Ellen Datlow - After - Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

Turns out Eppie…the girl…(It’s short for Hephzibah. Her mother has a funny name, too, Ziporah)…is a bit younger than I am, she’s only eleven. Turns out she and I will share a little tent behind her family’s big one. Mr. O. will sleep in there with us. (Her parents sure don’t want him around. He’s getting not so shy and is very bouncy. I have to keep an eye on him all the time. He likes to chew shoes.)

They take me inside their spaceship and show me where I’ll be living after we leave. The rooms for mothers are all along the side, and the nursery is across from them. What looks like the walls will be the floors after we get going. There’s a playroom for when the babies get older. It’s full of all kinds of great toys, most I never saw before in my whole life. Well, I do know my so-called parents kept me ignorant, but I didn’t know how much I didn’t know. But now that Eppie is teaching me to read, I’ll be able to read all that. Books can tell you everything you need to know. I’ve got a really good start. Eppie says I’m going faster than she thought anybody could. I think I actually did learn something just looking at those books and thinking about the letters.

I do a lot of work here, but since I’m free, it’s entirely different. They tell me I’m one of their best helpers because I know how to do a lot of things and I’m a pretty good cook, too, and getting better.

Those people in white have better tents than the rest of us do, and the head preacher even has the whole upstairs of the school just for his offices and living space. We listen to “our” radio station all day long. They…we keep asking for more money all the time, though they seem to have a lot already. They keep saying, “God will reward you for your generosity.”

Meanwhile my breasts are getting bigger all the time. I’ll have to get a bra some way. Eppie hasn’t reached that stage yet, so I don’t think I can ask her anything. I don’t feel close to Eppie’s mother, but she’s the one, comes to me and, about another thing, too. I didn’t know anything about that either, which shows how I wasn’t told anything back at my so-called home. Eppie’s mother keeps saying, “Isn’t that nice. That means now you can have babies. We’re going to need lots.” She says, “I’ll be taking care of you. I’m the midwife.”

Things are moving right along—not only with my breasts. The scaffolding is off the spaceship and they’re about to stand it up. There’s a new kind of scaffolding for that. Also there’s been a lot more end-of-the-world disasters—floods and earthquakes, and right here a tornado that ruined a lot of houses in town and killed eight people including a baby, but it went right around us, so everybody here knows that God is in favor of what we’re doing.

There are only four young men that are supposed to be our…“husbands,” I guess you’d call them. They’re supposed to be the fathers of all the new babies. They’re only bringing a few males compared to females. They said they’re the best and the healthiest. Only one looks like the sort they’re talking about…sort of a hero type…curly yellow hair….He doesn’t appeal to me at all. Too good-looking. I think I’m sort of in love with the real Mr. O’Brien. He’s not handsome, but I could see on his face how kind he was. The other three “husbands” are young. One, like Eppie, is only eleven.

Then that oldest handsome boy, Jed (for Jedediah)…grabs me and kisses me before I hardly know what’s happening. I had been out throwing the garbage in the garbage bins, and he followed me and pushed me down behind the bins. That boy…he goes around grinning and looking us girls over. He knows he’s one of the few fathers and he’s already lording it over everybody, like he thinks he’s the most important person on the trip. I suppose most everybody picked to be one of the fathers would act that way, but I sure don’t like it. Eppie and I feel special, too, but we don’t go around as if we were queens.

Thank goodness Mr. O’Brien is with me…as he always is. I try to fight the boy off and then Mr. O’Brien actually bites him. Grabs his wrist and pulls him away. Draws blood. The boy kicks Mr. O. hard, but Mr. O. doesn’t stop. Grabs him by his pants leg and rips it.

The boy says, “Look where he bit me.”

“It’s just scratches.”

“You have to sew these pants up,” and I say, “Okay,” and he says, “Not only that, but you’re going to have to do this one of these days, why not now? We can get things started.”

He’s been boasting about exercising every day up in the ship’s gym. I could feel how strong he is. He probably was chosen for his good looks, too. I don’t want to ever have a stuck-up little baby that looks like him.

“You’re not the only boy that’s coming.”

“One of these years you’ll have to pick me. That’s the rule. We have to mix up our genes.”

“Maybe you’ll be dead before it happens. Or I will be. I hope so, anyway.”

He squeezed my breasts even harder than my so-called father did back there at home. This is the first I start thinking about what really is going on here.

Just as I wished him to, Mr. O. protected me. Even bit hard enough to draw blood. I feel safe with him around.

Eppie and her family are going to be away for a couple of days while they go say good-bye to Eppie’s grandparents. They have to leave Eppie’s little brother with them. He can’t come because of a heart murmur. Lots of others are off to say good-bye, too. People over forty aren’t allowed to come. I can see why. They wouldn’t last long enough.

I’m going out to find Mr. O’Brien a good home. (“The dog has got to go. We can’t be a Noah’s Ark. The Lord will supply the needed animals when we get there.” Actually, they’re bringing some cows and chickens, but just so as to have eggs and milk for the trip.) They’re telling us younger ones to get ready to name all the new kinds of animals we’ll find when we get there. There won’t be any need for meat, so God will leave those animals out.

I don’t ever need a leash. Mr. O. sticks right by me all the time. I think he remembers that I rescued him and warmed him with my own body. I’ll bet he remembers sleeping in that doghouse.

He’s gotten pretty big now, just as I wanted, and he’d willingly die defending me if he had to. He’s exactly everything I wished for.

It’s so hot, everybody in town is just sort of waiting for it to be fall and be cooler. The town is all shut up during the heat of the day. Even lots of stores are closed from noon to three. People are at the movies or sitting next to their air conditions. Some people spend a lot of time walking up and down in the big cool grocery store and the Kmart. Eppie says, “Where we’re going it’ll be a wonderful new world like this one used to be. God will make it so.”

All around town I tell people what a great dog Mr. O. is and why I need to let him go. After a while I only try where they already have a dog. Nobody wants him, and lots of times I wouldn’t want him at some of those places either.

When people find out I’m from the end-of-the-world people, they laugh at me. Turns out they call us crazies. One lady said I looked nice and neat compared to some of them, though she said Mr. O’Brien looks like he belongs with them. Then she said why didn’t I clip him some so he’d be more comfortable in this heat. I hadn’t thought of that. She has three dogs of her own and a big fenced-in yard, and she’s really nice. She said she boarded dogs and also clipped dogs for people, and she knew I couldn’t afford it but she’d clip Mr. O. for me anyway.