White and Other Tales of Ruin

She grabs my elbow and begins to lead me through the kneeling crowds. The dirigible has drifted past the edge of the town, pumping out its voiceless message, and now it appears to be heading inland. The hillsides have stilled, the dry ground hidden beneath a carpet of procumbent humanity. I try to resist, but she walks faster, surprising me with her strength. She seems to know where she is going. Within a minute we have scampered into a shaded alleyway and she has dragged me into the shadows, hushing me with a hand over my mouth as I go to protest.

“Watch,” she whispers. “Things can get a bit weird around here.”

Like a snapshot of life, the entrance to the alley affords us a framed view of what is happening in the streets. As we slump down into the heat, the sound of the airship gradually disappears into the distance. The people begin to rise, gaze cast downward at first, then glancing up, then staring forcefully at the sky as movement becomes the prime motive once more. Voices call out, shouts and songs and screams. Some of the people remain subdued, but these seem to bleed away from the streets immediately. Others seem possessed of a frantic activity, running quietly at first, leaping into the air, rolling across the pitted tarmac, bumping into each other, exchanging silent blows. Within seconds their voices have returned; they scream, curse, fight their neighbour, their friend, their family. Less than three minutes after the first people have risen from their subdued pose, the street is a mass of flailing limbs and struggling bodies. It is repulsive.

“You’d better come with me,” the woman says. “Maybe you’ll be safe if you do. Maybe you won’t.”

“Makes no real difference,” I say, feeling the warm reminder of imminent death in my chest.

“Didn’t to me when I came here, either,” she says. “Does now. Believe me, you want to live.”

The declaration provokes a stupefied silence from me. I follow the woman further along the alley, soon finding myself creeping through dusty backstreets where old women huddle under black shawls in doorways like sleeping bats. I can smell the mouth-watering aroma of genuine Greek cooking.

As if identity is an afterthought, the woman turns several minutes later. “I’m Jade, by the way.”

“Gabe.”

From far away, we hear the first sounds of gunfire. The steady roar of the rioting crowd escalates with the effects of fear and fury, and the crackling of rifle fire continues.

“I’m looking for a man called String.” We are hurrying through dusty yellow alleyways. Shots herald the death of a few more rioters. My utterance seems melodramatic, to say the least.

“I know. Why else would you be here?” Jade does not turn around, but I guess that she senses my surprise. I can almost see the satisfied grin on her face. I bet she grins a lot, at other people’s misfortune. Her long hair swings between her shoulder blades as she rushes us through the twisting byways. She seems to know her way; either that, or she has me completely fooled.

Someone jumps into our path, a snarling, scruffy man with Sickness growths around his mouth. Jade stumbles to a halt and I walk into her, grabbing her hips to steady us both. The stranger begins shouting, gesticulating wildly, pointing at the air, at his forehead, almost growling as he motions towards me. Jade shakes her head, very definitely, confidently, and the man shouts again. I can see something in his eyes — the glint of madness, the desperation he must feel at the unfairness of things — and smell his degradation in the air; sweat, shit, aromas belonging nowhere near a comfortable, civilised human.

He is mad. He is ruined.

For a couple of seconds, I fear his madness will infect me. Indeed, this seems to be his motive, for he lunges past Jade, hands clawing for my throat.

She punches him in the gut. The movement is smooth and assured. He falls to his knees, gasping for breath and unconsciously adopting the same attitude as the hundreds of people at the harbour minutes before. He leans over until his forehead hits the dusty path, then his whole body shudders as he once again gasps in foul air. A smudge of muck sticks to his sweating forehead as he looks up at us.

“Do we go now?” I ask, but Jade disregards me completely. She whispers to him, indicating me with a derisive nod of her head. In the jumble of conspiratorial words, I hear String mentioned more than once. At each utterance of his name, the grubby man jerks as if given a minor electrical shock. I wonder how a name could invoke such a reaction.

Fear. Respect. From what I know, and what Della told me, these are the two things that String would revel in. One commands the other, both ways, and in the end it does not seem to matter whether he is good or bad.

Jade looks up at me and smiles her confident smile again. “We can go now.”

“What did you say to him?” I ask as we pass the man, still kneeling in the dust, eyes apparently staring at some point a few metres behind my head as I pass him.