They could lock me in a room filled with sewage. They could talk about the six billion dead, the end of civilization, and when that didn’t hurt enough, they could find every picture of Nikki and Rachel that had been preserved on computers and in school records. They could play me an endless slideshow of what I had lost. They could sit down and explain, in slow, cruel detail, how all of this was my fault, and I would believe them, because they would be telling the truth. There was so, so much that they could do to me, and I would deserve every agonizing bit of it. I always had.
“They could tell me to release you,” said Colonel Handleman calmly. “You would always know that there was a safe haven somewhere in the world, a place where things were still — what’s the word? Ah, yes. Clean. You would know that you had been rejected, and when we inevitably fell to the rot, you would know that it was your fault. The world would collapse, and if you lived long enough to see it, you would be fully aware that every person who succumbed did it with your name on their lips.”
I stared at her. “You wouldn’t.”
There was no mercy in her eyes; no forgiveness. There was only the same bleak look that had graced the black dog before I brought the crowbar down on its skull; the emptiness that had lurked in Nikki’s face as the softness leeched her life away. “Try me.”
I sat up, hands slipping on the still-damp floor. “What do you want? You say I should start acting like a reasonable human being, but you haven’t given me anything to be reasonable about.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Dr. Riley; I assumed that you would have figured it out by now, a smart lady like you.” She leaned closer. “You made this mess. We want you to clean it up.”
I blinked at her slowly. “What?”
“We want you to fix it. Whatever you require will be provided, and at the end, you’ll walk away a free woman. No charges, no consequences, just your own conscience. We’ll even keep your role in the original outbreak quiet. It’s easier now, with most of the media destroyed. You could be a hero, if that was what you wanted.”
It wasn’t what I wanted. What I wanted was a little house with an art studio in the spare bedroom, and a laughing, dark-eyed woman eating the melon I couldn’t bring myself to touch. What I wanted was a teenage girl curling her lip at the sight of her mothers dancing around the living room like goons. What I wanted was dead and gone and buried, and it was never coming back.
But there was a mess to be seen to. There was a mess, and there was a secret somewhere that would give me the right combination of chemicals, the right sequence of enzymes, to clean it up and beat it back. I sat up.
“You said that two percent of the population had the right combination of cytokines and specific enzyme expression.”
“Yes.”
“What degree of the population has one of the two, and what percentage of them showed resistant traits before succumbing?”
“I don’t know, but I could get you the figures.”
“How many people are left?” This was the big question: this was the one without which nothing else mattered. Too few, and we might as well be like Nikki, like Rachel, like the black dog — we might as well go into the gray, and let the softness have dominion over all.
Colonel Handleman smiled slowly. “Enough.”
This wouldn’t make amends. This wouldn’t bring back what had been lost. I had allowed Rachel to eat the melon, I had allowed Nikki to steal the juice; I had done this to the world. It was only fair and just that I should have to set it right.
I picked myself up from the bleach-covered floor, watching Colonel Handleman all the while. “I’m going to need some clothes,” I said.
“That can be arranged,” she replied. “Welcome to the cleanup crew, Dr. Riley.”
“Thank you,” I said.
There was work to do.
Seanan McGuire was born and raised in Northern California, resulting in a love of rattlesnakes and an absolute terror of weather. She shares a crumbling old farmhouse with a variety of cats, far too many books, and enough horror movies to be considered a problem. Seanan publishes about three books a year, and is widely rumored not to actually sleep. When bored, Seanan tends to wander into swamps and cornfields, which has not yet managed to get her killed (although not for lack of trying). She also writes as Mira Grant, filling the role of her own evil twin, and tends to talk about horrible diseases at the dinner table.
WANDERING STAR
Leife Shallcross
Exhibit 42: “Jessie’s quilt.” An extremely rare early 21st Century Australian memento quilt. Artist unknown. Various fabrics.
This textile work is unusual firstly because it has survived such a tumultuous period in history, but also because it appears to have been primarily assembled from fabric cut from children’s clothes, rather than from the purpose-produced craft fabric widely available in Australia in the early 21st Century. Due to the variety of fabrics used, the age of the quilt and the item’s likely early history, it is extremely fragile.
It has been assembled by a combination of hand- and machine-piecing and is hand-quilted. An embroidered inscription on the back reads “For Jessie, love Mum, 2017.”
I realize I’ve been sitting in my car, in my driveway, staring into space for at least ten minutes. It’s a perfect day. The sun is shining. The garden is flourishing. There’s the possum box in the tree by the gate, with the possum asleep inside it. I can just see her ears from where I’m sitting. Her baby will be curled up at the back.
I hear jubilant shouts from the back garden, and Jessie stumbles into view, laughing. She’s soaked to the skin. She turns and hurls a water bomb at her little brother.
I look down at the bags of shopping on the seat beside me. I spent the last bit of money in my account on cans of baked beans and packets of pasta. There weren’t any matches. Gavin has been stocking up on petrol. At the checkout, I caught myself assuming I’ll have the opportunity to shop again when I get paid next week. Then it dawned on me: This is it.
Twelve blocks make up the quilt, each constructed using three distinct fabrics in a traditional nine-patch pattern known as Wandering Star. The three fabrics in the first block are: A cotton flannelette printed with a pattern of pink rabbits; a pink and white striped cotton terry cloth; and a cotton/polyester fabric in lilac that has been machine smocked and machine embroidered with small, pink roses. All three are typical of early 21st Century infants’ clothing.
I can’t send them. I can’t let them go. When I think about it, I can’t breathe. These little people I’ve raised and loved. I’ve patted them to sleep until my hand is numb. I’ve worried about how long to breastfeed them, spent hours pushing organic vegetables through a sieve. I’ve read to them or sung them songs every night of their lives. I’ve attended their soccer games and harangued them to do their music practice and their homework. I’ve found lost library books and made emergency dashes to school with forgotten lunch bags.
I have spent the last eleven years looking after every aspect of their lives. And they trust me to do just that. To keep doing that.
How can I send them away? Who else is ever going to do even half of what I’ve done for them?
Block three comprises three cotton fabrics: a fine, blue denim, with remnants of decorative patches applied to it; a white cotton poplin with red polka-dots; and a pink cotton knit fabric that appears to be stained with colored paint.