The Extinct Animals Club

The children of the Airmark were singing Old McDonald.

Ellie Langford had no idea how old the song was – five-hundred years at least by her reckoning. Still, that didn't matter – the song could have been written ten years ago, and it would have already lost its relevance. Because she supposed Mr McDonald, man who owned a farm and was unmarried as far as she could tell, had lived in a time where farms were a thing on Earth. The type of farms where animals could sing about how happy they were. Back before farms effectively became factories. Where arable land was taken by the desert or the sea, before giant algae vats had been set up to support Earth's ever growing population. Even after mankind had spread across the stars, setting up colonies and tearing up dead planets to support those colonies, farms in the style of the one owned by Old McDonald had never come back into vogue. Or if they had, Ellie hadn't been made aware of it. Titan Station had imported 90% of its foodstuffs after all.

"And on that farm there was a duck. Eee-eye, eee-eye oh!"

"With a quack quack there…"

"And a quack quack there…"

Least the children seemed to be enjoying it, she reflected. None of these children would see a living duck, any more than they would a cow, or a chicken, or anything else that had grown on the farm of a senile Scotsman. But in a way, she envied them. She'd grown up in a world where, if nothing else, she could take some comfort in knowing that the human race would continue to exist. That Earth would continue to exist. That mankind had conquered Heaven, and the Devil was forever barred from the gates. But she, and most of what was left of humanity, had experienced a shift in their world. Across all worlds. The children in the room before her, so oblivious to her standing at the door watching, would never know a different world from the one they lived in. They might be the last generation of the human race, but they would never be cursed with the taste of something greater, forever denied to them.

"Well done," said the teacher. "Give yourselves a big clap."

The children obliged, and Ellie couldn't help but frown. She'd managed to get another month out of the Airmark's ShockPoint drive, and no-one had given her a clap for that. If singing about long gone farms was enough to get a clap, then she deserved a bloody medal.

"Now then," said the teacher, reaching around for her chair and presenting a plastic box. "Who wants to play with some toys?"

"I do! I do!"

She set it on the ground and opened the lid. "One each, remember."

Given how the children surged forward like the little monsters they were, Ellie doubted that they were going to obey that directive. Still, it had done the job. The little bastards were occupied, and their teacher, such as she was, was able to walk over to the door of the ship's daycare – technically the officer's lounge when this ship had an actual EarthGov captain, but hey, semantics.

"Hello Ellie," said the teacher. "You finished your shift?"

"Hmm."

"Pardon?"

"'Hmm.' Means yes."

"Oh," said Lexine Murdoch. "I get it."

Ellie looked at the little monsters in the room, playing with everything from dogs and cats to chimps and dolphins. "Does that ever actually work?" she asked. "One each?"

"No, not really."

"Then why say it?"

Lexine shrugged. "I guess I can live in hope that one day they'll follow my commands. That the children of the USG Airmark will appreciate the value of sharing and the need to follow the chain of command."

Ellie gave a condescending smile, patting Lexine on the shoulder. "One can hope."

"We can. It worked with my son after all." She walked back to one of the room's cupboards. "Want some tea?"

"Hmm."

Even now, two years after coming to the Airmark after being forced to abandon the Silver River, Ellie wasn't sure what to make of Lexine. For starters, she used the term "USG Airmark" to describe the ship, rather than just "Airmark." Not technically incorrect, but "USG" and "USM" were acronyms that hardly anyone ever used, and not just on this ship. EarthGov no longer existed. The EDF, veterans aside, no longer existed either. Accepting the reality of this new universe, most people just called their ships by their names, or went so far as to give them new ones. Names like Misery and Suffering or Dawn's Dream – names that were overly morbid or so hopelessly optimistic that she wanted to scream. Most people had never stepped foot on the likes of Titan Station or Tau Volantis, but they had eyes, didn't they? Luna? Earth? Mars? Hadn't they seen what happened to the worlds of the Sol system? Hadn't they heard the stories of the ones who'd fled the moons? After seeing and hearing all that, what possible reason could they have to think that this was going to end well?

"Milk?" Lexine asked.

"No, thank you."

Ellie accepted the cup from Lexine. Sometimes, she suspected that Lexine Murdoch knew more than she said she knew, or knew more than she knew she knew. A bit of a convoluted line of thought, but this was the Airmark – a ship of around 302 people, part of a makeshift flotilla that numbered over 18,000. Everyone knew at least something about everyone else. Few people knew about Tau Volantis, but most people knew that she'd been on Titan Station for instance. Say "Titan Station" and "I survived," and you could find yourself on the way to better things. Like in Ellie's case, quarters all to herself. Though granted, working on ShockPoint drives and killing necromorphs helped with that.

"Danny, I saw that," Lexine called out, before taking a sip of the tea.

"How is it?" Ellie asked.

"Fine. Just fine. Sure you don't want any milk?"

"I'll live," Ellie said, before taking a sip of her own.

She wouldn't have minded milk. But milk, like tea, like sugar, like everything else, was an increasingly scarce commodity for the Airmark and every other ship in the galaxy. The Airmark could synthesize milk, but only in rare cases, and usually it was reserved for newborns. Mothers still gave birth. But mothers were liable to board derelicts to scavenge for supplies and not come back, and the only people that did that more than mothers were fathers, and those who had no-one left to miss them.

People like me, Ellie reflected. She took another sip of the tea. It tasted bitter, and she rubbed her right arm. The scars hadn't fully healed yet, and it smarted to run her fingers across them. She'd fared better than Alan had when they'd salvaged the Gettysburg, who'd been clawed so much his body had been left in three big pieces and about twenty smaller ones, but still, claws were claws. Necromorphs were necromorphs, and necromorphs were everywhere in the galaxy. Across worlds. Across space. The only places they weren't were the flotillas like the one the Airmark was part of, and the few colony worlds that had yet to be damned.

Or visited, Ellie reminded herself. They were all damned. Death could just take its sweet time in spreading across the stars, now that its march had no longer been halted at a frozen world.

"Do you think it's good for them?" Ellie asked.

"Hmm?"

"Playing with stuffed animal toys."

"They're children Ellie," Lexine said. "They get to be children for at least a few more…Katie, stop that!" She went over and pulled "Katie" off another girl, both of them fighting over a stuffed gorilla.

Give it a few more years sweetheart, and you'll be fighting something else, Ellie thought, as Katie began crying, and the other girl began screaming. She took a sip of the tea, trying to ignore the sound of screaming children – she'd head that far too many times already.

"What I mean though," said Ellie, as Lexine returned from the fray, a gorilla with stuffing come out of its belly in hand, "is the whole stuffed animal thing."

"Pardon?"

"Like this," Ellie said, taking the gorilla. "They're playing with animals that they're never going to see." She showed Lexine the tag attached to the gorilla's lower left leg. "Extinct Animal Friends."

"What, you never played with EAF when you were a kid?" Lexine asked.

"When I was a kid I was playing with tools most of the time," Ellie said, trying to hide a scowl, and that yes, she wouldn't have minded at least one of the EAF line on Titan Station, but dear ol' dad had better things to use his money on, while mummy had ended her misery with an airlock. "But I mean, come on. You're singing about farms and dead Scotsmen. These kids are never going to be on a farm, they're never going to see Mister McDonald, and they're never going to ride horses, or pet chickens, or anything like that."

"And if the world didn't end, would you have got to do any of that?" Lexine asked.

Ellie scowled. "That isn't the point."

"Then what is the point?" Lexine asked, matching Ellie's scowl with her own. "Why do you even pop in here anyway?"

Ellie opened her mouth, but no words came out. There was a number of responses she could give. But none of them would be the truth.

You do know the truth. You just can't admit it.

Lexine, for her part, had removed the scowl and took her coffee cup over to the sink. She began to wash it out. "I get it, y'know," she said. "I lost people on…" She sighed. "Well, let's just say I've lost people."

"We've all lost people," Ellie murmured.

"Some in more extreme conditions than others."

"What is this, the Misery Olympics?"

"Olympics won't ever be held again, so, no," Lexine said. "But…" She sighed. "You know what I mean."

Ellie said nothing. Her thoughts were focused on her quarters. On the single bed that was waiting for her. How once, it had been a boon in an overly cramped ship. How now, in the dead of night, her memory was taken to slightly less screwed up times. When she had someone to share the bed with, however small. For however short a period of time before the world changed.

She finished the tea and handed it over to Lexine. Seeing the look on the woman's face, Ellie shrugged and began washing it herself – the Airmark had a 92% efficiency rate in recycling water, and the St. Dominic was a comet breaker. Water was one of the few resources the flotilla had no shortage of.

"I wonder sometimes," Ellie said, as she washed out the cup. "Whether at some point, the Extinct Animal Friends line will be extended." She looked back at Lexine. "Whether our own race will someday join them. I mean…" She laughed bitterly. "How many species are left anyway?"

"You're wasting water."

"Hmm?" She looked down at the cup. It was clean.

"Ellie?"

She looked down at her hands. Free of blood. For now.

Lexine reached over and turned the water off. After a moment, she hesitated there, before patting Ellie on the shoulder.

Here's the smell of the blood still – all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

She blinked – sooner the Airmark's Book Club moved on from Shakespeare, the better.

"I need to start packing up," Lexine said. "You're welcome to help, or…" She trailed off.

Ellie shook her head. "I should be going."

"Right." Lexine went back to the children, telling them it was time to start tidying up. What followed was a series of complaints, whining, and requests for five more minutes. Ellie, for her part, went to exit the lounge.

Yet she hesitated at the door. Looking at the toys being loaded back into the box. Looking at the children still fighting over them, unaware of the horrors that lay outside this ship. Looking at replicas of extinct species being put away, and what was possibly the last generation of the human race.

She turned away.