Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood

So, God, thinks Toby. What’s Your view? Supposing You exist. Tell me now, please, because this may be the end of it: once we tangle with the Painballers, we don’t have a cat’s chance in a bonfire, the way I see it.

Are the new people Your idea of an improved model? Is this what the first Adam was supposed to be? Will they replace us? Or do You intend to shrug your shoulders and carry on with the present human race? If so, you’ve chosen some odd marbles: a clutch of one-time scientists, a handful of renegade Gardeners, two psychotics on the loose with a nearly dead woman. It’s hardly the survival of the fittest, except for Zeb; but even Zeb’s tired.

Then there’s Ren. Couldn’t you have picked someone less fragile? Less innocent? A little tougher? If she were an animal, what would she be? Mouse? Thrush? Deer in the headlights? She’ll fall apart at the crucial moment: I should have left her back there on the beach. But that would prolong the inevitable, because if I go down, so will she. Even if she runs, it’s too far back to the cobb house: she’ll never make it, and even if she outruns them she’ll get lost. And who’s going to protect her from the dogs and pigs, in the wild woods? Not the blue folks back there. Not if the Painballers have a spraygun that works. Much worse for her if she doesn’t die immediately.

The Human moral keyboard is limited, Adam One used to say: there’s nothing you can play on it that hasn’t been played before. And, my dear Friends, I am sorry to say this, but it has its lower notes.

She stops, checks the rifle. Safety off.

Left foot, right foot, quietly along. The faint sounds of her feet on the fallen leaves hit her ears like shouts. How visible, how audible I am, she thinks. Everything in the forest is watching. They’re waiting for blood, they can smell it, they can hear it running through my veins, katoush. Above her head, clustering in the treetops, the crows are treacherous: Hawhawhaw! They want her eyes, those crows.

Yet each flower, each twig, each pebble, shines as though illuminated from within, as once before, on her first day in the Garden. It’s the stress, it’s the adrenalin, it’s a chemical effect: she knows this well enough. But why is it built in? she thinks. Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we’re about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy?

She pauses, turns, smiles at Ren. Do I look reassuring? she wonders. Calm and in control? Do I look as if I know what the hell I’m doing? I’m not up to this. I’m not fast enough, I’m too old, I’m rusty, I don’t have the whiplash reflexes, I’m weighed down with scruples. Forgive me, Ren. I’m leading you to doom. I pray that if I miss we both die quickly. No bees to save us this time.

What Saint should I call upon? Who has the resolution and the skill? The ruthlessness. The judgment. The accuracy.

Dear Leopard, dear Wolf, dear Liobam: lend me your Spirits now.

As soon as we hear voices we go forward very silently. Heel on the ground, said Toby, then roll forward on the foot, other heel on the ground. That way nothing dry snaps.

The voices are men. We can smell the smoke from their fire, and another smell: charred meat. I realize how hungry I am: I can feel myself drooling. I try to think about this hunger instead of being scared.

We peer through the leaves. It’s them all right: the one with the longer dark beard, the one with the light stubbly beard and the shaved head that’s growing in. I remember everything about them, and I feel like throwing up. It’s hate and fear grabbing at my stomach and sending tendrils through my whole body.

But now I see Amanda, and I feel so light all of a sudden. As if I could fly.

Her hands are free, but there’s a rope around her neck, with the other end tied to the leg of the dark-bearded guy. She’s still wearing her khaki desert-girl outfit, though it’s filthier than ever. Her face is smudged with dirt, her hair is dull and stringy. She has a purple bruise under one eye, and there are other bruises on the bare parts of her arms. She still has some of the orange nail polish on her fingers from Scales. Seeing it makes me want to cry.

She’s only skin and bones. But the two of them don’t look so fat themselves.

I feel myself breathing fast. Toby takes hold of my arm and gives it a squeeze. That means Keep calm. She turns her brown face towards me and smiles a shrunken-head smile; the edges of her teeth glint through her lips, the muscles of her jaws tighten, and all of a sudden I feel sorry for those two men. Then she lets go of my arm and lifts the rifle, very slowly.

The two men are sitting cross-legged, broiling chunks of meat on sticks over the coals. Rakunk meat. The black-and-white-striped tail is on the ground, over to the side. There’s a spraygun on the ground too. Toby must have seen it. I can hear her thinking: If I shoot one of them, will I have time to shoot the other one before he can shoot me?

“Maybe it’s some fuckin’ savages thing,” the dark-bearded one is saying. “Blue paint.”

“Nah. Tattoos,” says the shorthair.

“Who’d get their dick tattooed?” says the bearded one.

“Savages will tattoo anything,” says the other. “It’s some cannibal thing.”

“You been watching too many dumb movies.”

“Bet they’d human-sacrifice her in about two minutes,” says the bearded one. “After they all had sex with her.” They look over at Amanda, but she’s staring at the ground. The bearded one jerks the rope. “We’re talkin’ to you, bitch,” he says. Amanda raises her head.

“A sex toy you can eat,” says the shorthair, and the two of them laugh. “You see the bimplants on those bitches, though?”

“Not bimplants, they were real. Way to find out, cut them open. The fake ones’ve got, like, some kind of gel in them. Maybe we could go back there, do a trade,” says the bearded one. “With the savages. They get this one, they seem to want her so much, stick their blue dicks into her, and we get some of those hot babes of theirs. Fuckin’ good deal!”

I see Amanda as they see her: used up, worn out. Worthless.

“Why trade?” says the shorthair. “Why not just go back and shoot the fuckers?”

“Not enough juice in this thing to shoot all of them. Cellpack’s really low. They’d figure that out, they’d rush us. Tear us apart and eat us.”

“We got to get farther away,” says the shorthair, alarmed now. “Thirty of them, two of us. What if they sneak up on us in the dark?”

There’s a pause while they think about this. My skin is crawling all over, I hate them so much. I wonder why Toby’s waiting. Why doesn’t she just kill them? Then I think, she’s old Gardener – she can’t do it, not in cold blood. It’s against her religion.

“Not too bad,” says the bearded one, lifting a skewer from the coals. “We can bag another one of these tasty little suckers tomorrow.”

“We gonna feed her?” says the shorthair. He’s licking his fingers.

“Give her some of yours,” says the bearded one. “She’s no use to us dead.”

“No use to me dead,” says the shorthair. “You’re such a pervert you’d plank a fuckin’ corpse.”

“Speaking of which, your turn first. Get the pump primed. I hate a dry fuck.”

“It was me first yesterday.”

“So, we arm-wrestle?”

Then suddenly there’s a fourth person in the clearing – a naked man, but not one of the green-eyed beautiful ones. This one is emaciated and scabby. He has a long scraggly beard, and he looks very crazy. But I know him. Or I think I know him. Is it Jimmy?