The Soldier, the Doctor, and Micah Quinn (What Comes After)

The sky gleamed overhead, a lucid blue punctuated by lazy streaks of white. In the distance, a bird twittered emphatically and fell silent. A breeze swept along the deserted street, ruffling unmowed grass and abandoned bags of rubbish in a fading susurrus. The freeway to the south echoed with unending silence; the abandoned army base to the north sat unnaturally still aside from the rippling flag stranded at half-mast, the security gate swung open wide.

If she’d ever thought to characterise the apocalypse, it would have been the silence she got wrong.

Even now, some six months into the aftermath of the global pandemic, Micah still expected the muted rumble of traffic in the distance, the indistinct whop whop whop of a chopper invisible behind the clouds, the shrieks of children and the notification pings from Facebook and Bambler. At night, the quiet kept her awake, staring up at the ceiling or sky or trees under which they’d laid their heads for the night, an isolated bubble of humanity in a devastated world.

Mind you, these days running into other people was more likely to spark panic than relief. Miguel had come home with military-grade protection gear pilfered from the base in the chaos, but schlepping through an empty world in full containment gear just wasn’t practical. Not least, as Micah had pointed out, because every minute exposed to the world was a minute that risked rendering the suits worthless. The world had always been full of unexpectedly pointy objects; the apocalypse, with its haphazard abandonment of sundry items, had proven half again as dangerous. Never mind the suits—Miguel had limped for days from a nasty gash to his calf before they finally unearthed a non-penicillin antibiotic in what had looked suspiciously like a dodgy back-alley surgical clinic.

“And that,” Micah had said triumphantly, “is why we bother to comb every building.”

Miguel had hissed. “Just give me the fucking drugs, Micah.”

Grumpy or not, Miguel was back in (more or less) fighting trim, which, seeing as Micah’s idea of fighting involved wielding a pointy-heeled shoe as a weapon, was really just as well. She did know how to use the gun at her hip, theoretically at least, but really they were both best off if she plied her brains and her brother wielded his brawn. She had no illusions: an average-sized woman, especially one leaning heavily on a cane, might be a good target, but a bulky dude standing at 6’5”, wielding an automatic and impressively large combat boots, made most people think twice, no matter how desperate they were. For which Micah was grateful.

Of course, a street peppered with the dead wasn’t anything Miguel could blow to oblivion, and if Micah were honest there was something a little unnerving about lurching along an abandoned road where they were as likely to see a corpse leaning against a tree as an overflowing rubbish bin tipping over the curb. All these months and she’d still not got accustomed to the never-ending presence of the dead.

The inhabitants of 420 Alderwood Dr were particularly rank, or at least the father of the house was, Micah thought, standing mid-street and staring at his bloated face and perilously buttoned shirt. Her breath hissed against her mask, clouding her vision; sweat trickled down her back and soaked into her knickers, one of the delightful side-effects of the containment gear she’d have been just as happy to do without if it weren’t for Miguel’s insistence. Her dreams were haunted by visions of a cure to the disease, one that would enable her to lurch her way into any old house or post-apocalyptic cocktail party without giving any thought to protection. Every time, Miguel made sure she was safely ensconced in her protective gear before kitting up and stalking in ahead of her, refusing to let her enter until he could confirm it was safe—that there were no infected, alive individuals who might, zombie-like, lunge out of nowhere and start her down a miserable road to death.

There was an unpleasant irony, Micah had thought more than once, in the fact that she insisted on combing through every place they came across, and yet it was her brother who every time put himself at risk. Sometimes she wondered if it would have been better if she’d died in the initial outbreak, as the disease swept across America, as surely everyone who’d ever met her would have expected; the future that illness had wrought had no place in it for a spoonie. Yet, even as their father had been coughing his way to death in their childhood home, Micah had stayed safe, hiding from infection in a deadly game of blind man’s bluff, slipping food and the house’s dwindling supply of medicine through the cracked door like a lifeline to Narnia. It wasn’t the first time she had benefited from Sofia’s knowledge—and yet her stepmother had been one of the first to die, the victim of a nurse’s commitment to her patients and carelessness arising from overwork and lack of sleep.

Micah’s ruminating was interrupted as Miguel emerged from the house, shaking his head and looking fit to drop.

“Nothing in there worth pilfering,” he said once he’d dragged off his mask and goggles and sucked in a few good breaths of air. “Looks like after Mr 420 kicked it the rest of them holed up. Went through nearly everything before the disease took them. Blood soup city in there, man.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Micah said, annoyed, as she began to peel off her protective clothing, careful to save her gloves. “That’s a whole damned street with nothing more than a tin of chickpeas to show for it.”

Miguel grinned. “I did grab these,” he said, and produced a pair of black-and-white polka dot heels from his bag. “Your size, I believe.”

Micah inhaled sharply and snatched them from his hands. “You know me too well,” she said, reverently smoothing a finger over the fabric. “Think I’ll ever get to wear them?”

“I have faith,” Miguel said, shedding the last of his containment gear and bundling it into his bag. “After all, what’s civilisation but a pretty girl in shoes?”

Micah whacked her brother on the shoulder with a shoe and then carefully tucked them away. “That’s the last in this neighbourhood,” she said, her cane clicking against the asphalt as they rounded the corner and headed out on the main road. “What do you reckon? Keep heading south, or—”

Miguel stopped abruptly and stared ahead with an unreadable expression on his face. “That’s new,” he commented.

Micah followed his gaze. There was a person perched on the trunk of an abandoned car on the road ahead, not far from a depressed-looking gas station with half a dozen increasingly emphatic NO GAS signs scattered about. She looked perfectly at home, her legs crossed as though she were mid-yoga class and not hanging out in the open post-pandemic. Dark hair cascaded over the right side of her cheek; the left side of her skull was buzzed. An open duffel bag snuggled her right knee; empty wrappers and plastic bottles littered the trunk of the car and the road in front of her.

“Hello,” she said, regarding them with mild interest. “You don’t appear to be ill.”

“Nope,” Micah said. “No illness here. Nor with you, it seems.” She hesitated, eyes flicking to either side, and then said, “Any particular reason you’re sitting alone in the middle of the road?”

“Of course,” the other woman said. “I’m a doctor. They/them pronouns, if you think of it. My name is Rowan Park. I’ve been waiting.”

Micah blinked in surprise. “Waiting. For what, exactly?”

An expression of mild surprise crossed Rowan’s face. “For someone to come along to collect me, of course.”

Miguel turned towards Micah, away from Rowan, and said quietly, “Cracked, from too much isolation. You know as well as me there’s no saving those types. Move on?”

Micah shushed him, ignoring his annoyed eyebrows, briefly waffled over the best question to ask, and settled on, “Is there someone in particular you’re waiting for?”

If anyone had perfected the look of mild surprise, Micah decided, it was definitely Rowan Park. “I’m a doctor,” they said again. “Given the current state of the world, my expertise and what I can offer can only prove valuable.”

“What, do you have a cure in that duffel bag?” Micah inquired.

Rowan raised their eyebrows. “Well, no,” they said. “That would be a foolish place to keep a cure, if I had one. However, I am well acquainted with the background of the disease, and while I am hardly a virologist, my odds of developing a successful treatment is certainly higher than that of the average person, especially should I be provided with adequate working conditions and sufficient assistance.” Accurately reading Micah and Miguel’s dubious expressions, they added, “I also possess a stockpile of antibiotics, painkillers, and other common medications, as well as an extensive collection of contraceptives.”

“Well, that’s…useful,” Miguel said. His lips twitched.

“In my experience,” Rowan said calmly, “humanity is unfortunately overtly capable of damaging and infecting itself, sexually or otherwise, whether or not the end of the world appears to have arrived.” They considered their audience and added, “I have little value outside of my medical knowledge. It seemed logical to bolster my value to the greatest degree possible.” When they received no response, they said, “Will you take me? I’ve almost run out of supplies, so if you are uninterested, I need to go in search of replenishments.”

Micah stifled a snort. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You’ve just been…waiting here for someone to come along and recognise your worth. For six months.”

“Yes. I’d offer a tour of the convenience store that has been supplying my needs—” Rowan gestured vaguely in the direction of the gas station “—but there’s little left there of immediate value unless you require motor oil.”

“Well?” Micah asked, turning to her brother and maintaining a straight face through sheer force of will. “We could do worse than acquire ourselves a medic.” He gave her a look and she choked on a laugh. “Well,” she said again, turning back to Rowan, “welcome to Team Quinn.”

Rowan slid off the car. “Excellent,” they said. “May I ask if you’ve both been vaccinated against tetanus?”

Miguel burst into laughter.


Catch up with What Comes After here.

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