Soft Apocalypse (33 page)

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)

W
e 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.”

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.