Tails of the Apocalypse (26 page)

“Pretty Joe,” she chirped, hopping sideways in front of him. “Pretty Joe, Surly Shirley. Nuh-night. Nuh-night Paws and Claws. Come again.”

Joe didn’t move.

“Pretty Joe. Nuh-night.” She tried to beat her wings, tried to make a light breeze over his face. Pain arced through her again as her left wing only thudded weakly. So Surly bit his finger gently and pulled at it. He opened one eye a crack. It was too swollen to open further. Joe reached out and stroked her feathers for a moment. “Ahh-ee—” he started and then groaned as he realized he could no longer speak. He coughed on more blood oozing from his severed tongue.

“Pretty Joe, Surly Shirley, nuh-night,” she said. He picked up his head an inch or two and saw that she was hurt. He reached out with one hand and gently scooped her toward him. She squawked but let him pull her into his chest. He tucked her gently into his shirt, careful not to touch her limp wing. He got up on all fours and began crawling. Walt appeared behind him.

Surly saw him over Joe’s shoulder. “Bad bird!” she screeched. “Bad bird!” Joe turned over to see who was there.

“Shut up, you damn chicken,” muttered Walt. Joe put a big hand around her protectively and Walt shook his head, then bent over Joe. “Why’d you do that? So stupid, Joe. Why couldn’t you just keep your head down and follow orders for another two days? Why bring the soldier into it? What does the herd matter anyway? They’re just Infected. Nobody wants them. You think anyone’s going to want them even if they’re cured? Nobody wants a monster in their neighborhood. You were always thick, though. C’mon, I’ll help you get to the wagon.”

Joe shook his head.

“I have to, you’ll die if I leave you here. Just be quiet and we’ll be back home by tomorrow night. Gray’s crazy. I’m not being paid enough to get eaten by some zombie. I’m going home. I’ll drop you at that doctor lady’s place. Just don’t let Gray hear you.”

He pulled Joe up onto his feet, and they stumbled out the back door to an old pickup truck, Joe’s hand cushioning Surly as they walked. The cab had been sawn off and there was a scrawny horse yoked to it. Walt dropped the tailgate and dumped Joe onto it. “Just stay quiet. I’ll be back after the trade in a few hours.”

Joe lay down in the truck bed. Surly Shirley stayed still, letting the deep strobe of his heartbeat soothe her. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and shook it out, then stuffed it into his mouth with a sob. Something had crinkled when he retrieved the handkerchief, and Joe managed a weak smile. Reaching back into his pocket, he pulled out a small package of oyster crackers and opened them. Joe placed a tiny cracker next to Surly’s beak before he realized she was already sleeping, her body in shock. So he put the crackers away. The pain in Joe’s own body kept him awake for a long time through the rocky ride in the wagon. After several hours, the wagon finally stopped sometime in the night.

“Get out, Joe,” said Walt over his shoulder. When Joe didn’t comply, Walt turned to find that he’d finally fallen unconscious, the parrot a trembling gray bundle of warmth on his chest. Walt sighed and got down. He lifted Joe off the wagon and put him onto the grass in front of a huge glass dome, then got back on the wagon, twitching the reins so the horse cantered on.

Joe awoke with a groan as a light rain began to fall, chilling him. A woman with a light came out of the glass building. She pointed it at Joe, carefully circling him. When she was sure he wasn’t going to attack her, she leaned over him and patted his face.

“Are you Infected?” she asked as he opened his eyes.

He shook his head.

“What’s your name? Where did you come from? Who did this to you?” she asked in quick succession.

“Oo oo,” was all he said and put a hand to his mouth.

“It’s okay,” said the woman. “We’ll help you, there’s a doctor inside.” She lifted him up slowly and helped him walk into the building. He kept a hand cupped around Surly’s still form. She hadn’t woken up.

“Ruth!” called the woman. “Ruth, I need help!”

She helped Joe sit down on a warm cement bench. He looked around him. The greenhouse was shaggy, unkempt. Half the plants were brown and shriveled. But something was blooming. He could see startling bursts of color amid the dull, dead vines and leaves. The woman brought another with her. Ruth, he presumed. She was carrying a small basket of lemons, which she set beside him. He thought Surly would like them. Would like this place.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

His eyes filled and he shook his head. He never wanted to talk about it. Never again wanted to be the man who’d run with the likes of Gray and the others.

She patted his hand gently. “It’s okay, you’re safe now.” She glanced over him. “I’m just not sure where to start. What hurts the worst?”

Joe cupped both hands around Surly. He held her out for Ruth to see. Ruth glanced at the other woman and then back at Joe. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m not a vet. I don’t know what to do for a bird.”

Joe nodded and then burst into tears.

“Let’s get you back to the clinic so I can help you,” said Ruth, carefully taking Surly from him. She set the bird gently down by the basket. “Juliana, will you help me?” The other woman helped her lift Joe from the bench and they walked him carefully outside.

Surly woke to the sweet, thick scent of lemons warming in a bright pool of summer sun.

I’m not certain if there are pet shops in shopping malls these days. I haven’t seen one in years, but they used to be in both of the large malls in Maine when I was growing up. In both cases they were tucked away in a corner furthest from any natural light. When I was a kid, they were like some fantasy land of cheerful people and adorable furry things I was never allowed to take home. (My family adopted strictly shelter animals, and still does.) But my dad is a high school biology teacher, so we went to the mall pet shop fairly often for meal worms and mice to feed the snakes in his classroom.

The mice used to come in these small, white cardboard boxes with air holes. They were shaped roughly like a happy meal box. The similarity was not lost on me. There aren’t many animals more vulnerable than pet store denizens. Especially exotic ones, like Surly Shirley in the story. Without international shipping of food and medicine, most exotic pets would die pretty quickly. And while instinct can take an animal a long way, for an exotic pet far from its natural habitat and peers—a pet that was born in captivity—the odds of survival are pretty slim. I wanted my underparrot to win. I wanted a very vulnerable character to not only be able to survive the immediate chaos of an apocalyptic event but to become heroic in some way.

But even superparrots need sidekicks. Surly Shirley starts out as a bird I wouldn’t like. She’s mean, she’s jaded, and she’d rather bite than make friends. She’s someone I probably wouldn’t want around. Just like Joe, who starts this story as maybe a coward and definitely a thug. He goes with the flow, even around bad people like Gray, because it’s easier to do so. He’s willing to hurt people, just like Surly.

But when the chips are down, both realize they won’t be able to live with themselves if they don’t try to do the right thing. Without each other, they’d never have transformed into the heroic characters they become. So, what happens to them both? Does Joe recover? That I can answer since it’s already written in
Krisis
, the third book in my
After the Cure
series. He does recover, mostly, until he meets Gray again and must decide whether to save himself or the women in the greenhouse that rescued him. And Surly Shirley? Does Joe ever see her again? There aren’t many vets in the post-apocalypse. I hope she wakes up to a warm greenhouse and all the citrus she can eat, but she’ll probably never fly again. But that’s okay. Not every superhero flies. And sometimes they can be cranky and prone to bite.

If you’d like to read more about Joe, pick up
Krisis
. And if you’d like to read more about Surly Shirley, tell me so! Connect with me on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Afterthecurenovel
.

They came every spring
. Condors. They circled the sky and waited. Silently, stubbornly. They knew if they waited long enough, their reward would come; their hunger would be satisfied.

All they had to do was wait. Eagles hunted. Brown falcons hunted. Even humans hunted. But not the condors. They fed on death. And all other birds hated them for that.

Everyone but me.

To my young eyes, they were immense and majestic. They owned the sky. When the condors came, I poked my head from the nest and stared, fascinated. Their wingspan seemed as wide as the sky itself, their glide seamless, their flight as steady as the breeze. I was mesmerized. The feathers of their wingtips looked like fingers, spread out to embrace the currents of the air.

“Don’t look at them,” Mother would say, pushing me back inside the nest. Like everyone else, Mother hated the condors. She said the only reason they thrived was because of the Plague. The disease had wiped out most of the creatures on the planet. Humans, mammals, even fish. And yet the condors banqueted on the death and never got sick.

“Don’t look at them and don’t ever leave the nest,” Mother would say every time she left to hunt. “No chick has ever survived falling from its nest.”

I never met Father. It’d always been just the two of us, Mother and I, since the day I’d hatched. Mother must have been very self-conscious about this, because while all other falcons nested in trees, she’d built our home in a crevice among the cliffs overlooking the forest. She’d propped branches and twigs against the entrance to hide our nest from predators.

It was a gorgeous spot. The ledge around the crevice overlooked the river and the forest all the way to the waterfalls. When Mother came back from hunting at the crack of dawn, the sky was pink and crimson, and the water looked like a golden braid braced by trees.

The condors came after that, after the sun was already up. Mother would watch them warily from the ledge. The other falcon couples took turns guarding their nests, but being alone, Mother didn’t have that luxury. Maybe that’s why she never brought back a lot of food. Moths, crickets. Sometimes a small mouse. She regurgitated everything and watched over me while I ate. I never noticed she was getting thinner until much later, when I thought back on those mornings together. All feathers and no meat, as we birds say. That was Mother.

I should’ve known then. I should’ve known there was going to be a dawn when Mother wouldn’t return. The sun rose. The jays screeched. The condors circled in the sky, their black silhouettes racing over the profile of the mountains.

Clouds rolled. Humans came fishing, their loud calls echoing against the cliffs. By then I was hungry … really hungry. A lizard basked in the sun nearby and then slinked away. My stomach gurgled as I watched it go.

I raised my eyes and looked at the condors. I longed to fly with them, to soar on conquered winds. I stretched my wings and noticed how pathetic they looked. By now, the other fledglings in the tree nests had grown feathers and shed their down. I, instead, only had a hint of vaned feathers. The rest of my body was still covered in gray, stringy down. How I wished I had the beautiful, flawless wings the condors had, their fingered feathers so elegantly scraping the sky.

As I waited on Mother to return, that day seemed never ending. Sunset came at last, followed by twilight. My nest grew cold. Stars dappled the sky. A sliver of moon came out from behind the clouds, and in its milky light, the branches that Mother had placed to hide us drew long shadows across the crevice where our nest rested.

When I awoke the next morning, Mother had still not returned. I felt lonely.

Lonely and hungry.

I believe what kept me alive in that time, waiting for Mother to come home, were the condors—those same condors that were likely waiting for my death. And yet, every time I watched them soar high in the sky, I felt alive again, despite my growing hunger. I knew I belonged up there, that one day I too would conquer the skies.

At last, more than the drive to be with them, hunger made me force my fears aside. I needed to find food. I climbed out of the nest, squeezed through the branches, and crawled onto the ledge.

Oh, the excitement! It flowed through me as the wind from the ridge rustled my down.
This is what it feels like
, I remember thinking, the rush of the cool air under my wings.
What it feels like to fly!

I stretched my wings. Fluffs of down fluttered in the air, reminding me how pathetic I was. Pathetic, weak, and hungry. I looked over to the right and spotted the lizard again, lounging in the morning sun. The sight made my stomach rumble.

Lizards are slow in the morning,
I thought, steadying myself on the ledge.
Easy pickings.