After the End: Recent Apocalypses

by Kage Baker

  I knew I was sulking, but I didn’t see any reason to stop. The band was gone, the gardens were gone, Jenna was gone.

  I realized that I’d spent the decade since the War waiting for someone to rebuild civilization, and that it wasn’t going to happen. It was just going to get worse, every single year. Even if we planted a million gardens, the best I could hope for was to die of old age in a cave, surrounded by my illiterate offspring.

  It was enough to make me want to join the militia.

  Eventually, I staggered out into the blinding light. I went to work on a hill, and that’s where Timson found me.

  He was flustered and angry, showing more emotion than he usually did. “Have you seen her?” he said.

  “Who?” I said, blearily.

  “Jenna. You haven’t seen her?”

  “No,” I said, guiltily, “not since Lyman—”

  “Shit!” he said, and spun on his heel, taking off.

  His urgency penetrated my fog and I chased after him. “You think something’s up?” I said.

  He nodded grimly. “Lyman’s been too smug lately, like the cat that ate the cream. I think he’s got her.”

  “Where would he keep her?” I said. There wasn’t much standing that you could keep a person locked up inside of.

  “Those assholes have an ‘armory’ where they keep all their goddamn weapons. He’s said as much to me, when he was bragging. I want to find it.”

  “Hang on a sec,” I said. “Have you checked her place?”

  “You know where it is?” he asked, surprised.

  “Come on,” I said, feeling perversely proud that he didn’t.

  She wasn’t at her place, but there were signs of a struggle. Her pack was shredded, her seeds ground into the concrete floor.

  Timson took one look and tore off. I followed his long strides as best as I could. I knew where he was headed: Steve’s.

  Steve lived in part of a half-buried underground shopping mall. Timson pummeled down the stairs with me close behind.

  Steve and Lucy were twined on a pile of foam rubber. Timson hauled him up by the arm and slammed his head against a wall.

  “Where’s the armory?” he roared.

  Steve held his head. “Fuck you,” he sneered.

  Timson slammed his head again. Lucy rushed him from behind and I tripped her.

  “Where is it?” Timson said. “Don’t make me any angrier.”

  Steve dangled, nude, from Timson’s meaty paws. Terror and anger warred on his features. Terror won. He spilled his guts. “They’ll kill you,” he said. “They’ve been fighting off wanderers all week. They’re in a bad mood.”

  Timson snorted and dropped him.

  Lyman was expecting us. He blocked the entrance to the armory, a bomb-shelter with a heavy, counterweighted steel door. I’d seen a few doors like it in my travels, but I’d never managed to get one open.

  Timson got ready to rush him, then checked himself. Lyman had his gun hanging lazily off one hand.

  “Afternoon, boys,” he said, grinning.

  “Are you going to shoot me?” Timson said.

  Lyman held up his gun with an expression of mock-surprise. “Probably not,” he said. “Not unless you give me a reason to. I’m here to protect.”

  “Well, I’m about to give you a reason to. I’m going in there to get Jenna. I’ll kill you if you try to stop me.”

  Lyman stuck his gun back into his waistband. “You’re too late,” he said.

  I saw red and started forward, but he held a hand up.

  “She got away. We only wanted to scare her off and get rid of her seeds, but she went nuts. It’s a good thing she got away, or I would’ve forgotten my manners.”

  Timson growled.

  Lyman took a step backwards. “Look, if you don’t believe me, go on in and take a look around, be my guest.”

  Jenna wasn’t inside, but they weren’t kidding when they called it an arsenal. I hadn’t seen that many weapons since the War. It made me faintly sick.

  Then I spotted something that froze me in my tracks. Beneath one of the long tables, a dented silver canister with ugly biohazard decals. You saw fragments of them sometimes, exploded in the midst of plague-wracked corpses. A plague-bomb.

  Lyman strutted around like a proud papa. “Lots of these were here when I found the place, but we’ve picked up a few here and there along the way. Nobody’s chasing us out of here.” He followed my horrified gaze.

  “You like it?” he said. “That’s just in case someone does manage to run us off: it won’t do them any good! Our Final Solution.” He patted the bomb with a proprietary air.

  All of a sudden, it got to me. I started laughing. “Nobody’s chasing you out!” I gasped. “This is your rubble, and nobody’s chasing you out!” Timson started laughing, too. Lyman and his boys reddened. We left.

  We found Jenna with Hambone, in his cave. She had the remains of her pack with her, and was shoveling Hambone’s things into it.

  She startled when we came in, but once she’d seen us, she went back to packing. “Getting outta Dodge,” she said, in answer to our unspoken question.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, feeling guilty and awful.

  “They killed my seeds,” she said, in a hopeless voice. I started to reach for her, then stopped and stared at the floor.

  She finished packing and grabbed Hambone. “You coming?”

  Timson shouldered her pack, answering for both of us.

  I’d settled seven years before. I thought I’d stayed in good shape, but I’d forgotten how punishing life on the road could be.

  Jenna set a brutal pace. She wouldn’t talk to me any more than necessary. We ate sparingly, from what she scrounged on the way. She knew a lot about what was edible and what wasn’t, skills I’d never picked up, but my belly still growled.

  “Where are we going?” I said, after a week. My feet had toughened, but my legs felt like they’d been beaten by truncheons.

  Instead of answering, she pointed up at a plane overhead. Of course, I thought, time to make a long-distance call.

  A week later, I said, “Have you thought this thing through? I mean, the station may be automated, but it’ll have defenses. Locks, at least. How do you plan on getting in?”

  Timson, who’d been silent the whole morning, said, “I’m curious, too. I’ve been thinking: this Australia thing is kind of far-fetched, isn’t it? If they wanted to rescue us, they would’ve done it a long time ago, don’t you think?”

  “Screw Australia,” she said impatiently. “Any station capable of maintaining those jets is bound to have lots of things we can use. I want a fence for my garden.”

  “But how are we going to get in?” I said.

  “Hambone,” she said, with a smug smile.

  Hambone grinned affably. “Guh?” I said.

  “He’s a pilot. High ranking one, too.”

  “Not to repeat myself,” I said, “but, guh?”

  She spun Hambone around and pulled his shaggy hair away from the collar of his grimy T-shirt. “Look.” I did. She dug at the knot of scar tissue at the base of his skull. Horrified, I watched as the scar flapped back, revealing a row of plugs, ringed with cracked and blackened skin.

  “Brainstem interface. I noticed it the first time I saw you guys. You never noticed?”

  “I noticed the scar, sure—”

  “Scar?” she said. She flapped it around. “It’s a dustcover! Hambone’s wired! We’ll just point his retinas at the scanner and voila, instant entry. Damn, you didn’t think I was going to try and hop the fence, did you?”

  Timson grinned sheepishly. “Well, actually . . . ”

  We reached the station the next day. The familiar roar of the jets was joined by the ear-shattering sound of them landing and taking off, like clockwork.

  The airfield was fenced in by a lethal wall, ten meters tall and ringed with aged corpses. A lot of slow learners had found out the hard way about the station’s defenses.

>   We wandered the perimeter for several kilometers before we came to a gate. It had a retinal scanner, like I sometimes found when I unearthed the remains of a bank machine. Hambone grew more and more agitated as we neared it.

  “Go on,” Jenna whispered. “Come on, you can do it.”

  His nervous drumming became more and more pronounced, until he was waving his arms, flailing wildly.

  Jenna caught his hands and held them tightly. “That’s all right,” she cooed. “It’s all right, come on.”

  Centimeter by slow centimeter, Jenna coaxed Hambone to the scanner. Finally, he put his eyes against the battered holes. Red light played over his features, and the gates sighed open.

  We were all still standing around and grinning like idiots before we noticed that Hambone was running across the airfield.

  He was already halfway to a jet. We caught up with him as he was vaulting the extruded ladder. An armored cart that had been attached to the fuselage reeled in its umbilicus and rolled away.

  Hambone was already seated in the pilot’s chair, punching at the buttons. A cable snaked from the back of his seat into the plugs on his neck. I had time to think, That’s weird, and then the plane lurched forward. The cockpit had seats for a copilot and a bombardier, and we all crammed in like sardines, Jenna on my lap, and we crushed together when the plane jolted.

  “Holy shit!” Jenna shouted.

  Hambone drummed his fingers against an instrument panel while he pulled back on a joystick. “Strap in!” Timson shouted.

  I did, pulling crash-webbing across us.

  “Hambone, what the hell are you doing?” Jenna shouted.

  He grinned affably, and the plane lifted off.

  Hambone flew the plane confidently, with small, precise movements. Jenna, Timson and I stared at each other helplessly. The jet had taken off at a screaming climb that flattened us back against our seats—I noted with curious detachment that Hambone’s seat had a recessed niche so that the cables depending from his skull weren’t compressed.

  In an instant, we were above the clouds, with only tiny patches of scorched earth visible.

  The silence inside the cockpit rang inside my ears. For the first time in seven years, I couldn’t hear jets crashing overhead.

  “Hey, Hambone?” I said, cautiously.

  Jenna shushed me. “Don’t distract him,” she whispered.

  It was good advice. Timson stared at the instrument panels.

  “I think,” he whispered, “that we’re headed out to sea.”

  Jenna and I groaned. Hambone reached out with one hand and unlatched a compartment that spilled out freeze-dried rations.

  “At least we won’t starve to death,” Timson whispered.

  “Why are we whispering?” I said.

  “So Hambone doesn’t get panicked,” Jenna said.

  “He never gets panicked,” I said in a normal tone. Hambone unwrapped a bar of fruit leather and munched thoughtfully at it, while his fingers danced over the controls.

  “He never flies planes, either,” she hissed.

  “We’re over the ocean now. Pacific, I think,” Timson said. He’d done something with the seat that caused it to slide back into a crawlspace. We were still cramped, but at least we weren’t in each other’s laps. I looked out the window. Yup, ocean.

  I started shivering.

  “We’re going to die,” I said.

  “Probably,” Jenna said. She giggled.

  I punched her playfully and my panic receded.

  Timson started playing with one of the panels.

  “What are you doing?” I said, alarmed.

  “Trying to figure out where we’re going. Don’t worry, this is the co-pilot’s seat. I don’t think I can screw up the navigation from here unless he turns it over to me.” Ragged and filthy, he looked like a caveman next to the sleek controls.

  “You don’t think?” I said.

  He waved impatiently at me, poked some more. “Okay,” he said. “Hambone’s taking us to Australia.”

  I always knew that Hambone had heard the things we’d said. Still, it was easy to forget. We took turns trying to convince him to head back. After a few hours, we gave up. Timson said that we’d crossed the halfway mark, anyway. We were closer to Australia than home.

  Then there was nothing to do but eat and wait.

  Eventually, some of the instruments lit and I thought, This is it, we’re dead. Curiously, I wasn’t scared. I’d been scared so long, and now I was bored, almost glad that it was ending.

  “Bogeys,” Timson said, staring out the window.

  I looked up. Two sleek, new fighters were paralleling us. Inside their cockpits, I could see pilots in what looked like spacesuits. I waved to one. He tapped his headset.

  Jenna said, “They’re trying to radio us.”

  Timson picked up a lightweight headset from a niche above his seat. He screwed it into his ear and held up a finger.

  “Hello?” he said. We held our breath.

  “Yes, that’s us,” he said.

  “What?” I said. He shushed me.

  “All right,” he said.

  “What?” I shouted, startling Hambone. Jenna clapped a hand over my mouth.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know how. Do you know which button I push? I see. All right, I think this is it. I’m going to push it. Is that all right? Okay, thanks. Bye.”

  I peeled Jenna’s hand off my mouth. “What?” I demanded.

  “That’s the Panoceanic Air Force. They’re landing us at Sydney. We’ll be quarantined when we get there, but I think it’s just a formality.”

  The lights in the cockpit dimmed and the cable zipped out of Hambone’s neck. Absently, he reached back and smoothed the dustcover over the plugs. “They’re landing us,” Timson said.

  I leaned back and sighed. I like Hambone a lot, but I’d rather not have an autistic flying my plane, thank you very much.

  I was reaching for another bar of fruit-leather when the plane took a tremendous lurch that pressed Jenna and me against the crash-webbing hard enough to draw blood on our exposed skin. I heard a sickening crack and looked around wildly, terrified that it was someone’s skull. In the juddering chaos, I saw Timson, face white, arm hanging at a nauseating, twisted angle.

  We jolted again, and I realized that I was screaming. I closed my mouth, but the screaming continued. Out of the bombardier’s porthole, I saw the air convecting across the shuddering wings, and realized that the screaming was the air whistling over the fuselage. The ground rushed towards us.

  Jenna’s head snapped back into my nose, blinding me with pain, and then we were tumbling through the cockpit. Jenna had released the crash-webbing altogether and was ping-ponging around Hambone. I saw her claw at the dustcover on his neck before she was tossed to the floor.

  I pried my fingers loose from the armrests on my chair and came forward to Hambone. I straddled him, legs around his waist, and suppressed my gorge as I scrabbled at what I still thought of as his “scar” until it peeled back. My fingertips skated over the plugs and the knots of skin around them, and then I did toss up, spraying vomit and losing my grip on Hambone.

  I ended up atop Jenna. The plane screamed down and down and I locked eyes with Hambone, silently begging him to do something. His gaze wandered, and my eyes stopped watering long enough to see Hambone do something to his armrest, which caused the cabling on his seat to snake out and mate with his brainstem. The plane leveled off and he smiled at us.

  It couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds, but it seemed like a lifetime. Timson cursed blue at his arm, which was swollen and purple, and Jenna cradled her bumped head in arms that streamed blood from dozens of crisscrossed webbing cuts. I got us strapped in as we touched down.

  We got escorted off the ship by a bunch of spacemen with funny accents. They didn’t take us to the hospital until they’d scrubbed us and taken blood. They wanted to take Hambone away, but we were very insistent. The spacemen told us that he was very �
�high functioning,” and that the plugs in the back of his neck were only rated for about five years.

  “They’ll have to come out,” one of them explained to us. “Otherwise, he’ll only get worse.”

  Jenna said, “If you take them out, will he get better?”

  The spaceman shrugged. “Maybe. It’s a miracle that he’s still bloody alive, frankly. Bad technology.”

  They de-quarantined us a month later. I’d never been cleaner. Those Aussies are pretty worried about disease.

  The four of us took a flat near Bondi Beach. Timson found a job in a bookstore, and Jenna spends most of her time working with Hambone. Some days, I think she’s getting through to him.

  I’m on the Dole and feeling weird about it. I can’t get used to the idea of just showing up at someone else’s place and taking handouts. But the Aussies don’t seem to mind. Very progressive people. They ran our story on the news and a music store in Canberra donated a bugle and an electric piano.

  I’m teaching Jenna to blow. It’s not that I don’t like playing anymore, but it’s hard to sing and play at the same time. All four of us practice every night, out in our garden. We still flinch every eight bars, waiting for the roar of a jet to interrupt us, then smile sheepishly when it doesn’t come. The important thing is, we’re playing.

  Even an interloper like me knows how you get to Sydney Opera House: practice.

  :

  Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, journalist, blogger, the co-editor of Boing Boing (boingboing.net), and the author of young adult novels like Pirate Cinema, Little Brother, and Homeland and novels for adults like Rapture of the Nerds and Makers. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and cofounded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London.

  :

  The End came gradually: rolling brownouts, a dirty bomb in Disney World, the economy really tanking. The US is failing, but it’s worse in Mexico. There are rumors of a camp for the homeless outside of Toronto, so people are heading there. Jane and her thirteen-year-old daughter, Franny, have made it—mostly on foot—to somewhere in Missouri.