The Year of the Flood

SAINT RACHEL AND ALL BIRDS

YEAR TWENTY-FIVE.

OF THE GIFTS OF SAINT RACHEL; AND OF THE FREEDOM OF THE SPIRIT.

SPOKEN BY ADAM ONE.

Dear Friends, dear Fellow Creatures and Fellow Mortals:

What a cause for rejoicing is this rearranged world in which we find ourselves! True, there is a certain – let us not say disappointment. The debris left by the Waterless Flood, like that left by any receding flood, is not attractive. It will take time for our longed-for Eden to appear, my Friends.

But how privileged we are to witness these first precious moments of Rebirth! How much clearer the air is, now that man-made pollution has ceased! This freshly cleansed air is to our lungs as the air up there in the clouds is to the lungs of Birds. How light, how ethereal they must feel as they soar above the trees! For many ages, Birds have been linked to the freedom of the Spirit, as opposed to the heavy burden of Matter. Does not the Dove symbolize Grace, the all-forgiving, the all-accepting?

It is in the spirit of that Spirit of grace that we welcome among us three fellow Mortal companions on our journey – Melinda, Darren, and Quill. They have miraculously escaped the Waterless Flood by having been providentially sequestered: Melinda in a hilltop yoga and weight-loss establishment, Darren in a hospital isolation ward, and Quill in a place of solitary incarceration. We rejoice that these three appear not to have been exposed to viral contamination. Although not of our Faith – or not still of our Faith in the case of Quill and Melinda – they are our fellow Creatures; and we are happy to aid them at this common time of trial.

We are grateful also for this temporary abode, which, though it is a former Happicuppa franchise, has sheltered us from the grilling sun and the gruelling storm. Thanks to the skills of Stuart – in especial, his acquaintance with chisels – we have gained entrance to the storeroom, thereby procuring access to much Happicuppa product: the dried milk substitute, the vanilla-flavoured syrup, the moccachino mix, and the single-serving packets of sugar, both raw and white. You all know my view of refined sugar products, but there are times when the rules must bend. Thank you to Nuala, our indomitable Eve Nine, for the skill with which she has whipped up a sustaining brew for our refreshment.

We remember on this Day that the Happicuppa Corp was in direct contravention to the Spirit of Saint Rachel. Its sun-grown, pesticide-sprayed, rainforest-habitat-destroying coffee products were the biggest threat to God’s feathered Creatures in our times, just as DDT was the biggest threat to them in the times of Saint Rachel Carson. It was in the Spirit of Saint Rachel that some of our more radical former members joined the militant campaign against Happicuppa. Other groups were protesting its treatment of indigenous workers, but those ex-Gardeners were protesting its anti-Bird policies. Although we could not condone the violent methods, we did endorse the intention.

Saint Rachel dedicated her life to the Feathered Ones, and thus to the welfare of the entire Planet – for as the Birds sickened and died out, did this not indicate the growing illness of Life itself? Imagine God’s sorrow as he viewed the distress of His most exquisite and tuneful feathered Creations!

Saint Rachel was attacked by the powerful chemical corps of her day, and scorned and pilloried for her truth-telling, but her campaign did at last prevail. Sadly, the anti-Happicuppa campaign did not meet with equal success, but that problem has now been solved by a greater power: Happicuppa has not survived the Waterless Flood. As the Human Words of God put it, in Isaiah 34, “From generation to generation it shall lie waste… But the Cormorant and the Bittern shall possess it… There shall the great Owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow; there shall the Vultures also be gathered, every one with her mate.”

And so it has come to pass. Even now, my Friends, the rainforest must be regenerating!

Let us sing.

WHEN GOD SHALL HIS BRIGHT WINGS UNFOLD

From The God’s Gardeners Oral Hymnbook

68

We walk through the shimmering meadow. There’s a humming like a thousand tiny vibrators; huge pink butterflies float all around. The clover scent is very strong. Toby probes in front of her with her mop handle. I try to pay attention to where I’m putting my feet, but the ground is lumpy and I trip, and when I look down it’s a boot. Beetles scurry out.

There’s some animals up ahead. They weren’t there a minute ago. I wonder if they were lying down in the grass and then stood up. I hang back, but Toby says, “It’s okay, they’re just Mo’Hairs.”

I’ve never seen a live one before, only online. They stand there looking at us with their jaws moving sideways. “Would they let me pat them?” I say. They’re blue and pink and silver and purple; they look like candy, or sunny-day clouds. So cheerful and peaceful.

“I doubt it,” says Toby. “We need to walk faster.”

“They’re not afraid of us,” I say.

“They should be,” says Toby. “Come on. Let’s go.”

The Mo’Hairs watch us. When we’re closer to them, they turn in a group and move slowly away.

At first Toby says we’re going to the eastern gatehouse. Then after we walk for a while on the paved road, she says it’s farther than she thought. I start to feel dizzy because it’s so hot, especially inside the top-to-toe, so Toby says we’ll head for the trees at the far side of the meadow because it will be cooler in there. I don’t like the trees, it’s too dark in there, but I know we can’t stay out in the meadow.

It is shadier under the trees, but not cooler. It’s dank, and there’s no breeze, and the air is thick, as if it has more air stuffed into it than other air does. But at least we’re out of the sun, so we take off our top-to-toes and walk along the pathway. There’s that rich deep smell of rotting wood, the mushroomy smell I remember from the Gardeners, when we’d go to the Park for Saint Euell’s. The vines have been moving in over the gravel, but a lot of the branches are broken back and stepped on, and Toby says that someone else has come this way; not today though, because the leaves have wilted.

There’s crows up ahead, making a racket.

We come to a stream, with a little bridge. The water’s rippling over stones, and I can see minnows in it. On the far bank there are signs of digging. Toby stands still, turns her head to listen. Then she crosses the bridge and looks at the hole that’s been dug. “Gardeners,” she says, “or someone smart.”

The Gardeners taught that you should never drink right from a stream, especially one near a city: you should make a hole beside it, so the water would be filtered at least a little. Toby has an empty bottle, the one we’ve been drinking from. She fills it from the water hole so only the top layer of water runs into the bottle: she doesn’t want any drowned worms.

Up ahead, off in a small clearing, there’s a patch of mushrooms. Toby says they’re Sweet Tooth – hydnum repandum – and they used to be a fall variety, when we still had fall. We pick them, and Toby puts them into one of the cloth bags she’s brought, and hangs the bag outside her pack so the mushrooms won’t get squashed. Then we continue on.

We smell the thing before we see it. “Don’t scream,” says Toby.

This is what the crows have been cawing about. “Oh no,” I whisper.

It’s Oates. He’s hanging from a tree, twisting slowly. The rope is passed under his arms and knotted at the back. He doesn’t have any clothes on except for his socks and shoes. This makes it worse, because he’s less like a statue that way. His head is thrown back, too far because his throat has been cut; crows flap around his head, scrabbling for footholds. His blond hair’s all matted. There’s a gaping wound in his back, like those on the bodies they used to dump in vacant lots after a kidney theft. But these kidneys wouldn’t have been stolen for transplants.

“Somebody has a very sharp knife,” says Toby.

I’m crying now. “They killed little Oatie,” I say. “I feel sick.” I crumple down onto the ground. Right now I don’t care if I die here: I don’t want to be in a world where they’d do this to Oates. It’s so unfair. I’m gulping air in huge gasps, crying so hard I can barely see.

Toby takes hold of my shoulders, and pulls me up, and shakes me. “Stop that,” she says. “We don’t have time for it. Now come on.” She pushes me ahead of her along the path.

“Can’t we at least cut him down?” I manage to say. “And bury him?”

“We’ll do that later,” says Toby. “But he’s not in his body any more. He’s in Spirit now. Shhh, it’s okay.” She stops and puts her arms around me and rocks me to and fro, then pushes me gently forward again. We need to reach the gatehouse before the afternoon thunderstorm, she says, and the clouds are moving in fast from the south and west.

69

Toby feels bludgeoned – that was brutal, it was horrifying – but she can’t show her feelings to Ren. The Gardeners would have encouraged mourning – within limits – as part of the healing process, but there isn’t the space for it now. The storm clouds are yellowy green, the lightning’s ferocious: she suspects a twister. “Hurry,” she says to Ren. “Unless you want to be blown away.” For the last fifty metres they hold hands and run, heads down, into the wind.

The gatehouse is retro Tex-Mex, with rounded lines and pink adobe-style solarskin: all it lacks is a chapel tower and some bells. Already there’s kudzu clambering up the walls. The wrought-iron gate is standing open. In the ornamental garden with its ring of whitewashed stones – WELCOME TO ANOOYOO spelled out in petunias, but now invaded by purslane and sow thistles – something has been rooting. The pigs, most likely.

“There’s some legs,” says Ren. “Over there by the gate.” Her teeth are chattering: she’s still in shock.

“Legs?” says Toby. She feels affronted: how many demi-bodies does she have to encounter in one day? She goes over to the gate to look. The legs aren’t human, they’re Mo’Hair legs – a complete set of four; just the lower legs, the skinny parts. A little hair still on them, lavender in colour. There’s a head as well, though not a Mo’Hair head: it’s the head of a liobam, the golden fur scruffy, the eye sockets empty and crusted. The tongue’s gone, as well. Liobam tongue, once an expensive gourmet feature at Rarity.

Toby walks back to where Ren stands quivering, hands to her mouth.

“They’re Mo’Hair,” she says. “I’ll make them into soup. With our nice mushrooms.”

“Oh, I can’t eat anything,” says Ren in a doleful voice. “He was just a – he was a boy. I used to carry him around.” The tears are rolling down her cheeks. “Why did they do that?”

“You have to eat,” says Toby. “It’s your duty.” Duty to what? she wonders. Your body is a gift from God and you must honour that gift, said Adam One. But right now she feels no such conviction.

The gatehouse door is open. She looks through the window into the reception area – nobody – and propels Ren inside: the storm’s coming fast. She flicks a light switch: no power. There’s the usual bulletproof check-in window, a blank-faced document scanner, the fingerscan and iris cameras. You’d stand there knowing that you had five wall-mounted sprayguns pointed at your back and controlled from the inside room where the guards used to slouch.

She shines her flashlight through the counter window into the darkness of the inner space. Desks, filing cabinets, trash. Over in the corner, a shape: large enough to be someone. Someone dead, someone asleep, or – worst case – someone who’s heard them coming and is pretending to be a garbage bag. Then, once they’re at ease, there’d be some sneaking up and baring of canines, some slashing and rending.

The door to the inner room’s ajar: she sniffs the air. Mildew, of course. What else? Excrement. Decaying meat. Other noxious undertones. She wishes she had the nose of a dog, to sort one smell from another.

She pulls the door closed. Then she goes outside despite the rain and wind and hauls in the biggest stone from the ornamental flower-garden border. Not enough to stop a strong person, but it might slow down someone weak, or ill. She doesn’t wish to be leapt on from behind by a carnivorous mound of tatters.

“Why are you doing that?” says Ren.

“Just in case,” says Toby. She doesn’t elaborate. Ren is shaky enough as it is: one more horror and she could collapse.

The full force of the storm hits. A thicker darkness howls around them; thunder hollows out the air. In the lightning, Ren’s face comes and goes, her eyes closed, her mouth a frightened O. She clutches Toby’s arm as if about to topple from a cliff.

After what seems like a long time, the thunder trundles away. Toby goes outside to inspect the Mo’Hair legs. Her skin’s prickling: those legs didn’t walk there by themselves, and they’re still quite fresh. No sign of a fire: whoever killed the animal didn’t cook the rest here. She notes the cut marks: Mister Sharp Knife has passed this way. How close might he be?

She looks both ways along the road, strewn now with ripped-off leaves. No movement. The sun’s back now. Steam rises. Crows in the distance.

She uses her own knife to scrape much of the hairy skin from one of the Mo’Hair legs. If she had a large cleaver she could hack it into pieces small enough for her cooking pot. Finally she places one end on the top of the step leading up to the gatehouse and the other on the pavement and hits it with a rock. Now there’s the problem of a fire. She could spend a long time rummaging among the trees for dry wood and still come up empty-handed. “I need to go through that door,” she says to Ren.

“Why?” says Ren weakly. She’s huddled in the empty front room.

“There’s stuff we can burn,” says Toby. “To make a fire. Now listen. There might be someone in there.”

“A dead person?”

“I don’t know,” says Toby.

“I don’t want any more dead people,” says Ren fretfully. There may not be much choice about that, thinks Toby.

“Here’s the rifle,” she says. “This is the trigger. I want you to stand right here. If anyone but me comes out that door, shoot. Don’t hit me by mistake. Okay?” If she herself gets whacked in there, at least Ren will have a weapon.

“Okay,” says Ren. She takes the rifle awkwardly. “But I don’t like it.”

This is crazy, Toby thinks. She’s jumpy enough to shoot me in the back if I sneeze. But if I don’t check that room out, no sleep tonight and maybe a slit throat in the morning. And no fire.

She goes in with her flashlight and her mop handle. Papers litter the floor, smashed lamps. There’s broken glass, crunching underfoot. The smell is stronger now. Flies buzzing. The hairs on her arms lift, the blood rushes in her head.

The bundle on the floor is definitely human, covered with some sort of gruesome blanket. Now she can see the dome of a bald head, some wisps of hair. She pokes at the blanket with the mop handle, keeping the beam of light on the bundle. A moan. She pokes again, harder: there’s a feeble twitching of cloth. Now there are the slits of eyes, and a mouth, lips crusted and blistered.

“Fuckin’ hell,” says the mouth. “Who in fuck are you?”

“Are you sick?” says Toby.

“Asshole shot me,” says the man. His eyes are blinking in the light. “Turn that fuckin’ thing off.” No sign of blood leaking out of his nose or mouth or eyes: with any luck, he doesn’t have the plague.

“Shot you where?” says Toby. The bullet must have been hers, from that time in the meadow. A hand scrabbles forth: red and blue veins. Although he’s shrivelled and filthy, his eyes sunken with fever, this is Blanco, no doubt of it. She ought to know, she’s had the close-up view.

“Leg,” he says. “Went bad on me. Fuckers dumped me here.”

“Two of them?” says Toby. “Did they have a woman with them?” She makes her voice level.

“Gimme some water,” says Blanco. There’s an empty bottle in the corner, near his head. Two bottles, three. Gnawed ribs: the lavender Mo’Hair? “Who else is out there?” he rasps. His breath’s coming hard. “More bitches. I heard more.”

“Let me see your leg,” says Toby. “I may be able to help.” He won’t be the first person ever to have shammed injury.

“I’m fuckin’ dying,” says Blanco. “Turn off that light!” Toby sees various courses of action rippling across his forehead in waves of little frowns. Does he know who she is? Will he try to jump her?

“Take the blanket off,” says Toby, “and I’ll get you some water.”

“Take it off yourself,” croaks Blanco.

“No,” says Toby. “If you don’t want help I’ll just lock you in.”

“Lock’s broken,” he says. “Asshole skinny bitch! Gimme some water!”

Toby pinpoints the other smell: whatever else is wrong with him, he’s decaying. “I’ve got a Zizzy Froot,” she says. “You’ll like that better.” She backs out through the door and closes it behind her, but not before Ren’s had a look.

“It’s him,” she whispers. “The third one, the worst one!”

“Take a deep breath,” says Toby. “You’re perfectly safe. You’ve got the rifle, he doesn’t. Just keep it pointed at that door.”

She digs into her packsack, finds the remaining Zizzy Froot, drinks a quarter of the warm, sugary, fizzy liquid: Waste not. Then she fills the bottle up with Poppy and adds a generous dollop of powdered amanitas for good measure. The white Death Angel, granter of dark wishes. If there’s two bad choices take the lesser evil, Zeb would say.

She pushes the door open with her mop handle and shines the flashlight in. Sure enough Blanco is shoving himself across the floor, grinning with the effort. In one hand is his knife: most likely he was hoping to get near enough so he could grab her by the ankles when she went in. Take her down with him, or use her as a bargaining chip to get hold of Ren.

Mad dogs bite. What else is there to know?

“Here you are,” she says. She rolls the bottle towards him. His knife falls with a clink as he grabs for the bottle, unscrews it with shaking hands, guzzles. Toby waits to make sure it all goes down. “Now you’ll feel better,” she says gently. She closes the door.

“He’ll get out!” says Ren. She’s ashen.

“If he gets out, we’ll shoot him,” says Toby. “I’ve given him some painkillers to calm him down.” Silently she says the words of apology and release, the same as she would for a beetle.

She waits until the Poppy has taken hold, then re-enters the room. Blanco’s snoring heavily: if the Poppy doesn’t finish him, the Death Angels will. She lifts the blanket: his left thigh is a mess – decaying cloth and decaying flesh all simmering together. It takes a lot of self-restraint for her not to throw up.

Then she sorts through the room for flammables, gathering what she can – paper, some remnants of a smashed chair, a stack of CDs. There’s a second floor, but Blanco’s blocking the door to what must be the stairway and she’s not ready to get that close to him yet. She searches under the trees for dead branches: with the barbecue lighter and the paper and the CDs, they catch eventually. She makes bone soup with the Mo’Hair leg, adding the mushrooms and some purslane from the flower bed; they eat it sitting in the smoke of the fire, because of the mosquitoes.

They sleep on the flat roof, using a tree to climb up. Toby drags the pack-sacks up too, and the other three Mo’Hair legs, so nothing can steal them during the night. The rooftop’s pebbly, and wet as well: they lie on the two sheets of plastic. The stars are brighter than bright; the moon’s invisible. Just before they go to sleep, Ren whispers, “What if he wakes up?”

“He’ll never wake up,” says Toby.

“Oh,” says Ren in a tiny voice. Is that admiration of Toby, or simply awe in the face of death? He wouldn’t have lived, Toby tells herself, not with a leg as bad as that. Attempting to treat it would have been a waste of maggots. Still, she’s just committed a murder. Or an act of mercy: at least he didn’t die thirsty.

Don’t kid yourself, babe, says the voice of Zeb in her head. You had vengeance in mind.

“May his Spirit go in peace,” she says out loud. Such as it is, the fuck-pig.

70

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

“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

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.

73

I ask Croze if I should be helping to skin the dogs, but Croze says there’s enough people doing it and I look tired, so why don’t I lie down on his bed, inside the cobb house? The room is cool and smells the cobb-house way I remember, so I feel safe. Croze’s bed is just a platform, but it has a silver Mo’Hair fleece on it with a sheet, and Croze says, Sleep tight and then goes away, and I take off my AnooYoo top and pants because it’s getting too hot, and the Mo’Hair is soft and silky, and I go to sleep.

When the afternoon thunderstorm wakes me up, Croze is curled around behind me, and I can tell he’s worried and sad; so I turn around and then we’re hugging each other, and he wants to have sex. But all of a sudden I don’t want to have sex without loving the person, and I haven’t really loved anybody in that way since Jimmy; certainly not at Scales, where it was just acting, with other people’s kinky scripts.

Also there’s a dark place in me, like ink spilled into my brain – I can’t think about sex, in that place. It has brambles in it, and something about Amanda, and I don’t want to be there. So I say, “Not yet.” And even though Croze used to be kind of crude he seems to understand, so we just hold on to each other and talk.

He’s full of plans. They’ll build this, they’ll build that; they’ll get rid of the pigs, or else tame them. After the two Painballers are dead – he personally will take care of that – he’ll take me, and Amanda and Shackie too, and we’ll all go down to the beach and do some fishing. As for the MaddAddam group – Bill and Sedge and Tamaraw and Rhino, all them – they’re really smart, so they’ll have the communications going in no time.

“Who are we going to communicate with?” I ask, and Croze says there must be others out there. Then he tells me about the MaddAddams – how they were working with Zeb, but then the CorpSeCorps tracked them down through a MaddAddam codenamed Crake, and they ended up as brain slaves in a place called the Paradice Project dome. It was a choice between that and being spraygunned, so they took the jobs. Then when the Flood came and the guards vanished, they deactivated the security and walked out, but that wasn’t too hard for them because they’re all brainiacs.

He’s told me some of this before, but he hasn’t said Paradice Project or Crake. “Just a minute,” I say. “That’s what they were working on inside the dome? Immortality?”

Yes, Croze says: they were all helping Crake with his big experiment: some kind of perfectly beautiful human gene splice that could live forever. They were the ones who’d done the heavy lifting on the BlyssPluss pill too, but they weren’t allowed to take it themselves. Not that they were tempted: it gave you the best sex ever, but it had serious side effects, such as death.

“That’s how the pandemic plague got started,” Croze says. “They said Crake ordered them to put it in the supersex pill.” I felt lucky all over again that I’d been in the Sticky Zone because I might’ve gulped down the BlyssPluss pill secretly even though Mordis said no drugs for Scalies. It sounded so great, like a whole other reality.

“Who’d do a thing like that?” I say. “A poison sex pill?” It was Glenn, it must have been. That’s the sort of stuff he was telling the ReJoov Mr. Bigs, at Scales. He didn’t tell about the poison part, of course. I remembered those nicknames, Oryx and Crake. I’d thought it was just sex talk, with Glenn and his main plank: a lot of people used animal names at such times. Panther and Tiger and Wolverine, Pussycat and Doggie-wog. So, not sex talk: codenames. Or maybe both.

For one split second I think about saying all this to Croze – how I know quite a lot about this Crake from a former life. But then I’d have to tell about what I used to do at Scales – not just the trapeze dancing or even Glenn making us purr and sing like birds, but the other things, the feather-ceiling room things. Croze wouldn’t want to hear about that: guys hate to picture other guys doing sex things with you that they want to do themselves.

So instead I ask, “What about the splice people? The perfect ones? Did they actually make them?” Glenn always wanted everything to be more perfect.

“Yeah, they made them,” says Croze, as if it’s an everyday thing, making people.

“I guess those people died along with everyone else,” I say.

“Nope,” says Croze. “They’re living down by the shore. They don’t need clothes, they eat leaves, they purr like cats. Not my idea of perfect.” He laughs. “Perfect is more like you!”

I let that go by. “You’re making this up,” I say.

“No, I swear,” says Croze. “They get these huge – their dicks turn blue. Then they have group sex with these blue-assed women. It’s wicked!”

“It’s a joke, right?” I say.

“Seen them myself,” says Croze. “We aren’t supposed to go near them in case we mess them up. But Zeb says we can look at them from a distance, like the zoo. He says they’re not dangerous – it’s us that’s dangerous to them.”

“When can I see them?”

“Once we take care of those Painballers,” says Croze. “I’d have to go with you, though. There’s another guy down there – sleeps in a tree, talks to himself, crazy as a bag of snakes, no offence to snakes. We leave him alone – figure he might be infected. I wouldn’t want him bothering you.”

“Thanks,” I say. “This Crake, in the Paradice Project dome. What did he look like?”

“Never saw him,” says Croze. “Nobody said.”

“Did he have a friend?” I asked. “Inside the dome thing?” When Glenn brought Jimmy to Scales that time, they were definitely into something together.

“Rhino says he wasn’t much on friends. But he did have some pal of his in there, plus his girlfriend – the two of them were supposed to be planning the marketing. Rhino says the guy was a waste of time. Told a lot of stupid jokes, drank too much.”

That would be Jimmy all right, I thought. “Did he make it out?” I say. “Out of the dome? With the blue people?”

“How would I know? Anyway, who gives a shit?” says Croze.

I do. I don’t want Jimmy to be dead. “That’s kind of harsh,” I say.

“Hey, be cool,” says Croze. He puts his arm around me, lets his hand fall onto my breast, as if by accident. I take it off. “Okay,” he says in a disappointed voice. He kisses my ear.

The next thing I know Croze is waking me up. “They’re back,” he says. He hurries out and I put my clothes on, and when I go outside Zeb is there in the yard, and Toby’s got her arms around him. Katuro’s there; and the man they call Black Rhino, who’s even kind of black. Shackie’s there too, grinning over at me. He hasn’t heard yet about the two Painballers and Amanda. Croze will have to tell him. If I do he’ll ask me questions, and I only have bad answers.

I go slowly over to Zeb – I’m feeling shy – and Toby lets go of him. She’s smiling – not a thin smile, a real one – and I think, She can still be pretty sometimes. “Little Ren. You grew up,” Zeb says to me. He’s greyer than the last time I saw him. He smiles, and squeezes my shoulder briefly. I remember him singing in our shower, back at the Gardeners; I remember the times he was nice to me. I’d like him to be proud of me for making it through, even though that part was mostly luck. I’d like him to be more surprised and happy that I’m alive. But he must have a lot on his mind.

Zeb and Shackie and Black Rhino have sprayguns and packsacks, and now they start opening up the packsacks and taking things out. Tins of soydines, a couple of bottles – looks like booze – a handful of Joltbars. Three cellpacks, for the sprayguns.

“From Compounds,” Katuro says. “Gates open on a lot of them. Looters have been through.”

“CryoJeenyus was locked up tight,” says Zeb. “Guess they thought they could tough it out inside.”

“Them and all the frozen heads they had in there,” says Shackie.

“I doubt anyone got out,” says Black Rhino. I’m sorry to hear that, because Lucerne must have been inside that Compound, and despite how she acted later, she was my mother once, and I used to love her. I look over at Zeb, because maybe he did too.

“You find Adam One?” says Ivory Bill.

Zeb shakes his head. “We looked in the Buenavista,” Zeb says. “They must’ve been there for some time – them, or someone. There were all the signs. Then we tried a few more Ararats, but nothing. They must have moved on.”

“Did you tell him someone was living in the Wellness Clinic?” I say to Croze. “In that little room in behind the vinegar barrels? With the laptop?”

“Yeah, I did,” says Croze. “It was him. And Rebecca and Katuro.”

“We did see that crazy guy, limping along and talking to himself,” says Shackie. “The one who sleeps in a tree, down by the shore. He didn’t see us, though.”

“You didn’t shoot him?” says Ivory Bill. “In case he’s catching?”

“Why waste the ammo?” says Black Rhino. “He won’t last long.”

When the sun’s low we make a fire outside in the yard and have nettle soup with chunks of meat in it – I’m not sure what kind – and burdock, and some Mo’Hair-milk cheese. I’m expecting them to begin the meal with “Dear Friends, we are the only people left on Earth, let us give thanks” or some Gardener thing like that, but they don’t; we just have the dinner.

After we’ve finished, they talk about what to do next. Zeb says they have to find Adam One and the Gardeners before anything or anyone else gets to them. He’ll go to the Sinkhole tomorrow to check out the Edencliff Rooftop and some of the Truffle safe houses, and other places they might’ve gone. Shackie says he’ll go with him, and Black Rhino and Katuro say the same. The others need to stay and defend the cobb house against the dogs and pigs, and also the two Painballers in case they come back.

Then Ivory Bill tells Zeb about Toby and how Blanco’s dead now, and Zeb looks at Toby and says, “Well done, babe.” It’s kind of shocking to hear Toby called a babe: sort of like calling God a studmuffin.

I work up my courage and say we need to find Amanda and get her away from the Painballers. Shackie says he’ll vote for that, and I think he means it. Zeb says he’s very sorry, but we have to understand that it’s an either/or choice. Amanda’s just one person and Adam One and the Gardeners are many; and if it was Amanda, she’d decide the same thing. Then I say, “Okay, I’ll go alone then,” and Zeb says, “Don’t be silly,” as if I’m still eleven.

Then Croze says he’ll go with me, and I squeeze his hand for thank you. But Zeb says he’s needed at the cobb house, they can’t do without him. If I wait until he and Shackie and Rhino and Katuro get back, he says, they’ll send three guys with me, with sprayguns, which will give us a much better chance.

But I say there isn’t enough time, because if those Painballers want to trade Amanda, it means they’re tired of her and they could kill her at any minute. I know how it works, I say. It’s like Scales, with the temporaries – she’s a disposable – so I really have to find her right now, and I know it’s dangerous, but I don’t care. Then I start crying.

Nobody says anything. Then Toby says she’ll go with me. She’ll take her own rifle – she’s not a bad shot, she says. Maybe the Painballers have used up their last spraygun cell, which would lengthen the odds.

Zeb says, “That’s not such a good idea.” Toby pauses, then says it’s the best idea she can come up with because she can’t let me wander off into the woods by myself: it would be like murder. And Zeb nods and says, “Be very careful.” So it’s settled.

The MaddAddams hang up some duct-tape hammocks in the main room for Toby and me. Toby’s still talking with Zeb and the rest of them, so I go to bed first. With a Mo’Hair rug the hammock’s quite comfortable; and though I’m worrying a lot about how to find Amanda and what will happen then, I finally manage to sleep.

When we get up the next morning, Zeb and Shackie and Katuro and Black Rhino have already left, but Rebecca tells Toby that Zeb’s drawn a map for her in the sand of the old kids’ sandbox, with the cobb house and the shore marked on it, so she’ll know the directions. Toby studies it for a long time with an odd expression on her face – a sad kind of smile. But maybe she’s just memorizing it. Then she wipes it away.

After breakfast Rebecca gives us some dried meat, and Ivory Bill gets two lighter hammocks for us because it’s not safe to sleep on the ground, and we refill our water bottles from the well they’ve dug. Toby leaves a bunch of stuff behind – her bottles of Poppy, her mushrooms, her maggot container, all the medical stuff – but she takes her cooking pot and her knife and the matches and some rope, because we don’t know how long we’ll be gone. Rebecca hugs her and says, “Watch your back, sweetheart,” and then we set out.

We walk and walk; at noon we stop to eat. Toby’s listening all the time: too many birdcalls of the wrong kind, such as crows – or else no bird calls at all – means Look out, she says. But all we’re hearing is background cheeping and chirping. “Bird wallpaper,” says Toby.

We keep walking, and eat again, and walk some more. There are so many leaves; they steal the air. Also they make me nervous because of the last time we walked in a forest and found Oates hanging.

When it gets dark, we choose some big-enough trees and string up the hammocks and climb in. But it’s hard for me to sleep. Then I hear singing. It’s beautiful, but it’s not like normal singing – it’s clear, like glass, but with layers. It’s like bells.

The singing fades away, and I think maybe I was imagining things. And then I think, it must have been the blue people: that must be how they sing. I picture Amanda among them: they’re feeding her, taking care of her, purring to heal her and comfort her.

It’s make-believe. Wishful thinking, I know I shouldn’t do it: I should face reality. But reality has too much darkness in it. Too many crows.

The Adams and the Eves used to say, We are what we eat, but I prefer to say, We are what we wish. Because if you can’t wish, why bother?