Annie heard a vehicle pull into the gravel parking pad between the barn and the main house. It sounded different from the others. It wasn’t one of the Sherriff’s vans coming to pick up prisoners. There were no prisoners on site that day. Nor was it one the delivery trucks. Could be civilians or could be somebody from the government. Annie hoped it wasn’t the government.
“Be right back,” she said to Blade and headed through the rows of peach trees toward the compound. Her heart swelled with joy when she saw Parker emerge from the driver’s side door and Hughes from the passenger side. She’d been waiting for them to visit for almost three months now.
They’d have to pitch a tent. There were no spare houses or beds, and everyone on the commune agreed that guests mustn’t colonize any of the living rooms.
Annie ran across the lawn separating the orchard from the house and embraced first Parker and then Hughes on the parking pad.
They looked terrific, and they’d both lost weight. Everyone had. Nobody was starving, but all meals were simple and whole. Processed food no longer existed and might not again for the rest of their lives. Hughes had a plastic prosthetic arm and hand attached to his elbow, and he seemed to be comfortable with it now.
They’d both lose even more weight if they’d stay and work the farm with her—everyone on the orchard was thin and lithe—but Parker and Hughes had insisted they’d remain in the city. Annie wished she had the option.
“You finally came,” she said, wiping away a tear. “I’ve missed you.”
“Missed you too,” Parker said.
“Atlanta isn’t the same without you,” Hughes said.
“Annie?” Blade’s voice. He’d followed her out of the orchard. “Everything okay?”
She nodded and sniffed. “These are my friends I told you about. Parker and Hughes. Guys, this is Blade. He works the orchard with me.”
“Good to meet you, man,” Hughes said.
Blade just nodded.
“Let me help get them settled,” Annie said to Blade, “and I’ll rejoin you in a bit.”
Blade nodded and returned to the orchard.
“How long are you staying?” Annie said as they walked toward Parker and Hughes’s SUV. “I assume you’re staying.”
“Just for the night,” Parker said.
Only one night? She wished they’d stay permanently, but she knew not to say it.
“You brought a tent and sleeping bags?” she said.
“Two tents,” Hughes said. “No need to sleep cooped up next to this guy anymore.”
Parker popped the hatch and removed a pair of brand-new two-person tents still in boxes.
“You can join all of us for dinner at the big table next to the barn,” Annie said, “as long as you help clean up.”
“You get much news out here, Annie?” Parker said, turning to face her. He set the tent boxes down on the gravel.
“Not much,” she said. “That’s how we like it.”
“Something you should know,” Parker said.
“Only if it’s good,” Annie said.
“It’s good,” Hughes said.
“The government,” Parker said, “officially declared that humans are no longer considered extinct in the wild.”
She supposed that was good news. A bit bureaucratic, though, and obvious now that the vaccine had been delivered to the largest cities on six continents. Still, it was good news.
“All because of you,” Hughes said.
“Because of us,” Annie said. “Me. You two. Kyle. Even Roy played a part. Not that he deserves any thanks.”
“He was convicted,” Parker said. “Jury spent ten minutes deliberating.”
Annie knew he’d be convicted. The evidence was so overwhelming that the prosecutors told her she didn’t even need to testify, that she could go ahead and leave the city if that’s what she wanted.
“They going to execute him?” Annie said.
Hughes shook his head. “Governor abolished the death penalty.”
Annie looked off into space.
They enjoyed a dinner around the giant table next to the barn with all twenty-four members of the commune and Parker and Hughes as guests. Everyone had a small helping of barbecued chicken, a baked potato, various freshly picked salad greens, and sliced peaches for dessert.
Afterward, Annie took Parker and Hughes for a walk in the orchard. The air was still warm and humid, but it felt softer and milder now with the subtropical sun low in the sky.
“We’d like you to come back,” Hughes said.
Annie hadn’t expected this. She thought she’d made herself perfectly clear when pioneer groups announced their plans to resettle the countryside. Somebody had to grow food, and she didn’t belong in Atlanta.
“I’m happy here,” she said. And she was. As happy as she could be, anyway. She liked the quiet, the starry nights, the feeling of solidarity with her fellow misfits. Some of them wanted to live out an adventurous rural fantasy, but Annie suspected others were there to soothe themselves in a tranquil, bucolic environment. “Are you both happy in Atlanta? Really?”
Annie had hated the crowds, the lack of softness, and the smells. Most of all, she had felt like she was visiting from another world.
“It ain’t Seattle before the fall,” Hughes said. “But things are getting better and easier, and they’re going to keep getting better and easier. You wouldn’t even recognize the place anymore. The gates are open all day now, and people are moving back into Buckhead and Midtown.”
“It’s a lot less crowded,” Parker said, “and a lot less terrifying. The electricity works. The water works. Hell, even the Internet works, though there’s not much to look at.”
“That’s what you care about?” Annie said.
“We care about you, Annie,” Hughes said. “That’s why we’re here.”
“You know I don’t belong there,” she said.
“You tell yourself that,” Parker said. “But don’t believe everything you think. Where would I be if I believed every dumb and crazy thing that popped into my head during the past two years?”
“I’m not dumb and crazy,” Annie said.
“No, but I was,” Parker said. “I thought the virus turned me into a psychopath.”
“It did,” Annie said, “but only for a couple of days. You’re still you.”
“I understand that now,” Parker said.
“And I’m still me,” Annie said, “but I’m not the same me.” She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. She’d already explained this to them over and over again.
She’d seen things that could not be unseen. Understood things that could not be unlearned. She’d perceived the world as it really was, as if she’d snapped out of a delusional state. She’d tried, but she couldn’t get back into that delusional state again. People were animals, and they had teeth just like wolves did. Civilization had a dampening effect, sure, but it was an artifice. It was as temporary and as provisional as a Japanese house with paper walls, and far easier to break than to build. It could be—and had been—destroyed in an instant with human nature remaining beast-like behind.
Human beings had existed in the world for, what, a hundred thousand years? And they’d been civilized for virtually none of those years. For all Annie knew, human beings would continue existing for millions more before being wiped out by an asteroid or a supernova. But would the United States of America continue to exist for millions of years? How would people be living during and after the next Ice Age, after the great pyramids at Giza had been ground into sand and forgotten, and after plate tectonics had submerged New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo? Against the maw of deep time, the relatively ordered and gentle world Annie had grown up in had endured for about as long as a lightning flash.
She wasn’t going to explain that all over again. Parker and Hughes had heard it enough times already. “It changed me, okay?”
“It changed all of us, Annie. You think anyone is the same person they used to be?”
“It changed all of us differently,” she said. “Most of these people”—she swept her arm across the orchard and toward the barn—“lived their whole lives in Atlanta until now. They don’t want to live there anymore either.”
“These are your people now?” Parker said.
Annie sighed. “They haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”
“We have,” Parker said. “We’re your people.”
“You can talk to us,” Hughes said. “You can live with us.”
“Okay,” Annie said. “Let’s talk then. I want you to stay. There’s another house nearby we could rehab. It doesn’t even need very much work. I wasn’t going to say that, but I didn’t think you were going to ask me to move back to Atlanta, so I’m saying it.”
Parker and Hughes looked at each other.
“You two aren’t my people,” Annie said. “You’re my family. And I love you forever.”
Hughes hugged her then, a bit awkwardly since he had only one fully functioning arm, but Annie didn’t mind.
“I love you too,” Hughes said. “But I don’t know if this place is for me.”
“Come here,” Parker said and embraced her too. They held each other for a long time. Parker let go first.
“What about you?” she said to Parker. “Will you stay?”
He looked around. “What would I do here?”
“Pick peaches. Patrol the perimeter. Build things. You used to build cabinets, right?”
Parker nodded.
“We could use you,” she said.
“I don’t know, Annie,” Parker said.
“Will you think about it?” she said.
He nodded. “I’ll think about it.”
She believed he would think about it, but she wasn’t sure she believed he would stay.
They headed out of the orchard and back toward the main house in silence, Parker and Hughes on each side of her. She wanted to lean against them both as they walked, but something stopped her. She didn’t want them to know how lonely she felt. There was no denying it to herself, though. She knew that the deepest part of her would always be alone, that no one—not even Parker or Hughes—would ever truly understand what it was like to be Annie Starling. She had saved the world, yes, and she was glad to have done it, but part of her would forever be in the wasteland, lost and alone and looking for something to eat.
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About the Author
Michael J. Totten is a novelist, a book and magazine editor, and a former journalist who has reported from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the former Soviet Union.
His first book, The Road to Fatima Gate, won the Washington Institute Book Prize in 2011.
He lives with his wife in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
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