Under grim blue steel skies we trudged, thankful that the rain was presently just a wicked threat. The snaggy witches teeth of skyscape hid in their own shadows, cloaking us with their presence, content that their menace was being felt. Lightning in the far distance, thunder many seconds later. The winds and rain would come before nightfall, of that you could be sure.

Dancer said nothing, maintaining his three day silence. We just walked. And walked.

We had not stopped for three days, not even for sleep, and for the week before that we were walking eight or ten hours a day. I was sure that my rag-rapped feet were by now a mess of ruptured, bloody blisters, but I could not feel them, so I was to a degree content. I couldn't feel my body at all, everything was on autopilot. The only way I could be sure that I was still walking was to look down at my spindly, naked legs. Dirty, stained legs. All bodily functions were on auto. My bladder voided as necessary without me thinking about it. In that respect I was glad I hadn't eaten for a couple of days.

Sometimes I would hear babbling, like a lunatic speaking in tongues, or weird out-of- tune singing, familiar lyrics. Usually the Rolling Stones.

"Baby you're a fool to cry..."

They always turned out to be me.

Dancer was as always a couple of paces ahead. I wasn't sure if he even knew I was there. His stride still seemed strong, although his body was as wasted as mine. The sores on his body looked, I presumed, no prettier than my own. But still he walked, never faltering, never slowing.

Not like the others. They were just too weak, either in body or in mind or in belief, they fell by the wayside. One guy - the last to go - I swear walked on a full day after he'd died, his nervous system so hung up on the habit of placing one foot in front of the other it just couldn't let go.

The clouds parted briefly, just for a second, just long enough to see a glimmer of something. Couldn't be a plane, I doubted there'd be a pilot left alive that'd risk getting airborne nowadays. There were still plenty of autosilos hidden around, still brimming with semi-sentient ground to air death and with their solar powered brains still mostly functional. Moon? Hadn't seen the sun even for over a year. Who gave a shit anyway. I just kept walking.

Dancer slowed his pace minimally, so over the course of the next few minutes I drew level with him.

"Just us?" His voice was as dusty as the road. And just slightly more functional than the rusting autocorpses we passed at intervals.

I grunted something I hoped would sound affirmative. My tongue was dry, swollen, threatening to burst against the sharp edges of my broken teeth.

Dancer coughed a couple of times, an absurdly polite throat-clearing noise, testing his voice. "We can stop, rest. We're in time."

My knees quivered slightly in relief, but I couldn't make my legs stop pacing. Nor, it seemed, could Dancer. We were locked into a groove, had to stick with the program. Dancer made a strange noise, wheezing. I think he was laughing.

"Maybe we should keep walking. Be there tomorrow. Then stop."

Resigned, my eyes slitted, I started to doze. I had developed the art of sleeping while I marched, a trick I had heard about from old soldiers but had never believed.

And we walked.

And walked.

And walked.

When my eyes opened again we could have been in the same place, still the ruined tower-blocks on all sides, shattered glass on the street reflecting the nothing from above, bones here and there where people hadn't got out in time, however many years ago it had been. One tended to ignore the rats Whatever else was going on, no matter how toxic things got, the rats always seemed to thrive, their pelts as shiny as the skeletons they stripped clean.

The air here smelt different somehow. Dirtier. More real.

I fancied I could hear a motor in the distance, discounted it obviously. It was either in my head, or I was making the noise myself. I had no real control over anything anymore.

It was a little darker. But morning, night? Who could say. They were all one.

Just keep walking.

As I predicted, the wind was rolling through the streets now, into our faces, filling my eyes with the dust of long dead residents.

"Soon." Dancer spoke, I almost missed it.

I struggled some with the lump of dried meat in my mouth, tried to summon a little saliva to lubricate it, turn it back into something vaguely tongue-like again. It took a little time, and I seemed to have developed a lisp I hadn't had before.

"Dan... Danther... when we get there... what if we can't thtop walking? What if we go thtraight patht?"

Dancer made that laughing noise again, and I could see his shoulders shake. I was also suddenly struck by the stupidity of it and started to laugh - after a fashion - myself.

Then I had to get a grip, I almost lost it. That was a scary thought, to just keep on walking until you dropped, just because you couldn't stop, and to not BE there after we'd come so far...

I heard the sound of a motor again. This time I was almost sure it was real. Almost. It had been a long time, but the sound still stirred something deep inside. That raw, rasping, tearing sound of gas exploding within steel, twin exhausts, straight through, no mufflers, had to be a Harley...

The sound faded and I got my head back together. There hadn't been any gasoline for... however long it had been, it was so long since you'd even been able to kill for some. Or be killed. I'd found it safer to walk for a long time now.

My body kept pacing, pacing, one, two, one, two, left, right, on and on, but my mind was turning to shit. I could smell the old smells of the city, back before the world had fucked up, back when people still lived here. I could smell sweat, exhaust fumes, dope burning, all the smells of habitation, I was hallucinating. Even my fucking nose was hallucinating.

In the far distance the sound of a motorcycle accelerating, then a flash of chrome further down the street. I ignored it, my fucked-up brain was painting pictures on the dead canvas of the city. Another flash, then gone.

"D'you see them? Dancer asked. "Or is it me? Are they real?"

Without feeling it, I felt my body tremble. "Biketh... you thee them too? They're real?"

We started walking faster. The sound was real, throbbing, thrumming, many, many bikes all blipping throttles, either going places or arriving. Louder and louder, closer and closer, it was all around us now, hogs circling just out of sight like a pack of vultures. If my body had let me I would have broken into a run, but we were locked in the groove, one, two, left, right, on and on and I wasn't going to be able to stop until...

"Stop right there, guys. Right now!"

Two shadows stepped out of a doorway. Leather. Denim. Colours. Angels. Fucking Hells fucking Angels. With fucking baseball bats. And we couldn't stop... we'd walk right past and they'd kill us, all this way and...

A gentle hand on my shoulder. I stopped. My body was buzzing, complaining, wanting to get back into the rhythm of the walk, legs twitching. I looked around. Dancer was stalled also, a restraining hand on his shoulder.

"Sorry man, gotta do this, y'know?" I took little notice the words seeming to have no meaning. I was unable to disassociate them from the words that always ended up coming from my own lips.

Rough hands gently applied, running over the rags that hid my shame, extracting the knife at my waist. "Gotta be careful, man. Go that way, follow the noise." He gestured off to the right. A gentle push, and my legs resumed their task. Dancer was beside me.

"We're here, we're bloodyfuckingshittingbloody here!"

Suddenly there were Hells Angels everywhere, motorcycles wheeling like gulls, either patrolling or aimlessly cruising. I gawped like a tourist. Dancer was the one with focus, he knew where he was going. I followed him.

The biggest meanest nastiest Hells Angel of them all came rushing up to us, took us both by the arm with a firm grip.

"Good to see you two guys. I'm Zed. We weren't sure if you'd make it. It's all happening, right fuckin' now! Can you believe it?"

I hadn't been able to believe anything for some time now. He gave me a shake and pointed to the sky. Suddenly everyone was looking up. The cloud had split again, wider this time, and the light...

"Space station. Mir. Who'd've thought it could get that low without falling down? Sun's reflecting off its panels." Dancer spoke probably to himself, but in the hushed atmosphere everyone seemed to hear it.

"Damn Russki space station?" A voice behind us somewhere. "That's a star, is what it is. It's a Goddam star!"

Without realising it we were walking again, shouldering through the crowd towards a rough shack tacked onto the side of an old hotel building. Zed ushered us through the door where we found ourselves blinking in the lamplight. The first artificial light I'd seen in a while.

Realisation came like a knife between the ribs when I saw the girl. It was all wrong - Hells Angels? Why was that, the ultimate fucking irony? I couldn't help looking back at her. She laid back on a camp bed, naked and sweating, legs open as if enjoying a last post-coital moment of contemplation. A tattoo of a dragon adorned her left breast, and both her nipples were pierced. The whole tableau seemed far too alien.

Various colours belonging to bike gangs hung on the wall, medieval banners. There was a squeal and the Harley Davidson emblazoned blanket next to the girl moved. Zed pushed us forwards, his voice hushed, awed.

"You're the only two pilgrims to make it through the badlands, but we're glad enough you're here. Prob'ly best to keep numbers down anyway. Come on and meet him.

Come and meet the second son of God."

email your comments to Mike Coombes

Return to Mike Coombes' Page