Olivia’s car is a sweet ride: smooth and quiet, with heated seats that ease my pregnancy-strained back. The car’s display isn’t working and for a second, I let myself miss the old days when a broken computer could be easily repaired. Then I haul myself back to the task at hand, both hands on the wheel, staring hard down the road across the pine tree shadows that stretch, navy blue, across the highway, elongated by the orange burn of the setting sun. The trees are sparse here, and the shadows remind me of ladder rungs or prison bars; either way, the view is disorienting.
There are so many birds now. They’ve always thrived in the arctic, but without their predators, it’s getting to be more Alfred Hitchcock up here than Audubon. At this time of the evening the snow buntings are getting ready to settle in for the night, making their last bursts up into the air from the ditches along the highway. Hundreds fling themselves up and over the gusts that this hunk of speeding metal and I produce; they rush up on black wings, their white dinner-bun bodies catching the light as they loop up and over the road, only to settle back down in the snowy ditches. If there were any cats left, they’d go crazy for these tasty morsels. My belly shifts so I turn up the heat in the seats then focus again on the road to avoid missing the turnoff to our cabin.
Dan and I bought this place at the end of med school, just married and just able to make the payments, but expecting lucrative research careers. We heard rumors of mass animal deaths around the lab long before it made the papers.
The virus never spread to humans but we were all affected; people freaked out when the food supply dipped. There were food riots as production dropped and shortages began. It was Dan’s idea to move north where land was cheap, in the hopes that wild mammals would be disease-free and edible.
Dan could always spot an opportunity; he and I were schemers together when we were kids. When his mom threw out the stale baking, we retrieved it and held a bake sale. In junior high he found a stack of porn in a ravine and we charged other kids to take a look. We even pulled a few fast ones to be sure we got into the same medical school. Three months away from home, we were hooked up and moved in; by second year we were a power couple.
My roommate Olivia never thought the cabin was a good idea. She preferred to stay in the city. Last I heard she had occupied the second floor of a former office building at the intersection of two highways, with one office full of canned goods, the windows covered with quilts. She takes in strays – people of course. We have her car so it won’t give her and her stash away.
•
Olivia and I devoured the early rash of speculative articles on the animal deaths. What would it mean for us all if the virus attacked bees? What about fish? What about frogs? Birds?
Bureaucrats must have been reading the papers too; it wasn’t long before the government tried to stop the spread of the disease, announcing a series of initiatives that reporters rapidly named “kill lists.”
The extinction orders came fast and furious. First it was livestock, where the virus had first appeared. When the newspapers filled with photos of stacks of burning cows, we marched to the local grocery store and bought them out of hamburger meat. Then we went for lamb. The disease kept going and new lists were published weekly. We sat in bars with our friends scrolling through blogs about current events, drunkenly expounding the virtues of our favourite beasts: dog, chipmunk, pangolin, possum. We were hurting.
“I miss being a mom so much,” said one weeping friend, after losing her dog.
Lifestyle blogs featured vegetarian recipes.
“I’ve been waiting on this for years,” said Olivia. “Finally, my parents will figure out what to feed me,” she shook her head, the animal-lover choosing laughter over tears.
The extinctions led to hardship. Food shortages were followed by fuel shortages. Alternatives were slow to emerge. Tech became unreliable, then clunky, then unusable.
Medical school got weird. We had trained with computers and scanners to help. As we neared the end of our program, reluctant to abandon research projects that had been conceived with advanced tools at hand, the technological failures felt as severe as the extinctions.
By our fourth year of school there were no mammals that we knew of other than ourselves. No cattle, no sheep, no dogs, no cats and for the most part, no rules.
Some believed the virus was a hoax, that it was impossible to tell which animals had died sick and which had been the victims of government programs. We spun out our conspiracy theories over beer.
Whatever was happening, we lived in a new, barren world; hustling for supplies became the norm. Dan and I sharpened our skills and traded medical services for food, working together to make it through the chaos, thankful we had the cabin.
I spot the snowdrift where our side road begins and slow the car to navigate the narrow passage between icy berms. The wheels spin a bit before they gain traction in the hardened grooves of the turn. I brake when I see the red lantern hanging from the tree near the second turnoff, placed carefully back when Dan and I were city people worried that we’d never be able to find the property again without it. The night we finalized the purchase, I wept at a photo in the newspaper: a garbage truck spilling over with squirrel corpses. Dan wouldn’t have it.
“Humans are mammals too,” he said. “Don’t cry. We should feel lucky.”
It was a seminar on reproductive technologies that hatched our big idea. The instructor held up some vials, droning about the increased value of sperm and egg, multiplied now after the extinction orders and without a cure for the virus, the importance of science, of preservation. For the moment, stated our lecturer, the genetics bank at the university was full; we had an academic responsibility to preserve it until a cure for the pathogen that caused the mass die-offs could be found, so we could rekindle these animals to life.
In bed that night Dan started riffing. With no more four-legged mammals, he said, the virus wouldn’t have a vector so even without a cure it might be safe to breed them if we could find a host for the fetus.
“Think of the pet people,” laughed Dan. “We could make millions!”
“We could get some anti-rejection drugs and gestate in volunteers,” I tossed the idea his way, but Dan wasn’t catching.
“I can’t think of one woman who’d do that,” he said.
“I would,” I said. “And I bet I could recruit some friends. Did you see the way people were crying over those lists?”
Dan looked doubtful but I barreled on.
“Come on, everyone loved their pets. You just said it yourself.”
Olivia was the first person I asked and the first to say yes. We’d both do it, and find a few others to participate. We found recruiting was easiest when you talked about pets, especially kittens; no one wanted to believe their favorites were gone for good. In the end, five women volunteered.
As summer went on, we got our ducks in a row. Olivia and I went to the IVF clinic together, told them we were trying to conceive, and started hormone injections. We worked our bodies into fertile ground; we spent all our free time together to sync up our periods. Dan applied to a research position in the genetics lab, where pilfer sperm and eggs. By September we were ready. In the daytime we were model students, and at night we transformed into a reproductive machine, seeding fertilized eggs into whoever was ready.
First, we tried chimps, but no dice. A week after implantation, all the volunteers were menstruating except Dan. On the second try, I ended up in a hospital with a fever and an infection. On the way into surgery for the D & C, I told the doctor that it was Dan’s. We tried again right away before the end of the semester and Dan’s teaching position, but that one didn’t take, either.
Olivia had it no easier, and on her fourth try, she got cold feet.
“We should stop,” she said as we darted out the door of the medical building into a
watery dawn light. She gripped a prescription bottle of antibiotics, picking nervously at the label.
“It’s not working. We’re wasting a finite resource on a failing experiment.”
I told her to come up with a better plan or shut up and she said she would rat us out if we didn’t stop.
Two days later I arrived home to a wild-eyed Dan sitting on the couch in our apartment, with a gym bag full of dry ice and test tubes nestled in his arms.
“The university found out what I was doing. They fired me so I grabbed what I could.”
I stared down at the haystack of tubes, worse than useless without the lab records of what was what.
“They’re numbered,” said Dan. “We can match them up, we just won’t know what animal it is.”
I carefully tucked the gym bag into a fridge drawer, and we spent the next few evenings matching test tube ID numbers, like an old couple doing a jigsaw puzzle.
“Here,” he said. “567-098-1. I’ve got both of them.”
We fertilized and implanted within the week.
When I felt it quicken, I tried to call Olivia, but her phone wasn’t working or she didn’t want to hear from me, so I kept my secret to myself. I was tired and anaemic, and worried about infections but still happy. I tried not to gloat as friends wept over their lost pets.
Determined to succeed, I asked my doctor for a cervical stitch, citing previous miscarriages. The creature fluttered against my ribs as I browsed jubilant columns about the city without racoons and rats, followed by letters to the editor about the growing roach problem.
At first, Dan and I cuddled on our bed in the evenings giggling speculations at each other about what animal it would be, but at the start of the second trimester I swelled so suddenly that our game developed a hysterical edge. We tried to find a functioning ultrasound machine to get an idea of what we’d made. When we couldn’t, we scoured our textbooks for instructions on doing caesarians in the field. This couldn’t be a hospital birth.
I pull to a stop outside our cabin, and rest a moment before heaving myself up to standing. It’s delivery day. My unknowing passenger jabs me in the rib. The satisfaction of a successful experiment can’t quite offset the pain and I set my teeth against my tears.
I trudge to the cabin, scoop snow into a pot and put it on the stove to melt, then walk over to where Dan piled whatever groceries he could find – mostly oatmeal and cornmeal. I stare at the food, wishing my pre-surgery fast was over. Dan’s footsteps crunch on the icy porch, then he’s inside, carrying a bag over to the counter that acts as our kitchen, tracking snow behind on the floor with every step.
“I found us the alcohol swabs and supplies,” he says.
I riffle through the bag. He’s done well: it’s overflowing with clean white packages, gauze strips, disinfectant pads, string, needles, and a few IV bags.
“No anesthetic,” I whisper the words to myself.
“I couldn’t get to it before the pharmacist came back,” said Dan, who has been pilfering material from the drugstore for weeks in anticipation of this day.
What we do have is Tylenol, Aspirin and Advil so I take them all at once and set my hips against the table’s edge.
“Maybe we can go back to the hospital,” I say, knowing it isn’t true. The animal shifts, scraping against my hips and spine. I gasp and wince while Dan grimaces. We both know it is now or not at all, that I’m the one in danger.
I lie down flat on the table. Dan drags a chair over to the end of the table and sits between my thighs. I can’t see him but I can feel him. He rests a hand on my leg, and a puff of cool air hits my belly as he pushes the bottom edge of my down jacket up.
“This was a stupid idea,” I say to him, my throat tight. He doesn’t acknowledge my comment, but his warm hand palpates my stomach, then rests gently on my inner thigh.
“If this works, we’ll be famous,” he says, and walks over to the stove to boil the scalpels. I stare up at the dusty cabin ceiling.
“I’m ready if you are,” I say brightly to Dan. I don’t want him to get nervous. A surgeon shouldn’t be nervous.
He starts clinking instruments around in the pot like a child playing in the kitchen. I wish he would stop. I take deep breaths and focus on the future: the two of us, appearing at the medical building carrying a live mammal in our arms, any mammal.
I scream when Dan cuts me. I can’t help it.
I come to in a flash. Waking up is like a sledgehammer driving me into the table. My jacket is done up at the collar but open below. When I move to snap it shut, the fabric is rigid and smelly. There’s a whimper as I feel down my body, which is cold and crusty and very sore. I can tell I’m alone – that whimper was me.
Dan pushes his way into the cabin, stamping the snow off his boots and dropping an armload of wood by the door. Each foot-to-floor impact feels like a punch in the gut. He takes two more steps, and I throw up.
“You lost a lot of blood,” he says, walking over. “Do you think you can get up?”
I shake my head no.
“You have to,” said Dan, breathless. “It worked. I’ve got the car running outside to keep them warm. You’ll want to see.”
He’s right. I do. I roll over to one side and use his arm for ballast as I scream my way up to sitting.
When I’m ready, he supports my elbow and I slide off the table edge, praying that my legs will work for me. My boots are still on, and Dan has pulled my jogging pants back over my stomach. The old-penny smell of blood wafts up at me with every move I make.
“We need to go back to town,” says Dan. “To see if someone’s at the hospital.”
My stomach hurts a little less if I hunch over, so I shuffle forward. My bowed head gives me a good view of the blood trickling off me, mixing with water from the snow Dan tracked in.
He pulls me forward over the threshold toward the car idling in the bright white yard.
“You did it,” he says as he hurries me along. I’ve lost the thread of what we’re doing out here; I see sparkles with every step. When we reach the driveway, I grab at a tree, slide to the ground, and watch the snow flush around me.
“We have to get you up,” says Dan then he brightens and adds “Don’t you want to see?”
Without waiting, he opens a back door on the car and yanks out a bundle wrapped in a blanket, then pulls the cloth back to reveal a bucket. The winter sun lights up every wrinkle on Dan’s face, cracking it into a million pieces.
When I peer into the bucket, they are not what I expected. I am in so much pain, I anticipate a goat or a pony or a rhinoceros, anything that would have burst me open. Instead there are tiny claws and closed eyes and so, so many. I can’t tell what they are, but there is small, joyful movement in there. We’ll figure it out when we’re all safe.
Dan tucks the blanket back in place and jams the bucket into the floor space behind the front passenger seat. I look at him and smile.
“Can you get up,” he asks, impatiently tapping my arm. “We need to go right away, get them somewhere where we can feed them.”
His eyes dart from me to the car, and I can see he’s weighing the time it will take to help me along against the time left for whatever is squirming in the pail. It’s a few seconds before he speaks again.
“I’m going to get them to town,” he says. “You’ll be ok here, right?”
I close my eyes. When I open them, he is already behind the wheel of the car. I try to wave as he pulls away in a crunch of snow, the engine noise punctuated by my breath and heartbeat. The noon light brushes its warmth against my face, even as the real temperature makes itself known by biting at my cheeks.
I turn my eyes to the sky and watch as distant flocks of snow buntings bust up into the air, marking Dan’s path along the highway to town. He’s driving too quickly.
They were beautiful, my fur babies.
Meagan Perry lives in Toronto, Canada. Her fiction has been published in The Columbia Journal, Saint Ann’s Review, Carolina Quarterly, and Another Chicago Magazine. She was selected for honorable mention in the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, and “Snow Buntings” was shortlisted for the Disquiet International Literary Prize for fiction. Her audio work has been featured on BBC, CBC, NPR, and Irish Public Radio.
Photo courtesy Stocksnap