John Adams - Wastelands - Stories of the Apocalipse

H’ssig was afraid, too. The great hunting rat had no eyes. But his scent was keener than Greels, and there was a strange smell in the tunnel. His ears were better, too. Through them Greel could pick up more of the odd noises that came from within the fire that was not a fire.

Greel opened his eyes again. Slowly this time, not all at once. Squinting.

The holes the fire had burned in his vision were still there. But they were fading. And the dimmer fire that moved on the curving tunnel wall could be endured, if he did not look directly at it.

Still. He could not go forward. And he must not creep back. He was a scout. He had a duty.

He reached out to H’ssig again. The hunting rat had run with him since birth. He had never failed him. He would not fail him now. The rat had no eyes that could be burned, but his ears and his nose would tell Greel what he must know about the thing beyond the curve.

H’ssig felt the command more than he heard it. He crept forward slowly towards the fire.

"A treasure house!"

Ciffonetto’s voice was thick with admiration. The layer of protective grease smeared onto his face could hardly hide the grin.

Von der Stadt looked doubtful. Not just his face, but his whole body radiated doubt. Both men were dressed alike, in featureless grey coveralls woven of a heavy metallic cloth. But they could never be mistaken. Von der Stadt was unique in his ability to express doubt while remaining absolutely still.

When he moved, or spoke, he underlined the impression. As he did now.

"Some treasure house," he said, simply.

It was enough to annoy Ciffonetto. He frowned slightly at his larger companion. "No, I mean it," he said. The beam from his heavy flashlight sliced through the thick darkness, and played up and down one of the rust-eaten steel pillars that stretched from the platform to the roof. "Look at that," Ciffonetto said.

Von der Stadt looked at it. Doubtfully. "I see it," he said. "So where’s the treasure?"

Ciffonetto continued to move his beam up and down. "That’s the treasure," he said. "This whole place is a major historical find. I knew this was the place to search. I told them so."

"What’s so great about a steel beam, anyway?" Von der Stadt asked, letting his own flash brush against the pillar.

"The state of preservation," Ciffonetto said, moving closer. "Most everything above ground is radioactive slag, even now. But down here we’ve got some beautiful artefacts. It will give us a much better picture about what the old civilization was like, before the disaster."

"We know what the old civilization was like," Von der Stadt protested. "We’ve got tapes, books, films, everything. All sorts of things. The war didn’t even touch Luna."

"Yes, yes, but this is different," Ciffonetto said. "This is reality." He ran his gloved hand lovingly along the pillar. "Look here," he said. Von der Stadt moved closer.

There was writing carved into the metal. Scratched in, rather. It didn’t go very deep, but it could still be read, if but faintly.

Ciffonetto was grinning again. Von der Stadt looked doubtful. "Rodney loves Wanda," he said.

He shook his head. "Shit, Cliff" he said, "you can find the same thing in every public John in Luna City."

Ciffonetto rolled his eyes. "Von der Stadt," he said, "if we found the oldest cave painting in the world, you’d probably say it was a lousy picture of a buffalo." He jabbed at the writing with his free hand. "Don’t you understand? This is old. It’s history. It’s the remains of a civilization and a nation and a planet that perished almost half a millennium ago."

Von der Stadt didn’t reply, but he still looked doubtful. His flashlight wandered. "There’s some more if that’s what you’re after," he said, holding his beam steady on another pillar a few feet distant.

This time it was Ciffonetto who read the inscription. "Repent or ye are doomed." he said, smiling, after his flash melted into Von der Stadt’s.

He chuckled slightly. "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls," he said softly.

Von der Stadt frowned. "Some prophet," he said. "They must have had one hell of a weird religion."

"Oh, Christ," Ciffonetto groaned. "I didn’t mean it literally. I was quoting. A mid-twentieth-century poet named Simon. He wrote that only fifty years or so before the great disaster."

Von der Stadt wasn’t interested. He wandered away impatiently, his flash darting here and there amid the pitch-black ruins of the ancient subway station. "It’s hot down here," he complained.

"Hotter up there," Ciffonetto said, already lost in a new inscription.

"Not the same kind of hot," Von der Stadt replied.

Ciffonetto didn’t bother to answer. "This is the biggest find of the expedition," he said when he looked up at last. "We’ve got to get pictures. And get the others down here. We’re wasting our time on the surface."

"We’ll do better down here?" Von der Stadt said. Doubtfully, of course.

Ciffonetto nodded. "That’s what I’ve said all along. The surface was plastered. It’s still a radioactive hell up there, even after all these centuries. If anything survived, it was underground. That’s where we should look. We should branch out and explore this whole system of tunnels." His hands swept out expansively.

"You and Nagel have been arguing about that the whole trip," Von der Stadt said. "All the way from Luna City. I don’t see that it’s done you much good."

"Doctor Nagel is a fool," Ciffonetto said carefully.

"I don’t think so," Von der Stadt said. "I’m a soldier, not a scientist. But I’ve heard his side of the argument, and it makes sense. All this stuff down here is great, but it’s not what Nagel wants. It’s not what the expedition was sent to Earth to look for."

"I know, I know," Ciffonetto said. "Nagel wants life. Human life, especially. So every day he sends the flyers out further and further. And so far all he’s come up with is a few species of insects and a handful of mutated birds." Von der Stadt shrugged.

"If he’d look down here, he’d find what he’s after," Ciffonetto continued. "He doesn’t realize how deep the cities had dug before the war. There are miles of tunnels under our feet. Level after level. That’s where the survivors would be, if there are any survivors."

"How do you figure?" Von der Stadt asked.

"Look, when war hit, the only ones to live through it would be those down in deep shelters. Or in the tunnels beneath the cities. The radioactivity would have prevented them from coming up for years. Hell, the surface still isn’t very attractive. They’d be trapped down there. They’d adjust. After a few generations they wouldn’t want to come up."

But Von der Stadt’s attention had wandered, and he was hardly listening any more. He had walked to the edge of the platform, and was staring down onto the tracks.

He stood there silently for a moment, then reached a decision. He stuffed his flashlight into his belt, and began to climb down. "Come on," he said. "Let’s go look for some of these survivors of yours."

H’ssig stayed close to the metal bar as he edged forward. It helped to hide him, and kept away the fire, so he moved in a little band of almost darkness. Hugging it as best he could, he crept silently around the curve, and halted…

Through him Greel watched: watched with the rat’s ears and with his nose.

The fire was talking.

There were two scents, alike but not the same. And there were two voices. Just as there had been two fires. The bright things that had burned Greel’s eyes were living creatures of some sort.

Greel listened. The sounds H’ssig heard so clearly were words. A language of some sort. Greel was sure of that. He knew the difference between the roars and grunts of animals and the patterns of speech.