After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1) (17 page)

The shoot was no bigger than my hand but it contained a cluster of healthy looking green leaves. The stem was reddish in colour and contained one offshoot, also containing a couple of leaves. I bent in close to smell their fragrance. It was truly wonderful in comparison to the stale rot that was ubiquitous to the rest of the land, and I leaned in several more times to savour the experience.

Excited, I got back to my feet and began combing the area seeking others. I searched for a few minutes, circling this tree and that, craning my neck and shielding my eyes from the sun as I peered up and down the length of every tree I found, but, try as I might, I could find no others. In this part of the forest, at least, it was an aberration. Maybe there would be others out there further afield, but there was no point spending any more time searching for them.

I left it there in that little nondescript corner of the dead forest and surged onward. I could feel it now, the pull of my destiny. It was a rope around my waist that tugged at me ever so gently. But the tug was getting stronger. With each step I took toward the west its insistence grew.

I scrambled up an incline, my feet slipping in my enthusiasm and almost knocking over a withered stump that stood out at a forty-five degree angle. Looking back I had a good view of forest stretching across the valley. Something glinted in the distance, and I lifted the binoculars for a closer look. Adjusting the focus ring, I zeroed in on the target and saw sunlight skimming off metal and glass. They were a long way away and details were difficult to make out, but I thought I could recognise a few Marauder dirt bikes and a jeep beyond the tree stumps.

“Dammit,” I said to myself.

With them milling about I couldn’t make out which way they were headed, but I wouldn’t put it past them to come crashing through the forest after me. If I’d left footprints down there, they might do just that.

I lowered the binoculars and kept going, reaching the top of the incline and coming out on the edge of a small, roughly circular clearing in the wood. What I saw there almost made me tip backward down the slope.

Someone was sitting there silently just a few paces away.

18

He sat there like a statue, perched on the side of a mushroom-like protuberance of concrete and steel in the middle of the clearing. It was instantly clear that he wasn’t in good shape, for the top section of his head had been sheared off. From the place where his eyes should have been all the way back to the midsection of his cranium there were just gnarled and rusted bits of metal and plastic, effectively removing his forehead and the top of his scalp. Filthy, matted hair hung off the sides and back of his head, and from the nose down his synthetic skin was still intact, although it bubbled and peeled and gave the appearance that it may fall off at any second.

He didn’t have the markings of Marauder, but I wondered for a moment if this was some kind of trap they’d set. I could see no sign of them in the immediate area, and besides, this wasn’t the way they did business. They didn’t set traps to get what they wanted, they just relied on their greater numbers and took it, screeching and bearing down with their engines roaring. They didn’t waste time with trickery.

I took a cautious step forward. 

“Hey,” I called, a little more tremulously than I’d anticipated. I cleared my throat. “If you can hear me, you’re in danger. Marauders are coming. You need to get out of here.”

He didn’t move or acknowledge me, but my experience with Max had taught me that, no matter how dead a synthetic appeared, that may not necessarily be the case. I moved forward in a circular motion so that I could approach him from head on.

His posture was that of someone at rest. Shoulders hunched, head forward, arms locked straight and hands on knees, he gave the appearance of one who had experienced a tough morning’s hike and had paused on this monument to gather his breath. His clothes told a different story, however. Little more than rags, they hung off him in great loops, not technically clothing anymore, but more like scraps of fabric drooping from his limbs. The skin on his shoulders was bare and I could see that it had become yellowed and brittle, peeling upward in great flakes under the relentless pummelling of the sun.

I ducked lower to examine his face, or what was left of it.

“Ah, screw this,” I muttered, preparing to leave.

It was only then that he seemed to sense me.  Shuddering, he began to straighten his back, and I could hear his limbs grind and squeal together like a rusted old machine in need of oil.  I had
never
heard a synthetic make that kind of noise before.  As he drew himself up he made a low groaning, breathy sound, as if he were painfully exhaling a lungful of air as thick as tar. 

Aaahooouuggghhhh
. 

It went on for more than ten seconds until he finally straightened, then he groaned again as he drew his arms back and slowly worked them up and down, trying to regain some freedom of movement.

“Whoa, are you okay?” I said, still not sure what to make of him.

He didn’t respond. He just sat there, once again still, as if processing the sound of my voice.

“Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

He cocked his head to one side as if trying to determine my position with his hearing. “Who are you?” he said in a slow rasping voice.

“My name’s Brant. I’m passing through and I saw you sitting there. Thought I’d let you know there’s Marauders coming.”

He sat there again, still with his head cocked, considering. “Marauders?” His vocal modulator seemed busted, issuing at least two distinct pitches when he spoke so that it sounded like two people talking at once: one with a low, gravelly voice and the other a falsetto. It also appeared as though the end of his tongue had been chewed to bits, contributing to the rasp when he spoke.

“Yeah. Do you need help? You don’t look the best.”

“I uh....” He moved his head from side to side as if his neck were stiff. “I don’t know if I can get up.”

I crossed the gap between us slowly, deliberately, so as not to make any movements that might startle him. “Give me your hand.”

I reached with my right hand and took his left gently, like a gentleman assisting a lady from a car. His fingers wrapped around mine and then, as he started to rise, slipped up my arm and firmly onto my shoulder.

“Brant, huh?” he grunted through gritted teeth. He sounded in great pain at every movement of his body.

“Easy now,” I said. “Don’t want to-”

As the folds of his garments shifted I saw his other hand clamped on something at his waist. Below was the unmistakable shape of a leather sheath. I began to draw back but the hand at my shoulder shifted to the back of my neck with vice-like pressure.

“Ya think I’m stupid, huh?” he grated, and with a fluid movement drew out a wickedly curved hunting knife and held it to my throat with a disconcerting amount of pressure.

“Hey, stop!” I choked, trying to back out, but he held my neck firmly and pressed the knife even tighter.

“Didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to come back here, but you’ll wish you hadn’t,” he spat. Those sightless holes where his eyes should have been pressed in close. His stinking breath was like the odour of melted plastic and car fumes.

Unlike a human, there were no jugular veins in my neck to sever, but there were some important conduits that ran through the region, governing aspects of motor control and electrical flow. He wouldn’t kill me by ripping that thing across my throat, but he would most likely cause enough damage to leave me incapacitated, allowing him to come after me and finish the job.

That being the case, I decided to play it safe.

“I think you’ve got me confused with someone else, man,” I managed to gasp. “I’ve never seen you before.”

“Oh, I’ve got the right guy,” he drawled. “No doubt about it. You’re one of them who was here a few days back.”

“Look, I’m not sure who you think I am, but I wasn’t here a few days back.  I’ve
never
been here.  I’m heading west, a long way west, and I just came upon you by chance.”  My neck was slanted back as far as I could bend it as I attempted to ease the pressure of the knife.  The clank redoubled his grip on my neck and fought to draw it forward again.

“Don’t try to bullshit me, huh? That’s only gonna get you killed faster. You’re one of these pieces of shit who tried to break into my Can a few days back.”

“Can?” I repeated. My eyes dipped to the concrete and steel structure behind him. “Is that what this is?”

He laughed harshly.  “You play dumb real good. 
Real
good.”

I’d heard of the term ‘Can’ a long time ago, in the early days of Winter.  It was slang for a type of subterranean vault large enough to house a few dozen people. 
They were speculated to be self-sustaining for six to twelve months if the fuel stocks were handled efficiently, which many thought would be long enough to survive the Winter. I’d never actually seen one until now.

“You’ve got people down below?” I asked, my astonishment briefly overriding fear.

“Well, what else would I have in a Can, dumbass?” he spat. “Yeah, I’ve got people down there, people who are trusting me to protect them from scavengers like you and your buddies.”

“What buddies? I’m not with the Marauders. Don’t you think I’d have called for help by now if I had buddies nearby?”

“Oh,
you can’t call for help,” he smirked.  “Not unless you can talk to ghosts.  I took care of the rest of ‘em.  They got a good piece of me,” he admitted amiably, taking the knife away from my throat for a second to tap the metal of his skull where it had been ravaged, “but I got ‘em back.  Next time I just need
to stay clear of shotguns pointed in my face and I’ll be fine.”

I craned my neck around the clearing and saw several flashes of white, human skeletons it seemed, sunken into the soil where they’d fallen and now all but swallowed up by the dirt. They looked like they’d been there a long time.

“How long ago did you say this happened?”

“You know as well as I do. A couple of nights.” He seemed to consider. “I’m not sure exactly how many. After I took that shotgun in the face and strangled the last one with my bare hands, I couldn’t see. My eyes are gone,” he said, as if that weren’t obvious. “I crawled around out there for who knows how long till I stumbled on the Can here again. Thought I’d never make it back.”

It seemed clear that this confrontation had not occurred recently. Judging by the state of the human remains, it was more likely years, if not decades in the past. This clank may have been sitting here, catatonic, unaware of the passage of time until I came past and roused him.

“Listen, this didn’t happen a couple of nights back,” I started. “Those skeletons over there-”

“Shut the fuck up,” he said menacingly, edging closer and increasing the pressure of the knife on my throat. “I’m sick of your shit. I’d cut your lying throat right this instant if I didn’t need you.”

I shifted my feet uncomfortably. “Need me? For what?”

“To get back inside the Can. I can’t do it on my own.”

I glanced down at the entrance to the Can behind him. “I have no idea how to do that. I’ve never been inside one.”

Suddenly he withdrew the knife and pivoted, forcing me down onto my knees before the Can. He stood over me with the knife poised, his hand still firmly on my neck.

“Okay, I’m only gonna tell you this once. Here’s how it works.” He gave my neck a rough shove for emphasis. “When we heard you thieves messing around up here that night, we opened the hatch far enough for me to get out. I’m the security clank for this Can, see? It’s my job to deal with fuckers like you. I’m the protector around here. Do you remember that part?”

“No.”

He continued on, oblivious. “So I took out three of you, and one ran off. That was you, I figure. Heard your cowardly footsteps in the forest, trampling around and scaring all the wildlife.”

“Wildlife? What are you talking about? There hasn’t been wildlife in this forest for decades-”

“
Listen!
” he screamed, shoving my face down into the dirt. “Or I’ll hack your ugly head clean off your body!” I lay still and did as he instructed. “With my face blown off, I couldn’t find my way back to the hatch right away. Like I said, it took me a couple of days. By that time those below probably thought I was dead. I banged on the hatch and yelled for hours, but there was no response. No one released the catch from inside.” He eased the pressure on my head and I straightened slightly, rubbing dirt out of my eye. “They must have thought someone was trying to trick them into opening it up. Someone pretending to be me. So I’ve been stuck out here since.”

He went quiet for a duration, lost in thought. I still didn’t understand where I came into this.

“How long ago was it?” I said through gritted teeth. Maybe if I could make him realise the amount of time that had passed he’d give up this useless pursuit.

His grip loosened as he contemplated. When he spoke, he sounded dazed, uncertain. “Well, a while now... a good while. Might be as much as a week.”