Birdsong
Meara bent to look more closely at the curved length of bone tangled in the dusty weeds. It looked like it could be part of an arm. It might have been someone she knew once, before the village had been evacuated and destroyed. Or it might belong to one of the soldiers who’d come through. The armies hadn’t bothered to clean up their dead. Unless there was some other identifying scrap with the bone, she couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter.
She moved past it, already uninterested, already knowing it would crumble if she tried to free it.
Meara dug into the turf with her trowel, pulling up a clump of dandelions. She prodded the fresh hole for grubs. Not in this one. She moved on. She scanned the ground for wild mustard, onions, chickweed, any weed she could eat. Her busy fingers found them, tugged them free, filled her bag.
She hoped the grain that had been left to rot here when the war swept through would sprout again, feral, as it had the last few years. It filled her belly far better than dandelions.
* * *
Meara’s sister had moved north after her baby died.
The two women had crouched together for the brief, brutal labor, her sister’s two older children sent outside the house so they wouldn’t hear—wouldn’t see.
The baby had come out of its mother in a gush of brown fluid, scrawny and dark, its tiny bones warped and soft—poisoned before it was born. Meara’s sister had screamed when she saw the twisted thing. She had been sure her pregnancy was one of the lucky ones, untainted. She told Meara it wasn’t hers, there was no way she had birthed this thing.
Meara had taken the tiny, wounded baby away to her own house, past its frightened siblings, to let it live as long as it might. Children were more susceptible to the load of toxins released over the last months of the war. The younger the child, the faster the damage. In the womb was the worst.
When the baby died after half a day, whining thinly, she’d thrown the tiny body into the river.
So much more waste for the water to carry away.
As soon as she could walk without bleeding, Meara’s sister had gathered her surviving children and left, hoping to reach someplace safe.
Meara stayed behind in the almost-empty village. She had no hope of safety anywhere else.
* * *
A scrawny figure moved toward the river from the north, across the sea of grasses that had been farmland only a few years before. As the figure drew closer Meara saw it was a woman.
The newcomer stumbled as she walked, but when she spotted Meara she waved enthusiastically.
“Hey!” the woman shouted hoarsely and angled quickly toward her.
Meara tightened her grip on the trowel and waved back.
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen anyone,” the woman said as she reached Meara. “I was starting to think there was nobody left.”
Meara looked at the stranger. Her flapping coat was torn and faded to dust grey. Under the coat she was very thin, and dirty. Her hair had been chopped short. But her eyes were still bright, and wary.
“Around here, it’s been just me for quite a while.”
The woman stepped closer. Meara braced.
“Where is here?” she asked, a nervous smile flickering over her mouth.
“Milford,” Meara answered. “I’m Meara.”
The woman nodded. “Stennick,” she offered.
“Where were you?”
“A little place called Tompkins, upstate. I more or less followed the river down.”
“Is there anyone still up there?”
Stennick looked into the swirling, dirty water. “Some. There weren’t many of us to start with. The town is a ruin, but it was home, you know?”
Meara smiled, nostalgic.
“Oh, I know it,” Meara said. “People around here went north.”
Stennick laughed a little too long.
“And where I came from, they headed south,” she said. “It doesn’t look like anybody found what they were looking for.”
Meara shrugged.
“Where are you heading, besides south?” she asked the woman, calm and cautious.
Stennick looked at the wide, shallow river below them. “Just south,” she said. “I hadn’t thought about it any more than that.”
They stood in silence, Stennick watching the water, and Meara watching Stennick.
“You can stay here for a while, if you want,” Meara said at last. “Company might be good for both of us.”
Stennick smiled more firmly, although her eyes remained guarded.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m sick of my own voice at this point.”
She opened her coat and reached into a pocket.
“I have rice,” Stennick said, holding out a canvas bag.
“Where did you get that?” Meara asked. “It’s been at least a year since there were food drops.”
“I found it,” Stennick said flatly.
Meara let it go and pointed the way up to the crumpled shell of her house.
* * *
“There’s a lot of structural damage, but I grew up in this house. It’s still home. But now I just use the living room,” Meara said.
Stennick nodded as she swallowed a mouthful of rice, greens, and fish.
“I buried my son six days back,” Stennick said as she chewed. “He was twelve. He never knew any other life than this mess.”
Her voice was level, her face expressionless. Meara looked at her over the rim of her own bowl and waited for what else she might offer.
“I tried to stay near the interstate when we first set out, but it was easier to follow the river than the roads. I got tired of seeing the all the wreckage, the towns all blown apart,” Stennick went on, still neutral. Then she took another mouthful.
“It’ll be gone eventually. Rusted and rotted away,” Meara said. “But not the river.”
She put her bowl down by her feet.
“My father said when he was a boy this river was filthy” Meara said. “The paper factories would dump their waste right into it. He said they would sound a siren right before they released it, so that anyone swimming or fishing could get clear. He said the river would run like a rainbow from the dyes.”
She watched Stennick as she spoke.
“Eventually the factories shut down and the river got clean, or at least clean enough that eating the fish wouldn’t kill you.”
Stennick looked down at the bowl in her hands. Meara laughed a little, trying to bring Stennick out.
“There are still plenty of fish, despite everything. Garbage fish, like carp. I don’t think they’re actually safe to eat, but they taste okay when you’re hungry.”
Stennick tilted her empty bowl toward Meara in acknowledgement, and turned her eyes to the bright orange embers in the fireplace.
“Can you remember the last time you saw or heard a plane? I can’t,” Stennick said. “The skies are empty now. And never mind the planes. The birds are gone, too.”
She paused, struggling.
“I don’t know when I realized that there were no birds. Even when I was digging my son’s grave I was hurrying so the turkey vultures wouldn’t get to him. But I don’t think I saw any.”
She shook her head.
“You get so used to the sound of war coming down that you forget what birds sound like.”
Meara sat still, letting Stennick have her say.
Stennick reached into her pants pocket and pulled out a small bundle. She unwrapped it and showed Meara a cracked, dusty phone.
“All my pictures are on here, of my family, of before. If I ever find some way to charge it, I’ll show you.”
Meara put another chunk of wood on the fire. Stennick stared into the flames, unblinking.
“Remember the wildfires they set, as an excuse to just pour chemicals out of planes? Not even crop dusters. Just clouds of yellow dust in the sky,” she said.
Meara looked up. “I remember. It was chaos,” she said.
“I heard they were just dumping DDT on everyone at the end, human or not, figuring something would kill them,” Stennick said.
“They haven’t made DDT in fifty years, at least.”
“Yeah? They were dumping something nasty. Old stockpiles, maybe? It explains the birds, though. And the babies. The kids.”
Meara shook her head as if to cast out the idea.
“It wouldn’t have caused all that damage. It was too late, by the time they did it. It would have had to be something earlier, something we didn’t see.”
Stennick kept quiet.
“It wouldn’t have,” Meara repeated, as if it were so.
* * *
Stennick was curled like a dog by the cold hearth when Meara woke up in the blue early morning. She made her way out quietly and sat on the cracked front step to put on her boots.
Shod, Meara stretched and surveyed her lonely kingdom. She thought it must be the beginning of April. The air was chilly, and a mist hung over the river. It would burn off as soon as the sun got above the valley’s rim. At least this morning there was no frost.
The world was quiet, except for the dull lapping of the river as it washed the muddy rocks along its banks. Stennick was right. There was no birdsong. Meara peered up. The sky hung pale and empty above her. She turned her eyes to the fields, suddenly too aware of the silence.
Then the still morning was broken by the hollow sound of metal striking stone, down by the river. Meara shook off her unease, grabbed the long hook she kept by the door, and jogged down to the riverbank. There might be something useful washing by.
A battered aluminum skiff floated low in the sluggish water. A body lay crumpled across the fixed metal seat.
The boat bumped slowly across the just-submerged rocks. Meara leaned out, careful not to slip in the mud. She caught the lip of the boat with her hook, and pulled it in. She reached for the bow handle, snagged it, and dragged the boat up the bank.
The body grunted at the rough ride and tried to sit up.
Meara jumped back, a surprised shout escaping her.
A young man pulled himself upright on the seat. He was thin to the point of frailty. He smiled at her, his long, misaligned jaw making a jack o’lantern of him. He held out a hand to her.
“What’s your name?” Meara asked.
“Estes,” he croaked. “I’m Estes.”
Meara looked him up and down, assessing his condition. He was in no better shape than she was, but he was young. Probably in his twenties, still. She was certain he wasn’t human. But here he was, a foundling washed up on her shore.
“Welcome to Milford, Estes,” she said, and gave him her hand.
* * *
Stennick was awake when they came in, and she goggled at the newcomer from where she still sat on the floor.
“We have a castaway,” Meara said, bending to build a new fire. “He says his name is Estes.”
“Is it safe?” Stennick blurted.
Estes hung back, nervous at her words.
Meara shot her a sharp look and shook her head to warn Stennick to silence.
“Of course it’s safe,” Meara said.
She dug a plastic lighter from her back pocket and set the kindling ablaze. Then she gestured at Estes to come closer and patted a sagging armchair. He lowered himself into it as if every joint ached.
They sat close to the small fire in silence for a while, leaning in for its meagre warmth.
“Where are you from, Estes?” Stennick finally asked.
“Buffalo,” he said.
Stennick picked up a stick and stirred the fire.
“The cities took the worst of it,” Meara said. “Little towns like this weren’t the targets.”
“They moved us into refugee camps, farther north,” Estes began. “But they wouldn’t let us leave. Even when they couldn’t feed us, they wouldn’t let us leave.”
He stopped, overwhelmed and choking on tears.
“They shot anyone who tried,” he started, again. “We wanted to head west, or even up north to the border to see if we could cross, but they shot us, like rabbits.”
Meara looked down at her clenched hands.
“People from around here went north. They thought it would be safer.”
“Maybe it was, when they first opened the camps,” Estes said. “I think they had no idea how many people were desperate for help, who had nothing left and nowhere to go, all hungry and scared and just wanting to be somewhere safe again.”
“How old are you, Estes?” Meara asked.
“Nineteen,” he answered.
Meara glanced at Stennick. Stennick met her eyes, barely nodded.
“They came after all of us,” Meara said. “They could have told us from the others if they wanted, but nobody was looking at the fine points after a while. At who, at what they were killing. They were too scared.”
She watched Estes closely. He wiped at his eyes, more child than adult.
“And so here we are,” Stennick finished.
Estes looked at her, lost.
“There’s still a bit of stew left from last night,” Meara said. “You can eat that, and get some sleep. We’ll be back later.”
She stood.
“Come on, Stennick,” she said. “We have foraging to do.”
* * *
Meara drew Stennick up into the surrounding fields. Together they walked among the piles of stones that dotted the weedy ground.
“He’s one of them,” Stennick said, spreading her hands helplessly.
“I know. But I don’t think he does. I think he’s too young to realize it. He was probably born on Earth. And he isn’t going to live much longer.” Meara didn’t look up as she spoke. She scanned the area for anything edible.
“If you were travelling closer along the river you would have seen all the bodies,” Meara continued. “All the dead, humans and the others alike. Some in boats, some loose on the current. There’s nothing left in the north.”
She knelt to dig out a clump of dandelions.
“Estes is the first one I’ve seen make it down this far alive.”
“Stop it,” Stennick said, her voice breaking.
Meara stood up to face her. Stennick closed her eyes.
“My son was perfect the moment he was born. He was like a slippery little fish,” Stennick whispered. “This shouldn’t have happened.”
Meara put her arms around Stennick, holding her tightly as she cried.
“Hush,” Meara said. “Hush. There’s no way around it. This wasn’t a war we were going to survive. We didn’t matter. Once they found the others, they were going to do anything to keep them from … living here.”
“Stop it!” Stennick begged.
Meara drew a deep breath. “I can’t,” she said. “The planes, the dust—they were trying to get rid of them. Like Estes. They didn’t care what happened to my sister’s baby. To your son. They just didn’t want them to survive.”
She let Stennick go so she could tug up her sleeve.
“Look,” she said.
Meara’s forearm had a bend in it, a curve where it shouldn’t be.
“We’re all poisoned.”
* * *
It was nearly dark when the women returned to Meara’s ruined house.
The living room was cold, the fire long dead. Meara could hear Estes breathing and make out his long shape on the floor. She stepped around him carefully, then flicked her lighter long enough to light a splinter of kindling. She handed it to Stennick and laid a new fire by its tiny light. Stennick stood beside her, soaking up the scarce heat.
“He doesn’t sound good,” she said.
Meara looked over her shoulder at Estes. Beneath the blankets he was only a sketch of a body, his limbs bowed, his spine bent at an awkward angle. In the dim light he could be human.
“No,” Meara said.
As they stood there, his breathing changed to harsh panting. His eyes opened, wild and blind.
“Are you there?” he mumbled. “You there?”
“Estes?” Meara said. “Can you hear me?”
He turned his head, trying to find her. He let out a whining, breathy howl and struggled in a tangle of blankets, sobbing and gasping as he tried to get free of them. He tried to sit up but fell over with a wet thud. Black blood smeared the floorboards beneath him, pressed from his saturated skin. He groaned thickly and writhed from his pallet, lost.
Meara grabbed Stennick’s hand and gripped it hard. Stennick put her free arm around Meara’s shoulders, pulling her close. The women stared at him.
Estes breath rumbled in his throat, shallow and phlegmy. He tried to speak, but the labour of his breathing chopped his words into incoherence.
“Look at his face,” Stennick whispered.
Meara looked. Estes’s skull warped out of shape as they watched, his cheekbones twisting, his forehead collapsing in as his eye ridges shifted. The center of his face became a sinkhole. He keened in blunt animal pain.
Meara pulled away from Stennick’s embrace. She folded a flap of the blanket over Estes’s head, and hefted a knotty chunk of firewood like a bat. She paused for a second, tightened her grip, drew in a huge swallowing breath.
“Don’t,” Stennick blurted, but Meara had already squeezed her eyes shut and brought the wood down on Estes’s head, once, and once again, until his tortured body only twitched with the firing of dying nerves.
Meara dropped the firewood back on the pile. She squatted, sighed, and slowly, gently, began to wind the blankets into a shroud around Estes’s corpse.
Stennick shuddered and backed away. She started to say something but gave up.
“He was suffering,” Meara said flatly. “It would have taken him hours to die. You’ve seen it. How long did it take your son?”
Stennick gasped and ran outside into the chill, starless night.
Meara wrapped the blankets tightly around Estes’s mangled head. He hadn’t known. She wiped away her tears on the back of her hand, then straightened his limbs and bound them up, too.
“I’m sorry, Estes,” she said softly. “You seemed like a good kid.”
Then she curled up on the sofa and went to sleep.
* * *
When Meara woke, Stennick was asleep in the chair beside the dead fire. Her face was pained, lines sunk deep into her cheeks and forehead. Meara touched her shoulder gently.
“Hey,” she said as Stennick opened her eyes and sat up.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Stennick said.
Neither woman looked at the long bundle on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Meara said.
Stennick stood up. She extended her leg and pulled the fabric of her pants tight against it, showing the warp in the bone.
“It’s just a matter of time,” she said. “And we’ll all end the same.”
Meara sighed, her shoulders slumping forward. She nodded. Then she straightened up and motioned for Stennick to help her. Together they dragged Estes’s body outside and up into the field close behind the house. Meara went back, filled a canteen from a covered barrel, got a wheelbarrow from the side of the house, and led Stennick to the river to collect enough stones for a cairn.
It took most of the morning for them to bring enough, one barrow-full at a time. When they finished covering Estes’s body they stood beside the pile, exhausted. Stennick’s mouth twisted as she fought back tears.
“It’s like watching how my boy died, all over again,” she said.
Meara put a hand on her shoulder.
“When you lose this many, the whole world changes. Doesn’t matter who or what they are,” she said. “I used to dig each of them a grave. But I got tired.”
Stennick didn’t respond.
The sun shone high overhead, its warmth dissipated on a cold breeze.
“Maybe the birds migrated,” Meara said. “Maybe they got away.”
Stennick shrugged.
“I want to think they did,” Meara said. “I heard once that it’s different, if you can get across the border.”
Neither of them believed it.
The women stood in silence for a moment. Meara took a long pull from the canteen. She swallowed hard.
“Let’s take care of each other, when the time comes. Can we promise that?” Meara said.
Stennick wiped her eyes.
“Maybe we should keep heading south,” Stennick said. “See if we can find the birds again.”
Meara looked up at the clear, empty sky.
“Maybe,” she said.
Erica Ruppert, HWA, SFWA, lives in northern New Jersey with her husband and too many cats. She is the author of two novellas, Sisters in Arms and To the Shore, to the Sea, two collections, Imago and Other Transformations and Seven Stars: Collected Stories, and over sixty short stories. When she is not writing, she runs, bakes, and gardens with more enthusiasm than skill. She can be found online on Facebook, Bluesky, and at Erica Ruppert’s NerdGoblin.
Copyright © 2025 Erica Ruppert.