After the End

After the End


Amy Plum



1


JUNEAU




I CROUCH LOW TO THE GROUND, PRESSING MY back to the ancient spruce tree, and raise my crossbow in one hand. Keeping my eye on the precious shard of mirror embedded in my weapon, I inch it out from behind the tree. In the reflection, I spot something moving behind a cedar across the snowy clearing.

From the cracking of branches to my right, I know that another foe lurks nearby. I can’t see the inevitable scars and pockmarks from nuclear fallout, the radiation damage. But it’s there. I’ll have to take my chances. You have to be tough to survive an apocalypse.

I leap from behind the tree, duck as I see a missile hurtling toward me from a low scrub of holly bush, and simultaneously shoot in front of me. I hit the ground and roll, leaping back to my feet.

“I hit you!” yells a voice from the bushes. I hear a rustling of leaves, and then my friend Nome pops out, her hair glowing like burnished gold against the green and red holly.

“No you didn’t!” I yell back, but then I look down at where she’s pointing. Gooseberry pulp drips off the sleeve of my buckskin parka. “It’s just my arm. It wouldn’t have been lethal,” I say, flicking off the fruit sludge. But I know that though it wouldn’t have killed me on the spot, I would have been injured. And any injury would slow me down. Nome’s gooseberry would have meant my eventual death in the case of a true attack on our village.

Kenai steps from behind the cedar with a moose antler in his hand. He has painted an evil face on the wide part of the horn, and my arrow protrudes from its forehead.

“Bull’s-eye,” he says, and begins to make gurgling sounds as his homemade brigand suffers a painful and drawn-out demise. Trust Kenai to lighten a heavy moment.

The antler’s death throes are interrupted by Nikiski, who runs up with his hands in the air. “Cease-fire,” he yells, and then grins widely to show two missing front teeth. “Juneau, Whit wants you to come see him in the school. Something about hunting. Something about being low on meat. And Dennis wants you two”—Nikiski gestures to Kenai and Nome—“to drop by the library for something about a project he wants you to do.”

“Thank you for that precise and informative message,” Kenai says, ruffling Nikiski’s hair with his hand as he walks past the boy toward the village. “Battle officially over,” he calls behind him. “Brigand slain, but Junebug injured. Ten points to Nome.”

Nome lets out a whoop and then, shoving her slingshot inside her parka, jogs over to me. When she sees my expression, her playful mood deflates. “It’s okay, Juneau. Like you said, it wouldn’t have been lethal.”

I’m silent. She sighs deeply as we begin walking toward the village. “Juneau, you can’t be perfect. You’re going to be clan Sage, not our sole protector.”

“I’d rather be prepared to do both,” I respond.

“You’re seventeen, Juneau. And you’re already carrying the weight of the clan on your shoulders.”

I don’t respond. But inside, I acknowledge it: I’m just a teenager now, but one day the well-being of a few dozen people will be in my hands. It’s a heavy burden—one I know I must carry. Why else would I have been given my gift?

We crest the hill. Before us crouches the Great Ice Bear: Mount Denali, scraping its sugar-white pelt against the sky. And between its foothills and the forest are nestled twenty yurts. The light-colored skins stretched across the roofs and sides of the yurts make them almost invisible against the snow—a necessary camouflage.

It’s been thirty years since the war. My parents and fifteen others escaped in the very last hours, after the first firestorm of nuclear explosions triggered the aftermath . . . the creeping death of radiation and famine and genocide. They came here to Alaska’s unspoiled territory, far from any city that would have been targeted for destruction.

Although little was left in the wake of the Final War, it would be foolish to think we were the only survivors. Over the decades, during their rare scouting trips, the elders have found evidence. Abandoned cars run on the scarce drops of fuel that remained after the oil fields burned. Human trails left just beyond the boundaries of our territory. Sounds from the air of a lone renegade flying machine.

But there haven’t been any new signs found for a long time. Only a handful of close calls since I was born—seventeen years ago. The only deaths have been accidents: one by bear attack, and then my own mother’s death when her sled broke through lake ice.

These are the cautionary tales we are brought up with. Instead of the bogeyman (who terrified my mom as a child), our nightmares are populated with armed brigands roaming the land to plunder what is left. Merciless survivors of the apocalypse, bent upon taking what our clan has worked so hard to preserve: clean food and water and immunity from the radiation and disease that will, in the end, finish off the outside world.