THE BACK OF BEYOND
Peter Trusty
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© Copyright 2012
Peter Trusty
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ISBN-9781780690506
First Published as an e-book 2012
E-Books Publisher
17 Sedgeway Business Park
Witchford CB6 2HY
They don't care how that Earth turn out. They just want to spend the money right now. It's too late, man.
Chapter 1.
The street lights never came on any more. They hadn't for years, at least not any place he had been, and he had lived in a few cities in his time. They were all dark.
Michael Peachey cut down the narrow alley to the back of the house where he had chosen to live before moving on again. It had been another day of frustrations and pain, sheltering from the searing heat as often as possible while desperately searching for food and for people who might have food, and finding it hard to find anyone at all, let alone someone who was able and willing to barter what little they had in exchange for what little he could offer them. He was exhausted and he had nothing to show for all the walking he had done all that day. This wasn't unusual.
However, tonight, he felt some relief, it was cooler than usual. There was a slight breeze and even the smell of rain in the air. He could see no stars above him so maybe there were rain clouds. He had been hoping for such a change in the weather for almost two months now, hoping to replenish the various plastic containers he had put out to catch rainwater. But he could do without another tropical storm. They had been growing more and more frequent and more terrifying over the months and years.
As he walked looking up at the night sky, he collided with an empty metal dustbin. He stumbled as it rolled in front of him. The sudden noise scared him. He cursed as he sought for balance and ended up on his hands and knees. He had grazed his elbow. It was vital that he should avoid any accidents, for an accident might fatally hamper his struggle to survive as the margins were so slim and the risks so great. There were no doctors nor hospitals now, and it was more than likely that a broken leg would result in his death from starvation. He picked the bin up, and in his anger he banged the lid back on, then on second thought tossed the whole thing over the wall alongside him, so that he wouldn't fall over it on another night.
He found the back wall to his temporary home and clambered over; he crossed the garden in the pitch black and went down a flight of stone steps with a dangerously loose banister rail to the area beneath. He felt safer buried down here, and usually it was cooler. Then for two hours he sat without any light while he ate what little food he had left and drank almost a half pint of whisky, then he lit a stub of candle and retreated deeper into the darkness of the house to try to sleep. The whisky would help.
It was as mundane as that, and that's the truth of it. In the morning he woke to the same scenes, the same thoughts, the same lack of possibilities, and always the same heat as the day before, and the months and years before that. How could boredom co-exist so closely with a struggle to survive? You'd think that such a fight would have at least some adventure in it. Instead he saw the essential meanness of life when reduced to the business of merely trying to stay alive. His boredom seemed to have merged in with his loneliness. He couldn't tell them apart really, where one ended and the other feeling began. He had no companions. He allowed no one to get near him. He had learnt not to trust anyone. After all they hadn't better trust him.
Anyway there were fewer and fewer people living in the cities. There was almost nothing to loot or steal now and not enough growing in the gardens and allotments to sustain many inhabitants. A very few desperate souls rattled around the inferno of the streets where almost all the houses and shops were vacant and derelict and lifeless.
The number of cities was dwindling too, as even large metropolitan areas were completely flooded by seas moving inexorably inland year after year. The population retreated before them.
His sleeping that night was as always fitful and feverish. He woke in the morning streaming with sweat. The fearsome heat was building already and it could not be much more than five o'clock, barely an hour after dawn. He would have to get off his bed soon. He knew that by midday it would seem that the very air was on fire. Perhaps one day it would ignite and the whole fucking planet would finally burn. He had to go out to scavenge for food again, whatever he could find, maybe some neglected tins in an abandoned shop, or in a house where they had been well hidden by someone who had died or been killed before they could open them; maybe some root vegetables in a garden buried beneath scant grass and weeds. And soon he knew that, though it went against the grain, still if he wanted to survive, he would have to try to take things from people by force. He wasn't a particularly brave man either. He knew that too. But everyone here now every day ran the risk of violence, even though the big gangs had either broken up or had left long ago in a search for better pickings. Only a month back he had been mugged himself and savagely beaten by two men for the scraps of food he carried. They had almost broken his arm. He smiled now because next time he would be ready for them. He had even taken to travelling down the same street in which he had met them in the hope that they would ambush him again, for he had since found a gun and plenty of bullets too. Maybe next time he would take something from them. He took the gun now from under his pillow as he sat on the side of his bed. He gazed at it, almost fondly, and he turned it over in his hands. It could, probably would, save his life one day.
He had nothing left to eat that morning. He got up, took a cup and went outside and scooped water from the rain barrel near the area steps. He drank thirstily. He couldn't spare any water to wash with though he knew that very soon the few clothes he wore would be stinking with sweat.
He went back out onto the streets very early again. He needed to avoid as much as possible having to walk in the searing heat of midday and the afternoon. It had not rained during the night and the clouds were gone. The sun blazed down fiercely already. It was amazing to think but there were rumours of some people who worshipped this sun, surely it made a powerful god, but one just as surely that knew no mercy. Qualities that they themselves, the sun worshippers, aspired to, or so it was said. This was just one of the cults Michael had heard about. He had in the past, occasionally, some time back now, come across a few adherents who belonged to one fantastic sect or other, but most people never considered ideas or philosophies or anything much above the simple practical activities required to stay alive. They were barely human.
In fact he had so rarely met with any other human beings in the last year that he wondered if any cults, religions or groups of any size, survived. However, little more than perhaps a year ago, he had heard from someone, a man driven insane by suffering, aimlessly returning from the north, someone who had surely given up on life to be heading back into an even fiercer heat than he had left behind him, that there were somewhere up there in the mountains people who aspired to the old Christian religion and who yet defended their territory brutally.
There was no breeze at all today. He had known days and nights, too frequent to be called unusual, when the winds were so strong that they tore the roofs of houses and threw cars about the streets. He had seen a man carried along half a street and flung to his death against a building by one such wind.
The whole city often stunk too. The dead and unburied, those carcasses the vermin had not yet picked clean, would cause that. Also the heavy rains that accompanied the storms would sometimes overwhelm the sewers and murky water would pump up out of the drains to flow along the gutters, across roads and pavements. Then it was a blessing there were not so many people alive there.
He needed to forget cities, all together bypass them in the future. He needed to get out of this one soon. He had to move north again simply to escape the heat, forever driving him, and thousands like him, to less hot climates and up onto higher ground. The heat and the seas were directing a volume of human traffic, as they had always done throughout his lifetime. The migrants had always poured north, always inland, always to higher ground, while millions of these refugees died of hunger, murder and suicide along the way.
He searched the streets all day and found merely some root vegetables in an abandoned allotment. He met only with two people. A young man dressed in filthy rags and smelling of urine followed him for a block and a half shouting abuse. But that was not as disturbing as the girl, thin, about twelve or thirteen, who appeared suddenly in a shop doorway to smile slyly at him, but Michael was not pretty and worse he was empty handed. She withdrew back into the shadows as quickly as she had appeared.
There was the usual assortment of non-human survivors about: crows, pigeons, rats, seagulls, feral cats, vermin and predators, and one odd, wild, furtive, scuttling creature that he could not identify. He considered whether he could eat a rat, and decided he was not quite there yet. Just as he turned back home a grey squirrel ran across the road in front of him and quickly up a plain tree, something clutched in its tiny claw. He wondered how long even these creatures could survive here. He could perhaps eat a squirrel. But it was another night without much food.
Chapter 2.
During those first nights on the vast plain it seemed there was before him, looking ahead, mere space and silence, and on either side too, as he trudged on, sheer distance and at night the impenetrable darkness. There was at his back nothing that felt solid either, a few sad memories, barely existent already, of months spent among the empty buildings and the bleak streets of that monotonous, dying city. His memories meant nothing. More and more as he walked on it seemed to him that time was ultimately without meaning. There were no longer any boundaries he could observe and live by. Only the heat had a presence, a presence that overwhelmed almost everything else. He travelled carrying very few hopes with him, but still he hung on grittily observing practicalities, in order to maintain a grip on his consciousness, his individual self, as well as on his life. Most importantly he avoided travelling during the hottest parts of the day, sheltering wherever he could find away from the sun's heat that inexorably pounded hour after hour upon the flat land. He took what advantage he could of the cooler twilights and the early hours of the night, and he always started out very early in the mornings. He ended each day's journey in moonlight and started out again next morning at the first light of dawn. As well as the fierce sun, the wind was sometimes savage, more than strong enough to blow him off his feet as it rushed unimpeded in great hostile gusts over the flat surface. Apart from the shrill blast and howl of these winds, when they came, he rested or travelled in funereal silence, isolated and companionless as always. The grass under his feet was scant, patchy and weak. He ate rarely and usually berries and roots, except for one small rabbit that he shot, skinned and cooked on the third day.
It was on the sixth evening that he first glimpsed in the twilight-grey distance of the horizon, the dark, humped shapes of the northern hills which were his destination.
It was on the seventh night that he first heard the baying of dogs somewhere ahead of him. They did not sound like wolves. They were there the next night too, though he did not see or hear them during the day. He guessed there must be other people out here travelling like him, in the same direction as him, but so far he had seen no one. Perhaps there were still one or two isolated farms that were occupied and the farmers kept dogs to warn off marauding migrants and whatever wild animals survived in this bleak place.
On the tenth night he saw a light ahead, maybe a mile or two away. It held steady and still as he moved towards it. One fixed point of light. However, he decided that he would wait until morning before approaching nearer. Then he could better see and judge what it might mean. He slept that night below a low ridge in a shallow hollow in the ground.
Next morning he rose early, even before the heat of the sun could wake him. Soon he made his way cautiously towards the place where he remembered the light to have been the previous night. After less than a mile he could see a house, some outbuildings, a cattle shed, a pigsty, some hen coops, even a small bricked-up well, all gathered together there around the central two-storey house, and surrounding it all there was a high and complete wooden stockade surmounted with barbed wire and it had a big iron gate. This may be crude security but no doubt it would deter many people from trying to break in; especially as they would have found it difficult to do so and remain unobserved. Anyway the place seemed so isolated that he doubted that many had even come across it despite the numbers that must have travelled north over the plain these last few years, and most of those who had accidentally come across this farm, expecting an hostile reception, they may well have instead moved quickly on drawn to whatever shelter the hills only a few miles beyond might offer as an escape from the full force of the sun and the strong winds they had endured crossing this harsh, flat land.
He soon stood about fifty yards from the compound to the left side of the gate at about a forty-five degree angle. He was ready to run at the slightest alarm. He was undecided what to do next, whether to call out and attract attention to show that he had no hostile intentions, or to go back and wait behind the ridge he had just travelled along, to lie hidden there until someone appeared, so that he might see and better judge whatever might face him. It was clear that the place was occupied; there were a few signs on the porch in front of the house where a broom stood against a wall and an open book lay face down on a chair placed there in the shade of the house. What would be the point of waiting? He edged nearer.
Before he had a chance to make his decision whether to stay where he was, or turn and retrace his steps, or indeed to pass on and try against the odds to reach the hills beyond, the front door of the house situated directly in line with the gate opened and a man came out. He was an old man. His face was deeply tanned and lined above a thin grey beard. He was lean and wiry and wearing a light green shirt and a pair of worn khaki shorts and heavy brown boots. The laces hung loose. He had long matted grey hair. After a few seconds he glanced up and saw Michael. Both men stood transfixed in silence and then the old man slowly turned around and re-entered the house. Michael remained motionless. The other man came out again carrying a rifle.
Michael shouted, “You don't need that. I mean you no harm, and I had to approach simply because I am near to starving. I haven't eaten anything at all for two days and not much for a week before that. Worse than that my water is almost gone. I reckon I will probably die before I reach the hills over there.”
The old man said nothing.
“So you see I'm desperate. Whether you shoot me or not doesn't much matter to me. Without your help I'll die soon enough any way.
The old man remained grim-faced. “I can see or guess all of that. But none of it guarantees my safety. In fact it makes me worry more.”
Neither man said anything for some seconds, then Michael simply sat down on the ground and waited.
The old man said, “Is there anyone with you?”
“No I prefer to travel on my own. Like you, it seems, I find people difficult to trust.”
For about a minute the old man stood weighing him up. Then he said, “Well I might regret this. But, call it instinct or loneliness, it seems I want to trust you, for I am, for some unaccountable reason, seriously considering letting you in here. Long enough anyway to get some food and water.” He paused again for some several seconds. “You got a weapon with you there?”
“Yes, I've got a handgun in my bag.”
“Come forward slowly and don't reach into the bag. When you get near enough, toss the whole thing over the fence.”
Michael did as he was told. He had no choice. As he moved, both men looked steadily at one another. He threw the bag by one of its straps in one perfect loop directly over the gate. It landed just a foot in front of the old man's feet. Still watching Michael carefully he ferreted into the bag. He was obviously pleased with the gun. He put down his own rifle, and after checking that the handgun was loaded, he covered the younger man with it as he undid the heavy padlock on the gate and dragged it open.
So their relationship began. Two men who started warily enough, not even considering friendship, but slowly beginning to like one another, though neither had enough grace to admit that for some time, but it was obvious early to both of them that they could achieve more together than either could alone, that their cooperation made survival more likely for both of them. They began to depend on one another.
The old man's name was Liddy, Peter Liddy, but he preferred to be called merely by his surname.
That first time inside the house Michael welcomed the shade and the gloom that Liddy had created there. He collapsed into a worn armchair without being asked, and drank greedily the glass of coolish water the old man produced from somewhere further back in the building. Michael noticed that there were books everywhere littered around the place. Then a shotgun and various garden tools in one of the corners of the room. Later after he had eaten the frugal meal the old man prepared for him Michael was offered a bed for the night. He was to sleep safely in that house for several weeks afterwards, though Liddy kept the handgun.
Most of the time Michael felt grateful, grateful enough to do just what was asked of him without asking any questions. However, for the first time in a long time he began to be curious about someone else's story. For years now even his own history hadn't interested him at all. But now, as he began to suspect that he might somehow last for at least a while longer, there began to grow in him an interest in some other aspects of life than just the immediate problems of how he was to survive. He figured Liddy would of his own volition and in his own time tell him what he wanted to know. However one day as they were cleaning out the chicken runs together, Michael found himself stumbling into a personal conversation with someone else, “I don't know how – I mean at your age – how you've survived out here any time at all. How long has it been?”
“I've been here six years, six hard years now. I found the place, just happened on it, as I was crossing the plane. Just like you I was heading for higher ground and a better climate. Travelling wasn't quite so bad then. I reckon, it was a smidgen cooler. There was more water in the streams too. But the journey was still hard enough. At first I only intended to rest up here for a few days. There was some shade, though the place wasn't much then; the roof of the house was stove in and the chickens ran wild. I've made a lot of improvements. I built the stockade myself. I found the gate lying in a stream about half a mile away, a stream that's most often not more than a dry gulley now, although there's an occasional fair run of water when there's been a storm up in the hills beyond. I had a devil of a job getting that gate here. I hauled it a few yards a day, well mostly at night. It's heavy. It took weeks. But I guess I'm stronger than I look. I made the stockade out of wood from an old outhouse.”
“I can't imagine how you did all that. How old are you? You're certainly older than anyone I've ever met before.”
“I'm sixty-eight and I know I look it, but I'm wiry and needs must when the devil drives so I've probably done better than some men half my age.”
Despite the element of self-congratulation that he had noticed sometimes crept into the old man's voice, Michael said with genuine admiration in his tone, “That's for sure!”
“It's just that I'm cussed. It's stood me in good stead. I'm as obstinate as hell really. My poor dead woman told me that often enough. You'll find out if you stay here any time.”
“But why did you decide to stop here in this place for so long?”
“Well I heard that it wasn't always too safe up ahead. Some years ago I talked to a man who was coming back. Not many do that. He had friends killed up there. The earlier inhabitants don't much welcome migrants according to him. I guess people don't want to share what they've got when they've got so little. I can understand that. I've never welcomed anyone here. You're the one exception to that. Anyway back then I decided to make my own final stand here. I didn't expect to live much longer, and it was as good a place as any to die. There are probably not many better places for humans to live on Earth far as I can say.”
“One thing that really puzzles me, where did all these books come from? You can't have carried them with you, and I doubt if there's ever any bookshops or libraries or towns around here.”
“Well, of course they were here when I arrived. There were a lot more here too. At first before I began to read them I used them to make fires to cook with. Then I found more in the cellar under the house along with a few bottles of wine. The wine went years ago sorry to say. The person or persons who lived here before me must have been well educated and collected them over a lifetime. There was no sign of anyone when I got here though, alive or dead, no human remains I mean, no dead bodies, or live ones. Mostly you'll notice if you are given to read them that they are history books or politics and economics, some science, but mostly history of what their writers often call “the modern era”. I have never understood how an age, that has long passed now, could have so consistently called itself “modern”. It's like a death wish, as if they didn't expect anything else, anything more modern, to come along after them. And they were right there. It's obvious from these books that the human race has gone through a more technological age than you and I will ever see. By all accounts it seems like there was an age of milk and honey, ease and plenty. But it's all gone now, wasted as far as we are concerned. We aren't even fortunate enough, even someone as old as me, to remember it.”
They finished their work. As they went back into the house, Liddy said, “There's a lot of information too on how we, humans I mean, got ourselves into this mess. That's a recurring theme, especially in the science books. It's obvious that whoever gathered them together was very interested or concerned about that. You ought to read some. Wait a minute though. Look I'll show you one thing I found just as an example. The man, or perhaps it was a woman, anyway one of the people who lived here before me and left all the books, also wrote a diary for at least some of the time. I found what was left of it, though there wasn't that much; it mostly went to pieces in my hands first time I picked it up, and a lot of the pages left were unreadable, but in the drawer here I've got a few pieces that did survive, that I thought were interesting enough to keep. Not that they will ever be of any use to you or me personally, or perhaps to anyone else ever again.”
The old man opened the drawer of the kitchen table that he stood beside and took out a thick book. He opened it and delicately removed some torn and stained scraps of paper that were pressed between its pages, handling them with great care, almost as if they were some kind of ancient and sacred relics. The two men read what was there together. Every now and then the old man had to explain some of the words and passages, for Michael could not read very well. He had never been formally taught anything.
“It is a matter of judgment, but perhaps the oil wars really began in earnest when China attacked Nigeria, overrunning that huge country in a matter of a few weeks in one sudden massive attack. Millions of troops were deployed. At the time it seemed barbarous and ruthless to us, perhaps because the West had always been so much more circumspect, more careful and secretive, in their own attempts to control and exploit undeveloped nations that were rich in energy resources. This seems to me now, this Western approach or strategy, to be a strange mixture of hypocrisy (or perhaps just self-deceit) and decadence. Certainly that's how the Chinese and many Moslem countries saw it at the time. The German and Islamist philosopher Enkle described it as, “Weakness and hypocrisy, a failure to measure the true nature of Man, which is typical of liberal democracies that have never dealt adequately or honestly with the problem of evil.” The Chinese onslaught was direct and cruel, with no shade of guilt or mercy. The Nigerians described them as “locusts”, but many other nations and commentators, including the philosopher, admired and envied them.
“It was about the same time, a cold winter in Europe, the last of the really cold winters, just as some of the scientists were becoming as it turned out unnecessarily worried that the Gulf Stream might switch off the hot tap, just at that time the Russians stopped completely their supply of gas to Europe. They said they needed all that was left for themselves, but some suspected they were also indicating to the West that there had been a crucial and perhaps final shift in power.
“Poor Britain had started its nuclear programme too late to stave of the worst of the energy crises that occurred when the oil and gas began to run out in earnest, and too late as well to contribute significantly enough to a reduction in carbon emissions. Some right-wing critics held that a succession of democratically elected governments in the UK had been too weak to act responsibly on this issue because they were scared of their electorates. They had courted popularity because of the nature of their constitution. It is obvious now with the benefit of hindsight that more than a few unpopular decisions were needed to stave off the disasters that some, a minority, saw coming in the longer term. Whatever the causes, majority or popular rule or whatever, the British people suffered greatly because of a lack of decisive political leaders.
“Those who had faith in renewables might agree with some of this assessment. What renewable sources existed in the UK barely ever touched the two problems of climate change and “peak oil”. Too many of the wind turbines were not even attached to the National Grid in 2025 when the disasters coming were clear even to the majority, and there were simply not enough of them anyway, and not enough wave power, partly because dozens of Nimby groups had taken advantage of long-winded planning processes to prevent and delay much needed schemes in order to preserve their scenic views and the value of their real estate. What value now? There is no doubt these groups must be held responsible for many deaths, including many of their own elderly folk. The Green- Fascist Party were never powerful enough to do anything meaningful against these self-styled local democrats. Personally I agree, however, with those analysts who doubted that the energy produced by renewables could ever effectively replace the cheap and efficient energy provided by fossil fuels that we had all enjoyed for so long, for two or three hundred years.
“By 2030 many Asian countries had been at various stages of war for a decade (including one nuclear war) over water resources. As the rivers flowing down from the dwindling glaciers in high mountain ranges reduced dramatically due to global warming, countries upstream built more and more dams and used all other means that they could think of in order to stem the flow moving downstream to their neighbours.
“In the the United States there was unbelievable domestic chaos, for the Americans had based their whole economy on oil, their whole way of life, their cities, shopping malls, transportation of goods and services etc. on the motorcar and cheap gasoline. They had for example strangled their own railway system early in the twentieth century thanks to the lobby system and the corporate efforts of GM Chrysler and Ford. They had built their small towns at the end of long roads confident in their wealth and ability and right to carry on just as they wished. They paid for their hubris, as isolated communities too began to wither and die, and, of course, the much lauded American people blamed everyone but themselves for their problems. This was a feature of their culture of excessive individualism.
“There are just too many things to say, too many disasters to describe, their causes to analyse and explain for me to do justice to them. Mostly I blame short-term thinking and denial and self indulgence. What matters is that billions of humans have died because of these shortcomings of our own species. Perhaps humans will live on in a few isolated settlements, but I doubt that because climate change looks irreversible now. Most of the tipping points have been reached and gone past. Our planet may even become as hot and poisonous as Venus and it was all our fault, and we have caused to the extinction of many other species too, perhaps of all life on our planet that had been such a gorgeous exception in this disaster of a universe. We have ruined the Garden of Eden.”
There was no more that was readable but it was enough to get the general idea, to have a better idea, of just why Michael and Liddy found themselves just where they were isolated on this baking hot plain. So that was just one voice from the past. It was a harsh voice, but that of an intelligent person. The voice of someone whose anger had turned to bitterness. It was the very first voice from the past that Michael had ever heard, the first words he had read from times gone by. History had gone, just one other casualty of a disastrous era.
During the weeks that followed Michael picked up some of the books. There wasn't a lot more to do when the necessary work was done for the day. But he was never to be as interested in them as the old man. As far as he could judge, it wouldn't do any good knowing why the planet was as it was, if it was the whole planet that was like this. There was nothing that they could do about it now. He concentrated on the present as he had always done. The thing that most interested him was how the old man had survived. He must have faced attempts to break inside his stockade. He decided that it might be useful to know how Liddy had handled them. He started on the subject one evening. “But you must have seen lots of people trying to get inside your fortress here. I can't have been the first man that came along, others must have asked for refuge, and some must have tried to take the place from you when you refused them. Some of them must have been pretty desperate too.”
“Another thing I found here apart from the books were the guns. I had my own rifle when I started across the plain, but I found two more here and a couple of shotguns too, and plenty of ammunition. Most people are deterred by the stockade and the gate when they realise I will be shooting at them as they try to get over. At first I used to have a dog and a couple of geese that made a heck of a noise if anyone got near at night. People could see I haven't got much here too and that must have made them wonder if it was worth the risk. I have killed three men and one not much more than a boy. I winged another and he crawled away. I never found him to finish him off though, so I expect he got to the hills. I am prepared to give people some water to carry on their journey if they act peaceably. But I'm always very careful when I do that, and I'm not easy to fool. Also I can be ruthless you know when it is necessary. Another reason that I decided to stay was because I wasn't likely at my age to survive very long if I did go on and finish the journey I started six years ago. You arriving and settling in has made me think more about my options there, whether it might be worth it if we two took off together and sooner rather than later. Over the last week or two I've been mulling over our chances.”
This was the first time Michael had heard that Liddy was even thinking of leaving. “You are not going to move on surely? You can't mean to take the risk.”
The old man looked down at his feet. “I don't know and that's the truth.” He shrugged. “I'm run out of books you know. Some I've read two or three times. I'm getting to be quite a professor and it makes me want to know more. As well it's getting hotter every year and my chickens are nearly finished. As you know only one old broiler is still laying eggs regularly now, and water's harder to get than it used to be. Maybe it's time I went on and finished the journey I started all those years ago, and found out at last what's over those hills I've been looking at all this time. Do you know what I call this place?”
“No.”
“The “Back of Beyond”. I think that would sound right to some of those fellows who wrote those books maybe a hundred, two hundred years ago predicting this disaster.” He looked keenly into Michael's face. “Of course I couldn't make it without your help, but then I might be of some help to you. I would be another gun. Oh, I do intend to let you have your own back, unless you'd like a rifle instead or one of the shotguns.”
Michael said, “It all sounds like a pipe dream to me. On the other hand if the temperature does keep rising and we lose the chickens we might be forced into moving on. I need time to think over what you've just said but for the time being I'm enjoying the luxury of at least one meal a day. I've never known that before and I don't want to risk losing it for a while at least. I would like one of the rifles. Maybe I could go out and hunt.”
The old man grunted. “If you do travel any distance at all, you will need to watch out for the packs of dogs. You must have noticed that they're getting noisier and more numerous and more dangerous lately. I shot one a couple of nights before you arrived. There was a big pack out there and they were trying to dig under the fence. But I really am thinking of moving on. I mentioned earlier that I've had conversations through the fence with people coming back from up there. One camped out there for two weeks about a year ago. But I wouldn't let him in. Didn't trust him. However, I was interested in what he had to say. He talked about a city in one of the mountain valleys up there where it was cool enough to live for a while, where you could grow things. It was maybe a couple of hundred miles or more away. He said there was a library, a place full of books that hadn't been damaged there, and that's kinda tempted me. I would like to see that and spend some time there. But of course we'd probably never find it. He didn't exactly give me precise directions.”
“Did you believe him? Maybe he was just trying to persuade you out of the fortress.”
“You may think it's nonsense and there's no practical advantage to it, just reading and learning for it's own sake. It's a strange yearning I agree given the situation we find ourselves in. One thing that sometimes irritates me about you though, Mike. You seem to have no curiosity at all. I mean you've just come from a place where there must have been some sort of library and a few books still intact and you've shown no interest in them apparently. It seems, well, limited. You can get too stuck in the present, in the short term. But that's maybe helped you survive.”
Michael was suddenly angry. “You can talk, stuck here on a small dirt farm for six years and the hills just over there, and I bet you've never tried even one time to take a look.”
“No, you're right. Maybe I've been too scared in the years past, in case I'm disappointed. Maybe now I feel I've less to lose, that I'm so old, but it seems to me I have had enough of just getting by one day at a time.”
“What do you mean by stuck “in the short term”? Are you saying I'm dumb? Well, maybe that's true. I haven't had much time for deep philosophical ideas. To me the human brain merely evolved to be a survival tool.”
“Maybe that was so in the first place, Mike, hundreds of thousands of years ago.” The old man hesitated. “Look I'm sorry. Let's not argue about it. I guess I get frustrated. And it is clear to me that you're no fool. But if I've learnt anything from these books, it is that you have to think long-term too, even if you are concentrating on survival. The generations that caused us all to have to live in hell-holes like this, it was their biggest failure living for today and expecting someone else to pick up the tab tomorrow, just as long as they enjoyed themselves and didn't have to make any effort. They had enough warnings but the vast majority were in denial. They believed what suited them, suited their short term urges. They didn't consider future generations, even their own grandchildren enough.” He broke off suddenly. Michael waited. The old man grunted. “Now I sound like I'm preaching. Let's forget it for the time being, but I do want you to think about moving on.”
A while later he said, “I never had any children or grandchildren. Me and the woman decided it'd be wrong to bring them into this world.”
Chapter 3.
One night Michael was woken by an explosion of sounds. The noise came through the dark, open window of his bedroom, the squawking of panic-stricken chickens, thrashing their wings, rushing around their pen in loud intermittent bursts of movement. The door opposite his door, the door to the old man's room, was soon flung open. He heard Liddy cursing and shouting angrily, and the heavy stumbling thump of his feet on the bare boards. In his hurry the old man seemed to fall against a wall and he cursed loudly again. By the time Michael had thrown himself out of his bed, grabbed the rifle that was leaning against the table next to it and projected himself blindly across his room, he could hear that the old man had thrown open the front door. When Michael reached him, he was standing naked just outside the house and firing into the night. The younger man stood at Liddy's shoulder and followed the direction of the barrel of his gun. There in the dim light of the moon, running swiftly and lightly across the flat land, was an animal. Thin like a needle, a spectre in the eerie light, it turned just as it reached the ridge that Peachey had emerged from months previously, and then it stopped absolutely still and looked back. It was a fox and in its mouth was one of their chickens. The predator was for seconds motionless and it appeared to Michael to be gloating. Then it disappeared into the darkness. The old man beside him swore loudly.
In anguish the two men turned and looked at one another and then rushed back to the coop. They were not sure yet how the fox had got in, but there inside was a scene of absolute carnage. The other four birds lay stretched out in various stark, rigid attitudes. All of them were dead, slaughtered. In the light from Liddy's torch, they could see blood and feathers widely spread in the straw all around them. The old man cursed again. “Fucking fox. I knew there must be one out there. I knew he would come. I've felt him out there for months. Never seen him before though. Why did he have to kill them all? He must have known he couldn't carry them all away. But he had to kill every last one of them. Just fucking savagery, and it feels personal too. Fucking hens, I was fond of them.” He was so angry that he was close to tears.
Michael thought, “They had been his only companions for years.” His next thought was that they will make a few meals, but then afterwards there will be no more eggs at all. The loss of the chickens was a blow and the two men were so balanced on the very edge of survival or death that it was a blow they could maybe not afford to take. It was one more disaster on this disaster of a planet.
In the days and weeks that followed Michael took to hunting more often. He looked for the fox whenever he went out. He saw it as a competitor and an enemy, and whenever he shot the occasional rabbit he thought, “That's one less for you, you sly bastard.” He remembered the way it had stopped and looked back just before it had disappeared, to him it had appeared to be gloating, as if it knew them and how they would take it.
On top of the other problems it caused, this incident meant that the old man became more impatient to leave his house. He argued it was harder living there now and they had less to lose by moving on. He argued that the deaths of the chickens had shifted the balance of the decision in favour of going. When they argued he would stand close and opposite to Michael, his smallish head thrust forward on an ugly stretched neck. This and those sharp and definite nods that characteristically punctuated his speech whether he was teaching or advising, or sometimes even when just making a point, irritated Michael more and more, and Liddy's voice was becoming harsher too, as his tone was increasingly demanding. And this made Michael more stubborn. Their previously good relationship was deteriorating.
One time, furious with the old man's pestering, he said, “Why should I travel with you? What advantage is there in that for me? I'm not sure you would be able to make it across the last of the plain, never mind climb the foothills. You become tired too easily. Any man of your age would, and I would end up having to carry you, perhaps even literally. It would be a difficult enough journey for me on my own.”
Liddy was hurt and angry. He reminded Michael more than once that he had let him into his place, given him sanctuary in his house, when he might have easily refused, that he, Michael, probably owed him his life. He reminded him of the scene at the gate when they had first met and how grateful he had been. He did not actually mention the idea of friendship, or that Michael did not feel strongly enough, if at all, what it meant and involved, but the younger man was beginning to understand that this was implied in the argument, and even to experience pain at his own failure to honour the obligation he was beginning to acknowledge. He felt guilty for perhaps the first time in his life, as he realised that one might be indebted to another human. He also recognised within himself a feeling of affection for the other man. But it was also true that Liddy's argument was stronger in terms of its logic and utility. Michael saw that. Nevertheless, he so wanted a place to rest for a while longer after all those years of endlessly moving on, and the fox had not completely destroyed the sense of security he felt sleeping in his dark room behind the ugly iron gate, so for now he remained stubborn. However, the arguments with the old man occasionally became so raw that Michael left the compound to hunt on his own in order to escape the looks and recriminations, but he also went alone because it was true that Liddy tired easily, that his shooting was not so good and that he sometimes hampered or slowed down the younger man.
Late one afternoon, towards evening, he was out there returning from a successful hunting trip when he heard the sound of dogs baying. He thought that they were probably the same animals that he had heard on the night before he had come across Liddy's place. It was a pity that they hadn't caught up with the fox then, perhaps they were on the animal's track now. He walked on for a while, the evening drawing in, until he could see the stockade in the distance, when he noticed that the sound of the dogs had been growing appreciably louder and nearer. Feeling a little anxious he quickened his pace. However, as he went on, the barking and howling continued nearer and it seemed more excited. He stood still and looked back but he could see nothing. Nevertheless, he knew from the sound that they were somewhere behind him to his right. He remembered climbing a slight incline in the plain back there a little while ago. Then he realised that they must be following exactly on his trail, and they were hidden for now somewhere just behind that rise and moving towards him all the time. They had his scent.
He began to run, at little more than a trot at first, and he looked back more than once. Then he thought he heard the sound of a human voice and he turned sharply. There was a man highlighted against the setting sun, on the ridge, a slim upright figure marshalling the dogs, directing them with long, whooping, skirling calls and shrill whistles like a shepherd using them to round up sheep, but these sounds seemed to him feral rather than pastoral. Then he saw that the first dog had already breasted the rise and had covered almost half the ground between him and the human figure and it was coming on swiftly so he turned and ran as fast as he was able. He thought he would make the stockade but would the old man be ready, would he have the gate open? The dogs seemed near enough now that he imagined he heard their panting. They would be on him in no time. He turned for one more look back when he judged that they must be too close for him to make the safety of the compound. Unslinging his rifle he flung away the two rabbits he had carried on his other shoulder and knelt down to fire. He had to be ready to fight if flight wouldn't do it, and he had to have enough space ahead of him to kill at least a couple of the dogs before they were on him. He might have to be ready to fight and kill a man too. Quickly he checked that the knife he always carried with him in his belt was handy. There were now maybe a dozen animals and behind them to left and right running swiftly the near naked figures of two men who were each carrying a long pointed pole. Thin, limber, young men, feral, marshalling their dogs, with long whooping calls in the half light. It was like a scene from a nightmare.
At this moment a shot rang out. It was Liddy standing in front of the house, outside the open gate, firing at the dogs, but his aim was poor at the distance. Michael, much nearer, fired once and stopped the first dog, a huge Alsation cross-breed, in its tracks. As it fell, he was near enough to see a red stain spreading across its wide chest. The other animals simply ran by its body. But the men stopped, and then they began to call back their dogs. At first they came on toward Michael, but then they seemed confused between their instincts and the commands of their human masters. Sensing a chance to escape as they faltered Michael leapt to his feet, turned and ran. As he made it into the stockade, Liddy immediately turned in after him, slamming the heavy iron gate shut behind them.
They looked up. The other two men were gone, disappeared already, the dogs had come past the rabbits, but now they turned back and two of them collected the dead animals before running off, returning as they had appeared into the gloom of the approaching night. While Liddy fired shot after misplaced shot after them, Michael stood watching. As soon as they had disappeared the old man turned to him, “You bloody fool, why did you stop shooting?”
“I guess I was in shock, and they were running away anyway.”
“But don't you realise they almost certainly will be back. If they can find you out on the plain once, you can bet your life they will again, and from now on those men'll be looking for you and looking for a chance when you're not ready for them. The more animals we had killed then when we had the chance the better.” He turned back into the house.
Michael followed him, talking to his back as he went. “It seems stupid of them to risk attacking me and getting shot, surely not worth those two stringy rabbits I had caught?”
The old man turned on his heel. He looked exasperated. “Maybe they were after a bigger animal. You must have run into cases of cannibalism, and if that wasn't it, you would have made a good meal for their dogs. A dog's dinner! Come on you're not that young and naïve, I know.”
Of course! Michael had heard that the eating of human flesh was going on and becoming increasingly common in the cities he had travelled through, though he had never actually come across it. This was something additional to think about. From that evening onwards Michael allowed the old man's arguments more weight. He was now persuaded that they would have to leave soon, but not before, such was the reluctance he had to overcome, he had spent a little more time resting where they were. However, within two days he began increasingly to feel trapped inside the house, for now it was dangerous to go out hunting for food and now he preferred the old man to be with him on the very few occasions when they did venture out. But then they didn't go very far and they caught nothing. That old feeling of persistent, gnawing hunger that he had known since a boy was returning. Eventually he told the old man that he was ready to leave as soon as he gave the word, the sooner the better in fact. Almost at once they both began to gather some gear together.
Three days later after a short journey very early in the morning they began to climb one in the range of mountains that would take them off the anvil of the plain. It was a hill like all the others, if slightly less steep bare and rocky. As they climbed it offered them no shade from the midday and afternoon sun; there were no trees here but only a few stunted shrubs and very little grass at all. There were very few places that they could pause and rest. It did grow a little cooler as they climbed, but it was still hot and exhausting enough going. The old man faltered more than once and as Michael felt his own thin legs, weakened by hunger, aching painfully beneath him, he wondered how his companion kept going at all. There were no crystal mountain streams here rushing, or even trickling, by them, no refreshment of body or spirit at all. In a few hours they had at last reached the summit. They looked forward almost eagerly but on the other side far and wide there was nothing it seemed any different from what they had left behind them. There was merely another vast plain, desolate, arid and bitter and no houses, no settlements that they could see, no signs of any kind of even rudimentary civilization, certainly no churches, nor towers, nor cities of books. Nothing moved, nor it seemed breathed, out there beneath the searing remorseless sun that beat on either side of the hilltop on which they stood bewildered and helpless. The plain in front of them seemed as vast and pointless as the one that they had left behind. In the distance Michael could discern another range of hills on the horizon.