The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
It was me who took care of Oates -- gave him his towel and soap, and showed him the bed where he could sleep. I hadn't seen him for such a long time. When I left the Gardeners he was just a little kid. A little brat -- always getting into trouble. That's how I remembered him. But cute, even then.
"You've grown a lot," I said. He was almost as tall as Shackie. His blond hair was all damp, like a dog that's been swimming.
"I always thought you were the best," he said. "I had a huge crush on you when I was eight."
"I didn't know," I said.
"Can I kiss you?" he said. "I don't mean in a sexy way."
"Okay," I said. And he did, he gave me the sweetest kiss, beside my nose.
"You're so pretty," he said. "Please keep your bird suit on." He touched my feathers, the ones on my bum. Then he gave this shy little grin. It reminded me of Jimmy, the way he was at first, and I could feel my heart lurch. But I tiptoed out of the room.
"We could lock them in," I whispered to Amanda out in the hallway.
"Why would we do that?" said Amanda.
"They've been in Painball."
"So?"
"So, all Painball guys are unhinged. You don't know what they'll do, they just go crazy. Plus, they might have the germ. The plague thing."
"We hugged them," said Amanda. "We've already got every germ they've got. Anyway, they're old Gardener."
"Which means?" I said.
"Which means they're our friends."
"They weren't exactly our friends back then. Not always."
"Relax," said Amanda. "Those guys and me did lots of stuff together. Why would they hurt us?"
"I don't want to be a time-share meat-hole," I said.
"That's pretty crude," said Amanda. "It's not them you should be afraid of, it's the three Painball guys who were in there with them. Blanco's not a joke. They must be out there somewhere. I'm putting my real clothes back on." She was already peeling off her flamingo suit, pulling on her khaki.
"We should lock the front door," I said.
"The lock's broken," said Amanda.
Then we heard voices coming along the street. They were singing and yelling, the way men did at Scales when they're more than drunk. Stinking drunk, smashing-up drunk. We heard the crash of glass.
We ran into the bedrooms and woke up our guys. They put on their clothes very fast, and we took them to the second-floor window that overlooked the street. Shackie listened, then peered cautiously out. "Oh shit," he said.
"Is there another door in this place?" Croze whispered. His face was white, despite his sunburn. "We need to get out. Right now."
We went down the back stairs and slipped out the trash door, into the yard where the garboil dumpsters were, and the bins for empty bottles. We could hear the Gold Teamers bashing around inside the Scales building, demolishing whatever hadn't been demolished already. There was a giant smash: they must have pulled down the shelving behind the bar.
We squeezed through the gap in the fence and ran across the vacant lot to the far corner and down the alleyway there. They couldn't possibly see us, yet I felt as if they could -- as if their eyes could pierce through brick, like TV mutants.
Blocks away, we slowed to a walk. "Maybe they won't figure it out," I say. "That we were there."
"They'll know," said Amanda. "The dirty plates. The wet towels. The beds. You can tell when a bed's just been slept in."
"They'll come after us," said Croze. "No question."
61
We turned corners and went up alleyways to mix up our tracks. Tracks were a problem -- there was a layer of ashy mud -- but Shackie said the rain would wash away our marks, and anyway the Gold Team weren't dogs, they wouldn't be able to smell us.
It had to be them: the three Painballers who'd smashed up Scales, that first night of the Flood. The ones who'd killed Mordis. They'd seen me on the intercom. That's why they'd come back to Scales -- to open up the Sticky Zone like an oyster in order to get at me. They would have found tools. It might have taken a while, but they'd have done it in the end.
That thought gave me a very cold feeling, but I didn't tell the others about it. They had enough to worry about anyway.
There was a lot of trash cluttering the streets -- burnt things, broken things. Not only cars and trucks. Glass -- a lot of that. Shackie said we had to be careful which buildings we went into: they'd been right near one when it collapsed. We should stay away from the tall ones because the fires could have eaten away at them, and if the glass windows fell on you, goodbye head. It would be safer in a forest than in a city now. Which was the reverse of what people used to think.
It was the small normal things that bothered me the most. Somebody's old diary, with the words melting off the pages. The hats. The shoes -- they were worse than the hats, and it was worse if there were two shoes the same. The kids' toys. The strollers minus the babies.
The whole place was like a doll's house that had been turned upside down and stepped on. Out of one shop there was a trail of bright T-shirts, like huge cloth footprints, going all along the sidewalk. Someone must have smashed in through the window and robbed the place, though why did they think a bundle of T-shirts was going to do them any good? There was a furniture store spewing chair arms and legs and leather cushions onto the sidewalk, and an eyeglasses place with high-fashion frames, gold and silver -- nobody had bothered to take those. A pharmacy -- they'd trashed it completely, looking for party drugs. There were a lot of empty BlyssPluss containers. I'd thought it was just at the testing stage, but that place must have been selling it black market.
There were bundles of rag and bone. "Ex-people," said Croze. They were dried out and picked over, but I didn't like the eyeholes. And the teeth -- mouths look a lot worse without lips. And the hair was so stringy and detachable. Hair takes years to decay; we learned that in Composting, at the Gardeners.
We hadn't had any time to grab food from Scales, so we went into a supermarkette. There was junk all over the floor, but we found a couple of Zizzy Froots and some Joltbars, and in another place there was a solar-freezer that was still running. It had soybeans and berries -- we ate those right away -- and frozen SecretBurger patties, six to a box.
"How're we going to cook them?" asked Oates.
"Lighters," said Shackie. "See?" On the counter there was a rack of lighters in the shape of frogs. Shackie tried one: the flame shot out of its mouth, and it said Ribbit.
"Take a handful," said Amanda.
By this time we were near the Sinkhole, so we headed for the old Wellness Clinic because it was a place we knew. I hoped there'd be some Gardeners left inside it, but it was empty. We had a picnic in our old classroom: we made a fire out of broken desks, though not a big fire because we didn't want to send any smoke signals to the Gold Painballers, but we had to open the windows because we were coughing too much. We broiled the SecretBurgers and ate them, and half of the soybeans -- we didn't bother cooking those -- and drank the Zizzy Froots. Oates kept making the frog lighter say Ribbit until Amanda told him to stop because he was wasting fuel.
The adrenalin of running away had worn off by then. It was sad to be back in the place where we'd been children: even if we hadn't liked it all the time, I felt so homesick for it now.
I guess this is what the rest of my life will be like, I thought. Running away, scrounging for leftovers, crouching on floors, getting dirtier and dirtier. I wished I had some real clothes, because I was still in my peagret outfit. I wanted to go back to the T-shirt place to see if there was anything left inside the store that wasn't damp and mouldy, but Shackie said it was too dangerous.
I thought maybe we should have sex: it would have been a kind and generous thing to do. But everyone was too tired, and also we were shy with one another. It was the surroundings -- though the Gardeners weren't there in their bodies, they were there in Spirit, and it was hard to do anything they'd have disapproved of if they'd seen us doing it when we were ten.
We went to sleep in a
The next morning when we woke up there was a huge pig standing in the doorway, staring in at us and sniffing the air with its wet, sluggy-looking nose. It must have come in the door and all the way down the hall. It turned and went away when it saw us looking at it. Maybe it smelled the burger patties being cooked, said Shackie. He said it was an enhanced splice -- MaddAddam had known about those -- and that it had human brain tissue in it.
"Oh yeah," said Amanda, "and it's doing advanced physics. You're bullshitting us."
"Truth," said Shackie, a little sulky.
"Too bad we don't have a spraygun," said Croze. "Long time since I had bacon."
"None of that language," I said in a Toby voice, and we all laughed.
Before we left the Wellness Clinic we went into the Vinegar Room, for a last look at it. The big barrels were still there, though someone had taken an axe to them. There was a smell of vinegar, and also a toilet smell: people had been using a corner of the room for that, and not long ago either. The little closet door where they used to keep the vinegar bottles was standing open. There weren't any bottles; but there were some shelves. They were at a strange angle, and Amanda went over and took an edge and pulled, and the shelves swung out.
"Look," she said. "There's a whole other room in here!"
We went in. There was a table that took up most of the room, and some chairs. But the most interesting thing was a futon, like our old Gardener ones, and a bunch of empty food containers -- soydines, chickenpeas, dried gojiberries. Over in one corner was a dead laptop.
"Somebody else made it through," said Shackie.
"Not a Gardener," I said. "Not with a laptop."
"Zeb had a laptop," said Croze. "But he'd stopped being a Gardener."
We left the Wellness Clinic without any clear plan. It was me who said we should go to the AnooYoo Spa: there might be food in the Ararat that Toby put together in the storeroom; she'd told me the doorcode. Also there could still be something growing in the garden. I even wondered if maybe Toby was hiding out there, but I didn't want to get any hopes up, so I didn't say that.
We thought we were being really careful. We couldn't see anybody anywhere. We went into the Heritage Park and headed towards the Spa's west gatehouse, staying on the forest pathway, under the trees -- we felt less visible that way.
We were going single file. Shackie was at the front of the line, then Croze, then Amanda, then me; Oates was at the very back. Then I had a cold feeling, and I looked behind me, and Oates wasn't there. I said, "Shackie!"
And then Amanda lurched sideways, right off the path.
Then there was a dark patch like going through brambles -- everything painful and tangled. There were bodies on the ground, and one of them was mine, and that must have been when I got hit.
When I woke up again, Shackie and Croze and Oates weren't there. But Amanda was.
I don't want to think about what happened next.
It was worse for Amanda than for me.
PREDATOR DAY
PREDATOR DAY
YEAR TWENTY-FIVE.
OF GOD AS THE ALPHA PREDATOR.
SPOKEN BY ADAM ONE.
Dear Friends, dear Fellow Creatures, dear Fellow Mortals:
Long ago, we celebrated Predator Day on our lovely Edencliff Rooftop Garden. Our Children would don their faux-fur Predator ears and tails, and at sunset we'd light candles inside the Lions and Tigers and Bears fashioned from perforated tin cans, and the burning-bright eyes of these Predator images would sparkle upon our Predator Day feast.
But today our Festival must be held in the inner Gardens of our Minds. We are fortunate to have even these, for the Waterless Flood has now rolled over our city, and indeed over the entire Planet. Most were taken by surprise, but we relied on Spiritual guidance. Or, to put it in a materialistic way: we knew a global pandemic when we saw one.
Let us give thanks for this Ararat in which we have been sheltering over the past months. It is not perhaps the Ararat we would have chosen, situated as it is in the cellars of the Buenavista Condo Complex, which were dank even at the time of Pilar's mushroom beds, and are even danker now. But we are blessed that so many of our Rat relatives have donated their protein to us, thus enabling us to remain on this Earthly plane. It is also fortunate that Pilar had built an Ararat in this very cellar, hidden behind a concrete block marked with a tiny bee symbol. How providential that so many of her supplies retained their freshness! Though unhappily not all.
But these resources are now exhausted, and we must either move or starve. Let us pray that the outer world is Exfernal no more -- that the Waterless Flood has cleansed as well as destroyed, and that all the world is now a new Eden. Or, if it is not a new Eden yet, that it will be one soon. Or so we trust.
On Predator Day we celebrate, not God the loving and gentle Father and Mother, but God the Tiger. Or God the Lion. Or God the Bear. Or God the Wild Boar. Or God the Wolf. Or even God the Shark. Whatever the symbol, Predator Day is devoted to the qualities of terrifying appearance and overwhelming strength, which, since they are at times desired by us, must also belong to God, as all good things belong to Him.
As Creator, God has put a little of Himself into each of His Creatures -- how could it be otherwise? -- and therefore the Tiger, the Lion, the Wolf, the Bear, the Boar, and the Shark -- or, on the miniscale of things, the Water Shrew and the Praying Mantis -- are in their way reflections of the Divine. Human societies through the ages have known this. On their flags and coats of arms, they have not placed prey Animals such as Rabbits and Mice, but Animals capable of inflicting death, and when they invoked God as defender, was it not these qualities upon which they called?
Thus on Predator Day we meditate on the Alpha Predator aspects of God. The suddenness and ferocity with which an apprehension of the Divine may appear to us; our smallness and fearfulness -- may I say, our Mouselikeness -- in the face of such Power; our feelings of individual annihilation in the brightness of that splendid Light. God walks in the tender dawn Gardens of the mind, but He also prowls in its night Forests. He is not a tame Being, my Friends: he is a wild Being, and cannot be summoned and controlled like a Dog.
Human Beings may well have killed the last Tiger and the last Lion, but their Names are cherished by us; and as we say those Names, we hear behind them the tremendous Voice of God at the moment of their Creation. God must have said to them: My Carnivores, I command you to fulfil your appointed task of culling your Prey Species, lest these multiply overmuch, and exhaust their food supply, and sicken, and die out. Go forth, therefore! Leap! Run! Roar! Lurk! Spring! For I delight in your dread hearts, and in the gold and green jewels of your eyes, and in your well-fashioned sinews, and in your scissor teeth and your scimitar claws, which I Myself have bestowed upon you. And I give you My Blessing, and pronounce you Good.
For they do seek their meat from God, as Psalm 104 so joyfully puts it.
As we prepare to leave our sheltering Ararat, let us ask ourselves: Which is more blessed, to eat or to be eaten? To flee or to chase? To give or to receive? For these are at heart the same question. Such a question may soon cease to be theoretical: we do not know what Alpha Predators may lurk without.
Let us pray that if we must sacrifice our own protein so it may circulate among our fellow Species, we will recognize the sacred nature of the transaction. We would not be Human if we did not prefer to be the devourers rather than the devoured, but either is a blessing. Should your life be required of you, rest assured that it is required by Life.
Let us sing.
THE WATER-SHREW THAT RENDS ITS PREY
The Water-Shrew that rends its Prey
Acts purely out of Nature's need;
It does not stop to plot its course,
But simply does the deed.
The Leopard pouncing in the night
Is kin to soft domestic Puss --
They love to hunt, and hunt to love,
Because God made them t
And who can say if joy or fear
Are each in other's lasting debt?
Does every Prey enjoy each breath
Because of constant threat?
But we are not as Animals --
We cherish other Creatures' lives;
And so we do not eat their flesh
Unless dread Famine drives.
And if dread Famine drives us on,
And if we yield to tempting Meat,
May God forgive our broken Vows,
And bless the Life we eat.
From The God's Gardeners Oral Hymnbook
62
TOBY. SAINT NGANEKO MINHINNICK OF MANUKAU
YEAR TWENTY-FIVE
A red sunrise, meaning rain later. But there's always rain later.
Mist rising.
Oodle-oodle-ooo. Oodle-oodle-oo. Chirrup, twareep. Aw aw aw. Ey ey ey. Hoom hoom baroom.
Mourning dove, robin, crow, bluejay, bullfrog. Toby says their names, but these names mean nothing to them. Soon her own language will be gone out of her head and this will be all that's left in there. Ooodle-oodle-oo, hoom hoom. The ceaseless repetition, the song with no beginning and no end. No questions, no answers, not in so many words. Not in any words at all. Or is it all one huge Word?
Where has this notion come from, out of nowhere and into her head?
Tobeee!
So much like someone calling her. But it's only birdsong.
She's up on the roof, cooking her daily portion of land shrimp in the cool of the morning. Don't scorn the lowly table of Saint Euell, says the voice of Adam One. The Lord provides, and sometimes what He provides is land shrimp, says Zeb. Rich in lipids, a good source of protein. How do you think bears get so fat?
Best to cook outside, because of the smoke and heat. She's using her Saint Euell -- inspired hobo stove, made of a bulk-sized body-butter can: hole in the bottom for dry sticks and the draft, hole on the side for smoke. The maximum heat for the minimum fuel. No more than needed. The land shrimp sizzle on the top.
Suddenly there's a racket of crows: they're excited about something. Not alarm calls, so not an owl. More like astonishment: Aw Aw! Look! Look! Look at that!