Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

and potsherd images leeched from unsuspecting, varied minds. Truly, earthenware, a coarse clay mandala formed by a host of interlocking shapes, juxtaposed and randomly decorated, a celestial vase whose reliefs were continents.

  Schilling paused to shake his head. He wondered what there was to discover. But the wall provided his initial obstacle. Approaching, he listened, hearing the crackle of gases escaping wood. The idea of human company filled him with trepidation, only it was not a scenario he could run from. Carefully he followed the ancient wall to a point where it was low enough to clamber over, from where, cloaked in shade, he saw two figures, children huddled together next to a spluttering fire. They sat toasting lumps of torn bread, Y-shaped sticks in their hands, small faces glowing in the flames.

  He peered intently, not knowing what to do. At last one of the children looked up, his features mischievous, old, his blond hair brushed into a quiff. This character nudged his companion, whose potato nose levered in Schilling’s direction, the skull supporting it oddly narrow.

  The pair exchanged glances, a silent conversation between themselves. They shrugged in unison and returned their attention to the fire.

  Schilling, uncertain, moved closer. These weren’t children after all, he realized.

  v

  The booming was like the storm revisited. Zonda watched from across the valley. The space wagon hovered close by, had the mountain under attack. Wings looped overhead like feasting crows. She sat with her back to a fir, unable to believe her eyes. Most of the fighting was inside Central, hand to hand, the defenders obviously surprised. It confused her that she felt no sympathy, no loyalty. She was unwilling to cheer either side.

  Small-arms fire echoed, rocks battered together, shedding dust and sparks. A handful of troopers emerged from an opening near the summit, hatched now with green and purple heather, the sky above holed by the black silhouette of the wagon. It had to have come from the north, the base there, she conjectured. Zonda’s and Irdad’s onetime destination.

  What did that make the Ologist? An emissary? Had they succeeded might this assault have been avoided?

  Succeeded in what? she pondered.

  Anyway, she’d met Issac Waters and received a better offer, abandoning her high-born comrade and dooming him to failure.

  She paused, halted thinking and breath, but could find no guilt in her consciousness. It was of no importance, Zonda decided.

  vi

  Ula had no interest in the statistics of killing. That was Smith biting, he said, before he was bitten.

  And Issac?

  ‘You were right,’ Stewart told her. ‘He was wired as an assassin. Took out most of the ruling council.’

  ‘Most?’ She cleaned her nails, felt her skin contaminated, the air in her lungs stale. The excrescence of zombies. A morbid presence.

  ‘They say two got out; although I don’t see how that’s possible.’

  ‘You suppose they miscounted?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Removing his hands from his pockets he sat down. ‘There were body parts for six, but eight chairs, two moved just prior to the explosion.’

  ‘They can be that sure?’ Ula frowned, looking over her knees at Stewart.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s disturbing.’

  ‘And we didn’t learn anything.’

  He was caught off guard. ‘Do you still view this as an experiment? Shit, Ula, this is survival. Who knows when the company might investigate. We’re stranded.’

  She closed her eyes. Opened them again. ‘I can view it no other way.’

  He stood, hands returned to pockets. ‘You’ve changed.’

  ‘Hasn’t everyone?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘So why not talk about it? Stewart, the whole fucking planet’s running scared. We’re out of our depth here. This is entirely unprecedented. And you know what? I don’t think the company will investigate; because the company’s already here. This is Mother’s doing. We’re expendable.’

  ‘Like I said: survival.’

  ‘Balls,’ said Ula. ‘Understanding. It isn’t necessary to annihilate each other. That’s irrational.’

  He dragged his tongue over his lips. ‘Okay. Okay. But it happens that Joplinski is one of those unaccounted for. There’ll be more corpses, not fewer.’

  ‘And the city?’

  ‘What city?’

  ‘Come on, you know. The city to the east, the one blurring the screens up on the wagon.’

  Stewart grinned. ‘An aberration. A spectre. You took that seriously? I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s chromatic. Ring fragments. The sky is full of ghosts, Ula.’

  ‘Is that what Smith told you?’

  His grin vanished.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Smith hasn’t seen it,’ he murmured.

  Ula felt a new respect for her colleague. ‘I thought...’

  ‘You thought wrong. I threw up a blanket. This is between you and me, understand? Our secret. Nobody else knows; just us. Our secret city.’

  ‘Thank-you.’

  He sat once more, creasing his brow. ‘About time.’ The grin reappeared, a self-mocking expression. ‘Frightening, isn’t it?’

  Ula ceased paying attention to her nails. She straightened in her chair, lifting the portable screen from her lap. ‘One secret for another,’ she said. ‘Take a look.’

  Stewart accepted the foldaway and scanned the image. ‘Realtime?’

  ‘Yes. What do you make of it?’

  He scrutinized the picture a while before answering. ‘Difficult to say. The carrier appears to be reacting to an environment other than that viewed.’ He glanced at her briefly. ‘You never give up, do you?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Already you have a fresh subject, a new mind to rake.’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. He’s a present. For you. I’m headed south with Lloyd. Engagement party.’

  ‘Congratulations. Does Smith know?’

  Ula shook her head.

  Stewart peered at her again, with a hint of sadness, then back at the screen. ‘Wonderful. At this rate we’ll all be executed. Smith can smell a conspiracy.’

  ‘Yes,’ she conceded. ‘But Smith’s part of the experiment, too.’

  vii

  ‘Soapy Farfriender.’

  ‘Knox Hog.’

  ‘Hubert Schilling. Pleased to meet you.’

  Soapy rolled the tiger’s eye in his palm, buffed it on his sleeve and handed it to Schilling along with his string-pull bag.

  ‘Pilot Johnson asked us to keep a lookout for you. He was convinced you’d show up.’

  ‘He found us under a rock,’ said Knox, as if this was sufficient explanation.

  Soapy grimaced and patted his companion on the shoulder.

  A little heavily, Schilling thought.

  ‘Now, we don’t want to confuse the gentleman.’

  Knox shook his hand off. ‘We were dreams,’ he persisted, ‘born of the human mind.’

  ‘He’s quoting Pilot Johnson,’ Soapy clarified. ‘He has deficient genes.’

  ‘Who? Johnson?’ Schilling dropped the tiger’s eye in the bag where it nestled alongside his backgammon set. There was a pair of boots in there, also.

  ‘Knox Hog,’ corrected Soapy, blowing aside his quiff.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Pilot Johnson calls us his issue. He tells us to listen and grow.’

  Schilling squatted by the fire, toast swallowed and beard dusted with crumbs. Who was he talking to?

  Knox said, ‘Well, we’re listening.’

  viii

  The world carried her along, thought Zonda, advanced her like an idea. She rode the world and the world rode beneath her, each footfall a concept, each plant she trampled or stepped over the consequence of gravity and imagination, a struggle between the two.

  People, nervous and unfamiliar, ignored her.

&n
bsp; Thinking made Zonda invisible.

  She meandered along scorched corridors, down passageways hung with roots and smelling of humus, a dimly lit warren in which many had died.

  She didn’t know where to look. Everything was so different. She opened doors, eavesdropped on conversations, paused to drink coffee from a machine. She breezed a makeshift mortuary, disturbing sheets of green plastic, reading the names of toes. Some of them she recognized, overheard once, forgotten or stored away. A stairwell invited her to visit another level. Zonda accepted, spiralled down, happened upon the Weekender canteen. The large mechanical clock had not been repaired, its missing arms still missing, its face mottled, a china plate bordered in arcane numerals. She wandered through the kitchen, wrote Franky’s name in the dust on a stove; as if she had been there, the mazy signature at the bottom of a message since obscured. It was one of myriad fantasies, a harmless illusion she indulged.

  The world carried her along, its passenger. It informed her of impossible things.

  ix

  Irdad shivered.

  He’d been patient, crouched for hours, his prize floating toward sleep, the moment near...when he was stricken, laid flat by an electric pain in his skull.

  The land-whale was his adult state, his imago. He had to kill it and burrow inside, reanimating its shell while his own dissolved, the raw material from which would develop an egg.

  But he’d failed.

  And now? A man appeared. Moving with a lazy silkiness, he waved a greeting, framed in bluecap’s one sound eye while the other leaked vision...

  Irdad managed a smile as the man knelt before him. Clean hands brushed his face and a gentle finger hooked out the dead orb, holding it up to the light.

  ‘Christian?’

  ‘Shush,’ the man instructed. ‘It’s finished.’

  ‘Christian, I’m...’ His mouth