Tuesday’s Short—Ducky

This week’s short story takes us from a far-flung future of human exploration and alien encounters to one of quiet apocalypse. Welcome to Ducky.

Three characters, a dead duck, and a plague-devastated city. What more could you ask for?
Ducky

Brian

In Australia, the bird flu pandemic took twenty years to really hit its stride, and when it did, we almost kept it under control. Fast quarantine action contained the thousand or so flare-ups caused by the internationally exposed. Suspect birdlife was rounded up and eliminated from populated areas, and the residents knew what to look for, and what to guard against.And then it all went to hell. Someone brought a duck in.Two someones. My ex-wife. My daughter.

Sharon

What a trip! Through the up-north islands, across to Indo, round the archipelago and back. Ducky and Casey loved it and, best of all… no customs! We slipped right by them. It was a great way to celebrate the anniversary of our divorce.

Brian

Sharon said she was sorry, and that there was no harm done: Ducky was fine, and Casey was happy. Healthy, too, she pointed out. Healthy and happy, two things we actually work together for—Casey’s health and happiness.As for Ducky, well, Ducky had been with us since before the divorce. And Ducky had caused a hundred arguments before this, so that was the same as well.And then Ducky got sick, but my wife didn’t know. Casey’s pretty smart for an eight-year-old. “Oh no, mama, he’s not sneezing; he’s just got some fluff stuck to his beak, see?” and “That isn’t a runny nose, mama. He’s jus’ been sticking his beak in puddles. You know he likes that.”

Casey

Mama! Daddy! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to.

Brian

By the time Sharon realised what was going on, Ducky was lying, brittle-still in his bed box with ants running in and out of his beak, and Casey was hosting a fever that meant the air conditioner had to run in the middle of winter. Sharon was giving her an ice bath when the ambulance got there.Too late, of course. And too late for Casey and Ducky’s friends, as well. Too late for their families, and their families’ friends. Too late. Too late for the schools and the suburbs, and the passengers who had shared their buses, their trains, their hospitality, and their planes. Too late for the streets, and the suburbs, and all the rest of us.By that stage, there were no more international flights, so at least, we’re not to blame for the rest of the world.

Sharon

I’ve made mistakes, before. Brian was one, but nowhere near as big as this one. This one I made when my daughter wept. For duck. “He’s not sick,” she cried. Her tears formed streams, rivers, the Amazon or Zambezi. Down the twin continents of her cheeks, they tracked. I touched the ridgeline between them, and I let those rivers convince me. I did not destroy it. I did not enact quarantine. And I watched her die. My daughter. She is buried with the duck.

Brian

I tried to talk to Sharon, but she was always at Casey’s bedside, in the children’s ward, and then she wasn’t. She’d gone, flitted out of the hospital, and into the burning daylit darkness, walking out on me a second time. This time, there weren’t any outraged creditors, just the husk of our daughter’s body. I called Mike, and he put a team together.We went looking, in her quarters, three hours later. Like the rest of the neighbourhood, it was classed as a Level Four Biohazard. We wore the full silver suits, and had our own oxygen supply. Suddenly, I was glad to be one of the chosen, glad of the panic-jab inoculation that meant I wouldn’t get sick, that I’d be one of those who watched the world die. Otherwise, this headache might be attributed to something other than stress. Don’t worry. I had it checked. So far, I’m clear.Sharon had left a mountain of books, papers, her poetry, what I used to term her ‘useless scribblings’ I figured I’d have them all scanned and entered in a decade or two. The house was a shell without her, Casey or that blasted duck. Before, whenever I’d come to visit, there’d be a whoop of joy and little Casey racing to meet me, duck in tow.I can feel the mask misting up, and my heart is just one big ache. I try for a diversion. No good getting emotional in here. I can’t exactly lift the hood to blow my nose or wipe my eyes. And I don’t fancy having snot creeping along my upper lip for the next six hours.Glancing around, I pick up the first thing I see—a notebook, Sharon’s latest, as it turns out. The one where she’d discovered haiku. The first three-lined verse swims into focus as my breathing steadies, Casey and her pet temporarily vanquished.
infectious poemsa raging fever of linesseven, five seven
And that had been before she discovered the three-five-three pattern. I close the book, and vow not to look at anything else until I’ve scanned it into the computer, and don’t need to have my head encased in plastic. I know I’ve had the shots, but departmental policy is: Why tempt fate?The verse haunts me, but not like the images I see every day. Once, we were a city of the first world. I don’t mean the first world that was discovered after this one, I mean the First World. You know, the world of television and technology, satellite dishes and info-tech as a taken-for-granted part of schooling. We were part of the space race, our astronauts and physicists always in demand, even if they had to make their careers overseas before coming home to retire away from the rest of the rat-race First Worlds. And do you know what ended if for us?One little girl’s love for her duck.Love overcomes all, so they say. Love defeats everything. Well, this time it defeated quarantine laws and common sense. This time, it might even have defeated the twenty-first century and dumped us right back, set us on our asses in a quasi-techno-middle-age amalgam of what life might have been if the Great Library hadn’t burned, and Michael Angelo’s mathematics hadn’t been lost. Long live the greatness of Love.I stop writing now. At a loss. I try to catch my boss’s eye across the desk partition. He comes over.“What is it, Brian?”The words catch in my throat.“I don’t know if I can do this, Mike. I don’t know how to start. It’s just so huge, and, and here’s Sharon, right in the middle of it and… and… Casey.”There’s a reef of silence, its shoal-like edges ripping at my throat. I wait to see if Michael can sail us out of this one, but he sets a hazardous course.“It has to be done,” he says. “We know what brought us down, this time. Journals like yours, and Sharon’s, and Casey’s, will help stop it happening again. Make people aware.” He grimaces, as he reads over my shoulder. “And you’ve put it well. One little girl’s love for her duck.”

Sharon

And her mother. Don’t forget her stupid cow of a mother. It wasn’t truly a little girl’s love for her duck. It was a mother’s love. A mother is responsible for not facing down her little girl’s tears, and insisting that she knew best.Oh, yes, Brian. Didn’t I tell you? I can still tap your computer. Sometimes I can still tap your mind. Up there, the satellites don’t stop orbiting just because it’s all gone to Hell down here. Hell, I doubt they even care. And some of those internet servers are in nuclear-powered cities. One day, though, one day there’s going to be a dozen private tempests. A sudden scattering of fiery blooms unfurling below those eyes in space, like pustules erupting so that the Earth’s skin is left clean. Blemished, but clean. Here and there, cities will die, and servers will crash, just like the plant technicians died and crashed. And the water stopped flowing in paths it didn’t choose, and the grass grew cracks into fissures, and your world—your whole goddamned world—is going to come tumbling down around your ears.So, I hope you remember to print my verses, my ‘useless scribblings’. I hope you remember to use acid-free paper, too—you should know what that is. The paper I used to make my scrapbooks. That sort of paper. You’d better, you bastard.

Casey

They’re fighting again. Why are they always fighting? Mama wasn’t gonna win, anyway. There are a zillion places on the boat I coulda hidden Ducky. And one of Ducky’s friends was gonna switch place, and pretend, so we could leave him behind, instead. So, don’t. You. Be. Cross. With Mama!

Brian

“Shit!” The cry is out before I can stifle it. Someone drops a coffee cup, and there’s another muffled blasphemy in echo, as a hand tremor sends someone else’s cursive wild. Michael is beside me, hovering, and the whole office is staring. I wipe a hand across my eyes.The computer’s crashed. I glance across at Aisha, but her terminal is still working fine. Her brown eyes fill with puzzlement as she notices my blank screen. I turn away, just as Michael stoops down and hits the big silver button that should switch the whole thing on again.God, I miss Casey.

Sharon

Casey, my little girl’s name. Better than Lupita from that movie, Man on Fire. Better than Lupita, because it’s closer to Creasy, Creasy, Creasy Bear. My Casey. Why couldn’t her duck have been a teddy? Not a piece of lingerie, but a bear, a cuddly soft-toy protector, like a real bear looking after its cubs, but with no need for ferocity, because all it had to be was itself—a child’s toy, and not an anatine harbour for a world-killing, planet-killing duck-chook-bird disease.And I didn’t mean ‘better than’ Lupita in a bad way. Heaven knows that little girl went through enough. I wasn’t being racist. Not the way I said it. I mean, what mother doesn’t think her little girl’s name is better than the name of any other little girl? It’s not racist—more motherist, or childist, or namist, or just plain maternally biased.I loved Casey and her duck, not Lupita with her Creasy bear and poor, drunk Creasy bodyguard.He died, the Creasy bodyguard, Not the Creasy in Quinnell’s book, but the Creasy in Man on Fire, which was supposed to be based on the book. What a disappointment. The book Creasy ends up with a whole series, but the movie Creasy… Well, it’s hard to have a series if you’re dead.Sometimes, I wonder if that’s what this Ducky pandemic is all about. Finishing a series. No more sequels. No more empires. All finished. Like the writer didn’t want to keep going, and had to end the story somehow.And it’s not fair. The Creasy bodyguard didn’t have to die. Good old Pita had shown him how to live. He’d killed off all the bad guys, traded one life for another. He didn’t need to trade himself; he’d already traded the brother. Well, I guess that’s why he was a bodyguard and not a mathematician.By the way, it doesn’t take a mathematician to work out that we should allbe dead, now. So, how do they, those boys and girls in Brian’s office, still keep going?What’s their secret? Why aren’t they sick? They’ve been the closest I’ve seen to Ducky and Casey and all the others. What I’d like to know is why they’re still alive.

Casey

And you, mama? What about you? You aren’t sick yet. Haven’t you noticed? I got sick, and Ducky got sick, but you never, and Daddy never. Daddy’s got a secret AND IT’S NOT FAIR!

Brian

This time the whole office has blacked out. The emergency generators don’t kick in, but that’s because it’s a localised shut down. Just this floor is affected, and I can’t tell you why.

Sharon

“I’m leavin’ on a jet plaane. Can’t say when I’ll be back again.”That sounds horrible—but it’s not like there’s anyone to hear.Hear! Hear! Get it?Oh, never mind. I’m tired of the echoes, echoes, echoes anyway. Empty buildings, empty homes, emptied lives. I had to leave.The nurses were getting sick—not so you’d notice, but one day I’d catch red-rimmed eyes turning from plastic-shielded Casey to me without my mask—it fell off when I fell off. Just closed my eyes and fell off the world, for a while. One day, red-rimmed eyes would peer suspiciously, the next there’d be another nurse—clear-eyes, but wary and very, very insistent that I put. the. mask. back. on.How many times did I fall asleep? Wipe my face while unconscious, and tear the damned thing away from my nose and lips? Let my sainted breath mingle with the hospital’s air conditioning? How many?Not many. Casey’s days were not many after the fever set her body alight. My transgressions were the same. Not many.

Brian

Another nurse dead. That’s all of them. All the nurses that looked after Casey, but it’s strange. Not one of them got sick from looking after any of the others. There’s a connection there. It’s flickering at the edge of my mind, like something only glimpsed from the corner of my eye.The headache’s getting worse. Mike keeps telling me I have to sleep, but I feel like there’s no time.Oh, God. My mind feels like it’s going to explode!
Casey

Daddy’s sick! Mama! Daddy’s sick!Why’s Daddy sick, Mama? He shouldn’t be sick. He’s got a, gotta, gotta secret

Sharon

My hands. My hands shake. Shimmer and shake.I have hidden from Brian, the world, the empty skyscrapers, the voiceless stars. I have stolen a car and keep looking for some semblance of the law.I stop when the traffic lights turn red, even though I’m the only car on the road. The city, the city keeps going even when the people have stopped. They’ve stopped, and I want to weep.

Brian

Something is terribly wrong. It’s this headache. It’s not like a stress headache. I’ve taken to wearing a mask. If the lab has missed something, maybe the rest of the office will survive. God, I hope the lab hasn’t missed anything. I hope I wasn’t infectious before I realised. I’ll call the lab. Have everybody here tested, just in case. This isn’t right. I’ve been vaccinated. I was wearing a suit… Where’s the lab number?

Casey

The boat, Mama! Let’s go on the boat. You always, always, always loved the boat. Me and Ducky love the boat, too.

Brian

The headache. It’s always there. I’m working in an isolation bubble, now. For how much longer, I don’t know. The lab tech who tested my stuff, he’s gone down with the flu. They’ve been going over everything he’s done in the last week. Thought he was under the weather, because his girlfriend died—she was one of the nurses who looked after… oh shit!

Sharon

All those nurses. Mrs. Healy from the school. That little old lady from the bus—I thought I was helping!The traffic lights are so alive. Never stopping. Like the neon flashes that helped me pick out this motel. We honeymooned here. It was a big adventure. Brian and me.Who could know?

Casey

Mama? Why’s Daddy crying?

Brian

I’ve ordered retests on all the samples taken from the nurses, the teachers from Casey’s school… the kids… the bodies from the buses. This thing spreads like wildfire, but has no symptoms for almost two weeks after infection. I’ve ordered comparisons with samples taken from the flare-ups we managed to contain.I’ve ordered tests on Ducky, too. And Casey.

Sharon

Oh, Brian, I’m so sorry. They’ve moved you, but I know where your terminal is. I couldn’t stand to be caged in plastic like that. No, I’d run away. Far away. Fly like a bird. Set sail and never come to land again, if that was my only option.

Brian

I have to find Sharon!

Sharon

The map. A labeller of places. Listing roads to nowhere, and roads to everywhere, and places, places, places as they used to was, and never will be again. A land of non-existence, labelling remnants of a mighty civilisation. Labelling the cottage. Our retreat.Usually, we retreat to survive, but I always hated the open spaces. So stifling. An imprisonment. seclusion from humanity, connected by an artery of road to the city. We were surrounded by land. Bound. Tied down. Free only to observe the vagaries of the wind. Never free to fly. At least, on the ocean it seems like flying.They’ll be looking for me, now. The results from the labs were adamant. Adamant!How could I be the one?I leave the map in the motel room.

Casey

Daddy? Daddy? What are you doing?You can’t go and get mama; she doesn’t like the plastic tent. You can’t!Stop!The red light means STOP!Mama stopped. Why don’t you?I. SAID. STOP!

Brian

Shit! the whole light array just came down. Exploded and came down. Beautiful synchrony, but what a hell of a time. The road’s blocked, and she’s got a head start already—thanks to the map.We’ll have to go around, and pray it doesn’t happen again.Hell’s bells! Must be some kind of surge. The poles are cracking apart with the force of it.No, Mike. I don’t know why “all the weird shit” happens to me. Look at that! There are poles all over the place.

Casey

Yay, Mama! The moon’s up and there’s no one around. I told you I’d keep Daddy busy, didn’t I?Go! Ducky and I love this. We love the boat and the water and the wind in the sail. Nothing bad can happen when we’re on the boat.

Sharon

Look at that! Just behind the warehouses. Must be an electrical surge, but if I close my eyes a little , it blurs and I can see fireworks. A send off! All it needs is Brian, well-wishing us from the jetty, and Casey on the bow!

Brian

She’s gone. Sharon’s gone. The most dangerous creature to exist since Typhoid Mary, and we missed her. We let her slip right past us. Holiday cottage! I should have known better.She had a laptop on the boat. She had everything she needed. Supplies, freedom, a total lack of surveillance, and she’s gone. Put to sea under a full moon. No running lights, just a functioning echo-sounder and map of the bay and she’s gone. We’ve got planes up, and a few helos that somehow managed to stay in service. I’ve organised a leaflet drop for every coastal community that’s ever been mapped, and given orders for anything else to be dropped as well. So they should be well-warned. Gods’ I hope we can find her before she makes landfall. Gods’ I hope she doesn’t spread it further.I’m tired, now. The fever is taking its course. The nurses have tried to set it up so that the treatment will keep running, even if they do not. The theory is that, if I survive, I can help treat the others. But I remember the statistics, and know how thin the rope, the hope…I have shelves full of books on biological warfare and infectious disease. Experts and defectors. Scientists from the old Soviet Union, and technicians from China, retirees from America’s CDC, historians… Most put out one book; some put out two. And then there were the medical and technical manuals…I glance at the shelves, notice the Alibek book, and think how, once upon a time, you could sail the Aral Sea. How, once, the fish in its depths supported a whole industry of canneries.I remember Sharon, and think of how another island of disease has been set afloat. This time, on the oceans of the world. 


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Ducky is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: books2read.com/u/mda0d4.

You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?