Unholy Ground

We gather by the city’s dead eye.

‘It used to be a ride before it fell,’ says the salesman, cigarette smoke curling from between his lips, ‘before everything crumbled. An amusement. People used to come and go up into the sky and look down at it all.’

We look out across the filthy river that the enormous, creaking wheel has collapsed into. The water laps at it, bindweed and ivy trail from it, the once white metal now rusted but somehow still skeletal.

‘Up?’ asks the expectant mother, ‘in the sky?’

The salesman shrugs. ‘Just what I heard.’

My companions to be turn their gaze back to the road and the riverbank checkpoint. I let my own gaze linger, continuing to stare, screwing my bootheels into the dirt road. This fractured amusement-cum-ruin is supposed to serve as our bridge, over the river and into the Flux.

It is waiting for us. On the opposite bank. I was warned not to stare, but I now play a game with myself, trying to catch the tell-tale haze and shift where the cracks in reality fight each other.

I have started to develop headaches.

There are perhaps ten of us, all waiting patiently, some for almost a week. The militia do not let us cross. Even amongst the broken remains of the capital, there is a timetable to respect.

Most of our number are caravan guards and wagonhands travelling with the salesman. He says he is bringing cloth and alcohol to the eastern settlements. The shabby pack-cows are draped with strings of clinking bottles and animal hides and it is only when he examines the supplies yet again that I begin to doubt his story.

The expectant mother has several books in half-decent condition and shares chapters with anyone wishing to listen. I enjoyed the tale of the serving girl and her pearl but it made the militia uncomfortable and they confiscated it.

And I am there as well, waiting patiently for the last member of our disparate party. I was warned not to share my name and I am relieved that no one else has tried to share theirs.

There is gentle commotion as a figure rounds the corner of an empty tower and walks towards us down the streets. They are empty this close to the river and the Flux and the figure picks their way around abandoned vehicles and through the long grass that has forced itself upwards through the tarmac.

The Wayfinder has finally arrived. As she draws near, I feel my heart sink.

‘This is who is leading us through the Flux?’ The salesman is incredulous. ‘She’s… she’s…’

‘Ancient,’ says the expectant mother. She puts her head in her hands.

She is tanned and weather-beaten, her hair as white and fine as mist, wearing battered boots, battered jeans and a West Ham football shirt. She is hunched beneath a rucksack almost as large as she is.

When she finally reaches us, the Wayfinder leans on her walking pole, grinning. The smile spreads wide, her eyes nearly vanishing behind the folds of her papery skin, her beaming mouth nearly toothless.

‘Right,’ she says, ‘which of your sorry lot wants to go into hell first?’

There is bureaucracy to be done, so there is bargaining and there is bickering.

The checkpoint militia are suddenly in action, demanding paperwork and checking belongings. Rifles are not raised but seem to be made more obvious. The gunner in the tank makes a show of loading the old maxim-gun mounted in front of him and begins scanning for whatever the soldiers might consider ‘trouble’.

Papers are read, corrected, stamped, torn, discarded, re-written.

‘Purpose of crossing?’ I am asked.

‘Communication.’

‘Sanctioned or unofficial?’

‘Unofficial.’ I show him the letters I am to deliver. ‘They have all paid for privacy.’ I show him the stamps and marks on the tattered envelopes.

The soldier withdraws the hand that was hovering over a knife. ‘Fine. One less thing for me to arse about with. Any biological materials other than your personage?’

‘No.’

‘Any mutations?’

The questions go on. I am patted down, my satchel upended and clumsily repacked. I have no weapon. I make my living by being quick enough to run from trouble. Eventually, I am waved through to a corral full of beasts of burden and anxious faces.

There is a scuffle behind me.

‘Let go!’

The expectant mother is clutching a hunting rifle to her chest, but her child-filled belly is getting in the way and it keeps slipping from her grip. The Master Sergeant is attempting to pull it from her. Two soldiers have rifles pointed at her.

‘You have not declared it,’ the Master says, ‘it doesn’t cross with you.’

‘I need it.’

‘Madam, I…’

There is a thump and a groan as the expectant mother heaves the butt of the rifle into the master’s gut. As he curls up, the soldiers snarl warnings and cock their weapons. As she brings the nose of her own rifle up into the master’s face, the mother roars.

‘I have two children inside me and all I am asking for is seven bullets and a fucking trigger to protect them!’

There is silence. I am bewitched and terrified of the rage burning in her eyes. It is clear and potent. Beautiful. I cannot help but feel our chances of surviving the Flux are a little better with a fire like that amongst our number.

The Master wheezes as he straightens up, but he gestures for the other soldiers to lower their weapons. As he catches his breath, his eyes dart over her paperwork and a finger taps at a particular line.

‘Margaret, is it?’

The mothers’ eyes narrow. ‘Maggie.’

‘Maggie, I apologise. I know this is stressful. I know there are dangers awaiting you. You yourself have additional concerns. The United Governments of Britain do not have an issue with a person wishing to defend themselves against danger. We do have issue with unregistered protections.’

There is a sound of disdain from Maggie.

‘But’ the Master continues, ‘for a nominal fee, we can assure you proceed unhindered.’

‘What?’

‘A bribe, pet,’ says the Wayfinder, cheerfully, ‘he’s asking for a bribe.’

‘Oh for…’ Maggie drops the rifle to the ground to rest against her leg. She rummages in her coat, pulls out a purse and removes a sheath of paper notes from it. She slaps them down on the desktop and glares at the Master before pushing her way into the corral.

I am fully aware that each of us has paid these soldiers for the privilege of entering an area that will likely harm or kill us. I am aware that none of these soldiers will come with us into the Flux. Where I come from, far to the west, we only recognise the authority of the government and its militia when they are there, before us, tangible with the fully loaded weapons and vehicles full of fuel that they refuse to share. They say they still hold authority, still keep the peace, but their insistence and their grandstanding has made me a doubter.

I watch as the master take the payment and begin to count it.

I wish that I had not learnt the mother’s name.

Those who venture across the river and into the Flux should not know the names of the dead.

We are waiting once more.

I sit at the river’s edge and stare. The salesman claims he sees things moving in the streets. No-one else can. Or perhaps no one admits that they can. The buildings, empty, forlorn and crumbling, seem to flicker or to bubble at their edges, as though they are hot enough to boil away into the sky.

I sit and I stare until my eyes hurt.

Someone claps me on the back of my head.

‘You’ll get a headache doing that,’ says the Wayfinder.

‘As I would being struck,’ I reply.

She chuckles. It is a strangely pleasing sound, like a shovel digging into good soil. ‘This’d be your first crossing, would it pet?’ she asks.

I nod. ‘I suppose the experienced don’t stare at it.’

‘Oh, they do,’ she says, sitting down beside me. She unburdens herself of her pack and begins to remove objects from within; several small things wrapped carefully in string and cloth, an odd leather harness, a series of plastic poles. ‘It’s hard not to stare at something like that.’

I ask the question before I can stop myself.

‘What’s in there?’ I say, ‘What is it?’

‘Good question,’ The Wayfinder begins to assemble a frame from the poles, attaching it to the harness. ‘I’ve no idea. People claim to. But all we really know is that it’s not the only one. Patches of unholy ground the world over.’

I have never heard it referred to that way before.

‘What I can tell you,’ She says, as she screws poles together, ‘is that the laws of the world sort of… break down in there. Up is down, left is right, light is dark. Explosions from nowhere. Stone can turn soft then back again. It can get very messy.’

‘How do we cross it?’

She gestures to the rig and puts it on. ‘Help me, will you?’

I assist her in attaching a number of odd charms and trinkets to several hooks on the frame. There is a lightbulb, an iron screw and bolt, a string of copper pennies, a dead mouse. She directs me to make sure a heart shaped locket in bright yellow gold is directly in front of her eyes. They all dangle about her head like a bizarre mobile over a child’s crib.

‘Long time ago,’ she says, ‘I taught science in a school. Reactions. Changes. It’s all about reactions and changing. Decomposition. Oxidation. Combustion!’

She points to the dangling charms, one by one. ‘That one starts to rust, it means we need to run. That one starts to rot, we better hold our breath and run. That one catches fire, we close our eyes and run. There’s a lot of running in the Flux. Hah!’

She takes the golden locket between her thumb and forefinger and rubs it gently, almost kindly. ‘This one though… Interesting thing about gold is that it doesn’t do much. Looks pretty. Shiny. Melts down, but it’s mostly inert.’

‘So if the locket starts to change…’

‘We’re in fucking trouble.’

We sit in silence for a moment.

‘Don’t fret,’ she says. She gestures to a series of marks on her right forearm. Cuts. Long healed scars. A count. ‘Twenty-six times I’ve crossed unholy ground. And twenty-six times I’ve returned, more often than not with the people I set out with. And I’ll tell you this, pet, it’s beautiful in there. I’ve walked through frozen lightning. I watched an old church lift of the ground and hang there spinning and I swear I could hear music while it happened. Even if you get bought down by the shining-things, you’ll spend your last breaths thinking they’re the prettiest teeth you’ve ever seen.

She stretches both hands towards the Flux, peering through the frame of her withered fingers.

She sighs. ‘Why else would an old madwoman keep on going back?’

I stare at her and she holds my gaze for a long moment. When she begins to laugh, loud and coarse and joyful, I am left with the strangest shiver to my skin. I realise my head no longer aches.

‘My name is Amir,’ I tell her.

The wide smile again, hiding her eyes. ‘A pleasure, Amir. I’m Rachael.’

She claps me on the shoulder, the action making her charms clatter against one another. The heart shaped locket catches in her hair and she tugs it free, a strand caught in the hinge. Together we look out over the river and into the Flux on the other side.

The Wayfinder breathes deeply and takes a step.

I follow.

‘Off we go then,’ she says.