The Tiger Flu

by Larissa Lai

  I sigh.

  “Come on, engine running and eth ain’t cheap. We gotta go!”

  “What about them, the Salties? How are they gonna drive blindfolded?”

  “Tania is from the CEC. Prodigal daughter who ran away when the UMK took over. She goes back every year, though. She’s got a good relationship with her aunt, who’s still a general there. So got permission to drive eyes wide,” says Calyx. “Isn’t that right, High Priestess?”

  Elzbieta nods sagely. “You are lucky to get passage. It is because of Calyx Kaki’s ongoing relationship with the CEC, and because Tania is General Manuel’s niece. The CEC is jealous of its secrets, especially since the UMK came in, but if you don’t challenge its requirements, it won’t hurt you. Just do as they ask, and you will be in Saltwater City by day’s end. Go now, Groom Kirilow. Find Old Glorybind and avenge the attack on Grist Village, as both your mother double and your dead beloved would wish.”

  I glare at Calyx Kaki for having disclosed to Elzbieta way more than was necessary. I cram all my stuff haphazardly back into my knapsack and pull my hood over my head.

  INSIDE THE WHEELBARROW, I CONTEMPLATE THE GREEN BLINDFOLD in my hands. Calyx has the blue one.

  “You want more forget-me-do so you don’t feel the temptation to look?” Myra asks.

  “Don’t you dare try to dose me again.”

  “Penalty for peeping is summary execution. Penalty for allowing you to peep is summary execution. They’ve got UMK soldiers on the border, and they don’t mess around. Might be safer to take away the temptation.”

  “You will not groom me with my own teas.”

  “Then you will not peep, Groom Kirilow Groundsel,” Myra retorts. “Anyway, we already did.”

  I don’t like her. I put the blindfold on.

  It is nearly impossible to sit still in the backseat of the wheelbarrow. I’d rather walk—at least then I’d be moving. I shake my leg, and shake it and shake it and shake it.

  “Groom Kirilow, you have to keep still,” Calyx whispers.

  I try, but I can’t. My head races with all the things I’ve seen and heard since the season when kernels plump: the Salty’s hand falling to the ground after I severed it, Peristrophe’s last look at me from the tiny buds of her new eyes, the great bonfire, the dark shapes of batterkites, sisters pulled up in a fraying womb bomb, Corydalis Ambigua with her litter of sister puppies, Billy’s anxious eyes, the dark hole of his gun’s mouth gaping at me, the feast of the turkey vultures at Pente. Grief and wonder and murder course through my veins. I half remember something else, but I don’t know what it means: a long curving hallway, rock walls tinged with green, and sisters lined up for some awful fate. All the while, on the shadow-haunted cave wall of my mind, it rains and rains and rains. As it rains, I shake my leg.

  “Maybe the tea?” says Calyx.

  “No tea,” I say.

  The wheelbarrow hurtles through the blindfolded dark.

  I’VE NEVER HEARD GUNSHOTS BEFORE. BUT WHEN I DO, I KNOW WHAT they are.

  “Oh, Creator. No, no, no!” Tania. “Please no. Don’t let it have started.”

  “What in Our Mother’s holy name is going on?” I say.

  They ignore me. I can hear the sweat flowing from their pores.

  More gunshots.

  “Tania, what is it?” Myra asks.

  “You know that in the first wave of tiger flu we were bequeathed a nuclear arsenal to steward,” says Tania. “By stewards in the south who were dying in droves. We keep its operations top secret. For a long time, we held an important balance of power. And then the UMK moved in on us. Many of our people find this state of affairs unbearable—including me. But it keeps HöST out. It keeps Cosmopolitan Earth country safe from the denizens of the other quarantine rings. Madame never teach you?”

  “There’s a scale I’ll get next year,” says Myra, “if I bring in enough cans.”

  “I’m afraid something has happened, and we’re being called on to use it.”

  Myra is quick. “HöST or the UMK could retaliate. And scorch the whole of Old Cascadia.”

  “Then it won’t matter if we get through or not,” Tania says.

  “Or they could just waste the CEC.”

  “We’ve got to get through.”

  The wheelbarrow slows, and I hear its wheels grind in the dust.

  The slowing must not be voluntary because I hear Tania and Myra chant softly: “Let us go, let us go.”

  “He’s letting us go,” Tania says. A pause. “No. He wants us to stop.”

  More gunshots. The wheelbarrow stops.

  There is barking and wailing and a lot of confused and frightened chatter. I’ve had it with not knowing. I shove the blindfold up from my eyes to my forehead.

  “Pull that down! Pull it down now!” Tania shouts.

  I pull it down again. But I saw. A highway dense with wheelbarrows, hand carts, tractors, bicycles, tricycle-rickshaws. Animals too—dogs, horses, chickens, large cats, and creatures unknown. Many ragged walkers with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Some huddle in messy clusters. Some stand in anxious lineups leading nowhere. Some kneel by the side of the road, surrounded by armed soldiers in identical dark clothes. To their side lies a long row of corpses, knees bent, feet and hands tied, headfirst in the mud. One of them is still alive and upright. I know that person. That person is not my friend. I peek again.

  Peristrophe’s killer.

  I hear the wheelbarrow’s window roll down by some Salty magic.

  “It’s the dirty Salty!” I yell. “They have to let it go!”

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up, you stupid, stupid Gristie!” screams Myra.

  “What have we here?” says an unfamiliar voice, very deep. A soldier’s voice, with a UMK accent.

  “You have to let it go! Let it go, let it go!”

  “Shut her up. Now!” Myra.

  “Groom Kirilow, you have to be quiet,” Tania says.

  “It’s that dirty Salty,” I hiss. “The one that brought us the flu.”

  Tania says to the soldier, “I’m Tania Manuel, General Manuel’s niece. We have dispensation to cross through the Second Quarantine Ring today. It was arranged through the New Origins Archive.”

  “I know the story of the prodigal niece,” says the soldier. “And your passengers?”

  “That’s Calyx Kaki and her cousin. They come through here four times a year on their way to Mólkwcen for ice.”

  “I see. Did that one have her blindfold up?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I thought I saw her raise it.”

  “She wouldn’t do that, ma’am.”

  “I know I saw her hand there.”

  “Maybe she had an itch.”

  “The Salty. Let it go!” I wail.

  “What’s she talking about then?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. She’s had a hard week is all, and she’s a little off her head.”

  “Stay here.”

  The morning rains come as we wait, battering down on the roof of the wheelbarrow from the time before. They make us wait a long time.

  Tania says, “When they come back, Groom Kirilow, you have to be quiet, do you understand me? Quiet as the dead. Or we will all be joining them in the underworld. I have family here, so they are being generous, but there is nothing safe about this.”

  “The Salty,” I whimper.

  “What Salty are you talking about?” says Myra.

  “The one who invaded our village. The one who brought the batterkites.”

  “Then why do you want them to let her go?”

  “So I can kill it myself, you Mother-cursèd fool! After that, I don’t care what you do with me. Shoot me yourself and leave me here on this mud-and-blood-drowned road for the turkey vultures to eat with all the other victims of HöST. I don’t care.”

  “These aren’t victims of HöST,” Tania says. “They are victims of the UMK, as are all my people.”

  “I could give her the tea,” say
s Calyx Kaki helpfully.

  “Don’t you dare, you traitorous little shit!” I growl.

  The windows go down and there is more than one voice on the other side, urgent and volatile.

  “Cousin Sloane,” says Tania.

  “Normally you’d be in the dirt. Do you not have a clue what times these are?!” says the soldier. “For all your betrayals, General Manuel doesn’t want you harmed. The general must love you, or something like that. Who are these passengers?”

  “A sister from Grist Village in the Fourth Quarantine Ring,” Tania answers. “And her kin.”

  “Let the Salty—” I begin. Calyx slaps a hand over my mouth.

  “Giving you trouble?”

  “We can handle it.”

  “What did she see?”

  “Please, cousin, she’s the doctor my school desperately needs.”

  “Looks like a witch doctor to me,” says Cousin Sloane. “Will she talk about what she saw?”

  “She saw nothing.”

  “I know she looked.”

  “We have a tea to make her forget.”

  “A forgetting tea?”

  “Yes, they cultivate it themselves. It’s one of their main medicines.”

  “Huh,” says Cousin Sloane. “Does it work?”

  “It works, I promise.”

  “If it works, we could use some. What I wouldn’t give to put a stop to these executions of innocent travellers. We’re taking in as many refugees as we can, I want you to know that. But truly, what these UMK bastards call economic partnership I call occupation, and with this tiger flu crisis, they just want to shoot everyone. If we could promise them the people could pass through without remembering anything, we could save some lives.”

  “I’ll have her send you a shipment, if you let us go.”

  “I want to see it administered.”

  I hear them come around to the back. When the doors open, the gush of rain gets louder. Before I know it, their wet, dirty hands are all over me. “Don’t you dare, don’t touch me, filthy Salties, dirty city creatures! Get off me!”

  There are more gunshots.

  Calyx says, “Our Mother’s hooves. Your Salty, Groom Kiri.”

  “Someone killed it? Get your hands off me! Our Mother damn you to the darkest reaches—”

  My nose is pinched shut. I’m gulping my own medicine. Curse them, curse them, Our Mother curse them all!

  The last thing I hear before I’m out is Cousin Sloane. “Leave the flask with me.”

  23

  CATCOAT

  KORA KO // SALTWATER FLATS

  NODE: MINOR HEAT

  DAY: 1

  KORA CUTS HER HAIR SHORT, CHOOSES THE SPIKIEST SCALES FOR what they help her remember, sure, but also for how they look. She checks her appearance in the scarred ballroom mirrors. A series of short, sharp scales rings her cranium like a crown of horns. The long ones spiral down like snakes. Pale, wriggling lice move through the whole ensemble and make her scalp itch, but she tries not to think about them. She examines her gaunt face instead and the eyes that arc over cheekbones high like her mother’s. The blue cotton dress she wears over torn Arm-a-Gideon fatigues is worn and dirty. She wears it because her father gave it to her. She’s too thin, but everyone is these days. She looks terrifying enough to frighten any Saltwater denizen.

  Kora’s had enough. She’s breaking out on her own. If there is more to learn, she’ll get it outside.

  In the closet of special items, which no one is to touch without Madame’s express permission, hang four catcoats. Kora claims the newest one—the one with tortoiseshell fur. She steps into the feet: left, right. She pulls on the torso. She sticks her hands into the mitts that Madame has painstakingly pulled and pressed to fit human hands. She pulls the hood over her head. The thing yowls and protests the whole time. She strokes it to calm it—and to shut it up. Stupid thing. Doesn’t it know they were made for each other? When she’s got it zipped up, it stops its protest. It likes her body heat. It begins to purr.

  Out into night she goes. She makes a beeline for the Woodward’s Building.

  En route sits the Pacific Pearl Parkade, home of the tiger men, infected flu survivors who compete with the Cordova girls for caches of buried cans from the time before. It looks abandoned, but Kora remembers the Interiors and Exteriors course that Madame Dearborn taught last week. She knows the parkade holds a least a hundred tiger men. One day, she will go inside, just to see what it’s like.

  She can hardly believe she’s left the school. Her heart pounds, all hot blood and the thrill of defiance. Emotion must not make her clumsy. She slows her breathing to regain control. Pads softly down Powell Street, past the hungry homeless girl with her cart, past the N-lite junkies looking for other worlds in their minds. She passes a plague house where people have locked themselves in, hoping to keep the flu out. She shudders, thinking of the old man in that plague house beyond the Eastern Night Market three weeks ago. There is someone at the window. Does he see her? She rushes past and turns a corner.

  She passes three women in expensive dresses. They have the relaxed faces of people who live in the glass towers of HöST, walled in by the great Isabelle Chow to keep dancing girls and their ilk out. Kora sees people like this from time to time, people who come to Saltwater Flats to do things they wouldn’t be allowed to do in the glass towers. At first, Kora thinks these ones aren’t like that, and then she looks at their eyes. Their irises are so weirdly green and their pupils so dilated it’s like their eyes are eating the streets.

  She passes a girl walking solo, in frayed Arm-a-Gideon pants. Kora can’t see the girl’s face because her head and torso are covered by a black cowlie. But she moves with an alert sense of purpose. Her head turns and her pale face shows. She looks right at the space where Kora is walking, but she doesn’t see her.

  Madame Dearborn’s catcoat is working.

  She hears the commotion before she sees it. She’s coming over the rise just past the tiger men’s parkade. There’s a raucous cacophony of snarling and barking, the excited yips and the low, aggressive growls of a pack of wild dogs descending on their prey. A human being thrashes on the ground at the centre of their attention, hands over head, legs splayed and kicking. If she listens carefully, she can hear its high-pitched squeal riding over the growling and barking of the dogs.

  She begins her anti-canine tango. Slips out of her catcoat, picks up a large stick from the organic and industrial debris that litters the ground, and lunges, hollering, into the fray. Although packs of dogs run wild through the city and wreak havoc among the cowardly, they are brazen only with the fearful. They aren’t so unlike feral dancing girls. Kora swings her mighty stick—Left! Right! Crack! She whacks rumps, heads, backs, and legs as the wild dogs fly at her.

  She doesn’t see the sharp-toothed young one until it’s already close to her right side. The dog catches the flesh of her hand, just below the baby finger. She hisses. Pain arcs through her hand and up her arm like a lightning bolt. She pulls away, but blood gushes from the puncture wounds deep in the flesh of both the top and palm of her hand. Kora howls with rage. Shoves the hurt hand firmly into her pocket to slow the bleeding, and kicks the offending canine square in the belly, sending it sailing skyward.

  Now there are only two left, nipping at her legs. Stick in her one good furious hand, she pops the larger dog hard on the skull, and it collapses, whining. She raises her stick above the smaller dog. It yelps and tears off before the crack even lands.

  The man on the ground is a gory mess, like something left over from a slaughterhouse. He reeks of blood, sweat, and urine, but nothing is broken. She helps him up. With her sleeve, she wipes the blood from his face. Imagine her shock. Her flea-bitten brother.

  He looks her in the eye, and then runs in the direction of the Pacific Pearl Parkade. Although her bleeding hand screams in her pocket, she chases him. Picks up a rock with her good hand and hurls it. Hits him squarely in the back. He stumbles and falls.

 
It’s easy to catch up with him now.

  “You hit me!” He pulls himself upright. He’s got a cut above his left eye and he favours his right leg, but he doesn’t look seriously hurt.

  “I didn’t hit you hard. You were running.”

  “Not fast. Anyway, I don’t owe you anything.” He begins to walk away.

  Kora follows. “I just saved your ass.”

  “You left us.” Still heading, slowly, in the direction of the parkade.

  “You all made me leave!” She hides her wistfulness beneath indignation, wishing she didn’t care.

  He stops and turns to look at her. “You could have fought for us harder. You knew we wouldn’t survive without you.”

  “You look like you’re doing all right.”

  He touches the cut above his eye. “Do I?”

  “If it weren’t for me, you’d be doing a lot worse.”

  “And if you hadn’t happened to be walking by? Why am I even arguing? I don’t need you.” He turns and resumes his limping amble. “The tiger men count me as one of their own now. They’ve given me a home. I look after them, and they look after me.”

  “Tiger men? Bullshit!”

  “Don’t put them down, Kora. They are my home now.”

  She pauses. Looks him in the eye. “You’re not living with Charlotte and Wai anymore?”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “How could you leave? Who will take care of them?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Let’s go back to the apartment now and check on them. I’m quitting the Cordova School. I’ll move back in.”

  He gives her a look, half-baleful, half-disdainful. “Don’t go back, sis. There’s no point.”

  She pulls him to sit beside her on an old crate beside a warehouse. Her injured hand is awkward and bleeding. She uses it as a weight to press her dress against her thigh, ignores the searing pain. With her good hand, she rips the corner of her blue dress and begins to clean then bind the bleeding bite on his arm. Rips off another piece and cleans his other bites and bruises as best she can.

  He sighs. Tears off a piece of his own T-shirt and winds it around her injured hand.