Haven's Fall
A Trauma Tale.
A new machine stands behind the vast glass doors. The light from another huge entrance inside the building is flooding the room with the strange paintings, casting the machine's shadow along the wide pavement towards us. In the past the Oli had created a machine shaped like a woman, and it is walking towards us.
I shake Joe awake. He starts to his feet not fully aware, reaching automatically for his big shotgun. My brother's wolfhound is startled awake by his movementl and begins a low dark growl like a dog but with more menace than any dog I know.
'Easy Joe. We got company.'
'What the HELL is THAT!' Sammy is on all fours, voice high-pitched, terrified, waking from one nightmare into another.
'That is why we shoot every Oli we meet, Deputy,' said Joe taking aim.
'Tom I highly recommend we step back aways.' George Wolf-Man Ripley takes hold of my arm, his voice slurred with sleep.
'I'll stay George, but yes, you all need to step back some.'
'Sheriff you can't…' Joe starts in as I knew he would.
'Joe you can hit it just as well from ten yards off as you can from here.'
'Yeah but..'
'Deputy Joe Pepper I don't have the time. Let me do my damn job.'
The machine advances in slow strides, as if the time on the other side of the glass doors is different, but it's just the way it balances and moves. I feel that hard throb in my head start up again and I realise I am breathing hard. I am poised to run and my hands are trembling. I'm reacting the way you might if you were scared of insects and woke with a spider on your face. I try to slow my breathing. I force myself to stand up straighter. Look the machine in the eye like I am this tough post-Trauma Sheriff that an entire community depends on.
The machine reaches the huge glass doors and studies me for a while. In complete silence the glass doors slide open. It stands an arm's length from me, and I can smell hot plastic, as if the machine is newly built. Its face is a mask. The eyes can move, as can the head, but the lips, the face, are sculpted, the light from the room moulding the contours of the face in glossy reflections. I can't help thinking of a scorpions' tail, because there is something of that shape about the machine's eyes and behind its lenses are beetle wings. It tilts its head and looks beyond me to where the rest have gathered.
The machine's voice is all wrong. Musical and high pitched. The sort of voice you might imagine coming from a little girl's dolly.
'Joe Pepper if you shoot this beautiful body you and I are going to have a knock down drag out.'
But it is Coot Demure.
No doubt about it.
'What the hell!' demands Joe who is marching towards the machine with his gun sighted.
'Coot? Is that really you?'
'Well I'm the only one you are chasing, ain't I?'
Joe has taken up a position to my left and to the side so he has a clean shot.
The machine turns to face him smoothly.
'Point that damn cannon away Pepper. If we meant you harm you'd be dead.'
'We? Where is Space-Girl?'
'She's inside Tommy. Like me. I've come to lead you inside. Not you Joe. You'd shoot a damn vending machine if it so much as looked at you funny1.'
'A what?'
'Before your time, Joe. You coming, Tommy?' The machine steps to one side and raises an arm to gesture into the building.
I look back at Joe who shakes his head. Wolf-Man Ridley is back aways holding onto the ruff of his wolfhound and Sammy is a few steps further back in the shadows. I can't say I blame the boy, I'd rather be back there as well. Except, even further in the distance there is the first machine, the stalker, visible by the reflections of light on its glass shell and its weird interior.
'Joe she's probably right. If they wanted to they could have picked us off any time.'
'It's safer inside than out, Joe, I can tell you that,' the machine says, 'you will find that out in a while.'
I don't like the sound of that, nor does Joe who cusses continually, his feet edging forwards.
'Joe, I'm going to get Coot, you stay here. If I am not back by dawn you head out with George and Sammy.'
'Tom, I don't think…'
'This is where you say 'yes Sheriff', Joe.'
That wasn't what he said. What he said was angry, long and heartfelt, but he lowered his gun and backed away.
'Show me.' I told the machine and walked past it into the city.
Without appearing to hurry the machine is ahead of me before we reach the inner doors. What lies beyond is confusing. Not a machine but as complex as a machine. Not mineral but granular like a mineral, like dust, but stirring slowly like a cloud. Inside the inner doorway I am standing on a balcony that rings around the mass. It reaches above my head and down into the depths. There is no wall or guard rail so I lean over the edge to see with my hair crawling over my scalp.
The machine waits for me until I am ready to move on. Then gestures along the curve of the balcony. It leads me to where the floor is set into a semi-circular slot cut into the wall of the building that rises overhead. The machine steps into the alcove and beckons me to join it. As soon as I do the floor starts to rise into the air. I can't say that's the worst thing that has happened to me in the past few days but it comes close. I can cope if I don't look down.
'What is this?' I ask the machine, pointing at the mass of transforming crystalline dust.
'Thought you were smarter than that Tommy. It's the Bright. Part of it anyway. The conversion isn't complete yet.'
'The hell?'
'Oh no, it's wonderful. You'll see that when you join us.'
'Coot, where exactly are you?'
'I told you Tommy. I'm inside.'
'We are already inside, I want to know where exactly.'
'I get it. You must be exhausted. And all this is new to you and must seem really strange. You don't have the background knowhow but I must admit I had hoped for more from you, you being the community mechanic an all.'
'Coot!'
The machine raised its hand and, with a long engineered finger, tapped its skull.
‘I'm inside. In here, Tommy. And you will be soon.'
I don't understand at first. I think it must be some kind of relay, like the space suit did for the Bright.
'No Tommy. I'm inside. It was a tight fit but the Bright didn't need my entire brain, I don't need the oldest part of it anymore, the reptile part. Don't look so scared Tommy. The Bright has learnt how to dial out the fear and the pain. It damaged the girl though. It didn't understand at first and by the time it did she had lost her mind. It worked out a fix though, so my transition was optimal.'
I can't see Coot. All I can see is a machine. All I can see are the beetle wings behind the lenses of her eyes, iridescent, fluttering spasmodically. My head aches fit to split. And I am standing on the edge of a free fall to wherever the Bright has rooted or nested or whatever the Bright do.
'Dear God, Coot!'
'You should see yourself, trembling like an ape. You are so primitive. There is no need for fear, Tommy, the Bright will save you.'
‘I don't need saving Coot, not like this.'
'But you do Tommy. You all do. You don't have a choice. The radiation will kill you.'
It was a word from the deep past. A word used to scare children. Invisible. Lethal. Made by machines. I shake my head in disbelief. Coot misunderstands.
'It's going to kill you, Tommy. You have all been exposed. It's what killed them all. They used fusion devices to mine out Haven's structure because that was the most efficient method. They used robots to finish the landscaping and create the environment. But some of the robots began to fail and they didn't know why. That should have been a clue but they were pretty dumb back then. There used to be a saying 'more money than sense', that was exactly right. What they didn't know was there were some unknown Cobalt ore deposits. The Gamma from the bombs turned the Cobalt to Cobalt 60. It’s a world killer, Cobalt 60. Doomsday tech2. The radiation leached into the water supply, into the air. Pretty soon it was everywhere. They didn't stand a chance.'
'All the remains?'
‘Yep. Thousands of them. They couldn't get out, the blast doors were sealed. The stupid fuckers designed a closed world without an escape route, can you believe that? Some of them living close to the deposits died within days of the sealing. The rest over weeks.'
'Nobody survived?'
'Not one. But you can Tommy.'
'Not like this. Not like you.'
'Then you will die like they did. It may take longer, the radiation is a lot lower now, but you will die here.'
That's why, I realize. That's why the city is empty. Where would you rather die, in this sterile place or out in the woods under the leaves, or on the hills watching the stars?'
‘That's why they are all clustered together.’ I said that out loud.
'Helps you pass over, sharing the terror and the grief.'
There may be something of Coot left inside that plastic skull but all I can see are those terrible eyes. All I can hear is that alien voice.
'Then that's what I want, Coot. Take me back down. I don't want to be saved. Not if it means ending up like you.'
Next week, the final chapter in the Haven series.
‘
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb
From the article
“After one half-life of 5.27 years, the dose rate in the affected area would be 5 Sv/hour. At this dose rate, a person exposed to the radiation would receive a lethal dose in 1 hour.
After 10 half-lives (about 53 years), the dose rate would have decayed to around 10 mSv/hour. At this point, a healthy person could spend up to 4 days exposed to the fallout with no immediate effects. Long-term effects from this exposure would be increased risk to develop cancer.[18] At the 4th day, the accumulated dose will be about 1 Sv, at which point the first symptoms of acute radiation syndrome may appear.
What a cool story, Steve! You are a very good writer.
I'm digging it! Great, imaginative writing!