Lament for the Afterlife Read online

  “Give us a smile, son.”

  Peytr doesn’t. What’s the point? They can’t see his face anyway. The flash pops and he’s blinded. He tastes magnesium through the mask.

  “Once more,” says the crow. “For luck.”

  Why not.

  He looks up. Scowls. His parents wave.

  He falls in line as the boys start to march. He loses sight of Borys in the hustle, the attempted order. He loses sight of Jean.

  I shouldn’t be here, he thinks. I should turn back.

  But he goes.

  He knows they’re watching.

  Peytr’s only sixteen, so they put him on stretcher duty to save him from the horrors of war. They pair him with Angus, a kid from farther South, who’s been hauling bodies for almost a month—the division’s best triage man. First flares of the morning have crested the grey when Peyt peels off his helmet, hiding nothing, and shakes the wiry boy’s hand. Don’t get attached floats round Angus’s shaved head, but Peytr’s not sure if it’s a suggestion or a reminder.

  Angus takes the lead, which is A-OK with Peyt. He likes how Angus gives clear orders. How he tells him to warm up before they set off, getting him to do a few laps with the mules around the mess tent. How he shows him to breathe through his mouth without eating ’wind. How he runs fast but not too fast. How he jogs diagonally across roads, sprinting at intersections, keeping low between houses. How he seems to have one eye on the sky at all times and one on the ground. How he doesn’t turn around to see if Peyt’s keeping up. How he brooks no complaints about side-stitches or blisters or fear.

  Staying a block or so behind the fighting, they treat what they can on the field. Just pull out of the firing line and start working, Angus shouts. What line? Peyt shouts back. Where? Columns of smoke rise from grey-fires, marking enemy territory. There are so many, so near … what makes this patch of concrete more protected than that one? Peyt thinks they’re sitting ducks, about to get shelled right there on the sidewalk, elbow-deep in some guy’s belly. You got a better idea, Angus yells, twisting a tourniquet above a shredded forearm, leaving the near-dead behind. Mouth shut, Peytr helps lift a wailing kid onto their stretcher, and then they’re off again. They never stop for long.

  Most of the time, a pearl-eyed Whitey keeps pace by their side, transmitting messages in myriad voices, telling them where to find the latest fallen. The girl’s words are garbled, a muddy stream of moans and cries and mamamamamamas—but Angus directs her as they run, leaning close every time the mentalegrapher starts babbling. Listening hard, he nods or shakes his head. Too far gone, he says after one shrieking transmission—“They got me! They fuckin’ got me!”—blowing a shrill whistle to summon the skybunker corps instead. Moving on, Whitey’s throat gurgles as, far away, a soldier chokes on his own blood. Not worth it, Angus says, perking up when another voice screams and screams and screams through Whitey’s lips.

  “Which way?” Peytr says. “Where is he? Where is he?”

  Angus slows down when the screaming stops.

  “Save your energy, Borysson,” he says. “Some of them’s just meat what hasn’t accepted it’s dead yet.”

  The division’s best triage man.

  Peyt’s grateful Angus doesn’t laugh when they reach their next call, when the soldier’s scooped-out sockets and pulped legs leave him puking his borscht on the sidewalk. He even loves Angus a bit, just a bit, when he says “Happens to the best of us,” and passes his canteen. By their fifth shouter, Peyt’s chucking bile. By the twelfth he’s got the dry heaves. He keeps taking Angus’s water until it’s empty.

  “Thanks,” he says, again and again.

  He likes how Angus mostly keeps his thoughts to himself.

  Next morning, Peyt’s paired with a grunt called Willard.

  “Where’s Angus?”

  Willard shrugs, buckles straps and helmet, turns vulture. He kicks the stretcher laid on the ground between them. “Which end you want?”

  “Gotta warm up,” Peyt says, then runs round and round the mess tent until the weak has left his legs. The following day, he’s teamed with Barnard. Then Singh. Newcombe. Haas. Tierney. After that, he stops asking their names. Calls them Head or Foot, depending on which end they take. Within a fortnight, he just calls them Foot.

  By then, Peytr’s Head by default.

  The division’s best triage man.

  In theory, the grunts’ mission is simple: clear the staging area for phase one, Operation VERNA.

  Take point through grey territory, lure the fuckers out of hiding; play sparrow to the infantry’s hawk. It’s a three mile hike from base camp to the CBD through five suburbs, down a long stretch of highway and across a belt of parklands that was shot to shit long before the greys ever got a hold of it. Cross the gravel-lands and onto the asphalt. Conserve ammo, if possible—let the hoofmen blow their loads on the cocksuckers. Set up a perimeter, four blocks squared, starting on the city’s western border, two clicks away from the football stadium. That’s it. Air force will patrol from above while special ops recaptures the complex. Hoofers will bring up the rear, taking RPGs in shifts, squad after squad enlisted to help hold the grunts’ defensive line. Two hours from initiation to extraction. Simple enough, in theory.

  Five hours later, they’ve covered lots of ground, but won next to none of it.

  How can they hold a line when not a fuckin’ thing is straight between here and there? The front is one fuckin’ joke of a term, Peyt thinks, stepping over a heap of minced civvies. On three, he and Foot heft a wailer from a pile of clipped vultures. Shrapnel-grated and crusted red, the grunt’s eyes and limbs are intact. His ’wind’s gone haywire, though. Ranting and raving about underground labyrinths, warrens, rabbits disappearing in fuckin’ hats. Peyt hups the litter, palms slippery. He ignores the squirm and creep of someone else’s ’wind touching his body.

  “Sorry,” he mutters over his shoulder, the guy’s bloody skull bouncing on the stiff tarp with each step. “Sorry.”

  “Why you apologising, kid? You gone grey? Then shut the fuck up.”

  “Sorry.”

  The front isn’t a fuckin’ line, Peyt thinks. It’s a round-robin of grey artillery ravaging human flesh. It’s a fuckin’ red splatter with a thousand fuckin’ edges splashed every which way and back. And the enemy has a lock on each angle—N, S, NNW, SSE, wherever—they come from all sides, unseen, unsmelled, unfuckin’detected until they’re right there, right fuckin’ there, stabbing, digging, goring and gouging. Blinding. Vanishing. Though tunnellers have burrowed for decades and skybunker girls have given troops the bird’s eye for twice that long, scoping for weak points, entry points, any points, they still haven’t got the skinny on the whereabouts of those fuckin’ grey bastards’ lairs… . The fuckin’ grey bitches? Fuckin’ grey … whats?

  Whats …? Whats …? And for what?

  They’ve covered lots of ground.

  Won next to none.

  There’s an eruption two streets east of the plaza where Peyt’s crouched, scrubbing bloody gauze in a still fountain’s scum. Scrubbing old blood from his hands. Scooping water into the wailer’s mouth. Sand rains down as ships cut too close to high-rises and bunkers, the air under their wings thick with grit and silt. Peyt looks to Whitey, waits for more calls to come in. Tilts his head the way Angus used to, but only receives a clusterfuck of nonsense. He’s heard the word mayhem before, but never really heard it until now. Mayhem is so fuckin’ loud, all noise blends to white. Mayhem is supersonic. Peytr watches Whitey’s mouth move as if in slow motion. Through her, some guy’s shouting “On me! On me!” Peyt can’t tell if the kid’s calling for support or saying there’s a grey … what? … right there, right fuckin’ there, right then.

  A numbered civvie streaks past, waving the seven digits carved into his palms. “Get down,” Peyt yells as the man dashes into a known grey corner, looking around for photographers to catch the moment his body explodes.

  Ears ringing, Peyt sits up. Watches the dust settl
e. Breathes through his mouth until his pulse slows. Clenches and unclenches hands gone numb from the stagnant water, numb from clutching the stretcher’s cold metal grips. Echoes compound the noise in the square, doppelgangers of sound shouting from building to building, shouting from Whitey’s lips, pinpointing every soldier’s location, and none. Across the way, using dumpsters for cover, men bound over trenches, jumping for years before touching down. Sounds throb in Peyt’s chest, making his helmet vibrate, shaking all sense from his ’wind. The in and out of his breath is loud, so very loud in his ears.

  “Which way?” he asks, leaning close. Whitey could bite his ear off if she wanted.

  Which way?

  Which way?

  Whitey jibbers, deafening.

  Peyt grabs the stretcher, grunts at Foot. They take to the alleys, moving closer to the blast point. Not too close. As they pass, shopkeepers bolt their doors. Security blinds roll shut. From upper storeys and balconies, people watch the action. People living their lives. People going about civvie business.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” he shouts. The curse sounds almost natural now, almost convincing.

  They stay.

  Tomorrow he’ll be back to collect what’s left of them.

  ####

  “Move,” Peyt yells at Foot, trying to sound like an officer, not just an angry stretcher-bird. The pretence makes him angrier. There are no real ranks here, no staff sergeants, no orderlies. They’re a division only so far as provisions go; their names inked on one camp’s bunk and footlocker, one mess tent’s rations list. Loyalty exchanged for a full belly and a place to take cover—mobile loyalty, sure, but deadly sincere while it lasts. It goes with their nameplates, carried if they’re too wounded to move camp on their own steam, staying put when they’re dead.

  There’s no secret to promotion, Peyt’s Captain tells them, over and over again. “Just stay alive and open wide.”

  The men laugh as if the gag is a new one. “Good one, Borys,” they say, or “Fuck right off, B.” Peyt joins in, but calls the joker Cap—out of respect, mostly, and because he can’t call him Borys. He can’t. This Borys is nothing like his father. This Borys is tall and fit, blond as pine. This Borys makes eye contact when he speaks, squints when he laughs. Yeah, this Borys laughs.

  “I’m being serious.” Cap searches for a horizon through the smog, pupils dilating, soaking in colour the rest of them can’t see. “What ye gotta do is listen—got it? Listen. What’s this remind ye of?’ He barks up a phlegm of ’wind. Raises his eyebrows, waiting for an answer, when it squelches words into the dirt.

  After a minute, someone calls, “Landmine.”

  “Good,” Cap says, then proceeds with his version of training. “Ye got yer Screamin Mee-Mees—sounds like a pig-squealing bitch. Help meeee, help meeee, help meeeeee! Let’s hope we don’t hear none of y’all in them Mee-Mees any time soon.” Nervous laughter. “Then y’also got yer Oh-Twos, yer Dee-Fours, yer Rababou… . Keep an ear cocked for those fuckers, I tell ya. They sound innocent enough, like a trumpet blaring. A sharp brass note, held louder and longer the closer it gets. Fuckin’ killer if ye’re there when it hits.”

  Cap’s litany of weapons goes on and on. Scattershot bottled from lunatic nightmares. Firebombs of distilled hatred. Teargas wrung from desperation, tapped and capped on the field. And who the fuck knows what we’re hitting with any of it, Peytr thinks. Almost a month as Head and he hasn’t scooped a single grey on his rounds. Not a one. Maybe their bodies dissolve, he thinks. Maybe the survivors gather their fallen when the grunts aren’t looking. Maybe they come and snack on their dead. Gnashing and gnawing on grey meat down back alleys, leaving nothing but fuckin’ grey crumbs.

  Grey whats?

  Peyt’s got proof enough the fuckers exist. One blood-soaked stretcher, two well-worn steel handles, palm-loads of calluses. On the ground, a generation of corpses. Ahead of him and for miles around, a sorry collection of men, of boys, aiming at something. Returning fire.

  Most of Peyt’s long days have two nights. Some even have three. He sleeps when it’s quiet, regardless of what the sun’s doing. He tracks peace from bunk to bunk.

  The cot they’ve supplied isn’t much. Khaki sacking stretched over a metal rack that’s two inches too short for his frame. One steel bar will dig into his ankles if he doesn’t want the other cutting into his head. The canvas is almost new—he’ll give them that much—and it’s taut under his back; the same gauge and hue as the mildewed tent he can’t see, but can sense, peaking a few metres above the platoon in the dark. It reminds him of the one he slept on back home. The yellow tarp smell of it. The fabric squeaking as it gives, millimetre by millimetre, beneath his weight.

  As a kid, he’d drum his heels when he couldn’t sleep. Left right left right left. Lulled by spiral echoes of his pounding, the sproinging rhythm, erratic but persistent, he’d start to relax. He’d tire his buzzing brain by working his muscles. Small, repetitive contractions. Left right left right left… . Flex flex flex flex flex flex …

  Sleeping—trying to—on the floor next to him, Euri would whine at him to stop his twitching. But he couldn’t. Left right left right… . He’d kick and kick until his calves chafed. Flex flex flex flex flex… . After a minute or two, Dake would pipe up. Annoyed less at Peyt’s wriggling than he was that he had a real bed. Ever since the Millers had moved in, Daken had been stuck with a whisker-thin slab of foam on the tiles.

  Better than the folded towel Euri called a mattress, Peyt thinks, before realising she’s probably taken the cot for herself now.

  In the barracks, Peyt keeps his heels low so the other guys won’t hear, tries to shake out his jitters.

  What do the greys look like, he wonders. Flex flex flex …

  What do they look like? Left right left right left right left …

  “What do they look like,” he’d asked, when Jean came to tuck him in. “Have you seen one?’ Her silhouette detached from the doorway, crept on silent feet across the bedroom. A hand stretched out. Fingers warm and firm and reassuring, splaying across his shins, pressing him calm. His skin cooled the instant her touch withdrew. “Well? Have you?”

  Feigning sleep, the other kids rolled closer. Wordwinds shaped listening-horns around their ears.

  “If only we could talk to them,” he’d begun, as Jean took a round clunking off the dressing table. She palmed it before scooching Peytr’s legs to one side, sitting in the crook of his knees. Questions rained on his pillow—Where are they hiding?—tripped down his chest—Why? Why? Why?—and over Ma’s knuckles, slinking a chain of need-to-knows around her forearm. Can’t we just talk?

  “Filthy thoughts,” she’d whispered, flicking word-flies, pinching any she could catch. “Filthy.” Running her fingers through Peytr’s thick hair, she sifted, nails snipping and popping two kinds of lice, those with wings and those with serifs.

  Tension eased in his limbs with each thought shorn. One by one, Jean crammed them into the metal shell cupped in her hand. “You know what to do,” she’d said. In the half-light fogging down the hall from the living room, her face was inconstant. Shadows clung to her wordwind, sluggish darkness that shifted her features into something monstrous, something resolute.

  “Yes,” he’d said, though it made his stomach churn—until Ma plucked unanswered questions, rotting above his belly, and packed them into the grenade. Just to be sure, she screwed the lid on, mimed shaking the capsule. A couple good hard jolts to really stir up the contents. “Anyone tries to come through …” she’d said in lullaby tones, nodding at the boarded-up window. Cocking her arm, she exaggerated a fake throw, as she did every night, trying to make him giggle.

  “Everyone has ammo, son. But not everyone has the good sense to use it.”

  Peytr’s laugh was hollow. “I know.” He submitted a cheek to her kiss, returned the gesture. “I’ll use it. Promise.”

  “Cross your heart and hope to die,” she’d said.

  “Hope to die.”
/>   When she left, he was never totally drained. He simmered as Dake and the girls drifted off, their ’winds pristine and intact. New filthy thoughts fidgeted at the edge of his mind, danced on the tip of his tongue.

  Flex flex flex flex flex.

  The loaded grenade rattled on the table next to his head. Alive with his worries. They’d be back, he knew. Full-blown again come morning. Set to keep him awake.

  #####

  Before lights out, when the other grunts let their guards down and their ’winds loose, Peytr reads what they think about him.

  The kid’s wrung.

  He’s fucked.

  Is he okay?

  Hasn’t blinked in hours.

  Is he okay?

  Fuckin’ wrung.

  Ask him. Somebody ask him.

  Later.

  “There’s no later in war.” Cap is cleaning his pistol, hood laced tight to prevent accidents. When Cap shoots, it’s intentional. No exceptions. His ’wind is controlled, neither touching nor being touched. “There’s only, forever, now.”

  Cap’s fuckin’ wrung.

  Kid’s wrung.

  Is he okay?

  Ask him.

  But they never do. And that’s fine, Peytr thinks. He’s fine. Though his eyes are red, strained, bugged out from staring. He’s fine. His senses are honed at night. Heightened. He’s on the lookout. He’s vigilant. He’s deciphering shadows.

  Daybreak and the highway is empty except for the vultures. Helmets on, masks and hoods up. Weapons locked, loaded. Six riflemen, six grenadiers, four medics, including Peyt, hanging back. Cap and Daken, with maps and a Whitey, leading the platoon on the first sweep of the day.

  Until yesterday, Peyt hadn’t seen Daken for—what? Three weeks? Five? Since they arrived at HQ. Selectors took one look at young Miller, with his robust wordwind and broad torso, and stamped his papers with a black triple-helix. Peyt’s forms got a little red star in the top right-hand corner, some kind of kindergarten endorsement. Different age groups, he told himself, different missions. But still it rankled.