Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood

It is shadier under the trees, but not cooler. It’s dank, and there’s no breeze, and the air is thick, as if it has more air stuffed into it than other air does. But at least we’re out of the sun, so we take off our top-to-toes and walk along the pathway. There’s that rich deep smell of rotting wood, the mushroomy smell I remember from the Gardeners, when we’d go to the Park for Saint Euell’s. The vines have been moving in over the gravel, but a lot of the branches are broken back and stepped on, and Toby says that someone else has come this way; not today though, because the leaves have wilted.

There’s crows up ahead, making a racket.

We come to a stream, with a little bridge. The water’s rippling over stones, and I can see minnows in it. On the far bank there are signs of digging. Toby stands still, turns her head to listen. Then she crosses the bridge and looks at the hole that’s been dug. “Gardeners,” she says, “or someone smart.”

The Gardeners taught that you should never drink right from a stream, especially one near a city: you should make a hole beside it, so the water would be filtered at least a little. Toby has an empty bottle, the one we’ve been drinking from. She fills it from the water hole so only the top layer of water runs into the bottle: she doesn’t want any drowned worms.

Up ahead, off in a small clearing, there’s a patch of mushrooms. Toby says they’re Sweet Tooth – hydnum repandum – and they used to be a fall variety, when we still had fall. We pick them, and Toby puts them into one of the cloth bags she’s brought, and hangs the bag outside her pack so the mushrooms won’t get squashed. Then we continue on.

We smell the thing before we see it. “Don’t scream,” says Toby.

This is what the crows have been cawing about. “Oh no,” I whisper.

It’s Oates. He’s hanging from a tree, twisting slowly. The rope is passed under his arms and knotted at the back. He doesn’t have any clothes on except for his socks and shoes. This makes it worse, because he’s less like a statue that way. His head is thrown back, too far because his throat has been cut; crows flap around his head, scrabbling for footholds. His blond hair’s all matted. There’s a gaping wound in his back, like those on the bodies they used to dump in vacant lots after a kidney theft. But these kidneys wouldn’t have been stolen for transplants.

“Somebody has a very sharp knife,” says Toby.

I’m crying now. “They killed little Oatie,” I say. “I feel sick.” I crumple down onto the ground. Right now I don’t care if I die here: I don’t want to be in a world where they’d do this to Oates. It’s so unfair. I’m gulping air in huge gasps, crying so hard I can barely see.

Toby takes hold of my shoulders, and pulls me up, and shakes me. “Stop that,” she says. “We don’t have time for it. Now come on.” She pushes me ahead of her along the path.

“Can’t we at least cut him down?” I manage to say. “And bury him?”

“We’ll do that later,” says Toby. “But he’s not in his body any more. He’s in Spirit now. Shhh, it’s okay.” She stops and puts her arms around me and rocks me to and fro, then pushes me gently forward again. We need to reach the gatehouse before the afternoon thunderstorm, she says, and the clouds are moving in fast from the south and west.

Toby feels bludgeoned – that was brutal, it was horrifying – but she can’t show her feelings to Ren. The Gardeners would have encouraged mourning – within limits – as part of the healing process, but there isn’t the space for it now. The storm clouds are yellowy green, the lightning’s ferocious: she suspects a twister. “Hurry,” she says to Ren. “Unless you want to be blown away.” For the last fifty metres they hold hands and run, heads down, into the wind.

The gatehouse is retro Tex-Mex, with rounded lines and pink adobe-style solarskin: all it lacks is a chapel tower and some bells. Already there’s kudzu clambering up the walls. The wrought-iron gate is standing open. In the ornamental garden with its ring of whitewashed stones – WELCOME TO ANOOYOO spelled out in petunias, but now invaded by purslane and sow thistles – something has been rooting. The pigs, most likely.

“There’s some legs,” says Ren. “Over there by the gate.” Her teeth are chattering: she’s still in shock.

“Legs?” says Toby. She feels affronted: how many demi-bodies does she have to encounter in one day? She goes over to the gate to look. The legs aren’t human, they’re Mo’Hair legs – a complete set of four; just the lower legs, the skinny parts. A little hair still on them, lavender in colour. There’s a head as well, though not a Mo’Hair head: it’s the head of a liobam, the golden fur scruffy, the eye sockets empty and crusted. The tongue’s gone, as well. Liobam tongue, once an expensive gourmet feature at Rarity.

Toby walks back to where Ren stands quivering, hands to her mouth.

“They’re Mo’Hair,” she says. “I’ll make them into soup. With our nice mushrooms.”

“Oh, I can’t eat anything,” says Ren in a doleful voice. “He was just a – he was a boy. I used to carry him around.” The tears are rolling down her cheeks. “Why did they do that?”

“You have to eat,” says Toby. “It’s your duty.” Duty to what? she wonders. Your body is a gift from God and you must honour that gift, said Adam One. But right now she feels no such conviction.

The gatehouse door is open. She looks through the window into the reception area – nobody – and propels Ren inside: the storm’s coming fast. She flicks a light switch: no power. There’s the usual bulletproof check-in window, a blank-faced document scanner, the fingerscan and iris cameras. You’d stand there knowing that you had five wall-mounted sprayguns pointed at your back and controlled from the inside room where the guards used to slouch.

She shines her flashlight through the counter window into the darkness of the inner space. Desks, filing cabinets, trash. Over in the corner, a shape: large enough to be someone. Someone dead, someone asleep, or – worst case – someone who’s heard them coming and is pretending to be a garbage bag. Then, once they’re at ease, there’d be some sneaking up and baring of canines, some slashing and rending.

The door to the inner room’s ajar: she sniffs the air. Mildew, of course. What else? Excrement. Decaying meat. Other noxious undertones. She wishes she had the nose of a dog, to sort one smell from another.

She pulls the door closed. Then she goes outside despite the rain and wind and hauls in the biggest stone from the ornamental flower-garden border. Not enough to stop a strong person, but it might slow down someone weak, or ill. She doesn’t wish to be leapt on from behind by a carnivorous mound of tatters.

“Why are you doing that?” says Ren.

“Just in case,” says Toby. She doesn’t elaborate. Ren is shaky enough as it is: one more horror and she could collapse.

The full force of the storm hits. A thicker darkness howls around them; thunder hollows out the air. In the lightning, Ren’s face comes and goes, her eyes closed, her mouth a frightened O. She clutches Toby’s arm as if about to topple from a cliff.

After what seems like a long time, the thunder trundles away. Toby goes outside to inspect the Mo’Hair legs. Her skin’s prickling: those legs didn’t walk there by themselves, and they’re still quite fresh. No sign of a fire: whoever killed the animal didn’t cook the rest here. She notes the cut marks: Mister Sharp Knife has passed this way. How close might he be?