Grants Pass (8 page)

Of course, my eyesight isn’t what it
once was. My right eye has almost returned to normal, its vision focused and
clear enough. The left is still just a blur, though, from the damage it
sustained. My hearing is still shot too, a maddening, relentless tinnitus
filling my ears. Valentin told me my eardrums had nearly burst, that I’m lucky
I’m not entirely deaf. At any rate, adjusting the volume on the radio in my
suit did the trick.

“
I’m going
to activate the boosters in a minute,” Valentin tells me. “Run them dry.”

“
Do you
really think you can break orbit, Valya?” I ask. I’m no physicist, but his
scheme doesn’t really strike me as practical.

“
Of course,”
he replies, but there’s hesitation in his voice. I know him well enough to
recognize when he’s lying.

“
Well, with
only you on board, the food and water supplies should last much longer,” I
point out.

“
Not that
much longer,” his voice crackles in my ears. “But long enough to finally become
a true cosmonaut. My father would have been pleased at last.”

“
I’m sure he
already was,” I told him, thinking of my boy, my Niki. My chest hurts.

Valentin chuckles at that. “Well, I
suppose I’ll find out, when I see him in hell.”

I smile. “You do know you’re insane,
don’t you?”

“
You can
talk,
tovarisch
. I’m not the one attempting to walk home from outer
space.”

That makes me laugh out loud. “Hey,
it’s only four hundred kilometers. Piece of cake.”

Valentin laughs as well, for a
moment, but falls silent. For a long moment, the only sound is my breathing
within the suit.

Then he speaks again. “
Do
svidaniya
, Pasha,” he says seriously. “It’s been an honor working with
you.”

“
And with
you. God speed.”

I imagine the face he would have
made at the religious reference, but he says nothing, which I appreciate.

Bright light flares on the station’s
attitude and altitude control boosters. There is no sound, not here in airless
space. Nothing seems to happen at first, but slowly the station begins to draw
away from me, its orbiting speed increased bit by laborious bit. It grows smaller
in my helmet’s visor, becoming little more than an insect itself, then a bright
star. Finally it vanishes altogether, hurtling around the curvature of the
Earth. I know that, if I remain facing this way, it will come back into sight
eventually, overtaking me as it speeds around the earth even faster than me,
faster than twenty five thousand miles an hour. But I don’t want to see it
again. I’ve said my goodbyes to my friend.

It’s time to go home.

I use my own thrusters to rotate
back towards Earth. Once again, I watch the terminator drift across the planet
beneath me, sending the world into darkness. I just stay there for a while,
enjoying the peace.

But it won’t last. I put my rear
thrusters on full, and push myself towards Earth as fast as I can.

It takes only three minutes of solid
thrust to empty my tanks, and it doesn’t seem to make a difference, not yet.
But once gravity gets a better hold of me, I’ll start to notice it. It’s like
sky-diving. In fact, it
is
sky-diving, just from an impossible height.

And at an impossible speed.

I know I’ll burn up like a meteor
once I hit the atmosphere. Even if I’d used my thrusters to slow my orbital
speed down, I’d never have managed to decelerate enough to survive this. But
that’s alright. I’ve accepted my fate, the same as Coulter and Sutton had. The
same as Valentin has.

Something catches my eye, to my
right. A glimmer of light on the ground, the first I’ve seen in weeks. My heart
seems to stop for a moment. Could it be the town in America, Grants Pass, where
survivors have fled to start a new life, a new world? Or perhaps it’s a farm
house near Vladivostok, miraculously spared the ravages of the worldwide
pandemic that has killed so many others.

It makes no difference. Not now.

I watch the light track across my
view as I fall from space, until it vanishes in the blur that is my damaged
left eye. I couldn’t leave them; I had to stay, to return home, as I promised
my beautiful wife, my young son. Tears fill my eyes, beading in the
weightlessness, floating inside my helmet like stars, like ghosts, like wishes.

A spark scintillates across the
visor of my helmet. Then another. And another.

Don’t be afraid, Mischa, Niki.
Papa’s coming.

Biography

Martin Livings

Perth-based writer Martin Livings
has had nearly fifty short stories in a variety of magazines and anthologies.
His short works have been listed in the Recommended Reading list in
Year’s
Best Fantasy and Horror
, and had stories in both
The Year’s Best
Australian SF & Fantasy, Volume Two
and
Australian Dark Fantasy
& Horror: 2006 edition.

His first novel,
Carnies
, was
published by Hachette Livre in 2006, and was nominated for both the Aurealis
and Ditmar awards.
http://www.martinlivings.com
.

Afterword

When I first heard about the
Grants
Pass
project, I was intrigued by the possibilities it offered. I wanted to
write something about people trapped outside the pandemic, perfectly safe but
perfectly doomed, and how they might react to this fate. And what better place
than outer space? The International Space Station has always intrigued me, and
I wondered what would happen to the people on board if there were suddenly no
more supply ships, no more crew swaps, no chance of return. I wanted to know
how they’d react.

I guess it’s a dark story — hardly a
surprise from me! — but in my mind it was actually about finding some kind of
hope in hopelessness. When your options are all but gone, the choices you make
are more important than ever.

Animal Husbandry

Seanan McGuire

The city of Clayton was burning.
I saw the smoke from over fifteen miles away, but I kept riding towards it,
less from hope that the fire was a sign of civilization than from sheer, cussed
stubbornness. My instructions said I needed to go this way. Since all the GPS
systems failed around the time the networks and satellite uplinks died, I
really didn’t think that deviating was a good idea. Not if I was actively
interested in living, anyway.

Fortunately for me, the wind was
blowing out to sea, carrying the bulk of the doubtless carcinogenic smoke with
it. I left the trailer about a mile down the road from the lookout point,
choosing the minor risk that one of the other poor souls left in this
god-forsaken world would stumble over it — you can’t exactly Lo-Jack a draft
horse — over the greater risks of smoke inhalation and panicked animals
rocketing out of my control. My mare, the unimaginatively-named Midnight, would
put up with just about anything I asked from her. She’d be able to stand the
heat as long as I could.

Even with the wind in our favor, the
air was so thick with ash that I could practically chew it by the time we got
to the top of the lookout point. I shielded my eyes to block the flames,
squinting through the smoke as I strained to see the city beyond. There wasn’t
much left to see. The fire had almost burned itself out, but it was still
vigorous enough to make that particular route impassable.

There were two choices. We could try
to find another route. Or we could back-track twenty miles to the superstore
I’d seen in San Ramon, resupply, and let the fire finish burning itself to
death.

“
We need a
break, don’t we, Midnight?” I asked, running a hand down the anxious mare’s
throat. She snorted, front legs dancing a half-panicked tattoo against the
gravel. She was ready to bolt, holding herself in place solely because she
assumed I wanted her to stay.

There was no need for that. We’d
seen everything we’d come to see, and it was just more devastation. Tugging
gently on the reins, I turned Midnight towards the caravan, and the road.

****

Before we rode out of the region
completely, I stopped at the sign marking the city limits, pulled out my staple
gun and another of my precious flyers, and set to work. Even if we didn’t come
back this way, even if the store managed to yield a better route, I would have
done my self-imposed duty by the people who might still be living here.
Wherever they were. When we finally turned towards San Ramon, white copy-paper
ghosts glared from the city sign behind us, eye-poppingly clean in a landscape
gone to ash.

It would never be enough, but it
would have to do.

IMPORTANT - IMPORTANT - IMPORTANT

PLEASE READ

YOUR SURVIVAL COULD DEPEND ON IT

If you’re alive and reading this,
there are a few things you should be aware of. Firstly, those diseases everyone
died of? The ones that barely had time to make the papers before it was over?
They weren’t natural, and that means there’s no way to estimate their
out-of-body survival rates.
Be careful
.
Keep contact with the
dead to an absolute minimum. If you must handle human remains, wear gloves and
be prepared to dispose of your outer garments immediately afterwards. Avoid
closed-up spaces where people died, especially those which have remained moist.
Diseases survive better in dark, warm, moist places.

Stick with bottled water whenever
possible. Boil everything when you can’t. All that plastic they said we needed
to keep out of the landfills? Forget it. Bottled water could save you. (Not
just from the manmade toxins. Cholera, dysentery, lots of other nasty things
could be lurking in the water by now. Drink Crystal Springs or shit out your
intestines. The choice is yours.) When selecting canned foods, check to be sure
that the cans are whole and have not been dented. Exterior rust is fine.
Interior rust is not.

On the bottom of this flyer you will
find a list of basic nutritional supplements which are likely to be missing in
your current diet. All items on the list can be found at any large grocery
store or moderately-sized health food store. I recommend you begin taking them.

Watch out for dogs and other
previously domesticated animals, as they may have turned feral in the absence
of human custodianship. I have also included a list of standard poison baits
and their doses. I do not recommend their use. They may still provide a measure
of security while traveling.

I am on my way to Grants Pass,
Oregon. I recommend you do the same as soon as you can. Time was short before
the pandemics, and there’s no telling how much we have left.

Hurry.

My name was at the bottom: Mercy
Neely, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. Possibly the last vet in the world.
Possibly the last medical practitioner of any kind in California.

I really wish I’d paid more
attention in class.

****

The San Ramon superstore showed
signs of moderate looting, which was reassuring. I’ve come to see looting as a
sort of hopeful omen, a little piece of proof that the human race will manage
to recover from what it’s done to itself. I was less pleased to see that my would-be
looters had focused their attentions on the junk food aisles and cosmetics,
almost completely ignoring the canned goods and well-stocked pharmacy. Maybe
that was better for me, but it didn’t bode well for the survival of the
species.

After my brief solo reconnaissance
was done, I cranked up the loading bay door enough to drive the wagon inside
and parked it in what used to be the stock room. Midnight wandered off to
investigate while I was unhitching the other horses and pouring their oats out
on the concrete. I don’t know what their names were originally; I call them
Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and that seems to work well enough for everyone
involved. The goats were hard at work trying to chew through their ropes again.
I set them loose to wreak what havoc they could inside the closed superstore
ecosystem. Goats can do a lot of damage, but even they can’t chew through
walls.

Finally, with everyone else roaming
free, I opened the wagon’s back door and released the hounds. Even indoors,
it’s difficult to overstate the value of a good guard dog in this brave new
world we’re all marooned in. They came bounding out with tails wagging madly,
even Brewster, whose close-cropped stub of a tail could barely do more than
vibrate rapidly back and forth.

The dogs inquired whether I might be
interested in company while I explored the store, largely through the mechanism
of trying to jump up and lick my face. I allowed that this might be acceptable.
An agreement was reached. Who says animals don’t communicate?

“
All you be
good, now,” I cautioned the rest of the traveling zoo, and stepped through the
swinging doors that separated the loading dock from the rest of the store, all
three dogs at my heels. Time to go shopping. New-world style.

****

The world ended about fourteen
months ago. Sadly, I missed this momentous occasion. I was home sick with the
plague, and was thus not allowed to participate in the grand pandemic which
wiped out the majority of the human race. Yeah. I get the irony. Still, I like
to think I’m doing pretty well, all things considered. I’ve made it more than
halfway to my eventual destination, despite some pretty major complications,
and I’ve managed to do it without having a psychotic break. Talking to the
animals doesn’t count. That’s what I went to school for.

As for how I missed the
pandemic…bubonic plague has been endemic in California’s small mammal
population since the 1800s, when it was imported along with other luxury items
such as silk, spices, and cheap immigrant labor. The state managed to hold on
to all four imports until just recently. I doubt there’s going to be much of a
market for any of them these days, but hey, I also didn’t think mankind was
going to wipe itself out in a blaze of dick-waving glory, so what do I know?

California’s ongoing plague problems
are how I know for certain that the pandemic was manmade. Supposedly, Texas was
hit by a form of bubonic plague that mowed down the population like a wheat
thresher. It spread too fast for anything but a droplet-based transmission — person-to-person
by way of sneezing or coughing — and it was resistant to all known antibiotics.
Welcome to fourteenth-century Europe, where the Black Death was everybody’s
least-favorite neighbor. Only that’s not possible, because that’s not how
bubonic plague works. Bubonic plague is carried by rat fleas, transmitted by
rat fleas, and spreads slowly, since rat fleas are notoriously unreliable about
when they bite you. Pneumonic plague is droplet-based, but that’s not what
killed Texas. Bubonic plague that wasn’t bubonic plague killed Texas, and that
means it wasn’t bubonic plague at all. It was something somebody built in a
lab, and I’m sure its creator won the Terrorist Science Fair before letting it
out of the vial.

The Texas plague killed horses,
cattle, goats, and most dogs, by the way. Texas may be the last place in this
country where it’s safe to sleep outside without fear of your neighbor’s
abandoned Rottweiler. Thanks, Texas plague. Thanks a lot.

As the only veterinarian in Pumpkin
Junction, California, my practice covered basically anything that people wanted
to bring me. Mercy Neely, Swiss Army veterinarian. If someone had a sick cat,
dog, or other standard pet, I was their girl. If they had a horse that needed
gelding, a cow that needed a checkup, or a flock of sheep that needed their
shots, that was also me. I did parrots, reptiles, and anything else animal-like
that happened to need medical attention. I examined an African praying mantis
once; I extracted a mousetrap from the stomach of an escaped boa constrictor; I
euthanized an emu with a broken leg. My practice was boring more often than it
was interesting, but it was always vital. I was the only game in town.

I guess I technically still would
be, if I’d stayed.

I’d been out at the O’Shea place the
Sunday before the pandemic started, giving the goats their yearly exam. With
thirty of the things in the flock, it was easier for me to go to them. The barn
was hopping with fleas, and I must’ve been bitten a good thirty times before I
finished for the day. Three days later, I got sick. You can’t be a California
vet and not know what’s endemic to the population; I know bubonic plague when I
see it. I diagnosed myself, gave myself an illegal prescription for
tetracycline, doped myself to the gills, and went to bed. Not, sadly, before
hanging a sign with a cute little hand-drawn rat on my door. ‘Doc’s got the
PLAGUE!’

I even slept through the quake that
leveled half the damn state. Remember, kids, vets get the
good
tranquilizers.

I like to think that there were
other survivors in my home town. The pathogens that hit California seem to have
caught and killed almost instantly, and I went to bed for six days starting two
days before the pandemic came out to play. I like to think that some people
made it through the sickness, saw the sign on my door, and decided that there
was no point in checking. I wouldn’t blame them if they did, but I would see
them again when I got to Grants Pass.

Most of all, I like to think that I
was exposed along with everybody else. I didn’t miss infection because I was
locked in my little room over the office; I missed infection because I had a
natural immunity. In a healthy population, naturally immune parents tend to
have naturally immune children. Maybe Dan didn’t make it through, but if I was
naturally immune, there’s a chance that Linda was, too. There’s a chance that
she’ll be waiting for me at the end of this road.

Wishful thinking, but hell.
Everybody’s allowed a little wishful thinking after they’ve survived the end of
the world.

****

The dogs roved ahead of me as we
walked through the dimly-lit store, never ranging more than about ten feet
away. It wasn’t just because they felt the need to protect me, although that
was a part of it; the last six people we’d seen had been armed, and had taken
shots at my little pack before I had time to tell them not to. When I left
Pumpkin Junction, I had six dogs in my personal escort. They’d been picked off
one by one, and the three I had left were the ones who’d figured out that
hiding behind the human was the best way to survive.

Brewster was the most timid of the
three, despite also being the largest. He looked back at me, buffing
uncertainly. “It’s okay, Brewster,” I said, in a soothing tone. I was only
half-paying attention to his unease. My eyes were too busy crawling over the
shelves, noting the things we needed, the things we could use, and comparing
them to the wagon’s carrying capacity. If I hitched Midnight alongside the
Tweedles and walked for a while, we could manage another few hundred pounds of
kibble; that would probably get us all the way to Sacramento, where we could—