The End Has Come

“No,” Yulianna said. “It’s safe. They propped it open so I could breathe, but it’s cold in here. Are you here to steal food?”

“Is that what happened to you?”

“Sort of,” the woman said. “Here, let me get out from under the window.”

There was a scraping sound and a couple of thumps. “Ow,” the woman said.

“I’m coming in,” Yana warned. She jumped up, got her belly on the window frame, and slithered through. The hard part was not falling on her face on the floor, but she managed a sort of controlled slide and caught herself with her hands. Her feet hooked the window frame. Carefully, she unhooked them one at a time and brought them down to the floor, then stood.

“I’m going to make a light,” she said, and squeezed her lume.

She’d turned the ring around so the bright part was inside the curve of her hand, so the lume mostly shone through her flesh, producing a macabre effect. Even that was enough light that the woman on the floor winced and turned her face away, which told Yana how long she’d been sitting in the dark. The stranger didn’t shield her eyes with her hands because she couldn’t; her wrists were zipped to her ankles with plastic ties.

The woman couldn’t have been as hungry as Yana and her sister were. She still had some flesh on her bones, not just sinew and ropy muscle. Her hair was red, and shoulder-length, though it seemed patchy and staring as if she’d been ill. Or perhaps it was just matted from sleeping on the dirt floor, or from lack of general care.

“What did you steal?”

“Mussels,” the woman said. “From the frames. The aquaculture. I dove for them.” She looked defensive. “They were from before the Eschaton, and just sort of got left there. A little engineered ecosystem of kelp and shellfish.”

“Huh,” Yana said. She gave her lume two quick short squeezes so it would stay on without her attention. Impressed despite herself, she said, “Did you have a drysuit?”

“Just a lot of practice,” the woman said.

Yana tried to think of her as Yulianna. But the dry hair, the shadows under bruised skin . . . she couldn’t look at them, and think that name. It was a common name. But every time Yana tried to wrap that name around this stranger, her mind sheered off.

So she said instead, “Is that really . . . stealing?”

“They thought so,” the woman said, jerking her chin at the door. “You know, this is a great conversation, but maybe you could . . . untie me?”

“Right,” Yana said. “Do you solemnly swear not to decapitate me or something?”

“I do so swear,” the woman said, with mock gravitas.

Yana knelt beside her, pulled her clam knife from the sheath in her boot, and jerked the short razor-sharp blade through the plastic straps.

“Ahh,” the woman said. She flopped her hands against her chest as if they were wet feather-dusters. “Devil take it,” she said. “Nothing. Feels like a couple of hot squid on the ends of my arms. I hope I don’t get gangrene.”

Then she moaned sharply, bit her lip to stem the noise, and curled up around the arms, rocking back and forth with her face distorted by pain. “Ow, that hurts. Ow, ow, pancakes! Ow.”

Yana watched, thinking there was nothing she could do for her except bear witness. It made her uncomfortable to watch the other woman’s pain, so she turned her back. She played her lume over the barrels and crates and shelves, spotting food, gear —

“Is any of this booby-trapped, do you know?”

“Ah, ah. Don’t touch the two-way radios, owww!”

But the ows were getting softer. Finally, Yu . . . the woman made a sound that was probably a sigh expressed through gritted teeth and rolled forward onto her hands and knees.

“Anoxic pain,” she said. “Wow, that was not fun.”

“You’re a doctor?” Yana asked, interested. That was useful.

“Biologist,” the woman said. “Marine.”

Well, that explained the swimming.

“Right,” Yana said, examining the shelves. She needed valuable things, trade goods. Travel equipment. And food. There was a metal box labeled “wind-dried fish” that reeked promisingly. She grabbed that and opened it. Stuffing papery pieces of whitefish into her mouth, she started chewing, then filled up one of the side compartments in her pack while the pungent flavor flooded her mouth with saliva. The texture was a bizarre combination of leathery, spongy, and crisp. This was just protein, though, and you’d starve to death on only that. She handed the box over to the woman — since her hands seemed to be working now — and found a bag of dried apples next to it. She appropriated the whole thing. They were old, stiff and brown. Probably not pre-Eschaton, though. Dried fruit wouldn’t last that long.

Trade goods.

“Fat,” Yana said.

The other woman was now chewing on her own slice of fish. She rubbed her hands through her hair, where her fingers stuck in the mats. She wriggled them free, then rolled a cat’s cradle of shed strands down her fingers, wadded it up and tossed it away. There was sea salt still crusted on her skin and along the hems of her clothing, and it seemed to be causing purple sores around her hairline.