The Back-Pack

I always wanted to be beautiful. My partner told me I was, but I didn’t want to be beautiful only like that. I wanted to be the type of beautiful that stops a stranger mid-step, turns him around and makes him run after me. They do that now. That’s why I hide in the trees.

So, I sit in a tall, tree canopy, concealed by leaves, and watch the weedy, unkempt parking lot of the Kingston Penitentiary in the distance. Everything is silent, as it has been for almost two years. The majority of the inhabitants of Kingston, Canada are dead, as are the majority of inhabitants of every city, everywhere. But I still hide.

Within the penitentiary live most of the survivors of Kingston, whether by choice or by force.

The treeless parking lot around the prison in the distance looks empty, but I know that the prison goon guards are hiding in shaded spots, sleeping. They think there is no one left to attack them. Guarding has become a game to stave off boredom.

Initially, I came and watched the prison for my own protection. I figured out routines, took stock of the weapons, counted the number of men.

After some time, I continued to watch the prison to figure out how to rescue the other women in there, who are like me. I gave up on that too.

Now, I watch the prison as a routine, and out of loneliness. Just as I watch every other concealed survivor in the city, most of whom have no idea that I exist. There aren’t many survivors outside of the prison walls. And those who want to stay outside have learned to hide so well, it took even me a long time to find them.

Ninety-nine percent of men and women died. Out of the remaining women, about half began to mutate.  It happened too fast for the world to figure out how or why. All that’s known is that it happened at the DNA level. And it happened to me.

I am now, what they call a Femme. The name they use for us ‘mutant women’ came from a combination of Femme Fatale and La Femme Nikita. It describes us well. We are something that looks like living anime dolls, with huge eyes and hair in shades that remind you of precious stones or metals, from rose gold, to black pearl and diamond, always sparkling in the light as if glitter had been thrown on it. Our physical proportions are perfect, and our physical strength, agility and speed are lethal.

None of the male survivors mutated.

Sometimes I get a bottle of wine and get drunk on a treetop and then I inevitably start wondering if all this was the evil plan of a deranged feminist, gone horribly awry.

The mid-June sun scorches the top of my head, even through my grimy, grey tuque. I pull the tuque tighter over my ears, instinctively pushing strands of shimmery pink-gold hair back into its filthy prison. My huge, black eyes shut. It has been two years since the modern version of the twenty-first century ended and the memories, as well as the pain have blurred over time. But, sometimes, the oddest little things in Kingston rip a hole in my heart; like a torn-up t-shirt blowing below the tree, a band logo on it still partially distinguishable…A memory of me and my partner at a concert, buying souvenir, band t-shirts…I open my eyes again, shoving the memory and the accompanying pain inside a box in the back of my brain. I push off and jump to another tree, moving away from the prison. I need to leave Kingston.

            I have three backpacks waiting at my home. One for me, and the other two for the two people who don’t yet know that I’ve decided they’ll be coming with me. 

            I jump from tree to tree until I reach a residential neighbourhood. Once I reach the protection of a tight, overgrown street, I jump down to the ground and land softly on squatted legs. I sprint through an alleyway between houses, lithe and silent. When the alleyway ends, I squat, and like a panther, use my arms to help push me off the ground as I pounce up another tree.

The first future backpack owner lives with her mother and stepdaddy in a grimy apartment building right by the Marshlands Conservation area. Her name is Bianca.

Shitty apartments are the best accommodations nowadays. The goon gang’s already looted all of them and doesn’t bother going through anymore - due to the lack of working elevators and of course, the stench.

Only those who had been lucky enough to die right at the start of everything had gotten proper burials. Later, too many were dying too fast, dead bodies littering houses and apartments, people dying as they were planning funerals for their already dead. That’s become the trick of the survivors in hiding. They leave a couple rotting bodies in their building to make the goon gang think no one is living there.

I scale the wall of the building to a third storey window obscured by trees and climb inside. Then I tiptoe like a rushed ballerina to the other end of the hallway where I briefly stop and listen outside Bianca’s family’s door. I hear the raspy female weeping and the sound of metal against metal. That means that stepdaddy has been staring inappropriately at his acquired teen, anime goddess again. So, mother is wailing to God to keep stepdaddy strong and to forgive her sinful daughter for eating the tempting-fruit-of-the-whatever-tree that has caused her to mutate. According to mother, Bianca’s soul is on its way to hell, unless mother wails enough. When mother wails, stepdaddy just sits, sharpening his pile of knives, and Bianca cowers in a shitty, little room, staring blankly out of its single, tiny, window, which they’ve barred. I’ve wondered if she hasn’t figured out her new strength yet or if she doesn’t pull the bars off because she believes she deserves them.

I soundlessly walk into a neighbouring apartment, slide out its window and scale over to Bianca’s. We’ve met.

She sees me plastered against the window from the outside and gets up from her blank stared huddle. With a quick glance towards the door, she comes to the window and fingering between the bars manages to open it slightly. This is only the second time she’s done so. Before that, she had just stared at me. Progress.

 The opening is just enough for me to get a peach through with one hand, while I grope the bricks for stability with the other.

She shakily takes it. God, she stinks. And her mutant hair, with its shades of black and silver, isn’t even sparkling anymore.

“You should eat it right away and give me the seed…so there’s no evidence.”

It’s the first time I’ve ever spoken to her. Words become harder and harder to say, the less you speak.

She stares at my face. I’ve never heard her talk either. Not even when Mother wails.

Her black eyes widen and shed their vagueness. She straightens her shoulders and bites in, not taking her eyes off me. She slurps the dripping juices and devours the peach in just a couple bites.

What you survive on depends on what you have the guts to explore with the goon army running the town.  I’m more inconspicuous than most and so I’ve found all the houses with fruit and vegetable gardens. Bianca’s family survives mainly on game from the marshlands.

 I stick my hand through the window to take the seed from her, but she begins to gnash at the seed with her teeth, the movements of her mouth more and more violent and jerky. Has she lost her shit? Suddenly she stops mid-gnash and stares at my face. I try to move my features into a non-horrified position, forcing out a smile. Tears start rolling down her cheeks and she swallows, as if pushing her impending insanity down. Slowly, she takes the seed out of her mouth and puts it in my still open hand.

“They’re going hunting tonight,” she whispers, her whole body shaking as though she’s terrified of the words that have come out of her mouth.

I nod. I’ll be back.

I scale back to the neighbouring window, tiptoe back through the hallway and go out on the treed side towards the marshlands. The marshlands aren’t my favourite. The trees are too fragile to jump between so I have to stick to getting soaked in bogs as I make my way down towards Lake Ontario and the grounds of St. Lawrence College. I keep smiling though. I can feel that Bianca is going to join me. And, I have a pear for Tad.

By the time I find him, I’m dry again. The college isn’t large, but Tad’s pretty stealthy for a regular human and likes to switch up buildings of residence. Every now and then he also goes to the neighbouring golf club. After barbecuing his hunt he makes up a table for himself at the club, complete with a full set of silver cutlery placed on top of a silk tablecloth. Then he sticks a napkin inside his grimy t-shirt collar and eats. At first, I thought that he had gone insane but then I realized this was his way of keeping his sanity.

It does make me wonder though what kind of pretentious prick he must have been before, and if I can stand him. I’ve decided I can. I’ll admit, it’s possible that I based that decision on the fact that as the pain of the past dulls, my desire to be with a man proportionately grows. Though, to be fair, the combination of pretentious professor with the build of an athlete, with dark brown skin and eyes even blacker than his tightly wound curls, would have been eye-catching in the good, old days. And these days…well…his backpack is waiting.

I had started leaving him gifts of fruit a couple weeks back. The first time he freaked out - prowled the entire college for hours and didn’t sleep through the night. The third time he picked up the fruit and ate it, although he did it with a purposeful slowness, his eyes scanning the premises with every bite. He must have come to the conclusion that the secret fruit giver wasn’t dangerous, because although he began to leave traps for me, he always made sure they weren’t harmful. And he knew harmful. He used those traps for the animals and the goons. He’s also never said a word about it to his brother, Arlo, who just happens to be visiting from the penitentiary today.

“You should come to the Pen. Get it on with the Femmes. Shit, they’re crazy but so super hot.” Arlo could be the younger, twin version of Tad, if he weren’t so screwed up. I cringe in my lying position on top of the theatre building, while they stand and talk outside of it, their backs to its wall.

“That’s all you want from life? Scheduled rape?” Without seeing his face, it’s hard for me to tell whether Tad is disgusted or depressed.

“It’s better than jerking off. Is that what you do? Walk around and remember college chicks? Anyways, they imprison mutants, not women.”

“Femmes aren’t women? Who told you that? That could’ve been your mother if she hadn’t died! You’d fuck her too?!”

After an initial moment of silence, Arlo responds quietly, but with an undertone of poison, “You know shit about the Femmes. I’m going. You need to join us or leave. Everyone else is getting good at hunting now. We don’t need your meat anymore.”

I hear Arlo’s footsteps receding and Tad’s voice following him, “I’ll leave town if you come with me.”

            “Fuck off. You know nothing,” is the only response he gets.

            When Arlo’s footsteps are out of range the silence is absolute for a while. Then, I hear weeping. Tad’s never cried before. I slide down the roof of the theatre, not too far from him. He’s still against the wall, crouched so low he’s almost sitting, his hands encircling his head as he cries. He doesn’t notice me at all until I clear my throat gently.

His head shoots up and his blood shot eyes face me. His eyes widen as I stick out my hand, holding the pear out to him. He rises in slow motion and then takes a slow step forward, as if not to scare me off like some sort of frightened deer. Just like that deer, I take a step back. It’s instinct now. I haven’t been safe for a long time.

 He stops moving and puts his hands up, palms out. I breathe out slowly and nod. He takes another slow step forward and this time I stay. I let him move towards me, stretching out his hand for the pear. When our hands are almost touching, I move slightly forward to place the pear in his, but it falls on the ground as he grabs for my wrist instead of the fruit. I’ve learned not to scream. Screaming for help is how you end up imprisoned by the goon gang. A tiny sound still comes out with my shocked breath though.

 Tad’s jaw is tight and he’s moving fast. He spins me around by my arm in an attempt to grab my other arm behind my back. Before he reaches my other wrist though, I regain my thinking skills, lunge my free arm over my shoulder and grab him by the scruff of his shirt.  With a slight crouch I fling my body forwards and do a flip in the air, sending his body flying over mine.

His grip on my wrist loosens halfway through the flip and I let go of his shirt, letting him smash on the grass while I roll just a little, and land softly on all fours.

            I’m back up on the roof by the time he stumbles to his feet. He just stares at me, up on that roof like a crouched, anime Wonder Woman in camo leggings and shirt. I realize Arlo had been right. Tad knows nothing about Femmes. What we are. What we can do. A tear sneaks out of my eye at the sight of his terrified face and I quickly turn away before he can see. I hear a whispered shout as I sprint off, “Fuck. No! Come back.” But I don’t. Something inside me has cracked. He’s opened a box and the only way to close it is to run. Jump from roof to roof to trees and back into the disgusting bogs of the marshlands.

~

The sun is setting but red hues still fall on the ground through the trees.  I hear two male voices, broken up by the distance and the wilderness between us. In my ballerina mode, I tippy toe between the skinny trees, close enough for the voices to become clear.

“It’s time to kill him.” A smooth, male voice says the words in a sing-song fashion.

“The inner group shit’s gotta stop or we won’t have a group left. We’re not the only ones with weapons left. Word’s come there’s some weird shit stirring around Toronto,” a second, rougher, lower voice responds. 

“Tad isn’t our group. You’ve seen his weapons. Why’s he allowed? We could use those fucking guns. Especially if there’s shit stirring. You know we could.”

“Arlo…”

“Arlo won’t know anything. We just saw him. He’s pissed off. That means him and Tad had a fight. So, it’s now. Tonight. We make it clean. Get rid of the body. Arlo will think Tad finally gave up and left without him,” sing-song voice is apparently succeeding at convincing gruff voice because his last sentence is met with silence.

 My stomach is tight. Tad’s terror of me broke a little something inside, but not enough for me to throw his backpack away. I start to creep towards them. I can take on two guys easily.

“Tad’s not that fucking stupid, he has traps everywhere…it’s a risk,” gruff voice says.

 I keep inching towards them, when something in a grove of muddy reeds on my left catches my eye; a splotch of green that doesn’t quite match the green of the nature around us. My head darts back and forth between the splotch and the voices. I move towards the green but keep my ears on the goons.

“Jason, Sticks, Murray, Ahmad and Jorge are on their way. You can join and share the ammo we get after killing Tad or go wait back at the Pen with your mouth shut.”

Jason, Sticks, Murray, Ahmad and Jorge…. That’s five killers on their way to Tad now.  I have to go back, but I freeze instead. I’ve reached the green. It’s a t-shirt, on a dead body, face down. I can tell by the long strands of dark hair and the bony elbows who it is but, with shaking hands I roll it over anyways and stare at Bianca’s mother’s face. Her neck is slit perfectly with what must have been a very sharp knife. Her eyes still stare, the mouth wide open and full of mud. 

The voices of the men are disappearing. They’re on their way to Tad. I stare down at the mother. How long ago had stepdaddy killed her? He’s on his way home to Bianca.

I drop the body and it sloshes back into the mud.

“Fuck!” I grip at my hair with my muddy hands, staring back and forth between the two directions I have to choose between. Then I stop, put my hands down and straighten my shoulders. I nod to myself. I know which way I’m going.