Doubting Days

I have these days, these doubting days. Days I doubt everything. They cripple me with hopelessness when they rear their ugly heads. The day Jax manifested the sickness was one. Each cough brought him closer to death, phlegm rolling from his soot-soaked lungs, displaced by the burrowing worms inside him.

Skipper wouldn’t allow him on the fisher, not with a cough, not with the lung.

“I’ll go,” I said.

Jax scowled from his cot but didn’t rise. He knew the truth. We both did. It wouldn’t usually stop him fighting me, but he’d never been this sick. His shoulders slumped, like the weight of our frugal lives overpowered him, or perhaps it was silent capitulation.

“You need food.” I wanted to rush over to him—to hold him. But, instead, I picked up Maddie and pulled her away.

She’d be fine, even near him. Her lungs were too young to let in the sickness. The soot would be working on them, though. Scratching, chiselling at their virgin membranes to create easy entry for the worms. They got everyone, eventually.

“I’ll be fine.” Jax tried to rise. He collapsed back, another wave of coughing taking hold of him.

He wouldn’t last until tomorrow, not without food. I’d seen it before—first father, then mother. I fingered her locket, tracing its heart shape. Maddie struggled against my hold, but I didn’t resist for long and let her go. She loved Jax more than me, but then, he was likeable. For a brother, he wasn’t bad. For a sister, I could be a bit sultry.

“I’ll go,” I repeated.

“You’ll never get a spot, Rul. Skipper needs lancers and hookers.”

Jax was a great lancer. Skipper always needed them because the beasts pulled them overboard, never seen again. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the build to be a lancer or a hooker.

“He might need a gutter,” I said. He wouldn’t—that was the safest job. They filleted the beast once the hookers had the catch aboard. Skipper’s family were all gutters. He looked after his own.

Jax didn’t reply. Maddie slowly edged toward him, not scared by his thunderous coughs but wary for sure. I turned away, pushing our corrugated sheeting up to sneak a peek outside. Black mist doused everything to grey. “No wind.”

“He won’t let you aboard.”

“Safer with no wind. He’ll let me aboard.”

Jax paled further. He rubbed soot from his forehead, which mixed with his sweat and smeared to a slurry. “You can’t. You mustn’t. Who will look after Maddie if…”

If you die? You aren’t going to die. I’ll get on that damn boat one way or another! I’ll get you food. “He never turns down baiters.”

Jax convulsed, his coughs rolling into one, sounding like a building crashing down. There was no point discussing it further. Without a share of beast meat, he’d die.

“Go,” Jax pleaded. “Take Maddie away from here. Find somewhere…”

He slumped back on his cot, his words swallowed by the worms. I pushed a metal sheet up and climbed out of our burrow. Soot hung in the air, dirty fog obscuring all. I adjusted to the gloom as my doubt swamped me and threatened to send me scurrying back underground. Instead, I fingered the locket again.

Give me strength, mother. Enough to get there.

I hated the soot, and I loved it. It killed us slowly, but it shielded us from the aliens, muddling their heatseekers—giving us time to get back underground. My time was running out. Eamon would leave soon. He’d be hanging around for Jax, and with good reason, because if he turned up at Skipper’s with my brother, chances were, Skipper would take him too. Yeah, Jax was that good.

Inhale, two, three, four. Exhale. My doubt subsided, but it lurked. It was a doubting day—it wouldn’t leave. I ran, threading my way through sludge-filled craters and rubble piles, all shades of grey, no shred of green. Even the sun shone hazily—a charcoal sky blurred grey on an invisible horizon.

“Jax, that you?” Eamon called up. “Fuck’s sake, hurry up. What kept you?”

Four filthy, upturned faces greeted me as I stood atop the stormway’s bank. Eamon’s raft resolved from the gloom. It was nothing special—a few oil cans strapped to a sheet of ply, but it would travel the storm drain fine and hide us from the drones. “Jax ain’t coming,” I said. “He sent me.”

Eamon’s cheery expression blackened like his surroundings. Jax was his talisman. I wasn’t. He glanced at his companions, and each shook their head. “No room,” he said, turned and lifted his pole, driving it into the sludge.

“Jax sent me,” I growled. “If I tell him you turned me—”

“If he ain’t here, he’s got the lung. If he’s got the lung…”

I scrambled down the bank. “I’ll be baiter. If you offer Skipper a baiter, he’ll take you for sure.”

Eamon pushed on his pole, propelling the raft partly into the drain. “Tell you what, you come back to mine tonight, an’ I’ll take you tomorrow. How’s that?”

“Jax needs food tonight. Fuck’s sake, Eamon. Let me on.”

“You know my price.” He glanced down at his friends. When he looked up, mischief filled the black lines of his face. “Tell you what, make it to the vent, and I’ll give you a free ride to Skipper’s.” He pushed off, and the raft vanished into the drain.

His price made me shiver. If Jax died, I might have to get used to it to feed Maddie. Jax couldn’t die. Food would give him the strength to fight back. I scrambled up the bank, crouched in the brush. It was a quarter of a mile to the vent. I’d be exposed to drone strikes all the way.

No time to think, Rul. Just bloody run.

I took off, jinking, falling into a panicked rhythm. The sooty air scratched at my lungs, but I didn’t care. You needed hope to want to live, and I’d been long bereft of that. I threaded my way through the rubble, scrambling up and down scree piles, snagging my pants on rebar, turning my ankle and springing up to compensate. My shoulders hunched, expecting lasers to light up the dirty air—waiting for that one searing burn that I’d feel for a fraction of a second.

As the yards vanished, as I began to think I might make it, the first laser struck. Its explosion hurled me forward. I instinctively tucked into a roll, then smashed into an old shop hoarding as they strafed me. The hoarding bounced me away, sent me into a shoulder flip, and I miraculously ended up on my feet.

Mother said her locket would bring me luck.

I threw myself under cover of a bombed-out multi-storey. More laser fire erased my path. My throat screamed for water, but I had no time to hunt puddles.

Come on, Rul!

Racing across the concrete, I burst from my cover and scrambled down a bank, clawing at the storm grate. “Eamon!”

“We’re here,” he called. “Jump down.”

“Sodding thing’s stuck.”

“Think a drone melted it.” His laugh bounced up the vent shaft. I punched the grate, regretted it, and howled in pain as Eamon’s cronies joined his laughter. “Skipper’s ain’t far,” his call echoed.

“Shit!” I didn’t hang around and headed for the bridge. Skipper’s place was over the river. Eamon would only have to paddle across. Time was running out. Ferals be damned, I had no choice.

I made it halfway across. The ferals allowed me that, knowing they’d trap me. The bastards weren’t much different to us. They lived a shit life, and the aliens targeted them too. But there was one defining characteristic that set us apart. They would eat anything, me included.

“No Jax today?” The leader wore a mask with tubes draped over his shoulders, supposedly going to an oxygen tank. There was no tank. His voice sounded metallic, probably been drinking from the iron ponds.

“He’s sick. Me too. Eat me, and you’ll get the worms, Lincoln.”

Two more Ferals dropped behind me. No way forward, no way back. Lincoln pushed his mask up. He smiled, teeth black with rot. “I’d eat you nice and slow, Rul, worms or no worms.” His sidekick flicked a thin steel rod out. It resembled an old aerial, probably was. The two behind me thumped their rebar clubs on the railings. No way forward, no way back. “Not today, Lincoln. Not ever.” I jumped the railings.

Freezing water folded around me, much thicker than puddles and ponds, clogged with leached soot. I sank mere feet, but my jump was suicide. The vibrations rippling through the river’s sludgy lattices would attract beasts. I swam for the surface. Something grabbed me in the swirling gloom, pulling me up and out.

“Shit, Rul, don’t you give up?” Eamon growled.

I vomited black sludge. “Jax needs food.”

Eamon pumped the pole for all he was worth. “Every bloody beast will be zeroing in on us.”

I pushed my fingers through my matted hair. “I make a good baiter.”

Eamon didn’t answer. He cared for me in some insidious saviour and protector way, but I’d never make a good damsel in distress.

The sooty mist dissipated as if Skipper’s place was some radiant heaven. Grey sky shone through the black soot, a rare sight. Good omen? I doubted it—doubted everything.

Skipper’s huge fisher loomed. It could sail beyond the soot, out into the white mists. I’d heard that the water was clear there, but you couldn’t drink it. Eamon drew his raft alongside a pontoon, and we all jumped off except Crafty. He’d guard the raft—had a cushy number.

Twenty-odd folks surrounded Skipper’s fisher, but there wasn’t a straight set of shoulders among them. Eamon bullied his way to the front. I tried, but ranks closed fast. Skipper had his boot on the fisher’s gunwale and wore his usual floppy hat that restrained his wild hair. “No Jax?” he growled.

“I’ll step up to his spot,” Eamon shouted.

“’Course you will,” Skipper said and rolled a phlegm-filled gob over the fisher’s side.

“I’ll be baiter!” My offer drew silence.

Fisher pointed. “No need. Got a free baiter today.”

A man hung from the boat’s stern. Black veins riddled his skin, pulsing as he struggled. He’d be dead soon. Whichever way took him would be agonizing. Skipper selected his crew. He didn’t need a baiter.

I crouched as the other rejects wandered away. Lincoln’s gang would be covering the exits. The fisher sped away, churning black water. I stayed, incapable of processing the rejection, the defeat—even Eamon’s proposal. Fog played with my shattered emotions, refusing to hide the receding fisher from me. I had nothing to show for my efforts—no food for Maddie nor dying Jax. My doubting day had proved well-founded.

Eamon’s smug face looked back at me, revelling in my failure. He’d invite me to his for a meal tonight. If I wanted to eat, wanted to sneak some food into my pocket so Maddie and Jax could eat too, I’d have to go. He’d demand something in return. My skin crawled in anticipation.

I retrieved my mother’s locket from inside my sock and turned it between my fingers.

Where’s the luck you promised me?

Eamon looked up. A hazy shadow passed over the fisher. He stared back at me, but no gloat painted his expression. My heart stopped. A flash blinded me, quickly followed by its inevitable explosion. When my vision returned, it was blotches of grey speckled with glittering amber.

I took a stuttering breath and opened the lucky locket. My mother stared back, trapped in the trinket.

I needed her.

Eamon was dead, Skipper too. Jax would die, that much was inevitable, and hunger would force Maggie and me to move on.

I needed my mother to calm my doubting days.