A Longer Short
Boots thumped on the boards over their heads. Issi didn’t dare breathe. She held onto the boy’s head and held it under her body and into her chest with a grip so firm he wouldn’t be able to wriggle even a mozzie smidge. He just had to keep his mouth shut and not make any noise – none, or they were dead. The girl to her left was frozen in a rigid torment – and no breath came from her nose or mouth. No movement of the fetid, thick air.
Good. No sound, no sign of life – let the thumpers move on quickly, not hear or see anything that might take their fancy. Don’t let them look too hard. Please.
Mud caked the three piles of clothing they inhabited, other bits of flotsam and jetsam, into an unrecognisable mass of detritus. More of the same. Bloated bodies, mudded up things that looked like they were once something. Not now. The undersea earthquake – did that make it a seaquake? – and the tsunami that came after laid waste to everything on the plains. The whole city, gone.
Issi wanted the boot-thumpers to see only the useless piles of detritus; wanted them to keep going. She wanted to be safe, to be dry, to find water and food and shelter. But the most critical need was for the thumpers to be gone.
If they grabbed her, if these two kids she’d rescued gave her up, she’d have no chance. They’d have no chance. They’d be dead. Food for the scavengers. After a bit of fun, of course.
Not a single building remained whole or standing. Not a house or hotel or high-rise or mansion or shack. Nothing was recognisable. Not one car or bus or truck or crane or tractor – or any type of vehicle – stood upright on their wheels; all lay dead on their sides, or upside down, or torn apart; bled oil and fuel and mud; added to the aroma of the putrefying bodies and rotting vegetation and the salt and the fear and the chaos.
Crows and dogs circled and flanked, crowded and prowled and pounced – silent unless feeding. Things howled at night, their direction hidden by the sound reflected from the surfaces at crazy angles. Only the flies – millions and millions of flies and mozzies and midges and bities – made any sound. The buzz and zubb and drone of the things that bit them bloody.
Issi and the two children – who would not or could not speak – hid among the battered and broken and brutalised remnants of human habitation. Camouflaged by the rags their clothes had become, by the colour of mud and blood and other stains on their skin; by the gummed-up and ratty tangles of hair and limbs and odd, unmatched shoes; by the smell of unwashed, uncombed, uncared for people and places and things. And the shit that was everywhere, in lumps and mounds and solid bits of water; high on a now-dry bit of wall or fence; stuck to everything that lay on the ground, that floated in the thick water, that settled back to the ground after the water abandoned its prey.
The things that bit kept biting. Don’t slap, don’t swipe – cover bare skin. Find clothing or rags or mud. Make no noise. Attract no attention.
The thump of boots receded. Issi kept hold of the boy, kept watch on the girl. The girl swivelled her eyes slowly in an upward and left-first arc without moving her head. Nothing reflected in the glisten of her eyes. Still Issi waited. She counted to one thousand before she moved her own eyes. Scanned. Only then did she lift her head.
The day before, the boy had moved too soon. The second party of boot-thumpers almost had them. Issi let herself fall to the ground when the thump sound registered. Instinct. The girl had held him still under the metal that swayed and wallowed as the boots went over them; as Issi lay among the rotting vegetation they had been searching through. They needed something to put on their rotten feet. They needed bandages.
Her eyes were closed to slits, and she thought she might have prayed that they wouldn’t look into the sea of garbage. Her body shape would have been a clear beacon – too different from the surroundings. Bare skin on her hands and one arm.
The first group had looked, pointed. Issi felt tears, tasted salt, lowered her face a micro fraction at a time. The camo-uniforms and masks hid their faces. The loose outer flaps of ponchos hid their shape. The heavy tread of boots was the only sign of how close they were. Unless they were too close.
When she had heard the hiss of the re-breathers on the masks. That’s how close the second group was.
Luck didn’t give second chances.
The thumpers moved on, gloves pointed at something over her head. Laughter.
She hadn’t been caught – that time. But the boy was scared, whimpered all the time unless someone was holding him. Issi was scared. The girl was scared. It was a nightmare and they couldn’t wake up. If the girl had spoken in her life before, she couldn’t now. Every time something happened, or Issi swore, or a sound startled her, the girl froze into a lump of hardness. The Lump.
Issi began calling her Lump, and the boy became Fred. Two words that didn’t take too much effort to speak; could be whispered without sounding too distinct from the other sounds that surrounded them. They each responded to the name she gave them. She didn’t bother telling them her name – they didn’t speak, and her spoken name would be like a beacon of difference. Too much sibilance to be inconspicuous.
The count completed, Issi went one hundred more before she roved her eyes through the surroundings. The boot-thumpers were long gone; no second party this time. Her eyes flicked to Lump, who still hadn’t stirred. Issi lifted Fred from under her body. He was still, his eyes closed, his skin grey.
Shit! Had she suffocated him? She opened his mouth, closed his nose with finger and thumb, leaned over his face. His eyes opened. All the breath left her body in a thunderclap. Asleep. He’d been asleep.
They were all so tired. Nowhere was safe. Or dry. Or warm. They had to take turns to stay awake, on guard, while two of them slept. But only for short periods. Staying still was not an option. Too many boot-thumpers out on patrol. And they had seen what happened to the people who surrendered to them.
The younger women suffered the longest. Issi had watched the first time; had tried to come up with a plan or a distraction. The thumpers wore masks, covered their faces, so she couldn’t see if she knew one of them, if she could have begged for help or mercy. She even sent Lump out to one of the flanks to try to find other people who could help.
Nothing. So few people, and the ones alive were in worse shape than Issi and her charges. And the thumpers took any of the living with them, regardless of their condition; dragged them in a line of linked chains; condemned to obey or die. The thought of following a group of thumpers to see where they went, if there was any help, crossed her mind before she saw what they did. Now, she avoided them. Hid from them. Scanned for any sign of them in a movement, or a sensation of sound, or even just a feeling.
Where had they come from? Or were there always the people like these? The ones who hung around at the edges of disasters and took what they wanted, hurt and killed and plundered until there was nothing left, or until they grew tired of the game. Or until the real humanitarian help arrived.
Where were the rescuers? In every major catastrophe, and this certainly was catastrophic, there were the teams of rescuers, helicopters, food drops – that sort of thing. Humanitarian organisations were set up for these situations. They had plans and strategies and structures. They always came in at the first opportunity.
Not this time. No choppers, no planes, no drops, no crews in bright yellow haz-suits. No loudhailers. No big red crosses on white flags.
No one came. No one would come.
They needed to do it themselves; save themselves. The first thing was to get away from the plains, get up into the hills. Away from the thumpers and the scavengers and the flies and the mozzies; the smell.
Issi knew her way around the hills. Knew how far up and in to go to get to the orchards and dairies, the small towns and co-op communities. People above the wave line. All they had to do was get off the plains. Alive.
If there was nothing in the hills, they would at least get to the safe plains on the far side of the hills; the flat farming land that rolled on undulating mounds of grasses and grains as far as the eye could see. The bread-basket, her mother had called the area, as she had called the hills the food bowl.
They had to keep moving, get out of the danger zone.
The only safe time to move was during dusk and dawn. Lump huddled next to her brother to sleep. The metal tray-thing that rose at an angle from the skeletonised building protected them from the light of the fading sun; helped guard against being visible to the patrols of thumpers. The exact moment the light faded to a drizzle of indigo, Issi grabbed Lump by the arm and looked into her eyes. Fred whimpered, and Lump put her hand against his mouth for a second. Fred opened his eyes, nodded. Lump twisted her neck to look around; raised her body and lifted Fred at the same time, stepped into the pattern their life had become.
Lift feet with care, step down only after looking, test the stability of whatever it was the foot was going to land on. Her feet couldn’t feel anything anymore. The rot had left skin peeled away to bright red and yellow goo. Lift the foot. Look. Move. Again and again and again. Occasionally, Issi or Lump would look up towards the dark outline of the hills. So far away. Maybe too far. But there was no giving up. They were alive. They were together. They had a plan. All they had to do was reach the hills. Alive.
Any area where there was noise or light or smoke, any disturbance, they veered away. Stayed low and quiet. Moved with the stealth of a slug. Oozed through the muddle of dead things, and rotten things, and unknown things. Watch each shape of thing: could it be useful? Hold water, maybe? Protect their feet? Keep them warm? Dry? Not many of those things. Too hard to see much in their light-deprived course through the muck. Too hard to look for good things while the brain was on guard against the bad things – the thumpers and their patrols. Other things – heard but not seen. Unknown things; hard to tell where they were, but they kept going – go up, always up. Keep going. Always at least one of them awake to watch the surroundings.
Issi was tired. It was too soon to stop, but her mind spun in mad whorls. Her thoughts strayed and slid from one daring option to another. It was a dangerous slide. She knew better. Keep only the thoughts that would save them; abandon all the worry about the things that didn’t matter, couldn’t feed them, couldn’t help them. Keep going. One foot over that lump of slippery, greasy goo. The next step. Slip. Slide. Move. Follow – who was Issi following? Was that . . . no her mother wasn’t here. The lump ahead of her was Lump. The girl. Where was the boy?
Lips parted, air sucked in. Issi almost spoke, almost yelled. Stopped herself. She could see a moving shape ahead of Lump. That must be Fred. Were they still heading up? She lifted her vision, looked around. Didn’t recognise anything. It was dark. Too dark. Had they been walking in the darkest dark that came just before dawn? How would they know where they were, what they were walking on, if they couldn’t see their own feet?
A hand on her arm – cold, so not a thumper’s gloves. Issi opened her eyes. Lump looked down, her lips drawn into a thin line. So they had stopped. Issi was dreaming. Again. She hoped she hadn’t made a noise. She had always been a sleep talker and walker. Now that silly childhood affliction was a danger to their lives. She could not make noise, or move without knowing exactly where she was, and that no one was near.
It was supposed to be her doing the protecting. She was older than Lump by at least five years, which would make Lump ten or so, and Fred would only be about six, maybe not even that. But he was tough and wiry, even if he did want to cry all the time; even if he whimpered when he didn’t realise. How was Issi any different? They were all kids. But not now. Now they were only survivors. No one else around – except the thumpers.
When she opened her eyes again, Issi saw Lump with Fred nestled in her lap. Issi assumed they were brother and sister. What if they weren’t? What if Lump and Fred had come together the way Issi had found them? A single face that didn’t look at them like they were prey?
That first moment, when Issi knew it was human eyes looking at her through the murk, her heart had pounded and skittered. She was an animal being hunted. Her body responded with a freeze first, but her eyes had been looking around for a path to take for flight. Then the second pair of eyes, big brown eyes, wide black pupils, and the whimper of a child. Issi felt her heart slow, her eyes soften, her breathing calm. No choice. She had to take them with her. They wouldn’t survive without her. He had the eyes of a baby. Someone’s baby.
Now she knew she wouldn’t survive without them. Issi had to have one of them near while she slept. No one could keep going forever. Her body would fail eventually. Her mind was already slipping into fantasy. She had dreamed of a bakery. The one she used to walk past on the way to school in the mornings. Peter, the big fat baker, would wave as she drooled past the window. Bread.
Water would be better at the moment. They couldn’t afford to drink anything from the ground. Too many dead things, too many chemical things. Rain only happened in light drizzles. Enough to keep them cold, not enough to keep them hydrated. They had to keep going. Further up into the hills.
Before their skin peeled off completely; before they became desperate enough to drink anything wet.
Three more slogs through dusk and dawn; three more days without water or food; three more days of dodging the thumpers and the screams. They reached the hills. The road was gone, but Issi knew a way. The road to the quarry. A rough track more than a road, but it was still there. The quarry, when they reached it, was full of trees and rocks and briny water. The wave must have pushed even up this far.
They kept going. Issi could see the crest of the hill where the lookout tower was. That’s where they’d go. She couldn’t see the tower, but it wasn’t visible except from the other side, the in-road to the park, so it didn’t bother her. It would be there. From the tower, they would be able to see where the refugee stations were, where to go for help.
Two more days of trudging through rough scrub and painful steps on stony ground, but at least they had water. The hills were full of little springs and creeks. The water was muddy in some places, so they washed in that water, cleaned the pus and muck from their cuts and wounds and festering bites; waited until they got to another spring before they drank their fill; rested, and drank their fill again. Their feet began to dry out; skin began to heal in slow lumps of scar.
More walking, slogging over rough ground, slippery clay, loose gravel. Always going up, heading to the high ground. Picking off the crickets and frogs and tadpoles to crunch or suck or chew on.
No need to worry about noise now. They walked on ground that crackled; used sticks to wave off the blowies and bush-flies. Issi heard a strange sound, turned around, saw Fred moving his mouth in an O. He was whistling. A very quiet whistle, but a whistle. She smiled, turned back to the path, and walked with more vigour. They were nearly there. A thick steel pylon poked part of its skeleton through the trunks of the dryland forest.
The steel girders became larger, more solid, through the blank spaces between the trees. The western track was steep, the sun was at their backs; it took all their concentration to walk up at such a steep angle. The sound of their breathing stabbed into the almost-dusk, punctuated each step upwards, softened by the soft roll of stones under their feet. So quiet in the damp air. No birds sang; they had seen no kangaroos or lizards or snakes. Just insects, sometimes frogs. No people.
A gap between the trees. They stopped. Looked out over what was once the car park. It was filled with big tents.
A circus? No. But big. Drab green and grey stripes on the largest tents; covered in a web of black or nearly black open-weave material. If the sun hadn’t been behind them, it would be impossible to see until . . . until too late.
Uniformed guards – count: twelve; no, fourteen – with weapons held at ready. This was not what she had expected, but . . . what if these were the rescuers? The military had been called in for emergencies before; it could be. She didn’t recognise the badges or the flag or the uniforms – had a foreign military been called in to assist? If they were here to help, why were they being so quiet about it? Why were they camouflaged? Why were there no signs or banners or . . .
A tiny tendril of fear snaked in her thoughts, held her still – she would stay clear until she knew for certain.
All the tents but the largest were camouflaged; the biggest was white – dull white, with a subtle pattern that moved with the light. Or was that the yellow smoke that emanated from the far side?
People moved towards the centre of the compound. White safety gear covered the guards in front of the white tent. Drab-uniformed guards surrounded and herded a group of dirty refugees into the opening. One man staggered and fell; he was naked but for one sock, with red hair and blood caked in a long blaze on his neck and back and legs. Two uniformed guards kicked him with savage thwacks until he stood up, shuffled back into the line. Fred grabbed Issi by the hand. Lump had her fingers clamped onto Fred’s shoulder. They were frozen in place, until Fred slowly pulled them all lower, below the thick outline of prickly acacia. Under the bush.
Each person in the line, refugees from their clothing and demeanour, went into the big white tent. The rubber-like walkway made no sound. No squeak or squelch or squeal. Feet shuffled and dragged as they walked or were pushed or dragged. The soldiers peeled off as each line entered the tent. No refugee was allowed to sidestep the entry guards, the white coveralls and rebreather masked guards.
A sharp, high-pitched screech from the air above them sliced through the nerves in her teeth, and Issi flinched, but didn’t move. Directly above them, lowering from the darkening sky was a metal machine. Not a chopper, not a plane. It was stationary, almost; a dull thrum of motors behind the squeal of the flat metal porch opening; a hatch. Dozens of people, refugees, survivors, were dropped from the machine and onto the ground. Some screamed. Some were probably already dead, or died as soon as they hit the ground. Thumps and oomphs reverberated through the ground, into her torso lying flat on the ground. She shouldn’t look. Boots thumped on the hatch as more people went over the edge. Hooded heads leaned out, watched, pointed and laughed as their cargo emptied.
The sun set. The world went dark. Mid-winter. The longest night.
Bright lights boomed into the darkness, scared them rigid.
White coats shuffled over and divided the trash into living and dead. Living went into the line for the tent. Dead were dealt with immediately by – oh, shit! The red mist floated for a moment, hung in the air, before the tiny drops descended into the dark earth. The smell, sulphur and ozone and roast pig, made her gag. Lump put her hand over Issi’s mouth.
One of the white coats lifted the mask. Tangerine eyes with a vertical black stripe dripped grey fluid – a hand pulled off one of the gloves, wiped a cloth across the sepia skin, spat, pulled the mask back down. Pulled the glove over the ash-white claws.
Copyright Cage Dunn 2016 (from Speculations of a Dark Nature, Shorts Vol II: Alone in the Dark).
