The Earth Has Died, page 10
So it was that they travelled as a chain of small, divisive tribes, all of whom were arguing, jostling, and sometimes fighting with one-another. One man tried to steal Samuel’s moonshine. He dodged, then scampered away, drawing his machete. Yet he never had to use it. His little tribe defended him as their own, drawing themselves together and challenging the man, whose own group was too far away to help. That man soon stomped away, crestfallen, sullen, his shame palpable, his own moonshine relinquished.
Some died along the way. Samuel spotted bloody trails hardly covered by the snow three times, and, in the midst of one ordinary fight, saw the edge of a knife bite into a man’s neck. He died in seconds. The fighting stopped the moment his body hit the snow. All involved made no movement at first, but as soon as one did, they rushed towards the fallen body, swarming it, stripping it clean of all possession, all clothing, all moonshine. When they were finished, the corpse, the sacrificial lamb, was dragged away by sled, naked, and the enrichened legionnaires laughed at their newfound treasures, rejoicing together as comrades again.
“Why do they keep fighting?” Samuel asked Alex, who had not participated in any fighting or looting.
“Proves your strength. And you can claim the glory of conquest,” she replied, speaking slowly, as if confused by Samuel’s question. “Basically, you get free shit if you win.”
“What about the bodies?”
She didn’t answer. Samuel didn’t like that. Rather than focusing on the unsettling, likely truth, he wondered if they buried them, or if they thought the dead could become afflicted in some way. Neither satisfied him: one was implausible, the other impossible. Yet as his mind turned towards thoughts of the affliction, he thought again of the Man of Bones; of his deformities: his obsidian scars; his lurching, prowling gait; and his monstrous size befitting of the enhanced, not a baseline. “What’s wrong with the Man of Bones?”
“Wrong?” Alex laughed, and Samuel again thought he could see a twinkle through her mask. “Nothing. Least if you ask me, or any of us. Boneman can take on the afflicted, brought us together, gives us food, shelter, and warmth. Where we live, we can walk outside sober without freezing to death, but he gets us plenty of moonshine anyway, since the fat man’s so craven.”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” Samuel replied, intrigued the notion of a warm land, but doubting the integrity of Alex’s statement. “I’ve never seen anything – anyone – like him. Is he afflicted?”
“Afflicted? Maybe. Not in the normal way. But he’s not normal, is he,” Alex explained, and after Samuel furrowed his brow in confusion, she continued: “You and me, we’re baselines, at least as far as the affliction’s concerned. Boneman isn’t baseline, but he isn’t quite an enhanced neither. Sort of… between the two, far as I know.”
“That shouldn’t be possible.”
“And it is. Besides, it’s not that arbitrary. Every one of us got their immune system enhanced in the womb. Doesn’t make us ‘enhanced’ though. And, like that, Boneman isn’t afflicted. Way I see it, he’s more human than your doctor.”
For the rest of the evening, frightfully cold as it was with snow rampaging down, Samuel quietly plodded along, drinking all the moonshine he could to stave off the weather. Down a different route through the mountains, and through a part of the woodlands Samuel hadn’t visited in years. But he remembered it all the same. Their path, forged by the efforts of those before them, was easy, their trials self-inflicted by continuous infighting, and all legionnaires cursed at the sight of afflicted corpses left to rot by the path. Samuel shivered, uncomfortable at the sight and number of them, unable to believe them truly dead.
Again, he thought of his night in their nest. Their claws. Their flesh-raking, bone-breaking claws and gnashing teeth. And the serum healing it all. Just for him to bleed again. Samuel paled, and promised himself that he wouldn’t look at the corpses anymore.
When night came, they gathered around crowded fake-fires and real ones, and, unlike in the morning hours where they had spoken of moonshine and of fighting, come twilight, their discussion turned to other topics. Warfare. The afflicted. And above all, meat. How they liked it cooked. Which part of it – fatty or not – tasted best. How much better it tasted than crop. Rather than listen, Samuel drank, and checked his bag to ensure he had food of his own to last. The more time he spent with them, the harder it was to deny the truth that seemed so obvious.
Perhaps their warm spot existed, and in it flourished wildlife. Beasts amongst men once more. Samuel shook his head. Dreaming would achieve nothing but disappointment.
As the Legion took shelter under tarps, tents, and in sleeping bags, all stitched and sewn from scraps, Samuel set up his own shelter. Never did he travel by night, but he always prepared for it.
Four Bloomtech pegs, brilliantly beautiful, brilliantly effective, scanned the ground, melted a square of ice, and slammed down. From the ends of each, a spiralling pattern of Bloomtech flowers emerged, melding into a metal canopy as leaves and petals overlapping creating a perfect tent for Samuel to rest in. Inside, Samuel had room enough to roam freely, and with a fake-fire crackling, with moonshine to warm him, he could barely feel the cold as he passed out, drunk.
When a headache woke him, Samuel stumbled out of the tent, drank deeply from the nearest bottle of moonshine, and pricked his thumb against the tent’s genereader. Its four walls unravelled into the stakes. Samuel packed them, the Legion picked up their camp, and again they marched, the early morning’s sublight guiding them, their first drinks of moonshine warming them. More walking. More snow. More symptoms of the Sky Engine; rotten trees, dead, and the black spot in the sky seemed larger, greater than before.
But by midday, the snow began to dissipate. Replacing it, falling from the sky nonetheless, was tar. Spots of it were sticking and smearing on Samuel’s clothes. Dots of it saturated the settled snow. The dark spot grew larger still. And as they walked, the Sky Engine disappeared; the whole sky became black, oil multiplied, festering in the snow, until the ground became black. Here, in the hinterlands of the Silver City, of the Woodlands, there was nothing but darkness. An endless night devoured the day, enveloping them. Primitive torches bounced up and down in the column, burning stinking, putrescent oils.
Hours passed. Midday passed; evening came. More walking. More stained snow. More dark clouds.
And then, they at last reached their destination, a shifting thing. Appearing as first the face of a cliff, then shown to be an enormous blade of steel, and finally revealed as a vast castle, built by a giant slapping molten slag metal together as an ordinary man might build a mud shack. Huge fires belched up whirling tornadoes of petulant smog from within its walls. Ash bespeckled Samuel’s clothes. There was heat. Real heat. The air was warm, and the snow was no longer snow, and yet nor was it ice or frost. They walked upon embers now. A field aflame.
Beyond was a mess of charred metal, alone in a field of rubble and disembowelled machinery. Jagged, cruel spikes of tarnished iron enclosed a towering castle in a mammoth ribcage, protecting it from whomever would be mad enough to assail such a fortress. Towers of steel stood impenetrable amidst them, tall and mighty.
“Told you it was warm,” Alex said, “welcome to the Silo.”
They took off their outer layers. Bare skin, out in the open, when to do the same a hundred miles away meant death. Was this true civilization? Not running from the cold and the challenges of the new earth; instead, fighting them. Samuel couldn’t believe it. But the waves of hot, dry air blasted from the Silo were either a lie, or truly warm. He joined the others, and began to remove his clothing. The warmth was true. The warmth was real. He walked through the Silo’s open gates, scraps of scavenged vehicles bolted and welded together, in awe.
Hammers beat metal, each a thunderclap. Now it rained not sleet nor snow, but steel. On sheet metal balconies, on the roofs of shacks and towers, cheered a whole civilization, covered head to toe in soot, celebrating the Legion’s return. From their lofty heights they showered the arriving party in weapons, trinkets, and coins.
On the ground, people had lined up on either side, countless strong, all abuzz with energy. Something rock hard hit Samuel in the forehead, and as he winced, touching the mark it had left, trickling with blood, they announced their joy to the skies and threw bucketful’s more.
Spearheads, Samuel saw, and he leant down to collect the one that’d hit him, placing it into a deep pocket.
Out of another pocket came a spare cloth, but before it reached his forehead, Alex stopped him. “Leave it.”
Samuel furrowed his brow.
“Let it bleed. They’re watching you.”
“Does it matter?”
“They work. We fight, and we bleed.”
“You might,” Samuel said, but he did nothing to staunch the bleeding after.
Up a hill they went, and on either side were ramshackled factories, blacksmiths, and refineries. Sticking out of all of them were rusted smokestacks; tall, short, thin, and wide, some the size of cooling towers, and others gutter pipes. No matter their size, they all belched black smog. Volume and size changed, nothing else.
Overshadowing all, at the epoch of the hill, was the castle Samuel had seen earlier. To its side sat an endless pit, sides plated in steel, ladders descending infinitely into the abyss; the eponymous Silo itself. Whether or not the Legion had a rocket, as Eli had claimed, Samuel couldn’t tell. Around it, and at the base of the castle’s walls, Legionnaires hummed. They sang. They chanted, their tongue otherworldly, inhuman, or perhaps simply ritualistic noise conceived the moment it left a speaker’s mouth.
Dwarfing them all, standing before his castle, beside the silo, stood the Man of Bones, stoic, colossal, his body twitching to the inane rhythm generated. More legionnaires joined them. More legionnaires added their voices, an amalgamation of eldritch design.
“Today marks a glorious day,” the Man of Bones whispered, yet his voice carried as if shouted. “My brothers, my sisters, my Legion, I come to you as a herald of war!”
Louder, the voices sang, panting, breathless.
“Our great enemy has returned to us in strength, and the pitiful Silver City has grown fat and lazy. They request the Legion. We shall answer their call. Tonight, we dine on meat, and drink their moonshine, and tomorrow, we shall celebrate the destruction of our enemy,”
Someone cried out, and the crowd joined them. Their song did not end.
“We are the warriors of the Legion. We claim the Earth and the stars. We will salt the soil of those who deny our might. We are the proof that conquest is glory. So, my brothers, my sisters, my Legion, let us celebrate, and mark tomorrow as a day to be remembered. Tomorrow, we claim glory through death. Let us fight or die!”
At that, the song ended suddenly, and the Legion broke out in an odd, inhumane yelping. The Man of Bones marched into the castle, its doors, bricks of solid steel, opening for him, and his Legion followed, dragging Samuel along with them.
Rather than the veritable palace of the Greeley’s office or the resolute hideaway of Kane’s bunker, the castle was a fortress. Wide, tall, and open, surrounded on nearly all sides by metal panels splattered brown and orange with rust. Within, legionnaires sat at tables. The floor rattled with their clamour. Servants handed them drinks, and quickly replaced empty cups.
As Samuel looked around, his eyes were drawn to not the floor, but that beneath it, that which attracted the gaze of nearly all legionnaires. Cages. Built under them, with a grated roof which allowed those above to both walk freely and view the spectacle beneath. Within each cage were combatants locked in brawls. Shirtless, bleeding, and bruised. Dying. Before Samuel had taken his seat, he watched two men die; one man fell, his skull crunched as someone else stomped on him. Another, the largest in his cage, died after three others attacked him at once. Both deaths earned cheers from the Legion.
Samuel couldn’t spot the intricacies in each fight. He could tell when someone was injured, or when someone died. The whole place stunk of iron and alcohol, and the stink of blood rose in tandem with drunken shouts encouraging more bloodshed. It was almost intoxicating.
“Legionnaires,” Alex said, as Samuel looked over them. “Young ones in training.”
She led him up to a long table, away from the planks upon planks that the rest of the Legion were using. Where empty, brass cups were waiting to be filled and waxy candles melted into soft clumps. They sat at the far end. Samuel preferred that. Out of sight, and away from most of them. Good.
A serving woman arrived with a pitcher of moonlight and poured him a goblet of silver. At first, Samuel hardly noticed the iron collar she and the other servants wore around their necks, and after his first drink, chugged, he didn’t care. Morality disappeared alongside sobriety.
“Slaves?” He asked Alex, wiping moonshine from his lips and sucking his fingers.
“Some fight, and some serve.”
From the walls themselves emerged the Man of Bones, pushing away a block of corroded steel. He sat at the centre of the table, his chair large, but just as plain as the others. With him, and sitting alongside him were an entourage of high-ranking legionnaires, emblazoned in medals like Alex, bristling gold, silver, and bronze, a troop of dragons. They drank deeply, and talked loudly.
“What do you do?” Samuel asked Alex after a while.
“Not sure what you mean,” Alex replied. Having worn her mask throughout, she hadn’t eaten or drank anything. Only breathed. Deeper than usual.
“Alright. Why are you sat up here, not down there?”
“Eh, I handle new fish. Used to fight, can’t anymore.”
Samuel took a sip. “Why not?”
“My job was to burn nests. We’d run in with moonshine, explosives, you name it, and demolish the building. One day I ran in and what we had blew up early. Cost me my lungs. Cost my mates their lives. Earned them glory though, and a lot of it. Since I’m university educated, and since I couldn’t fight much anymore, Boneman put me up here. Earned a place at the high table, and the opportunity to deal with the fat man.”
“So, you’re a diplomat.”
“Guess so.”
Samuel turned back to his cup. He drank faster than any of them, yet his cup, constantly refilled, never seemed to run empty. He began to feel warm, and good, then very swiftly, his head began to spin. He lost track of how much he’d drunk. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered now was the cup and its contents. A familiar escape from the cold, and an escape from the Legion. He forgot why he was there. Darkness encroached on the outer rim of his vision.
“Silence,” the Man of Bones whispered, and the room succumbed to his command as if choked. “Who…” he began, and yet as he did so, the Man of Bones’ spasmed, then lurched forwards, slamming his hands on the table. The room made not a whisper. Slowly, the Man of Bones retracted his claws, breathed deeply, and continued: “Who hungers? MEAT!”
Silence broke in a landfall of echoing voices: “MEAT!” they shouted in unison. “MEAT!” “MEAT!” They beat down upon their tables. “MEAT!” They bellowed, whilst the Man of rose, and began to slink, prowling, sniffing, selecting legionnaires with the touch of his claw, and pairing them together. At his touch, they wept with joy. Their knees buckled, and they fell forwards, hands clasped in worship, tears streaming from their eyes. When they rose, they embraced their partner with indulgent fervour, like family reunited. Strong with strong. Skinny with skinny. Tall with tall. Short with short. All hugging and kissing like lovers departing, and amidst it all, the same unanimous cry: “MEAT!”.
Then, the Man of Bones laid his hand upon Samuel’s shoulder, and lifted him from his chair. Samuel stumbled, too drunk to walk. Too drunk to see, but sober enough to piece together his situation, and to realize the danger he was in. As he rubbed his eyes, as if to wipe away his intoxication, he stumbled, and the Man of Bones picked him back up, then dropped him alongside someone else, his opponent. Samuel couldn’t see the man’s face. An oblong, flesh-coloured shape. A pair of silver eyes. A smile. A scowl. Confusion. Overwhelmed, he closed his eyes.
The roar in his ears reached a crescendo. The cages opened. The chosen jumped down eagerly. In his moonshine haze, Samuel did nothing as his possessions were taken from him, nor as someone pushed him down. His body fell onto wet sand. His mind and perception both ruptured from the fall. He nearly vomited. Above, boots drummed. The call for ‘meat’, emblazoned, rang in his ears. Groaning, Samuel pushed himself to his feet, brushed himself down with numb hands, and reached for a machete that was not there. Ignoring the shouts, he patted himself down again, trying to find any kind of weapon. He had none.
They’d taken everything save for his clothes and his skin, and they’d dumped him in a cage with an abomination of a man at least a head taller than Samuel. Spilt moonshine fell upon them like rain. Samuel was awash with it. The scarred man beat his chest. Samuel blinked and held out a hand. He mumbled something incomprehensible, unaware of what he himself was trying to say. Before his eyes opened, a fist collided with his cheek, and the back of his head banged against metal bars. Cheers. Screams.
“Hit him harder!”
“Kill him!”
“Right hook! Right hook!”
Another punch sent him sprawling to the floor, wheezing, coughing out sand in his mouth, but also yanked him back into reality. Wake up, some distant part of himself thought. Wake up.
“Get up!” the scarred man screamed, his voice raw and rough. “You call this a fight? Up! Get up!”
