Eupocalypse Box Set

by Peri Dwyer Worrell

  Jessica lay on her side for a few minutes and the contractions slowed. At Akisni’s direction, DD and Deborah helped her up, and held her arms as she slowly walked the length of the room a few times, “It helps wiggle the baby down through the pelvis,” Akisni explained. A contraction hit and Jessica sank into a squat; the women automatically sank down with her and she wound up sitting on their thighs as the pushing urges hit her and her moans turned to grunts and groans. This happened twice more as they walked her slowly back to the bed.

  Jessica put her hands on the bed, but before she could climb on, her knees buckled. Akisni hustled around behind and dropped to the floor. “Quick! Get me that stack of towels! This baby is right here!”

  Jessica was flat-out screaming now, a sound which brought tears to DD’s eyes as she handed Akisni the towels. My little girl is crying in pain and I can’t make it stop! Akisni barely got the towels spread out on the floor before the infant's slick black head made its appearance. DD sat and took her daughter’s hand, getting her own hand almost crushed for her troubles. Jessica whimpered as the next contraction pushed the baby’s head all the way out, and made panicky noises as the baby’s head turned in Akisni’s hands. Finally, the shoulders and the rest of the body slithered out, and Jessica gave a low moan of relief, burying her face in her mother’s hands.

  Akisni dried the baby off, inspecting him carefully as she did so. “A boy,” she said, bundling him loosely. “Go ahead and get up on the bed now, Jessica, and you can hold him.” Jessica complied, leaning back on the pillows. The baby began to cry until she took him, meeting her son face to face for the first time. Once again, DD’s eyes filled with tears, this time of pride, as she saw the face of her grandson. She looked back and forth from his pink, wrinkled, perplexed face to the face of the grown woman she’d met, just the same way, in a time out of place and a place out of time, years ago.

  The two women barely noticed Akisni gently guiding the placenta out. “Who wants to cut the cord?” Akisni asked, stepping over to the instrument tray in the corner.

  “Oh no!” Akisni exclaimed.

  “What is it?” Said DD fearfully.

  “Oh, no, it's okay. It’s just that the clamps are plastic and I guess the machine sickness got to them. Never mind, there’s some boiled hemp over there. I’ll just tie the cord off.” She crossed the curtain and retrieved the spool of homemade string from the infirmary. DD took the scissors and snipped the cord—it was tougher than she expected—and then helped Jessica put the baby to her breast.

  “He looks like a nursing champion!” Akisni observed. She left the room and so did Deborah. The three generations of family were left alone to rest, bond, and get acquainted.

  A little while later, Akisni returned and woke Jessica, taking the baby and handing him to his grandmother, who was sitting in the rocking chair in a sentimental reverie. Akisni checked Jessica and pronounced her in great shape, with no tearing and not much blood loss. “You did great!” She beamed. She, Deborah, and Suzanne levered Jessica onto her wobbly legs and stripped the stained bedspread and the waxed-cotton sheet beneath it from the bed, revealing a whole, clean set of bedding underneath. They pushed a three-sided crib up against the bedside and secured it with a strap, and DD kissed her grandson on the head—the top of a baby’s head is the best smell on earth—and laid the child inside.

  The next morning, DD, still in the chair, woke with a start. Augusta stomped into the room as hard as her frail octogenarian feet could stomp. Still bleary from waking up to help Jessica nurse the baby and tuck him safely back in during the night, it took her a moment to realize she’d fallen asleep sitting up in the rocker, but the sharp spasm in her left shoulderblade confirmed it.

  “What you name this baby?” Augusta demanded.

  “I haven’t picked a name yet.” Jessica blinked, startled.

  “You gots to name him now.” Insisted Augusta “Mama knows baby name when God give it the breath of life.” She drew closer to look at the infant’s face, then drew back in surprise. “Daddy black?”

  Jessica smiled. “Mestizo. Spanish-speaking Mexican Indian.”

  Augusta jerked herself upright to her full, intimidating, four feet, ten inches. She gazed at Jessica and the baby critically for a moment, then sharply concluded, “You gots to name that baby,” and shuffled out of the room.

  DD smiled wearily at her daughter. “You take your time. Have you thought of any names?”

  “I have a few in mind: Amit. Sutokata. Ozark. Hunter. Stark.”

  “Those are all good names. I like Ozark especially.”

  The baby began to fuss and suck his hands, and Jessica sat up and brought him to her breast. DD watched her feed her son, DD’s grandson. I never thought this day would come. Not a day when the world was back to the dark ages; and not the day when my errant girl would be nurturing a baby of her own.

  LIX.

  Honor Among Thieves

  Brownie rose extra-early on the morning of the 23rd. It was the kind of cool late-Summer morning which lets you know the rollercoaster year has well and truly begun its downhill glide into Fall and Winter, so he shivered as his bare feet hit the floor. He didn’t bathe or brush his teeth. He’d stashed his shoes under his bed, instead of leaving them in the mud room like everyone always did. He pulled on a heavy wool sweater and a knit stocking cap and crept down the stairs. Gillie was on patrol this morning; she’d started her circuit about twenty minutes earlier. Brownie had been obliquely watching her; he knew she usually ducked into the goat shed to warm up. They’d all been taking patrol less and less seriously after the raids had petered out; the last one had been five —or was it six? — weeks ago.

  He slipped out the door and soundlessly, unhurriedly, walked out to the lab shed in the bluish glow of the pre-dawn sky. He stood in the shed doorway as his eyes adjusted to the darker interior from the dimness outside. He’d been discreetly spying on DD, Amit, and Josh whenever they went inside, so he followed the protocol: clean smock, clean face mask. A panicky moment when he realized they would see that the mask and smock had been used, but then he realized that the scientists didn’t keep track of one another’s comings and goings, so they wouldn’t notice an extra in the hamper, would they? He drenched his hands in ethanol and poured ethanol into a shallow dish in front of the door jamb. He slipped off his shoes and waded through the —very cold! —tray of alcohol. He gasped involuntarily, and then froze, afraid his sharp intake of breath would draw attention. A minute went by and nothing happened; he told himself he should relax, he was being silly. Everything sounded so loud in the early-morning tranquility.

  He took a small, stubby test tube from a rack under a leather curtain. He opened a box, an unplugged dorm refrigerator actually, with bricks inside that had been heated the prior day in the stove. He took a flask full of cloudy liquid out of the box and removed the thin layer of lambskin stretched over its mouth. He poured a tiny portion, not even an ounce, of the liquid into the test tube, filling it almost completely. He located a jar of beeswax and fumbled with it one-handed, stuffed some into the opening of his little tube. He returned the flask to the incubator, hoping the temperature drop didn’t raise anyone's suspicion in the morning; he didn’t know how carefully they monitored it. He exited the shed, stuffing the mask and gown he was wearing into the hamper as he left. He put his shoes back on and poured out the tray of alcohol. He squinted in the direction of the rising sun as the door was slammed shut behind him by a spring hitched to the doorframe, sounding loud as a gunshot in the silence, and he stifled a curse.

  He slipped down the trail back to the house. Gillie exited the goat barn just as he was reaching the front door; he caught a glimpse of her in silhouette before she blew out the candle she no longer needed in the burgeoning daylight. With care to be soundless, he eased through the door. Then, he froze. The baby wailed! Jessica’s footsteps in the far bedroom, then a pause, then more wailing. Brownie stood still as a statue. What if she decided to just get up and begin her
day in the crepuscular light? Could he slip back outdoors unnoticed? What would he say to explain his presence? But Ozark's infant cries became lightly muffled and quickly stopped, as Jessica put him to her breast and lay down in bed beside him. Brownie stood, frozen, for a long time before he decided it was safe to move.

  Brownie was back in his bed, apparently asleep, by the time the rest of the house’s occupants awoke with the sunrise.

  The next few hours were excruciating. He went about his normal morning routine, hygiene, breakfast, chores, sure that his guilt was transparently obvious. At long last his afternoon patrol shift rolled around, and he went outside with relief.

  Brownie had reconciled himself, years earlier, to sharing information with the Feds. After all, he was just talking. And nothing they were doing at the community was actually dangerous, or illegal, so as he saw it, the Feds were just being their normal paranoid and incompetent selves and paying him for nothing. And the money he’d squirreled away over the years had been nothing to sneeze at. That money, electronic markers in a bank that had vanished with the death of data, was inaccessible now, of course. Isaac was now paying him instead in antibiotics, sugar, and silver coins.

  But this was different. This wasn’t just talk. Brownie had actually affirmatively taken action, stolen something from those he considered his friends, people who trusted him. He waited by the deer trail impatiently. Sutokata was, in a way, his only remaining family. He wanted to be rid of the ampule as soon as possible, and he was determined to tell Isaac that he wasn’t going to spy any more. There was no more Federal Government as such, from what everyone said; Brownie didn’t even know where this information was going, or who it actually was who wanted a sample of the new “battery bacterium,” as DD’d described it.

  Brownie handed the tiny test tube to Isaac with a quiet sigh of relief.

  “You have to keep it warm. Keep it in a pocket close to your body. If it freezes, it’s dead,” Brownie said. “That’s all I know. It was hard enough to sneak into the lab shed and take this without making them suspicious. Usually only the three scientists go anywhere near there. And they can be there at any hour of the day and night.”

  “Good work, Mr. Brown,” said Isaac.

  “Yes,” a third voice said, “Good work.” Tim Schneider stepped up to Brownie. With a graceful dance step, Tim whirled, ending up behind him, and with one clean motion, slit Brownie’s throat. Brownie dropped to the ground, unable to gasp or speak, blood trickling and fountaining from the gruesome second grin beneath his chin.

  “I’ll take that now, Isaac,” Tim said, holding out his left hand. In his right, he held a simple kitchen knife, honed to razor sharpness.

  Isaac backed away. “No, sir. I don’t think so.”

  “Isaac, are you disobeying a direct order?”

  “You’re not in my chain of command. Lee Flatt was my C.O. and word is, you had a hand in his death.”

  Tim made a sudden lunge for Isaac, who turned and ran into the woods. Tim started to follow him, but the smaller man had vanished from sight. The thorns and twigs snagged Tim’s clothing and his feet began to sink in the mud. Tim, ever fastidious, recoiled in distaste. He hesitated a moment, fury twisting his features at losing control of his prize, and then shrugged. Isaac, on foot, couldn’t beat Tim, on his bike, back to the camp. On the other hand, Tim couldn’t explain Brownie’s half-decapitated corpse to the Sutokatans. Tim cogitated rapidly; he could beat Isaac back to the protectee camp, ambush him there, and take the ampule away from him. He wondered what Lee’s superiors, who didn't even know about Jeff, would give him in return for this prize.

  So! Tim figured he’d better get moving. He ran back to the house and grabbed his bike.

  LX.

  For a Season

  Snowbear, Akisni, Josh, Amit and DD raised tiny snifters of French cognac from Snowbear’s private reserve. “To shewanella!” they all repeated and drank a small sip, then leaned back to savor the drink, the moment of victory, and the company.

  The heady liquid was consumed as much with the nose as the mouth, by inhaling the biting fragrance and taking minuscule sips. DD closed her eyes and savored the wood-smoke, caramel, gardenia essence.

  “You know what I’m thinking?” DD said.

  “Probably something obscene,” observed Josh. DD stuck out her tongue.

  “I’m thinking about shewanella-powered radios. Hovercraft. Airships!”

  Amit jumped in agreeably. “No reason we can’t scale up the drone. No reason we can’t scale it down, for that matter, if we can find a plastic-free way to insulate the circuitry.”

  “No DOT or FAA to keep it forever in development with regulations!” Interjected DD. “No more ‘Where’s my jet pack?’”

  “But why,” mused Akisni, “keep it to ourselves? It’s like sourdough.”

  Snowbear snorted a little and nodded. “Sourdough. Spread it around and it will keep growing. The instructions are pretty simple to make the cell cultures. It could go viral.”

  “Bacterial, actually,” DD corrected him.

  “Whatever. The point is, if we want people to have the opportunity to learn to use it, we need to start spreading it around asap, before the weather starts getting really cold again,” said Snowbear.

  “Yes, it’s easier to keep alive when the conditions are warmer,” agreed Amit.

  “Not only that,” DD offered, “but this Winter is going to be brutal. Most farmers were using hybridized or GMO seeds. They didn't have any way to replant last Spring. Then they lost all the technology they used to plant, cultivate, and harvest. Yields of grain had to’ve been pathetic this summer, across the whole country, just like they were around here. People are living on canned goods and crops in silos and warehouses. The bioelectricity has the potential to allow them to grow a reasonable amount of food again. But they have to get started. If people don't have a way to return to modern agriculture, we can expect mass starvation.”

  “Mass starvation means mass migration,” commented Akisni. “Like during the Dust Bowl, or Ireland after An Gorta Mór, the Great Hunger.”

  “So,” Amit said, “there's no internet to spread this around with. Who's going to disseminate the new technology? It's going to have to be done the old-fashioned way, by travelers bringing the word with them.”

  “I’ve been wondering how my family is doing in Galveston,” admitted Jeremy in a seeming non-sequitur. DD caught his eye.

  “I’m ready to hit the road again!” exclaimed DD.

  “Are you sure?” Smiled Snowbear. “You haven’t been away from that grandchild more than a couple of hours since he was born!” DD frowned. She hadn’t thought of that. She dipped her lip in the cognac and licked it.

  “No,” she said after a moment’s thought, “I’m ready for a trip. Jessica has been complaining that I’m too domineering. She needs some breathing room to come into her own as a mother.”

  “Who are you? And what have you done with DD?” Akisni mock-scowled at her.

  “I think,” DD said, suddenly introspective and serious, “that holding myself back from trying to track Tim down and kill him personally, with my own two hands, was my great turning point. I was torn between the need to be close to Ozark and Jessica, and the burning urge to strangle that son of a bitch. I realized after a while that, well, you just simply can’t be in control of everything that happens to you, or everywhere around you.”

  “Wonder what Brownie did to piss Tim off so badly?” Josh idly wondered. They were all silent for a moment, remembering their fallen friend.

  “To Brownie.”

  “To Brownie,” they all raised their glasses, then sipped their cognacs. It trickled down their throats like liquid fire, kindling a glow in the stoves of their existence.

  A few weeks later, they were ready. The two ethanol trikes were tuned up and loaded. Pages and pages of instructions on maintaining shewanella cultures were printed by hand lithography methods using homemade vegetable dyes and charcoal ink. The glass-
blowing kit was running 24-7 making small sample lights, powered by bioelectric cells.

  Amit, DD, and Josh still found time to brainstorm and tinker. “We’re almost ready to start testing out the miniaturized semiconductor colonies. Are you sure you want to go now?” Amit asked.

  “No, it’s time for me to see the Gulf of Mexico again. I want to know if it’s really boiling.”

  LXI.

  Fly Away Home

  Isaac crouched in the woods. The glass vial of shewanella culture felt like a lead weight in his shirt pocket. So fragile! This technology was too powerful for him to hold the responsibility alone. He had to get the ampule to Site R. Site R had been something of an open secret during his training, and he didn’t know its exact location, but he knew which county it was supposed to be in, and that it was on the highest ground for miles around. That should be enough knowledge to allow him to locate their security cordon so he could turn the vial of shewanella over to them.

  The girl they called Jessica, no longer pregnant, had just pulled her little Vespa over to the side of the path and was picking something, the little purple Fall wildflowers maybe, by the roadside. This was his chance to get transportation to Site R! If he could get this ampule to the President before the terrorists took advantage of it, he could save his country! His chest swelled with patriotic pride as he imagined fulfilling his duty, as he’d always dreamed of doing.

  Isaac ran out to Jessica’s scooter and swung his leg through. He started it and revved the little motor in one movement. A slight hang-up as he figured out the shifter, and then the scooter pulled away abruptly. As it did, the basket on the back fell to the ground.