Caitlín R. Kiernan [www.caitlinrkiernan.com] is the author of several novels, including Daughter of Hounds, The Red Tree, and The Drowning Girl: A Memoir. She is a prolific short fiction author—to date she has written over two hundred short stories, novellas, and vignettes—most of which have been collected in Tales of Pain and Wonder; From Weird and Distant Shores; To Charles Fort, With Love; Alabaster; A Is for Alien; The Ammonite Violin & Others; Two Worlds and in Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume One), and Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart. Coming up is new novel Blood Oranges (written as by Kathleen Tierney). Kiernan is a multiple nominee for the World Fantasy Award, an honoree for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and has twice been nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award. Born in Ireland, she lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
1.
Eleven-year-old Samuel is sitting alone at the entrance to the Confluence Park bunkers, huddled against the hot, stinking wind ruffling his hair, even though they’ve all been forbidden to go alone to the entrance. It’s long past midnight, and the dreams have been keeping him awake again. The ruins and the storm-wracked sky outside are less frightening than the dreams—all of them taken together as a whole, or any single one of dreams. Better he sit and stare out through the gate’s iron bars, fairly certain he can be back in his berth before Miss makes her early morning rounds. He always feels bad whenever he breaks the rules, going against her orders, the dictates that keep them all alive, the children that she tends here in the sanctuary of the winding rat’s maze of tunnels. He feels bad, too, that he’s figured out a way to pick the padlock on the iron door that has to be opened in order to stare out the bars, and Samuel feels worst of all that he thinks often of picking that lock, too, and disobeying her first and most inviolable rule: never, ever leave the bunker alone. Still, regret and guilt are not enough to keep him in his upper berth, staring at the concrete ceiling pressing down less than a meter above his face.
Outside, the wind screams, and sickly chartreuse lightning flashes and jabs with its forked fingers at the shattered, blackened ruins of the dead city of Cherry Creek, Colorado. Samuel shuts his eyes, and he tries to ignore the afterimages of the flashes swimming about behind his lids. He counts off the seconds on his fingers, counting aloud, though not daring to speak above a whisper—sixteen, seventeen, eighteen full seconds before the thunder reaches him, thunder so loud that it almost seems to rattle deep down in his bones. He divides eighteen by three, as Miss has taught them, and so he knows the strike was about six kilometers from the entrance to the tunnels.
Sam, that’s much too close, she would say. Now, you shut that door and get your butt back downstairs.
He might be so bold as to reply that at least they didn’t have to worry about the dogs and the rats during a squall. But that might be enough to earn him whatever punishment she was in the mood to mete out to someone who’d not only flagrantly broken the rules, but then had the unmitigated gall to sass her.
The boy opens his eyes, blinking at the lightening ghosts swirling before them. He stares at his filthy hands a moment, vaguely remembering when he was much younger and his mother was always at him to scrub beneath his nails and behind his ears. When she saw to it he had clean clothes every day, and shoes with laces, shoes without soles worn so thin they may as well be paper. He stares at the ruins and half remembers the city that was, before the War, before men set the sky on fire and seared the world.
Miss tells them it’s best not to let one’s thoughts dwell on those days. “That time is never coming back,” she says. “We have to learn to live in this age, if we’re going to have any hope of survival.”
But all they have—their clothing, beds, dishes, school books, the dwindling medicinals and foodstuffs—all of it is scavenged remnants of the time before. He knows that. They all know that, even if no one ever says it aloud.
There’s another flash of the lightning that is not quite green and not quite yellow. But this time Samuel doesn’t close his eyes or bother counting. It’s obvious this one’s nearer than the last strike. It’s obvious it’s high time that he shut the inner door, lock it, and slip back through the tunnels to the room where the boys all sleep. Miss always looks in on them about three, and she’s ever quick to notice an empty bunk. That’s another thing from the world before: her silver pocket watch that she’s very, very careful to keep wound. She’s said that it belonged to her father who died in the Battle of New Amsterdam in those earliest months of the War. Miss is, Samuel thinks, a woman of many contradictions. She admonishes them when they talk of their old lives, yet, in certain melancholy moods, she will regale them with tales of lost wonders and conveniences, of the sun and stars and of airships, and her kindly father, a physician who went away to tend wounded soldiers and subsequently died in New Amsterdam.
Walking back to his bed as quietly as he can walk, Samuel considers those among his companions who are convinced that Miss isn’t sane. Jessamine says that, and the twins—Parthena and Hortence—and also Luther. Sometimes, when Miss has her back to them, they’ll draw circles in the air about their ears and roll their eyes and snigger. But Samuel doesn’t think she’s insane. Just very lonely and sad and scared.
We keep her alive, he thinks. Because she has all of us to tend to she’s still alive, against her recollections. He knows of lots of folks who survived the bombardments, and then the burning of the skies and the storms that followed, and whom the feral dogs didn’t catch up with, lots of those folks did themselves in, rather than face such a shattered world. Samuel thinks it was their inescapable memories of before that killed them.
He crawls back into bed, and lies on the cool sheets and stares at the ceiling until the dreams come again. In the dreams—which he thinks of as nightmares—there’s bright sunshine, green fields, and his mother’s blonde hair like spun gold. In his dreams, there’s plenty of food and there’s laughter, and no lightning whatsoever. There is never lightning, nor is there the oily rain that sizzles when it touches anything metal. He’s never told Miss about his dreams. She wouldn’t want to hear them, and she’d only frown and make him promise not to dare mention them to the others. Not that he ever has. Not that he ever will. Samuel figures they all have their own good-bad dreams to contend with.
2.
The storm lasts for two days and two nights. Miss reads to them from the Bible, and from The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and from Mark Twain. She feeds her filthy, rawboned children the last of the tinned beef and peaches, and Samuel has begun to resign himself to the possibility that this might be the occasion on which they starve before an expedition for more provisions can be mounted.
But the storm ends, and no one starves.
Early the morning after the last peals of thunder, after a meager breakfast—one sardine each and tea so weak that it’s hardly more than cups of steaming water—Miss calls them all to the assembly room. They know it was not originally intended as an assembly room, but as an armory. The steel cabinets with their guns, grenades, and sabers still line the walls. Only the kegs of black powder and crates of dynamite have been removed. The children line up in two neat rows, boys in front, girls behind them, and she examines them each in their turn, inspecting gaunt faces and bodies, looking closely at their shoes and garments, before choosing the three whom she will send out of the bunker in search of food and other necessaries.
Once, there were older kids to whom this duty fell, but with every passing year there were fewer and fewer of them. Every year, fewer of them survived the necessary trips outside of the bunker, and, finally, there were none of them left at all. Finally, none came back. Samuel suspects a brave (or cowardly) few might have actually run away, deciding to take their chances in the wastelands that lie out beyond Cherry Creek, rather than return. However, this is only a suspicion, and he’s never spoken of it to anyone else.
The lighter sheets of rain that fall towards the end of the electrical storms are mostly only water, and after an hour or so i
t will have diluted most of the nitric acid. It’ll take that long to hand out the slickers and vulcanized overshoes and gloves, the airtight goggles and respirators, and for Miss to check that every rusty clasp is secure and every fraying cord has been tied as tightly as possible. Samuel imagines, as he always does, that the others are all holding their breath as she makes her choices. There have been too many instances when someone didn’t return, or when they returned dying or crippled, which is as good as dead, or worse, here in their bunker in the world after the War. Samuel also imagines he’s one of the few who ever hopes that he’ll be picked. He doesn’t know for certain, but he strongly suspects this to be the case.
If volunteers were permitted, he would always volunteer.
“Patrick Henry,” says Miss. Patrick Henry Olmstead takes one step forward and stares at the toes of his boots. His hair is either auburn or dirty blond, depending on the light, and his eyes are either hazel green or hazel brown, depending on the light. He’s two years younger than Samuel. Or, at least he thinks he might be; a lot of the younger children don’t know their ages. Patrick Henry has a keloid scar on his chin, and he’s taller than one might expect from his nine years. He’s shy, and speaks so softly that it’s often necessary to ask him to please speak up and repeat himself.
“Molly,” says Miss.
“Please no, Miss.” Molly Peterson replies.
“You have good shoes, Molly. Your shoes are the best among the lot.”
“I’ll let someone else wear my shoes. I won’t even ask for them back afterwards. Please choose another, Miss.”
Molly is only eight, and her hair is black as coal tar. She’s missing the pinkie finger from her left hand, from a run in with the dogs before they found her at the corner of East Bateman and Vulcan Avenue. Before an expedition brought her back to the bunker two years ago. The dogs got her sister, and she’s only left the bunker once after her arrival. Molly has nightmares about the dogs, and sometimes she wakes screaming loudly enough that she startles them all from sleep, as her cries echo along the cavernous corridors. Her skin is very pale and freckled. She’s small for her age. Samuel fancies if he were to ever court a girl, Molly would do just fine.
“You will go, Molly. Your name has been read, my choice has been made, and we will not have this argument. No one will go in your stead.”
Molly only nods and chews at her lower lip.
“You will have eight hours,” Miss tells them, just like always. “After eight hours…”
Samuel tunes out her grim and familiar proclamations. No one’s ever come back after eight hours, and that’s all that matters. The rest, Miss only says to be sure his two companions fully understand the gravity of their situation, and Samuel understands completely. This will be his fifth trip out in just the last year. He’s good at scavenging, and Miss knows it. He enjoys entertaining the notion he’s the best of them all.
“Eight hours,” Miss says again.
“Eight hours, Ma’am,” the chosen three repeat in perfect unison, and then she shepherds them away to the room where the outside gear is stored. She gives them each a burlap sack and a Colt revolver and a single .44 caliber bullet; the bunker’s munitions cache is running too low to send them off with any more than that single round. She once whispered in his ear, “For yourself, or for one of the dogs. That has to be your decision.” He has no idea whether or not she’s ever said the same thing to any of the others. He doesn’t actually want to know, because maybe it’s a special acknowledgement of his bravery and approaching manhood, and if it’s a jot of wisdom she imparts to one and all, Samuel would be more than a little disappointed.
3.
As almost always, Samuel is given the responsibility of carrying the map. It’s a 15-minute topographic map of the Cherry Creek metropolitan area. It’s folded and tucked into a water-tight leather-and-PVC case, so he can see it, yet there’s minimal danger of its getting wet. But Samuel knows exactly where he’s going today, even through the dense fog, so he hardly needs the green and white topo sheet, with its black squares marking buildings and all its contour lines designating elevation. He and Patrick Henry and Molly are heading to what’s left of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Luftschiffahrt’s Arapahoe Station dirigible terminal. A few months back, he and two others were rummaging about in one of the airships that crashed when Cherry Creek was hit by the first wave of blowbacks from Tesla’s teleforce mechanism. Deck B was still more or less intact, which meant the kitchen was also mostly intact, along with its storerooms. The two boys with him hadn’t wanted to enter the crash, so Samuel had climbed alone through a ragged tear in the hull. He spent the better part of an hour picking his way through the crumpled remains of the gondola, always mindful of the hazards posed by rusted beams overhead and the rotting deck boards beneath his feet. But, at last, he found the storeroom, the shelves still weighted down with their wealth of cans and crates of bottles and jars, a surprising number of which hadn’t shattered on impact, thanks to having been carefully packed in excelsior.
Samuel had retraced his steps, marking the path with debris placed just so, then cajoled his two fellows to follow him back inside. The three of them had returned with enough food to last several weeks, including fruit juice that had not yet spoiled. The discovery had earned Samuel one night of double rations.
“Are you certain we’re not lost?” asks Patrick Henry, his already quiet voice muffled by the respirator covering the lower half of his face.
“I don’t get lost,” Samuel replied, then tossed half a brick against a lamppost. Someone had long ago shattered the globe crowning the post, or, more likely, a lightning storm had taken it out. “I’ve never gotten lost, not even once.”
“Everyone gets lost sometime,” says Molly. “Don’t be such a braggart.” She was so scared that she jumped at the thud of the brick hitting the lamppost.
“Then maybe I’m not everybody.”
“Now, you’re not even making sense,” mutters Molly.
“Are you sure we’re going west?” Patrick Henry asks.
Samuel stops and glares back at the younger boy. “Holy hell and horse shit, I wish Miss had let me come alone. Why are you asking me? You’re the one with the Brunton.”
No one—not even Samuel—is ever allowed to carry both the map and the Brunton compass. Just in case. Patrick Henry blushes, then digs the compass from the pocket of his overalls.
“Waste our time and take a reading if it’ll make you feel better, but we ain’t lost.”
“Aren’t,” whispers Molly.
“But we aren’t lost,” Samuel sighs and rolls his eyes behind the smudgy lenses of his old blowtorch goggles
“It won’t take long,” says Patrick Henry, and so Samuel kicks at the dirt and Molly frets while he squints into the compass’ mirror and studies the target, needle, and guide line, finding the azimuth pointing 270˚ from true north.
“Satisfied?” Samuel asks after a minute or two.
“Well, we’re off by…”
“We’re not lost,” Samuel growls, then turns and stalks away, as though he means to leave the other two behind. He never would, but it works, and soon they’re trotting along to catch up.
“It’s not as though we can see the sun,” Molly says, a little out of breath. “It’s not as if we can see the mountains.”
“I know the way to the station,” Samuel tells her. “That’s why Miss picked me, because I know the way.”
“It pays to be sure.”
“Fine, Molly. Now we’re sure. Shut up and walk.”
“You don’t have to be such a bloody, self-righteous snit about it,” she tells Samuel.
“Yes he does,” sneers Patrick Henry, and Samuel laughs and agrees with him.
The going is slower than usual, mostly due to deep new washouts dividing many of the thoroughfares. Patrick Henry takes a bad tumble in the one bisecting Davies and Milton streets, where the dead city’s namesake waterway has jumped its banks and carved a steep ravine. But h
e doesn’t break or even sprain anything, only almost loses the revolver Miss has entrusted to him. Samuel and Molly pull him free of the mud and help him back up to street level, Samuel admonishing him for being such a clumsy fool every step of the way. Patrick Henry doesn’t bother to say otherwise. The two sit together a few minutes with Molly, catching their breath and staring upstream at the wreckage that had once been Beeman’s Mercantile before the building slid into the washout.
It’s afternoon before they reach the airship, and Samuel has begun to worry about getting back before their eight hours are up, before Miss writes them off for dead. Besides, with the dogs on the prowl, he knows from experience that every passing minute decreases their chances of not meeting up with a pack of the mongrels.
“It’s enormous,” Molly says, gazing up at the crash, her voice tinged with awe. All three were too young to recall the days when the Count von Zeppelin’s majestic airships plied the skies by the hundreds. And this was the first time that either Molly or Patrick Henry had actually seen a dirigible, other than a couple of pictures in one of Miss’ books.
“It’s like a skeleton,” says Patrick Henry, and Samuel supposes it is, though the comparison has never before occurred to him. Once, almost a year ago, he’d crawled through the ruins of the late Professor Jeremiah Ogilvy’s museum on Kipling Street. He’d seen bones there, or stones in the shape of bones, and Miss had explained to him afterwards that they were the remains of wicked sea monsters that lived before Noah’s Flood and which were not permitted room on the Ark (he was polite and didn’t ask her why sea creatures had drowned in the deluge). The petrified bones had much the same appearance of the crushed and half-melted steel framework sprawling before them.
Samuel points to the narrow vertical tear in what’s left of the gondola. It’s black as pitch beyond the tear. “The larder isn’t too far in, but it’s rough going. So, we’d best—”
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 7 Page 13
