Joe lay down in the truck bed. Surly Shirley stayed still, letting the deep strobe of his heartbeat soothe her. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and shook it out, then stuffed it into his mouth with a sob. Something had crinkled when he retrieved the handkerchief, and Joe managed a weak smile. Reaching back into his pocket, he pulled out a small package of oyster crackers and opened them. Joe placed a tiny cracker next to Surly’s beak before he realized she was already sleeping, her body in shock. So he put the crackers away. The pain in Joe’s own body kept him awake for a long time through the rocky ride in the wagon. After several hours, the wagon finally stopped sometime in the night.
“Get out, Joe,” said Walt over his shoulder. When Joe didn’t comply, Walt turned to find that he’d finally fallen unconscious, the parrot a trembling gray bundle of warmth on his chest. Walt sighed and got down. He lifted Joe off the wagon and put him onto the grass in front of a huge glass dome, then got back on the wagon, twitching the reins so the horse cantered on.
Joe awoke with a groan as a light rain began to fall, chilling him. A woman with a light came out of the glass building. She pointed it at Joe, carefully circling him. When she was sure he wasn’t going to attack her, she leaned over him and patted his face.
“Are you Infected?” she asked as he opened his eyes.
He shook his head.
“What’s your name? Where did you come from? Who did this to you?” she asked in quick succession.
“Oo oo,” was all he said and put a hand to his mouth.
“It’s okay,” said the woman. “We’ll help you, there’s a doctor inside.” She lifted him up slowly and helped him walk into the building. He kept a hand cupped around Surly’s still form. She hadn’t woken up.
“Ruth!” called the woman. “Ruth, I need help!”
She helped Joe sit down on a warm cement bench. He looked around him. The greenhouse was shaggy, unkempt. Half the plants were brown and shriveled. But something was blooming. He could see startling bursts of color amid the dull, dead vines and leaves. The woman brought another with her. Ruth, he presumed. She was carrying a small basket of lemons, which she set beside him. He thought Surly would like them. Would like this place.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
His eyes filled and he shook his head. He never wanted to talk about it. Never again wanted to be the man who’d run with the likes of Gray and the others.
She patted his hand gently. “It’s okay, you’re safe now.” She glanced over him. “I’m just not sure where to start. What hurts the worst?”
Joe cupped both hands around Surly. He held her out for Ruth to see. Ruth glanced at the other woman and then back at Joe. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m not a vet. I don’t know what to do for a bird.”
Joe nodded and then burst into tears.
“Let’s get you back to the clinic so I can help you,” said Ruth, carefully taking Surly from him. She set the bird gently down by the basket. “Juliana, will you help me?” The other woman helped her lift Joe from the bench and they walked him carefully outside.
Surly woke to the sweet, thick scent of lemons warming in a bright pool of summer sun.
A Word from Deirdre Gould
I’m not certain if there are pet shops in shopping malls these days. I haven’t seen one in years, but they used to be in both of the large malls in Maine when I was growing up. In both cases they were tucked away in a corner furthest from any natural light. When I was a kid, they were like some fantasy land of cheerful people and adorable furry things I was never allowed to take home. (My family adopted strictly shelter animals, and still does.) But my dad is a high school biology teacher, so we went to the mall pet shop fairly often for meal worms and mice to feed the snakes in his classroom.
The mice used to come in these small, white cardboard boxes with air holes. They were shaped roughly like a happy meal box. The similarity was not lost on me. There aren’t many animals more vulnerable than pet store denizens. Especially exotic ones, like Surly Shirley in the story. Without international shipping of food and medicine, most exotic pets would die pretty quickly. And while instinct can take an animal a long way, for an exotic pet far from its natural habitat and peers—a pet that was born in captivity—the odds of survival are pretty slim. I wanted my underparrot to win. I wanted a very vulnerable character to not only be able to survive the immediate chaos of an apocalyptic event but to become heroic in some way.
But even superparrots need sidekicks. Surly Shirley starts out as a bird I wouldn’t like. She’s mean, she’s jaded, and she’d rather bite than make friends. She’s someone I probably wouldn’t want around. Just like Joe, who starts this story as maybe a coward and definitely a thug. He goes with the flow, even around bad people like Gray, because it’s easier to do so. He’s willing to hurt people, just like Surly.
But when the chips are down, both realize they won’t be able to live with themselves if they don’t try to do the right thing. Without each other, they’d never have transformed into the heroic characters they become. So, what happens to them both? Does Joe recover? That I can answer since it’s already written in Krisis, the third book in my After the Cure series. He does recover, mostly, until he meets Gray again and must decide whether to save himself or the women in the greenhouse that rescued him. And Surly Shirley? Does Joe ever see her again? There aren’t many vets in the post-apocalypse. I hope she wakes up to a warm greenhouse and all the citrus she can eat, but she’ll probably never fly again. But that’s okay. Not every superhero flies. And sometimes they can be cranky and prone to bite.
If you’d like to read more about Joe, pick up Krisis. And if you’d like to read more about Surly Shirley, tell me so! Connect with me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Afterthecurenovel.
Kael Takes Wing
(a Mayake Chronicles short story)
by E.E. Giorgi
They came every spring. Condors. They circled the sky and waited. Silently, stubbornly. They knew if they waited long enough, their reward would come; their hunger would be satisfied.
All they had to do was wait. Eagles hunted. Brown falcons hunted. Even humans hunted. But not the condors. They fed on death. And all other birds hated them for that.
Everyone but me.
To my young eyes, they were immense and majestic. They owned the sky. When the condors came, I poked my head from the nest and stared, fascinated. Their wingspan seemed as wide as the sky itself, their glide seamless, their flight as steady as the breeze. I was mesmerized. The feathers of their wingtips looked like fingers, spread out to embrace the currents of the air.
“Don’t look at them,” Mother would say, pushing me back inside the nest. Like everyone else, Mother hated the condors. She said the only reason they thrived was because of the Plague. The disease had wiped out most of the creatures on the planet. Humans, mammals, even fish. And yet the condors banqueted on the death and never got sick.
“Don’t look at them and don’t ever leave the nest,” Mother would say every time she left to hunt. “No chick has ever survived falling from its nest.”