Морин Макхью - Wastelands - The New Apocalypse

He’d let something happen to them over his dead body.

That’s what you’re afraid of.

You don’t pack your music. You hope that what’s left on your dead phone is enough to keep you going if the power comes back on. Part of you wishes that you could play something to steady yourself, to amp you up for the dash outside to find a car, but you have to convince yourself in silence. It’s hard.

It’s useless to take your heavy laptop or the hard drives. You hide them all in the garden of your tiny flat, buried after wrapping them in garbage bags to keep the dirt and moisture out. Music has saved your life more times than you can count. You hope one day that you’ll be back to dig up your lifelines, the songs that held you safe.

Cash. Just in case it still works. You don’t have much left after your surgery, but thank God that happened before the horde came. It might help to bribe someone, to convince them to let you go. You might be able to trade it for something useful, if someone is that stupid.

A first aid kit. If you’re seriously bitten and your blood mixes with theirs, it’ll all be over, but you might need the supplies for minor scrapes, accidents. You know how to strap a broken arm, how to cool down a black eye. Useful survival skills for anyone, really.

You leave behind your compass. Someone else who doesn’t have your sense of direction might find it, might need it. You hope that it keeps somebody safe.

You hope that there’s somebody else out there to keep safe.

Someone had left a sleeping bag in your room after a music festival, so you strap that to your pack. Maybe you should take your yoga mat, to sleep on, but you figure that it’s too flashy to carry safely (that’ll teach you for picking out a lime-green mat), and it’s so thin that you might as well just sleep on the dirt if you can snatch some rest. Your stepdad is the one with all of the decent camping gear, anyway, and by the time you see him, you probably won’t need it.

The sun is setting, and that slows the horde down, not that you know why. You could bargain with yourself for another night here, maybe three, but the guilt at staying safe when your family might need you is pushing you out the door. With luck, you’ll be home in a few days. You just need to take those first few steps.

You hear the thump and sway of the horde outside, and you make sure your knife is loose in its sheath. You know to drive it up under their chin, because the blade is long enough to reach the brain from there, and there’s less of a chance it’ll stick in bone.

Just a few more things, to give you luck, to keep you safe.

You sort through your nail polish and pick out your favourite. Bright red. You felt a little weird about wearing it after you came out. But you get to decide how you present, what makes you feel like you, and what you love.

Especially now.

The last thing you pack before you venture out into slow-moving danger is the tear-stained letter that you wrote to your grown-up self when you were thirteen, begging yourself to keep going, to make it, to survive. You always knew it would be hard, but you couldn’t have guessed what you’d face. You nearly laugh then, because the horde is almost the least of it.

You tuck a couple of blank sheets of paper and a pen in with the letter, because when you’re home, when you’re safe with your family, you’re going to write another letter right back to yourself.

You’re going to say thank you, and tell the thirteen-year-old version of you that you love them, that you stayed brave, and that you made it.

Greg van Eekhoutis the author of several novels, including the California Bones trilogy and the middle-grade novels, Voyage of the Dogs and the upcoming Cog . His work has been shortlisted for the Nebula and Andre Norton awards, and reprinted in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy . Visit writingandsnacks.com.

Every season there are fewer eggs.

Every season, fewer chicks hatch.

Every season, fewer hatchlings survive.

Our flock diminishes, but we remain, and we gather beneath the full night sun to recall our glory. Barefeather’s old legs need two tries to leap to the top of the log in the center of the clearing. She shows more flesh than plumage, and I don’t think she’ll be here to lead us next season. We gaze at her in reverence, but I do not know if she sees us through her clouded eyes.

She shifts her weight, flutters her wings, and begins the chant.

“Hello,” she says.

“Hello,” we repeat as a chorus.

“Hello,” she says again.

“Hello,” we respond.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

I listen for the rustle of small mammals in the brush, but there is nothing. My stomach rumbles. Even Barefeather strains for the sound of prey. We are all hungry.

Barefeather resumes.

“If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with mesothelioma you may be entitled to financial compensation,” she calls.

“If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with mesothelioma you may be entitled to financial compensation,” we answer.

“Honey, have you seen my keys?” she says.

“Honey, have you seen my keys?” we say.

“Who’s a pretty bird?”

“Who’s a pretty bird?”

“Let’s go to the mall.”

“Let’s go to the mall.”

She takes us through the ancient litany, the echoes of a time before we changed. Before we forgot our own calls, when we perched on the shoulders of gods. From the time when we could fly.

“Polly wanna cracker?” Barefeather says.

“Polly wanna cracker?” we conclude.

Last season, my nest mate, Green, left the flock. Nobody wanted him to go, but nobody stopped him, because he left to search for more of our kind. There is strength in numbers, and our flock has grown sparse as the feathers on Barefeather’s back. The elders say the gods changed the world with their magnificent fires. One day the bounty of the forests will return, but we will be gone by then.

So Green said he wanted to go outside the tree line, across the river, and beyond our range. Even if he didn’t find a new flock, perhaps he’d find prey, and with full bellies we might lay more eggs and hatch more healthy chicks.

When he didn’t return by the end of the season, I feared he was dead. Months later, I was sure of it. So, when he stumbles into the clearing as the last echoes of our chant fade into the boughs, we squawk with delight and run to him.

Crusted blood streaks his head and chest. One eye is gummed closed. I shudder when I see the crack in his bill.

“Green, where have you been? What happened to you?”

Before he can answer, Barefeather nudges me away. “First we care for our brother. Then, we talk. Gather food for him.”

We bring him seeds. He hunches with puffed feathers, weak and famished. Barefeather cracks open a nut and regurgitates for him, as if Green is a hatchling.

“My brother,” I say, gently picking at the mites in his dusty feathers. “My nest mate. It is me, Dullclaw. It is me, your sister.”

After a time, still trembling with weakness, Green speaks.

“I went outside the tree line,” he says. “Across the river, beyond our range. I left the forest and ached in the desert. I floated on wood across a sea and climbed a mountain, where I froze beneath the stars. When I came down the other side of the mountain, I found a new forest.”

We shuffle and scratch with questions.

Barefeather manages a sharp look, even with her ghost eyes. But I cannot help myself. I must know.

“Green, did you find prey?”

“Only a little,” he croaks. “Insects. A dead mouse. Some strings of muscle.”