Thicker Than Water

Originally published in Strange Lands Short Stories (Flame Tree Press, November, 2020).

3,879 words

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It was not unreasonable for Marin and Damian Karras to assume that they would both return to the shelter alive. Plenty before them had. And as brothers, they had the highest chances of any. No one knew why that was so, why siblings returned more often than those who ventured out unrelated to one another. Even after more than forty years in the shelters, there was a lot that wasn’t known, like what started it all, or why the sky was poisoned. About the only thing that was known for certain was that science had nothing to do with what was left of the world.

It was the witch.

“You don’t have to do this, boys. Someone else can make the delivery, can’t they?” Sharon asked, pacing between her sons and taking the lapels of their slickers in her hands in turns.

Marin sighed. “It’s okay, Ma. We’ll be fine. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.”

“We can find someone else. Anyone else. I could even go instead! I’m strong, I can make the trip!”

This time it was Damian who spoke. “Don’t be silly, Ma. It’s only a day’s trip. We can probably even make it before nightfall.”

“But—”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Damian said. “There’s more than ten hours of daylight left, and it’s been at least a year since blood relatives got...lost.”

Jasmine and Sarah Blair. Sisters. They’d gone out for a supply run the spring before last, only the supplies never came. Neither did the girls.

Evan MacNeal, who had once been a sheriff, stepped forward from the small crowd that had gathered to see the boys out. “We’ve been over this, Sharon. It’s their turn.” His voice was soft, but firm.

What remained of the Karras family stood silent in the lobby of the old subway terminal, listening to the sound of the rain patter softly against the sagging roof. In places it leaked through, dripping to the once-white marble tile. Faded schedules and fares still hung to the walls in places, the print stained by moisture and long since legible. Empty vending machines stood against the walls. Turnstiles had either rusted in place or had been ripped out by the scrappy group of inhabitants that had made the subway their home. Mold grew from the walls like carpeting.

“You’re sure you have everything you need?” Evan asked.

Damian nodded. “Positive.”

“Then you better get going,” Evan said, firmly shaking the hand of each of the brothers. “You’re only losing light. And don't try to push it. Stop at the school before dark, and stay there until morning. The harbor is in the library on the second floor. Blessed it myself on my last time through.”

The Karras’ all hugged briefly, Sharon pressing her boys tight to her breast, sobbing as she held them. Damian and Marin flicked the safeties off their rifles, pulled their waxed slicker hoods over their heads, and stepped from the station to the overgrown parking lot of the tarnished world beyond.

###

“What do you think she looks like?” Damian asked.

“You think this is really the best time bring that up?”

“Why not? It’s not like she can hear us. She's only active at night.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it? She’s a witch. You don’t know what she can hear. And no one knows for sure that she isn’t active during the day.”

“She’s probably off in France, banging a cow or something. She can do that, you know. Travel the world in an instant.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“And you’re a dumb bastard.”

Damian laughed. “Tell you what: if I see her, I’ll be sure to let her know you think she’s hot. Maybe she’ll pity fuck you before making you shit out your intestines or something awful like that.”

“Already got it covered,” Marin said, walking beside his brother as they picked their way through reeds that stood as tall as their chests. “Jan’s chowder already did the job last night.”

The laughter of the young men echoed along the broken city street and through the shattered windows of the storefronts they passed. Lumps of rust that were once cars lined the ruined buildings on either side of the road. They had been walking for hours, the sun now directly overhead, but through the thick slate clouds they could not see it.

“You think anyone’s still alive over there? In Lewiston, I mean.”

What remained of the city of Lewiston was in fact some miles to the north. Their destination was a warehouse much closer, but the inhabitants had named it after the place from which they'd been driven: Brunswick. The few settlements that remained were odd that way—schools and bus stations and churches and office buildings, all named for the dead towns that surrounded them and from which their occupants had fled.

“Of course they are,” Marin said. “Evan was on the radio with them just last week.”

“Yeah, but did you talk to them on the radio?”

“Well, no. But so what?”

Damian shrugged, kicking a rock as he walked. The rain continued to fall.

“Don’t you think it’s a little odd that no one other than Evan is allowed to talk on the radio?”

“You worry too much.”

“You don’t worry enough,” Damian said, glancing sideways at his twin.

“Think about this, genius: that shit you’ve got in your backpack is worth more than both of us—”

“Not to me. Not to Ma.”

“—and if it weren’t, they wouldn’t be sending us out here to deliver it, would they? Hiking our asses across this God-forsaken city to a settlement with less than a hundred people living in it. Use your head, okay? Stop being a jackass for once.”

Marin looped his arm over Damian’s shoulder and the two of them walked in silence down the quiet path. Occasionally they spotted people through the remains of some of the windows they passed, overturned tables and broken pipes hanging from ceilings that had long since collapsed. But they were only mannequins.

###

“We’re going to have to stop at that school,” Marin said, wincing. “Thought we could hurry and skip it, but we’re not making enough progress, and I need to get dry. This rain is starting to get to me.”

“I told you, you should have waxed your jacket again before we left.”

“I waxed it last week!”

“They've been thinning the wax,” Damian said, holding out his gloved hand to catch the drops of rain that fell in his palm. “Mixing it with some kind of filler. It doesn't last as long as it used to. Not as thick.”

“Nothing last as long as it used to,” Marin muttered. They had made it to the elementary school beyond the south crossing of the Androscoggin River, half a mile from an old college campus. It was damp inside, the air heavy with the stink of mildew and rotting earth. Broken glass crunched beneath their feet as they crossed the cracked marble tiles of the lobby. Marin clicked on a flashlight. The light was dim, and he shook it to charge the battery. An arrow had been spray painted on the wall, pointing up a staircase.

The harbor—some just called them safe houses—was one of several that dotted the makeshift pathways for travelers on their way from one settlement to the next. It was a room in the abandoned school, and at one point had been a library. Small plastic chairs and low tables meant for children were piled in one corner. Paint that had once been colorful and bright had flaked from the walls, revealing the dull grey of crumbling plaster beneath. It smelled of rot and dead rodents but it was dry, and it was safe. All the same, Damian found himself pouring a line of salt across the doorway and repeating the prayer their mother had taught them since before they could read.

“You don't need to do that, you know. It's already been blessed.”

Damian thought about this for a moment, then finished his prayer. “Something feels off about it. Can't say what it is, but I don't trust this place.”

Marin shrugged. “Suit yourself, Dimi, but I think you're a little paranoid.”

It didn’t take long before they’d collected a pile of books dry enough to burn. Damian started a fire and the two brothers took off their rain slickers and shirts, pulled off their boots, and stripped to their briefs.

Damian whistled when he saw his brother’s back. “Ouch. She really got you, didn’t she?”

“Is it bad?” Marin craned to look over his shoulder.

“Your whole damn back is all bruises. Surprised you can move your arms at all.”

“You got any of that cream left? I’m almost out.”

“Yeah. Ma gave me a jar before we left.”

Above the small fire Marin had strung a wire from one side of the room to the other. Together they hung their wet clothes before Damian fished a small tube of powder from his bag.

“You better say the prayer for this one,” he said. “I always screw it up. Would hate to have our clothes not properly cleansed.”

Marin uttered the spell quietly as Damian sprinkled the powder over the fire. Smoke thickened and it rose to the ceiling, curling over their damp clothing before billowing out of a broken window. Ten thousand needle pricks of light glowed brightly and moved across the fabric, skimming its surface like water fleas as it went, burning away the physical manifestation of black magic deposited by the steady rain.

They tended to each other’s wounds while their clothing dried, working the healing ointment their mother had blessed into bruised and tender muscles. Everywhere the wax on their clothing had failed was a place for the rain to penetrate, slowly breaking down everything it touched. The rain was evil, passive in its way, but evil all the same. The witch had seen to that. There was little she had not cursed.

###

The wind was howling when Damian woke, though it was not the shrieking wind that had woken him.

It was full dark. They had pulled their sleeping bags close to the fire when they turned in for the night, partly because of the warmth, partly because of the proximity to the protective smoke.

“Marin,” he whispered, shaking his brother. “Marin! Wake up.”

His twin continued to sleep deeply. The coals in the fire had gone out. Damian looked about and saw only darkness. From the hallway beyond he heard footsteps, soft, as if from bare feet. He pushed the sleeping bag away and rose, walking to the library entrance. A door hung there once, but it had rotted away from its hinges. Damian stood to one side and peered as far around the corner and down the hall as he could without crossing the line of salt and into the hallway.

There was nothing. He looked the other direction, and again, saw only darkness.

“Marin!” he said, turning back to his brother. “Get over here!”

Damian screamed when he looked back to the dark hallway. Inches away, on the other side of the invisible barrier, a man's pale face hung upside down from the ceiling. His eyes were milky, the pupils hazy, as if the jellied orbs had begun to rot. Long black hair, stringy and wet, dangled toward the floor. Split and cracked lips moved soundlessly, as if in prayer. He was naked, and he had no arms.

Damian fell to the floor and scrabbled backward in a panic, his heels kicking at the soggy and moss-riddled carpet as he pushed away. The figure remained in place, suspended in the door frame, whispering words from a language ancient and dead.

Crack! A flash of light and a defining boom from his right. Marin pulled the bolt to eject the spent casing and slammed it shut before firing again. The creature in the doorway shrieked and scrambled along the ceiling and out of sight.

Marin shouted at Damian, gripping his shoulder.

“What?” Damian staggering to his feet and rubbed his ears. Gradually the ringing subsided.

“I said, are you alright?”

“Fine, I'm fine,” Damian said. He felt dizzy from the thunderous gunshots and the adrenaline and his racing heart. The air smelled sharply of cordite from the gunfire. “That was her, wasn't it? That was the witch!”

“No,” Marin said, flicking the safety on his rifle and leaning it against an old desk beside his backpack. “I don’t think so.”

“How do you know?”

“Because we're still alive.”

“Jesus,” he said, sitting down, wiping sweat from across his brow. “What was it doing?”

“Praying, looked like. Trying to overcome your spell. To get into the room.”

“Think it could have?”

Marin's face clouded. “I don't know. It should have never been able to even approach the door. You were right to seal the entrance, though. Someone's compromised the barrier here. It's not safe.”

“Jesus, what was that?”

“Something from a nightmare.”

Damian’s hands trembled. He sat back down and pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from his bag. “I think this is the nightmare,” he said, gesturing at the desolate room around him and the world beyond the broken windows.

They took turns sleeping that night, each watching and listening uneasily in turn. Eventually the grey morning came, and with it, more rain. The rain was another form of attack, the brothers knew, and they thought about that as they ate their cold breakfast in silence.

###

“Who you think he is?” Damian asked, toeing the body with a muddy boot. They were on the move again, having left the school behind several hours ago. He knelt and checked the pockets for something useful, but found only a faded picture of a man kissing a woman on the cheek, his arms wrapped around her sides and hands resting on her swollen belly.

“I don't know,” Marin said regretfully. “No one from our camp, though.” He took the photo from Damian, running a thumb across its glossy surface, wondering what had happened to the woman and their baby. The picture had been taken in a dark building, a factory maybe, but the smiles on the young couple's face were radiant. Had anyone ever been so happy, he wondered? It was amazing under what circumstances happiness could exist.

They finished checking the body for anything useful, and, finding nothing, moved on. They'd re-waxed their clothing before heading out that morning, but progress through the ruins of the city had been slow. The rain had been constant the day before, but since their encounter in the night, it had been become driving, as if personally offended by their perseverance. Places where their flesh was exposed or where the rain got through had turned their skin into a constellation of black and blue. Everything hurt, as if their very muscles were breaking down with each step. The image of what they had seen in the night weighed heavily upon them and though it was daylight, they couldn't help but feel as if they were being watched. Occasionally something flittered just on the edge of their vision and they jerked their heads around to catch whatever it was that seemed to be dogging them, but the world about them remained recondite.

When they came to an old traffic signal they stopped. From the rusted metal pole still standing above the street hung six bodies, their corpses swinging gently in the wind. Men or women they couldn't tell, but one they knew was a child.

“This isn’t her work,” Damian said quietly.

“No, it’s not.” She doesn’t own all of it, Marin thought, thinking of evil and what people could do to one another. The brothers tightened their grips on their rifles, glanced nervously around, and kept on.

###

When Marin caught his brother checking his watch for the third time that afternoon, he chuckled and said, “Why do you even wear that thing? It's not like it's in any way useful.”

Damian shrugged. “Habit, I guess.”

The watch was analog, but like all clocks, its time could not be relied upon. The hands moved on their own accord, sometimes forward, sometimes back, sometimes not at all. There was nothing wrong with them mechanically, but since the rain had begun to fall nearly four decades ago, they had become unreliable. There was no reason for it except to say that it was the will of witch, and even that had been a guess.

Still, Marin thought, if he finds comfort in it, why not?

These were the things that were on his mind when they turned the corner and finally came to the remains of the warehouse, their final destination.

“Where's the guard?” Damian asked. A piece of corrugated tin squealed and banged against a barricade, flapping loosely in the wind. Trash littered the approach, wrappers and bits of plastic and metal filaments flittering across the cracked and overgrown pavement.

“You’re sure this is it?”

Marin pulled a laminated map from a zippered pocket on his chest and unfolded it, looking around to compare his surroundings to what had been marked. “Yeah,” he said. “This is it. No question.”

Damian unshouldered his rifle. “Hello? Anyone there?” His call died in the rain, muffled as if laid upon by a lead blanket.

“I don't like this,” Marin said, folding the map again and bringing his own rifle to bear.

Slowly they entered the warehouse. It had been a Costco once, and inside metal racks had been pulled to form a concentric circle of barriers. Water dripped from the ceiling in a thousand places. Damian called out again, his voice reverberating through the expanse of the building's interior.

“I don't understand,” Marin said. “They were on the radio asking for this medicine not two fucking days ago. Where is everyone?”

“Let's try to find their radio and call back home. At least we can let Ma and the rest of them know we got here okay. Maybe they've even heard something since we left.”

They carefully picked their way through the settlement, looking for any sign of recent life but finding none. When they came to what appeared to have been an old optometry department, they found a HAM radio setup. A base station had been established, spools of wire leading from the transmitter up along the wall and through the ceiling. A layer of dust coated the equipment.

Marin tried the knobs on the radio. It was dead.

“Here's the dynamo.” Damian lifted a foot and pressed down on the pedal of a bicycle. A light atop the handlebars glowed dim. “Looks like it still works.” He dropped his pack and rifle and climbed on the seat and began to pedal. The radio fizzled and came to life, the output from the speaker a mindless dull static.

“Hello?” Marin said, keying the mic. “Is anyone there?”

Static.

“Keep at it,” Damian said, pedaling away. “Someone's bound to pick up.”

After five minutes of calling into the radio with no response, Marin set the mic back into its cradle. “Come on,” he said. “If there's anyone out there, they're not listening.”

Damian climbed off the bike and picked up his pack. As they walked away, destined for the deeper recesses of the warehouse, the speakers on the radio crackled faintly.

“Hello? Who is this?”

“Shit!” Marin said. “Get back on that thing before the battery dies!”

Once again Damian dropped his gear and began to pedal.

“This is Marin and Damian Karras. We're at the warehouse settlement of Brunswick. Who is this?”

“Brunswick? I haven't heard from you guys in months. This is Lewiston. What's going on over there? I didn't think there were any of you left!”

“We're not from here, we came up from Freeport. They called for antibiotics three days ago, but there's no one here.”

“That's impossible. No one has called from Brunswick in over three months.”

Another voice came over the air. “Clear the channel, Lewiston. This is Freeport Actual, authorization code charlie-charlie-niner-zero.”

“Freeport Actual? Sheriff? Are you—”

“I said clear the fucking air, Lewiston.”

“Acknowleged, Freeport Actual. Signing off.”

Damian and Marin looked at each other, unsure of what to say.

“I'm sorry it had to be this way, boys.”

“Evan?” Marin said, speaking into the mic. “What's going on here?”

“Your mother has taught you well. I didn't expect you to get this far. I'm sorry you did. I'm sorry about a lot of things. I wish it didn't have to be this way.”

“What’s he talking about?” Damian asked.

Marin dropped his pack and rummaged through it, pulling out the sealed antibiotics they were to deliver. Ripping the seal off the package, he dumped its contents onto the floor.

Rocks.

Understanding dawned on Marin. The broken barrier at the elementary school harbor, the empty warehouse.

“You son of a bitch,” he said, his hands shaking. “You set us up.”

The response was immediate, visceral. “Damnit, it was the only way! How many times have you been taught about sacrifices since you were children? 'The blood of the lamb shall wipe away the sins of the father.' Is that not what the scripture tells us? Is it not?”

“You crazy son of a bitch,” Marin said, his voice rising. “If you believe that shit, why aren't you out here? Why us?”

“I'm sorry, boys. I really am. The witch needs a sacrifice so the rest of us keep on. That's the way of things. Your mother understood that.”

“Fuck you!” Damian shouted, his voice breaking even as he panted while peddling. “She would have never agreed to this.”

“Really?” the old sheriff asked, his voice only just rising above the static of the radio. “Are you sure about that?”

“We're coming back there, Evan. And when we do, we're putting a bullet right in your forehead,” Marin said.

A sigh came over the air, followed by a long pause.

“Don't…” a voice said. A woman's. It was their mother's. “Don't ever forget how much I love you. I'm so, so sorry,” she said, tears evident over the airwaves.

Damian stopped pedaling. “Shut it off,” he said, climbing off the bike. “I've heard enough.”

Marin did so, his sooty cheeks reddened and streaked. He sniffled, wiped his nose.

Damian gripped his shoulders. “Be strong, brother. There are worse things out there than the witch. We’ll show them,” he said, thinking of the bodies they had passed. Had the people of Brunswick figured things out, as they had? Had they put an end to it, as they would? Or were people slaughtered simply because?

Perhaps both are true, Damian thought. He had a moment of doubt, thinking of all the people still living at Freeport station. Friends and neighbors, women and children. If they returned and put an end to the insanity, would they become a new insanity? Would that make them any worse than the witch and the lives she had taken, the sacrifices she demanded?

Like the sky, the world remained shades of gray, as it always had. As it always would.

Together they shouldered their bags and slung their rifles, setting out for whence they came.