Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(75)

Gooseflesh met the cold air, and I closed my eyes, shuddering still as I let it dry. I pulled on a turtleneck as I heard Sandip’s steps, and his eyes stayed down as I tugged on a skin-tight pair of jeans. They stuck on my hips, leaving the small paunch of my gut free. The last sounds of the hover-ships faded, the bleating calls of check and ping echoing through the otherwise silent city.

“All day?” Jill’s mouth hid in the sweater.

“Yeah. Come here, we’ll stick together.” I motioned to Sandip.

He edged closer as I flapped the blankets, cream-coloured felt that caught my hangnails. “I didn’t mean any harm.”

“I know.” I thrust one into his hands and propped up the bed on the end table to create a lee. I hunkered down and Jill snuck into the crook of my arm. “Can’t change it now. I’ll get us home.”

He joined us and I strong-armed him in close as he flapped the second blanket over us.

“Let’s stay quiet now. And rest if you can,” I whispered, and squeezed one shoulder and then the other as we slumped beneath the musty mattress.

I could hear the slow drip of our clothes where they hung, a poignant pluck loud compared to the lapping river outside. Jill’s breathing slowed from shuddered huffs into deeper, slow pulls. My arms were numb, from cold or their weight I don’t know. It was warmer beside them, but my feet… Marc’s chiding voice was there as he cupped my toes and blew heat against them, snow still on the mat by the door. Hushed whispers as the baby slept in a wood crib by an ember fire. The cattle were fed, their munching shuffles heard through the adjoining wall. Precious warm kisses.

I twitched with a start and opened my eyes, swallowing my fatigue as I strained to pull a tingling arm free. Sandip shifted. Fuck. Stay awake. The light was bright outside, the day blessedly free of any ship or drone or tracker. My eyelids drooped. What good would I be against them, anyway?

I woke again when the light was fading, to a sharp jab in my ribs.

“Good job on watch,” Jill whispered. She was sitting up beside me, her legs still beneath the shared blanket.

I squinted at her before I saw that Sandip was still sleeping nearby. I tried to wiggle cold-stiff toes and sat up, sloughing the blanket onto him. “We should move. We can get back by dawn. Get him up, okay?”

“Our jackets and boots are still wet.”

“We’ll make do. We’ll take the blankets.” I stiffly rose, hobbled on cold feet.

“Should I search the building?”

“No!” The words snapped, and she looked down as Sandip sat up into the blanket. “No. We’ll go home. Just let me go pee.”

The canoe was waiting, flipped and ready with our wet packs when I was relieved and dressed. The waters were calm, the skies overcast. Jill was in the bow, wrapped in a blanket, and Sandip had the other in hand for me.

“I haven’t seen any movement – or heard anything unusual. Not that I’ve been awake long,” he said, and handed me my binoculars too.

“Sure you don’t want this?” I waved the blanket.

“I think you need it,” Sandip said, and held the canoe steady. “Here.”

“Did she get you with her icy feet too? Just like when we were little…”

I sat midship and wrapped my lower body in the blanket. He hopped in and pushed us off as I took up a paddle with Jill. The river would guide us home – guide us to the safety of the ring dyke community, and the chickens in the farmyard – and Marc’s waiting arms.

“Let’s see if we can do this right?” Sandip murmured, and directed us out into the current and the waiting night.





LAST MAN STANDING


Frank Westcott

Disaster struck. One man left standing. No woman to speak of. He could see. If there was one. How would he procreate? Could he. If he could. Find a woman. And he had any juice left.

Food would be scarce. And there was no power to speak of. Candles. One windmill. Tilted. No cows. To speak of. He stammered even if no one was listening.

His mouth felt like a broken slot machine after the fire. No handle to open it. Lips sealed. He stammered anyway, inside his head even if there was no one to listen, if he spoke out loud, if he could, and his lips weren’t sealed. In the silence. Around him. Gracefully. Or gracelessly. Whatever the case, if he spoke, if his lips magically opened. But he stammered in his thoughts, as if he spoke them and there was someone listening. Able to. But there wasn’t. He heard. With the last scream of death from the barn.

They called the barn the dying place. Or the other way around. The dying place was the barn. You get things turned around when you are the second-last man standing, or sitting, for that matter. I was the second-last man standing. It was the way the cards were written, dealt, off the dealer, off the bottom of the deck, his deck, after he fell to the floor in the barn, and the cards scattered all over the place. His place. And the air. Around him. Like ice in the water of time that no longer existed. Because this was the future. We were seeing. Toronto. After the storm. The last storm. We would see. Witness. Or be alive for. There had been many. Predicted. All of the them. Except the last one. It came first. Thing. In. The. Monring. Morning.

My fingers slip on the keys now like the last man’s speech inside his head. You see. I can see into the future. This future. His future. Toronto without a bus. Line. Or streetcar named desire, if that’s what you wanted. Time had fallen out o the CN tower, renamed something else I can’t remember. What. And the periods are slipping all over the place too on this machine. I wonder where the comma went. Oh… there it is … ,… Found one. How many commas on a typewriter, anyway. I can’t remember. Memory’s not too good after the storm. The second-last one. That is why I am the second-last man standing. Or sitting. For that matter. I can’t remember if I said that already. All ready. All aboard. But I might have. And the conductor called from the train.