Stone Seeds (3 page)

BLOOD

THERE IS A DRONING sound, a long hum and it stops above Tomax. And then it feels to Tomax like he's dreaming. The window pane splits, from the bottom left of his mother's house, cloud spirals like a huge finger pointing, tracing an invisible seam upwards. Its fingers darkly stretching out then splaying. The glass in the windows expands, bricks bubbling or they seem to and then rocks flip up and the earth under the house rises, churning and heaves over. The body of the house pulsing and wrestling with the air a moment.

Everything falls then.

And there is sound, Tomax thinks. His ear drums split and bleed.

And then there is no sound.

For a moment Tomax thinks he's running. Only his feet don't touch ground. And then blown down, like that. And now raining rocks. Face against earth. He tries to raise his hands up toward his head on an instinct to protect his face, his skull, but his arms seem pinned down somehow. Tomax is curled over on the ground, flying glass shards, then dust heaves across him. Like a sand dune of dust.

His mind is washing in and out of sense.

Rocks don't rain, Tomax thinks. Rocks don't rain.

It feels to him as though the world moves slow and pained.

A little sound trickles back, on one side only.

Clattering of rubble. For a moment Tomax thinks that it's over.

There's a deep crump in the earth when the second drone hits, it's like rugs pulled out from under giants, and they fall. Elbows hit the earth first. Huge elbows then knees. The cracks are spreading out beneath him. Smaller seams grow out of the cracks and the whole split widens. It's like falling into a huge opening mouth in the ground.

Tomax falls in slow jolts and then churning up in one motion, like the earth underneath him is ploughed. Tomax has slipped into the bowels of his own house. The body of the house is lying over his head.

It occurs to Tomax this trap is his tomb, and he's fighting the sides of the tomb now, fighting for air and light, fighting for the next breath, but sand pours in and stones at all the points where Tomax pushes against the rubble. It gets worse, until his body lies immobilised in dust, sand, rubble. Tomax stops moving.

And now his right foot twitching and loosens something, sand makes a small wave from it, heaves up toward Tomax's neck, throwing his jaw up and back, sharp and hard. There's a surge of shrapnel sized rubble piling up against Tomax's chin, forcing his head up and back agonisingly.

Cracking sound, soft and sickening, running down Tomax's left ear.

He feels his neck strain with the tension.

He's not thinking anything at all for one long moment.

And then Time, he thinks. I needed more time. Knowing what's above him will move again in a moment. Swivels his eyes painfully up and left. There's a beam, saved his life.

But for how long? He cannot see but he can hear the wood tremble, strain. The weight above the beam moves. Something or someone is trapped over Tomax.

The edge farm boy closes his eyes.

When he opens them there's a crack in the rocks near his face. A thin seam of light filtering in through it. Dust settles slowly out there and in a bit Tomax can see bent human shapes, and they're moving. Something or someone out there. Hoving in and out of view. Whatever it was vanishes. And now there's only steaming rubble. Light glancing off the tin roofs on the ground.

Tomax tries to stay calm. He tries to gather his thoughts. The body above him alternates between struggle and exhausted pause and there is a thick pain in Tomax's neck. Blood welling in a warm pool at his left ear. He can't tell if it's from him or from above.

Some noise is trickling back, from his left ear. Then human sounds, he thinks, only not like human sounds.

Groans and a low whirring whine.

The living thing just above him is suffering. Whatever it is, it's in pain, rocking and panicking.

The sound pulls at Tomax. And then stops, as though the creature senses him too. Small thumps of its tail. Tomax's mind is washing in and out of sense. In a little while he understands it's next door's dog. It often comes to his back door for scraps, it must have been caught in the blast. As though the dog knows it's Tomax, down there, struggles again. More dust and rubble falling on to Tomax, more sand flooding in.

Now Tomax recognises his mother's voice. Outside. He tries to orient himself, where's it coming from? And then strains toward the crack. His eye strung to the light through it. It's as though he sees her for the first time in his life. She is standing by the rubble. Orange grain sack in each hand. At
first she seems bewildered. “Tomax,” she says. She drops her grain sacks, and he sees them spill and drifting windward, quickly gone. “Tomax,” she says. Quietly at first. And then, “TOMAX!” She screams. And there's that pained sound again. Inhuman.

You think it can't be coming from you, Tomax thinks. But it is.

The pain comes in rhythmic waves now, sending jolts to the base of his skull.

There's a different voice outside now. A man's voice. “Stop,” says the voice to Tomax's mother, not unkindly. And then, “Listen.”

Tomax tries to identify the voice, the man sounds familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. It takes a moment and then. Jengi. He thinks. It's Jengi out there. Now Tomax knows he stands a chance. A slim one.

Jengi is last of the Diggers tribe and the Diggers were salvage workers in the previous era. The old bomb clean up crews. The Diggers were skilful at extracting the bodies, both the living and dead, along with valuable metal pipes, and other useful things. People sometimes survived the bombs in the days when the Digger tribe still worked the clean up operations.

“Tomax?” Jengi yells. “Tomax? You alive, Boy?”

Jengi. Tomax thinks. But he can't say a word.

“Make a sound if you can!” Jengi yells. And then there's quiet.

Tomax's jaws are pinned closed by the sand, rubble. He makes a sound in the back of his throat. He knows right away that it's not loud enough.

Jengi lies stomach down on the ground. “Silence,” he instructs the edge farmers milling around the rubble. And then Jengi puts his ear to the earth again, strains to hear. Tomax's mother swivels slowly around to watch the Digger do what he was trained to.

“Quiet.” Jengi repeats, sterner this time. Puts his ear back to the ground. He waits.

And then “Tomax!” He raises his head, yells again. “Make a sound if you can, Boy.”

Tomax tries again. Sound in the back of his throat. Tries and tries until his throat is raw.

Jengi goes on listening. Then he twitches his head. He looks up.

“Nothing.” Jengi says decisively. Getting up and dusting down his trousers. “I reckon he's dead.”

Tomax sees his mother feeling her way around the rubble. “He's not dead,” she says. More to herself. “He's not, he's not …
dead
. Tomax, Tomax,” she whispers into the crevices in the piled up bricks. And then calling down into her ruined house.

Tomax sees the fire, small but spreading quickly. Starts in one corner of the rubble and then taking hold of a dry beam. The fire grows high quickly, just to the right of his mother.

The edge farm houses are mostly made out of wood and wattle, mud daubed. When the drones hit the edge farmhouses they light up like match-heads. But Tomax's father was a house builder in the before and made his house with Bavarnican brick and cement, nobody is quite sure how he managed to get hold of the materials but deals were sometimes struck with the last exiles. Not to mention friendships which crossed lines.

The general put a stop to all that, of course. Tomax's father was forced to make do with tin for its long roof but in that way this house looks like every other edge farm house, at least from above. What you can't see from a drone's-eye-view is that he used thick beams from the killing forest to make the rafters of his house, burying the roots of them many feet into the ground. “Those rafters will either kill us or save us some day,” Tomax's father said at least once every single day, including his last one.

Tomax's mother sees the fire right away. She seems to snap out of her trance, filled with a strange life, “Tomax, Tomax.” She thinks she hears something at the rock, springs away and moving quickly to the next heap, calling into every crevice she can find. Calling, waiting, calling waiting. At one point she imagines that she hears him.

Now she's moving pieces of rubble, gently, expertly. In the wrong place. “Jengi.” She says, “Jengi, help me.” Jengi watches her. He shakes his head. Her voice still doesn't sound like her voice, Tomax thinks. Only broken, rasping sounds. And that strange mania to her digging. She's not herself, Tomax thinks. She's too close to the fire. As though she can't feel it right now. A small corner of her scarf catches fire, burns along the seam, sparks peter out at her hair. She keeps digging.

Tomax makes another sound in the back of his throat. His throat is raw and the effort's agonising.

At first Tomax thinks that no one heard him over the fire's crackle, sound of moving rubble, swish of feet. And then Jengi's close, saying “Tomax?” Softly at first. And then it's very near, Jengi's voice, and now Tomax knows Jengi can hear him. Tomax shifts his elbow accidentally in his excitement,
sand moves in, pushing his head farther back. Now Tomax's forehead is jammed hard against the boulder. His eye is close to the crack.

Suddenly Jengi's boots are right there. Just to the left of Tomax's head and just a boulder between them. Tomax makes every last sound that he can in the back of his mouth. There is a tearing, ripping feeling. Pain in his throat and he's moved his head in his urgency. Stones clatter down, the right side of his head, a small surge of gravel, more dust.

Tomax knows he can't make another sound, if he wants to or not.

And then Jengi's face. Looming close in the crack. Tomax and Jengi are eye to eye for a moment. Blink. Jengi heaves away again and disappears behind the rubble.

Now he is trying to move the debris above Tomax, gently as he can.

Jengi finds the dog before he finds Tomax.

He has to use a brick to kill it. Tomax hears the soft whine as the dog greets Jengi, soft thump of tail wagging, long pause and then a sickening thud, one low dog whine, another thud then nothing. The dog's silence swelling back to Tomax.

The fire is at Jengi's back now. His limbs are black lit against it. Tomax can't see his face.

Some edge farmers come and pull Tomax's mother back from the fire. They pin her to the ground. “Stop,” they say. “Stop. Your boy's gone.”

Tomax feels the heat rising around him.

There is a deep keening sound. Now he sees his mother struggle against the pinning arms, fail. She sees the flames rise. And then her mouth is thrown open like that. No sound
coming out, not for one long moment. The flames go on rising. Her body bucks and heaves. Then lurching, hitting, scratching, filled with a strange life, she rolls away from her neighbour's hands, their arms and elbows. She becomes unpinned for several moments, scrabbling determinedly toward the flames. Toward the wrong spot, toward the place she imagines that her boy is. And now yelling his name, his name, his name like that, down into the flames, and dragged back again. Pinned by her limbs. Body lurches skyward. Now a large-built neighbour kindly sits down hard on her stomach to hold her. She looks up. Bomb-dust rolls across the sky and smoke, a gap forming in the cloud above her like a great set of jaws, she thinks. Opening slow.

Jengi glances behind him. “Hold her,” he says. And then to himself, “We'll see what's left of him in a minute.” He goes on digging. Sweat streams down the sides of Jengi's face. He stops again and listens. He gets closer to Tomax. Jengi picks up a brick. He looks back just once at Tomax's mother.

Night fell that suddenly, Tomax thinks. He thinks he hears his mother's voice, and then Jengi again. He also thinks that this is dreaming. There's a burning sensation down his left arm. Smoke seeping down from the beam above him, it's peppered with sparks. Flame lights up the whole of one end of the wood.

More shouts, hiss of water on heat and the burning slows down. Jengi used the precious water on the flames. Meaning one thing only, Tomax thinks … Jengi knows I'm alive.

Tomax passes out.

When he wakes it's the cold that comes with the desert night, the blackness of lights out, so Tomax knows that it must
be after curfew. There are scratching sounds, things move around him. Desert rats, Tomax thinks. There's a determined scrabbling, then a gnawing at the brick behind him. Something slides into the cracks, wriggles the gap wider. The rats are getting close now. Tomax is that gathered by the dark, that tightly gathered by it.

Now Tomax believes that nobody is looking for him. They think he's dead. For the first time since the bombing, he wishes he were.

Scrabbling sound but there's a different rhythm to it, not rats or mice but large brusque hands. Debris tossed in a haphazard fashion. Human sounds. And then Jengi's knuckles, thick veined and blood streaked, veering in and out of view. Moves the rock by Tomax's head and then eases both his hands in. First he makes a space around Tomax's ears. Tomax watches Jengi's fingers working. They're covered in dried blood. “There you are, Boy.” Jengi says in his low voice. And then “Now,” he says. “Now. Try to move something, Tomax.”

Jengi hasn't called out to Tomax's mother or to her edge farm neighbours helping. For the first time Tomax sees the brick, in Jengi's right hand.

Tomax moves his head slightly.

“Good.”

Jengi tests the boy's neck. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.” Jengi seems to need to take a moment. Tomax hears Jengi breathing in and out, in and out, rough little pants.

“You are … fixable.” Jengi says.

Jengi lets the brick fall from his hand. Tomax looks down at the weapon. The brick is dark with blood at both ends.