Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF

When I woke up, there was a hole in my new knickers… just there, across the fadge. There was also a hole in the mattress, underneath.

I wasn’t hungry, but that’s normal when you’re doing ecstasy. Thing is, I wasn’t hungry for a high, either. For the first time in all I could remember, I wasn’t hungry or thirsty for owt. I put on a skirt, then I looked for my make-up. When you’re on the game, you age fast, and you want a bit of slap to cover the wrinkles and that.

Then I noticed that the tracks in my arms had gone. And the ones in my legs were fading.

I got my make-up and went to the mirror. While I was putting on my slap and my lippy, I saw that the lines in my face were gone. All this time, I’d been sixteen going on forty. Now I looked more a proper age sixteen again.

I remembered that fellow from Uni, and I figured whatever was in that drug he’d needled me with, I wanted more of it. But I had no notion of where to find that punter again.

Till then, I’d been going days at a trot without a proper meal, spending all my dosh on ecstasy and other drugs. After I met that perv from the Uni, it took me a couple of days to twig that I wasn’t hungry any more, nor I didn’t want the drugs neither. But every day, I kept finding holes in my knickers, so I always felt a breeze round my fadge. After a week without any meals, and not wanting any, I started to feel like maybe I was

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and wondering if I was going to stay sixteen years old for the rest of my life. Whenever I cut myself, or got beaten up by a punter, the hurt would heal right away. Except my teeth, and that. Before I’d met that perv, I’d had a few teeth knocked out that never grew back, and some chipped teeth that only got worse. Strange that everything else heals now, but never my teeth.

I stopped going on the blob. I’d figured out that, whenever I sat down, or when my fanny ever touched against owt, that’s how those tiny nano-robots inside me would get energy to keep working: whenever I pulled away, a few bits and bobs of whatever my fadge had touched would be missing, as if it had melted off, like. Didn’t matter what: cloth, wood, metal, plastic. My lady-bits had become some kind of dispose-all, eating anything. Glass, too. So I’m a human bottle bank.

There was only so long I could stay in one neighbourhood without someone noticing I never get any older. I tried to avoid the dole office, the labour exchange, the Nash… the National Health System, I mean. Anyplace where government folk would see me. When they made everyone get ID microchips under their skin, I knew the game was up. After I’d been microchipped a few weeks, my skin pushed the microchip out again. The people at Central Entry knew straight away.

Central Entry’s security team came to nick me. They took me to a gowy lab down at Centry. They did no end of tests on me, and somebody twigged that the microbots in my bloodstream are regenerating my body — except my teeth — so that everything heals and I never get older. Some government wonk with big words explained to me about how my telomeres stay the same, and the Hayflick limit, and that. Another gowy told me the nanobots in my blood are (I heard this word often enough to remember it) self-replicating.

Then they locked me up, so they could study me. Special Act of Parliament or summat, so they could keep me locked up in a lab.

The doctors were especially interested in how I never need to eat nor drink, because the nanobots inside me get energy and materials from whatever touches my fadge. I still need to sleep, though.

They gave me a private room but it was just a cell, cus I was never allowed to leave except when they took me out for tests. They stuck needles in me, and took all the blood out of my body twice over, trying to take out the tiny robots. They did tests on my fadge, and that, and several times my lady-bits melted the tips of their scientific thingies. Then they put me back the room again. With the door locked.

Once, they turned off the vents in my cell, and I could hear all the air pumping out. I couldn’t talk, with no air and that. I couldn’t breathe, neither. About three hours later, the air came back and I started breathing again, then some doctors came to see me. Said it was an accident. Liars!

There’s a water tap in here, but I only drink water once in a while when I’m dead bored. That’s dead bored, not dead. Once I went without water for two months, no probs. One of the doctors said summat about the nanobots rehydrating my cells. He also said as how the nano-wotsis had adapted to my personal DNA and that, so injecting some of my blood into somebody else won’t work the trick.

I never get hungry or thirsty. At least I still need to sleep.

After seven or eight years of getting poked and jabbed, I tried to

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and they tried as long as they could to keep the lab safe from the snot-rot (what I heard a nurse call it), or the Global Pandemic (what a doctor called it), but finally it showed up in the lab and they all started dying. The stuff eats flesh and bones and all, and that. I heard rumours from the lab staff about people just melting into huge puddles of snot, or at least it looks like snot, with nowt left but their clothes and shoes and maybe bits and bobs of their teeth.

One morning I woke up and nobody answered the signal to come to my cell, no matter how many times I pushed the button. I tried to force the door open, or a window, but the security thingies kept stopping me same as ever. The automatic voice kept warning me not to try again.

After a long time, the lights went out and the air cycle stopped. I kept trying the door but just getting the warning. I screamed for somebody, anybody. Finally, the automatic voice stopped. After another long time, I tried the door and it opened.

It took me a while and more aggro to get out of the lab, but I did.

Everybody was dead. I could see the big piles of snot and clothes where some people had been lately, and inside the buildings some little piles of dust where the snot had dried up.

Most of the animals were dead too. Plenty of trees and plants, though. And insects. There were birds for a few weeks, then they all started dying.

I found a car that worked without the security link to its owner’s ID chip. I’d never twigged how to drive properly, but when you’re the only driver on the road it’s easy-peasy. I got out of London and I headed for the

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in the motorboat I’d found to get to France. I went along the coast till the boat needed a recharge and I couldn’t keep it going. Then I found another car I could start, and for a couple of years I just

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and wouldn’t you bloody well know it that whatever killed everything else won’t kill the insects, and there’s more of them all the time! Ugh! Flies and beetles and nasties, and there seem to be more every day. And I’m seeing new sorts of insects now: flies all glittery like red metal, and beetles with big yellow eyes, and I’m sure there weren’t any of those before the snot-rot killed off all the people. At least the rats mostly

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Once in a long while I find an old stash of food in plasti-clings so it never went off nor got mouldy, and sometimes I’ll eat something just to remember what food tastes like. Sometimes the wrap is broken and the food’s gone off, but I’ll eat it anyway. Not as if it will kill me ha ha. Once I ate some cheese that had gone all mouldy, just for the new experien

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and I came running up shouting at them to take me along, take me with them back to wherever they bloody came from. I know they saw me. I’m sure they heard me. Two of them looked at me with I guess those were eyes. But the bug-men just went back into their big metal ball. It made a humming noise and then it glowed and then it just wasn’t there anymore. It didn’t go up to the sky or like that. It just went.