Kitty's Morning Walk

by Benway

In a dark corner of the demolished biscuit factory, a small, slight figure stirred. She rose from the concrete floor and stretched, reflecting that years of ninja and martial arts training only taught you how to ignore the pain and discomfort that came from sleeping on a concrete floor. She looked at her companion, who had morphed in her sleep into a form more able to rest comfortably on the hard, cold surface. She also heard the muted voices of two of her companions in conversation. Picking up a canteen from the floor, she drew a dial of contraceptives out of one of the pouches on her belt and swallowed a small white pill with a mouthful of brackish water. Her companion stirred, and then morphed into her usual form.

"What time is it?" "About six, I think. Brian's already up."

Kitty picked her way over the debris to a niche between two giant ovens where Kurt and Brian had been talking. They were both looking at the radio from the plane, which she had pieced together the night before, after the crash. Brian had the earphones on, and was looking sightlessly into the middle distance as he adjusted the controls. Kurt, clearly exhausted from a sleepless night, glanced at her and then back to the radio.

"It is working, isn't it?" "Oh, yes. Its just that either the Magistrates of the rebels are jamming radio signals, so Brian's having a lot of trouble trying to reach the contact."

Kurt glanced at Brian, who had not reacted at all to her presence.

"I will keep to the plan from yesterday. We make radio contact with the rebels, and then get them to guide us into the city. We want to avoid the fighting as much as possible."

Kurt paused.

"I think they're all going to kill each other."

Kitty nodded. She took a food bar from Brian's pack and bit into the yielding, acrid matter.

"Yeah. We were lucky to find this place. I didn't see a soul during my watch last night, and neither did any of the detection equipment. A scouting expedition in daylight would be useful. Do you need me for anything?"

"Not right now. Try to be back within the hour. We'll signal if anything urgent comes up."

Kitty forced down the rest of the bar, and walked towards the gaping hole in the side of the factory. She passed the sleeping Wisdom, who had made a nest out of old cartons, and was sleeping in greater comfort than she had. She noted Douglock, staring in rapt concentration at the controls of a crushed packaging machine. In the weak light of the dawn, he looked so much like his template that she felt the urge to go over and talk to him. She knew how disappointing and painful it would be to interface with the creature, and instead she kept going, out of the factory and into the parking lot in front of it.

As a small child, she had known what was made here. One Christmas, a well-meaning but basically ignorant neighbour had given her a metal box filled with the richest, most intriguing biscuits that she had ever tasted. The box had a delightful portrait of a 4 Teddy bears at tea, and she had liked it so much that for several months after she had sealed her favorite bear in the box to sleep every night before she went to bed. The phrase Made In Genosha meant nothing to her then, nor to her parents, who had mistakenly thought that it was English. The people who had built the factory had wanted to believe that, too. On a hilltop  several miles from  Hammer Bay, they had built a little corner of England, with a village green, a small church, and two rows of semi-detached houses lining the road past the factory. It was situated at the top of a hill, and from the parking lot Kitty had a clear view of the surrounding empty countryside. There was a major highway in the distance, but it was deserted except for the odd abandoned vehicle.

The aim of her exercise was to verify, in daylight, that the village was clear of obvious threats. Meggan and Brian had overflown the village at dusk as the small party had made its way from the crash site to the shelter of the factory, but they had seen no signs of life in the dark ruins of the town. Kitty was admirably equipped for the task. She was less likely than Brian to get bored, and she had a far better knowledge of military technology than Meggan. Even better, she had the option of being intangible, which put her at much less of a risk from bombs than her not-quite-as-indestructible-as-they-sometimes-thought-they were team-mates. She regretted the dulling of her other senses; it required immense concentration to keep herself walking on the surface of the ground, and to follow the words of anyone talking to her who was not also phased. She had never quite gotten used to the silence, and so she had asked Forge to make her a Walkman that could operate in her phased state. She selected a minidisc from her belt with a mix of songs on it, and set out into the remains of the village.

As she walked down the plant driveway towards the church and the village green, she wondered which of the two sides had been here when the shells had landed. The wreckage of a motorized gun lay in the shoulder of the roadway, and the remains of three soldiers had been laid down beside it. She stopped to examine them, and from their appearance decided that the battle had happened over a week before. She wondered if the gun was the target of the barrage that had leveled all the houses to the right of the church, and  had heavily damaged the remainder. A quick walk through the church revealed a great deal of blast damage, but also some disturbing grafitti in the local dialect accompanied by some obscure symbols. There was also a great deal of dried blood, and signs of human fecal matter atop the altar. Kitty took a Minox from her belt and photographed the symbols, the altar, and the blood. She phased through the wall behind the altar and walked around the church and onto the village green. The trees ahead of her were bare of leaves as if it were winter, but it was the middle of December. Ah, the blast, she thought. As she approached the pond, a great black cloud of flies flew up from the water. A sharp, bleu-cheese odor cut into her dulled senses,  coming from the grayish heaps of matter that rose above the surface of the pond. A large piece of yellow machinery stood next to the pond, which it took her a moment to recognize as a tree chipper. She approached the machine, and examined it more closely. It had an oversized crank attached to one side, but no motor. Dried streaks of black, crusted material caked its sides, almost obliterating the sign identifying it as the property of the Hammer Bay Department of Parks and Recreation. Kitty again withdrew a Minox from her belt, and took several photographs of the pond and of the machine. The event documented, she put a new disc in the Walkman and set off toward the intact houses on the other side of the village.

As soon as she stepped into the road, the world disappeared in a flash of light and a cloud of dust.  Kitty swore and slammed her eyes closed. She heard the dull roar around her, and noticed that the vague sense of the ground beneath her feet had vanished. There was a feeling of warmth, which passed away slowly. So much for discreteness she thought. She counted to five and opened her eyes, seeing starbursts in front of them which took a moment to clear. She looked down into the small crater below her, and noticed from its shape that it had probably been caused by a mine, rather than a shell or a rocket. But I'm intangible, she thought. Then it occurred to her that if she had been walking a little too deep in the road, she could have phased through a trigger and triggered it by frying the electronics. She looked around carefully, but saw no obvious response. Her 2-way radio signaled.

"You OK, Katchen?" "Yeah. Just a mine. Stay off the streets running north out of town."

Kitty went on, exploring the houses one by one. Most of them were heavily damaged, and in some of them, the bodies of the inhabitants lay where they fell in closets, bathrooms, and basements. There were a few more dead soldiers, but no sign of recent fighting. Whatever had happened was very sudden; in several houses, the remains of a lunch or a supper lay rotting at the tables. She noticed the bizarre symbols and grafitti in some of the houses, especially in the bedrooms. In one, she found the heads of a dog and a cat impaled on the posts of an iron bedstead. She had to reload the Minox three times before she reached the last house on the street.

The windows of the last house had miraculously remained intact. The elegant symmetry of its front lawns was marred only by the presence of a combat boot in the middle of the concrete path leading to the front door. Kitty materialized the tip of her boot and kicked the thing aside, noting that it seemed unusually heavy. She phased through the door and entered the house. The living room was dusty, but had not been touched. Kitty made a circuit of the room, examining the photos sitting on the mantlepiece. A family portrait, a son in the uniform of the magistrates, a graduation picture, all betraying an aura of excessive Englishness that only expatriates could achieve. She passed through a dining room with more rotting food on the table, and entered a kitchen. The floors of the room were covered in trails of dried blood, and dark blotches of it were smeared on the open cabinet doors. The back wall of the room was missing, and opened onto a large crater where the back yard would have been. In a tree on the opposite side of the crater, what looked like a polka-dotted sack had been draped over one of the branches. Kitty noted that it was either the body of a small child or of a part of its mother. Turning, she went back into the kitchen and noticed something unusual about the blood. The trail had come in from the back, but instead of leading to a body it mapped out a path that passed by every emptied cupboard before disappearing up the servant's stairway. Kitty air-walked carefully up the staircase, and followed the trail into the large bedroom. She walked over to the bed, and looked at the woman that she found there. She appeared to be about 35 ,and she was wearing Magistrate combat fatigues without insignia. She was very pale and breathing shallowly. Kitty gingerly bent over, materialized the tips of her fingers and drew  back the bed spread. The woman had obviously also had an encounter with a mine. her right foot had been blown off, and a crude tourniquet applied. This had stopped the bleeding but not the infection; the right leg had inflated the woman's combat pants until the thick cotton had split, and Kitty could see the grossly swollen, blackened flesh under the torn fabric. The floor around the bed was covered in drink cans, empty food tins, and packets of powdered soup. All the tins nearest the bed were empty, but a bottle of water remained intact just beyond arms reach from the bed. Kitty picked it up, opened it, and materialized her fingers again. She checked the woman's week pulse, and listened carefully to the labored breathing. Bracing herself, she fully materialized so that she could be heard. The stench in the room was almost unbearable. A combination of garbage and sharp cheese, urine and shit filled her nostrils, and she had to fight back her nausea. She placed her hand on the woman's forehead, and then spoke gently.

"Can you here me?"

The head nodded.

"Do you want some water?"

The eyes opened, and replied wordlessly. Kitty put the bottle to the woman's lips, and let her sip from it.

"I hurt myself"

"Yes you did. "

"Mine"

"Oh."

Kitty drew a blank. What could she say? You've half rotted away with gangrene and I'm amazed that you're not dead?

"Was this your house?"

"Heh. No. Not my house. I'm American"

The voice was so horse and strained that Kitty had not caught the accent.

"I'm an engineer. Paid me so much to come here."

"How long have you been like this?"

"Don't know. Lost track after the first few days. Water ran out. Couldn't get any more."

"I have some for you now."

The woman drank slowly, coughing some of it back up.

"Thank Jesus for sending me an angel."

"I have to ask; why are you dressed as a magistrate?"

The womens face froze in look of terror.

"You're one of them. Not going to kill me, are you?"

"No, no I'm not. I'm not on the magistrates side or with the rebels. I'm a sort of neutral agent here."

A look of relief passed over the woman's face.

"Thank god. Me too. Work for Stark International. Defensive measures division"

"Defensive Measures?"

"Yeah. Tech support for land mines. Magistrates wanted to know why they hadn't worked here. They had mined one end of the road, but they marked the wrong end on the map. They worked fine. My escort got blown to bits just down the street, and I survived. Funny old world isn't it?"

Kitty's blood ran cold. She thought of the two small corpses she had seen in the street next to a mine crater near a village in Lebanon. The hands were still joined in death, and were about all that had recognizably remained of them. The woman saw something in her face and gasped.

"I had to. I couldn't find any other job."

"BITCH!"

Kitty drew back, filled with disgust. She picked up the water bottle and hurled it at the wall, where it shattered. She tore out of the room, forgetting to phase, and raced down the stairs. She picked up a large chair and hurled it full force through the living room window. She stood in the centre of the room breathing heavily. Three options crossed her mind. The first was to leave the woman to rot. She had a few days left at most, many of which would have been in fitting agony. The second was to take a kitchen knife and put the woman out of her misery. Kitty knew the exact place to strike for a quick death, but that seemed unsatisfying. As she calmed, she decided that she had to find some way of helping, even though the woman as good as dead. She went to the kitchen and took a sharp knife from the drawer. She would offer the woman a choice: a quick end, or passage to a hospital, where she could at least die in relative peace. It would not be difficult to carry her through the lines, as Meggan or Brian could manage it easily. Rephrasing, she mounted the stairs again, and entered the bedroom. The woman lay staring at the ceiling, her mouth open. She was clearly dead. Kitty began to giggle, and then to laugh hysterically. She was very glad that there was no-one around to hear her.

When she had recovered herself, she drew the blanket over the woman's corpse and left the house, air-walking through the false winter back to the factory. There, she found that all the team had awoken and were gathered around the radio. Brian turned to her.

"We will rendezvous with Moreau tonight. He's going to guide us to the city, and he said he has some information about my father's connection to this place. How was the recce party? I heard that it was blast."

Kitty glared.

"I didn't find anything. Just some mines. And a minor atrocity. Don't go near the pond. There's no-one here. No danger."

She bolted from the from the room, and ran into a bathroom. She crouched over the dry bowl, locking her hand around the cold, ceramic rim. The hot, acidic remains of the breakfast bar and of one of Moira's wretched lasagnas splattered her face, and the floor. The hot, slimy mess tasted vile as it shot out of her, each surge accompanied by an agonizing pain in her midsection. There seemed no end to it. After a last few heaves of greenish, bitter bile, her stomach spasmed again and she heaved out loud bellowing coughs, but nothing else. She collapsed against the wall, shivering, her eyes stinging as the sweat flowed down her forehead into them. She absent-mindedly flicked a clump of half-digested food from a strand of her hair.

"You OK?"

It was Pete Wisdom, of all people.

"Yeah"

"Was it bad?"

She turned back to the bowl.

"I'm an X-Man, Mr. Wisdom. It was nothing that I hadn't seen before."

FIN

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