Year of the Flood: Novel Read Free Page A

with soap — there’s still a lot of soap, all of it pink — and sponges off. My body is shrinking, she thinks. I’m puckering, I’m dwindling. Soon I’ll be nothing but a hangnail. Though she’s always been on the skinny side — Oh Tobiatha, the ladies used to say, if only I had your figure!
    She dries herself off, slips on a pink smock. This one says, Melody. There’s no need to label herself now that nobody’s left to read the labels, so she’s begun wearing the smocks of the others: Anita, Quintana, Ren, Carmel, Symphony. Those girls had been so cheerful, so hopeful. Not Ren, though: Ren had been sad. But Ren had left earlier.
    Then all of them had left, once the trouble hit. They’d gone home to be with their families, believing love could save them. “You go ahead, I’ll lock up,” Toby had told them. And she had locked up, but with herself inside.
    She scrubs her long dark hair, twists it into a wet bun. She really must cut it. It’s thick and too hot. Also it smells of mutton.
    As she’s drying her hair she hears an odd sound. She goes cautiously to the rooftop railing. Three huge pigs are nosing around the swimming pool — two sows and a boar. The morning light shines on their plump pinky-grey forms; they glisten like wrestlers. They seem too large and bulbous to be normal. She’s spotted pigs like this before, in the meadow, but they’ve never come this close. Escapees, they must be, from some experimental farm or other.
    They’re grouped by the shallow end of the pool, gazing at it as if in thought, their snouts twitching. Maybe they’re sniffing the dead rakunk floating on the surface of the scummy water. Will they try to retrieve it? They grunt softly to one another, then back away: the thing must be too putrid even for them. They pause for a final sniff, then trot around the corner of the building.
    Toby follows the railing, tracking them. They’ve found the garden fence, they’re looking in. Then one of them begins to dig. They’ll tunnel under.
    “Get away from there!” Toby shouts at them. They peer up at her, dismiss her.
    She scrambles down the stairs as fast as she can without slipping. Idiot! She should keep the rifle with her at all times. She grabs it from her bedside, hurries back up to the roof. She holds one of the pigs in the scope — the boar, an easy shot, he’s sideways — but then she hesitates. They’re God’s Creatures. Never kill without just cause, said Adam One.
    “I’m warning you!” she yells. Amazingly they seem to understand her. They must’ve seen a weapon before — a spraygun, a stun gun. They squeal in alarm, then turn and run.
    They’re a quarter of the way across the meadow when it occurs to her they’ll be back. They’ll dig under at night and root up her garden in no time flat, and that will be the end of her long-term food supply. She’ll have to shoot them, it’s self-defence. She squeezes off a round, misses, tries again. The boar falls down. The two sows keep running. Only when they’ve reached the forest rim do they turn and look back. Then they meld with the foliage and are gone.
    Toby’s hands are shaking. You’ve snuffed a life, she tells herself. You’ve acted rashly and from anger. You ought to feel guilty. Still, she thinks of going out with one of the kitchen knives and sawing off a ham. She’d taken the Vegivows when she joined the Gardeners, but the prospect of a bacon sandwich is a great temptation right now. She resists it, however: animal protein should be the last resort.
    She murmurs the standard Gardener words of apology, though she doesn’t feel apologetic. Or not apologetic enough.
    She needs to do some target practice. Shooting the boar, missing at first, letting the sows get away — that was clumsy.
    In recent weeks she’s grown lax about the rifle. Now she vows to cart it around with her wherever she goes — even up to the rooftop for a bath, even to the toilet. Even to the garden — especially to the