Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalipse

I thought about that. "Even if we aren’t?" I asked after a while.

"What?"

"You want Dave convinced, but we’re still in the same shape we were before. We don’t know anything at all about what’s waiting for us after we die."

She giggled again and snuggled up closer to me under the covers. "Then God is just, if He exists," she said. "After all, I’m agnostic. I wouldn’t have it any other way." 

Mute by Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe — who is perhaps best known for his multi-volume epic, The Book of the New Sun — is the author of more than 200 short stories and 30 novels, is a two-time winner of both the Nebula and World Fantasy Award, and was once praised as “the greatest writer in the English Language alive today” by author Michael Swanwick. His most recent novels are The Wizard-Knight, Soldier of Sidon, and Pirate Freedom.

This story is about two children who return home, find an empty house, and are forced to grow up in a hurry. It first appeared in the program book for the 2002 World Horror Convention, where Wolfe was guest of honor.

In that same program book, Neil Gaiman offered up some advice on how to read Gene Wolfe. The first two points of his essay were:

(1) Trust the text implicitly. The answers are in there.

(2) Do not trust the text farther than you can throw it, if that far. It’s tricksy and desperate stuff, and it may go off in your hand at any time.

Keep that in mind when you’re reading this story. And when you’re done, you might want to heed Gaiman’s third point as well: “Reread. It’s better the second time.”

Jill was not certain it was a bus at all, although it was shaped like a bus and of a bus-like color. To begin with (she said to herself) Jimmy and I are the only people. If it’s a school bus, why aren’t there other kids? And if it’s a pay-when-you-get-on bus, why doesn’t anybody get on? Besides there was a sign that said BUS STOP, and it didn’t.

The road was narrow, cracked and broken; the bus negotiated it slowly. Trees closed above it to shut out the sun, relented for a moment or two, then closed again.

As it seemed, forever.

There were no cars on the road, no trucks or SUVs, and no other buses. They passed a rusty sign with a picture of a girl on a horse, but there were no girls and no horses. A deer with wide, innocent eyes stood beside a sign showing a leaping buck and watched their bus (if it really was a bus) rumble past. It reminded Jill of a picture in a book: a little girl with long blond hair with her arm around the neck of just such a deer. That girl was always meet­ing bad animals and horrible, ugly people; and it seemed to Jill that the artist had been nice to give her this respite. Jill looked at the other pictures with horrified fascination, then turned to this one with a sense of relief. There were bad things, but there were good things too.

“Do you remember the knight falling off his horse?” she whispered to her brother.

“You never saw a knight, Jelly. Me neither.”

“In my book. Most of the people that girl met were awful, but she liked the knight and he liked—”

The driver’s voice cut through hers. “Right over yonder’s where your ma’s buried.” He pointed, coughing. Jill tried to see it, and saw only trees.

After that she tried to remember Mother. No clear image would come, no tone of voice or remembered words. There had been a mother. Their mother. Her mother. She had loved her mother, and Mother had loved her. She would hold on to that, she promised herself. They could not bury that.

Trees gave way to a stone wall pierced by a wide gate of twisted bars, a gate flanked by stone pillars on which stone lions crouched and glared. An iron sign on the iron bars read poplar hill.