The End Has Come

Thirty-five, thirty-six. And there it was once more, a beam like a stroking finger. It crossed the black water, lanced over her head, bathed the bluff in brilliance, and moved on. On the horizon, she watched the shine of the Svet nezhyti, the Zombie Light, dim as it swept away again. The thing loomed out there in the night, unmanned, forgotten, possibly leaking reactor coolant — but automated. Still doing the job it had been set to do, decades or maybe a century ago. And it had illuminated enough of the stretch of beach before her that, crouched, she could scurry to the next rock without breaking her ankle.

Her stomach clenched, but Yana had become a connoisseur of clenching stomachs. This wasn’t early hunger, which could endanger one with plunging blood sugar, unexpected weakness, and dizzy spells. Nor was this true starvation, when the stored resources were exhausted and the will began to revolve around food and only food, when the body grew frail and riddled with sores.

This was, rather, the comfortable middle ground of hunger — where the body had adapted to privation, where it was working hard to utilize stored resources, rather than grabbing and cannibalizing anything at hand. What a falconer called “sharp set,” where the bird is ready and eager to hunt, lean — but also physically capable.

Another kind of margin. Another narrow edge to balance on.

Yulianna had been worse off, which was why Yana was here alone. Because when their supplies started to get low, Yulianna had set her jaw and refused food, refused water — starving herself so that Yana would have more. That was when Yana had realized that she would have to go out and seek supplies. They would need to go south, go inland. For that, they needed portable rations — and gear. Boots. Warm clothing.

Yana wanted to worry, but she wouldn’t let herself. Her sister would be fine. She’d left Yulianna most of the remaining food. And the gun.

If she pulled this off, neither she nor Yulianna would have to be any kind of hungry — or cold, or badly dressed — for a good long time.

But first she had to survive the rest of the night.

Yana reached over her shoulder and patted the neck of the crowbar tucked into the loop of her large frame pack. She waited for the light, waited for the darkness, and darted to the next shelter. She wasn’t worried about being spotted by anyone in the Zombie Light; there was no one in the Zombie Light. It had been empty for the devil knew how long, mindlessly spinning away on its reactors.

The people — and cameras, and infrared sensors — she wished to avoid were those in the bunker at the top of the bluff, overlooking the sea.

Unfortunately, they were also the people who had the food.

A basic conflict in desires, as her economics tutor would have said. Before he starved, or was torn apart by feral dogs, or went cannibal and was put down, or whatever the hell had killed him.

She might have made an effort to find out — she’d liked him — if there had been any chance of the news being good, and if there’d been any chance of her finding out some kind of definitive answer. But she’d learned a long time ago that the news was never good, and that it was generally best not to ask too many questions.

You never liked the answers once you got them.

He, too, might have had a couple of trenchant comments to make about margins. Margins of survival. Margins of safety. Margins of profit. The world was right up against the edge of all of them now.

Maybe it was teetering back, Yana told herself. Maybe things were starting to get better.

She was finally close to the bluff. One disadvantage of the bunker’s position, from the point of view of the bunker’s inhabitants: It held a commanding view of sea, strand, genetically-engineered kelp-tangle aquaculture clusters, and distant undead lighthouse, but the edge of the bluff cut off their line of sight to the beach immediately below. There had been motion detectors down here once, not too long ago . . . but after the Eschaton, the end of the world — here in the future — entropy took its toll and things which had once been cheap and disposable could not be replaced. Manufactured objects that had been designed to be thrown away were not simple to repair.

It was Yana’s advantage, and a delightful little scrap of irony.

She bounced on her toes like a runner warming up before a race. When the light swept past again, she scrambled up the steep, overhung-in-places bluff. Her fingers scraped at crumbling stone; roots gave when she grabbed at them. Though she was strong and fit and practiced and not too hungry, her forearms ached with a deep muscular soreness by the time she dragged herself over the edge.

There was no time to lie there panting and collecting herself. She wriggled to her feet and crouched, balanced on her toes and fingertips, waiting to discover if she’d been seen.