After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia (11 page)

Billy thinks that Nelson’s lucky. When we find him, he wants to make a wish. Me, I’m
here to ask Nelson a question. An important one. Here, where he’s buried, I hope I’ll
get the answer good and strong.

Thinking about it makes me hopeful but edgy. So I drop Billy’s arm and stroll forward
like I know what I’m doing. Right ahead is a massive stone bowl, big enough to sit
in. Nelson’s bathtub? I’m grinning at the thought, and I peek in, and it’s half full
of green water and dirt and twigs and feathers. A pigeon clatters over, and I look
up—and my mouth drops open. The roof ’s all circles and arches, picked out in gold
paint and fancy colors.…So this is what they thought of Nelson, this is what they
done for him.…

“Charlie!”

I pull up, swearing, on the very edge of a hole in the floor. A
made
hole, perfectly round, over a meter across. Farther on there’s another, and another.
For fuck’s sake, this floor ain’t solid at all, it’s built over cellars or something,
and if Billy hadn’t yelled, I’d’ve fallen through. I go cold all over. It’s all black
down there.

And Billy looks about to burst into tears.

“Billy-boy, you saved me!” I hook him around the neck and tousle his hair. He manages
a sick grin. I feel sick myself. Chrissakes, what kinda place has holes in the floor
like this?

Then I figure it out. The holes are there to light the cellars below. Maybe once they
had grids over them, or thick glass. But it’s shook me up. Don’t know what I was expecting,
but I wasn’t expecting to nearly die. I get a bad thought. What if this is one of
them places that’s, you know,
guarded
? Where there’s a curse if you disturb the dead? What if Nelson’s magical house is
full of traps?

We shuffle along past the sooty rings of old fires, past heaps of garbage, past a
great black gateway guarded by statchoos of angels with smoke-stained wings. The more
I look around, the creepier I feel. In every corner there’s marble statchoos of people
dying—dropping off horses’ backs, fainting and falling, laying down on their deathbeds.
You’d think they was marking tombs, but there ain’t no room for graves in this hollow
floor. I take a squint at the lettering cut in the platforms under ’em. They’re all
monuments to dead soldiers. Maybe a mighty battle was fought here once—and lost.

Suddenly the walls rise like cliffs. The roof overhead jistabout disappears. “High,
Charlie!” Billy gasps. “High as the sky!” He’s right. I’m giddy just looking. We’re
standing under the dome we saw from outside, so huge and hollow you could fit the
whole sky into it. Way, way up, there’s a curving row of windows with a ledge running
around.

“Let’s go up,” Billy says, eyes aglow. I wanta get up there too, there must be stairs.
I tug open a door in the wall, and there they are, a spiral flight leading up.…

But we won’t find Nelson up there, will we? You don’t bury people in the ceiling.
You bury ’em in the ground. In the cellars.

And right on cue, I see an open doorway with steps leading down. In the arch above
it, three skulls are carved in the stone.

“Come on!” I say to Billy, and I pull out my cell and click the light. A thin beam
streaks out, painting a bluish glare on a flight of steps leading downwards. Billy
hangs back.

“Nelson’s there,” he says, pointing up at the dome. “Upstairs.”

“No, Billy, he ain’t. We can go up there later if you like. This way first.”

“S’dark.”

“Use your cell,” I say, and he pulls it out and turns it on and flashes it down the
steps. Then he clicks it off and shakes his head.

“Billy, you
gotta
come with me. I can’t leave you alone.”

People always think Billy’s younger’n me, but he’s nineteen, two years older. He’s
shorter than me, and shy, and if you don’t know him it ain’t easy to tell what he’s
saying.
But he’s not stupid.
He just thinks different. And when he makes up his mind about something, you can’t
shake it. Like that rabbit of his. He got it off a market stall selling live animals
for meat, chickens mostly, but other things too. It’s a monster, a whopping white
rabbit he calls Bunny. Bad-tempered as hell. It scratches and bites, and it shits
little brown droppings all over the house. Morris and me is always grumbling about
it, and Billy knows, but he don’t care what we think. He loves it.

He’s got that stubborn look on his face right now, scowling, tongue pushing out between
his lips. I say, “If you don’t come, you won’t get to see where Nelson is. An’ you
won’t get to make your wish.”

“Don’t care.”

“How can you say that when we’ve come all this way?” My voice rises. “Chrissakes,
Billy!”

That was too loud. Pigeons clatter up and there’s a gusty sweep and rattle as they
swirl overhead. The echoes keep coming, like footsteps tapping toward us, and voices
whispering, and my hair rises. I hate the feeling of all this space around us, full
of shadows where anything could hide. I keep thinking the statchoos’ll move. I feel
we’re being watched, yet I look around and behind us and don’t see nothing. It’s only
the birds…I hope.

“Come
on
,” I hiss.

“No,” says Billy, and I’m mad with him, but it’s no good showing it. Billy won’t come.
He don’t like the dark. And I wanted this to be a good time together.…“All right,”
I tell him. “Stay
right here
. Don’t move. I’ll be as fast as I can.”

I run down the steps, counting under my breath. Thirteen down, then a turn, then a
lot more. It’s clammy cold, and there’s a rank, rotten stink. Thirty-three, thirty-four—then
the light from the cell flashes off black water at the bottom. I might’ve expected
it. Even above the tide line, cellars don’t always drain out.

I prod the water with my toe and it don’t seem all that deep, so I step in and swear
as it overtops my boots. I’m standing in an arched passage, and I can see by the stains
on the walls that the water level sometimes comes much higher than this. Now what?
Billy’s waiting, an’ I really shouldn’t have left him. I’ve gotta be quick.

Which way?

To the left it’s pitch black. To the right there’s a grayish glimmer, so I try that
way first, and the light comes through a hole in the floor above, like the one I nearly
fell through. The tunnel widens into dark spaces. I hurry along, past more white statchoos,
pale and horrible in the dusk. The light off the ripples travels over them, and their
faces flicker like life, and I catch my breath hard. Then the passage ends in a wall.

I slosh back past the bottom of the steps and try the other way, the dark way. Pretty
soon I come to another choice—straight on or turn right, but it ain’t really a choice
at all coz the way ahead is barred by rusted metal gates. I’ll hafta to go right…but
it’s gnawing at me that Billy’s on his own, I ought to get back to him, how long have
I been down here?

But I’ll never get this chance again. And maybe Nelson’s real close, maybe just around
the corner. It’s worth a look. I don’t know if I’m fooling myself, but I’ve got a
feeling about it—like a whisper in the dark, like feeling the heat of a fire with
your eyes shut. Whether it’s real or not, I go wading into the water anyway.

The floor slopes down gradual, ankle deep, knee deep, thigh deep, and the walls is
slimed with green, and there’s black lumps of stuff floating that I try not to look
at.

The passage opens into a chamber. I stab the light about, and it flashes off a bunch
of white pillars sticking up outta the water. In the middle of them is a stone platform,
like an island, and on the platform is a black marble coffin. Big but not giant-sized.
On top of that, there’s a golden pillow with a crown.

That’s all. But a shudder runs right down my spine. I know this is the place even
before I spell out the golden letters on the platform: horatio visc nelson. I never
knew the rest of his name before.

Nelson’s
here
.

I breathe in, slow and deep and careful.

It ain’t like them palaces up on the Heath that Morris goes on about, all silk carpets
and pictures and shandyleers. Maybe it useta be that way upstairs, when Nelson was
alive. But when he died they put him down here in the dark, with a black bed to lie
on and quiet white walls. An’ a golden crown like a king.

The ripples I’ve made go slopping against the pillars. The beam of my light jumps
off the surface: a lake of black water and bright ripples surrounding a black marble
coffin on a white stone island.

I’m glad I came. I’ll always remember this. I don’t reckon I’ll ever see it again.
Coz I’m
leaving
.

Morris don’t know what I’m planning, at least I hope he don’t, I ain’t stupid enough
to tell him, though he might guess. He’s sharp, is Morris, and he likes to be in control.
“Nobody leaves the Krew,” he says. “Family sticks together.” Yeah, but what does that
mean? It means selling nirv for Morris in a half-drowned, half-ruined city crawling
with Hairies, where the cholera comes back every coupla summers. What sorta life is
that? Ma died. What if Billy dies?

Oh, I guess the old bastard’s fond of me and Billy, in his way. But he don’t
own
me, I don’t need his
permission
. I’m leaving, all right, and there’s only two ways, upriver or down. Upriver’s too
dangerous, patrols and checkpoints and electric fences. Downriver’s dangerous too—you
gotta get past the Barrage and right out to sea. I reckon I could do it, though, and
find my way north up the coast. It’s worth it. Up in the north there’s a proper government,
not like what we got here. Proper jobs—doctors—
rights
. Up north I can get to be something. Make something outta my life. And Billy’s.

But that’s it—Billy. No way can I take him with me, I’ll hafta leave him behind, at
least for a while. (Forever if I get killed—but I won’t get killed.) When I get a
job, and a permit and all, I’ll come back for him or send for him, an’ it’ll be better
for both of us in the end. How can I tell him, though? I don’t know how to tell him;
he’ll never understand. And will he be all right when I’m gone? What’ll Morris do
when I skip out, taking the boat and stuff? He’ll be as mad as hell with me (nobody
leaves the Krew), but not with Billy, right? Billy’s still family. Will Morris look
after Billy if I’m not there? I think so, but I don’t know.

I don’t
know
.

So I ask Nelson. I square up and speak into the dark. “What d’ya think? Will Billy
be okay with Morris? Shall I go?”

I listen, listen for the least bit of sound, listen
inside
my head as well as outside. In the cold silence, my heart thuds against my ribs.
A little bit of me says I’m fooling myself—telling lies to myself—but I gotta believe
in something or I ain’t got nothing.

There’s a tiny tickling noise like a cat lapping. My neck prickles, my breath hisses.
I flash the light down and see fresh ripples crossing the surface. Toward me. Next
there’s a sloshing, regular sound: splash—splash—splash. Someone’s wading out of the
deep darkness on the other side of Nelson’s tomb.

My blood turns to acid. My heart comes choking up into my throat. It’s Nelson—I’ve
woken
Nelson! I swing the cell up. A face appears in the light beam, screwed up an’ blinking—a
face buried in long straggles of gray-black hair. My hand dives for my gun, but my
pocket’s all wet and tight and I can’t get my fingers in. I start backing away, the
water grabbing at my thighs.

The thing whines like a dog, and my hair stands on end. It works its jaw up and down.
Around its mouth is draggled and sticky, with feathers stuck to it.…
Feathers?
It’s gripping something—a dead pigeon, all tore open, I can see the dark blood and
white bones. It’s been sitting in the dark behind Nelson’s tomb, chewing on a dead
pigeon. I’m almost sick. I scream at it, “I’ve got a gun!” and I run.

But the water’s so deep. I hafta force my legs along, elbows pumping, thrashing up
stinking spray, nearly falling every stride, and I glance back to see if it’s coming
and can’t see nothing in the dark, so it could be right behind me.…Then I’m in the
shallows, splashing along ankle deep, and now I can
really
run—so fast I almost miss the steps, but here they are—and I hurl myself up and slip
and my knee slams into the stone—hell that hurts!—and I scramble up on all fours,
and I’m coming into gray daylight, shouting, “Hairies, Billy, run…”

And he’s not here.

He’s not here!

“Billy!”
My voice explodes into the space above me. All the birds hurtle up again and go whirling
around. Where the hell is he, he
never
goes wandering off—and there are
Hairies
in here, I shoulda guessed a place like this would be crawling with ’em—I took too
long, I should never a-left him—
“Billy?”

Faint and thin, his voice floats back. “Hi, Charlie…”

I look up. Shit! Overhead, way overhead where the ledge clings to the underside of
the dome, I see the tiny white blob of his face looking down. “Hi, Charlie,” he calls
again. Or maybe he means, “High!”

He sounds really pleased with himself.

Shit! Shit! I know he’s not gonna come down on his own, I’ll hafta fetch him. Just
as I start for the doors leading to the spiral staircase, there’s a noise behind me,
a sorta tuneless singing, “Doh-de-doh-de-dum. Dum, dum, dum.”

The Hairy’s coming, limping up outta the cellar like a walking corpse, naked, dripping
wet, the hair plastered to its thin shanks and knobby knees. As it comes it hums,
jiggles, twitches, scratches itself. I struggle to push my hand into my wet pocket,
shove and wriggle my fingers till they curl around the handle of Morris’s little gun,
and I drag it out. It musta got well soaked—will it work when it’s wet?

The Hairy sees me. It stops in the archway just under the death’s heads. It’s still
got the pigeon dangling from one hand. It tips its head sideways like it’s trying
to figure me out. Through the hair its eyes gleam like a dog’s. Then it drops the
pigeon and shambles right at me.