Defying Doomsday, page 19
She heard the geese but she wasn’t worried about them. “You’ve got wings, you can fly,” she said. But the sheep, trapped in paddocks, could eat everything down to the ground and they’d do nothing but starve then.
“They’re only sheep,” Anna said. “There’s nothing I can do for them.” She knew even less about sheep than she did about plague. Even less than fish, and she hadn’t been able to save the aquarium. For all she knew the sheep were carriers … but when the plaintive bleats were punctuated by the tiny high cries of lambs, Anna knew she couldn’t take it any longer.
“This is going to be a nightmare,” she grumbled, lacing her boots up tight and clutching her cane. She walked out the front door and towards the bleating, tapping her way up the road to the car park. There was a big curve, she knew, and that was easy to navigate because she’d done it before, every time she’d visited. Her dad took her arm, always, but without him she could manage.
Her cane hit the bank before she did—a steep grassy slope, and lumpen. Easy to trip on. It was just a few paces to the fence. A short distance, but she only found out what the ticking was when she reached out and got shocked for her trouble. “An electric fence,” she said. “Well isn’t that just fucking marvellous.”
She still felt guilty, swearing. As if there were someone around to hear her. “I wouldn’t mind being told off,” said Anna, sucking on the stung finger. “I’d be happy to be grounded.”
Even the sheep didn’t respond to that, though she could hear them just beyond the fence, their quick anxious movements. They bleated again, distressed. Wanting something from her. “Even if I get you out, I wouldn’t expect much,” said Anna. “If you think I’m going to be the one to shear you, you’re sadly mistaken.” There weren’t any clippers, and even if there were it wasn’t like she could see what she was doing with them. “You’d probably lose your ears.”
The only thing to do was to follow the fence-line, to try and find a gate. And the only way to do that was to stumble slowly over the grass, trying to keep her balance and listening for the fence. Trying not to fall, because either way was trouble. Down and she’d drop a few paces onto the road, probably break an ankle. Up and she’d fall face first against the electric fence.
“I’m warning you,” said Anna. “If I could see, I’d definitely be thinking about mutton right now. You don’t know how sick I am of fish.”
There were two false alarms before she found the gate, before she could wrench it open with her thrice-stung hand. “Get out, you little shits,” she said. “Out! And don’t think you’re getting anything else from me. I’ve got nothing for you.”
But she couldn’t hear any mad rush, not even a little shuffle. “You’re the stupidest fucking animals on the planet,” she said, but there was no real heat in her voice. It figured—there she was, post-apocalypse, the only person alive that she knew of and doing quite well with it, considering, and she was stuck with geese that flew away from her and sheep that didn’t have the sense to make a break for freedom when she gave them the chance.
“Well, the gate’s open,” she said. “You can all find your way out here and run along the road when you want to. I’m sure you’ll find grass eventually.” There had to be more of them out there, she thought. More on the farmland, not just these few huddled at the bottom corner. “You’ll have to let them know yourselves,” she said.
She was just about to step back onto the road when the sheep began to run. One of them knocked her down as it went past. Its fleece was soft and fluffy. Another one stepped on her hand.
“I hate you all,” she said.
* * *
To mark each day, Anna took a piece of gravel from the car park and dropped it into a mug. She only needed one cup for herself, and there were fifteen others in the break room not being used.
On the forty-third day after her father left—the first mug, the one with the chip on the rim, was nearly full—there was someone on the radio, someone talking back to her.
The sound was distant, faint, and she couldn’t make it out over static.
The worst of it was she knew that whoever it was couldn’t make her out either. The sound of another person was too much for her, and Anna sobbed and sobbed into the microphone until there was no sound at all, and there was nothing she could do to get them back.
When she woke, her cheek was imprinted with marks from the microphone and her eyes were glued shut with salt and swelling.
On the forty-fourth day after her father left, Anna didn’t leave the radio. The water boiled out of the jug and she had to turn it off before the element burned out but she was too afraid to leave and fill it again, because whoever it was might radio back while she was gone.
She peed into the jug for the same reason. It’d wash. There was still bleach under the sink.
There was nothing on the forty-fourth day. There was nothing on the forty-fifth day either.
Or the forty-sixth.
Or the forty-seventh.
“I’m going to die alone,” she said.
* * *
Anna could smell the tides, knew when they were out. The soft-sweet scent of mud was a dead giveaway. Even when it was raining, she could smell it—although the rain made it worse, for the paths were slippery. But she couldn’t live on fish forever. Her teeth would fall out, her gums would go soft and spongy. She needed vegetables.
She took the fish bucket with her. It would be difficult, she knew. With the fish, all Anna had to do was to make her way along the path down to the little wharf. She always knew which way was seaward, what with the sound of waves, and she could always find her way back to the lab, back along the path if she kept her hand on the railing and counted footsteps. But for seaweed, she’d have to go out to the rocks. They were slick and slippery and she couldn’t see where to put her feet, had no faith in footsteps.
She moved carefully, balancing. Held the bucket out before her, swung it round to check for obstacles. Ran her hands over the rocks, looking for holdfasts and for texture.
Anna didn’t remember all the algae she could eat. There was one she knew of. Karengo. A type of Porphyra—but she couldn’t remember what it was like, how it felt. It could have been anything! A kelp, a red, a brown. She’d hoped that she’d recognise it when the time came but all the seaweeds were foreign under her fingers. Anna knelt with her knees in a tide pool and sobbed until she vomited.
There was nothing to rinse her mouth out with but salt water, so she did that anyway, felt the dry sting of it where she’d bitten her tongue. “I hate this,” she said, face wet and feet wet, wet all through and alone with it. “I hate it!”
But hatred wouldn’t keep her alive. Anna curled up in the rocks, hid her face in her knees, imagined pineapple to soothe her breathing, and tried to remember.
Feel this, said her father. Feel how slippery it is. How thin the leaves are. Sea lettuce, edible as its name suggested, and absolutely unmistakeable under her fingers, like soft oiled cellophane.
Why is it so slippery? she said.
It’s only two cells thick. The cells come in sheets, they slide against each other. Like graphite. It lived in the intertidal, in the rocks. Common and unremarkable and edible, green she heard. There had to be vitamins in it.
There’s another, said her father. Neptune’s necklace. You know that one. The little beads all strung together, her favourite on the beach because when she found strings she’d pop all the beads as if they were bubble wrap. Make sure you pop them before you try eating it, said Dad, because there was liquid inside the vesicles and that liquid was salt and seawater. Pop them all and rinse it well.
Anna filled her bucket and made it back to the lab with bruised feet, scrapes all down her legs and her last long fingernails chipped and broken. “What I wouldn’t do for a nail file.” She sighed. If one of the scientists had kept a manicure set in their offices, she hadn’t been able to find it. She had to even them up with her teeth.
She rinsed the seaweed in the common room sink, over and over in cold water until when she bit through the necklace there was only the faintest taste of salt. It hung in ropes, the Neptune’s necklace, and she spread them over one end of the table, left them to dry in the sun. “You’ll keep a long time, I think,” she said. When they were dry enough to rattle, to be crisp under her fingers with bits that snapped off easily, she hung them over the coat hooks by the door. That way she wouldn’t have to go out on rainy days. She couldn’t afford to catch colds, to succumb to chill. There was still hot water when she turned on the taps and the shower, but Anna didn’t know how long that would last. How long there’d be electricity.
She ate the sea lettuce first. Didn’t much like it, but it was better than nothing. It rotted easily though, and when dried went down to nothing. “I’ll eat you on the day,” Anna decided. “Fresh as fresh.” It was better than scurvy. Her teeth stayed solid in her mouth, and when she scrubbed them with a small stick she couldn’t taste blood, so her gums were all right.
“Looks like there’s vitamin C in you after all,” she said. That was lucky, though she’d rather have had her pineapple.
* * *
She was halfway through the second mug when the radio sparked back into life again. After so long waiting, Anna was afraid to answer. She’d learned that hope was a painful thing; it smelled like hydrochloric acid and deserted laboratories.
“Please don’t go!” she said. “I’m here. I’m here!”
She wasn’t sobbing really, not again, but her throat hurt, was closing up hard, and she could hear her own voice breaking.
Crackling on the line. Then “What’s your name, honey?” said a girl who didn’t sound that much older than Anna, and she’d never been so glad to be patronised before. It helped that there was almost as much relief in her voice as there was in Anna’s.
There were two of them. Their names were Minnie and Mo. “Short for Moana.” They’d been tracking great white sharks, following the migration routes down from Tonga towards the Chatham Islands. “In the middle of nowhere when it all broke out,” said Mo. “We thought we were the only ones left.” They’d kept going because they didn’t know what else to do, and science gave structure to the days.
Their research vessel hadn’t come out of Portobello but there was no other home for them now. “What d’you say? Fancy some company down there?”
“Dunno about Anna, but I fancy it,” said Minnie. “It’ll be a change from you at least.” She was good-natured about it, but the two of them were sisters and postdocs in the same field, and Anna could hear that sharing only went so far.
The end of the world was a difficult thing to share.
* * *
She was out on the mudflats, at the lowest low tide, when she got turned around and lost. She’d been looking for shellfish; digging for cockles in the sand. The electricity would give out sooner or later, she was sure, but there was driftwood on the beach for fires, enough to cook with so it wouldn’t hurt to expand her diet. The shellfish came up easily; there was something satisfying about digging in the sand, although there were crabs in the sand too and she’d been nipped a few times, small pinches that made her squeal.
She’d filled the fish bucket when she stood and realised she was stuck. It had seemed so easy … walk towards the sound of water, and that was the ocean. Turn around and that was shore. But the shore was curved and she was certain she’d walked along as well as down, certain she’d moved further than she should have.
Anna moved slowly, walking towards the rocks she thought, the place where the lab should be—but she walked for longer than she thought she needed to, walked and still didn’t feel stone on her toes. She recited her story, to try to hold onto control. “I’m on an island, and there’s a bar with cocktails and coffee and cream. There’s fruity drinks with umbrellas, and I can smell coconuts…”
She was just about to panic when she heard it: bleating. The sound of a curious sheep. Out of sheer boredom, Anna had started collecting more seaweed than she could eat, and of different types. She’d lugged it up to the car park and dumped it there. “Here, sheepy-sheep-sheep,” she’d called. “How about some nice iodine then?”
It was truly pathetic to be so lonely.
“You wonderful greedy little brute,” she cried, muddy to her knees and with the fish bucket full against her. She clambered towards the sheep, over the rocks that were closer than she had thought, the distance no longer telescoped by panic. When she reached the path, then the lab, the first thing she did was to take down some of her clean dry Neptune’s necklace and feed it to the sheep.
It even let her pat it. “I’m so happy you’re here,” she said, her fingers deep in its wool. “God, my life.”
* * *
It was a funny thing, but when Minnie and Mo decided to abandon the end of their shark migration mapping and skip the Chathams to come down south sooner, Anna was furious. All that time hoping and waiting for human contact and it was coming quicker than she liked. No—not quicker than she liked. Quicker than she could respect.
It was the fact that they didn’t even ask that annoyed her the most. She knew what had done it. Telling them she was blind had flipped a switch, had turned her from fellow survivor into a child who needed protecting.
“Fuck off!” she spat into the radio, and it was the first time she’d ever cursed at an adult when she knew they could hear her—let alone two of them. “I’m not going to keel over without you, and I don’t need any bloody babysitting!”
She’d survived on her own and she was proud of that. From months with the blank emptiness of radio, Anna surmised that it was more than most had done, and no one was taking that achievement from her.
Anna ignored the radio for the next three days, until swearing and pleading and reasoned attempts at dialogue had dwindled into silence and then apology.
“You’re right,” said Mo. “A week or two more won’t hurt. Not when you don’t need us to look after you. We’ll just follow this big bitch out to the Chathams, maybe see if there’s anyone else out there. But once we’ve finished the study, we’re on our way to you.”
“If that’s all right?” asked Minnie.
“That’s fine,” said Anna.
* * *
It was a week after the mudflats and a day after her last conversation with Minnie and Mo when she decided to pull herself together. The boredom had become intolerable. She might still have some electricity but there was nothing on the radio or the TV. Just static. The lab had a library but none of it was in Braille so she couldn’t read it and that was probably a blessing, given that it was likely limited to the history of fish stocks and back issues of marine chemistry journals.
“Still,” she said. “This is a science facility. I should be able to do something.” She could feed herself. She’d found other survivors. She’d even made friends—if only with sheep, and the geese would come around eventually. (She thought she heard albatrosses on the wind sometimes, and it was a comfort but not a close one.)
“I need a purpose,” she said. It was a matter of pride. She’d defended her current capabilities, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t extend them.
Anna had never been the best science student. She picked up more from osmosis than textbooks. And she could never trust herself in some of the lab rooms—there were chemicals and fume cupboards and equipment she had no idea what to do with, but there were also pieces that she did understand. Old bits of equipment, for basic experiments, for students. “A quadrant’s not that exciting,” she said, “but it’s what you have.”
She thought she remembered hearing of random experiments—of the random placing of a quadrant, for surveys. “But I can’t record where I am if it’s random,” she said. She couldn’t see the tape measure. “It’d have to be the same spots, over and over,” she said. “I could tie ropes.” To the wharf and to the rocks, and when she stretched out the rope at right angles she’d be at the same spot each time. There were several places along the little inlet she could pin down that way.
“If I take every shellfish in the quadrant, to the depth of my hand, and count them, I can see how many new ones come when I go back.” She’d give it a fancy name of course. Rate of colonisation of cockles in the intertidal zone outside Portobello Laboratory. She could keep a record.
All right, so it wasn’t going to light the marine world on fire, a paper like that, and there was no one to publish it and no one to read it even, but it would give her purpose. Something to do, something to contribute. Knowledge, in case the rest of the world was alive somewhere. It would show she wasn’t useless, that she could survive and be productive.
“When they get here,” she said, “I’ll finish my piña colada and show them my work.”
They’d be scientists, the people who came. And not just Minnie and Mo, because if they’d been able to survive then others would have too … the ones who’d taken the research boats out to sea, back before anyone had heard of plague. And the lab was home. They’d come back to it.
“When they come back,” she said, “I’ll show them what I can do.”
11
Tea Party
By Lauren E Mitchell
We are all, of course, mad here. I am, and Bingo is, and the Count. Chess likes to pretend she’s not, but it doesn’t stop her from coming to the table when the tea is poured.
She also pretends Chess is her real name, but if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that nobody uses their real names any more.
Bingo gave me my name, Tally, when he saw the lines of scars on my arms. I called him Bingo because after we’d talked a while it turned out he’d checked off just as much time on the ward, dancing back and forth across the DSM, as I have. Or had. I guess that stuff doesn’t count for much anymore. Wherever the doctors did their dying, it wasn’t out here, miles-kilometres-light-years from the city. There aren’t prescription pads out here. The whole damn world went off-script.
