The Last Man on Earth Club

by Paul R. Hardy

  “I’m not pregnant,” she said.

  “To be honest, I didn’t think it was very likely.”

  “Hah. Like there’s anyone on this planet who could actually get me knocked up…”

  “Well…” We had news for her on this front. But I decided to keep it back for a moment. “I think we need to discuss what just happened, first.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “I won’t say you didn’t contribute to Katie’s choice. But it was a choice she made herself.”

  “I suppose she did.”

  The nurse finished her scan. “You’re fine. You should probably avoid spicy food for the rest of the day.”

  “Huh. All the problems are upstairs, right?”

  The nurse smiled her regret. “Not really my department.”

  “Do you mind if we have the room for a moment?” I asked.

  “Of course,” said the nurse, and left. I sat down on a chair.

  “Is she going to make it?” asked Liss.

  “We should be able to save her, yes. But it’s going to be difficult.”

  “Huh.” She fell silent and looked down at her toes.

  “Is something else troubling you, Liss?”

  “It’s just…”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s stupid.”

  “That’s okay.”

  She looked up at me.

  “What if it was me?”

  “You can’t take the blame for what Katie did—”

  “I don’t mean that! I mean… everyone who died on my world. Because I don’t know how they died! I don’t know why! And, and…”

  “Is this because of what Katie said?

  “Yeah. No. I don’t know.”

  “Well, she… did raise an important issue.”

  “No shit.”

  “It is a mystery. Do you think she had a point?”

  “Well if I were the police, I’d want to talk to me. But… I don’t know! I don’t know what I’m supposed to do…”

  I took a breath. “I think I need to give you some news.”

  She looked at me with sudden hope. “You found something? I mean, did the ICT find something?”

  “No. It’s not that.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s about you.”

  “Oh, crap, are they going to lock me up…?”

  “No. It’s to do with the sexual compatibility test.”

  She was puzzled. “Er… what…?”

  “They had a surprising result. It impacts on your therapy, so they asked me to give you the news.”

  “Okay…”

  “We know what species you are.”

  She struggled to make sense of that. “I already know what species I am…”

  “No. I mean we found a match. You have the same genetic structure as a species we already know.”

  “Wait. You mean I’m not… you mean I’m not from — what do you mean?”

  “I mean we discovered that you are, almost certainly, a member of a species we know. The Quillians. They’re IU members.”

  “I… but… how?”

  “I’m sorry. I really don’t know why they didn’t spot it earlier.”

  Her eyes went wide, then her face fell. “Oh, crap.”

  “Liss?”

  “It’s my fault. I gave you fake samples when you found me. So you wouldn’t be able to use my DNA against me…”

  “That would explain it, yes.”

  She shook her head, trying to absorb the news. “You’re saying I’m from another world? Another universe?”

  “Maybe. We don’t really know what it means.”

  “Have you asked them what happened? The, uh, Quillians?”

  “No. Your medical records are confidential unless you choose otherwise.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I think there are two good things here.”

  “Oh, great. I can get pregnant and rebuild the species, only I wasn’t even a member of the species in the first place!”

  “Yes. You can get pregnant, and…”

  “And what?”

  “The ICT have something else they can investigate.”

  She thought about it.

  “Shit. You think it might have been them?”

  “Probably not. But it’ll give the investigators somewhere to start.”

  She looked like she might throw up again. “Oh crap. Crap. Crap!”

  “I’m not saying it was them. Just that you might be the same species. I can’t even begin to think how many reasons they might have had for being in your universe. But if they were there… maybe they know who else was?”

  “Shit. I don’t know. I can’t… If it’s some big IU species, how are they going to be able to do anything?”

  “If they’re guilty of a crime on this scale, or even if they just have a lead, someone’s got to look into it.”

  “Balls. Do you think any species is going to let everyone think they committed genocide? They’ll walk out on the IU first. And then anyone with something to hide will go, and then you haven’t even got an Interversal Union. You really think they’re going to let that happen?”

  “That’s a lot of things to assume, Liss.”

  “That’s how people act.”

  “So if the ICT can’t do it, did you want to investigate them yourself?”

  “I don’t even know where to start…”

  “Okay. So on the one hand, you’re assuming the ICT will fail. And on the other, you’re assuming you’ll fail if you try the same thing. It seems like a very negative attitude…”

  “We’re not talking about self-esteem here! This is a whole species! You think I should take them on, is that it?”

  “You don’t have to. You can give this to the ICT, and you certainly should even if you look into it yourself. But whether or not you take any action is up to you.”

  “I don’t know… I just… what if I get it wrong?”

  “Well, if you feel you’re guaranteed to fail, then of course, maybe you’re justified in not starting.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, and then stopped. “Seriously. Reverse psychology? You want to try that on me?”

  “If it makes you look at what you just said and re-evaluate it from a more objective position, certainly.”

  “Yeah, yeah, all right, I know what you’re going to say. You don’t succeed if you don’t start and all that motivational bullshit. Hey, it’s only a genocide of three billion people, not really all that important or anything…”

  “It’s up to you, Liss.”

  “Great.”

  I stood up. “I’ll let you think about it.”

  I left her there, dangling her legs off the bed and looking troubled.

  6. Kwame

  Kwame was too nervous to go inside, though he did his best to hide it. I couldn’t force him, so we had to wait as he prevaricated. Two medics were with us, a necessary precaution given what lay in wait. Kwame asked after their families. He asked for the latest news on the ICT. Eventually, he asked me about Katie. I told him how she was doing: all the pieces of her body and brain were now in a medical lab in Hub Metro being painstakingly reconnected.

  “But she will be brain-damaged?”

  “Very likely. We have enough scans to be able to put her brain back together the way it was, but we don’t know enough about her species to fix any problems if it turns out something’s missing.”

  He sighed.

  “Are you bothered by what happened at the session, Kwame?”

  “She would not have taken such an action if we had not been so… angry.”

  “She took that decision herself.”

  “Yes, yes. I know. Perhaps… she decided she could not wait for anyone else to do it.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “She is guilty of genocide. I do not know what she was thinking… but is it possible that she judged herself?”

  “I think you may be projecting your own situation onto Katie’s.”

  He
sighed. “We share a similar problem.”

  “And how are you feeling about your problem at the moment?”

  “I think… I think she is braver than I.”

  “We can go in any time you like.”

  “Yes.”

  “If you want to find out, this is what’s going to help.”

  “Yes…”

  He looked at the door. Just an ordinary door in the centre, one of the ones leading to the empty areas we didn’t need. Until now. The space behind the door had been remodelled into something Kwame would recognise. The medics were with us because we knew what it was he feared: the flashbacks he would almost certainly face once he went inside.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “This is the best thing we can think of at the moment.”

  He took a breath, psyching himself up. “She was brave. She was brave.” His good hand flexed. “I can be brave.” He strode forward with purpose and the medics scrambled to follow us as the doorway opened on a perfect facsimile of the entrance hall of the Mutapan command bunker. Once the door closed behind us, the illusion was complete; our doorway vanished into the façade of massive blast doors.

  The hall wasn’t so much a reception area as a defensive position. There was a desk where a guard might have sat in normal times, and loopholes on both sides that led to hidden guard posts and allowed them to fire upon any invader. The door leading into the main complex was heavy, made of steel. The fluorescent lighting had been carefully replicated and did the room no favours, tinge ing everything with a sickly green.

  Kwame halted, all his momentum lost, eyes fixed on the inner door.

  “Kwame? Are you still with us?” I asked.

  He swallowed. “Yes. I was just… surprised for a moment.” He turned and looked about. “The work is excellent…” His eyes fell on the desk. “You even have the right passes.”

  A row of laminated ID cards lay on the desk. Kwame picked one up. It had his picture on it, and his name in his own language. “Oh…”

  He had to steady himself on the desk as the strength fled from his legs. The medics pushed forward, but he waved them away.

  “It is nothing. I am just… I remember seeing this… I…”

  “It’s okay, Kwame, you don’t need to push yourself. We can stop now if you like.”

  “No. It is… working. How much of the bunker have you created?”

  “As much as we could in the space we had. There’s the main level with offices, living spaces and so on, and you can go downstairs into the hibernation chambers as well, but we only had room for a few of those.”

  “You used the entire centre…”

  “All the parts that were shuttered, yes. They’re pretty much designed to let you do this kind of thing.”

  “Can I go in… alone?”

  “No. We need to keep the medical team nearby at all times.”

  “It…” he looked around at them, waiting there with their medical bags. “It won’t be the same.”

  “We can’t risk it.”

  “And it does not smell… right.”

  “How should it smell?”

  “As though fifty people had been living here for a month.”

  “I can arrange that.” I tapped some controls on my pad, and a subtle stench wafted through the room.

  “And it’s too quiet. There should be air conditioning… we should hear people walking about… conversations…”

  “We can do that as well. Do you want to go in further today?”

  He paused a moment. He was still dreading it.

  “May I continue alone?”

  “The medics have to stay with you.”

  “No, I mean…” He looked back at me; I was the one getting in the way. It wouldn’t matter. He knew full well we were recording everything.

  “Of course,” I said. “You go right ahead. I’ll sort out those changes you wanted.”

  He nodded, and I withdrew.

  7. Olivia

  My mistake with Olivia was to let her know what I wanted to talk about.

  I called her an hour before her next therapy session to make sure she knew it was happening, and she grudgingly admitted she hadn’t forgotten. I told her it was very important that she turn up on time, as I wanted to discuss the events of the last group therapy session, and what had happened with Katie.

  She must have thought I meant the accusations Katie had made about the killing of revenant children, and she was right. While Katie had not suspected which revenant children were at the heart of the trauma, Olivia knew well enough and quickly understood what I would be expecting her to talk about.

  So she made a break for it.

  We didn’t notice until the time grew closer for the session, when I checked in with her again and found she was no longer in the centre. She was already beyond the inner perimeter, hiking over rough ground with the help of a stick. I pulled up a map on the wall and figured out where she was going.

  There were cliffs in her path. Sheer and steep where a mountain stream had long ago carved a ravine, then frozen into a glacier and widened the gulf over a million years until the opposite edge of the valley was almost a kilometre away. The drop was three hundred metres at least, and ended on a slope of jagged boulders.

  I ran out after her with medics trailing, but was only able to catch sight of her at the cliff’s edge as I scrambled across the uneven hillside. She stood at the lip, leaning a little on her stick; then straightened and tossed it over the edge. I heard a distant clatter as it tumbled down.

  “Olivia!” I shouted at her. There was a slight motion of her head as she heard me and chose not to listen. I was still thirty metres away when she jumped.

  There was no longer any point in running. She’d made her choice. I sighed and walked at a safer pace to the cliff’s edge, to be joined by the medical team. And just as we got there, Olivia was floated back up.

  Maybe she’d hoped that by hiking such a distance, she’d find a cliff we hadn’t covered. But the gravity sleds were scattered far and wide, originally intended to save skiers if they took a wrong turn and found themselves flying into empty air. The top half of the sled inflated into a soft cushion that had caught Olivia as she fell, and she still lay face down and spreadeagled upon it.

  “Olivia?” I asked. “Are you ready to talk to me now?”

  She didn’t look at me as the sled placed her in the care of the medics.

  “Yeh.”

  “Would you like to come back to the centre?”

  “No.”

  I nodded and ordered some supplies.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, we had chairs, hot drinks and a portable heater, while Olivia stayed wrapped in the foil blanket the medics had given her. The sun was dropping low and filtering through gathering clouds, but there was no chance of rain; it was just another sign of winter coming soon.

  “You really didn’t want to talk to me today, did you?” I asked.

  “Give her a bloody medal, she’s perceptive, that one.”

  “Did you think it would work?”

  “Course not.”

  “So why…?”

  “Better than talking to you.”

  “But you’re willing to talk now?”

  She sighed. “Ask me what you’re going to ask me.”

  “Okay. Katie asked you a question during the group session…”

  Olivia slurped her drink and kept her eyes fixed ahead of her. “Yeh.”

  “She asked you if you’d killed any revenants who happened to be children. It bothered you.”

  “Yeh.”

  “Can you talk about that?”

  She paused for a long time, her eyes on her drink.

  “Killed Tymothy when he revenned. Boy of six. Parents couldn’t do it. It was early on. Oh, and I’d put children down before, I told you about the temple schools in the first outbreak, that locked them all in with revenants? I put a lot of them down. You get used to it.

  “Tymothy’s pare
nts didn’t think the same. They were children in the first outbreak. Never had to put a revenant down themselves. So I had to do it for them. They ended up leaving before the others. Thought they could make it to a station on the coast but they never got there. So yeh. I’ve killed children. So what?”

  “Is that what you were concerned about in the group session?”

  She didn’t answer that one. Just looked down into her mug again.

  “Is it something to do with your own children?’

  She looked up at me sharply. “I didn’t eat them!” She held her gaze on me, defying me to make the accusation.

  “I know. But you ate others who came back.”

  “Yeh. I had to. I had to! I couldn’t round them up from the hills like we used to, not by myself. I had to use anything I could. But I didn’t eat them!”

  “I know that, Olivia. They were still in the pens when we found you.”

  “I should have killed myself when they came back. Just… join everyone else, be done with it. But I thought there was someone else out there! And I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d told them, I’d told them for years, there was someone out there. Just because the radio didn’t reach ’em, didn’t mean they weren’t there, and we had to sit tight, we had to. I wasn’t going to give up, even if everyone else did. So I kept trying. Twice a week I charged up the battery and tried the radio. Nothing. No one. Nobody in range. You lot were gone, everyone was gone, it was just me.”

  “What did happen to your children?”

  She sprung up, infuriated. “You think I’m some kind of monster? Is that it? I kept them in the pen with the others but I left them alone! What, do you want to make me out like some kind of cannibal of her own children? Is that what you want?”

  “I know what happened to your children.”

  “Then why are you asking me?”

  “Because I want to hear you tell me.”

  “Waste of time! It’s a godsdamn waste of time!”

  “It’s in the report from the people who found you.” She slumped back down, shivering again under the blanket. “You were on your own, except for the two revenants in the pen. And after the crew had explained what was going on, you took a gun and shot both of them in the head. And then you tried to kill yourself.”