around this ghost town? A week, two weeks?”
“I don’t know. A month, maybe? I can’t tell anymore.” Swing back, swing forth.
“Neither can I.”
They sat in silence for a while, West remaining stationary, Patra traveling in an ever-decreasing arc beside him. Eventually, she stopped swinging and came to a rest beside him, kicking up a small cloud of dust that settled back to the ground a little too fast for her comfort. The air was dead, oppressive, freezing. West was quietly thankful for the cessation of the rusty creaking sound that had been grating through his head at Patra’s every motion. Now at rest, the sound stopped, much like the landscape stretched before them, a world at rest, silent.
Is this heaven? Hell? Drowning in this…
He felt her looking at him, and he turned to face her in his swing. She still had that silly grin on her face. He had long ago gotten over the initial shock of being near a metal human, and he found her smile quite intriguing.
“You never answered my question.”
“What?”
“What’s your first name?”
“Oh… I don’t have one anymore.”
She frowned. “What did it used to be, then?”
He saw that she was not going to give up. “Don’t laugh.”
“I promise I won’t laugh. How bad can it be?”
“Adam.”
She blinked once, then her smile widened, and she began to snicker. “Adam West? Wasn’t that the guy who played—”
“Shut up, Cleopatra.” He said it playfully, but before he knew it she had stood up and pushed him out of his swing onto the cold dusty ground. She stood over him with her smiling face an image of silver fire. “Batman my ass.”
With that, West kicked her legs out from under her and she fell not gently to the ground, landing mostly on top of him. “Egyptian queen my ass.”
They laid in a pile on the ground, laughing loudly, appreciating the echoes their laughter made down the mountainside. Neither questioned the moment. They laid on the ground, looking up at the gray shell that was suffocating the planet, laughing about dead African queens and dead American television actors because their reality was too terrifying to laugh about. Patra was on top of West’s arm, so he pulled her over and they hugged each other in an only slightly-more-than-friendly embrace. West felt like a child, invigorated, refreshed. The swing floated back and forth above them; his right leg was still ensnared in the metal and rubber device. Patra’s attack had caught him off-guard indeed.
The sky moved above them. They knew not what it was that strangled the earth, and neither wanted to discuss the suspicion that eventually the atmosphere would be consumed by the silver web and they would suffocate. Day by day, the silver web seemed to inch closer to the surface. For now, they were content to lay on the dusty earth at look at the sky like children.
Lying on our backsides, just waiting to convert, the sky’s an open wound when the clouds resemble our ex- lovers.
The thought struck West suddenly, unexpectedly. He thought for a brief moment he heard whistling, or whistling of a sort, but then it was gone. James Richter used to whistle like that. All the time.
He felt Patra’s gaze again, and when he turned to face her, she looked down guiltily. “What is it, Cleo?”
She quietly smiled, face not exactly as lithe as once it had been. She quickly turned to him, leaned over, gave him a quick kiss on the lips. She searched his eyes for approval, and found it tenfold.
She stood, took his hand, helped him up. They brushed the sand and dust off of themselves. West was about to wrap his arms around her when she grabbed his hand and began pulling him back up the mountainside, toward the mine entrance.
“It’s time to check on the orb, Batman. We can play some more after dinner.”
He was not sure if she was alluding to sitting on the swing or something infinitely more playful, but he knew that it would be an adventure nonetheless.
Mountains, or the precipitous lack thereof.
“What do you think happened?”
Simon looked across the expanse and shook his head.
Where once the Rocky Mountains had thrust into the American sky, now an impossible stretch of flattened earth lay, littered with shards of the Enemy web that had fallen to earth. The landscape was devastated as far as they could see. One rather disturbing addition to the scorched earth that they had not encountered before was the presence of hundred, perhaps thousands, of dead Enemy vessels that had been knocked out of the sky by the web breach. They most likely had been mining the mountains in one large infestation when the end of the upload generator came, and the writhing bodies of the vessels had fallen lifelessly to the great gouge in the earth they had created when the spire had erupted, spilling their precious uploaded lifeblood into the atmosphere.
“Do you think it’s safe? What if there are survivors in those wrecks? There’s so many of them.”
“It’s safe. Nothing could’ve survived this. Let’s go.” He grasped her hand reassuringly, not feeling at all reassured himself about the monstrous vehicles, aliens, whatever that littered the landscape all the way to the horizon. The expanse looked as if the world’s largest toddler had strewn his toys carelessly across the countryside. Simon felt sick. America was forever gone, regardless of what they found at Diablo.
“Simon?”
He looked at her, eyes windows to the heartbreak he felt at seeing his once-proud nation reduced to an enormous quarry. She embraced him, kissed his cheek tenderly.
Hands joined, they walked into the valley of the dead.
Dirt.
Hmmm…
Hadn’t there been mountains here at some point?
Richter quizzically surveyed the bleak expanse of gouged earth before him. They certainly had been thorough. At least it would make the journey quicker; he had only hills to traverse now, it appeared. He wondered sardonically what the save-the-rainforest types would think of this mess. Of course, they were all now part of the monster that had killed the planet themselves. What irony, to be consumed by the consumer, to become one with that which had destroyed your beloved blue jewel in the night between the stars.
We will never reach the stars.
How very sad. As a boy, he had hoped to be an astronaut, and as a pilot coming out of War Three, he had almost lived his dream. Almost.
Something about clouds, and ex-lovers, and unraveled kingdoms.
A beautiful song, if only he could remember how it went. Didn’t really matter; his lips were too dry to whistle. Had been for weeks.
Richter walked on, kicking a small stone before him.
Kick, clatter skitter clatter. Kick, skitter clatter skitter. How joyous were the sounds of life’s simple pleasures. How joyous any sound became in this mute dead world. Kick, clatter skitter clatter.
Clink.
Orb. Night? Maybe. Gray.
Clink.
The orb was brighter by the day; what that meant, neither knew. It did not reach out for them. Apparently the fact that they had both been into the light nullified any threat of the light reaching out for them. It had tasted their souls already; apparently it did not need a second bite.
Patra took another spoonful of tepid vegetable beef soup and guided it to her mouth. Clink. They had found quite a supply of canned food in the mostly-demolished Diablo Grocery, and although neither ever really felt hungry, they ate, probably because it took up time and it truly felt strange to not eat. So vegetable beef soup it was.
West looked up at each spoonful that Patra delivered to her mouth, not because he was interested in her table manners, but as a reflex. Clink. Each time she placed the spoon to her lips, it made a subtle metal “clink” as her non-flesh lips made contact with the stainless steel spoon. They had not felt metallic when she had kissed him.
