Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalipse

by James Van Pelt

James Van Pelt is the author of the novel Summer of the Apocalypse, and nearly 90 short stories, which have mostly appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, and Talebones. He also has two collections, Strangers and Beggars and The Last of the O-Forms and Other Stories.

Van Pelt had been writing a series of stories about slower-than-light ark ships fleeing Earth, when it occurred to him that he had generalized that the ark ship passengers were escaping from the “mutation plagues,” and it might be interesting to write about what was going on back on Earth. Thus, “The Last of the O-Forms” was born.

This story, which was a finalist for the Nebula Award, takes place in a world where there are no more normal births. Each and every one is a mutation—which is both good and bad for Dr. Trevin’s Traveling Zoological Extravaganza…

Beyond the big rig’s open window, the Mississippi river lands rolled darkly by. Boggy areas caught the moon low on the horizon like a silver coin, flickering through black-treed hummocks, or strained by split-rail fence, mile after mile. The air smelled damp and dead-fish mossy, heavy as a wet towel, but it was better than the animal enclosures on a hot afternoon when the sun pounded the awnings and the exhibits huddled in weak shade. Traveling at night was the way to go. Trevin counted the distance in minutes. They’d blow through Roxie soon, then hit Hamburg, McNair, and Harriston in quick secession. In Fayette, there was a nice diner where they could get breakfast, but it meant turning off the highway and they’d hit the worst of Vicksburg’s morning traffic if they stopped. No, the thing to do was to keep driving, driving to the next town, where he could save the show.

He reached across the seat to the grocery sack between him and Caprice. She was asleep, her baby-blonde head resting against the door, her small hands holding a Greek edition of the Odyssey open on her lap. If she were awake, she could glance at the map and tell him exactly how many miles they had left to Mayersville, how long to the minute at this speed it would take, and how much diesel, to the ounce, they’d have left in their tanks. Her little-girl eyes would pin him to the wall. “Why can’t you figure this out on your own?” they’d ask. He thought about hiding her phone book so she’d have nothing to sit on and couldn’t look out the window. That would show her. She might look two years old, but she was really twelve, and had the soul of a middle-aged tax attorney.

At the sack’s bottom, beneath an empty donut box, he found the beef jerky. It tasted mostly of pepper, but underneath it had a tingly, metallic flavor he tried not to think about. Who knew what it might have been made from? He doubted there were any original-form cows, the o-cows, left to slaughter.

After a long curve, a city limit sign loomed out of the dark. Trevin stepped on the brakes, then geared down. Roxie cops were infamous for speed traps, and there wasn’t enough bribe money in the kitty to make a ticket go away. In his rearview mirror, the other truck and a car with Hardy the handyman and his crew of roustabouts closed ranks.

Roxie’s traffic signal blinked yellow over an empty intersection, while the closed shops stood mute under a handful of streetlights. After the four-block-long downtown, another mile of beat-up houses and trailers lined the road, where broken washing machines and pickups on cinder blocks dotted moonlit front yards. Something barked at him from behind a chain link fence. Trevin slowed for a closer look. Professional curiosity. It looked like an o-dog under a porch light, an original-form animal, an old one, if his stiff-gaited walk was an indicator. Weren’t many of those left anymore. Not since the mutagen hit. Trevin wondered if the owners keeping an o-dog in the backyard had troubles with their neighbors, if there was jealousy.

A toddler voice said, “If we don’t clear $2,600 in Mayersville, we’ll have to sell a truck, Daddy.”

“Don’t call me Daddy, ever.” He took a long curve silently. Two-laned highways often had no shoulder, and concentration was required to keep safe. “I didn’t know you were awake. Besides, a thousand will do it.”

Caprice closed her book. In the darkness of the cab, Trevin couldn’t see her eyes, but he knew that they were polar-ice blue. She said, “A thousand for diesel, sure, but we’re weeks behind on payroll. The roustabouts won’t stand for another delay, not after what you promised in Gulfport. The extension on the quarterly taxes is past, and I can’t keep the feds off like the other creditors by pledging extra payments for a couple months. We’ve got food for most of the animals for ten days or so, but we have to buy fresh meat for the tigerzelle and the crocomouse or they’ll die. We stay afloat with $2,600, but just barely.”

Trevin scowled. It had been years since he’d found her little-girl voice and little-girl pronunciation to be cute, and almost everything she said was sarcastic or critical. It was like living with a pint-sized advocate for his own self-doubt. “So we need a house of…” He wrinkled his forehead. “$2,600 divided by four and a half bucks….”

“Five hundred and seventy-eight. That’ll leave you an extra dollar for a cup of coffee,” Caprice said. “We haven’t had a take that big since Ferriday last fall, and that was because Oktoberfest in Natchez closed early. Thank God for Louisiana liquor laws! We ought to admit the show’s washed up, cut the inventory loose, sell the gear, and pay off the help.”

She turned on the goosenecked reading light that arced from the dashboard and opened her book.

“If we can hold on until Rosedale…” He remembered Rosedale when they last came through, seven years ago. The city had recruited him. Sent letters and e-mails. They’d met him in New Orleans with a committee, including a brunette beauty who squeezed his leg under the table when they went out to dinner.

“We can’t,” Caprice said.

Trevin recalled the hand on his leg feeling good and warm. He’d almost jumped from the table, his face flushed. “The soybean festival draws them in. Everything’s made out of soybeans. Soybean pie. Soybean beer. Soybean ice cream.” He chuckled. “We cleaned up there. I got to ride down Main Street with the Rosedale Soybean Queen.”

“We’re dead. Take your pulse.” She didn’t look up.

The Rosedale Soybean Queen had been friendly too, and oh so grateful that he’d brought the zoo to town. He wondered if she still lived there. He could look her up. “Yeah, if we make the soybean festival, we’ll do fine. One good show and we’re sailing again. I’ll repaint the trucks. Folks love us when we come into town, music playing. World’s greatest traveling novelty zoo! You remember when Newsweek did that story? God, that was a day!” He glanced out the window again. The moon rested on the horizon now, pacing them, big as a beachball, like a burnished hubcap rolling with them in the night, rolling up the Mississippi twenty miles to the west. He could smell the river flowing to the sea. How could she doubt that they would make it big? I’ll show her, he thought. Wipe that smirk off her little-girl face. I’ll show her in Mayersville and then Rosedale. Money’ll be falling off the tables. We’ll have to store it in sacks. She’ll see. Grinning, he dug deep for another piece of beef jerky, and he didn’t think at all what it tasted like this time.

Trevin pulled the truck into Mayersville at half past ten, keeping his eyes peeled for their posters and flyers. He’d sent a box of them up two weeks earlier, and if the boy he’d hired had done his job, they should have been plastered everywhere, but he only saw one, and it was torn nearly in half. There were several banners welcoming softball teams to the South-Central Spring Time Regional Softball Tourney, and the hotels sported NO VACANCY signs, so the crowds were there. He turned the music on, and it blared from the loudspeakers on top of the truck. Zoo’s in town, he thought. Come see the zoo! But other than a couple of geezers sitting in front of the barbershop, who watched them coolly as they passed, no one seemed to note their arrival.

“They can’t play ball all day, eh, Caprice. They’ve got to do something in between games.”

She grunted. Her laptop was open on the seat beside her, and she was double-entering receipts and bills into the ledger.

The fairgrounds were on the north edge of town, next to the ball fields. A park attendant met them at the gates, then climbed onto the running board so his head was just below the window.

“There’s a hundred dollar occupancy fee,” he said, his face hidden beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat that looked like it had been around the world a few times.

Trevin drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and stayed calm. “We paid for the site up front.”