Page 210 of The End of the World As We Know It
In a thousand years, the innumerable sons and daughters of Sayang that come to occupy the hottest swath of the Great Plains will still paint precisely the same flowers, precisely the same way, whenever they smell the rains coming. Zara’s black sunflowers, blooming all over the breast of the divide.
Everything expires. But that doesn’t always mean it goes bad.
THE DEVIL’S CHILDREN
Sarah Langan
Maple’s been missing north of a month. I want to pretend she’s okay. I want to pretend she ran away and that one day, I’ll join her. But the feeling inside me is queasy.
She’s not the only member of my kind to go missing. They leave the mountains to check on the water supply or to deliver an altar offering, and we never hear from them again. It’s possible they got Captain Trips and stayed away rather than infecting the rest of us. Possible, too, that the infection hit them so hard and fast they didn’t have the time to radio news. There are also mountain lions to consider. These are heartless creatures; happy to chew even bones.
It’s autumn in California and the setting sun smears red rays across the San Gabriel Mountains. My tribe has occupied this place since our treaty with the Chosen, who’ve proven capricious overlords. On whims, they shrink our borders. They encroach, bringing sickness. We’re too vulnerable and spread out to fight them. They get away with it.
Without Maple, I’ve been foraging alone. The others have said nothing, knowing I’m not ready to replace my friend. But tonight, the thing I’ve been dreading happens. Ferris Landing approaches mycamp. He’s a tall, slender man and he looks behind me instead ofatme. “I’ll gather with you tonight,” he whispers. Everyone in my tribe whispers.
Ferris isn’t suited for my work. He’s been known to pick poison oak instead of fennel, to scare small game with gangly feet. In truth, he’s unsuited to any work. But it’s not the way of my tribe to tell people what to do. He’s offered help. It’s my job to accept that help with grace and let him figure out whether he belongs.
“As soon as it’s dark,” I say.
Night comes hard and fast, that last of dusk burning into black. Ferris meets me at the path that was once Mulholland Drive. It’s beautifully eerie, a wild and ripe territory.
We’re not long before Ferris stops and calls, “Here?” to me in a whisper that’s louder than most. Everything about him is louder than it should be. But to my surprise, he’s found lamb’s quarters. They’re full of iron. More than deer meat, they thicken the blood.
“Yeah,” I say. “You got it.”
We gather those, then the beets and potatoes I planted with Maple on the wide flat overlooking dilapidated, ivy-riddled houses down in the valley that was once Studio City. He’s helpful, carrying everything, acting as a second, trying hard to intuit my next moves.
We finish sooner than expected and have time before we need to head back. Ferris sits on a rock. He makes room for me, but I ignore this. It’s impolite to stand close, to sit nearby. Even family members avoid direct touch. He lights something whose tip smolders red. It’s been two generations since Captain Trips, but the old-world graffiti is still carved into the granite.Laura loves John. Hollywood 4-Neva.
Ferris exhales a stinking cloud. He’s a misfit, which, in our group of ragtag survivors, is saying something. He always laughs too late. Always watches, but rarely speaks. Behind his back, we call him the Preacher.
“You’re kidding,” I say. “That’s a cigarette?”
He shrugs, sheepish, and I get the disturbing feeling that he’s planned this. Left our territory and braved the open to loot it from an overgrown and ivy covered 7-Eleven, been carrying the pack around since, waiting to show someone he’s a secret rebel.
He holds the cigarette. His voice is jarringly loud. “Want a drag?”
Has he forgotten that my mother died from a lump in her lung? That we live only a few hundred miles from the rubble of an A-bomb? That I used to have a best friend named Maple, and he’ll never take her place?
“You ass,” I whisper.
I stomp ahead toward camp. Soon, he’s trudging behind me, and I feel the thickness of his uncertainty as he mentally proposes and disposes of the words to mollify me. We walk in the quiet long enough that I realize I’m being hard on him. I miss Maple too much to want to have fun with anyone else.
Back at camp, we’re the last shift to eat. It’s our way to always do things in the smallest possible groups. Even confined to our limited territory, we keep apart.
There’s news first—what we’ve heard and related over the radio on a closed channel. We learn that our tribe in Montana needs antibiotics, and our tribe in Texas has found uranium, which they hope to keep a secret from their local Chosen, who will surely want to loot that metal and resettle them, likely infecting them in the process.
We talk about those of our group who have gone missing. Aside from the practical possibilities, a few of my kind think it’s magic—some kind of rapturing. I doubt this. But they seem excited about the possibility. The more likely cause for our missing is something I don’t want to think about.
Before retiring for the dawn, we draw straws to decide who will deliver our seasonal GoodWill offerings to the Chosen. It’s a part of our treaty, token gifts that serve to humanize us, make us seem like people and not animals.
No one likes to make this dangerous trek, though lately, I’ve been itching to get out—to find Maple, but also just to leave. To see something new. There’s a sameness to our life that has been gnawing on my sleep. For how long are we expected to subsist on a dead and shrinking plot of land? What is there to hope for, when your future is a noose pulled tight?
I draw a long straw. I should be happy, but something inside me is disappointed.
Then Ferris draws his short straw. Because I’m now his partner, this is also my short straw. I expect him to convey some kind of apology. Shrugged shoulders or sheepishness or even a whispered,Sorry! My first day with him and I’m already screwed.
Instead, he looks at me, his brown eyes nearly as dark as his pupils, and smiles.
