by Jeff Kamen
~O~
‘Keep going!’ Pétar yells, and behind him the stark woods are disappearing under the onslaught. Heeding his words, Jaala runs on crying out for Anya, looking back to see individual tree tufts smoking at the tips, hundreds of frail and lonely pinnacles dissolving.
Pétar comes abreast of her and they run ahead of the hunters’ vehicles, the child she is holding to her chest jostling limply, barely conscious. They take another turning and continue downhill, passing abandoned belongings, bodies lying in the grass, bleeding and wounded. Anya is all she can think of but to turn back now would be to kill herself and all those caught up with her. On they run.
Out to the east, heavy waves are breaking over the clifftops. She sees burning fuel cascading down the horns and sockets of the massive rockface, flames erupting in its myriad eyes and running hot and bright down countless fissures towards ledges and rock formations below. Streams of fire that torque and spit and lengthen, falling with a steady flicker into deep chasms long hidden and lightless. Flames descending with a bright infernal spattering and the dry creepers like chains of hanging hair blackening and writhing. Behind them the burning is an ongoing roar. People are dying in droves, lost in screams of a hellish discordance.
Her people. ‘Keep to the road!’ she cries, seeing a greyclad figure go stumbling on the rocks, and together they head for the wastes, running to a world that few of them have ever known. Running to the cooler air and away from death and towards their comrades scattering across the wilderness. Running with cries of terror and agony, the desert trembling in every quarter, lit to the horizon by the torch of alien fires.
Chapter 37 — Smoke Searching
‘Everything went black after that. We could see the fires behind us but nothing else. We had to light lamps before we could do anything.
I looked for Annie everywhere. She was always so practical. I kept thinking, we’ve got hundreds of people here, surely she’ll turn up in a minute, helping, making sure everyone’s okay. Then we began to move away. I thought, wait, she isn’t here, I just had that feeling. And I panicked, I did something stupid. You know me … how things are. It’s easy to say it wasn’t me doing it, but it was. I did what I’d been telling others not to do, I ran back towards Ansthalt. I was shouting for her, I thought if she could hear my voice she’d know which way to go, even if she couldn’t reply. I didn’t see where the lamps were going, I just stayed out there, running and calling, bumping into people. There was still a lot of noise then, you could hear the fires in the distance, but also there was a lot of noise around me. There were animals running loose, carts moving, people screaming, crying.
I think the worst thing is knowing I might have been so close to her, only unable to see her. I think about that a lot. Anyway, I was … it reached a point where I was feeling sick. It was the smoke, you couldn’t breathe. Everyone was choking. I thought, any minute I’m going to have to turn back, but I kept going towards the glow … just a bit more, just a little, I kept thinking it won’t be long, surely everyone came together. Then there was no one there. Just suddenly. It sounded … clouded. Even the fires sounded different, thick, not like before. I tried to shout again but my voice was going.
Then I heard people coming. It was a big group, all gathered round a wagon, everyone holding onto it so they wouldn’t get split up. I asked if they’d seen her and someone said they’d seen her with Staš. They wouldn’t stop, they knew they’d die if they did, and I stood there in the dark and I thought, that’s it, that’s all I need to know, she’s with Staš, she’s safe, it doesn’t matter where they’ve gone. They could have gone out west, it didn’t matter. So I caught up with the wagon. We went on until we heard people ahead and it was the others, the group I’d left. I don’t think they even knew I’d gone. I met up with Pétar and we kept everyone going the best we could, to get out of the smoke. I’m not sure how long we went for, but it was quite a while.
The first time we rested I remember saying we need to count everyone, we need to know how many are here. I got some help, and between us we made it nearly three hundred people. When I knew that, I started thinking she must be with us. You know, asleep, or sick. In the back of a cart or something. Makes you realise what you’ll hold onto. Just to believe, keep going. Then we moved on, just like before, we had to get away. The next time we did a count, maybe a couple of hours later, there was ninety missing. Ninety. Maybe they got separated from us, or maybe they just fell. I don’t know how it happened, some of the hunters were at the back to keep watch and they didn’t see anything. There was no way to know.
When I heard the numbers I kept quiet. It sounds bad, doesn’t it. Put like that. The reason was, if I’d made it known to everyone, we’d have lost others, too. There’d have been people wanting to go back for the missing. To look for them. That’s one of the hardest things. When I think of that moment. Thinking she was one of the ninety, and I let her go.’
Chapter 38 — Predators
‘This is Lütt-Ebbins, do you read me?’
He released his thumb and waited again, muttering in growing agitation. The foothills were fading from view as the smog came drifting from the north, the world a yellowing haze out there, away from the black retreats engulfing Ansthalt.
‘This is an emergency call to any agent of GRIP or any leader who has taken control of the City. There are two of us overland, topside, currently located somewhere north east of you. Visibility is decreasing and we request immediate assistance. Please send out a reconnaissance party. We’ll continue due south for now.’ He waited another minute before switching off the radio, then turned to Stoeckl to find a large shape facing away from him, feet parted over a spatter of urine.
‘Any luck?’ Stoeckl called.
‘Still dead.’
‘Shit.’
Lütt-Ebbins looked away, eyeing the jagged peaks and hills that broke up the southern skyline. They’d been making good progress so far, but his best estimate still put them a day out from home. He thought back through Vonal’s instructions but could not remember what he’d said about the radio other than to take it with him. He tried a few dials, studied it. It was a police radio. The lights indicated that it worked but nothing else. When Stoeckl came towards him he switched it off, saying, ‘We’re too far out to pick up a signal. That must be it.’
‘Still?’
‘Must be. They could have heard me okay, maybe even yesterday, but there’s no way to tell.’
Stoeckl collected his pack from the ground and shouldered it. ‘So what do we do? Go straight on?’
‘For now, yes. I’ll leave it a few hours. Save the batteries.’
Although it was early afternoon it seemed it would not be long before dark returned. The smog was rolling in quickly. They set off at a challenging pace, taking few breaks and drinking from their supplies in measured sips and keeping talk to a minimum. In the swirling twilight they picked a path through the burnt glass and the cracked and powdery slabs of an earlier world and tried the radio again at the top of a rise, but met with no response.
Tramping down into a shallow trench they dropped their things and made camp with their backs to a blotted-out panorama fringed with heavy smoky tresses. The smog overhead was thickening, depositing a fine oily soot that stained the skin on contact. They built a fire from the dry brush they’d stuffed into their packs as they’d gone along, and once it was crackling, Stoeckl went out to look for more substantial fuel while Lütt-Ebbins stirred them a paste to eat.
A while later, Stoeckl returned with some odds and ends of wood and tangles of dead plants. He sat sombrely and fed the fire. Then they ate, Lütt-Ebbins watching the low flames between his ruined shoes and Stoeckl planting his bare feet in the dirt as though to soothe them.
In time the fire sank to a basketry of wires that breathed and incandesced and breathed again, the evening falling in a coppery haze over the foothills and so unlike the blackness to the north that it was like peering through to the skies of another world
, somewhere safe and wholesome and better. In these worsening conditions they did not dare lower their masks for more than a minute at a time, so when they fell to talking they had to make the effort to speak clearly through their filters. They’d long reached the end of their speculation about what awaited them at home and instead spoke of their families, people they’d lost in the fighting. Lütt-Ebbins uttered his words in continued discomfort. He couldn’t shake it off, nor in many ways wished to. Always that eerie figure hovering at the corners of his sight, watching him from behind a pair of fire-damaged goggles. A figure now built of wax and cloth, smouldering as it jerked around.
The thin flames bent and twisted and he watched them grievingly. Wishing for so many things; for his old friend to have found peace at last, some kind of solace.
Then a thought came to him as he went back through his friend’s possible motives. Whilst it was true that he might have simply opted for self destruction, something jarred him about it. Didn’t sit right.
He thought of that well-rehearsed scribbled note. Could he have known about the colossi? Had he in fact sacrificed himself, knowing something that no one else suspected? Would never even guess at? Would never believe? Was this the secret? This the cause of that double life? He tried to recall his friend’s final words and gestures, anything to suggest the terrible weight of knowledge burdening him. Had the fire been some kind of warning?
Had he known that something so awful was about to occur, he had frightened everyone away? Given them no choice?
Saved them, in fact?
Son of prominent scientists ...
Observer of esoteric documents from an early age ...
Quiet thinker ...
No one would never know.
He looked to the north as if seeking counsel of some kind, but the sight of the smoke just compounded his problems, and with a quiet sigh, he did what he could to let it go and instead focussed on what Stoeckl was saying.
Eventually it was time to sleep. They’d seen nothing move in the wastes throughout the journey, and on agreeing to make do without a watchman, they wrapped themselves in blankets and lay staring at the darkness and the pitted stars beyond.
‘You don’t think …’ Stoeckl said, rolling onto his side, ‘you don’t think the radio’s dead because of those … things?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well. You don’t think any of them could’ve got to the City somehow?’
Lütt-Ebbins folded his spectacles and placed them face up in the ash. ‘I doubt it. Not those ones, at any rate. You saw the fire. Seemed to kill them outright.’
‘Well, yes. Apart from the last one. And we don’t know what else was under there.’
‘True. But the ones we saw were on fire, that’s all I’m saying.’
Stoeckl checked his valve reading, then lay back again, his blond hair almost black with grime and his eyes hollow in their dirt-rimmed sockets. ‘So you think we’ll be okay?’
‘I’d like to think so. I think our main problem will be if the enemy gets organised again. Assuming there’s nothing else to worry about. Ostgrenze’s the main concern, of course. Always was. If we haven’t been able to infiltrate them, we’ll have their entire army to hold back.’ Lütt-Ebbins hesitated, reflecting on his words. ‘I suppose that could be the reason for not hearing anything.’
‘What is?’
‘Our people not wanting to give anything away. Positions. Secrets. Names. There could be complete radio silence at the moment.’
‘So how are they going to hear us?’
‘Let’s just see what the morning brings,’ he said wearily. ‘If the sky clears it’ll be easier to see the entrance in any case. We may not even need the radio.’
~O~
Midmorning, submerged in a sepia gloom, they were rounding the base of a steep bank of sediment when he called Stoeckl back again. ‘Listen,’ he said, holding up the radio.
‘... not your enemy,’ the voice was urging, ‘we do not wish there to be any more lives lost in this campaign to free the people ...’
He tried to pick up another channel but got only slashes of static. He returned to the message to find it was playing on a loop, with no sign that anything else was being broadcast. Once more he gave their position and requested help, then waited. When finally he switched off the radio he returned Stoeckl’s gaze with a tight smile. ‘Better than nothing, I suppose. And don’t forget they may have heard me.’
‘But doesn’t it sound like they’re still fighting?’
‘True. But the right people are in charge now. That’s the difference.’
Stoeckl continued to look at Lütt-Ebbins as he nodded south, towards the peaks of the Ridge.
‘We need to be closer. We could miss the door from out here.’
‘What does it look like?’
‘Not sure exactly, but it’s big. I don’t think we’ll miss it if we’re careful.’
Stoeckl nodded cautiously as he followed him away.
They saw the wagon in the distance later that morning. It was stationed on a huge gritty rise like some outsized toy of wheels and wood. They searched the haze for sign of its occupants and spoke in whispers as they dwelt on what to do. Lütt-Ebbins’ inclination was to ask the owners for help, something Stoeckl was much less certain of, although after a longer discussion he began to come around to the idea. Eventually they reached agreement.
They set off optimistically, but halfway up the embankment Lütt-Ebbins stopped with a raised hand, suddenly nervous, not liking the silence that attended the location. ‘Let’s just wait a minute,’ he whispered, torn, unwilling to deny himself the opportunity to examine such an incredible specimen. An overland craft. The work of minds unfathomable to him. He found himself studying the vehicle with deep fascination: the shape of the heavy spokes, the panelled sides, the thick felt roof overlaid by some kind of flysheet that rippled quietly as it lifted.
‘What are we doing?’ Stoeckl hissed. ‘Are we talking to them or leaving?’
‘I’m just ... I want to wait.’
‘Wait and do what?’
‘Wait and listen. We can do that from here.’
‘No. Let’s go. It can’t be good if you’re thinking that. Let’s go, Lütt.’
‘I know, but what if ...’
‘Please. We don’t know that it’s safe.’
Lütt-Ebbins looked up at the vehicle again, then reluctantly turned away. ‘Probably right,’ he conceded, and catching up with Stoeckl they trod together downhill, both men glancing backwards, he with quiet regret.
They were back on the desert floor again, taking their bearings, when a ferocious bestial screech broke out behind the wagon, followed by a cat-like mewling.
‘What was that?’ Stoeckl gasped, pulling Lütt-Ebbins away by the sleeve.
‘Anim … animals ….’ Lütt-Ebbins replied numbly, swinging his pack over his shoulder before following Stoeckl at a trot. Then they ran. The land ahead of them was composed of sediment of various grades studded with wallowing blocks of concrete, split and weathered. They entered this primitive zone with both men alternating between looking for places to hide and checking behind them as another raw screech broke out.
‘I saw something, I saw something,’ Stoeckl panted, and they ran on as swiftly as the ground would permit them, their breaths coming hard and sharp and the gloomy entrails of smoke swirling and coiling in all directions, conjuring monsters from behind every shadow so that they ran into another and went on again slapping each other and arguing, turning away from a long ridge of ash that would have slowed them down considerably had they tried to ascend it, and yet for all their running, the screeching and mewling seemed to be no further away than when it had started.
‘Wait,’ Lütt-Ebbins insisted, pulling Stoeckl to a stop. ‘Wait.’
They halted, dragging at the filtered air to listen. This time the screeching was nearer.
‘Shit,’ Lütt-Ebbins said. ‘Move, go, let’s move.’
Stoeckl turned to Lütt-Ebbins as they ran on again. ‘The gun,’ he begged, ‘get the gun out,’ and then screamed as a tall muscular figure appeared at the top of the ridge they’d turned away from. It crouched lithely, hissing, observing them with a taut feline intensity.
‘Oh ... oh my …’
‘Keep running. Keep running.’
As they raced away, Lütt-Ebbins glanced back to find it lifting its nose like a creature used to scenting its prey on the wind. It was hairless and very pale, with leathery skin and claws. Its mouth seemed to twitch and drool as it homed in on them, the lips drawing back ferociously as it screeched again, filling the air with its noise so that both men screamed involuntarily and continued screaming as they sprinted, Stoeckl rounding a deep crater and Lütt-Ebbins leaping after him, his mind blank with terror. The screeching stopped midflow but he did not dare find out why. They ran headlong over the broken ground, Stoeckl begging him to shoot it, just shoot and kill it, ran with the mewling accompanying the other noises, and then Lütt-Ebbins checked behind and there was nothing visible on the ridge. For a moment he thought they might be free, might have run just far enough away from the creature to avoid detection, a creature with a narrow face whose familiarity had scared him as much as the noise it had made, for there was something in the creature’s eyes that had more than a hint of Tilsen about it, a Tilsen that was nine feet tall and spattered in dark gouts of blood. Then it came bounding out from behind some rocks not more than twenty yards ahead of them. ‘LÜTT!’ Stoeckl screamed, wrenching aside to change direction, and with a vicious snarl the creature launched itself from its spot, and had barely landed on all fours before it leapt on again, kicking up dust as it reared to an upright posture and began to accelerate using the balls of its long white feet, its great thighs and calves rippling and shuddering as it powered the sinewy load of its body over the ground. It reached Stoeckl in seconds, landing on his back with a screech that burned through the day and burned through Stoeckl’s screams as it dragged him to the ground in search of what it could eat of him.
