After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1) (18 page)

His confusion was evident.  A
week?
That was crazy.  There was no possible way that timeframe was accurate.  He’d suffered more harm from that shotgun blast than just superficial damage to his face - his memory and possibly his processor must also have been affected.  I decided the best way forward was just to comply with his wishes, let him play out his fantasy, and then hope that he would allow me to go on my way.

“So how can I help you?” I said warily.

His hand contracted around my throat again and he leaned in close. “There’s a way to get in from the outside. A combination lock hidden on the underside of the lip. I know the digits but, with these eyes... I can’t see what I’m doing. And believe me, I sat here clicking blindly through those numbers for what seemed like forever, but it wouldn’t open, no matter how long I tried.”

“Okay, the combination lock. I can help with that. Where is it?”

“Well,
look
,” he barked. “You’re the one with eyes.”

He shoved my neck again. 
That
was getting irritating.  I scrabbled around on my hands and knees, feeling the underside of the metal lip as he’d instructed, steadily making my way around the circular hatch.  It was awkward work with him hunching over me like that, crawling around in the dirt.  After about a minute my fingers brushed against a lump and I stopped.

“I think I found it,” I said. I got down flat on my stomach and peered up through the dust stirred by my knees. “Yeah, it’s here.”

“Good,” the clank said. There was excitement in his voice. “Now enter these digits.”

He paused, and for a horrible moment I thought he might have forgotten them.

“Yes?” I prompted.

“Five,” he began. I spun the first dial, making a small clicking noise each time the dial turned.

“Okay, done.”

“Four.” More clicking.

“Yes, next?”

“Five, seven,” he rasped.

There was a louder click as I completed the final dial, the sound of a mechanism inside the hatch moving. The clank manoeuvred above me and reached out feverishly with his knife hand, feeling around for a handle on the top of the slab, the butt of the knife making dull booming sounds on the hollow metal. He found it and jerked at it, and with a screech the hatch opened a tiny crack.

“Get up,” he instructed. He controlled my every move like a puppeteer, jerking me this way and that with his deathly grip, the knife ever poised for a killing blow should I resist his directions. “Open it.”

I reached for the handle and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. I added my second hand to the effort but there was still no give. Bracing my foot on the rounded concrete edge of the mound, I heaved with all of my might. On the third attempt the hatch’s resistance was ended, and it grated upward with another metallic shriek. A foul stench gushed outward and I staggered back, straining against the clank’s grip.

“Steady,” he commanded, as if I were a horse spooked by a snake on the road.

“There,” I gasped, “it’s open. Are we done here?”

He stood there chewing his lip as he considered. He stepped up to the hatch and reached out for the lid to steady himself and gather his bearings. “Hey! Hey, down there! It’s me. It’s Jarr. I’m back!”

The only sound to emanate from the hole was the dying echo of his own voice.

“There’s....” I began, but he cut me off with a curt gesture with the knife.

“Ssh!” He turned back to the hatch. “Arnid? Jess? You down there?” Again, silence. “Dammit. They’re scared. They’re hiding.” He turned to me. “They may not even recognise me with my face all torn up like this.”

“Why don’t you go down and find them?” I suggested, knowing it would be a fruitless search, but hoping he might leave me alone in attempting it.

“Yeah,” he mused. “Yeah, I’ll have to.” He leaned in close with the knife again. “But I need your eyes to help me find them.” He grimaced. “You go first.”

“I’m not-”

He clouted me with a backhand, the butt of the knife crashing into my cheek and knocking me to the ground. He leant down, searching with his free hand, and came up with a fist full of my hair. He hauled me to my feet and shoved me at the hatch.

“Get in there. 
Now
.”

I clambered over the edge of the hatch, rubbing gingerly at my face, and began to make my way down into the lightless pit. I felt like I was descending into Hell one rung at a time. I didn’t want to see what was down there. I already knew there was only one outcome for these people, and I’d seen it repeated in every house, every apartment and every shelter, in every city across the entire continent. Death. Death awaited me at the bottom of this ladder, sitting smugly in the darkness like a spider waiting for prey to descend into its web. I’d seen enough death to last a thousand lifetimes, and surely by now it had seen enough of me. And yet, here we were again, about to face off as we had so many times before.

Get through this
, I told myself. 
Just get through this.

It was a long way down, maybe fifteen or twenty metres. I stepped off the bottom rung. Jarr was right behind me, feeling his way expertly downward. He’d made this climb many times before and hadn’t forgotten.

Ahead of us, there was just darkness. I considered hiding and hoping he wouldn’t find me, but he would still be between me and the ladder. He could wait there for me as long as he liked. I decided to keep playing along.

“So, what do you see?” he said eagerly. He lifted searching hands for me and, after locating me, resumed his controlling grip, knife at the ready.

“Jack shit,” I muttered. “It’s totally dark. I might as well be as blind as you. There was no point bringing me down here.”

“They’re not stupid. They’re hiding out there.” He patted his way down my back until he reached the satchel. “You got something you can light in here?”

“No,” I lied.

“So be it. You’re gonna have to crawl every inch of this Can on your hands and knees until you find my people.”

I sighed noisily. “Hang on.” I carefully and deliberately pulled the satchel to where I could see inside, the shaft of white light from the hatch above allowing me to see well enough to find the flashlight. I clicked it on. A wan circle of light appeared on the floor. I swung it around. The charge was so low that I could only see a few paces in any direction. It would be completely dead within minutes.

“So?” Jarr said.

“Yeah, okay,” I said miserably. “I can see a bit. Not much though. There’s hardly any juice in this thing.”

“Never mind that, what do you see?” he said eagerly.

I took a few steps forward. “I see black.”

The Can was narrow, only two or three metres wide. It reeked of burnt things. Burnt wood, burnt chemicals, burnt gasoline, burnt plastics, and other things that I didn’t even want to contemplate. There was a good reason for that. Everything in sight was charred. Tables, chairs, books, you name it. Plastic cups and jugs were half melted, metal tins and canisters stacked against the wall were scorched. There were piles of powder and ash where unrecognisable objects had been incinerated. There were even scorch marks on the arched steel roof.

“The place has been torched,” I said. “There’s no use going on.”

“Bullshit,” Jarr spat. “I’ll be the one to make that call.”

“Hey, did that shotgun blow off your sense of smell, too?  Can’t you smell what’s
in
here?”

“That’s it,” he goaded, pressing the knife in h
arder at my throat.  “Keep
wisecrackin’ and we’ll see how far that gets you.”

I edged forward, swinging the beam this way and that. Wherever it pointed, it told the same story: a flash fire had ripped through here, roasting everything inside. In such a confined space there would have been no hope of escape. Aside from the main passageway, there were also little nooks on either side, and I could see blackened pallets within, sleeping quarters or personal spaces, I guessed. I didn’t bother going inside them. I just kept shuffling along in a straight line, hoping this would be over soon.

“How did they even breathe in these things?” I wondered aloud. “Maybe they all suffocated and the fire came later.”

“No chance,” Jarr said. “There’s vents leading up to the surface. Well disguised up there, mind you. We had two configured for intake and one for output. No chance of suffocation.” Despite his strong words, the tone of his voice indicated that his conviction was wavering.

We found the first body. There wasn’t much left of it, just another blackened mass in amongst a sea of blackened masses. I recognised the shape of a human skull, however. No question. The remains were piled on the floor behind a metal cabinet.

“There,” I pointed. “There’s one of your ‘people’. Nothing left but a cinder.”

“Where?” Jarr demanded. I guided his hand down until he touched the skull. He flinched, then eased his fingers back onto it and gently moved them around. After a few moments he straightened.

“That’s not a person,” he stated flatly.

My mouth hung open in astonishment.  “What?  Oh come
on
....”

“Move it,” he said, giving me another shove forward. 

“You have
seriously
lost your grip on reality,” I said, resisting his manipulations.  “I’m telling you there’s nothing here for you.”

He continued to push at me.  “That’s not for you to judge.  Now
keep going
.”

On we went, further into the bowels of this underground hall of the cremated, finding more and more bodies. They sprawled across the floor of the hall, cowered under tables, lay curled up on pallets. I counted thirteen by the time we reached the end, but I hadn’t bothered to check the nooks. There would likely be more.

“That’s it, we’ve reached the end,” I said. “There’s nowhere else to look.” As the flashlight began to give out I examined the large piece of machinery that was situated here embedded in the wall. It was most likely the generator. It too was covered in black powder and scorch marks. As the light winked out I turned back to Jarr.

“Can’t be,” he muttered. “No, it can’t be.”

“Listen, something bad went down here. Something real bad. My guess is a gas leak. In this confined space, the fire would have torn through here in seconds. No chance to escape.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry.” And at that moment, I was. This couldn’t be easy for him to deal with.

“No,” he muttered vacantly. “They’re here. They’re resourceful, they’ve just found a place to hide. If we wait here long enough, they’ll come out.”

“If we
wait
?” I said, incredulous.  “If
we
wait?  What are you talking about?”

He stepped out into the centre of the passageway, allowing the bulk of his body to block my path, the knife held at the ready like a butcher preparing to carve. I could see the distant light of the hatch over his shoulder.

“Yes, we wait. You and me.”

There was a menacing determination in his stance. With his shoulders set, the knife gripped tightly in his hand, it was the look of a man ready for a fight. He was like a gladiator poised in an arena, calmly waiting for the advance of his adversary, singular of purpose and utterly self-assured.

He
wanted
me to come at him.

Panicked, I considered my options. The first was to just wait and see if he relented. See if he came to his senses, realised his folly and backed out of his own accord, let me go on my way. That might take minutes, hours, days. Or longer. It might take forever, and meanwhile, the Marauders were coming. How long had he waited up there just to get back inside? Years. His patience might be limitless.

I could rush him, try to knock the knife out of his hands, or just shoulder him out the way. It might work, but I was worried about that blade. One lucky swing would be all it took to do some serious damage. If he didn’t kill me he might still inflict enough damage to prevent me from climbing out of here.

I didn’t like either option. But something told me he never had any intention of letting me out again. After all, he viewed me as a ‘threat’ to his people, one that now possessed the code for accessing the door. There’s no way he’d let me wander off with that knowledge.

I was going to have to take things into my own hands. While neither of the first two options were particularly appealing, perhaps there was a third. Subterfuge.

As gently and as quietly as I could, I reached onto the table behind me, carefully groping for an item to pick up. Something I could throw. My finger brushed against something that felt like a stick. Carefully I gathered it and held it firmly in my hand. With a degree of revulsion I realised it was a scorched human bone.

“Uh... hey,” I said hesitantly in a hushed tone. “Hey, I think you were right. I think I can see someone.”

“What?” Jarr said, astonished.

“Yeah, I can. I can see them,” I lied. “They’re here in this end nook.” Even though he couldn’t see the gesture, I pointed past the generator into the small room beside it.