Garth stared at his father and said: “I know. That’s what I asked myself after I destroyed that thing: ‘Where’s the blood?’ I saw spongy pulp and pink froth, but—”
“—But no blood, or very little? And then dry as dust? Yes, that’s how it is.” And yet again Zach’s nod. “The fly-by-nights are mutations, Garth. And you’re right, for in the aftermath of the war the radiation did indeed change them. They couldn’t inhabit the refuges—shelters as they were called then—because men would surely discover and do away with them. And out there, under the open sky, perhaps because they were changeling creatures in the first place, the new change was a whole lot faster. The ones the sun didn’t destroy, it turned them into the monsters that have preyed on us—mainly on our scavs—ever since. You should count yourself lucky, Garth, that working as a scav on Ned Singer’s team those few nights, you haven’t come across any of them before now!”
Garth was still frowning. “So, radiation either killed them off or turned them into what they are now,” he began. “But they seem to me like mad things! What of their intellig—?”
“—Waned, and failed them.” His father pre-empted him. “For as well as altering their flesh and bones, that weird heat also ate at their minds…or at least, so we believe. On the other hand—” and now he frowned, “—well, there have been one or two cases of intelligence lingering over a while…”
“Lingering over? From what?”
“From folk who have been taken, bitten and changed, but not killed. When I was a scav along with Big Jon Lamon, we actually saw it happen. We lost one of ours—Jack Foster, he was called—who…who…” But there Zach paused.
“Go on,” said Garth. “Jack Foster, who…what?”
“Who came back! Came back as a fly-by-night. Came back with a swarm, maybe twenty or thirty of them, that tried to get into the refuge! Because Jack knew, you see? Because he remembered!”
Garth nodded. “Maybe there were some among them who knew he was important, that Jack Foster could lead them to…to their next meal, in the refuge! And so he was spared to become one of them. Something like that, anyway.”
“That’s what we figured,” said. Zach. “That until the change took him in full, and his mind, too, Jack would have remembered us—and about the refuge! In which case he should have remembered how the entrance was a gauntlet! But whether he did or not it made no difference, didn’t stop him. When they came swarming out of the darkness the watchmen wiped them out half-a-dozen at a time! It was…oh, a glorious slaughter! God, how I wish it was like that every time, but without someone being taken!”
Garth thought things through a while, considered everything the Old Man had told him, and finally said: “So actually you’re saying that perhaps there’s a spark of intelligence in the fly-by-nights after all? But we already knew that, didn’t we? That while they no longer need to hide from men—because they are the masters of the surface world now, where there simply aren’t any men—well, not until us—still they have sense enough to take cover from the sun. However mindless and deranged they may be, it appears they’re not that crazy!”
“Instinct,” Zach replied. “Not true intelligence, but instinct pure and simple.”
And, believing him to be correct: “Survival!” said Garth.
“That’s how the theory goes, yes,” said Zach. “Except maybe you shouldn’t be so quick in taking it for granted that there’s no men above ground any more. I mean, it’s possible that you’re right, but…well, in the old times during and after the war, there couldn’t have been enough room for everyone in the shelters, and people are very adaptable. I’m sure you won’t remember this Garth, but again when you were just a child the occasional outsider—sometimes a family, even a small group, but as wild as animals through generations of cowering, existing, surviving outside—would come to us in their search for sanctuary. Then, if we’d lost folk and had room to spare, we would sometimes let them in. But the last lot…well, it must have been thirteen, maybe fourteen years ago, and since then: nothing. Still I suppose there could be others out in the open even now, though how they get by I just don’t know.”
“Survival,” Garth said again. “But if so, then it’s against all the odds…”
By then the convoy was into the city’s outskirts, negotiating a rubble-strewn road with the gaunt shells of burnt-out or shattered buildings growing up on both sides.
The leader, Big Jon Lamon, grotesque in a nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare suit, stood tall in the turret of his rauper (or his “kettenrauper,” according to a hand-painted sign flaking away on its rusty iron flank, though no one could remember the designation’s origin: actually that of an armoured half-track, a museum piece in miraculously working order) where Big Jon had brought it to a temporary halt, and from which he hastened the convoy’s vehicles on as they passed him by.
“That big building up front there,” Big Jon pointed, shouting orders at the driver in the shielded cab of the tow-tractor that pulled Garth and Zach’s trundle. “Get parked up alongside, deep in its shade, until we can sort out the accommodation. Mind you: no one goes inside, not yet!” Then as the vehicle trundled by and Big Jon spied a familiar face:
“Ho there, Zach! How goes it with you?”
“Battered and bruised, and aching in my back, my belly, and my two sides!” Garth’s father replied with a shout and a little dry humour. “Other than which I reckon I’m probably okay! Sorry for the women and kids, that’s all.”
Big Jon, having begun to laugh, stopped at once and nodded. “Well, with luck,” he yelled, his voice almost lost in the thunder of the tow-tractor’s motor as the convoy rumbled on, “today they’ll get to rest up all they want—God bless ’em all!” Following which, Big Jon and his rauper both were lost in billowing clouds of dust.
“Aye, but before anyone rests up there may be more work for some of you,” Zach muttered, as he fixed his son with a worried look. “Dangerous work at that.” He might have said more but instead, shifting his gaze beyond Garth, he nodded his acknowledgement of Ned Singer who was coming round from behind the weapons rack, swaying toward them in their corner seats.
Zach’s meaning had been perfectly clear, however, and when Garth said, “Fly-by-nights?” it was more than just a question.
“I hope not,” Zach replied, under his breath, “but it’s not unlikely. Some of these buildings still have roofs and could be occupied. In respect of which—well here comes your boss right now, doubtless to issue his instructions.”
Answering Zach’s nod with one of his own, however perfunctory, Singer took hold of a dangling strap to steady himself and leaned over Garth. “’Prentice Slattery,” he growled, “I suppose you know what comes next, and what I expect of you? But are you ready for it?”
Garth accepted that he was still an apprentice of sorts, at best a novice where fly-by-nights were concerned, and answered: “I’ll be ready when you call for me, Mr. Singer. But may I ask, what’s your reckoning? Is it likely we’ll be facing danger this time?”
“Danger, for you? Not if you watch and learn,” Singer grunted. “Not if you stick close, do as you’re told and quick about it. The reason I bother myself with you: you’re my youngest, my weakest, my least experienced. If you’d gone scavenging with me sooner—if you had a bit more of that behind you, back at the Southern Refuge—I wouldn’t be so concerned. I would know you better, how you’d think and react in a crisis or difficult situation. But you’re a Slattery, and—”