Gabriel’s Watch - Book One: The Scrapman Trilogy Read online

  Turning a rotary-combination lock hidden beneath the off-white handle of a refrigerator, I heard the mechanism click free with the final number and pulled open the door. Revealed behind the portal was a staircase descending beneath the jumbled heap of junk on the surface. Shutting the refrigerator door behind me, I clutched my prize with childlike anticipation as I made my way down into the pit. And with a flip of the switch, the overhead lights flickered for a moment, then sustained luminosity, and doused the place with a beautiful golden sheen.

  Central to the underground room, at the base of the stairs, was a workbench. At that moment it was crowded with a collage of wiring, mechanical parts, and tubing. Dimly lit and a bit dusty, the shop had the appearance of some mad scientist’s lair—a place for creating life-altering elixirs or bringing back the dead.

  Neither of these were my aim, however. My agenda was purely mechanical. It was here that Alice and I constructed gadgets to occupy our minds, improve our lives, and pass the time ... until our time ran out. It sounds depressing when put that way, but there were others, many others, working hard in far more malevolent endeavors. At least we were being productive—at least we were being good.

  At the bottom of the stairway, I tapped a yellow plush giraffe hanging off a bookshelf to my right. It emitted a few musical notes as it swayed gently back and forth before returning to silence moments later—a generous lump swelling in my throat.

  Play it again, Daddy.

  Her voice filled my head, clear as day. She’d be ... fourteen this year, maybe fifteen. It was hard to imagine her that old. I started to drift back into that dark place—that place I’ve spent the last ten years trying to avoid. I shook the thought from my mind. Maybe that’s why I’d kept so busy in the shop, toying and tinkering. Perhaps I’d been running from what had been chasing me. One might ask why I didn’t just take down the giraffe—why I didn’t just remove the constant reminder of her death. Well, that would be the person I would punch in the face, right after telling him to mind his own business.

  Who knows? Maybe putting this in writing is grounds for some form of progress. I’m no shrink.

  I added my recently acquired bounty to the collection already on the workbench, placing the large metallic object I’d found at Zolaris at the end. Once connected with the rest of the equipment, it began to look very much like a human body—the metallic object being the head.

  It was time for the electrical connections and the hydraulics. I’d found a CPU at Zolaris which, according to the manual, linked up with its brazen skull to process images it picked up, along with its several other senses. This thing was supposed to be as close to human as science could get, without the aid of biological engineering, of course. But this one’s body was now a crude mixture of salvaged, retro-fit, and modified junkyard parts—surely a far cry from whatever shiny billion-dollar body it had back at Zolaris.

  I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Alice’s smiling face.

  “What did you find?” she asked, squinting a bit as her eyes adjusted. She liked the dark.

  “I got the head, another tech manual, the CPU, that thing over there—whatever it is, and ... this,” I said, purposely brandishing the chip last.

  Alice was just as pleased as I thought she’d be. “Miles, that’s incredible!” she said, grabbing me by the shoulders and squeezing tight.

  That’s my name, by the way—Miles, Miles Stone. Pleased to meet you.

  “Let’s get started then, huh?” Alice offered as she rounded the table and flipped open the tech manual. “Where to begin? ... Where to begin?”

  After tucking a length of black hair behind her ear, she ran a finger from one page to the other, gathering information and considering options, her lips moving without the slightest sound. She was magnificent.

  “I ... uh ... I ran into some trouble on the way outta there,” I said, disturbing her focus as she raised her head.

  “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

  “I ran into a couple agents—three actually—on the way out.”

  “Agents” were what they called the members in their gang—“government agents”—they were a pompous bunch.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just thought you should know. We might be hearing about it later.”

  “And they didn’t follow you back here,” she said, more of a statement than a question.

  “Not a chance,” I smiled.

  “Oh ... good.” She began to return to her work.

  “I think it’s time we get some guns,” I added.

  She looked back up at me. “Guns?”

  “Yeah, guns. The government is getting stronger, more and more people are joining, and they’re reaching farther toward the edge of the city—toward us.”

  Alice nodded. “If you want to get some guns, then get some guns. Believe me—I’m the last person in the world you need to convince; you’ve just wanted to stay away from them for so long, that’s all.”

  She was right. Ever since the mutiny we witnessed ten years before, I’d taken an unspoken vow to never pick up a firearm—especially with Alice around. But over the years, she’d proven herself much stronger than I would ever have anticipated.

  “I know. But I think now’s the time, especially when I’ve had to go deeper and deeper into the city. It’s silly not to have a gun anymore.”

  “I agree,” she said, looking back at the mechanical mess before her.

  If anyone could piece that thing together, if anyone could turn that madness into something operational, it would be Alice. She’d long since obtained my complete confidence when it came to mechanics and engineering

  “So what’s the ETR on the ZEKE machine over there?” I asked.

  “Um ... I think I can have it together in a couple days, but we’re short a few proxes and so forth.” She made a face that was less than positive. “I don’t know exactly how he’ll react to his new body—we might be back at the drawing board next week.”

  “What happened to your self-confidence?” I teased.

  “It’s still here, along with my integrity—I’m just being honest.” She held her arms out, displaying the area in which we were having this conversation. “We’re not exactly living below a Home Depot and this isn’t exactly a professional machine shop. I’m doing the best I can.”

  “I know,” I fumbled, trying to recover after inadvertently hitting a nerve. “I was just kidding. You’re awesome and I’m an idiot.”

  “Thanks,” she agreed wholeheartedly.

  As much as I would’ve loved to stay and watch the miracle of her engineering, I left Alice to her craft, knowing how much she truly enjoyed her privacy.

  With the flip of a switch I initiated a set of reflector photo-eyes to alert us of any movement upstairs; they were set in a grid-like pattern, so nothing entered without tripping at least one of them. It usually signified what we were having for breakfast that morning, and rarely warned us of anything other than a wild animal, but I found it never hurt to take a few extra precautions. We had some traps up there as well, but—more often than not—it was a rather unlucky raccoon falling for those.

  That’s actually how we caught Alice’s tabby cat; discovering the feline swinging from one of our trip-lines, we cut her down only to find a very thankful and irresistible ball of purring fur. And after one challenging bath, and very little debate, Alice had settled on the name Dinah. She continued to adore that cat.

  Our power, you might be wondering, came from a series of solar panels we’d salvaged from all over. They were placed out of sight atop the junkyard and wired all the way to our secret cavern beneath.

  A very small shack upstairs was used as a decoy, keeping passersby from asking an abundance of questions regarding my living situation. In reality we had a water-purification system, a power system, a relatively constant food supply, and even a small sewage system; as far as the end of the world was concerned—we were sitting pretty.

  The night reached that brittle-stiff calm when closing on the midnight hour—time to get some rest. Alice would surely be up until early morning, hammering it out until it was just another achievement to slip under her belt. But, as for me, there was a nice soft bed at the end of the hall, a place where I could drift away for a few short hours.

  My room, like the rest of the shelter, was plain—little more than a mattress and a series of random supplies. After stripping down to comfortable attire, I reached up to release a slide-latch to unlock the only steel window just below ceiling level, then lifted it an inch or two. The small window was positioned in such a way that it granted me a very narrow view at ground level, just enough to glimpse the wasteland beyond.

  In the moonlight, past my home and the debris of the previous world, I could see two thin strips of raised earth in the distance, each marked with its own small and simply constructed wooden cross. There in the thick and stale night air, with the world collapsing around us, I blew them a kiss and wished them goodnight.

  3

  PARTING GIFT

  It is the darkest chapter of our civilization ... it’s an ominous sensation, recounting the events that have come to challenge the foundation of my once unshakeable reality, events that have forever altered the fate of the damaged world in which we now reside. I have seen the horrors of war, have found her blood across my doorstep, and have stepped over countless bodies claimed by her hands.

  You’ll notice that I’ve referred to war as if it were a woman, just as the ancient Greeks paid tribute to their goddess Athena. I assure you this is not an accident, for war is the vile mistress of men, and one with whom we’ve grown increasingly intimate.

  But it was within the sheer terror of an instant that I witnessed my reality crumble, an instant I’ve been
doomed to relive for as long as it sees fit to visit me in the dead of night.

  It ended only when the war lit the horizon aflame, sending huge plumes of ringed smoke billowing toward the upper atmosphere. It was then, after the years of global destruction, that the war finally burned itself to the ground. But her aftermath, comprised mainly of the ashy deposits of fallen debris, can still be found deep within the city’s many structural skeletons or scattered throughout the surrounding streets. And there are parts of the city, I swear, still saturated by the stench of smoldering flesh.

  Our copious society, once a thriving heap of healthily selfish individuals, was honed to only several pathetic pools of inner- and outer-city survivors. We were all that remained of the immediate devastation.

  But surely someone would be coming for us, surely someone was busily scouring the impacted areas, airlifting those that had risen from the muck. For days we waited, watching the skies for any sign of hope, but it wasn’t long before a dreadful realization descended upon us:

  No one is coming, because no one is looking.

  Further questions followed:

  Has the city been quarantined because of the chemical attacks, the radiation?

  For Christ’s sake, did they just leave all of us here to die?!

  But those questions were lost upon the remaining and resounding silence, never quenched by the hum of a distant helicopter, or resolved by a searchlight in the night’s sky. And in that silence an animal awakened within ourselves, a primitive beast that seemed to grasp the bleakness of our situation long before we’d allowed the rest of our minds to fully comprehend it.

  Our previous enemies, which could be found at the opposite end of nearly every tumbling sea, were now of very little concern to us. A newfound rival was arising, replacing the foes of old with one that was much, much closer.

  Some began to go their separate ways, gathering what they could as they headed for various homes and shelters, while others formed into larger groups in which stronger individuals inevitably fell into the roles of early dictators.

  There must have been a few hundred of us at that point, numbers ever dwindling, when I looked out into the hopeless abyss that was our sick and wounded. Their weathered expressions were glossy and vacant beneath that afternoon’s sun, their lives draining steadily from the pores of their skin.

  Then night fell in an instant.

  A great shadow eclipsed the heavens as something massive emerged from above. We looked up in unison, expecting to find something familiar, but it was nothing of the sort. It descended upon us as if torn directly from the pages of some futuristic holy writ, shaking the very matter of our bones. And there it nestled, just above our pathetic assemblage, a twisting mass of wires and metal the size and shape of our long-forgotten coliseums.

  I’d rather not use the “A” word when referring to the beings that stepped off this gigantic vessel, but as they came to greet us, it was clear they were not of Earth. Tall and lanky, they wore thin black suits that covered every inch of their bodies, suits that seemed to be designed to protect them from our distressed planet, or perhaps only from us. Their heads, visible beyond the transparency of globed helmets, were slightly greenish in color but not oblong or gigantic-eyed, as one might have anticipated.

  None of us fled, despite the urge that had certainly existed within each of us. We instead stood firm, regarding them in a kind of humbled astonishment.

  The Visitors, upon their arrival, brought down huge metallic containers. Once opened, we discovered each container to be full of food. One encased exotic fruits and fresh vegetables, another was filled to the brim with something resembling cheese, and another with loaves of warm, golden bread. The first of us approached the bins with extreme caution, but soon we were running from one to the next, trying to load whatever we could stand to carry. The Visitors then motioned for us to be slow, to be calm. There would be more, and there was no need to rush.

  They formed us into lines, when we displayed our ability to be patient, and our ability to follow orders as a group. And they seemed pleased with this. I noticed a few of them nodding to each other, impressed thus far with the restraint we had shown.

  The Visitors then proceeded to tend to our wounded, lathering them in a thick, blue, gelatinous substance that made quick work of any flesh wounds. They then lowered fevers, bringing color back to many desperate faces, as they injected various liquids into the veins of the sick.

  Unfortunately, however, there was nothing they could do for the already dead.

  Those without a lingering pulse were transported aboard the ship, where I assumed their bodies were being properly disposed of.

  And there were many bodies—still sprawled out from that final surge of the apocalypse.

  But “disposed” isn’t exactly a word I like to connect with the remains of the ones I love, so there were two bodies I did not allow them to take.

  Before I go any further, I must explain the markings on each Visitor’s thin, black attire. There was something resembling hieroglyphs running the length of their broad shoulders. These obvious markings were different for each Visitor, both in its make and its color. Purple seemed to represent the ones in charge, while those in blue dealt mainly in medical affairs. Then there were the ones in red; they kept a tight perimeter, overseeing every interaction between us and them. I noticed the ones in red wearing a strange attachment on their hands that none of the others had. It was a device that I watched them manipulate from time to time, although its true purpose had continued to elude me. They must have been the security detail; that thing on their hands had to be some kind of weapon.

  There were other Visitors with different colors and markings as well: greens, oranges, yellows, and silvers. But I didn’t trouble myself with categorizing the rest of them.

  So, when they came to collect the bodies of my wife and daughter, I might have been a bit more assertive than I needed to be, causing the ones in red to become something just short of agitated.

  But a Visitor in purple waved them away, placing a hand firmly on my shoulder.

  “It’s fine,” he told them, and I watched as they collectively lowered their hands at his request. The Visitor then turned to look at me, smiling softly with pale green lips. “You should try to refrain from raising your voice,” he warned. “The red ones tend to get ... a little anxious.” He reached out and took me softly by the chin, turning my head as he examined my profile. “A fine specimen you are,” he noted. “Strong willed, too.”

  I shoved his hand away, but the Visitor only smiled.

  I was surprised to find his English spoken so perfectly, down to the smallest detail of our arduous dialect. Even his voice sounded human: “What you are experiencing is anger, my friend, which is normal for someone in your state.” He reached out again, extending his hands toward my face. It was not a threatening gesture, so I didn’t back away. “Allow me to help you,” he offered, pressing his index fingers to my temples and administering very light pressure.

  I expected to feel something, although I wasn’t exactly sure what it would be. I looked him in the eyes, his face not far from mine, as I examined the hairless head beneath that encompassing globe. His skin appeared impossibly smooth, not a blemish marking his creamy complexion, while his eyes struck me in their pure and utter blackness, spawning an instinctive shiver to travel the length of my spine. I had to look away. But it was then that he released me. “Very good,” he said, tapping a small screen attached to his wrist. “That went very well.”

  I shook my head, confused. I hadn’t felt a thing.

  “We can help you bury them,” he said, motioning toward my fallen loved ones. “It’s the least we can do.”

  I shook my head, fighting off the lump in my throat. “I can do it.”

  “Very well,” he nodded with sympathy. “Then I insist we preserve them for you.” He motioned out an order and before long a Visitor in silver came to lower a capsule atop their bodies, entering a series of codes onto a console at its base. He lifted the capsule the following minute, allowing me an unhindered view of my loved ones once again. Half expecting them to be frozen, faces white around cold blue lips, instead I found them looking almost healthy, as if I’d just stumbled upon them in slumber, back in a world that had made sense. I fell to their sides, willing their eyes to open, willing them to take a breath from somewhere beyond the deaths they had suffered. But they remained still as before, looking blissful, looking painfully at peace.