After the End ate-1

by Amy Plum

  She leads me into the space, which I see is one big sparsely furnished room lit brightly by a half-dozen oil-burning lamps.

  She eyes me merrily. “Don’t usually like guests. But you’re a special exception.”

  “Why’s that?” I ask. I hobble my way across the room and lower myself onto the couch, swinging around to prop my hurt foot on the cushions.

  “Because I was expecting you,” she says matter-of-factly, staring straight at my right eye.

  “But why?” I ask. “And how did you know where to find me?”

  “Do we have to share all our secrets right away?” she asks, and pulls a metal box from a corner cupboard. She starts rummaging through it. “Let’s see. Ace bandage might come in handy. Skin’s not broken, so we don’t need disinfectant. Ah, here,” she says, and pulls out a plastic pouch the size of a paperback book and begins squishing it in her hands. She presses it against my ankle, and I gasp in surprise.

  “It’s ice-cold!” I say, and put my hand on the first-aid box to see if it’s some kind of refrigerator. But no—the metal is room temperature.

  “You’ve never seen an ice pack?” Tallie says, a grin stretching across her lips.

  I shake my head.

  “Okaaaaay,” she drawls. “I thought you were supposed to be from the future.”

  “What?” I ask, mystified.

  “Oh, nothing,” she says. “By the way, I told you my name. I still don’t know yours.”

  I sit staring at her. What is going on? Who is this stranger who claims to have been expecting me? If she’s not with Whit, how did she know I was coming? Her body language suggests friendly, not dangerous. But I’m still wary.

  “You don’t have to tell me. I’ll just pick a name. Hmm…” She leans her head to one side, considering. “How about Frederica? Fred for short?”

  I can’t help myself. I laugh. “I’m Juneau,” I admit.

  Tallie nods approvingly. “Suits you better than Fred. Goddess or city in Alaska?”

  “Alaska,” I say, wondering how many times I’m going to have to clarify that. In my clan no one questioned our names. The children were all named after Alaskan towns. It bound us to the past. “You are your own little cities of the Promised Land,” my father used to say. “The hope for the future of the earth.” My chest constricts as I remember this—just one brick in the wall of lies they built to keep us from discovering the real world. I still don’t understand, I think, and exhale deeply before noticing that Tallie is watching me with a concerned look on her face.

  “Are you tired? Hungry?”

  “Both,” I respond.

  “Let me see what I can get together,” she says, and heads toward a door on the river side of the house. As she opens it, I hear flowing water. I turn and lean over the couch to see that the room over the river is the kitchen, with a sink and counters, cupboards, and a wall full of knives and utensils. Tallie opens a trapdoor in the floor and winds a crank beside it, pulling up a metal cage filled with food.

  She turns her head to me, and with a quirky smile says, “Best refrigerator a girl could ask for.”

  My mouth drops open. “That is ingenious!” I say.

  “Why, thank you very much,” she says, flipping her hair back over her shoulder as she leans in to pick some things out of the cage. “You’re not vegan, are you? Vegetarian?” she calls.

  “No,” I yell back. Vegetarian? I think, smiling to myself. If only she could see me skinning and gutting a caribou.

  After a few minutes Tallie returns with a tray. “How about a couple of cheeses, some homemade bread, and cured ham?” she asks.

  My mouth is watering, but I just stare at it and search her face once more.

  She puts the tray down with an amused expression and pops a piece of cheese in her mouth. “See? Not poisoned. Not even spoiled.”

  I relax. “Sorry. I’m not in the most trusting mood lately. Honestly, this looks like the best meal in the world.” I spread some butter on the bread, lay a piece of ham on it, and raise it to my mouth, but then freeze at the sound of a knock on the front window. “Oh no!” I whisper, dropping my food in panic. But Tallie is up in a second and walking toward the sound.

  “Don’t worry, Juneau. It’s just a raven. It’s probably hungry.”

  “Don’t let him in!” I yell, and rise to my feet before crumpling back down to the couch, gasping with pain and holding my ankle. But it’s too late. She opens the window to place a piece of bread on the sill, and he squeezes past her and into the house.

  “Well, aren’t you cheeky?” she says, putting her hands on her hips.

  “Tallie, you have to get him out of here,” I urge. “He has some kind of location device hooked to his leg.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” she says, and putting both hands out, traps Poe on the ground and rolls him over. “There’s nothing on his legs.”

  The flashing red light is gone. I breathe a sigh of relief, but my stomach still churns with anxiety. “Come here, Poe,” I say. Tallie releases him, and he hops over to me.

  “So you know this bird, like, personally?” she asks, one eyebrow raised.

  I pick Poe up and comb through his feathers, but there is nothing attached to him: no note, no tiny machine. Someone must have removed the bracelet. But why?

  “He’s going to have to stay in here. We can’t let him go now that he’s seen where we are,” I say, pulling him onto my stomach. I pet him like a cat, and he nestles his head against my arm.

  Tallie stares at me with knitted brow, finger posed pensively on her lips. “People often call me strange. But your bird paranoia problem”—she gestures with her chin toward Poe—“takes the cake.”

  “It’s not—” I begin.

  “Shh,” she urges, shaking her head. She closes the window, flicks the lock closed, and lowers the wicks of the oil lamps, dimming the room’s light to a warm flickering glow that reminds me of nighttime in my yurt. “You eat. As for me, I’m usually in bed by now, but I’ll wait until you’re done.” She walks over to the bedroom corner and pulls some clothes out of a dresser drawer. “I never have guests, so I have no use for walls. Which means if you’re overly modest, you might want to turn around, ’cause I’m about to get naked.”

  I focus on eating, giving her privacy, and in a few minutes she walks back wearing flannel pajamas. She catches me smiling and says, “Like I said. No guests. I wear what I like.”

  I swallow my bread and nod toward a rifle resting in a rack over the door. “Is that for hunting?”

  She shakes her head. “I’m too squeamish to kill anything unless it’s about to kill me. It’s more for protection.”

  “From what?” I ask.

  “Oh you know. The usual,” she grins. “As you noticed, I’m living a bit off the grid,” she explains. “No one knows I’m here.”

  “Why?” I ask. “Are you running from the law or something?”

  She shakes her head. “You’re the guest, so I get to grill you first. But I’m not even going to do that until tomorrow morning. You done with the food tray?”

  “Yes. Thanks,” I say as she clears it away. She pulls the throw blanket off the back of the couch and drapes it over me.

  “You sleep now. The door and windows are locked, although I have a feeling that if the people after you were headed this way, we would have already heard from them. But, as to not take any chances, I’ll take this to bed with me.” She grabs the rifle from off the wall and lays it on the ground next to her.

  I pull my crossbow over from where it’s propped on my bag and place it next to the couch. It’s cold comfort, and less powerful than Tallie’s shotgun, but I feel safer knowing it’s by my side.

  42

  MILES

  IT TAKES A LITTLE TALKING TO CONVINCE THE state police to let me take my “stolen” car without pressing charges or filing a missing persons report. Portman, who happens to be in the same war veterans’ association as one of the patrolmen, finally persuades t
hem that it was all just a teenage love spat, during which my girlfriend drove off with my car and then was picked up by friends. The gas station cashier claims she had her headphones on and didn’t notice a thing.

  “You better get home to your father now,” Redding tells me as they pull away. He looks resigned, as if he knows I’m not going to obey him. And he’s right. Getting home to Dad is the last thing on my to-do list, unless I do it with Juneau in tow.

  I turn the keys in the ignition and notice the gas dial swing up to full. So Juneau must have filled the tank before she ran off. I walk up to the station and knock on the bulletproof glass. The girl behind the window ignores me, so I knock again. She looks up. I flash her my most charming smile. She slips her headphones off and pops her gum at me.

  “Sorry about that,” she says. “I thought you were those cops again.”

  “Yeah, that car’s actually mine. My girlfriend drove off with it while we were having an argument.” I decide to stick with Portman’s story. It worked on the cops. “I know you told the police you didn’t see anything, but is there anything at all that you remember that could help me out? It’s late, and I’m worried about her.”

  The girl smiles widely and says, “I actually just said that because I didn’t want to have to make an official statement.” She goes on to tell me that she saw everything, including two guys returning a half hour later without the girl and yelling at each other for a while before driving away.

  “What direction did they go?” I ask.

  “South toward Salt Lake City,” she responds.

  “Thank you so much,” I say. She shrugs and slides her headphones back on.

  So it happened as I had hoped. Whit’s guys didn’t succeed in finding Juneau, yet she hasn’t come back for my car. That means she’s still out there somewhere. I step over a knee-high concrete wall into the pasture and look around. Trees in the distance, with mountains even farther past them. She could be anywhere. And the point has already been established that my wilderness survival skills are laughably lame next to hers.

  Unless she wants me to find her, like she did in Seattle, I have no hope. And after she overheard my phone conversation with Dad, that’s just not going to happen. I rub my face sleepily with the palm of my hand. I know she’s heading for Salt Lake City, but unless she hitchhikes, there’s no way she’ll make it there tonight. I’ll just have to hope she’s too scared to hitch a ride with strangers, I think, and then realize the irony of that thought.

  I climb in my car and start driving southward, ready to stop at the first hotel I see.

  43

  JUNEAU

  I AWAKE TO THE SMELL OF BACON AND THE SOUND of eggs popping and spitting on the stovetop. And even though I am completely disoriented, I can’t stop a smile from blooming on my lips. I sit up and am staring Poe straight in the beak. He squawks and flaps his wings.

  “He hasn’t moved all night, watching over you like your own avian bodyguard,” comes a voice from across the room. And—snap—I remember where I am.

  “Good morning, Tallie,” I say.

  She adds a log from the woodpile to the stove. “Breakfast?” she asks.

  “Yes, please,” I respond, and she sets a tray on the low table in front of the couch: eggs, bacon, toast, and orange juice.

  “Are you a coffee or tea person?” she asks. Her pajamas have disappeared, and she is dressed in jeans and a lumberjack shirt, with her fiery hair tamed and tied in a knot behind her head.

  “Chicory, actually,” I answer.

  She makes a face like she bit into a sour berry. “Ugh. Nasty stuff. My ex-mother-in-law used to drink chicory. Tea it is, then.” And in a minute she’s back.

  She pulls the armchair up to the table and pours two mugs of tea.

  I swallow a bite of toast and ask, “You don’t have animals, do you?”

  “I don’t like pets,” she says, eyeing Poe. “I have enough work around here without having to worry about codependent furry things.”

  “No, I mean where do you get the bacon and eggs?”

  “Oh. There’s a general store ten miles away. I hike in twice a week and do handyman jobs for them in exchange for the supplies I can’t forage for myself. I’m self-contained, self-sustained, and I don’t have to pay taxes that go to nice people getting killed in senseless wars.”

  “Now I understand why you make yourself invisible,” I say.

  “Yeah, I’m a conscientious objector to just about everything,” she says with a grin. “No electricity, no phone or internet, no car. And, contrary to what you’re witnessing right now, I’m normally pretty antisocial.”

  I wash down a piece of honey-smeared toast with a gulp of strong tea and ask, “How did you find me? You said you were expecting me.”

  “Oh, that,” she says, and lifts her eyebrows mysteriously. “I threw the bones.”

  I pause, a forkful of eggs lifted halfway to my mouth. “You threw the bones?”

  She opens a drawer in the table between us and takes out a rust-red leather pouch, and then, loosening its drawstrings, spills a handful of dried, bleached animal bones onto the table. “My great-grandma Lula-Mae’s possum bones, passed to her daughter, who passed them to my mom, who passed them to me. Along with double-X chromosomes, all the women in my family possess the Sight. That’s them over there,” she says, nodding to a table in the corner that holds framed photographs. “I call them my goddesses.”

  She begins arranging the bones in a circular pattern on the table. “I throw Lula-Mae’s bones every morning, to keep in practice. Outside on the ground, mind you. Not here on the table. They have to touch earth. Yesterday they looked sort of like this.” A few of the bones cross each other in places, and others are lined up parallel. “I won’t go into all the boring details, but it told me a visitor was coming around midnight, and that this wasn’t a hunter, as usual, but someone being hunted.”

  She points to the two skeletal hands, which are sitting one next to the other, thumb bones touching. “This told me that my visitor would be like me. ‘Touched’ like my women. Are you psychic? Or into divination?”

  “Kind of,” I admit.

  She studies me carefully, like the bones in my face are just as readable as those of the long-dead possum spread before us. Seemingly satisfied, she looks back down and resumes her explanation.

  “It also told me that we both have something to teach the other.” She picks up her mug and watches me over the raised rim as she takes a sip. I don’t know what to say, so I keep my mouth shut.

  “But the way the tailbones fell”—she points at a few disjointed bones—“it suggests that you have an important mission. That people’s lives or destinies may lie in your hands.” Her face is all seriousness now, and she waits for my response.

  I swallow hard and meet her eyes. “My father and clan have been kidnapped and are being held against their will somewhere. I am trying to find them. To rescue them.” She holds my gaze before leaning back, staring at a point behind me on the wall and rubbing her chin thoughtfully.

  Something occurs to me. “Why did you ask me if I was from the future?”

  She snaps back into the here and now. “Hmm? Oh. The end of the tail sticking out of the circle. It’s sticking out of time, or out of the world. So I figured that I should be on the lookout for either a UFO landing in my front yard, or some kind of time machine bringing you here from the future.” She laughs.

  “Well, you could definitely say I’m from another world,” I allow.

  “Yes, I figured you were the one when I saw you through my telescope.” She nods toward an expensive-looking model standing next to the window, pointed down the mountain. “And then I confirmed it when I shone the light in your eye and saw that gold sun-looking iris. Looked pretty alien to me. What is it? A genetic mutation?”

  My mouth dropped open. “You’re the first person who hasn’t thought it was a contact lens.”

  “Well, you didn’t take it out last night. And it doesn’t rea
lly match the renouncing-your-femininity theme you’re rocking.”

  “I was trying to disguise myself as a boy to avoid my pursuers,” I admit.

  “Looks like that didn’t work out very well for you,” she says, amused. “You need to lose the Gap Boy look, by the way, if you want to maintain that disguise. It makes you lumpy, not boyish. Anyway that’s my story. I want to hear yours, but let’s see how that ankle’s doing first.”

  I pull the blanket off my lap and prop my bare foot on the side of the table. Tallie whistles. “That’s not as bad as it looked last night. A little more rest, and you should be up and about in a day or so.”

  “Couldn’t we just wrap it tightly? I really need to go. Like I said, I’m looking for my clan, and although I think that they’re safe for the moment, who knows what will happen?” My voice rises slightly as I explain, and I’m suddenly fighting tears. I pick up my mug and take a big swig of tea, swallow, exhale, and feel better.

  “Do you know where they are?” Tallie asks.

  “I know what the place looks like. And I know it’s southeast of here. And still pretty far.”

  Tallie nods and thinks on it. “Well, you’re not going to be much use to anyone if you’re hobbling around on one foot. And whoever’s chasing you will probably be hanging around the area for a while before they give up, so it’s better you stay hidden for the day.”

  She begins scooping up the possum bones and placing them carefully into the pouch. “And then there’s Beauregard here, who says we have something to teach each other.”

  “Beauregard?” I ask, incredulous.

  “Lula-Mae named the possum after her first husband. Don’t even ask.”