The End Has Come (13 page)

I hate Class Cs.

Yellow goop has glued Rex’s eyes closed. His nose is clotted. I need two things: a medical kit, and water. I’ve got two tunnels that I can check for old supplies. I pick the left one, because I figure warriors always go right, artists left.

“I’m going to find medicine,” I tell him. Then I scratch under his chin, the only place where it looks like he’s not hurting. “I love you.”

Rex nods, and I swear to God, it’s because he wants me to know he loves me, too.

The tunnel’s too caved to walk through, so I crawl. Granite rocks fall around me, heavy enough to break my back. I know it’s stupid to do this for a dog. Rationally, I belong in the city with a modern lab and assistants. I ought to get over this disdain I harbor for my own kind and make real friends. If I did that, I wouldn’t feel so alone. I wouldn’t talk to myself and imagine that my dog understands me. Except, he does understand me. And they don’t.

I keep crawling.

Rocks fall behind me, blocking my way back. It gets dark so I shine a light. I go another few feet before a boulder stops me entirely. I’m strong. Under ordinary circumstances, I could lift it. But not here, without leverage.

I hear a scraping from the other side of the rock. Something digs. A mole? A mouse? A survivor?

God, please help me, I say as I try to roll the rock. I manage to push it a millimeter. It rolls back into place. I punch it. I punch the wall. I punch myself. It’s so dark in here. I’ve gone mad. What the hell do I care about a dog?

I try one more time. Use my legs as I push. The rock shifts. I keep pushing, groaning. I’m clear. There’s nine inches. Maybe I can squeeze.

A face appears on the other side. It’s got albino red eyes. “Ugh!” it grunts as it jabs an arrowhead through the crack, right into my shoulder.

The staff it’s using is made from a human tibia. I yank the tibia, get hold of the things’ skinny arm, and tear it off.

By the time I get back out, Linus has returned and is bent over Rex.

“Leave him alone!”

Linus stands back. Rex’s eyes are bandaged. He’s breathing better now, but coughing sand.

“Found a medicine kit,” Linus tells me. “He’s blind and deaf but he might live if we get him to the city and replace his respiratory tract.”

I drop the gristly arm I’ve found in front of Rex’s mouth. He tries to chew just to please me, but he’s too sick to swallow. I get on the ground and hug him so he knows he’s not alone.

“I thought you ran off,” I tell Linus.

“Class As are so neurotic,” he answers. Charming.

We wait out the storm down there, and don’t head up again until first light. I cuddle Rex for most of that time. His company calms me.

Up above, I pretend that the cave ceiling is a perfect blue sky. There are birds cawing. I’m playing catch with my shiny-pelted Collie while my wife and family watch from the windows of our beautiful ranch house in a town just like the drawing.

Wonderful World
plays and I hum along.

The woman’s name is Lorraine, I decide, and she smells like tea. The child is a little girl. I imagine their warmth, the feel of them, and remind myself that this is love.

I remember.

• • • •

I use my shoulder to shove the manhole aside. Then we’re out. The sand has shifted, obscuring the entire west side of the skyscraper canyon. Old balconies with rusted terraces peek out as if etched from stone. A sulfur red sun beats down. I check for a signal. It’s weak, but back.

Ship’s buried over there,
I say.

Linus hurls himself like a burrowing crab into the great sand mountain where I’ve pointed.

It’ll take a day, at least, for him to find and repair our vehicle. By then, Rex will be dead.

I pick him up. It’s a few hundred miles to the city. On foot, we’ll make ten. But we can’t be the only people on this strip of road. I should be able to flag someone down. I start walking.

We’ve gone less than a mile in the hot sun, Rex slack in my arms and worrisomely heavy, when the droning starts. It comes slow from the direction of Las Vegas. As it gets closer, I recognize the Kanizsa Triangle.

I stop, more tired than I’d realized.

Linus pulls up. Sand weighs the ship low to the ground. He kicks down a rope ladder and I carry Rex with one arm and hold the ladder with the other, my stabbed shoulder screaming. Has it been hurting all this time, only I haven’t noticed until now?

Sand’s gotten inside my suit because of the hole. Linus looks us both up and down.
I should change into my prototype,
I say.

Yes.

I change. We sail.

• • • •

It takes less than a day to get to the city, where the Pacific Ocean ushers a welcome rain. Sand’s less of a problem here than ultrafine particulate matter. Animal lungs turn to soup up here in just a few hours.

The city of the Pacific Colony is built in a semi circle around one of the last survivor tunnels on the West Coast. The genetic pool down there is fantastically diverse. Class As have been manipulating DNA for ages and have developed all variety of neural matter.

Linus docks our ship. The signal is strong with exactly the kind of chatter I despise, only more nonsensical than usual. They’ve found an old song they all like. They keep replaying it to different beats and instruments. Someone resurrected old photos of the first Above shelter and we’re supposed to have a moment of celebration at mid-day. Lastly, there’s been a survivor revolt in the Atlantic Colony.

The first thing we do, at my insistence, is head to the medical center. A pair of Cs carry Rex to a gurney. I hold his forearm as comfort as they inject the morphine-oxygen IV, then pull out his sand-crusted respiratory tract. They keep this morphine-oxygen IV handy, just for me.

Have I mentioned that this is not my first dog? Nor even my hundredth?

Will he be okay?
I ask.

None of the Cs answer, because they’re not smart enough to draw conclusions.

• • • •

Once I’m out, I’m met by the team of Class As that run the Above Survival Apparatus division. They ask for my latest prototype and I point at my own body. I explain:
It’s better than the previous, because it allows for more sensation of physical touch. For instance, I can feel Rex’s warmth, and that signal carries through my nervous system. I can also feel cold, though I find that less pleasant.

They nod with excitement.

In addition, I’m looking into gonadal sensitivity. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

The head A smiles, to be polite. Plastic stretches across his metal teeth in a phony way. I’m reminded why I hate it here: They think I’m crazy.

You’ll make the appropriate modifications for mass production?

I always do, don’t I?

• • • •

I spend a week in the city. It’s a terrible, loveless place. The houses are sleep chambers. No one touches. The only people who feel this lack are the As, and none of them will admit it. Instead they conduct more experiments. They keep trying to find the right combination — the thing that sparks our evolution. But it never happens. We don’t change. We can’t. It’s our nature. We are always the same.

The revolt in the Atlantic Colony is quelled. I find myself sorry to hear it. In what dreams I still have, I imagine them rising up. I’ll find them when that happens. I’ll help them.

• • • •

On the last day, I collect Rex from the medical center. One look and I know it’s not my dog.
You cloned him,
I say.
He won’t know me. Now he’s just a sick, old dog.

The C walks away.

Show me his body.

Incinerated,
Linus tells me. He’s wearing a shining new suit. It’s agile. Slightly more human in appearance. In a way, I envy Cs, and even Bs. They never kill themselves. They’re not smart enough to juggle oppositional perspectives.

My last stop is the survival tunnel over which the city stands. We spray it at night so they don’t wake up when we experiment. It would be kinder to clone them from parts, but we want the variety that environmental stress provides.

I was one of the first to discover this particular tunnel a thousand years ago. I came down with another A class, and there they were. These blinking, beautiful creatures who’d turned pale and waiflike in the dark. They hadn’t interbred or poisoned their cells with prions like so many others. They’d stayed strong.

As I’d looked at them, I’d thought that we could live together. Or maybe we ought to act as the cyborgs they’d created us to be, and serve them.

They fired the first shot. In return, we slaughtered all who resisted, and took the best brains for our pool. A thousand years later, they’re sickly things who’ve lost the use of language. Their mutations, which we’ve stimulated, are at turns sublime and grotesque.

I go down to the lowest part of the tunnel. I pick a C class human. She’s pulled from the stocks for above ground respiratory tract insertion as my new dog. I always pick children, so they grow to love me.

I head out the next day. The forecast is clear. I’ve got a Class D driver this time. It speaks in binary code. The dog whimpers at my side. I pat its head. “’S okay, Rex. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll tell you so many stories,” I say. “Did you know? I had a house, once. I had a family. I had a dog I trained to fetch. This was before the asteroid. This was when the world was wonderful . . . I used to be human once, too.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sarah Langan
is the author of the novels
The Keeper, This Missing,
and
Audrey’s Door.
Her work has garnered three Bram Stoker Awards, a
New York Times
Editor’s Pick, an ALA selection, and a
Publishers Weekly
favorite Book of the Year selection. Her short fiction has appeared in
Nightmare Magazine, Brave New Worlds, Fantasy Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
and elsewhere. She’s at work on her fourth novel,
The Clinic,
and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.

Agnes waited as the ID number above the cell changed to green, and the steel wall dissolved into a transparent gel. Taking a breath, she stepped through the viscous barrier, suppressing a shudder as the gel clung to her body. Agnes had never become accustomed to the feel against her skin. Once she cleared it, she relaxed as the wall hardened behind her.

The cell was empty.

Agnes reassured herself Reeves was still corporeal; the cell’s air filters were Sensitive to changes in the oxygen count that would indicate transformation. Usually, the signs were evident hours or even days prior to the change — the subject could then be terminated before it occurred. Usually.

“
Hell(----)o,
Doc(--)tor.”

Agnes looked up and saw the spindly, naked prisoner crawling on the ceiling, smiling toothlessly at her.

“Come down,” Agnes said sharply.

Reeves’ smile widened, displaying blackened gums. The staff had been forced to remove his teeth soon after his imprisonment; in a moment of desperation, he had started biting himself to draw blood to paint with. Since that time, teeth, hair, fingernails — anything that could be used to render an artistic form — had been surgically removed from Reeves and all other Sensitive inmates; blood clots and contraceptive blocks had been formed in their bladders and genitals, preventing excrement or semen from being used as a medium for their creative talents. In questionable compensation, intestinal and gland implants recycled their waste and saliva with 70% efficiency. The Sensitives needed only a few grams of protein every month to sustain themselves.

“
The(----)se
wall[-]s
are
wonderful!”
Reeves’ forearms and legs bulged with the effort of holding himself suspended from the softcell ceiling. “l can put
[---]
my hands in
[--]
it, but I
[---]
can’t make them
s(-)tick
[---].
And
[---]
when I release my
[--]
hands, it goes right
[--]
back to its
origin(--)al
shape
[-]
as if I had never
[---]
touch(---)ed
it at all.” His smile widened, the skin on his neck stretching, outlining his throat.

She ran a safety diagnostic. The ECCO box stuttered Reeves’ speech, turning his syllables arrhythmic. It was regulation for all Sensitive patients after the MONO tone implants had proven ineffective — two months ago, 84J had recited a poorly-structured haiku and vaporized the Central Corridor, killing himself, the interviewer, and several other Sensitives. After this incident, many of the frontline neurotechs had suggested removing the vocal cords of the inmates entirely, but this motion had been struck down by Agnes and others in Executive Main: research clearly showed that voiceless Sensitives gained telepathy faster than those who could still speak. Telepathy, in turn, accelerated the transformation and worse, allowed them to transmit destructive thoughts without a vocal medium.