The morning light is throwing long shadows across the land, exaggerating every slight rise and fall. It’s going to be a warm day again but its too early in the year for real heat and hot nights. There are thunderheads on the horizon, maybe rain tomorrow.
‘Cut it up, Boss?’
Apprentice Sammy is confused, standing at the entrance to the barn and holding a sheet of aluminium in his hands.
‘Into little bits, ‘bout quarter of an inch a side Sam. And when you are done you can collect all the rust from all the old iron and steel you can find and do the same.’
Sammy looks to the rusted old junkers that had been stripped for parts and left out in the sun and rain, hopeless old wrecks that I didn’t have a use for until now. They form a small row by the side of the barn, old Ford trucks and Toyotas long past burial with no one to bury them.
Sammy starts a complaint.
‘I don’t get it? I’m supposed to be building that Coupe.’
‘And then you need to grind it down to powder.’.
‘But this is real good Ally, Boss.’
I need two piles. One of rust and one of Aluminum powder, three pounds rust to one pound Aluminum. And I need a lot, and I need it real quick, so think about how you are going to do it.’
‘I know, I know, make your head do the work not your hands.’
‘Glad that stuck. Keep them both dry. Store the Aluminum powder in a tin so it doesn't oxidise much, and remember, metal powder is explosive.’
Sammy looks up from his precious metal sheet that he knows, from days of being chewed on by his boss, ‘is worth a damn fortune and has to be treated with respect’ – and then he breaks into a grin as wide as the horizon.
‘Oh I get it. A bomb! Hell yeah!’
I leave him happy, marching back into the barn to find the right tools to build a bomb.
This time of day I am usually wearing my work clothes but today I’ve got to talk to Space Girl and Coot, and the one I am thinking about right now is Coot. I have a feeling about Coot I normally reserve for strangers, or the sign of a Trauma tribe on the horizon. Known her for years, decades even. Didn’t know her at all it seems. That’s what I have to find out.
I spent time last night marking up Coot’s map as accurately as I could. The map didn’t cover the complete territory, but I marked up the gates we knew about and one more that would fit on the map using Coot’s Trig trick. The four gates made a big arc across the land marking the perimeter of the bunker, or so I’m guessing. Wondered why so many doors until the true scale of the bunker hit me. Just the one door and you’d have a hundred miles drive through the bunker to reach the other side, thats if you could drive. That’s a week on foot. It makes sense to have more doors if you have to walk. Or maybe it’s a lot of separate bunkers. In which case why plan them in a circle? And if there is a reason for building bunkers in a circle what’s in the middle?
I have been round the same loop all night.
Quit stalling Sheriff.
I roll up Coot’s map and slide it back into the old card tube it came in and placed it on the passenger seat of the cruiser. Head into town.
‘This officer Ridley or Tommy come visit?’
Coot Demure is glaring at me from the gap in her door.
‘Why? You feeling guilty Coot?’
I even try a smile.
‘It determines what I put in your coffee.’
‘So I get to come in or do I wait for the hemlock on your porch?’
‘Oh, so it’s comedian Tommy.’
Coot opens the door and I follow her in. Coot’s shack is small but neat. Eat your food off the floor clean. Everything is old but it’s cared for. A wall of books. Two chairs, a low table, lamps. Then there’s her wall of pictures. A world gone by. A world left behind. Buildings mountain tall. Busy as ant hills. Silver birds with rigid wings rising over the spires. Islands in the sky the size of cities. Women with flawless skin and painted lips and eyes. Impossibly clean and healthy women with the blue crescent of the world behind their floating hair. All cut from magazines which Coot has collected over the years.
‘Back here Tom.’
Coot’s kitchen is not so small I can’t fit, but another person and it would be tight. She pumps water into her kettle and puts it on the alcohol burner. Gets two mugs down from a cupboard. I lean against the door frame. Wave her map tube at her.
‘You found more doors?’
Coot tries to make it like she is surprised, her voice bright and cheerful. Coot doesn’t do cheerful.
‘Chow Down Dan helped.’
There is the faintest pause in her movement as she reaches for the coffee can.
‘That’s good.’
‘Joe Pepper’s idea, said Chow Down has been traveling these parts a long time.’
‘His name’s Zhōu Dān, Tommy. He’s half Chinese.’
‘That explains the eyes, and his lingo.’
Coot shakes her head as she places the coffee tin on the worktop beside her tin sink and removes the lid.
‘No that’s his tribe pidgin. How did you get him to help?’
‘Cost me my star and time at the Lazy. You spend time with him there when he comes into town. How long have you known him?’
‘She shrugs. Measures out a heaped spoonful of coffee.’
‘Years I guess. Made you a strong one.’
‘He knew your Trig trick. Marked it out on the ground. You were right, once I’d seen it I understood it.’
Coot grinned, eyes bright.
‘Trigonometry, Tommy. Civilised!’
‘But there was one thing about it I didn’t understand.’
‘What’s that?’
Still bright, still cheerful. Not like Coot at all. Brittle.
‘Your trick doesn’t work unless the doors are in a circle. How did you know the doors were in a circle, Coot?’
‘Oh Tommy, had to be you didn’t it.’
Coot looks older than I have ever seen her. Crumpled. Looking at the planks on her floor. Snatching glances at me. We are back in her living room sitting in her carefully patched and darned chairs.
‘How did you know, Coot?’
Coot gets to feet and walks over to her pictures. Places a finger on one of a tall tree covered in candy colour lights with a cliff of windows behind. People are skating in front of it.
‘That’s Rockefeller Plaza Tommy. All dressed up for Christmas. I used to visit every year without fail. It was a melting pot. Didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, you could go skating at the Rockefeller Plaza.’
‘You were rich.’
Coot pointed to another picture. Old yellow cars on a street wider than Haven. The street lined by mountains that were also towers of light.
‘This is Fifth Avenue. Every shop in the world on Fifth. We lived Upper West Side when I was very young. I don’t remember much about it, Central Park, our apartment. That’s all really.’
I hear the words, but the implications are just too damn big to fit in my head. Coot keeps talking to her pictures. She said the place was called Manhattan. I may have heard that name once, it sounded familiar, but I know there has been nothing like these places since the Bright.
‘Just how old are you, Coot?’
‘Not all the Oli were bad, Tommy. Some of us tried to go a different way. Tried to keep civilisation together. My family were wealthy, but they weren’t bad people. But the Bright, they were as fanatical as the Oli in their own way. We lost everything.’
‘How old?’
When she turns her head to look at me it’s a mask I barely recognise. Fear will do that to a face.
‘I’m not about to harm an old woman, Coot. Not one that’s done me or my town no harm. Forget about your age. How much do you know about those damn doors?’
‘It’s why my family ended up here. But we were too late. Haven was closed. The real Haven.’
‘To keep you safe from the Bright?’
‘A redoubt. To see us through.’
‘Space girl. You knew her in the past as well?’
‘Coot shakes her head.’
‘She’s inner circle, Tommy. All the inner circle went up, not down. We were not as important as them. They captured a Bright core as a hostage. Wired it up to an EMP gun. The Bright can live forever, did you know that? You’d think that would be an advantage, but it limits your tactical options severely when the enemy have one of your own. Imagine threatening to end an infinite life. Ruthless cunts. Maybe we all went a little mad back then, but it worked for them, for a while anyways.’.
‘How do you get into the bunker, Coot?’
‘You don’t Tommy. Not once it’s sealed up. There’s no way once those doors are closed.’
‘I’m working on that.’
‘No, you are not, Tommy.’
And then Coot looks at my mug.
‘I am sorry, Tommy.’
‘For what?’
‘It’s belladonna. I’ve tried it out before. You should be OK. But I needed something strong, something fast.’
I drop the damn coffee on Coots immaculate floor. It spreads out in a dark stain. I get to my feet and I can do that fine, but my mouth is dry as dirt.
‘You drank some too!’
Coot shook her head, and she is telling the truth, her mug is near full to the brim.
‘But I was watching you. You didn’t put anything in the coffee, I was watching you.’
‘I have more than one tin of coffee Sheriff. I tried to tell you to come in easy but it was the Sheriff calling not Tommy. You don’t want to do more than sit still Sheriff, your heart is going to have a bad time of it so you need to take it slow. Your heart will race soon, and your vision will go. Best you sit down Sheriff, there’s nothing you can do.’
I can get out into the street. Head into town. I can’t drive, might hit someone. Head to the Lazy. Always someone there. I get to my feet. I don’t feel so bad. I take a step towards Coot’s door and I still feel OK. Then I take the next step and the floor is coming up to meet me and blurs. Then someone hits the back of my head again.
‘NO!’
Coot grabs the arm of the Princess but she is strong. The older woman clings to the younger one’s arm with both hands, preventing her from raising the skillet high enough to strike Tom Ridley a third time. They struggle in the small room of Coots shack both breathing hard, panting as they stumble together, knocking into the table and the chairs.
The Princess’s lips are curled away from her teeth, her eyes bright and empty. Coot is bent backwards by the young woman until she has to let go and so she drops to the floor and lies across Tom Ridley’s skull.
‘You are going to kill him.’
But the wildness in the Princess will not listen and she strikes Coots back drawing grunts of pain from the old woman until she tires of wielding the cast iron skillet. The Princess steps backwards swaying, the skillet still held in both hands, shoulders stooped, face twisting from thought to thought. With a shriek she spins and brings the skillet down on Coot’s table smashing the mugs and scarring the wood.
The woman drops the skillet to the floor. Sits against the table. Glares down at the old woman draped over Tom Ridley’s head. Coot has her hands over her own head, the bones and veins of her hands prominent, fragile. After a time she relaxes the tension bowing her arms, unlocks her fingers. Then she rolls off of Tom Ridley and glares up at the other woman.
‘The belladonna was enough! You may have bust his skull. He could die here, on my floor.’
‘You are right. But we are leaving. Now!’
‘I can’t leave him like this.’
The young woman with the red hair smiles.
‘I don’t care how many bodies the proles find. Now make up your mind. Oli or dead?’
I was just experimenting. If it was annoying I will revert to custom, thank you for the feedback.
This one took me a bit longer to read because I was looking for quotation marks or apostrophes when you had dialogue. Other than that, it was good.