The Last Man on Earth Club

by Paul R. Hardy

  “What, all at once?” asked Olivia.

  “No, but enough that it’s going to put a lot of stress on the resources of the IU. That means they need to use all the therapy centres they have, even the one you’re at.”

  “We’re aware of this,” said Iokan. “As I understand it, the Diplomatic Service is providing us with temporary accommodation.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But, unfortunately…” I tried not to glance at Liss. “…resources are even thinner than we expected. The Refugee Service need all the therapists they can get for the evacuation. They’ve ordered me to report to the Lift.”

  “Well bloody say no!” said Olivia.

  “I did,” I said. “But I wasn’t given a choice.”

  “You’re leaving us?” asked Elsbet, suddenly anxious.

  “No,” I said. “But I am leaving the Refugee Service.”

  “So you are leaving us!” said Olivia.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “Let me explain. The ICT have offered me a job as consulting therapist…”

  “What does that entail?” asked Kwame.

  Eremis spoke up. “We’re expecting many of the witnesses we speak to will be extremely traumatised. We need someone to help us assess their mental state. In the first instance because we need reliable witness statements that will stand up in court—”

  “Huh,” snorted Olivia, assuming his motives were entirely mercenary.

  “—and secondly, so we can arrange proper care for them. If necessary, we need to be able to provide that care ourselves.”

  “Why?” asked Pew.

  “Some witnesses will need protection from the people they’re testifying against.” I noticed Liss chewing her lip. With any luck, she was considering the consequences of what she’d done, and how much danger she’d put herself in. Eremis went on: “If that’s the case, we’ll need to be able to offer therapy while they’re in our custody.”

  Iokan smiled. He’d already figured out what was coming next.

  “As for the group,” I said, “we’re here to make you an offer. I can’t stay with the Refugee Service, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to stay on as your therapist. They’ll assign someone to you as soon as they can, but it might take a while, given what’s going on.”

  “You’re just abandoning us, is that it?” accused Olivia.

  “I don’t think that’s what we’re here for,” said Iokan. “My answer is yes. I’ll come with you.”

  “What…?” demanded Olivia.

  “Do you mean to say—” said Kwame, laboriously.

  “You want us to come with you?” finished Elsbet.

  “That’s pretty much it,” I said. “The Refugee Service is willing to transfer custody to the ICT, but only if you agree. So: how do you all feel about that?”

  “I’ll do it,” said Liss before anyone else could cut in.

  “So… what, are we still going to this Diplomatic place?” asked Elsbet, suddenly very tense.

  “Yes, in the short term,” said Eremis. “We’ll be looking into other accommodation as soon as possible.”

  “And they don’t have anything to do with this…?”

  “No,” I said. “They won’t speak to you unless you ask.”

  She relaxed. “Oh. Well. Okay, then.”

  “That’s fine. Kwame?”

  He considered it, and turned to Eremis. “Will you be able to investigate my case?”

  “I can’t promise we’ll be able to give you quite what you want…”

  “What I want has changed. There were events at the very end which were less… nebulous. Including several deaths. I would like to have my name cleared if nothing else.”

  Pew looked up from the dudgeon he’d been in, and seemed troubled.

  “Perhaps we should discuss this later, Kwame?” I asked.

  “I would be glad to,” he said. Eremis nodded.

  “Pew?” I asked. He didn’t look like he wanted to talk. He hadn’t wanted to talk much recently in any case. As much as he’d been a little more co-operative recently, it had all been grudgingly given and he seemed to hate the process of therapy for more reasons than just the trauma he would have to relive in order to remedy his PTSD.

  “No,” he said.

  “Just ‘no’, Pew?”

  “Just no.”

  “Can we discuss your reasons? Especially if the others might find them relevant.”

  He folded his arms and looked down into them.

  “Pew?”

  Olivia jumped in. “Well, It’s no surprise, is it? You’ve dropped this on us all of a sudden, no wonder he’s not ready. And you’re not giving us a choice, are you? Where else is there to go?”

  “Well, I have to admit there aren’t a lot of alternatives—”

  “Oh, but I bet the Psychiatric Centre is one of ’em…”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m afraid it’s the only realistic option.”

  “Well there you are, then. Not much of a choice is it? Dragged all over the planet like this, no wonder he doesn’t want to go—”

  Pew thrust forward in his chair. “Stop it! That’s not why I don’t want to go, that’s why you don’t want to go! You don’t know! You don’t know!”

  “So spit it out, then!” retorted Olivia.

  “It’s them!” He jabbed a finger at Eremis. “They’ll investigate anything you want but they won’t do anything for me! And we all know who killed my species! If they won’t help me, why should they help you? All they’ll do is put Kwame in prison they know he killed someone! They won’t do anything about a whole species!”

  “Pew, we’ve discussed this. I’m sorry we can’t give you what you want—”

  “But they’ll put us in prison if it was us who killed the last one! Never if it was them!”

  Kwame leaned forward. “I do not know what you think I did, but I am no longer asking to be tried for genocide.”

  “I know that! Everybody knows that!”

  “I seek to be cleared on a charge of murder. I do not understand—”

  “What if it was me? What if I killed the last one?”

  There was silence. Kwame did not know what to say.

  I spoke up. “I really don’t think this is the time or place for this. We need to talk about this in individual therapy. All I’m asking today is that you give me a chance to keep working with you. I’m only trying to help—”

  “You’re like her. Just like her!”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Shan’oui! She said she wanted to help. It’s always help and then there’s none of us left!”

  He slumped down in his chair, refusing any eye contact. I looked around at the rest of the group. “I think I need to discuss this with Pew in private. Do the rest of you mind stepping outside? Elsbet, can you disconnect for a moment? I’ll let you know when we’re finished.”

  Elsbet vanished, and the rest of the group filed out. Olivia looked back at Pew with exasperation, shaking her head. “I’ll be as quick as I can,” I said to Eremis. He nodded, and I think he understood. I’d warned him this might not be simple.

  He left me and Pew alone together in the meeting room.

  17. Pew

  I sat down beside Pew, trying to make it as much like a therapy session as possible, in spite of the fact that we were sat at the edge of a room intended for meetings of up to twenty people.

  “We’re alone now, Pew. Can we talk about it?”

  He didn’t answer. Just stared at the tabletop.

  “Are you worried they’re going to start investigating you?”

  Still no answer.

  “Pew, you haven’t committed a crime. You’re the victim of a crime.”

  He stared ahead with fixed, trembling eyes.

  “Pew, what is it you’re afraid of?”

  He snapped at the accusation. “I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid of anything. I’m not afraid of them. It’s just wrong.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  He whipped his head round
. “They’ll come for me and it wasn’t me! It was them! It was them that killed her!”

  “Killed who?”

  “The last one they sent.”

  “In the breeding programme? Do you mean Ley’ang?”

  “Yes.”

  He stared back at me, defying me to console him. I went on instead.

  “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault, Pew. Can you tell me what happened?”

  Another pause. “They put me back in the programme after I escaped. But there weren’t any women left. They were all dead. Some of them killed themselves because they couldn’t get pregnant by me.” He let that sink in, then continued. “There weren’t any women. But there was a girl. She was too young to mate before but they said she was ready now. She wasn’t ready. She was a child.”

  “You mean she was too young to—”

  “No! She was old enough for that. She was like a child. She believed all the bullshit they’d told her.”

  “I understand. What did you do?”

  “I couldn’t go with her.”

  “Why?”

  “She was like me. When I was younger. She thought they were telling the truth. She didn’t know she lived in a cage.”

  “I see.”

  “I tried to tell her but she didn’t understand. And they were all watching behind a mirror. I couldn’t touch her. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stand being in the same room as her. So they gave me the drugs.”

  I realised what that meant, and what he must have been forced to do to her.

  “I’m so sorry…”

  “That’s what I have the flashback about. They put me back in there and I… I couldn’t stop it… I… beat her until she stopped screaming, I…” His gaze slid away. I feared the flashback starting.

  “Pew. Slower. More careful.”

  He locked his eyes back on me. “I killed her.”

  I nodded. Not judging. Not condoning. Just acknowledging.

  “Not straight away. I hurt her. I think… I think I was trying to hurt her so much she could never have children. I was so disgusted…”

  “With the way the Soo treated you?”

  “With us. The Pu.” He grimaced as he said the name of his species. “We never fought. We just let them do it to us.”

  “I see.”

  “She died in the ambulance… they said there was a crash, didn’t they?”

  “Yes. That’s what’s in the records.”

  “They lied.”

  I nodded. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”

  “Then Shan’oui came to me, afterwards. I didn’t even know what I’d done. She told me.”

  He swallowed hard to keep his feelings in check. “I screamed. I wept. She told me I was the last Pu in the world.” He gave me a hard look. “And she said she was sorry.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Thank you, Pew. I know that was difficult but I think you made some real progress—”

  “You don’t understand.”

  He was still angry. “Okay. What don’t I understand?”

  “She said she was sorry. She said she’d tried to defend me. She said she’d done everything she could. She did nothing.”

  “But she tried. Isn’t that right?”

  “All she did was make it worse!”

  “How did she do that?”

  “She kept us there, in that prison. She shipped us out to fuck. She let them put cameras in so every Soo in the world could watch us fuck and die. She let them do everything. The only thing she didn’t do was save us.”

  “She must have been in a very difficult position.”

  “She thought she was being kind. She should have just killed us. That would have been kinder!”

  “Pew, I can understand that you’re angry, but—”

  “You’re like her. You’re just like her!”

  “I don’t run a breeding programme, Pew.”

  “You say you can make it better. You say you can give us justice. It’s bullshit!”

  “All I can do for you is therapy—”

  “It doesn’t make it better!”

  “Pew, I’d appreciate it if—”

  “You can’t bring them back!”

  I had to pause.

  “I can’t, Pew. I would if I could, but I can’t.”

  His voice became unnervingly quiet and threatening. “Do you know what I did to Shan’oui?”

  I didn’t answer. His eyes were locked on me, unblinking, rimmed with red, his hands trembling as they gripped the arms of the chair like claws. All my instincts told me he was going to attack. I reached for my pad, slowly, and shook my head to keep his attention on my face.

  “I still had the drug in my system.”

  “…You attacked her.”

  The pad was in my jacket pocket. I couldn’t pull it out without him noticing.

  His eyes widened with a fanatic stare. “I can still go back there. Every time I remember.”

  As he did when Olivia touched him. He could set off the flashback and then he would be the monster again.

  He was doing it now. Sweat on his brow. His eyes drifting to see a vision far in the past. A look of horror on his face for a moment. And then he was there.

  He wasn’t looking at me. I grabbed for the pad and pressed the emergency signal.

  He snapped his eyes on me like a beast in rut, and jumped—

  But I wasn’t there. I was a shadow of light, an illusion sent across the many kilometres between Hub Metro and the centre. He plunged through me, not understanding, driven by animal lust and horror. He jumped to try again and I could only stand there, unable to help him, as he fell through me and wailed at how powerless he was.

  I couldn’t help the tears as Kwame and Iokan ran on ahead of the security team, and pulled him to the floor, screaming, spitting, fighting back with a terrible strength.

  He didn’t have any more words. Just wails and howls, like the animal the Soo had made of him, as the medics tranquillised him and took him away to detention.

  18. Olivia

  It was a wrench to leave the Refugee Service. I’d worked there most of my adult life, and I was used to all its habits and ways, the internal politics and culture, and even, I found to my surprise, the blend of tea commonly distributed throughout the service. But this was still Hub, and it was still the IU, and that was more than enough.

  Even so, I needed leave, and Eremis made arrangements to let me get some time away once the group were settled at the new centre. But I no longer felt trapped in the same desperate, hopeless circumstance, trying to coax their damaged minds towards therapy and healing. Most of them were past the worst already, and the challenge was new, different, and made me want to come back to work rather than dreading the same old horrors from scarred survivors of dead worlds. Once I made it clear I was leaving my old job, the Quillian threat to remove their support for the evacuation evaporated. It was never more than a subtle hint designed to put pressure on the Refugee Service, and once the responsibility passed to the ICT, there was nothing the Quillians could do without looking petty and vindictive.

  I returned to the snowbound centre with Elsbet and Liss so we could pack their belongings, and so I could speak to Olivia, who steadfastly refused to commit herself. I don’t know if it was just tetchiness, or her old reluctance to co-operate coming out again. It wasn’t the violent opposition that Pew showed. More a reluctance to commit to the therapy she so desperately needed and that we could provide now she had opened up to me.

  It came, at last, to the final day. My own belongings were packed, and the office had only the fittings that would vanish when I blanked it and handed it over to the new therapists. Olivia and I watched from the window wall as everyone else went down to the bus, wrapped up in their warmest coats, stepping aside as porters pushed their belongings out on floating carts and loaded up the baggage compartments.

  One other vehicle came down to make an impression on the snow: an ambulance from the Psychiatric Centre.

  “Poor bastard.” />
  Olivia looked down as Pew, heavily sedated, was floated out to the ambulance to be taken away. The rest of the group watched as he passed by. Iokan raised a hand, despite Pew not being able to see. Kwame cast his eyes down. Elsbet tried to look somewhere else. Liss huddled her arms against the cold and wiped her eyes.

  “They’ll look after him,” I said.

  “No they won’t,” said Olivia. “They’ll leave him there until he rots.”

  “We need to make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone else. You remember what he did to you.”

  “Did you think I’d forget? Poor bastard, all the same. Therapy didn’t work on him, did it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Hah! That’s a good answer. When do you give up? When he’s dead?”

  “We’ll keep trying as long as there’s hope.”

  She shook her head. “Is that what you want me to sign up for? That’s your idea of therapy?”

  “He’s a very special case.”

  “Oh, and the rest of us are normal…”

  “You’re all special. And you’re all different.”

  “Yeh? How?”

  I thought about that for a moment. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  She glared at me for a moment, but then sighed. “I’m older.”

  “Go on.”

  “When we first locked the gates at Tringarrick, a lot of the younger ones wanted to fight. Men mostly. Some of the women as well. Huh. Like I did, in the first outbreak. I couldn’t let them. They’d only have got themselves killed. He’s like them. It’s always the young ones that want to fight.”

  “And what do you want to do, Olivia?”

  She looked at me as the ambulance lifted off into the sky, and the others trooped to the bus. “You think it’ll work?”

  “In your case, yes.”

  She looked back outside as the ambulance powered away between the mountains, then sighed. “So what am I supposed to be doing?”

  “To begin with, exposure therapy for the PTSD.”