After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1) (38 page)

Over my shoulder, Ol’ Trembler lingered ominously, biding its time and waiting for the inevitable.

40

In the light of morning I followed the edge of the river, heading south. The surface was calm and benign, contrasting the uneasiness in the pit of my stomach. I wondered if, finally, I’d reached my last day in this forsaken world. For one who had always avoided risks, I was about to do something that I would once have considered insane.

I had to climb Ol’ Trembler. I had to know if Max was in there. As I approached it, I couldn’t conceive of a reason for it to still be standing. It almost looked as though it were in the process of falling right now, arcing toward the ground but somehow frozen in mid-flight. I pictured myself climbing its stairs, circling around and reaching the lower side, my tiny body providing just enough ballast to finally tip it over the edge and send it plummeting to the ground.

Walking within its walls was akin to a game of Russian roulette with the odds not in my favour.  I knew that.  But what did I have to lose by going up there in any case?  I’d already arrived at a point where I’d decided there was no value in my life anymore, so why not?  With the stakes so low, there really wasn’t a reason
not
to go.

Veering away from the river, I crossed up and climbed over some old garden beds that contained a scattering of weeds, some rusted floodlights and what looked like the stumps of palm trees as their only occupants. The gardens curved away extensively in both directions, forming an elaborate pattern that must have been an amazing sight from the heights above in the heyday of the city. Dropping down on the other side, I navigated through the teardrop shaped circuit that led to the entrance, past the cars that had been left here and toward the dark cavity of the foyer.

Here, the scale of the place was truly staggering. I hadn’t realised before just how broad the base of the building was. Maybe that was one of the reasons why it hadn’t fallen yet - the foundations must have been tremendously deep and extensive. Vertically, it just seemed endless. It curved away into the sky to a point where I could no longer see the peak.

As I neared the slanted entrance there was a great, sustained creak that made me shudder to a stop. 
Oooaaaaaaahhhhhh. 
The grating of huge strands of steel as they shifted under the colossal weight of the building.
 
It sounded like the deep and ancient voice of the building itself, warning me one last time to stay clear of it.

Unfazed, I kept going. The front doors had cracked and splintered away, so there was nothing to bar my entrance into the ground floor. Inside, the foyer was broad and expansive with a high ceiling and ornate marble columns that were now chipped and fractured. Busted sculptures, furniture, and pieces of concrete and plaster that had fallen from the ceiling were the most recognisable features still remaining, and broken glass was everywhere. Beneath it I could see a large circular pattern etched on the tiles, now obscured by the garbage that lay on top of it.

A flight of stairs was visible to the left, leading up onto a mezzanine, but one of those marble columns had fallen upon it and it looked impassable. I picked my way gingerly across to the elevator doors and found the entrance to the stairwell nearby. It was ajar.

Gripping with both hands I pulled it aside, and it squealed and whined as it slid across grit and chunks of plaster into a more accommodating position.  I squeezed through and went inside,
standing there listening for any sounds that might be coming from above. Greeted by nothing but silence, I placed my foot on the first step.

Still time to back out.

I pushed myself onward.  Even from the first floor it was not an easy climb.  A hole had been punched in the concrete exterior, sending a shaft of light across a mound of rubble, and I clambered over it, dislodging a few pieces and sending them bouncing and thumping down the stairs below.  Looking back over it, I had to wonder:
Could Max have made it over that?
  I had my doubts, given that he couldn’t reach very high, but it didn’t matter.  I wasn’t turning back now.  I strode up to the second level, free of the first obstacle, and then beyond.

At the tenth floor I exited the stairwell and stepped out into the crooked hallway. The elevator doors were slightly parted here and, by applying some pressure, I was able to open them all the way. I leaned inside and peered up, my hands clasped on the stainless steel door jambs. The jaunty angle of the shaft was immediately disorienting. I felt dizzy and unstable just at the sight of it disappearing upward, the cables loosely hanging to one side as gravity pulled them vertical. Far above I could see light punctuating the darkness, possibly another open elevator door. Creaks and scrapes echoed down worryingly as the building seemed to sway.

“Max?”

My voice seemed even more hollow and empty here than it had out in the streets. Maybe Ol’ Trembler was the epicentre of the desolation that pervaded all of Perish, the place where even sound could not escape. A black hole.

Back in the stairwell, more levels went by.  The going was tough in places, the stairs either blocked by clutter or damaged and incomplete.  One section in particular was completely shredded, opening out to the exterior of the building where a great chasm awaited the slightest misstep.  I had to reach up for a handhold to bridge it, leaving my legs dangling out precariously with nothing to steady them.  Half way over it, I looked down and considered what would happen should I let go.  I imagined myself bouncing and tumbling hundreds of metres downward, cannoning off concrete and metal and then being flung out into the air, spinning helplessly in my last few seconds before being dashed to pieces far below.  Finally
an end to my misery.

Maybe that was the reason I was here in the first place. Maybe I wasn’t looking for Max at all, but instead seeking the same thing that he’d desired: an easy way out. A painful, but mercifully quick exit out of Perish, and out of this world.
 
It would be so simple, to just let go. Right now. Taste the emptiness of the sky, feel the air rushing over my limbs, see the ground hastening toward me with the crushing finality of its brutal embrace. There would be no more effort required than to just... let go. That was all it would take.

I held on, pulled myself up, set my jaw in determination. The summit was still a long way to go.

It seemed like days that I climbed, but judging by the light outside it was more like hours. At times I would stop to step out of the stairwell and cry out in futility for Max. The higher I went, the more the angle of the floor seemed to increase. In the upper reaches I had to hold onto doorways and walls just to keep my feet from slipping out from under me. The creaks and groans, too, got worse. Undoubtedly the building swayed more up here in the wind, creating more lateral load on the structure. The impression that the whole thing was about to tumble down only became stronger the higher I went.

It was afternoon by the time I came to the end of the stairwell at the top level.  I braced one hand on the wall and tugged the door open with the other, and, moving through, I found that the
floor sloped away from me at what seemed an alarmingly steep angle. This level had the appearance of a studio apartment or a penthouse, but it was so badly damaged now that it was hard to tell. The windows lower down had been smashed apart, shards of jagged steel around their edges like teeth encompassing a gaping mouth. Down through that void in the wall I could see the diminutive and ruinous shapes of buildings across Perish, as small as children’s
toys.  At my feet, tracks on the floor indicated that furnishings once contained inside the apartment had slid down, through the windows and into the calamitous drop outside.

I white-knuckled the wall, knowing that if I lost my purchase I’d be following the same path as they had.

“Max?” I called.  The wind here was furious, gushing in the broken windows and swirling around me, pushing and pulling at me with invisible hands. 

There seemed no sign of him.

“Max! Are you there?”

I began to struggle along from one handhold to the next, grabbing at whatever was within reach: a kitchen bench, a doorway, a corner of the wall, a cupboard. From one room to the next I crept like a mountaineer, placing one foot securely in front of the other, settling each time to ensure my balance and grip, trying not to look below. At one point I clasped a doorframe that splintered and fell apart, and had to reach desperately for another hold. As I clung there I watched the fragments of wood slide and tumble downward, slipping soundlessly over the edge.

In time I made my way through the entire floor this way, inch by inch, wondering which handhold would betray me next. Somehow I made it through. Although I completed my search without falling, my objective still eluded me. Max wasn’t here.

Defeated, I shrugged down against the wall and looked out morosely across the city far below. Even in this pursuit of Max I had failed. Most likely, he had never even come here. I was chasing ghosts again, making the wrong choices. Following the wrong path. It seemed that this was to be my only legacy.

I sat there for a long time, not quite sure where to go next, or what to do. The shadows in the city grew longer and the twisting shape of the river more obscure. The wind did not abate, incessantly howling and whipping about and causing grit to lodge in my eyes.

Eventually I clambered to my feet again. It was time to leave. There was nothing more to see here. It was time to return to the wasteland and start again, forget that I’d ever made the stopover here in Perish, go on as if the whole episode had never occurred.

I felt the tremors before I heard the sound. At first I thought it was a tremble in my hand, the result of gripping the wall for so long, but then the intensity increased. The floor and the walls were shaking, the movements getting stronger. The building groaned, but not like the creaks I’d heard before. This was the terrible, guttural sound that I’d heard across Perish before, the noise that emanated in the depths of Ol’ Trembler’s foundations and were flung out across the city like a beastly roar. I cried out and pressed myself to the wall. The building was moving. I looked to the window, and, terrifyingly, I saw the city quavering from side to side.

The sound was deafening. Louder than thunder, louder than an earthquake, it was the voice of death finally speaking to me.

Then it stopped. Abruptly, the shaking ceased, and with a final creak the building settled again. Dust filtered down from the ceiling in little pockets and swirled about in the wind. From somewhere deep below I heard the echoes of straining metal coming to rest. In moments everything had stilled, as if the old edifice had simply yawned and stretched it limbs before settling back to sleep.

Today was not the day that Ol’ Trembler would meet its end. And nor me.

I gave the room one final look and then, on shaky legs, worked my way back to the stairwell.

41

I drifted through gloomy streets on my way out of town. The moon was out, shedding just enough light for me to find my way. With no destination in mind I wandered aimlessly, knowing that I would never walk these streets again. Perish was now a place like my home in the west, a place with too many memories, too many scars to pick at. Too much hurt lurking beneath the skin, ready to burst out at the slightest provocation.

Good riddance, you piece of shit.

Out on the sands I could feel the pull of the wasteland again, and I not only welcomed it, I hungered for it. Strange how perception could twist and flip with such alacrity, taking a thing once horrible and turning it into something desirable. I stopped to feel it resonate through me, the closest thing I could approximate to an actual emotion.

I found myself facing the pre-dawn horizon, watching the last of the night’s stars slowly dissolving in the sky. The desert chill was sharp on my skin, the sands calm and still, caught in a kind of peaceful slumber in those early hours of the day. I wiped the grit from my eyes as I lifted my head to the heavens to see the gradient of black, to blue, to the faintest pink out in the east. I’d once felt something when looking up at those stars, those tiny dots of light, but that was another time. Another life. All of the magic, the lustre had been lost to me. In my heart I knew why, but it did no good to dwell on it. Things like that just didn’t matter anymore.

I started forward again, pulling my foot from where it had sunk in the sand.  As I looked back, I saw something glint softly from a short distance away.  It appeared almost like the remains of a spindly branch protruding from the ground, but as I neared I realised it was the unmistakable shape of a metallic arm. 

Something happened to me at that moment.  That wall of
unfeeling
, the crusted cocoon of the wasteland that had wrapped me up for so long felt like it was about to crumble, to blow away like a thousand years of dead skin flaking off my body. Something glimmered underneath, something raw and vulnerable, something I’d almost forgotten.

The hand was inhuman. It had lost all its skin, stripped back to bare alloy and tattered synthetic muscle, appearing like some ghoulish limb rising from the crypt, ready to snare and entangle unwary passers-by and pull them down into the depths of hell. The alloy was mottled black and green and criss-crossed with gouges, making my own injuries seem insignificant in comparison.