Things We Didn’t See Coming

Sometimes when she's not here I try to dissolve into this one feeling of missing her and it pushes away everything else—this guy going through our stuff, the virus. It's not uncomfortable missing her, actually, and with him down there leering at me with his glazed glassy eyes and bloody mouth and nose, concentrating on her and our future is the only way to believe this will pass. It's like wanting her to be here makes me forget she's not.

It's instinct for me, the desire to go see what's been left, to put a price on every bit of it, to figure out what I can use and what I can haul away, to imagine the people who bought it all and laugh at their futility, to move in and make their world mine. But if we continue walking toward this mirage, if we change our shells even this one more time, I am sure in my blood we’ll doom ourselves to always live exactly as we have lived, inhabiting whatever corner of the world isn't nailed down, never staying anywhere long enough to make anything real. We will be the ghosts that feed off the edges of life.

It was on a street of townhouses that had these identical miniaturized plantation facades. Unnecessary double staircases curved four steps up, and a tiny useless balcony over the front door was held up by plaster pillars. Most of these had had their back walls blasted off from one of the explosions […]

I was about to call rescue to tell them to seal the place against looters, when I saw her standing in a bedroom. Little Margo, wearing all this tough yellow gear. She was stealing again, like when we met, jamming useless objects into her fire suit. I hadn't clipped anything since conning my way into verification, but I could still enjoy watching someone else do it, especially her.

Most evacuees don't learn. They try to start over someplace exciting (a target) or temperate (subject to floods, fires or earthquakes). Or they identified this month's most thermal politically neutral region. They assume they're not going to have to pack again. Even though it may be the third or fourth time for some of them, they're still completely tweaked with relocation fever. Full of piss and, as the expression goes, vinegar. They take their first steps around their new home and get confidence; make friends, buy appliances, plant tomatoes. You want to shake them: Do you really think this time it's going to be different?

Her pack is on both shoulders, her bedroll and her jug of water hanging off it. My equipment is at my feet. A dozen times we would have died, but Margo saved us. She knows all the nuts and berries. And how to find your way by the stars. And the value of everything. She's just given Shane the bad news and I don't care. It feels like it used to. She's a real survivor […]

When she speaks, her mouth is right in front of mine and it almost feels like I'm saying the words with her. We’ll fix it, like there's something I have to fix too.

I nod. I'm granted another kiss.

The reason Juliet chose us, it turned out, is we're heterosexual. Voters are fine about ignoring her personal life, to a point. Since the various media outlets forced them to read endlessly about her night crawls, which usually involves some variation of the women we danced through to get to her, they want variety of gender. In the first month, she dressed me up in rubber and had me fuck her on the main stage of just about every flesh club in her constituency—the million-dollar landscaped one in the cities and the back-road barns in the country. […] In the old days, the candidate had to eat a lot of doughnuts to get their message through, but Juliet 's calculations about the addition of us to her entourage were correct.

Her goal, [Juliet] says, is to connect the coast and the north-south borders with great corridors of wild land—farms, forests, suburbs reclaimed by nature. One day there will be no more cities—their shells will be ghostly interruptions of the new nation, which will be composed of rural communities linked in all directions. Even if we aren't here, the land will be: My money will keep it safe. When the rain comes back—ever the optimist—this is where her utopia will be.

If my desperate fifteen-year-old self were here, it would marvel at my excellent fortune. It's all been the result of my insistence on the practical union in the first place. I opted for it to protect—I thought—my heart, but Margot exploited it to expand our world. When I proposed, getting down on one knee even, she said, “If you want it, I'm going to make you use it.”

Name an act, a theft, a drug, a social rung, a job, a dream: we have tried it or abstained only for reasons of health or sanity or law. The goals don't always entice me, but they entice Margo, and I will be quiet or charming or rough in order to reach them.

There's a spark in front of us as [Juliet] lights two long white candles with a match. She hands one to each of us. “Go on. We’re protected.” She holds her arms open to the woods. “It's time for it to go. Do the honors. Don't think about it, we're safe in the suits, the vehicle is secure, the edges of the forest are protected. Everyone, everything is safe. It will all grow back. The forest needs the fire.”

Margo's eyes are shining. “Yes! Yes!” she yells, as she pushes her little flame against one twig and then another. She turns to me in lecturing ecstasy, “You don't even comprehend it do you? […] We’re three already, you don't need documentation! You've got your security and all the love you'll ever need!”