White and Other Tales of Ruin

He kicked the branch away and gasped as the rope tightened and pinched his skin. He had heard somewhere that suffocation killed most crucifixion victims. He stared out across the cove, past the ship, hoping that anyone approaching from that way would see what he had left to them and take heed.

Behind Roddy, in the trees and on the mountainside, from the ravine beyond the mountain, sounds of merriment filled the air as birds took flight, lizards and small mammals gambolled through the undergrowth. But he felt removed from the island, as if he were already dead, and the noise barely touched him.

As he hung there, he had time to really think about what he had done.

The Origin of Truth

They were stuck in a traffic queue. There was nowhere they could go. They couldn’t help but see the melting man.

Doug wanted to turn around, cover his daughter’s eyes and hide the sight from her innocent mind. But she had seen stuff just as bad over the last couple of days, and she would probably see a lot worse in the future. He could no longer shield her from the truth. In a normal world, it was only right that his concern translated into action, but the world today was so different from last week. Normal was a word that had lost its meaning.

Besides, she was fascinated.

There were nine television screens in the shop window, and all of them showed the same picture: the man sitting propped outside a baker’s, a split bag by his side, crusty rolls and ice slices scattered across the hot pavement. His legs had disappeared from the knees down. He was watching the process, his face stretched in surprise — eyebrows raised, jaw lowered, brow furrowed — as his limbs turned to gas. The view was being captured by a telescopic lens mounted in a helicopter. The picture was hazy and shaky.

The ultimate in victim TV, thought Doug. Somewhere in the north of France this man was dying. And here, now, in London, they were watching him.

“Nobody touch the windows,” Doug said, even though he had locked them using his own master control. “And keep the cylinder open.” There were three compressed air cylinders on the back seat next to Gemma. One had already run out, the second had been opened for several minutes.

“What about when they run out, Dad?” Gemma said sensibly. Damn her, she was so sensible. “What then? Will the air come in from outside?”

“It already is,” Lucy-Anne muttered from the passenger seat.

Doug glared at his wife but she did not turn, did not register his attention.

“It won’t, honey,” he said instead. “The pressure inside will keep it out.”

“But what if those things can crawl.”

There was no answer to that, so Doug did not attempt one. Instead he glanced at the man on the screens, saw that his stomach was already possessed of a sick, fluid motion. He leant on the horn. “Get a bloody move on.” He wanted Gemma to see as little of this as possible.

“If they were here, honey, we’d know it by now.” Lucy-Anne sighed. “They’d have started on the car.”

“Don’t talk like that!” Doug said.

“It’s true!”

“Yes,” he replied weakly, “but not … in front of Gemma.”

“Why is nobody helping him?” his daughter asked without conviction. She was only ten, but she had learned a lot over the past few days. Like sometimes you just can’t help people. If they can’t help themselves … and against this, no one could … then it’s best to leave them and forget about them, pretend that they never were.

In minutes, this man they were watching from afar would no longer exist, and hours later the same thing would be happening right where they were.

As the traffic moved off Doug heard his daughter turn up the air release valve on the second cylinder. He took one last glance at the TV screens and saw why.

The picture was flickering and spinning as the nanos started work on the helicopter.

Half an hour later they edged out of the city, along with what seemed like a million other people. Doug was unsure as to why the countryside seemed to offer any better protection from what was soon to come. It was survival instinct, he supposed, an urge to flee that was perhaps a racial hangover from all the wars and ethnic conflicts there had been down through the centuries. As children his grandparents had been evacuated to families they did not know to live lives they could not understand, and now he was subjecting his wife and daughter to the same. Leaving what they knew for what they did not. Except in this case, there was no escaping the reason for their flight. No running from what could — and would — be everywhere. May as well try to leave gravity behind.

But he had to do something. There was no argument. There was always a chance.