White and Other Tales of Ruin

image remained pure, the trees and shrubs and flowers and grasses grew lush and healthy. Things weren’t so bad after all. There were a lot of people much more worse off than me. What this meant for them I tried not to consider, because this trip was all about me, and for the woman across the aisle it was purely about her, and so on, and so on…

If thinking that way worked I was not about to argue.

It was only as I noticed the shapes slung between the trees that I realised we still had some way to go. They came into focus, my breath hitched, my heart stuttered. And I knew it wasn’t a holo or a movie or an act.

It was more than that. I knew for certain that this, all of this, was far more real than anyone could have guessed.

I knew, because I recognised one of the shapes strung up on the barbed wire.

Laura.

“Laura!” I strained in my seat, fighting against the straps. I needed to press close to the window, closer to Laura, just to make sure it was her. Her hair was tangled in a knot of wire above her, arms flung out and bleeding where they were tied, legs dangling. I recognised the dress she wore… she’d first worn it on her thirteenth birthday. I’d bought it for her. Expensive. And even before the party started she spilled orange juice down it, and she started to cry because her party was spoiled. I’d told her that it was the girl, not the dress that mattered. The girl inside…

“Laura!” I screamed again. The strap was biting into my waist as I reached for the window. The coach was moving along slowly, and other hanging figures were coming into view. Some of them were still but for the movement of birds and other carrion creatures, but most of them still moved where they hung, each movement drawing more blood or further cries or moans.

Laura moved.

I sat still and watched, and just as she passed out of sight behind a thick clump of trees she shifted again, her mouth falling open into a scream I heard from afar.

“That’s Laura out there!” I shouted, having no comprehension of how this could be so, simply knowing that it was. I could no longer see her but her scream remained. “That’s Laura!”

“Hey, I’m sure you didn’t see?”

“Don’t tell me I don’t know my own daughter!” I shouted at the woman, and she flinched as if slapped.

I looked back at the window and it was fading to black. The atmosphere had changed. The coach jerked slightly, as if struck from one side, and the windows flared brightly again for a couple of seconds before blacking out. They’d only let us see some of the pain and suffering out there this time, and I was sure I’d glimpsed something even worse happening ahead.

Perhaps they didn’t like what I was saying.

“She’s still alive,” I said, kicking out at the chair in front of me. “Hey! You! My daughter, she’s still alive on those trees. I have to get her!”

I saw the man’s tuft of grey hair turn as he tried to lift himself to look at me, but we were too securely fastened. “It’s a holo, a make-believe. It’s not really happening. And if it is your daughter maybe she’s an actress, perhaps they paid her to act? ”

Perhaps, I thought, but then I remembered the pain I’d seen on her face and the scream I’d heard. Laura was my daughter. I’d seen her in pain enough times — scraped knees, toothache, the broken arm when she was nine? to know that she could not have been acting.

I wished that she had been taken away by a sect.

I grasped at the strap around my waist and pulled. It did not budge.

“Are you sure it was her?” the woman said.

I nodded without looking up, still tugging at the strap, trying to find where it was buckled. I thought of Janine on her death bed, how the panic in her eyes had been for the daughter she was leaving behind, not for herself.

I hated myself for not looking after Laura.

There was a sighing noise from somewhere along the coach, and a few indrawn breaths. Footsteps approached along the aisle. The passengers were silent once more, and I felt a shadow approaching.

“Positive?” the woman hissed.

I stopped messing with the strap and looked across at her, just as a dark shape manifested between the two seats in front of us. “It was Laura,” I said.

The thing leant down towards me. It looked like a huge beetle, with a hard shiny skin and a head twitching with several small antennae. Somewhere in there, perhaps, was a man or woman, but just then I felt as if I was looking a denizen of Hell right in the face. I’d never seen anything like this before.

The thing clicked and clacked, reaching out one black hand and offering me the open end of a stun-gun.

Kill me, I thought, they’ll kill me for seeing what I’ve seen…

… or perhaps they’ll just add me to it…

And then it flipped on its back, hands grasping at air as the woman stretched her left leg and kicked its ankle. “I reckon you’ve got maybe three seconds,” she said, crouching back in her seat as if afraid to touch the thing again.

I looked down at where the shape was struggling on the floor. Thoughts rushed at me as I decided what to do first? Are there more of them? Does it have protection software? Is it going to kill me?? and for the half-second it took these to whirl through my head the world stood still. Its armour seemed to impede it, and when it reached out to grab my chair and haul itself up, I kicked out at its hand. The armour was as hard as metal and I gasped as pain dug through my foot.

The thing paused, looked up at me, antennae twitching, perhaps signalling.

I kicked again, using my heel this time, connecting squarely with the dark visor. I heard a crack and but hoped it was artificial. The thing flung one hand up as it rolled back. I reached out and grasped its wrist, twisting, feeling the armour harden under the contours of my hand, the stun-gun slipping from its grip?

I had maybe a second left until the thing shook off its confusion and came for me.

I kicked again, three times, aiming at the visor every time. It was constantly trying to rise, only my kicks keeping it down. I stop kicking, up it gets, I thought. So I kicked yet again, and again, glancing at the mean-looking black stun gun in my hand, trying to figure out how the hell to use it. There was a silver button and what looked like a trigger, again in silver, so I leaned over, forced the barrel end against the thing’s cracked visor and pressed both.

The button must have been a voltage booster.

The thing? and I really hoped there wasn’t a man or woman in there? only twitched for a second or two before it lay still, smoking.

“What’s going on back there?” I heard someone shout, and I welcomed the distraction. Looking down would mean seeing what I had done, and I was afraid that it was a very bad thing. The normal stun guns carried by law enforcement were designed to do just that: stun. From the stench of hot meat I was afraid that this one had done much more.

“I’m getting off,” I said.

“Don’t be mad!” It was the man in the chair in front of me, still unseen, thinking he knew best.

“My daughter’s out there,” I said, “and she’s bleeding and dying. Besides, I thought you said it was all false.” I paused, he said nothing. “I’m getting out,” I said again. Maybe I was trying to talk myself out of it.

“If there’s one of those… things in here, there’ll be more out there. Lots more.”

I felt around with my fingers, trying not to look because I didn’t want to see whatever damaged, dead thing lay inside the armour. I’d heard about genetic alterations, gene mutation… I’d heard about it far too much. I didn’t want to see it as well. My fingers scraped the smashed visor and I tugged free a loose piece of composite.

“You sound like you’ve seen?“ I began, but then the dead thing moved.

It hissed, expelling a stinking breath right up into my face. And I heard a voice, soft and persuasive, deep inside my head. This was much more personal than the voice that had introduced the horrific scenes. This was not only inside my head but inside me, reaching out from places I’d forgotten or tried to forget, sounding like my poor dead Janine and my dying Laura combined… and it was telling me to sit back down.

You don’t want to get up.