Will McIntosh - Soft Apocalypse

“Are you working for the scientist in Atlanta?” I asked. “Do you know a man named Sebastian?”

Carl seemed surprised. “So you know.”

I flashed a big smile. “I was there for the very first planting.”

We sat and smiled at each other for a while. Another thing I was learning about these people was that they were comfortable with silence. Long lulls in conversation were not uncommon.

“We’re not wandering aimlessly, are we?” I asked, finally.

“We’re heading north,” the big guy said. “To slow things down up there.”

With a newly engineered variety that thrived further north, clogging the highways and airports, slowing the spread of brand-name products even more. Maybe throwing them back into the Stone Age. I still wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. I had no way of knowing what the world would have been like by now if it wasn’t for the bamboo, and Doctor Happy, and any other disruptions that’d been created that I didn’t know about.

A week in, I had no idea where we were. We reached the top of what passed for a hill in South Georgia, and there was nothing but bamboo and sandy blank patches and scattered stands of scrub pines as far as I could see in every direction. It would take the tribe months to make their way north (not that I planned to be there that long), but the tribe didn’t seem to be in a hurry. I was filthy, thirsty, and bored. Sand gnats buzzed around my face, relentlessly landing in my ears and the corners of his eyes, but I wasn’t ready to go home yet. Maybe I was doing penance for what I’d done, or maybe I just wanted to prove Ange wrong about how long I could play Tarzan. I turned and waited for Bird. She was dragging, sweating even more than me, her mouth pulled down in a grimace that made her look confused. Usually she was egging me on.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I ate something wrong. I have to poop.” She pulled down her rags and squatted right there. I was getting used to it. I turned and walked a respectable distance. Three guys moseyed past, saying hello to her as she squatted there, her face red from straining.

Suddenly she turned her head to one side and puked. I ran to her, put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re really sick.” I put my palm on her forehead, and hot as it was outside, it was still obvious she was pulling a fever. “Shit, you’ve got something.” I automatically reached to yank my mask over my mouth, but I’d packed it away days ago, and it was way too late in any case if she’d caught anything designer. I thought of the woman with the giant tongue, panting in the car, and my bowels went loose. I turned in the direction of the guys vanishing into the bamboo. “Hey! She’s sick! Call a stop.”

They called, and the call repeated, further away each time.

“I have something that will help with the nausea.” I wrapped my arms around Bird’s waist to help her to the ground. She cried out in pain, like I’d stuck an arrow in her, and grabbed her stomach, low, on the right side.

Appendix. As soon as I saw her grab thats pot, I knew. I had nothing in my pouches to help that.

The tribe was gathering, a few at a time.

“We need to find a doctor! She’s got appendicitis.” It had never occurred to me to wonder what would happen if I fell and fractured my skull while I was out here.

“There are no towns near here. No doctors,” an old guy missing his front teeth said.

“Well what do we do?” I asked. Bird was whimpering in pain.

“Nothing to do,” Sandra said, shrugging. “We’ll camp here till Bird’s strong enough to walk, or till she dies.”

“I don’t want to die,” Bird said.

I needed a consult. I pulled out my phone, dialed the Phone Doctor number. A recorded voice prompted me to type in my credit code. Wincing at the thought of what this would cost, I did.

“Andrew Gabow, M.D. How can I help you?” a clean, rested voice said over the phone. I felt a wave of gratitude, just to hear that tone.

“I’ve got a woman here who I think has appendicitis. We’re way out in the wilderness, there’s no way to get her to a town. What do I do?”

“Describe her symptoms.”

I went through them; the doctor asked follow-up questions about the exact location of the pain in her abdomen. He sounded miffed that I didn’t have a thermometer to get Bird’s exact temperature.

“You’re probably correct—acute appendicitis. I’ll give it to you straight, Jasper—she’s in real danger. You’re not going to carry her out of there in time, and when her appendix bursts, the infection will spread, and chances are she won’t survive. Not out there. Probably not even in a hospital.”

“What do I do?” I asked.

“You’ve got one option. Perform surgery on her.”

“ Me?”

“Whoever in your party has the most medical experience. Is there a nurse with you, a paramedic? Nurse’s aid?”

I asked the tribe; a dozen heads shook. Shit, half of them probably didn’t know how to read. Most of the rest had probably forgotten.

“There’s got to be another way,” I said to the doctor. “What about a helicopter?”

The doctor laughed. “Will that be cash or charge?”

“Oh god,” I said. I felt like I was separating from my body; I heard my voice saying “oh god,” but it sounded far away, coming from someone else.

“Build a fire,” Doctor Gabow said. “I’m going to do this for a hundred dollars federal, because you can’t afford what I should be charging, and because I’m a nice guy.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” I said. “Somebody build a fire!” Who was that scared little boy who just yelled that? a calm sliver of my mind asked.

When the fire had been built, we heated water. I plunged my hands into the pot of scalding water and held them there as long as I could. Then Carla did the same—she was going to assist. Carla put a knife in the water, then held it over the flames before handing it to me. My hand shook so badly I could hardly hold the knife. The children had been moved out of hearing distance. Four people held Bird down, one for each arm and leg. The doctor suggested we put her in a stream to cool her and reduce the bleeding, but there were no streams around.

“Don’t make the cut too deep,” the doctor said. I had activated the hands-free element on the phone. “About a half inch down, two across. There’s going to be a lot of blood, but don’t worry about that. We’ll handle that later.”

Tears poured down Bird’s cheeks as I held the knife over the spot we’d washed and doused with moonshine. The knife was shaking so badly it was blurry. I held it there a long time; twice I brought it down just short of Bird’s soft skin, and twice I pulled it back up.

“Make the cut, Jasper,” the doctor said.

“I can’t do this,” I said. “Somebody else, please. Somebody do this.” I wasn’t an action guy. Cortez was the action guy—if he was here, he would have done the cutting without breaking a sweat. I’d never cut anything in my life that wasn’t on a dinner plate.

“I don’t want to die,” Bird whimpered. “Please. I don’t want to die.”

With a howl, I cut her. She screamed in agony, bucked violently, trying to break free of the people pinning her down. Like an animal. Blood welled up where I’d cut her, filling the incision and pouring out. “I can’t do this, I can’t do this.”

“How deep is the incision? What do you see inside?” the doctor said, so calm, so far away in his comfortable air-conditioned office.

“I don’t know.” Reluctantly I pulled the skin apart with my thumb and forefinger to see how deep it was. “There’s just red tissue, I can’t see anything.”

“You’re still in muscle. You have to cut again, deeper.”