Samuel, it appeared, was one of the leaders of this odd assortment of unnatural creations, along with two others: a leadership committee of sorts. One of them was even thinner than the type she thought of as salamander-like. Impossibly thin, she wondered where the creature managed to store its internal organs. Its arms and legs were stick-like, bulging unpleasantly at the joints. Its head, instead of being loaf-shaped like many of the other types, was tall and tapered like a traffic cone. Samuel had told them every eugenic’s shape was designed specifically for a purpose. Sal could only imagine this one was designed to slither through pipes, or at least wriggle through some very tight places. It looked like a flesh-coloured cigar with limbs.
‘… have ignored us … this long, because we … just a nuisance … not a danger!’
Its chest was so slim and its lungs must have been so tiny that it was forced to pant like a dog on a hot day, its words broken up into garbled bites between each rapid breath.
‘I say that we … stay hidden here.’ It shuffled on thin trembling legs to a stool at the side of the stage and perched on the edge of it.
Another of the leaders spoke. This one looked like an even bulkier version of the ape-type. It swayed, top-heavy with muscles that flexed and wobbled with a life of their own. Its head looked like an apple nestling – almost lost – between two watermelons for shoulders. And on top of its head, an old-fashioned top hat was perched. Sal realized that even though its head looked no bigger than an apple, compared to its body it had to be the same size as an adult human’s for it to fit so snugly.
It’s huge.
The rest of the eugenic was oddly out of proportion. Its waist tapered in, and the legs, short and fat, seemed almost like an afterthought.
‘If them humans come …’ it said with a voice so deep Sal felt something vibrate in her own chest. It stabbed a finger as big as a canteloupe at her and Lincoln. ‘If them come, maybe we kill these both … show them soldiers their heads. Them be frightened off! Not bother us no more!’ The ape’s deep voice made Bob’s barrel-round voice sound like the whine of a mosquito.
Samuel put the shotgun he’d been cradling in his skinny arms down on the stage and scooted forward. ‘No, that’sh shtoopid! We need them alive! If we kill them, they will really take a bloody revenge on all of ush!’
‘I’m sure no … humans will come … Samuel,’ whispered the cigar-like one. ‘They have … left us alone … this long –’
‘But that wash before shome shtoopid genicsh killed shome of them!’ Samuel scuttled across the stage and looked up at the ape’s tiny apple head. ‘It wash one of your lot lasht week, washn’t it?’
The ape shrugged guiltily. ‘Maybe.’
‘You idiot!’ snapped Samuel. ‘We’re all going to be dead thanksh to you!’
‘They won’t enter … the city, Samuel,’ panted the cigar. ‘They still fear … all the poisons and … the diseases.’
Sal noticed his thin legs were shaking again under the stress of standing. He may have been designed to squeeze into tight places, but clearly those legs weren’t created to hold his weight for long. Once again the cigar perched on the edge of the stool. ‘Why did you … steal some humans … anyway?’
‘Becaushe, Henry, becaushe I heard about thish fool’sh shtupid raid! I heard about the humansh being killed – women and children – and I knew we better have shomething to bargain with when they come for ush here!’
The ape stooped over Samuel, his looming shadow filling half the stage. ‘Call me fool again, Sam … I squash you!’
Samuel looked up at him, his ragged lips flapping. Sal wondered whether that was fear or frustration. The audience stared in silence and the tap-tap-tapping of rainwater continued in the background.
Sal watched the frozen tableau. For a moment she wondered whether somehow she’d been sucked down a rabbit hole and was stuck in some bizarre post-apocalyptic version of Alice’s Wonderland.
‘Gimme them humans,’ said the ape. ‘I kill them, go take ’em heads and throw at them redcoats if them come. That scare them away! If not –’ he grinned at the shotgun lying on the stage – ‘then we now got nice big gun!’
Samuel shook his head and tutted. ‘They have bigger gunsh, you big dumb mump! And many more of them too. We wouldn’t lasht a minute fighting them, Jerry!’
The ape – Jerry – smacked a three-digit fist down on to the old floorboards. The entire stage rattled. ‘I want fight them … not running like …’ He scratched his head, struggling for an example.
Samuel waited until it was clear Jerry wasn’t going to come up with anything. ‘Truth ish, Jerry, you killing humansh wash a big mishtake.’
‘Didn’t mean to, Sam! Them got in the way … an’… an’… just happened. Real quick.’
‘Well, we can’t un-happen it now. It’sh done.’ Samuel shrugged bony shoulders. ‘Perhapsh my taking shome human prishonersh wash a mishtake too.’ He lowered his big head on his narrow neck. ‘We’ve pushed our luck too far thish time. I shay we musht all leave. Find a new place to hide.’
‘Where will … we go … Samuel?’ wheezed Henry.
Samuel put a finger to his ragged lips, thoughtful for a moment. ‘We could try north?’
There was whispering and muttering from the auditorium.
‘Shome of you know I can read, right? … Well, I ushed to read thingsh that are called a book.’
‘Book?’ The ape’s apple-head frowned. ‘What them?’
‘Marksh on paper … you big mump. Wordsh. Knowledge.’
‘Call me a mump again and I smash you!’
Samuel casually waved away Jerry’s outburst. ‘Shush … let me finish. I ushed to read booksh about the world. How it ushed to be. They call booksh about that short of thing … hishtory booksh.’
The audience of genics muttered the phrase. Trying it out on their own varied lips.
‘There ushed to be humansh treated jusht like ush. They called them negroesh. They looked different. They had dark shkin, were treated like complete mumps. But shome of the pale humansh felt shorry for them and they figured they wash jusht ash normal ash other humansh.’
‘So … Samuel, what is … your point?’ said Henry. His thin wheezy voice whistled asthmatically.
‘You know about the human war, right? There’sh one shide called the Northies. And then there’sh our lot. Maybe … if we go north and find the Northies, they might treat ush different?’
‘Them Northies,’ rumbled the ape, ‘you say them human too?’
‘Yesh, of courshe they are.’
‘Them will treat us just same. All humans bad.’
‘Not all humansh. Shome of them –’
‘All humans BAD! I kill them what come in our city!’
Some of the audience of eugenics roared support for that.
Samuel sighed. He turned to look up at the big ape then pointed to the top hat rammed tightly on his head. ‘Then why, Jerry, if you hate humansh sho much, why do you try and look more like one of them? Hmm? And why did you pick a human name?’
Jerry’s face frowned at that: anger and confusion in equal measures. The theatre was silent for a moment. Samuel let that question hang in the air for the giant to ponder.
Eventually a big fist reached up and pulled the top hat off. Jerry tossed it across the stage. ‘Stoopid hat anyway,’ he rumbled.
‘Jerry … Henry … all of you, lishen to me! I shay we musht leave here tomorrow. I know the humansh are coming … can feel it in my bonesh … and they will kill ush all, if we shtay. I’m sure of it!’
Jerry shook his head defiantly. ‘Them come here? We gonna smash them up!’
There were more roars of approval from the seats.
‘Well, that’sh up to you. Me? I’m leaving tomorrow and I’m taking those two prishonersh with me,’ he said, pointing towards Sal and Lincoln.
‘Them stay here!’
Sam waddled up to Jerry. Stood toe to toe and glowered up at him. ‘They’re mine. I found t
hem! You want them, you gotta take ’em off me.’
Jerry’s tiny black-dot eyes returned the challenge; his huge fists bunched and flexed as they glared at each other for a dozen silent seconds.
‘You gonna shmash me up, then?’
Jerry said nothing.
‘Well?’
Finally Jerry looked down, shame-faced, at the stage boards between his big feet. ‘No, Sam,’ he muttered.
‘That’sh right … you’re not.’ He shook his head. ‘Becaushe without me to figure out the complicated thingsh for you, you’d be losht.’ He looked out at the bizarre menagerie sitting among the rows of threadbare seats. ‘All of you would be!’
Their noises – chirrups, mutterings, howlings – dwindled to a silence.
‘We have to leave. The army men will come because humansh were killed. We should leave tomorrow morning, head north and find a new home.’ He glanced at Sal and Lincoln. ‘Not all humansh hate our gutsh. These two sheem different to me. Maybe them Northy people think different too.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe not, but I know we can’t shtay here, not no more. We knew thish day gonna happen eventually, anyway.’
Ancient weather-worn timber creaked to fill the long silence.
‘Sam’s right … I think,’ panted Henry. ‘We have … to go.’
Jerry looked at him, sensing wiser minds than his had reached a consensus he couldn’t begin to argue against.
He sighed. ‘Maybe you right.’
‘Of courshe I am.’
‘Sorry, Sam,’ he said finally.
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Sam reached out and patted one of his bulging knuckles. ‘You big ol’ mump, you gotta jusht trusht me. All right? We’d be real dumb to shtay put and fight them sholdiersh. Real dumb.’
Sam waddled towards the edge of the stage and looked out at the dark rows of seats. ‘And we ain’t no dummiesh, are we?’
CHAPTER 53
2001, Dead City
Sal stared up at the stars through the shutters of their coal cellar. Oddly calming, she thought. In a world turned upside-down, where everything was wrong, bizarre, you could at least look up at the sky and see normality. Stars that shone regardless of who won a civil war, or who should or should not be a president. Their light was billions of years old. They didn’t have a care that a girl from 2026, stuck in the year 2001, in a world that should never have been, was watching them.
Funny, that.
Across from her she could see Samuel on a nest of worn blankets, twitching in his sleep, his ragged lips rustling like tent flaps with every shallow breath. Around him other genics of all the standard types she’d seen were curled up and fast asleep, producing a chorus of breathing: different sounds, different rhythms.
Soft whimperings, half-spoken muttered words, feet and hands jerking and curling. She realized these manufactured creatures dreamed in their sleep just like humans. Twitched and flexed like babies in a womb.
Babies. Children. Yes, just like frightened children. Even the smart ones, like Sam and that strange thin one, Henry. Even that giant ape … Ferocious though he might look, he was like a little baby inside that miniature head. And wasn’t it so childlike, their futile efforts to look more human? The items of clothing they each tried their best to wear properly, the names they chose for themselves. They had every reason to despise humans for the way they’d been treated, yet they did all they could to be more like them.
After the gathering at the deserted theatre, the various packs had returned to their dens to settle in for the night. She and Lincoln had spoken with Sam for a while, softly, as the other creatures began to fall asleep. She’d asked him about his life, what it was like to be ‘made’. He’d told her about the growth farms in the English countryside – enormous factories of iron struts and grimy glass where near to full-grown genics were birthed from giant copper vats, then cleaned, clothed and numbered. And about living from day one in schoolhouses: long huts stacked with hard bunk beds and straw mattresses. Living there to be educated on the basics they needed for their life-long roles, taught by other genics designed specifically to teach. His description of the growth farms had reminded her of the enormous internment camps back in 2026 along India’s northern border with Pakistan; the lives of refugees lived entirely within chain-link compounds, one day like any other.
Then, with no warning at all, he’d been crated up like so much freight and shipped to a far corner of the British Empire.
Sam had told them that at first he’d worked in a very hot place where the humans were of Sal’s colour, mostly darker. There he’d worked on maintaining field harvesters, stripping them, cleaning the engines alongside human workers who lived only marginally better lives than the genics did. It had been one of them who had taught him how to read.
Then again, without warning, he’d been packaged like freight and shipped to another country, and another. Eventually learning from the scraps of books and pamphlets he picked up and squirrelled away the names of all these strange places: New Rhodesia, Great Albany, British Central District, Cape Georgia. Finally ending up in a place called America.
Sam said he could read most things. Only occasionally did he find language too difficult for him to understand. But his one big regret was that he couldn’t write more than a child’s untidy scrawl. His hands, designed to hold spanners and wrenches, lacked the dexterity to manage something as straightforward as a pencil.
If he could have written things, he’d said he would have liked to have written ‘singsong stories’. Sal had no idea what those were. Perhaps he meant poems.
On that note he’d said he needed his rest and was fast asleep within seconds. She wondered if that was a deliberately designed ability, to be able to flick a switch inside and be instantly unconscious. Or whether it was a lifetime’s habit, learning to get rest when it was available.
‘Abraham?’ she whispered in the dark.
There was no reply.
‘Lincoln?’ she tried again. Nothing.
She was going to ask him what he thought of an idea she had. To see if they could slip out of the cellar unheard, escape the city and try to intercept these soldiers the genics were certain were coming their way. Perhaps, seeing them free and unharmed, the soldiers might let the creatures go, be redeployed to do something more useful elsewhere. Or, if not, then perhaps she and Lincoln might be able to send them off in the wrong direction on a wild-goose chase. Give these things a chance to escape and find a new home somewhere else. But the deep voice of a genic grunted irritably out of the darkness.
‘Shut up … resting now.’
So much for that idea, then.
CHAPTER 54
2001, outside Dead City
Liam watched the night sky. He was looking at the very same stars as Sal. In front of them was the outline of the dark city suburbs.
McManus prodded the dying fire with a stick. ‘We shall wait till first light, Liam. Then we’ll send in the hounds.’
Another delay of hours. Liam did his best to contain the frustration behind gritted teeth.
‘They should find those runaways easily enough … and your sister and friend too.’
Liam glanced across the trampled field, lit by several campfires. The ‘hounds’ that McManus referred to were those large baboon-headed dogs. He could see them clustered around one of the fires, eating rations of food out of a trough. He could see flashes of long teeth as they periodically raised their heads and chewed hungrily on what appeared to be dry nuggets of protein biscuit.
‘They look pretty ferocious, so they do. Are you sure my sister’s going to be safe from them?’
‘Indeed. Those hunter-seekers won’t harm them. They’ve been instructed.’
‘How’ll they know who it is they’re not to hurt, though?’
‘White Bear has had them all get a taste of the tracks left by the genics. They know the smell of your sister and have orders to follow the scent, locate them and then report in.’
Liam looked at him sceptically.
‘Instructed, you said? You make them sound almost human.’
McManus grinned. He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. One of the hunter-seekers looked up from his feeding trough. ‘Yes, that’s right, you over there! Pack-Alpha … come here!’
The creature obediently got up off its haunches and trotted across the camp towards them.
Liam shared a look with Bob. ‘I’ve never seen a dog so well trained.’
‘Well, firstly, remember these things aren’t dogs,’ said McManus.
The hunter-seeker came to a halt in front of them – waist high, almost as big as a Great Dane.
‘You may sit, Pack-Alpha.’
‘Thanks, guv,’ it grunted, slim hindquarters settling down on the dusty ground.
‘This civilian is Mr Liam O’Connor. And the big chap is Mr Bob O’Connor. It’s their sister and friend who’ve been taken by the runaways. Now, for their peace of mind, would you please tell them what your orders are.’
It turned intelligent baboon-eyes on to Liam, a pink tongue protruded from its long furry muzzle and moistened its thin dark leathery lips. ‘Follow smell-trail. Find humans.’
‘And what will you do when you find them?’
It cocked its head and Liam could have sworn the thing rolled its eyes as if that was the most stupid question a person could ask. ‘Call home.’
McManus pointed to a leather strap round the creature’s neck. Beneath its jaw was a small brass box with a simple toggle switch on it. ‘They flip that switch and it turns on a short-range radio beacon, which we can then follow in. It also opens the microphone so they can tell us exactly what they’re seeing. They make excellent reconnaissance units.’
He turned back to the genic, squatted down to inspect an ident number on its collar. ‘Ahh, you’re Pack-Alpha-Two. Sorry, didn’t recognize you there … George, isn’t it?’
Liam choked a surprised laugh. ‘George?’
‘Ahh, yes. We let them pick their own informal names. They like to do it. Makes them feel a part of the regiment. Doesn’t it, ol’ chap?’