Soft Apocalypse

by Will McIntosh

  The clatter of a dropped bowl rang out. “Phoebe?” an old woman in an orange house dress was tottering, bow-legged, toward us.

  “Mom?” Phoebe cried. She raced to meet her mother.

  “Phoebe, I can’t believe it. I thought you were dead.” She gripped Phoebe by the shoulders, looked her up and down. “I’m so sorry I didn’t wait for you, but these people came by with a sign that said ‘Free meal, ask me how,’ and I was so hungry, so I followed them and had a meal, and then after my meal we went back, but you weren’t back yet, and we waited, but we couldn’t wait all day because we had to come here.” She buried her face in Phoebe’s shoulder and bobbed up and down. “I’m so glad to see you. My Phoebe, I can’t believe it.”

  Phoebe looked over her mother’s stooped shoulder; it looked like the weight of the world had been lifted from her. She caught my eye; I nodded, the only person there who really understood. Everyone in the dining area had stopped to watch the reunion, now a few clapped, then they returned to their meals.

  Phoebe introduced me to her mom. “Is this your boyfriend?” she asked. She had one of those voices, sort of shrill and whiney, and she talked fast. Although most Doctor Happy people talked fast.

  “I sure am,” I said as I took Phoebe’s mom’s hand.

  As Phoebe introduced her mom around, I watched people eat. Everyone seemed friendly as hell, joking with each other, laughing. Even when nothing funny was being said people just burst into spontaneous laughter, occasionally propelling food from their mouths with the force of it.

  Phoebe’s mom was astonished when she learned that we were not necessarily here to accept the Doctor Happy needle and be saved (forever, amen), but judging from Phoebe’s reaction I got the impression that this was nothing compared to how her old, non-Doctor Happified mother dealt with disagreements. Phoebe promised to find her mom again as soon as she could, and we moved on.

  As we walked it occurred to me that Athens was pretty much scrubbed of any reminders of the outside world. There were no movie posters outside the theater, no ads, billboards, no stuffed Disney characters in the gift shop we passed. They seemed serious about making a new start. “So what is the plan for this place?” I asked. “How is it going to be so different from the past?”

  “Well, we’re decentralizing power, for a start,” Sebastian said. “No crooked politicians for us. We’re borrowing a lot from other places that tried to make a clean start, looking at what worked and didn’t. External things, like shorter work days and a de-emphasis on material goods, is crucial, but we’re also working on the internals as well.”

  “Such as?” I asked. I was truly interested in what they were putting together. In a sense, we could be living in year zero, seeing the beginning of something new. Assuming the Jumpy-Jumps didn’t plow the whole thing under.

  Sebastian pulled a spiral notebook out of his pocket and held it up. “This is my liar’s notebook. Every time I tell a lie, I write it down. Everyone has one.”

  “You’re all nuts,” Cortez said.

  “What’s nuts is what’s going on out there,” Sebastian said, pointing over the city wall.

  He led us through the old part of the university campus, where tall oak trees shaded a long stretch of lawn. People were lounging around like they were killing time between classes. It seemed so anachronistic, a scene from the time before everything went wrong.

  “Everyone gets one day off a week,” Sebastian said. “Once everything is established we’ll start bumping that up, until it’s three or four.”

  Colin and Jeannie were surveying the scene with the look of house hunters about to pull out a tape measure to see if their favorite sofa would fit.

  As the last light bled out of the sky, Phoebe and I were tired, but couldn’t sleep.

  “What happens now?” Phoebe asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Me neither.”

  Murmurs drifted from the next tent, where Colin and Jeannie were also not sleeping. I wondered what they were saying. Joel let out a pathetic squeal of hunger. It was a heartbreaking sound, an intolerable sound. I would not ask them to wait another day; I felt guilty that I had asked for this one.

  It was hard to think with my stomach so empty. What I really wanted to do right now was to clutch Phoebe to me and tell her that I loved her. I wanted to vanish the last bit of distance between us so we could face this together. But we hadn’t known each other long enough for that.

  “There are things I wish we could talk about,” I said, hesitantly, “but they’re the sort of things you talk about when you’ve been together much longer than we have.”

  Phoebe was quiet for a long moment. “Maybe we should talk about them anyway, given the circumstances?”

  “Okay.” For a moment, my old, familiar insecurities reared up. Would I blow it by professing my undying love? Was Phoebe feeling the same for me, or was I just any port in a storm? Off in the distance a whimpering dog serenaded us; my psyche given voice.

  The hell with it. What did I have to lose?

  “I’m afraid Doctor Happy will change how I feel about you. If you love everyone, how do you parse your feelings for one person out of that giant vat of love?”

  Phoebe laughed hysterically. For an instant I thought she was laughing at my profession of love. “Giant vat of love?”

  “Yeah. Haven’t the Doctor Happy people told you about the giant vat of love?”

  “No,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But I know what you’re saying, and I’ve thought about it too.”

  “You have?”

  “Mm hm. I’m afraid I won’t feel the same way about you if Doctor Happy changes us too dramatically.”

  One of our stomachs growled. I was pretty sure it was mine.

  “On the other hand,” Phoebe went on, “if we didn’t lose each other in the giant vat of love, Athens is a place where we could stop worrying about starving or being shot. It might give us the space to be together in a real, normal way. Out here it takes all of our energy just staying alive.”

  “So, you do want to be together?”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  A flush of warmth swept over me. I wrapped my arms around Phoebe and kissed her.

  “We’re not so broken,” she whispered. “The people we thought we were are just waiting for a chance to come back out.”

  She was right. The evidence was right there—the two of us, falling in love, still able to fall in love after all we’d been through.

  I was up most of the night, thinking, trying to sort through a tangle of conflicting emotions.

  Early the next morning, music drifted across to us from Athens—something classical, with a lot of string instruments. It sounded live. Somehow it didn’t surprise me that Athens had accomplished musicians. They had everything else.

  Phoebe and I crawled out of our tent with our possessions in plastic bags. My stomach did a flip, like I had just hit the big drop on a roller coaster. This was it, I realized.

  Cortez was squatting beside his tent, the assault rifle across his thighs. I pulled the pistol out of my waistband and looked at it, thought about the two men I’d shot with it, thought about Ange screaming in pain while those boys held her down, about Tara Cohn telling Cortez that he sucked. What was so nuts about wanting all of that to stop? Maybe Sebastian was right, maybe they were the sane ones.

  “You want this?” I said, holding out the pistol. The words seemed to come from a distance, somewhere over my head.

  Cortez ignored the gun. “You’re going in?”

  I nodded.

  Colin and Jeannie crawled out of their tent. When he saw our stuff packed, I thought he might hug me. “Good. Great. The tribe will stay together.” He turned to Cortez. “How about you, Cortez? Come with us.”

  Beyond the gates a trumpet rose out of the softer strings. It was a beautiful, golden sound. It had been so long since I’d heard live music that clear.

  “Come on, take the leap.” I tried to smile, but the muscles in
my face were stiff with fear. The edges of my mouth began to twitch and I gave it up.

  Cortez folded his arms, shook his head. “I probably would take a leap. Off a water tower. It’s not for me. You all go ahead.”

  “But what will you do?” Jeannie asked.

  The trumpet bleated triumphant, soaring toward a crescendo. Cortez paused, waited for it to recede. The song was almost over. Funny how you can tell a song was ending, even if you’ve never heard it before.

  “I’ll head home,” Cortez said. “Choose the sanest gangsters and join them. In these times there’s always work for warriors.” It made sense. Cortez was the only one of us who had the right resume now that civilization had collapsed.

  One by one, we said goodbye to Cortez. When it was my turn, I hugged him fiercely and said, “You’ve been like a big brother to me, watching out for me, showing me how to get by. We’d all be dead if it wasn’t for you.”

  He pressed his face against the side of mine. “Don’t get me crying,” he said into my ear. I handed him the pistol; he tucked it into his waistband.

  We watched as Cortez hefted his belongings, turned, and slipped into the bamboo.

  “He’ll make it,” I said to the others, fighting back tears. “Somehow he’ll make it.” Unable to put it off any longer, we turned toward the gate.

  “I’m scared,” Phoebe said. Her hand was cold.

  “Me too,” I said.

  The music ended, leaving the valley quiet.

  “We’re going to be at the start of something new—the year zero,” I said.

  “And they’re good people, honest and kind,” Jeannie added.

  “Hell, we’re going to get to eat in that food tent three times a day,” Colin said. “No more hunger, no more bugs.”

  In my college psychology class I learned that bettors are more confident about the horses they pick after they place their bets. I knew that was what we were doing; if you’re going to drink the Kool-Aid you might as well throw your head back and chug.

  As we approached the gate, I realized that some part of me had known for a while that this is how it would turn out. We were survivors, after all. If this was the only game in town, then we’d play.

  Besides that, it felt good not to have the weight of that gun in my waistband.

  We reached the gate and asked the guard to fetch Sebastian. I took a deep breath. Fine. Time to meet the future. Phoebe squeezed my hand; I squeezed hers back.

  When Sebastian saw our expressions he hurried, wrapped his arms around each of us, whispered that we’d made the right decision. His eyes were bright, and just a little wild.

  He led us through the gate, and this time I looked at the town through different eyes. This was going to be my home. It was such a strange notion.

  “In here,” Sebastian said, sliding open a door made of yellow bamboo. We stepped into a big hall with long, narrow windows draped in wheat-colored fabric. The close end of the hall was squared, the far end rounded. Two people, a man and a woman, greeted us.

  “These people are joining us today,” Sebastian said. “They’re friends of mine. We go back a long way.”

  I thought of Cortez, pushing through the bamboo, and had a moment of panic. Couldn’t we do it, the six of us? Couldn’t we figure out a way to survive out there?

  Maybe for a few weeks, but no more. I thought of Sophia and felt a terrible sadness. She should be here with us, safe. She was probably dead by now. I hoped she had died quickly. By gunfire, maybe.

  “Ready?” The woman put her hand on my back and coaxed me toward a curtained cubicle. Inside there would be a little vial of blood and a sterile needle.

  I paused. “We want to go together.” I looked back at Phoebe, who nodded.

  Jeannie, who was also being led to a cubicle, paused as well. “We do, too.”

  Her escort smiled. “Sure. We can fit two to a room. Or two and a half.” He touched Joel’s bald head.

  The woman transferred a chair from one cubicle into another. They led Colin and Jeannie inside. The pungent, familiar odor of Colin’s unwashed self hit me as he passed. We must smell terrible to these people—it was amazing that their pleasant smiles never dropped, were never replaced by a wrinkled nose of disgust.

  Phoebe and I stood at a respectful distance, waiting our turn. We heard murmuring in the cubicle, then a little cry of rage from Joel that tapered off after a few inbreaths.

  Colin pushed back the curtain. He held up his arm, displaying a little round band-aid on the inside of his forearm. Jeannie followed, carrying Joel. Her eyes were red-rimmed. She didn’t show us her band-aid, or Joel’s.

  “Next?” the woman called, poking her head out of the cubicle.

  My bowels loosened. My heart was hammering like crazy. I looked at Phoebe; she took a quavering breath, tried to give me a brave smile. “Ready?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Me neither.”

  We walked to the cubicle holding hands.

  It was a tight fit; Phoebe’s thigh was pressed against mine. The man and woman, wearing yellow surgical gloves, sat facing us, their knees almost touching ours. It felt strangely intimate. I wondered if people in Athens shared a special bond with the person who infected them, the way Rumor seemed to think he and I shared a special bond because I squirted him in the eye with a water gun after he killed my friend’s dog.

  The woman rubbed alcohol on the white underside of my forearm.

  “Can you poke us at the same time?” I asked.

  “Sure,” the man said.

  “Relax,” the woman said, probably seeing the panic in our eyes as she unwrapped a needle from its packaging. “You’ll be so glad. I promise. You’re going to feel better than you’ve ever felt before.”

  I hoped it was true. I so wanted this to be our happily ever after. We deserved a happily ever after, after all we’d been through.

  They dipped the needles into vials of deep red blood. Was blood always that red? The neutral colors in the room probably created a contrast.

  The woman held out her hand. I laid mine in it, palm up. Phoebe did the same.

  The man and the woman looked at each other with bright, eccentric eyes. They weren’t crazy eyes, really. Eccentric was a better description. “Ready?” the woman said to the man, grinning. “One. Two…”

  I looked into Phoebe’s lucid green eyes and willed myself to always love her in exactly the same way that I loved her at that moment.

  “Three.”

  She was very gentle; I barely felt the needle prick my skin.

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, thank you to my wife, Alison Scott, for her encouragement and love, and for reading and commenting on this novel, which is nothing like the Jane Austen novels she usually reads. I’m deeply grateful to Laura Valeri, Sara King, Joy Marchand, Tom Doyle, and David W. Goldman, my friends and fellow writers, for providing truly indispensable feedback. Also Walter John Williams, Kelly Link, and my fellow students at Taos Toolbox 2007.

  Special thanks to my father, Brigadier General William F. McIntosh, for advice and information regarding how the military might react to a soft apocalypse.

  Thanks to Andy Cox and the people at Interzone, who published the short story on which this novel is based. To the Clarion Science Fiction Writer’s Workshop, and my teachers Jim Kelly, Maureen McHugh, Scott Edelman, Nalo Hopkinson, Richard Paul Russo, Howard Waldrop, and Kelly Link. Thanks to my friends Colin Crothers, Doris Bazzini, and Angela Ogburn for inspiration.

  Finally, many thanks to my agent, Seth Fishman, for believing in this book.

  Although I created a nightmarish version of the city of Savannah, I hope a glimpse of its real beauty and charm has shone through. If you haven’t been to Savannah, come visit and wander the squares.

  About the Author

  Will McIntosh is a Hugo Award winner and Nebula finalist whose short stories have appeared in Asimov’s (where he won the 2010 Readers’ Award for short story “Bridesicle”), Strange Ho
rizons, and Science Fiction and Fantasy: Best of the Year, and many other venues. In 2005 his short story “Soft Apocalypse” was nominated for both the British Science Fiction Association and the British Fantasy Society awards. His story “Followed,” which was published in the anthology The Living Dead, is currently being produced as a short film. A New Yorker transplanted to the rural south, Will is a psychology professor at Georgia Southern University, where he studies Internet dating, and how people’s TV, music, and movie choices are affected by recession and terrorist threat. In 2008 he became the father of twins.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Tribe

  Chapter 2: Art Show

  Chapter 3: Rock Star

  Chapter 4: Dada Jihad

  Chapter 5: Soft Apocalypse

  Chapter 6: Street Hero

  Chapter 7: Smithereen Sonata

  Chapter 8: Pig Thief

  Chapter 9: Gunslinger

  Chapter 10: Athens

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author