Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF

by Mike Ashley

  Clear-headed, full of purposeful rage, I hurry back to the mayor's house. My mind is made up. I'm ready to announce what I know, or at least tell people what I think I know. Most won't believe me. Stubborn, unimaginative souls will dismiss my words, declaring that I am misinformed or crazy or both. But even if the entire town laughs at my madness, the idea will start chewing at them: what if I am right? What if the odd old lady bears some responsibility in the murder of billions? And what if her family not only knows about it but by one route or another approves of what she did?

  Yet coming through the front door, I discover May and her father standing before a very happy audience. I expected them to be in the adjacent room, the door closed. I didn't imagine dozens of people laughing about something outrageously funny, something said just a moment ago. I'm standing at the back of a big loud happy party, a handful of people glancing my way just long to determine that I am immune to their deep joy.

  May sees me. I feel her eyes but when I try to meet them, she shifts direction. A fond hand touches her father's shoulder, and whatever story she has been telling ends with the words, "And that's how we finally crossed the Mississippi River."

  Raucous laughter.

  And I retreat outdoors.

  My mind is still made up. Yes it is. I just need a better moment, and maybe a smaller, more open-minded audience. And I might have to lie. Winston gave a hypothetical confession. I'll just change his words a little, giving him even more arrogance than usual. But even as I'm practicing this speech, Jack emerges to ask me, "What's wrong?"

  I take a deep breath, wanting to answer. But my voice is missing.

  "Did you catch Winston?"

  I nod.

  "You look sick, Noah."

  That's only because I feel sick. I've got a rabbit's heart in my chest, and I can't seem to breathe fast enough to make my chest stop aching. I want to sit. I want that tall beer and a good chair and silence. But mostly, I want to be in a different place than this, and that's why I ask Jack, "Did you ever get my elk unloaded?"

  "Mostly, but then our guests showed up and my boys bolted," he says. "Why? You want to start home now?"

  "Yes."

  He nods. He says, "Let's go finish then. I don't know where my boys got to, but there shouldn't be much left to do."

  "No."

  He studies me, waiting.

  I'm not sure what I want. But I hear myself saying, "Do me a different favor. Would you?"

  "Sure, what?"

  "When you get a chance, tell May ... tell her that I know."

  "You know what?"

  "Tell her that her brother told me most of it. And I figured out the rest for myself."

  "What did you figure out, Noah?"

  I just shake my head.

  Now Jack looks grim and serious. One of those strong hands clamps down on my shoulder. "What'd that kid say to you?"

  Through the door comes more laughter. Fourteen years of my life was spent in this town, and I can't remember ever hearing this much joy.

  "Noah?" he presses.

  But I shake free, starting back to the butcher's shop. "Point May towards me, would you? And don't wait long, Jack. As soon as the meat's off, I'm driving out of here."

  Three years after my mom died, Lola and I took our last trip to the city. Useful scrap was hard to find by then, what with fires and rust and time. But we had some loot worth the trouble, and we also realized we'd never come back to this place again. Which was a very worthy accomplishment.

  Half by mistake, half by planning, we ended up standing next to one of the mass graves. A fleet of bulldozers had been parked on the same ground for nearly two decades. The ground was still rough, bits of bone and stubborn clothes poking out here and there. Looking at that sorry scene, I thought about the last funeral that I had attended, and when Lola asked what I was thinking, I told her.

  She was crying. I was crying.

  Sniffling, she told me, "Somebody wanted this. Somebody planned all of this."

  I couldn't count the times we had wrestled with this subject.

  "Know what I wish, Noah?"

  "What?"

  "That those responsible had come out and said so." My sweet sad shunned wife leaned into me, explaining, "As soon as the Shakes began, they should have put out some official statement proving that they were real and listing all of their wise good-hearted reasons for doing the unthinkable."

  "We can guess their reasons," I said.

  "But if they went public, there wouldn't have been any doubts."

  "And what would that have changed?"

  "We would have somebody to blame today. A group with a name, real people with a clear purpose."

  "The Shakes would have killed the same people," I said. "Every government would have failed in the same ways. And the two of us would have ended up here or someplace like here, looking at dead people and dirt."

  "Except," she said. "If they offered their proof and their reasons, then we'd know that people were responsible for everything. Just ordinary idiot self-important people. And that means that those ordinary idiot self-important people in Salvation couldn't tell themselves that this had to be God's judgment, or that they're all so special and pure for surviving."

  I hadn't thought of it that way.

  Lola sniffed and said nothing more, wiping at her eyes with the backs of both hands. And I stood very still, looking out over that enormous graveyard, thinking, "This is how it feels. This is what it's like, serving as pallbearer to the world."

  I watch for her, pulling a slab of smoky meat off the trailer, and then I take a break, expecting May to rush into view. Only she doesn't. I remove another two slabs and carry them into the butcher's shop, and when I come out I'm ready to see her. But the street is empty. Nervous energy gives me enough juice to work hard and fast. Warm enough to sweat, I open up my coat and sling more meat onto a cart and wheel it inside, pausing in the doorway to look back at nobody. She won't show. I know this now. But when I come outside again, May is standing in my truck, waiting for me. Except that I don't want to see her. A moment ago I was comfortable with the two of us never crossing paths again.

  She says, "What?"

  I push the cart past her, my head down.

  "Your friend says you know something," she says. "He told me that I had to run over here and talk to you. That it was important."

  Bear meat is greasy and dark, and it demands an entirely different approach to smoke properly. I start pulling the bear off the truck, piling the roasts and haunches on the cart. May watches me until the cart is full. Then she says, "You don't know anything."

  "What was the old woman's job?"

  There. Somebody asks a question. And I guess it was me, since nobody else is standing here.

  "Job?"

  "Before the Shakes came," I say.

  She stares at me, saying nothing.

  "She was a scientist," I guess.

  May straightens her back before reminding me, "That was a long time ago. And I'm sure you noticed, her mind is mostly gone."

  "She saved the world."

  The girl doesn't react, not even to blink.

  "Your brother's pissed with her. But that's only because she killed the wrong people he thinks. On the other hand, you know that she's a good person, an exceptional person, and always has been. You love your grandmother, and you came all this way to see where she and your dad lived before the world changed. Those notes in your back pocket? They're going to help you write a book about this great woman who helped save the world." I'm sweating hard, tired hands shaking. "The world needed saving. If grandma and her friends hadn't acted, our species would have eventually pushed the climate over the brink. And that would have been an even worse mess than the nightmare I lived through."

  May says nothing. But her eyes drop, and with ten feet between us, I can hear her breathing.

  "The thing is, maybe I believe that's all true. The climate was in deep trouble. There were too many people and no time to spare. And t
hat one way or another, the Shakes saved the world."

  Her eyes lift.

  "We're still here," I admit. "And I'm pretty much happy to be alive."

  A smile starts, but then she thinks better of it.

  "There's just one problem, May. Maybe your grandma did what she did for the best reasons. Maybe we didn't have any choice left. But why not come out and explain the situation? Why didn't she and her colleagues make their argument, even if it was horrible to consider and there was no turning back?"

  She looks off into the distance.

  "One statement, and all the mystery would be gone. Nobody likes dying, but at least there would have been a purpose to it. Mankind was being chopped back like a weed, and the planet would be better for it. That's not nearly as hopeless as a pack of faceless murderers with no goal but to be vicious."

  May stares at the sky until I look in the same direction. I see nothing but the high blue, and she turns to me. "Maybe they should have," she says.

  "Did any of them take the vaccine?" I ask.

  Her eyes stay on me. She waits and then says, "No," before risking a small step toward me.

  I try to speak, but my voice breaks.

  May waits impatiently.

  I breathe, and talk. "Most voices would claim that if people wanted to kill billions, even for the good of the earth, then they should take their own medicine. Me? I'd be happy if they ate their shotguns or drove off cliffs. But to think that one of them is fat and ancient and rolling around the half-dead world in a palace ... that doesn't say much about this group's sense of sacrifice, or decency, or honor."

  May considers what to say. Then as she opens her mouth, ready to challenge me, I interrupt.

  "But the worst thing? In my mind, without doubt, their silence made these people possible." I swipe my hand at the town, at faces neither of us can see, at the years of embarrassment and hurt and being excluded by people who in better times I wouldn't need for a single minute. "The good citizens of Salvation think they're here because God is benevolent. God is decent. And God preferred them to the nameless bones in unmarked graves all around the world. Dumb-shit lucky bastards, yet they're free to think they're nothing but chosen."

  Again, she considers.

  And when her mouth opens, I start to interrupt.

  But May throws up a hand. I fall silent. I don't remember what I was going to say. A step apart, she looks younger than ever but not as pretty, and she smiles with the bright intense expression that I have never seen from a real person, only on saints in old religious books - the consuming crazed gaze of an earthly soul bound to eventually sit on the lap of God.

  In a whisper but with considerable intensity, she tells me, "You don't understand."

  "Understand what?"

  The hand covers my mouth.

  "You think it's finished," she says. "You think once is enough to save the world. But what you call the 'noble' thing would have been foolish. My grandmother and the others ... they had to survive and remain in touch with one another. That was the plan from the start." She pauses, investing in a couple deep breaths. "How many children are living in this one town, Noah? It's like that everywhere. A few old people, plenty of young parents, and too many children to count. And you heard how people are crossing the sea, spreading out to find new homes. Another crisis is coming. It won't happen in my life, and maybe not for several centuries. But eventually these same tricks will be necessary if we're going to ... "

  Her voice falters.

  I taste salt and May as I pull back the hand. "If you're going to what?"

  Almost too softly to be heard, she says, "Another weeding."

  Then the saintly smile returns, self-assured and a million miles above the concerns of the ignorant and innocent.

  Lola was right. Seeing my shrunken mother in the casket was important. Even essential. Now I was certain that she was dead, no doubts left, and helping carry her to the hole in the ground reminded me that she was never half as large as she seemed in my head.

  She was a shell already beginning to rot, and we nailed shut the lid and lowered the box and started to shovel gouts of dirt and chunks of rock on top of an object that was no more my mother than it was the sky overhead.

  Yet I was crying by the end.

  And those who still happened to like me, or at least loved my mother, put their own emotions on my tears. They came over and hugged me and prayed for my soul. Then I went down to the Quilt Shop and bought a very tall beer, drinking it too fast, my gait a little sloppy as I headed back up the hill.

  "Going to see your mom again?" Ferris asked in passing.

  "I need another minute with her," I admitted.

  The old man pulled up, hearing that. Then he turned and looked at me until I returned the gaze. He was a small ageless sparkplug with a bright smile and charming manner. Others had told me that he had lost most of his family to the Shakes, but I could never remember him mentioning them, even in prayer.

  "Son," he said to me, like old men often do when referring to any fellow younger than them.

  I waited.

  "A minute won't be long enough, son."

  "Maybe not," I agreed.

  "Don't go," he said.

  But I'd already turned, pushing hard for that hill.

  The guests won't stay the night in Salvation. I guess that much, watching May walking quickly toward the RV. She will speak to her brother, and he'll make a show of his important anger, and leaving him, she'll return to the Mayor's house to speak in private with her father. In the meantime, I might tell somebody what I guessed and everything I know. In the heat of the moment, May said too much. But that moment has passed and she probably can't believe that she could do something so careless, so plainly stupid. Right now she's telling herself that I'm not part of this community,

  I'm just a crazy hermit, and nobody will listen to my nonsense. But it's going to gnaw at her, this idea that maybe I will spread the word, and maybe a few of these odd people will believe me, and May is certainly not enough of a fool to trust the good will of Christians living in the midst of this parched, unfamiliar wilderness.

  The four of them will drive away, and it will happen sooner instead of later. The best road is the highway. They can either head back east or drive west to the next junction, then north to the old Interstate - a route that gives them a straight shot at the promised land of Canada.

  What waits in Canada, and why should it matter?

  Other people like grandma, and a secret community of like-minded zealots. At least that's what I imagine. But I know almost nothing about the world beyond my horizon. All I can deal with today is the people who are here, now.

  In a rush, I unload the last of the bear and elk and fire up the truck and make the long turn around the block, driving back up the highway. I stop beside the half-built factory, considering its walls and windows before deciding to move farther. The bridge is as good as any place. I cross the bridge slowly and pull off into the ditch, parking in a spot low enough that nobody can see my rig from the opposite bank, but still leaving me with a good chance of driving out of there. Fast, if necessary.

  This is hunting. My prey isn't people, I tell myself. What I'm hunting is a large lumbering machine cast off from another time, and I won't hurt anybody. That's how I convince myself to pull my rifle out of its hiding place, both pistols and enough ammunition to fight off a brigade. With binoculars around my neck, I move close to the north end of the bridge, and after hard thought and a few doubts, I decide where to make my blind and how to work this ambush.

  But I am hunting people. Punching holes in those military-grade tires might be impossible, and I doubt that I could cripple any engine that's durable enough to drive halfway across the continent. But a bullet in the driver's head wouldn't be difficult, and I don't like Winston. I picture him at the wheel and grandma back on the bed, and once the RV rolls off the road, I can finish the old lady without ever seeing her. Her son is a bigger problem. And there's May too. I don't kn
ow what I want to do, but when I think about them, my thoughts start to swerve. They won't be coming in this direction, I promise myself. I'm just sitting here to prove a point to myself, because they're right now heading back east again, taking a known route before heading north to that promised land.

  My blind is a stand of tall dead grass and I do my best job of vanishing. The day is past its brightest, with the cold coming out of the ground and out of the dimming sky. It doesn't take long to feel chilled. But I curl up tight and adjust my stocking cap, standing every so often to stomp my feet, checking the surrounding ground for anything sneaking up on me. But nothing is. I might be the only animal in this landscape. I kneel down again, check my weapons again, feeling nervous and a little warmer because of it.

  They won't come.

  I say that aloud.

  "They went the other way, and they're gone," I tell the evening breeze.

  Maybe an hour of daylight remains. I stand again and stomp my stiff cold hurting feet, thinking hard about leaving. But when I glance downstream, I catch a sudden flash of sunlight reflected off moving glass, my heart kicks and for a moment I think of turning and running. But that isn't what I do. From somewhere comes the courage to put the binoculars against my eyes and just the sight of that aluminum house is enough to make the anger rise up all over again, as big as ever and refusing to back down.

  I am going to shoot the driver and then work my way back. Any movement in a window will be a target. Any likely hiding place will be punctured. I'll tear apart the RV on my way back to grandma, and then I will stop. Maybe I won't waste precious ammunition on her. One cold night with nobody to care for her, and the end won't be long coming for her either.

  The RV is still a long, long ways off.