gate, stealthy as a thief. Darkness, no movement. The scent of night flowers: lilies, nicotiana. Mixed with that, a whiff of smoke from something burning, blocks away: she could see the flare. A kudzu moth flickered against her face.
She stuck the crowbar under a patio stone, lifted, grabbed the edge, heaved the stone over. Did it again, and again. Three patio stones. Then she dug with the shovel.
A heartbeat, then another.
It was there.
Don’t cry, she told herself. Just cut open the plastic, grab the rifle and the ammunition, and get out of here.
It took her three days to get back to AnooYoo, skirting the worst rioting. There were muddy footprints on the outside steps, but no one had broken in.
6
The rifle is a primitive weapon — a Ruger 44/99 Deerfield. It had been her father’s. He was the one who’d taught her to shoot, when she was twelve, back in those days that seem now like some mushroom-induced Technicolour brain vacation. Aim for the centre of the body, he’d said. Don’t waste your time with heads. He said he just meant animals.
They’d been living in the semi-country, before the sprawl had rolled over that stretch of landscape. Their white frame house had ten acres of trees around it, and there were squirrels, and the first green rabbits. No rakunks, those hadn’t been put together yet. There were a lot of deer; they’d get into her mother’s vegetable garden. Toby had shot a couple, and helped to dress them; she can still remember the smell, and the slither of shining viscera. They’d eaten deer stew, and her mother had made soup with the bones. But mostly Toby and her father shot tin cans, and rats at the dump — there’d still been a dump. She’d practised a lot, which had pleased her dad. “Great shot, pal,” he’d say.
Had he wanted a son? Perhaps. What he’d said was that everyone needed to know how to shoot. His generation believed that if there was trouble all you’d have to do was shoot someone and then it would be okay.
Then the CorpSeCorps had outlawed firearms in the interests of public security, reserving the newly invented sprayguns for themselves, and suddenly people were officially weaponless. Her father had buried his rifle and a supply of ammunition under a pile of discarded picket fencing and shown Toby where it was in case she ever needed it. The CorpSeCorps could have found it with their metal detectors — they were rumoured to be doing sweeps — but they couldn’t look everywhere, and her father was innocuous from their point of view. He sold air conditioning. He was a small potato.
Then a developer wanted to buy his land. The offer was good, but Toby’s father refused to sell. He liked it where he was, he said. So did Toby’s mother, who ran the HelthWyzer supplements franchise in the nearest shopping area. They turned down another offer, then a third. “We’ll build around you,” said the developer. Toby’s father said that was okay with him: by this time it had become a matter of principle.
He thought the world was still the way it had been fifty years before, thinks Toby. He shouldn’t have been so stubborn. Already, back then, the CorpSeCorps were consolidating their power. They’d started as a private security firm for the Corporations, but then they’d taken over when the local police forces collapsed for lack of funding, and people liked that at first because the Corporations paid, but now CorpSeCorps were sending their tentacles everywhere. He should have caved.
First he’d lost his job with the air-conditioning corp. He got another one selling thermal windows, but it paid less. Then Toby’s mother came down with a strange illness. She couldn’t understand it, because she’d always been so careful about her health: she worked out, she ate a lot of vegetables, she took a dose of HelthWyzer Hi-Potency VitalVite supplements daily. Franchise operators like her got a deal on the supplements — their own customized package, just like the ones for the higher-ups at HelthWyzer.
She took more supplements, but despite that she became weak and confused and lost weight rapidly: it was as if her body had turned against itself. No doctor could give her a diagnosis, though many tests were done by the HelthWyzer Corp clinics; they took an interest because she’d been such a faithful user of their products. They arranged for special care, with their own doctors. They charged for it, though, and even with