Soft Apocalypse

by Will McIntosh

  We waited in silence for a few minutes, and nothing happened—no roaring outside, no smoke.

  “Maybe the wind shifted and it missed us?” Colin suggested.

  “Why don’t I check?” Cortez said. “Everybody move away from the door.” A bright crack of light formed, then a big square. The light flooding into the silo was tinged orange, and thick with smoke. Cortez slammed the door. “It’s coming. Everyone down.”

  I got on my stomach, cradled my face in my arms and closed my eyes.

  Twice in my life I had been certain I was going to die. The first had been when the Jumpy-Jumps pulled me into that alley, the second when I was caught trying to steal from the farmers and Ange had saved my life. Now, as I lay in a silo hoping to ride out a forest fire, I suspected that this might really be it.

  I crawled on hands and knees over to Phoebe, put a hand on her wrist. She turned her hand palm up, took mine in hers.

  There was a squealing, like air leaking from an inner tube. The smell of roasting chestnuts grew heavier.

  “How long will it last?” someone asked. No one answered. I didn’t think it would be too long. Didn’t forest fires travel fast? Off on the other side of the silo, Joel was crying. Poor Joel, with his fresh little lungs.

  The squealing grew deeper, or maybe a deeper sound drowned out the squealing. It became that roar that could never be mistaken for anything but fire.

  Someone coughed. I tried to press my face into the crook of my elbow to create a little pocket of oxygen, but I could already feel a tickle in my lungs. I coughed.

  The roar became deafening. I took a breath, felt my lungs fill with hot smoke. I coughed uncontrollably, nearly gagged. Joel screamed—a piercing cry of outrage that was followed by frantic coughing. I hadn’t noticed that it was getting hotter, but suddenly my clothes were so hot they felt like they were burning my skin. I wanted to pull them off, but that would involve exertion, and then I would have to breathe. I didn’t want to inhale again. I lingered on the outbreath, expelling the smoke, willing the fire to pass.

  When I finally did inhale, it was agony. The smoke was hot; it singed my throat, made me cough so hard it was more a full-body spasm. I was burning up—the heat both outside me and in. I heard Phoebe’s coughs in my ear, clutched her hand like a lifeline.

  Around us others were coughing and gagging in the darkness. I tried to inhale, but it felt as if my lungs had collapsed, like I was trying to inhale with something clamped over my mouth. The sounds around me receded. I was losing consciousness. I was suffocating. My legs drew up of their own accord, putting me in a fetal position. Fetal, as in fetus, but not a cat fetus, which I once ate. I was fairly sure I was dying, receding into a swirling blackness punctuated by swirls of even darker blackness that popped into my vision with each cough. Although I knew my arms were up near my head, I had the sensation that they had drifted up behind my head and were twisting and stretching. Far off, someone was screaming. It may have been Ange.

  I felt a squeeze on my hand. I coughed. It felt like I’d been gone. I coughed again. It hurt like hell. My throat was raw, like someone had peeled all of the skin out of there.

  Phoebe’s coughs returned, or I returned to where I could hear them, then I could hear the others coughing as well.

  There was a blinding light. I lifted my head, saw Cortez curled up by the door, which was now ajar. Red light filtered in, along with heavy black smoke. Cortez closed the door.

  I coughed, and this time the cough felt more productive, making me feel slightly better instead of worse, so I let my spasming chest go, let myself cough.

  Joel began to scream.

  I gave Phoebe’s hand a final squeeze and let go, then sat up, tried to rub the smoke out of my eyes with fists that were just as smoky. I crawled over to the door.

  “I guess we should wait until the worst of the smoke has cleared,” Cortez said.

  We stepped out into a different, completely alien place. Instead of bamboo leaves right in front of your face no matter where you turned, the landscape was a vast black desert covered with charred spikes (the remnants of the bamboo) and black, naked trees. In the mix of starlight and the red glow radiating from the horizon, it was a chilling sight.

  We stared off at the burned land. The assholes pursuing us had probably assumed we were dead, and had gone home, so there was probably no need to hurry. We had no supplies, no food or water, no tents, no clean clothes.

  “Which way?” I asked. We’d come from the north, so that was out. The fire was moving south, so we’d only hit more devastation that way, so it was east or west. I crossed my arms, pointed toward the east and west simultaneously. “That way is a very nice way.”

  It was a lame joke, but I got some laughs.

  “Of course people do go both ways,” Colin said absently.

  “Hey, Scarecrow, how about a little fire?” Phoebe said, doing a decent Wicked Witch of the West impression that got people giggling.

  Cortez began to sing, “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” and a few of us joined in. If we’d had more energy, maybe we would have tried to do that special skip that Dorothy and her companions used when traipsing down the yellow brick road, but our giddy relief didn’t extend that far. We left it at “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” then grew serious again. We weren’t nearly out of the woods yet.

  “I guess the first priority is finding abandoned houses that are not burned, to salvage some clothes and whatever else we can use,”

  I said.

  “East or west?” Cortez asked.

  “Colin and I vote west,” Jeannie said. She was bouncing Joel, who’d quieted down. His little head bobbed languidly as if nothing had happened.

  But what was west? Athens, then Atlanta. Atlanta would likely be a bigger mess than Savannah, and we weren’t welcome in Athens.

  “Why west?” Cortez asked.

  “Because we’re going to join the Doctor Happy people in Athens,” Jeannie answered softly.

  I dropped the rifle. I looked at Colin. He met my gaze for a second, then looked away. “It’s the only way to keep Joel safe.”

  Cortez squatted on his haunches, his head hanging.

  “What about the virus?” I asked. “You’re going to let them infect you? And Joel?”

  Colin shrugged. “There are worse things. Like starving.”

  I felt rising panic. I could barely imagine being separated from Colin and Jeannie. Yet I also couldn’t imagine infecting myself with Doctor Happy.

  I stared off into the charred landscape, watched smoke rise off a blackened scarecrow of a tree.

  “That’s where we’re going. We’d like it if you all came with us,” Colin said.

  I looked at Phoebe, then Cortez. Cortez shook his head. “I’m going east.”

  I looked back at Phoebe. She just stared at the rifle I’d dropped.

  I’ve heard that you have to have a kid of your own before you truly get it, but, looking at Joel, tear streaks in stark relief with the dirt and soot covering his face, I understood why they had to go to Athens. He was probably going to die if they went anywhere but Athens, and it was unimaginable that such a small child should die. I guess Doctor Happy was a small price to pay for his life.

  Infecting myself, on the other hand, filled me with a dread that went right to my bones.

  I looked at Phoebe, gauging her reaction to this. Under my exhaustion and anxiety at talk of the tribe dividing, I found one sparkling bit of clarity: I wanted to go where Phoebe went. I didn’t have time to think too deeply about this, but it afforded me a mooring in the chaos.

  “I hate the thought of splitting, but maybe that’s best at this point,” Cortez said.

  “Hold on,” I said. “We’re going to split up, just like that?”

  “It’s not ‘just like that,’” Cortez said. “Colin and Jeannie have clearly thought this through. I respect the choice they’re making, but it’s not for me. Period.” He gestured at the assault rifle slung over his shoulder. “I’l
l take this for me and whoever else is going east. Whoever’s going west can take the other. Fair enough?”

  We stood like rival gangs in a standoff, no one moving.

  My guts tensed. “Hold on,” I said, buying time. “Let’s think this through.” We needed to stay together; I felt that with absolute certainty. “Colin and Jeannie can’t make it to Athens on their own. If this is what they want to do, we owe it to them to help them get Joel there safely.”

  Phoebe bent and picked up the assault rifle. “I agree.” She looked at me, then at Jeannie. “I’ll help you.”

  “Thank you, Phoebe,” Jeannie said.

  Cortez put both hands over his mouth and sighed through his nose. He stared at the burnt ground, his eyes fixing on one charred spot, then flicking to another, and another. “Shit,” he finally said. “You’re right. I was only thinking about myself.” He nodded tightly. “Okay, if that’s what you want to do, I’ll go with you, but then I’m going to Savannah.”

  “We won’t be joining you,” Jean Paul said. He seemed to be trying to sound regretful, but it came out sounding mostly angry. “We’re heading back to Savannah.”

  There was an uproar of protests, entreaties that Sophia and Jean Paul stay with the tribe. Jeannie all but begged, which got Sophia crying but did not shift their resolve.

  I’d noticed that Jean Paul and Sophia had been standing a few dozen paces away from the rest of the tribe, pointedly separating themselves as we deliberated. They hadn’t joined in on the Wizard of Oz antics, or done more than crack a smile. I suspected they were leaving to be rid of me, not because they’d rather go to Savannah than Athens.

  Cortez held the assault rifle to Jean Paul, who waved it off. They said their goodbyes; Sophia hugged Colin and Jeannie. She nodded to me, mumbled goodbye. I mumbled goodbye back.

  I caught Sophia glancing back once as they walked away; I winced at the pain in her swollen red eyes. I glanced back a few more times, watched her shrink into the distance, remembering how once, in another time on another planet, I’d kissed her in a movie theater, and my heart had nearly stopped.

  I glanced at Phoebe walking beside me, and revisited the feeling I’d had a few moments before—a feeling that was very real and fresh. When I imagined Colin and Jeannie disappearing into crazy Athens, it was like pulling something out of me, some organ or some sense that would leave me permanently disabled. It was easier to imagine Cortez trotting into the brush, because that’s where Cortez belonged. He was a cat, he was meant for this life. When I imagined losing him, it felt like losing my big brother, the person I looked up to, the person who kept the monsters in the closet.

  I couldn’t imagine Phoebe leaving at all. I couldn’t picture her disappearing into the bamboo, couldn’t envision her white sweater growing fainter until it merged with green stalks. Just couldn’t imagine it, and that shocked me.

  Something broke open inside me. My eyes filled with tears; I looked off to my right so Phoebe wouldn’t see if she happened to look my way. It felt so good to walk beside her. I wanted to reach out and take her hand, but I wasn’t sure how she’d react.

  As the rays of sunlight painted the burned landscape, the ground beneath us began to stir. Here and there little green nubs pushed up out of the earth. It would probably take weeks for the bamboo to reestablish completely, but it was already growing restless. Those jackass scientists had designed it well.

  I glanced at Phoebe again, and this time she looked back at me. “What?” she asked.

  I touched her elbow, motioned that I wanted to let the others get further ahead of us.

  “I was just thinking about how much I enjoyed that afternoon at the carnival. It’d been so long since I had fun. When we get to a town, can we go hang out somewhere alone for a while? Just go for a walk, maybe find an abandoned movie theater and look at the posters, or an abandoned Dairy Queen and make fun of the names of the sundaes?”

  “Sure,” she said. She had a puzzled look on her face, maybe mixed with a little whimsy.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, what?”

  She burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, it’s just that a few hours ago we were almost barbequed in a grain silo, and I’d swear you just asked me on a date. Am I right, are you asking me on a date?”

  “I guess I am.” I nodded. “Yes, that’s what I’m doing. My timing may not be perfect, but if you think about it, when would be a good time to ask? When we’re not barbecuing in a grain silo, we’re in a shootout, or hacking our way through bamboo, or eating bugs. There really is no opportune time to ask someone on a date any more.”

  Phoebe wiped laughter tears from under her eyes with the back of her hand, which was as sooty as the rest of her hand. “I see your point.”

  “So, will you go?”

  “I already said yes,” she said. “But don’t expect a kiss, because my toothbrush is lying on the railroad track next to Sir Francis Bacon.”

  “Fair enough. Can we hold hands?”

  “We can hold hands.”

  Chapter 10:

  Athens

  Fall, 2033 (Three days later)

  We weaved through the bamboo until we came to one of those blissful, enigmatic blank patches, then we walked side by side, holding hands.

  “A mockingbird,” Phoebe said, lifting her head to look for it.

  “You know the sounds different birds make?”

  “Just mockingbirds, because they’re easy. They learn songs from other birds and sing them one after another. Listen.”

  We listened. Sure enough, it went through a whole repertoire of different songs. We followed the songs of the mockingbird to a little house on a dirt road and headed down the driveway, trying to spot it.

  “It has white spots on its wings,” Phoebe said. She stopped short.

  The mockingbird was perched on the branch of an elm tree, in the back yard. A man and a woman were hanging from a low branch of the tree, beside a picnic table. The woman twisted slowly in an imperceptible breeze, the rope creaking. It looked as if they’d been dead about a week.

  The mockingbird went right on singing.

  We turned around without a word and continued our walk. We were avoiding any talk of bad things, which was a challenge with corpses hanging from trees, especially if you haven’t eaten anything except wild herbs and bugs in two days, and nothing beyond that except the occasional bird or squirrel for the past few weeks.

  The tiny strip of businesses that passed for Elberton’s downtown did not include a movie theater, nor a Dairy Queen. There was a hair salon called Shear Perfection, a restaurant called Kountry Kooking, and a few long-vacant storefronts.

  “So, what position did you play on the softball team in high school?” I asked, putting my arm around Phoebe’s waist.

  “Third base,” she said. She eased toward me, allowing her hip to press against mine.

  “That makes a lot of sense, with your rocket arm. I miss sports. I hope professional baseball comes back.”

  “I miss new things. Shrink-wrapped things that have that brand-new smell.”

  What we both really missed was food. I wondered what this date with Phoebe might feel like if I wasn’t so hungry. I was certain that I would be floating, that I’d be butterflies-in-the-stomach in love. My stomach was too empty for butterflies to survive, but as it was, I still felt like the dials on all of my senses had been turned up. I felt like I belonged next to Phoebe with a certainty I’d never felt before.

  “This is going pretty well, considering. Don’t you think?” I asked.

  “No complaints. Best date I’ve had since you took me to the Time-saver. We should start heading back, though. It’ll be dark soon.”

  We passed Kountry Kooking again. There was an illustration of a piece of partially shucked corn on one side of the sign, an ecstatically happy pig on the other.

  A walking skeleton who could have been a man or a woman pushed out of the bamboo into the clearing and crossed
in front of us. Two starving children with haunted eyes trailed behind him or her. As they disappeared back into the bamboo on the other side, the smaller kid glanced our way. It was easy to forget that there were still people here. Not many, but a few.

  “I’m worried that we’re going to be too weak to walk all the way back to Savannah once we get to Athens,” I said to Phoebe. “It’s a long way.”

  “I had the same thought. We won’t have many options, though. Either we try to make it to Savannah with Cortez, or we join Colin and Jeannie.”

  “Do you consider Doctor Happy an option?” I was almost afraid to ask; I didn’t want to think about that possibility, unless there turned out to be no other options.

  “Yes. But I’m scared. It scares me to think about it,” Phoebe said.

  “Me, too. I don’t know what to make of Doctor Happy. Look what happened to Deirdre.” I swept a spider’s web out of the way with the back of my hand.

  “Why do you think Deirdre did what she did?”

  “I’ve thought a lot about that.” I gestured toward a house with a porch swing. “Want to sit a while?”

  We sat on the swing, sitting closer than friends but not as close as lovers. Phoebe gave us a push with one foot; the swing squealed, but swung nicely. She looked at me, waiting.

  “I think Deirdre decided she’d rather be dead than happy.”

  Phoebe looked taken aback by the idea.

  “You had to know Deirdre,” I said. “Happy Deirdre is about as easy to imagine as clean filth.”

  Phoebe laughed.

  “I swear, it’s true.”

  “And you went out with this woman?” Phoebe asked.

  I gave the swing a push. “I know I can’t explain that one.”

  “I’m sure it had nothing to do with her breasts,” she teased. It had slipped my mind that Phoebe had met Deirdre that one brief time at the beach. “So you think she couldn’t stand being in her own happy skin?”

  “Yeah, I do.” I considered for a moment. “There was something in her eyes when the infection first kicked in; something I couldn’t quite place. The more I think about it, the more I think it was terror.”