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rotworld · 6 months

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24: Body Shop

(previous)

you set out for anchor. a brief detour quickly goes wrong.

->contains gore, discussions of mortality. video for today's radio song has flashing lights.

Home is the center—the center of everything. The pull is irresistible, a gravitational force that feels like it’s tugging your heart right up against your ribs. Anchor is west of Nelton, but it’s at the heart of the Drift. You don’t know how or why you can tell, but you’re certain it would go dead-center in a map of the whole Drift. You know they put themselves there, at the heart of the Drift, on purpose. You know you can’t put off the journey for much longer.

You wake between Jamie and Malachi. The bed isn’t quite big enough for the three of you and you’re a heap of tangled limbs, Jamie’s head resting on your chest and Malachi’s arm around both of you. The afterglow lingers, a dreamy warmth and shared, soft sighs. But as the fog of sleep fades, the reality of the task ahead sinks in. Malachi gets up first, stroking Jamie’s hip and kissing you one last time. You hear him in the kitchen, setting the table for three and putting out leftover frittata.

“We should go today,” you tell them. You don’t have to explain the urgency you feel. It’s an electric feeling in the Drift, the sense that you’re standing in the eye of the storm and you need to move now before the winds come back and tear you apart. “It’s due west. It’s far, I don’t know if we’ll reach it before the next shift, but…”

“We have to try,” Jamie agrees.

The town of Nelton—those who remain, those who are well enough to travel and not staying to rebuild—have organized a convoy. Malachi asks you to lead and swears they’ll follow you to the ends of the earth. You hope it doesn’t come to that. You warn him that you might need to stop, just once, hopefully only briefly. Your car’s been through a lot. There’s a specialty mechanic who works on courier vehicles along the roads and it’d give you peace of mind to stop in.

Maybe you’re stalling, just a little bit longer. Anchor’s pull has your heart racing in dread.

You’ve never been so reluctant to get back into the driver’s seat. You clutch the steering wheel, looking down at your hands; one finger missing, the rest mangled by steadily growing frostbite. They’re noticeably stiffer now, sickly flesh stretched all the way to the first joint of each finger. Jamie lays one of their hands over yours. They squeeze gently. You can’t muster much of a smile but you nod appreciatively.

You start the car and drive, just like you always do. But this trip feels like it might be your last.

[NOW PLAYING ON THE RADIO: SIMMA HEM BY RIDDARNA]

“What do you want to do when this is over?” Jamie asks.

You’re startled. Neither of you have spoken for some time. It doesn’t feel like there’s room for words in the squeezing tension. The Verlindans are feral shadows at the roadside and the people of Nelton follow in a somber line behind you like a funeral procession. You’re deep in the foggy in-between now, no scents or sights to anchor you to a particular city or its outskirts, nothing abandoned for Verlinda to reclaim.

“I don’t know,” you admit.

Jamie nods. They shift anxiously in their seat before resettling, watching the gray haze pass by. “When we—when my mother brought us together…when she infected me,” they say, stiff and struggling with the words, “I went to bed every night thinking I’d never wake up. I knew how it worked. It was going to eat my brain and replace all the parts I needed to live with itself, until I wasn’t me anymore. That’s not the kind of death that’s easy to imagine or understand. In my head, I pictured it like the fluke was a person, a kid who looked a bit like me. They were standing in the doorway of my bedroom with their hand on the light switch. Everything seemed fine, but one day, when I wasn’t looking, they would flip the switch. And that would be it.”

“How did you sleep?” you ask.

“I tried not to. But sometimes I also tried talking to it. This was before we were properly communicating. I don’t think it understood what I said back then. But I talked anyway. I acted like tomorrow was going to be the best day of my life and told it everything I was going to do. I’m going to lay around and watch TV all day, I’d say. I’m going to Prismville with the nicest person on my mother’s research team, and we’re going to see the old mining museum and then we’re going to get ice cream. I don’t know what I thought I was doing. Trying to convince it to let me live? Assuming that it might want the same things I did? But it helped, you know. It didn’t feel like I was lying to myself. Maybe it would take a hundred tomorrows, but I believed what I said.”

“Jamie…” You don’t know what to say. It hurts your heart that Jamie suffered like that, ten years old and grasping for anything to hold onto, any faint hope they could find.

“Ah, I’m no good at giving advice, courier,” Jamie sighs, smiling wryly. “This story ends with me putting a Higgs’ fluke in the ear of my problem. But I’m asking sincerely. It doesn’t have to be realistic, or make any sense. So…what do you want to do?”

It takes you a while to answer. Your instinct is to say you’ll do what you always do—go somewhere else, be somewhere else. Make a delivery, spend a night at a kind stranger’s, do it all again in the morning. Some part of you can’t shake off the fear, knowing that Drift is not what it used to be. Another part simply struggles to imagine any other future, regardless of what Anchor’s done.

“There’s…” You hesitate. Jamie doesn’t rush you. The road curves and you see half a town sliding around the curl in the asphalt behind you, Malachi in an old, beat up hatchback right behind you. “There’s a little town called Henley Creek that I stayed in once. I didn’t see much of it. But there was an older woman who ran a coffee shop, and she owned the residential space above her store. She let couriers stay up there whenever they came through town, free of charge. She gave us eggs in the morning.”

“Do you want to go back there?” Jamie asks.

“Maybe. But, more than that, I…I want a place like that.” You laugh. “I could never afford it. But I guess that’s my dream for the best day of my life. I’d buy a big house and put nice things in it. Any courier who passes through will see the sign on the door and know there’s a hot shower and a bed waiting for them, breakfast in the morning before they leave. And I’ll go back there between deliveries to put more eggs in the cupboards and wash the sheets. Maybe sometimes I’ll stay the night so we all sit at the table together and ask each other where we’re from and where we’re going, and…” You get choked up and stop, clearing your throat.

“You need tea,” Jamie says. They smile almost shyly, shrugging. “I mean, you don’t need it. Could do coffee, I guess. But some people prefer tea. And it should be nice. Homemade. Couriers deserve that much at least.”

“Is that your best possible tomorrow? Still stuck with me?”

Jamie’s hand rests lightly on your thigh. Not rubbing or squeezing, just settling there, soft and reassuring. “I wouldn’t be stuck,” they say quietly. “I’d be exactly where I want to be.”

A sign passes—just the one you’d half-hoped, half-dreaded seeing. “Can you signal that we’re stopping?” you ask. Jamie nods, rolling down their window and sticking out their arm, gesturing towards the exit up ahead. Malachi flashes his headlights in acknowledgement and the whole convoy slows, right on your heels as you take the sharp, curving road deep into the fog. There should be a rest stop up ahead. One last chance for anyone who might change their mind. You notice the Verlindans slink off and remain at a watchful, cautious distance, keeping to the trees.

You see neon. A metal canopy. Gas pumps in front, two garage bays further back. The place looks significantly older than the last time you were here, rust-eaten and decrepit. “This is where you go for repairs?” Jamie asks warily.

“I don’t, if I can help it,” you say.

Emblazoned on the door are the same bold words you saw on the sign, lit in unsettling, bloody red: PIT STOP.

You send Malachi and the others ahead to the rest stop, warning them to be ready to leave in a hurry. Jamie’s picked up on your body language by the time you’re pulling into a parking space, eyeing the gas station uneasily. They might’ve seen it before, if they’ve ever seen a gas station along the road. It’s always this place, always with the same attendant, always when you need it most.

“He doesn’t take cash. If anything’s wrong, I might need to trade for it,” you say, taking your keys out of the ignition. “I’ve ended up with some valuables lately, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Jamie doesn’t make any indication that they heard you. They’re staring at the building. “The anchorware’s fried,” they say, pointing to a perfectly rectangular spot of discoloration near the door. That’s strange, you think. You didn’t notice anything odd when you drove up. The gas station looks like it’s mysteriously aged half a century but it’s still standing, still in one piece.

Jamie is glued to your side when you push the doors open. You both hesitate at the sight and smell of the place. The gas station is melting. The roof is drooping, black sludge oozing between the ceiling tiles and puddling like tar on the soft, quivering floor. Colorful plastic wrapping blurs like paint smears on a palette, dripping in indistinct globs down the sagging, lopsided shelves. There’s an unpleasant, stale odor; mold and crypt dust, air that’s gone bad.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Jamie says.

You agree. The car will have to get you to Anchor as it is. But when you try to get the door open, it won’t budge. Jamie rams their shoulder against it and it shudders, something cracking the frame. Not metal. It sounds like bone.

“Courier? That you?” The voice is low, rasping, words wet and gurgling. The gas station attendant lurches out of the back of the store. The shadows cling to him like cobwebs, shedding in clinging strings and slivers from his shoulders. Your stomach churns at the sight of him as he drags himself forward in slow, shambling steps.

He must’ve been caught in the malfunction. He shouldn’t be alive. Pieces of him are missing, the wounds permanently gaping and oozing the same oily slurry as the walls and ceiling. You can see his clavicles, a flash of pelvic bone, the squirm and pulsation of small intestines. Patches of flesh have been stripped away on one side of his cheek and jaw, revealing a skeletal grin. One arm has unraveled into coils of dangling flesh, the other long and skeletal, a stiff, taloned claw wrapped around the handle of a bloodied butcher knife.

“Sorry. Didn’t hear you come in at first. Can I…help you?” he says, smiling sickly.

“We were just leaving,” Jamie says, fidgeting with the lock on the door. It’s stuck, gummed up with a sticky mess of half-liquified reality.

The attendant chuckles, sounding like a choking dog. Spittle the color of ink oozes between his teeth. “Just got here, didn’t you? What’s the rush?” He comes around the counter, leaning his broken body against it, leering at both of you. “I’ve got a problem, courier. It’s all…falling apart. Safety and certainty are in short supply right now, but you’ve got so much. More than I remember you having.”

Jamie rams against the door one more time and relief floods your mind when the lock clatters and snaps. The door swings open and they stumble through—into nothing. The dark swallows them whole. Your heart leaps into your throat but you rush to follow anyway, unwilling to be alone here. Your first step hits nothing; empty air. A void. There’s not even time to scream before you’re plummeting.

It’s not a long fall, at least, and something catches you. There’s a squelch and a splatter, the give of flesh beneath your knees and shaking hands. You know you’ve found yourself somewhere horrible. The stench of blood fills your nostrils and you feel bodies, gruesome bits and pieces, mountains of mangled flesh without end. You can’t find the ground. You can’t find an end to it. You stagger to your feet and you fall again because you can’t find the footing, everything soft and slick and clinging to you.

“Courier…c’mere.” You hear a wet, sick sound. Skin peeling. A knife skinning flesh from bone. There’s a dim, red light like the hellish neon of the Pit Stop’s sign, staining everything you see in slick, visceral colors. “Don’t…don’t be selfish. You have what I need.”

You look back and immediately regret it. The attendant is still falling apart. More of his face sloughs off, a flap of skin dangling grotesquely from his chin. His body quivers and twitches like a glass mimic about to drop its imitated shape. And all around him, all around both of you, lining this dark, hazy passage, are jumbled pieces of human bodies. Striated muscle tissue, veins and stringy tendons, shards of bone and still moving, still gently pulsating, still bleeding offal, grotesque architecture shaping and lining the walls.

“All this, this is…not enough. I’ll fall apart. We’ll all fall apart. But you can keep me stable a little longer.” He rumbles with laughter, shambling closer. He’s faster than you, moving quickly and naturally over the hills of corpses. His arm splits, a new limb sprouting at a painful angle like a snapped twig from his elbow. A scream catches in your throat when sharp, clawed fingers graze your ankle.

There’s a screech, a thunderous crash—light and fresh air seeping in through a hole punched into the dark. That’s your car and Jamie behind the wheel, looking frantically for you through a windshield. You find the strength to push yourself forward with desperate haste, clawing and dragging and ignoring the awful, inhuman noises in your wake, the blood and grime on your hands, the bodies, endless bodies piled up in the dark. You don’t look back.

Jamie throws the door open and drags you inside, throwing the car in reverse and peeling out while you’re still catching your breath. The gas station is dizzying to look at. Jamie rammed your car into the front of the building, the jagged mess of metal frame and cracked tile resembling a hole punched through a human chest. It throbs and it bleeds, curling in on itself protectively. You can’t imagine there’s any coming back from that kind of destabilization, no fixing the shivering, flesh-and-metal mess that’s left behind.

You look down at your own withering fingers with a stone of worry sitting heavy in the pit of your stomach.

(next)

#rotpeach writes #goretober #the drift

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