We Who Are About To... by Russ Joanna

Author:Russ, Joanna [Russ, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Feminism
ISBN: 9780819567598
Amazon: 0819567590
Goodreads: 651807
Publisher: Wesleyan
Published: 1976-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

Alan-Bobby was dead. No pulse in his groin, no chest movement. I used the broomstick to haul Nathalie’s and John Ude’s bodies from the stream-bed, one at a time, and take them a good km or so downstream; they could rot there. Dead people are like sandbags but in odd shapes because they keep folding up, and because they were still warm; I kept getting irritated at them for flinging their arms and legs out like that and not helping me. I think that’s characteristic. I left Alan alone, because I was tired, and decided to go downstream. From high enough (I was not stuck with the water now) you can see the river winding like a silver snake in the distance and the grey-green brush folded over on itself in hill after hill, each darker and stranger than the last; plum-colored at the horizon. League upon league. A rumpled, painted tablecloth where the glaciers had come down. I went down by the side of the stream this time and much straighter, leaving a snake of flattened vegetation over the hills. Watch it after you pass and you can see it slowly straighten up.

I had to go down.

Otherwise they might have to decide to come up to me.

* * *

No stops this time.

* * *

I left the broom by the stream and far enough away; nobody’s going to steal it or break it or hit me over the head with it. I slept for a while; it was going to start greying-out soon. I ate the stuff I’d brought with me, a kind of candy bar and then something salty you mix with water and which I’d mixed and carried in the plastic wrapping, but that had got all over itself and on to my jacket pocket. Supposed to be soup, anyway, not paste. I tried to wipe it off with the plastic but it was very uncomfortable: beginning to go stiff. When it dries, iI’ll fall off. (Most of it.)

Then we sit.

Where is Val?

There are bushes, trees, the marks of feet. I can’t smell the latrine. There are long, flattened smudges on the ground where things have been dragged. Do I remember how to get to the new camp?

Where’s Cassie?

It all looks familiar, but then everything here looks familiar. Follow the water (again). I kept it in sight, trying to hide behind bushes. There were more footprints, a kind of confused scramble and crossing of marks, a place very much walked on.

I saw something white between the trees. That’s not a natural color. A little closer: someone had tied a sheet to the edge of the old bungalow, for a lean-to. Very sensible. But there’s nobody there. Doesn’t seem to be anyone about.

Valeria came out of the bungalow, flapping a towel in her hands as if to dry it or shake crumbs off it. Then she hung it on one of the sticks that made up the lean-to. She stared into the distance, almost as if she’d

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