Excerpt: ‘Extinction Scenarios’
1. Genetics
Human gene pools require a certain population to maintain their vigor. Below a population of about 4,000, they become non-viable. From there, it is only a matter of time.
Baby Foot raises his thick-eared bald head to meet the eyes of the Chieftain. She is resplendent in robes made from strips of ochre plastic that part to reveal ample breasts and a swollen belly.
“Gift,” he says, raising the little bundle to her eye level.
She gazes past him, rubbing her belly in small circles with one hand and sighing. Her time is close.
“Give it here,” says one of the Twins. The Twins are the Chieftain’s guards, a pair of mean-eyed, skinny men with round bellies and straggly hair under baseball caps. They carry spears and clubs, and they’re not known to ask anything twice.
Baby Foot would pause if he didn’t fear a beating so bad. He’s had one from them before. Such a pretty little chile he’s handing to them, all rosey cheeked and blonde, but her left leg’s a twist of flesh and Blind Gram says she isn’t no trueborn chile. And the Chieftain’s about to give birth, so here he is, handing her to the Twin on the Left (no one can ever remember their right names).
The Chieftain is looking absently at the ceiling, and she sits down, leans back on her chair, her big belly thrust upward. Baby Foot wants to leave, but he knows he’ll be beaten again if he does. All the
same… He wanted to strangle the little chile before he gave her over to the Twins, but that’s against the rules. They might kill him, too.
The Twin on the Left takes her from the Twin on the Right and snaps her neck like he’s killing a chicken, which is a relief. At least she didn’t feel much. At least she didn’t cry. Then Right cuts her throat, and the Chieftain gives a startled little sigh as the blood pours out on to her belly. Then she’s moaning, rubbing it on, chanting the words that are supposed to make her chile come out true. She’s chieftain on account of she’s the only woman left in the village who gives birth to true born, so the men have their turns with her — mostly Right and Left — in hopes of making more strong backs to work the fields.
“Now get,” says Right, and Baby Foot leaves the Chieftain’s little house without looking back.
Outside on the dusty village street he keeps walking to the graveyard, finds Lala’s fresh grave far at the back next to all the children who’ve been falseborn of late, and cries ’til there’s a little mud puddle by his small left foot. She didn’t make it through the birth, and now he’s alone. Maybe at least the Chieftain will bring a true chile into the world.
He stays there ’til past nightfall, for he’s got nothing else to do save fieldwork, which doesn’t seem important right now. Then, around Minding Bell, when the Twins normally make their rounds to see that
everyone’s a-bed, he hears a commotion coming from the square outside the Chieftain’s house. Voices are shouting, “Isn’t no trueborn,” and, “Bash her in,” and, “Stick her guts!”
Baby Foot runs up to see what it’s all about, and he gets there just in time to see it. The Twins’ve got the Chieftain, one holding her by the hair, while the other thrusts his spear again and again into her gut. She screams like a pig getting its throat cut, and somewhere down there on the ground amid all her guts is the chile she just birthed, a poor misshapen little thing, its throat cut too, most like.
There’s talk and murmuring, how they’ll have to go find another girl from the village over yon hill to be Chieftain, how they haven’t never believed this one she was a good chieftain anyhow. And someone comes up and pats his arms, tries to hug him, says it weren’t fair how Lala died and they took his chile for that whore bag Chieftain’s little rabbit fuck of a twisted chile.
But he doesn’t want to hear it, on account of he knows that next village over yon hill’s nothing but empty, and the next one after that, and the one in the valley beyond, too, nothing but empty houses,
gravestones, and landless crows.
Photo (pre-manipulation) by Lasse Czeloth (Robotnok) via Stock.Xchng. I have chosen not to release this story under a Creative Commons license yet; Extinction Scenarios is copyright 2009, Jack Graham, all rights reserved.
