Steel People

I woke up alone on the beach, masked in clouds of spray. When I sat up, the rising tide hit me in the face like a frozen sheet. I snatched my leatherback off the sand, where I’d been using it as a pillow, and ran up the beach into the dunes. In the darkness I tripped on driftwood, and strands of plastic.

I found her at the top of a dune, with a little driftwood fire sputtering and her pale skin aglow in its weak light. Her blanket was around her bare shoulders and her bushy hair fluttered in the breeze. When she saw me, she threw it sideways into the sand and scooted over.

“You could have woken me before heading for high ground,” I said and sat beside her.

She shrugged, “you don’t sleep much, and I wanted to leave you.”

That part was true. I didn’t like closing my eyes, because that brought back memories from better times. I crossed my legs and leaned on her shoulder. “So.”

“Yes?” she said and raised a dark, thin eyebrow.

“Think we’ll see turtles this year?” I twisted to look up in the sky. The glitter band still shined. I remember hearing from someone that it would be a few years until most of the satellites started running out of power.

“We saw them last year.”

“I know, but we hadn’t seen them the year before that,” I said.

“You worry too much,” she said. She jabbed a thumb into her chest. “I, think they’ll be there. I think we’ve finally gotten past the worst years.”

I didn’t share her optimism. Maybelle had grown up in what we used to call a driftwater community. She was used to living the way our ancestors a millennia ago did, worrying one season ahead. I’d come from a skyscraper somewhere that no longer existed. I’d seen humanity lose everything.

“Want to try sleeping more? While the fire’s still going?” she said with pride at her flickering blaze of damp twigs.

“Of course. Thank you for the fire, it’s lovely,” I said. We lay back and fell asleep in  with the sand warming our backs and our bare bodies pressed together, arms entwined to warm our fronts.

The next morning, the ruined Dallas skyline poked above the mist. I paused from packing up camp counted the great arcologies. Seven. Missing one, I counted again.

“One of the big towers must have fallen over last night,” I said and pointed.

She counted too. “Shit. We didn’t hear it. God damn it I always miss the steel people buildings falling over. I wanted to watch one go!” she kicked sand in frustration and the wind blew it back on us.

I smirked at her, for I’d seen many buildings collapse, and she’d always missed the great ancient towers toppling, shedding debris as they went for one reason or another. She aimed her next sand kick at me.

We ate our last bits of hog jerky for breakfast. Then we headed off up the Caribbean coast. We wore our belongings around our waist in belts, and over our shoulders in a poncho and leatherback pack. The humidity was seething and perspiration had condensed on our bodies in seconds.

We each carried a spear in one hand, and held each other with the other, our fingers intertwined and rubbing salt into each other. The Dallas metro coast unfolded before us. Empty shells of houses sank into the newfound water.

“How loud was this all? When it was alive?” Maybelle said.

I wanted to tell her I was from a completely different city called Boston and cities up there were older, colder, and far more compact. Except she’d scowl and say the steel people worried about things that didn’t matter.

I said, “very loud. There were cars roaring all day and night. The only break was when the smog came in muffled everything and the sky turned black.”

“I know what smog looks like,” she said. “Tell me about something prettier.”

“At night all the shop signs glowed neon red and blew and pink in the sky. You could see all these logos dancing in the sky,” I said. I looked back at her and saw a little smile. It was so beautiful.

Around noon, we came upon a herd of seals resting on the beach. The plastic was piled high around the edges of their territory. As we stalked them, I wondered who’d gone through the trouble of doing all that work to protect the seals. Until I saw a large bull grab a car fender and haul it into the pile.

We picked out a young female with no calf in sight. Then we jumped her. The pack hauled themselves hooting into the water, but I sprinted faster. I killed her.

We dragged her corpse far from the seal beach as we could, and spent the afternoon prepping her. That night we had nice, blubbery seal meat. Maybelle left as much fat as she could on.

“Fat’s good for energy,” she said.

I didn’t question her. I was just glad to have a full meal in my belly and weighing me down for the first time in weeks.

As we cooked, the air grew hotter and wetter, until it was a seething soup. The act of lifting browned seal meat to my lips generated perspiration up my arms. I looked over my shoulder.

The Dallas skyline was dark fignments against the deepest black wall of stormclouds. They drove specks of flocking birds and fronds of plastic refuse before them in a flowing cloud like a bride’s dress fluttering around her feet.

I looked at Maybelle and reached out an arm. She surprised me by throwing both her arms around me and burying her head in my shoulder. Her bushy blonde hair tickled my chin and made my nose itch as I kissed her greasy scalp.

We found a solid stone wall and bunkered down. We stretched our lone blanket like a tarp and weighed it down with the heaviest rocks we could find. I dug a hole just outside and shoved our raincatcher in, then checked the filter. All good. I crawled inside our little nap-hole. She unfurled her arms and entangled me. There was only darkness, sweat, and our slickly wet bodies sticking together.

We heard it first. The ground shook and groaned around us. A few insects fled across my back and up out the exit. Fools, I thought. The wind whipped them away. It blew the tarp in until it was concave and taught. Rain pounded the outside, abandoned buildings groaned, but over all of it came a deep, agonized roar. It rose to a painful howl, and fell to a dying animal’s moan as the tarp went slack. Then it rose to a howl again and screamed louder and louder. Water trickled under the tip and ran in two streams, one over my shoulderblades and into my back, and one over my breast and down to my belly.

I shivered and hugged Maybelle close, sure any moment would end our lives in a wall of water and terror. I hoped it would be too quick to feel.

Then I felt her tremble and hug me tighter. That feeling of someone clutching me tight as I was holding her, relying on me to protect them, it stoked a warmth within me.

“Whatever happens, I am grateful to spend the end days with you,” I whispered in her ear.

I’m sure she couldn’t hear me, my words crushed into the back of our little safe-hole.  Yet she must have felt my lips moving, and understood. She dug her fingernails into my back and nodded into my chest.

The tarp ripped open and water vapor sprayed us. I hugged her tighter and twisted to take the cold shower. She shook her head. We suffered together.

It went on for hours. Hurricanes had an eye, even the modern titanostorms. We must have missed it because it never stopped. At some point I felt Maybelle let out a long snore into my shoulder and I was horribly, destructively envious.

Until a high-pitched scream raced overhead. She shot awake and dug fingernail furrows into my chest.

“It’s me,” I gasped in pain. She stopped, then hugged me and stroked my bleeding shoulders as the screaming continued.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Then, she cocked her head up. “What is it?”

It howled right overhead, until punctuated by a brief blast that shook the ground. I knew the sound of a scramjet. They always blew high over the city, screaming so loud we had to halt school until they stopped.

There goes someone important, father always said with genuine delight.

“A jet. One of the steel people’s flying machines,” I said.

“Why’s it out here in a storm?” she screamed back so I could hear.

I shrugged hard as I could. My shoulders ached and I flinched.

“Sorry,” she said, and kissed me with salty lips.

As she did that, the winds died off into a gentle hum. We held together, locked eternally as trailing blasts of wind blew

We fell asleep soon as the gaps were long enough.

I awoke cold and wet, with a finger poking my chin. “Dae, Dae, Daemon!” Maybelle said.

I opened my eyes and white light blinded me. “Augh!” I said as I clamped my hands over my eyes.

“It’s just the sun, silly. We survived. And we’ve got a full water catcher.” She poked me down to my chest and pressed her palm over my sluggish heart.

I crawled out and splattered into a puddle of mud. I came up in a crouch and breathed in cold, fresh air. The sky was pale gray and a faint film of rain covered us all. The hurricane had blown away all the smog and left fresh virgin coolness on the morning breeze. It kissed my skin all over and gave me the strength to stand.

I could clearly see the jagged ruins of slow-sinking high rises all around. The gulf itself had risen by several feet, so all the dunes we’d trekked across two days ago were little islands as trash gathered around them like reeds in my fingers.

It was such a sweet morning I fished the brush from my leatherback, the tiny bit of soap we’d bartered once so long ago, and started scrubbing.

Maybelle emerged and did the same. She stretched out each tress of hair and brushed the grime from it. “Where’s the raincatcher?” I said.

“I changed the filter  put it up there.” She pointed at the top of the stone wall. It sat there, pristine and beading sweat like one of us. Six liters of clear drinking water, free of dirt and pollution. I got thirsty looking at it. “I was going to fill up all our bottles but remembered how scared you were when I left you sleeping alone,” she said.

I took her cheek and kissed her. “Thank you, my doomsday companion.”

“Stop calling it doomsday,” she said. She plucked her water bottles from her pack.

“It is. I saw the floodgates at Boston collapse. Even if there’s still my fellow steel people out there, I know it’s all over,” I said.

“For you, maybe,” she said. “For me, it’s another day.”

I shivered at how easily the fall of human civilization could be brushed off. I watched her fill her bottles, then handed mine over. Yet, I was jealous of her for not knowing more.

Then she took my shoulder and gave me an apology with a wide eyed stare I felt myself falling into. “Any nightmares?” she said.

“No. The storm must have blown them away,” I said.

“Me old mum said the storm winds blow away all our evil spirits. That’s why the waters send them whenever it gets too humid,” she said with a toothy grin. “Now, if you’ve got nothing else to do, we need to find that jet. Maybe it’s full of goodies for us.”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” I said. I shivered. I didn’t want to see the luxuries of civilization. Even now, they reached out to me for a society I could return to. One pumping full of fresh water and ready-farmed food.

Maybelle saw I was afraid, so she insisted we wear armor. Without a scrap of body armor, we found a patch of pure mud smelling like clean earth and smeared ourselves head to toe in gooey blackness. I felt silly at first as we covered each other, and I took care painting around her eyes and nose. Yet I worked away at her back and she got mine, she so thoroughly covered me that I began to believe and covered her just as thoroughly. When it was done, we were pitch black and shielded from whatever my fears were.

We hefted our spears and I extended an arm. Maybelle locked us back together finger to finger.

Finding the crash site was easy as scaling the highest hill and looking around until we saw fresh, shining metal amongst the weathered ruins. It sat right on the shoreline, nose pointed towards the surf. It was a millisecond of flight time away from being lost forever.

Best of all, nothing was moving.

We communicated by hand squeezes. I counted to three and we leapt down together, landing with a combined grunt. She gave a single squeeze to tell me she was okay, and I led us away.

The debris narrowed the street until it brushed my shoulders on either side, so I went first. I kept my spear pointed ahead and tucked under my left arm, while my right arm was held behind me to maintain my link with her.

We emerged onto the beach. The acidic stench of burnt plastic and electronics reached my nostrils. I wrinkled my nose and pressed forwards.

“Ugh, the smell of evil,” Maybelle said.

Close enough, I thought. We circled the wreck, dipping our heels in the warm water. The ship was a luxury skimmer. It had a sharp nose like a fox’s and sleek body. Two short, rigid wings extended out its sides to engine pods. Except one wing had folded beneath the wreck. The other stuck into the air, its engine leaking dark oil into the ground. The cockpit was polarized so we couldn’t see within.

I grabbed my other best tool from my pack; a crowbar. The heat-resistant paint had peeled around my hands and the tip. The cockpit had been jarred loose and there were plenty of gaps. I jammed the crowbar in and grabbed the end. Maybelle came in and planted her hands under mine. We threw our bodies into it.

The cockpit groaned, then released its cargo with a final crack and a jolt that threw us down into the sand. Maybelle leapt up first. By the time I was up, she had her spear aimed at the cockpit.

The pilot wore a neon orange flight suit. She was slumped in her seat, brown blood dried around her eyes and nose. Already I could see her face purpling and smell the rot in her. I studied her suit and the writing. Where was she from? Where was there still civilization that hadn’t been consumed by the earth’s fury?

“The medicine bag should be behind her seat,” Maybelle said and climbed inside. The cockpit was barely big enough for two people but she went in headfirst and contorted herself around the seats.

I couldn’t help but grin at her long limbs kicking around to shove herself into the confines.

“Here we go!” Her triumphant grin blazed bright as she yanked the red bag free.

“There should be emergency rations too,” I said. I planted a foot on the empty copilot’s chair and leaned over the dashboard. I tried the navigation computer. It was splotchy with busted diodes but I clearly saw the outline of the Mississippi river and the northern states.

I felt frizzy hair tickle my shoulder. I shivered.

“Do you miss home?” she said.

“Maybe,” I said.

“It’s okay,” she said. Then she clambered up past me. “I couldn’t find any food.”

I felt around under the dashboard until the glove compartment popped free. Two black bunders came out and I snatched them up. “There. Emergency dried food. It’s not quite seal meat, but mmm,” I said.

“If we’re hungry enough It’ll be good,” she said. She perched on the edge of the dashboard, her sandals bending beneath her feet as she expertly held her balance. “Is that all we can get?”

“Yes,” I said.

“We should bury her. Her soul is just sitting there alone,” Maybelle said.

I looked from the dead pilot to the grey sky. I wondered if someone had set out to find the lost ship. The pilot had a few worry lines around her cheeks. Her brow was obscured by the visor and virtual reality viewset of her helmet. Her mouth was slack, as though she’d gone down impassively trying to right her craft and clear the hurricane to the very end.

“Let’s do something quick,” I said.

We buried her in a cairn debris and shoved a smashed landing strut straight down at the headspace. Maybelle locked us together again, and bowed her head. She muttered something under her breath.

I waited until we were on our way, fresh supplies and barter bait bouncing along our backs, before breaking the solemn silence.

“Maybelle, what did you say to her?” I said.

“I just asked her to not be stupid anymore and fly into storms,” Maybelle said in a soft, completely serious tone.

I nodded back. Simple and understandable. We headed on along the shore, Until it rose along the bones of a concrete building into a steep cliff. We clambered to the top, and were stunned by the brightness of the yellow rays.

“Wow,” I said. I stopped us short and wheeled around to look at the noon light. Dallas’ towers were child’s fingers reaching up to shield their eyes from the light. The city around them, a mess of smashed melons and running water. I was suddenly incredibly tired. So I sat down.

Maybelle sat down with me and clutched my hand into her lap. I found myself cold and shivering as I huddled up next to her. It was beautiful. The curve of her body hunched over, chin craned to survey the doom plains was beautiful.

“We’ll stay on this side of Dallas and go straight up. We can track the river until it leaves the city behind, right?” Maybelle said.

“Yeah definitely, the water will get purer after we pass it,” I said.

“There should be at least one tribe out there. Maybe there’ll be a rivertalker,” Maybelle said and looked at me sharply.

I looked back into her butterscotch brown eyes. She didn’t know what butterscotch was. I closed my eyes. I knew why the pilot had flown into a hurricane. Someone had ordered her to. I knew what they’d do if she’d refused.

“Is the rivertalker for the dead pilot?” I said.

“No. I want one to marry us, so our souls can be bound together forever,” she said. She leaned back and waited, worriedly, for me to come to her.

“Yes,” I said and came running. “I don’t ever want to return to whatever’s left of the steel peoples. I want to be with you forever.” I shivered harder as I severed all my last doubts.

She kissed me with wet, salty lips. I caught her cheeks and kissed her back just as hard. Her fingers gripped the sensitive insides of my elbows until my arms twitched. Beads of perspiration ran down my skin under my poncho, sending rivulets of mud trickling down to pool at the creases of my elbows, and at my waist.

A building somewhere in the distance groaned and imploded with a roar. Maybelle kissed me harder.

What a perfect place to be, I thought.

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