Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop (7 page)

What do you say when you’ve
become part of an apocalyptic group of wanderers?

‘
Oh, nice
weather.’

‘
Yes, the
ashes compliment the wind quite nicely.’

‘
You know,
it’s too bad civilized life had to come to a screeching halt; I
could sure go for a shower.’

Annalise said something else
about wandering towards a side road instead of the highway and
Davion altered his course. Melanie sung softly to herself. At one
point I was certain the song was the same we’d heard in the cellars
before the audio cut off. Hell of an earwig, I supposed.

It wasn’t until I’d tripped on
a root sticking out of the ground that I’d woken up and seen how
far we’d gone. Annalise helped me up as I patted the brightly
coloured dirt off my hands. Sondranos as a colony had to be
close-knit. It was here I’d learned about what I’d mentioned
earlier: how the landscape wasn’t as flat as you’d expect in a
crater. Take a train across Scotland, from Edinburgh to Culzean
Castle and you’ll know what I mean.

We’d found ourselves walking
along a small, two lane road that traced along a ridge. A handful
of trees planted on the left side of the road pointed towards the
sky as the soil beneath climbed steadily, slowly upwards. They were
the first trees I’d seen since landing. Thousands of them stretched
to the west - wind-broken creatures with leaves that hung ragged
off scraggly branches. Some of that might have been caused by the
implosion we’d seen in the city, but I couldn’t be sure. Most of
them looked impossible. Others had been so closely planted together
that they looked like the pine farms outside Paisley. To the right
was no better. A dozen, hand-planted bushes lined the side of the
road every now and then. Most were either dead or dying. Their
branches groped each other as if to steal the life from their
neighbours. Dead leaves on the ground mimicked the colour of the
dirt. An unseemly dip a couple meters off the side of the road told
us we walked on a path specifically raised higher than the
landscape. Below the drop and in the distance was the natural
formation called the crater’s cradle, and beyond that would be the
suburbs or recreational areas. Daniel had once insisted we find a
place in Stirling, out near the Wallace Monument and in the
enclaves of suburbia. We never would have lasted out there.

Annalise must have noticed my
sudden snap back into reality. “You okay?”

“
Just
thinking about a friend,” I said.

She paused, about to ask a
question I didn’t want to answer – anything about who the friend
was, or if he was in Sondranos. Instead, she noticed me taking in
the surroundings, catching my surprise as the sudden change of
environment.

“
If you’re
trying not to think about being stuck here, do yourself a favor and
don’t look ahead,” Annalise said. I held her gaze. Her eyes were
soft, and trusting of me.

I didn’t have to look out and
follow the road forward to know why she’d told me not to. I averted
my eyes to a few feet ahead, but never straight up. As a result, I
wasn’t reminded of the crater standing like a prison wall, hulking
itself across the horizon in every direction.

“
The Abbey is nothing compared
to the commune,” Davion began speaking just after all traces
of the terminal and Abbey had fallen behind the new tree-line. “On
entering, you will see a Great Hall as high as our architects could
reach without employing technological advancements in ungodly ways.
All around is family. You won’t need to know their names to be
welcomed,” Davion exaggerated the word
family
by circling wide with his
hands and arms, sermonizing. Melanie perked up at this mention. “I
thank the Lord that I have been granted this task. I thought I’d
been punished for something, but now I see. I bring you to your
salvation, and my own.”

Annalise rolled her eyes.
“Stationed or punished?”

“
You don’t
get stationed in my profession – you get called,” Davion said.
Still ahead, Davion turned to walk backwards, not faltering a step.
He was another man, then. Here was the shepherd, willing and
decidedly leading us to a larger flock. I felt a certain kind of
jealous hatred within my chest in that moment. Cold, yet somehow
warming my blood. Who was he to act so strongly in the face of
something devastating? “Being assigned like a soldier is a trait
unbecoming a man of my stature.”

Annalise opened her mouth, but
the words subsided into a grin. Stifling what she was about to say,
she winked at me. I couldn’t help but wonder what she held
back.

“
Don’t
provoke him,” I whispered. I just didn’t want to hear him any
more.

She nodded and nudged me,
noting that I’d been still watching the ground. It had turned from
the Montana grass to a patchwork of green, clay, and all manner of
soil used in terraforming. Small speckles of silver gleamed in the
vast tracts of fall colours.

“
Almost makes
you want to take your shoes off,” Annalise said.

“
Just might,”
I smiled.

“
Thank the
Sondranos carpet foundation!” Davion said, swivelling back
around.

“
It’s what
natives call the ship that transported the Montana grass – it
didn’t fuse to the soil properly when they planted it, and ever
since people call it the largest natural carpet in history. Not
exactly a selling point for our home,” Annalise said.

“
Salvation
is our selling point,
Annalise!” Davion raised his hands and acted as if he was
conducting – waving wildly about to the beat of something none of
us heard. How dare this man, I thought. How dare he omit the truth
and act like it simply didn’t exist in the face of his
purpose.

Melanie staggered her steps
until we’d caught up with her.

“
He’s acting
like this is a good thing,” she said.

“
We’re all
doing it. Focusing on the next task, trying to think positive
without thinking of what we’re leaving behind,” Annalise responded.
“Better than looking at the reality.”

I raised my hand in mock toast
and smiled. Annalise returned the gesture. I watched Davion and
wondered if the only reason I’d begun to hate him was because he’d
been man enough to step out into the courtyard when life crumbled.
I’d taken a star-liner away while he’d faced the conflagration
face-first. Practically ran in to it – Annalise was proof of that.
Did I have anything to show for running?

Daniel’s voice echoed in my
mind, ‘if you could be more like him…’

I twitched away the thought,
and Annalise noticed. “Wanna hear a story?”

I nearly stumbled. It was
random, but welcome. I felt like she was only speaking to me.
Melanie had resumed singing to herself, and I was certain she’d
started making up lyrics to distract her internal thoughts. Davion,
meanwhile, soldiered on.

“
Sure,” I
said. “Why?”

“
You look
like you need one.”

“
How does one
look like they need a story?”

“
You’re still
breathing,” she smiled. She waited until I smiled in return before
starting.

“
In the early
twenty-second century, a girl named Ilyana spent her life looking
for heads-up pennies on the ground. She believed they meant good
luck. If she passed a man offering her the trip of a lifetime,
she’d keep her eyes on the ground waiting for the sign to accept
until she walked too far away to respond. One day, she was walking
down a street by the name of Rue de la Montaigne in France, where
her biggest celebrity crush had been dining for lunch. His name was
Bradley. Bradley rushed out of the restaurant, having paid in cash,
and slipped his change into his pocket while trying to avoid the
paparazzi.

“
He’d
recently been in a film about King Arthur that revolutionized the
genre. As such, everyone wanted a digital image of him making
mistakes, or acting normal. Could you imagine King Arthur eating a
burrito? Or, Gods forbid, going to the toilet?

“
Anyway,
Ilyana looked up to see what the commotion was even though she was
already late for class and didn’t want to be detained any longer.
So, she abandoned her near-subconscious search for a penny and
proceeded to skirt the crowd. Bradley burst through the crowd and
ran into her, knocking them both into the street. He helped her up
and their eyes locked. Bradley suggested he buy her dinner two days
later to make up for his mistake. Ilyana responded quietly, to
which Bradley had to read her lips to understand over the noise and
Ilyana’s shy volume: ‘I’m not doing anything now. There’s a coffee
shop across the street?’

“‘
I’d like
that very much,’ Bradley smiled. He extended his arm, forgetting
about the snapping photos and cat calls for him to smile for the
camera. Ilyana blushed and wrapped her arm around his.

“‘
Hey,’
shouted one of the photographers, ‘you dropped your
change!’

“
Neither
Bradley nor Ilyana heard. They were too busy watching each other
and the road ahead. In fact, Ilyana vowed to never keep her eyes
stuck to the ground so long as she had something to look up to.
What she’d always wanted could only be seen by looking to the
future and moving towards it. After a long a happy marriage, on her
deathbed, she told her great-granddaughter that there would always
be pennies; it’s the act of looking for them that denies you the
chance to attain them.”

I paused. Melanie had inched
closer and stopped singing. I don’t know when she’d begun
listening, but her attention slipped away just as quickly as the
ending of Annalise’s story. “Are you trying to tell me that I’m
watching the road too much?”

“
Relax, it’s
just a story,” Annalise grinned, and smirked.

Annalise stopped. She looked
like she had more to say, but all pretence of that fled in the
instant she stuck her arm out to halt Melanie and me. Davion heard
the scrape of heels against pavement and turned.

“
What’s
that?” Annalise asked, pointing to a spot along the
ridge.

I followed the line of her
finger to where she pointed and struggled to see anything other
than brush and the edge of the decline. A flicker of light caught
my eyes, stinging for no more than a second, and the silvery
glimmer object of something embedded in the dirt a couple metres
away. It could have been a missile, or a silver hydrant.

Annalise broke from the road
and headed towards it. I followed, choosing to step closer to the
edge of the hillside instead of remaining directly behind.

I stepped closer to the edge
and watched as Annalise approached the object. You could tumble
down the decline, but could never hope to keep your feet planted
unless you went down very slowly. After the fall, the copse of
trees was a visual appeal to nature, as they didn’t do anything
other than act as a makeshift wall against the ridge. As the hill
touched bottom, the decline stopped and became a sheer cliff for
about five or six feet before it hit ground. It looked as if
someone had tried to dig the hillside away with a spade for years,
one sweep at a time. The treeline was marked by healthy, young
pines.

The trees extended into the
distance the length of a couple hundred metres before finally
meeting a small neighbourhood of town homes lining a grid system. I
could have put my hands before my eyes and blotted out the entire
neighbourhood. When I had the chance for closer inspection –
breaking the fourth wall to tell you that, yes, we would be drawn
there like moths to a bonfire – brightly coloured homes spread out
with equally sized yards and fenced in backs, some with pools and
some with swing sets. Most sat like boxes on their foundations. I
didn’t see any people scrambling in the streets. Beyond that were
dirt, grass, more trees, and a scattering of red-clay fields. Past
the trees, any movement would have looked like ants; however, I
still didn’t see anything stirring. I also saw no signs of
destruction.

Annalise
stopped at the object as I caught up to her, having finally picked
my way down the ridge. The surface was clear silver. At the back,
the propulsion system had
Int: AE
stamped below a large bowl surrounding a handful
of blue wires. The smell of burning fuel hovered around it like a
barbecue. They were Aurichrome stabilizers – ancient
technology.

“
Davion,”
Annalise called out. “Does this look familiar?”

“
What is it?”
Melanie huffed, coming up behind. Her gaze shifted from the object
to the stiff fall an arm’s length from all of us.

Behind us, Davion re-joined our
group and clapped his hands together. His smile extended beyond
normal reach. “Oh my, this is fascinating!”

The object had buried itself
into the ground through sheer force. My entire body could have fit
inside the shell with room to turn around, maybe do a few flips
provided I could bend at a 180 degree angle. An impact around the
main canister staggered the dirt, causing it to circle around the
cylinder. However, the most telling piece of the object came near
the top. A small compartment of casing had been detached. We didn’t
dare look inside, or lean close enough to accidentally do so. A
series of scratches marked where something had climbed out of the
hole, which led to a dent in the ground. The dent was torso sized,
and a handful of prints proved that whatever had exited the object
had also fallen down the ridge.