Soft Apocalypse (34 page)

“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 grabbed 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 disappointed 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.

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.