“Sure. I can do that. Thank god I found some good shoes for this walk.”
“If it gets too much for your feet, ask one of these to carry you.” She jerked her head at their followers.
The rearward guard paced along behind them.
“Hmmm. Sexy ones too, hey? I like the one you caught. Vargr.”
“He’s okay.” She smiled. “How did they take over, the Ghoul Lords? Why didn’t we nuke them or send armies in? Was the Lure strong even then?”
“Yes it was. They somehow knew to take out the governments and defense system operators first. Planes fell out of the sky when the pilots flew near the top story. The army was the first resort and you can imagine how well that fared. That first day they landed all over the planet in one enormous flood of white wings. Drones and satellite images showed them as thesetentacled beings with sails like manta rays floating and diving through the stratosphere. No flying saucers, so that wrecked a few people’s expectations.”
She laughed derisively.
“They had enough numbers to flood a lot of the Earth with the Lure from Day One. Planes fell, cars stopped, people just got up and climbed, abandoned their jobs, their kids. The children mostly never made it to the top. It was a terrible butchery of a kind. Dr. Nietz came up with some sort of electronic insulation, but even that must have failed. He had ideas that man. He was in New Zealand when they came. If he’d stayed where he was, miles underground, he might have survived.”
“I vaguely remember his company having a toe in a whole lot of different things. Moon landings? Archaeology. Genetic research.”
“Yes, and AI, and probably flower arranging. The media loved it when he made those announcements.I will launch my own shuttle, create new understandings of the planet’s distant past!I never really got to meet him, not until the last day I can remember, and that day is pretty much a fog.”
“I get that, only the fog for me covers all of my past.”
“Tsk. We must correct that.”
“Keep going…”
Vargr flew back and said the way ahead was clear for as far as he’d travelled. He fell into place on Cyn’s other side and seemed happy to simply listen.
The guards accommodated Maura’s lack of night vision by carrying old electric lanterns with the setting on low. The light cast swung to and fro up the walls and over the tracks. At regular intervals a gridded square of tiny portholes high above let in spears of natural yellow sunlight.
It gave Cyn a surprisinglynormalfeeling to walk through this shattered land chatting to Maura, with Vargr ambling along,wings folded, his bare chest shining with sweat. Flying must be hard work. Roaches and rats made skittering sounds all around, though the charred remains of explosions and the blackened walls receded as they went further into the wide tunnel.
Her heartbeat slowed when they crossed the red line showing where the trainway entered the skyscraper on the other side of the void, and she realized she’d been imagining the tunnel cracking, crumbling, and falling into the chasm beneath it.
Was this the calm before the storm? If it was, she was still going to enjoy the stroll and the chat. She’d squash a few roaches, kick any rats that tried nibbling on her, using her lovely steel-toed boots, and she’d wonder how a man could fly when his weight was enough to leave dents in the softer surfaces he walked over.
15
They stoppedat nightfall to rest and set up camp on one of the platforms to the side of the trainway. Rutger said they were not far from his Worshipper tribe—only another half a day’s travel to reach them, but the beasters preferred to travel by night. Even though the day was not visible, the waxing and waning of the Lure ruled them. Luckily Maura showed no sign of succumbing unless Cyn drifted too far from her. It wasn’t easy restoring her wakefulness, so she stayed close to the woman.
What would happen when she had to leave her? It was a subject neither of them discussed, yet she was sure Maura was afraid to be a mindless zombie-type again.
A few clothed skeletons on the platform were quickly swept aside with a broom she found propped against a wall. No doubt the broom had been left there years ago. Cyn had wielded it. She refused to be intimidated by old bones.
A train had crashed here and slewed across the tracks, ploughing along and taking out parts of the brickwork wall. The carcasses of the last carriages lay rusting and twisted on the tracks. The front of the train had disappeared into the motorwayon the other side of the wall. From the sounds, water was cascading into the building somewhere in that direction.
Same as at the museum, stalled vehicles showed through the holes. This was how the rats must have survived, at first—they’d eaten the dead in those cars and inside the train. Nothing seemed to have been cleared away. The accident would’ve been late in the invasion timeline.
Rumbling and intermittent flashes of lightning gave an instant weather report. It was storming outside. The flashes lent color to the tops of the cars and trucks and frightened the rats caught in the light into freezing.
That mess beyond the wall gave Orm’s Toother a hunting ground. With Orm on his back, the nanodog scrambled through, leaving bits of fur caught on the jagged edges of the hole.
Two of the foot-soldiers climbed through after them to investigate. They came back with a report of a waterfall pouring past the building’s edge where the train engine had rammed its nose through. Rainwater from the storm. The beasters had washed up in a pool of the run-off.
The thought of getting a bath vied with a fear that something might pounce and shove her into space. What was life without risk? Risk was the spice of life nowadays. Maybe she’d try it out, if others went too.
They lit a campfire using splinters of wood, cotton clothes, and other unknown objects as tinder. She wasn’t asking what they were. Bone didn’t burn well, thank god. Was it immoral to use it if it did? Philosophy wasn’t her area of expertise. She figured not. With all the plastic and synthetic about, no one was judging what campfires were made of.
Besides… she held out her hands to the warmth, inhaled the scented smoke… it felt good to sit and watch the flames. Cyn grinned to herself. Maybe civilization was burning things? The right things.
