After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia (14 page)

But no good place comes along. Then we see a big doghouse at the end of a dog run,
but no dog there and it’s quite a ways from the house. At least it’s out of the rain.
We crawl in. I get stiff all curled up there and have to stretch my legs out into
the rain. We don’t sleep much. We leave as soon as it’s even a little bit light. I
share one of my peanut-butter sandwiches with Mr. O’Brien.

That morning just about at dawn (we’ve already walked for a while), I see a school
way out here in the middle of nowhere. At least it says school on it. It’s no bigger
than a little house and has a big backyard with an old sand pile and a slide and two
swings. I know about those from a long time ago.

I push on the doors and look in the windows. It looks abandoned. But what a nice place
to hide. Two rooms. A few little chairs and tables. It would be nice if some books
were still there, too, but I don’t see any.

Except I can’t get in. I try all the windows but I don’t want to break any.

We give up and go on.

I share another peanut-butter sandwich with Mr. O.

At evening we come to another school. This one is entirely different. It’s big and
it looks scary. It says school on it, but almost all the people there are grown-ups.
And some look very old. They’re kind of raggedy, too. The men have beards and the
women wear long skirts. There’s a big banner right under where it says school, but
of course I can’t read it.

They’re all very busy, but not doing school-like things. They’ve rigged up all sorts
of unschoolish tents, and there are canvas shades over what looks like a cooking place
with lots of pots. In the big back field they’re building a huge shiny long thing
with no windows at all. Hard to tell what it is because of the scaffolding around
it. It takes up the whole field. People in neat white coveralls are working on it.

I’m going to ask somebody what’s going on, but I’d like to ask a kid, except there
aren’t very many around. Odd, but all the kids I see are girls and they’re all wearing
skirts.

I wait and watch a long time. Good that Mr. O’Brien seems to like being with me and
that he’s a nice quiet dog. We’re both the shy type. We share another peanut-butter
sandwich. We’re going to run out pretty soon.

We’re sitting behind some big bushes to eat and we’re not paying attention. All of
a sudden here’s just what I wanted, a girl about my age practically right beside us.
She’s wearing a long torn dirty skirt.

First thing she says is—that is, after we stare at each other for a couple of minutes—“I
wish I could wear blue jeans like yours, but they won’t let me. Skirts are always
in the way. Are you trying to hide? What’s your dog’s name?”

“Mr. O’Brien.”

She sits down right next to us and looks as if she’d like to share our sandwich with
us, but I can smell what’s cooking in those pots under the canvas shades, so I know
she’ll get food.

“Why are you hiding?”

“We’re not. We’re just having lunch. What does that say there, under where it says
School
?”

“Can’t you read?”

I really am embarrassed. I almost say I can except I need glasses. But I decide not
to lie.

“It says,
Prepare, the end is nigh
.”

“The end of what?”

“The world of course, silly.” She looks at me as if I really am dumb. “It’s in the
middle of ending right now, can’t you tell? Everybody knows that. All you have to
do is look around. And look how hot it is already and it isn’t even lunchtime.”

Have they kept me so isolated back home I don’t even know it’s the end of the world?
I wouldn’t be surprised, though. When I was cleaning up in the kitchen, I heard the
news when they listened to it and things did sound bad. Lots of wars and earthquakes
and horrible toxic spills, and even right near us there was a gas truck crashed into
a house and exploded and killed everybody and burned up four houses.

“You have to get ready,” she says.

“How? What should I do?”

“You can join us. We’re going to a better world. We need more young girls. It’s going
to take a long time to get somewhere, and it’s the young women who’ll have to have
a lot of babies on the way so we can start up the new population. We won’t need a
lot of men. I’m going to have all the babies I can. I’m precious. You would be too,
if you joined us.”

I’m thinking how lucky it is that I ran into these people.

“If I join can you teach me to read?”

“Sure, and I’m good at reading.”

I can’t believe my luck.

“You can’t bring a dog, though. You’ll have to get rid of him.”

“Right now?”

Maybe I’m not as lucky as I thought.

“Well, pretty soon, anyway. You can find it a good home, though I don’t suppose this
world will last much longer, what with all that’s been happening, but dogs don’t live
a long time anyway. He might die before the world ends, so that’s all right.”

Not so all right with me.

“Come on, they’ll be glad to have you join up. I’ll ask them if you can keep the dog
till we leave. They’ll probably say yes because, like I said, they really do want
more girls like us.” She says again, “We’re the most important ones of all.”

Turns out they do want me. I make them all happy, especially when I say I’m running
away and my people wouldn’t dare tell the police since I was illegal in the first
place. They think I’ve come to the exact right spot. “Sent by God,” they say. But
they sure don’t like Mr. O’Brien. (“That’s a growing dog. He’ll eat a lot.”) I promise
I won’t ever take more than my share and I’ll split my food with him. I tell them
I’m used to making do with less.

Turns out Eppie…the girl…(It’s short for Hephzibah. Her mother has a funny name, too,
Ziporah)…is a bit younger than I am, she’s only eleven. Turns out she and I will share
a little tent behind her family’s big one. Mr. O. will sleep in there with us. (Her
parents sure don’t want him around. He’s getting not so shy and is very bouncy. I
have to keep an eye on him all the time. He likes to chew shoes.)

They take me inside their spaceship and show me where I’ll be living after we leave.
The rooms for mothers are all along the side, and the nursery is across from them.
What looks like the walls will be the floors after we get going. There’s a playroom
for when the babies get older. It’s full of all kinds of great toys, most I never
saw before in my whole life. Well, I do know my so-called parents kept me ignorant,
but I didn’t know how much I didn’t know. But now that Eppie is teaching me to read,
I’ll be able to read all that. Books can tell you everything you need to know. I’ve
got a really good start. Eppie says I’m going faster than she thought anybody could.
I think I actually did learn something just looking at those books and thinking about
the letters.

I do a lot of work here, but since I’m free, it’s entirely different. They tell me
I’m one of their best helpers because I know how to do a lot of things and I’m a pretty
good cook, too, and getting better.

Those people in white have better tents than the rest of us do, and the head preacher
even has the whole upstairs of the school just for his offices and living space. We
listen to “our” radio station all day long. They…we keep asking for more money all
the time, though they seem to have a lot already. They keep saying, “God will reward
you for your generosity.”

Meanwhile my breasts are getting bigger all the time. I’ll have to get a bra some
way. Eppie hasn’t reached that stage yet, so I don’t think I can ask her anything.
I don’t feel close to Eppie’s mother, but she’s the one, comes to me and, about another
thing, too. I didn’t know anything about that either, which shows how I wasn’t told
anything back at my so-called home. Eppie’s mother keeps saying, “Isn’t that nice.
That means now you can have babies. We’re going to need lots.” She says, “I’ll be
taking care of you. I’m the midwife.”

Things are moving right along—not only with my breasts. The scaffolding is off the
spaceship and they’re about to stand it up. There’s a new kind of scaffolding for
that. Also there’s been a lot more end-of-the-world disasters—floods and earthquakes,
and right here a tornado that ruined a lot of houses in town and killed eight people
including a baby, but it went right around us, so everybody here knows that God is
in favor of what we’re doing.

There are only four young men that are supposed to be our…“husbands,” I guess you’d
call them. They’re supposed to be the fathers of all the new babies. They’re only
bringing a few males compared to females. They said they’re the best and the healthiest.
Only one looks like the sort they’re talking about…sort of a hero type…curly yellow
hair.…He doesn’t appeal to me at all. Too good-looking. I think I’m sort of in love
with the real Mr. O’Brien. He’s not handsome, but I could see on his face how kind
he was. The other three “husbands” are young. One, like Eppie, is only eleven.

Then that oldest handsome boy, Jed (for Jedediah)…grabs me and kisses me before I
hardly know what’s happening. I had been out throwing the garbage in the garbage bins,
and he followed me and pushed me down behind the bins. That boy…he goes around grinning
and looking us girls over. He knows he’s one of the few fathers and he’s already lording
it over everybody, like he thinks he’s the most important person on the trip. I suppose
most everybody picked to be one of the fathers would act that way, but I sure don’t
like it. Eppie and I feel special, too, but we don’t go around as if we were queens.

Thank goodness Mr. O’Brien is with me…as he always is. I try to fight the boy off
and then Mr. O’Brien actually bites him. Grabs his wrist and pulls him away. Draws
blood. The boy kicks Mr. O. hard, but Mr. O. doesn’t stop. Grabs him by his pants
leg and rips it.

The boy says, “Look where he bit me.”

“It’s just scratches.”

“You have to sew these pants up,” and I say, “Okay,” and he says, “Not only that,
but you’re going to have to do this one of these days, why not now? We can get things
started.”

He’s been boasting about exercising every day up in the ship’s gym. I could feel how
strong he is. He probably was chosen for his good looks, too. I don’t want to ever
have a stuck-up little baby that looks like him.

“You’re not the only boy that’s coming.”

“One of these years you’ll have to pick me. That’s the rule. We have to mix up our
genes.”

“Maybe you’ll be dead before it happens. Or I will be. I hope so, anyway.”

He squeezed my breasts even harder than my so-called father did back there at home.
This is the first I start thinking about what really is going on here.

Just as I wished him to, Mr. O. protected me. Even bit hard enough to draw blood.
I feel safe with him around.