Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalipse

He shook his head. "Shit, Cliff" he said, "you can find the same thing in every public John in Luna City."

Ciffonetto rolled his eyes. "Von der Stadt," he said, "if we found the oldest cave painting in the world, you’d probably say it was a lousy picture of a buffalo." He jabbed at the writing with his free hand. "Don’t you understand? This is old. It’s history. It’s the remains of a civilization and a nation and a planet that perished almost half a millennium ago."

Von der Stadt didn’t reply, but he still looked doubtful. His flashlight wandered. "There’s some more if that’s what you’re after," he said, holding his beam steady on another pillar a few feet distant.

This time it was Ciffonetto who read the inscription. "Repent or ye are doomed." he said, smiling, after his flash melted into Von der Stadt’s.

He chuckled slightly. "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls," he said softly.

Von der Stadt frowned. "Some prophet," he said. "They must have had one hell of a weird religion."

"Oh, Christ," Ciffonetto groaned. "I didn’t mean it literally. I was quoting. A mid-twentieth-century poet named Simon. He wrote that only fifty years or so before the great disaster."

Von der Stadt wasn’t interested. He wandered away impatiently, his flash darting here and there amid the pitch-black ruins of the ancient subway station. "It’s hot down here," he complained.

"Hotter up there," Ciffonetto said, already lost in a new inscription.

"Not the same kind of hot," Von der Stadt replied.

Ciffonetto didn’t bother to answer. "This is the biggest find of the expedition," he said when he looked up at last. "We’ve got to get pictures. And get the others down here. We’re wasting our time on the surface."

"We’ll do better down here?" Von der Stadt said. Doubtfully, of course.

Ciffonetto nodded. "That’s what I’ve said all along. The surface was plastered. It’s still a radioactive hell up there, even after all these centuries. If anything survived, it was underground. That’s where we should look. We should branch out and explore this whole system of tunnels." His hands swept out expansively.

"You and Nagel have been arguing about that the whole trip," Von der Stadt said. "All the way from Luna City. I don’t see that it’s done you much good."

"Doctor Nagel is a fool," Ciffonetto said carefully.

"I don’t think so," Von der Stadt said. "I’m a soldier, not a scientist. But I’ve heard his side of the argument, and it makes sense. All this stuff down here is great, but it’s not what Nagel wants. It’s not what the expedition was sent to Earth to look for."

"I know, I know," Ciffonetto said. "Nagel wants life. Human life, especially. So every day he sends the flyers out further and further. And so far all he’s come up with is a few species of insects and a handful of mutated birds." Von der Stadt shrugged.

"If he’d look down here, he’d find what he’s after," Ciffonetto continued. "He doesn’t realize how deep the cities had dug before the war. There are miles of tunnels under our feet. Level after level. That’s where the survivors would be, if there are any survivors."

"How do you figure?" Von der Stadt asked.

"Look, when war hit, the only ones to live through it would be those down in deep shelters. Or in the tunnels beneath the cities. The radioactivity would have prevented them from coming up for years. Hell, the surface still isn’t very attractive. They’d be trapped down there. They’d adjust. After a few generations they wouldn’t want to come up."

But Von der Stadt’s attention had wandered, and he was hardly listening any more. He had walked to the edge of the platform, and was staring down onto the tracks.

He stood there silently for a moment, then reached a decision. He stuffed his flashlight into his belt, and began to climb down. "Come on," he said. "Let’s go look for some of these survivors of yours."

H’ssig stayed close to the metal bar as he edged forward. It helped to hide him, and kept away the fire, so he moved in a little band of almost darkness. Hugging it as best he could, he crept silently around the curve, and halted…

Through him Greel watched: watched with the rat’s ears and with his nose.

The fire was talking.

There were two scents, alike but not the same. And there were two voices. Just as there had been two fires. The bright things that had burned Greel’s eyes were living creatures of some sort.

Greel listened. The sounds H’ssig heard so clearly were words. A language of some sort. Greel was sure of that. He knew the difference between the roars and grunts of animals and the patterns of speech.

But the fire things were talking in a language he did not know. The sounds meant no more to him than to H’ssig who relayed them.

He concentrated on the scent. It was strange, unlike anything he had encountered before. But somehow it felt like a man-scent, though it could not be that.