Among You Secret Children

by Jeff Kamen

  ‘LÜTT!’

  A sob caught in Lütt-Ebbins’ throat as he ran to help. He felt heavier at every moment, his feet sinking in the ash. He had the gun out and his long legs were working like they’d never worked before, pain flashing up the tendons like lightning, and he hurled his pack at the creature and it whumped into the muscle of its back, making it turn and screech at him with such force that thick cords stood out on its neck and its leathery face darkened. A bloodied Stoeckl tried to fight the thing away, screaming, ‘LÜTT! LÜTT! LÜTT!’ and Lütt-Ebbins was almost upon them as he fired the gun. His first shot went wide. Dust erupted in a plume. He fired again. Fired again. The creature swung round baying, Stoeckl’s head caught in the crook of its arm. It screeched once more and Lütt-Ebbins halted, levelling the gun barrel on his raised wrist, and the next shot blew away the left side of its face. He fired once more and there was a hole in its chest. Stoeckl was still screaming as the creature toppled heavily on top of him, and Lütt-Ebbins was running to his aid when a sharp mewling came from behind him. With a moan of dismay he turned round and there was a small naked figure running at him, a boy that was no child at all but primeval and wild of countenance.

  Its open mouth was slavering blood and it ran at him with its little flat hands outstretched and leapt at him clawing. The shot he fired as it bore down on him tore a clump of flesh from its shoulder that sent it spinning away and landing on the ground in a heap. It threw its bald wrinkled skull back in agony. With a hoarse cry he charged at it and kicked it in the jaw. The wrinkled head flew backwards. It tried to crawl away and he fired again and missed and as the boy rolled over as if to turn on him he took the gun by its steel grip and smashed it in the face. It fell back mewling and writhing.

  ‘Lütt!’ Stoeckl screamed again, more faintly now, but Lütt-Ebbins was shaking, ready to fight, one arm of his spectacles projecting sideways from his head. He kicked the boy in the ribs and in the back, kicked him in the windpipe and in the groin and began to stamp on him, yelling now, his thin hair strung with blood where it hung before his eyes. He kicked again, saying things he did not know he could say, wishing death on the creature and worse than death. The boy was crawling in the dirt, howling and mewling and shaking its bleeding head, and he followed it along and smashed the gun barrel into its cheekbone as it looked at him and brought it down again and again until all he could see was blood and a drenched animal snarl beneath it as the boy worked its jaw at him, still mewling, spitting defiantly as it dragged itself away.

  Sickened and exhausted, he let it go. He might have watched it crawl out of sight had he not heard a faint gasp behind him. ‘Stoeckl,’ he whispered, and ran to his friend to find him unmasked and pawing weakly at the dirt, a lost-looking figure expiring beneath the large muscular body that pinned him down.

  ‘Can’t … breathe …’ was the last thing Stoeckl said before he fainted, his teeth stained with his own blood and the creature’s combined. Lütt-Ebbins seized the creature by the wrist, and with a strangled noise began to pull.

  ~O~

  Morning found them sheltered beneath a deep mustard sky shot through with smoke trails. Lütt-Ebbins was sitting on a rock, damp and shivering, the pair of them having travelled as far as they could from where they’d been attacked.

  His calls for help on the radio had finally been answered after sleepless hours of fresh cries and mewls from the unlit wilderness. He still had the gun primed ready to shoot. Stoeckl was cradled in his arms: grey and motionless, but alive.

  Since dawn, a silence with a primordial feel had befallen the world. The sediment drifting through in gentle accidents. He watched birds of a species he could not name wheel and dart over the foothills and the wondrous architecture of their wings turning so effortlessly brought a sullen peace to him. He studied them for long minutes and then a jeep appeared in a storm of dust.

  He counted five occupants in the vehicle, all masked, wearing eyeguards that reflected the rock cavity he’d sought shelter in as the crew acknowledged his position. Riding shotgun at the back was a woman in fatigues with ammunition slung across her body in a weighty bandolier. Two clinicians in aprons sat before her and Vonal was in the passenger seat, grimly lifting a hand. The driver parked close by and the crew jumped out and got straight to work, bringing across a stretcher, a drip feed, a kitbag of medical supplies. The first thing they did on reaching Stoeckl was tear open his jacket. Lütt-Ebbins put his gun away and moved aside to let them continue unimpeded. He watched them blankly, the drips and valve connections and injections. Stoeckl lay motionless throughout, his eyes closed.

  Vonal approached with a carton and held it out. Lütt-Ebbins took it gratefully. He ripped off a corner and took a few mouthfuls. Vonal patted his shoulder, then led him to a rock where they could sit and talk.

  ‘So there were two of them,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, a female and a … a male,’ Lütt-Ebbins said distantly, rinsing out his mask. He let it hang dripping, then shook the last droplets out. ‘The female’s dead. The other, the boy, he made it away, I think.’

  ‘You shot him?’

  ‘Yes. He … he was in a bad way.’

  Vonal peered over his eyeguards, revealing dark bruises. ‘Better make sure,’ he said. ‘Don’t want any more surprises today.’ Signalling to the jeep, he sent the driver and the armed woman out to check the area between their current location and where the attack had occurred. The jeep sped away and was soon just a distant engine drone.

  Lütt-Ebbins drank without speaking, watching the clinicians. They were working with calm professionalism, timing Stoeckl’s pulse, checking readings on a small portable screen. He looked down at his spattered shoes. The dusty bloodstains there. The dried blood darkening his trouserlegs. ‘I did it to save him, Vonal. But it doesn’t feel very good.’

  ‘No,’ said Vonal. ‘I don’t suppose it does.’ He rubbed the dark stubble of his chin, watching as a clinician began massaging Stoeckl’s chest. ‘It’s good to see you again, Lütt. You did well.’

  Lütt-Ebbins regarded him listlessly. ‘Did I?’

  ‘Didn’t you? Seems like you did okay to me. I’m sure the lad there would agree.’

  Lütt-Ebbins poured water into his palm and splashed his face. He sat with the discoloured water dripping. ‘Sorry, Vonal, it’s just been a bit … you know. A bit much.’ After a moment he looked up. ‘I’m glad to see you, too. You had me worried for a while.’

  ‘Yeah, well. We’ve been busy on two fronts. Three if you count rounding up Genetiks.’

  Lütt-Ebbins stared. ‘There’s more of them?’

  ‘Yeah. A load of bombs went off just as we took City Hall. They’d hidden explosives everywhere. We lost some good people, Lütt, some good people. The damage — you can imagine it. Those two things that jumped you were just a part of it.’

  ‘... How do you mean?’

  ‘They came from the research labs apparently. MC. Seemed we’d just turned a corner, then we get hundreds of these things jumping out of the deep freeze, making a run for it. Your two went all the way, broke through the seal. You wouldn’t believe it, Lütt, we’ve been chasing them like mice. You were probably safer out here.’

  Lütt-Ebbins smiled thinly. Then he described to Vonal in detail the creature he’d killed and mentioned the similarity with Tilsen. He asked if he was aware of her involvement in any research trials, but Vonal said he knew only of her police record.

  ‘Wouldn’t put it past her though,’ he muttered. ‘Reminds me. Remember Ischmann?’

  ‘What about him?’

  Vonal adjusted his mask. ‘We had him in the cells a couple of days. This was when we first got back. There were guards and blackjackets and hangers-on all in a lockhouse together making a last stand. They’d managed to overrun the block, said they wouldn’t be taken alive. Reckoned we were all half-breeds, the usual stuff. Anyway, we hit back and thought we had them under control, at least the important ones, then guess what? He had somebody knock him off before w
e could start with the questions.’

  Lütt-Ebbins turned back from watching Stoeckl. ‘Ischmann did that? Really?’

  ‘Gave the guy who did it a screwdriver for some reason. Screwdriver. What did he do that for? What’s wrong with taking a pill?’

  Lütt-Ebbins shook his head.

  ‘Crazy.’ Vonal refitted his eyeguards as if to block out the memory. ‘Funny thing was, someone did a check on the body, and what we thought was Ischmann was just a copy. He’d been cloned.’

  ‘Ischmann?’

  ‘Yeah. I always did think he was one of their golden boys. Seems they couldn’t get enough of him.’

  ‘So where’s the original? Ostgrenze?’

  ‘If he’s still alive. We might know in a few months, or we might never know. We managed to blow the tunnel in, blew it all the way.’

  They spoke for a while longer, Vonal updating Lütt-Ebbins on the uneasy state of truce that existed between the home forces and the estranged colonies to the east and west. It was in the course of discussing this, and the cause of the smoke overlying the wilderness, that Lütt-Ebbins described the creatures he’d seen climbing out of the base. On hearing this, Vonal snatched up his radio. ‘Get me Sachs,’ he said, and Lütt-Ebbins sat listening as Vonal put the insurrection crews on full standby and made arrangements for a forensic search of the City, its cellars and waterways and all its outlying terrains.

  ‘That’s all we can do for now,’ Vonal said resignedly, pushing down the antenna. ‘Let’s hope you saw the only ones they made.’

  The jeep returned within the hour. The woman confirmed there’d been no sightings of the boy in the locality, nor of any other escapees, and the focus turned to getting Stoeckl home for treatment. The med team wanted to wait a little longer before moving him, and continued with a transfusion for another twenty minutes before carrying him to the vehicle. Once there, he was wrapped in foil and placed in the back with lengths of tubing sprouting from him, his body jostling like meat as they drove from those isolated bluffs and headed west.

  The City entrance was hidden from view behind a projecting wall of rock, and it was not possible to see it until they’d travelled past the area and turned back around. On their final approach, the entrance appeared at the top of a long stone ramp leading up from the desert floor, the doorway shaped like a huge black lozenge incised in the rockface. As they slowed, Vonal called ahead to arrange a hospital place for Stoeckl and to get an update on the search.

  ‘Gal’s getting the drinks ready,’ he said on hanging up, and Lütt-Ebbins smiled, scraping the wayward hair from his face as the wind took it.

  It was then that he noticed two striped radio masts housed within a clutch of wire-bound stakes, positioned high on the rugged slopes. He looked at them, then up at the tainted sky, taking in his last sight of the outer world for the present and wondering when he’d next be out in it, able to walk in the daylight as he wished.

  Pulling down his mask to feel the air on his face, he spotted a figure in dark rough clothes climbing away from the masts. A man leading a small herd of goats away up the rocks. Some of the animals were lingering behind to nibble at the grass and he watched enviously as the man called them on.

  He sent him a wave, watching the goats clamber and jump among the rocks, while no more than a stone’s throw beneath them a group of armed figures appeared in the tomb-like doorway, raising their weapons in welcome.

  He waved again but the herder did not wave back. He wondered if the man couldn’t see him for some reason, or simply had no interest in what was going on below, for instead of watching the jeep he continued to climb away, still gesturing, whistling to the creatures roaming freely around the razorwire fence.

  Part Three – Transformations

  Chapter 39 — A Desert Find

  The road south has all but disintegrated and the company’s progress been reduced to a continual thudding and a long creak-creak and a dismal wailing in the utter dark. They wander through that infernally forged landscape with no noise around them, no light other than their lanterns. The ground is sheeted in greasy soot and they go across it stiltedly and there is no reprieve.

  In croaks and whispers they beg Jaala to stop, let them rest, but she forces them to continue, to go on or die where they stand. She forces them to keep walking, keep driving, until finally a wretched keening from the middle of the column brings them to a stop. Drivers and passengers dismount and gather round a woman whose burns have consumed her. Her husband and relatives sob dryly in the darkness like a collection of husks. There is not enough spare wood with which to burn the body, and so with deep misgivings they dig a pit and lower her down with cords, slipping her carefully free of them as though releasing her into water. As the haggard onlookers croak their grief, Jaala looks at the upraised faces and finds them dotted with sores. Some burning furiously on the skin, some cracked and bulging, like large spidery wens. She touches her own face, looks down at her own hands, and sees that they are filthy, but no worse than that. She hides them out of sight. Different, she thinks; different in every way.

  They slog on in the cloying blackness. When they shamble to a stop again it is on the shores of a terrain where cracks in the ground proliferate like blood vessels. A talc-like plague of dust is gathering, and in haste they prop up their shelters and sleep with the carts bearing the brunt of the invasion as the dirt comes whistling and hissing through their dreams.

  By morning the winds have risen. The mules are swinging their heads in distress and the goats have retreated into an agonised huddle. The sound of snapping canvas and wind-lost voices and billowing cloth fills the camp. She wraps her face and goes out in the muddy overcast to help pack up their tents before they are torn away and pitched into the firmament. Flurries of plastic scraps gust everywhere, snagging on every point and rustling in the corners. Far out in the gloom, the great ash mounds are at war with themselves, rising, falling, ever-scattering. Other people are coming out, and with the sediment hissing through relentlessly, they use gestures to communicate as they organise themselves. They haul down the thickly furred canopies of their shelters and tread them flat or roll them up and bind them with twine and they go about pale and harried and much like the materials they are handling, for all things stained with oil and soot are now ashen, the colour of fired clay.

  In the midst of this upheaval a harsh voice halts them, makes them turn.

  ‘There. Over there ...’

  A murmuring breaks out and some in the company go out to investigate. Jaala drops the line she’s handling to join them, finding something vast swarming in the depths of the sky.

  Steadily, inexorably, a thin tendril of light breaks out and lies trembling across the horizon. Through layers of smog they see the faint brown outline of the sun.

  Crinkled and smoking it lifts up from the terminal crossing points of land and hangs ritually before the earth like a gourd.

  ~O~

  ‘Hey. Hey, Jaala.’

  She is torn from sleep by someone rocking her shoulder. She stares dully at Radjík and then looks about in panic, wondering where she is. She sees a deep iodine light beyond a fan of wooden spokes, feels her throat burning. ‘What?’ she says, coughing. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘We found summin,’ the girl whispers, then withdraws.

  ‘What?’ she says. ‘What is it?’

  But the girl is trotting away.

  She crawls out from beneath the cart, still coughing. All seems unchanged since before she’d rested. They’d made camp with a darkly shimmering view of the Ridge to the south, a huge incoming wave frozen at a distance of twenty miles or so. Like the rest of the world, it appears sinister and unreal. She follows the contours of peaks and gaps and high ledges, then takes in the surrounding landscape. Much of the west is clouded, hung with drear blots of smoke, while the north is lost in a permanent choking night. Where the camp is situated, the air is thick and sour but breathable. For the moment, it seems the winds are blowing in their favour.
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  She sees Radjík heading away from the camp, to where some hunters have gathered. As she catches up with her, Radjík explains that they’ve found a wagon on a slope to the south. ‘Me and Draj found it,’ she whispers, straining to speak.

  ‘Whose it is?’

  ‘Martha and Stéf’s.’

  ‘What?’ she says, approaching the hunters uncertainly. Yvor is wiping his bow with a greased cloth. ‘Where are they?’

  The hunters exchange a look.

  ‘We found this,’ says Jakub. Sitting on his cracked and soiled palm is a gold hoop earring. ‘Doesn’t look good.’

  She sees the expression on his face and her own face mirrors it. ‘I said, where are they?’

  ‘We’ve been lookin, yeah?’ Radjík hisses. ‘They aint there. Their stuff’s all over the place. Must’ve been robbed or summin.’

  She reaches for her knife. ‘Show me,’ she says.

  ~O~

  They widen the search and come across two putrefying bodies. They are half naked and badly mutilated, each with deep tears in the flesh as though they’d been mauled by some savage beast.

  A wet green stench hangs in the air and the gulley the bodies have been dragged into is clouded with flies. Crows look on from a washed-out slope, cawing emptily, a few padding forward in stealthy increments. As the hunters draw back, muttering in dismay, she wraps her face and crouches to investigate.

  The first thing she notices is that the heads are turned to one another, as though they’d been slaughtered in some pitiable last act of communication. The skulls agape, both fibrous-looking and raw. Martha and Stéfan, the names wailing inside her as she sees what their lives have come to, all that easygoing love. Batting the flies away, she notices where the meat has been bitten from the woman’s face. The terrible rakings on the man make her wonder if he’d fallen protecting her. Their eyes have been picked to bloody slots and the hollow mouths hang open in howls of eternal outrage. There is little else to gather other than the attack had been brief and ferocious. She turns away with a sob.