Will McIntosh - Soft Apocalypse

Nobody answered.

We walked in silence, lost in our own thoughts and fears. Colin was half-carrying Jeannie, sweat pouring down his temples. She was awfully pregnant.

They were leaving me even further behind, I realized, moving on to a different phase of life. The grownup phase. I was stuck in perpetual late-adolescence, going over the same ground again and again.

All of us were moving backward, I realized. We were homeless nomads again. Everything we had worked for, all of the progress we’d made had been torn from us in a single afternoon. I didn’t even have a jacket, and I’d worn my old sneakers to the game. It had all been so sudden that I couldn’t wrap my mind around all of the implications.

Up ahead, two people were heading the wrong way on the tracks. Her walk was unmistakable: the quick sway of her narrow hips, the short steps, as if she were walking downhill. The energy of it, the eagerness, despite having just hiked two or three miles through a sewer. She waved, started running toward us. Her husband trotted behind, not looking as eager. Ange shouted her name, then Jeannie. They ran ahead. The three of them met in a triple-hug.

I guess I was expecting Sophia to keep her distance from me, out of respect to her husband, but even while she huddled with Ange and Jeannie she was looking past them. She came right to me and hugged me. “How’re you?” she said in my ear. It felt good to be in her arms. Way too good; I felt a familiar tingle of electricity, a fluttering in my stomach.

“I’m okay,” I said.

“For sure, for sure?”

“For sure, for sure,” I replied, an old island saying we’d made our own, long ago. I let go, drifted back as others greeted her, as she and Jean Paul were introduced to Sebastian.

I was suddenly afraid the feelings I’d had for her so long ago would resurface, along with all that pain. It would be easy to do if Ange and Cortez hooked up. It’s easy to fall into unrequited love if it’s the only kind available. I looked hard at Sophia, testing myself, ready to flee inside myself if I felt those feelings blossom. Not too bad, so far. Maybe the Jasper who’d fallen so hard for Sophia was gone—bludgeoned with a shovel, shattered by a gunshot, choked by a cat fetus.

We camped on a trestle, thirty feet above a sluggish stream—high enough that the bamboo couldn’t reach us. The stream wasn’t moving fast enough to generate any energy, and the sun was down, so we kept our ancient solar blanket and river skimmer packed. Cortez pulled a huge hunk of cooked meat wrapped in a plastic bag out of his pack and sliced it up with a scary hunting knife while Sophia and Jean Paul brought out some bread, peanut butter, and cookies they’d manage to grab as they fled. Colin and Jeannie retrieved water from the stream and hooked the water filter to the energy pack. The filters were one thing we hadn’t had in our first stint as nomads that would make this trip a little easier. Ah, progress.

We sat along the edge of the trestle, our feet hanging over the edge, and ate dinner. And lunch, for that matter.

“What is this?” I asked Cortez as I worked to dislodge a piece of meat jammed between my back teeth.

“Just eat it,” he said, his voice low.

“I just like to know what I’m eating,” I said.

He sighed. “Dog, okay? You’re eating dog.”

“Okay.” I was hungry enough that dog was fine. I just wanted to know. “Thanks.”

Below us, oil glistened on the black water.

“It sucks to kill a dog,” Cortez said.

An image flashed in my mind, of Cortez holding out food, luring a dog to him, then cutting its throat, then butchering it. I hadn’t realized he’d gotten that destitute since losing his place. “I bet it does.”

“It sucks to kill anything,” he added.

“Yeah,” I said. I knew what he was referring to.

“Boy, what I wouldn’t do for a moist towelette,” Colin said to no one in particular, wiping his greasy fingers on bamboo stalks.

When it got dark we lay in the tracks, our asses and elbows dangling over the stream between the ties.

“Somebody tell Deirdre to turn off her music,” Colin said. “She’s had it on for half an hour.”

Deirdre was on her back, eyes closed, her arms cradling the back of her head. From ten feet away I could hear the buzzing of her music pod.

“Deirdre,” Cortez called. Then again, louder. Deirdre didn’t flinch. Cortez dragged himself up, went and tapped Deirdre on top of her head.

“What?”

“We need you to turn off the music. We’ve got to conserve our energy.”

“Fuck you, I brought most of it.” I recognized the music bleeding out of Deirdre’s earphones. It was her own.

“I know you did,” Cortez said, “but when you’re part of a tribe, everything is community property. We all take care of each other.”

Deirdre sighed loudly. “Fine.” She rammed the pod into her pack.

“Is anyone’s phone working?” Ange asked.

“Nope,” Colin said after a pause. “Ours is dead. Nothing.”

Cortez had a radio. Most of the stations were off the air, but a few were still broadcasting. While we prepared to travel, we listened to a report. New York was in flames. Seattle was in flames. Los Angeles and a few other cities were under the control of federal troops, but elsewhere federal troops were battling various warlords, gangs, corporate entities, police, and fire departments that had claimed control of territory ranging from city blocks to entire states. General Electric had claimed ownership of a chunk of upstate New York and declared it a sovereign nation. At least that’s what the radio said. They didn’t sound all that certain. The feds had announced that all males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five should report for military duty. Evidently it was written somewhere that they were allowed to do that during an emergency. The radio guy sounded more certain about that.

“Let’s be ready to move in about ten minutes,” Cortez announced. “Statesboro’s about twenty miles. It would be nice to make it there by tonight.” He turned to Jean Paul. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but it would be safer if you changed clothes.”

“What’s wrong with my clothes?” Jean Paul asked. He was wearing a green designer jogging suit.

“You don’t look poor. It’s best if we look like we have nothing worth killing us for.”

“Excuse me, but who exactly put you in charge?” Jean Paul said, balling his fists on his hips. The immature part of me perked up, hoping Jean Paul would make the mistake of provoking a fight, which he would lose badly. The mature part of me knew it was every tribe member’s job to make sure there was peace and harmony within the tribe.

“We did,” I offered. “Not exactly in charge, I guess, but he chairs the ‘keep us alive’ committee.”

“He’s also in charge of wardrobe,” Colin added.

Jean Paul didn’t look at us. He just pulled off the jacket and squatted next to his pack, muttering something under his breath as he dug through it.

As we trudged forward, the ties glided by beneath our feet, the bamboo giving the illusion that we were moving briskly. Occasionally there were breaks and patches in the bamboo; these were usually filled with groups of refugees. As we passed them, many begged for food. In some places an entire half-acre might be relatively bamboo free, but for the most part it was omnipresent.

“So,” Cortez asked, joining me. “You got a girlfriend these days?”

I laughed at the absurdity of the question, given our current situation. Cortez grinned. He was clearly trying to lighten me up a little.

“No, not really. How about you?”

“I’m taking a break. A spiritual celibacy fast.”

“Really? Why’s that?” That would mean he was out of the Ange business, at least for the time being.