After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia (33 page)

Millie remained sitting with her back against the wall. Max lay on the other side
of the room, using his coat as a blanket. Was he sleeping, or just lying there listening?

She used to like Max. Weeks after the world had gone mad, he’d found her and Jolly
hiding under the porch of somebody’s house. They were dirty and hungry, and the stench
of rotting meat from inside the house was drawing flies. Jolly had managed to keep
Millie alive that long, but Millie was delirious with pain, and the place where her
hand had been bitten off had started smelling funny. Max had brought them clean water.
He’d searched and bargained with the other warrens of hiding kids until he’d found
morphine and antibiotics for Millie. He was the one who’d told them that it looked
like only adults were getting sick.

But now Millie was scared of him. She sat awake half the night, watching Max. Once,
he shifted and snorted, and the hairs on Millie’s arms stood on end. She shoved herself
right up close against Jolly. But Max just grumbled and rolled over and kept sleeping.
He didn’t change. Not this time. Millie watched him a little longer, until she couldn’t
keep her eyes open. She curled up beside Jolly. Jolly was scrawny, her skin downy
with the peach fuzz that Sai said came from starvation. Most of them had it. Nobody
wanted to grow up and change, but Jolly needed to eat a little more, just a little.
Millie stared into the dark and worried. She didn’t know when she fell asleep. She
woke when first light was making the window into a glowing blue square. She was cold.
Millie reached to put her arm around Jolly. Her arm landed on wadded-up clothing with
nobody in it. “She’s gone,” said Citron.

“Whuh?” Millie rolled over, sat up. She was still tired. “She gone to check the traps?”
Jolly barely ate, but she was best at catching gamey squirrels, feral cats, and the
occasional raccoon.

“I dunno. I woke up just as the door was closing behind her. She let in a draft.”

Millie leapt to her feet. “It was Max! He sprouted! He ate her!”

Citron leapt up too. He pulled her into a hug. “Sh. It wasn’t Max. Look, he’s still
sleeping.”

He was. Millie could see him huddled under his coat.

“See?” said Citron. “Now, hush. You’re going to wake him and Sai up.”

“Oh god, I was so scared for a moment.” She was lying; she never stopped being scared.
She sobbed and let Citron keep hugging her, but not for long. Things could sneak up
on you while you were busy making snot and getting hugs to make you feel better. Millie
swallowed back the rest of her tears. She pulled out of Citron’s arms. “Thanks.” She
went and checked beside Jolly’s side of the bed. Jolly’s jacket wasn’t there. Neither
was her penguin.
Ah.
“She’s gone to find aspirin for me.” Millie sighed with relief and guilt. “She took
her penguin to trade with. That’s almost her most favorite thing ever.”

“Next to you, you mean.”

“I suppose so. I come first, then her necklace, then the penguin.” Jolly’d found the
ceramic penguin a long time ago when they’d been scavenging in the wreckage of a drugstore.
The penguin stood on a circular base, the whole thing about ten inches tall. Its beak
was broken, but when you twisted the white base, music played out of it. Jolly had
kept it carefully since, wrapped in a torn blouse. She played it once a week and on
special occasions. Twisted the base twice only, let the penguin do a slow turn to
the few notes of a tinny song. Churchy had told them that the penguin was from a movie
called
Madagascar
. She’d been old enough to remember old-time stuff like that. It was soon after that
that they’d had to kill her.

Millie stared at her and Jolly’s sleeping place. There was something…“She didn’t take
socks. Her feet must be freezing.” She picked up the pair of socks with the fewest
holes in it. “We have to go find her.”

“You go,” Citron replied. “It’s cold out, and I want to get some more sleep.”

“You know we’re not supposed to go anywhere on our own!”

“Yeah, but we do. Lots of times.”

“Except me. I always have someone with me.”

“Right. Like that’s any safer than being alone. I’m going back to bed.” He yawned
and turned away.

Millie fought the urge to yell at him. Instead she said, “I claim leader.”

Citron stopped. “Aw, come on, Millie.”

But Millie was determined. “Leader. One of us might be in danger, so I claim leader.
So you have to be my follower.”

He looked skyward and sighed. “Fine. Where?”

That meant she was leader. You asked the leader what to do, and the leader told you.
Usually everyone asked Jolly what to do, or Max. Now that she had an excuse to go
to Jolly, Millie stopped feeling as though something had gnawed away the pit of her
stomach. She yanked her coat out of the pile of clothing that was her bed and shrugged
it on. “Button me,” she said to Citron, biting back the “please.” Leaders didn’t say
please. They just gave orders. That was the right way to do it.

Citron concentrated hard on the buttons, not looking into Millie’s eyes as he did
them up. He started in the middle, buttoned down to the last button just below her
hips, then stood up to do the buttons at her chest. He held the fabric away from her
so it wouldn’t touch her body at all. His fingers didn’t touch her, but still her
chest felt tingly as Citron did up the top buttons. She knew he was blushing, even
though you couldn’t tell on his dark face. Hers neither. If it had been Max doing
this, his face would have lit up like a strawberry. They found strawberries growing
sometimes, in summer.

Leaders didn’t blush. Millie straightened up and looked at Citron. He had such a baby
face. If he was lucky, he’d never sprout. She’d heard that some people didn’t. Max
said it was too soon to tell, because the pandemic had only started two years ago,
but Millie liked to hope that some kids would avoid the horrible thing. No temper
getting worse and worse. No changing all of a sudden into something different and
scary. Millie wondered briefly what happened to the ones who didn’t sprout, who just
got
old
. Food for the easthound, probably. “Let’s go…” she said, then remembered herself.
Leader. “We’re going over by the grocery first,” she told Citron. “Maybe she’s just
checking her traps.”

“She took her music box to check her traps?”

“Doesn’t matter. That’s where we’re going to go.” She stuffed Jolly’s socks into her
coat pocket, then shoved her shoulder against the swollen door and stepped out into
the watery light of an early spring morning. The sun made her blink.

Citron asked, “Shouldn’t we get those two to come along with us? You know, so there’s
more of us?”

“No,” growled Millie. “Just now you wanted me to go all alone, but now you want company?”

“But who does trading this early in the morning?”

“We’re not going to wake Max and Sai, okay? We’ll find her ourselves!”

Citron frowned. Millie shivered. It was so cold out that her nose hairs froze together
when she breathed in. Like scattered pins, tiny, shiny daggers of frost edged the
sidewalk slabs and the new spring leaves of the small maple tree that grew outside
their squat. Trust Jolly to make her get out of a warm bed to go looking for her on
a morning like this. She picked up three solid throwing rocks. They were gritty with
dirt, and the cold of them burned her fingers. She stuffed them into her jacket pocket,
on top of Jolly’s socks. Citron had the baseball bat he carried everywhere. Millie
turned up her collar and stuck her hand into her jeans pocket. “Let’s go.”

Jolly’d put a new batch of traps over by that old grocery store. The roof was caved
in. There was no food in the grocery anymore, or soap, or cough medicine. Everything
had been scavenged by the nearby warrens of kids, but animals sometimes made nests
and shit in the junk that was left. Jolly’d caught a dog once. A gaunt poodle with
dirty, matted hair. But they didn’t eat dogs, ever. You were what you ate. They’d
only killed it in an orgy of fury and frustration that had swelled over them like
a river.

Really, it was Millie who’d started it, back before everything went wrong, two winters
ago. They’d been at home. Jolly sitting on the living room floor that early evening,
texting with her friends, occasionally giggling at something one of them said. Millie
and Dad on the couch sharing a bowl of raspberries. All of them watching some old-time
cartoon movie on TV about animals that could do kung fu. Waiting for Mum to come home
from work. Because then they would order pizza. It was pizza night. Dad getting a
text message on his phone. Dad holding the phone down by his knee to make out the
words, even though his eyesight was just fine, he said. Jolly watching them, waiting
to hear if it was Mum, if she’d be home soon. Millie leaning closer to Dad and squinting
at the tiny message in the phone’s window. Mouthing the words silently. Then frowning.
Saying, “Mum says she’s coming home on the easthound train?” Dad falling out laughing.
East
bound
, sweetie.

There hadn’t been an easthound before that. It was Millie who’d called it, who’d made
it be. Jolly’d told her that wasn’t true, that she didn’t make the pandemic just by
reading a word wrong, that the world didn’t work that way. But the world didn’t work
anymore the way it used to, so what did Jolly know? Even if she
was
older than Millie.

Jolly and Millie’s family had assigned adjectives to the girls early on in their lives.
Millie was The Younger One. (By twenty-eight-and-three-quarter minutes. They’d been
afraid she wouldn’t make it.) Jolly was The Kidder. She liked jokes and games. She
was the one who’d come up with loup-de-lou, to help keep Millie’s mind off the agony
when she’d lost her hand. She’d still been able to feel the missing hand there, on
the end of her wrist, and the pain wouldn’t let her sleep or rest, and all the adults
in the world were sprouting and trying to kill off the kids, and Max was making her
and Jolly and Citron move to a new hiding place every few days, until he and Jolly
figured out the thing about sprinkling peppermint oil to hide their scent trails so
that sprouteds couldn’t track them. That was back before Sai had joined them, and
then Churchy. Back before Churchy had sprouted on them one night in the dark as they
were all sharing half a stale bread loaf and a big liter bottle of flat cola, and
Max and Citron and Sai had grabbed anything heavy or sharp they could find and whaled
away at the thing that had been Churchy just seconds before, until it lay still on
the ground, all pulpy and bloody. And the whole time, Jolly had stayed near still-weak
Millie, brandishing a heavy frying pan and muttering, “It’s okay, Mills. I won’t let
her get you.”

The feeling was coming back, like her hand was still there. Her wrist had settled
into a throbbing ache. She hoped it wasn’t getting infected again.

Watchfully, they walked down their side street and turned onto the main street in
the direction of the old grocery store. They walked up the middle of the empty road.
That way, if a sprouted came out of one of the shops or alleyways, they might have
time to see it before it attacked.

The burger place, the gas station, the little shoe repair place on the corner; Millie
tried to remember what stores like that had been like before. When they’d had unbroken
windows and unempty shelves. When there’d been people shopping in them and adults
running them, back when adults used to be just grown-up people suspicious of packs
of schoolkids in their stores; not howling, sharp-toothed child-killers with dank,
stringy fur and paws instead of hands. Ravenous monsters that grew and grew so quickly
you could watch it happen—if you were stupid enough to stick around. Their teeth,
hair, and claws lengthened, their bodies getting bigger and heavier minute by minute,
until they could no longer eat quickly enough to keep up with the growth, and they
weakened and died a few days after they’d sprouted.

Jolly wasn’t tending to her traps. Millie swallowed. “Okay, so we’ll go check with
the warren over on Patel Street. They usually have aspirin and stuff.” She walked
in silence except for the worry voice in her head.

Citron said, “That tree’s going to have to start over.”

“What?” Millie realized she’d stopped at the traffic light out of habit. She was such
an idiot. And so was Citron for just going along with her. She started walking again.
Citron tagged along, always just a little behind.

“The maple tree,” he puffed. When you never had enough to eat, you got tired quickly.
“The one outside our place. It put its leaves out too early, and now the frost has
killed them. It’ll have to start over.”

“Whatever.” Then she felt guilty for being so crabby with him. What could she say
to make nice? “Uh, that was a nice line you made in loup-de-lou last night. The one
with eyes and spies in it.”

Citron smiled at her. “Thanks. It wasn’t quite right, though. Sprouteds have bleedy
red eyes, not shiny ones.”

“But your line wasn’t about sprouteds. It was about the…the easthound.” She looked
all around and behind her. Nothing.

“Thing is,” Citron replied, so quietly that Millie almost didn’t hear him, “we’re
all the easthound.”

Instantly, Millie swatted the back of his head. “Shut up!”

“Ow!”

“Just shut up! Take that back! It’s not true!”

“Stop making such a racket, willya?”

“So stop being such a loser!” She was sweating in her jacket, her skinny knees trembling.
So hungry all the time. So scared.

Citron’s eyes widened. “Millie…!”

He was looking behind her. She turned, hand fumbling in her jacket pocket for her
rocks. The sprouted bowled her over while her hand was still snagged in her pocket.
Thick, curling fur and snarling and teeth as long as her pinkie. It grabbed her with
paws like catcher’s mitts with claws in them. It howled and briefly let her go. It’s
in pain, she thought wonderingly, even as she fought her hand out of her pocket and
tried to get out from under the sprouted. All that quick growing. It must hurt them.
The sprouted snapped at her face, missed. They were fast and strong when they first
sprouted, but clumsy in their ever-changing bodies. The sprouted set its jaws in her
chest. Through her coat and sweater, its teeth tore into her skin. Pain. Teeth sliding
along her ribs. Millie tried to wrestle the head off her. She got her fingers deep
into the fur around its neck. Then an impact jerked the sprouted’s head sideways.
Citron and his baseball bat, screaming, “Die, you bastard!” as he beat the sprouted.
It leapt for him. It was already bigger. Millie rolled to her feet, looking around
for anything she could use as a weapon. Citron was keeping the sprouted at bay, just
barely, by swinging his bat at it. It advanced on him, howling in pain with every
step forward.