White and Other Tales of Ruin

“They?” he said. “Capital ‘T’? So, who are They? The government? The military? The evil Galactic Empire? The Bliderbergs? God himself?” he looked up to the sky, his eyes moving jerkily as if counting the stars. “You know what I was before? An anthropologist.. I lectured on ancient civilisations, specialising in social and political aspects, how the organisations in an old civilisation can affect us as well, even if there are no direct links whatsoever. Harmful, eh? Dangerous? ‘They’ must have thought so. Because they stole me away and — ”

“My daughter never did anything that could have been a threat to anyone.”

“No. No. Maybe not. Well, that’s my ‘threat’ theory blown out of the water. Not that I ever really believed it anyway.” He smiled and I knew that he was playing with me now, perhaps enjoying my discomfort and pain and confusion because he’d passed up the chance to barb me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe … well, someone controls all this.”

“Really? What if it is God? Where’s the limit to His control?”

“Don’t be stupid. God is dead, didn’t someone once say? Besides … if I ever did believe, that’s been wiped out since Laura was taken away from me.”

“Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer.”

I raised an eyebrow, partly in surprise, mostly because I hated being condescended to. I wasn’t about to ask him what it meant, but he told me anyway.

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. Voltaire.”

“Great,” I said. “My life is now full. And you? You believe in God? Living here, like this — ”

“What else is there for me to believe in? The goodness of Man? Give me a fucking break.” He’d suddenly gone from relatively quiet to loud and angry. I thought he was going to strike out.

“You have medicines, though? Bandages?”

“Same provisos as the food and drink. Today … probably not. Let’s face it, you brought the storm and rotted our food. I hardly think there will be plasters and sterile gauze for you.”

“I hope you die,” I said. It surprised and shocked me, and it was a stupid thing to say. He could kill me here and now. He was mad, after all.

Black Teeth didn’t even register the comment. He looked out over the landscape, perhaps scouting for trees to use for tomorrow’s work.

“I need to get away from here,” I said quietly, turning to go. “I need to help Laura.”

“The reason I spared you,” he said, “was because I thought you’d know the way out. You’re an alien, you should never be in here. For me you were … hope. That’s all.” He turned to me, and the sudden change in his expression was startling. In the starlight he looked like a little boy who had lost his ball over a neighbour’s fence, and now he was asking for it back. Innocence hid the blemishes on his skin and the murder and madness in his eyes.

I shook my head and his expression changed again.

“So what?” I said. “Are you going to barb us now? Now you know I can’t help you?”

“I should. We should. They look up to me because I’ve been here longer than any of them. They’ll call for it. You should go.”

“You’re helping me again? Why?”

“I’ve never got to talk to any of the people we barbed before. Never known them as anything other than fodder.”

“Not even my daughter?”

He looked at me, his eyes dead and resigned to worse than death, and suddenly I wanted to leave as soon as possible, run, run aimlessly from these terrible, pathetic people.

“She was asking for you all the time I strung her up,” he said.

I turned and left him instantly, not allowing myself time for thought or reflection. It was the only thing I could do.

“Through the cave,” he called after me. “A tunnel. Don’t come back out this way, otherwise you’re our fodder again. Go elsewhere. At least then it won’t be me who has to kill you.”

I didn’t acknowledge him. I didn’t want to see the into the eyes of the man that had seen my daughter begging for me, and done nothing to help.

Inside the cave, eyes were upon me. I looked into the face of the woman who’d been washing Black Teeth, and there I saw envy. Someone else, a young boy with an old man’s face, seemed ready to kill me. A woman touched my ankle as I walked by and looked up, and I wondered whether she wanted me to kill her. The copulating couple at the rear of the cave still going at it, noisier now, and their cries and grunts added a surreal background to my walk to Laura and Chele.

I knelt down beside my daughter and touched her face. She was still unconscious.

“We need to leave,” I said.

Chele shook her head. “She’s unconscious, not asleep. We shouldn’t move her far.”

“I’ll carry her.”

“Nolan, she’s not a little girl anymore, and — ”

“Believe me,” I said, looking into Chele’s eyes to add emphasis, “we need leave right now.” I held her gaze for a few seconds and nodded.

She looked around the cave, her eyes glittering fearfully in the weak torch light. “Which way?”

“Through the cave. Down there to the back, there’s a tunnel.”