Machina Obscurum Page 18

  Later that night, as he sulked in his rot-walled shanty and chewed on his bread in the gloom, Murgul considered himself for the thousandth time. He wished he had a shard of mirror and a sliver of moonlight, if only to look at his face. The Maggot, he dwelled on the name Luka often called him. It suits me, doesn’t it? For leaving me alive, the Lichy must’ve hated me above everyone else.

  It was hard to argue with the horrid things people said about him. Of all the creatures in Vhur, he reckoned his disfigurements were foulest, his countenance hardest to look upon. His twisted face was a ruin. His lips rent his chin like an ugly pink gully, and his nose jutted from his face, a craggy grey mountain with an ugly blunt top. His left eye sagged where his cheek should have been, and his right eye was as clouded as chamber pot water. If he could have grown a beard, he would have, anything to cover up the scabrous skin piled like putty upon his skull.

  Fouler still was his body. Hunchbacked, the huge bulbous scars upon his shoulders rolled like hills. His arms and legs, though thick and corded with muscle, looked like cattle’s meat left a week in the sun and ready to slide off the bone. He had neither fingernails nor toenails, and only four teeth stuck in his gums. His every other movement was agony, and sleep most nights was all but impossible. He was stronger than most men could ever hope to be, but utterly lacking in endurance. After a time even the simplest labor wracked his muscles with such pain his only relief was to cry.

  But at least my hands work. He held his thick fingers up to his face, almost able to see them in the dark. Farmer’s hands, these are. Pa would be proud, or maybe not. No. If Pa were here, he’d probably kick me like all the others. That was his way. No room for the weak. No mercy for the sick.

  For the first time in a month, he slept deep enough to dream that night. In his one-roomed, slat-roofed hovel at the end of Tolem’s gloomiest, filthiest alley, he set his head down on the moldering floor and felt his mind fall between the shadows. He was healthy in his dream, and as handsome as he used to be. He ran beside the stallions on his father’s farm, chased his sisters through the orchards, and waded like a bull across the high-grassed fields lying in Vernam’s shadow. The grand city looked beautiful again. Its parapets soared like white spears, green and grey pennants flapping in the sunshine, the trumpets blaring to announce the baron had returned home from a hunt. It was just as he remembered it, and exactly as he wanted it to be again.

  But then Luka rode in on an Iritul horse, its flesh maggoty, its jaw wasted, and its pale ribs bared to the sunlight, and he knew it was a dream. The alchemist leapt down from his horse, in fouler spirits than ever. “Did you see that, Maggot?” Luka shouted at him. “My horse has gone and died. Everyone in Vernam is dead just the same. I saw it. Did you, you stinking pus-bag? They’re all piled in the city square, they are. That’s what the trumpets were for. They blew ‘em to announce the burning, and any minute now we’ll see the smoke. It’s your fault, it is. If you hadn’t gotten sick and wandered into town, they’d all still be alive, and you’d be dead.”

  “But Luka, I…”

  Luka smacked him across his lips, breaking all but four teeth. The nightmare hurt as much as real life. “Quiet, Maggot!” the alchemist hissed. “Did you hear what I said? If not for you, they’d still be alive, and you’d be dead. They’d still be alive! And you’d be dead! Better that way for everyone, especially the children!”

  The rain woke him. The grey dawnlight crept in through his door of rags, and the water ran in through more cracks in his ceiling than Tolem had buckets to catch. He sat up in a miserable state of mind, his pain punishing him for daring to sleep. With spit running down his chin, he ate his soggy bread and drank what rain he could funnel down his throat, and then he left for Luka’s hospice. The children, he thought as he slogged through the puddles in his alley, they’ll help me out of this state of mind. One of Lys’s smiles, a few of Jacek’s jokes, and it’ll all be well again.

  The walk through Tolem was not as bad as most days. The rain had driven many of his usual tormentors inside, and the guardsmen were oddly absent. He lumbered through the maze of alleys in the same order as every morn. Sullen Street, Lichy Lane, Dead Men’s Corner, the Gravemaster’s Pub. He named each place he came to. Someday they’ll rebuild this place, and give everything a prettier name. Sun Street, Lys’s Lane, Golden Corner, and Murgul’s Pub.

  By the time he came to Tolem’s thoroughfare, most of his hurts had subsided. The walk had loosened the lumps upon his back, and the scars between his joints felt lubricated. His gait was still as slow as a hobbled horse’s, but at least I walk half as fast as most men, instead of a quarter. He shambled along through the falling rain, pretending the crumbling dwellings on either side of the streets were in perfect order. Stone houses gutted long ago by fire became mansions in his mind, and towers without their tops still soared into the clouds. Graveyards were no longer full of weeds and grey headstones, but stuffed to their brims with flowers, while the names on the tombs were for great-grandfathers instead of little children, young mothers, and men ravaged by the Lichy. It was a pleasant fiction, all the way until he turned a corner, crossed a courtyard filled with fallen statues, and approached Luka’s hospice.

  There stood a dozen guardsmen in the rain, and behind them, all the children beneath an awning.

  “There’s the Maggot!” one of the guardsmen pointed a spear in his direction.

  “Get him!” shouted another. “Don’t pop any of his boils, or he’ll infect us!”

  All at once, they came for him. He saw Lys weeping in the background, and brave little Jacek gulping out of fear. He wanted to tell them it would be alright, that another beating was nothing out of the ordinary, but when the first guard swept him off his feet with the haft of his spear and the second one crushed what remained of his nose with a cuff from his mailed fist, he knew everything was wrong.

  “Why?” he sputtered on the ground, and one of his four teeth ran with the blood right out of his mouth.

  “Don’t play the fool with us, Maggot!” spat the guard with the spear.

  “You know what you did!” shouted another.

  His head felt full of slush. The scars on his back screamed at him. He wondered what he had done and whether the guards meant to murder him in front of the children, my children. But as the blood boiled from his nose and he tried to shape the words upon his twisted lips, the captain of the guard stood over him. Captain Vas, hardest soul in Tolem, laid his silver-bladed sword in the hollow of Murgul’s throat. “What’ve you to say for yourself, Maggot?”

  “I… What did…? I mean… Did I do wrong, Sire? I meant no harm. I came to care for the children.”

  “Murgul the Maggot.” Vas gazed down at him, grey-eyed and compassionless. “For the most gruesome slaying of Luka Emure, alchemist and advocate for Tolem’s cherished offspring, I sentence you to death. The sentence will be carried out on the morrow. There will be no noose for the Maggot, only a chain, a cage, and God’s cleansing flames.”

  And I Feel Fine

  John R. McGuire

  B egin log. Sarah Knotts. May 11, 2019.

  Huh… I guess the Mayans were right after all.

  That was my first thought when the end times came. You might have expected screams or crying or begging…basically any of the five stages of grief. But no, that’s not how I work. I’m too worried about ancient prophecies coming true rather than the immediate need to extract myself from the situation.

  Typical.

  Oh, sorry. I should probably be a little more official in how I do this. I mean, I activated this recorder for a reason right? My grandmother always said that when you cut corners you only hurt yourself. Or was it when you skip steps you bounce…no, that’s not it either. Damn, can’t remember. I guess it doesn’t much matter.

  Still, always better to be official.

  End log.

  Begin log. Sarah Knotts. May 12, 2019.

  Seven years after the big one. Though, you might say that’s a bit of a mi
snomer. Really, I should say seven years after the first one. That would be much more accurate.

  So why am I so calm?

  It’s a question I ask myself all the time, honestly. I should be a screaming mess, running around, panicking… or whatever it is a person is supposed to be doing. This, if you think about it, is the strangest thing you could possibly even think. I’m saying I should act normal…when the world hasn’t acted normal in quite some time.

  Either way, once you lived through a dozen or so cataclysmic events in your lifetime, what’s the difference? Wait, what am I saying? You probably know exactly what I’m talking about.

  I guess.

  I mean, I’m not yawning about it, but if it is my time…well, what the hell am I supposed to do about it?

  I remember that first morning after it happened. Heaps of clothes on the ground, cell phones lying on top of the piles, drinks and food once being enjoyed now serving only the scavengers and ants. News spread fast, and all over the world it was the same scenario. People had just up and disappeared.

  Nothing brings out some religious nuts like a good mystery, so we heard lots of claims about how God had finally had enough with us screwing up the Earth. That he had taken his faithful up to Heaven and abandoned the sinners.

  Maybe that was what happened. The rest of us poor schmucks biding our time until the absolute end.

  I always thought it strange that things got back to normal so quickly after that. Don’t get me wrong, there were still tons of things we had to deal with. Family members lost and gone and all of that. But it was a shared grief. Everyone knew at least one person who disappeared…

  It bound us together.

  And when you think about it, percentage wise, there weren’t a lot of people taken. Then you had that scientist make the claim that it was spontaneous combustion. Had all sorts of charts and graphs to back up his theories. Like anything else, you can get scientists to say anything if you pay them enough. And I gotta believe the governments of the world didn’t need some kind of religious fervor let loose…hence the combustion theory. I didn’t buy it, but it seemed to calm a lot of people down.

  People just want to believe.

  I was never a big one on the Bible, but I have wondered, how many people survived The Flood? I remember that he brought two of every animal, but he also brought his family.

  Is that right?

  Well, it couldn’t have been all that many. We may be getting down to that number here shortly. Assuming we haven’t already reached it.

  To be honest, I’m not even sure who this message is for. For all I know the amount of humans left in the world could be down to a few dozen. And I think that I read somewhere that you’d need a minimum number of potential breeders to be able to restart the human race. Something about genetics and inbreeding.

  What really sucks… ok, what really sucks more is that you know it is coming, but there is nothing you can possibly do to stop it.

  And folks thought Global Warming was bad. Oh no, we’ll be dead in hundreds of years.

  I’d kill for Global Warming. I could do it in my sleep.

  End log.

  Begin log. Sarah Knotts. May 13, 2019.

  It was a zombie uprising last year, and I have to say, putting down Johnny in front of his mother may have been one of the least happy days I’ve ever had. Man, did that woman have a set of pipes on her. My ears still ring sometimes when I’m getting ready to go to sleep. For most people they get the ear ringing from loud music, me, I get it from the unholy screams of a woman whose son you just killed.

  For a second time.

  Whoever is out there listening to me blather on about all sorts of horrible things… I just want to say that I don’t mean to be so callous. I really don’t. Mostly I blame others and that seems to get me through the days.

  Dreams of alcohol get me through the nights.

  The thing they don’t teach you in school is how to be all right with it all. We study history, but what is history? Just a series of horrible events, and then we answer questions about dates. But, we never learn what it really means. Those people who died in the Black Plague, we know the numbers, but what about the survivors? When they thought the world was ending, did a bunch just take a knife to their throats and end it all? Those that didn’t, how did they find the internal stamina to keep going on?

  This is the stuff that keeps me awake at night.

  I need a drink.

  End log.

  Begin log. Sarah Knotts. May 14, 2019.

  The worst part is the waiting.

  Or maybe the worst part is the loneliness?

  I mean you really can’t trust anyone these days. I get a knock on the door, hoping it is the pizza delivery order I put in a decade ago. Maybe the guy just got lost? But no, it’s some random scavengers.

  Oh, they tell you they’re nice, but sure enough, it is just more of the same crap. They’re trying to take your stuff, or they want to infect you, or whatever.

  Hey! It’s not as if it’s my fault Dad was a nutbag who not only stocked his shelter, but had a shelter to begin with. What did you expect? They had to have bomb drills when he was in elementary school. Duck and cover or some such shit. Like any of that would save you from the mushroom cloud shape filling up the horizon. But it was something for them to do, and I have to think doing something is better than doing nothing. My grandfather raised him with plenty of stories about the Soviets, which would be enough to make any kid a little nuts.

  So he went out of his way to ensure that this place, this bunker, was full of everything you would need to survive whatever came. Food stores, a way to replenish the water supply through extra deep wells, exercise equipment, all sorts of entertainment, and just about anything else you could think of. He didn’t know if he would need to be down there for a year or ten, so he prepared.

  I want you to know something; I did my best to save everyone I could. I invited the good ones in, and I invited the bad ones in.

  No matter what, I learned that people end up as bad ones most of the time.

  Except for Ian.

  End log.

  Begin log. Sarah Knotts. May 15, 2019.

  You know I am making up these dates, right? I have no way of knowing what the real date is. This camera says May 15, 2019 on the little display, but how do I know it hasn’t been reset or rebooted? There aren’t any new patches to update the damn thing, that’s for sure.

  They say that in a nuclear Armageddon the only survivors would be cockroaches. I think that statement is wrong and sells us short. The real answer is always cockroaches and humans will find a way to survive. Though I suppose, at this point, humans are effectively cockroaches.

  So maybe the original statement works.

  End log.

  Begin log. Sarah Knotts. May 18, 2019.

  I buried Ian six days ago.

  One week. That’s how long it has been. One week. I don’t know how to go on.

  My constant, my love. My…

  I’m sorry, I can’t…not today.

  End log.

  Begin log. Sarah Knotts. May 19, 2019.

  This must be cabin fever kicking in. Heh. I’m actually surprised that it took this long.

  Ok.

  Let’s try this again.

  Deep breath.

  I buried Ian eight days ago.

  I don’t know what I’m doing here anymore.

  This was not how it was supposed to be. My family had the shelter since back during the Cold War when everyone either had a bomb shelter or hoped those old videos about crouching under a desk were going to be enough.

  They should have called those old things ‘Better get ready to kiss your ass goodbye!’

  It was a lark, a goof. We used it as a teenaged clubhouse.

  Back when I was nine one of the houses in the neighborhood went on sale and somehow, one of the teenagers managed to get in the locked house. And then he told a friend, who told their brother, who told me, and soon enough we had
a fully functioning house to hang out in. It was the perfect place to just get away from everyone else.

  You know, just how every little kid needs their own house to really reflect on the rigors of elementary school.

  Anyway.

  It made us think we were older than we really were. And yeah, the older guys hated that us youngsters where always there, but they couldn’t kick us out because then we would have told on them and poof the whole thing would have been gone.

  Mutually assured destruction.

  Of course, no matter what there is always some dumbass in the neighborhood. Some kid or pair of kids who think they know better or think they are cooler than they really are. Yeah, we had those kids in our neighborhood. We had those two idiots. You want to know what they did?

  They were playing in the house without anyone there. No supervision whatsoever. These two first graders who decided they were above it all.

  Yeah, mistake number one. Not like they murdered someone. Very forgivable.

  But then the dumbasses made sure that whatever it was they were doing in the house occurred in full view of the front kitchen window. Suddenly every person out for a walk in the neighborhood could look in as they passed the For Sale house and see one the neighborhood kids in the window.

  You can guess how that turned out. Locks were changed, windows sealed up, and the clubhouse became a distant memory.

  But it was a fun two months.

  That’s what the bomb shelter was supposed to be. I mean, sure we were teenagers and no one knew we were going to be down there… uhm… mixing it up.