Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalipse

"We went to ask the guards over the intercom boxes if they knew how to stop termites," Jennie says logically. "After all, their work is to stop things, germs and things. We thought they might be able to tell us how to stop termites. We thought they might have special training in it."

The bedroom door opens and Rachel comes out, her young face drawn. McHabe smiles at her, and then his gaze returns to Jennie."I don’t think soldiers are trained in stopping termites, but I’ll definitely brim?

#

On his second visit to me six days later, just before the Block dance, Tom McHabe seems different. I’d forgotten that there are people who radiate such energy and purpose that they seem to set the very air tingling. He stands with his legs braced slightly apart, flanked by Rachel and Jennie, both dressed in their other skirts for the dance. Jennie has woven a red ribbon through her blonde curls; it glows like a flower. McHabe touches her lightly on the shoulder, and I realize from her answering look what must be happening between them. My throat tightens.

"I want to be honest with you, Mrs. Pratt. I’ve talked to Jack Stevenson and Mary Kramer, as well as some others in Blocks C and E, and I’ve gotten a feel for how you live here. A little bit, anyway. I’m going to tell Mr. Stevenson and Mrs. Kramer what I tell you, but I wanted you to be first."

"Why?" I say, more harshly than I intend. Or think I intend.

He isn’t fazed. "Because you’re one of the oldest survivors of the disease. Because you had a strong education Outside. Because your daughter’s husband died of axoperidine."

At the same moment that I realize what McHabe is going to say next, I realize too that Rachel and Jennie have already heard it. They listen to him with the slightly open-mouthed intensity of children hearing a marvellous but familiar tale. But do they understand? Rachel wasn’t present when her father finally died, gasping for air his lungs couldn’t use.

McHabe, watching me, says, "There’s been a lot of research on the disease since those deaths, Mrs. Pratt."

"No. There hasn’t. Too risky, your government said."

I see that he caught the pronoun. "Actual administration of any cures is illegal, yes. To minimize contact with communicables."

"So how has this ‘research’ been carried on?"

"By doctors willing to go Inside and not come out again. Data is transmitted out by laser. In code."

"What clean doctor would be willing to go Inside and not come out again?"

McHabe smiles; again I’m struck by that quality of spontaneous energy. "Oh, you’d be surprised. We had three doctors inside the Pennsylvania colony. One past retirement age. Another, an old-style Catholic, who dedicated his research to God. A third nobody could figure out, a dour persistent guy who was a brilliant researcher."

Was. "And you."

"No," McHabe says quietly. "I go in and out."

"What happened to the others?"

"They’re dead." He makes a brief aborted movement with his right hand and I realize that he is, or was, a smoker. How long since I had reached like that for a non-existent cigarette? Nearly two decades. Cigarettes are not among the things people donate; they’re too valuable. Yet I recognize the movement still. "Two of the three doctors caught the disease. They worked on themselves as well as volunteers. Then one day the government intercepted the relayed data and went in and destroyed everything."

"Why?" Jennie asks.

"Research on the disease is illegal. Everyone Outside is afraid of a leak: a virus somehow getting out on a mosquito, a bird, even as a spore."

"Nothing has gotten out in all these years," Rachel says.

"No. But the government is afraid that if researchers start splicing and intercutting genes, it could make viruses more viable. You don t understand the Outside, Rachel. Everything is illegal. This is the most repressive period in American history. Everyone’s afraid."

"You’re not," Jennie says, so softly I barely hear her. McHabe gives her a smile that twists my heart.

"Some of us haven’t given up. Research goes on. But it’s all underground, all theoretical. And we’ve learned a lot. We’ve learned that the virus doesn’t just affect the skin. There are—"

"Be quiet," I say, because I see that he’s about to say something important. "Be quiet a minute. Let me think."

McHabe waits. Jennie and Rachel look at me, that glow of suppressed excitement on them both. Eventually I find it. "You want something, Dr. McHabe. All this research wants something from us besides pure scientific joy. With things Outside as bad as you say, there must be plenty of diseases Outside you could research without killing yourself, plenty of need among your own people—" he nods, his eyes gleaming "—but you’re here. Inside. Why? We don’t have any more new or interesting symptoms, we barely survive, the Outside stopped caring what happened to us a long time ago. We have nothing. So why are you here?"