your hip young crew. Leave old Pops holding the larva.
Gary chose that exact moment to shit himself, shooting a squish of green goo all down my turtleneck.
Returning from the baby change room with Gary tucked into a sling on my chest, I thought for sure Clarezza would be back at our table. But no, she was holding court at Nyx's, the entire crew leaning in as she related some riveting anecdote, no doubt from one of her quests. She looked like she was about to start autographing copies of her book.
Even when our pizza arrived she didn't return. I tried to make eye contact, holding up a hot pepperoni slice dripping with cheese in her general direction. She ignored me, nibbling at the communal garlic bread at the other table and looking at Nyx with shining eyes.
I ate alone, Gary falling asleep in the sling. I piled Clarezza's share onto my plate in a vain attempt to make it look to the other people in the restaurant that I'd planned to have dinner for one. After the waiter took away our plates, giving me a pitying look, I lingered over a solitary glass of beer. Still the elf maiden didn't excuse herself.
The restaurant started to empty. The workers staggered out into the street, their wings buzzing. Nyx's table didn't show signs of slowing down, ordering more group nibblies and bottles of wine.
I had to act. I rose, sweeping Gary's little plastic toys into his nappy bag and lifting it over my shoulder. With Gary still fast asleep in his sling, I approached the table.
'Ahem.'
Clarezza jumped a little in her seat.
'Pops!' she said. 'I thought you'd left.'
Nyx adopted a sheepish, sorry-to-be-embarrassed-for-you expression and took a slow sip of his wine.
'Just going now,' I said, trying to sound upbeat. 'Are you ready?'
'Oh,' she said. She looked around the table, which fell silent. 'I wasn't planning to. We've just ordered some dessert. The twice-baked butterscotch brioche bread pudding is meant to be amazing.'
'Oh, okay.' I said. I stood there like a bump on a log.
'You should head home, Pops,' she said. 'You look beat. Plus Gary needs to go down in his hexagon.'
There was hardly a sound in the restaurant. It was if the whole place had rejected me and was waiting for me to take the hint.
'Fine,' I said.
I left.
Clarezza didn't come home that night. Or at all. I heard on the grapevine that she'd shacked up with old purple robes, the dick.
I wouldn't have minded so much if Gary was there to lend me comfort. But he created a chrysalis for himself that night, moving on to the next phase of his life cycle. By the time he'd metamorphosed into a drone and emerged from his shell, he'd forgotten who I was. I'll never forget the emotionless look in his compound eyes as he left. A crew of workers came around to pick him up, and that was that. Not even a thank you.
That's what you get for projecting your affections onto a cold and emotionless being. Heartbreak.
And Gary wasn't much better, either.
EIGHTEEN
I pop the door of the cupboard open a fingerwidth. Motes of dust swirl in an acute shaft of afternoon light. I must have nodded off for an hour or so.
Grandpa nap. I yawn, crawling out onto the floor.
The townhouse I'm hiding in is prime real estate, despite being picked over by scavengers. High ceilings, a few rugs on the floor, heavy wooden furniture too big to steal and not yet chopped into firewood. Maybe I'll see if I can shack up here when things settle down a bit.
I want to get moving, get back before night falls. They won't let me into the Nest if I'm late. Sunset can only be a couple of hours away now. I have to take a risk that the winged thing has moved on.
And besides, I'm famished.
I can't go on for much longer without a feed, and I ate my entire field ration for morning tea. I should have saved something. I overheard the snake-boys back at the Nest talking about a new kiosk, in the Rams football stadium. It's a little suburban ground, just near here. I'll have to chance it.
I leave the townhouse and head down the quiet, leafy street. Overgrown window boxes, smashed glass. A few burned out shells of cars. The kind of place you could raise a family.
A block or two later and I find it; the Elk Mild Stadium. Dad took me there a few times when I was a kid to see the Rams play. Lovely old wooden stands rising up above the trees, faded Elk advertising hoardings hanging high.
The turnstile creaks as I push through. I feel an odd hit of guilt at not paying to get in.
I come through the standing room section underneath the grandstand, the afternoon sun spilling down before me. Rows of seats, then the white picket fence, and beyond that the field. When I was a kid the grass was so smooth and flat you could have rolled a cat's eye marble across it. Now it's gone wild and long. A small herd of deer is on the far wing, heads low, munching away. That's where Hayden Magee used to roam.
I walk under the stands for a bit, circling the field. Enjoying the pleasant feeling of nostalgia. But this is the kind of daydreaming that can get you killed. I snap out of it when I spot some humans.
It's always an odd moment. If we bumped into each other in an alley, if we were all going for the same chicken bone in a rubbish bin, then without question there'd be trouble.
But there's a tiny bubble of civilization down here. As I come around a concrete pillar, the kiosk opens up before me. There's one guy working a little cart in the standing room, a scattering of makeshift tables and chairs all around. Some people are sitting on milk crates, eating food with chopsticks from wooden bowls. I've come across a decent posse of scavengers.
They are all wearing improvised armour; plastic shoulder guards, leather vests, gloves. Their armour is black, bedazzled with a few tough-looking nails and spikes and bits of chain. Meant to be intimidating, but coming off as a bit ludicrous. A little bit contact sports meets S&M.
The bandits give me suspicious looks as I approach. I make sure they can see the plasma rifle slung over my shoulder. They continue to eat, watching me like rival animals sharing a watering hole.
One thing about Rambunculans is that they are quick to look for an economic opportunity. No matter what happens, like an an
t hill that is repeatedly kicked, the people get straight back to putting things right. And back to trying to turn a dollar. Even if they need to risk their necks to do so.
The proprietor of the little kiosk is a steel-haired chap, just shy of seventy, his muscled body sweating in a black singlet. He briskly cleans a wok with a metal prosthetic arm. He winks when he sees me.
'I hope you like chicken fried rice, my friend,' he says. 'Because it's all I've got.'
'Chicken?' I raise an eyebrow.
'That's what I'm calling it.' I relax a little at his smile.
'Hit me.'
The fried rice guy drops a few wilted veggies into a wok, tips in a skerrick of pink meat, and turns up a blue flame. He pops open a rice steamer, a waft rising up.
'You sell drinks, too?' I ask.
'Got a can of cola if you want it.'
I dig a coin out of my pocket and hand it to him. He turns it over, examining the relief. It's a snake coiled into the shape of an 'R'.
'What's this? Looks like a phony adder.'
'This is legit. Cobra, worth fourteen adders. New one.'
He nods, impressed.
'Guess I owe you some change, then.'
You get all sorts of currency in these transition periods. The other day I found a type of coin I didn't recognise, minted Sod-knows-when. It had an image of a giant duck roosting on top of a sky scraper. Harder to pass than a plastic tank from a packet of Weet-Ohs.
I get an odd feeling of familiarity from the fried rice guy. Maybe because he's the friendliest person I've met since the Mongoose rebels took up arms.
The kiosk owner runs an appraising eye over me as he works the wok.
'What line of work are you in, friend?' he asks. 'You don't look like a scavenger to me.'
I shrug.
'I'm kind of an independent contractor.'
I can tell he's taking in my grey hand-me-down military jacket, my gun. Thinking about my freshly minted cobra. But he's too polite to come right out and ask who I'm working for.
He scoops the veggies and rice into a brown bowl, pours a dash of a brown liquid from an old plastic bottle onto it.
'Enjoy, my friend,' he says, handing it over with the can of cola.
I take a seat with my back to the concrete of a toilet block. I eat, and recognise the metal-armed vendor.
Travis Burlap.
He used to be a poet.
NINETEEN
I've forgotten so many details of my life. But for some reason, the words to Burlap's poem 'Red Jelly' have stuck with me.
Red jelly
on a plate
flit
flat
flummox
I need to think
about my waste-line.
Powerful stuff. And then there was the seminal classic 'Toasted Sandwich':
My day depends upon
a toasted sandwich
ham and cheese
with pickle...
do I dare to add mustard?
The kind of poems that seems infused with significance when chanted into a microphone in a packed jazz bar. But after you've shelled out nineteen bucks at the book launch for a copy, and you're reading the poems the next day on the toilet, they seemed to lose their lustre. In fact, they seemed a bit stupid. It made you think he cooked them up at the bus stop, wrote them down on the back of a ticket and called it art.
The book launch. Larry Fettuccine, the editor of Slightbulb Books, printed Travis's slender volume with the press in a little office upstairs from the bar. Travis was very young, eighteen or something. He may have been Fettuccine's lover. There was some kind of scandal attached to the publication that sizzled in the newspapers and boosted the turnout at the launch. But perhaps it was just an unkind rumour somebody started to create some buzz. And by 'somebody' I mean 'Pops Allsop'.
The book launch was a great night. People were packed right in to the back. A very in-the-know crew. Rambunculan literati.
They hung on every line, guffawed at every half-joke. Larry manned the stall next to the door, managed to sell every last copy of the book. I lurked behind the bar, soaking it in. I felt like Allsop Records was the centre of Rambunculous, the centre of the world.
And the after party was amazing. An impromptu jam session started when Bips Budheimer hopped onto the house baby grand, ripped into an up-tempo version of 'It's Not Quite Healed'. Two or three players jumped up on horns and skins. Someone tried to tap dance on a table; they crashed to the floor. Laughter, drunkenness. Everyone having a great time.
Rowena was clutching her copy of Travis Burlap's book, sitting on the bar with her legs crossed. She was smiling, face aglow from drinking red wine.
'I can sign that for you if you like,' I said to her. She put one arm around me in a friendly drunk kind of way, gave me a heavy-lidded smile.
'You?' she said. 'What was your involvement?'
'Inspiration,' I said. 'I inspire others to be great.'
She laughed. A protracted blues jam collapsed and everyone cheered. Rowena clapped, knocking my head around and spilling wine on my shirt.
'Oops,' she said. Not sorry.
'Seriously, though, do you want to see it?' I asked her. She raised an eyebrow, then glanced down.
'I've seen it, Pops,' she said.
'The book, I mean.'
She held her copy up to my face in a 'you're looking at it' kind of way.
'Not that,' I said. 'The plates. They're still upstairs with the printing press. I've got a key.'
'You want to leave your bar in the hands of these hyenas?'
I looked around. Things were messy, but I judged by the amount of people beginning to pass out in the darker margins that things would slow down soon. I grabbed a bottle.
'Let's go.'
We tripped on the narrow stairs and got tangled up together. Rowena started giggling beneath me. I kissed her, then picked her up, dragging her along with me. We burst into the dark office. I couldn't find the light switch, but a string of lozenge-yellow street lamps lit the place fine. Boxes of books, Larry's desk a mess, framed covers of other titles on the walls. In the corner, the press with its bed of type still laid out, the cylinder with a fresh sheet of paper suspended above it.
This magnificent machine was smashed up and chucked to the bottom of the Slowcrawl River by the philistine General Zirconia during his humourless reign. But not before Rowena and I made use of it.
We did it on the edge of the bed of type, our skin smudging with ink, a thousand metal letters imprinting into my arse. I could still feel the indentations with my fingertips the next day. Beat poetry hot off the press.
Smiling, holding hands, we went downstairs. Things had cooled. Budheimer was playing a very gentle ballad to half a dozen quiet punters gathered around the little stage on wooden chairs. I sat in a booth with Rowena leaning against me, her head resting on my chest. I was filled with a blurry feeling of music and love. I was never happier before or since.
Then the world turned, and the sun came up.
The last to leave that perfect night, Rowena and I walked out into the sunlit lane. A yellow light was reflected in the rectangles of windows down the canyon of buildings. And at the horizon, the sun was rising as though through a gap in a monolith. Everything was aligned.
Then a piece of the sky broke away and fell, shattering my world.
A meteor plunged across the skyline, trailing smoke and fire. Rowena's hand clenched mine. The meteor disappeared, and I looked into her eyes.
Then the explosion. A pulse of energy that shattered every window in the street. Glass came down in a rain.
We ducked beneath the awning of the bar, huddled together.
The booming sound wave swept along Qwerty Lane, a horrid wall of noise that made my ears shriek with pain. Glass and rubbish was whipped up. Dust. Rowena was shouting something. Her face was cut, bleeding.
'-do something!'
'What?!' I yelled.
The lane was quiet again. I looked to th
e sky, and saw more meteors falling, smoke trails reaching like tentacles from the depths of space. More destruction on the way.
'Bunker o'clock,' I said.
'We have to help,' said Rowena. 'People will be hurt. Dying.'
Already the city was on fire. My city, which burned and shook and was invaded and flooded and attacked. My city, which was peaceful for two years, two measly years in my long life. As though it was waiting, waiting for me to be happy, not just content, but blissfully happy before it started to rain down shit.
'Pops!'
Rowena was trying to drag me down the lane.
'Rowena,' I said, 'we need to hide. We could die out here!'
Her face creased, pleading.
'But we can help others,' she said.
'I only care about us,' I said. 'About surviving.'
She was confused.
'You want to run from this?' she asked.
Another shock wave blast made us stagger, almost fall. We propped ourselves against the glass sign of Allsop Records.
'You see?' I said. 'We-' Another hurricane of sound hit us, cutting me off. I sought the words that would convince her to flee, to not be brave.
A small meteorite plumed into a building farther down the lane. The building crumbled, came down like a child's block tower.
'Pops...' Rowena was crying, her face pleading. 'We can help.'
'We need to help ourselves,' I said, gripping her arm.
Another meteor passed overhead, aligning with the rising sun; the cosmic moment that marked the end of things.
The sun shone again, through a haze of dust.
'Run!' I yelled, letting go of her.
I saw the look in her eye as I moved away. I know she heard me, but she didn't move. The street exploded behind her.
I ran. All the way to the nearest bunker.
Rowena didn't follow.
When I emerged from the bunker, I found that another meteorite had obliterated my bar. There was nothing left but rubble.
I knew early on that Rowena hadn't died. I spotted her on the news the next night, working in triage at the Outer Slocking shelter. So I knew where she was. But I didn't seek her out.
