Afterland

by Lauren Beukes

  Working on it, okay? A few more days. That’s if Mila can restrain herself from going full cult.

  Her daughter pulls away and stalks through the double doors into the auditorium with its glistening chandeliers.

  The realtor clips by, tapping on her phone, and Cole follows her outside. She has to up her game, get them out of here.

  “Hi there, I’m so sorry about my daughter. She’s going through puberty. She didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “Looks to me like she’s just practicing what you all preach.”

  “I know. They can be quite radical.” Emphasis on “they.” “I’m—” she starts stops again. “I’m—May I confide something to you?”

  “I don’t know, can you?” Tart sarcasm.

  “To be honest, I don’t know if this is the right environment for her.”

  “No kidding,” Alicia says, jabbing at her phone, barely listening.

  “What you were saying, about people helping each other…” She’s desperate here, trusting a total stranger.

  Got to trust someone, sometime.

  The realtor blows out a sigh, and lowers her phone. “What exactly do you want?”

  “I’m thinking of leaving the Church. Because, well, you saw. But I need a phone. To connect with my family.”

  “You want me to give you my phone?” Alicia raises both penciled eyebrows.

  “No. But I was wondering if you could buy me a sim card and some airtime? I have cash.” She reaches into her bra, for the fifty dollars she held back. “There’s no chance for me to do it myself. Not without them noticing.” She presses the crumpled money, warm from her skin, into Alicia’s hands. “Please.”

  “Hmph.”

  But it’s not a no.

  42.

  Billie: Fishy Fishy Fishy Fish

  They stop at a Walmart to buy clean clothes, a beanie to pull over her head, black with fluffy cats’ ears, the only one that will fit over her bandage, and other essentials: a phone charger, bullets. The cashier doesn’t blink at bullets, but the pharmacist refuses to give her antibiotics without a prescription. Fucking America.

  “Please,” she says. “I’m really sick. We’re on a road trip and my doctor’s back in Georgetown,” she manages to correct herself, last minute, mangling “Johannesburg” into a whole new place. She’s not even sure where that is. She might have made it up.

  “Come back tomorrow, during clinic hours,” the woman in the white coat says. She has a wispy mustache, overgrown eyebrows. Too much testosterone. Bet you can get that without a script. Billie buys clean bandages instead, a jumbo tube of antiseptic ointment.

  A cheap hotel in downtown Des Moines. Twin beds. Terrible hotel art. Seashells and beach umbrellas—as if they are anywhere near the ocean. Billie is in the bathroom, unraveling the bandage, working her fingernails under the edges of the dressing taped over the back to get at her wound, whimpering where it gets stuck.

  It’s not the only thing holding her brains in. It’s not. Don’t be stupid. The fluorescent light is too bright, unforgiving, little dead bugs caught in the lampshade above her head, insect corpses scattered on the thick glass, hieroglyphs she can’t read.

  She tosses the dressing in the sink. She can’t see the actual wound, not without a second mirror, but she can feel it, a thick and swollen lump, like a spider bite, where the drill went in, seeping clear fluid. She doesn’t know what it is, is afraid to look too closely. Pus, right? It has to be pus. Not cerebral fluid. Unless pus means it’s infected and she’s going to die anyway.

  At least there’s no blood. No sign of actual brain tissue. There are two rough stitches in the spider bite, and around it, a raw rip where her own sister tore a hole in her scalp. Do hair transplants actually work or is she going to have to wear a wig for the rest of her fucking life?

  She washes her hands with surgical paranoia, swabs the wound with the antiseptic. It stings so bad she wants to cry. Like being doused in acid. Malala of Des Moines over here. Was she doused in acid? Or shot in the head? Billie can’t remember.

  The ointment is thick and orange when she smears it on. It stains her fingertips.

  “You sound like a dying cat. Meeeeeew,” Zara mimics her. She’s dragging one of the beds over to the door, blocking the entrance, as if Billie is going to try to escape in the night. The carpet exposed by the furniture shift is a brighter patch of no-color gray than the rest of the room. The contrast makes it looks like a doorway, a portal to another world. Get me out of here, Billie thinks.

  “You want to give me a hand here?” she snaps.

  “It’s disgusting.”

  “You don’t have to touch it, but can you tape down the dressing? Please. I can’t do it myself. I’ll hold it.”

  Reluctantly, Zara comes to help her. The light in the bathroom does her no favors either. She looks even worse than Billie. The bags under her eyes have graduated from purses to totes. There is blood from her mangled ear crusted on her neck.

  “We’re a pretty pair. Here.” Billie rips the tape with her teeth, hands it to Zara. “Do the edges.”

  “You know first aid?”

  “I know you should clean that abortion on the side of your head before it gets infected. There are some extra antiseptic wipes over there.”

  “Ouch,” Zara hisses, leaning in to the mirror to see. Like they’re a couple of girls doing their makeup before a big night out.

  “Now who’s the dying cat?” Billie winds the bandage around her head. Probably overkill, but what does she know?

  “I think both of us.” The faintest of smiles cracks cold-heart over there.

  “Meooooow,” Billie yowls.

  “Meow. Mow! Mow! Mow!”

  “Now you sound like you’re in heat,” she nudges into her with her shoulder.

  “Hah.”

  “Hey, Z.”

  “What is it?”

  “Who is the buyer?”

  The shutdown is instantaneous. “You have been reading my messages.”

  “You read mine.”

  “You don’t do that.” She cuffs the back Billie’s head, right on the bandage. Hard.

  “Ow, fuck!”

  “Remember why we are here, this mess you have made.” Zara stalks out of the bathroom.

  “You know what?” Billie chases after her. “I do remember. Do you? It’s my sister. My nephew. I brought you this fucking gift-wrapped. You chose to stop at white-trash city and fuck everything up. This is your bullshit road trip through hell.”

  “Done?” Zara is sitting on the bed, taking off her boots. Her gun is on the weird floral brocade cover beside her. Unsubtle much?

  “Fuck you,” she snarls.

  Zara pats the gun like a pet. “I am looking for a reason.”

  Billie burns with resentment, tossing restless and irritated. Maybe it’s fever too. She needs to get more antibiotics. And oh yeah, her fair share of the two bar. She can’t stop thinking about the apparent ease and speed of the reply in the message chain. Without even blinking, without a second thought, no bargaining, no delay to think about it. Two million, offered up on a golden platter, as if that was a perfectly reasonable amount.

  Zara’s breathing shifts down a gear. She’s wearing all her clothes, eyes closed, her hand beside her gun, on its own pillow beside her, lying on top of that brocade cover. Billie could tell you those things are disgusting. They never get washed, unlike hotel sheets which are bleached after every use. She hopes Zara gets bedbugs, or crabs, or fucking Ebola.

  It has to be more than black-market sperm, she thinks. The milk trade can’t be worth that much. Even if they were to be harvesting from him as many times a day as a teenage boy can jerk off, the economics are wrong. Like De Beers with their stockpile of shiny rocks in a giant safe, because you don’t want to flood the market with diamonds…or pearl necklaces. She smirks to herself. The dirty jokes come naturally, even though she’d rather not be thinking those particular thoughts about her nephew.

  Also: the economics
of the reprohibition. It’s like stolen art: there’s a limited number of clients with the means to pay for it and the wherewithal to keep it hidden. It could be a one-time buyer. A rare collector who wants to hoard the means of reproduction for herself. Bulk distribution. Why buy milk when you can get the whole cow—or rather the young bull studling? But then we’re back to the risk of flooding the market. No, it’s something else, Billie thinks.

  Zara makes some kind of grating sound in the bed across the way. Bad sinuses. She should get that seen to. If they stop at another drugstore to get, oh I don’t know, fucking antibiotics.

  The clues are there in the syntax. “Mrs. Fish and her rare exotic.” She remembers being bored out of her mind and hungover at the Cape Town aquarium when Cole and Miles “blessed” her with a visit. The kid was three or four, in full tantrum mode on the carpet, making a sound like an animal that should be put down, kicking and thrashing because he had to wait his turn to crawl through the tunnel into the clownfish display with the donut center, so you could pop up in the middle of the tank, right in there with the fishes. Cole was helpless, useless, trying to distract him with the moray eels, the lionfish, shall we go look at the jellies, instead of hoisting him up by the arm, giving him a whack on his baby bubble butt, and telling him to get a hold of himself.

  Finding Nemo, she thinks.

  What’s worth more than young, dumb, and full of come?

  A son.

  43.

  Cole: Madonna of the Checkpoint

  The afternoon light flattens everything out, so the security plaza looks superimposed against the heat-blasted blue sky. Shadows form sharp geometries on the concrete riot barriers running up against the edge of the highway. Tangles of razor wire sprout like shrubbery between the haze of the trees. The flora of security. The state troopers manning (womaning?) the checkpoint have dark blotches spreading under their armpits. Unlike the Sisters, they have sunglasses. And guns. Flashbacks to the airport. Flashbacks to the roadblock. Is this going to be the time they get caught?

  Mila dawdles behind and it’s hard to tell if it’s anxiety at the undue process or teen ennui, or even if the two are distinguishable. But then Cole sees why she’s taking her sweet time. She’s spotted another guest of the Border Authority, a teenage girl, sprawled on the steps of an RV parked near the door of the processing center, in cut-off denim shorts and black combat boots. The girl stops fiddling with her phone long enough to note this fresh curiosity, and raises it to take a photograph. It makes a shutter click, the electronic ghost voice of cameras, and Cole can’t help flinching.

  Soon. Soon they will be out of here, away from the Church, on a slow boat home. But not yet. Hang ten, kid. Not long now. Taking every hurdle one at a time. She tugs at her Apologia, which is clinging in sweaty creases to the back of her legs.

  They are herded into the waiting room with orange plastic chairs arranged in friendly curves, like batches of cartoon smiles, every seat filled with women, patiently waiting for processing. They haven’t seen anything like this on their journey so far. Border cops, sure, in every state, checking drivers’ licenses and sometimes health certificates, and Oklahoma had volunteers in ADGA t-shirts handing out food parcels and accommodation vouchers. (This triggered quite the argument when Temperance realized that ADGA stood for Atheist Do-Good Association, and they had to decide whether to eat the food, turf it, or go back to proselytize.)

  It’s a sit-stand-shuffle-along line, everyone moving one seat along as someone else gets served. Temperance has the Church’s special dispensation letter, all their IDs, and for three of them (her, Mila, and Chastity, who is Canadian, it turns out), sworn and notarized declarations of their identities and Social Security numbers, along with an affidavit stating that their previous documentation was lost and they were making good-faith efforts to get it reissued as soon as possible. There are gaps in the system, ways of slipping through, but she doesn’t know how up to speed they are here.

  “They should have a conveyor belt,” Cole whispers to Mila. “Like at a sushi restaurant. It would be much more convenient.”

  “What?” Mila doesn’t bother to hide her irritation.

  Cole is envious that she can tune out the radio chatter of fear so effectively: what if they have gender-sniffing dogs, what if they require fingerprints and retina scans and real ID, and they’re dragged out of this line? Exposed in front of everyone, arrested, taken away. She knows they look for the Judas signs of your own body betraying you: sweating, nervous glances, shaking. Add that to her base-level anxiety. She stares blankly at the Liberty Protocols pamphlet they all got at the door, without taking in any of the contents.

  They move up, move along, getting closer to the front, when she becomes aware of a fracas outside the doors, that chilling phrase, “matter of future security,” and she’s on her feet, pulling Mila up, thinking the worst. Cops. Terrorists. The Department of Men come to take them back to a new gilded cage. Or prison.

  There’s a scuffle, four border guards bringing in a tiny woman, mousy-brown, clutching a bulky gym bag tightly to her stomach and crying. She’s heavily outnumbered, like she’s a terrorist, or a bomb about to go off. A U.S. Postal Service worker is trailing them, another officer behind her.

  “I didn’t know,” USPS protests. “I didn’t know she was in there. You got to believe me.”

  Someone rips the gym bag away from the tiny woman, or maybe she drops it. It thumps on the floor, and the vanguard surrounding her can’t step in to hide the truth. Not drugs, but something even more illegal, more dangerous.

  She’s pregnant.

  A shudder runs through every woman present. Yearning. Horror. That’s what the woman was trying to hide, the bag pressed against her to hide the bump. Not so far along, not waddling zeppelin just yet, but showing, clearly, on her petite frame, even under the baggy tracksuit she’s wearing. Five months? Six?

  “It’s not what you think!” the woman shouts. Her hair is greasy. She’s not wearing makeup. Going for nondescript, but sometimes that’s not a disguise. Should have joined the Church, Cole thinks. You could hide anything under the Apologia.

  “Is she—?” Mila starts.

  “Don’t stare,” Cole says. It shouldn’t be surprising. Women have always found ways to terminate pregnancies illegally. Of course they’re going to find ways to have babies illegally.

  And it could be fake. One of those faux baby bumps some people strap on, the same way they push around their little dogs in prams, or creepier, those ultrarealistic newborn dolls.

  “I have IBS,” the woman wails. “I get real swollen.”

  “Found her hiding in the back of the mail truck,” one of the border officers says to her superior. “Compartment behind the cab.”

  “I didn’t know,” USPS says. “You gotta believe me.”

  “Oh, she’s blessed. So blessed.” Generosity murmurs, awed. “Mother Mary.”

  An old woman gets up from her seat, shaky on her feet, moving toward the pregnant girl, the life she’s carrying inside her, hands open, beseeching. “Dios, you are blessed, you are so blessed, like my Paola. The spitting image of my Paola when she was carrying the twins, Francisco and Christopher. Is he kicking? Can I feel him kick?”

  “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to sit down,” the border guard barks. “All of you. Back in your seats.”

  But she might as well be asking the tide not to come in. Chairs scrape, women rise, all of them moving toward the Madonna.

  “I mean it! Everyone sit your asses down.”

  “He’s not kicking right now, but you can feel him,” the pregnant woman says.

  “It’s a boy?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been able to go for a scan.”

  “This woman is under arrest for contravening the Reprohibition Act, and anyone who gets in our way is going down for interfering with due process. Get back! All of you.”

  There’s a shuffling and a muttering of resistance. Is that all it would take to start
a riot? One pregnant woman? Please not now, Cole thinks. Not when they are so close to escape.

  “This is his head, here, and feel, the hard little heel. He likes to push against my ribs, put his feet up. He’s such a little man. Can you feel?”

  “I feel him. Oh, he’s beautiful. So beautiful. God has blessed you. Will you call him Francisco? Or Christopher? For me, please, for my little boys, my little grandsons who died. Please, it would mean so much.”

  “That’s it. I warned you.” The border guard drags the old woman back to a chair, shoves her down hard.

  She collapses, moaning, “Te suplico. Te suplico. Te suplico.”

  “And you, hands behind your back.”

  “Please don’t hurt my baby!” the girl shouts. “I can pay the fines! My husband left me all his money. You think I would do this if I couldn’t afford it?”

  “No one’s going to hurt your baby. But you’d better start cooperating.”

  “Extraction team on their way,” another uniform relays, her radio close to her mouth.

  “Great. Get her out of here.”

  The Madonna is led away, into the warren of back offices. The electric doors swish shut behind them, and then they’re gone, leaving an inflamed wound of emotion. The crowd is restless, anguished.

  “What’s going to happen to her?” Mila whispers.

  “First-class ticket to Ataraxia, I reckon. Or something like it.”

  “They’re not going to kill the baby?”

  “They’ll quarantine him, if it’s a him. If it’s a her, too. Run all the tests. The baby might have to live in a bubble for the rest of her or his life.”

  “And the mom?”

  “Probably going to jail. For a long time. They have to make an example.” The way they will with her, when they catch her.

  “It’s not fair,” Mila says. “The Church says motherhood is a woman’s most sacred duty. They can’t punish her for that!”

  “Or that kid could lead to a new outbreak that really does kill us all. It’s irresponsible. It’s illegal.”