Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

‘The ribs are snapped. It’s likely they did it.’

  Schilling, nervous, afraid of his fear, had to agree.

  She made it look simple, but he was far bigger, jammed amid flaking bones, the living twisting inside the dead as if eaten, consumed in a bizarre reversal of roles. Like crawling through a ruptured wooden fence, he mused, no more difficult than that, the image a means of distraction, decayed flesh and skin crackling like autumn leaves, inviting him to hibernate. He made it to where Debbie waited, unwrapping a chocolate bar, and flopped down exhausted.

  ‘You’re really not enjoying this, are you?’

  He felt claustrophobic. The sensation was new and completely alien. They had pills for it aboard ship.

  ‘Bite?’

  Was she trying to kill him? A cute assassin hired by Ruby...

  ‘Oh, come on - where’s that indomitable fighting spirit?’

  She was crazy; had to be.

  ‘On your feet, soldier!’

  Just passing?

  Schilling got up, brushed the detritus from his knees.

  The torch slowly faded, immersing him in gloom.

  ‘I don’t understand how the power’s drained so quick.’

  He was touched by an eerie suspicion.

  ‘Don’t worry, your eyes will adjust.’

  ‘Nobody can see in the dark.’

  She laughed quietly and proceeded, towing Schilling after using a piece of invisible string.

  The fourth corpse was tiny, no more than ten centimetres long. One of them might have stood on it had it not glowed red.

  A fifth, yellow. A sixth and seventh, blue and green in a final morbid embrace. The colours were distressing and hypnotic, registering like stains on his retinae, burnt impressions of once human forms tortured and shrunk.

  If he concentrated he could just about make out his own feet.

  What lay ahead? Did a fantastic sea creature burrow inland and were these the remains of meals? He pictured the mound, Brackley’s Heap, that great leaning phallus. Was it possible the monied archaeologist was near the truth?

  ‘Debbie,’ he said, haunted by panic. ‘Debbie, stop.’

  There was a moment of acute silence.

  ‘What is it?’ Her voice was reassuringly near, hovering below his shoulder.

  He took a deep breath. ‘I can’t go on.’

  She touched him. ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘We just can’t walk forever,’ he argued, wanting to apologize; unsure what, if anything, he had to apologize for.

  ‘The others might need you,’ she said.

  ‘The others are dead.’

  ‘Sometimes you have to continue, no matter what.’ She took his hand in hers. ‘Sometimes there is no turning back.

  She sounded like Franky. He’d gone to Franky for advice.

  Holding his hand she resumed apace, a mother leading her young son.

  ‘I can tell you a story if you like,’ she offered jovially. ‘No? Okay, maybe a song...’

  Yes, he thought, a lullaby.