#post-apocalyptica

[imustbeamermaidrango]

Post-apocalyptic Mad Max festival saywhut!?

[whowitnessedtheworld]

I’ve never been much into post-apocalyptic stories before, often because they tend to focus on the mechanism of the apocalypse--the zombie plague, the sentient robots, the One Big Earth-Killing Baddie.

What’s so interesting about Mad Max is that the mechanism (a succession of resource & nuclear wars) has come and gone, and not in a fell swoop, but in increments. We’re given a world that has had its peak crisis, and now it is dealing with the aftermath. It’s a world that could equally begin anew or crumble into oblivion.

We have Angharad asking, “Who killed the world?” And no one can really answer, because there was no one big baddie, it was everyone. And it will take everyone to heal.

As bleak as the wasteland is, something about that feels like hope.

[infinitemachine]

Mutant Safari by MrDream

[infinitemachine]

Abandoned Station - Photobash by sandara

[infinitemachine]

Hunter sketch by SavageZombie

[violetlydreaming]

Post-Apocalyptica

So you might be sitting there thinking, "God, you're reblogging a lot of Fallout crap, stop that!"

I understand. Sympathize, even. But I have some sad news for you, my friends, I've picked up a new little project.

Based upon some comments made by people in a little brainstorming group I'm a part of, I've decided to take a shot at creating a post-apocalyptic setting.

While ironclad dates have not been set down, it's set in the future. Think 22nd century, or 23rd century or so.

I'm just curious for those of you following or interested, what are the most important aspects of a post-apocalyptic setting for you? What makes it compelling? What do you think is cool, that you'd want to see in one? Please feel free to inbox me, as I'm definitely interested in any thoughts you might have.

For those interested, I'm going to be using a modified version of BRP, specifically flavored towards the rules of Call of Cthulhu. I like to imagine life in this Wasteland is pretty dangerous. Not sanity-rending though, that mechanic will be replaced by a system called Tolerance. 

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

Old short story: 'The Arms of the Old Moon'

It's from a few years ago (date modified: 7/19/2010), and unpolished (Holy Infospeak Batman, and use of the wrong version of the Book of Common Prayer, although I'm a bit disturbed to find I seem to have written more realistic 'normal young adults' back then for some reason), so go easy on me. It's...not good, but I think it has the ability to be good. There are a few others from this series, apparently, that I'd need to dig up.

THE ARMS OF THE OLD MOON

‘What do you mean, you don’t have any oranges?’

            ‘Jake, I’m sorry, but the money set aside for domestic citrus production has been slashed and the Channel Ports are clogged now that they’ve opened up the Weald. It’s really not Sainsbury’s fault.’

            ‘I know it’s not your fault, Georgia, but damn, we need oranges! What, do you want us to get bloody scurvy on top of everything else?’

            Georgia Whist sighed, brushed a strand of brown out of her face, and looked at the irate youth on the other side of the register. ‘Look. We have orange juice. We have raspberries, gooseberries, all sorts of vegetables, and any number of other things that have vitamins galore. We do not, however, have eating oranges, grapefruits, or anything made with lemons. Now are you going to stop making a fuss over something that nobody here can control, or do we have a more basic problem on our hands?’

            Jake’s fingers tightened on the strip of raised metal between him and the register’s conveyor belt. He took a deep breath. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Lettuce and raspberries. Five standard units of each.’

            ‘Right you are,’ said Georgia. ‘Five lettuce!’ she called. ‘Five raspberry!’

            ‘I still don’t understand why we have to do this,’ said Jake, pointing at a sign that read ‘Produce not on shelves; MUST be inquired after at register’.

            ‘What, you don’t remember the food riot in Peterborough? Or the food riot in Durham? Or…’

            ‘I remember those things fine, Georgia,’ said Jake. ‘But Durham was over chocolate and Peterborough involved a ship from New Granada that wouldn’t unload its cargo. Neither situation was like this.’

            ‘The seasonal crops are very small this year,’ said Georgia. ‘If it wasn’t for the Fruit and Vegetable Rationing Laws there would not be any produce left, in which case you would get scurvy. Remember, we already lost the entire country’s strawberry crop when that lorry got waylaid driving along the Gulf of Cole.’

Presently an old man brought ten heads of lettuce and five baskets of raspberries to the register.

            ‘All right,’ said Georgia. ‘That’s seventy-two quid in addition to all this.’ She gestured at Jake’s shopping trolley, full of salty snacks, brown bread, and gallon jugs of water and milk. ‘A hundred and one total.’

            ‘A hundred and one qu…’ muttered Jake, feeling around in his pockets. ‘Bloody Hell, this rationing…’

            After paying for the food, Jake unloaded it into the boot of his father’s old car and drove off. The supermarket car park was almost deserted; his was one of the few families in the area that had not yet made arrangements with local farmers, thus bypassing Sainsbury’s and the like entirely.

            Driving along the dusty road from Melton Mowbray back to Asfordby under a gauzy blue-white-grey sky, Jake saw an injured hedgehog lying in the little rain-carved ditch to one side.  He pulled over.

            The hedgehog was trying to reach the wilted remains of a hedgerow that a nearby farmer, probably Mr Trigham, had restored fifteen years ago on the ruins of a much older coppice. It really was no longer a hedgerow worthy of the name, but it still afforded some shade, which would do the injured creature a world of good. The hedgehog’s soft underbelly was covered with festering round lacerations. Its legs were severely injured so that it had to drag itself along the ground, which only aggravated the wounds. Jake reached down and picked up the hedgehog, praying that he would be able to help it somehow. Inspecting its laceration he saw that they were clustered around the left rim of its pot-shaped belly, rather than covering the entire underside. The lacerations were not as encrusted with dirt as Jake had feared, but they seemed very likely to be infected if they were not already. The hedgehog’s legs did not seem to have been cut or broken; Jake guessed that something had happened to the ligaments.

            The hedgehog pissed on Jake’s hand. A small red rod shot out and in again, thus confirming that, yes, this was a boy hedgehog.

            Jake set the hedgehog down on the roof of the car, held it down lightly with his dry hand, and wiped the hedgehog urine from his other hand off on his jeans, which was the best he could do given the situation.

            The hedgehog looked at Jake.

            Jake looked at the hedgehog. The hedgehog’s conical pinkish-brown snout with its black tip twitched inquisitively. His beady, black, yet oddly expressive eyes closed slowly, then opened again. He was obviously in pain, yet Jake could have sworn that he was trying to express optimism and gratitude.

  ‘I’m worried about Mrs Loftus,’ said the Reverend Mr Henry Sewell.

            ‘Oh?’ said his wife. ‘What’s the problem?’

            ‘Her dog is dying. She’s seventeen years old, so really it was inevitable at some point, but Mrs Loftus is incredibly distraught. Yesterday after the service she came up to me and begged me to help her put together a memorial service when, in her words, ‘Bitty finally goes’. She lost her husband in the Storm and both of her children live overseas, so she’ll be extremely lonely.’

            ‘Well,’ said Emma Hartman Sewell, ‘the community’s probably willing to bond together to support her.’

            ‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘We should call Fatima Zahra and see if her imam can help us with this. I haven’t done any funerals for a while and I’ve never done one for a dog.’

            ‘Why her imam, though?’

            ‘Fatima Zahra’s a community organiser, Em. A community doesn’t bond together based around any number of vicars any more. But a vicar, an imam, and somebody whose job it is to make communities bond together…well, I just think we’d get a much better remembrance for Bitty and a much less rough mourning for Mrs Loftus.’

            There was a jangle from the old cowbell hung from the vicarage’s front door-knob. Henry and Emma looked up as their son traipsed into the small home, visibly straining to carry some ridiculous weight of food in twin burlap sacks.

            ‘I’m home,’ said Jake, completely unnecessarily.

            ‘Oh, good,’ said Henry. ‘Well son, run into anybody?’

            ‘Just Georgia.’ There was a rustling from one of the sacks. ‘Oh, yes. And, uh…and Merlin.’

            ‘Merlin?’

            Jake reached down and lifted the hedgehog out of the sack. ‘Merlin.’

            Henry raised his eyebrows. Emma smiled slightly. ‘A hedgehog!’ she said. ‘Is he hurt?’

            ‘Yes. His belly’s pretty badly banged-up and he can hardly walk.’

            Emma walked over and lifted Merlin (here accepting Jake’s designation for the hedgehog as legitimate) out of her son’s arms. ‘You don’t see many hedgehogs around these days,’ she said. ‘So much of the old farming land’s been submerged and there are all these refugees moving into what’s left.’

            ‘The Government’s passing a bunch of measures to preserve the countryside that there still is,’ said Henry, giving a cursory glance to the relevant article in the Guardian that lay spread on the kitchen table. ‘They’re starting to give financial incentives for people to move out of Somerset and West Suffolk, as well as what’s left of Kent.’

           ‘That could backfire easily,’ said Emma, who was wetting a cloth napkin to clean Merlin’s lacerations. ‘Jacob, your father was just telling me about Mrs Loftus’s dog.’

            ‘Oh, yes,’ said Jake. ‘Bitty’s dying, isn’t she?’

            ‘Yes, and Mrs Loftus is very upset. You’re friends with Barbara Cannon, right?’

            ‘The police? Yeah, I’m getting to know her pretty well, actually.’ Jake kicked off his trainers and lay down on the couch. ‘Why?’

            ‘We’re talking about putting together a memorial service with the whole Asfordby community,’ said Henry. ‘The Cannons live a little ways off in Asfordby Hill and aren’t very religious, so we don’t talk to Barbara that much, but since she’s the police it’d be good to have her involved.’

            ‘I’ll see about that, then,’ said Jake. ‘Hey, where’s Ginny?’

            ‘She’s in the churchyard,’ said Emma. At this point there was a loud squeal from Merlin as witch-hazel splashed over his wounds. Emma quickly put on some antibiotic ointment, which seemed to calm the hedgehog down a bit.

  Jake went out into the leafy churchyard, where his sister, twenty-two and just finished with Cambridge, sat between two concrete monuments. One was that of the late Mr Loftus. Ginny Sewell munched on a sandwich of cheap corned pastrami between two slices of white bread almost foamlike in consistency. ‘Bleecch,’ she said.

            ‘Hey,’ said Jake. ‘I just got some food.’

            ‘Any decent bread?’

            ‘Yes. Good bread, water, milk, Chippos, pretzels, raspberries, and lettuce.’

            ‘What about those oranges we wanted?’

            ‘No oranges.’

            ‘At Sainsbury’s, or in the country?’

            ‘Apparently in the country.’

            ‘Damn!’ said Ginny. ‘That’s the fourth time this month!’

            ‘I know, I know,’ said Jake. ‘But, well, we do what we can or must.’ He took a deep gulp of the warm summer air, scented with the soil of the churchyard. ‘So did you swim a lot at uni?’

            ‘Yes,’ said Ginny, somewhat more excitedly. ‘Every day. You’re thinking of going to Durham Uni, aren’t you?’

            ‘Yes, but that’s not for another year.’ Jake sat down next to his older sister. ‘I’ve heard Cambs Mere’s a fairly nice area.’

            ‘It’s pretty much the same as Old Lincolnshire. Bit warmer, though.’

            ‘So now that you’re home again, want to go to the beach sometime?’

            ‘Not really. I’m all swimmed out.’

            ‘Swimmed?’

            Ginny sighed. ‘Swum, then. Or swam. What have you been up to? We haven’t really talked since I’ve been back.’

            ‘Oh, not much. Expressed outrage over the produce rationing…met a hedgehog…’

            ‘A hedgehog?’

            ‘Yes. He was hurt. Mum’s taking care of him in the house.’

            ‘Are we going to keep the hedgehog?’

            ‘Don’t know. I’d like to. Not sure if mum and dad will approve.’

            ‘Have you named the hedgehog?’

            ‘Merlin.’

            ‘Naming him was a bad idea.’

            ‘Why?’

            ‘We don’t know if you’ll be able to keep him yet, that’s why!’ Ginny lay back on the grass, her sandwich riding on her stomach as it rose and fell with her breath. ‘Do you know how long hedgehogs live?’

            ‘No. Do you?’

            ‘Yes. We learned about hedgehogs in first-year environmental science.’ (Ginny had graduated with a BS in ecology; she recognised this as somewhat morbid given the state of the world.) ‘Four to seven years in the wild, up to thirteen or fourteen in captivity.’

            ‘So about what a dog lives?’

            ‘In captivity.’

            ‘Yes.’ Jake paused, listening to a distant bird whose call he did not recognise. ‘I feel sorry for Mrs Loftus, don’t you?’

  Fatima Zahra Muhammad got a phone call from the Reverend Mr Henry Sewell as she drove along the M1 south from Nottingham. She pulled over into the shoulder of the motorway and flipped open her cell phone.

            ‘What is it, Henry?’

            ‘Fatima Zahra, you know Maisie Loftus, right?’

            ‘A little bit.’

            ‘Well, her dog’s dying, and she asked me if when she goes we would organise a memorial service.’

            ‘Wait, when Mrs Loftus goes or when the dog goes?’

            ‘When the dog goes.’

            ‘Uh-huh. And you’re calling me because you want me to get the community together.’

            ‘Precisely! Mr Loftus was killed three years ago when the waters closed over London and her children both lived in the Low Countries; they’re now in the Alps. So that dog means a lot to her; it’s the only family she really has.’

            ‘Henry, I respect the situation, but you’re making this sound awfully maudlin.’

            ‘Sorry. Anyway, though, I was wondering, since there are a lot of Muslim families in this area, could you talk to your imam and maybe see about ramping up some support for Mrs Loftus in that section of the community?’

            ‘Couldn’t you talk to him yourself, clergyman to clergyman?’

            ‘It’s a matter of which of us knows him better, Fatima Zahra. I’m sorry to impose, but some community togetherness is really useful in troubled times.’

            ‘I know that, Henry. Listen, I’m on my way into Leicester to meet with some people about urban crime. Can I call you back this evening?’

            ‘Sure. I think I should go, too. Em’s motioning that it’s my turn with the hedgehog.’ He hung up the phone.

            Hedgehog? wondered Fatima Zahra as she brought her car back out on to the motorway. Well, at least she wasn’t the one who had to deal with the knifings in New Ipswich or, God forbid, the refugee zones in Cumbria and the Weald. The problems that a community had dictated the solutions that the community got, a truism that was simultaneously profound enough for Fatima Zahra to live her life by and obvious enough to make other people think that she was a bit vapid when she told them.

            For this reason, Fatima Zahra tried not to tell too many other people about this little mantra of hers.

            She turned on the radio. King Richard was receiving some American diplomats at Auckland Castle, the construction of the new Houses of Parliament to replace the commandeered Durham Cathedral was proceeding apace, some of the regional wars in South America were winding down…nothing really interesting in the news to-day. None of the music stations had anything good on either. So she drove on in silence but for the hum of her engine and the whooshes of others passing her.

  ‘There we go,’ said Henry. He tied a gauze bandage tight around Merlin’s middle, tapped the leg splints to make sure they would hold, and held him up. ‘Good as new.’

            ‘Well, until we can get him to a vet,’ said Ginny. ‘They might be a bit bemused at practising on a hedgehog.’

            ‘No,’ said Emma, ‘I’ve known people who’ve kept hedgehogs as pets before.’

            ‘So we’re keeping Merlin?’ asked Jake, who was sitting strumming a Spanish guitar, trying to play a piece by Joaquin Malats.

            ‘I don’t see any real reason why not to,’ said Emma. ‘Dear, when’s Bill going to get here?’

            ‘Should be about half an hour,’ said Henry. ‘Lord, I haven’t seen my brother in months.’ He sat back in his rocking chair, watching the television through drowsy eyes. Without London or Cardiff, there was no really good new television coming out of the BBC any more, and the BBC knew this, so they were showing some of the oldest reruns imaginable. Last week Ginny had sat through fifteen consecutive episodes of Magpie, which hadn’t even been a BBC show when it first aired. Henry wasn’t sure what this was, but it looked promising—he thought Dr Quatermass might get involved.

            ‘Jacob,’ he said at length, ‘where did you get that guitar? I don’t believe I’ve seen it before.’

            ‘It was a gift from Ateev,’ said Jake. ‘He switched to bass a few months ago and had it lying around.’

            ‘What are you playing?’

            ‘Malats. Serenata Española. Well, I’m trying to play it, anyway.’

            ‘There isn’t really much way to screw up a classical guitar piece,’ said Ginny. ‘Even the mistakes sound beautiful.’

            ‘A bit like hymns,’ said Henry. ‘Virginia, you were in Melton Mowbray yesterday so you missed this, but during the service we had the completely wrong set of lyrics for two verses and nobody noticed.’ He chuckled. ‘Imagine that.’

            ‘I think there are a lot of things like that,’ said Emma. ‘When I was editing that newspaper column, before the Independent got bought out, I’d occasionally leave in words that had the very slightly wrong connotations. It was an arts and culture column so I could get away with that; wouldn’t have tried it with an actual news column. But then we went under and…’

            ‘Mum didn’t want to work for the Telegraph,’ said Jake to Ginny. ‘I think we can all agree you’re lucky you missed that drama.’

            ‘Agreed,’ said Ginny.

            ‘Agreed,’ said Emma. She noticed that Henry, despite being otherwise relaxed, was still holding the rather distressed Merlin in a position that could not have been comfortable. ‘For God’s sake, Henry, put the hedgehog on your LAP,’ she said.

            ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Henry, setting Merlin gently down on his lap. Merlin gave a little contented snort, curled up, and went to sleep. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I really miss chocolate sometimes.’ He held up some of the hard sweets that Jake had bought. ‘These just aren’t the same.’

            ‘They had chocolate,’ said Jake. ‘It was just really expensive. Three quid for a Cadbury’s bar.’

            ‘Wow,’ said Henry. ‘You’re right, that is expensive. Jacob, would you stop practising your guitar? I’m sorry, but my head’s throbbing a bit.’

            ‘All right,’ said Jake, putting the guitar aside. ‘So did you call Fatima Zahra?’

            ‘Yes. I’m waiting for her to call us back. She was on the road.’

            ‘Where to?’

            ‘Leicester.’

            ‘Oh,’ said Ginny, ‘that conference about the crime in East Anglian cities?’

            ‘I believe so,’ said Henry. ‘Though why they’re holding it in Leicester…’

            ‘It’s not as if there’s much left of East Anglia to hold it in,’ said Emma.

            ‘I suppose so. Christ, I never thought I’d live to see the day when Bury St Edmunds was a byword for youth gangs and Nottingham was a model community. Well, disasters can change a lot of things.’

  The next day, after Henry cleaned up around the Church of All Saints and stood admiring this beating heart of his parish, with its high limestone spire and low-Gothic redbrick walls, he and Jake drove through Rutland to the village of Great Casterton. Great Casterton was only a few kilometres from Stamford, whose abandoned streets listed wildly down into the waters of the new sea inlet beneath which could still be seen the flooded remains of Bourne, Boston, Spalding, and the other ancient towns of the Old Lincolnshire Fens.

            Between Great Casterton and Stamford was a small rise with a view of the Fens Sea Inlet and the coastline running willy-nilly west-north-west to east-south-east from the hamlet of Little Casterton to the small city Peterborough. On this rise was the veterinary office.

            ‘So do you plan on keeping him?’ asked Henry as he and Jake got out of the car. Jake held Merlin in the crook of his right arm.

            ‘If it’s all right with you and mum, yes.’

            ‘It’s all right with me. I talked to your mother and she says that she doesn’t really mind.’

            ‘Great!’ said Jake. ‘Well, we have a pet hedgehog!’

            ‘Yes. Now we’ve got to fix his legs. I’m not an expert on hedgehogs,’ said Henry with a sardonic grin, ‘but I imagine Merlin needs to walk just as much as any other animal.’

            ‘Oh, you,’ said Jake. He grinned back at his father. They walked together into the veterinary.

  ‘He’s got a torn ligament in his left hind leg and a torn tendon in his right fore leg,’ said Sarah Hewitt MRCVS. She had been doing this for thirty years, since long before the Storm, and she was still getting used to being considered a seaside location. It meant more traffic along the roads nearby, for one thing, which frightened some of the animals on occasion. She was slightly neophobic, but she also had what she saw as the good fortune (good, at least, in this situation) to be an idealist. Humanity had got itself into a decline, but that was no reason other animals had to suffer, so she continued gamely at her work regardless of whatever else may happen around her.

            ‘So, uh…’ said Jake.

            ‘You did a good job taking care of him,’ said Dr Hewitt. ‘But I would rather you have called me yesterday rather than waiting until to-day. I would have made a special evening appointment.’

            ‘I’m sorry,’ said Henry. ‘I…well, there was some uncertainty as to whether or not we’d be responsible for the hedgehog in the long term, so…well…sorry.’

            ‘It’s all right,’ said Dr Hewitt. ‘Whoever washed these ulcers did a good job.’

            ‘That was Em. I bandaged him afterwards.’

            ‘I found him on the road and brought him home,’ said Jake. ‘Mum and dad took care of him after that.’

            ‘And what about Ginny?’ asked Dr Hewitt. ‘I fondly remember her horse phase. Did she help?’

            ‘I think she sang him a lullaby,’ said Henry. ‘Actually, it was ‘All through the Night’, the same one Em and I sang to her when she was a child. The singing seemed to calm him down, at least.’

            ‘Yes,’ said Dr Hewitt. ‘Most animals respond well to melodious music.’

            ‘Lot of animal stuff going on in Asfordby,’ said Henry conversationally. ‘Did you ever have the pleasure of treating the Loftus family’s old dog Bitty?’

            ‘Let me think,’ said Dr Hewitt, who was well-known in the area for her prodigious memory for all things mammalian, reptilian, and avine. ‘Bitty…Loftus…yes, actually, I do remember. Fifteen or so years ago, a puppy. She’d be dead by now.’

            ‘Dying,’ said Henry. ‘Bitty is seventeen and dying. Mrs Loftus is very distraught. I’m trying to get some people in the community to support her.’

            ‘Losing a pet is always very hard,’ said Dr Hewitt, ‘especially a long-time companion like a dog. I wish Mrs Loftus the best in coping with it.’

            ‘Thanks. I’ll tell her you said that.’

            ‘You know,’ said Dr Hewitt, ‘there’s talk at the UN of forcing Corsica to start exporting lemons again.’

            ‘Lemons. Are lemons relevant to the hedgehog?’

            ‘No, but there has been a lot of drama going about.’ Dr Hewitt gave Merlin a grey herbal pill and pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘Apparently Corsica got quite a good lemon crop and Ajaccio tried to keep it under wraps to corner the market. But since food’s become a global issue, there was a Security Council meeting, France threatened to invade and reannex Corsica, Italy threw its weight in, and bottom line, we can probably look forward to a partial repeal of rationing in a few weeks.’

            ‘Well, it’s nice to have some good news now and again,’ said Henry. He patted Merlin gently. ‘So, should we get a hutch or something?’

            ‘Yes,’ said Dr Hewitt. ‘A rabbit hutch should be fine for the time being. Now, I have to warn you—you have to be absolutely certain that you want to keep Merlin, because while hedgehogs aren’t especially high-maintenance, they do require some learning on the fly, so to speak, about how to take care of them.’

            Merlin snorted contentedly and rolled over on to his back. ‘The legs should be better in about a week,’ Dr Hewitt said. ‘There are some hedgehog care manuals in the waiting room. Anyway, call me when Bitty has her memorial service. I’d like to come.’

            ‘Of course,’ said Henry.

  Henry and Jake lunched at The Crown in Great Casterton. There was some minor drama between them about how many sips of Henry’s beer Jake should be allowed to have, still being three months under the legal drinking age, and in the end Henry put his foot down and decided that Jake should have no beer at all. Jake fumed for a few minutes but eventually gave up and set upon his bangers and mash with relish.

            ‘I had fun with Uncle Bill yesterday,’ said Jake.

            ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Henry, still slightly sullen with his son. ‘You know, once we’re not so short on food we should be able to have him around more often.’

            ‘I’m just amazed that this place is still serving food,’ said Jake. ‘Though I suppose that since everything we’re eating still grows in this country it isn’t as affected by the rationing.’

            ‘That’s it,’ said Henry. ‘Getting potatoes from what remains of Norfolk and sausage from Cumberland is much easier than getting citrus from the Mediterranean. Potatoes and sausage aren’t subject to debates in the UN Security Council, for one thing. Though I fear that the Carlisle Refugee Zone might get expanded into the beef-producing areas.’

            ‘That would depend upon Parliament,’ said the man behind the bar. ‘Hey, you’re, uh…Henry Sewell, right? The vicar at All Saints in Asfordby?’

            ‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘This is my son Jacob.’

            ‘Nick Springfield,’ said the barman, proffering a meaty hand that Henry shook heartily. ‘I saw you on local-access television a while back. You were talking about the past three years’ changes in the way of the Church of England works.’

            ‘Oh, yes,’ said Henry. ‘I remember that. One of the few times I’ve actually spent time in Leicester itself.’

            ‘It was very interesting,’ said Nick. ‘And believe me when I say that local-access television is seldom if ever that interesting.’

            ‘Well, it bored me to tears,’ said Henry. ‘I’m not particularly fond of the Bishop and I don’t really make a secret of it, so of course he thinks I’m a complete tosser and gives me all these boring things to do.’

            ‘Do you act like a complete tosser around him?’ asked Nick.

            ‘…you know, I’d rather not answer that,’ Henry replied.

  That night, while Ginny and Jake walked around the village, Henry and Emma stayed inside trying to figure out how they were going to conduct the business with Mrs Loftus and Bitty. Behind the vicarage Merlin limped about his makeshift hutch until he tired himself out and went to sleep. Henry watched him out the back window of the kitchen while Emma flipped through the Burial of the Dead.

            ‘‘O God’,’ read Emma, ‘‘whose beloved Son did take little children into his arms and bless them: Give us grace, we beseech thee, to entrust this dog Bitty to thy never-failing care and love, and bring us all to thy heavenly kingd’—Henry, this is impossible! How can Mrs Loftus ask for a full funeral rite for something that can’t be ontologically classed as an adult or a child?’

            ‘The dog’s seventeen,’ said Henry. ‘If she was human she’d still be a child under English and Church of England law.’

            ‘But she’s not human, Henry, and seventeen is ridiculously old for these big breeds of dog!’

            ‘We’ve agreed to interpret this according to the principle of Epikeia,’ said Henry. ‘But that still doesn’t mean that we can just translate the terms ‘adult’ and ‘child’ wholesale into the different experience of a dog.’

            ‘Fine, we’ll use the child version of this part of the rite. What about this part? ‘Into thy hands, O merciful Saviour, we commend thy servant Bitty. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech thee, a sheep of—’ Bitty is an Australian shepherd, Henry. This isn’t just a matter of the sheep metaphor falling flat, it’s a matter of the sheep metaphor actually contradicting external reality and falling into this weird sort of Zen koan territory that in context people might actually find amusing!’

            ‘For ‘sheep’ substitute ‘member’,’ said Henry.

            ‘What about ‘a lamb of thine own flock, a sinner of thine own redeeming’?’

            ‘How about this? ‘Into thy hands, O merciful Saviour, we commend thy servant Bitty. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech thee, a member of thine own fold and flock.’ Take out ‘a sinner of thine own redeeming.’ I’m not certain about official ruling on the matter, but I see no reason to think or assume that dogs Fell.’ Henry yawned. ‘You know, the saddest part is that this is by no means the strangest funeral we’ve ever prepared.’

            ‘I know,’ said Emma. ‘That is sad. Anyway, what’d Fatima Zahra say when you talked to her?’

            ‘Just that she’ll have Mrs Loftus brought up when she goes to mosque on Friday. It’s really up to Mr Edera and me after that.’ Oluwa Edera, a Nigerian immigrant imam in Melton Mowbray who had a long-standing pastoral relationship with Fatima Zahra, was not a close friend of the Sewells as such, but Henry had met him and talked with him a few times and he thought him a perfectly fine man of God, so he felt fairly optimistic about Edera’s hypothetical willingness to help Mrs Loftus. ‘I wonder what Virginia and Jacob are up to.’

            ‘Probably just hanging about with their friends,’ said Emma. ‘People from Lincolnshire moving into Leicestershire and Rutland is a good thing for them at least; it’s good for kids their age to meet new people whom they might not necessarily seek out in the normal course of things.’

            There was a silence.

            ‘This says ‘as the body is borne from the church’,’ said Emma. ‘Are we actually expected to go down the whole kit-and-caboodle, coffin-and-garlands route?’

            ‘No, of course not,’ said Henry. ‘Mrs Loftus is considering having Bitty cremated and the ashes sprinkled over the Fens Sea Inlet, actually. Remember, Epikeia.’

            ‘There are some things that no amount of indulgent interpretation can cover,’ said Emma, ‘and you’re on thin ice with Bishop Detroit as it is, so we can’t come up with a new rite from whole cloth. Mrs Loftus insisted on Church of England. Mrs Loftus is eighty-nine years old. That’s really no reason not to listen to her, though, so we’re in a bind. It’s theoretically impossible to use the rite as it is and we can’t amend it too much or you could be sanctioned again.’

            ‘This is going to be a long night,’ said Henry.

  ‘Ginny? Virginny Sewell? Dear gracious!’

            Ginny and Jake looked up from the massive plate of what passed for pad thai that they were sharing with Ateev Singh in The Blue Bell. At the door of the pub were two very old women in loud floral dresses that had probably been in style in the 1950s. The one speaking to them was Marietta Sweeney; the other, a bit worryingly given recent local events, was Maisie Loftus.

            Ginny stood up and took Mrs Sweeney into a loose embrace. ‘Oh, my,’ Mrs Sweeney said. ‘How you have matured!’

            Marietta Sweeney, widow of World War Two veteran Lieutenant John Sweeney, was, more-or-less, the official old busybody woman of Asfordby parish. She enjoyed poking around people’s lives, not out of malice but simply because, like many old people, she had gained a keen understanding of people and their problems through her eight and a half decades on this Earth. Maisie Loftus was a more subdued woman; other than Bitty, Mrs Sweeney was really Mrs Loftus’s only friend, something that compounded Mrs Loftus’s natural loneliness and made her dog’s imminent death an even more calamitous prospect for her than even Henry and Emma realised.

            ‘It’s lovely to see you again, Mrs Sweeney, Mrs Loftus,’ said Ginny. ‘Do you know Ateev Singh? He’s a friend of Jake’s.’

            ‘My family moved here after King’s Lynn went down,’ said Ateev. ‘My father is going to try for cricket captain.’

            ‘Eh?’ said Mrs Sweeney.

            ‘Purba Singh is going to try to be the cricket captain!’ said Jake in a loud voice. ‘This is his son, Ateev, a friend of mine.’             ‘Oh, well, that’s lovely,’ said Mrs Sweeney. ‘Mrs Loftus, what do you make of that?’

            ‘I wonder if that would upset little Jimmy Swenson,’ said Mrs Loftus.

            ‘James Swenson is fifty years old,’ said Ateev. ‘He’s retiring. That’s the only reason dad’s gunning for captain.’

            ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mrs Loftus. ‘Virginia, how is the preparation for dear Bitty’s service going?’

            ‘It’s going well,’ said Ginny. ‘Going well. Dad and Oluwa Edera, who runs a mosque in Melton Mowbray, are getting everybody we know in the area together.’

            ‘That’s lovely,’ said Mrs Loftus. ‘I do apologise if this has put any strain on your father, dear, but…you know, Bitty has been such a dear companion.’

            ‘I know,’ said Ginny. ‘I know.’

            ‘Animals are great,’ said Jake, gazing into the pad thai abyss with eyes clouded by hunger that the few bites he had so far eaten had done nothing to allay. ‘We got a pet hedgehog, Mrs Sweeney.’

            ‘A hedgehog?’ asked Mrs Sweeney. ‘Oh, well, I can’t say that I have seen a hedgehog these past five years, since well before the Storm! I should love to come round to the vicarage and see it.’

            ‘Him. We named him Merlin.’

            ‘Merlin?’ asked Ateev. ‘Like the Welsh bard?’

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘Speaking of bards, how’s that guitar?’

            ‘It’s good, it’s good. I’ll have to learn to play it far better than I do now, though. How’s your bass?’

            ‘It’s certainly different,’ said Ateev. ‘Most of the relevant music is rock, though, which isn’t something I’m used to.’

            ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Sweeney, ‘if you became part of the next great band, and it came out of Asfordby…how exciting that would be!’

            ‘You like rock music, Mrs…uh…’

            ‘Sweeney,’ said Ginny.

            ‘Sweeney?’ Ateev finished his sentence in the interrogative.

            ‘I like music that’s good,’ said Mrs Sweeney. ‘I lost track of those little genre names around the time there started to be a difference between ‘stadium rock’ and ‘arena rock’. What kind of guitar did you give Jake?’

            ‘Classical Spanish.’

            ‘Oh, lovely! Well, I hope you all do well, take care of your instruments, take care of Merlin, see you later!’ Mrs Sweeney smiled brightly and walked back out of the pub. Mrs Loftus lingered for a moment, looking unutterably sad, and then followed.

            ‘Ginny,’ said Jake, ‘Mrs Sweeney didn’t ask you about uni.’

            ‘I’m sure she will eventually,’ said Ginny. ‘You know how she is. She lets conversations just happen and absorbs interesting titbits through a sort of mental osmosis. She doesn’t specifically set out to know certain things.’

  The next day, a Wednesday, Jake went to study for A-levels, Ginny set about looking for a job with the Defra offices in Leicester, and, in an entirely unexpected development, Nick Springfield found himself sacked by some bigwig in Northampton whom he had not even known still owned The Crown.

            And then came the beginning of July—vanguard to a summer that would not be too burdensomely hot, they hoped.

  Fatima Zahra Muhammad, Oluwa Edera, and Henry Sewell met in All Saints Church on Monday, one week after Merlin had entered the Sewell family’s lives. They sat casually; Henry and Edera in the front pew, Fatima Zahra on the steps of the altar, her legs crossed, reclining slightly and looking up into the vaulted ceiling.

           ‘So,’ said Edera, a big man with a booming, Yoruba-accented voice. ‘Mr Sewell, it is lovely to see you again.’

            ‘You too, Mr Edera,’ said Henry, shaking Edera’s hand. ‘You’re looking well. By the way, you can call me Henry.’

            ‘Only if you will call me Oluwa,’ said Edera, laughing and showing teeth somewhat ravaged by the malnutritious third-world diet of his childhood.

            ‘All right, Oluwa,’ said Henry. ‘So, did Fatima Zahra tell you what’s going on with Mrs Loftus?’

            ‘Yes. I asked if anybody else in mosque Friday knew Mrs Loftus. I think…’ Edera was silent for a moment, his brow working. ‘I think I counted about…five, maybe? Five or six people who said that they would want to support her when her dog go. So…just let me know when you were thinking for the memorial service, and we will see what we can do.’

            ‘The dog isn’t dead yet, Imam,’ said Fatima Zahra. ‘Henry, I think when the dog dies you should schedule the service for a few days later at least, just so we can set everything up.’

            ‘Oh, certainly,’ said Henry.

            ‘So is this going to be an Anglican funeral or just a commemoration?’

            ‘An amended Anglican funeral,’ replied Henry. ‘I’m sorry if you’re not fond of that idea, Oluwa, but Mrs Loftus insisted.’

            ‘Oh, no, no, I am fine,’ said Edera. ‘No reason to make a religious debate out of a woman’s dog dying and her wanting a certain type of service.’

            ‘Well,’ said Henry, ‘all I can say is, I’m glad I’m only a vicar. How to administer Burial of the Dead to a dog is the sort of thing that archbishops have lost sleep over in the past.’

            ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Fatima Zahra. ‘Is there any chance that the dog might get euthanised?’

            ‘None whatsoever,’ replied Henry. ‘Mrs Loftus wouldn’t stand for that. Letting a pet get put to sleep is never easy and I think the sadness and shock might kill Mrs Loftus. Actually kill her. Similar things have happened before.’

            ‘So there is no chance of knowing beforehand when the dog is going to die.’

            ‘Not really, no.’

           ‘This is the strangest community I’ve organised in a long time,’ said Fatima Zahra. ‘Wait, let me rephrase that. This community has the strangest things for me to organise.’

            ‘I know what you mean,’ said Henry. ‘Normally you don’t mobilise an entire parish and half of a mosque because an old woman’s pet’s dying. But Mrs Loftus has lived in Asfordby for eighty-three years. She’s one of the last people in town who remembers the Main Street Flood of 1940. She’s a local institution and Bitty’s her whole world, so there we go.’

            ‘Put that it way it makes more sense,’ said Fatima Zahra.

            ‘Well, all the best to you, Henry,’ said Edera, standing up and clapping his hands. ‘I would best be going. Have to get the ferry to meet a friend in Lincoln.’

            ‘All right,’ said Fatima Zahra. ‘I should probably go, too.’ She stood up and began walking down the nave. ‘See you, Henry.’

            ‘See you, Fatima Zahra. See you, Oluwa.’

  The next morning the Sewells were sitting in the kitchen, eating their various breakfasts and in Jake’s case playing with-cum-engaging in physical therapy with Merlin. Somebody knocked on the front door of the vicarage; Henry raised his eyebrows and looked up from his book. Morning coffee in hand, he went through the house and opened the door to see Mrs Sweeney.

            ‘Mrs Sweeney!’ said Henry. Mrs Sweeney did not respond. She was staring at her feet. ‘Mrs Sweeney…’

            ‘Dad, who is it?’ called Ginny.

            ‘Mrs Sweeney, what’s wrong?’ asked Henry. He leaned against the door-frame.

            ‘Mrs Loftus,’ said Mrs Sweeney. ‘Bitty passed in the night.’

            ‘Oh, dear.’ Henry frowned. ‘How’s Mrs Loftus holding up?’

            ‘That’s the thing. May I come in?’ asked Mrs Sweeney.

            ‘Of course,’ said Henry. Mrs Sweeney followed him back to the kitchen. Emma, Ginny, and Jake saw her more distraught than they had seen her for years.

            ‘What is…’ began Jake.

            ‘Bitty passed away last night,’ said Mrs Sweeney. ‘Maisie Loftus…’

When Mrs Loftus had realised that her last and best companion was truly gone, it had simply been too much. She had outlived her dog by less than three hours.

‘Oh, my God…’ said Ginny. ‘Oh, poor Mrs Loftus!’ She hugged Mrs Sweeney again, this time tightly.

            Jake held up Merlin meekly. ‘This is…my…hedge…’ he muttered.

  Margaret Anne LOFTUS, née Trevelyan, d. Tuesday 12.30 am, Asfordby, Leicestershire. B. Tewynn Pleustri (Newquay), Cornwall, before the destruction of the area in the Storm. Natural death. Cause: cardiac arrest. Age eighty-nine years, one hundred and thirty-six days.

  ‘So we went through all that for nothing,’ said Fatima Zahra. ‘Whole thing’s pointless.’

            ‘No,’ said Henry, peering at her over their table in The Blue Bell. ‘It’s not pointless. Now we’ve got to bury Mrs Loftus. Preferably along with the dog.’

            ‘But the community-organisation part was to comfort Mrs Loftus, not to plan the funeral itself. It’s terrible, what’s happened here. No question. I’m just saying that the comparative fruitlessness of our efforts only makes it bitterer.’

            ‘I see your point,’ admitted Henry. ‘Well, I’d best start planning the funeral in any case. Tell Oluwa that I’d still like to work together with him on affairs in the area.’

            ‘Of course. He says he’d like to work together with you, actually.’

            ‘Well, that’s nice.’

            ‘Mm.’ Fatima Zahra drank some of her soda water. Henry drank some of his beer. ‘I think I should like to pay my last respects to Mrs Loftus.’

            ‘I’ll see you at the funeral, then,’ said Henry. He stretched. ‘You know, in the first few months after everything almost ended, I had to do so many funerals that I didn’t even plan them individually. I just did it by rote. But nobody’s died in the parish for two and a half years, so I’m a bit…rusty, so to speak. Dissecting the Burial of the Dead as strenuously as I did was probably good for me as a vicar, even if its original point has been, strictly speaking, lost.’

            ‘Always with the silver linings, you are.’

            ‘Thanks. I try.’

  ‘O God,’ said Henry that Saturday afternoon, ‘whose mercies cannot be numbered: Accept our prayers on behalf of thy servants Margaret Loftus and Bitty, and grant Maisie and Bitty an entrance into the land of light and joy…’

            ‘Did you have any trouble getting here?’ whispered Fatima Zahra as Edera sat down next to her.

            ‘No, no. Is it just beginning?’

            ‘Yes. Why are you here, Imam? You didn’t really know the woman.’

            ‘I feel after that planning this is the least I can do.’

            Everybody else sat down around them. ‘And in this mountain,’ intoned Henry, ‘the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things…’

            ‘Nice to see you here, Fatima Zahra,’ said Mrs Sweeney.

            ‘For God’s sake, Mrs Sweeney, whisper!’ hissed Fatima Zahra.

            ‘…and the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears…’

            ‘This is interesting,’ said Edera. ‘It been years since I last was at a Christian funeral.’

            ‘Let’s all just be quiet,’ said Fatima Zahra.

            ‘Yeah, yeah. Agreed.’

            They listened in silence for a few minutes. Then the Quemadmodum began.

            ‘Which psalm is this?’ asked Edera.

            ‘Forty-two,’ said Mrs Sweeney. ‘My soul is athirst for God,’ she cried with the congregation, ‘yea, even for the living God; when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?’

            ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions,’ Henry was saying.

            ‘Wait, did he just skip something?’

            ‘Mrs Sweeney, be quiet!’ said Fatima Zahra.

            ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just…very distressed, you know?’

            ‘I know. I’m sorry for your loss. Now please be quiet until there’s a natural lull in the service.’

            ‘Will there be natural lulls?’ asked Edera.

            ‘Probably,’ said Fatima Zahra.

  ‘…beseech thee, to thy whole Church in paradise and on earth, thy light and thy peace.’

            ‘Amen,’ said everybody except for Fatima Zahra, Edera, and a few other people who did not really know what was going on.

            ‘Grant that all who have been baptised into Christ’s death and resurrection die to sin and rise to the newness of life, and that through the grave and gate of death we, and those beasts of the earth that may be dear to us, may pass with him to our joyful resurrection.’

            ‘Amen.’

            ‘Grant to us who are still in our pilgrimage, and who walk as yet by faith, that thy Holy Spirit may lead us in holiness and righteousness all of our days.’

            ‘Amen.’

            ‘Grant to thy faithful people and beasts pardon and peace…’