Кейт Форсит - Relics, Wrecks and Ruins - Anthology of Speculative Fiction Short Works

Snatches of howling laughter carry on the breeze.

“That’s not fucken funny,” Kanye shouts. Anxious, seeing Gellan’s second level near complete. Thick black smoke belches from the place they toss the giant dump truck tires. None of this is supposed to be happening.

Blur of metal, whizzing close to his bleeding ear. He ducks as bullets ricochet off cubes. He trips and scrambles, arms grazed and stinging against sharp edges.

Amidst a sloppy hail of bullets, he rolls and drops down another tier. Landing forces breath out hard. Hip hurts when he tries to get back up.

Bright blood smears and stains his shirt. Everything is happening too fast. Slate keeps firing, hooting and hollering whenever Kanye jumps.

Gotta hide. Guns are going off like crackers, bullets peppering metal all around. Kanye whimpers as a squirt of warm piss dribbles down his leg. Scrambles for the nearest prison slit in BigZig, prays to Hercules for luck, holds his breath, sucks in his gut and wriggles on his belly like a lizard.

Sharp things stab and snag his skin. He makes it through, landing on his hands, curls up tight until the shots subside. Even Slate’s not dumb enough to shoot dead air. Kanye sits up, sniveling and tasting sticky dust.

Bright light spears in from outside. Everywhere else is dark. A foul stench—something’s died in here. Something big. But everything hurts and all he can do is wipe his nose and work out what the hell to tell his dad. How Gellan thrashed the fuck outta that stackbot, messed it up, shooting guns and people just for kicks. How Slate is getting too big for himself, all the stackies reckon he’s crazy, reckon he’s dangerous, what with all the home-stilled booze he chugs.

Something stirs in the pool of darkness just beyond the slit window’s bright glare. Kanye stops, strains to catch a glimpse. Prays to Hercules it’s just a rat, but when it moves again, he knows it isn’t.

Cries out as something emerges from the stinking, shadowy, all-encompassing dark. Kicks, propelling his body back until his spine slams against the wall. “Don’t hurt me!”

Stays put, stares at the emerging figure. The oldest woman he’s ever seen up close. Long fingers, bony like talons. Gray trousers and a shirt that badly needs a scrub.

“Are you ok?” she asks.

“Get away from me!” Tries to inch back on his arse, forgets he’s up against the wall. “Touch me and I’ll kill ya!”

She smiles. “No you won’t. Give us a look at your arms and that ear. Caught yourself a nasty scrape, looks like.”

Kanye whimpers; all the fight’s spooked out of him.

“I’m Judith,” she says softly, kneeling down and reaching for his arm. “Call me Jude—everybody does, or at least they used to.”

She curls her fingers around his wrist, prods him gingerly in several places. Checks his other arm and then his ear. “Nothing broken.”

Kanye snatches his arm away.

“So, what do they call you?” she asks.

“Shut up. You don’t get to talk. My dad’s the boss of everything round here.” He gestures broadly at the bright and spearing light.

Old woman uses her knuckles to push herself to standing, then steps back, swallowed by the gloom.

Kanye keeps his back against the wall, remembers the words his dad uses—cash-cows—words he’s never thought about too close. In his head, he’d pictured actual cows. Wouldn’t even call this one a cow, she’s skinny as a line of pipe.

“Please,” she says, stepping back into the light, “I’m starving. The girl who brings me food hasn’t come for two days.”

Kanye stares through swirls and plumes of dust.

“Tell me your name,” she says.

“You don’t get to ask me shit. My dad—”

She clasps her hands and cuts him off. “Of course.”

Her pants are gray like the suits on TV. Too big for her bony body. Bare feet. Toenails dirty. Pale blue scarf knotted tight around her neck.

“Your dad’s been gone a while, hasn’t he?” Holds him with her gaze. “That makes you the man in charge—am I right?”

“Too right.” Gets up and brushes dirt off his pants, thickening the dust swirling through the air.

“Things aren’t going so well with him away now, are they?” she says. “Can’t see much from here, but I hear all sorts.”

“Shut up! You don’t know anything. You don’t know jack shit.”

“Thing about ransom prisoners,” she says carefully, “is that nobody pays good money for a corpse.”

The old woman sways unsteadily. Brings one hand to her head, then hits the floor with a soft thud, stirring up another cloud of dust.

There’s a chain around her ankle.

She slumps forward, groaning, head resting in both hands.

“I’m in charge here,” Kanye reminds her. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. Don’t you forget it, old woman.”

“I won’t,” she says softly.

Three days Gellan has that stackbot running nonstop. Smoke pours from its grinding, screeching gears. Nobody knows how to shut it down. Gellan lost his shit and attacked it with a Super Dozer, that only made things worse. ’Bots are programmed to protect themselves—anyone with half a brain knows that.

What nobody knows anything about is Kanye’s secret place . His dad never goes up top of BigZig, never checked how one cube came out dented. A space where special treasures can be stashed. The place Kanye comes to think about his problems.

He built a shelf on two red bricks. On it sits a spotted shell brought from a real live ocean, four brown falcon feathers—each one from a different bird—toy soldiers from some war he’s never heard of. A lipstick: stay matte rose & shine. And his favorite thing—the 24-inch, plastic, US Army C-130 Hercules, with its Stars-and-Stripes flag on the tail and muscle-man stickers on both sides. The lipstick and a faded photograph are all he has to remind him of his mum.

The trains are starting up again and he doesn’t know what to do. Rumbling and rattling, shivering through his bones. The ache that’s been there since that day . Dad should be back from R&R already. Should be but he isn’t, like a lot of other things that aren’t.

Perhaps a lucky bird will guide him, but the sky’s as still and flat as always. Time’s past needing birds to help him. Kanye knows what has to happen next. He waits a while, then stands and tucks the Smith & Wesson into his dacks, picks up some stuff salvaged from his dad’s office. Loads his pack, climbs down to the prison gate, gulps good air before letting himself inside.

Not much light in the passageway. Ignores flies buzzing on dead things in locked cells. Finds his cash cow hugging her knees in a single shaft of dusty light.

“Brung you some food.”

She’s not half as old as he first thought. Grunts as she rips the MRE in half and scoops mush into her mouth with both her hands. Like she expects him to change his mind. Like she isn’t taking any chances.

Random crashing from outside and bullets plink against BigZig’s cubed sides.

Fucken tools have started up again.

The woman licks the last smear from the plastic pack and belches.

“You saved my life,” she tells him. “And I’m grateful. Really grateful. You have no idea—you really don’t.”

Kanye sits, placing the gun just beyond the reach of her rusty chain. So she knows he’ll use it if he has to.

“Nice boots,” she says.

Kanye sits a little straighter. Black crocodile-belly boots cost more than sacks of marijuana. Only worn when he needs extra luck.

“They’re all dead, aren’t they? The other prisoners,” she says.

“Not much value in them,” he says, scratching his scabby arms. “Not like you. Slate reckons you’re worth heaps.”