After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

see what’s happening—if it’s already there, and Billy’s all alone. It gives me the horrors. I gotta get there first, before it reaches the top.

I vault the last tangle of metal, and run on. All of the circle looks the same, like I’m getting nowhere, like the building’s revolving and I’m staying still. I’ve lost sight of Billy, don’t know how far I’ve come, I’m dreading to hear him scream. I grip the gun in my hand. I’ll use it this time, I really will. I’ll kill it if touches him….

I come around the last curve and close the circle. And Billy’s waiting for me like I told him, his face all pleased—and there’s the Hairy clambering outta the black oblong of the doorway behind him.

I slide to a stop, pointing the gun. My hand’s shaking so bad, I daren’t fire. “Billy, get behind me quick, there’s a Hairy, gimme some room to shoot.”

But Billy turns. He sees this thing—this thing what rips pigeons apart and eats ’em raw—and he smiles, all kindly and superior, like he knows best, and, “Don’t worry, Charlie,” he says. “Hairies ain’t scary.” An’ he reaches out and pats it on the head.

It grabs him. It tugs his arms, gibbering, but this time I can’t hear proper words, just a sorta mad moaning like it’s pleading for something and I can guess what. It stinks of salty piss like an old tomcat, it’s covered with filthy tangled hair; who knows what diseases it’s got? The gun’s no use; I drop it and try yanking Billy away, but the Hairy holds on tight and I yell, “Get off! Get off of him! He ain’t got nothing for you!” An’ I grab its wrist— touching it, skin and bone and harsh hair under my fingers—and twist till it lets go. I land a kick to its kneecap, and it screams and collapses. Billy wails something, and I turn on him. “Outta the way! Let me deal with it—”

He shoves me hard in the chest. He’s beetroot red, scowling, really angry. “Charlie hurt it!” He crouches over it, muttering, “Poor thing, poor thing.” He pulls a crumpled foil packet outta his pocket and offers it to the Hairy like a kid sharing candy. “Here, this is nice.”

I go berserk.

I rip the packet outta Billy’s fingers and jiggle the foil open. A pinch of golden-brown powder lays there, with that dry sweet smell. Nirv. Precious, precious nirv, precious as gold dust. I empty it on the floor. The Hairy dives for it, but I don’t care. I grab Billy by the shirtfront with both fists and heave him toward me, and I shake him, the way Morris shook me—and I rage into his face, “Who give you that? Who give you that? Who give it you?”

Billy tries to turn his face away. “Stop it, Charlie, bad Charlie, stop, stop, stop!” His voice rises to a shriek. He flails his arms and punches me; it don’t hurt, but it shocks me rigid. I let go. He’s sobbing. He staggers back and crouches down and wraps his arms over his head. When I move to comfort him he cries out and bunches up tighter.

He’s scared of me. He wasn’t scared of the Hairy, but he’s scared of me.

And I’m sick at myself. I didn’t hafta do that. Only one person coulda give him that packet.

The Hairy’s down on the floor, sweeping and scraping up every trace of the brown powder with its dirty fingers, licking and licking them. Shudders of ecstasy run through its skinny body.

Oh, I remember how that feels. Like the sun bursting outta your skin. Like you know everything….It looks up an’ its eyes burn mad and bright and satisfied. I feel its mind slipping cold into my thoughts like a pickpocket’s fingers.

“Moh-riss,” it whispers, and yawns.

And after a moment I croak, “Morris. Yeah.”

And it lays down and curls up, ribby as a starved dog under the hair, and another big shudder runs through it from top to toe, and it lays still.

Billy always says he ain’t scared of Hairies, but I never listened. I shoulda known he don’t say things he don’t mean. Maybe he’s right. Maybe they’re harmless. But I hate them coz I helped to make ’em, and they’re horrible. I think of Maddalena. I’ve never stopped thinking of her. If Hairies read minds, no wonder this one saw her. She’s always hiding like a spider in the darkness at the back of my head.

I’m shaking so hard, my teeth are chattering. I look at the Hairy laying there. How gently Billy touched it, the way he pets Bunny’s fur. But Billy could get to be like that, growing hair all over him, wandering lost and mad in a place like this.

Only one person coulda given Billy a packet of nirv, and that person is Morris. And why? He never lets anyone in the Krew take nirv. No chances, zero tolerance. “Keeping the family clean,” he calls it. He’s never let Billy anywhere near it before, in case he spilled it or tried some. Plus, it’s expensive, why waste it?

This is about me, not Billy. This is a deliberate threat.

Coz he’s guessed, hasn’t he? Morris has guessed I’m planning to go, and he ain’t going to argue, he’s just letting me see what’ll happen to Billy if I do. He knows I’d find out. He gave the nirv to Billy to show me Billy won’t be family without me around. Won’t be safe. Coz Morris has to have things his own way, and he wants me under his thumb.

You don’t cross Morris, the crooked, devious, evil bastard.

I feel sick. Bitter and sick and stupid. I shoulda known Morris couldn’t be trusted, not really, yet somehow I did trust him….I pick up the gun and wish I could shoot him with it, and then I think I couldn’t even shoot the Hairy, and anyway what good would it do? Then I think, So I’ll hafta stay in London, and the minute I think that I’m so miserable I know I can’t, I jist can’t. So I put the whole idea away, coz right here and now I hafta put things straight with Billy. And then get us both out. I crouch beside him.

“Billy-boy, I’m sorry I shook you. Forgive me? Please?”

He whimpers.

“I’ll make it up, right? Whatever you say.”

A grunt this time. He’s got his eyes shut tight, his head buried in his arms.

“You can thump me if you want.” I pause. “Hey, I’ll even kiss Bunny.”

He unfolds and looks at me. “On the nose,” he says.

“On the nose. Right.”

He don’t exactly smile, but I feel some better. “Let’s go home,” he says, and I say, after a moment, “Let’s do that.”

I get up first, and then I pull him up, and we look at the Hairy laid out on the floor. “It’s asleep,” says Billy, and I say, “Yeah, it’s asleep,” an’ he says, “But its eyes are open,” and I see he’s troubled by that, and I say, “Yeah, it’s asleep with its eyes open. Time to go.”

As we set off down the stairs I say, “Come on, Billy, who give you that stuff?”

His eyes flash sideways to see if I’m going to lose it again. I say, trying to keep my voice level, “Okay, when Morris give you that stuff ”—I wait, but he don’t say nothing and my heart’s like lead, it was Morris all right—“did you try it? Did you”—I lick my finger, dab it in the air, lick it again—“did you taste it?”

He nods once. My heart’s beating really hard. I say, “How many times?”

But he shrugs. I know I’m not going to get an answer.

It’s dark on the stairs now, the light coming in from the little barred windows is feeble and poor. Without talking anymore we go down and down, hundreds a steps, around and around and around and around, and push through the doors to the cathedral floor.

Now I’m looking, now I know they’re here, I see them moving. A long way off across the floor, something wanders slowly past one of the big statchoos and disappears again into the gloom. Under the breathy cooing of the pigeons there’s other noises—hoots and cries, quiet raps and echoes. It’s getting dark outside and the Hairies are coming home.

I grab Billy’s hand, and we hurry past the heaps of rubbish, and around the black openings in the floor. The statchoos loom like huge pale ghosts. We reach the ten-meter slice of dim sky that shows between the open doors, and scramble over the rubble.

It’s raining—big, splashy drops. Evening’s on the way, but it’s lighter than I thought. And much warmer out here. The tide’s going out, the wind smells of seaweed and fresh mud, the river’s gray with streaks of silver. We run down the steps to the boat and lift it between us, stumbling down the exposed wet slope to the edge of the water, and we jump in.

I push off and open the throttle and the water creams behind us. We both look back and see the front of Sint Paul’s rearing up like a cliff, all ledges and pillars and black openings. We draw farther away. The two sharp towers