Ellen Datlow - After - Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

I’m shaking so hard, my teeth are chattering. I look at the Hairy laying there. How gently Billy touched it, the way he pets Bunny’s fur. But Billy could get to be like that, growing hair all over him, wandering lost and mad in a place like this.

Only one person coulda given Billy a packet of nirv, and that person is Morris. And why? He never lets anyone in the Krew take nirv. No chances, zero tolerance. “Keeping the family clean,” he calls it. He’s never let Billy anywhere near it before, in case he spilled it or tried some. Plus, it’s expensive, why waste it?

This is about me, not Billy. This is a deliberate threat.

Coz he’s guessed, hasn’t he? Morris has guessed I’m planning to go, and he ain’t going to argue, he’s just letting me see what’ll happen to Billy if I do. He knows I’d find out. He gave the nirv to Billy to show me Billy won’t be family without me around. Won’t be safe. Coz Morris has to have things his own way, and he wants me under his thumb.

You don’t cross Morris, the crooked, devious, evil bastard .

I feel sick. Bitter and sick and stupid. I shoulda known Morris couldn’t be trusted, not really, yet somehow I did trust him….I pick up the gun and wish I could shoot him with it, and then I think I couldn’t even shoot the Hairy, and anyway what good would it do? Then I think, So I’ll hafta stay in London, and the minute I think that I’m so miserable I know I can’t, I jist can’t. So I put the whole idea away, coz right here and now I hafta put things straight with Billy. And then get us both out. I crouch beside him.

“Billy-boy, I’m sorry I shook you. Forgive me? Please?”

He whimpers.

“I’ll make it up, right? Whatever you say.”

A grunt this time. He’s got his eyes shut tight, his head buried in his arms.

“You can thump me if you want.” I pause. “Hey, I’ll even kiss Bunny.”

He unfolds and looks at me. “On the nose,” he says.

“On the nose. Right.”

He don’t exactly smile, but I feel some better. “Let’s go home,” he says, and I say, after a moment, “Let’s do that.”

I get up first, and then I pull him up, and we look at the Hairy laid out on the floor. “It’s asleep,” says Billy, and I say, “Yeah, it’s asleep,” an’ he says, “But its eyes are open,” and I see he’s troubled by that, and I say, “Yeah, it’s asleep with its eyes open. Time to go.”

As we set off down the stairs I say, “Come on, Billy, who give you that stuff?”

His eyes flash sideways to see if I’m going to lose it again. I say, trying to keep my voice level, “Okay, when Morris give you that stuff ”—I wait, but he don’t say nothing and my heart’s like lead, it was Morris all right—“did you try it? Did you”—I lick my finger, dab it in the air, lick it again—“did you taste it?”

He nods once. My heart’s beating really hard. I say, “How many times?”

But he shrugs. I know I’m not going to get an answer.

It’s dark on the stairs now, the light coming in from the little barred windows is feeble and poor. Without talking anymore we go down and down, hundreds a steps, around and around and around and around, and push through the doors to the cathedral floor.

Now I’m looking, now I know they’re here, I see them moving. A long way off across the floor, something wanders slowly past one of the big statchoos and disappears again into the gloom. Under the breathy cooing of the pigeons there’s other noises—hoots and cries, quiet raps and echoes. It’s getting dark outside and the Hairies are coming home.

I grab Billy’s hand, and we hurry past the heaps of rubbish, and around the black openings in the floor. The statchoos loom like huge pale ghosts. We reach the ten-meter slice of dim sky that shows between the open doors, and scramble over the rubble.

It’s raining—big, splashy drops. Evening’s on the way, but it’s lighter than I thought. And much warmer out here. The tide’s going out, the wind smells of seaweed and fresh mud, the river’s gray with streaks of silver. We run down the steps to the boat and lift it between us, stumbling down the exposed wet slope to the edge of the water, and we jump in.

I push off and open the throttle and the water creams behind us. We both look back and see the front of Sint Paul’s rearing up like a cliff, all ledges and pillars and black openings. We draw farther away. The two sharp towers go fading into the rain.

Billy rubs his arms, shivering. His head droops. He looks pale and thin and tired. I’m headed for home, coz where else can we go?

“Billy, that stuff that Morris gave you…nirv…” He gives me a weary glance, and I say, tight-voiced, “Don’t ever try it again, whatever he says, it’s bad for you.”

He jist looks puzzled and I don’t blame him. Coz if it’s so bad for you, what’s me and Morris doing with it? What’s me an’ Morris an’ the Krew doing with it, making Hairies? I feel worse than ever. I say, “Even if it makes you feel…Billy, how did it make you feel?”

I think he won’t answer, can’t answer. And then he says, “Big.”

I’m silent.

We’re done with the channels now, passing out of the Fleet and into the Thames. Sint Paul’s vanishes behind the high spoil heaps and into the dusk. Billy cranes his neck to see it go, and then he says, “Did you see Nelson?”

It’s a second before I know what he’s talking about. It feels like years since this morning, years since we beached the boat below the steps and went to explore. I think of the holes in the floor. I think of wading into the black water, finding Nelson’s black coffin on its white marble stand. I think how I asked him for help. How I got no answer but the Hairy splashing out at me like a bad joke.

But Billy’s looking at me, hopeful. So I get ready to make up some story how I really did meet Nelson himself down there in the cellars, in a golden room glittering with shandyleers and dimonds….Just as I open my mouth, a thought comes to me and I shut it again.

I got my answer.

I go hot and cold all over.

I asked if I could trust Morris, if it was safe to leave Billy with him—and the answer was no.

So Billy’s coming with me.

It’ll make things twice as hard—twice as dangerous. We’ll need so much more stuff, we’re so much more likely to be seen. Can I explain to Billy what it’s all about? Can we really do it—can we really make it all the way downriver to the sea? A bubble of excitement tells me we can.

I sit up straight, feeling better than I have for hours. I don’t hafta try and explain to Billy why I’m going away. I don’t hafta leave him behind. We’ll live and die together.

Screw Morris! We’ll both go!

And Billy’s still looking at me, waiting to hear about Nelson. I say, “Yeah, in a way I did meet Nelson, Billy. In a way, I think I did.”

Billy says, “I saw him too.”

I go hot and cold again. He sounds so matter-of-fact. I almost ask what he means, and then I daren’t. “You did?”

Billy nods. “He was upstairs. I told you he was. I made a wish.”

My voice comes out all faint. “You did? What was it?”

He says proudly, “To be with you, Charlie. Just to be with you.”

I’M MAKING DO WITH LESS. AND THEN LESS AND LESS AND LESS. I’m even eating less. But I don’t know if it’s better to eat a lot so as to live off my fat later on, or eat less so as to be in practice for not having enough food. I’ve heard, though, that if you’re fat you stretch your stomach, so you need more food to feel satisfied, so I’ve decided it’s better to shrink mine.