Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

star, sharp and breathing as its luminosity spread through the atmosphere. It appeared close, a frozen comet. Looking away the image followed, a blur melting to blue and green over the rich landscape. He rubbed his eyes, the skin round them loose and sagging. Tiny woodland sounds blanketed him, adding to the surreal texture of his situation.

  He wasn’t alone. Out there, among the boles, others roamed.

  And the progeny. Soapy and Knox.

  The axe in both hands Schilling jumped from his vantage, jogged into the trees, away from the tumbling river, weaving easily through junctured groves of beech and ash. It was as if he could see; not the surface world of bark and leaves, but the sub-surface, a world of traded nutrients, bartered water, sustenance and information bought and sold in a variety of guises, using an array of currencies. He was convinced the issue were even now engaged in such a transaction, his freedom up for sale, their co-ordinates in exchange for novelties and trinkets.

  Faces surrounded him. A few he recognized. No names adhered to them, however. They were floating human faces, some decayed, faces from the mess hall and the balcony rail, the hospital ward and the landing field. Runners, the essence of plants, crowded faces in a tavern, an elbow V on a table. Curtains on the breeze, his mind engendered them from the un-dark. Spectres. They didn’t frighten him. They hung in that space beyond the painted window of reality, the stained glass of present day in the planet’s cathedral walls.

  Knox Hog stepped out from behind a tree, potato nose shining dimly.

  Hubert Schilling raised the axe high and swung the killing blade.

  A scream.

  Soapy Farfriender dropped from the branches clutching a pair of shoes. He peered at the corpse, seemingly baffled, the night no obstacle to his vision.

  The shoes, Schilling noted, were red with gold buckles.

  A second scream rang. Neither had come from the issue, both dead now by his hand.

  Johnson?

  Shoes a leprechaun might wear.

  Why should Johnson scream?

  Dancing shoes...

  The shame he felt was terrible. The cuts were incomplete, neither head truly separated, but dangling, surprised.

  Shoes that walked. A child’s shoes. Running, skipping shoes. Blood red shoes making a dash for whatever burrow or nest they had been stolen from, as these corpses were thieves.

  Red shoes with gold buckles.

  Blond quiff and narrow skull. Deficient genes.

  Screaming...

  Soapy forced an apple between his jaws, saying, ‘What’s the matter, don’t you like us?’

  ‘Yeah,’ added Knox. ‘You certainly don’t act like you do.’

  Schilling could feel his skin tearing, his cheekbones pushing through. The zipper that was his spine had turned cold.

  The issue sat on his broad chest, whole and living.

  Soapy yanked the apple, which Schilling bit, talking and chewing at the same time. He lay on his back in the woods, a single brilliant star illuminating the scene, effulgent and pulsing.

  He swallowed. ‘God, I thought...’

  ‘Forget it,’ Soapy advised. ‘We’ve heard all the excuses.’

  His throat ached. They stood and helped him to his feet.

  Knox toted the axe, its blade honed and clean. Like the river water, thought Schilling, it rippled.

  He didn’t know what to believe. Walking back to the camp he was silent, the shame lingering. But he was purged of another thing, a quite separate emotion.

  Johnson slept like a baby. Her hair glistened in an entirely new way, her body soft and contoured under the rough sail. Schilling knelt at her side.

  The issue crouched in the boulders’ shadow, suddenly invisible.

  He touched her and she came awake.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked quietly, fumbling automatically for the pack of cigarettes in her shirt pocket.

  ‘I’m scared,’ he said. ‘I’m crazy.’

  ‘You’re scared you’re crazy or you’re scared and crazy?’ Johnson returned, lighting up. Her eyelids crimped in the sudden glow. ‘You’re most definitely ugly.’ She smoked as if there was no danger.

  ‘Scared, crazy, and ugly,’ he replied, mood lifting. ‘I think this wood is haunted,’ he continued, shaking his head.

  She blew smoke at him. ‘I could have told you that.’

  ‘What? That I’m scared? Crazy? Or that the wood is haunted?’

  ‘Get some sleep, Hubert; this profound shit is getting to me.’

  He stroked her chin. It was hairless. ‘You’ve never called me that before.’

  ‘It’s your name, isn’t it?’ She batted his hand away.

  Schilling lay down, convinced he was sane. ‘I’m in love with another woman,’ he stated.

  Johnson punched him on the shoulder, wincing at the jumpsuit’s stiff reinforcement.

  He laughed, spluttered, heaved lungfuls of air.

  She tamped her cigarette out on the ground. ‘Sweet dreams.’

  In the morning it rained. Schilling envied Johnson her weatherproofs. He walked uncomplainingly at the head of their troop, the issue ranging to either side, his trust in them restored. He carried the axe again, nervous of its weight and still embarrassed by the amicable way Knox and Soapy had greeted him as he sat eating a breakfast of crumbs. They asked no questions and Schilling did the same. A satisfactory arrangement. He wondered what knowledge the pilot had of their true identity. Were they twins? He thought so. By whom, or what, were they made?

  The trees gradually thinned. Cleared at some time, the ground in past years cultivated. Crudely outlined fields lay fallow, speckled with wildflowers under a fleecy sky. The rain ended abruptly. The sun sheared, burning holes and raising staircases of insects from the spangled meadow. Schilling held up one hand. The issue ambled closer, heads bobbing among tall grasses and flower stalks.

  ‘An engine,’ he said. ‘Hear it?’

  ‘Let’s ambush them.’ Johnson at his shoulder. ‘Turn the tables. We could use the transport.’

  ‘Maybe they’re friendly.’

  ‘Maybe they’re not.’

  The issue vanished once more, shy of violence, reminding Schilling of his own.

  ‘They’ll be armed,’ he cautioned.

  Johnson nodded. Producing an automatic pistol she checked the clip and palmed it home. ‘So?’

  ‘There,’ Schilling pointed; ‘the bushes.’

  They watched as a roofless jeep appeared, scything through the dappled fields, whining and slow. Johnson handed Schilling the gun, signing she didn’t know how to use it. The ex-trooper scowled, took the weapon and planted his axe. A pulse of anger straightened him. He switched his gaze. The jeep slid up a rise, wheels spinning on the moist grass, three black-clad company soldiers arguing who should get out and push. A routine patrol? It made no difference; they’d be missed. But if the four of them had already been sighted there was nothing to lose.

  The jeep came to a stop. Knox stood in its path. Behind the vehicle was Soapy, quiff stuffed under a peaked cap.

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  That was Johnson.

  ‘Hey!’ Schilling. ‘Okay, okay - climb down. Do it!’

  It was perhaps inevitable they’d shoot.

  He dived into the long grass and returned fire, taking one man in the chest as he rolled, bullets slicing the tall stems.

  Then silence.

  Johnson called to him. He stood shakily, disturbed. The two remaining soldiers had had their throats cut, the issue dragging their bodies from the vehicle as he looked on, numbed by the fact, the guilt of educating these innocents in the ways of killing. It was his example they followed. His dream execution. Johnson had told them to listen and grow.

  She took the pistol from him. ‘Sorry.’

  He unfroze. ‘We all get corrupted sometime.’ He walked off, not wishing her to see the tears zig-zagging down his heavily wrinkled cheeks.

  She started after, chang
ed her mind, approached the jeep. ‘Liquid petroleum. Good for a couple hundred kilometres,’ she called, voice drowned as the engine note soared.

  Schilling wiped his eyes and retrieved his axe. The twins, as he’d come to think of them, moved excitedly in the back of the vehicle, rifling compartments that were mostly empty. He swung in beside Johnson, cigarette smoke curling from her nose.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Drive.’

  The pilot reversed and steered the jeep across the incline. She’d cleaned blood off the seats. Schilling grabbed the rollcage, bag and axe between his knees while the issue tumbled in the rear. They drove over hummocks, through a rocky stream, up the side of a hill covered with gorse, scattered trees bent double, moss greening boughs.

  It had happened too quickly, he thought. The pistol had discharged. The knives had sliced. Death rode a pale rocket on Oriel.

  Johnson’s fell on the inspired side of reckless driving. He made no complaint, gazing south, expecting an incoming barrage. Oriel might have changed beyond recognition, but the company’s militaristic presence had yet to be erased. He vowed to give it priority. At five o’clock relative they ran out of fuel. Johnson arched her spine, breasts tight against her shirt. She shook her head in mock pleasure, squashing them flat as Schilling stared.

  ‘Were you always a tease?’

  She took a drink of water and licked her lips. ‘Of course. You just failed to notice before.’

  The twins had succumbed to Morpheus in back.

  ‘It’s strange, they get more human by the hour.’

  ‘While we become monsters,’ finished the pilot. ‘Is that how you see it?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he replied. ‘Too early to say.’

  Birds squawked. Johnson sucked her teeth.

  ii

  A