babies—burning alive, dying in agony. And then feeling his own body engulfed in a bright, livid heat as he was submerged in the bubbling mire and the pain—oh, good Christ, the pain—
If only the pain would end…
He was right on time.
“Sure you got enough in there? You’d better or—”
“I told you to stop threatening me. Don’t do it again.”
“You’re a tough one, ain’t ya?” He sounded edgy. “Tough as nails, huh?”
“Just give the pills, will you?” She snapped.
“I don’t have ’em.”
She wanted to punch him, split his lips, knock his teeth down his lying throat. “You said—”
“I’m taking you to somebody who has ’em.”
She got up close to him, right in his face. Butted his chest with a forefinger. “You don’t get a damn thing until I get the pills, got it? And if you’re thinking about taking me somewhere to cut me and leave me for the dogs, you’d better think again. I’ll be watching you. And I’m not exactly helpless.”
“You’ll get what you’re after, don’t worry,” he assured her. “And a lot more if you ain’t careful,” he added under his breath as he sidled away.
Kay was tired.
So much walking. He was taking her further and further into the shattered city, ignoring her queries, refusing to even acknowledge them. He never paused, never slowed down, just kept walking, walking, walking, knowing full well that she had no choice but to follow.
This can’t be. He can’t be serious about this. He’s trying to pull something on me. This is very bad. God, what a horrible place. It reminds me of Mirkwood Forest, all twisted and bent. The stillness is unreal…
Here the blast’s effects had been concentrated. The equivalent of a hundred and fifty-kiloton bomb had exploded almost directly above them, liquefying the skyline in mere seconds, sparing none of the elegant, glass-sheathed towers. They all came down. There was little left. Everything looked wilted, deformed. Squashed into putty by a giant, pressing hand.
The wasteland.
What else would you call a place so devoid of life? The light was muted, insubstantial. It had been like that for weeks; occasionally the perpetual overcast would thin a little, but the sun was rarely visible through concealing layers of high, dirty clouds. The grey, impartial light the only source of illumination.
It revealed the devastation. It amplified the silence.
And, everywhere, the smell of the dead.
Kay and her guide crept through the glimmering graveyard. The footing was precipitous; there were yawning depths to be skirted, immense sheets of molten glass and plastic to skip and skitter across. She worried of losing her surly companion and then not being able to find her way out, wandering the ruins until she finally just gave up and crawled into a hole to die. She tried to keep up but he knew the way and, she noticed, he was much stronger and nimbler than he looked.
He was ten yards ahead of her when he stopped and rapped on a panel directly beneath his feet.
Three quick—two slow—three quick
She joined him, caught her breath as they waited.
“What now?”
“Be quiet!” The answering knock came two or three minutes later, a single, subterranean thump. He looked at her. “Well, babe, this is as far as I go.” The sneer was back. Her eyes flicked down to the door. “What are you waiting for? Go on…open it.” Still she didn’t move. “Go on, babe. Or maybe you ain’t as tough as you let on.”
You could be right, she admitted. But only to herself.
For Sebastian.
She reached down, gripped the improvised rope handle and pulled. The door was heavy and it took two attempts to drag it open. And then she had to jump back because she misjudged its momentum and nearly got flattened. He just stood there, laughing. He told her she was “funnier than Mr. Bean”.
A crude ladder led down into a dirt-walled cavity, the floor of which was not visible. She took a deep breath and stepped on to the ladder, started down, counting the rungs as she went. Two. Three. Five…
“Tell ’em Kenny sent you,” he called to her as he shut the door, depriving her of what little light she’d had.
She descended slowly, lingering a moment on each successive rung before reluctantly moving on. Her eyes weren’t adjusting to the stifling black; she could see nothing, not even the ladder itself. What happened when it ran out?
Ten steps later, she had her answer.
It was like the ground came rushing up to meet her, her questing foot colliding with something indisputably solid and unyielding. Her relief was just as palpable. Followed immediately thereafter by terror, the most intense jolt of fear she had ever experienced. Deep-rooted and dating back to childhood.
She’d always been scared of the dark.
Kay followed along the wall until she found an opening to a tunnel. It wasn’t very wide and she kept stumbling on the uneven floor. Somewhere down there was something alive—it moaned and muttered intermittently, strange syllables that didn’t sound human.
Nothing to be afraid of. Time to get on with the job, girl. But she got turned around somehow, tripped and went face first into the wall. She dabbed gingerly at her nose. She’d furled a little flap of skin on the tip, just a scratch really, nothing a little makeup won’t cover, ha, ha!
Shit! Gotta take it slow and try to remember how to get out of here again. Groping her way along, she became aware that the grumbling was getting louder; it now approximated some kind of language but she still couldn’t make out any words.
The tunnel took a sudden turn and she was among them.
A few candles provided adequate illumination but it was her nose that supplied the first convincing evidence as to the identity of the inhabitants of the grotto:
Scabs.
That rotten bastard led me into a den of Scabs.
Of all the post-apocalyptic horror stories, the Scabs had acquired the special distinction of being the single most repugnant living examples of the perversity of nuclear war.
Their ranks were composed of those survivors who were closest to ground zero. Flying glass and debris should have eviscerated them, the intense heat and radiation should have fried them outright…somehow, the Scabs had survived.
They were doomed to short life spans, of course, their bodies wracked with pain, constantly malfunctioning, betraying them with cruel relentlessness.
Some were blind, many were missing limbs, most were undoubtedly mad.
All bore the hideous stigmata from which their nickname was derived: the keloids, layered scar tissue that swelled their faces and puckered their flesh.
Almost immediately they came to be hated, shunned as living manifestations of a war that had killed so many mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers. The common people might be forgiven for their abominable behavior but the Scabs fared no better with medical staffs when they sought help. Most doctors considered them terminal cases and refused to treat them, often denying them even a modicum of kindness and civility: a sip of bottled water, a smile, a reassuring word.
The Scabs quickly learned that there was no place for them in the New Society currently under construction. They retreated to those regions of the city deemed unfit for habitation by the others. How they survived, no one was certain. It was presumed that like everybody else they looted abandoned stores and that led to talk of cleaning them out once and for all, seizing all the goods they had accumulated and distributing it among those who could put the stuff to better use.
Nothing had come of the idea…not yet anyway. Better, maybe, to let them rot away.
That’s what Kay’s nose had detected: the rot. Untended, infected tissue falling away from faces and hands and feet, leaving mere remnants of people, a form of living death.
She had to get out of there, leave, right now. She started to turn around and had just given the order to her feet, girls, this is a red alert, I need warp speed in two seconds or we’re all dead
, when—
“You’ll never make it,” the scab hissed as he pushed himself up from one of the low benches that lined the walls. The others still seated stared at her, her appearance remarked upon by the same gruff utterances she’d heard earlier.
“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t know—”
A hand rose painstakingly. “Doesn’t matter. What do you want?”
“I want to leave. I’ll go and—”
“You go and you die.” She choked on her heart. “You stay and you might live. Might.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“What have you got for us?” She twisted out of the backpack, held it out to him by the straps. “Empty it. On here.” He tapped a desk that had once seated a small child. Kay shuffled over to where he stood, blanching at the smell his body gave off, avoiding looking at him. She opened the pack, removed some oranges, an apple and a small head of lettuce. “That’s all? Most of us…” Something in his voice drew her eyes to his face. He had no lips. His yellow-white teeth were still surprisingly intact, prominent against his blackened gums. When he spoke, his teeth remained locked together, his jaw rigid, words torturously formed. “Most of us have trouble with solid food.”
“I…brought this.” She pulled out the real prize: almost a quart of milk. Some in the chamber sucked in their breath, began to rise from their seats. The authoritative scab waved them back. They subsided, grumbling ominously.
“That’s good. That’s very good.” A pocked hand stroked the jar. “What do you want from us?”
“Pills,” she blurted.