Icebreaker

  by Steven William Hannah

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.

  ISBN 9798648835856

  Copyright © 2020 Steven William Hannah

  Cover artwork by Stephen Dally (instagram: @s.dalitattoo)

  All rights reserved.

  The Interloper Trilogy: Book One

  Icebreaker

  by Steven William Hannah

  Chapter One

  In the dead of night, there comes a knock at the door of a frozen tin shack. Old Simon would have jumped in fear, had he been surprised - but he is expecting a visitor. He merely sparks the match that he has been holding in his frozen mittens, lights the candle by his bed, and carries its weak light with him to the door. Shivering in his oil-stained denims, he unhitches the rusted lock and eases the door open. Flurries of snow force their way in, curling around the door and buffeting his legs, bringing the frozen night air with them; the smell of salt and industry. Old Simon shivers, longing for a night when he has oil to burn for warmth.

  The visitor looms in the doorway, tall and bedraggled. He wears a dark leather raincoat, hood up, and carries a heavy leather satchel. Old Simon starts to shiver a greeting, but is cut off by the stranger.

  “You asked for a doctor?”

  Old Simon hears the question, the real question, and nods in answer. This man is no normal doctor. He steps back in invitation. The stranger - the doctor - steps inside. The door clacks shut behind him as he sheds his cloak and hangs it on a wall hook. Without the soaked leather distorting his silhouette, he seems far less imposing.

  He's tall but slight; his face is long and stubbled, but his eyes are dark and kind, and he wears the thick yellow fleece of a fisherman up to his neck. Early twenties in the face, late thirties around the eyes. Somebody who has seen much; Old Simon knows the look well. As if to dispel any doubt as to his intentions, the stranger offers his hand to the old man, smiling.

  “Bear,” he introduces himself. “I'm the doctor.”

  “Simon,” rasps the old man, nodding. The stranger has a firm and honest handshake, though he isn't what Simon had expected from the rumours. “I'd offer you a drink but -”

  “No need,” says Bear, raising his hands and taking in Simon's shack. Bear has a spark to his eyes that puts Simon at ease. Everything seems to interest him. “Can't drink on this job anyway,” he gives Simon a knowing smile. “It's hard enough as it is.”

  Bear sets down his satchel and begins taking in the shack. Simon, the old fella, is lurking about in the background, lingering next to a cellar door, the type that inevitably leads to a concrete underground shelter. Every house in Forgehead has one, every single house.

  The rest of the shack is what he expected. Old Simon is close to the docks, where the most unfortunate of Forgehead's workers have their dwellings. This far from the forges and workshops, the temperature is lowest. Ice is quick to form on the outside of the shacks, leading most people to sleep underground in their shelters. The shacks are for storage.

  Simon seems eager to get started, and so Bear puts him at ease.

  “Just gathering data,” he says, looking over the shack. Everything might be important. This is not just work – this is research. Simon loses some internal battle with himself, and opens drawer, pulling a flask out. Simon watches him, awaiting judgement. Bear can smell the alcohol coming from it - but he does not judge.

  The shack, thinks Bear. Uneven concrete covers the floor, and the roof is low enough that Bear can reach up and brush his hand against the rotting beams. It resembles the cramped tool sheds of Bear's youth, where he spent many long gaslit nights with his father, tinkering with old electronics from before the Cataclysm.

  There's no light, save for the dim flicker of the candle in its glass tube; no windows, no moonlight by which to see. There isn't a surface that doesn't hold some box of scrap metal, or some bundle of fabric. Bear has seen this setup before: this is a tinkerer's place, someone who works with old machinery. He recognises ruined old direct-current motors and spools of copper wire. He immediately feels at home.

  The shack has a grand total of two doors – little more than planks and corrugated metal sheets held together with nails. One door is the entrance that he stepped through. The other is where his work likely is.

  Simon hovers near him like a fly, impatient, hovering from one foot to the other, taking sips from his flask. When he finally breaks the silence, his voice is trembling;

  “So I don't know how much you've been told, but I just -”

  Bear waves his polite ramblings away with a smile as he investigates the boxes of scrap up close, taking his time. “Don't worry, Simon. The message got through, and here I am.” Bear pulls a large writing pad out of his satchel, rough recycled paper that rasps as he turns the pages. He tries his best to look professional.

  “I have to ask you some questions first, Simon – if that's ok?”

  “Oh. Of course.”

  “First – I assume that you asked for my help because the usual channels are... unavailable to you? You didn't want to tell the militia? The Forestry?”

  Simon sits on the edge of a desk, his eyes tired in the candlelight. Bear would guess at Simon's age, but in Forgehead people start to look old at thirty.

  “Aye,” says Simon. “I mean, there aren't any doctors here that I can afford anyway.” At the mention of cost, an uneasy silence falls over Simon. He gives Bear a questioning look.

  “I don't charge for these services,” says Bear, answering his unasked question.

  “Oh thank Gaia,” he breathes. “You're a better man than I.”

  “I can't charge for this work, man,” shrugs Bear. “It's too important. Now – to get us back on track. You can't go to the usual channels? You haven't told anybody else?”

  “I mean – I would tell our Council reps, but anybody who's Council will tell the Foresters, and if they find out what's happened to my boy -” Simon stops talking and holds a clenched fist against his mouth. Bear sees the stress that he is under. He understands what it feels like – those that are taken like this end up something worse than dead.

  “No need to continue,” he tells Simon. “Thank you.”

  Bear understands exactly what the Foresters would do too, if Simon were to mention his son's fate. He has seen it done. Simon's son is already a statistic, something to be burned – along with his house and anything he owned. Better safe than sorry, of course. Marks of this practice are everywhere – the streets of Forgehead are littered with sealed, burned buildings. Tombs by any other name.

  Still completely necessary, thinks Bear. Better than to risk an outbreak.

  “Now Simon,” he pushes. “I need to ask you some questions about your son. Is that ok?”

  Before Simon can answer, there's a sudden, sharp wailing from downstairs that makes the candle flicker. Both Bear and Simon freeze as the shadows dance against the wall, and the wind rattles the door against the frame. Every box of scraps begins to rustle, then settles. It dies off, and Simon looks at the door in tired resignation.

  “That's my son,” he whispers, and looks at the ground. “What do you want to know?”

  Bear catches his breath and tries to play it down, but some things he suspects he will never get used to.

  “Of course. I've heard that kind of thing before. Apologies for my reaction, I should really be used to that by now. Am I right in saying he's below us?”

  “In the shelter, aye. He's there so the neighbours don't hear the things that he shouts.”

  “Of course,” says Bear. “So. Before I talk to your son -”

  “Can you help him?” Simon blurts out. as though he doesn't know the answer.

  Bear holds his gaze in the darkness, staring into his milky old eyes. This is the point where he always considers lying. It would be so easy to give them a little hope, just enough to sustain them; but really, they should already be grieving. Bear doesn't answer, and in doing so, tells Simon what he already knows. The old man sighs and his shoulders sag inwards. He looks up from his hands after a pause.

  “Have you ever gotten anybody back?” he asks Bear. “Is there a chance? Any at all?”

  “No.” There's a long silence whilst the wind howls. “But the data I'm collecting could point us to possible cures; prevention, treatment... To that end, Simon, again: I need to ask you some questions. Ok?”

  Simon gives a weak nod and stumbles backwards onto a bed that Bear had assumed was a low shelf of some sort. It's covered in thin coats, clothes and straw. There's no fireplace, Bear realises, and shivers as the cold starts to seep through his fleece.

  It dawns on him that Old Simon has been sleeping here, in order to keep his son and his condition hidden. He must be suffering. Bear makes a note to try and get him some kind of help after he is done here. Bear prepares a stubby engineer's pencil and rests the paper on his knees.

  “Ok,” says Bear. “How long ago was the exposure?”

  “Eight days.”

  “Eight? Really?”

  Simon nods. “Is that unusual?”

  “Rare to find one that's made it past seven,” Bear tries to brush over it. “Has your son ever worked with the Forestry?”

  “No.”

  Bear makes a note. Unusual again. These are answers that he expected

to hear. His heart begins to beat in his ears. “Has your son lived here all of his life?”

  “Forgehead? Aye. Raised him myself.”

  Bear makes another note and tries not to hear the implied story that Simon is telling him. Mother died in childbirth, Bear reckons; still a common occurrence this far down the coast. Few doctors, next to no contraceptives, long nights; sad story.

  “Has your son ever left Forgehead for any period of time? At all?”

  “No.”

  Bear notes the fast answer – of course he hasn't left Forgehead. To do so without the protection of the Forestry or – rare though it is – a Crawler, would be suicide.

  “So,” Bear puts the pencil down and starts looking for deception. He needs to know if Simon is lying, because if he isn't, then his son's case is exactly what Bear has been looking for all these years. “If your son has never left Forgehead, how did he come to be exposed?”

  “Is this a trick question?” asks Simon, and Bear hears the indignation rising. “How the fuck should I know? He fell through the front door – I thought he was drunk – rubbing his eyes and, and, ah, hell -”

  Simon's brief flare of indignant anger turns to grief again. His breathing is coming short – hysteria is setting in, and Bear leans forward to stop him from going down that road; anger won't answer any questions, and Bear has many. Simon is shaking when he puts a hand on his shoulder, trying to fight back tears.

  “Stay with me, Simon, we're almost done. So, your son was afflicted somewhere in Forgehead?”

  “He must have been.”

  “That's...” he stops. That's impossible. Absolutely impossible – and exactly what Bear was hoping he would say. “That's good information, Simon, I can use that. And he told you when you asked? That he had encountered the, uh -”

  “Gaia?” Simon asks. “Stared into the Devil's eyes? Whichever name you call it by. Yes. He only managed a few words, but that's what he was saying.”

  Bear tries to remain polite, to not indulge superstition, but he cannot help but correct Simon. “Are you Gaian, by chance?”

  “In name, I suppose. Hard to call it faith when we know she exists. I'm Gaian the same way I'm human.”

  He believes that the awoken mother earth is trying to kill us, thinks Bear – but not enough to drop out of society and start drawing runes on himself, covering everything in dream catchers, and eschewing personal hygiene. It would be fair to say that Bear has a low opinion of Gaians, little more than a cult in his eyes.

  “I only know what we call it here in Forgehead,” Simon shrugs and waves Bear away. “Christian or Gaian, doesn't matter. We both know what we're talking about, what does it matter?”

  Bear stops scribbling and looks up from his notes. “It always strikes me that to call it anything other than an unnamed phenomenon is to give it a kind of mythical property. It implies that we cannot, and will not, ever understand it.”

  Simon laughs. “Do you understand it?”

  Bear gives an awkward cough. “No.”

  “Then what difference does it make?”

  “Fair,” says Bear. “Back to the questions; your son confirmed that he'd seen Gaia's eyes?”

  “He'd seen her, aye,” whispers Simon after a pause. “I asked him what had happened to him and he just – he screamed like a man shot. You ever heard that noise, when someone gets hurt so bad that they know it's over? When it's just suffering left? It's like this weak groan. Acceptance.”

  Bear can't see much time left in the old man's eyes. “Yeah,” says Bear. “Yeah, I know what that sounds like.”

  “He knew what he'd seen.” Simon stares into the darkness, away from Bear. “We both knew it was over then. I -” Simon cuts himself off, before finding the strength to continue. “I couldn't do what he asked me to.”

  Bear knows that his son would have asked him to end it. By any means necessary. He knows because he was once asked to do the same thing, and did no better than Simon.

  “Few of us can,” says Bear. “Don't judge yourself for that.”

  “Doctor, if it comes to it, will you end his suffering?”

  Bear forces himself to meet Simon's eyes. “That's not for me to do, Simon. I can't make that call.”

  “But you're a doctor?”

  “Not of medicine,” says Bear. Simon looks at the ground, defeated. “No life is mines to take. He's in the basement now?” Simon nods, and Bear feels reluctant to push Simon much further. Here, though, he has to. He cannot do this alone.

  “Simon; are you familiar with the established stages of the, uh, psychosis associated with -” There's a blank look in Simon's eyes, and Bear realises that the man probably can't even write, let alone familiarise himself with the stages of mental breakdown that accompany exposure sickness. “Sorry,” says Bear, “let me walk that back a bit. Has he begun to draw or scratch symbols onto the walls?”

  “Aye – spirals that go into lots of little spirals. I try not to look at them.”

  “Good man. Keep your eyes off of them,” says Bear. “Has he tried to speak to you at all?”

  “He has, aye. In rare wee moments, lucid moments. Sometimes he gets right up to the door, and he whispers under it while I'm asleep.”

  Bear feels his stomach curdle at the thought.

  “Does he talk about people who are deceased?”

  Simon nods. “He said his mother wanted to talk to me. Told me to come in close and listen. Told me to open the door.”

  “And?”

  “And I didn't. Crazy talk, all of that. It didn't sound genuine. Sounded malicious. Didn't sound like him at all.”

  “Smart of you to resist,” says Bear. “What about mimicry?”

  “What's that, Doc?”

  “Pretending to be other people? Trying to sound like other people to deceive you?”

  “No,” he says. “No, not that. I don't think so. His voice changes sometimes, but otherwise, no.”

  Bear continues, eager to hit the big questions now. “He didn't exhibit the usual dreams in the lead up to an incursion? My records don't show any phenomenological event eight days ago - nothing might have caused his exposure.”

  “No dreams,” says Simon. “Not that he told me, no. And there wasn't an incursion, you're correct. It was just him that got it.”

  Bear feels something catch. This is it. This is the case that he has been waiting for.

  “And you didn't experience any dreams?” asks Bear.

  “No, no, I'd have told the Forestry immediately.”

  “Perfect, thank you Simon.”

  Bear hefts his bag and begins to rake through it, leaving Simon in silence. The old man breaks in with a nervous question.

  “Do you believe me, Doctor?”

  Bear stops and raises an eyebrow. “Why wouldn't I?”

  “But I mean – this isn't how it happens, is it? Gaia ain't something you see down an alleyway after four pints, right? It doesn't just burst into our town like this, that's not how it works. She can't get past the walls. You're supposed to get the dreams, first too, aren't you? Gaia warns us. Then we all spend a few days with our eyes bound shut and our ears clamped over and the Forestry burn it back to hell with their weapons. It's always all of us dreaming – all of us at risk. There's always a warning. It ain't supposed to work like this – is it? Just to one of us? Have we –“ Simon stops, and Bear sees the guilt in his face “Have I brought this on him somehow, doctor? Did I do something bad? Or -”

  Bear shakes his head, and puts a hand on Simon's shoulder before he starts to lose it again. “No. No, Simon, you have not brought this upon anybody. But you are correct: this is not how the phenomenon usually presents itself. This isn't how it usually works – and that's why it's so important to study what has happened here. That's why I'm going to go and talk your son.”

  “Has this ever happened before?”

  “Once,” says Bear. “Just once that I know of. Now. I need your help to collect the necessary data from downstairs.”

  From the bag, Bear begins to build a pile of equipment: An electronic music player, small headphones, a wind-up LED flashlight, and a thick fabric blindfold. Next, Bear produces a plastic box the size of a walkie talkie, adorned with dials, valves, switches and antennae. Finally he finds and fastens on a thick leather glove covered in steel pipes and gas cylinders. He tests the pilot light on it, briefly lighting up the room.

 

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