Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse (The Exile Book of... Anthology Series #9)
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
INTRODUCTION
One of the more interesting apocalyptic movements I’ve readabout is the one spearheaded by a farmer from upstate New York by the name of William Miller. Not because apocalyptic beliefs are anything new – remember Y2K or the supposed Mayan prophecies? – but because the Millerites seemed to gain so much traction back in 1843. When the apocalypse didn’t take place the movement fragmented, an episode that is called the Great Disappointment.
That’s what makes me smile. The Great Disappointment, a title that seems to imply a desire for an eschatological out-come. Certainly, something in our hearts makes us covet this dark path, for it reappears in fiction over and over again. Admit it. Didn’t the punk fashions of Mad Max tickle your fancy? Katniss lives in a post-apocalyptic (and dystopian) society, but in a burst of irony the books and movies have inspired Hunger Games tie-in makeup. Much of the enjoyment of a zombie video game is not in the fear of the undead, but our trigger-happy fingers that allow us to blow everyone to pieces. The Road isn’t exactly my idea of a party and Oryx and Crake paints a rather depressing picture, but even when you are dealing with murder, mutants, cannibalism or disease, the post-apocalypse is something we eagerly consume because we like to think about our survival.
By that I don’t mean that we are all hoarding cans of food and ammunition in our homes. But we do like to imagine we can survive a great disaster. There is something hopeful about the post-apocalypse precisely because it is post.
The post-apocalypse caters to our more selfish fantasies. Wouldn’t the world be more fun if we didn’t have to go to work tomorrow and became vampire hunters instead? Small matters, like our commute, would dissolve into nothing.
This volume explores the Canadian post-apocalypse. What is it we in Canada fear, desire, worry and fantasize about? Ecological disasters, for one. This was a constant issue in the submissions I read and several of the stories I accepted consider the depletion of natural resources and global warming. Another common concern was the maintenance of Canada as a nation-state, a topic that seemed to be rather odd compared to American post-apocalyptic fiction: it doesn’t seem such a big issue to our southern neighbours. A number of characters in Fractured are marginalized individuals who did not fit comfortably in the pre-apocalypse. Because of this, even though it is the end of Canada as they know it… they feel fine.
Canada is touted as a polite, even dull, nation. But Fractured is not about our good manners. It is about the cracks and the fragments of a shattered future, and what rises from the rubble. In these tales the Canadian post-apocalypse is frightening, exciting; sometimes it’s even beautiful.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
April 2014
NO MAN IS A PROMONTORY
H.N. Janzen
Kelowna has changed in the last five years. Back then, this was City Park. When Pennyweight and I snuck in under the protective shroud of darkness this morning, though, the dead trees and bare earth made it hard to think of this place as anything other than what it is now – a graveyard. Heaps of brown earth hastily scraped over the bodies of the fallen fill the void where the grass used to be, and charred bits of bone and teeth litter what used to be a kid’s water park before it was repurposed for disposing of those killed by the fallout. Apart from Pennyweight, I haven’t seen a kid in years. The bio-weapons killed almost all the plants above water, and some people will eat anything. Not Pennyweight and I. We’re the last people in this city, and we have food for two.
There’s a promontory on the beach, a little rock toe stretched cautiously into the lake. On top of it is a raft made of barrels that some keen individual roped together in an attempt to cross the lake after the bridge went out. Beneath the rusty barrels, huddled together for warmth, Pennyweight and I are scoping the lake. Pennyweight is wearing a man’s medium corduroy suit jacket, the closest we could find to camouflage for a 12-year-old. He looks like a bundle of sticks in fancy dress. I’m wearing my old army uniform; with my gaunt frame and my face paint made from water milfoil, I look like a photograph in National Geographic, something with a title like Woman Soldier at the End of Days. Sometimes it amuses me that we’re both Indian, but different kinds, with Pennyweight coming from across the lake and my mother having come here from across the ocean.
Despite our clothes, the seeping moisture always finds its way in, and what heat it can’t take, the cold rocks leach away. The frigid air deadens my sense of smell, but I know that when we are warm in our beds tonight, the scents trapped in our clothes of plant rot and the last glacial run-off before winter will make the room smell like a camping trip. As it stands, all I can smell is Pennyweight’s salty breath.
It wasn’t always like this. I used to be in the Canadian Armed Forces infantry. I got back from my first tour overseas right before all this began. When I was selected for advanced training, my mother insisted that I come back to Kelowna so that she could throw a party for me. No matter how old I got, I was still a little girl in her eyes. Sometimes, when I have a hard time falling asleep, I wonder if, as I cradled her in my arms that last time, she had finally gazed up at me and seen a woman instead. I doubt it. Even as I stared down at the weak, ephemeral husk she had been at the end, I still felt as though I were looking up at her.
Across the lake is a dilapidated building on the hill, along with a gigantic wooden “L.” I think it used to be part of a series of signs that said THE BLUFF, but I never really paid attention to it when I had the chance to. I linger on the “L,” combing over the flecks of white paint. Pennyweight is trying hard not to shiver against my arm, but I can feel his shoulder jiggling against my ribs. Rather than pushing him away, my hands clench, steadying the scope.