The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [152]
I try to speak, but my voice breaks.
May waits impatiently.
I breathe, and talk. "Most voices would claim that if people wanted to kill billions, even for the good of the earth, then they should take their own medicine. Me? I'd be happy if they ate their shotguns or drove off cliffs. But to think that one of them is fat and ancient and rolling around the half-dead world in a palace ... that doesn't say much about this group's sense of sacrifice, or decency, or honor."
May considers what to say. Then as she opens her mouth, ready to challenge me, I interrupt.
"But the worst thing? In my mind, without doubt, their silence made these people possible." I swipe my hand at the town, at faces neither of us can see, at the years of embarrassment and hurt and being excluded by people who in better times I wouldn't need for a single minute. "The good citizens of Salvation think they're here because God is benevolent. God is decent. And God preferred them to the nameless bones in unmarked graves all around the world. Dumb-shit lucky bastards, yet they're free to think they're nothing but chosen."
Again, she considers.
And when her mouth opens, I start to interrupt.
But May throws up a hand. I fall silent. I don't remember what I was going to say. A step apart, she looks younger than ever but not as pretty, and she smiles with the bright intense expression that I have never seen from a real person, only on saints in old religious books - the consuming crazed gaze of an earthly soul bound to eventually sit on the lap of God.
In a whisper but with considerable intensity, she tells me, "You don't understand."
"Understand what?"
The hand covers my mouth.
"You think it's finished," she says. "You think once is enough to save the world. But what you call the 'noble' thing would have been foolish. My grandmother and the others ... they had to survive and remain in touch with one another. That was the plan from the start." She pauses, investing in a couple deep breaths. "How many children are living in this one town, Noah? It's like that everywhere. A few old people, plenty of young parents, and too many children to count. And you heard how people are crossing the sea, spreading out to find new homes. Another crisis is coming. It won't happen in my life, and maybe not for several centuries. But eventually these same tricks will be necessary if we're going to ... "
Her voice falters.
I taste salt and May as I pull back the hand. "If you're going to what?"
Almost too softly to be heard, she says, "Another weeding."
Then the saintly smile returns, self-assured and a million miles above the concerns of the ignorant and innocent.
Lola was right. Seeing my shrunken mother in the casket was important. Even essential. Now I was certain that she was dead, no doubts left, and helping carry her to the hole in the ground reminded me that she was never half as large as she seemed in my head.
She was a shell already beginning to rot, and we nailed shut the lid and lowered the box and started to shovel gouts of dirt and chunks of rock on top of an object that was no more my mother than it was the sky overhead.
Yet I was crying by the end.
And those who still happened to like me, or at least loved my mother, put their own emotions on my tears. They came over and hugged me and prayed for my soul. Then I went down to the Quilt Shop and bought a very tall beer, drinking it too fast, my gait a little sloppy as I headed back up the hill.
"Going to see your mom again?" Ferris asked in passing.
"I need another minute with her," I admitted.
The old man pulled up, hearing that. Then he turned and looked at me until I returned the gaze. He was a small ageless sparkplug with a bright smile and charming manner. Others had told me that he had lost most of his family to the Shakes, but I could never remember him mentioning them, even in prayer.
"Son," he said to me, like old men often do when referring to any fellow younger than them.
I waited.
"A minute won't be long enough, son."
"Maybe not," I agreed.
"Don't