“They won’t take it.”
“Not before. But maybe they will now. For the bears.”
She looked at me then, her gaze steady in her exhausted face, her failing body held as upright as she could manage on my hideous sofa in my stinking apartment. She’d worked all kinds of crappy jobs to give Carrie and me as decent a life as she could. Back in another world, when decency was still possible for people who were not Sweets.
“Okay, Mom,” I said wearily. “When it’s daylight, I’ll take Carrie a gun.”
• • • •
I took Ian’s twelve-gauge shotgun, a lot of ammunition, and a .45 sidearm; the .50 caliber had too much recoil for me to manage it well. I hesitated over the AK-47—did you need that much power to stop a bear?—but then left it.
The day was clear and warm. A whole encampment of people had appeared in a field about half a mile from the Sweet settlement; they hadn’t been there a few weeks ago. Last summer the field had held cows; I didn’t know what happened to them. Eaten, maybe. Now there was a collection of patched tents, a few cars, an ancient RV. This far out from Buffalo, tent towns were rare until crops were ready to harvest, or steal. It was only May.
And then there was the flag.
It was the only new thing I saw as I slowed down for a tent count. Twenty, maybe, and no kids playing on the trampled weeds. This wasn’t a camp of refugees. The flag flapped above it atop a tall pole that might have been the mast of an old boat. Clean white cloth with bright red appliquéd letters: NO ALIEN SWEETS. Each letter dripped blood.
A truck passed me, a twenty-year-old Chevy pick-up, two men in the cab. The passenger gave me a hard stare. They turned down the road toward Carrie’s settlement. When I got there, however, I didn’t see the Chevy.
But I did see the bears.
Two adult black bears rummaged in what I guessed was some sort of compost heap, digging out anything edible. A third one ambled toward the wooden community hall, and a deer stood on the ridge behind the settlement—the place had turned into a fucking zoo. No people in sight. Which one of these bears, if any, had killed, and why?
Several people emerged from the community hall, banging on pots and pans, shouting and singing. The bear paused, turned away. I felt like an idiot, standing beside the car with Ian’s twelve-gauge; clearly I was not needed. At the far edge of the group of pot-bangers stood Carrie, her lips open in a song indistinguishable in the din. The sight of her brought such a rush of conflicting emotions that I turned to get back in the car. I despised her, all of them. Passive cowards. They were, indirectly, costing me Ian. She was carrying a niece or nephew, but that baby would just be another coward, unwilling to even try to resist its biology.
The bear, waddling away from the community hall, suddenly let out a huge roar and raced forward. A second later I saw the cub on the ridge beside a stand of trees. Between mother and cub, but much closer to the cub, walked a boy of about six.
The child heard the roar, saw the bear, and froze. Where the hell had he come from and why was he outside when nobody else was? With that heightened, slow-motion perception that makes such moments sharp enough to cut glass, I saw the boy’s mouth open to scream, as pink inside as Carrie’s had been in song.
Carrie dropped her pot and rushed toward the child. She was closer to him than the bear was—they would reach the kid at the same time.
I fired while I had a clear shot, then fired again. The bear dropped. Carrie clutched the child. The other bears fled. The cub vanished into the trees.
When I reached Carrie she was on her knees, the boy in her arms, her face raised to mine. “Oh, Sophie, thank you! But that poor cub, we have to get him now and maybe raise him because you—”
I slapped her across the face. Nothing ever felt so good.
But then someone was turning me around with a firm pull on my shoulder, his other hand holding down my gun arm. It was the man from the pickup truck, a bearded and none-too-clean guy dressed in jeans and t-shirt, his gray chest hair spilling over the stretched-out neck of the tee. “Ma’am? You with us?”
“With who?” I shook off both his hands. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Just some folks come here to prevent a slaughter. And we ain’t got much time. A few hours, is my guess.”
The man who’d driven the truck stood talking to the group at the community hall. A few Sweets were shaking their heads. Carrie still knelt at my feet, murmuring to the terrified child she’d risked her life to save. They both still looked terrified—but not frozen.
The man said mildly, “Damn fools, every last one of ’em. But still don’t deserve to get massacred by that lot in the tents.” He spat on the ground. “So you with us or you leaving? We gotta make a plan.”
• • • •
There was time to call Ian. He answered right away. Maybe my mother got to him. I told him where I was, and why. I didn’t ask if he would come out to the settlement with the rest of his weapons. I already knew the answer. We stumbled around for a while, and then he said abruptly, “You never asked me what our breakthrough was.”
“What?” It didn’t seem the right time for a chat about science.
“The night I moved to the lab. You never asked me what the research breakthrough was. The one I rushed to the apartment to tell you about.”
“Ian, we were a little busy fighting and—”
“You never asked me. Never called to inquire.”
“So what is it?” I heard the sarcasm in my voice, regretted it, did nothing to soften it. “Can you cure all the Sweets?”
“You know it doesn’t work that way. What we found is a really important step in how the Sweet brains have been rewired.” He laughed sourly. “And anyway, you’d hate it if we could cure them.”
“What?” I was genuinely confused.
All at once his voice took on venom I had never suspected he felt. “If we could ‘cure’ the Sweets, you’d have no reason to be angry at yourself, for not being as good as your sister is. And without that anger, you’d have no idea who you are.”
When my fingers, all eight of them, could work again, I cut the phone connection.
• • • •
Now I wait in my assigned place, on the roof of the community hall, behind a pile of concrete blocks. Luke Ames, our self-appointed leader, determined the positions, weapons, and ammunition for the five of us defenders. In a long-ago life he was a Navy SEAL. We don’t know how many will come against us. We do know the Sweets will be no help.
If we could cure the Sweets, you’d have—
Luke’s AK-47 feels warm in my hands. I have a hat, but the summer sun is full on the gunmetal. I should be mentally rehearsing all the instructions Luke gave his tiny army, but instead my mind is full of different images. Of all the things that the world is losing, the things that made the texture of the life I grew up in. Football on crisp autumn afternoons. War movies full of heroism. Sexy military uniforms.
—no reason to be angry at yourself for—
Anna Karenina and Oliver Twist and Charlotte’s Web. Businesses started in garages and built through stubborn, ornery individualism in the face of all consensual wisdom. Sweets did everything by consensus and nobody was stubborn or ornery. Nobody would think of letting an orphan starve, or of throwing themselves under a train for love, or of killing Wilbur the pig for bacon.
—not being as good as your sister is. And without that anger, you’d—
In two generations, maybe less, my lost world would be incomprehensible to the human race. If it survived at all.
—have no idea who you are.
Harbingers of the End Times, the religious nuts call the Sweets. Angels of the apocalypse. But there are all kinds of apocalypses.
The first of the attackers comes into sight down the road. There are three trucks, driving very slow so as to not outpace the walkers beside them. Everyone is armed. On the back of a dusty red pick-up rests some sort of missile launcher. I raise my weapon and wait for Luke’s signal.<
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nancy Kress is the author of thirty-two books, including twenty-five novels, four collections of short stories, and three books about writing. Her work has won two Hugos (“Beggars in Spain” and “The Erdmann Nexus”), five Nebulas (all for short fiction), a Sturgeon (“The Flowers of Aulit Prison”), and a John W. Campbell Memorial Award (for Probability Space). The novels include science fiction, fantasy, and thrillers; many concern genetic engineering. Her most recent work is the Nebula-winning and Hugo-nominated After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall (Tachyon, 2012), a long novella of eco-disaster, time travel, and human resiliency. Forthcoming is another short novel from Tachyon, Yesterday’s Kin (Fall 2014). Intermittently, Nancy teaches writing workshops at various venues around the country, including Clarion and Taos Toolbox (yearly, with Walter Jon Williams). A few years ago she taught at the University of Leipzig as the visiting Picador professor. She is currently working on a long, as-yet-untitled SF novel. Nancy lives in Seattle with her husband, writer Jack Skillingstead, and Cosette, the world’s most spoiled toy poodle.
AGENT ISOLATED
David Wellington
There were zombies all over Brooklyn, but at the moment the fires jumping from house to house downtown were the real danger.
There was a germ, a prion, going around that turned people into zombies. Somebody had gotten a bad memo. They’d been told that fire would kill the prion. It didn’t. It killed zombies pretty well, but there were just too many of them and they just kept coming. Now the fires were spreading, too.
Whitman stomped on the brakes as the whole front of a warehouse erupted into the street in front of him. He threw the truck in reverse and got it turned around, looking for a safe way forward, any way forward, any direction.
“There,” the woman in the passenger seat said. He didn’t know her name. He wasn’t sure he’d get a chance to find out. “Head south, to Brighton Beach. There are boats there. There are boats coming there at dawn, and they’ll take us to safety.”
He looked over at her. “Boats?”
She had a baby in her arms. There were kids and old people and just people, lots of people, in the back of the truck. Whitman hadn’t stopped to count them, or find out where they had come from. It didn’t seem to matter much at the time.
“Who told you there would be boats?” he asked. There were a lot of rumors going around, of course. The government wouldn’t say anything. Couldn’t, now that the power was out—no cell phones, no internet, no emergency broadcast system. The best information came from finding a soldier, one of the many, many soldiers in New York City that night, and asking them. But Whitman couldn’t afford to do that, not anymore. “I didn’t hear anything about boats.”
Whitman himself should have been a great source of information. He had worked for the CDC. Originally he had been the head agent in charge of this operation, the quarantine and evacuation of New York City. Funny how much could change in twenty-four hours.
If the people in this truck knew who he was—if they knew what he’d done . . . they would tear him to pieces.
He threw his arm across the woman and the baby as he stomped on the brakes.
“Jesus,” the woman screamed.
He’d had to stop short because the street ahead was full of zombies.
Smoke might have made their eyes so red. The dead expressions on their faces might just have been shock. But by now Whitman could tell. He knew a zombie when he saw one. The way they held themselves, the way they moved.
The prion made little tiny holes in their brains, until they couldn’t talk. Until they couldn’t think. They fell back on animal instincts. Flight or, far more often, fight. Humans were predators by design, honed by two hundred thousand years of evolution into brutal hunters. Only the thinnest veneer of civilization lay on top of that. Strip it away, break down everything that made a person human, and what was left wanted very badly to punch you and scratch you and make you bleed.
Which was how you got the prion in the first place. Fluid contact. Blood from wounds, saliva from bites, mucus from anywhere. Nice how that worked out. Nice if you were a prion, anyway.
Whitman threw the truck in reverse, but when he looked in his mirrors, he saw the fire was spreading behind him. Smoke filled the street, smoke full of sparks. There were a lot of warehouses in Brooklyn, and they were all stuffed full of toxic shit. Going backward wasn’t an option.
He peered through the cracked windshield. The zombies stared back.
“Everybody,” he shouted to the passengers in the back, “keep your arms and heads inside the vehicle. And hold on to something.”
“What are you doing?” she said, her eyes wide.
He threw the truck back into first gear and stood on the accelerator.
• • • •
“We can take Flatbush all the way down to the beaches,” the woman pointed out. Angie. She’d told him that at some point, that her name was Angie. He couldn’t remember when, exactly. A lot of his memories had gotten jumbled up.
He shook his head. He remembered some things just fine. “The Army’s using Flatbush as their main corridor into the city. They’ve got materiel coming in nonstop, all headed toward Manhattan, taking up all the lanes. Flatbush Avenue is strictly one-way right now.” Whitman had his own reasons for not wanting to meet up with any Army units, but she didn’t have to know that. As far as Angie was concerned he was just a nice guy with a stolen truck.
A truck that was now covered in blood and body parts. Whitman could see a finger rolling around on the hood. He tried not to remember the moment he’d rammed through the crowd of zombies. Apparently he hadn’t seen enough horror in the last day to desensitize his stomach.
“How do you know all this?” she asked.
“Just trust me,” he told her.
She shook her head, but she didn’t ask any more questions. He wondered how long that would last. “There are other roads. We can take Atlantic Avenue pretty far.”
He nodded and focused on driving.
Angie ran her left hand through her hair. There was a plus sign drawn on the back of it with permanent marker. Whitman had one, too—just like everybody in the truck. They’d all tried to scrub them off, with spit or with lemon juice or whatever solvent they could find. One guy in the back of the truck had tried to burn his off with drain cleaner, and still it hadn’t worked. None of them had managed to do more than smear the ink around a little. That ink was military grade and it was designed not to run.
Nobody with a plus sign on their hand was allowed into Manhattan. Whitman was pretty sure nobody with a plus sign was going to get on a boat, either. But he was out of better ideas.
He’d had a bunch of good ideas, once.
He’d had the idea, for instance, that they could block all the bridges and make Manhattan a safe space. That if all the healthy people locked themselves indoors they would be safe from the zombies.
He’d had the idea that the Army could move through the city block by block with non-lethal weapons, finding and detaining every zombie they came across. That had been a great idea—until soldiers started getting bitten. After that, nobody talked about detaining zombies. After that, the real guns started coming out.
He’d had the idea that three of the outer boroughs of New York City—Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx—were expendable. The idea that there was plenty of room in Manhattan for all the healthy people, if they crowded together. The idea Staten Island made a great place for a quarantine facility. Those ideas had come thick and fast, when it became clear that his original ideas just weren’t working. That there were a lot more zombies than they’d thought, and that most of the city was already a lost cause.
He’d had the idea that if he could just save Manhattan . . . then . . . something. Something good would happen and the tide would turn.
He’d had another idea, his best, but he refused to think about that. To accept he’d been responsible for it.
He’d had th
e idea that he was very tired.
He’d had the idea that he had bad information, and it was going to ruin everything.
He’d had the idea he was the wrong man for the job.
And then, when the call had come in from Atlanta, when Whitman’s own name showed up on the database of potential infections—well, then, he’d thrown away every idea he’d ever had, except one.
The idea to run away.
• • • •
He braked the truck to a stop. “You drive for a while,” he told her.
“What are you doing?” Angie asked. But she took the wheel, her baby still in her right arm, while Whitman moved through the back of the truck. It had been a transport, originally, a CDC vehicle meant for moving squads of clean-suited technicians around. There were benches in the back, and it could comfortably hold about a dozen people and all their gear.
Now about fifty potentially infected people were jammed inside, sitting on each other’s laps, curled up on the floorboards. More held on to the rear end, clutching to the fender so they didn’t fall off. Nobody complained about being crowded.
None of them had gone symptomatic since he’d picked them up. He supposed it was just a matter of time, though. And with even one zombie inside the truck, every single person back there would be at risk. Whitman had no idea how to solve that problem—he’d started coming around to Angie’s plan, which seemed to be to just hope for the best.
After the army doctor had put the plus sign on Whitman’s hand, after they’d told him he was headed for Staten Island and the hell of the camps there, he had just gone crazy for a while. Fought his way free, gotten back to a CDC mobile command center somehow. There’d been nobody there. He’d found the truck and he’d just driven away, with no idea where to go next.
He’d found Angie in the Boerum Hill neighborhood, along with about a third of these people. They’d been standing behind a wrought iron gate that fronted an apartment complex, watching their world go up in smoke.
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