The Broken Earth

The Broken Earth (Chapter 2)

Two days went by before the boy woke up. Two days of frantic worrying from Arthur as he tended to the boy's wounds with his lacking equipment and poor medical knowledge. Genuine panic clawed at him when he set the child's leg back in place and the boy briefly screamed in splitting pain only to fall back into the loving embrace of sleep. The broken bone may only have been held in place with a couple of broken chair legs and a few tattered old belts but it seemed to do the job.

The boy's clothes were covered in dust from the wasteland. He'd had to cut off one of the boy's jeans legs to get to the leg and assess the damage but other than that the ruined clothes had been left as they were. His matted blonde hair had been washed back by a wet cloth that had been used to constantly clean his brow and the bruises around his eyes had  shrunken but turned an angry black.

Between Arthur's constant ventures beyond the cottage door to hunt for supplies or take shots at the odd Smiler that fancied its chances and the uneasy hours of sleep he stole, nearly every spare second he had was spent at the boy's side, praying for recovery.

It was selfish, he knew that, but this was a real link, maybe his last link, to the world he grew up in. He wasn't going to let it leave right now; too many unanswered questions. How did he survive? Were there others? Where are they? Did she survive too? Are they still out there too?

He sat on the foot of the bed he had clumsily improvised from piled of clothes and blankets, clutching his head. How the hell was he going to handle this? That pit of depression opened within him once more, whispering poisonous doubt to him. The boy would die, they always do, and Arthur would be left alone again 'til the end of his days. If infection didn't kill him then the sight of this scarred waste of meat on his bed would. Hell, Arthur probably looked just as bad as the Smilers by this point. This evil line of thought that spoke to him constantly was so common to him and alien to his own thoughts that in his lonliness and madness he'd even named it. More-dread. Mordred.

Rasping chuckles escaped him. Oh the fucking irony of it all. What was he then, King Arthur? Did he have a round table and some sodding knights at his disposal? Christ, it was bad enough he'd named the malevolent voice in his head that he'd birthed after King Arthur's bastard son but was he now so rapidly approaching delusion that he thought himself King of this wasteland? 'All hail King Arthur, lord of the Broken Earth,' Mordred hissed in his head.

A groan from the other end of the bed woke Arthur from his inner turmoil. He rushed to the bathroom, grabbing the bowl of water he'd been using to tend the boy's wounds and wrung the now dirty rag within. The child whined in pain as he began to wake, sweat coating his brow until it was diligently mopped up by Arthur.

"Can you hear me, lad?" he asked in a voice he now found foreign in his head. He'd almost forgotten he could say more than bloodlust roars, pathetic sobs and slurred curses.

A slight nod from the boy answered, followed by a forced whine of "yeah, I do".

"Take it easy, you had a nasty injury. I took you back to my home to fix you up. Don't be too frightened, I won't hurt you."

The boy prized his eyes open and Arthur was expecting instant fear. The shabby room, decorated with mould and crude furniture that looked like it was carved by a drunk, the low light and the Frankenstein monster beside him would've put the boy into a state of terror, surely. What happened next caught Arthur completely off guard. The boy simply smiled at him, raised his thumb and mumbled "thanks, mister."

Arthur nearly fell back. "You're not scared at all!?"

"I've seen scarier things," the boy shrugged. So this is the lasting legacy of Armageddon? Arthur thought. Children can have serious injuries out in the wilds, be abducted by men that look more akin to patchwork nightmares and find themselves in a dungeon of a room and remain completely unfazed? 'Not only has the Earth died, so has innocence,' Mordred laughed away in a corner of Arthur's brain.

"What were you doing out there in the wild anyway?" Arthur nearly shouted in fury at the child as though he was his own son and he'd disobeyed his father.

A frown curled across the boy's features as he remembered. "I was just out wandering from town and this pack of Invaders chased me... y'know, the ones that look like dead bodies? And they just kept chasing me, for miles. I kept shouting back hoping someone would hear me and I saw this cottage and started running towards it but I suddenly fell and hurt my leg. What happened to them?"

A town! There was a whole town of people left! Elation lifted Arthur up among the clouds though his face betrayed nothing. Instead he coughed and asked, "Was there six of them?"

"Yeah, I think so anyway.... yeah it was six. Why?"

"Only one got away, I got the rest of the sons-of-bitches," No sooner had he said this than Arthur flushed. He'd always been taught not to swear in front of kids, no matter the situation, and he'd just broken one of society's tenents that he held so dear previously. 'Fuck it,' Mordred hissed before being forced violently out of his mind, 'Society's dead, no one gives a toss.'

"Wow, that's cool, thanks Mister," the boy said, his eyes widening as spoke.

"Just call me Arthur," He grunted as he stood up and stretched his aching legs. "I suppose your family will be wanting to see you then, where's this town of yours?" 

"Oh okay, I'm Jonah by the way. Errrm... I can tell you as soon was we get out of here and I can see the Sun, I'm no good with directions. But I can show you where Eden is, definitely."

Eden? That sort of thing conjured images in Arthur's head of a bountiful garden, filled with every plant and animal, fat and ripe and ready for the taking. It was impossible though, even the daftest person would know that. Everywhere was dead, ruined, broken.

"Can I ask you a question Mist- Arthur?"

"Hmm? Oh, go ahead, lad."

"What are you doing out here on your own?"

Arthur sighed and bit into his fist. Where could he begin? How could he begin without crying like a baby? That child Jonah was born after it all happened, he couldn't possibly know what he'd been through.

"Well you know about the invasion?" Jonah nodded slowly. "When the skies first turned red and the first of the bastards came me, my family and friends hid in this cottage here, hoping to hide from whatever was going on and to come out when everything blew over. We lost all contact with the outside world and after a time we thought we were the last ones on Earth."

"Where are they now?" Jonah asked.

Anger and sadness welled within him at that question. He's just a kid, he couldn't possibly know but it still cut him like a damned dagger to hear it asked! With his eyes filling with tears he stared at Jonah, willing to him with every fiber of his being he whispered, "never ask that again. I can't bare to answer now, and I don't know if i ever will, but please never ask that again."

The haunted look he received silenced Jonah instantly and it was only now that the child seemed scared. Arthur left the room for a few minutes and gathered a pack of supplies he'd been packing throughout Jonah's recovery full of essentials for travelling. Pulling his jacket on and hauling the pack on his shoulder he returned to Jonah.

"Tell me when you're ready and I'll carry you home. Least I can do since you're in no position to walk."

"Let's go now!" There was no pause for thought from Jonah when he answered.

It was unsurprising really, why would he want to stay with this lunatic in his hovel any longer than he had to? He didn't care if he was too weak to travel, he just wanted to go right away. Mordred stirred in Arthur's head; no one would want to stay around him, not after what he'd done and what he was. The second he got to this Eden he'd be cast out before he could even ask to stay, or worse; he'd be shot on sight. 'Good riddance too,' Modred snarled.

With the faintest of nods Arthur's heart sank as he carried Jonah on his back to the door.