After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1) (4 page)

I rode the bike up onto the bridge and only stopped when I’d reached its midsection, where the water would be deepest. Once there I yanked the Marauder out of the cage and levered him over the concrete railing, watching him spiralling to the water below. He hit with a loud splash, his body carried slowly downstream as he began to submerge, twisting languidly. I saw his face bob up, mouth frozen in that scream of agony, eyes sightless, and then he was gone.

Dispatching the drone parts one by one like coins in a wishing well, I then gripped the bike and hoisted it up over the barrier, flipping it into the air and over the edge.

With that done, I stood and considered what I was going to do next. The immediate danger might have passed, but the Marauders would eventually be back. They’d come looking for him in the last direction he’d travelled, and that would invariably lead them to this city. This was a long way south, and a long way east for them, but they’d made a special project of me, and I had no doubt they wouldn’t just allow me to walk away.

I’d bought myself a week or two, but that was about it.

I could head east, follow this bridge to the other side and then just keep going, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to thank Max. I owed him that at least. Most likely he wouldn’t be happy to see me return, but I still had to do it.

Turning back down the street, I realised the day had moved well into the afternoon. It had gone so quickly. My wrist was throbbing but there was nothing I could do about it. Not out here, with no supplies. I articulated it back and forth and wiggled my fingers, and luckily it seemed the damage was not too extensive. Maybe once the nerves went dead, the only thing I’d have to worry about was keeping sand out of there.

During my walk there sounded a deep, resonating groan from somewhere out in the city, an ominous and foreboding noise that shook the very ground. Sand tinkled down all around me, loosened from its resting place in the buildings above, and I could hear things crashing and falling over inside the structures. After a few moments it eased, the sound fading away in the distance, and the quiet was restored. An image in my mind formed of some huge machine out in the city, a thing of massive gears and pistons and treads the size of houses rumbling forward across the ground, crushing the wreckage of the city beneath it and spewing out nothing but sawdust behind. A fanciful, unreal notion that I quickly discarded. I could only wonder at the true nature of the noise and what might have created it.

I searched more of the ruins along the way, and the night had arrived when I made it back to Max’s location outside the low-rise apartment building where I’d first found him. It was a squarish, nondescript place, the kind of inner city housing that had been around forever and which, before the Winter, would have been just waiting for a developer to knock it down.

But Max wasn’t there. The street was empty. So much for showing my gratitude, or even saying farewell.

My hair was ruffled by a cool breeze that drifted down the thoroughfare, and looking up I could see the hulking shapes of skyscrapers all around me, vast black silhouettes that blotted out the starlight. For so long there had been nothing above but blackness, an impenetrable shroud that hid the stars, the sky, and even the sun. It lasted so long that, for a time, I thought it might never go away.

But the Winter was over, and the stars had returned. That was something to be glad about.

As I was about to leave, I saw a faint rectangle of light appear on the second floor of the apartment building. It grew steadily brighter, settling on a homey yellow colour almost like candlelight, spilling illumination across the courtyard and the sidewalk outside. From my angle on the street I couldn’t make out any details of the room inside, and there was no sign of Max himself, but I assumed he was probably up there.

“Max?” I called out.

“And I thought
I
was noisy,” came Max’s voice from above.  “You’re really putting me to shame stomping around out there.”

“I’m sorry, I uh-”

“Yeah?” he prompted, still unseen upstairs.

“I just wanted to say thanks.”

“I distinctly remember telling you to leave me the fuck alone.” 

“Yeah, you did,” I said, discouraged.

“So why are you creeping around my place at night?”

“I’m sorry. I’ll leave you alone. If that’s what you want.”

My boots rang out as I stalked away, head bowed, feeling foolish.  Why had I bothered?  This had been a bad idea from the start.  I should never have turned around at the river.  I should have just kept going, marching right out of the city. 

I’d taken a few paces down the street when I heard his voice again.

“Hey!” I could see his face in the window now, peering out at me. “You’re too stupid to be dangerous. You can come back if you want.”

With that, he disappeared back inside, his invitation left hanging in the air. He seemed indifferent about whether or not I accepted it.

I decided I would.

In the courtyard I moved past a soda vending machine on the ground floor, illuminated softly from the window above, its front panel bent and torn aside to reveal the innards.  It brought to mind the image of starving people looting and squabbling over cans of cola as the food ran out all those years ago.  I’d seen them killed for less. 

From there I moved up the stairwell, and it became obvious that Max had used it in transit a
lot
. The concrete was scratched and gouged all to hell where he’d been shoving his bulky frame around. The wall too showed markings of his passage.

Light from the apartment cut into the darkness of the balcony, and when I reached the landing it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. Inside, Max sat slouched in a big wooden high-backed chair with broad armrests to accommodate his sizeable frame. It had seen plenty of repairs, evidenced by makeshift wooden splints on the legs and by a short plank that had been hammered into the splintering backrest.

He sat quietly now, his attention drawn to the window as he stared out into the night. The room was illuminated by a small lamp on the end of a metal rod. It had been inexpertly fixated to the plasterboard wall through a ragged hole, kept in place by lengths of timber that had been roughly sawed and then haphazardly bashed into place. Bent and twisted nails covered the boards, as if the one performing the installation had never used a hammer before.

The room was covered with a patchy, threadbare grey carpet, full of stains and tears and fraying ends. The smell of it was cloying, a musty and unpleasant scent that wafted out overzealously into the stairwell.

“Well, don’t stand out there all night,” Max said. He didn’t look at me.

I moved forward and more of the room came into view. Paint peeled from the door in great vertical curls that showed the grey of the wood beneath, and a bronze door plaque, blotchy and green with age, displayed the number twenty-one. A matching door handle hung limply, and the door frame was splintered and busted where it had been forcibly opened.

It was a modest place, angular and cramped, with a tiny kitchen and a living space all jammed in together. The kitchen itself was empty, the benchtops bare and coated in dust. Ceramic tiles, mounted above the sink, were imprinted with whimsical etchings of blue and white striped house goods. A teapot, a mug.
 
A jar of sugar. Some had peeled away and fallen in the sink where they lay untended.

“Sorry,” Max grunted at my hesitation.  “I’d have vacuumed the place and polished the silverware if I’d known you were coming.”

“It’s okay I uh... it’s fine.”

The carpeted area formed an ‘L’ shape that surrounded the kitchen.  Set back from the window was a small red faux leather sofa, stuffing protruding from a broad rip on the cushion, and the leather itself was covered in grime.  A wooden bookshelf rested against the back wall, the shelving collapsed on one side.  Various knick-knacks had slid down and collected in the bottom corner, including a tennis trophy, an ashtray, a box of matches and a filthy stuffed Pooh-Bear minus an arm.  Above it hung a shredded television panel, surrounded by scorch marks on the wall.  A darkened doorway led out the back.

I stepped into the room and edged past Max. Space was tight and I brushed up against his chair in attempting to pass. He made no effort to move. I placed my satchel on the floor and sat on the sofa, but from there could only see the back of his head, so I stood and carefully slid it forward along the wall to where I could observe the ‘good’ right side of his face as he stared out the window.

“So, uh, thank you for saving me. I mean that. That guy was about to rip me a new one.”

“So I noticed. Looks like you aren’t getting on well with the Marauders.”

I laughed softly. “Yeah, I think I’ve really gotten under their skin of late.”

“What happened?”

“Well, the last time I saw them they were camped in the ruins of a city further west. They had seven or eight captives inside a cage near where they’d made camp for the night.”

“Alive?”

“Most of ‘em, yeah. I heard they’re experimenting on the live ones before dissecting them for spare parts.” I screwed my mouth distastefully at the thought of it. “So, anyway, I crept in under cover of dark and killed the one who was guarding them, the girl our friend was screaming about.”

“Oh right. The ugly one.”

“That’s her. But she didn’t go down quietly. The others came running, and I only had a few seconds before they converged, so I smashed the lock on the cage and we all ran like hell.”

“Did the prisoners make it?”

“I don’t know. We split up so we’d be harder to find.” I stared wistfully out the window. “I hope they made it. Anyway, this kind of thing has been going on between me and them for the best part of a year now, I guess. It’s been hard to keep track of the time, but I think that’s right.” I gestured to him. “How about you? Have they given you trouble?”

“They don’t come out here,” he said simply.

“Okay.” I looked about the apartment. “So, how long have you been here, Max?”

He didn’t answer right away. He clasped his hands under his chin and sat, as if contemplating.

“A long time,” he said finally, his gravelly voice drawing out the words. “Lonnng time. Since the beginning.”

“What, since the beginning of the Winter?”

“Yep.”

“But that’s been decades.”

“Has it? Feels like longer,” he said sourly. “Like you said, hard keeping track of time out here.”

“What were you? Before, that is.”

“Domestic clank. Cleaning, sanitation. Gardening. You know the drill.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t have the appearance one would expect of a synthetic with those kind of duties, given his large frame. He looked more suited to hard labour and heavy lifting to me, but I didn’t push it.

“How about you?” he said. He turned to face me for the first time and raised his damaged left hand, tapping an index finger on his dented metal temple. It made a hollow tinny sound. “Where’s your mark?”

He referred to the tattoo on the left temple that all synthetics were branded with when created, marking them as the product of their corporation. It was a way to quickly and easily tell the difference between humans and machines at a glance.

“It’s a long story. I’m a custom build.”

Nodding, he waited for me to go on. “So, that’s it? You’re gonna leave it at that?”

I shifted uncomfortably. “I guess you could say I came out of a lab.”

“A lab,” he said dryly. “Well that explains it.” He rubbed his forehead, exasperated. “
What
lab?”

“It was a research lab,” I said simply.

He sighed and levered himself up on his elbow.  “So did you go to all this trouble of coming back here and sneaking around just to
not
tell me anything about yourself?”

“What’s there to tell?” I said. “We’re both stuck out in the middle of nowhere, with no place to go. What does it matter which lab I came from?”

“Okay,” he said, relenting, holding up his hands. “Whatever. You’re right, I don’t give a shit.” He looked over at me, thoughtful. “So you’ve given me your thanks. Is there something else you want?”

“Uh, what do you mean?”

“I mean did you come back here because you want something from me? Is that what this is about?”

“No, I don’t want anything from you,” I said flatly.

“You didn’t come here to break me up into spare parts?” A hint of levity glinted in his milky eye.

I glanced over his massive frame, aware of the irony in his jest, and recalling the way he’d torn the Marauder apart with his bare hands.  If anyone was going to be breaking anyone else up for spare parts, it would be
him
breaking
me
.

“I’m no goddamn Marauder,” I said. “I’m no cannibal.”

“So what, then? Surely you have somewhere you’d rather be.”

“Well, I’m trying to get home, but I can’t go there with these Marauders on my tail. I don’t want them following....” I trailed off, and Max just stared at me curiously. “Anyway, once I’m sure they’re gone, I’ll be heading back west.”