by Meg Elison
“Army medic. Iraq. Four years.”
“See? You’d be a good member of our team.”
“Where you headed?” She knew the answer.
“South. We heard there was almost no plague death in Central America. Lots more women down there.”
Lots of women. Also milk and honey, and the streets are paved with gold.
“Yeah, I heard that, too. I like my group, though. Thanks.”
“Suit yourself. So where’s this ton of drugs?”
“Back at camp. I’d have to go get it and come back and meet you here. Take me maybe an hour.”
“All right. See you when you get back.”
She walked away slowly, not wanting to turn her back on them. They were silent while she left.
She walked until she knew they couldn’t see her, then ran. She ran around blocks and zigzagged until she almost got lost. She found the saloon again and stood panting, gulping water. She went down into the cellar where she had stowed her pack. She had caught her breath and filled up a bag with a handful of everything. When she came up the ladder, the five men were there, with another guy she hadn’t seen.
Damn it.
Aaron looked at her like the devil with a soul to collect. “This is Archie. Our spotter. He was up on a rooftop when you split. Looks like you’re all alone after all.”
She stared him down. “They’re all out raiding,” she said.
Breathe slow, talk low. Don’t look around, stare right at Aaron. I can still get through this.
“Sure they are. So we’re gonna take what we want and then be on our way.”
A few beats of silence while she thought about it. Manny and Archie had guns drawn on her, but the two of them stood almost together and not ten feet away. Nobody else had shown a gun. If she let them get close to her, she knew what would happen. They’d take her guns and pat her down. They’d realize what she was, and she’d end up on a leash. They wouldn’t kill her as long as they figured it out first. She held that thought up to the light and examined it.
Nope.
She dropped the bag to the floor, and the sound was an anticlimactic thud. On the other side of the bar, inches away, Aaron pulled his machete. She drew both guns and fired, not really seeing, toward where the two armed men had been. She shot Aaron in the face, close up, as he tried to bring the machete down. She flinched back from the spray of blood, stumbling. She missed Chuck and hit his baseball bat; he dropped what was left of it and ran. She fired again and again, making holes in people, aiming without eyes. She hit one of them in the thigh, and he went down screaming. She winged and grazed and cut them up more than anything. Kept it up until nothing moved. The two who had guns had shot at her and missed, but she never knew it. Her ears rang. She went outside, deaf and still holding her guns up. Chuck was out there, trying to drag both women toward a bicycle, but they were both fighting him. He had his back to the door.
“Drop the chain. Drop it.”
He looked over his shoulder at her, still holding both leashes. Up closer, she could see they were made of heavy chain with padlocks at the neck. The women looked chafed and sore where the chain rubbed. There was no way they’d get out of them.
“Fuck you.”
“I’m holding the gun, asshole. Drop it.” She cocked back the hammer on her revolver for good measure. Her hands were shaking. It was a punk line. She didn’t know why she said that, why she cocked it. She was going to kill him anyway. She drew it out for no reason.
He turned around and tensed up, to run or pull them in to shield him. She couldn’t tell what his plan was. She shot him in the back of the head with the newer gun. His skull caved in and blood came down between his shoulder blades. He collapsed forward with the chains wrapped around his forearms. Melissa, the younger one, fell back on her ass with the pull on her chain. Roxanne stayed upright, staring at the dead man.
They stayed like that for a minute. It was all so absurd that she couldn’t comprehend it. She had just shot six men in a saloon. She was a cowboy. She felt nothing. Not remorse, not elation. She was a little sick, a little shocked, but didn’t really feel bad. Her ears hurt, her heart did not. She put her guns away and walked forward to yank the chains out of the dead man’s hand. Once they were loose, she thought the two of them might run. They didn’t. They stood there dumbly.
She turned to Roxanne. “Do you know which one had the keys?”
The leashed woman looked at her as though she had to translate what had been said. “Aaron,” she said after a minute. “On his belt.”
She walked back into the saloon and found Aaron crumpled up on the floor. She reached into the crumple and felt around for a key ring. She found it, but it took her a minute to work the carabiner free and get them out. She walked back into the sunlight. Melissa was still sitting on the ground, but she had started to cry. The cowboy walked over to her first. Melissa flinched away from her, but she got the key into the lock. The chains slid off the girl, and she sat there, naked. She walked over to Roxanne and did the same. She immediately rubbed her neck. They stood there for a minute, deciding.
“If you guys want to come inside, I’ve got food. And I bet we can find some clothes.”
Roxanne looked at her sharply. “So, what? We’re yours now?”
The cowboy kicked the chains at her feet, and they rattled a little. “No. You’re free. You can go wherever you want. I just thought you’d have a better chance of getting somewhere if you ate and put some clothes on.”
Melissa still sat on the ground, crying. She walked over to face her.
“Hey. You hungry?”
Melissa shook her head.
“You want a shirt?”
She nodded, sniffling.
She sat them down with bottles of water and went to the nearest houses where she had been raiding. She came back with a bottle of olives, a can of peaches, and a pile of women’s clothes. The women were exactly where she had left them. The water was gone. She laid everything in front of them and went in for more. The idea of staying in the saloon that night had just about died. She wasn’t going to haul the bodies out, and they couldn’t sleep with the bodies in there. She grabbed her gear and a case of water. She emerged again to find they had both gotten dressed. Melissa was trying on shoes.
Roxanne was sitting up with her arms crossed.
“I found the best I could. Some of it probably doesn’t fit well, but you can hope for better if you raid a store or a mall.” She looked at her under the brim of her hat. Roxanne had a stony quality about her face.
“Have you got any cigarettes?”
She rummaged in the outer pockets in her bag. She knew she still had some. “They’re gonna be stale as hell.”
“I don’t care.”
She handed Roxanne a book of matches from the saloon and she lit up a menthol and inhaled deeply like a lifelong smoker. She watched the cowboy the whole time.
Melissa finally spoke up. “Where are we?”
“In Oregon, right on the border with Nevada.”
“Wow.”
“Where did you come from? How did you guys get here?”
Melissa answered first. “I’m from Michigan. I was traveling with my boyfriend, just outside of Detroit. Aaron and some other guys shot him and came and took me. We mostly drove here, but we walked some and rode bikes. I’ve been on a leash since Vegas.”
“That’s where they found me.” Roxanne was smoking hard and fast now, lighting up a second one. “I was with Nettie. Annette. We worked together. She got away. I was tased, and I woke up with the chains on and nothing else.”
“Are either one of you pregnant?”
The two freed women exchanged a glance. “No,” Roxanne said. “The other girl was. Shawna. She died during the birth, and the baby didn’t make it. That was last winter.”
“Are you having regular periods?”
They both looked at her.
“You’re still gonna try and fuck one of us?” Melissa said it with utter disgust.
“Nope. I’m a doctor. I’m trying to help you out.”
“She said she had medical experience, Melissa, remember? When she was negotiating.” Roxanne looked at the other woman speculatively.
“Oh. You knew?” The midwife felt exposed.
Roxanne laughed a dry little laugh that was mostly smoke. “Working in Vegas, I have seen every kind of impersonator on the planet, honey. I know a drag king when I see one. You’re good. I’m not surprised the guys bought it. But you don’t fool me.”
Her hat came off. Cowboy no longer. “Well, good. So, periods? Any infections? Injuries? Chance you’re pregnant now?”
Roxanne shook her head, inhaling. “Hysterectomy. It saved me a lot of trouble, back in the day. I got a constant UTI from that bunch of dicks that we were with. But I think that’s it.”
Melissa was thinking with her brow scrunched up. “I think I had my period this month. Pretty recently. I’m all torn up, though. It burns when I pee. It aches all the time.”
After they ate, she dosed them both with antibiotics and painkillers. She explained the dosage to them and gave them each a full run.
“Whatever happens, wherever you go, make sure you take the whole run.” They finished off the night with a bottle of cranberry juice from the bar and laid down to sleep in an ugly tract house.
In the morning, she told them both to watch for a pack. Roxanne found hers right away, a high school kid’s backpack with a chest strap around the front. It spanned across her ridiculous implants, making them even more prominent.
Melissa searched listlessly, halfheartedly, before giving up.
When the three stopped to rest on an old porch swing and Roxanne had wandered away, she asked Melissa if she wanted a shot.
“Just in case you get . . . caught again. It’ll keep you from getting pregnant and going out like Shawna did.”
She stared with big, dark eyes. They were empty.
“Have you got anything that will just kill me? Like a painless injection and I’ll go to sleep? Like a dog?”
“What?”
“I just want to die. I don’t want any more of this. I’ll just get caught by some other band of dicks who’ll use me as a human blowjob dispenser. Eventually they’ll kill me or I’ll starve to death. There’s no reason to continue with this. Like a lot of morphine, maybe? Something peaceful? I don’t want to be shot.”
“No . . . look . . . there’s no reason to die, either. You’re ok, in one piece, and you’re recovering from what was done to you. That won’t happen again.”
“It will. Yes, it will. There are no women left. Maybe a handful of us. Eventually we’ll get used up. I’ll get captured again. It’s all men out there now.”
“Yeah, but they’re not all like that.”
“Maybe they didn’t used to be. What else is there now?”
They sat in silence for a minute. “Look. I don’t want to kill you. I don’t want you to kill yourself. But it’s your choice. What I’m offering is a load off your mind, just in case . . . in case you meet a guy you like. Do you want it or not?”
“Sure.” She shrugged.
She gave Melissa the shot and a few morning-after pills for her pack, when she found one.
Roxanne came back with a pack for Melissa. It was a hideous flowered backpack. Melissa put her pills in it but wasn’t interested in gathering supplies. She ate diffidently and seemed eager to go to sleep.
Slept with my arms wrapped around my medkit. Could have killed herself with any number of things in it, but she didn’t. Morning = Melissa just gone. Now we are two. Swing, swing, bang, bang, drink poison = win the game.
Roxanne sat up, blinking. “Where the hell did she go?”
She had been up for a while, staring at Melissa’s abandoned pack and shoes. “I dunno, but I don’t think she’s coming back.” She didn’t want to look for Melissa. She didn’t want to find the girl hanging in a garage or slit open in a bathtub. Melissa had made her choice.
“So do you want to come with me?”
Roxanne dragged on her cigarette. “Who the hell are you, drag king?”
“Call me Ishmael.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m Alex.”
“Where are you going, Alex?”
“North,” she said. “East. Away from where everyone else is heading.”
“They’re all following that radio broadcast.”
She looked up, her throat suddenly very tight. “What radio broadcast?”
“The one in Spanish. I didn’t understand it, but some of the guys did. You got a radio?”
She didn’t, but they found a car with enough battery left to turn one on. Roxanne sat in the passenger seat and tuned it in carefully, finding a very narrow signal.
“. . . of the Republic of Costa Rica. We have established a survivors colony in our sovereign nation where all those who lived through the plague may come to live in peace. Most of our women did not die, so it is safe to bring your women here. All women, come to the Republic of Costa Rica, where you will be cared for as the mothers of a new civilization.”
The message repeated.
Directions followed, complete with coordinates. Alex translated the Spanish Roxanne couldn’t make out.
Roxanne laughed her dry laugh. “Sure. Very safe. Bring all your women here. Heh.”
“Yeah.”
They sat for a little while, listening to the message loop. Roxanne left to pee eventually, and Alex carefully dialed up and down the entire radio band, first AM, then FM. The Costa Rican signal was the only thing she could find. She turned the car off. She thought about where they were.
No way that broadcast is from anywhere near Costa Rica. What would carry the signal? Somebody wants people to head south, especially women. She came back. Said she would go with me. Didn’t tell her what I thought about the radio, but couldn’t stop thinking it. Packed up and started off on bikes, to see where we could get.
July
Biking and hiking through the sharp, rocky hills of Idaho. Some of them are too steep to bike, but we’ve been dragging them up. It helps speed things along, and I know we’re making better time than we would on our feet.
They camped out one night in a huge luxury RV they found abandoned at a rest stop along a freeway. It had a glass bubble ceiling above the loft, and they both lay on their backs, looking up at the stark and cloudless sky.
“So you’re a dyke, right?”
Alex thought for a while before answering. In the old days at nursing school, she had stretched this answer out in long sociological discussions of identity, fluidity, gender normative behavior in a heteronormative society.
Yes. No. Sometimes. Say yes, maybe she’ll want to sleep with me.
“I dated mostly women. In school. But my most serious long-term relationship was with a man. Whatever you want to call that.”
Roxanne smoked, and the long curls of it hit the glass and pooled. It smelled awful, but Alex wasn’t about to send her away. She cracked the roof hatch.
“I just figured.”
“I didn’t always dress like a dude. This is a safety measure.”
“Yeah, but what if you found some people? A guy who could take care of you? He could defend you, hunt for food so you don’t have to? What are you gonna do when canned goods run out and you gotta shoot deer to live?”
I just shot six guys. Did she just forget that? Don’t fight. Talk easy.
Alex crossed her arms behind her head. “Shoot deer, I guess. Or fish. I haven’t seen any deer.”
Roxanne turned toward her, up on an elbow. She stubbed out her cigarette and automatically lit another. “We did, when we were in California for a bit. In the hills there were mule deer with huge ears and huge feet. I think you can eat them.”
“That’s good news. Anyway, why would I sell myself to a bunch of guys who keep me for somewhere to stick it? What kind of deal could I make?”
Roxanne smoked and sighed. “I would have talked myself
off that chain. They were just scared we’d run. It wouldn’t have lasted.”
Alex didn’t answer.
“I know what guys are like. I worked the pole when I was younger, then retired into waitressing like everyone does. Guys think they’re always in charge, but you can manipulate the shit out of them. We hold all the cards.”
“Not anymore.”
“What, babies? They don’t give a shit. Besides, every man on Earth thinks his dick is magic and he’ll be the one to turn it all around. You think they don’t? You should have seen them fight over Shawna, trying to guess who knocked her up. We still hold the cards.”
“If you say so.”
“What, you don’t believe me?”
“I believe I found you chained up and naked. I don’t think you held much then. Didn’t you say they tased you and kidnapped you? Didn’t I have to treat you for abrasions and infections in your vagina? That’s not a lot of cards, is it?”
She was quiet for a long time. “They didn’t have a Taser.”
“So . . . ?”
“Nettie had a Taser. She kept it on her since she got raped back in oh five. Katrina. She moved to Vegas right after. I met her at a bar, and we moved in together. I loved her so much. I didn’t have any idea I could love a girl like that.”
“I don’t understand.” Alex turned to look at her finally. Roxanne’s face in the starlight and smoke was like a leather mask.
“Nettie had the Taser. We could hear them coming. She gave it to me good right in the neck. To slow them down. So she could get away. I hope she still has it.”
Alex stayed awake long after Roxanne had fallen asleep. When she finally fell asleep, she dreamed she was an auctioneer, selling every girl she had ever loved to men with long knives. Her dream tasted like ash.
Let’s just say it’s the Fourth of July
Fucking Idaho is nothing but hills. Up and down and can’t ever see what’s ahead. We walk the bikes half the time, but it’s still not as bad as walking. Long stretch of nothing so we’ve been sleeping in the open. Hate, hate, hate that = hardly sleep at all, but it’s what we’ve got.