24

Linen and girt hang in the razor wire above like the tethering apparitions of fallen mal'akhs. The time's fed girl's back is in front of Henry's rifle. They caution their way around the port-side rib of the Ark, close to the exterior wall. Lost in the labyrinth of crates and coffers upon the pitch wood and iron bar cages. He shoves her with his barrel. She spits and swears.

"Fuckate yourself."

Dead ends reveal dead bodies. Sometimes whole and decaying. A leg in the jaws of a bear trap. Sometimes hardening morsels left from flame throwers and explosions. Crispy skin marinating in foulness. Limbs braid through bars like spokes on a Catherine wheel. Horrific art projects of sallowing, offal lumps and tissue and tendon stitching together fleshy, rotting mal'akhs.

White noise thunders from beyond the hull of the Ark. It's a muffle of throat curdling screams and teeth scourging rages. Bangs like weaponry meat and creaks like collapsing, cavernous hollows vibrate under time's fed's bare feet, shuddering the heartwood floor. Tiny earthquakes rattle upon the exterior of the Ark by what might've been. Razor wire bounces and fling the tethers of caught linen into blurs of shaking white, like broken dove wings flapping.

The lights flicker and fade. Flicker and die. Flicker alive again. Someone hangs from a noose tied upon a beam at the ceiling of the main floor. Sways like a single ball in a pendulum. It absently watches the time's fed girl trudge through the psychopathic labyrinth of the young earth museum. She watches the hanging corpse in return for a moment and thinks of stranger ships lost in an ocean of plague.

An alarm outside the Ark screeches. A warning of blaring technology through the white tumult. A car or truck. There wasn't one in the parking lot when she entered the Ark. It blasts a cadence of hard noise and silence and noise and silence and noise and silence and noise. Over and over and over. And something roars above such din outside but close to the exterior hull where she walks. It thumps against the pitch gofer in her direction, like it can smell her earthen ass almond scent. Like it can sense the flaking remains of a dead river. The creature is something big like a giant, ravenous bear. Like the animatronic thing back in the zoo.

She looks back at Henry and he smirks and spits in her direction. Eyes the bottom of her hoodie. She knows what he thinks.

No chance, fuck face. I'm in no condition. Look all you want. There'll be no touching like that, even if he is...no. He's not that. He's got that look in his face. I can't trust him. I don't trust him.

They find many dead ends and backward traces. The openings on both sides of the cages eventually tell the tale of a path that leads to the stairwell. Ascension to the second level. Two flights of four-side heartwood. Open stringers. Tread and riser. Twisty spindles growing out of each step into a cylindrical railing made of gofer and iron. The words "how far" are carved into the newel post like bladed skin. Carved into every other tread.

The time's fed girl climbs the staircase. A trail of dead bodies greet her sight upon the landing. Putrid in the rot of flesh flies eating sugar from their brains. Shoeless. They've all been shot to death, judging by the holes in their withering heads.

The two step over the carnage. Henry steel toe kicks at a broken hand and then a rigor mortis leg.

Time's fed steps further ahead of him. She tip toes gingerly over the dead, wondering if one of them might wake up to bite her feet off. But no, they're not what might've been. They're what is and what will never be again.