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

She tries to clean herself with a corner of her filthy shirt.

“How about more water? Bucket’s nearly empty.”

He sniffs.

“And how about you tell me your name?” She crosses her legs and folds her arms in her lap. Chain clanks every time she moves.

“What’s so great about you anyway?” he says. “Why are you worth big bucks? You don’t look like a queen or anything.”

She pushes greasy hair behind her ear. “You haven’t exactly caught me at my best. I’m the federal minister for environment, infrastructure and sustainable futures.”

He snorts. “Government, ay? Pack of liars, that’s what my dad says. Stole the water, chemtrails through the sky, back-pocket, big-pharma weaponized diseases—AIDS and COVID, Pig Flu, Nypah, Hendra… So much bullshit brewed up to poison us.”

She bursts out laughing and shakes her head. “Well, you sure have got yourself a bumper crop there. You forgot the aliens, Bigfoot, mind-control labs and new world orders…” The chain clanks as she stretches her legs. “Don’t give us government types so much credit for stealth and ingenuity. Keeping secrets from the public is harder than you’d think.” She glances around her prison cell, “Although, I don’t know. Out here it seems much easier than back home.”

She’s cut short by a piercing shriek. Not the stackbot—this time something human. The shrieking ends abruptly—which is worse.

Kanye’s chest feels hot and tight.

Next comes machine-gun fire, metal slamming hard on metal, howling dogs and roaring engines.

“Name’s Kanye,” he says.

She leans forward. “Kanye, my government is doing its damnedest to build a future that’s safe and sustainable for all. There’s been damage done, for sure, in recent years. Big damage, slow responses. Mistakes beyond anyone’s control. But that doesn’t mean things can’t get better. Doesn’t mean we should give up on civilization itself.”

She leans closer. “Nobody’s trying to poison you and your father, Kanye. Help me get away from here. Back to where there’s proper food and medicine. Come with me to Sydney and I’ll show you.”

More rapid fire and a muffled blast, big enough to rattle BigZig’s walls.

Jude swallows hard. “Your friends are running feral, Kanye. Reckon it’s time to take matters into your own hands, you know? Before it’s too late. Help me contact my people and they’ll pull us both out of here. You saved my life today, so I owe you one.”

“No way. When my dad gets back—”

“He’s not coming back, Kanye. If he was, he’d be here already—and I think you know it. Get me out of… wherever the hell this place is… and I’ll save us both.”

“Oh my god—fresh air!” she says. Shuts her eyes and breathes in deep. “But where the hell are we? What’s this place called?”

They both duck as stray bullets whizz and plink.

He shrugs. “Woomera.”

“Woomera!” She slides from a crouch to sitting, rests her forehead on her palms and the fight kind of goes out of her. “They snatched me from Sydney—how the hell did I end up way out here?”

Both stare at the scene spread out below. Scattered fires burning bright and high, broken-down machinery—some of it house sized, people staggering about and firing. Dogs and goats. A bulldozer attempts to ram its way through the side of a rusted shipping crate.

Kanye clutches his gun against his chest, waves it whenever he speaks, like punctuation. “Fuckers got no fucken idea,” he says. “Nobody’s doing what they’re s’posed to be doing.”

She shades her eyes to stare out across the desert. “No wonder nobody’s come looking for me. This really is the arse end of nowhere.”

“Everyone knows Woomera,” he says.

“Not for a bloody long time, they haven’t. Got turned into a theme park or a museum or something. Sold off for mining too, maybe.” She squints. “I can’t quite recall.”

“Astronauts know about it.”

She almost smiles. “Haven’t been astronauts at Woomera for a very long time.”

“There’s astronauts. I’ve seen them.”

“In fact, there weren’t even astronauts at Woomera back in the day. Rockets, yes. Mission controls and plenty of weapons testing, but astronauts no.”

“Lady—I know what I saw.”

She’s not listening. She’s squinting at the sky. Nothing to see, not even clouds, but a look on her face like she can see beyond the blue. She scrambles back into a crouch, checks her balance, peeps over the edge.

“Got my gun trained on you so don’t go trying any tricksy moves,” he says.

“Binoculars.” She holds out her hand and he passes them over. She squints through the eyepiece, past the loudly malfunctioning stackbot that’s jerking and spasming as it launches another random cube into the low roof of a demountable shed. Past the thick black smoke of the burning garbage heap and out into the desert, scattered with rocks and wrecks and human bones.

A bucket-wheel excavator lies on its side, half buried under mounds of sand. Like a dinosaur. He used to have a book of dinosaur pictures.

“Hey—what’s that wreckage over there. Away from the other junk—is that a plane? Get me there and I can get us the hell away from here,” she says.

He stares at her with sullen disbelief. “It’s broken. You don’t know—”

“Shut up, kid, and listen to me if you want to get out of this place alive. Government satellites pass over this big old dump. Come and help me send a message, or stay up here alone if you’d really rather.”

The gun weighs heavy in his hands. Protecting the cash cow is one thing, taking orders from her is something else. So tired and his head hurts and what if his dad really isn’t coming back?

He leads the way along the goat track hacked into BigZig’s side. They’re three tiers down when the rumbling starts. Horribly familiar. He can’t bear to look—perhaps it’s coming from the ’bots or from one of those random monster storms. Could be from lots of things, no need to panic.

Jude’s face flushes with color as he feels the blood drain out of his.

“Oh my! Kanye—there’s a train coming!” She jumps up and down and waves.

His stomach lurches like he’s gonna spew. Spins around and slaps at her. “Stop it, ya fucken idiot! It’ll see you!”

She’s got this dumb look on her face. “Why—What’s the matter? A train can take us back to civilization.”

Kanye doesn’t move, despite the raucous fighting on the ground not far away. He stares fixedly as the train approaches the compound. It’s all happening again. The train zips through like a dirty bullet and his chest hurts from breathing ragged. He doesn’t turn to watch where it is heading.

Jude nudges him as bullets fly. He slaps her hand away and keeps on moving.

“Where’s that train heading, Kanye?”

He grips the gun tight like Uncle Jaxon taught him. He runs across a stretch of open concrete strewn with rubble, some of it still smoke charred and warm. She follows. Air explodes with random weapon fire. Two women wearing knitted hats and oil-stained gloves gawk from beneath a tattered awning, but don’t do anything to stop them.

But Jude stumbles to a halt, her bare feet leaving bloody footprints in the dirt. “Hang on! Kanye—it’s bloody cold at night. We need supplies.”

He waves the gun at a shipping container covered in skull graffiti. Jude ignores the dead man slumped beside it. Makeshift door swings off its hinge as she pushes past. She’s banging around in there a few minutes while he’s trying not to think about that train.

She comes out swigging from a canteen, wearing a big man’s jacket with bulging pockets. Walks like a clown with her skinny ankles stuffed in battered trainers.