Will McIntosh - Soft Apocalypse

Cortez leaned in my window. “We took a vote. We want Phoebe to join us. You want to ask her?” I took a big, sleepy breath and nodded.

When I stepped into Colin and Jeannie’s room, Phoebe was telling them what she’d heard about Athens. It sounded like the Doctor Happy crowd had lured thousands to join them. Maybe they could establish a beachhead to get things stabilized in the region, who knew? As long as they didn’t come my way with their needles, that was fine with me.

“I’m going to get some air,” Phoebe said after a while. She grabbed her sweater and headed for the parking lot.

“She’s such a sweetheart,” Sophia said. “I came in to check on her last night, and we talked for a long time. I told Jean Paul if we didn’t take her with us, I was staying with her.” Jean Paul smiled sardonically.

“I’ll go ask her,” I said.

Phoebe was sitting on a concrete step, her knees pressed together, her feet pigeon-toed, reading an old waterlogged book: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil .

“You don’t see many people reading these days, except the newspaper,” I said.

“They don’t know what they’re missing,” she said. It had to be in the 80s, but she was still wearing her sweater.

“You read a lot?”

“I read all the time. I always have.”

“What are you reading?”

She looked down at her lap, marked her spot with a finger, held the book up so I could see the cover. “It’s about Savannah, back in the nineteen nineties.”

“Really? Is it good?”

She wobbled her head. “It’s okay. I’ve read it before—I like that I know most of the places he writes about.”

“Hm. Maybe I could borrow it when you’re done.”

Phoebe knotted her eyebrows at that.

“We’d like you to join us, if you’re interested.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “That’s really kind of you.” She looked directly at me, something she didn’t do very often. “Thanks,” she said. “I was hoping you might ask. It’s difficult being alone out here.”

We ate a hellish mix of bitter grass, wild onions, and mint leaves I’d harvested since we got clear of the bamboo and there was more biodiversity. Afterward we relaxed in the parking lot. Cortez settled on the tailgate of a truck, plugged our energy pack into the radio

and took his daily stroll up and down the dial.

We all bolted upright when a voice leapt out of the static.

“The Wasteman was having a bubble, I tell ya.” The speaker had a Jumpy-Jump accent mixed with a southern twang. “Told her he was issuing a batybwoy warning on Paddy.”

A second adolescent voice laughed raucously. “Paddy’s always using a toe to do a thumb’s job.”

They rambled on, gossiping in their incoherent slang about the Wasteman and Paddy, about who better watch out, and who should represent themselves physically at the radio station.

“Come on, say something helpful,” Jean Paul growled.

More crap. Termite was working for the firemen, so he needed to be drenched.

“At least it tells us there’s something left of Savannah,” Colin said.

“Let’s go home,” I said. “I’m tired of this.”

“It could be worse there than here,” Cortez said.

“The last I heard when I was still in Twin City was that Savannah was a very bad place to be. We were in short-wave communication with people there,” Phoebe said. “Of course that was almost six months ago.”

We fell into disappointed silence, listening to the two boys talk about killing.

“I don’t care,” I said. “I’m sick of these ghost towns.”

“Where would we live if we went back?” Colin asked. “With so many people dead, there might be more places to live, or there may be less because so much was burned, but it doesn’t matter, because we have no way to pay rent.”

“The Poohbah’s making a zigzag that’s likely to terminate Twig’s hall pass,” the broadcaster said.

We looked at each other; we looked at the floor.

“Well, if Savannah’s infrastructure is intact, I can certainly provide you with all the money you need to get started,” Jean Paul said. “But I doubt that’s the case.”

I guess I could have interpreted that as a generous offer, but to me it reeked of condescension.

“Why don’t we just head in that direction?” I suggested. “We don’t want to head west toward Athens, or Atlanta, which is bound to be worse than Savannah. South is going to be hotter and dryer. North is where all those rifles are. We can scout out Savannah, and if it’s bad we could head north up the coast.”

No one had any better ideas, so we headed in the general direction of home.

“There is no such word as ‘jerkin.’ I’ve never heard or seen the word ‘jerkin’ in my life,” Phoebe said as she jumped from the roof of an SUV, crashed through bamboo stalks and onto the hood of a sedan.

“There is,” I said. “It’s from back in Conan the Barbarian times—it’s like a leather vest. You can store your quiver of arrows in it.”

“I’m going to find a dictionary. You want to make a bet?”

“It won’t be in a little pocket dictionary, but if you can find one of those giant dictionaries that could fell a charging ox, I’ll bet you. I wish there was still an Internet. We could just Google it.”

I caught a glimpse of color in the distance, felt the stirrings of a thrill deeply conditioned in me from childhood. Bright multicolor flags, red-and-white-striped awnings. A Ferris wheel, stretching high above the bamboo. “Oh my,” I said. “The carnival is in town.”

Phoebe looked confused for a moment, then she saw what I was looking at and broke into a big smile. “Oh man, do I love a good seedy carnival.”

“Me too,” I said. “You think the owners left any good salvage when they abandoned it?”

“Probably not. They were probably traveling light, moving from town to town.” She slapped at something behind her ear, looked at her hand. “Then again, the only way to know for sure would be to make a quick trip over there.”

“Good idea,” I said. “Yes, maybe a quick reconnaissance trip is in order.”

“And maybe one quick trip down that gigantic slide.”

There was indeed a gigantic slide, with three progressively bigger swells. “Let’s go,” I said.

We started at a squat snack stand that promised candy apples-cold drinks-popcorn-cotton candy-soft serve , but it was cleaned out. Most of the games were shuttered. We opened the Baseball Toss: prizes still hung from the ceiling, and all the hairy but deceptively thin trolls were lined up to be thrown at. I vaulted over the counter, and Phoebe followed. A huge crate of worn rubber baseballs sat beneath it.

“Looks like they took off in the middle of the night,” I said. “Cost too much to transport the show, so they just ditched it.”

“Yeah,” Phoebe said, holding a baseball in each hand, not sounding particularly interested in what I was saying. She climbed back over the counter. “Get out of the way.”

Phoebe could throw hard. Her arms were long and as thin as twigs, but sinewy. A little knot tensed on her triceps as she drew the baseball back and fired it, brushing the fringe of hair but missing the elusive meat of the troll.

“Damn!” she whispered.

“You’re an athlete,” I said.

She smiled. “Track and softball in high school. I sucked at softball, but I was good at track.” She grabbed another ball, tossed it in the air and caught it, getting a feel. “You’re all going down,” she shouted at the trolls. “I have plenty of baseballs here, and they aren’t costing me a dime. You can’t run, because you have no feet, and you can’t hide, because, again, you have no feet.” She whipped the ball, laughing. It sailed right between two of them. “Crap!” she shouted, still laughing. She wiped a tear from her cheek.