Chapter 10

“I’m always loneliest when the room is full.”

Light. Pain. Dan’s eyes felt like they’d split in half. Andrew had hardly cracked the door open, but it burned like a wildfire. Dan retreated into the blackest corner he could find and cowered. For ten minutes, the men moaned, masking their eyes. But eventually, the fire faded. They forced their hands off their faces and waited until they could stand it.

With the sun hurting less and less each second, Andrew marched up to the door and kicked it open. The extra light stung again, but now Dan could see the side of a concrete wall a few meters away; it was the other side of the tunnel, now marked with long black streaks of ash across its face, which faded the further into the tunnel they went.

Dan stepped out. Slowly, he turned to the right.

Where once had stood flowers, grass, and trees, a place where slow breezes had swayed boughs of endelwood and oak, there lay a pile of ash. Trees had lost their green, shriveled into black twigs. In place of flowerbeds lay rows of brown strings, and when Dan lifted his legs, he left footprints in a thin layer of white powder that covered the street. In fact, that powder had poured into every crack and puncture in every surface as far as he could see.

But beyond that—OldMouth.

It was the ash after a bonfire. The glassy stare after the breathing stops. OldMouth Bay, the neon city, where Dan had grown up, where he’d met every friend he ever had, where he’d toiled to build his life, where he’d failed, where Father had killed himself. It lay dead under the dark grey sky. Its buildings had shrugged off their flesh, turned to crumbled steel skeletons, devoid of glass or brick. All of it lay before the horizon, where the Rings disappeared—their reddening tint brought fiery light to every corner of the city, and though he could only see the skyline, Dan knew nothing remained. Not Tannerson’s, not Gretcheldson and Smarg, not Phillips and Moriarty, and not his own home. The beggars in their tents, the Lords in their towers—their corpses all dotted that black monument to death itself.

The countryside fared no better than the city. Even the bay was ruined, as slag and soot had smothered the water in a blanket so thick, one would struggle to tell a hill from a wave. And every tree, endelwood or no, had decayed into smoldering cinders and that damned white powder. And it was all Dan’s fault. That cursed blood in his veins had tainted him with the legacy of his sinful kinsmen. Those freaks who had lobbed their Anarchist weapons into his beloved homeland. Andrew might have blamed the King, but that was a treasonous thought. No one could have done this but those fucking monsters. How dare he resemble them? How dare he?

Dan blinked a tear away. He blinked again, but it didn’t stop the stream from dribbling down his chin. Trying to hold his tears back didn’t work, so he rubbed his eyes raw instead. He would have just stood there forever, but Andrew didn’t let him. The financier took a step, fists clenched, and started walking down the road.

Wordlessly, Dan followed. They didn’t bother to check their cars for valuables—or even look upon them for a moment. Dan tried to avoid staring off the overhang, into the distance—but Andrew seemed powerless to look anywhere else.

The two men hiked in silence for ages. They shuffled like drones, sluggish and drained. As soon as he’d started moving, Dan’s stomach had curled up and wailed like a dog, but he could go on for now. Andrew, however, had begun to shamble. But he didn’t let his face show the strain, or any other trouble at all—he’d put on a crinkled smile, one that fell down every few minutes until he remembered to put it back up again. Dan had to keep Andrew’s turgid pace, but even though they moved slow, they still moved.

With dull eyes, Dan scanned the horizon. Far off north, perhaps hundreds of kilometers away, a wall of thick smoke curled into the sky. Forests still burned in the distance. The blast must’ve set them alight—in such a dry season, nothing could stop the blaze. Only a few scant patches of forest had stayed green, and most of them were on the coast. To the south was another smoke-wall. But smoke didn’t peek over the mountain’s peak, eastward. Like a great shield, the mountain had halted the heat. It wouldn’t help, in the end—in a week or two, fires from Brandyhead and Wennol would reach the mountain. The trees would burn. Perhaps, he thought, the endelwood would shrug off the flames and regrow by the spring—they might just seize the Mits in the pathmen’s absence. If not, the entire continent would become ash.

Neither fate would be better than the other—just the sort of cruel joke Mother liked. Somewhere, Dan swore he could hear her cackle.

Twenty minutes and a half a kilometer into their journey, the two men noticed a single car in the center of the road. A one-seater like Dan’s, turned sallow by flames. Andrew swallowed and looked away, breathing heavily. He reached out and grasped Dan’s shoulder, but then drew his hands back to himself. In the end, they’d have to pass it, whether it was empty or—occupied. So, they took tentative steps toward the car, as if it would rev up and barrel them over any second. When they got close enough, they hissed and shot their eyes away. The car had a passenger. Hands clutching the steering wheel, the dead thing rested its hairless head on the horn. A man or a woman, who could tell? What remained of its skin was black and cracked, stretched out like leather on a couch. Its clothes were tatters, melted around its shoulders and hips, fusing with the flesh. What remained of its eyes were dark balls suspended by wiry nerves. Dan couldn’t look away. Couldn’t stop guessing who it was—he’d never be able to tell. And the smell—it was meat. Just meat. Sizzled grease and melted fat. Like a pork cutlet somebody dropped into a fire.

If he’d spoken to Mother for two more minutes, or stopped by the pathmen’s work-truck, or checked around Valton, he would have smelled the same way. That corpse—that person—might have been trying to get to the same tunnel. And if they’d driven just a bit faster, Dan might’ve had another companion.

Dan looked away, ready to leave it behind, but Andrew just stood there. He’d clamped his hand over his mouth and refused to let go. The skin around his eyes went red as he bent down, ready to spill his stomach. Dan reached down, but he stopped. He wasn’t sure what to do—hug the man, drag him up by his arms, or turn away. So instead, Dan sat down and waited.

After ten minutes, Andrew staggered to his feet. He turned away from the car, stiff-legged. Soon enough, the men had passed beyond sight of it. But as meters became kilometers, one car became two, and three, and four—they even passed the pathmen’s broken-down work-truck. Despite himself, Dan couldn’t help but stare through each window they passed. Some had small bodies inside—children, surely. Others had open doors, with corpses huddled in rotting piles outside. He ignored Andrew’s quiet whimpering when they passed by. Sometimes he had to ignore whimpers of his own.

Eventually, they rounded a sharp corner, perhaps a half-kilometer from Valton. On the other side were the crumbled remains of a two-story house. Most of its structure had burnt away, and only half of the bottom floor remained. The bones of the roof and upper floors had come to rest on the ground in a delicate slant. All around lay broken glass and black wood, dipped in dried puddles of vinyl siding.

Andrew walked over and peered through the fractured doorway. “Alright,” he said. “I think I’ve had enough.”

Dan stopped and crossed his arms, not sure what he ought to say. With tight lips, Dan finally let himself speak. “Well,” he said, “if you want to talk about it…”

“Great! See, Dan,” he said in a strange, light voice, “I actually knew the people who lived in there. A couple. A man and his wife.”

“Mr. Phillips, I didn’t know—”

“Call me Andrew.” With that, Andrew spread his lips apart in a twitching grin. “So, three days ago, before any of this happened, the man and his wife went to bed early. They’re deep sleepers, see. Couldn’t wake up if you beat them with a stick. Turns out, they slept through the whole bombing!”

When Dan raised his brow, Andrew’s smile widened.

“The man woke up the next day, and he rolls over sees his wife is all burnt up. He says ‘Honey, are we dead?’ and she looks up and says, ‘It’s the end of the world, dummy! Of corpse we’re dead!’”

The two men stared at each other. Neither moved.

Dan coughed a chortle. Andrew’s lips tightened and burst with a puff of air. Bending over in agony, Dan laughed. Andrew joined him, practically screaming. Tears streamed down Dan’s face as he doubled over, slapping his side.

The men howled themselves all the way down the mountain.

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