Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(71)

Jesus, I whisper.

Now there’s a traffic jam of different realities. Whenever one possible future collides with another, the result is destruction of both potential worlds. The Abyss is a garbage dump of extinguished reality strings.

I close my eyes.

What can we—?

Do? Nothing.

I actually laugh. After all our achievements in technology, culture and civilization?

Nothing. Mac flaps a hand. Erased as if they didn’t exist.

But that’s—

I pause, groping for words.

Insulting, I manage finally.

Mac laughs.

No, really! I am shaking with rage. Is this how we live now? After everything the human race has achieved! It just… ends? No bang, no whimper? Just a grand reminder of our monumental insignificance! The whole of… HISTORY! Juggernauting over a cliff? Into nothing? That’s insane! Like an author abandoning a story before finishing the final





RIVER ROAD


Amanda M. Taylor

My sister Jill tapped her handmade machete on the gunwale, a steady pattern of tat-tat-tat ratta-tat as she stared vacantly at the branches that passed. The waters of the Red River slapped the aluminium hull of our freight canoe as I scanned the trees through my binoculars in the predawn haze. Ice clung to the bare boughs of the elms and oaks, their trunks submerged in lapping, murky floodwaters.

“Stop it,” I whispered, and the machete skirted into the leather sheath on her thigh.

The abandoned suburb came into view as we crested the break in the old dyke, and I darted the binoculars again: the cab of a rusted truck barely broke the lapping muddy waters; broken windows, shattered inward; houses and garages half-obliterated and charred by memories of what tore them down; overgrown lilacs with heavy buds, waiting for the waters to recede. There was only silence, which let my mind rouse their smell – it was only a month away, blooming in that holiday time before the mosquitos came.

“See anything, Kimiko?” Sandip asked me from where he sat in the stern, paddle a rudder in the weak current. He was ashen bark, skin not yet warmed by summer’s kiss, but marked by acne. The neck of his crocheted sweater was rolled up high, turtleneck snug beneath his chin.

I shook my head and tucked a strand of my black hair back over my ear. It was too dark to tell what might be waiting for us – it had been too dark all night, but luck was on our side. It was the safe time of year to scavenge. Well, the only time we could.

The canoe turned under his direction and I hunkered down on the seat in the bow. Each silent breath brought a lasting fog, taken sluggishly by a passing breeze that tinkled the ice in the boughs.

“It’s too cold,” Sandip whispered.

“It’s better this way,” I said, and offered a reassuring smile. “They don’t like the cold. They don’t like the water either, that’s why we’re here.”

“You’ll do fine,” Jill said, and gave his knee a squeeze. “I came last year and it was easy. Except for when I fell in, so don’t do that.”

“Right,” he said, eyes darting to the trees he guided us through for cover. “In and out, right?”

“In and out. This is the easy part. Want to come back with us next week too?”

“We’ll see,” he said, but half-smiled when Jill squeezed his leg again. “It’s a change of pace, that’s for sure.”

“That’s why I like it,” I said, and stood up again, binoculars forward as we closed in on the warehouse. The large building was half-submerged, like all the rest, blackened by mould, time, and aged violence. The side we approached had not been spared, with rusted, bent girders crumpled inward and a gaping hole of concrete blocks spilled into the waters, disappearing below the surface. There was a small knit scarf in a familiar pattern. “There, you see the marker?”

“Oh – yeah.” The canoe angled toward the hole in the building.

My binoculars swept again, double-taking back to movement in the water. “Hold!”

Sandip and Jill shrunk down as I stood up, bringing the binoculars into focus on the bloated corpse in the water.

A pent breath escaped. “Just a horse. Don’t worry – it’s just a horse.”

“What a waste,” Sandip said, as he nibbled at the dried skin on his bottom lip. “They’re hard to come by.”

The canoe scraped into the submerged cinderblock and I stamped into the side to keep myself from pitching into the freezing water. I braced on the gunwale, binoculars swinging from the strap around my neck. “Warn me next time!”

“S-sorry!”

“He didn’t mean to,” Jill said, and scooted forward in the boat to grab a bent loop of rebar jutting from the broken wall. She hauled us into the shadow of the dilapidated building, the metal hull grating and echoing off the space. We climbed onto the landing where the knit scarf was, and I untied it as Jill checked out the stairs.

“They should be good,” I whispered.

“Excuse me for being careful.”

As she crept up to the second floor of the warehouse I looked across the mottled darkness. Here and there gaping holes let in the growing morning light, bright pockets that seemed to make the surrounding areas darker still. The sounds of water lapping echoed across it, but disappeared under the creak of the metal handrail of the half-intact stairwell.