Requiem Read Online Free Page B

slept.
    She gave a
mumbled, 'good morning', inaudible to anyone standing more than
half a metre away. She wasn't sure if he'd heard her so cleared her
throat to announce her presence. He remained occupied with the
boards.
    'What's in
there?' she asked.
    'The shortcut I
was telling you about.' He looked over at her after dropping a
thick wooden board to the ground and dusting his hands off.
    'How did you
sleep?' he asked.
    'Pretty well,
actually.'
    'Good.' And
with that he turned and resumed his work.
    Seline shuffled
her feet in the loose dirt and idly surveyed her surroundings. More
dishevelled rooms and houses lined the street. Large, glassless
holes for windows and dust for paint. They were all direct replicas
of one another, copied, pasted, and packed like toy soldiers
standing guard along the abandoned roadside. Broken and up-turned
pavement blocks lay where the side-walk once was. The stumps of
amputated trees, discoloured and poisoned, poked from bare patches
of dirt. She considered the etchings in the steps and noticed the
same thing in the neighbouring buildings.
    'What's wrong
with the stairs? Why do they all have these deep markings in them?'
she asked.
    'Those are
footprints.' Another beam was tossed to the ground. 'These are all
new-gen apartment blocks.'
    'They've been
worn right into the concrete? How old are these buildings?'
    'Most of them
are about eight years old. You can see that some of them were
repaired at some point. That's what these braces and clamps are
from.' He pointed to several heavily rusted brackets bolted into
the crumbling permacrete walls, most of which were bent and left
twisting into the air over massive cracks they were supposed to
have sealed shut.
    With a loud
crash Sear cleared the last of the blockade away from the garage
door. He tugged at a frayed scrap of rope that had been crudely
knotted to a hole at the base of the metal sheet. The hinged joints
of the makeshift door creaked and shook as it opened outward in a
slow sweeping motion. The shed was almost empty apart from a large
shapeless form waiting in the centre of the dirt floor and a
smaller object pushed into the corner. Both objects were covered
with a thick canvas blanket. Sear pulled the cover off the large
centre piece and let it fall to the ground before kicking it aside
to rest against a collection of beams wedged firmly under a damp,
sunken section of the ceiling.
    'So this is the
shortcut?' said Seline.
    'As far as
shortcuts go around here, I'm afraid you won't do much better;
though you're welcome to try.'
    Seline stood in
the doorway and examined the bike. Perished rubber seals, a heavily
dented and oversized metal fuel tank that looked as if it had been
hammered and welded into shape, bald, thick rubber tyres held
together like patchwork with thick trails of sealant.
    'What does this
thing run on?'
    'Ethanol.
Mostly.' Sear removed the fuel cap and looked inside the tank.
'They always dilute the fuel when they smuggle it in from the
Corporate Zones. It's been so long since we had any kind of fuel
out here, I'm beginning to wonder if their storage facilities are
starting to run dry.'
    'Whose storage
facilities?'
    'NeoCorp's.'
    Sear screwed
the cap back on, kicked the stand up, and rolled the mummified
shortcut out into the street. He swung a leg over and seated
himself on the scraps of foam that had been attached to the bike
with a few reels worth of insulation tape. He fidgeted with a piece
of metal just below the handlebars and the bike shook off a fine
layer of dust as it sputtered into life. Seline waved the fumes
away from her face.
    'Am I supposed
to fit on the back here?' she said as she approached the bike.
    'Not quite,'
replied Sear.
    He pushed the
stand down with his foot, stepped off the bike and walked back into
the shed. He emerged bent over and wheeling out her half of the
shortcut. A small side-car for the motorcycle. Unlike the rest of
the bike which was at least respectfully rustic, this