AFTER: The Anthology by Shane M Brown

Author:Shane M Brown [Brown, Shane M]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

Jake spent the night in a small room overlooking the reserve. In the morning, after a breakfast of preserved fruit and rice, he walked with Max toward the address on the paper. Jake spotted his friends' chalk marks twice, and then just McKenzie’s and Anderson's marks as Churcher must have taken another route.

The area Max navigated was overgrown with shrubs gathering thickly against walls and vines smothering fences and stretching between houses. Passing a fire-gutted house between a computer repair shop and a hairdresser’s, Max beckoned Jake a short way into the property. He pointed to a small plant emerging through the collapsed floor.

‘You recognize this?’ Max asked.

Jake only really recognized the seven species of plants his cluster was charged to conserve. This plant's leaves spiraled off a single stem topped with a blue flower.

‘No. Should I?’

‘It’s a Spiral Sun Orchid. It normally self-pollinates after growing for five years. This one's ready after two. It'll produce millions of seeds. It hasn't existed on this planet for eighteen years. It's extinct.’

‘Sure you have the right plant?’

‘There's a botanist with the community during the summer,’ said Max. ‘She found the cells in this plant have a thousand times more determiners than yours or mine.’

Jake wanted to touch the new life sharing the foreign bodies corrupting his cells, but Max’s wonder stayed his hand.

‘And our crops grow too well,’ said Max. ‘We’re even growing rice.’

‘I saw. What does it mean?’

‘Today we have a new plant in an old building. In a year...I don't know.’ Max turned from the plant he had shared. ‘I'm looking forward to finding out.’

Jake hoped he'd have the chance to learn too.

‘You're welcome back here,’ said Max. ‘With the community, I mean. You'll be surprised what you find.’

Jake imagined Helena in the fields, dirty and happy. She wants to try new things. Is this what she wants? He reached into his pocket and felt her photo. ‘You'll understand if I...don't.’

‘I'll be watching for you,’ said Max.

They shook hands and Jake watched his new friend disappear between the quiet buildings toward the community.

Jake followed Max’s directions, twice checking he wasn't being followed then looping back to approach by a different route. The once-wealthy suburbs he passed now had stagnant green swimming pools and large branches pushing unchallenged through upper story windows. Three hours after he left Max, Jake found the address.

It wasn't a house, but a large rectangular property split into an off-street parking lot and a huge domed glasshouse. Jake circled the property, sneaking through the bordering bushes and peering inside the glasshouse. A small caretaker’s hut was joined to the back. Jake heard a train pass in the distance.

Someone was in the glasshouse. Working, it looked like.

Was the person meant to be a distraction? Jake looked around for a sign from Churcher, but was sure his friend would have been focusing on staying alive at this stage. What had his friends thought standing here? Had they all thought it was a trap? Whatever they had done, it hadn't succeeded, and they had probably all followed their instincts.

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