Will McIntosh - Soft Apocalypse

Two naked kids ran between us, giggling, one chasing the other.

“I’d like to come with you for a while,” I said. Bird squealed with excitement, jumped up and down.

“I need to go get some things. I’ll meet you back here?”

She pointed at the ground. “Right here.”

“Right.” I jogged out of the park, up Whitaker to East Jones.

Colin was on the roof, working in the garden. I told him I was going on an extended herb excursion with the tribe in the square, that I might be gone for a few weeks. I’d done a few overnight jaunts, so he didn’t think too much of it. I didn’t tell him about Tara Cohn. I knew I would eventually, but it was too fresh right now, it would take too much out of me, and I was so tired. My eyelids burned from dirt and tears and lack of sleep.

I packed some toiletries, a change of clothes, two wild herb books. I threw on my collection vest, its pockets like a dozen little drawers in a curio cabinet, and headed to the square.

Back in the square Bird grabbed my arm, led me to a little pile: a cooking pot, bow and arrow, machete, a black plastic bag tied with a string. “These are my things. Can you carry the machete and bow and arrows?”

I nodded, picked them up. Bird grabbed the other things, and we left. Just like that.

By afternoon I was drenched in sweat and exhausted. I hadn’t slept in thirty hours, and I’d been an accomplice to a killing since then.

We reached the foot-high plastic wall that marked the perimeter of the outer rhizome barrier, and pressed into the bamboo. It was like another world. In most places the stalks were so tight that you had to squeeze between them; you chose your path like you were in a maze, trying to look ahead, avoid the areas where you had to hack with the machete, seeking out the more open areas where you could walk normally. It was a perfect distraction, a mindless task that occupied most of my attention.

I liked watching the kids. They navigated the bamboo so effortlessly. Not only were they smaller, but they moved like they were born to it, which they probably were.

There was a constant cracking. The cracking seemed to rise and fall, louder, then softer, but that may have been in my head. The long, narrow, striped leaves added a dry rustling whisper to the cracking when the wind blew.

It was hard for me to think of the bamboo as something beautiful, but I had to admit, it was beautiful in its way. There were a few birds and squirrels and other little animals around—most of the animals seemed to have died out, but there were some, if you watched. There were also lots of small plants, especially where the bamboo didn’t grow too thickly.

I spotted a clump of senna growing in the shade of a cherry tree along the bank of a little stream. I squatted and plucked it.

“What are you doing?” Bird asked, squatting next to me.

I wasn’t sure how to describe it to her. “I collect herbs that you can use as medicine.” I held the senna in my palm so she could see it. “This is a laxative—it helps you go to the bathroom.”

Bird scrunched her eyebrows, then turned away, evidently unimpressed.

When we camped for the night I called Ange. I told her I was on an herb expedition, and I told her about the tribe, but I didn’t tell her about Bird, or Tara Cohn. Maybe Ange would bump into Cortez and he would tell her, but they didn’t socialize much, and I guessed Cortez might not tell anyone about it.

I described the tribe, though, and Ange laughed and said it sounded like I’d joined a cult, and that my ass would be back in my apartment in two days, when I was tired of playing Tarzan and needed a fucking shower.

It was a “one-night” camp, which meant we found a reasonably open spot, put our shit down, sat on the ground, and we were camped. A few people went off to forage. Bird took my hand and led me a little ways off, and pulled me down into a bed of fallen bamboo leaves to make love.

It was obviously not her first time. Her breath was bad, but she wasn’t all that interested in kissing anyway. It felt good and natural, having sex in the wilderness with this sweet, easygoing girl.

When we rejoined the tribe, no one looked at us like we’d done something wrong. No convoluted moral code, no guilt. They weren’t playing at this, I realized. It was like they didn’t know how to think about things the way most people thought about them.

Dinner was wild onions and blackberries, and canned corn beef. There wasn’t much of it, but I ate without complaining. I didn’t want to play the role of soft city boy. I was a city boy, but I wasn’t all that soft. It wasn’t my first time sleeping outside, or eating whatever scraps could be gathered.

After dinner, people lounged around while Sandra, the white-haired skeleton of an old lady, told a story. I recognized the story—it was a bastardized version of an old movie from the late 0s, King of Our Engine . Good flick, so-so in story form.

I wondered what was in the garbage bag Bird had been carrying. I grabbed it and pulled it over to me. I was starting to get the hang of this place: you didn’t ask permission to use other people’s stuff, you just took it if you wanted it. They were true socialists, way more than my old tribe, which had shared food and energy, but not personal belongings. These people barely had any concept of personal belongings. I untied the bag and peered inside, instantly recognizing the contents.

Bamboo shoots, with black-and-white-striped stalks, the roots wrapped tightly in burlap. I closed the bag, suppressing a smirk. I’d never seen this variety before, but I would never forget the day that Sebastian pulled shoots much like these from his bag of tricks in Ange’s living room. I knew what they were for, even if I didn’t know why this tribe had them. I couldn’t ask Bird about them now, because the old lady was still telling her story, so I sat cross-legged and listened.

A little girl, two or three years old, came over and sat in my lap. She threw her head back and looked up at me, grinning. I ruffled her hair. She giggled. You couldn’t tell whose kids were whose—they wandered from person to person like they were happy orphans, and it occurred to me that I had no idea if any of these people were Bird’s parents or brothers and sisters.

When the story was finished, I thought I’d start up a conversation. “So how long have you been doing this?”

“What?” said the strong-looking guy Cortez had approached in the park that first day.

“Living in the wilderness, not living in houses.”

“Most of us a long time, a few a shorter time,” Sandra piped in. “The children, their whole lives. We don’t talk about our city lives much. We prefer happy stories.” She didn’t sound pissed off at me for bringing it up, just matter-of-fact.

“So why do you visit the cities at all?” I asked.

“There are things we need there, food mostly, and things we need to give to them,” Carl said. He was a fifty-something guy with an overbite. He didn’t have as much of an accent as most of the others, so I guessed he was a recent convert.

“You trade with them?”

A couple of people laughed.

“We give them what they need, we get what we need,” Carl said.

I smiled and nodded. I understood more than they thought I did, and that felt kind of nice. “Are you speaking in riddles because my ignorance is entertaining, or because you don’t want to tell me? If you don’t want to tell me, you can say so.”

Some of the smiles faded; a few people picked up weaving projects and other things they were working on.

Carl tossed a bamboo shoot he’d been whittling at my feet. “We give them these.”

I picked it up, held it in my palm. “You started the outbreak near the square, didn’t you?” I looked at Bird. She smiled like a gremlin and nodded so vigorously her breasts bounced. I was with the people who had wrecked Cortez’s home. Ironic.