Cataclysm Baby

Virgil, Virotte, Vitalis

Starting from the middle of the country, we follow the rumors, the talk that there are no more women, no more mothers or daughters, none remaining to bear our future forth except those afloat beyond the last lands of the west, collected aboard a ship, some tanker meant to carry them away, to keep them safe.

What I know, despite those rumors: There are no women left, except the one beside me, this daughter disguised as a son, who I must somehow see aboard that ship.

On our way west, I cull her hair every few days, steal her layers of clothing from abandoned storefronts, thick shirts and thermal underwear and patterned button-ups distracting enough so that what lies beneath might be harder to see, to suss out and desire. As we walk, I tell her that once this sandy stretch of waste was a plain state, was all fields of waving wheat and corn. Mile after mile, I offer her some bit of this world I’ve known, some memory of what once lay on either side of the wide freeways littered with abandoned cars. For a thousand foot-sore miles I do this, not running out of stories until we cross the last state line, the last desert. Until we enter the last city, perched at the far end of the earth, where we climb down to the shore, our descent cut with broken roads providing unsure passage, switchbacking to the crowded docks leading out above the tossing water.

And there in the distance: The tanker we’d hoped to catch, too quickly departed, left without my daughter.

What choice do we have? No other option but to go out onto the docks anyway, to push through this great crowd of men, only and always men, all armed, all fat with fury, all crowding the shore or else wading out into the oil-black of the water, its brackish thickness, their voices begging, cajoling, demanding the ship to turn back, to return to them these last few mothers and daughters, these final receptacles for the making of legacy, a continuation of our failure.

We push through, my daughter’s hand in my hand, in the one not clutched around my revolver, my own six chances to clear the way. I pull my daughter close, wrap her tight in the leather of my duster, and in the distance the tanker taunts us with its purpose, its promise to stay afloat until all us men are gone, until at least the worst of us have passed, leaving the world for those more deserving of its inheritance—

And then my daughter saying, Look.

Then her eyes peeking out from the blanket of my coat, her hand pointing over the water, and her saying, Look, Daddy.

There, Daddy. There.

How few they are: All the good women of the world. All gathered except for my daughter, who should be among their number.

How few, and how far, but perhaps still close enough.

I nod, open my duster, tell her to get ready.

I tell her, When I start shooting, you run for the end of the dock, and no matter what you keep running.

I tell her, You swim as fast as you can, and pray they rescue you.

She sobs once as I raise the heavy hammer of my revolver, but there is no time for goodbye, and no other word I wish to say that our thousand shared miles did not already allow. I push her out of my duster, follow her into the space my bullets tear free of the men blocking her way, and with each shot I get her one falling body closer to the end of the dock, our escape hung out over the water.

And then my hand scrabbling fresh shells from my pocket, then my hand reloading, then six more shots making six holes in six men, making ten feet of running-space.

And then my daughter, covered in the blood of those who would want only what she is, never who, men waiting to mar her, to tear her away, to hold back her body they desire.

And then reload and fire, reload and fire, and then we run until there are no more men ahead, until we tumble off the edge of the dock, fall far into the cold waves, where the ocean fills my mouth and nostrils, drenches my heavy clothes so tight I can barely kick to get my head above the surface, to suck again the sickened air.

What I know: My daughter is no longer nearby, no longer close at hand, but surely she can’t be lost.

As I am dragged ashore by the kin of the men I have struck down, as they beat the angry stocks of their rifles against my face and chest, as they take from me what satisfaction they could not take from my daughter, then I tell myself that I know she swims on unmolested, that without us men to hold her back she kicks by the buoys that mark the end of this world’s dominion, makes what powerful strokes she needs to take her out past the breakwater, toward the waiting tanker and then into the future, that far flatness beyond.