The Eternal War

CHAPTER 50

2001, Dead City

Food. There was food, of sorts. Sal watched the eugenic creatures hungrily devouring the scraps they’d scavenged on their raid. She could see several old and rusted cans being passed around, the labels that indicated their contents long ago faded or torn off. Rats, plenty of rats, caught and skinned … cooked over a small fire. Cobs of corn being stripped out of their husks.

She saw Samuel among the muttering cluster of creatures, organizing them, ensuring every creature in his pack had something to eat.

Pack.

That’s the term she’d used for them earlier. But now … now that she knew that at least some of these things could talk just like a human, and the others, well, they might not be able to talk, but they behaved with a clear intelligence … ‘pack’ felt like the wrong word to use.

Samuel came over to her and Lincoln with a handful of food items cradled in his thin arms.

‘You musht eat shomething or you will shtarve.’

He held a rat carcass on a stick. It was still sizzling from the fire. He offered it to them. ‘It’sh very good!’

Sal shook her head. ‘I can’t.’

‘God’s teeth,’ uttered Lincoln. ‘I can’t eat a rat!’

Samuel shrugged. ‘I will have it, then. How about shomething elshe? Corn?’

Sal nodded. It was raw, but then she realized she was starving. ‘Please.’

Lincoln nodded. ‘I have eaten corn raw before.’

Samuel handed them each a cob in its husk and then squatted down on his haunches to consume the rat.

The building’s coal cellar echoed with the sounds of eating, slurping, chewing, the grunting satisfaction of hunger being sated.

‘Samuel …’ said Sal quietly, ‘why … why are we here?’

The eugenic looked up from his carcass. ‘You are both our prishonersh.’

‘Did you say prisoners?’ asked Lincoln.

‘Yesh.’

Sal peeled the last of the husk away and hungrily nibbled some of the ears of corn off the cob. ‘But why?’

‘Sholdiersh … will be coming here shoon.’

‘Soldiers?’

‘One of the other bandsh, they killed shome people. Very shtoopid.’ Samuel looked at them. ‘Killed humansh, like you. That will make the sholdiersh come here. I know thish.’ He shook his head and casually slapped his forehead. ‘That wash very shtoopid.’

Shadd-yah … how human a gesture was that? It was just the sort of daft thing Maddy would do, exasperated and stressed out over something.

‘We are to be hostages?’ asked Lincoln.

Samuel cocked his head. ‘Hosh-tagesh? What doesh that mean?’

‘You will use our lives … to bargain for yours.’

‘Perhapsh.’ He nodded slowly, ideas forming and reforming behind his big eyes. ‘If we give you back, shafe and shound … maybe they leave ush all alone?’ He hunched narrow shoulders. ‘We don’t normally kill humansh. It meansh trouble. Shomething bad musht have happened.’ He carefully tore another chunk from the cooked rat.

Sal saw how carefully he chewed. Careful to keep the loose irregular flaps of his lips free of his teeth. She dared herself to ask.

‘What happened to your mouth?’

Samuel shook his head. ‘I wash birthed with a normal mouth. Jush like yoursh, Shaleena. I wash deshigned to work on machinery.’

‘Designed?’

‘Yesh … made by shmart men in a faraway town called Oxford. They grow ush genicsh over there in them big vatsh — ’

‘Genics?’ Sal frowned. ‘Do you mean you’re genetically engineered … things?’

‘You say you worked on machinery,’ said Lincoln.

He nodded. ‘Mechanic,’ he said with a hint of pride. ‘A mechanic genic. Very clever, me. My genic type fixesh broken machinery in factoriesh. Make them work very shmooth again. But … me and my big mouth …’

Sal figured he was grinning, but it was hard to tell.

‘I got in shome big, big trouble.’

Lincoln pulled corn from between his teeth. ‘Trouble?’

‘Yesh, one of the big worker genicsh got crushed and killed by one of the factory machinesh. I shaw what happened. It wash a humansh fault. The machine wash shet up all wrong. And I shaid sho. But the humansh wouldn’t lishen to me.’ He shrugged casually. ‘Sho I told all the manual-worker eugenicsh they should put down their toolsh and shtop working until they fixshed the machine and put it right. Otherwishe, there’d be another one killed … and another … and another.’

‘What happened?’

‘They shewed my mouth up with a needle and thread. Shaid I wash a troublemaker. Shee, they don’t like it when a genic talksh back at them! That and when they turned over my bunk room they dishcovered I had booksh. They didn’t like that at all. Didn’t like how I taught myshelf to read. Very dangeroush. Givesh all the other eugenicsh big …’ Samuel struggled to say the next word carefully. He just about managed to say it without a lisp.

‘… ideas.’

He took another careful bite. ‘They shtopped making the very clever type like me yearsh ago. Too much trouble with all the talking back!’

‘I still do not understand how they make you?’ said Lincoln.

‘At firsht, a century ago it wash breeding one animal with another to make new animalsh. “Shelective breeding” they call it. But now they know how to make a creature from nothing. I heard shomeone shay the shmart men in Oxford can play with the “code of nature”. Shome might even shay … it’sh the code of God! The proper term for thish technique, though, ish eugenology!’

Samuel finished his rat and discarded the wooden skewer with nothing more than the rodent’s blackened bones and a few rags of sinewy meat left on it.

‘They write thish code then they grow ush … jush like tomato plansh … in a big factory farm.’

‘Grow … like plants?’

‘Yesh … in large tub of shtinky gunky shtuff they call pro-teen growth sholution.’

‘Shadd-yah,’ whispered Sal, ‘just like Bob!’

One of the other eugenics called out Samuel’s name. ‘Uh-oh, shomeone needsh me.’ He looked at their uneaten corn. ‘Eat it. You will need your shtrength for later.’ He got up and padded across the cellar on his knuckles and flat feet, leaving Sal and Lincoln alone.

‘Good God, his story is remarkable,’ uttered Lincoln. He looked at Sal. ‘Grown, just like a field of beans? Unless he is making fools of us?’

Sal shook her head, biting into the corn cob again. ‘He’s talking about genetics … it’s a pretty big technology in my time. Everything’s genetically modified. Just like Bob.’

‘Bob? Your big friend?’

‘Uh-huh, designed just like these … then grown in a large tube of gunk.’