Year of the Flood: Novel (36 page)

70

TOBY. SAINT RACHEL AND ALL BIRDS

YEAR TWENTY-FIVE

Toby wakes just before dawn. In the distance there’s a liobam, its odd plaintive roar. Dogs barking. She moves her arms, then her legs: she’s stiff as a slab of cement. The dampness of the mist goes right into the marrow.

Here comes the sun, a hot rose lifting out of peach-coloured clouds. The leaves on the overhanging trees are covered with tiny droplets that shine in the strengthening pink light. Everything looks so fresh, as if newly created: the stones on the rooftop, the trees, the spiderwebbing slung from branch to branch. Sleeping Ren seems luminous, as if silvered all over. With the pink top-to-toe tucked around her oval face and the mist beading her long eyelashes, she’s frail and otherworldly, as if made of snow.

The light hits Ren directly, and her eyes open. “Oh shit, oh shit,” she says. “I’m late! What time is it?”

“You’re not late for anything,” says Toby, and for some reason both of them laugh.

Toby scouts with the binoculars. To the east, where they’ll be going, there’s no movement, but to the west there’s a group of pigs, the biggest gathering of them she’s seen to date — six adults, two young. They’re strung out along the roadside like round flesh pearls on a necklace; they have their snouts down, snuffling along as if they’re tracking.

Tracking us, thinks Toby. Maybe they’re the same pigs: the grudge-bearing pigs, the funeral-holding pigs. She stands up, waves the rifle in the air, shouts at them: “Go away! Piss off!” At first they just stare, but when she brings the rifle down and aims it at them they lollop off into the trees.

“It’s almost like they know what a rifle is,” says Ren. She’s a lot steadier this morning. Stronger.

“Oh, they know,” says Toby.

They clamber down the tree, and Toby lights the Kelly kettle. Although there’s no sign of anyone around, she doesn’t want to risk making a bigger fire. She’s worried about the smoke — will anyone smell it? Zeb’s rule was: Animals shun fire, humans are drawn to it.

Once the water has boiled she makes tea. Then she parboils more of the purslane. That will warm them up enough for their early walking. Later they can have more Mo’Hair soup, from the three legs remaining.

Before they leave, Toby checks the gatehouse room. Blanco’s cold; he smells even worse, if that’s possible. She rolls him onto the blanket and drags him out to the rooted-up earth of the flower bed. Then she finds his knife on the floor where he dropped it. It’s sharp as a razor; with it she slits his filthy shirt up the front. Hairy fishbelly. If she was being thorough, she’d open him up — the vultures would thank her — but she remembers the sickening reek of innards from the dead boar. The pigs will take care of it. Maybe they’ll view Blanco as an atonement offering to them and forgive her for shooting their fellow pig. She leaves the knife among the flowers. Good tool, but bad karma.

She heaves the wrought-iron gate shut behind them; the electronic lock’s non-functional, so she uses some of her rope to tie it shut. If the pigs decide to follow, the gate won’t deter them for long — they can dig under — but it may give them pause.

Now she and Ren are outside the AnooYoo grounds, walking along the weed-bordered road that leads through the Heritage Park. They come to some picnic-table clearings; the kudzu is crawling over the trash barrels and barbecues, the tables and benches. In the sunlight, which is hotter by the minute, butterflies waft and spiral.

Toby takes her bearings: downhill, to the east, must be the shore and then the sea. To the southwest, the Arboretum, with the creek where the Gardener children used to launch their miniature Arks. The road leading to the SolarSpace entrance ought to join in somewhere around here. Nearby is where they’d buried Pilar: sure enough, there’s her Elderberry, quite tall now, and in flower. Bees buzz around it.

Dear Pilar, thinks Toby. If you were here today you’d have something wise to tell us. What would it be?

Up ahead they hear bleating, and five — no, nine — no, fourteen Mo’Hairs scramble up the bank and out onto the road. Silver, blue, purple, black, a red one with its hair in many braids — and now there’s a man. A man in a white bedsheet, belted around the waist. It’s a biblical getup: he even has a long staff, for sheep-prodding no doubt. When he sees them he stops and turns, watching them quietly. He’s got sunglasses on; he’s also got a spraygun. He holds it casually by his side, but lets it be clearly seen. The sun’s behind him.

Toby stands still, her scalp and arms tingling. Is this one of the Painballers? He’d turn her into a sieve before she could even get the rifle aimed: the sun’s in his favour.

“It’s Croze!” says Ren. She runs towards him with her arms outstretched, and Toby certainly hopes she’s right. But she must be, because the man lets her throw her arms around him. He drops his spraygun and his staff on the ground and clutches Ren tightly, while the Mo’Hairs amble about munching flowers.

71

REN. SAINT RACHEL AND ALL BIRDS

YEAR TWENTY-FIVE

“Croze!” I say. “I can’t believe it! I thought you were dead!” I’m talking into his bedsheet because we’re holding on so tight I’m smushed up against him. He doesn’t say anything — maybe he’s crying — so I say, “I bet you thought I was dead too,” and I feel him nod.

I let go and we look at each other. He tries a grin. “Where’d you get the bedsheet?” I say.

“There’s a lot of beds around,” he says. “These things are better than pants, you don’t get so hot. Did you see Oates?” He sounds worried.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to spoil this time by telling him about something so unhappy. Poor Oates, hanging in a tree with his throat cut and his kidneys missing. But then I look at his face and realize I’ve misunderstood: it’s me he’s worried about, because he already knows about Oates. He and Shackie were up ahead of us on the path. They’d have heard me shout, they’d have hidden. Then they would have heard the screaming, all sorts of screaming. Then, later — because of course they would have come back to check — they would have heard the crows.

If I say no, he’ll most likely pretend that Oates is still alive, so as not to upset me. “Yes,” I say. “We did see him. I’m sorry.”

He looks at the ground. I think of how I can change the subject. The Mo’Hairs have been nibbling all around us — they want to stay close to Croze — so I say, “Are those your sheep?”

“We’ve started herding them,” he says. “We’ve got them kind of tamed. But they keep getting out.” Who is
we,
I’d like to ask; but Toby comes up, so I say, “This is Toby, remember?” and Croze says, “No shit! From the Gardeners?”

Toby gives him one of her dry little nods and says, “Crozier. You’ve certainly grown,” as if it’s a school reunion. It’s hard to throw her off balance. She sticks out her hand and Croze shakes it. It’s so strange — Croze in a bedsheet, looking like Jesus though his beard isn’t exactly flowing, and Toby and me in our pink outfits with the winking eyes and lipstick mouths; and Toby with three purple Mo’Hair legs sticking up out of her packsack.

“Where’s Amanda?” he says.

“She’s not dead,” I say too quickly. “I just know she isn’t.” He and Toby trade a look over my head, as if they don’t want to tell me my pet bunny got run over. “What about Shackleton?” I say, and Croze says, “He’s okay. Let’s go back to the place.”

“What place?” says Toby, and he says, “The cobb house. Where we used to have the Tree of Life Exchange. Remember?” he says to me. “It’s not too far.”

The sheep are heading that way anyway. They seem to know where they’re going. We follow along behind them.

The sun’s so hot by now that it’s boiling inside our top-to-toes. Croze has part of his bedsheet draped over his head; he looks a lot cooler than me.

It’s noon when we reach the old Tree of Life parkette. The plastic swings are gone, but the cobb house is the same — even the spraypainted pleeb tags are there — except they’ve been building onto it. There’s a fence made of poles and planks and wire and a lot of duct tape. Croze opens the gate, and the sheep go in and file towards a pen in the yard.

“I got the sheep,” Croze calls, and a man with a spraygun comes out through the house door, and then two more men. Then four women — two young, one a bit older, and an older one, maybe as old as Toby. Their clothes aren’t Gardener clothes, but they aren’t new and they aren’t pretty. Two of the men are wearing bedsheets, the third has cut-offs and a shirt. The women have long cover-ups, like top-to-toes.

They stare at us. Not friendly: anxious. Croze says our names. “You sure they’re not infected?” says the first man, the one with the spraygun.

“No way,” says Croze. “They were isolated the whole time.” He looks at us for confirmation, and Toby nods. “Friends of Zeb,” Croze adds. “Toby and Ren.” Then he tells us, “This is MaddAddam.”

“What’s left of us,” says the shortest man. He says their names: his is Beluga, and the other three are Ivory Bill, Manatee, and Zunzuncito. The women are Lotis Blue, Swift Fox, White Sedge, and Tamaraw. We don’t shake hands: they’re still nervous about us and our germs.

“MaddAddam,” says Toby. “Good to meet you. I followed some of your work online.”

“How’d you get in?” Ivory Bill says to Toby. “To the playroom?” He’s eyeing her antique rifle as if it’s made of gold.

“I was Inaccessible Rail,” says Toby.

They look at one another. “You,” says Lotis Blue. “You were Inaccessible! The secret lady!” She laughs. “Zeb would never tell us who you were. We thought you were some hot bimbo he had.” Toby gives her a thin little smile.

“He said you were solid, though,” says Tamaraw. “He insisted on that.”

“Zeb?” says Toby, as if she’s talking to herself. I know she wants to ask if he’s still alive, but she’s afraid to.

“MaddAddam was a great caper,” says Beluga. “Until we got snatched.”

“So-called drafted by fucking ReJoov,” says White Sedge, the youngest woman. “Crake, that little bastard.” She’s brown-skinned but she has kind of an English accent, so it comes out
bahstahd.
They’re a lot friendlier now that Toby’s told them she was really somebody else.

I’m confused. I look up at Croze, and he says, “It was that thing we were doing, the bioresistance thing. Why they put us in Painball. These are the scientists they scooped. Remember I told you? At Scales?”

“Oh,” I say. But I’m still not clear. Why did ReJoov scoop them? Was it a brain kidnapping, like what happened to my father?

“We had visitors,” Ivory Bill says to Croze. “After you went for the sheep. Two guys, with a woman and a spraygun and a dead rakunk.”

“Really,” says Croze. “That’s major.”

“Said they were Painball, like we should respect that,” says Beluga. “They wanted to trade the woman for spraygun cells and Mo’Hair meat — the woman and the rakunk.”

“I bet it was them got our purple Mo’Hair,” says Croze. “Toby found the legs.”

“Rakunk! Why would we trade for that?” says White Sedge indignantly. “We’re not stahving!”

“We should’ve shot them,” says Manatee. “But they were holding the woman in front.”

“What was she wearing?” I say, but they ignore me.

“We said no trade,” says Ivory Bill. “Tough for the girl. But they’re desperate for cells, which means they’re running out. So we’ll deal with them later.”

“It’s Amanda,” I say. They could have saved her. Though I don’t blame them for not trading: you can’t give spraycells to guys who’ll use them to kill you. “What about Amanda?” I say. “Shouldn’t we go and get her?”

“Yeah — we need to get everyone together now that the Flood’s over,” says Croze. “Like we’ve said.” He’s backing me up.

“Then we can, you know, rebuild the human race,” I say. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s the only thing I can think of. “Amanda could really help us — she’s so good at everything.” But they just smile at me sadly as if they know it’s hopeless.

Croze takes my hand and walks me away from them. “You mean that?” he says. “About the human race?” He smiles. “You’ll have to have babies.”

“Maybe not just yet,” I say.

“Come on,” he says. “I’ll show you the garden.”

They have a cookhouse, and some violet porta-biolets over in one corner, and some solar they’re fixing up. There’s no shortage of parts for just about everything back in the pleebs, though you have to look out for falling buildings.

Their vegetable garden is in behind: they don’t have a lot of stuff planted yet. “We get pig attacks,” he says. “They dig under the fence. We shot one of them, so maybe the others got the point. Zeb says they’re superpigs, because they’re spliced with human brain tissue.”

“Zeb?” I say. “Is Zeb alive?” I feel dizzy all of a sudden. All of these dead people, coming alive again — it’s overwhelming.

“Sure,” says Croze. “Are you all right?” He puts his arm around me, to keep me from falling down.

72

TOBY. SAINT RACHEL AND ALL BIRDS

YEAR TWENTY-FIVE

Ren and Crozier have wandered off behind the cobb house. No harm, thinks Toby. Young love, no doubt. She’s telling Ivory Bill about the third man — the dead one. Blanco. He listens carefully. “Plague?” he asks. An infected bullet wound, she says. She doesn’t add the Poppy and the Death Angels.

While they’re talking, another woman comes around from behind the house. “Hey, Toby,” she says. It’s Rebecca. Older, less plump, but still Rebecca. Solid. She takes hold of Toby’s shoulders. “You’re too thin, sweetheart,” she says. “Never mind. We’ve got bacon. Fatten you up for sure.”

Bacon is not a concept that Toby can grasp right now. “Rebecca,” she says. She wants to add, “Why are you alive?” but this is — increasingly — a meaningless question. Why are any of them alive? So she merely says, “Wonderful.”

“Zeb said you’d make it. He always said that. Hey. Gimme a smile!”

Toby doesn’t like the past tense. It has a deathbed smell. “When did he say it?” she asks.

“Heck, he says it most days. Now come on in the kitchen, eat something. Tell me where you’ve been.”

Zeb’s alive then, thinks Toby. Now that it’s true she feels she’s always known it. She also doubts it — it won’t really be true until she sees him. Touches him.

They have coffee — dandelion roots, roasted, Rebecca says proudly — and some baked burdock root with herbs, and a slice of — could it be cold pork? “Those pigs are a nuisance,” says Rebecca. “Too smart by half.” She eyes Toby challengingly. “Needs must when the devil drives,” she says. “Anyways, at least we know what’s in it — not like at SecretBurgers.”

“It’s delicious,” Toby says truthfully.

After their snack, Toby hands over the three remaining Mo’Hair legs, not that fresh but Rebecca says they’ll be fine for stock. Then they plunge right into history. Toby runs through her time in the AnooYoo Spa, and tells about the arrival of Ren; Rebecca describes her fake identity selling life insurance in gated communities out west while planting MaddAddam’s inventive bioforms, and how she got the last bullet train east — a risk, lot of folks coughing but she wore a nose cone and gloves — and then holed up in the Wellness Clinic, along with Zeb and Katuro. “In our old meeting room, remember?” she says. “Our Ararat supplies were still there.”

“And Katuro?” says Toby.

“Doing fine. Had a germ of some kind, but not the bad one; he’s over it now. He’s off with Zeb and Shackleton, and Black Rhino. They’re looking for Adam One and the rest of them. Zeb says if anyone could get through, they could.”

“Really? There’s a chance?” says Toby.
Did he look for me?
she wants to ask. Probably not. He’d have thought she’d do fine on her own. And she had, hadn’t she?

“We’ve been listening on the windup shortwave, 24/7, and sending too. Couple of days ago we finally got an answer,” says Rebecca.

“It was him?” Toby’s prepared to believe anything now. “Adam One?”

“We just heard the one voice. All it said was, ‘I’m here, I’m here.’“

“Let’s hope,” says Toby. And she does hope; or she tries to.

There’s the barking of dogs outside, and a confusion of shouting. “Shit. Dog attack,” says Rebecca. “Bring that gun.”

The MaddAddams with sprayguns are already at the fence. Big dogs and small ones, maybe fifteen, bounding towards them wagging their tails. The spraygunners begin shooting. Before Toby can fire, seven of the dogs are dead and the rest have run away.

“Watson-Crick splices,” says Ivory Bill. “They’re not really dogs, they only look like it. They’ll tear out your throat. Used them in prison moats and such — you couldn’t hack them, not like an alarm system code — but they got loose during the Flood.”

“Are they breeding?” says Toby. Will they have to fight off wave after wave of these non-dogs, or are they few in number?

“Lord knows,” says Ivory Bill.

Lotis Blue and White Sedge go out to make sure the dogs are dead. Then Tamaraw and Swift Fox and Rebecca and Toby join them, and they skin and butcher, with the spraygunners standing guard in case the other dogs come back. Toby’s hands remember how to do this from long ago. The smell is the same too. A childhood smell.

The dog skins are laid aside, the meat’s cut up and put into a pot. Toby feels a little sick. But she also feels hungry.