White and Other Tales of Ruin

by Tim Lebbon

  ii

  “There’s a guy called String,” Della said, handing me another bottle of beer and lobbing a log onto the fire. “He may be able to help.” So casual. So matter-of-fact. It was as if she were talking about the weather, rather than my fading life.

  “String?” The name intrigued me, and repeating it gave me time to think. He’d been all over the news a few months ago, but then I’d thought nothing of it. At the time I’d had no need of a cure.

  Della stared over at me, the light from the fire casting shadows that hid her expression. Calm, I guessed. Content. That was Della all over. She had short hair, which she cut herself, and her clothes consisted of innumerable lengths of thin coloured cloth, twisted decoratively around her body and giving her the appearance of an old, psychedelic mummy.

  She had no legs. They had been ripped off in a road accident, just at the beginning of the Ruin. She was too stubborn to wear prosthetics.

  “Lives in Greece. On one of the islands. Can’t remember which.” She frowned into the fire, but I did not believe her faulty memory for a moment.

  “So what could he do? What does he know?”

  Della shrugged, sipping her beer. “Just rumours, that’s all I’ve heard.”

  I almost cried then. I felt the lump in my throat and my eyes burning and blurring; a mixture of anger and resentment, both at my fellow humans for tearing the world apart, and at Della for her nonchalant approach to my fatal condition.

  “I’m pretty fucking far past rumours, now. Look.” I lifted my shirt and showed her my chest. The growths were becoming visible, patterns of innocent-looking bumps beneath my skin that spelled death. “Just tell me, Della. I need to know anything.”

  She looked at my chest with feigned detachment. It was because she hated displays of self-pity rather than because she didn’t care. She did care. I knew that.

  “His name’s String — rumour. He’s a witch-doctor, of sorts — rumour. Rumour has it he’s come up with all kinds of impossible cures. I’ve not met anyone who’s gone to him, but there are lots of stories.”

  “Like?”

  She shrugged, and for the first time I realised what a long shot this was. I was way beyond saving — me and a billion others — but she was giving me this hope to grab onto, clasp to my rotting chest and pray it may give me a cause for the few months left to me.

  “A woman with the Sickness eating at her womb. She crawls to him. Five days later, she turns up back home, cured.”

  “Where was home?”

  “London Suburbs. Not the healthiest, wealthiest of places since the Ruin, as I’m sure you know. But String, so they say, doesn’t distinguish.” Della poked the fire angrily with a long stick. I could see she wanted to give this up, but she was the one who’d started it.

  “Which island, Della?”

  She did not answer me, nor look at me.

  “I’ll know if you lie.”

  She smiled. “No you won’t.” From the tone of her voice I knew she was going to tell me, so I let her take her own time. She looked up at the corrugated iron roof, the rusted nail-holes that let acidic water in, the hungry spread of spider’s webs hanging like festive decorations.

  “Malakki,” she said. “Malakki Town, on the island of Malakki. He’s got some sort of a commune in the hills. So rumour has it.”

  “Thanks, Della. You know I’ve got to go?” I wondered why she had not mentioned it before. Was it because it was a hopeless long shot? Or perhaps she just did not want to lose me? Maybe she relied on me a lot more than she let me think.

  She nodded. I left a week later, but I did not see her again after that night. It was as if we’d said goodbye already, and any further communication would make it all the more painful.

  iii

  There is a good chance that I will never return from this trip. The lumps on my chest have opened up and are weeping foul-smelling fluid; the first sign of the end. I wear two T-shirts beneath my shirt to soak up the mess.

  And if my disease does not kill me, Malakki is always there in the background to complete the job.

  The island is awash with a deluge of refugees from the Greek mainland, fleeing the out-of-control rioting that has periodically torn the old country apart since the Ruin. From the harbour I can see the shantytowns covering the hillsides, scatterings of huts and tents and sheets that resemble a rash of boils across the bare slopes. All hint of vegetation has been swept away, stripped by the first few thousand settlers and used for food or fuel for their constant fires. Soil erosion prevents any sort of replanting, if there were those left to consider it. There is a continuous movement of people across the hillsides; from this distance they resemble an intermingling carpet of ants, several lines heading down towards the outskirts of the city.

  In the city itself, faceless gangs ebb and flow through the streets, moving aimlessly from one plaza to the next or sitting at the roadside and begging for food. There are hundreds of people in uniform or regulation dress, most of them carrying firearms, many of them obviously not of standard issue. Whether these are regular army and police it is impossible to tell, but the relevance is negligible. The fact is, they seem to be keeping some form of radical order; I can see thin shapes hanging from balconies and streetlamps, heads swollen in the fierce heat, necks squeezed impossibly narrow by the ropes. A seagull lands on one of the shapes and sets it swaying, as if instilling life into the bloated corpse. Retribution may be harsh, but there seems to be little trouble in the streets. The fight has gone from these people.

  I reach the edge of the harbour and look around, trying to find a place to sit. The boat journey has taken eight days, and in my already weakened state the stress on my body has been immense. Inside I am still fighting. I cannot imagine myself passing away, slipping through the fingers of life like so much sand. I can barely come to terms with the certainty of my bleeding chest, the knowledge of what is inside me, eating away at my future with thoughtless, soulless tenacity. The Sickness is a result of the Ruin, perhaps the cause of it, but for me it is a personal affront. I hate the fact that my destiny is being eroded by a microscopic horror created by someone else.

  Over the course of the journey, I have decided not to sit back and accept it. I wonder whether this is what Della intended — that her vague mention of a rumoured cure would instil within me a final burst of optimism. Something to keep me buoyant as death circles closer and closer. And that is why I am here, chasing a witch-doctor in the withering remains of Europe’s paradise.

  I see a vacant seat, an old bench looking out over the once-luxurious harbour. I make my way through the jostling crowd and sit down, realising only then that this position gives me a perfect view of the long heap of corpses against the wall. I wonder if they are there waiting to be shipped out, perhaps dumped into the sea. I muse upon the twisted morals behind their slaughter, try to remember what reason the policeman had been trying to impart to me. Trouble, he had said. Poor bastards.

  “You ill?” I had not even noticed the woman sitting beside me until she spoke. I glare at her. She is the picture of health, or as healthy as anyone can be in today’s world. Her face is tanned and smooth, her hair long and naturally curled. As for the rest of her, her robustness sets her aside. She is trim, short, athletic looking, but still curved pleasingly around the hips and chest. Her bright expression, however, is one of arrogance. I take an immediate dislike to her.

  Apart from anything, it is presumptuous to assume I even want to talk.

  “And is it your business?” I ask.

  “Might be.”

  The relevance of the answer eludes me. Thoughts of String are still long-term; in the short term, I have to decide what to do now that I have arrived.

  My thoughts are interrupted, however, by the sound that has become so familiar over the years. A swarm of angry bees, amplified a million times; a continuous explosion, ripping the air asunder and filling the gaps with fear; pounding, pulsing, throbbing through the air like sentient lightning. A Lor
d Ship.

  Around me, along the mole and in the plaza facing the harbour, people fall to their knees. The act effectively identifies those who have come to the island recently, for they remain standing, glancing around with a mixture of shock and bewilderment.

  “What the hell are they doing?” I gasp in disgust.

  There are two men huddled at my feet, their eyes cast downwards and their hands clasped in front of their faces in an attitude of prayer. They are mumbling, and I can hear the fear in their voices even over the rumble from the sky. I nudge the nearest with my foot, and he glances up at me.

  “What are you doing? Don’t you know what they are? Why don’t you try to live for yourself?” The man merely looks at me for a second or two — even then, I’m unsure whether he understands — before remembering what he had been doing. He hits his forehead on the ground, such is his keenness to prostrate himself once more. His voice raises an octave and becomes louder; he is sweating freely, shirt plastered to his back; two ruby drops hit the pavement from his clasped hands where his nails have pierced the skin.

  I stand, dumbfounded. “They must be fools! Don’t they know?”

  “Leave it!” the short woman says.

  “What?”

  “Leave it! Leave them be! Don’t say anymore!” She stands next to me and stares into my eyes, and what I see there convinces me that she knows what she is talking about.

  My pride, however, tries one more time: “But don’t they know —?”

  She grabs my elbow and begins to lead me through the kneeling crowds. The dirigible has drifted past the edge of the town, pumping out its voiceless message, and now it appears to be heading inland. The hillsides have stilled, the dry ground hidden beneath a carpet of procumbent humanity. I try to resist, but she walks faster, surprising me with her strength. She seems to know where she is going. Within a minute we have scampered into a shaded alleyway and she has dragged me into the shadows, hushing me with a hand over my mouth as I go to protest.

  “Watch,” she whispers. “Things can get a bit weird around here.”

  Like a snapshot of life, the entrance to the alley affords us a framed view of what is happening in the streets. As we slump down into the heat, the sound of the airship gradually disappears into the distance. The people begin to rise, gaze cast downward at first, then glancing up, then staring forcefully at the sky as movement becomes the prime motive once more. Voices call out, shouts and songs and screams. Some of the people remain subdued, but these seem to bleed away from the streets immediately. Others seem possessed of a frantic activity, running quietly at first, leaping into the air, rolling across the pitted tarmac, bumping into each other, exchanging silent blows. Within seconds their voices have returned; they scream, curse, fight their neighbour, their friend, their family. Less than three minutes after the first people have risen from their subdued pose, the street is a mass of flailing limbs and struggling bodies. It is repulsive.

  “You’d better come with me,” the woman says. “Maybe you’ll be safe if you do. Maybe you won’t.”

  “Makes no real difference,” I say, feeling the warm reminder of imminent death in my chest.

  “Didn’t to me when I came here, either,” she says. “Does now. Believe me, you want to live.”

  The declaration provokes a stupefied silence from me. I follow the woman further along the alley, soon finding myself creeping through dusty backstreets where old women huddle under black shawls in doorways like sleeping bats. I can smell the mouth-watering aroma of genuine Greek cooking.

  As if identity is an afterthought, the woman turns several minutes later. “I’m Jade, by the way.”

  “Gabe.”

  From far away, we hear the first sounds of gunfire. The steady roar of the rioting crowd escalates with the effects of fear and fury, and the crackling of rifle fire continues.

  “I’m looking for a man called String.” We are hurrying through dusty yellow alleyways. Shots herald the death of a few more rioters. My utterance seems melodramatic, to say the least.

  “I know. Why else would you be here?” Jade does not turn around, but I guess that she senses my surprise. I can almost see the satisfied grin on her face. I bet she grins a lot, at other people’s misfortune. Her long hair swings between her shoulder blades as she rushes us through the twisting byways. She seems to know her way; either that, or she has me completely fooled.

  Someone jumps into our path, a snarling, scruffy man with Sickness growths around his mouth. Jade stumbles to a halt and I walk into her, grabbing her hips to steady us both. The stranger begins shouting, gesticulating wildly, pointing at the air, at his forehead, almost growling as he motions towards me. Jade shakes her head, very definitely, confidently, and the man shouts again. I can see something in his eyes — the glint of madness, the desperation he must feel at the unfairness of things — and smell his degradation in the air; sweat, shit, aromas belonging nowhere near a comfortable, civilised human.

  He is mad. He is ruined.

  For a couple of seconds, I fear his madness will infect me. Indeed, this seems to be his motive, for he lunges past Jade, hands clawing for my throat.

  She punches him in the gut. The movement is smooth and assured. He falls to his knees, gasping for breath and unconsciously adopting the same attitude as the hundreds of people at the harbour minutes before. He leans over until his forehead hits the dusty path, then his whole body shudders as he once again gasps in foul air. A smudge of muck sticks to his sweating forehead as he looks up at us.

  “Do we go now?” I ask, but Jade disregards me completely. She whispers to him, indicating me with a derisive nod of her head. In the jumble of conspiratorial words, I hear String mentioned more than once. At each utterance of his name, the grubby man jerks as if given a minor electrical shock. I wonder how a name could invoke such a reaction.

  Fear. Respect. From what I know, and what Della told me, these are the two things that String would revel in. One commands the other, both ways, and in the end it does not seem to matter whether he is good or bad.

  Jade looks up at me and smiles her confident smile again. “We can go now.”

  “What did you say to him?” I ask as we pass the man, still kneeling in the dust, eyes apparently staring at some point a few metres behind my head as I pass him.

  “We can go now, “ Jade repeats, effectively denying me any explanation. I suddenly wonder whether I really want to follow her.

  From the harbour — now several hundred yards away by my reckoning — comes a more sustained burst of rifle and machine-gun fire, and then a stunned silence. Jade seems unconcerned.

  I wonder how much higher the pile on the harbour will be by morning.

  iv

  “In Here,” Jade says. I follow her through a narrow doorway and we feel our way along a twisting, oppressive tunnel. I hear the scampering of tiny feet, and wonder whether they are rats or lizards. When we emerge into the courtyard, I am struck by the sight of beautiful pots of flowers, hanging from every available space on the balconies above us. Then I realise that the flowers are painted onto roughly cut wood, which in turn is nailed to handrails and windowsills. The revelation depresses me enormously.

  The buildings rise only three storeys, but they seem to lean in close at the top as if the perspective is all wrong. I look up for a few more seconds, but still there is only a small, uneven rectangle of sunlight filtering down from above.

  “Is String here?” I ask.

  Jade laughs. “Don’t flatter yourself, buddy. Did I say I’d decided to take you to him? Hmm? If I did, I’ve sure forgotten it.” She opens a door in one corner of the courtyard and disappears into shadow. I follow and watch in embarrassment as she strips off her shirt and splashes her bare chest and shoulders from a bowl of water.

  She glances at me, amused. “Surely you’ve seen a naked woman before.”

  I cannot help myself. I stare at her breasts and feel a stirring inside which has been absent for so long. She seems to be d
oing it on purpose, teasing me, but she excites me. She’s arrogant, confident, brash, intriguing ... invigorating.

  Jade turns away and finishes washing as if I’m not there. She starts to unbuckle her trousers, but I have a sudden twinge in my chest and go out into the courtyard to sit down. A few minutes later she reappears, unperturbed by my sudden bashfulness. She is carrying a bottle of wine in one hand.

  I have not tasted wine for months. The last time was that night at Della’s, when she told me about String. The last time I saw her. “Wine,” I mutter, unable to keep a hint of awe from my voice.

  “Ohh, wine,” Jade mimics, taking a swig from the bottle. I feel that we should be using glasses, but such luxuries died out during the early years of the Ruin. I gladly take the proffered bottle and drink from it myself. I do not bother to wipe the neck. Jade could have TGD, Numb-Skull, QS ... anything. But I’m dying anyway. What’s another fatal disease to such as me? It would be like sunburn to an Ebola victim.

  “Where are we now?” I ask.

  Jade throws me an amused little smile — condescension seems to be her forte — and takes back the bottle. “Globally, we’re fucked.”

  “I meant where are we, here, now. Your place?” I cannot keep the frustration from my voice.

  “No, not my place. I don’t live anywhere, really. I stayed here for a while when I first came to Malakki, then after...” She trails off, looks away, as if she had almost said something revealing.

  “After...?” I prompt. She takes another swig from the bottle and I stare at the new shirt, clinging to her still damp skin like an affectionate parasite. Her nipples are trying to break through. I think of the growths on my own chest, slowly killing me.

  “After I went to String, I was going to say.” She stares at me, but I sense that she is really looking at something far away.

  It hits me all at once. I realise that ever since Jade had led me from the troubled harbour, I have been doing little but complaining and asking questions of a person I do not know. Her avoidance of many of my queries frustrates me, but I did not have to come with her, did I? She had offered her help like a latter-day Samaritan — a breed of person that seems to have all but vanished, swallowed into the gullet of mankind’s folly — and I had willingly accepted. She had very probably saved me from a bullet.