Afterland

by Lauren Beukes

  20.

  Cole: Find a Crack and Fall Through It

  Patty comes in to find her swearing at the laptop and the bastard bastard FBI or CIA or whoever it is pretending to be her dead sister.

  “You bastards. You sick twisted assholes.”

  “You, uh, all right in here?” Patty says.

  “Yeah. Fine. Sorry.” Flustered.

  “Sometimes the connection drops. Peer-to-peer Wi-Fi isn’t always the most reliable. I know it can be frustrating.”

  “It’s not that. It’s…something else,” Cole finishes lamely.

  Patty leans against the door. “I had an affair, you know.”

  “Um.” Cole wasn’t expecting this. “How would I know?” she laughs, uncertain. Where the hell did this come from?

  “It wasn’t especially noteworthy. The usual old chestnut. I felt terrible about it, the lying, the hiding, the sneaking around. It was shitty behavior. But you know what the worst thing was? I didn’t want anyone else to be complicit in my mess. I didn’t confide in anyone, none of my friends or family or a psychologist or a priest or even my dogs, because they were our dogs and I know they’re animals, but I didn’t want them to look at me with that absolute nonjudgmental doggy love dogs give you, because I didn’t deserve it.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  “Sure. But that’s how I felt at the time. The men, well, they died. Both of them. Same as everybody else, and then it didn’t matter so much anymore, the hurt and the heartache and all the talking that comes out of that kind of thing, all those difficult conversations. But you know what really hurt? What poisoned me every day? The not talking. Because I carried that secret inside me for a year and a half without telling a single soul. I was so alone with it and it was a poison inside me. Did any of your loved ones go for chemo?”

  “It was too late for that.” By the time Devon got sick, all the hospitals had waiting lists, as if they were upmarket country clubs.

  “John went through chemo. My husband, not my lover. That was Dave. Big men, both of them, not enough opiates in those mercy packs to help either of them slip away. We all ended up in the same house at the end. How’s that for uncomfortable?”

  “You did what you had to.” Going along, so the woman won’t circle back to tricky questions.

  “That’s how I used to talk about my affair too, when I finally did talk about it, and it was such a relief, I can’t tell you. Or maybe I can. I don’t know you, or what’s happened in your life. But what I want to say to you is that some secrets are worth telling. Otherwise they poison you like chemotherapy—irradiating you from the inside. You gotta talk, even if it’s to a dog who won’t judge. But plenty of friendly people around here—been through their own personal hell—they won’t judge either. That adventure camp stuff you were talking about when you arrived? I know that’s bogus, and I don’t care. We’ve had all kinds through here. Recently and before. People getting away from their troubles. Stalkers, abusive exes, toxic families. You’ve got that look. I know it well. Spooked. On the run.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Cole confesses.

  “Sure you do. What does your gut say?”

  “Get home.”

  “Well, then.”

  “You got a flying Mayan pod-ship we could hitch a ride on?”

  “No, but I can give you a little cash. We keep reserves for exactly this kind of thing, and Angel says you can take her car. It’ll get you on your way. But you should get going soon.” She leans forward and squeezes Cole’s shoulder.

  “Thank you. Really.”

  “No problem. Pass it on, if the opportunity arises. Oh.” Patty pauses in the doorway. “One last word of advice? Find a crack. Fall through it.”

  21.

  Billie: Search History

  They are back to knocking on doors, walking the streets. What’s the police procedural word? Working the beat? But at least they’ve narrowed it down. Several hours after the tractor shot, another image appeared on the kid’s Snapchat: a furiously beady-eyed hen, with the ominous tagline “So long, mothercluckers!” They’ve been monitoring his account, checking and watching obsessively since then, but her nephew has gone quiet. Radio silence. Except for that buzzing in her head. Still, there can’t be too many places in Salt Lake featuring a tractor painted with the f-word. Some lawn ornament.

  In East Bench, where all the roads are wide and the houses are low, as if they’ve been flattened by the desert heat, or cold, a pair of young women with their arms flung around each other’s waists direct them to Kasproing House.

  And there it is: “The future is female/fucked,” Billie reads the writing on the tractor parked out front of a run-down two-story house with a wild lawn. A bird dips and darts through the grass.

  “As long as governments are restricting reproductive rights, that’s true.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, are we activists now?” Billie snipes.

  “Fuck no.” Rico laughs. “Where would the money be in that?”

  As they approach the front door, one dog starts barking, then a whole pack of them takes up the chorus. Billie feels like the noise is inside her head, like firecrackers in a cave.

  A woman with a shock of gray hair opens the screen door, holding onto the collar of a pitbull barking at them. Billie has to put her hands over her ears. Like that autistic kid in her class in playschool who couldn’t handle the bell ringing, or shouting in the playground, or the hand dryers in the bathroom. Too much, he’d yell. She feels for him now.

  “No, Spivak. Down! I’m sorry, he’s not usually like this.” She’s got that Madonna physique of someone desperately trying to cling to her youth, leanly muscled from excessive exercise but with wings of loose flab exposed by her strappy vest. Just give it up, Billie wants to tell her. Stick a fork in you, you’re old and done.

  “I don’t like dogs,” Zara says, holding back. Real unease in her voice.

  “Oh, he’s harmless.”

  “Think you could put the dogs away?” Rico flashes that pageant princess smile. “My friend has a phobia.”

  “And I’m an injured bird,” Billie says. The noise has set off sparkling lights in her vision. Oh, that’s interesting, she thinks, distracted.

  “It’s true. She had an accident. Could we get her a glass of water? Iced tea, maybe?” Bright smile, all teeth.

  “I think you need to go to the clinic,” the woman says, moving to close the door.

  “Is my sister here?” Billie barges past her. She wants to get inside. She wants to sit down. And what she really, really wants is for all this to be over. The dog snipes at her, teeth clacking on air.

  There are too many animals in here. Another hound, hugely pregnant, lies panting on the carpet, her tail thumping irregularly. A black cat is curled up on the windowsill, watching them with unblinking yellow eyes.

  “Hey, Cole! We know you’re here!” Billie yells.

  “You need to leave,” the old bag says, but Zara has taken her gun out.

  “Put that dog away or I’ll shoot it. Put it away, now.”

  “Come out, come out wherever you are!” Billie pushes farther into the house. There’s something moving in her periphery, just out of sight. Ghost traces in the corner of her eyes. She’s seeing things all the time now. Maybe she’s dying and they’re waiting to welcome her.

  “You need to leave,” the old hippie says again, real alarm in her voice.

  Death is hanging from the ceiling. That can’t be real.

  “Lady, listen, my friend is going to kill your dogs unless you put them away. You got a room you can lock them in?”

  “All right,” the hippie concedes. She whistles for the dogs, and Zara keeps the gun trained on her as she herds them into a little study off the living room.

  “Lock it.” Zara says. “Lock it now.”

  “We don’t want to cause any bad karma here,” Rico says. Good thug. “We’re looking for our friends.”

  “Have you seen them?” Billie wh
irls back. “I’m so worried. My sister, my little niece. I’m so worried. She’s off her meds. She’s a liar, very deceitful, you know. Fake news. Bad for business.” The words are getting away from her, tearing through spiderwebs, dangling threads. “She hurt me.”

  “She’s not here.” A girl comes down the stairs, South Asian maybe, scruffy hair with a purple stripe and those ugly-on-purpose nerd girl glasses. “Are you the cops?”

  Rico laughs. “No, sweetheart. We’re family. And friends of the family.”

  Billie’s cue. “She’s my sister. You must be able to see the resemblance.” They have the same eyes, their father’s snub nose. “Cole has more wrinkles. And she’s insane. Look what she did.” Not an official diagnosis, Billie thinks, but actions speak loud, like an air horn. Sound the alarm.

  “We’re not going to do a DNA test,” the older woman says evenly, as if she’s in charge here. She’s not. You got that very wrong, lady. The dogs are barking and howling from inside the study. The noise is terrible. Billie can’t stand it. Not for one moment longer. “But Bhavana is right. She’s not here. They left.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Rico says. “I wish I could. But I think you’re hiding her.”

  “I’m not well,” Billie says. But no one is listening.

  There are gaps here. Ghosts. The world swims in and out. Snapshots of violence.

  Zara has the grizzled hippie lady in a choke hold, dragging her from room to room, up the stairs. Dogs are scratching at a door. Howling, barking.

  Nerd Girl is hunched in the corner, a dark welt forming on her cheek. Billie is guarding her. Yes, that’s what she’s doing, sitting on the couch.

  “She’s very sick,” she taps her head. She can hear Zara upstairs, thudding around, throwing things. Rico is outside.

  “You wait until the others get back,” Nerd Girl says, poison in her voice.

  “No,” Billie slurs. “That would be bad. These people. These people are very, very bad.”

  “You need help.”

  “But she doesn’t know that I’m very bad too,” Billie says.

  “I mean it. Medical help.”

  A scream from upstairs. A thump-thump-thump as the old woman skitters down several steps and catches herself against the railing. Death in his ratty robes hanging from the ceiling seems to turn his wolf’s head toward her.

  “Coming for you now, bitch,” Billie says.

  “Patty!” Nerd Girl squeals and scrambles to her feet.

  “Nuh-uh, no one said you could move,” Billie says. She hopes she doesn’t have to get up from the couch to stop her. She doesn’t think her legs will work. A thick tide of nausea jerks inside her, hitches her spine forward.

  “No one.” Zara stalks past the older woman, aims a half-hearted kick in her direction.

  “Not outside either.” Rico says, catching Nerd Girl as she tries to run past her and swinging her hard into the bookshelf. She presses her forearm against her throat.

  “Where did they go? The woman and the girl.”

  “I don’t know,” she protests, high-pitched.

  “C’mon, baby. I don’t want to have to kill you. She might,” Rico nods at Zara, still holding the gun. “But bullets are expensive and I don’t want blood on my shoes. Where did they go?”

  “Family!” the girl yelps. “She said she was going to family. I don’t know where.”

  Another gap, another jump. They’re in a parking lot. Not outside the house. Somewhere else. Billie can’t keep track. They keep looking in her direction. Clove cigarettes and fallen jacaranda blossoms. She’s sitting on the curb. Are they still in Salt Lake City? At least dog-head death isn’t here anymore.

  “The sister-in-law,” Rico says. “Guess we’re going to Chicago.”

  “I’m not good,” Billie says. Her voice is in a cardboard box with the lid down and not enough air holes poked in it. There are lights blinking on and off at the edge of her vision. The flowers are rotting.

  22.

  Cole: Raccoons

  From the back deck of the cabin, Cole watches the mountains shade from dusky peach to slate blue with the falling light that draws moths to perform a thwarted suicide ballet around the glass solar lamp. They should take it inside, draw the drapes, full World War II blackout, and she will. In a minute. Angel’s gold Mercedes is parked at the top of the driveway, out of sight of anyone passing on the road. Not stolen, but gifted. Living up to her name. “Pay it forward,” their erstwhile anarchist tour guide said, pressing two hundred dollars into Cole’s hand. “You know, if you can.”

  On the road again. Every town they’ve passed through is a ghost town of a kind. But the most haunted places are the ones that are still inhabited. Women’s country. The only traces of men are the memorials they’ve passed everywhere. Flowers lashed to the bases of flag poles, a variety of murals, from a crude rendition of action heroes to a sea of men and boys walking toward the parting in the clouds, golden rays of light beckoning them home, and in a field they passed, statues of naked cement men with their hands lifted up, thousands of them, like an army of kouros boy statues, or Pompeii’s ashen dead, frozen in place.

  They’ve been getting better at spotting the right kind of houses, and this cabin in the woods, perched on the side of hill, was one of them: doors shut but unlocked, the interior still fairly well equipped. There was even a solar geyser so they could take lukewarm showers. It was so exactly what they needed at that moment, Cole tiptoed around in exaggerated caution for half an hour in case it was a trap. Crazy thinking. But it’s hard not to catastrophize when you’re living through disaster.

  Mila sits frowning at her notebook, feet dangling over the edge of the half-empty plunge pool with its skein of leaves, jiggling her legs in concentration.

  “Hey,” Cole warns from the lounger she’s curled up on with a blanket and a selection of old magazines she found in the bathroom. “So we’re clear on this, I am not going to be the one diving into that pool to find your flip-flops when they fall off your feet.”

  “Flip-flops float,” Mila says, without looking around. “Obvi. And I already took them off.” She’s still pissed at Cole for making them leave Kasproing.

  “What are you drawing? Want to show me?”

  “I’m busy.”

  “Show me. C’mere.” She lifts the blanket in invitation.

  Mila clambers up and pads over on her giant bare feet, which have grown since last week, she swears, and nudges in under Cole’s arm. “Oof,” she complains, as Mila’s bony shoulder thunks into the side of her boob. But she loves the weight of her, the warm boy smell (it’s true) of his skin (her skin) and the oil in her hair.

  “It’s a storyboard.”

  “For a movie?”

  “Yeah, when I get a phone again, I want to finish filming it. It’s about a demon chicken. But she’s not really a monster—she’s misunderstood and people keep stealing her eggs, which would make anyone mad.”

  “Huh. And is she breathing fire here?”

  “Yeah. This is the part where Cluckacka discovers her arch-nemeses, the monster babies, are planning to take over the coop, and she eats one of them and absorbs his fire powers.”

  “And how exactly are you going to get a chicken to shoot flame-breath? That’s a lot of CGI work. This is going to be a hella expensive project.”

  “Mo-oom. I’m going to film live locations, and animate over it. The chicken and the monster babies are going to be 2D. I can draw it myself.”

  “Crafty. You get that from me. Just saying.”

  “I get it from myself,” he sarcs, happily. “You’re not looking!”

  “Sorry, I was looking at your lovely face. You’re so handsome, tiger.”

  “But you see this monster baby shoots staples from his eyes, and he staples Cluckacka right against the wall, so now she’s trapped and then one of them summons this giant foot to stomp her. I wanted to use the Garden of Gilgal in the background. I took video.”

  “But you did return Ang
el’s phone?”

  “Yeah, and I saved it to my Snap.”

  “You did what?”

  “You see, Mom, the way the internet works is that there’s this thing called the Cloud and…”

  “Is that public? Is your Snapchat public, Miles? It’s important. What did you post?”

  “It’s locked to friends and family only, Mom. Relax. Privacy king over here, remember? And it was just videos of the chicken.”

  “You can’t do that, Miles. You can’t expose us like that.” She feels the panic rise, a surge of anger.

  “Okay, okay!”

  It’s a video of a chicken. And she’s overreacting.

  “I’m sorry, it’s—” she starts.

  A crackle in the bushes. She comes to her feet in one pure rush of terror. “The lamp!” she lunges to turn it off, but in her fluster, knocks it off the table. It shatters on the deck, and Mila’s feet are bare.

  “Don’t move!” But Mila leans forward, her eyes catching another pair of eyes in the undergrowth. Non-human. But small, manageable, not like, say thirty to fifty feral hogs. “Chill, Mom, it’s a raccoon. So cute!”

  There is something uncannily human about the way the critter stops to wring its front paws before disappearing back into the brush.

  “Look out, it’s the new dominant species, remember?” Cole mugs, but really she’s thinking, rabies, tetanus, stitching up bite wounds. “Gonna rule the world.”

  “Unless it’s a monster from another dimension, in disguise!”

  “We should invite it for dinner, find out.”

  “You can’t feed wild animals, Mom.”

  Normalcy. Fun-times almost-apocalypse mother-child road trip. It’s good, hanging out, silly conversation. Raccoons. If you forget that dinner is going to be tomato puree and creamed corn and rice pudding, all out of cans scavenged from the potato-scented cellar beneath the cabin. If you forget they’re driving a borrowed Mercedes that gulps gas, which gets more expensive every time she finds a station that’s open and functioning. Goddamn country roads and burning oil fields. If you forget that she’s a sister-killer. Cain and Abel.