Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

eagerly swinging an axe, smashing coloured obstructions, limbs disintegrating, heads exploding, doggedly creating a runway. Johnson munched a lit cigar and fidgeted. If the plane couldn’t take off, he reckoned Schilling would hack his way to the coast and swim to Courtney. Watching the blade at work, he gazed out the misshapen window. There was a discernible upward curve to the starboard wing, but he didn’t see that as a problem. In the big man’s company anything seemed possible. He wondered if he ought to help. And get in the way of that axe?

  There was a loud stomach rumble. The sea appeared round Schilling’s ankles, kilometres from where it should have been.

  Johnson flicked the cigar away, his optimism with it. The flyer had skids for emergencies. The problem lay in gaining sufficient forward momentum for them not to be dragged under by that clinging ooze.

  They’d have one chance. There would be no turning back; not with the limited rudder control Johnson had. The trooper shouldered his axe and approached, sweat coating his features like pearls. He looked pleased with himself.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re grinning at, you’re going to have to lose a few more kilos before this bird gets off the ground.’

  Schilling wiped his nose. ‘Is it wide enough?’ he asked through the window, voice slurred.

  ‘Huh? Oh, yeah...plenty of room. It’s perfect.’

  The grin vanished. He carried the axe on board, depositing it aft and himself next to the pilot, who nodded repeatedly, only stopping when he caught sight of his reflection in an instrument panel.

  The engines squealed like strangled kittens and the aerial frame shuddered as Weekender Johnson, volunteer, wound them all the way up, cringing less with each revolution. He even began to enjoy his morning. The compass needle was broken, he noticed. So what? This was one of those moments requiring a jaunty laugh.

  Maximum thrust. It couldn’t be sustained. He fished a fresh cigar from a niche in the battered console. Aloft, the ocean was ubiquitous, having swallowed the sky and slipped into the lap of the continent. Holding course with his knees he reached under his seat for a map, knowing it was probably useless.

  i

  They circled.

  Even without the compass Johnson was sure this was where Courtney had been. He’d made the trip thirty or more times, and while the island drifted painstakingly north and west it was too big to simply disappear over the horizon. Taking the plane lower, he skimmed slow waves, the trooper leaning out the poetised door. The pilot thought he intended to jump, but Schilling only glared at the ocean, whorled like stiff green yoghurt. To the south was a plume he used as a marker, afraid of losing his bearings - if not his marbles - over the deceptive seascape.

  Courtney was submerged. Schilling must realize that. Any survivors were adrift among three-dimensional, lichens marmalade. Laughing to himself he jammed the controls and joined his passenger. The cargo hold was greasy, the flyer banked, the trooper braced across the wind-rushed hatch.

  Johnson tapped him on the shoulder. ‘It’s no good,’ he shouted, ‘there’s nothing here.’ He wasn’t able to tell if Schilling understood. All he got in response was a flat stare, unfocused and expressionless, the sole indicator of life a pulsing artery visible over the collar of his jacket, short-sleeved and stained. ‘We’re running low on fuel,’ he added. ‘It’s Base 2 or nothing, okay? Maybe we can get some wheels there, or a hover.’

  Schilling dragged shut the door. The volume lessened.

  The pilot flattened his wild hair. ‘Whatever transport we can find we’ll have to steal,’ he commented. ‘But that shouldn’t be too difficult given the current climate.’ And later, ‘Ever experience a crash landing?’

  ii

  He sat with his left hand clamped tight round his right wrist, peering at his whitened knuckles like a shaman at chicken bones...

  Just then the bergs had shifted, the evening sun playing off a whole new set of profiles.

  He had his axe, pulled like a splinter from the wreck, the flyer wedged between towers of alien snow, semblances of palm trees and whole city blocks.

  ‘You’re shuddering,’ Johnson said, talking to reassure himself. ‘Should have considered landing before we took off.’

  Base 2 was an island. It had been constructed on a promontory, steep cliffs of porous rock on the seaward side, land sloping to the rear where now a strait cut it off from the southern continent. Caves, stilt-walled like old ladies hitching up their skirts, gave access to the saltless depths. There should be wheels or hovers parked therein, either drowned like wasps in cold sweat tea or afloat at the old ladies’ knees, the stone skirt roof with sufficient clearance to accommodate an ocean upwardly displaced. Their problem lay in crossing the strait.

  Aircraft had passed low overhead, circling the base, planes like garish lizards, bristling with armour; but the crash, if observed, went uninvestigated.

  He wished he knew more about what was happening on a planetary scale. Life had been less complicated in the past. Then the company and the pilot had sparred for fun, death looming no larger than accident, one a chance result of the other. Now it seemed the killing was deliberate, the line taking a step back in order to volunteer the individual, a man on whose behalf they were willing to forgo the privilege.

  Roman Johnson wondered how deep it was and if they should even consider wading.

  Hubert Schilling raised his axe and began hollowing out a boat.

  Not a boat in the conventional sense, that would have proved impossible to paddle. What Schilling hewed from a three metre berg was a tube, a pipe section, an elongated doughnut. It was surprisingly round, the brawny trooper obviously pleased once more with his handiwork, smiling maniacally as he rolled the fragile mass to the shore.

  ‘You honestly think this will work?’ quizzed the pilot, stepping inside, fingers testing the curved wall.

  Schilling pushed the axe through a belt loop and stared at Johnson as if to say: ready?

  After three...

  At first he was convinced they were sinking, but the cylinder was two metres in diameter, the ocean sufficiently condensed to support their weight provided them retain forward momentum. And fear accounted for that. Cracks appeared, but they made it across, crashing into a shelf of rock on the new-made island, the base on it crumpled and listing.

  Clouds massed, twilight premature. They picked their way carefully over what was once the landing field, the remains of flyers scattered like crushed insects. Everything was quiet. Nothing moved besides themselves. Schilling crouched low and pointed. A door hung lazily on one hinge. It looked to have been kicked open, a dent forced outward. The flesh of Johnson’s neck tingled. He’d salvaged a torch from the plane but the wan yellow light did little to relieve the inner darkness. He couldn’t shake the impression that whoever had used that door last had been afraid, in too much of a hurry. Schilling entered first, the head of his axe gleaming.

  The roof sagged and the floor was wet. Liquid dripped as they ducked, Johnson playing the light upward where it revealed fractured reinforcement, grids impacted from above. There were toppled shelves, footprints smeared in noxious pools, a jelly of dust and grease. The place was stale, as if deserted long before the storm, abandoned to tamer elements, something the pilot new to be false. Base 2 had been alive and kicking only a four, five days earlier? The dislocation made him more uncomfortable. He felt like reality creeping in. Schilling led the way, cutting through the beam, hunting for a downward path. Dust whorled, suspended on damp air. The next door was missing entirely, the corridor beyond scratched and indented. Belongings lay scattered, further evidence of a struggle. A glove, pencils, a pack of cigarettes the trooper stood on before the pilot could rescue. He shook his head, resisting the urge to check the pack to see if it were full or empty. There was the faint gurgle of water pipes and air vents screened behind the false ceiling, a cistern maintaining itself without human scrutiny. Schilling walked briskly and with some notion of direction, although Johnson was sure the base
was new to him. Bare patches on the walls showed where noticeboards or warning signs had hung, their removal a puzzle, one neither man cared to fathom as they came to a stairwell and descended rapidly through successive levels. Johnson imagined a figure lurking in the shadows by a machine shop, but they passed unchallenged, any eyes displaced by camera lenses, shock or apathy. The clues to violence diminished the deeper they ventured, the man ahead not once looking back. He strode confidently, emerging from a passage narrowed by compression onto a gantry in a flooded cavern, a blackness therein the yellow torchlight failed to penetrate. It shone off tide-raised fins, however, capturing the abstract hulk of a vessel.

  Schilling turned at last, happy. It was impossible to judge from the irregular cavern roof if the sea would permit an exit. Not that it worried the axeman, who’d doubtless fashion an opening were one not available. The vessel, a hover was his prize, his means of reaching Courtney Island, sunk like fabled Atlantis, and it would take more than a few tonnes of stone and sludge to forestall him.

  Johnson leapt aboard while he severed the moorings. Raising the hatch he dropped inside, suddenly awash in stark illumination. He pocketed the torch and rubbed his chin, long hours unshaven. The trooper appeared, fixing himself in a chair by a flashing console,