The Seeds of New Earth

  THE SILENT EARTH

  BOOK TWO

  Mark R. Healy

  Copyright © Mark R. Healy 2014

  markrhealy.com

  Cover Art Copyright © Mark R. Healy 2014

  Editing by Clio Editing Services

  clioediting.com

  Terms and Conditions:

  The purchaser of this book is subject to the condition that he/she shall in no way resell it, nor any part of it, nor make copies of it to distribute freely.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.

  Part One

  Sow

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  Part Two

  Reap

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Part One

  Sow

  1

  The flashlight was starting to give out. It threw a murky yellow disc across the pavement, enough to accentuate the shadows in the street but little else – a poor excuse for illumination. As I watched, it winked and then went out.

  Thumping it in my hand, I tried to jolt it back to life as if hammering on the chest of one whose heart had stopped. It was no use.

  The motion of my feet ceased and I listened. Something out there was watching me.

  This wasn’t the first time I’d felt it. In the past weeks I’d experienced this same feeling before – an indefinable knowing that I wasn’t alone, that there was some kind of presence nearby and that it observed me, not unlike a hawk watching a mouse in a field. I felt that any minute now it would decide that it had waited long enough, that it had finished toying with me and now the game was over, that there was no more satisfaction for it to derive from this pursuit. It was time to end it, to swoop down with a wordless shriek, to rip and tear at my innards with talons and a wickedly curved beak until the light went out of my eyes.

  I fought to push that idea from my mind. Imagination was a dangerous thing at times.

  High above, the stars were coming out. The last breath of the day was spent, manifested by a cool breeze that eddied around my ankles and flapped at the folds of my jacket like the hands of an invisible assailant. I pressed my fingers to my chest. The fabric fought to squeeze between them, to cast itself at the mercy of the wind, but as suddenly as the breeze had arrived, it was gone. The fabric went limp and the street quietened as the last wisps receded across the concourse.

  This was a city without people. The humans who had built it had perished long ago, and now it was an empty husk where the sound of their voices was but a memory.

  I still thought of them often. My creators. I’d outlived them by many years, but still yearned for their return, to hear the reassuring sounds of their feet echoing in these streets again, to hear their voices. After so many years I’d had enough of traipsing this place alone.

  But now I wasn’t alone. Something other than me was flitting between the shadows, unseen. I could sense it. And it was anything but reassuring.

  I took a few quiet steps along the asphalt. There was a rustling in the gloom that seemed to mimic every movement I made, as if the thing out there was a shadow, masking its own motions in the furtive stirring of my own. A predatory thing that stalked me with great cunning and patience, waiting for the right time to strike.

  Marauders? No, it wasn’t them. They would have come at me already by now, brandishing their machetes and screaming promises of violence as they thundered along the street. They would have taken me by force, not by patiently abiding in the darkness.

  I hooked my thumbs under the straps at my shoulders and tugged them forward, the weight of the backpack transferring snugly to the curve of my back. With that secure, I ducked into a crouch and moved rapidly to the alleyway nearby, poking my head discreetly around the corner to survey its narrow confines.

  Overhead, threadbare cables stretched between apartments and along the walls like cobwebs, disappearing in and out of gaping voids and crisscrossing into the upper reaches of the tenements, where one thick strand dangled vertically, swinging idly back and forth in little oscillations like a hangman’s noose.

  Was this place truly hiding secrets from me, or was I just afraid of my own shadow, creating imaginary spectres in order to frighten myself? Tricks of the mind to alleviate the loneliness.

  As if in answer I heard a noise down the alleyway, a rasping, drawn-out scrape like a blunt knife being dragged across wood. I shied backward involuntarily, then, edging forward, peered down the alleyway again. There was nothing moving, nothing altered since I had last looked.

  I could leave now and be on my way, make my way home while there was still enough light to see, make it to the security of four walls and shelter from the evening chill. That was the safe option, the easy option. It was probably also the prudent choice.

  I knew that it would gnaw at me, though, the source of this unknown presence that seemed to monitor my every movement. It would dog me as I fled home, as I lay in the darkness of the house, watching the windows for signs of movement. It would be waiting in the morning when I stepped back into the sunlight and looked out across the city, teasing me.

  It would eat me up, knowing that I’d had a chance to unravel the mystery and had failed to take it.

  I needed to go after it.

  Slinking away from my place of concealment I shuffled down the alleyway. The wind stirred again, ruffling little flaps of garbage at my feet, and I noted that among them were the decaying remains of those who had died in the Winter, their forms now nothing more than mounds of brittle grey bones entangled in scraps of clothing. An undignified kind of resting place, I thought remotely, but one that I had seen all too often in my travels. I had mourned for so many of them over the years, understanding the pain of what they must have gone through, but now was not the time for such sentimentality. I needed to focus.

  A wooden doorway appeared on my right, bent and broken inward, within which I could see a staircase leading up into the dimness of the building. I stood and listened. Drifting down the stairwell, I thought I could detect the barest hint of that scratching and rasping I’d heard before, permeating the quiet. Something moving, sneaking about.

  I pushed forward, noisily kicking and bashing through the remains of the door, then stopped to listen to determine if the racket had elicited a response from above.

  Nothing. All was quiet.

  My boots brushed against the steps and I began to ascend. Almost immediately I heard it again – the scraping. It was louder, closer, more defined. I was closing in on it.

  With more urgency, I thumped my way up onto the next floor and out into a long, dark hallway. In the gloom I could make out the mottled and cracked form of the walls and ceiling where paint had peeled away, the flakes collecting on the bare floor in chunky strips like an accretion of fallen leaves. Half a dozen doorways lined either side, disappearing at the end of the passageway where it fed into the tenebrous innards of the building.

  The noise abruptly stopped.

  I clenched my fist involuntarily, unsure of what to do. Was
it lying in wait behind one of these doors, its breath stilled, poised to strike should it be cornered? Had it laid a trap somewhere and now patiently waited for me to fall into it? Or had it found itself at a dead end, standing there helplessly as I closed in?

  I’d come this far, and I’d never been this close to capturing it, to discovering the nature of it.

  Don’t turn back now.

  I entered the passageway, the paint chips crackling as they yielded under my boots, my jaw set firmly, my synthetic muscles coiled and ready to respond to whatever might cross my path. I paused at the first doorway, my hand hovering over the knob. I grasped it gently and twisted. It was locked.

  Further down I could see that only one of the doors in the passageway was open. Listening at the first door for a moment longer, I heard nothing. I kept going.

  Pausing briefly at each entrance, I listened for sounds of movement, for that distinctive scraping noise, but it seemed to have retreated. I could no longer find any trace of it. Had I lost the watcher, or was it still here, having fallen silent?

  I reached the open door and looked through, into the room beyond. Inside it was brighter than the hallway, and as I eased across the threshold I saw the dull light from outside spilling in through an open window. The room itself was in tatters, a small bed rotting away in one corner and a filthy, dirt-smeared kitchenette in the other. The darkened recess of a lavatory appeared as I entered further, but it was empty.

  I moved across to the window and looked out into the street, the cool evening breeze caressing my face. There was no movement out there. Gripping the windowsill I leaned out more, craning my neck this way and that, but could see nothing aside from the great concrete and steel expanse of the city and the stars above.

  As I leaned back inside, my fingertips brushed something sharp, and I looked down. The wooden frame of the windowsill had been splintered and gouged, with four distinct gaps lined out across it like great claw marks. Something had come through here. Something had gone out.

  Lifting my hands away and brushing at the splinters of wood that clung to my skin, I realised it had eluded me, stealing off into the night and out of my reach. Whatever purpose it had in mind, whatever its reasons for following me, would remain a mystery for now, for once again it had managed to stay out of my reach.

  This game of cat and mouse wouldn’t last forever. There would come a time when it grew tired of waiting. One day soon I’d find it, or it would find me.

  2

  As luck would have it, the light that filtered down from the half moon was enough for me to find my way through the hushed and darkened streets. There were moments when it slipped behind clouds or the bulk of skyscrapers, inky black and immense against the starry sky, obliging me to pick my way along more carefully. On the whole my progress was adequate. I’d been confronted by conditions worse than this in my time and still found my way.

  Upon clearing the downtown district I was able to look out upon the moonlit sprawl of the outer suburbs from a rise, seeing clusters of dim shapes where low-rise apartment buildings and houses all melded together into one wrinkled tapestry. At this time of night I couldn’t see the decay, the extent of the ruin, but I knew it was there. This place that I would have once called beautiful had now been ravaged by war and by the Winter and left to slowly crumble away. Those curves and glistening surfaces, the perfect lines and architectural marvels, were now jagged and unrecognisable caricatures. That was the way of the world I now found myself in.

  I knew this path out into the northern suburbs well. I had travelled it many times before and could almost have made it without the aid of any light whatsoever. I instinctively knew all the turns and the bumps, all the obstacles, and my body responded without hesitation, eating up the kilometres with essentially the same assuredness I would have exhibited in broad daylight. My footsteps echoed through abandoned neighbourhoods, the sounds chasing each other along walls and through empty building interiors like wraiths fleeing into the night.

  A lonely place, one with an awful and desolate past, but not one without the promise of something greater. There was a future in these broken structures, I thought adamantly, a chance for something beyond these decrepit remains. That was why I was here, after all, the reason I’d been created: to restore life to this desolate world. If I could fulfil the potential within me and make those changes a reality, then maybe one day soon these streets would be alive again with more than just shadows and lonely echoes.

  It wasn’t long until I reached the gentle swell of Somerset Drive and saw the reassuring glow of home, the hazy yellow light scattering from the windows and out into the street. In the front yard, where once a neatly manicured lawn might have resided, now stood tall strands of wheat, shifting in the breeze and made golden by the splash of light from inside. As was my ritual, I allowed my fingers to skim across the soft tips as I followed the narrow pathway that led up to the door, the heads of the wheat bending under my palms and then springing back into place in my wake.

  I turned the handle of the door and stepped lightly inside, and Arsha looked up from where she stood bent over a steaming pot in the kitchen. A look of relief passed across her face and she favoured me with a little smirk.

  “Finally,” she said, pausing with a metal sieve in her hand as curls of steam drifted around her face. “What happened, you get lost?”

  I closed the door behind me and shrugged the backpack onto one shoulder, grinning. I considered telling her about the incident in the city: the strange noises, the pursuit, the unknown watcher. I hadn’t mentioned anything about it before on those previous occasions I’d sensed it following me, not wanting to worry her unnecessarily. For all I knew, there was nothing out there but figments of my imagination, illusions that had been conjured up for no good reason. She sensed my hesitation and her brow furrowed as she watched me moving over to the old blue sofa by the wall.

  “Nah,” I said affably, dropping down onto a lumpy cushion and sliding the backpack between my legs. “You know me. I just get carried away looking around.”

  She continued to stare at me for a moment longer, assessing my response, then gave a little amused shake of her head.

  “Yeah, you’ve been known to do that, Brant.”

  She seemed satisfied with that vague explanation, so I left it at that. There would be time later to tell her about whatever it was that was stalking me should it manifest into something more substantial than ghosts and shadows.

  “I made a good find, anyway,” I went on, unzipping the backpack and reaching inside.

  “Oh?” She placed the sieve down and moved around from behind the kitchen counter to get a clearer look. The steam had coated her face in a sheen of moisture that glimmered in the candlelight, appearing almost like human sweat. She brushed at it with her wrists, avoiding contact with her grubby fingers, and swept it back into her auburn hair which she’d tied behind her head in a ponytail.

  Amusingly, she gave off the appearance of an old-fashioned housewife preparing dinner for her husband, an image that couldn’t be further from the truth. Someone with Arsha’s drive and ambition would never settle for such an ordinary existence. She was far better suited to tireless research in a lab somewhere, or climbing the corporate ladder, making great discoveries and efficiently organising high-level methods and procedures. It was hard to even picture her falling in love with a man and attempting to build a life with him. There had never seemed to be room in her thoughts for romance, even before the world had imploded.

  These domestic chores made her seem like a fish out of water, like a brilliant scientist cleaning toilets for a living.

  “What are you grinning about?” she said.

  “Uh, nothing. Here, have a look.” I gently pulled out a grey disc about the diameter of a dinner plate, its rounded shape bulging outward in the centre and tapering at the edges. It was coated in a scuffed rubbery exterior and was heavier than it looked, almost as weighty as a comparably sized lump of concrete. I lifted it a
nd held it out to Arsha.

  “Another solar cell,” she said appreciatively, clasping it between her wrists so as not to smear mashed soybean across it. “That’s definitely a good find.” After a moment she glanced down doubtfully at me. “Where’s your flashlight? You weren’t wandering around in the dark again, were you?”

  I pulled the flashlight out and began to unscrew the battery compartment. “These batteries are shot. I hardly get anything out of them anymore.”

  “That’s no excuse, Brant,” she admonished. “You shouldn’t be creeping around at night. You’re going to hurt yourself out there with nothing to light your way.”

  I shrugged, taking the cell as she handed it back to me. “I know my way around. I can look after myself.”

  She scowled and stalked back over to the kitchen, returning to her task of forcing soybeans through the sieve and into a bowl.

  Arsha and I were like siblings, I thought as I watched her, sharing a close platonic bond that did not trespass into the realms of deeper affection. We were like any brother and sister living together: frequent to argue, not always seeing eye to eye, but deep down caring and respectful of each other.

  She was also like a bossy older sister in most ways, chiding me when I stepped outside her expectations. I went along with it for the most part, not wanting to create unnecessary friction.

  “I know you can look after yourself,” she said. “I’d just hate to see something happen to you when tomorrow…” She trailed off and dropped the sieve down into the bowl. “Well, you know what’s at stake tomorrow.”

  I ran my thumb idly along the edge of the power cell, staring back at her.

  “So we’re definitely going ahead?” I said warily. “You’re sure about that?”

  She nodded. “I am now. I’ve reviewed the data on the cryotank, and I agree with you. We need to get started as soon as possible.”