Морин Макхью - Wastelands - The New Apocalypse

“It’s a ritual,” James said. Liyana nodded, though he may as well have been speaking to himself.

Clearly it was a ritual. There was no doubt about that. But what Liyana hadn’t realized was the purpose, which now glared right at her, as obvious as the bright sun shining in the open sky above. Elephants’ graveyards weren’t real, but they remembered their ancestors, understood the passing of generations. Of course they would understand when that cycle ground to a halt. The sadness she saw now in the matriarch’s eyes wasn’t just for her lost calf, it was for the loss of every elephant in the world, the end of life. How many people had killed themselves in the last seven years? The cataclysm had somehow given these elephants the ability to burn, and they’d come to the conclusion that self-immolation was the best remaining option.

These thoughts swirled through Liyana’s mind, touching her consciousness then flitting off, barely cohering. She couldn’t think of what to do. Couldn’t think that there was anything to do. Something thudded against the inside of her stomach, and she looked down, confused, her hands instinctively cradling. The baby kicked again.

Liyana turned to James. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Please stay here.” And without waiting for a response, she ran as best she could into the center of the circle of elephants.

They shuffled backward and forward, their trunks flailing, but Liyana held her hands out, kept her head down, trying to appear submissive and unthreatening. As if she could threaten a creature of this size.

Heat radiated off the animals, baking Liyana’s skin as if she was standing in front of an open oven. This close, splotches of pink and red danced across the elephants’ wrinkled gray skin. Shimmery heat waves blurred their edges.

“Please,” she said. “You don’t need to do this. The world isn’t over. It’s going to go on. We’re all going to go on.” The elephants calmed at her tone, but the temperature still rose. Liyana smelled ozone, and worried that her hair would singe if she didn’t move soon.

Such heat couldn’t be good for her baby, or for Liyana herself. Her head swam, and she feared she’d swoon, that if she fell she’d be caught up in the conflagration when the elephants set themselves alight. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t go.” Her eyelids fluttered.

They shot back open when she felt the air cool and something warm press against her distended stomach, and she found herself staring into the face of the matriarch, the elephant’s massive ears flapping slightly, fanning the sweat from Liyana’s forehead. It was the closest she’d ever been to an elephant in all her years studying them. Both before and after the destruction of the world, she’d always been at a distance. The matriarch’s eyes gleamed with deep intelligence and curiosity. She probed again with her trunk, then used it to lift the hem of Liyana’s shirt. Liyana removed it the rest of the way. Around her, the other elephants pressed closer, their bodies cooling, but still giving off residual warmth. She imagined herself in a cocoon of elephant hide, and laughed.

The matriarch lightly pressed her trunk against Liyana’s belly and the other elephants joined her. As if sensing them, the baby inside her kicked once, then again and again and again, a rapid tattoo like she was happily stomping her feet, dancing to some inaudible music.

An array of calls sounded from the elephants around her, high and low, a rippling melody that thrummed through her whole body. Trumpeting sounded in the distance, the more distant members of the clan joining in. They sang to her baby for what felt like ages, before they suddenly stopped, turned, and exited the clearing, the matriarch the last to go, her trunk lingering on Liyana’s stomach for a long moment before she, too, left, pausing to turn back only once, catching Liyana’s eye as she stood frozen to the spot in the middle of the ashes. The matriarch blinked slowly, then walked away.

In an instant, James was at her side as Liyana sagged into the ashes of the dead elephants, breath hitching in a combination of laughter and relief. She still wasn’t sure what she’d done, but she believed she’d made a promise to the elephants. She prayed she could keep it.

After the screaming and the unimaginable pain and the gritted teeth, the contractions and pushing, a little girl fell into the world. Crying and slick and sparkling with some unreal internal glow, since nothing in this world could be the same as it had once been. But Liyana held her daughter, and cried unabashed tears of joy. This was her girl. She was alive and in the world, however warped that world had become. She was human. She was magic.

Hugh Howeyis the New York Times bestselling author of Wool, Sand, Beacon 23 , and Half Way Home . His books have been translated into more than forty languages. His latest, Machine Learning , collects his short fiction into one volume. He is also the co-editor (with Gary Whitta and Christie Yant) of the ACLU charity anthology Resist: Tales From a Future Worth Fighting Against and (with John Joseph Adams) of The Apocalypse Triptych. He currently lives on a catamaran that he’s sailing around the world.

There’s a cave behind our house with the bones of those we’ve eaten. It’s been many years since anyone was put inside, but I pass this cave every day on the trail back to the cassava patch. Mid-morning, the sun lances in at the right angle and white bone gleams in the darkness. Hollow-sad eyes peer out—the skulls of those who wish we’d eaten more cassava in their day.

We stopped eating people before I was born, but only barely. Our chief is ninety-two, and human flesh has passed his lips. We like to think the past is further away than it really is, but the past is like the killer in a movie that you know is standing right behind someone, if they’d just turn around and look. It’s dangerous not to look. That’s when the past will get you.

I grew up on a small island in the Lau Group of the Fijian archipelago. When I was a young boy, I discovered movies and got addicted for a spell. We watched them on a battered cell phone charged by a solar panel, me and my best friend Tui, one ear bud each, sharing laughs and ear wax. There was no cell service here, of course. Never has been and never will be. The past and the present are fast friends in the Lau. You can hardly tell them apart.

I was in my twenties when the first tourists visited our island. Before this, they were not allowed, even as cruise ships and resorts filled the rest of Fiji far to the north. Our small islands were farther away and deemed special. Special meant no development, no jobs, no civilization. It meant cleaning the family solar panel with a wet rag, topping up an old car battery with boiled water, and learning how to wire up a voltage regulator—all so we could have light in our home after sunset in the winter.

The handful of tourists who eventually came arrived by small boat, much as our ancestors did. The islands of the Lau are a pain to reach; a strong wind blows without pause in the wrong direction. They call these “trade winds,” but it must mean trade for someone else. These winds have kept us isolated as the rest of Fiji became a giant resort. The winds blow and blow, always in one direction. The palm trees here lean north like they’re yearning for elsewhere.

The arrival of white people caused a stir. They came from places we’d heard of but never dreamed of visiting: France, Germany, America. People with pale skin had showed up here before, hundreds of years ago. They taught us religion, that we should to dress from ankle to wrist, and to please not eat each other. Especially not them. Some of their bones are in the cave behind my house.