IGMS Issue 49 (14 page)

Graham blew on his middle finger to try to quell the pain. Under the broken nail, the bone felt fractured. He bit down on a Sharpie and wound packing tape around the joint. After Ed severed the electricity, the elevator doors had banged open on every floor. Graham couldn't tell if it was a safety default of the old building or something else, but he wasn't about to lose the chance to get out. He considered the unbolted paper cutter blade. What could he use it for? He knew exactly what, if it came down to it.
Bring it
.
You don't have to use it
. He shook his head in aversion, but threaded the handle through his belt loop all the same.

Fighting a bout of hunger and nausea that turned the floor to liquid under his feet, he stuffed his phone in his pocket and lurched to the shaft.

Dim light glimmered from the warehouse opening above. Of course. The bastard had a day's worth of solar power up there. Well, let him enjoy it for the few hours he had before Graham escaped and called the cops. Graham leaned forward, caught the elevator cable in his hand, and swung out. His finger flared under the pressure as he let himself down hand over hand, conscious every moment of the elevator's bulk suspended over him. He dropped the last few feet to the bottom of the shaft and clambered into the ground-floor vestibule.

A glint of metal on the floor caught his eye. Without even approaching it, he recognized it as the head of Ed's front door key. The stem, he knew, would be twisted off in the lock. Through the door's four-inch window, he found the building's power line, not outlined against the starry sky, but on the ground.

Clenching his jaw, Graham left the vestibule and felt his way between the dark lumps of machinery to the trap door. The rope and pulley would hold his weight. He'd slide down and swim to the bank.

Graham swore as his fingers found a shiny padlock latching the grate closed. None of the scrap pipe nearby fit in the steel loop to give him leverage.

He sank back on his heels, disgusted with the futility of his hands. From the new vantage point, an unfamiliar, dropcloth-covered mound in the corner caught his attention. He drew aside the filthy shroud, finding a bank of solar batteries, joined by cables. Ed's new power source, probably bought with the money from the sale of the truck.
My truck
, Graham thought.

Somewhere up in the warehouse, Ed operated his cell signal blocker. A signal blocker requiring power. Graham looked at the batteries in front of him. He picked up a length of pipe, weighing it in his hands. Had Ed really left himself so open?
He knows how toxic they are
, he thought.
How close to the water supply. He doesn't think I'll do it
.

He hefted the pipe over his head. "You want to be off the grid, Ed?" he hollered towards the elevator shaft.

Then he let it fly.

Graham's victory yell faltered when he noticed the light shining from the elevator opening. His cell showed no reception. The nutjob still had power. He had to have a supplemental source.

Graham couldn't tunnel his way out through the brick walls. He would have to get to the signal blocker himself.

He tried the first flight of steps. On the second flight, the metal creaked and began to swing. Graham's instincts stabbed at him. After a second's hesitation, he bolted back down. One flight from the exit door, he heard the top platform snap loose. Level after level clapped together above him in a screeching avalanche. When it hit bottom, dust sprayed over him where he had landed.

Graham got his heart rate under control, walked to the shattered pile of metal, and found the bright spots in the iron where it had been cut most of the way through. He knew, then, where Ed wanted him. He looked up at the three-story distance above him. Stay and starve, or.... Well. Really, he had only one option.

For once he wished the river louder, to mask his grunting progress up the elevator cable. His heart beat high and thin as he neared the top of the shaft. He leaned out to catch the lip of the warehouse opening, wincing as his busted finger took his weight. He pulled himself onto the floor, the concrete cold against his stomach.

He hauled himself to his feet, swaying, and stumbled into total disorientation. Vegetative aromas. Wood smoke. A thin raw scent like spilled blood. Trickling noises sounded all around him in the clammy air. A single battery-powered work light stood in the center of the floor. Once Graham neared it, he made out the shapes surrounding him.

Hydroponic tanks. Floating plugs sprouting vegetables. Growth lights. Racks and racks of dried, smoked fish. On a nearby table, some bits of grey fur and feathers being worked into a garment.

"Sustainability," he whispered.

"I built it for us." The voice echoed from the darkness. "Totally self-contained. Regenerating, rather than depleting."

"That's not possible. You can't avoid an impact."

"It
is
possible. It's what the world could be like, if people didn't lose sight of the vision."

"I've got a pretty good glimpse of it now," Graham said, struggling to concentrate on the direction of Ed's voice.

"This is the first step of many," Ed said. "I'm not the only one who sees the way things are going. Who sees a world addicted to profit and plastic and overconsumption. Nothing less than a disaster will jolt us off that road. Hundreds of people on the web agree. The only choice is to bring the crisis sooner, when there's still an Earth to salvage."

"Terrorism," Graham said.

A scoffing laugh came from somewhere on his left. "You want terror? Look around. The country's overpopulated with apathetic idiots, squeezing out more apathetic idiots by the dozen. The future's where the terror is!"

Graham winced, fighting off a hunger cramp. "People will change." But as he said the words, he knew with dull certainty he didn't believe, had never really believed, their truth.

"You need help, Ed," Graham said. He took a gamble and withdrew his cell phone from his pocket, turned it on. "Let me contact that home - Reardon."

"Help? They need
my
help. My conscience is finally clean. I can survive here, waiting for society to fall apart. When the end comes, I'll get down on my knees to welcome it. Then pledge my hands to the new world to come."

Graham swayed. He had allowed this. Failure resonated in his weakened body.

"If you don't let me leave, I will prosecute."

"I don't believe in the law."

"You'd better," Graham spat. "My name is on the mill's property deed. I worked for this place. My parents worked for it. It's mine." His voice became a shout. "And I won't give it to you." He loosed the paper cutter blade from his belt loop.

Ed's gleeful yell rang out, surprisingly close. "Yes! Come on!"

Graham gasped and spun. He backed away from Ed's voice, tripped on a cord. A cord leading to a small black box with a row of antennae, sitting on a worktable.
The signal blocker.

Graham ran for it, ignoring the dashing footsteps behind him. He threw the box to the floor, shattering it, and darted among the hydroponic tanks. Awkwardly cradling the blade, he raised his phone and sprinted for the warehouse's opposite end.

Before he pressed the redial button, a tackle flattened him. The phone and blade clattered across the cement. He clawed at Ed's weight on top of him, the stench of their combined body odor in his face. Ed's sweaty arms slipped out of Graham's grasp, and he tore free. By the time Graham got to his feet, he saw the light from his cell phone's screen reflecting on glinting teeth. An anguished cry burst from him as Ed lobbed the device through the window and into the falls.

Graham bellowed. Blood pounded in his ears. His breathing became ragged. The smell of smoke and water and fish guts swam in his head. He scrambled on the floor, and his groping fingers found the blade's handle.

Other man. Threat.
The nerve endings trilled in his arms and legs.
Run? Fight?

"Haaa. Haaa," Ed was hooting. Graham caught a glimpse of his stooped, shadowy figure circling, heard a soft splat as saliva fell from Ed's mouth to the floor.

Graham's fingers curled tightly around the handle. He hunched, forearms protecting his vitals. Panic shrieked at him, turning him all eyes, jaws and ears.
This place. His place. HIS.

Blood coated his mouth. He'd bitten his tongue. Or had he bitten Ed? The snarl behind his teeth turned to a whimper.

Red in tooth and claw. Was this who he was? He discovered his knuckles rested on the floor.
Oh God.
With effort, he pulled himself back from that edge, back upright.

"Damn you." In a spasm of horror, he hurled the blade away from him. "I wo-won't live this way with you," he said. "And I won't fight."

His voice sounded so frail. As his words disappeared in the yawning space, he knew with his head and his gut what would happen.
Everything becomes part of the system
, he thought. He would feed it, one way or another.

Food for worms.
A sob broke from him. No, not for worms. Something higher on the food chain. Ed would find a resource in everything.

Somewhere, a lever clanked, and a low, humming rumble began. The turbines churned to life, vibrating through the mill's foundations. With a series of clacks, light burst from the warehouse's overhead lamps, bouncing off every table surface with frazzled energy. The dots of green began circling in their tanks again.

Graham blinked at the figure crouched across the floor. Naked. Taut-skinned. Wide, grinning eyes obscured by a mane of curls.

He felt the prey impulse to back away. Resisted it. With the resurrected power of Ed's new energy source reverberating through the soles of his feet, he unclenched his hands. Win... loss.... Irrelevant. The cycle of the green world fed on just one thing.

"Compost," he whispered. He would contribute to whatever came next. That had to count for something, didn't it?

As if in response to his thoughts, the raw voice answered him.

"This place has a population problem. I see your footprints, Graham. But I'll leave nothing behind. Not even a trace."

Graham's spirit sank. The river thundered around them, and with a skittering laugh, the figure that had been Ed advanced.

Paula wakes, shaking, to the press of lips against her shoulder. She's been crying in her sleep again, chasing memories of Marcus. Dante is holding her. She can hear the patient rhythm of his breaths; her own gasping sobs slow to match him.

"Forever, forever, forever." He makes it a mantra, kissing the promise into her skin.

She has never really loved him.

"Well?" Dante asks, as he flicks on the garage light. "What do you think?"

There is a moment, as the bulb warms to life, when everything is shadow, and she can imagine safer surprises. A puppy. A new car. A loaded gun.