“We will carry Snowman-the-Jimmy,” one trio announces, but Jimmy says he can walk.
Blackbeard marches into Toby’s cubicle. “I will bring the writing,” he says importantly. “And the pen. I will bring those, for us to have there.”
He views Toby’s journal as a joint possession of theirs, which is fine, thinks Toby, as it lets her follow his writing progress. Though sometimes it’s hard to get the journal away from him so she can write in it herself, and he has to be reminded not to leave it out in the rain.
So far he’s concentrated mostly on names, though he’s also fond of writing THANK YOU and GOOD NIGHT. CRAK GOODNIT GOOD BAD FLOWR ZEB TOBY ORIX THAK YOU is a typical entry. Maybe one of these days she’ll gain some new insights into how his mind works, though she can’t say she’s had any blinding illuminations as yet.
At sunrise the next day they set out from the cobb-house compound in the Tree of Life parkette. It’s an exodus, a move away from civilization, such as it is.
Two Pigoons have arrived as escorts; the rest will meet them at the AnooYoo Spa, says Blackbeard. He’s got Toby’s binoculars, which he’s figured out how to use. Every once in a while he steps off to the side, lifts the binocs, focuses. “Crows,” he announces. “Vultures.” The Craker women laugh gently. “Oh Blackbeard, but you knew that without the eye tube things,” they say. Then he laughs too.
Rhino and Katuro walk ahead with the Pigoons, followed by Crozier and the flock of Mo’Hairs. Some of them have bundles tied onto their backs, which is new for them, though they don’t seem to mind. With their human hair, curly and straight, and the lumpy packages on top of it, they look like avant-garde hats with legs.
Shackleton stays in the middle of the procession, with Ren, Amanda, and Swift Fox, who are surrounded in their turn by most of the Craker women, attracted by their pregnant state. The Crakers make cooing noises, they smile and laugh and pat and stroke. Swift Fox appears to find this annoying, but Amanda smiles.
The rest of the MaddAddamite group is behind them, and then the Craker men. Zeb brings up the rear.
Toby walks near the Craker women, rifle at the ready. It seems a long time since she came this way with Ren, searching for Amanda. Ren must be remembering those days as welclass="underline" she drops behind to join Toby, slipping her arm through Toby’s free left arm. “Thank you for letting me in,” she says. “At the AnooYoo Spa. And for the maggots. I would have died if you hadn’t taken care of me. You saved my life.”
And you saved mine, thinks Toby. If Ren hadn’t stumbled along, what would she have done? Waited and waited, shut up inside the AnooYoo by herself, until she went bonkers or dried up of old age.
They stick to the road that leads through the Heritage Park, heading northwest. There’s Pilar’s elderberry bush, covered with butterflies and bees. One of the Mo’Hairs grabs a mouthful of it on the way past.
Now they’ve reached the eastern gatehouse — pink, Tex-Mex retro — and the high fence that encloses the AnooYoo grounds. “We came here,” Ren says. “That man was inside it. The Painballer, the worst one.”
“Yes,” says Toby. It was Blanco, her old enemy. He’d had gangrene, but he was bent on murder despite that.
“You killed him, didn’t you?” says Ren. She must have known at the time.
“Let’s say I helped him enter a different plane of being,” says Toby. That was the Gardener way of putting it. “He would have died soon, but more painfully. Anyway, it was Urban Bloodshed Limitation.” First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled.
She’d dosed Blanco with Amanita and Poppy: a painless exit, and better than he deserved. Then she’d dragged him onto the ornamental planting ringed with whitewashed stones, as a gift for the wildlife. Was the dose of Amanita strong enough to poison anything that ate him? She hopes not: she wishes the vultures well.
The heavy wrought-iron gate is wide open. Toby had tied it shut when they’d left, but the rope has been chewed apart. The two Pigoons trot through first, snuffle around the walkway to the gatehouse, nose their way in. They come back out, then trot over to Blackbeard. Subdued grunting, eye-to-eye staring.
“They say the three men have been there. But they are not there now,” he says.
“Are they sure?” Toby asks. “There was a man in there earlier. A bad man. They don’t mean that one?”
“Oh no,” says Blackbeard. “They know about that one. He was dead, on the flowers. At first they wanted to eat him, but he had bad mushrooms in him. So they did not.”
Toby checks out the ornamental flowerbed. It used to say WELCOME TO ANOOYOO in petunias; now it’s a lush thicket of meadow weeds. Down among them, is that a boot? She has no desire to probe further.
She’d left Blanco’s knife there, with the body. It was a good one: sharp. But the MaddAddamites have other knives. She only hopes the Painballers haven’t retrieved it; but they, too, must have other knives.
Now they’re in the AnooYoo grounds proper. They keep to the main roadway, although there’s a forest path: Toby and Ren had taken it earlier, to stay in the shade. That was where they’d come upon Oates, slaughtered by the Painballers and minus his kidneys, strung up in a tree.
He must still be there, thinks Toby. They should find him, cut him down, give him a proper burial. His brothers, Shackleton and Crozier, will welcome that. A true composting, with his own tree planted on top of him. Restore him to the cool peace of rootlets, the calm dissolve of earth. But now is not the time.
Dogs barking, off in the woods. They stop to listen. “If those things come over wagging their tails, you need to shoot them,” says Jimmy. “Wolvogs; they’re vicious.”
“Ammunition’s rationed,” says Rhino. “Until we find more.”
“They won’t attack us now,” says Katuro. “Too many people. Plus two Pigoons.”
“We must’ve killed most of them by now,” says Shackleton.
They pass a burnt-out jeep, then an incinerated solarcar. Then a crashed pink mini-van with the AnooYoo logo on it: kissy lips, winky eye.
“Don’t look inside,” says Zeb, who has already looked. “Not pretty.”
And now there’s the Spa building up ahead, solid pink, still standing: no one has burned it down.
The main force of the Pigoons is milling around outside, probably finishing off the organic kitchen garden, one-time source of garnishes for the clients’ diet salads. Toby remembers the hours she’d spent alone in that garden after the Flood, hoping to raise enough edible plant life so she could keep going. It’s all churned earth by now.
At least she left the door unlocked.
Shadow, mildew. Her old self, bodiless, wandering the mirrorless halls. She’d put towels over the glass to blot out her own reflection.
“Come in,” she says to everyone. “Make yourselves at home.”
Fortress AnooYoo
The Crakers are entranced by the AnooYoo Spa. They walk carefully along the hallways, bending to touch the smooth, polished floor. They lift the pink towels that Toby had hung over the mirrors, glimpse the people in there, look behind the mirrors; then, when they realize the people are themselves, they touch their hair and smile to make their reflections smile too. They sit on the beds in the bedrooms, gingerly, then stand up again. In the gymnasium the children bounce on the trampolines, giggling. They sniff at the pink soap in the washrooms. There is still a lot of pink soap.