After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1) (28 page)

This deep into the city the vegetation was lessening. There was far less exposure to sunlight here than out in the suburbs, but nevertheless I could see it, poking out of drainpipes and through cracks in the gutters. Even in such an unlikely location, life was trying to re-establish itself. Little by little it would take back the territory that it had once owned.

I turned the corner. M-Corp was just down the street, soaring up into the sky so far that I had to crane my neck just to see its peak. A gentle breeze buffeted me, drifting down the street and sending bits of dust and garbage darting through late afternoon shadows that clung to the recesses of towers along the way. It ducked in and out of the broken hollows, crooning a sad little song on the otherwise empty street.

And so, I was home.

M-Corp had taken some superficial damage over the years, but structurally it still appeared rock solid. Looking along the elegant curves of its facade I could see that practically every window above the third level was shattered, mirroring the buildings around it. An airbust at some point had done the damage, if I recalled correctly. As I neared it, broken shards of glass crunched under my boots and twinkled dimly through the dirt. The front doors were up ahead.

I stopped. Something was wrong.

The glass windows and doors that led to the foyer were covered in a thick coating of dust. Beyond that I could see things piled up against the door: sofas that had sat in the foyer, tables, chairs from the conference room, trash receptacles, and just about everything else. It was almost as if a huge whirlwind had pushed out from the centre of the building and thrown everything against the entrance. It had been barricaded from the inside.

There was also a huge chain and padlock linking the doors on the outside, effectively blocking it from both directions. I remembered the padlock, but not the barricade. Arsha must have felt this increased the security of the place.

“Arsha?” I called out. My voice bounced around the street for a few moments before fading out. There was no response. Our workshop was located on the fifth floor. Not too high. With the windows smashed, she should have been able to hear me. “Arsha? It’s Brant.”

I moved around the side of the building. There was an alleyway here with a loading dock and a fire exit that could also provide access to the building, and it too was blocked. A dumpster and a wall of garbage and debris had been piled up, but I knew our secret entrance was here. Tossing some debris out of the way, I dropped my hands to the oxidised metal of the dumpster. With more precision than I expected, I located a small indentation and pulled at it, revealing a little hatch that had been cut into the side of the dumpster. I crawled through. Inside it had been hollowed out, and lying on the concrete within were a flashlight, a crowbar and a couple of other implements Arsha had left inside. I pushed through the back wall and came out into the alley.

The loading dock and the little steel door that was located beside it were not far. Stepping up to the landing, I carefully extracted a chunk of mortar from the corner of the wall. Behind it was a small silver key which we used to open the door.

All of this was unchanged, like I had never been away.

With the door open, I reached for the hidey-hole and replaced both the key and the mortar, then moved inside to the foot of the stairwell. It was gloomy, but enough light was spilling in from above to illuminate the way.

Up on level five I found the workshop, and inside the memories came flooding back. It had changed, that was for sure. The pristine white walls, floors and benchtops were now stained with grime and dust that had floated in through the gaping exterior windows. Things had been moved around as well - the shelving had been reorganised and there were more cardboard boxes strewn about, filled with wires and green circuit boards, paper filters, various plastic containers and cylinders, and other discarded pieces of junk. I traced my finger along the nearest bench as I walked along. Familiar objects came into view. Glass eye droppers with latex bulbs, a burette, a dusty oscilloscope, a colorimeter.

Arsha wasn’t here.

I kept climbing floors, hoping to get a vantage point from which I could survey the city. At around the twentieth floor I stopped and lifted the binoculars to the surrounding area. I saw familiar bridges, buildings and streets that wound their way across the city. I took my time, hoping to cover every square inch of territory to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Finally, beyond the inner city, I saw a slash of brightness that poked between the shadowy skyscrapers like the morning sun peeking through bedroom drapes. I squinted.

It was a rise, a little hill bathed in the bright orange-red afternoon sunlight.

And something was moving there.

31

I zig-zagged my way through city blocks, trying to keep the hill in view.  It was no use.  The skyscrapers rose up around me on all sides, and from street level there was no chance of keeping visual contact with it.  I became disoriented, and when I finally emerged from the central cluster of high rises, I found that I had missed my target, travelling too far to the east.

Slowing my pace, I examined the hill again with the binoculars, twisting the focus ring to bring it more sharply into view. I waited for a few seconds but couldn’t see any sign of the movement I’d witnessed a few minutes before. I wondered if perhaps I was simply on the wrong angle. Time would tell.

I got moving. Fast. My feet skipped across the pavement and I clutched the satchel tightly to my ribs in one hand, the binoculars in the other. I thundered down into a canal, the trickle of water exploding around my feet as I charged through. Up the other side, I almost lost the aluminium canister from the satchel in my haste. I juggled it and shoved it back down inside and kept going.

Reaching the foot of the rise I stopped, listened, straining to hear even the slightest noise. Nothing. Not even a breath of wind to alleviate the silence.

Ahead of me, winding its way up the gentle slope was an old stone staircase. It was cracked and uneven and, in parts, swallowed up by sand. I took the steps slowly, deliberately. I didn’t know what was up there, but whatever it was might not have my best interests at heart. It was best to disguise my presence should I feel the need to make a hasty retreat.

It would be foolish to have come all this way home and then fall into the clutches of the Marauders, or one such as Jarr.

Little weeds grew out of cracks in the staircase, and I made every effort not to trample them. Every single one of them was like gold, a precious gift to be treated with care and respect. With my eyes fixated on the crest of the rise it wasn’t easy. The sound of sand scraping between stone and the leather of my boots seemed like such a racket in the silence. I tried angling my feet to walk on their outside edges but it didn’t help lessen the noise.

At the top of the stairs, a rusted wrought iron archway rested on pillars of stone.  The stonework was messy and uneven, and there were gaps where pieces had fallen out.  The archway itself, although heavily deteriorated, was resplendent with ornate curls and swirls and ripples that coalesced into a flowing script that spread across the apex.  It read
Hillview Cemetery.

I passed surreptitiously beneath and out onto the crest of the hill.

The cemetery was ancient. At one time it would have been a beautiful sight, adorned by trees and presenting a serene vista as it looked out across the city. Now it was a bare patch of dirt littered with broken headstones that jutted out at all angles like jagged teeth. I moved forward, my eyes darting from one place to the next as I tried to identify what it was I had seen from down in the city. Row after row of headstones appeared as I ascended the last few steps, poking out from behind the ones before like timid children.

Then I saw it. In amongst them, a figure was hunched over a grave. I moved forward cautiously. Whoever it was didn’t know I was here yet. I moved slightly to one side to get a better angle, but stopped when I heard the sound of boots scuffing on gravelly earth.

She stood and turned her face to the sky, staring up as the waning sunlight titled through the skyscrapers, her auburn hair gently caressed by the breeze. She lifted a slender hand and brushed at it, scraping it away from the sides of her face. A mannerism I had seen so many times before.

She was the one thing in the city that hadn’t changed.

“Arsha,” I called softly.

She turned jerkily at the sound of my voice, looking about in confusion as she tried to locate me. When she did, something passed across her face - a mixture of shock, disbelief and perhaps even fear. She clutched at her breast and seemed to recoil ever so slightly, as if I were a ghost newly risen from the grave at my feet. A thing of loathing.
 
A thing that couldn’t possibly be.

“Brant!” she breathed in bewilderment, but as she said it, her expression changed to one of pure astonishment and a tentative kind of delight. Her mouth worked as she tried to say something else, but no sound came out. Instead, she started forward, closing the distance between us in a few strides, her eyes never leaving my face. Then she was against me, her arms wrapped around my neck and her face buried in my chest, almost knocking me over in her ardour. I lifted my arms and returned the embrace.

She pulled away after a moment and took a half step back, dropping her hands to my shoulders and holding them firmly as her eyes darted across my face. She shook her head ever so slightly as if she still couldn’t believe it was really me.

“I...,” she stammered, and then pressed her eyelids shut. When she opened them again she had brought herself under control. “I thought you were gone for good.”

I grinned sheepishly. “So did I, for a while.”

She let go of me and stepped back further, running an eye up and down my length. Taking in every detail. Assessing. No, she hadn’t changed at all.

Her evaluation completed, she smiled and returned her gaze to my face. She lifted her fingers thoughtfully to her lips and drummed them distractedly as she contemplated, what must have been for her, a strange development. A smudge of dirt darkened the skin across her cheekbone, but her pale complexion was otherwise unblemished. Pristine. Her eyes sparkled, bright and blue in the twilight.

“I just....” she trailed off and shook her head one last time. “I just don’t believe it.”

I shrugged, a little lost for words myself. “You uh... you look good.”

She laughed, a spontaneous and genuine sound that rang out across the hillside. She clapped her hands together once lightly in her mirth.

“I look good, huh? That’s the first thing you have to say to me?”

She was smiling, but I picked up the undercurrent of something more biting beneath those words.

“Yeah. You look good.” I grinned ruefully.

“Well, you look like
shit
,” she said, and laughed again. This time I joined her.

“I guess I’ll be withdrawing from this year’s beauty pageant.”

“That’s a good idea,” she said, her laughter subsiding. She cast a furtive glance over her shoulder at where she’d been standing when I’d arrived, then smiled awkwardly.

“Uh, what are you doing up here?” I said.

She shrugged self-consciously. “I come here sometimes. It’s peaceful.” She glanced about. “Wouldn’t you say?”

“Sure,” I said. “But a graveyard? You could have chosen somewhere a little more cheery.”

I began to pace among the gravestones, glancing from one faded inscription to the next. These dates were very old, pre-dating the White Summer by many years. The people buried here had lived and died during times of peace, in a world that had yet to face the curse of Winter. They didn’t know how lucky they’d had it.

I came to the spot where Arsha had been kneeling. I could see her footprints in the dust where she’d been milling around. They traced a roughly rectangular shape, and it seemed evident that she’d taken caution not to step on the grave itself.

There, laid across the bare earth, were a handful of flowers. Carnations, a daisy, a tulip.
 
Arsha appeared at my elbow.

“Amazing, isn’t it,” she remarked. “I’ve begun to grow these again.”

I stooped and lightly gathered up the carnation. It was bright and pink. I pressed it to my nose and inhaled the light scent of it. It sent a tingling sensation down my back, as if awakening nerve endings that had been slumbering all these years.

“Wonderful,” I said, placing it back down. “But whose grave is it?”

She turned away and gazed out into the distance across the city, folding her arms across her chest. “No one’s. Everyone’s. It’s symbolic. It represents the human race and all that’s been lost.”

Her words hung heavy in the air. 
All that’s been lost.
  There was no way to quantify that concept.  We’d lost
everything.

Needing to break the silence, I uttered the first thing that came into my head. “So, uh... were they growing naturally around the place?”

“No,” Arsha said. “I took them out of cryostorage.”

A mote of excitement scuttled around in my belly. I went and stood beside her. “The seeds are still viable?”