Thy Eternal Summer (13/15)

Chapter 61

They woke early the next morning, and set off in the darkness. It was slower going, as Blake did not know this land as he had his farm's. He estimated they had enough power to get back to Liberty; the four square would take any standard power source, and if there were none left, well, there was always walking.2

The possible repercussions never really entered their head. They were heading toward more people, yes, most of whom were likely to be hostile. Their final destination would most likely be the city, Bismarck, which they had been told explicitly was a war zone and a haven for robber barons and thief lords. Yet, they continued on stoically. These thoughts crossed Jack's mind, as he knew they must have done Blake's, but neither of them said anything. There was nothing to say, Jack supposed: they had a mission and a destination, and nor mountains nor valleys nor kings nor peasants nor angels nor demons would keep them from reaching it, or at least dying in the attempt.3

They camped in their thermal clothing at night, in craters and under hedges and wherever they could find some semblance of cover and shelter. They ate canned food out of the bug-out bag, and took the water purifier when they found a stream and filled it and drank of that.4

Liberty, for Liberty it must have been as there were no other towns on this route, loomed before them at dusk one day. They arrived on the outskirts when night was full, and the place illuminated by starlight. 5

It was a labyrinth. What had once been so rigid and straight, arranged with such military precision, was now a massive heap of rubble. The streets were still identifiable, the layout, but the old familiar paths were buried under what had once been buildings and cars and power lines and satellite towers and... people. 6

They made their way through the devastation, driving slowly on what firm ground remained. There was very little sign of life, very little to signify that living people had ever occupied this graveyard. 7

At one point, they did find a sign of former life. Three bodies, a man, a woman and a little boy, lay in the middle of the street. They were clinging to each other, their hands tight with rigor mortis; all three were shot through the head, and the blood and a little bit of brain lay pooled over the ground. 8

Further on, they found a sort of hovel, carved out of the rubble into the basement of what had been a standard house. Set above the entrance was a piece of overturned black top, a dark black cross scratched hard into the gray stone. They stopped the four square, got off, and went to look inside. There was a large group of people, ten or twelve perhaps, arrayed in various terrified looking poses around the room. All had been shot, most riddled with automatic weapons. Three children huddled in a corner; a woman, frozen on the ground where she had been shot and died, lunging for them. Two men had evidently met the attackers at the door and been blown backwards, the wounds spattering the ground behind them. 9

Jack struck the wall with his fist, letting out a howl of rage and anguish. Blake dropped to his knees, bowed his head, closed his eyes, and his mouth began to move silently. Jack dropped to his knees too, and bowed his head. His eyes stayed open, and he stared at the ground below him. The very ground had been upset, its order interrupted, webbed with cracks and churned about unnaturally. Jack did not know anything to pray.10

After a few minutes, Blake rose silently. Taking one last look around the room, he turned and left. Jack followed him. 11

The filling station had been destroyed, but Blake was able to salvage a couple car batteries, which with modification would apparently work on the four square. They made camp in town that night, and slept fitfully.12

They arrived at Bismarck as the sun was going down. They proceeded through a long section of Upper Class suburbs, similar to Liberty's residential suburbs but larger. This area seemed relatively unharmed. There were a few missile craters, and some areas were largely rubble, some seemed to have disappeared. But it obviously wasn't the rich population that the enemy—the Coalition—was worried about. 13

Jack and Blake looked around, investigated a few houses. There didn't seem to be much missing from them, besides people. The standard equipment, the magnanimous decorations, the posh food pantries even that were the staple of the homes of the upper class seemed mostly unharmed. A few vases were broken, a few windows cracked—the inhabitants had been taken away, it seemed, and a few resisted. As they got closer to the city itself, there were some places that had obviously been looted.14

As the full dark of night fell on the place, they reached the inner city.15

Chapter 7 16

Some buildings had been toppled, some remained standing, tall and proud. The missiles had not targeted the city center, the enemy wanted the city center for its own. Yet a few of the towers, a few of the lumbering giants that had been famous the world over for their size and strength and power, had been laid waste. They had smashed into others, of course, and it was a testament to their architects that most of the other towers held up. Still, the center of the city was a calamity, a zone of destruction like something Dante or John Milton might dream up.17

There were piles, piles everywhere. Piles of rubble, stones and glass and rubbish that had been tossed about in the destructive fury of the attacks. Piles of human waste, that had been simply left in the streets by a people gone mad with their world crashing down around them. Piles of garbage, old cans and cardboard and all the other things that people, even still, used and had no need for and discarded. 18

The air was rife with the stench of the dead, and with the stench of the living dead. Decaying bodies, the sick and sweet smell of drying blood, the smell of waste—human, dog, rat, and whatever else found it convenient to live down here still—the smell of the sewers, which had of course been cut open. The smell of roasting meat, meat of various types that the CEOs and financial wizards who had done business down here would never have considered eating. Dogs were succulent, rats would do, mice and sparrows and squirrels and various types of pets were available when nothing else was.19

Stones crunched under foot. Stones, which were really just the tiniest shards of glass from windows and doors and asphalt and all the other building materials, and all the other components that had gone to make a smoothly running city, and had been shattered and shredded by the attack. The very air felt gritty, as if the materials that went to make up existence had been shredded and now lingered in the air, settling slowly upon and soaking through all the physical beings and entities that were left.20

If grittiness was the feeling, the taste could best be described as a cough. The city air seemed to settle on the lungs, and the lungs, reacting naturally as they always had, tried to get the invader out. The taste of what passed through the mouth and down into the lungs—it was the taste of destruction, and that was all that could be said. It was what one might get if they ground up violated earth, melted flesh, waste, and despair into a fine powder and inhaled it, as an earlier generation inhaled certain forms of drugs. 21

And the people!22

At first, and this fooled Jack and Blake when they first entered this city, this hell, there seemed to be no people. But the people were there. It was simply that, in the few weeks since the missiles had fallen, they had become people of darkness, people of shadow. They crawled about in the rubble, threading between foundations of buildings and broken sewage pipes, never allowing the sun light or moon light to touch them for longer than necessary. 23

It was said by some that in the hours following the attack those who had found themselves alive were unable to bear it. Their world, the world they had worked so hard to preserve and to fit into, had been toppled, chopped from the base, completely destroyed. They went crazy. And not the crazy that workers sometimes get, when they go insane and need to see the company psychiatrist for an afternoon and then take some prescribed medication and leave time. Not even the crazy that workers very rarely got, the kind where they brought in some kind of illegal firearm and shot down as many of their compatriots as they were able.24

These people had completely lost all compunction, all restraint, the entire frame work through which they saw their world going up in smoke. They had run through the streets, shouting and howling like wild animals, company executives and corporation presidents tearing off their clothes and throwing off their shoes and running howling and naked, workers following their superiors' example as they had been taught and trained and ordered to do. Clothes off, some of the workers had lain down in the street and had sex; others, no doubt releasing a lifetime of pent up rage and restraint, took up whatever would make a convenient weapon and began slaughtering those around them. 25

There were a few, a very few, who had dared in their small way to think beyond the box, or who were exceedingly calm or removed, or simply had a good head on their shoulders despite a lifetime of incessant dulling. These took themselves away, knowing they would need their clothes for warmth and what little protection they provided. They saw the behavior of their fellows, and did not imitate it. Rather, they hid, and waited for them to run themselves out.26

When the Coalition came through, they simply exterminated all those crazies. Then they set out, using their suburban slaves, to find the smart ones. They enslaved all those they found. They seemed to like children, for the children disappeared and were never heard of again. The adults served the thief lords and the robber barons, and learned to be grateful for what there was to be grateful for—grateful if they lived through the day, and grateful if their over seers were kind enough not to beat them of a night or work them until their hands were masses of blood of a day. 27

The slaves served, and the people of the shadows hid. They grew to know the underground, the dark, and to love it. They grew to be able to navigate by touch, by smell, and not by sight. And they grew to hate the sight of people.28

So it was in Bismarck, and so it was in all the cities in the nation. They rose homogeneously, and homogeneously did they fall. 29

Of course, Jack and Blake did not know all this when they arrived. The first things they noted when they arrived were their attackers.30

They came from the dark, some kind of sharp darts that threw themselves into the tires of the four square and threw the four square itself in a crazy skid that knocked Jack and Blake to the ground. Jack rolled, covering his head, expecting the four square to smash over him at any moment. It didn't, skidding instead down a pile of rubble and coming to rest upside down, its wheels spinning toward the sky, like a bug knocked on its back.31

The next thing Jack was aware of turned out to be their attackers. They were spindly, hunched forms that dashed about above him, their shadows cutting across the sun. They looked like men, but with the bends in a man's joints greatly exaggerated. Their skin was gray, and sagged from their bones. 32

Three of the men gathered around Jack, raising clubs that seemed to be sticks with shards of glass jammed into the ends. Jack rolled away from two of them. He grabbed the ankle of the third, the man's skin leathery, his bone feeling brittle beneath it. Jack pulled on the ankle hard, and the man fell, his bone breaking. Jack rolled to his feet and caught the clubs of the other two, restraining one easily with each arm. He jammed the clubs backwards, and heard bones breaking in the arms of the two men. They turned and ran. Jack looked over to see that Blake had had a similar fight, with similar results.33

They paused a moment, exchanging looks of fear and exhilaration and revulsion and wonderment. Jack said what they were both thinking.34

“What in hell were those?” he said.35

Blake shrugged, looking around. “Eric said he'd heard rumors, all kinds of...” He made his way down the mound of earth. “Damn it!” He turned to face Jack, who came down behind him. “They killed this thing!” The four square was still lying on its back, its wheels still spinning pathetically. 36

“Oh well,” Jack said. He moved off into the urban jungle. 37

They soon discovered the industrial part of the city, the part that had been hit hard, the part that was now piles of solidifying rubble. They found the entrance to a tunnel and, guns out, followed it a little way. They encountered what seemed to be the remains of old meals, the leavings of fires, even holes for personal waste, but no people. The tunnel seemed to have been abandoned. 38

They noticed that the tunnel was not only protected from the outside, but was both cool and didn't smell quite as badly as the rest of the city. They heard sounds, still, the occasional shouts or screams, the muffled gunshots, the crashing slides that seemed to be the background noise of this place. But the sounds were muffled now, as if this place, this tunnel, were cut off entirely from the outside world. 39

Jack and Blake were aware suddenly of a great tiredness. They had been running for days, it seemed, and it would be incredibly nice to lay down and go to sleep. They stretched out, clearing spaces for themselves on the rough ground, and simply lost consciousness.