Tim Waggoner
Audrey pushed the shopping car filled with metal odds and ends along the cracked sidewalk, her husband Edmund trailing behind her, struggling to keep up. Sweat beaded on her upper lip, despite the slight chill in the air. The temperature never varied in the World After, never grew colder, never grew warmer. But Audrey was seventy-three, and even though she worked every day and was in good shape for her age, pushing a full cart took it out of her. She had no idea how long she’d been working. Time didn’t operate the same way it had before the Masters’ arrival. There was no day or night now. The sky was a perpetually hazy sour yellow, like diseased phlegm with no sun or moon ever visible. Audrey didn’t know if there even was a sun or moon anymore. For all she knew, the rest of the universe might’ve ceased to exist once the Masters came to Earth. Without day or night, Audrey had no sense of time. She could’ve gathered metal for five hours or fifty. There was no way to know. She only knew that she was tired all the way down to the bone.
The thrall mark on her forehead hurt like a fresh sunburn, and her head pounded with a rhythm that almost felt like language.
BRING, BRING…
Maybe it was her Master’s voice, maybe it was her imagination. It didn’t matter. Either way, she had to make her delivery—so much depended on it. She stopped pushing the cart, released her grip on the handle, and turned around.
Edmund, her senior by eight years, was twenty paces behind her on the sidewalk. He was naked, his parchment-thin skin drawn close to his old bones. His limbs had been rearranged, so he could only move by crab-walking backward, and his head was turned 180 degrees so he could see where he was going. Not that his cataract-covered eyes could see much. His sparse body hair was wiry and snow-white, but his head was bald. Instead of a beard, thick worm-like growths grew out of his chin and cheeks. The fleshy tendrils were tipped with oozing pustules, and Audrey thought of them as pimple-snakes. They writhed with independent life, and Audrey couldn’t look at them without nausea twisting her stomach. His mouth hung upon, jaw slack as if the muscles no longer functioned, and perpetual lines of drool ran from his mouth to moisten his pimple-snakes.
He didn’t talk—or maybe he couldn’t. Either way, Audrey was grateful. She had no idea how his mind functioned these days, but whatever distorted thoughts might spark and sputter inside what remained of his mind, she was glad he couldn’t share them. He did make sounds from time to time: strange mournful hissings and tremulous bleats. His penis was always erect, so filled with blood it was purple-black, and a clear fluid that smelled like ammonia leaked from his ass. A line of the foul stuff trailed behind him on the sidewalk. In some ways, his body odor was the worst part. He stank like unwashed cock and balls that had been slathered in shit, and his breath was a sour-sweet reek that reminded her of rotting fruit.
Edmund hadn’t always been like this, of course. Like so many things about the world, he’d changed since the advent of the Masters. So had she, just not outwardly.
It took him a while to close half the distance between them, but when he had, he stopped, gazed at her with eyes dull and lifeless as glass marbles, and lowered himself to the sidewalk. Audrey gritted her teeth in frustration. She hated it when he did this. She wanted to yell at him, shout that he should get his lazy ass moving, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. He understood so little these days. Not that he’d understood much in the last few years before he’d changed. She knew of only one way to get him going again, and while she was reluctant to do it, it was vital they made their delivery today… before she lost her nerve.
She hesitated a moment, uncomfortable about leaving her shopping cart unattended. She’d worked hard to gather this much metal, and she didn’t want to risk another thrall stealing it while she was trying to coax Edmund to get moving. Then again, the longer she remained in one place, the more she risked being noticed by another thrall. Or by one of the deadly creatures that roamed the World After.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
She once thought she’d understood that phrase, but she hadn’t known shit.
She started walking toward Edmund.
***
In the first days after the Masters’ advent, and the remaking of the world, Audrey had often thought it a blessing that Edmund’s mind had been mostly devoured by dementia. He remembered her—more or less—but otherwise he wasn’t aware of much. In a way, she envied him. She wished she was insulated from the World After with a comforting blanket of mental oblivion.
After the Arrival, she estimated they had remained in their home, doors locked and curtains drawn, for nine days before their supplies became dangerously low. Water was the biggest issue. Something still came out of the taps, but it was thick as tar, smelled like a mixture of cinnamon and turpentine, and had a corrosive effect on both metal and porcelain. She didn’t want to know what it could do to flesh. Their only food was one nearly empty container of oatmeal and a few boxes of pasta. But she had no water or electricity to prepare any of it.
One evening—or perhaps morning, it was all the same now—she lay in bed, curtains closed so she wouldn’t have to look at the phlegm-colored sky outside… or at whatever hideous abomination might go lurching past. Edmund lay on the bed next to her, so motionless he might have been dead.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept, was certain that she wouldn’t drift off no matter how long she lay there, but sooner than she expected, her eyes closed and sleep took her. She hadn’t dreamed since the Masters’ arrival, but she did so now.
In the dream, she stood on a patch of bare earth enclosed by a high wooden fence with barbed wire all around the top. The white paint on the fence was old and peeling, the wood beneath, gray and weathered. Mounds of scrap metal were piled at the corners of the fence, each taller than she was. In the middle of the enclosure was an open pit, ten feet in diameter, she estimated, maybe fifteen. The edges were smooth, almost as if the pit was a natural structure, though the perfect roundness of it argued against that. She stood several feet away from the pit, but she still had a good view of the inside. All she could see was darkness, so black, so deep, so absolute, that it seemed to actually be absorbing light, pulling it into itself and swallowing it.
Gazing into the pit caused unreasoning atavistic fear to well within her. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think, could only stand and watch, heart pounding rapidly in her chest like a small bird caught by a predator’s mesmeric gaze.
She heard the Master’s wordless voice for the first time then. It asked her a question, offered her payment for her service—unquestioning, unwavering. She spoke a single word in reply.
“Yes.”
Fiery pain seared her forehead then, as if an invisible branding iron had been pressed to her flesh, and she screamed herself awake. Edmund woke too, confused and frightened. He began to shout and then to cry, and Audrey held him for a time, comforting him while her forehead pulsed with pain. When Edmund fell back to sleep, she took a flashlight from her nightstand, went into the master bathroom, looked into the mirror over the sink, shone the beam on her forehead, and saw her thrall mark for the first time. Along with the mark came knowledge: the location of the Master’s lair and what was expected of her. The Master wanted her to get to work immediately, for it hungered. There was just one problem, one that she hadn’t considered in her dream.
She fixed her gaze on the thrall mark’s reflection, as if by addressing it she could communicate with her new Master. “I can’t leave Edmund alone for long. He’s not strong enough to work, and his mind… “ She trailed off, uncertain how best to explain it. But before she could speak again, she heard Edmund scream, a high-pitched shriek so intense it sounded as if he were tearing his throat to shreds.
She dropped the flashlight and ran back into the bedroom. Edmund writhed on the bed as his body reformed itself, bones breaking and resetting into new configurations. The transformation wasn’t swift and it only become more painful as it continued, but when it was finished, Edmund had become a monstrously twisted thing, a creature strong enough to accompany Audrey while she worked. Her Master had done this somehow, she realized, in order to help her. It was, to the Master’s alien mind, an act of kindness and generosity.
Audrey swallowed her rising gorge and forced herself to whisper, “Thank you,” all the while unable to take her gaze off the horrible thing her husband had become.
***
The Masters had come from elsewhere. Space, another dimension, a different time… no one knew for certain. Some believed the Masters had ruled Earth in the far distant past, perhaps even created it to be their plaything—or feeding ground—and long ago they’d left Earth for unknown reasons, but now had returned to reclaim what was theirs. They had no individual names—at least, none that humans were aware of—and no one had ever seen a Master. No one who’d ever lived to tell about it, anyway. Most believed they possessed no physical form, not as humans understood the concept. They lived in separate lairs and worked through thralls and monstrous servants of their own creation. Thralls were rewarded for their service with food, clean water, and electricity in their homes, and while wearing a thrall mark didn’t protect you from every danger in the World After, it usually gave predators—both those human and those not—pause.
A thrall’s main purpose was to feed his or her Master. Sometimes this meant capturing other humans and bringing them—kicking and screaming, if need be—to the Master’s lair. But Masters didn’t always feed on human flesh. From other thralls, Audrey had learned of Masters that fed on blood, human waste, and specific organs such as the pancreas. Some fed on inorganic objects such as used clothing, books, electronic devices, CDs, and DVDs. Some dined on more abstract fare: people’s memories, emotions, or fantasies. All Audrey’s Master required was metal. Any kind would do, although it was particularly fond of copper. Audrey had no idea exactly what happened to the metal after she threw it into the pit that served as her Master’s lair, but she’d never heard it hit bottom.
Even though their Master gave them food and water—somehow made it materialize right in their home—Audrey was thin to the point of emaciation, as was Edmund. Masters might reward thralls for their service, but they were far from generous. They gave just enough for their servants to remain alive, and not a scrap more. And for this, thralls risked their lives day after day. But what else could they do? It was the only game in town.
***
In the World Before, Audrey’s therapist had warned her about something called compassion fatigue.
It happens to long-term caregivers, she’d said. Especially those whose loved ones suffer from conditions like dementia, which only worsen over time. You become emotionally exhausted, and—if you’re not careful—that exhaustion can turn into feelings of resentment. Even hatred.
That hadn’t happened to Audrey. Not before, anyway. But now? Now it was hard to think of the loathsome thing that followed her around like some freakish dog as the man who had been her husband. She wanted to be free of Edmund as much, if not more, as she wanted him to be free of the nightmarish existence she’d inadvertently cursed him with.
The first time she’d tried to kill Edmund, she’d done it during a scavenging run, when she’d been picking through the ruins of a downtown office building. She didn’t know what had caused the building’s collapse. There was no sign of fire, no sign that something had struck the building. No wood rot, no crumbling concrete, no fatigued metal. It looked as if the pieces of the building had simply detached from one another and fallen into a jumbled heap. Edmund stayed away from the debris, guarding the shopping cart and watching as she walked through the odds and ends, searching for choice bits of metal. If anyone—or anything—came near, he’d let out a loud hissing sound. She had no idea if this was a conscious warning on his part or merely an instinctive reaction. Either way, his warnings came in handy.
As she searched among the debris, she came across large shards of glass, pieces of a window that had been broken in the building’s collapse. A couple of shards were the right size to hold in one hand, and one of those was the basic size and shape of a butcher knife blade. She gazed at the glass knife for a long time before finally crouching down to pick it up. She gripped it like a knife, careful not to squeeze too hard so she wouldn’t cut her hand. She was surprised by how heavy it felt, almost as if it were a real blade instead of merely a piece of broken glass. She gingerly touched the finger of her free hand to the pointed tip, then ran it along one of the shard’s edges, again careful not to press too hard.
After a time, she stood, turned, and began making her way toward Edmund.
He watched her approach, no awareness showing in his milky eyes. His erection bounced several times, like he was a dog wagging its tail upon his master’s return. He didn’t react when she knelt next to his head. Didn’t flinch when she touched the glass shard to his throat. Didn’t do more than let out a soft hiss of air—was there a hint of surprise in that breath?—as she drew the shard across his neck, the sharp edge parting flesh and severing veins and arteries, bringing forth a gushing flood of crimson.
He turned to look at her then, blood dribbling past his lips onto his pimple-snakes. No expression, no recognition. And then he slumped to the ground and continued to bleed out.
She stood and stepped back to avoid the worst of the blood, but it was too late. It had spattered her clothes, slicked her hands… so what did it matter if the widening pool on the ground touched her shoes?
She watched her husband die, surprised by how long it took for his erection to subside. But subside it did, and Edmund let out a last choked gurgle and stopped breathing.
Heart pounding, she stepped forward and pressed two trembling figures to the side of his neck. No pulse.
She stood. She felt mostly relief, although there was some sorrow and guilt as well. She contemplated what to do with his body. He was little more than skin and bones, but he was still too heavy for her to lift. She couldn’t get him in the cart, and even if she could, what would she do with him? There were no funeral homes anymore. She supposed she could bury him in their backyard, but something had happened to the grass. The edges of the blades were sharp as razors, and if you got too close they emitted high-pitched cries that sounded like tiny voices screaming. She wasn’t sure it would be safe to try to dig there. Maybe if she just took his head…
She heard the first predator then, approaching in the distance. A simian hoot-hoot-hoot accompanied by a leathery sliding, as of something large dragging itself across asphalt. The scent of Edmund’s blood had drawn it, whatever it was, and she knew it wouldn’t be the last. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about what to do with Edmund’s remains now.
She dropped the glass knife, took hold of the shopping cart’s handle, and began pushing it away from her husband’s corpse as fast as she could.
***
She didn’t have any metal to deliver to her Master that day, and her reward for her failure was an excruciating headache brought on by her throbbing thrall mark. Even so, when she got home she slept well for the first time since the Masters’ arrival.
She woke to the sound of pounding at the front door. As she stumbled down the hallway, she already knew what she’d find waiting for her. She unlocked the door, opened it, and stood back as Edmund—who didn’t have a mark anywhere on his body, including his throat—crab-walked inside. A thought drifted through her mind. The cat came back…
***
She tried three more times. She used an iron poker to cave in Edmund’s skull. She jammed a pair of socks down his throat to block his airway. Finally, in desperation, she took a screwdriver, rammed it through his left eye into his brain, stirred it around real good, and then did the same to the other eye.
He healed each time.
She had no idea if Edmund healed because of some quality his transformed body possessed or if her Master specifically healed him each time as a way to torment her. Whatever the reason, she knew she couldn’t kill him by ordinary means. To end his travesty of a life, she would need power. The same kind that had transformed him in the first place.
She began to plan.
***
The skin on Audrey’s right hand was raw and blistered. Pushing the cart hurt, but she couldn’t manage it with only one hand, so she endured the pain. Edmund followed behind her on the sidewalk, moving a bit faster now, with a decided bounce in his step. She’d jacked him off, and it hadn’t taken him long to come. It never did. But while what shot out of his quivering cock looked more or less like semen, it was an unhealthy gray, stank like sulfur, and was boiling hot. Getting Edmund off was a sure way to motivate him. He’d be in a good mood for hours—but she only did it when nothing else worked, for no matter how hard she tried, she always got some of his cock-lava on her. Usually on her hand, but if his orgasm was particularly strong, he’d blast like a firehose, and there was no telling where she might get hit. Today, she’d been lucky. Only her right hand and a small spot on her left wrist had been burned. Painful, but nothing that would slow her down, and now Edmund was trotting behind her like an eager puppy, cock already swollen purple once more.
Audrey didn’t look down as she walked. She knew better than to gaze at the cracks in the sidewalk. Something—or many somethings—lived inside and whispered the most awful things. If they caught you looking down, they’d whisper louder. They’d urge you to do things to yourself and to others, and the longer they whispered, the harder it was to resist them. Better to not set them off in the first place.
The town’s population was sparser now. Many people died during the early days after the Masters’ arrival, and many more had died since. Some had been sacrificed to Masters, some had been killed by the new monstrous predators that roamed the world, and some died at the hands of their fellow survivors, people who’d been driven mad or had turned savage during their struggle to stay alive.
Because of this, Audrey saw few people along the route to her Master’s lair, and those she did see were sitting in alleys or on front stoops, heads down, sleeping or—just as likely—gone deep into their minds to try to escape the horrors of the World After. Every now and again one of them would look up as she passed, and she always made sure to turn her head toward them so they could see her thrall mark. That was usually enough to make them look away and lower their heads once more.
She was aware of other creatures, moving swift and silent between buildings, or crouching on rooftops and watching, motionless and hopeful. At times she even had the sense that something was looking down at her from above, but when she looked up, she saw nothing in the sour-yellow sky. The land was filled with predators now—some large, some small, all deadly in their own ways. Her thrall mark would keep them at a distance, especially close to her Master’s lair. She hoped.
Audrey had never had cause to visit the Third Street Iron and Metal Company before the Masters’ arrival. She didn’t live particularly close to the place, either. She had no idea why the Master who laired there had offered to take her on as one of its thralls. Maybe it had broadcast a general call and she’d answered. Maybe she’d been chosen for a specific reason, one she’d likely never know. Whatever the truth was, she’d come to wish she’d never accepted the Master’s offer. If she hadn’t, she and Edmund would’ve been dead by now, probably from lack of fresh water, but that end would’ve been preferable to what their lives had become. Serving as a thrall was a mistake, one she intended to rectify now.
The word company seemed too grand for this place. A high white wooden fence surrounded the property, with the business’s name painted in red letters on one of the outside walls. A section of a wall served as a sliding door which could be closed and locked, although it was always open when Audrey came here. Since the only thing that could threaten a Master was another of its kind, there was no need for simple physical boundaries like doors and locks.
Audrey’s thrall mark burned hot as fire. Her Master knew she was close, knew the metal was close, and it was losing what little patience it had. Audrey had heard about what happened to thralls that displeased their Masters. It made what had been done to Edmund look like little more than a mild swat on the hand.
She began pushing the cart once more, Edmund crab-walking obediently behind her.
The instant she set foot on the barren earth inside the fence, she felt the Master’s power wash over her. She was officially in its lair now, the place where it was strongest. The air here seemed to ripple, like the distortion created by waves of heat rising off hot asphalt. Edmund made a small bleating sound when he entered. He was never comfortable in the Master’s presence, but he always accompanied her inside anyway. She was counting on this—habit? Loyalty?—now.
The ground was smooth, the path to the pit well worn, and the squeaking wheels of the shopping cart rolled easily over it. Normally, Audrey would push the cart up to the pit’s edge—not too close—and then start lifting out pieces of metal one by one and tossing them in. If the Master was especially impatient and the cart’s contents not too heavy, she might try to dump the entire load in at once. She would do neither of these things today, though.
Her Master’s impatience, its lust to feed, filled her, made her thrall mark feel as if white-hot coals had been slipped beneath her skin. She gritted her teeth against the pain, gripped the cart handle tighter, and started to run. She was seventy-three, malnourished and dehydrated, but fear, anger, and determination fueled her, and she ran with the strength and speed of a much younger woman. The cart’s wheels squeaked so loudly they almost seemed to be screaming. The sound of the wheels combined with the sound of her heart pounding in her ears, and she couldn’t hear if Edmund continued to follow her, if he too had picked up speed, his bare hands and feet slap-slap-slapping the earth as he fought to keep up with her. She hoped he was.
At first, she felt only her Master’s all-consuming hunger, but then she detected a hint of puzzlement. Why was this thrall approaching the pit so fast? But before the Master could command her to stop, Audrey felt the front wheels of the heavily laden cart roll over the edge of the pit. She held tight to the handle as the cart tipped forward and fell into the darkness, pulling her with it. She looked back in time to see Edmund fling himself after her, and she smiled. The Master might prefer to eat metal, but she hoped it wouldn’t mind an offering of flesh. Two offerings.
Audrey and Edmund tumbled down through black nothingness.
***
Audrey had no idea how long they fell. She’d lost her grip on the cart somewhere along the line, and she had no idea where it was. Edmund was close by, though. She might not have been able to see him, but she could still smell him. More, she sensed his presence the same way she’d sometimes wake in the night and know he was lying in bed next to her without having to reach over to confirm his presence.
The vertiginous feeling of falling had subsided around the time she’d lost contact with the cart, and she couldn’t tell if she still continued descending. Without so much as a speck of light, she had no way of telling which way was up and which way was down, if such directions even meant anything in this dark limbo. For all she knew, she was hanging motionless in this void, and she might remain so until she died. Or worse, she’d stay like this forever, never dying, always awake and conscious. How long could a person exist like that before going completely insane?
She tried to speak but was unable to tell if her mouth produced any sound.
I’m so sorry, Edmund. I didn’t know something like this would happen. I thought we’d die.
No reply from her husband. For once, she was glad his mind was gone. If they were trapped in this place, he wouldn’t go mad. After all, he was already there.
After a time—how long was impossible to say—she sensed another presence, enormous and terrifying. It was as if she were floating in a sea and a silent ocean liner had drifted close without her being aware of it until the massive craft was almost on top of her. She knew she was now truly in her Master’s presence.
She felt a wave of curiosity roll forth from the Master. It wasn’t a word, wasn’t even a human concept, but Audrey interpreted it as a single-word question.
WHY?
She didn’t have to ask why what.
I couldn’t let him go on living like he is. And I couldn’t leave him.
She sensed only continuing curiosity, now tinged with confusion, coming from the Master.
He’s my husband. We belong together.
The Master’s confusion and curiosity vanished, followed by a sense of satisfaction, which Audrey interpreted as a single word.
UNDERSTOOD.
Pain exploded throughout her body as her bones, muscles, and organs began to shift and rearrange. She let forth a soundless scream, but she felt a hand clasp her shoulder—Edmund’s hand—and she knew that, whatever horrible thing was happening to her, at least she wasn’t alone. And then she felt Edmund’s fingers join with her flesh, their skin flowing together like liquid putty, and if she could’ve produced sound in this non-place, she would’ve screamed louder.
***
Audrey and Edmund shuffled slowly into an abandoned building. The sign out front said the place once had been a night club called Spinners, but since neither of them could read anymore, the letters were only meaningless nonsense. They moved on four hands and four feet, two pairs of eyes scanning the debris inside the club for any metal. Poking out from beneath a splintered table, they saw a thin half circle of what looked like… Could it be? Copper! Once, Audrey would’ve recognized this object as a bracelet, but now she only saw it as her Master’s favorite delicacy. Audrey and Edmund were excited to retrieve the bracelet, but their combined anatomy made it difficult to move the pieces of broken wood. Yes, they had four hands, but their arms no longer bent the way they once did. Edmund carried a silver serving spoon they had found in a restaurant a couple blocks away, and he put it on the floor. The two of them then took hold of the table fragments with their teeth and slowly, painfully dragged them off the bracelet. When the object was fully revealed, Audrey leaned her head down to it. She used her thorn-covered tongue to lift it into her mouth, and then she gently gripped it between her serrated teeth. Audrey and Edmund couldn’t operate a shopping cart, and so they were limited in what they could gather for their Master, but hopefully their meager offering would still be pleasing. Their Master would understand. After all, hadn’t the Master made them this way?
Edmund retrieved his spoon, and they left the bar. Because of the tangled arrangement of their limbs, they scuttled and lurched instead of crab-walked, and they were more awkward than either of them had been on their own. But they’d learn to make due. Everything would be all right, just as long as they had each other. Once outside, they turned left and began heading in the direction of the Third Street Metal and Iron Company.
Together.