Mother Earth

Mother Earth

1

Turning

THE SUNRISE SHONE CRIMSON behind the wood as I ran, the sky seeming to bleed in sympathy with the wound on my left arm. Vaulting a fallen tree trunk, I could hear my pursuers gaining on me despite my best efforts. As I slowed to avoid a stagnant pool, sharp teeth sank into my ankle, and I yelped with sudden pain.

The fox glared balefully up at me, disturbing intelligence in its dark eyes. I shook my leg violently, finally managing to dislodge him, before I took off once more. Blood trickled warmly down my ankle, and I blocked the sensation from my mind. I couldn’t afford to lose focus now.

As I continued to fly as fast as I could through the living emerald maze, a harsh shriek came from above. Looking ahead, I saw a clearing opening out just a few metres in front of me, and hovering above that, I knew, would be the cruel- but majestic- golden eagle.

The forest around me was too dense for me to make my way through at speed, and I decided quickly that I had no other option. Covering my head with my arms, I sprinted into the clearing.

Sharp talons tore at my skin, shredding the shirt on my back as they did so. I continued to run, not bothering to attempt to fight the bird off, and soon I was back under cover of the trees. The eagle eyed me for a moment, tattered strips of bloodstained fabric hanging from its clawed feet, before soaring smoothly upwards to hover once more above the canopy.

I would talk to Cameron when I got back, I decided as I leant, panting, against a tree trunk. I was travelling further and further each day now, and it was ridiculous for me not to have a gun to defend myself.

Guns were in drastically short supply here, and ammunition was even harder to come by. They were only allocated to the runners who travelled farthest, or who went into the densest, wildest areas and needed most protection. Cameron won’t agree to it, a small voice at the back of my mind nagged me. Not while he still doesn’t trust you.

Cameron Baxter was the leader of our house, a small, clever man who was liked and respected by almost everyone- except me. He considered me unstable, unpredictable- ‘a loose cannon’; in turn I found him domineering and overly stoical, with a violent temper when roused. We had irritated each other from the day we met, which was now many years ago, and the relationship had not improved since. I was also convinced that he was a secret misogynist- he appeared to me to hate every woman he met, and me most of all.

I was beginning to feel weak from the wounds I had sustained, superficial though they were, and as it was never a good idea to stay next to one tree for very long anyway, I pushed away from the large bole and continued slowly on. As I walked laboriously forwards, a stone fell sharply on my head; looking upwards, I spied a grey squirrel perched in the branches above.

Fuck off, I told it unceremoniously, trudging on. In another mood I would have spent the next hour trying to hit the quick little creature with my slingshot- arrows were too precious to waste on such a harmless target- but now I only wanted to get back and sink into a hot bath.

Soon the house appeared in front of me, though to an unfamiliar observer it would have looked like no more than an average-sized metal door sunk into a hillside. A small, weedy man called Kevin was on watch outside, and I nodded a greeting to him as I pressed the button on the intercom next to the door. The little box crackled before the voice of Fred, today’s gatekeeper, emerged.

Password? his gruff northern accent barked.

I gave him the day’s password. Summer sky. After a moment the heavily fortified door swung slowly inwards, and Fred’s thickly-bearded face was grinning at me from behind the little gatekeeper’s desk just inside.

So who came up with the password today? I asked drily, rolling my eyes for his benefit.

God knows, he said wearily. Think Cameron’s trying to cheer us all up with chirpy bloody passwords?

I nodded. Possible. What was yesterday’s- smiley face?

Yep- and the day before that it was sunny meadows. We laughed. Clapping Fred on the shoulder, I set off for my quarters to dump my gear and get a bath. The harsh strip lights on the ceiling of the stark concrete passageway flickered as I walked, sending shadows careering wildly around the walls. A denser shadow than the rest detached itself from the darkness and approached me. I sighed quietly with relief as I recognised my best friend, Jackson Dowling.

He caught me up in a big hug. How was it out there today? he asked, wincing in pain as the plaster cast on his arm brushed against my back. He had broken the arm the previous week during a scuffle with a large stag, and the injury meant that he was grounded from running duties for at least the next four weeks. To someone as active and energetic as Jackson, this was agony.

I shrugged. Nothing major, though the eagle’s back again- bastard caught my back with his talons, but it isn’t serious.

He spun me round to examine the shredded remains of my shirt and the torn skin beneath. Ronnie, this needs medical attention! He shook his head and put an arm around my shoulders. Come on, let’s get you to the medical bay. He caught sight of the gash on my arm, which I had sustained by tripping over a rock; it was still oozing a slight trickle of blood. He gestured towards it. That needs bandaging too.

I tried to shrug out from under his grip. I’m fine, I insisted. I just need a hot bath and I’ll be good as new. He merely smiled down at me as he walked me along, his dark, handsome face creasing, warm brown eyes sparkling. I sighed; I could never stay angry with him for long.

Fine, I grumbled, but you don’t have to hold on to me. I won’t try to escape, and you’ll hurt your back stooping like that. Jackson was a gentle giant, tall and solidly built, whilst I was petite and easily a foot and a half shorter than him. He laughed and rumpled my short blond hair, white teeth gleaming against his dark skin.

Unlike most rooms in the maze-like structure which constituted the house, the medical bay was large and spacious. Dr Stanley, a small, middle-aged man with wire-framed glasses and a quiet, thoughtful manner, stood beside a bed at one side, treating a young boy with a dislocated shoulder. He made some final adjustments to the lad’s brace and came over to us.

Veronica, Jackson, he greeted us softly, a touch of resignation in his voice. How can I help you today?

Jackson turned me so that my back was facing the doctor. Ah, I see.

Her arm’s hurt too, and her ankle, Jackson added. I shot him an evil glare which he ignored. I hadn’t thought he had noticed the minor wound at the base of my leg.

The doctor led me to a bed, and I lay on my belly whilst he examined the wounds. After a minute or two, he straightened up and pronounced his verdict.

These look rather unpleasant, but there’s no permanent harm done- they’ll be healed in a few days. I’ll call a nurse to clean and dress them. While he bustled off to find a nurse, I put out my good arm and poked Jackson in the ribs. Told you so! He shrugged, unperturbed. It was better to be safe than sorry. I huffed in semi-agreement.

Walking back down the corridor after our visit to the doctor, I looked up at my companion, whose face was unusually pensive. A twinge of guilt twisted in my stomach; Jackson was the best friend I had ever had and I didn’t always treat him as well as I knew I should. I’m sorry if I upset you before, I offered. I didn’t mean to snap at you.

He seemed to emerge from his thoughtful mood at once. Naw, don’t be silly, he laughed. You forget I’m used to your craziness by now anyway.

I laughed. I don’t know why you hang around with me.

I guess I must like you enough to put up with all your crap.

I nodded, pretending to consider the matter deeply. Yeah, that must be it, I concluded solemnly. I’m just so wonderful that nobody can resist me.

This time he roared with laughter. Definitely.

So what’re you doing now? I asked. Are you officially off duty?

He nodded. Yep; I’m going back to my quarters now to have a quiet meal with Simon, and probably an early night after that. Simon was his live-in partner. Looking after you is exhausting occupation you know. I pretended to whack him with my good hand.

Seriously though, Ron, he said in a lower voice. We had reached the junction in the passage where we would have to split up to reach our individual quarters. You don’t look after yourself when you’re out there, and it worries me.

I grew instantly defensive. I always take care when I’m out.

He shook his head. Not enough- I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Sometimes I think that you just don’t care that much whether you come back or not each day. I started to protest, but he held up a hand for me to let him finish. But even if you don’t care if you come back, I do. Please don’t leave me with the job of trying to recover your body, Ron.

Tears sprang to my eyes at the care and affection in his voice. OK, but when have I been reckless lately then? I demanded to distract myself and stem the tears which were threatening to overflow.

Just last week, he shot back. When we went out to cut that fallen tree into logs and got attacked by those wild boars. We all wanted to run for it, but who was hanging around trying to pick up logs? Or what about last month when Adrian crashed his armoured vehicle, and you went crawling into it whilst it was on fire just to save some ammunition?

I was stung. Ammunition’s scarce! I saved enough bullets to keep the whole house going for weeks.

And nearly died in the process- the bloody car exploded two seconds after you got out of it. So how can you claim not to be reckless?

Annoyed at his persistence, I merely shook my head. I’ll see you tomorrow, I told him as I turned to walk away.

He sighed once more. ’Night, Ron.

I stomped my way down the passage to my quarters, taking out my irritation on the floor beneath my feet. What was the matter with these people? I wondered. I was doing my best for the house, and nothing I did ever seemed to be good enough. Just because I took the risks none of them dared to! I fumed silently as I unlocked the heavy wooden door with the big, old-fashioned key and slammed it behind me with slightly more force than was strictly necessary. All the doors belonging to individuals’ quarters were designed like this- private rooms were not considered to be enough of a security risk to warrant the difficult installation of complex metal doors with buzzer systems.

My quarters consisted of two simple rooms, as did every other inhabitant’s of the house- a living space with basic cooking facilities, and a small bedroom with a bathtub in one corner. Just like the rest of the house, they were hewn from the solid rock of the hill and lined with thick grey concrete. The house had been built some forty years before as a sanctuary in case of nuclear war between mankind; it had never been needed for its original purpose, but had instead become the shelter for the local survivors of the Turning Day several years later. Although it was known to us all merely as The House, in reality it was an impenetrable fortress.

One blessing to the members of the house was the underground stream which ran right through the hill and provided clean water for drinking and bathing. Heating the water for my bath took some time on the little standard-issue stove, but eventually I sank into the hot water with a sigh of relief. Only once I was fully immersed did the sharp sting from my back remind me of the dressings the nurse had carefully applied.

Damn, I muttered to myself. Putting a hand round, I could feel that the fabric was now sodden and falling away, so I pulled it off and threw it to the floor, ignoring the protests from my tortured skin as I lay back in the water. It would heal more quickly if it were exposed to the air anyway.

When I was once more clean and dry, I disposed of the water down the drainage chute and wandered over to the cooker. I hadn’t eaten since the morning and knew I should prepare a meal, but I was tired and couldn’t raise the energy. My eating habits were often like that- I would come back exhausted from the day and lose interest in food before I could find time to prepare it. A few years before, the leader had experimented with having a communal kitchen which doled out meals to all at set times of day. The plan had proved an abject failure due to the individual variations in the arrival and departure times of the watchers and runners who kept the house functioning and enabled everyone within its walls to survive. Since then, each person was provided with an allowance of food proportional to their size, gender and activity level, and was left to consume it in whatever way they saw fit. The kitchen was now used only for simple raw food preparation such as skinning and jointing game or portioning larger vegetables.

My head was beginning to throb badly now as I found a packet of the tasteless ration biscuits in a cupboard and ate two, washing them down with cold water. Glancing at the little clock on the wall, I was shocked to see that it was already past nine o’clock in the evening; I was due on the early watch at five the next morning, which meant that it was time to go to bed.

As I pulled on the plain grey pyjamas and crawled beneath the cold white sheets, I reflected on how everything in the house was colourless and functional- there was little time for beauty amid the day-to-day task of staying alive. In years long gone, artists of every sort had abounded; painters, dancers, writers, composers, clothing designers and more had plied their skills freely, filling the human world with vibrancy and joy. Now, the only colours lay outside the walls, where beauty was plentiful but invariably deadly.

As I waited for sleep to come I wondered for the thousandth time how it had come to this. Much of humanity had had a good life back in those days, but the insatiable greed grew until the people lost all sense, wanting more and more even as they revelled in luxury. Demand for resources such as fossil fuels, precious stones, wood, and more and more food had piled increasing strain on the planet, the people raping and pillaging her indiscriminately. The Earth was a treasure trove of goods ripe for the picking, ready to fill the pockets of the greedy. The few who argued against the madness were shouted down or vilified, unable to make their voices heard. The ice caps began to melt as the climate slowly warmed, the planet groaned beneath the burden of waste which humanity had produced, air and water became more polluted as trees were felled and toxins released continually into the atmosphere. The planet was slowly becoming a living nightmare.

Until one day, everything changed. Who could have known that the planet had a mind of its own, that nature both could and would stand up for itself at need?

It had begun with the pets. One day, the inhabitants of Earth had awoken to news stories from all over the globe of pets attacking their owners. Thousands of people were killed by their dogs, and some even by their cats. Animals in cages were released by other creatures, with intelligence that had never been guessed at by their human ‘owners’; pet birds inflicted horrible injuries on their keepers, and even rodents such as hamsters and rats viciously bit the people around them.

Chaos ensued, with calls for all pets to be killed immediately- but of course most of them had already made good their escape. A matter of hours later, the real hammer fell, and every other living being on the planet turned against the human oppressors.

Millions died as they were hunted down and killed by every creature imaginable, and at that stage there was no understanding of why this was happening. As people attempted to recover from the tide of animal violence, the third blow hit- the Earth itself began to rebel. Volcanoes erupted all over the planet during just a few days, earthquakes wrecked buildings and killed millions on every continent, whilst the resulting tsunamis drowned yet more. Freak weather systems- storms, hurricanes and tornadoes- battered the remaining survivors, and in a matter of days, most of humanity was dead and the human species was teetering on the edge of extinction. As the worst of the natural disasters died down, a message arrived; it appeared the world over, written in clouds, in sand, on the remaining television monitors, spelt out with rocks, and in every language in existence. It was simply this: FOR MOTHER EARTH. Every living human being saw it.

By luck, courage or some other strange force, a few survivors clung tenaciously to life. Banding together for security, the tattered remnants of civilisation found or built fortresses across the world to protect themselves from the very planet they inhabited. What resources were left locally- weapons, vehicles, fuel and food- were stockpiled, rationed and shared amongst the house members.

It made for a hard life, as I could well attest. Food soon ran out and more had to be gathered. Armed runners were trained to hunt for meat and to forage for wild edible plants, as well as to search out stocks of fuel, ammunition and other gear. Scrounged technology was utilised to produce artificial sunlight which enabled the houses to grow vegetables inside. Some had worried that the plants themselves would refuse to grow, but it seemed that the instinct to live was too strong. Most houses had at least one tatty old radio with which they kept in contact with other pockets of survivors, sharing knowledge and hope. Humanity’s flame had almost burnt out, but a spark still smouldered amid the ashes.

I had been born just two years after Turning Day, so I had grown up amid the harsh realities of this life, though I had not seen the terrible early days of pain, starvation and death, for which I was eternally grateful. I barely remembered my mother- she had been taking her turn on the watch one day many years before when she was attacked and stung to death by a swarm of wasps. I was very small at the time, and the rest of the house took a hand in raising me until I was old enough to feed myself and to understand the dangers of the outside world. I wasn’t sure exactly how old I was, as the first years after the apocalypse were badly-documented and hazy with grief in most people’s minds. I knew I had to be around thirty to thirty-five and was content with that. After all, when life was no more than a daily battle for survival, what significance was there in marking the passage of time?

The worst part was that I couldn’t even blame the planet for turning on us, I reflected as I turned out the light and lay down. The retribution had been well and truly earned. Some wondered if Earth might one day become inhabitable again, when much of the damage done by our species had been mended. I found it impossible to imagine- nature would never trust us again, would never forgive us the harm we had done.

This was not a new thought for me at this point, and I would occasionally discuss my musings with Jackson, the one person I could completely trust. He agreed with me, but my talk always worried him; these were not acceptable opinions to voice, and we would have been ostracised had our fellow inhabitants overheard our whispered, late-night conversations.

Allowing my eyes to drift gently closed, the throbbing of my wounds slowly eased into the background of my awareness. My last thought was a prayer for a dreamless sleep.

2

Mission

THE MORNING DAWNED cool and clear, with the promise of warmth to come. It was late spring and on sunny days the air was beginning to warm up in earnest as nature showcased her glory all around.

The Sun was just beginning to peer above the horizon as I stepped outside to take my turn on the watch, shafts of golden light gleaming through the trees in the nearby forest as I relieved Omar, last night’s late watcher, from his post. I quickly scanned my surroundings before taking up my sentry’s post outside the door. Notching an arrow to my bow in readiness and shouldering the quiver of arrows, I settled back against the rock wall for the boring three-hour surveillance.

As ammunition was in such short supply- and was for most others refuges the world over- one of the first skills taught to every inhabitant was that of archery. Wood for bows and arrows was easy to find in the forest, and a specially-trained team spent several hours each day making the elegant, archaic weapons. Every adult was assigned a bow and quiver of arrows, meaning that no-one was ever caught outside defenceless, and training was given regularly to ensure that everybody’s skills were kept up-to-date. The system had saved many lives over the years, and was adhered to rigidly by all.

However, the world was quiet and still this morning. The trilling music of the morning chorus reached my ears, lovely but distant, and I yawned silently. I had never really seen any sense in the constant watches which were kept outside our dwelling- after all, we lived in an impregnable fortress, and unless the animals found a way to manufacture explosive, they could not reach us within. But it made the people feel safer, and prevented any ambushes from being laid outside our door.

For a while, I just watched the Sun slowly ascend, its deep redness mellowing to orange as it gained altitude. So peaceful was the world around me that I could begin to imagine how it would have felt to some of those who had lived before the turning- how nature must have seemed such a sanctuary from dirty, overcrowded cities, noise, pollution and grinding hard work.

Deep in thought, I didn’t notice the door beside me creaking open until a dark face was grinning at me around it. I jumped slightly.

Gotcha! Jackson flashed his perfect white teeth at me, and I sighed theatrically.

What are you doing out this early? I asked gruffly.

Nothing much, he answered a little too innocently. Just thought I’d come and keep you company for a while.

I nodded; whatever he was really up to would doubtless become clear. OK, I told him easily as I settled back against the wall once more. He paused for a moment, clearly assessing my cool mood this morning, then shrugged and took up a position next to me.

After a few minutes of silence, he turned to me. Look, Ron, he said, I’m sorry if I went too far last night- I only spoke out of concern for you, and I hope you realise that. I don’t take back what I said, but I’m sorry if my saying it made you unhappy.

I had to laugh a little at his convoluted apology. It’s alright, I said, don’t worry about it- I know you’re only trying to look after me, and I know I don’t always appreciate you properly. You’re a far better friend than I deserve.

Nah, he said, putting an arm round my shoulders and squeezing. You’re worth it.

I winced as my still-sore skin stung beneath the pressure, but smiled a bit too. Thanks, Jacks, I murmured, lowering my bow momentarily to give