Crater Charlie's Magpies

Magpies were the lifeblood of Crater Charlie. They flew in from afar or crawled across the tangled carpet of unchecked plant-life, and they descended on the suspiciously perfect circle of Charlie’s crater; the one for which he was named, in case there was any doubt about that. Creative nomenclature had been one of the first casualties of the apocalypse, much to everyone’s surprise. Admittedly it did have to wait in line behind the enormous loss of human life, the devastation of various major settlements, and the utter collapse of global society as it had been known for hundreds of years, but those ones were so expected that they barely warranted a mention. It was the loss of nuanced naming conventions that really hit the survivors hard, because they were going to have to live with the consequences forever and it really wasn’t clear why it’d happened in the first place.

Sometimes there would be months between magpies arriving and Crater Charlie would peek out of his improvised cabin at irregular intervals, letting the door creak open just far enough for his head of gossamer-thin hair to poke through and face the dished earth. He’d hope that one had crept in silently, below his notice, or that there’d be signs in the sky of one approaching from the far distance. This ritual of vigilance would be repeated day after day, but not with any sense of concern or urgency. If no magpies came then he’d pay his respects to the clear horizon, the undisturbed crater, and the web of vines that comprised his garden, then return to his own private business. There was no need to ever worry because there would always be another magpie ready to swoop in on his crater eventually. All he needed to do was wait.

Whenever a magpie finally arrived he’d bounce around his cabin of sheared airship panels and scavenged parts with anticipation. The first magpies after a long drought were always the most exciting, for the usual reasons that humans love to receive things that they’ve been made to wait for and reject those same things when they’re made freely available. The apocalypse couldn’t change everything.

Once a drought was broken it might then turn into a storm of magpies arriving every day, solo or in groups, and he’d been spoilt for choice when they all took themselves willingly into his crater. His heart would sing, not literally like the strange heart-mutants he’d encountered in the early days of the post-apocalypse, as he flitted from magpie to magpie and extracted the treasures and nourishment they so willingly and eagerly brought to his door. His own heart-songs were those of a plentiful harvest, much like his ancestors might have sung to their deities back when they knew how to till the land and grow crops; they were nothing like what the heart-mutants sang in their hunting packs. If anyone in the old world had told Crater Charlie to picture bagpipes made from muscle and sinew, and then imagine how they might sound when played in a submerged shipping container, he probably would have enquired as to why they wanted that to happen. If a satisfactory reasoning were to be provided, then what he would have come to hear in his mind’s ear would not have been dissimilar to the songs of the heart-mutants, but nor would it have evoked such primal fear in his own chest. What he pictured would also, unfortunately, have been rather close to how they really looked.

Crater Charlie was something of an old-world apologist. Sure, the ways of the old world had led to the destruction of nearly all life on the planet, and yes they had led to an enormous technological backpedal, the resurgence of tribalism, and the abandonment of established wisdom on how to dress comfortably and practically for some reason, but it also named things well. In the old world he’d never have been called Crater Charlie, and he wanted to make sure that he didn’t pass that feeling forwards, so he’d named his guests magpies. After all, every one of them was lured in by nothing more than the shiny object at the centre of his crater.

It dangled from a jagged spire of steel girder in the centre of the depression, the only remaining part of what had previously stood there. In the sunlight it glinted like a polished mirror or a carelessly abandoned lightbulb attached to an equally carelessly abandoned power source, and it drew the magpies without fail. They all thought it was something precious for one reason or another; some believed it could buy favours or grant power, others felt that it might be the final component they needed to finish up their hydroponics enclosure or their sewing machine, and Crater Charlie had even heard one of them speculate that it was the abstract notion of hope, ready to be retrieved and let back into the world. That person had been pretty far from the mark, but their imagination was commendable. Crater Charlie was, as far as he was aware, the only person who knew the truth. It was possible that some other potential magpies had passed by and correctly identified it, he supposed, perhaps before he arrived on the scene, but he didn’t think it likely.

It was worthless, really. Just an old heart-shaped locket that hung from its chain and swung in the winds that blew through the crater. It had probably been bought from a discount boutique in the old world as an apology for an interpersonal transgression, but it had an awful lot more to be sorry about now; the steel girder that rose from the earth, like the arm of sundial in the centre of the suspiciously circular crater, had given it a platform above a sea of thorny weeds. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be terrifically heinous; a mild prickling in and of itself was far less severe than the maladies to be suffered elsewhere in the world, and even the worst scratching-wounds would traditionally be healed in a matter of days. The point of contention, and the one that would give the locket cause to apologise for luring so many magpies onto the rocks, as it were, was the aggressive and deadly venom contained within those thorns.

One by one the magpies would arrive, in their airships or their road vehicles or sometimes even under their own effort, and they would see the locket hanging there. It would shimmer and shine in the daylight like nothing else for miles around, and they would be overcome with a desire to claim it as their own. So, into the crater they would land, or drive, or march, and towards the girder they would struggle against the clawing vines and woven mass of undergrowth until they inevitably dragged themselves through the thorns. And then they would stop trying to reach the locket for the reasons that one might intuit from the action of aggressive and deadly venom entering their body. So dense was the patch of undergrowth in which these thorny weeds grew that the limp bodies of the stung simply fell beneath the canopy, hiding the evidence except for their ships and vehicles. They would be tidied away by the grateful caretaker of the garden, Crater Charlie, and either utilised in his own home or carried to the nearest settlement for trade with the locals, the same group of locals who’d named him Crater Charlie, even though he’d introduced himself quite clearly as Derrick Mulligan. He let that slide for the sake of the relationship, however, because they never questioned how or where he got his stock and they allowed him to live unmolested at the edge of the crater. He in turn kept them supplied with spare parts and various sundries, and everyone was a winner, aside from the magpies.

Crater Charlie had known of the site of his crater since before the collapse of civilisation. In fact, Crater Charlie had worked in the building which formerly stood there, back when the ground was still level and had no suspicious circularity at all. There had been all sorts inside the Verilab building; plant samples, equipment for genetic-engineering, terraforming experiments, prototype power sources and apparently, somewhere or other, a heart-shaped locket of purpose long forgotten. At the fall of humanity something had clearly gone rather awry in Verilab, and the unfortunate combination of vast quantities of stored energy, chemicals and equipment designed to accelerate and modify floral growth, and various types of plant DNA ripe for the mutating, had led to what Crater Charlie adopted as a new home. He’d only come back to pick up his favourite mug and a comfortable pair of running shoes; they’d not really been necessary for his weekend away at a friend’s, right at the end of the old world, but in the new world they had rather a lot of practical value. When he arrived and saw what Verilab had become it was painfully clear that they were gone forever, and he knew better than to trust whatever was growing in that bowl. When he took note of how the crater interacted with what he eventually came to know as magpies, however, it seemed to take on a value that eclipsed that of both drinks storage and reliable footwear combined, if such a thing can be imagined, and he took consolation.

Crater Charlie had inherited a farm. He never had to sow the seeds or water the saplings, because they were able to provide fertiliser all of their own; he just harvested the spoils and let the garden grow.