Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood

“Hey, be cool,” says Croze. He puts his arm around me, lets his hand fall onto my breast, as if by accident. I take it off. “Okay,” he says in a disappointed voice. He kisses my ear.

The next thing I know Croze is waking me up. “They’re back,” he says. He hurries out and I put my clothes on, and when I go outside Zeb is there in the yard, and Toby’s got her arms around him. Katuro’s there; and the man they call Black Rhino, who’s even kind of black. Shackie’s there too, grinning over at me. He hasn’t heard yet about the two Painballers and Amanda. Croze will have to tell him. If I do he’ll ask me questions, and I only have bad answers.

I go slowly over to Zeb – I’m feeling shy – and Toby lets go of him. She’s smiling – not a thin smile, a real one – and I think, She can still be pretty sometimes. “Little Ren. You grew up,” Zeb says to me. He’s greyer than the last time I saw him. He smiles, and squeezes my shoulder briefly. I remember him singing in our shower, back at the Gardeners; I remember the times he was nice to me. I’d like him to be proud of me for making it through, even though that part was mostly luck. I’d like him to be more surprised and happy that I’m alive. But he must have a lot on his mind.

Zeb and Shackie and Black Rhino have sprayguns and packsacks, and now they start opening up the packsacks and taking things out. Tins of soydines, a couple of bottles – looks like booze – a handful of Joltbars. Three cellpacks, for the sprayguns.

“From Compounds,” Katuro says. “Gates open on a lot of them. Looters have been through.”

“CryoJeenyus was locked up tight,” says Zeb. “Guess they thought they could tough it out inside.”

“Them and all the frozen heads they had in there,” says Shackie.

“I doubt anyone got out,” says Black Rhino. I’m sorry to hear that, because Lucerne must have been inside that Compound, and despite how she acted later, she was my mother once, and I used to love her. I look over at Zeb, because maybe he did too.

“You find Adam One?” says Ivory Bill.

Zeb shakes his head. “We looked in the Buenavista,” Zeb says. “They must’ve been there for some time – them, or someone. There were all the signs. Then we tried a few more Ararats, but nothing. They must have moved on.”

“Did you tell him someone was living in the Wellness Clinic?” I say to Croze. “In that little room in behind the vinegar barrels? With the laptop?”

“Yeah, I did,” says Croze. “It was him. And Rebecca and Katuro.”

“We did see that crazy guy, limping along and talking to himself,” says Shackie. “The one who sleeps in a tree, down by the shore. He didn’t see us, though.”

“You didn’t shoot him?” says Ivory Bill. “In case he’s catching?”

“Why waste the ammo?” says Black Rhino. “He won’t last long.”

When the sun’s low we make a fire outside in the yard and have nettle soup with chunks of meat in it – I’m not sure what kind – and burdock, and some Mo’Hair-milk cheese. I’m expecting them to begin the meal with “Dear Friends, we are the only people left on Earth, let us give thanks” or some Gardener thing like that, but they don’t; we just have the dinner.

After we’ve finished, they talk about what to do next. Zeb says they have to find Adam One and the Gardeners before anything or anyone else gets to them. He’ll go to the Sinkhole tomorrow to check out the Edencliff Rooftop and some of the Truffle safe houses, and other places they might’ve gone. Shackie says he’ll go with him, and Black Rhino and Katuro say the same. The others need to stay and defend the cobb house against the dogs and pigs, and also the two Painballers in case they come back.

Then Ivory Bill tells Zeb about Toby and how Blanco’s dead now, and Zeb looks at Toby and says, “Well done, babe.” It’s kind of shocking to hear Toby called a babe: sort of like calling God a studmuffin.

I work up my courage and say we need to find Amanda and get her away from the Painballers. Shackie says he’ll vote for that, and I think he means it. Zeb says he’s very sorry, but we have to understand that it’s an either/or choice. Amanda’s just one person and Adam One and the Gardeners are many; and if it was Amanda, she’d decide the same thing. Then I say, “Okay, I’ll go alone then,” and Zeb says, “Don’t be silly,” as if I’m still eleven.

Then Croze says he’ll go with me, and I squeeze his hand for thank you. But Zeb says he’s needed at the cobb house, they can’t do without him. If I wait until he and Shackie and Rhino and Katuro get back, he says, they’ll send three guys with me, with sprayguns, which will give us a much better chance.

But I say there isn’t enough time, because if those Painballers want to trade Amanda, it means they’re tired of her and they could kill her at any minute. I know how it works, I say. It’s like Scales, with the temporaries – she’s a disposable – so I really have to find her right now, and I know it’s dangerous, but I don’t care. Then I start crying.

Nobody says anything. Then Toby says she’ll go with me. She’ll take her own rifle – she’s not a bad shot, she says. Maybe the Painballers have used up their last spraygun cell, which would lengthen the odds.

Zeb says, “That’s not such a good idea.” Toby pauses, then says it’s the best idea she can come up with because she can’t let me wander off into the woods by myself: it would be like murder. And Zeb nods and says, “Be very careful.” So it’s settled.

The MaddAddams hang up some duct-tape hammocks in the main room for Toby and me. Toby’s still talking with Zeb and the rest of them, so I go to bed first. With a Mo’Hair rug the hammock’s quite comfortable; and though I’m worrying a lot about how to find Amanda and what will happen then, I finally manage to sleep.

When we get up the next morning, Zeb and Shackie and Katuro and Black Rhino have already left, but Rebecca tells Toby that Zeb’s drawn a map for her in the sand of the old kids’ sandbox, with the cobb house and the shore marked on it, so she’ll know the directions. Toby studies it for a long time with an odd expression on her face – a sad kind of smile. But maybe she’s just memorizing it. Then she wipes it away.

After breakfast Rebecca gives us some dried meat, and Ivory Bill gets two lighter hammocks for us because it’s not safe to sleep on the ground, and we refill our water bottles from the well they’ve dug. Toby leaves a bunch of stuff behind – her bottles of Poppy, her mushrooms, her maggot container, all the medical stuff – but she takes her cooking pot and her knife and the matches and some rope, because we don’t know how long we’ll be gone. Rebecca hugs her and says, “Watch your back, sweetheart,” and then we set out.

We walk and walk; at noon we stop to eat. Toby’s listening all the time: too many birdcalls of the wrong kind, such as crows – or else no bird calls at all – means Look out, she says. But all we’re hearing is background cheeping and chirping. “Bird wallpaper,” says Toby.

We keep walking, and eat again, and walk some more. There are so many leaves; they steal the air. Also they make me nervous because of the last time we walked in a forest and found Oates hanging.

When it gets dark, we choose some big-enough trees and string up the hammocks and climb in. But it’s hard for me to sleep. Then I hear singing. It’s beautiful, but it’s not like normal singing – it’s clear, like glass, but with layers. It’s like bells.

The singing fades away, and I think maybe I was imagining things. And then I think, it must have been the blue people: that must be how they sing. I picture Amanda among them: they’re feeding her, taking care of her, purring to heal her and comfort her.