Toxic City
Walkers in the Mist
Volume 1
PART ONE
1
For over a month Val had been
bedbound. Each time she woke up, her first objective was to move. It was the
best cure for the stiffening of her young yet haggard muscles. It negated the effects
of blanket radiation which, after months to years, would sink through clothes,
skin, fatty tissue, and rest on the outer lining of muscles. If this was
allowed to continue then her body would slowly calcify, locking her inside. But
moving hurt. Turning her head caused lightning sensations down her back, and
the creaking of her bones was scarily audible. Any medical examiner worth their
salt would presume she owned the organs of a middle-aged woman. In fact, she
was barely six months from fifteen.
After minutes that felt like
hours, she rolled from the mattress to the floor – as it had no bedframe – and forced
every sinew to stand. She stumbled across clothes, empty bottles, and spent
ration packets, using furniture for support until reaching the small closet
that housed the toilet. She collapsed on the narrow pot and hissed against the
burning sensation as she pee’d. Not much came out; a bad sign since she’d spent
most of her waking moments downing litres of warm, sterilised water. Her
kidneys were obviously in a terrible state and this was no surprise since she’d
consumed months’ worth of radiation medication in as little as a few weeks.
“Jim?” she called, her voice
hoarse. She repeated her shout to no avail.
She’d not looked for him during
her struggle to the loo, but it was obvious he wasn’t there.
She hauled herself to a stand,
but bumped her head on a plastic sheet covering a hole in the ceiling. Pulling
it away showered plaster dust, but the space up through the loft bathed her in
light. Not pure sunlight as the clouds hadn’t broken in her lifetime, but light
all the same. That meant one thing.
She had made it to day thirty-six.
2
Val stumbled from the table
where she’d been tuning the radio and collapsed on the mattress. She refused to
lie down as she’d likely sleep, so she distracted herself by looking about the apartment.
It consisted of one large room with smaller quarters serving as the toilet and
her greenhouse at the end. The old Beckton Globe Library in East London had
been her home for almost three years and whilst it wasn’t a fortress, it was
enough out of the way of the main road to remain safe.
The windows were covered in lead
and lined with blast-proof cladding; protection from the Mists – powerful
storms that dragged radiation across the Earth. With the help of Jim, who was the
closest thing she had to family, she had erected a partition to the back of the
room that also acted as a desk supporting a water purification unit – or WPU. On
the back wall was a hatch she’d constructed from a pressure door sourced from
an old war ship that Jim still lived in. Also with his help, she’d hauled it home
and installed it within a month or so. Now it acted as the perfect barrier
between her less-than-sterile apartment and the greenhouse growing veg and
brewing beer. As Jim had said at the time, it wasn’t bad going for a twelve-year-old.
It was nearly seven, but whether
that meant morning or evening, it didn’t matter. ERD would always come upon this hour. For this, she listened ever
closer to the static, waiting.
Not
long now, she
told herself. Stay awake for a few
minutes more.
She looked to her dresser filled
with empty medication packets. There was also a broken mirror that she now used
to check the colour of her tongue and eyes. She’d been called a lot of things
in her time, but pale wasn’t one. Muddy. Dusky. Black, even. But she was light
brown in her opinion. Or she should’ve been. Her last mission into the Wastes
far south of London had brought about such high levels of exposure that it had
actually drained her of some pigment. Now she looked relatively grey with
yellowing eyes.
Her hair fared no better. When
she was young and living in the Sacred Hearts Orphanage, all the Sisters would
run their fingers through it and say it was her most precious feature. Now it
was limp about her face and several clumps came free when she pulled at knots. It
wouldn’t be long before the spots of alopecia combined, making her look ten
years older. She used a small, standard-carry penknife to slice her hair to a
few inches in length. It looked no better, but at least it could be pushed
beneath her beanie hat.
She rushed with cold and held
herself. It was a side effect of the meds. She’d begin seizing soon if she
didn’t remain calm. She needed a distraction and eyed the radio as if willing
the voice to come.
ERD, they called him. His name
meant, ‘Energy-Rich Drink’ if the jingle at the start of his broadcast was
anything to go by. He, like many others who’d hi-jacked radio channels from the
Peace Enforcement Agency, reused jingles that had played before the End. This
one stuck and most had come to know him by it. The funniest jingle was for ladies’
sanitary towels that sang before Hound Hoolia’s broadcast. She doubted he knew
what the woman was singing about, but it would break the monotony of the static
all the same.
As if her ears had popped, the
static died and a jingle broke through.
“It’s what you do,
Not what you think,
So break from the chains
With an Energy-rich Drink!”
The women seemed so euphoric! As
if all life’s problems could be solved with a simple soda.
Val leaned back with a relieved
smile.
“Hello ERD.”
Now all she had to do was stay
awake.
3
‘Good
morning. And yes, it is morning,’ said the aged but well-spoken man from her slightly less
static-hungry radio. ERD was a constant reassurance and, right then, her only
beacon of strength. Eyes closed and head waning, she listened to his mature voice;
educated in his words and gentle in his tone.
‘…and
any of you up early enough would’ve seen the rains below Old South Quad. The clouds
thinned to such a degree I was told the sky had been almost visible. I hope
none of you saw it, actually. Not in
person at any rate. Anomalies fall with the rain and we all remember what happened
to Peace Ranger Rotsland.’
She snorted a laugh – as morbid
as it was – because she could still picture the outline of his body on the
concrete column of the train-bridge heading to Sevenoaks, the perfect
silhouette of a man squatting. The explosion had printed a permanent shadow,
decimating everything save his trousers and ID cards. And a pile of shit,
incidentally.
‘Today
falls directly in the middle of April, a spring month, or so it had been before
the End. Anyone outside of the buffered areas of Central will feel the balmy
early morning reach peaks of twenty-four Celsius, though I have heard rumour
that the afternoon may tip somewhat uncomfortably over thirty degrees. So keep
light and make sure you have your rations.’
Val smiled. He appeared so
caring. Not the type of caring where
people had a job to do, like the Casuals who worked in hospitals or those peddling
merchandise aimed at relieving day-to-day
hardships. He seemed genuine, like he had nothing to gain and everything to
give.
‘You
know, I was reading a book last night. It was a sorry state of a novel with its
cover missing and the pages browned, but I did read some of the inner pages
however, that it was printed nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, so I can
forgive as much.
‘It
was a fictitious affair, deemed a comedy in its day. The title, for what was
left of the interior, was
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’ll
not eat too greatly into your morning routine, but I found myself more
enchanted as I went and I wanted to share it with you.
‘The
hero of the tale was a man with no true difference to you or I. Caught up in
his life, dealing with his own affairs, thinking largely about sustaining an
existence he was never much happy with in the first place. Yet, like most, he
was content to sustain it all the same.
‘Then,
incidentally, the world blew up. Completely and utterly obliterated. Amazingly, moments before the blast that
claimed the other billions of his race – as there were in the days before the
End – he and an alien companion were sucked into a spaceship. Improbable, but I
suppose not impossible considering the realm of things. And there began his new
adventure as, well, a hitchhiker of the galaxy.’
A silence followed before he
said, ‘You’re screwing up your face now,
aren’t you?’
She softened her expression to
mild surprise. If she’d not been responsible for the making of that radio, she
would’ve sworn he could see her through it.
‘I
suppose you would have to read it in order to feel how I feel. I wish I could
print a copy for everyone. Books are a blessing, an escape from the norm. Not
all of us can find ourselves in the midst of a novel that keeps us turning page
after page. But then, we’re all living our own story, much like the hero in my
book.’
His voice grew somewhat solemn.
‘A
while ago our world ended. Before your time and before mine. Remnants of it
persist to this day but never how it was before. Children are born, grow, and
die never to know sunshine, fearing the rain and growing old before their time.
Many will be fighting to preserve a life that has more ill in it than good, but
persevering in order to fend off what worse may come along.
‘I
suppose this has become quite a sermon. But to top off the few stringent
minutes I’m given, before my air runs out, I can only insist that you grab the
next ride on that ship, on that train, on that bus, and find your own adventure.
‘Life’s
too short not to be explored.’
She thought she could hear him
smiling. Then the jingle played, running a little longer than the intro tune,
and Val allowed herself to collapse and phase out. No longer could she fight
the convulsions.
4
The evening brought sweltering
heat and she snapped awake when her PDA, known as an RDAC, began bleeping. It
meant a Mist was coming. She was weak and delirious. But she needed to secure
the windows, bolt down doors, and activate systemic-ionisation routers to deter
heavy particles. But when a shaded figure lowered over her, pushing her down by
the shoulders, she calmed.
Jim was home.
He watered her, wiped her brow,
and slurred, “Well done on surviving day thirty-six, and with no medication to
boot!”
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| Meet Val! ( this is how she looks on a good day) Awesome concept art done by my artist over at fiverr! |
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