Soft Apocalypse

by Will McIntosh

  Phoebe wrapped her hands across her upper arms. “God, that gives me chills. Do you think that reaction was just because of who Deirdre was, or do you think everyone feels it when they get infected? I can’t help but wonder if there’s an underside to Doctor Happy—if it’s not all sunshine and lollipops.”

  “I once asked Sebastian about being infected, and he said it gives you a glimpse of the infinite, and a glimpse is enough, because if you could see any more you’d probably go mad.”

  Phoebe considered. “That does sound terrifying. But not the sort of terrifying that makes you jump off a building… more like you’re tightrope walking without a net. Terrifying, but exciting, too.”

  “Maybe it was just Deirdre, then,” I suggested.

  A bird landed on the porch railing. “Ooh. Mockingbird,” Phoebe said. We stayed still, letting the swing slow. The mockingbird opened its little beak and belted out a remarkable series of chirps and twills and tweets before turning and taking wing over the bamboo.

  “The funny thing is, I actually don’t mind Doctor Happy people. I sort of like them,” I said.

  “Me, too,” Phoebe said. “I’m just not sure I want to be one.” She gestured that we should get moving. We headed back toward camp.

  “What if we lived near Athens?” I suggested as we pushed into the bamboo. “If that’s the new cradle of civilization, maybe we could be their semi-civilized neighbors. The Sparta to their Athens.”

  “Ooh, keep using historical metaphors. That’ll win major points with me.”

  “What do you think, though?” I was pretty sure I was blushing from her compliment.

  “What would we eat? I’m guessing the area surrounding Athens is pretty much like this.”

  I thought about it. “We could salvage things to trade with Athens, go on foraging trips into the outlying towns to find things they need.”

  “Can’t they do that themselves?” she asked. She tilted her head to one side. “I guess it’s possible, though.”

  We returned to the back yard of the house where we were staying and found the tribe in good spirits. Cortez had shot a squirrel with the assault rifle. We could smell it roasting over an open spit. There weren’t many squirrels around. I wasn’t sure if that was because of the bamboo, or climate change, or because hungry people were eating them all.

  “I’m going to make soup,” Cortez said as we joined him. “Goes further that way.”

  While we ate in the kitchen, I laid out my sketchy idea. The tribe picked up the thread and ran with it, and we hashed out a plan. By the time we’d sucked the marrow out of the squirrel’s bones, it was dark, and we could barely see one another.

  When we topped a ridge and saw the mass of buildings that used to comprise the University of Georgia, it was like seeing the Emerald City. After tramping through wilderness and abandoned buildings for so long, civilization looked shiny and magical.

  Much of the bamboo had been cleared, although there were copses here and there worked into the landscape as if it were an ornamental plant. The town was ringed by a high wall that looked to be constructed of red clay blocks. Guard towers stood at strategic points along the wall, and each housed a big steel thing that resembled a satellite dish. Inside the city, the old brick and concrete buildings were interspersed with new buildings made of the same red clay. The clay buildings were rounded, and snaked crazily through the campus.

  We circled the wall until we found a gate. It was open; people were going in and out. They were all so absurdly clean. By pre-collapse standards they weren’t that clean, but by current standards they were like walking moons.

  Attempting to look like we knew what we were doing, we went right up to the check point.

  “We’d like to speak to whoever’s in charge of trade,” Cortez said.

  “Trade?” the guard asked, shaking his head. He had the inevitable shiny eyes and easy grin of a Doctor Happy carrier.

  “Yes,” Cortez said. “We have goods we’d like to trade.”

  “Hold on,” the guard said. He ducked inside a little round booth that was also made out of red clay bricks and got on a walkie-talkie.

  The guard came back out. “Someone will be with you in a moment.”

  “Can it possibly be this easy?” Phoebe asked, her voice low.

  “Looks like we’re about to find out,” Jeannie said.

  “Get a load of this,” Cortez interrupted, gesturing beyond the gates.

  I followed his gaze. Sebastian was running toward us with open arms, laughing like a lunatic, eyes wide. “You made it, you made it.” He roped an elbow around my neck and leaped, wrapping his legs around my waist so that I had to catch him or fall over.

  “We made it,” I said as I held him.

  Sebastian dismounted, suddenly got serious. “I don’t see Ange.”

  I’d forgotten that Sebastian hadn’t been there when we lost Ange. So much of the past was a hungry blur. I shook my head. “Ange didn’t make it.”

  “Ah, fuck,” he said. He teared up, looked up at the rafters for a moment. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  He cheered up almost immediately and rubbed both of my shoulders. “But I was sure you were all dead by now, so this is a net gain.”

  It was a sobering idea, that Sebastian had simply assumed we were all dead. It was a reasonable assumption, I guess. How many people who’d been living in Savannah (or any other city, for that matter) were still alive? Less than a quarter, easily. It could be as little as one in ten. Was it just luck that we were among the survivors? Cortez certainly had a lot to do with it, but maybe I wasn’t giving the rest of us enough credit. I’d never thought of myself as a survivor, but we had survived a lot, had defied the odds in staying alive.

  “We haven’t made it yet, though,” I said. “We’ve made it to the gate. We need your help to make it the rest of the way.” He raised his eyebrows. “We have a plan for how to live on our own terms. Help us convince your people.”

  I explained our plan to set up a camp nearby and establish a trade relationship with Athens. Sebastian moaned theatrically, rolled his eyes as I laid it out.

  “You always have to do it the hard way,” he said. “One little pinprick!” He reached out and poked Cortez with his index finger. “One little pinprick and all will be vascular.” I couldn’t help but feel annoyed by his antics; we were tired, near-starving. This was no joke to us.

  “That’s not the way we roll,” Cortez said. “Will you help us?”

  Sebastian shook his head. “What you’re suggesting just isn’t possible.”

  My heart sank. “Why not? Why isn’t it possible?”

  “Because people have been planning this for five years,” Sebastian said. “They thought out these communities very carefully. One of the fundamental guidelines is that the community be homogenous. No exceptions.”

  Communities? So there were others forming.

  “I don’t have any more influence than anyone else here, until my turn comes up to be on the decision board,” Sebastian went on, “and that’s not likely to happen any time soon.”

  “Can you get us a meeting with them?” Colin asked.

  “They’re just going to tell me to tell you to join the community. And that’s not how you roll.” He waggled his head, gently mocking.

  “Will you at least ask?” I said.

  He shrugged.“Sure, I can ask. I can also ask them to form a human pyramid and sing Christmas carols.”

  An hour later Sebastian returned. As he approached I tried to read his expression, hopeful that he had succeeded in convincing them to at least talk to us, but he was always smiling, so it was impossible to glean anything from his expression.

  He shrugged. “They’re just not interested.”

  I felt like crying. I was so tired, so hungry.

  “They said that besides the homogeneity issue, we have teams who go out on salvage runs every day. We don’t need to trade.”

  “How are you fixed for medicines?” I asked. I gra
bbed some of the samples I’d put together. Instead of being stuffed into pouches, each was in a separate pill container with a child safety cap. We’d found them in a medicine cabinet in Watkinsville, all empty. I opened one, tipped some of its contents into my palm. “Chamomile. For inflammation. It also works as a mild sedative.” I opened another, wiped a bit of the goo that oozed out onto my palm. “Aloe vera. For burns and—”

  Sebastian shook his head. “We’ve got it all growing in our greenhouses, and herbalists to work with our doctors.”

  I wiped the aloe on my pant leg.

  “Look,” Sebastian said, “why don’t I show you around the town, and we can talk about what Athens has to offer.”

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  Sebastian shrugged, looking perplexed. “Okay. Suit yourself. I’d better get back to my work. I’ll check up on you when I can, see if you change your mind. I hope you will.”

  We set up camp twenty yards from the gate, at the edge of where they’d set up their rhizome barrier. We had no tents, so we used sheets we’d salvaged from houses along the way. Once we were settled, we initiated plan B. Each of us chose a trade item and took up a position outside the gate.

  “Tampons. Who needs tampons?” Colin shouted without embarrassment. He held a box of tampons in the air, two more under his arm.

  “Soap. I’ve got soap,” Jeannie called, while a dozen steps away Cortez was hawking water filters. Actually we only had one spare water filter—a happy find in the basement of a house in a little town called Washington. It didn’t matter—the plan was to establish ourselves, then we could seek out more trade goods.

  It didn’t work. No one even approached to see how much we were asking for our merchandise. We got plenty of attention, though. One smart aleck shouted, “Blood! I’ve got blood that will solve all your problems.” That got some hearty laughs from the residents.

  The steady stream of residents passing in and out of the gate was supplemented by the occasional group of new recruits coming to join the community. Some of these groups were small, others consisted of forty or fifty starving people led by one Athens recruiter. I kept expecting to spot Rumor leading one of these groups. Cortez had scouted the entire perimeter of the city, and reported that they were expanding the city on the far side to make room for all of the new recruits. I imagined they were already planning for a day when their community wound through the bamboo for miles in every direction.

  After about an hour, we gave up.

  There was no plan C.

  Sebastian came out as the sun was setting. He squatted beside us, pulled a flat, round loaf of bread from under his shirt. We stared at it with wild, wide-eyed hunger. It smelled incredible.

  “It’s all I could hide,” Sebastian said apologetically.

  We took the bread behind a tent, out of view of the citizens of Athens, and Cortez divided it up with his hunting knife, giving Joel a double share.

  “So good,” Colin said between bites. He was clearly trying to eat slowly.

  A tear rolled down his cheek. I don’t know if he was crying with relief, because it tasted so good, or out of despair that we had fallen so far that eating a loaf of bread was like a thousand Christmases rolled together. Whatever the reason, it spread, and soon all of us except Cortez were crying softly as we ate.

  As the sun set Phoebe and I crawled into the same tent. We hadn’t discussed it; it just flowed from the bonds that had been building between us. I lay there with my eyes closed, listening to Phoebe’s breathing, so grateful that she was here with me.

  I don’t know why it took me so long to find her. Maybe it makes sense that it would be difficult. What does love look like when the world is falling apart? Your one true love might appear when your heart is so badly wounded that you can’t possibly bear for someone to touch it, and her heart might be in the same shape. Now that I’d finally recognized that this was the woman I’d been searching for, though, I was afraid that we might never get the chance to see where it might lead.

  “We’re running out of time,” I said, keeping my voice low. Joel seemed to be shrinking, turning back into a newborn, unaware of the outside world, sometimes unable to recognize his mother.

  “I know.” Phoebe took my hand under the blanket. We listened to the crickets. “If Colin and Jeannie join them, what will you do?”

  I’d been thinking about that all day. “When I told Sebastian that Ange was dead, did you notice that he got really sad for a second, then he cheered up?”

  “Yes, I did notice that.”

  “They haven’t been scrubbed of all their negative emotions; they still feel sadness, probably fear and anger as well; it’s just toned way down. It makes it seem less like getting a frontal lobotomy.”

  “So you’re thinking of joining Colin and Jeannie?”

  “I don’t think I can go back into that jungle.” I couldn’t quite bring myself to say yes directly.

  “Me neither,” Phoebe said. “I think we’re on the same page.” She squeezed my hand. “But I’m scared.”

  “Me too.” Every time I thought of that pinprick, I felt like I was falling into a dark, unknown place.

  We spent the next day doing nothing. Cortez made a few forays into the bamboo looking for food, but came back empty-handed. Phoebe and I had only slightly better luck, returning with a stingy handful of stinging nettle and some beetles. The rest of the day we sat and stared at the gate, watched the well-fed populace go about their lives.

  Around noon, Colin and Jeannie crawled out of their makeshift tent with Joel in tow and their few possessions in plastic bags. Colin’s face held the grim resolve of a soldier going off to war. Jeannie’s eyes were red from crying. She went over and hugged Phoebe.

  “Give it a few more days,” I said, stepping between Colin and Athens.

  “What will a few more days buy us?” Colin asked.

  I had no answer.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Phoebe, coming to join us.

  Colin gestured toward Athens. “That’s the only way forward. We’ve ruled out every other direction. They’re all dead ends. Literally.”

  “I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but shouldn’t we take more time to think it through? There’s no going back once we make that decision. Why don’t we step back, talk about it some more?” I gestured toward a spot in the grass.

  “We’ve been thinking it through for months,” Jeannie said. “I just want to get this over with, and get some food for my baby.”

  I took a deep breath, brushed hair out of my eyes. I wasn’t ready for this. I didn’t want these to be my last hours as me, the way I was used to feeling and thinking. I looked at Colin, could see in his eyes that they really meant to go, now. My heart was racing.

  A hundred yards away, half a dozen federal soldiers in tattered combat fatigues slipped out of the bamboo. They were led by a bright-eyed, smiling black guy in tan shorts. The black guy spread his arms and said something to the new recruits before leading them on toward the gate. The gate to nirvana, to Valhalla. Shangri-La.

  “Come with us,” Colin said. “We don’t want to do this without you.” He shrugged. “How do we know it’s not going to be great? A couple of hours from now we might be laughing, wondering why we’d made such a big deal about it.”

  I had no doubt we’d be laughing. I had no idea what would be going through our heads, though. I wasn’t ready. Maybe in a day or two, but not now.

  “We came all this way with you,” I said. “I’m not saying you owe us anything, but I’m asking you to give it another day or two. That’s all I’m asking.”

  Colin and Jeannie looked at each other. Jeannie nodded reluctantly.

  “One more day. I don’t see what good it’ll do, but if that’s what you want…” He shrugged.

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling a rush of relief. I didn’t know what good it would do, either. I just knew I wasn’t ready.

  Late in the afternoon, Sebastian came to visit. I was disappoint
ed to see that he didn’t bring any food with him.

  “Let me show you around Athens,” he implored us. “Come on, what do you have to lose?”

  “We’d like to see it,” Colin said, meaning him and Jeannie.

  I looked at Phoebe.

  “Why not?” she said. “I’m curious to see it up close.”

  Cortez said nothing, but as we turned to follow Sebastian, he followed as well. Sebastian reached around me and pulled the pistol out of my waistband. “Leave this here, if you don’t mind.” He gestured to Cortez. “Yours too, please.” We stashed the guns in our tents and rejoined him.

  There were no angles in the newly constructed buildings. Everything was curved, and many were open to the outside.

  “We don’t like to be closed in,” Sebastian explained.

  It was difficult to see where any one building left off and another began; they snaked into each other, in some places rising up to wind through the trees. The overall effect was pleasing to the eye, the colors a variety of soothing pastels.

  “Are those weapons mounted on the outside walls?” Cortez asked.

  “Non-lethal weapons, yes. They’re heat cannons—when you activate them and point them in a general direction, everyone in a ten-acre area will have the sensation that they’re extremely, extremely hot. Very unpleasant.” He fanned his face, chuckling. “But the heat cannons are only our most visible defense. We’ve got others—all non-lethal, but I wouldn’t want to be a hostile trying to take Athens unless I had tanks and fighter planes.”

  We passed a wide, canopied space where a hundred people were eating, or lined up to eat. I couldn’t help suspect that he was leading us past the dining hall on purpose.

  “Why is it you have food when nobody else does?” Colin asked.

  “Like I mentioned, we’ve been planning for years,” Sebastian said. “Most of our cleared land is dedicated to food production, and everyone puts in some work in the fields every day. No meat—meat takes up too many resources to produce, plus nobody would want the job of killing the animals.”

  Interesting as all this was, I was having trouble caring at the moment. My mouth was watering.