Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(72)

“Okay, I think,” she whispered.

I snagged my bow from the belly of the canoe and motioned for Sandip to go up. The hatchet in his hand trembled. We met Jill on the second floor, when there was a shrill sound and they dropped to the ground. Overhead, the beat of dark wings fluttered and scooted past, shadows fleeing toward the light.

“Jesus!” Jill hissed when Sandip grabbed her. “It’s fine – it’s fine, just bats, okay? They’ll be gone now.”

“Sorry… I’m fine, really,” he whispered.

I edged past them, the echoes of the bat cries still clinging in the far corners. I searched the space, lit from a wide roof cave-in that had crushed most of the shelves into the floor below. “Come on. In and out, find anything useful – metal, plastic. No rot, okay? And watch your steps – I don’t need to be fishing you out of the water downstairs. And I don’t want to see you coming back for the lantern.”

“How often is someone glad to see a hole in the roof, right?” Jill said and grinned at Sandip. She snagged his arm and pointed at a path that looked secure.

We branched off, and each slow step became a chorus of echoes, as heels tap-tap-tapped to test the aged flooring. The closer I got to the west wall, the stronger the wet wood-rot smell grew. Beneath it rose the clay-mud soak from the river, dripping staccatos that offset our heeled beats. Gyproc and particleboard crunched underfoot, laminate flooring showing grime and blackened mould.

I found a cache of saw blades, rarities that I stacked in my pack with care, and smaller bits like screws, sandpaper, and drill bits. They all went into the bag, and the same shuffle and scramble from Jill imitates those I’m making. Discarded, hardened glue, and rotten, cheap MDF – sorting the grain from the chaff. My mouth is in my shirt to evade the choking smell of mould by the time I find a box of bar clamps and a pipe-fitting wrench. No pipe. I wanted to bring it back to the farm, but maybe the toilet has seen its last. The crumple of flooring down into the water below redirects me back over my steps for safety. I can’t make out what Jill and Sandip are saying, but she’s laughing and the sound carries.

Back on the stair landing, I hushed them and scanned for movement in the dim light as my bag clanks into the belly of the canoe.

“Not much left,” Jill whispered.

“We need everything we can carry from here. I want the scouts to find somewhere new before the water goes down.” I scanned the brightening morning outside, lapping cold waters hugging the submerged trees. The clouds are evaporating overhead, burning off in the sun. The quiet glup of the riverwater is almost comforting. From our vantage I can see the sentry watchtowers deep in the city. Alien architecture, with jagged, rotating edifices lit with bright beacons that can even be seen from the farm. There are memories of them coupled with my childhood, shadows and sounds that cohere into feelings and a sucking pain in my heart.

Sandip and Jill chattered nearby, and I clambered up the stairs to find them.

“Fuck,” Jill whispered, and she motions to me from across the floor beams. “Kimiko! You better see this!”

The beams and remnant floorboards creaked underfoot as I hurried toward them, and the pain in my chest warped into anxiety as I saw the body of the tracker lying between them. Its body looked stiff with rigor, skin glistening with slime and dead-pale. Its hulking girth and broad shoulders were slumped, untouched by decay. They never decayed, and my memories drew on the fall, those vice jaws on my grandfather’s leg as he screamed for us to go, just go, and get out. Mom wouldn’t let go of my arm – it bruised that night. The snarls followed the screams and muffled weeping into my own hands, hyperventilating to try and stop.

“I’ve never seen one up close before,” Sandip said.

“It was dead, we didn’t kill it – we’re okay.”

Jill was swaddled against mom’s chest, screaming. She wouldn’t remember. She never remembered.

“Kimi, hey – hey, are you okay?” Jill asked, as she took my shoulders and gave me a quick hug. She laughed a bit. “I’m fine, don’t give me that look. It’s already dead.”

“Let’s just get out of here. The sun’s coming up.”

“You got it,” Jill said, and hoisted both her and Sandip’s bag up over her shoulders, clanking the metal within.

“Damned beasts,” Sandip said, and hoisted the spade he had in hand.

A half-cry escaped my lips as he brought the shovel down and severed the tracker’s head, crushing its skull with a squelch and spew of black blood.

“What the hell did you do that for!” I started counting in my head.

“Shit!” Jill had his arm and dragged him back toward the stairs. “Shit!”

“They destroyed everything, I just needed… I just needed to do something back!” He almost tripped over an exposed I-beam, and jerked out of Jill’s grasp. “What’s the problem?”

I grabbed his shoulder and pushed him ahead of me, glancing back at the crushed skull of the tracker with a double take. Twenty seconds. Better to overestimate. “You just tipped them off to where we are. Were you not listening when Marc gave the lecture this morning? You crushed the implant in its f*cking skull, and now we have two minutes to get the f*ck out of here before its signal is heard!”

“What?” His face was slack, his feet moving under our efforts now. “But there was a set of pulleys—”