I looked around, trying not to flinch at the view of the melted buildings among stumps of black stones half-eroded by inorganic decay, and ignoring the stench coming from the ruins.
“Yes, here it’s not any better,” Shaun said with a smirk. “If you had expected the Old Town standing like it was in the old good days, you were having a fanciful dream.”
Yes, and that was the awakening.
I sighed. It’s going to be a long day.
Days were indeed unbearable long in the Scottish summer—along with nights too short and troubled. I woke up sweating, my hand ready on the gun near my pillow. The silvery titanium surface was cold between my fingers. And precious. Nothing else could be used any longer, for whatever artefact—civilian or military—because not just iron, as the moniker would have suggested, but most of the metals were vulnerable to the Iron Plague. Like humans or animals, and even some plants. A few creatures remained alive, sure, but that proved a mixed blessing, since they were rabid and famished. Damn dangerous for all the others. I considered myself no exception.
I gave a sidelong look at the two figures wrapped in blankets sleeping on the other side of the fire. After travelling alone for so long, I was glad to find survivors—healthy ones—even without actively searching for them, many or few though they could be. I had only tried to escape as far away as possible.
Images of doom that I had tried to push away without success crept back into my mind. We would have never forgotten that moment, 2,325 days ago, when apocalypse came to us into the form of tiny stuff out of nowhere—nanoparticles of a technology turned badly wrong and, worse, alive on its own. The worst thing? Nobody knew the extent of that catastrophe, nor its scientific explanation. What remained was under the eyes of the ones who got away, looking like nightmares too persistent for sanity.
I went back to sleep. Nothing to gain by indulging in them.
“Raven? What the heck of a name is this?” Shaun said, while, the morning after, we were sharing a breakfast in one of Canongate’s derelict houses.
“Mine, you Shaun of the Dead. Anything to say?”
He laughed, and threw me a bottle. “Drink. Water in Edinburgh is not safe everywhere. This one is.”
I grabbed it on the fly and drank. It had no taste, indication good enough there were no metal particles. I revelled in that simple pleasure, like a man lost in the desert sipping drops of oasis water he had searched for too long. Not a casual metaphor either.
“What have you found out about it?” Shaun said after a moment.
“The Plague, you mean?”
“Yes. You’re from the South. You should have seen more of that in London than we had here.”
“I guess so,” I replied, trying hard to forget the accuracy of those details. “But we haven’t discovered much either.”
Ellen made a sign with her hands that Shaun translated for me.
“We?”
“Yes. The people I worked with. I am a biologist—or I should say, I was.”
Shaun had not asked until that moment why somebody from a place several hundred miles away was strolling around in his city, when no form of transportation existed any longer. He asked no questions, and I had not explained. What for? Stories from the Plague were appallingly similar, and nobody had any tears left. Not even me. I couldn’t cry any longer, apart out of hunger pangs.
“Has it happened in the same way?”
“I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t here,” I said. “But from what I could see, pretty much.”
“Which metals are affected the most?”
“As far as I know, all metals except the platinum group and titanium—don’t ask me why. Some of them more than others, of course. Only old stones and wood remain unmelted, even though structures made up with high concentration of the most vulnerable minerals in their bricks have collapsed too. This explains the ruins here, and the fact they are not uniform.”
Shaun nodded, looking around. “What about contagion?”
“That depends on the minerals of the water people drank. They might be lucky or not. In London, we weren’t.” I thought again at the delay we had discovered that and how long it took us to find a remedy. Looking at the statistics too long. Half of the population was infected by then, and the images of the sick created a new category of clinical horror. Ebola was a mild cold in comparison, even though it bore some resemblance in terms of symptoms.
“After a while it didn’t make any difference.”
“No. Not for us. And not for any other living beings on planet Earth.”
Iron. Iron is the key of the problem, I mused in silence. There are four stable isotopes in iron. It has taken an awful lot of time before realising only one of them, the rarest of all, was somehow more resistant to the degenerative particles. Having known it in advance, maybe some preventive measures could have been taken, infrastructures maintained, lives saved . . . “Plants—many plants adapted to survive without, or used the more resistant isotope: we didn’t know until the end, and now I wonder . . .” I said, cutting short a long line of reasoning.
“About what?”
“If this was a punishment for what we have done to this planet. The hubris of the ancient Greeks, you know, that attracts nemesis. If plants have started to recover, maybe one day the whole planet will. Except us, the real virus, eliminated forever for the better good.”
“Whatever you say, mate. Personally I don’t know anything about your Greeks, past or present.” Shaun shrugged. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t be overly concerned about any future day.”
“Why?”
“We might not live to see one. Come on, let’s go exploring Meadows.”
“Have you given up the search for survivors?” I already knew the answer.
“No. This is how we found you, wasn’t it?”
We suited up and walked toward a gaping hole that once was a prime residential area of the city, something I could still remember from my high school travel days. I braced for the cringing sight I knew awaited me there.
I was not deluded.
As if Meadows had not been enough, a couple of weeks later I was in for a treat: the core of the Old Town, the Castle itself.
“Clear,” Shaun said, his wooden torch casting a cone of light into the half-collapsed corridor. Flames and shadows made the old castle frightening even to my jaded eyes.
We had waited a few days preparing as much as we could for the exploration of the dungeons and the rest of the subterraneans. It was the last thing we had left to do before moving out of the city and going to the countryside. It was not accidental. I dreaded what we would find, and yet I decided to accompany them, fighting my resistance.
While we were sure nobody and nothing could possibly live in what remained of the upper floors, the basement and below were most likely standing, even if in a badly damaged fashion. If there’s anything still alive in Edinburgh, it is here it’s going to be. And it won’t be pretty. I repeated the words to myself, trying to keep my head cold and my senses sharp.
Ellen moved forward, silent and attentive.
“Careful,” I said to her. “We don’t know what awaits us there.”
“Sis can’t hear you, Raven,” Shaun reminded me gently.
I kept forgetting Ellen could only read my lips. She showed nothing of the typical hesitation of disabled people when put into unfamiliar environments. I guess because in that hell she was more at ease than us.
“Don’t worry for her.” He smiled with pride. “What she can’t hear, she can smell.”
And it was true. A few metres later, she gestured for us to stop and got onto her knees, examining the lurid path, mired with rain filtered from the upper levels and debris. Then she turned, looking at her brother and signing.
“Stones were breathing here,” he said.
“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d understood him.
“This place was inhabited. Ellen detects an animal presence,” he said. “But she can’t tell if there’s anything still
around, dead or alive. The stench is strong but not unbearable.”
“There might be something alive. Maybe even humans.”
“Or what they have turned into,” Shaun said.
“You don’t believe they’ve become zombies, do you?” That was one of the rumours, at the beginning. And for a simple reason. It would have actually been reassuring, considering that a few governments did have a zombie contingency plan, as fanciful as that sounded.
He shook his head. “No such luck. Sick and demented, yes. Nowhere less dangerous, maybe more.”
“Certainly more. Before London went still, there were a few massacres.” I looked around, trying to guess what was lurking beyond the entrance of the vaulted chambers of the dungeons.
Ellen stopped, extending her arm to keep us from proceeding. She signalled something to Shaun and leapt alone inside the chamber.
“What is she doing?” I wasn’t happy she’d disappeared.
“She has sensed something.”
“One more reason to join her.”
“No. If there’s anybody there, it’s in the obscurity. She can perceive it quicker than we can hear it, let alone react. Trust her, mate.” He stared into my eyes. “Without Ellen, I won’t be alive.”
I waited, impatiently, for something to happen, amazed by Shaun’s attitude. My fingers kept fidgeting nervously on the stock of my gun.
The wait wasn’t long. After ten minutes or so, her slim silhouette emerged out of the dark pool in front of us. I searched for her expression in the shadow, or to understand what she was communicating to her brother, but I relaxed.
“What did she say?”
“That whatever was breathing here before has already left. Not since long. Everything on the ground is dead. Only animals, for what she could see.”
This sounds as a good moment for us to leave as well. There was nothing to be gained by hanging around a graveyard, regardless of its historical merit.
“Do you know the most terrifying thing about having hordes of sick people chasing us?”
Shaun asked the question, pensive.
“I am sure you’re going to tell me.” I knew he couldn’t help himself.
“That there’s no one else normal,” he said. “What if there’s simply nobody else in this city or on the whole goddamn planet who hasn’t been infected?
That was a thought I was not ready to entertain. “Let’s go,” I said, turning on my heels.
“Wait. I still want to explore,” Shaun said. “I’ll see you at the World’s End, mate.”
“You mean the place, right?”
“Where else? “ Shaun snickered. “For the rest, the world ended long ago.”
I walked out of the dungeons, creeping up from the half-collapsed stairs and helping my ascent with ropes. There was an uncomfortable feeling of failure niggling inside me. Somehow, I was sure the twins were feeling the same way.
We can’t admit it, even with ourselves, but we hoped for those marauders. We were alert and ready for battle. Yes, even willing. Nothing is worse than being alone, not even death. But alone we are. We have explored the whole Midlothian County, and haven’t been able to find a single, breathing creature. The truth? There’s nobody else here.
The world did end long ago, Shaun was right. Or at least the Scottish portion of the world. We had the confirmation a few days later the Castle’s episode, on a sunny afternoon when Ellen came to search for us.
“There’s a trail,” Shaun interpreted for me.
“Which kind of trail?’
“She’s not sure. But there were traces of something alive, and they lead to a place outside the city.”
Ellen led us across Leith Walk to what, before the Plague, used to be one of Edinburgh’s seaside suburbs. And it was there that, just a dozen of metres away from the shore, we had an amazing view. The sand was littered with corpses—animals of all forms, species and dimensions. There were hundreds of thousands of them, covering the beach past where our stare could follow, and probably further. It looked to me like if, in a sort of hive-mind instinct, they had tried to escape en masse from the ravaging disease to a safer place and had been stopped by the sea. Some of them where bloated with water. An evident sign they all died in the attempt of swimming.
Shaun and I did not say a word. Ellen knelt on the ground, and cried.
That same night, when we were sitting outside looking at the sky—a pastime we seemed not being able to get rid of, Iron Plague or not—Shaun caught me following Ellen with my regard.
“What are you waiting for, Raven?”
“Excuse me?”
“That day in the dungeons . . . I have seen you.”
“So?”
“You were worried, mate.” He continued. “You fancy her.”
“Correct.”
“Bummer! And I thought you had a crush on me.” Shaun laughed.
“I could, if I had not met her.”
“Well, sincere condolences. Ellen was not dating anybody even before the Plague, when she had quite a choice.” He smiled. “I guess the shortage of breathing preys has not changed a thing for her.”
I was not surprised. I shrugged.
“But she likes you, I feel it. I know my sister.” He continued with a smile. “You should ask her out. She can’t talk, but she would make herself understood nonetheless.”
I nodded slowly. “I will.”
But I didn’t. Not that day, not any time after. I preferred living side by side with the woman I loved, adoring her in silence rather than risking her refusal or worse, being sent away. That was something I could not bear. I could not live alone any longer.
We kept doing what we did since we had met, searching for survivors, of whatever kind. Not trying to find not a solution—there was probably none—for a cause that had lost any relevance to us. What we wanted was just a reason to remain alive.
Days became weeks and then months.
We travelled looking at our stars, in a sky often clouded.
“Do you need assistance, Fidra? Have you fed the dogs?”
“No, Raven. Ellen will help me.”
After one year or so of roaming a desolate, silent Scotland, we eventually found a place in which stones were still breathing—the remote island of Fidra in the East Lothian, where a derelict church was preserved almost intact. A young girl with two dogs lived there. She couldn’t have been older than seven. God only knows how she had survived. She didn’t remember a great deal, apart from her parents taking her to that place and then dying of the same disease that claimed the rest of the world.
She is with us now. She has no memory of her name either, so we called her Fidra, from the place where we found her. She’s especially attached to Ellen, and the two are inseparable. But we all love her, and not only because she’s adorable and she’s the only other survivor we have found so far. She has given us hope.
Now we know the Iron Plague is not the end.
Maybe it was in Scotland, in Europe, in the advanced world. But not the entire Earth. Somewhere on this planet, people like us, with strange genetic disorders that metabolise iron in their blood in a different way, are still alive. And if they are, they will be living with nature. Not in metal structures but in wood huts and underground caves. It is from them that civilisation will be built again, one more in harmony with life.
Us? After our long tour across Scotland, we returned to Edinburgh, settling in this Canongate, melted and stinking, but where millenary dark stones stand stubborn. I guess history made them in the first place and keeps them alive. And they’re going to live on, longer than us. But we offer our contribution—we make them breathing.
It’s only 3:45 am, but at this latitude dawn is already breaking.
I look around at our room made of plastic and synthetic scraps. We sleep on a pallet of straws and rags. Sometimes there’s only enough for Fidra to eat while we rely on berries and weird-looking but edible sprouts.
Later in the morning we will go fishing in a loch.
Ellen thinks life is returning in the countryside. She has seen flies near the water, and possibly there’s something brewing there. We are all excited at that perspective.
I take Shaun’s hand while he’s still asleep, and I put it on my breast. He squeezes it a little, and without waking up he starts making love to me. I have no illusion he feels real attraction, but, as he said once, only Ellen has not been affected by the lack of available mates. To me, it makes no difference. It’s an animal instinct that needs to be satisfied, a species that has to survive and if thanks to our lust we can generate one precious life for a depopulated land, that’s something good for everybody.
I allow him to pleasure me and I close my eyes. This day’s going to be as long as the others, but it’s a promising one.
Russell Hemmell is a statistician and social scientist from the U.K., passionate about astrophysics and speculative fiction. Recent stories in Gone Lawn, Not One of Us, Strangelet, and elsewhere. Blog: Earthianhivemind.net. Twitter: @SPBianchini.
A Cautionary Tale
by
Tom Larson
Port Bella was just a whistle stop in those days. A tree-lined street running to the river, the business strip whittled down to a general store and the saloon next to it. Half that since the bar went bust. Then Juanita showed up in a rental truck with a pair of bruisers and a liquor license. She parked in the shade while the boys pried the boards from the windows and doors, ten years easy since they’d seen the light of day. The rest was just lifting and lugging, and by late afternoon she was all moved in. For a week or so it was nonstop contractors, local boys to spread the word. Nobody knows when she started serving. Someone pulled on the door and it just opened.
She worked the bar and served up chili, trading barbs and barking insults. To belly up was to be fair game. She was hell on the regulars, singled out bad points, picked and poked until they couldn’t get enough. Started ducking in two or three nights a week, brought their pals and girlfriends to sample a dose. More than a few took to the challenge and most nights the banter was blistering.
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