The Last Smile in Sunder City

by Luke Arnold

  One of the grunts dropped the tooth into a clear bag and wrote out the details on a label.

  “Two dead Vamps,” mused Richie. “You think it’s a Nail Gang, Detective?”

  Simms didn’t look up. “Maybe. First, we need to find out who got liquefied, and how.”

  “What’s a Nail Gang?” I asked. Every cop threw me a look that was sourer than the smell inside.

  “As if you don’t know,” Simms hissed, and moved away to continue her notes. Richie came and stood close enough for me to guess that he’d had fish for dinner.

  “Human gangs that move through the land wiping out ex-magic folk. We’ve just started getting word about them. They believe they were mistreated in the old days and think it’s their job to give Humans their time in the sun. When the population of a species gets low enough, they strike. Try to put the last nail in the coffin.”

  I could have said what I was thinking, but it wouldn’t have been worth the breath. Nobody wanted to hear how sick it made me to be part of the same race as those monsters. A Human complaining about Humans was as boring as bilge-water. It didn’t matter to anyone. No one cared. I didn’t care. A Clayfield found its way from my fingers to my teeth.

  “Can you ID the Vamp?” I asked.

  Simms finally looked up. “Why you interested?”

  “I’m looking for one.”

  “Who?”

  “Can’t say.”

  Her book snapped shut as her forked tongue flicked out from her lips and disappeared again.

  “I don’t like you sticking your nose into our business, Fetch.”

  “Come on, Simms. No need to be jealous.”

  She squinted her flat face at me.

  “Jealous?”

  “Yeah,” I said blankly, “of my nose.”

  Luckily, she’d kicked me round too many times to still get any satisfaction from it. Instead, she spat into the corner of the alley and headed back inside, calling to Richie. “Kites, come take inventory.”

  Richie put a hand on my shoulder.

  “We’ll check the dental records tomorrow. I’ll let you know when we have a match.”

  “Thanks, Rich.”

  “Now get out of here.”

  I thought about arguing but it wasn’t worth the effort. There wasn’t any reason to hang around. Either my guy was a pile of dust in that room or he wasn’t. I just had to wait and find out. There was cash in my pockets and booze in my veins, so I decided to make my way home.

  Goblins took a few decades to embrace Sunder City, but once they arrived, they made it their own. Goblin technology mixed Human equipment with magic to create new, often dangerous, inventions.

  Their greatest addition was the Sunder streetcar that once ran the length of the city ninety-six times a day. The Coda put the shuttle out of commission, but like a lot of residents, it adapted to a new occupation. Every night after sundown, parked in the middle of Main Street, the streetcar transformed itself into the distribution window for the Beggar’s Bread. The magical engines were refitted with Human-made motors. Not enough to push it up the hill, but enough to get a bit of heat. A metal plate placed over the top of the engine became a giant frying pan, on which the scraps of Sunder City were fashioned into food for the homeless. Some barely filtered river water, grass-flour and collected restaurant off-cuts were thrown into a barrel and anyone with an empty belly could ladle a piece on to the pan and get themselves some grub. Had I done it? More than once, and it wasn’t the worst meal I’d eaten by a long shot.

  Running the show were the Brothers Hum, a religious sect of winged monks. Historically, the Brothers had never believed the Elven story of the great river being the source of all life and all magic.

  The Brothers Hum had preached that the world was sung into creation by the voice of the moon. It was a complicated and attractive belief system, save for one small problem. It was wrong. We know that now. The Coda was proof that even if the Elves and their scriptures weren’t right about everything, they were certainly closer than everyone else.

  I suppose it’s nice to know which creation myth is the right one, but what a price to pay for certainty. The one true legend is dead and belief in any other idea seems foolish. Faith has left us. The gods are gone. Yet, the Brothers Hum remain.

  They started serving from the streetcar a few weeks after the world went dark. Rather than give up their calling, they redoubled their efforts and devoted their lives to assisting the city’s most needy.

  In my short and sorry life, I’ve seen many people hide a desire for terrible deeds beneath an apparent higher calling. It’s not hard to find a belief system that will support your own selfish needs. The big surprise for me was discovering that it works the other way too. These broken-winged brothers, even without their story, just have naturally decent hearts.

  “Not dining tonight, Brother Phillips?” asked Benjamin, a tall monk with a shaggy blond bowl-cut.

  “No, thank you. Actually…” I fumbled in my coat pocket for some coins and dropped them into his shaking hands. “For the nights I have.”

  He nodded, taking my charity with good grace. I kept my head down and walked away as fast as I could. I always found it more embarrassing to give assistance than to take it.

  The night was warm but the breeze was cool and I was happy to step back inside my building. The booze was leaving my body and old aches and pains came in to fill the space. Questions came too: little niggling things that kissed the back of my neck with poison lips.

  What good do I think I’m doing?

  I’d probably found my guy already: a sprinkling of sand on a cold, concrete floor. Hooray for Fetch Phillips, collector of crumbs, let’s sing his praises through all Sunder City.

  I climbed the stairs, pulled my bed down from the wall and longed for the days when three dead bodies would have troubled my sleep.

  The first mark was made by my father…

  Not my real father. He died along with my mother in the first home I ever had; a village called Eran, tucked into the woody hills south-east of Sunder.

  I was under our house, in the space where the neighbor’s dog had gone when it got sick. We thought she was missing till Mother noticed the smell. There were a couple of broken boards and, if you were small like I was, it wasn’t hard to climb inside.

  The killer came right past me, panting and dripping with blood. I could smell some kind of meat, like in the ice box after Father brought something back from the butcher.

  Either I passed out or my mind stopped making memories to save my sanity. When the soldiers found me, I knew I was the only one left. I didn’t talk when they asked me questions and I didn’t complain when they stripped me and washed me and dressed me in clean, oversized clothes. I didn’t look for the parents I knew were gone and I didn’t resist when they sat me in the carriage and took me away.

  I slept all the way to the city of Weatherly and they probably thought my brain was toast. I didn’t cry and I didn’t leave the safety of the blanket or even open a window. I regretted that later, after being stuck inside the walls. For years, all I would dream about was the chance to see something outside that damned city.

  When I finally opened my eyes, it was too late. We were inside, and I was lifted from the carriage into a large stone room where a young man in a gray uniform was waiting. He was Patrolman Graham Kane – my new father.

  Graham had a kind but troubled face, like he was always trying to remember where he’d left his keys. He seemed huge at the time, but he must have been barely a man when he knelt down, put his arms around my shaking body and told me I was safe.

  I never asked him, or anyone else, why he was chosen to take me in. It could be because he was capable and loyal and towed the line of the city laws without question. Maybe they hoped he was warm and caring enough to make me forget the life I’d left behind. Honestly, I think it was just because he opened the door.

  He had plenty of weight on him but he carried it well, even as he got older. He had
workman’s hands, and around his left forearm there was the tattooed black band of the Weatherly patrol. For as long as I knew him, he wore the same pair of square glasses, even though they needed to be shoved back up his nose every two minutes.

  He was thoughtful, and never spoke till he was sure of what he wanted to say. Then he would say it once, determined never to be interrupted, and nod, once, to signify that he was done. I called him “Dad” after only a week. After a month, it almost felt normal.

  I loved him. I did, despite how things turned out. Though, as I got older, I couldn’t quite relax when he was around. He’d taken me in and treated me like I was his own but I wasn’t his own. More and more, I felt like I was in the home of some generous man who was doing me a favor and I needed to do something to pay him back but I could never work out what it was.

  His wife Sally, who became my mother, was the ideal woman on paper (if the paper was written by a committee of boring politicians). Cheerful, manicured and obedient. Weatherly had many laws and a strict moral code, so Mrs Sally Kane followed those rules as if her life depended on it. She was loving and supportive and never complained about anything I did, but if I ever tried to scratch her surface, I couldn’t find anything underneath. At a certain point in my youth, I stopped asking her advice or her thoughts because I could always guess the answer. She never seemed to struggle. She never contradicted herself. It was as if she wasn’t really there.

  Only now, after years on the outside, can I make some sense of what was going on in that city, and in that house, and inside her head. Weatherly was a man’s world. Made for Humans, and only Humans, and made for men in particular. Sally Kane had spent her whole life inside the walls. She had followed the rules and believed the stories and shaped herself into the perfect version of what Weatherly wanted. How could you fault someone who became exactly who they thought they needed to be?

  Our house was in the suburbs because every house in Weatherly was in the suburbs. Graham wore a suit every day because every man over eighteen wore a suit every day. On the weekends, we went to the arena and watched the games just like all the others. I went to school. I did my homework. I repeated the facts that were taught to me so I could get a good grade and please my parents. I walked the line with all of them. I did as I was told. I stayed inside the walls, just like everybody else.

  The wind never came to Weatherly. It was separated from the rest of the world by big walls and even bigger lies. The reasons for the walls were different depending on who you asked. The story inside was that the world had been ravaged by war. Bio-chemicals and bombs had turned everything outside into a wasteland; the only survivors lived within our sanctuary city. Weatherly was the only world that mattered and Human life was the only element worth protecting.

  The Patrolmen must have known that the lessons were a lie. They’d all seen things that contradicted the story. Still, they put their faith in the laws of the city and gave in to their fears. Whatever was out there, it had to be dangerous. Whatever their leaders were hiding, it was for good reason. Rather than waste their days wrestling with the truth, it was better to get on with life and trust the lies.

  The people inside never spoke of the Dragons or the pointy-eared Elves or the old men who could make miracles with their hands. It was populated only by Humans and the animals they could control; things they could eat, pet or ride upon. A meticulously constructed reality in which we were the top of the food chain.

  That was Weatherly’s gift to its people. Ignorance. The Humans outside the walls knew that they were inferior. So, in this place, there was nothing to be inferior to. Children were free to grow up without ever knowing anything else. They would believe they were standing at the height of evolution. Never know the shame. Never know their place. They would never know anything outside the walls.

  But I did.

  That knowledge meant I acted different, which meant I was treated different, which pretty much meant I was different. I had a head full of wild beasts and bright lights and a world that was bigger than the one they all knew. Occasionally, with trusted friends, I tried to explain the things I remembered: animals as big as houses or strangers with all-white eyes. It never went over too well. As I got older, they stopped saying I was lying and started saying I was crazy, so I learned to shut up. I convinced myself that they weren’t memories at all, just a child’s imagination warped by trauma and change. I did my best to believe in this new world and its strange, rigid beliefs.

  Weatherly believed in a God, but he was a vengeful one. An all-powerful, masculine force that damned the outside world for its sins. We were the lucky ones, but our salvation came at the cost of servitude. We would get married. We would work. We would believe what we were told.

  I tried to go along with the act. I’d say the lines and learn the laws but, with one eye fixed on the world outside, I lost my focus. I was smart but I wasn’t successful. At the end of school, I was still being told that I hadn’t committed myself. They meant that I hadn’t committed to my studies or a career, but I knew it was more than that.

  I hadn’t committed to Weatherly.

  The usual thing for teenagers to do after graduation was to become an apprentice. While the others were studying to become doctors and botanists, I was drifting. I worked where I could, just to get enough cash to pay my board with the Kanes. They didn’t ask for it. In fact, I think it made them uncomfortable. But I insisted. At the very least, it gave me a reason to get out of bed.

  I delivered beer kegs and fixed furniture and drove old ladies to appointments and picked fruit and mended fences but I never got a job. As a joke, the old boys in the bar called me Fetch. It was supposed to be an insult but I wore the name proudly, like some strange badge of lazy defiance against their expectations.

  Graham never got angry. He didn’t say that he was disappointed or that the comments from the others in town made his life difficult. One day, he just left the enrolment forms for the Patrol Academy on my bed.

  The Patrolmen of Weatherly do many things. They supervise the traffic and watch for crime and make sure everyone obeys the rules. Most importantly, they’re the only ones permitted to work on the walls.

  A plan began forming in the back of my head. One of those secrets that you keep even from yourself, not daring to look at it till the time is right. I filled the papers, handed them back, and my training started within the week.

  I applied myself with unprecedented conviction. I read the textbooks and jogged a hundred miles and learned to take down drunks and domestic-violence offenders. I did crowd control on New Year’s Eve and filed paperwork for minor assault and disorderly conduct. I did all my work with a diligence that had previously been foreign to me. When my year was up, they talked about putting me in traffic or fire but I demanded to go to the wall.

  It was Graham who made it happen. Of course it was. He’d pushed me in that direction and I’d given it everything I had. I told him how nice it would be to work directly under him and how excited I was. So, he had no choice but to enlist me into border control as an apprentice cadet.

  There was a small graduation ceremony that all the other Patrolmen attended. Our names were read out in front of the crowd and then we took our seats at a long table. After all ten graduates had been announced, the formality dropped away and things turned into something of a party. We were given beer (for the first time outside the home), and the Patrolmen became boisterous and rough with their congratulations. While we drank, a man in a leather apron moved down the table. He stopped in front of each graduate, laid out a stained cloth, produced a bottle of ink and a needle, and marked each new member with a solid black band around their wrist.

  When it was my turn, the man with the apron stepped aside and Graham took his place. He held my hand gently while he dipped the needle into the ink and pierced my skin. It hurt, but not so much that I couldn’t appreciate the gesture. He wasn’t a man of many words so in his language, this tattoo was a long and heartfelt speech. When it was done,
he wiped it clean and wrapped up my wrist and put his arms around me again.

  To my surprise, I woke for my first day of work feeling quite proud. Dad and I took turns to use the shower and shoe-polish. Our uniforms were already pressed and I didn’t really need to shave but I did it anyway. I brushed my teeth and slipped into my boots and Dad came out with two cups of coffee. Quietly, because Mum was still sleeping, we sat at the kitchen table on metal chairs and old linoleum and sipped in silence. It was a little burned and my eyes were still half asleep but as the sunrise came in through the curtains, I warmed to the small sense of purpose that was waking in me.

  It only took three months for the excitement to wear off and the routine to become a bore. The early mornings lost their shine and it turned out that I wasn’t working so much “on” the walls, but within them. I spent my days in a series of stone hallways, testing their stability, draining rooms of rainwater, plugging holes, patching cracks and logging records of abnormalities.

  The boredom was only compounded by my knowledge that we were upholding an illusion. It felt absurd, then ridiculous, then infuriating. The easy relationship that I’d built with Graham twisted as he turned from “Dad” into “Boss”. We would look at each other over our morning coffee without saying a word but inside, I was screaming.

  We both knew that it was bullshit. He’d received me straight from the world that apparently wasn’t there. I didn’t understand why we were talking to each other in falsehoods like we didn’t know any better.

  But he wasn’t the only one who was lying. Because I had finally turned to look at the plan I’d been forming in the back of my mind, and I knew what I was going to do.

  The doors weren’t locked from the inside. They’d been made to keep monsters out not citizens in. Getting into the walls from the city required badges and body-checks. Getting out the other side only required the desire.