Rachel stepped out behind me. “Again?”
“Funny, that’s just what I was thinking.” I trotted the few steps to where Olivia was standing. “Now what?”
She turned to face me. “They’re saying the kangaroos attacked last night. That Juliet’s missing because the kangaroos got her.”
“But that’s just stupid,” I said.
Olivia rolled her eyes. “Try telling them that.”
I paused. “All right,” I said finally. “I will.”
“Wait, Mahir, I didn’t mean—”
But I was already striding toward the crowd. When I reached the edge, I clapped my hands. Most of them ignored me. I clapped my hands again before cupping them and shouting, “May I please have your attention?”
The noise around me stopped. A few heads turned. No one looked terribly impressed. I lowered my hands.
“Er, hello,” I said, suddenly self-conscious. “My name is Mahir Gowda. I’m a visiting journalist with After the End Times. I came to learn more about your fence. It’s a marvel, really. I never dreamed that there could be anything like it. I’ve also learned quite a bit about your country. And one of the things I’ve learned is that you’re all being bloody idiots right now.”
That got a bit more attention. Irritated grumbles ran through the crowd.
“I mean it! You have more freedom than anywhere else on the planet. You can be outside! In the sun, in the grass, where there are birds and weird little mammals and—and no one else gets that anymore, do you understand me? People who’ve chosen to abandon the cities, maybe, but they have no government support. They have no guards or soldiers to support them. They have no fences. You’ve got the best of both worlds. You’re free enough to get bored and make up stories about danger, while everyone else on this planet is legitimately terrified. The kangaroos can’t get through the fence! We’d all be dead if they could, but they can’t, and you know it. That’s why you feel safe making a big deal of ‘what if.’ You know what happens when you make too much of ‘what if’?”
“No, what?” shouted someone belligerently. I couldn’t see who… but it sounded suspiciously like Rey.
“Someone believes you,” I said. The grumbles stopped. “Someone believes you, and that’s when the real fences come. That’s when the gates get locked, and the testing panels go in above every door. That’s when you start trading in your freedom for feeling safe. But you’ll never feel safe, not all the way, because every time you narrow the cracks that danger can come in through, the cracks that remain will seem just that much wider. Is it worth it? Is it worth looking at one of the last free places in the world, and giving it all away?”
No one said anything. I looked at them, and they looked back at me, and somehow, no one needed to say anything. We all knew what the answer had to be.
Part VI
Going Home
Australia is a wild place, full of dangers that the rest of the world has forgotten. Australia is a tame place, full of people who live ordinary lives, lives that any among us would recognize. It is passionate and strange, it is boring and mundane, and it is beautiful. I dare any person in this world to stand upon Australia’s soil and not think, “Oh, how green this land, oh, how blue this sea; I must have been very good to have been allowed to come here.”
I must have been very good indeed.
—MAHIR GOWDA
1.
“You’re sure you’ll be all right?”
“I’ll be in the very capable hands of Virgin Atlantic,” I said. “If they can’t get me home safely, no one can.”
Olivia smiled. “I’m sorry Jack and Juliet couldn’t be here.”
“Honeymoons and court cases take priority,” I said. “Hotaru’s shortbread is consolation enough.”
“Thanks again for coming. It was… nice to work with you.” Olivia hesitated before flinging her arms around me. Voice muffled by my shoulder, she added, “I’ll miss you.”
“Oh, I’ll come again,” I said, returning her embrace. “Can’t let you have all the fun, now can I? And I look forward to seeing your follow-up reports.” We never did find out who’d been taking shots at the local kangaroos. My money was on Karen, who was happier believing that an impartial force had taken her child than the more realistic possibility of a human kidnapper. As a father, I couldn’t blame her for that.
“You mean it?” Olivia asked, pulling away.
“I do. Although I may wait until Sanjukta is a little older.” The image of her running freely through the tall Australian grass, unafraid of infection, was almost intoxicating. I wouldn’t want her to grow up here, but I wanted her to see it. Just once. Just long enough to understand. I smiled at Olivia. “Everyone should have the opportunity to see the world without a fence in the way, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” she said. She wiped her eye with the back of her hand. “Safe flight.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said, and turned to walk toward the line for security. I had seen a different world, and I would never forget that, but some things, no matter where you go, will remain the same. Thank God for that. It is our similarities that make the differences matter, even when those differences include a fence extending as far as the eye can see, cutting a razor line across the horizon. Maybe, in the end, especially then.
The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell
Introduction
Oh, Foxy.
One of the things I have a bad habit of doing is treating side characters like they’re secretly the protagonists: like the story would be all about them if we could just change the direction of the cameras slightly, focusing on something other than the foreground. I can give you full histories for spear-carriers and torchbearers, and will, if given the slightest opportunity.
Enter Foxy. She was introduced in Blackout as part of the Monkey’s crew, a manic pixie nightmare girl with a knife in one hand and a submachine gun in the other. She was part deconstruction of the trope and part broken bird, and I loved her on sight. Which meant that, inevitably, I was going to want to backtrack and explain how someone like her could come to be, what combination of trial and trauma went into her creation.
This is probably the novella that resulted in the most whimpers of protest from my internal proofing pool. It’s definitely the one that most closely follows the traditional “zombie fiction” model. It’s the story of an elementary school teacher: Elaine Oldenberg, who just wanted to keep the children in her care safe. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a hero. She should be remembered that way. It’s really too bad that she spends most of her time wishing she didn’t have to remember anything at all.
(Fun fact: It’s an open secret around here that many of my characters are based on my dearest friends. Not direct Tuckerizations, where they share names, physical descriptions, and occupations, but close cognates. Elaine was inspired by, and largely based on, my best friend in the world, Michelle “Vixy” Dockrey. This is how I show my love. Distressingly.)
The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell
The changes brought on by the Rising echoed through every layer of American society in the years immediately following the event, and have continued to echo ever since, inexorably changing the way in which we live. Some of the changes were immediate and obvious—the relaxation of gun control laws, the cessation of the “war on drugs” that had done so much to swell the American prison population in the early years of the twenty-first century, the dramatic increase in the minimum wage necessitated by the country’s sudden economic transformation—while others were more subtle, and were, in some cases, not fully understood for years. Other changes are ongoing, and will no doubt continue indefinitely. That which has been transformed does not revert to its original state just because the illusion—or reality—of danger has passed.
Perhaps the most transformed of the so-called American institutions has been the primary education system.
While the majority of college-level students have proven more than happy to turn to a wholly
virtual educational experience (excepting those students entering hazardous, hands-on fields such as medicine, biology, and food preparation), concerns regarding the social skills and overall development of younger children have kept the elementary and middle-grade schools open, despite legitimate concerns about the safety of those facilities. As the events of the 2036 tragedy at Seattle’s Evergreen Elementary demonstrated, those concerns should not have been left unaddressed.
—from Unspoken Tragedies of the American School System by Alaric Kwong, March 19, 2044
>> AKWONG: HEY BOSS?
>> AKWONG: I THINK I FOUND HER…
—internal communication from Alaric Kwong to Mahir Gowda, After the End Times private server, March 16, 2044
Wednesday, March 19, 2036, 7:16 A.M.
If there was any nicer place to be a schoolteacher than Seattle, Elaine was sure she didn’t want to know about it. Knowledge might lead to the desire to see if the rumors were true, and that was a path that could lead to poor decisions and winding up stranded a few hundred miles from home, packed into some Idaho or Montana classroom and dreaming of the evergreens. No, it was better to accept the blessing that was her homeland for what it was: a paradise of gray skies, emerald hills, and the deep blue wonder of the Sound, which could be seen from the back of the blacktop on clear days. There were more of those than people from outside Seattle would have ever dreamt, even if there weren’t as many as she remembered from her time in Southern California, where it seemed like the sun only went away at night, and then only grudgingly.
Too much sun was bad for the heart, in Elaine’s opinion. It made it harder to enjoy the rain, whereas a surplus of rain just made the sun all the more precious. Maybe it was a Hallmark card way of looking at the world, but honestly, what was the point in keeping things sunny and sanitized all the time? Let a little rain in.
The alarm pad next to her classroom door was flashing on and off when she entered. She propped the door before entering the code and taking her second state-mandated blood test of the day. The first had been required to get her through the front door, and more would happen at both regular and irregular intervals until the final bell rang and signaled the return of her precious first-grade charges to their parents, older siblings, and nannies. Blood tests for students were thankfully less common; while the government needed to know that the children she taught were not in the process of converting, there was also a general understanding that forcing five- and six-year-olds to prick their fingers repeatedly throughout the day was a good way to make them afraid of school and resistant toward additional blood tests.
There was a bill up before the state senate that would grant teachers the power to request their students provide a clean blood sample whenever there was “reasonable suspicion” of conversion. Elaine was sure the bill would pass without any major opposition. Bills that traded on the words “student safety” and “think about the children” generally did, especially now that the Rising was far enough in the past that people were starting to acquire a vague sense of perspective.
The classroom’s fluorescent overheads revealed small, sturdy desks scarred with pencil marks and ink stains, the plastic seats worn smooth by a decade of buttocks. It was almost possible to ignore the restraints built into the legs of the chairs, and the manacles tucked away under the edges of the desktops. She generally tried not to think about those things, or about the set of military-grade Kevlar gloves stored in the top drawer of her own desk, waiting for the day that they would be needed. She’d gone through the R&R training like every other teacher in her class—how to react when a student started showing signs of conversion, how to remain calm during the process of restraining and securing them—but after eight years on the job, she had never needed to put on the gloves for anything more severe than a skinned knee.
Not all the teachers she’d graduated with had been so lucky. Betsy Emkey had been teaching a class of third graders when one of her larger boys had managed to slink off to the back of the room and amplify. Betsy had been able to get him restrained, but not without suffering multiple bites to the arms and torso. Her school’s vice principal had been the one to shoot her, after getting her students out of the room and into the care of the school nurse, who had performed blood tests on all twenty-one of the remaining students, and who had been forced to administer lethal injections to the three who came up positive. Betsy’s memorial service had been small, private, and filled with people who couldn’t meet each other’s eyes. “There but for the grace of God” was the first thought on every teacher’s mind when one of those articles showed up in the news feeds, when one of those unavoidable tragedies sparked a moment of silence from the President and a whole new round of legislation aimed at getting kids out of classrooms and into bubbles, where they could grow up safe and secure and unsocialized.
“They can learn math and reading and history anywhere, but we’re the ones who have to teach them how to be a part of the human race” had been one of Betsy’s favorite sayings, right after “The early bird catches the worm” and “Bless your uncultured heart.” Elaine had always thought Betsy was on to something—although maybe not so much with the thing about the birds. Humanity, though, that was a thing that needed teaching. Her first graders came to her every year, standing in the doorway and looking terrified of the prospect of spending a year in Miss Oldenburg’s class, which seemed so grown up and structured and strange from the perspective of their limited experiences. And every year, she gathered them close and she lifted them up, showing them the bright sun of human society, the joy of friends who didn’t just exist on a computer screen, and the virtue of spending time playing in the summer air and splashing in mud puddles.
The dead might walk, and the world might be a dangerous place, but as far as Elaine Oldenburg was concerned, that was no reason to live your life in fear. Joy was the only thing that would really make the future better.
She was walking around the room, checking the supplies of construction paper, crayons, pencils, and zip ties, when a knock on the door alerted her to the fact that she was no longer alone. She turned to see the school’s night custodian, Guy, standing and watching her, a smile on his broad, bearded face. His ever-present black leather cap was tilted back on his head, concealing his bald spot without hiding his eyes. The children didn’t like it when they couldn’t see people’s eyes. Too many horror movies and news reports focusing on the ocular effects of a full-blown Kellis-Amberlee conversion, making it harder for people whose eyes were naturally black or who had developed retinal KA through no fault of their own.
“Morning, Miss Oldenburg,” he said with a tip of that same cap. “Any trouble on the grounds?”
Elaine couldn’t help but smile. He started every day with the same question, as regular as the blood tests at the toll booth between her house and the school. She didn’t know what she would do when he reached retirement age at the end of the year—something that had been lowered to fifty for people who worked directly with children, including teachers, administrative staff, and yes, school janitors. The higher your chances of suffering a heart attack or something similar while you were at work, the sooner you would find yourself shuffled off to pasture. There were always positions teaching with the virtual schools, and hospitals were more than happy to absorb the support staff that the schools were legally required to dismiss, but still. Guy was part of the school, as much a fixture as the water fountains or lockers, and it wouldn’t be the same without him.
“My next door neighbor still won’t cancel his newspaper, even though he only brings it in once a week; the rest of the time, it’s just an expensive eyesore announcing to the world that he’s too hip to get his news online like the rest of the world,” she reported dutifully. “How about you, Guy? Any trouble on the grounds?”
“Not as such, and I can’t complain,” he said, with a sunny smile that showed off his dentures. “Everything’s shipshape and ready for the students. Do you have an exciting lesson planned for today??
??
“I was thinking we might read a little, maybe learn some American history, maybe have a snack.” Elaine shrugged. “I’m playing it mostly by ear.”
“You always do,” Guy said and laughed. Elaine laughed with him. “You have a nice day, Miss Oldenburg, and call me if you need anything. My shift doesn’t end until nine.”
“I’ll do that, Guy, thank you,” said Elaine. She watched as the janitor turned and continued on to the next classroom, where another version of their daily talk would no doubt play out. She knew that some of the teachers found him less endearing than she did, but as far as she was concerned, it was best to know and be friendly with as much of the staff as possible. It would make it easier to tell if something was wrong with them.
The clock above her whiteboard made a small chiming noise as the display turned from 7:29 to 7:30. Half an hour before she had to go out to the front of the school to collect her students and escort them back to the classroom, settling each one with a coloring sheet and a handful of colored pencils before going back to get the next. Once, that sort of arrangement would have been an invitation to chaos—leaving a classroom full of first graders alone not just once, but multiple times, was like dangling a carrot in front of a hungry rabbit and expecting it not to jump. The restraints in the legs of the desks had taken care of a lot of the problems. Students couldn’t get up and race around the room; students couldn’t get up at all. There would be no physical bullying while the teacher was out of the room. That was, as far as Elaine was concerned, the only small blessing to the arrangement.
There was still teasing, of course, and bullying of the verbal kind; Elaine couldn’t prevent that, and the laws regarding constant surveillance in the classroom were stalled in committee as lawmakers argued an endless loop of student privacy versus public safety. Even the teachers were divided on the topic. Privately, Elaine thought the cameras couldn’t come fast enough. As far as she was concerned, anything she did on school grounds was fair game for the bureaucrats. Getting qualified teachers was hard enough that she wasn’t going to get fired over something as small as swearing when she jammed her finger in the door or snapping at a student who ran a little too fast in the hallway, and having those videos might make the antibullying statutes easier to enforce.