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Today was the day of a Very Important Birth.
And War was to Witness it. Some humans just had little scraps of essence in them; as though they had picked up a piece of apocalyptic philosophy to carry in their squishy little hearts. This child was to be warlike. A Genghis Khan, a Boudica, a fighter.
Unfortunately for War, the Birth was taking place in a very muddy field just outside of Glastonbury, and she was babysitting.
Babysitting was maybe not the right word, but Pollution was very new compared to the rest of the horsemen, and they naturally needed a bit of looking after sometimes, in the same way teenagers on work experience did. Even if they were theoretically capable of total autonomy, nobody wanted to leave them alone in case they got into trouble.
Pollution was a child of the Anthropocene, and was yet to reach even their 300th birthday. They had existed in embryonic forms since the advent of fire, but only really coalesced into consciousness with the industrial revolution, and had spent a great deal of time just faffing about with coal dust and peppered moths before actually doing anything useful.
There was no coal dust here for them to play with, though. Just miles and miles of verdant English countryside, and a persistent drizzle. War stomped through the mud of the adjacent field to the camp, ubiquitous earthen brown already absorbing her blood-red (and inadequately intimidating) Wellington boots.
Trailing behind her, in a cloud of crisp packets and, increasingly, used tissues, Pollution squelched and sniffled. The younger anthropomorphic personification was immensely dissatisfied with their situation, and, about halfway through the walk, had shucked off and abandoned their wellies so their bare feet could leech various chemicals into the soil.
They were beginning to regret that, because it was March, and their toes were beginning to go faintly blue. As much havoc as they wanted to be wreaking, War had told them to behave, because this sort of humans would notice. Which they thought was rather daft. Humans never noticed anything .
Pollution found it difficult to keep a lid on this much power, especially in a place so clean and green and ripe for it. The virginal countryside disagreed with their constitution, and the lack of particulate matter made the air difficult to breathe. Pollution wasn’t built for places like this. Being, as they were, not quite human, they didn’t have a stomach, but their body decided now was the time to get one, for the sole purpose of making it churn.
Something sticky gathered in their throat, and they coughed it up into their sleeve. It was still mucosal green, but it was also glowing with radioactivity. Pollution flicked it to the ground, and hoped the hippies would suffer for it.
As War led them towards the camp, it only got worse. The issue with existing in the minds of humans was that the minds of humans could affect your existence, and the presence of a gaggle of environmentalists was actively detrimental. They could smell compost and zero-packaging shampoo. War was stomping ahead with the determined stride of someone who didn’t get itchy around nitrate-rich dirt, and Pollution was starting to struggle to keep up.
Things really went downhill after they jumped the fence, though.
The aura of organics was so strong that it was difficult to bear. The area looked like a festival ground, but without the luxury of half-empty bottles and cigarette butts. As they strode through the campsite, Pollution’s head began to pound. The reek of weed and patchouli didn’t really help, either.
“War,” they said, fussing, the usual cold composition in their tone beginning to crumble. "Carmine. I don't feel well ."
"You're a primordial entity, you'll be fine.” War said, distracted.
“Not primo-” Pollution began, then cut themself off with a sneeze and a subsequent groan of misery. “‘I’m not primordial . Only been around three hundred,” a pause for some unpleasant raspy wheezing. “Three hundred years.”
War was of the opinion that her companion was being utterly and unnecessarily dramatic. One little knot of hippies wouldn’t do much, not with current economics alive and well and churning out plastic like it was going out of style. It was high time they learned to handle this sort of adversity, anyway. Everyone ran into it after a while. Things like the United Nations and the evolution of germ theory were just a rather frustrating part of life. Without them, the apocalypse would have come already.
The Very Important Child was to be born in a small, leaking, waxed-canvas tent with a bunch of hazardous candles and crystals and a “birthing pool” (of the inflatable paddling variety) full of healing oils. War was to stand outside in her anorak until the baby was carried out, at which point she would coo at it, cuddle it and imbibe it with the ancient rage necessary to tear down empires. Pollution was just along for the ride, and clearly didn’t like it much.
At their feet, an errant crisp packet crinkled into existence, and was promptly speared by a pimply youth with weather-inappropriate sandals and a litter spike. He twirled the pole up to look at it.
“You shouldn’t eat these, y’know,” he said. “BPAs in the packaging, innit. Gives you cancer.”
Pollution gave a faint moan.
War rolled her eyes at the youth’s dramatics, and stormed steadily on towards the rising sound of screams. The wails of a woman in labour were like a battle cry; loud and animalistic. Birth was in itself a fight, especially when you’d decided to give it directly on the ground, with sheep nosing about outside your temporary abode.
Behind her, Pollution cursed, and she glanced back over her shoulder to see them extricating a suddenly-blistered foot from the mushy depths of a compost heap.
“I really don’t like this,” they complained, hobbling along to catch up to her. Their white hair was soaking, sticking to their forehead. “I feel ill .”
“Stop whinging, it’ll be soon now,” War said. “People go through much worse on the battlefield.”
“I know, I know-” Pollution broke off into pitiful, hacking coughs and spat the result onto the ground. In the nasal, hoarse voice of someone with a very blocked nose, they continued, “Get their legs blew off and the like. I love the-” More coughing, until the younger stumbled, swaying slightly where they stood. “Smoke ‘n stuff. Agent Orange was good.”
War slowed her pace. Pollution was a force of nature, but had been, until now, an unopposed one. They needed to toughen up, but didn’t need to push so hard as to seize up and collapse into a heap of petrol and single-use plastics in the middle of nowhere.
The Very Important Baby was almost there, when they made it to the tent. Pollution was getting properly and awfully snotty by that point, choking and snorting in an utterly inelegant way. War cast a sidelong glance at the younger horseman, hoping they wouldn’t keel over on the spot before little miss murder popped out. It'd be dreadfully inconvenient.
Inside the tent, the dula and the father were having a bit of a spat over whether lavender or eucalyptus oil was better for the pain, and the mother was having an internal battle over whether to shriek her lungs out for codeine or not. In the gathered crowd, two women were beginning to bicker over a handspun hemp shawl. War was rather impressed with their tenacity; anywhere else the conflict would have escalated at speed into a brawl.
Pollution stood beside her, and was looking rather worse for wear. They were always pale ish , by the human average, but had begun to turn a sickly looking yellowish colour, like a wilting plant.
If they had been aware of the comparison, Pollution would have resented it. They didn't get on with plants as a whole. Right now, though, they were rather more concerned with how unwell they felt. The last time Pollution had taken , it was right after the great stink of London, when everyone and their cat suddenly got it into their heads to invent a "sewer system". This, as always, had been brought on by great force of thought. Also, possibly hypothermia, as they'd come in the same grungy cotton shirt and trousers as always.
Pollution wiped their nose on their sleeve, which had gone slimy instead of crusty with the weather. Their stomach was beginning to really hurt now, as though it was full of something hot and bubbling. Like all the unspent energy had collected in their gut and was vying for a way out. It was getting difficult to find the energy to stand.
The baby was brought out, eventually. Wrapped in a little red blanket. Probably very sweet, but Pollution didn't care.
Because that was the moment they couldn't hold on any more. At first, they thought they were just fainting , which was catastrophically embarrassing in itself, but then their body wrenched itself back up from the position they'd swooned into, and they began to retch. What came up was crude oil, slick and orangey-black, shot through with river runoff, the sort of thing that made waterways catch on fire.
They choked up what seemed like gallons of it, then, at last, collapsed back into the waiting hands of strangers, panting weekly. Their stomach did another awful, cramping flip, and they groaned again.
Busy with the baby, War ignored them.
When she finally went to check up on Pollution, who'd rather ruined the whole ceremonial business with young Pippin Galadriel Moonchild by being distractingly sick, War found them in the healing tent, dozing on a camp bed. They'd been changed out of their mucky clothes into something far too colourful and knitted to suit them. It gave the impression of a body being consumed by a large and malevolent hacky sack.
“Oi, Chalky.” War poked their cheek, found it startlingly warm. "It's time to go."
Pollution blinked dimly up at her.
“Someone gave me tea,” they said, sounding distant. “For the tummyache.”
“Did it help?” War offered a hand to haul them off the cot, biting back laughter. Pollution scrunched up their nose, looking revolted.
“The herbs were from their garden,” they mumbled, slim fingers prying beneath the neckline of their shirt, scratching at the rash forming there. “They were carbon neutral .”
“Oh you poor dear .” War said. “Had to touch a plant. Must have been awful for you.”
Pollution sneezed ruefully and scowled at her.
They’d existed, prior to this. Half-formed and half-conscious and trapped as a toddling thing, incarnating over and over as humans repeatedly scraped to those peaks of population necessary to facilitate their impact.
Together, they trudged back across the fields. By the time they reached the shoulder where they’d parked their bikes, Pollution was swaying where they stood, on the edge of nodding off. War looked at the bikes, then back at the other horseman. Had visions of accidents involving fireballs and discorporation.
“Want to ride with me?”
Pollution nodded, silent and sullen. Normally they would have perked up with proximity to the motorway, but they’d had quite a shock, now that War reflected on it. She hoped it wouldn’t stick. The jumper they’d borrowed had already begun to gain that vaguely grubby look everything they wore did, like they’d rolled in loose dirt while War wasn’t looking.
The ride was uncharacteristically quiet. Pollution seemed preoccupied by the business of simply hanging on. They were totally silent, for the first few minutes, then abruptly dug their fingernails into War’s arms, and hissed through their teeth for her to pull over. She did so, and watched in mild disgust as Pollution was sick on the side of the road. The oily run-off dribbled down the embankment and into a mud-swollen stream.
“This is shit,” Pollution folded their arms over their chest, taking slow, measured breaths. Titled their head back, shivering in the rain. For a godlike entity, they sure could pull off pitiful well.
War did not have sympathy for pitiful things.
“You’re back in your,” she gestured vaguely to the motorway. “Natural habitat? Cars and lorries and all. Asphalt, you love asphalt. Why aren’t you better yet?”
“Dunno.” Pollution murmured. “Not enough cars?”
They made it, eventually, to a nearby service station, with a tiny attached b&b. Traffic was picking up, there, and— although the window wasn’t designed to open—just swinging it open a crack made the whole room smell of car exhaust. It was the perfect place to recuperate.
Pollution flopped down on one of the twin beds, sullying the white sheets immediately. The giddiness that had set in after they’d woken up from their faint had yet to abate; it felt a little like the room was swaying. With great effort, they dragged the sopping jumper over their head, and scratched at the rashy skin beneath. Their affinity for pleather and polyester was apparently inspiring a violent allergy to wool.
"I'm going to steal you some other clothes," War told them. "You just… sleep. I don't know."
Form shaped function. The form of a scrawny youth, worn out from walking and dizzy with fever, had only one goal in the world.
When Pollution woke again, it was dark outside, and they were alone. The television was on, playing a faint recount of the evening news. Someone, somewhere in America, had signed a new bill restricting car exhaust emissions. That news was about as helpful as ice cubes in the Arctic.
War had left them a glass of now-flat lucozade and two mysterious tablets, which they took without question. Anything to deflate the cloying wrongness bubbling up in their chest.
They turned on the bedside lamp, and debated the benefits of turning on the light as well. It would be soothing, to up the electricity consumption of the place, but they felt far too awful to do it, in the heavy-limbed headachy way usually only experienced with the hangover of a lifetime. Which frankly wasn't fair ; they couldn't even get drunk, what with being a supernatural entity. War had got the hang of that, but it seemed to take a lot of psychological gymnastics that Pollution wasn't capable of yet.
There were pajamas folded at the end of the bed, a soothing poly-cotton blend that was cool against their fevered skin. They sipped nervously at their lucozade, unsure if drinking was a good idea, and listened to the occasional cars whipping past. Waited.
When War got back, she was carrying more shopping, and a pleasingly polystyrene drinks holder full of pleasingly polystyrene cups. She'd brought takeaway, something greasy and overwhelming and faintly nauseating.
"Are you awake?" she asked, her voice soft.
And that was worrying, because nothing in the world evoked gentleness in her. Nothing. Getting blood from a stone was peanuts, compared to getting tenderness from that woman. There were moments, almosts, Christmas day truces and candy airlifts, but those were just holes in her influence. War wouldn’t be caught dead with Mercy, Gentleness, or Hope. The closest she managed was a semi-amicable working relationship with Tact.
So something must have been really wrong.
War started when she saw Pollution in tears. Partially from the shock of it, and partially because she’d seen Pollution cry before, and true to form, each tear ate into the fabric where it fell.
“Oh, don’t ,” she said, dropping the plastic bags to the grimy carpet and grabbing for the box of tissues on the nightstand. “For fuck’s sake, Chalky. I’ll give you something to cry about, if you don’t stop.”
“They want me dead!” Pollution wailed..The edges of their collar were beginning to look moth-eaten.
“Of course they do.” War was starting to find this immensely frustrating. “You’re killing them. You’re— you’re a horseman of the apocalypse. An enemy of humanity. Why wouldn’t they want you dead?”
“It’s not—” a swallowed sob, more of the disgustingly snotty sniffling. “It might work . What if it works ?”
“Don’t be stupid,” War snapped. “There’s what, thirty of them? They’re not going to hurt you.”
“It’s not just them….” the sentence trailed into nothing, lost to their glassy gaze at the television screen. “They’re everywhere. Out there, thousands of them. And they’ve got pamphlets .”
War rolled her eyes.
“It won’t work. It never works.” she said. “They’ve been trying to get rid of me since Cain and Abel. The atom bomb didn’t do it. Believe me, it doesn’t work .”
Pollution was quiet for a moment, staring at the wall, shoulders shaking. Then, with fear in their ice-blue eyes, they turned to her.
“It worked with Pestilence.”
At once it all made sense.
Perhaps it should have been a point of shame, that War didn’t think of him often. He was a ghost, almost a memory. The discovery of penicillin had broken him to the core, and the other three had watched as the teeth and claws of his essence died, as all the force went out of him. He had gathered, over thousands of years, into such power as to create something like a soul, and then vanished in the blink of an eye.
Something of him remained, swirling in dirty water in remote villages, in the bellies of mosquitoes and the most broken of bodies. But that was almost worse.
“Chalky, you’re different.” War tried for comforting, embraced the younger horseman. She’d seen mothers do this, under shelling. “He wasn’t like you. You’re much more tempting.”
Pollution sobbed acid and mucus onto her shoulder.
“Wind turbines,” they mumbled, voice hoarse. “They’re going on about wind turbines . And solar .”
War tentatively began stroking their back. This was rather difficult, as they’d achieved a sort of all-over defensive stickiness in their stress, like a hagfish.
“It’s not that bad,” she said. “Just… think of them as the enemy.They’re outgunned. So they’ve got a few solar panels. You’ve got… most of the economy, really. Factories, sweatshops, oil slicks, cars, corporations… and it’s not like PepsiCo will stop using plastic.”
“‘M good at plastic.” Pollution pulled back momentarily, to sneeze messily between the both of them. Their speech seemed waterlogged, like the words were going to pieces in their mouth. “It’s just… scary.”
They scrubbed an impossibly-stained sleeve across their face.
“You’ll think of something.” War said, trying to peel her hand away from their shirt without making it too obvious. “Get in bed with a few more CEOs, it’ll be easy.”
Pollution nodded, but their eyes were empty. Their messy hair stood out around their head in the dim light, like a parody of a halo.
“You’re a consequence of convenience.” War said. “Pestilence was inconvenient. You’re not. And convenience is marketable.”
Pollution hummed some sort of vague affirmative. Coughed a few times, drooping with exhaustion, like they’d wept out whatever mush of nuclear waste and coal dust kept them going. Form and function; a physical expression of a (perceived) existential threat.
“I got you rice,” War offered, rummaging for the tepid takeaway containers. “If you feel up to it."
Pollution shook their head, let it fall mechanically forward, moving like broken hydraulics.
When they collapsed back onto the bed, something cellophane crinkled. War went for a much-needed shower, and used an entire travel-sized bar of soap. Her clothes were a total loss, sullied by casual contact.
When she returned, Pollution was asleep in a sprawl, snoring breathily and oozing various viscous things onto the pillow. War wondered, for a moment, what it would be like, if they were to go the way of Pestilence; to have their subjects rise up and eat them alive.
She had to touch the dirty duvet through a protective layer of PVC, but she tucked Pollution in all the same. Tried to dismiss her own fears.
After all, it wasn’t like PepsiCo would stop using plastic.