Кори Доктороу - Make Shift - Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future

“Can you guarantee the school won’t be private?”

“Well, no, it’s a public-private partnership. You know that; we’ve gone over that. There are several sponsors from the Toronto-Waterloo tech corridor—”

“So this theoretical school would have all kinds of smart-building sensor technology—”

“Yes—”

“Which means it’s spying on the kids, and there’s probably spyware in all their tablets, and there’s probably corporate propaganda from the sponsors, everywhere from the restaurants on campus to the infirmary. And that’s another thing: can you guarantee that the students who need it will get access to birth control? The virus isn’t the only thing those kids have to worry about. Are we talking a dusty little dish of free condoms, or IUDs on demand? What happens when one of those kids needs the morning after pill? It’s a boarding school, after all, things happen—”

“We haven’t gotten that far, yet, but—”

“I’m not selling.” Erin made her voice as flat as possible. “I know that a small farm that grows government grain for the ration—”

“Is that truck lost?” The music from the white pickup truck had returned. Carruthers was sitting up in his chair. His whole body pointed forward like a dog who’d nosed a rabbit. On the wood armrests of his chair, his knuckles had gone white. “Why are they slowing down?”

“Get down,” Erin said, and rolled smoothly out of her seat to the floor. “GET DOWN!”

But he wasn’t getting down. He was standing up. His mouth hung slack and his head tilted, like he was trying to make out the image on a buffering video signal, and he turned to look at her stretched flat across the floorboards. Erin knew that her sense of time was dilating, stretching, that only a single agonizing second had passed, but it felt like he was standing there in the open for hours. For some reason, the music seemed so much louder. So much closer. “What are you—”

And then the dry pops started.

It took a seeming eternity for him to realize what was happening. And then he was covering her, his chest to her back and his fingers curled over her head, covering her eyes.

“Jesus Christ ,” he muttered through gritted teeth.

The pops stopped. The music remained. Erin wondered if she would hear their boots on the gravel, over all that music. Probably not. Especially not with this huge wall of man covering her. She would not have time to push him off and go for the deer rifle inside the house. She would not have time to find the hatchet duct-taped to the bottom of the coffee table. She would not have time to pick up the high-intensity water gun, propped innocently beside the front door, and shoot them with the industrial-grade bleach hidden in its modified glass tanks.

But then she heard laughter, and the truck revving its engine, and the music retreating. And then nothing but Carruthers’s breath, fast and light across her neck, and his heart hammering at her back like it wanted inside.

“Dowling still growing on you?” She squirmed and twisted until she was facing him. “Or are you reconsidering the property values in this area?”

He blinked at her and she realized his eyes were bright and wet. “What?” he asked, and his voice was thick.

“I was just asking—”

“This isn’t fucking funny. How can you fucking joke about this, Jesus God, we just got fucking shot at —”

The front door creaked open and they turned to see Dionisia army-crawling her way out the threshold. “You’re okay,” she said, and smiled.

Erin threaded her arm through a gap in the cage of Carruthers’s body and reached for the other woman. “Are you?”

Dionisia snorted. “I was in the bathroom. When I heard what was happening I hid in the shower.”

“Ruthie?”

“She was in the studio in the back. Headphones on; she didn’t hear a thing.” Dionisia jingled the watch on her wrist. “I had to text her for an answer.”

As if on cue, Ruthie burst into the screen porch. Her hands were covered in red. For a moment Erin’s heart entered her throat, until she realized the crimson streaks down Ruthie’s arms and tank top and shorts were paint. It was the same deep vermilion as her dyed hair. She’d been working on some kind of epic self-portrait this month. “Oh my God,” Ruthie was saying. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here…” She took a series of delicate steps around Carruthers and Erin. “Oh, hi, nice to see you again, mister real estate developer guy. Some fun, eh?”

Carruthers said nothing. He didn’t move. For once he seemed incapable of making a witty retort or mocking remark. He just kept looking from Ruthie to Dionisia to Erin and back again, as though he were waiting for something. Screaming, maybe. Hysterical tears. Anything but Erin’s jokes and the wives kissing each other in between nervous laughter.

“We should…” His mouth seemed to have trouble forming words. “We have to call the police, we have to do something—”

“You have to get off me, first,” Erin said, and tried wriggling free of him.

His attention snapped back to her, and she watched him look her over and realize the awkwardness of their position. “Oh. Shit.” He sat up on his haunches. “Sorry. Fuck. Sorry.”

“No worries,” Erin said, and wriggled the rest of the way. She sat up and stood carefully. There were no holes in the screen. No holes in the windows. They’d aimed squarely at the scarecrows, then, the same as last year. Only this time, they’d attacked in broad daylight. “You should check your truck,” she said. “The tires, I mean. It’s probably just BBs, or buckshot, or rock salt, but—”

“ Just buckshot?” Carruthers hopped to his feet. He loomed over her, six feet four inches of ginger Viking sunburn and spanking new gentleman farmer cosplay from Mountain Equipment Co-op. “What the hell are you saying, just buckshot ? Jesus Christ, Erin—”

“There’s a jack in my truck, if you need it, but I don’t think—”

“Erin!” His voice was ground glass. When she looked at him, his breath was still fast and his fists clenched and unclenched. He was rigid, trembling, a wire about to snap. He swallowed. He pointed out the screen porch, at the fallen scarecrows. “What the fuck just happened?”

Erin followed the line of his finger to the lengthening shadows outside. Abruptly she realized that whatever had transpired for her, something else entirely had transpired for him, and it had revived something in him that he’d likely worked very hard to bury. A phobia, or worse, a memory. “Maybe we should take this inside,” she said.

RUTHIE HAD LIT A SWEETGRASS BRAID AND WAS METHODICALLY CLEANSING THEhouse, all the doors and windows top to bottom, while Dionisia fussed in the washroom for a CBD nerve tonic.

“I’ve got a nice rhubarb gin from Niagara, if you’re interested,” Erin said, with her head in the freezer.

“What?”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, and pulled out the bottle and some ice. She found her grandmother’s nice lustre carnival glass tumblers, and topped the gin with club soda and the brandied cherries she usually reserved for Manhattans. The more sugar the better, after moments like this. She remembered that much. After a moment’s digging she found a purple Quality Street tin at the back of the pantry, shook it to determine there were still some chocolates inside, and emerged with their drinks and the candy on a tray. She set the tray on a table between the armchair where Carruthers sat, a quilt haphazardly thrown over him, and the sofa. She found a place on the sofa, picked up her glass, and gently tapped the bottom of it against the top of his. “Your health.”