Ellen Datlow - After - Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

“Pathetic!” I heard someone shout. “Zero points!” It was Jenna’s voice. “Player one only has twelve…no, eleven lives left. And she can’t win the game unless she reaches the clump!”

I ran up to her. “Jenna! Why would you do such a stupid thing? I looked everywhere for you! I thought you were dead! Why’d you run away?”

She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “Go away, Russell! You never want to play with me, so I’ll play by myself!”

“Play? What the hell are you doing?”

“Long Jump One Thousand. If you can reach the clump before your lives run out, you win. I’ll show you.” She pointed to a see-through girl in the front of the group, a girl with cherry red glasses, whose mouth was open as if she were about to sing. Maeve. “You, nerd girl! Get ready to jump!” I recoiled in horror. “Jenna…no! You can’t do this. These are people.” She shook her head. “No they’re not! They’re dolls. Kens and Barbies. I have twice as many as Chrissie now.”

I felt sick and didn’t know what to do. I stared across the baseball field. Though it was littered with windblown papers, it was mostly still intact.

A see-through person, Mr. Verini, my world studies teacher, stood nearby. He held a piece of chalk, put his finger to his lip, looked like he was about to speak. But I knew he never would.

“Mr. Verini, come here!” I commanded, and he obeyed. I lifted a small pebble. “Catch this stone.” I tossed it to him. He dropped the chalk and caught the pebble.

“Excellent!” I said. Across the field, a hairless cat with huge yellow eyes and long teeth was sniffing about the dumpster. “Hey, creepy!” I called. “Know how to catch a ball?”

The cat bounded over on all fours. “Excuse me?” she said, her voice like snakes hissing.

“Do you know how to catch a ball?”

“I’m a very fast learner. You have to be if you want to survive.”

“Good. Go find eight smart friends and bring them here.”

“What for?”

“Because we’re going to play a game of baseball.”

“Base-ball?”

“Yep.” I looked at Jenna. “Humans versus Creepies.”

The cat hissed, “Why?”

“Because it’s about time I played with my sister.”

And for the first time in weeks, Jenna smiled.

Two strikes. Two outs. This is it. Now or nothing. Time seems to slow as the pitcher readies herself on the mound, as Jenna expectantly leans off first base. I glance at the Kens and Barbies sitting in my dugout, waiting for someone to instruct them. The Creepies, the Lost, they stare at me, awaiting the pitch.

It comes. It’s perfect. I have to swing. There is nothing left in all the universe except this pitch.

Time stops. Synapses ignite in my brain, a billion new connections, lightning fast time. Crack. My bat connects with the ball. The ball compresses, pauses, flies off my bat toward first base.

I feel like I’m burning, like my head is exploding with thought. Jenna is sprinting away from first. Dirt flies in slowed arcs from her heels. Her face is a twisted expression of glee and terror. The pitcher turns. The ball flies high over the head of the first baseman.

I’m dropping the bat, running for first, watching the ball fly up, up. I feel like my eyes are laser beams, my body encased in high-tech armor. My head is a supercomputer running this game.

The mound of hands in right field is scrambling for the ball, which keeps sailing farther, higher. The pitcher is jumping on the mound, shouting, “Catch it! Catch it!” Even the Kens and Barbies have turned their eyes to watch the ball.

“Screw you!” I scream to the hand who shredded this world, like I shredded so many of mine. “Screw you very much!” My voice spreads into the cosmos ahead of the sailing ball.

The ball sails up, over the blob of hands. The blob tries to catch it, leaps higher than any human ever could. But he won’t reach it. No one will. The ball flies high over the home-run fence, and out into the stars.

“Home run!” Jenna screams. “Home run! Home run! Home run!”

A dozen or a hundred or a thousand feet out, the ball explodes. The sky fills with light as I round second, and the Creepies shield their eyes. The Kens and Barbies rise to their feet. I reach third and the sky’s almost too bright to look at. Jenna squints at the light as I scoop her up, hug her, and step on home plate.

“It’s so beautiful,” she says. “What did you do?”

“ We played, Jenna. I think it’s because we played.”

The light begins to burn away the edges of the field, moving closer every second.

“So what happens now?” she says.

“I guess it’s up to him.” I point up.

She takes my hand and looks at me, terrified. “I’m glad you played with me, Russell.”

“We make a great team,” I say as the light reaches our feet. I only wish Mom were here to see us now.

WE WALKED INTO THE OFFICE WHERE MAMA WAS SITTING. That was how Mama had dreamed of this reunion, her daughters walking hand in hand, as we had when we were little.

The room where Mama awaited us was a dull shade of brown. The one window in the room had also been painted brown. There was no way of knowing what it had once looked out on. The walls were unadorned, the picture of The Leader having been removed and not yet replaced with whatever the new government would deem appropriate.

Mama gazed eagerly at the girl as we walked in. “Your eyes are so brown,” she said. “Like Isabella’s. Like mine.”

“Sit down,” I said, gesturing to one of the straight-back chairs that faced Mama. The girl eased herself into the chair. Her posture was flawless, her right hand cupped by her left, her ankles crossed demurely.

“My Maria,” Mama said. “I’ve longed for this day since the soldiers took you.”

The girl nodded sympathetically but said nothing.

“Were you treated well?” Mama asked. “Were they kind to you?”

“Yes,” the girl said. “My parents loved me and cared for me.”

“But they weren’t your parents,” I pointed out. “You were stolen from our family. You must have known that. What did they tell you?”

“Papa explained it to me,” the girl replied. “Mama had been taken ill when I was a baby, and I was given to one of our servants to look after. The servant ran away with me, and sold me to some villagers. Papa and Mama searched four years before they found me, and when they did, they brought me home.”

“And you believed them?” I asked.

“They were my parents,” the girl said. “Why should I doubt them? Besides, I knew what servants were like. They would do anything, say anything, for an extra morsel of food.”

I looked up at the wall, where the portrait of The Leader had hung. “All lies,” I said. “All of it, lies.”

“So I’ve been told,” the girl replied politely. “But of course I had no way of knowing.”

“For months, soldiers came to houses,” Mama said. “Every village for miles around. There was nothing we could do to stop them. The soldiers knew who lived in each house, how many children there were. To hide even one child meant death to everyone in the family. If an entire family went into hiding, all the children in the village were killed. And each day, the rules were different. One day, in one village, the soldiers took all the firstborns and sent them to the slave camps. The next day, it could be babies, sent to a death camp. The day they took you, they took four-year-olds. They had our records. They knew your age. They took you.”