WebWorld (1.12)

Okay, not night exactly. Tail-end dusk with just touches of grey and red and turquoise still soaking into the air. There’s that thing isn’t there, about twilight? Something fanciful and romantic, but at the same time a little bit fearful. The mix of grey and pink spread across the white landscape like a tablecloth. And it was quiet out here, as we set off, layered and holstered into backpacks. Carrying little besides food and clothing, leaving everything else behind. I found myself looking up and down the road, at the white river, punctuated with pregnant little mounds, often clustered, sometimes tinged with sunset colours, or gold or green threads.

What’s in there anyway? I felt like if we became trapped and surrounded, I’d just want to stumble over to one of them and slit it with one of our kitchen knives just to see what I’d find.  Get a grip, dude. This is just beginning.

Zara held up the map on her phone. The route was already pre-set. Three hours walking time was predicted. “Velgor street,” she ran her finger over the red line on the map.

“You wanna loot the café for pancakes?”

“I want to loot Helioscape for shoes.”

“You’re on your own for that.”

“You’d look good in a pair of eight-inch heels.”

“I’d look fantastic.”

Velgor street set us on a heavy up-hill incline. It looked like a waterfall. And there was no sign of life. We kept looking. We managed a constant search-pattern of all the windows, seeing if we could see faces in them, unsure what to do if we did. Our neighbours hadn’t chosen to go with us – we’d asked a few of the ones we knew better: safety in numbers, we could probably have packed up to eight people into Duncan’s truck. Not even Jeff had been on board. Even when I’d suggested it might be his last chance.

“I wish you luck,” is what he’d said, “you and Zara. I’m going to stick it out here. If we organise, maybe we can protect each other.”

We shook hands on that. I hoped he was right. I wondered which one of us was following a pipe dream, and whose was going to end bloody.

 Both. That conclusion came quickly and easily. But I stuffed it down inside me and focused on each step and each metre. There were occasional flickers of movement up there in some of the apartment blocks; there were twitches of curtains, but no sound, no greeting. Just watchers like we’d been. And would we have even tried to take one of them with us if they’d hailed us and asked where we were going?

There were sounds in the street below us. Not engines, which had grown increasingly rare, but the harmony of footsteps in an action that was not quite marching. The unison of voices. Some of these bandit gangs had named themselves, drawn banners, and would walk the streets chanting that name, maybe beating on makeshift drums – a show of force: feed us, clothe us, satiate us, and we’ll do you no harm.

Zara caught my arm and drew us behind a low wall. Our faces were scarf-covered but I could still taste something scratchy and unfriendly in the air. I kept my breathing shallow; I pressed my lips together. They were dark matchsticks against a grey background, almost blending in, but their voices carried and echoed against the tall buildings. Most of them had some sort of magenta, tasselled scarf around their neck, and they were all chanting it out loud: Henwood-Henwood-Henwood-Henwood, the suburb they’d claimed and named themselves for. Some of them carried for-sale signs from around the neighbourhood.

I ducked my head behind Zara, pressed against her shoulder.

I was nervous, no question. But you know what else I felt? Envy. There was a solidarity and safety about them, about the barbed wall of their numbers. They were thugs, and brutal, and they were probably all double-digit-murderers; but they were in it together, there was power about them, and fearlessness.

I remembered a guy with a chainsaw. I remembered a guy with an axe.

“Come on,” Zara said. They were past where they’d be able to see us from the street. She slid her forearm around mine, lattice-linking our hands; we were heading in a direction at right angles to theirs.

#

Things were as I’d predicted they’d be. I felt a flare of smugness. The gum was thinner up higher, it was smoother and less ropey, and less given to clotting and climbing than it was downtown. The road beneath our feet was less spongey. But there were signs of damage up here too. Some of the older houses had stood up poorly against the strain. We passed one cottage that was flattened. Threads of gum were woven all the way through broken timbers, and now the cottage just lay there in a pancake stack of wreckage. Any vegetation had been swamped. And there were other, similar, houses that were collapsed or partially collapsed.

There were lights on in windows. A few silhouette faces. They didn’t look quite human. Their eyes followed us as we walked.

I was surprised to see a little knot of people sitting out on a porch along Grober Street.

A couple of them even waved at us.

I stood at the gate, “are you guys all right?”

“As all right as anyone.”

“Can we…?”  Approach, that is. Was one of them going to pull out a shotgun?

“Yeah,” the guy called, “come on over.”

So we walked up the garden path to where six of them were gathered. There were a few tufts of grass and weeds poking out along the way.

“Where you from?” said one guy.

“Lairo Street.”

“Ouch. Is it rough down there?”

“Yeah.”

“Last time we tried going downtown, it was thick with that stuff. The air stank of it. The only people out there were thugs wielding light fittings. Well, garden lamps and that kind of shit. How have you guys held it together?”

“Indoors mostly. They breached us once.” I tried to keep a steady tone, to make that sound almost casual, and not to let myself be flooded with all the attendant images.

“Nasty.”

“It was.”

“Where are you guys getting food from?”

“We’re not, not in weeks.”

“Yeah, there’s nothing trading. Some of us got together and kicked down the doors to some places. We distributed food to last a couple of months. It’s all pretty mad.”

“We’re getting out,” I told him.

“Going where?”

“Up to the ranges.”

“Yeah, there’s been a bunch of people doing that. Trying that. I haven’t heard back from any, but what are they going to do, send us a fucking postcard?”

“We’ve lost touch too. Even in town.”

I know now – and I think I knew then – that these were decent people. But I still felt on edge, iron filings along my skin, as if at any moment they might jump us and rob us, maybe drag Zara inside with them while they tossed me out onto the street. I could see it in my head, and it competed with the words, with an honest, human tone.

The guy said to me – while his friends or family looked on from about a metre back – “So what do you reckon? Is it? The end of the world?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re taking bets if you want to join the pool.”

“Shit. Um. What are the odds?”

“Three to four in favour.”

“Of the end?”

“Yup.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Look around. If it’s going to be all right, if there’s anything out there, why hasn’t it dropped by in weeks? You don’t see choppers anymore.”

I was willing to concede that. “We scared them off.”

“Or they’re just gone. Humans can take a lot of shit. But if we can’t feed ourselves… Once we run out of food… The ground’s too poisoned to grow any more. If that’s universal, then yeah, we’re all fucked, aren’t we?”

“Which side did you bet?”

“Survival. I’m an optimist.”

“Her too,” I gestured at Zara.

He looked at her, “are you scared, love?”

She tried not to bristle, “Well, obviously.”

“Yeah, good. It’s a scary new world.”

#

“Watching the sunset?” I asked her, as we’d walked a few more blocks.

“I suppose they must have been.”

“Are they just waiting to die?” I’m not sure at what point I’d started to feel that digging little nugget of frustration with every pair of eyes that just watched us pass. It seemed so defeatist, so meek and beaten.

“Maybe just waiting,” she answered. She still had her doubts about the whole expedition.

We were walking along the ridge now, a long road girded with big, decent houses, and the darkness was all but full-fallen. The street lights were mostly out, and largely muted by a coat of webbing. There was a last breath of red stretching out from the horizon. We’d seen a few vehicles pass us since getting up this high, and I determinedly took that as a good sign, as vindication. We were doing this the right way. The burst of headlights still made me flinch, and we’d still take cover behind a tree or wall, or in shadow, avoiding the direct gaze of those lights. Because you didn’t know…

… and when they came playing music at a fierce volume, we ducked into the courtyard of a squat little block of flats and pressed ourselves against a wall, shrinking as small as we could. Even though I could feel the gum against my cheek, and feel the way it seemed to move a little under it, attracted to the warm. Wiggling like worms, like it would quite happily have burrowed in there…

… but the pimped-out truck that came past was more of a threat. It’s black-and-metal-clad occupants hung from windows, or off the back – two on the roof – and they carried weapons in the open. Mostly just a motley collection of makeshift clubs, but there some firearms amongst them, and big, stylised knives. The blaring music was a message, and they were looking for easy targets. Me and Zara: alone on the street. Backpacks full of food. They could have descended on us like locusts. They would have…

…. TattonHill-TattonHill-TattonHill-TattonHill…

They wore orange jumpsuits and high-vis vests in some sort of road-worker, prisoner mishmash.

They passed without seeing us, or at least without seeming to see us.

“You good?” I whispered at last to Zara.

She nodded. “Yeah.”

I felt a few layers of tension drain away. Not out of the woods, but getting there.

#

And we were doing good until we encountered the Mary Street bridge. I’m not sure what it was about that bridge, but the gum had taken a fierce liking to it and was wrapped around it like bubble-wrap coated in layers of cotton wool and memory foam. The weight had caused a large chunk to fall away in the middle and land like a massive broken tooth on the road below. All of which meant that we’d have to descend briefly into the valley, into the thicker of it. And I felt my heartbeat quicken with the realisation.

Not. Part. Of. The. Plan.

“It’s okay,” Zara said, “We’re still good. It’s not like it’s downtown.”

And yet, this area of warehouses and small industry was lower to sea level, and had once been thickly inhabited with workers and upstairs borderline-slums. And God, you could feel the difference. We weren’t losing very much height, but the gum had thickened up and grown rougher. I could sense and smell and taste the change in the air.

In the dark, everything seemed about to reach out and grab us. There was nothing out there that didn’t want to rise up out of inanimacy and become an attacker. I couldn’t look anywhere without thinking that I saw a vaguely humanoid shape – thicker, and lower centred, but with shoulders, a head, maybe eyes. I pressed close to Zara, keeping my hand ready to snatch at the kitchen knife in my belt.

I was hyped-up on paranoia. But still. The moment was different. The movement I saw from the corner of my eye felt more distinct. I glanced, but couldn’t see it, but then saw it again. More than once. We were passing a couple of long warehouses on each side of the road. And I could see a thick growth of gum along the walls of each. Beyond that, in parades of windows, there was definitely movement.

I squeezed Zara’s hand.

She looked at me.

I whispered, “something’s out here with us.” I whispered ‘something’, and I did that without thinking. There was just this sense of whatever was moving not being human. Maybe the way it moved. Maybe… I was fighting off images ignited by those rumours: people gone out at night to be found on the streets with their stomach ripped – or eaten, for Christ sake, eaten – the next morning.

“Over on the left?” she made a tiny gesture.

“Other side too?”

“In the building,” she said, “I think so.”

“Yeah. Looks like.”

“I don’t know if they can get out.”

“Yeah, what are our odds?”

“Just keep going?”

“Got the knife?”

“Yeah.”

“Keep your hand on it.”

We didn’t know if we should break into a run, if that would precipitate something pouncing on us. But we picked up the pace, and our feet shuffled rapidly along the ground. I could feel her hand tight around my fingers, and I must have been just about breaking hers. There were definitely shapes moving in the windows, and they didn’t feel like people. I couldn’t stop to count, but I felt as if they numbered double figures.

And then the sound of glass breaking. A body of darkness from within the darkness came at me, came flying. It was fast and heavy, and I didn’t have time to do more than grab for my knife and brace myself for the impact. It was a cold, spongy, weighted, iron-tinged impact. I was knocked backwards and sent rolling, and I can recall this one distinct memory: the sound of my own voice, yelling to Zara: “Run! Run-run-run-run!” But I already couldn’t see where she was. My hands were one-empty, one-bladed; and there was no indication of her in the thick dark that surrounded me.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work