Морин Макхью - Wastelands - The New Apocalypse

“You could take care of yourself,” Maggie muttered.

“Don’t judge me,” Cynthia said through gritted teeth. “Fucking that man is keeping me alive right now. I can’t not do it, I can’t force him to wear condoms, and I do not want to have a baby.”

Maggie looked away.

Cynthia continued. “My… my sister got pregnant. I’d managed to keep her with me all this time, I’d promised to take care of her. But seven months in she got sick. Massive headache, vomiting, cramping. Then seizures.”

“Sounds like eclampsia,” Maggie said. “It’s a thing that happens sometimes. We might have been able to help her, but maybe not.”

“I couldn’t save her. The baby killed her, and it isn’t supposed to be like that, I don’t want to go through that. There’d be no one to help me.”

The whole thing took maybe half an hour. Maggie had Cynthia go back to the bathroom to pee in a cup. The test came back negative, and Cynthia started crying again. Maggie coaxed her to undress and pulled out the stirrups on the table. “Kath, why don’t you see how they’re doing up front?”

Kath ducked out.

Both injured men were stable. Dennis was in the waiting room, talking to the gang’s leader, Adam.

“They shouldn’t be moved for at least a couple of days. Especially not if you’re going to shove them in a car and bounce them around—”

“Hey!”

Dennis put up a calming hand and tried again. “You can leave them here, no problem. And yes, any food you want to give us will be appreciated.”

“And protection,” he said, his curled lip almost making it a sneer.

“We’re the only medical help for a hundred miles around. Maybe more. Your people would be dead now. You tell me whether or not we deserve protecting.”

Adam didn’t have anything to say to that.

Cynthia and Maggie emerged a little while later. Cynthia looked tired, shadows under her eyes, a slump in her shoulders. But she also seemed determined. An edge of that ever-present anxiety was gone. Kath was close enough to hear Maggie say to her, almost under her breath, “We’ve got a cupboard full of IUDs. I think we even have a few diaphragms stashed away somewhere. Tell your friends. We’ll help anyone with birth control, no barter needed. Spread the word.”

Cynthia nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

In what Kath thought was a gesture of supreme goodwill, Maggie invited Adam and his gang to stay for the day, to get some sleep, and to share breakfast. Kath realized later the underlying motive: make the clinic compound feel like home. Make it feel safe, and give them a stake in keeping it that way. They declined, however. Adam muttered something about not wanting to feel even more indebted. Cynthia took hold of his arm, whispered something, and the man settled.

They agreed to leave their injured and return for them in two days. That gave the clinic a couple more days to get them as strong as possible, and make sure infection didn’t set in. They had a pretty good track record with this sort of thing so far, but it would only take one death from sepsis to undo everything.

The stakes seemed so high, for everything they did.

“We’re running out,” Dennis said, as they stood on the barricade, watching the caravan drive away, tires kicking up chips of broken asphalt.

“Of what?” Maggie said tiredly.

“Everything, really. But specifically—I think we should try to start growing some penicillin.”

She stared. “Can we do that?”

“I think we can. I think we have to.”

Maggie bowed her head. “What you’re saying is you don’t think this is ever going to end. It’s never going to go back to the way it was.”

“No,” he said, folding her into his arms when she started to cry.

Technically, Kath’s watch shift ended hours ago. A second night on her feet, she ought to be exhausted. But her nerves were wired, her skin itched. She set off for a circuit around the barricade. Still had the shotgun slung over her shoulder, shells hanging in her pocket.

She hadn’t gotten a quarter of the way around when she spotted Melanie standing at the barricade, looking out at the sun-baked plain.

“You okay?” Kath asked cautiously.

“Would it sound weird if I said that was kind of fun? Good trauma practice, you know? Nice, thinking I actually helped save someone.”

Kath stepped forward, well into her space, and kissed her. Jangling nerves stilled. Melanie pulled back, surprised, glancing around to see if anyone was watching.

“We’re not being discreet anymore?”

Kath shook her head. “I told Maggie. She was freaked out that I was going to get knocked up.”

She laughed, hugging Kath close. “That woman needs to chill the hell out.”

“Yeah. But I don’t know. She’s the one holding all this together.”

They walked on for a while, arms around each other. The sun felt warm this morning instead of scorching. Kath finally felt ready to lie down for a nap.

Looking ahead, along the junkyard edge of the barricade, Melanie asked, “Where would you be now? If none of this had happened?”

She wouldn’t be in Melanie’s arms, for one. That was a weird thought, that if none of this had happened she wouldn’t have Melanie. And that would be a shame. She rested her head on her shoulder and sighed.

“It doesn’t matter. This is where I am.”

Timothy Mudieis a writer and editor whose fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Lightspeed, Escape Pod, Kaleidotrope , and numerous other magazines, anthologies and podcasts. He lives outside of Boston with his wife and son.

Liyana had seen elephants form into protective circles when calves were threatened, but this was different. These days, animal behavior was all but impossible to predict, of course—prey turning to predator; trees turning to stone in moonlight—but this didn’t feel random. There was intent in the way the elephants moved. The seven of them—she counted three juvenile males, two juvenile females, and two adult females—plodded into a loose formation a dozen or so meters from where Liyana crouched in a blind nestled deep in a thick copse of thorny bushes. Moving in unison, the elephants faced inward, heads turning slightly, inspecting one another as if making sure they were all ready.

Lower back beginning to ache fiercely, sharp twinges shooting up her spine, Liyana wanted more than ever to shift position, to stand up and stretch. To pee, even though it seemed like she’d just done so moments ago. To wipe the sweat pooling in her lower back and between her breasts. Without speaking, she mouthed an apology to the baby inside her. Just a few more minutes.

The largest adult called, a low rumble that Liyana felt more than heard, her heart vibrating, pressure rising through the soles of her feet despite her thick boots. The rest joined in, a basso profundo chorus.

For almost a full minute, the elephants sang a low note that Liyana couldn’t help but think of as mournful, though she was always reluctant to anthropomorphize the animals she’d studied and protected. Abruptly the sound cut out, leaving behind an even deeper silence. One by one, like a string of firecrackers, the elephants burst into flames.

Liyana gingerly lowered herself into the sagging remains of what had once been an overstuffed armchair in what had once been the lounge of what had once been the Amboseli Adventure Safari Lodge, where tourists had once paid extravagantly to live in comfort while pretending they were bush explorers, seeking lions and leopards and elephants. Sometimes, even though it had been years—seven as best Liyana’s people could tell—it still amazed her to think about how people used to live. At one time, someone had probably complained that the lounge was too cool from the air conditioning. Even with the windows long broken and a breeze riffling through the room, Liyana sweated through her clothes.