Forty Thousand in Gehenna

He wept. He did not know it until he felt the wind on his face turn the tears cold. He looked back from time to time at the glow which marked the end of what he knew.

And if the calibans would hunt them further, if they had a mind to, he knew nowhere that they were safe. He only hoped they would forget. Calibans did, or seemed to, sometimes.

xvii

The Town

The snap of wires, flares in the dark–there was screaming, above all the commotion of people ru

They surged at the gates, at the wire, but the Base never saw them.

“Open up,” Dean cried, screamed, lost among the others. “Open the gates–”

But the Base would not. Would never open the gates at all, to let a rabble pour into their neat concrete gardens, come too near their doors, bring their tradecloth rags and their stink and their terror. Dean knew that before the others believed it. He turned away, ran, panting, crying at once, stopped in a clear place and looked over his shoulder at nightmare–

–at a seam opening in the earth, at houses begi

A renewed screaming rang out.

The rift kept travelling.

And suddenly in the dark and the floodlights a monstrous head thrust up out of the earth.

Dean ran, everything abandoned, the way the calibans themselves had opened, across the ruined fields.

Once, at screams, a thin and pitiful screaming from behind, he looked back; and many of the lights had gone out, but such as were left shone on a puff of smoke, a billowing cloud amid the tall concrete buildings of main Base…and there was a building less than there had been.

The calibans were under the foundations of the Base. The Base itself was falling.

He ran, in terror, ran and ran and ran. He was not the only one to pass the wires. But he stayed for no one, found no companion, no friend, nothing, only drove himself further and further until he could no longer hear the screams.

xviii

In the Hills

They found him in the morning, among the rocks; and Cloud raised his bow, an arrow aimed across the narrow stream–because everything had become an enemy. But the townsman, wedged with his back to the rocks, only lifted a hand as if that could stop a flint‑headed arrow and stared at them so bleakly, so wearily that Cloud lowered the bow and put the arrow away.

“Who are you?” Cloud asked when they squatted across the narrow stream from each other, while his sister Pia and his wife and son tended ma Elly, bathing her face and holding water for her to drink. “What name?”

“Name’s Dean,” the other said, hoarse, crouching there on his side with his arms about his knees and his fine town clothes in rags.

“Name’s Cloud,” Cloud said; and Dal came beside him and handed him some of the food they had brought, while the stranger sat across the stream just looking at them, not asking.

“He’s hungry,” Pia said. “We give him just a bit.”

Cloud thought about it, and finally took a morsel of bread and held it out to the townsman on his side.

The man unwound himself from his crouch and got up and waded across the stream. He took the bit they offered him and sank down again, and ate the bread very slowly. Tears started from his eyes, ran down his face, but there was never expression on it, never a real focus to his eyes.

“You come from town,” ma Elly said.

“Town’s gone,” he said.

There was none of them could think of what to say then. Town had always been, rich and powerful.

“Base buildings fell,” he said. “I saw it.”

“We go south,” Cloud said finally.

“They’ll hunt us,” Pia said.

“We go down the coast,” Cloud said, thinking through it, where the food was, where they could be sure of fresh water, streams coming to the sea.

“South is a big river,” said Dean in a quiet voice. “I know.”

They took the townsman with them. They found others as they went, some of their own kin, some that were only townsmen who had run far enough and fast enough–like themselves, those who could run, and those who would run, for whatever reason.

Others drifted to them, and sometimes calibans came, but kept their distance.

xix

Message from Gehe