Asylonia

10. Zombie

X.

In the dying moments of darkness, as two shallow suns slipped through the cracks of an all-consuming, murky-grey cloud, David Attreus crouched low in the mangled cockpit of an F-19 Thunder Fighter. His T-shirt rode up his back, exposing pale, blubbery skin, soaked in sweat and tickled by the frayed ends of wires, drooping from damaged control points.

The Thunder Fighter's computer system had survived in decent condition. Her aesthetic was blemished by the shattered glass of a display screen, and by dark groves, festering with brown, spongy glue where buttons had once sat. Yet internally she was unscathed. Behind a white, plastic face mask, David smiled with pride at the almost indestructible engineering of the United Earth Force, wondering if he had been personally responsible for putting this particular machine together. He didn't think so, but it was possible, anything was possible.

His teeth ground that smile into a twisted grimace as he brought a UEF Standard Issue Lazer Knife down against the computer, looking to get at the hard drive. It broke free and smacked him in the chest with its weight. David stumbled, threw his arms out before him and fell forward onto his hands and knees.

'Ah you...,' he winced.

The cool chill of daylight sauntered through a chink in the ship's body, dancing on the back of his neck as he crawled outside, carrying with him the hard drive, and a disc labeled United Earth Force - Satellite Navigation Guide V.3.5.'

The wind gathered her strength and coiled around his legs. A whirlpool of grit and gravel chased his feet as he lifted himself into the Thunder Fighter cockpit, then rolled the ship into the barn. Leaving her beside the Pipersport and the ravaged carcass of a hijacked UEF Salvage Ship, he covered all three both with grubby, oily-smelling canvas sheets.

Outside, his feet scuffed along as he squatted to pluck a dying dandelion from the ground. With its moldy brown leaves and a limp stalk, damp with lingering rainwater, it hardly looked like the most appropriate offering, but it was all he could find and it would have to do. He returned to the garden, dropped the dead flower on the grave of the dead soldier, then walked, with flagging legs and slouched shoulders, back towards the house, through the dim-lit kitchen, and down creaking, wooden stairs, into the basement.

Closing his eyes to shield them from the assault of artificial light, David felt the room cave in around him. He could hear echoes of his mother, screaming in the silence. He could hear the washing machine clack and thump against the side of the tumble dryer. The dryer itself drummed a thunderous backbeat to an abhorrent chorus that his childhood mind always translated as the gunfire of war. Moving among his father's possessions - tables strewn with maps, and crates overflowing with military regalia - he remembered using this noise as the soundtrack to play gunfights in which he, General David Attreus, always triumphed. Over this imaginary gunfire, he could hear his mother moving around the basement, dressing him down with her orders to pack it in and bloody well quiet down, David. If he thought about it, he could even see her as she went about the seemingly everlasting chore of doing laundry, and he could see now what his younger mind had once failed to notice. He saw her caught in her own private war, against herself, and against the incessant addiction to keeping up appearances which plagues the terminally houseproud.

As David got older, the violent plays he would act out in the basement gave way to the quieter activity of serious study. His eyes absorbed the photographs of military aircraft and jetcars lining the basement walls. His fingers put screwdrivers to engine parts and his mind familiarised itself with the complexities of computer terminals. Even still, even then, there was Sherri Attreus, her words of discouragement like klaxons over the bomb blasts of the tumble dryer.

'The Earth Force isn't for you,' she would say. 'You're not cut out for that kind of thing David, not you. You won't be any good at it, not in the slightest. Why don't you cut out all this bloody stupid thinking and go get a nice, sensible job? Something you're cut out for, something even you could manage.'

Her every put down caused one of two effects. When he was feeling particularly strong, proving her wrong proved to be his greatest motivator. He would show her just who was cut out for what. The rest of the time, which was most of the time, it only weakened his morale and lay heavy on heart.

Yet despite whatever hurt she may have caused him, David Attreus held no resentment towards his mother. He thought that, in her own weird, not-particularly-loving kind of way, she loved him, that she only wanted what was best for him, and for her.

He hoped that what he interpreted as emotional pain, she intended as an attempt to protect him from the physical pain, injury or death that could well prove to be the consequence of enlisting in the United Earth Force. More than that, she was trying to protect herself, from having twice the worry and despair and fear. It was bad enough having her husband away at war, without having to contend with the ever-present threat of losing her son to the bullet, too.

He did not like it, but it made sense, and he refused to hold his mother's attitude against her, even when her already cruel putdowns became laced with pure hostility following the death of Alan Attreus, the United Earth Force's celebrated Wing Commander, her husband, his father. Where he held onto the hope that he would be united with his mother through grief, she had only pushed him further away. David was never sure whether Sherri Attreus was unwilling, or simply incapable, of being there for him when his father died. He only knew that she had not been, and that, despite his best intentions, she had shunned his every effort to be there for her.

He would sit outside her bedroom door during the long hours of her isolation, her harrowed screams and torrents of tears drowning out the sound of his own gentle sobbing. Every now and again she would emerge, her eyes bleak and the grey wires of her hair crawling over the crevasses of her haggard face. She walked slowly, dead in all but the fragile beating of her heart until her vacant eyes fell upon David, and the life which had been drained from her by her husband's death was replenished by a repulsion for her own son. Once cruel barbs became spiteful, meant not to discourage and protect but to damage and destroy. She yelled, she screamed, she blamed David for the death of his father, never offering any reason why, but adamant all the same in her accusations, as though David's mere existence were reason enough to lay the blame at his feet. Then she would retire again, and hours of isolation would become days.

Unwavering, David refused to admit he had been hurt and felt incapable of retaliating with anything more than persistent concern. Nor could his grief-stricken mind comprehend the idea that anything could be wrong beyond the natural process of grief.

There were times when he would wake from a troubled sleep to find she had slipped past him and shuffled out of the house. He would find her stood by the garden gate, looking out into the marshes, or moving around in an endless circle like an emotionless, walking corpse. Drained of soul, her heart seemed to beat only because it lacked the sense to give up. David would dash outside, press his hands into her shoulders, and guide the zombie that had once been his mother back to her bed.

People came by. The curious said they had neither seen nor heard from either of them for days and asked if everything was alright. The concerned told him they knew what a terrible shock it must have been, when really, David felt they knew nothing of the sort. There were those who brought dishes of food which were always received with a thank you, and others still who offered to help around the house, always refused with the same level of politeness. To all of them, David was truly his mother's son. He kept up appearances and convinced them everything was fine, even after his mother had slipped out of the house and, instead of stopping at the garden gate as usual, had moved through it and out of sight.

He had told them, and himself, that she would be OK, that the whole thing had just broken her spirit, and that she had gone away simply to get a break, to gather herself together. David would go out into the marshes, expecting to find his mother alive, if not particularly well, and to bring her home. He found it better than facing the truth.