Морин Макхью - Wastelands - The New Apocalypse

But Karen had said that some people would find her jokes funny. And if that were true, why not give them a show? She’d always wanted to try stand-up comedy, and this was her only chance.

She might give someone their last laugh.

“Free water ?” Karen said, reading her flyer. As if Nayima had promised the moon.

“I could purify a few cups. There’s only about ten.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Karen said. “People are hiding. Besides, no one will take water from you. They don’t know you. They won’t go near you. I wouldn’t take it. You make your own water, or it’s an unopened bottle. That’s it. Think like one of them .”

Karen was in her Mommy mode again. She was insufferable sometimes. Nayima wasn’t going to cross off free water from every page in her stack. Or deny someone who might not have time to desalinate it themselves.

Nayima made fresh water every day, more than she needed: slowly boiling a covered pot of water with a glass in the center on her deck fire pit, allowing the freshly condensed water to drip into the glass, or simply leaving bowls and glasses wrapped in plastic wrap in the sun. The kitchen cabinet had been full of bowls and glasses to use. Not everyone had that, or even knew how to ensure the water you had was safe to drink. She herself had learned how long ago at camp.

“I’m bringing the water,” Nayima said. “It’s my show.”

Silence. Nayima braced for what she knew Karen wanted to say: “They won’t come. Don’t expect them to come.” A quiet plea.

Karen’s shitty attitude again.

Nayima figured the others wouldn’t come—they were all fugitives, whether it was from the flu or from flu-hunters, and fugitives did not gather on the bones of the world to take in a show. Hell, either she or Karen—or neither of them—might not make it back to the apartment. But hearing it from Karen infuriated her.

Nayima snatched up her pages and stood up to pack her backpack: her Glock, her key, and the plastic box of thumb tacks she’d found in the kitchen drawer—at least a hundred—with heads in the soft pastel colors of Easter eggs. As an afterthought, she packed a hammer, and water bottles, beef jerky and an extra pair of sneakers were always inside her pack, just in case.

“I’m coming with you,” Karen said. “We’re not supposed to go out alone, remember?”

That had been Karen’s rule, not Nayima’s, and probably served Karen more. If trouble came, Nayima might not have time to slow down and see after Karen, which she told Karen with a look. Nayima had made her no promises of heroics and she didn’t expect heroics in return, but Karen’s hangdog eyes wanted to stay with her always. Karen might kill or die for her.

Why did that simple caring repel her so much?

“Come on, then,” Nayima said. “Post office first.”

The post office closest to her apartment was a twenty-minute walk on the Pacific Coast Highway, in a small roadside strip mall modeled after a frontier town, with wood facades and old-fashioned lettering. Most of the other storefronts’ windows were broken or partially burned out, but the post office was still in good shape even though the door was unlocked. Most people weren’t looking for anything the post office had to offer—except announcements and notices.

The Daykeeper had come and gone. On the door, Nayima found the newest sign tacked into the wood: the day, date and year stenciled in bright red paint. Someone spent time and care spray-painting each sign and came each morning to post a new one. Beside it, an older paper flyer flapped in the breeze, from weeks or months before: SURVIVORS—REPORT TO SACRAMENTO FOR TESTING & VACCINE above an Eagle crest proclaiming REPUBLIC OF SACRAMENTO AUTHORITY .

Nayima chuckled every time she saw the sign. Traveling four-hundred miles on the Five was easier said than done, even if you had a car and gas. And “Authority” was a stretch. The Daykeeper, whoever they were, had more authority in Malibu.

Also, the sign had implied fine print: if you tested positive for antibodies, you were a carrier. And no carrier in her right mind would report to anyone.

Another older sign read: CERTIFIED VACCINATIONS!!!! At her feet lay the litter of old vaccine needle packs from a long-ago drop or visit from Sacramento. At one time, more survivors had lived here. Like Karen, they had stayed hidden and missed the worst of the plague. Karen had said she’d heard helicopters and megaphones about six months before, but she’d thought she had dreamed them. And she had been afraid to show herself, ready to die.

Nayima didn’t go inside the post office to see the bulletin board, which she already knew was crammed with index cards and paper scraps from long ago, people searching for loved ones or trying to pass on news of the plague. She doubted that there had been many reunions. Instead, Nayima tacked her flyer beside Sacramento’s, struggling to drive the tack into the sturdy wood. She should have brought nails instead, she realized. But four pretty little tacks would hold it in place for a couple of days.

Nayima stepped back and assessed the flyer, only wishing she had included her name. Still, the simple proclamation felt like her finest moment since the flu began. Even Karen exhaled a hnh sound as if to say: OK, I get it now .

One Day Only. Three words evoked excitement. Joy, even. What was the name of that baseball movie with the line If you build it, they will come ? And even if they didn’t come, the sign was hopeful. Maybe hope could be contagious.

Karen moved closer as if to hug her, but Nayima pulled away.

“No,” Nayima said. “Someone might see.” She couldn’t help glancing around to see if anyone was nearby. The only movement was from seagulls wheeling toward the surf.

“So what? There’s a vaccine,” Karen said.

“I bet none of these people have seen a vaccine,” Nayima said. “That’s still just a myth until there’s a better supply line. Trust me, they’d just assume we’re carriers who don’t give a damn about getting infected. It’s a quick way to draw a bullet.”

“You have so many reasons,” she murmured.

“Reasons for what?”

“That I should go piss off. I just wanted to celebrate a leaflet.”

Kyle had tried to keep Nayima away from him too; maybe she had learned the habit from him. But if she stayed with Karen, she would get killed or caught one day. Karen wasn’t careful enough. She’d been too spoiled in her Ventura County hideaway, so far from the bigger cities and the roads. Everyone Karen knew was dead too, but she still had no fucking idea.

“Every morning, I half expect you to be gone,” Karen said. “Is that the way it’ll be? You’ll be a phantom in the night? Like I dreamed you?”

Probably , Nayima thought. “I don’t know,” she said instead.

“I would have loved you even in the real world.”

Nayima looked at her, startled. Only Gram had loved her, and her best friend Shanice, and her cousins in Baldwin Hills. No one else. She had dated and fucked, but she had never made love before the flu. Karen looked lovely in that moment, her face framed against a palm tree and the clear morning sky the color of a postcard. Nayima could imagine how she looked to Karen’s eyes: like a future. The beauty in Malibu was a lie.

“This is the real world,” Nayima said. “Get used to that before you start using words like ‘love.’”

The light left Karen’s eyes before Nayima turned away.

Even at the end of the world, everyone wanted to come to Malibu .

The Pacific Coast Highway was still clogged. That was Malibu’s greatest drawback—still. Nayima had visited Malibu with friends on spring break in her senior year of high school, when most of her friends had been white and thought vacations were for skiing and surfing. As novice drivers they had felt they were taking their lives into their hands to try to master the manic traffic on the PCH. No one slowed down for almost any reason, driving as if they would live forever.