Margaret Atwood - MaddAddam

In the late afternoon, once the thunder is over, the gleaner team returns. Toby sees them walking down the street, weaving in and out among the abandoned trucks and solarcars, backlit in the declining sun, and counts their silhouettes even before she can identify them. Yes, there are four. Nobody’s missing. But also, no one’s been added.

As they approach the fence around the cobb house Ren and Lotis Blue run to meet them, with a posse of Craker children following. Amanda runs too, though not as fast as the others. Toby walks.

“It was intense!” Swift Fox is saying as she comes up. “But at least we made it to the drugstore.” She’s flushed, a little sweaty; smudged, jubilant. She sets down her pack, opening it. “Wait’ll you see what I got!”

Zeb and Black Rhino look wiped; Katuro less so.

“What happened?” Toby says to Zeb. She doesn’t say, “I was worried sick.” Surely he knows that.

“Long story,” Zeb says. “Tell you later. I need a shower. Any trouble?”

“Jimmy woke up,” she says. “He’s kind of weak. And thin.”

“Good,” says Zeb. “Let’s fatten him up and get him walking. We could use some more help around here.” Then he’s moving away from her, over towards the back of the cobb house.

Toby feels a blip of rage travelling through her body. Gone for almost two days and that’s all he has to say about it? She’s not a wife, she has no nagging rights, but she can’t stop the images: Zeb rolling around in the aisles of the deserted drugstore with Swift Fox, tearing off her camouflage outfit among the bottles of conditioner and shampoo-in colour, more than thirty exciting tints; or were they a couple of aisles over, near the condoms and sensation-enhancing gels? Maybe they’d squashed themselves in beside the cash register, or over by the baby products — finished off with a whole box of wet wipes. Something of the sort happened. It must have happened, to bring out that smug look on the face of Swift Fox.

“Nail polish, painkillers, toothbrushes! Look, tweezers!” she’s saying now.

“Looks like you cleaned the place out,” says Lotis Blue.

“There wasn’t that much left,” says Swift Fox. “Looters were through, looks like they were interested in the pharmaceuticals. The Oxy, the BlyssPluss pills, anything with codeine.”

“Not much use for the hair products?” says Lotis Blue.

“No. And the girl stuff — they didn’t take that,” says Swift Fox. She starts unloading the packages of Heavy Days and tampons and Slimlines. “I made the guys carry some in their own packs. They scored some beer too. Now that was a minor miracle.”

“Why did it take so long?” Toby asks. Swift Fox smiles at her, not snidely. Instead she’s too friendly, too guileless, like a teenager who’s broken curfew.

“We got kind of trapped,” she says. “We poked around and gathered stuff, but then in the afternoon, right before we were going to head back, there was a herd of those huge pigs — the ones that used to try raiding the garden before we shot some of them.

“At first they were just lurking along behind us, but when we’d finished in the drugstore and were coming out, we saw they were heading us off. So we ran back into the drugstore, but the front windows were smashed, so there was nothing to keep them out. We managed to get up onto the roof through a little trapdoor in the storeroom ceiling — they can’t climb.”

“Did they look hungry?” says Ren.

“How can you tell with a pig?” says Swift Fox.

They’re omnivorous, thinks Toby. They’ll eat anything. But hungry or not, they’d kill in spite. Or for revenge. We’ve been eating them.

“So then?” says Ren.

“We stayed up on the roof for a while,” says Swift Fox, “and then the pigs came out of the drugstore and saw we were up on the roof. They’d found a carton of potato chips, they dragged it outside and had a party, keeping an eye on us the whole time. They were flaunting those chips: they must’ve known we were hungry. Zeb said to count them in case they split up into groups, with some of them creating a distraction and the others waiting to ambush us. Then they went off to the west, not walking but trotting, as if they’d decided on a goal. And we looked, and there was something over there. There was smoke.”

Every once in a while something in the city catches fire. An electrical connection, still attached to a solar unit; a pile of damp organics, going up in a fit of spontaneous combustion; a cache of carbon garboil, heated by the sun. So smoke is not unheard of, and Toby says so.

“This was different,” says Swift Fox. “It was thinner, like a camping fire.”

“Why didn’t you shoot the pigs?” says Lotis Blue.

“Zeb said it would be a waste of time because there were too many of them. Also we didn’t want to run out of energy packs for the sprayguns. Zeb thought we should go over there and take a look, but it was getting dark. So we stayed at the drugstore for the night.”

“On the roof?” says Toby.

“In the storeroom,” says Swift Fox. “We barricaded the door with some of the boxes in there. But nothing happened, except rats; there were a lot of those. Then in the morning we went over to where we saw the fire. Zeb and Black Rhino figured it was the Painball guys.”

“Did you see them?” asks Amanda.

“We saw the remains of their fire,” says Swift Fox. “Burnt out. Pig tracks all over it. Also what was left of our Mo’Hair. The one with the red braids? They’d been eating it.”

“Oh no,” says Lotis Blue.

“The Painballers or the pigs?” says Amanda.

“Both,” says Swift Fox. “But we didn’t see any two guys. Zeb says the pigs must’ve chased them away. We did find a dead piglet, a little farther along: spraygun kill, Zeb said. A hind leg cut off. He says we should go back for it later because those pigs aren’t likely to throw themselves in our way again, not after one of their young has been killed, so we should make the most of any stray pork. But we heard some of those crazy vicious dog splices, so maybe we’ll have to fight them for it. It’s a zoo out there.”

“If it really was a zoo there’d be fences,” says Lotis Blue. “That Mo’Hair was stolen, right? It didn’t just wander off. Those two guys must’ve been quite close to us and nobody saw them.”

“That’s creepy,” says Ren.

Swift Fox isn’t listening. “Look what else I got,” she says. “Pregnancy tests, the kind where you pee on sticks. I figure we’ll all be needing them. Or some of us will.” She smiles, but she doesn’t look at Toby.

“Count me out,” says Ren. “Who’d bring a baby into this?” She sweeps her arm: the cobb house, the trees, the minimalism. “Without running water? I mean …”

“Not sure you’ll have that option,” says Swift Fox. “In the long run. Anyway, we owe it to the human race. Don’t you think?”

“Who’d be the dads?” says Lotis Blue with some interest.

“I’d say take your pick,” says Swift Fox. “The line forms to the left. Just choose the one with the longest tongue hanging out.”

“Guess you’ll be stuck with Ivory Bill then,” says Lotis Blue.

“Did I say longest tongue?” says Swift Fox. She and Lotis Blue giggle, Ren and Amanda do not.

“Let’s see those pee sticks,” says Ren.

Toby stares into the darkness. Should she follow Zeb? He must have finished his shower by now: the cobb-house showers are never long, unless it’s Swift Fox, using up all the sun-warmed water. But Zeb is not in evidence.

She stays awake in her cubicle, just in case. Moonlight silvering her eyes. Owls calling, in love with each other’s feathers. Nothing she wants.