Eupocalypse Box Set

by Peri Dwyer Worrell

  It was a long walk, and he was barefoot. While the sidewalks were mostly intact, crossing the darkened gravel streetbeds was hard on his feet—soft and tender after so much disuse. Freedom, which he had so desperately yearned for, was physically painful. It was helpful that he had lost so much weight during his imprisonment, though, so the rocks did not press so hard. Finally, he remembered that the street two blocks over was a no-car pedestrian mall, paved with concrete flagstones instead of asphalt, so he turned down an alley to cut in that direction. The buildings on either side were so close he could almost reach them with his outstretched hands. Everything was so quiet!

  A pathetically starved dog darted out of an empty doorway, sniffed the air, and shied away at a run before Li could react. Still, Li smiled to see a living thing. The smile left his face abruptly, though, as he heard a footfall behind him and turned around.

  A man wearing western jeans and a polo shirt with incongruous traditional woven sandals, stood scowling. “What are you doing here?” The man said.

  “Just walking home,” responded Li.

  “Who gave you permission?” The man was a good five inches taller than Li, and looked as though he hadn’t missed many meals—or workouts.

  “I didn’t know I needed…” Li began, but two other men had walked up behind him to the right and left, almost touching him, but not quite.

  “Come with us.” The big man nodded, and his two friends took Li’s upper arms, their meaty hands wrapping almost fully around his wasted biceps.

  The group set off in the direction Li had been going. He had no energy to resist, and he was habituated to submission by now. He went along without comment, starvation-dizzied by their strolling pace, panting like a racer.

  When the four men reached the pedestrian street Li had been headed for, he gratefully stepped up onto the flagstones and followed them to an open storefront. Li halted in front of the store, seeing broken glass everywhere. His two escorts lifted him between them like a doll and carried him through the looted, empty shop and into the back room.

  There, they set him on a wood bench facing a long, rough, wooden table. A number of other men sat at the table—some of them looking gaunt and dazed, others who looked more fit and better fed sporting bleeding head wounds, broken noses, or black eyes.

  Someone put a bowl of watery rice soup in front of Li, and a spoon in his hand. For a few minutes, there was nothing else in the world for him except that bowl of food. When he finally looked up, he realized that all the other men had been fed as well, and were as engrossed in the measly meal as he was. Li was reminded of the stories his grandmother used to tell about the famines of the Great Leap Forward—whole cities full of people relocated to the agricultural collectives, where they’d be sitting at communal tables like this after working all day, served a quantity of food which wouldn’t sustain a toddler.

  Then a man began making a round of the room holding a basket. He reached into the basket and dropped some sort of brownish lump in each man’s bowl. Li’s eyes lit up as he saw what landed in front of him: a whole sweet potato! He hadn’t seen a sweet potato since he was arrested. It was browned, and its peel burnt and flaky where it had sat over a grill. Li momentarily flashed back to himself as a child, pestering his mother to buy him a sweet potato from a vendor in the street. His mouth watered.

  The men around the table actually laughed a bit, watching each other trying to peel the hot potatoes without burning their fingers. Once they all were finished and smiling, the tall man who had first confronted Li addressed them all.

  “Welcome to the Older Brother Clubhouse.” he began. “You are all privileged to be recruited as Older Brothers to visit the fiery South!”

  Li wasn’t following this, and judging by the expressions on some of his tablemates’ faces, neither were they.

  “Our Little Brothers in the South have not been able to benefit like we have from the falling away. We’re taking a trip to discover why this is.”

  Li’s neighbor finally broke the code for him in a whisper: “Shuo Meng here believes the rumors that Africa still has plastic and gasoline. We’re all going to Africa to try to get them.”

  Of course, this left Li with more questions that would have to go unanswered. Why did Meng believe this about Africa? If it was true, why weren’t African countries invading the rest of the world? How would it happen that they were immune to the machine sickness anyway?

  And of course, Africa was a big place. Where in Africa was he taking them? Now that his stomach was fuller than it had been in many months, his mind was beginning to function again, and he was able to wonder and speculate beyond the next hour.

  All the men were beginning to stand up from the benches, so Li followed suit. Once they were all standing, one of the sergeants who had wrangled him in began to clap his hands. They all stepped in time down the sides of the room, alternated through the door at the end, and wound up in the center of the next room in a single file. It was comforting, being in the company of other free men, acting as one together. This room was basic: a central aisle and two deep wooden shelves on either side, forming top and bottom communal bunk beds lined with bamboo mats. A trough sink and a squat toilet in a shallow booth were at the end of the room.

  After complete isolation for so long, the opposite extreme here—a complete lack of privacy—stunned him. But everyone was scrambling onto the beds to make themselves comfortable, so Li picked the left side of the room and crawled onto the bottom bunk. Everyone was careful not to touch his neighbor.

  “Get some rest, brothers.” the sergeant called out. “We travel tomorrow!”

  Violation Hatching

  Suzanne crouched silently behind the stacked ammo cases with Jomana in her arms. The corpsmen had long since stopped pretending to requisition supplies. As the supplies became scarcer and began to run out, they had become suspicious that the LS women were hoarding, and were gradually looting the warehouse, scattering items into greater and greater disarray.

  They started showing up with locals—soft-spoken Somalis with wide temples and lighter skin, darker Nubians, and some Arabs as well. Some of these men they brought in were dressed in military uniforms, some in plain western style shirts and pants, some in tribal attire, and some in flowing robes and fezzes. Djibouti’s role as a cultural crossroads reflected the kaleidoscope of eastern Africa.

  The US military men stopped wearing their insignia, many cutting them from their uniforms. Others stopped wearing uniforms at all and started adopting the clothing of whatever group they had allied themselves with.

  The cases Suzanne was hiding behind were empty, on their sides with their lids open, haphazardly piled as a hiding place. She trembled, remembering how Parrish had howled and kicked when the men they’d sold her to had dragged her out.

  Suzanne needed to get out! She had to get Jomana out! Jo was a quiet baby, seeming to know that when her mother’s sweat turned acrid with fear, she had to be silent and still—like a baby rabbit frozen in the nest when the fox noses around. But she would be babbling and walking soon, and Suzanne knew she wouldn’t be able to hide her any longer. What could she do then?

  The corpsman who was here now was showing a dark man around. The man was tall, his hair in the curly, twisted Prince Valiant bob which—with his high cheekbones—marked him as an Afar. But he wore Arab-style robes and the fez which marked the Muslim clergy in this part of Africa, in addition to the huge ceremonial-scabbarded knife which the Afar and Somali men all wore at their waists—belted crosswise for left-hand draw.

  “Sheik Muse, as you know, we’re running low on all types of ammunition, handgun as well as rifle. The quantity you request…”

  “…Is far less than you have remaining. Do you think I’m stupid? And you still run the risk of getting caught if one of your patrols should come by.”

  Suzanne nodded. The last MP patrol had been by three days ago, so it wasn’t impossible. But they were coming less and less frequently, and they’d dropped fr
om six men to just three on the last one. When Bradburn fell from the top shelf and cracked her head open, she’d lain there overnight two nights in a row before the MPs had come and taken her body. Suzanne had checked her as soon as she found her, but the flies crawling on her opaque irises had told her she’d find no pulse in that cooling neck.

  Jo was latched on to Suzanne’s nipple—not really nursing, but not quite asleep. The men continued to haggle. Finally, the corpsman stomped off, presumably to get a cart for the Sheik’s purchases. Jo’s eyes flew open as Suzanne gasped.

  Sheik Musa had whipped around the stack of ammo cases, and his face was inches from hers. His skin gleamed and she could see every hair in his sparse mustache, smell the goat butter he used to dress his braids. “Are you a prisoner?” he hissed. “Do you want to leave this place?”

  Suzanne, stunned speechless, nodded.

  “Then trust me.” The corpsman came back in.

  Sheik Musa stood, pulling Suzanne roughly by the hair. “I will take the woman—and the child—as well.”

  The corpsman’s eyes lit up in greedy surprise. “Suzanne! We thought you’d already hoofed it out of here.” He addressed Sheik Muse. “If you want the woman, I won’t agree to the added containers. She’s a fine piece, I know for a fact!”

  Tears came to Suzanne’s eyes; he did know. That was why she’d taken to hiding when anyone came around (it might be him).

  “You drive a hard bargain,” Sheik Musa conceded. “But I’ll take her nonetheless. And fifty more for the added containers.”

  “Agreed.”

  So, Suzanne feared, she was now a slave. She hoped the sheik had something to eat. Suzanne had subsisted on crumbs and condensation for so long, she herself looked like a famine victim, and only the fact that her milk had not dried up kept Jo growing—just barely. The baby’s pallor and dry, flakey skin broke her mother’s heart.

  “Follow me,” commanded Muse. Suzanne obeyed.

  Nice to Meet You, Too

  A man stood looking down at Missy. Ryan didn’t hesitate—he instinctively burst into a run, his legs covering the hundred yards of beach between himself and his little girl in moments. He forgot about the tire iron in his hand until he saw himself swinging it at the man’s head.

  Missy had been sitting in the sand, digging one of her masterfully designed sandcastle waterworks. Her head was tilted up to look at the man, her twin afropuffs catching the afternoon sun, one strap of her sundress slipping down her plump little shoulder. Her expression, an innocent smile, registered with Ryan just as the man stepped away.

  Ryan pulled his swing at the same time, and let the tire iron hang inoffensively at his side.

  “Hey, I didn’t mean anything,” the stranger said. “I was just talking to the little girl is all.” He was tall, brown-haired—a skinny, workin’ fella. He wore jeans and a metal-snapped cowboy shirt, faded and threadbare, and leather moccasin boots with thick sewn-on soles. Ryan glanced up at his ride: an ATV, a four-wheeler. Ethanol-powered, if he guessed rightly about the jugs lashed to the wooden luggage tray on the back. He nodded.

  “Sorry.” Ryan chewed his tongue a moment. “Ain’t no law any more, you know? Man has to look after his family.”

  “Sure, man. I get it, bruh. No hard feelings.”

  Lori, gathering petrobutter down the beach, had noticed the stranger and now came jogging up.

  “Mommy!” Missy laughed. “Look at the tunnel for the moat!”

  Lori beamed at her, glanced between the two men.

  “Sorry, my manners! Name’s Jeremy.” He extended a hand to Ryan’s introduction, shook Lori’s offered hand, and grinned disarmingly when Missy held her hand up to be shaken too.

  “This here’s Missy,” said Lori. “You from around here?”

  “Used to be. I went up to Indiana right when the machine sickness hit.”

  Ryan whistled. “Not easy traveling nowadays!”

  Jeremy nodded. “Not easy, no. But not impossible either.”

  “Well, you’re welcome to join us for dinner. It’s seabutter, potatoes, and goat cheese tonight.” Lori held her hand out for Missy to take, pulling her to her feet. “I’ll just go get my basket.”

  Jeremy’s stomach growled audibly. Lori peered at him. He was awful thin. “I’d be honored.” Jeremy said. “Can I help?”

  “No, sir,” said Lori firmly. “That there’s our truck, the one with the mules hitched to it. Just pull your bike up next to it, and you can follow us home.”

  Jeremy gazed curiously at the people spaced about five hundred feet apart along the strand. Most of them were women and children, and they were scooping something out of the surf and depositing it in tightly-woven straw receptacles. He followed the family in their truck-turned-mule-wagon, casting a look over his shoulder at the strange, low clouds seething over the Gulf—like nothing he’d seen before.

  Later, the mule team pulled the truck up underneath a stilted bungalow, about as far from the beach as you could get on Bolivar—which is to say, not far at all. Jeremy dismounted his ATV and stepped up to the truck bed, lifting Lori’s basket out without asking this time.

  Lori smiled. Missy ran to the front of the rig to “help” her daddy un-hitch the mules, which consisted of whispering earnestly to them while Ryan unbuckled, unclipped and unhitched them, lowering the traces to the ground.

  Missy seemed torn, but the novelty of the stranger’s presence prevailed. She left her father to halter the mules and lead them out to the sandy paddock behind the house, where they drank from their trough and munched on the tough sea grasses. Missy followed Jeremy and her mother up the steps to the front door of their home.

  Lori took the basket from Jeremy and set it on the granite countertop. She stepped onto the screened rear porch, opened the woodstove there, and fed firewood into the ash-blanketed coals inside until it was burning brightly. She took a metal bucket and handed it to Missy. “Go get some water, baby,” she said. Missy clattered down the steps outside to the rain barrel with the water bucket.

  “Cute little gal. How old is she?”

  “Five. She’d say five and a half. She was three when the machine sickness hit. Doesn’t remember anything Before.” Lori looked wistful.

  “She seems pretty happy.”

  “She’s a good girl.” Lori took a stewpot from the cabinet and began sorting through the muck she’d scooped up on the beach.

  “What’s that?” Asked Jeremy.

  Lori stopped and scrutinized him for a moment. “You really are new around here, aren’t you?”

  “Well, not really. But I left right after the machine sickness began. What’d you say that was?”

  “This,” Lori picked up a handful, picked out bits of shells and sand, feathers and miscellaneous flotsam, and plopped the rest into the stewpot with a splat, “is seabutter. Started washing up on the shore over the first winter, maybe three or four months after everything went to Hell.”

  “And you eat it?”

  “Sure do. You have to boil it and drain off the grit. If you don’t, it gives you the trots and awful cramps. But if you do, it’s good eating. Missy is doing great on it.” She continued sorting the chaff out of the seabutter while they talked. “And I have to watch out, or my pants get snug, even with all the hard work I have to do nowadays.”

  Missy came in, straining proudly under the weight of the bucket full of water. She set the bucket down on the dark, roughened plywood floor, undoubtedly chewed up when the machine sickness had eaten some type of vinyl floor covering.

  Lori filled another pot with the water and set it atop the warming stove. “Missy, get Mr. Jeremy here some tea.” To Jeremy, “It’s chamomile. Hope that’s alright. You can’t get real tea for love or money anymore.”

  Jeremy smiled.

  Missy went out on the porch and came back in with a big glass jug full of yellow flowers floating in yellow liquid. She set it on the countertop, which she could just barely see over, and pulled a glass and strainer off a low
shelf. “Here you go, Mama,” she warbled.

  “Jeremy, would you mind pouring your own? I’m up to my elbows in grease here.” Jeremy could see that was almost literally true; the shine on her hands and arms looked oily and rich. He poured himself a glass of the sun tea.

  Ryan came in and got himself some tea, and the two men sat down for a few minutes to talk. “So, what brings you to these parts?”

  “I was just telling Lori that I used to live hereabouts. I left right after the machine sickness hit.”

  “Whooee, you left? Where’d you go?”

  “Indiana. This girl I was with…”

  “I knew it. It’s always a girl!”

  Jeremy smiled and went on, “This girl I was with knew some off-gridders up there, and figured that was where we ought to go.”

  “And was it?”

  “It was a pretty sweet set-up, alright. They had a scientific lab up there, and they built these things they called biobatteries. They produce their own charge and run on garbage.”

  “Pull the other one!”

  “No, really. I’d show you, but we gave ’em all away.”

  “What the hell’d you do that for?”

  “Well, they’re like sourdough—once you have one, you can grow more, easy. We wanted to get them spread wide as we could before winter.”

  Ryan sipped his tea and sucked his teeth for a bit, thinking about that. “So, you can power things with ’em? Like, what kind of things?”

  “Anything, I guess, if you build a big enough one.”

  “And they run on trash?”

  “Or raw sewage, yep.”

  “Get the hell out of town!”

  “No, really.”

  “Well, I guess you earned your meal with that story. Mmmm…” a sizzling sound was accompanied by the unmistakable smell of browning potatoes and onions. “Almost suppertime.”

  They all rinsed their hands off in a shallow basin of water on the porch, which Lori flung out onto the little kitchen garden below.