Authors: John Grant,Eric Brown,Anna Tambour,Garry Kilworth,Kaitlin Queen,Iain Rowan,Linda Nagata,Kristine Kathryn Rusch,Scott Nicholson,Keith Brooke
A beady-eyed black bird watched him from the window ledge of the old Rigoletto cinema. Rubble and broken stones lined the sidewalk. Through the rubble a baby's arm clung to the life it was yet to live. Temple dropped to his knees and began pulling the stones away, throwing them across the street as he desperately tried to dig the baby out of its premature coffin, moving urgently at first but then slowing as the hopelessness of it settled over him. What was he doing? Delaying its death by a day, maybe two. He couldn't feed himself let alone another mouth. He stood, dusted off his bleeding hands and walked away, leaving the baby to what he hoped wouldn't be a lingering death.
The sense of utter uselessness life had thrust upon him still hurt. What sort of man was he? "The sort of man capable of leaving a kid to die," he said bitterly.
The bird watched it all. And maybe through its bird eyes it could see the baby's lifeforce slipping away as the threads binding soul to skin and bone unravelled. Why else would it stand vigil? It needed to feed as much as every other wretch.
The baby's cries followed him down three streets before they quieted.
Gritting his teeth—hardening his soul—Temple walked on.
A hospital tent had been set up on the corner of Stora Nygatan, beneath the awning of the Grey Monk Cafe. People queued for their weekly fix of rehabilitators, slack skin and sharp bones denying the promise of healing offered by the Red Cross on the side of the dusty tent. The air quality was so poor these days that they were giving out inhalers almost as frequently as they were giving out nutrition supplements and cognitive dampeners. No-one wanted to think anymore, because thinking meant understanding what was happening to them. Above the cue, the night sky was full of phosphorous stars on strings, cheap two-dimensional lies less real than the old celluloid ones that had lit up the city like a bonfire before the Fall.
The Fall.
That was a pretty way of saying the end of civilisation—or at least all things good about it.
Those first few days just after had been the worst.
The mask of humanity had slipped from the Death's Head of the world, and beneath, the bone grin, the bloody teeth and vacant sockets of chaos eager to be unleashed.
That's when Nina had been born out of the ruined face of a movie starlet on a poster. Nina, with her eyes so full of sky and diamonds and promise. Her name was still on the billboards and hoardings surrounding the Rigoletto but time and the elements had combined to break her fake plastic smile down the middle like her fake plastic heart. Her right cheek lay in pieces on the floor, ground in to the dirt of the street. But no amount of rain could wash away those diamonds. He had dreamed a world where she was his lover and confidant. Through that she gave him hope. In return he gave her all of his love,
did
fall in love and
did
feel the need and the ache that went with finding himself alone again now that she was his. Because that was what she was. His. One of his dead. She didn't need silver eyes.
It wasn't about the corpses stacked up waiting for the meat wagons. His dead were the memories he'd made up and fed off daily. They were the ghosts he couldn't escape. Every building, every street and alleyway sheltered spectres he'd created and couldn't kill.
~
Rain began to fall.
Temple watched her as she came running down the street. Her slender white legs stumbled over the cracks in the pavement. She still clutched that bunch of dead flowers in her hands. Her head was back and she was running hard. Tears mingled with the rain on her cheeks.
Then she saw him and began running even harder.
She tripped on an uneven splinter of stone where the pavement had been crushed under the rolling tank tracks and fell face first. She flung her hands out to break her fall and hit the ground hard. Her face twisted with the pain, but she didn't stop to cry. She just pushed herself back to her feet and carried on running straight towards Temple as if her life depended upon it.
He didn't move.
"My brother," she gasped, desperation in her eyes and hands as she grabbed at him. Little girl lost. He'd seen it a dozen times a day in a dozen different kids. There was nothing new about it. "They've taken him."
So?
He wanted to say. He didn't. "Hold on," he said instead. "Who's taken him? Where?"
"A jeep came. The Spider Boys were all over it. They grabbed him and took him through The Gate. Mister, please. You've got to help me…"
"What would make you think that?" Temple asked.
"Because you're different. You gave me money. You helped me once."
"So because I helped you once, you expect me to do it again? Give me one good reason not to walk away?"
She looked at him like he had just broken her heart by disproving everything she'd stupidly believed about him. He wanted to tell her that there were no good people left. But sometimes it was better to show people, that way they learned the lessons you were trying to teach them.
"They'll kill him if you don't."
"More likely they've already killed him."
"No," she said, "He's still alive." He could see how difficult it was for her to refuse to believe what was almost certainly the truth.
"Okay, let's say they haven't killed him yet, why should I care about one more death on my hands?"
"He's all I have."
"Is that it? Sorry, little one, your answer isn't good enough. People die. Deal with it. Move on."
"You cold-hearted bastard," she spat at him.
"Of course I am, sweetheart. That's how I stay alive. You should try to become more like me if you want to live a few more years. Charity won't last much longer, and then what do you have left to barter away?"
She looked around helplessly. No-one was going to help her. No-one was going to step in to save her. "I'll pay you," she said, fastening onto the idea with a bright flare of hope.
"Will you now?"
"My body," she offered, and for a moment Temple found himself studying the shapeless lines of her body: the curves had already begun to define the woman she was becoming.
"No," he said, a wry smile touching his lips for the first time. "I don't play with children, so as far as I am concerned that's no sort of payment. Offer me something I want and I'll think about getting myself killed for you, little one."
She looked helplessly at the sad flowers still clutched in her hand. She was trembling now, on the verge of fresh tears. He shook his head. "I have a little money," she said without meeting his eyes.
"I don't want your money, child. Something else?"
"Nothing," she said, giving in to the tears. "I have nothing except my brother, and and and…"
Temple crouched down beside her and took her free hand in his. He had already decided he was going to help her. He'd made that decision back in the square outside the church when he'd put that coin in her hands. She wasn't his responsibility, but he was about to make her just that. "Think child. Think of something you might know, something you might have seen on the streets that I might need. Think of something that could help me, something that could open a door or save a life. Think of something worth buying your brother's life with. That is how it has to be, an exchange. Anything given freely is unreliable. Something given in trade is bound. There is honour in that, do you understand?"
She nodded, but didn't stop crying. After a moment she stabbed her chest with sharp fingers, "I have nothing except this," she protested.
"Then he dies."
Temple turned away and started to walk off. He closed his eyes, willing the girl to say something, to shout at his back and find an answer. He couldn't bring himself to look Nina in her billboard eyes. She didn't. He stopped and waited, but still she said nothing. He could hear her breaking her heart behind him, and no matter what he thought of himself, he wasn't a monster. He walked back to where she knelt, curled up into a ball. She looked up at him. "I need a reason. I want the life that goes with it. I want a purpose. Give me that, sweetheart, and I'll go fetch your brother."
Temple took her small hands in his bigger ones, and stroked her bloody palms with gentle thumbs. "I am Nobody," he whispered, saying it as a name. "Do you understand that? I don't exist. No papers, no family, no life, no future, no past. There is no meaning to my life. No point. No purpose. If I died today no one would grieve for me. There are no lives out there that I have touched. No-one lies awake wondering where I am. No-one comes begging strangers to save me."
"We," she said hesitantly. "We could be your family…"
A faint smile touched his hard lips. "You could, couldn't you? I would be so proud of a daughter like you. But I can't feed myself let alone two more mouths."
"But this isn't fair! You said—"
"Life isn't fair, little one. I wish it was, but I don't have that kind of power."
"Then make saving Luke your purpose, Mister," she said, hopefully, latching onto the idea. "People go missing every day. Make them your purpose. Make your life mean something. Make it mean their survival." A slow smile crept across her face. She spat on her palm and pressed it out at him. "That sounds like a life worth living to me, Mister," she said, waiting for Temple to shake her hand.
Temple grinned and took her delicate hand again. They shook on it, a pact sealed. A trade. He was amused by the seriousness in her eyes.
"Do you have a picture of him? Something I can use to make sure I rescue the right boy?"
She rummaged through the folds of her skirts and pulled out a sepia-tinged portrait of a happy family. Her hand trembled slightly. He looked at her again, reassessed her age as closer to fifteen. This was her history. No wonder she didn't want to let go of it. She probably couldn't remember anything about this happy family any better than he could remember his own.
"You'll get it back, I promise."
Reluctantly, she handed it over. He studied it: a boy and a girl, on the lawn outside a big old country house. Not big enough to be called a mansion, but big enough to mean money. Lots of it. Behind them, he saw an angel with a face of still waters and picnics and motherhood. Contentment shimmered in the clear blue of her eyes. Temple felt a twinge of jealousy as he slipped the photograph into his pocket and the familiar emptiness took over.
"Bring him home to me, please, mister."
"Temple," he said, winking with a confidence he didn't feel. "That's my name. Not mister."
"Temple," she said, tasting it on her lips. "Sounds like you have God on your side, Mr Temple."
"Been a long time since I had anyone on my side, kiddo, but He's got to be on someone's side, right? So why not mine? Give me two hours, if I am not back here… well, go get someone else. Maybe they'll have more luck."
"I'll wait, I promise," the girl said, gravely. "And you'll bring him back. I know you will." For all that she had been through, she had somehow managed to retain a glimmer of that simple innocence that was youth. Despite himself, Temple found himself warming to her. That was bad.
"Two hours," he said, and he slipped off, moving back in the direction of the square.
He didn't look back.
...continues
Copyright information
© Steven Savile, 2011
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