The Boy at the End of the World

by Greg Van Eekhout

  “I need to make a splint to immobilize my fingers,” he said. “I know this, somehow. It must be in my personality profile.”

  “Yes. You have a very basic knowledge of first aid. That is what you were drawing upon when you washed your piranha-croc wounds with salt water.”

  “Okay. Great. The only thing is, I don’t know how to make a splint. Do you?”

  Click whirred. “No.”

  “How are you supposed to help me survive and continue the human race if you can’t even make a splint?”

  “There are many ways to help humans,” Click said. “For example, keeping the Ark clean. That was my primary function. Other custodial units would have taken care of other needs had they not been destroyed. I am doing the best I can.”

  Fisher swallowed in pain. He took a deep, slow breath. “I know.”

  Fisher looked at the twigs and the flower stalks. In his mind’s eye, he rearranged them until he came up with a design that would hopefully keep his cracked fingers from moving around.

  He placed the twigs below and alongside the broken fingers. Then, directing Click to hold the end of a flower stalk in place, he wrapped the stalk around the twigs.

  This was the easy part. There was still the matter of tying the knots. He couldn’t do it one-handed, and Click didn’t have the dexterity to do it himself.

  The first knot took almost an hour. He had to tell Click how to hold the stalk, how to wrap it and tuck it through loops. And once the first knot was done, Fisher watched, heartbroken, as it immediately unraveled.

  He wanted to give up. The slightest touch sent pain jolting through his fingers.

  But he kept at it.

  Finally, the splint was secured in place, at least for now.

  His entire hand throbbed. But he’d given himself a chance to heal. All he had to do was survive until then.

  To start with, he needed food.

  He picked up his jaw-hacker and dragged himself to his feet.

  Even the bugs eluded him. To catch bugs, Fisher had to be able to crawl fast and cup them quickly in his hands, and with only one good hand, he could do neither. His head throbbed. His vision swam. He had become a weak animal.

  This was ridiculous. Fisher had been better at survival just a few hours after becoming born. He’d made his own weapons. He’d made his own tools. He had become a master at reshaping nature to suit his needs. But now? Even crawling in the mud for bugs was too hard for him. Maybe this was how humans had felt as their buildings crumbled around them, taunted by memories of their former power. Maybe this was how they felt when they realized they were dying.

  Something moved at the edge of the streambed. Fisher ducked back into the bushes and gripped his antelope jaw-hacker. A froglike creature stood in the water on four stilt legs. Fisher’s stomach melted with desire. The frog’s green speckled body was packed with succulent meat. With a flash of its tongue, it snatched a fly right from the air.

  The stilt-frog could keep the fly. Fisher wanted the frog.

  His plan was simple. He would rush forward and smash the frog with his jaw-hacker. He wouldn’t even need both hands for this. But he’d only get once chance. He drew in a deep breath and readied himself.

  A shfft noise cut through the air, and a long wooden needle embedded itself in the frog’s back. The frog spasmed once before keeling over.

  Fisher drew back further into the bushes. From the reeds on the opposite side of the stream emerged a two-legged mammal, about three feet tall, with sharp-clawed feet that matched the prints Fisher had found in camp.

  The mammal tucked a pistol-grip bow into a belt pouch and leaned on a long metal rod with a wicked-looking blade on the end. Using the pole for support, it limped forward and waded into the stream. Dried blood matted the yellowish-brown fur on one of its thighs.

  Fisher held his breath in the shadowed bushes. This had to be the intruder he’d been trying to snare, and its backpack no doubt contained Fisher’s flint rocks and torches.

  The mammal reached the skewered frog and hoisted it under its arm. Bothered by its wounded leg, it struggled to return to shore.

  Before reaching the muddy bank, the creature stopped and wobbled. Its arms went slack, dropping the dead frog in the stream. Then the creature fell forward and lay still, facedown in the shallow water. Bubbles rose around its head.

  This was Fisher’s chance. He could kill the mammal and take both it and the frog back to camp. This was a life-saving feast.

  He crossed the stream, approaching cautiously in case this was some kind of trick. He tossed the frog ashore and stood over the mammal. If it was only pretending to drown, it was doing a good job of it. Fisher should just smash its head in. In a few hours, he’d be gorging on protein-rich meat. He may not be a stronger animal than the mammal, but right now he was the luckier one, and sometimes luck was better than strength.

  So, why was he hesitating?

  Transferring his jaw-hacker to his right armpit, he reached down with his good hand and lifted the mammal from the water by the scruff of its neck.

  “Try to attack me, and I’ll kill you,” he said.

  But the mammal only coughed water.

  He dropped the mammal on dry land beside the frog and returned for the creature’s bladed pole. It was heavier than it looked, and more complicated, with switches built into the grip. This wasn’t just some crude weapon. It was technology.

  The mammal spat up more water and lay panting in the mud. Fisher aimed the bladed end of the pole at its chest.

  “What are you?”

  The creature coughed. “Zapper is prairie dog. Is obvious, no?”

  Fisher’s brain ran through its catalog of animals. Prairie dogs were a kind of ground squirrel, good at digging. But prairie dogs were half the size of this creature. And they didn’t walk on two legs, or carry tools and weapons. They certainly couldn’t talk.

  “Why have you been sneaking into my camp?”

  “Zapper wants to steal your stuff. You have good stuff. You not notice your missing stuff? Human ape is stupid, hah?”

  “I’m not stupid,” said Fisher, moving the sharp tip of the pole closer. “You took my flint and torches.”

  “Ai, yes, Zapper is doing that. Dig way in, dig way out, slide rock over hole to cover Zapper’s way. You not even notice?”

  Fisher hadn’t, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Hah! Stupid ape.”

  “If I’m so stupid, then why are you the one flat on his back with a weapon pointed at him?”

  “Zapper not a ‘him.’ Zapper a ‘her.’ Ape too stupid to know difference.”

  “I’m still the one holding the stick.”

  Faster than Fisher could believe, the prairie dog was on her feet. She leaped into the air and grabbed onto the stick. Dangling from it, she pummeled Fisher’s stomach with half a dozen brutal kicks, driving all the air from him.

  Doubled over, he gasped for breath. Now the prairie dog had the stick. Fisher waited for another attack.

  “Hah. Ape is at least a little stupid, no?”

  “Maybe a little,” huffed Fisher.

  Apparently satisfied by Fisher’s answer, the prairie dog planted her pole in the ground and leaned on it. She was breathing heavily. The effort had cost her.

  “We take frog to your camp now? Cook it up?”

  “You … you want to share your kill with me?”

  Fisher rubbed his belly. With those claws, he was lucky the prairie dog hadn’t ripped out his intestines.

  “You save Zapper from drowning, no?”

  “I guess I did.”

  “Then Zapper share food with ape. Is right thing to do.”

  Without question, this prairie dog was the most peculiar creature Fisher had ever encountered.

  He pointed into the bushes. “Camp’s that way.”

  She grunted. “Zapper remembers. Zapper’s been there.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Zapper held her head in outrage as Fisher turned the spitted
frog over the sizzling fire.

  “Nai, that is no way to cook frog! You want all fat to run out? Fat is good! Fat is delicious!”

  “How should I cook it, then?”

  “You boil. Does Fisher know how to boil? You put water in pot and pot on fire and frog in pot, bubble-bubble until done, all the fat stays in.”

  “Do you have a pot?”

  Zapper shook her head and Fisher shrugged. “Then roasted frog it is.”

  Fat dripped into the fire. Zapper groaned.

  Click had clicked and whirred through this entire exchange. In fact, that was almost all the robot had done since Fisher had returned to camp with the limping prairie dog.

  Protein remained at the edge of the fire’s glow, his eyes gleaming in the shadows. The mammoth clearly did not like having a stranger around. Not one bit.

  “You are an intelligent rodent with opposable thumbs and powers of speech,” said Click.

  Zapper nodded agreeably. “Ai.”

  “And you speak our language,” continued Click.

  “Zapper speak human, but only when Zapper must. Is encoded in Zapper’s DNA. Human is hokay for saying human things. But Zapper is preferring her own language.” She demonstrated with a series of grunts and squeaks.

  “Your species has evolved in unlikely ways,” said Click.

  Zapper waved her paw dismissively. “Hah, evolution not only way to change. Prairie dogs is changed also by human scientists. They clone us, and then they engineer clones so can think smart things and talk smart things. Smart things like us is good to sneak. To spy. To set bombs. Humans use weaponized prairie dogs against their enemies. But now humans all gone, except for bad frog cooker. Still us prairie dogs, though. Some, at least.”

  She gazed down at the dirt.

  Fisher removed the frog from the fire and peeled off its crackling skin.

  “How many more of you are there?”

  “There is eighty-eight dogs. Eighty-six at the colony, and me and Nailer. Only Nailer is dead, so now is only eighty-seven dogs.”

  As Fisher and Zapper shared the frog, the prairie dog told the somber tale of how she’d come from so far away to end up in this jungle.

  “We live in the west, where we is safe and secure, except for the snakes and the coyotes and naked rats and acid turtles. We kill them good when they come hunting. But our worst enemy is more dangerous. The rovers. They take many forms: flyers, swimmers, crawlers, diggers. They is nasty machines, and hard to kill.”

  “Machines?” Fisher interrupted. “They sound like gadgets!” Fisher went on to describe the gadgets, and Zapper agreed that rovers and gadgets were probably the same mechanical creatures.

  “They always come from east,” she said. “Always, they is searching, looking. They is finding our hunting grounds, is driving us from colony to colony. So Greycrown, our leader, sends me and Nailer on expedition. We try to find the rovers’ home, to spy on them, find their weaknesses. Then we is to report back to colony and figure out how to make war. But at mouth of big river, rovers catch Zapper and Nailer. Zapper get away. But not Nailer. Nailer is killed.”

  Fisher couldn’t read her expression. The muscles in her face weren’t built like his and didn’t show emotion the same way. But her shoulders bent forward and her head sagged.

  “Nailer was your friend?” he asked.

  Zapper bared her teeth. “Nailer was Zapper’s littermate. After they kill Nailer, the rovers chase Zapper through jungle. Zapper hide until rovers pass her. And now they go west. Many of them. More than ever. They is coming to find our last colony, to destroy it, and end prairie dogs forever. Zapper must go west too. Must go home, to warn colony.”

  “I know where the rovers come from,” Fisher said. “At least originally. They were the defense systems of my Ark. But they evolved in bad ways. Now instead of protecting life forms, they want to destroy them. And they’re not even the worst machines around.”

  He told her everything that had happened to him since becoming born, including finding the Southern Ark and its evolved defense system, the Intelligence. Zapper stared into the fire as Fisher spoke, nodding. Orange flames flickered in her shiny black eyes. She remained quiet for a long time, as if weighing what she wanted to say.

  “Prairie dogs know of Arks,” she said finally, her soft voice a whispery rasp. “In colony, old ones tell stories passed to them from long ago. They speak of forbidden places, human places where the dead sleep, to be woken up later so dead can haunt the living. Is spooky places.”

  She shivered.

  “Is three Arks built,” she continued. “Is lost Ark, on other side of land. Is Southern Ark, where is nothing but death. And is Western Ark, near prairie dog colony, where dogs is forbidden to go.”

  Click whirred, and Fisher sat up with a start. “Wait, you’re saying you know where the Western Ark is?”

  Zapper grunted. “Ark is secret. Hidden. Elders know, because they must know places to avoid. Colony leader Greycrown know for sure. But she not tell.”

  Zapper had said the rovers—the gadgets—were seeking out her colony. But maybe that’s not all they were after. Maybe they knew the prairie dog colony was near the Western Ark, and that was the real prize they sought.

  Fisher felt something flickering in his chest, like the beginnings of a fire that, if tended and fed, could grow into a towering blaze.

  “I want to leave at first light,” he said. “I want to talk to this Greycrown of yours. Once I tell her the Ark is the last chance for the human species—for all kinds of species …”

  Zapper’s dark eyes grew sharp as she aimed a penetrating glare at him. “Zapper will take you to colony,” she said. “But Zapper must warn you: Greycrown not liking idea of more humans. To Greycrown, even one human is too many.”

  CHAPTER 18

  After the jungle came desert. Sand dunes stretched without end. During the day, Fisher and his companions faced blazing heat. At night, the air cooled to an arctic chill. Wind-blown sand pelted them around the clock.

  Fisher replaced his splint with a new one made from the long leg bones of the stilt-frog. His fingers were still sore, but he was healing.

  Protein’s soft, padded feet handled the terrain well, and nimble Zapper had no trouble scampering across the sand, even with her wounded thigh. But for Fisher and Click, it was a difficult slog.

  Zapper knew the way. Navigating by sun, moon, and stars, she led them to oases and springs that kept them alive. On their fourth day on the dunes, they found a sign. Shifting sands must have only recently uncovered it. Though weathered and pitted, Fisher could still make out the lettering:

  HOUSTON 27 MILES

  SAN ANTONIO 226 MILES

  DALLAS 268 MILES

  “Ah, I believe we are in Texas,” said Click. “Or rather, what was once Texas.”

  “How long will it take us to cross it?” asked Fisher, spitting out fine sand.

  “I do not know. Texas did not used to be a desert. The world has changed. City development, farming, ranching … they change things.”

  Zapper stopped at the top of a dune and called down to them. “Is not much farther. Maybe 1,400 miles. We do fine, as long as we not fall into acid turtle pit.”

  Day after day they drove themselves relentlessly across the desert. Hot winds whipped Fisher’s clothing like flags. Sand collected in the fissures in Click’s cracked body. When they could, they took shelter beneath towering stands of prickly pear cactus, huddling in the shade of the broad, paddle-shaped leaves and eating sweet, red fruit. Fisher fastened his long hair behind him with a strip of shredded cactus leaf, and he grew skilled at hunting the gliding reptiles that flitted high among the cacti. Rest stops were short, and sleep was rare, and they covered the miles.

  And strangely, it was Click who urged Fisher on when he grew tired. It was Click who encouraged him to climb high up the cacti to scout ahead, or to gather the best fruit. Whenever there was a choice between stopping or continuing, it was always Click who prodded Fishe
r along. Sometimes Fisher figured Click had finally embraced Fisher’s strong desire to reach the Western Ark. But sometimes he wondered if it was something else.

  Fisher wore holes in his shoe treads. He patched them with the skin of cactus leaves and with tufts of Protein’s hair. Zapper taught him how to make a real deadfall trap, which involved a more complex arrangement of sticks than Fisher had come up with on his own. And he was almost glad when Zapper’s trap caught no more than Fisher’s ever did.

  At night, Zapper entertained them with prairie dog songs. They sounded to Fisher more like the cries of an animal who’d stepped on a cactus spine, but Zapper said they were songs of celebration, of sorrow, and songs to make one feel brave in times of darkness and danger.

  Fisher didn’t have any songs to contribute.

  “Why don’t I have songs?” he asked Click one night, as he wove dry grasses into a head covering to protect him from the sun.

  “Your personality profile—”

  “I know, I know. There was probably a Singer profile that made music, right?”

  Click whirred a moment. “No. That was not a skill set included in the profile banks.”

  “So humanity was never supposed to have music again?”

  Zapper made one of her nonhuman expressions, but Fisher was learning to read them. Her face showed disbelief.

  “At colony, song is how old stories stay alive. Is how dogs know who we are, and how we is coming to be this way. We is knowing stories from the first days, when we is weaponized by human scientists. And older days, when we is being born from rock and lava, from deep underground.”

  “I doubt you originated from geological phenomena,” said Click. “That is merely mythology.”

  “Nai,” said Zapper. “Is song. Is our story.”

  Fisher had no song, no story. At least not in the way Zapper and her community did. All he had were bare facts. The falling leaf feeling returned.

  He wondered if there would come a time when he’d be telling another person his own story, how he became born, and the things he did to survive, and the battles he fought to find other humans. Maybe someone would remember his stories, many years after he was gone. They would sing about Fisher, who thought he was the last boy, and they would know what the world was like before they became born.