Leo Frankowski

got up. “Just remember that you’re looking at the last
famine in history.”
    “Don’t get
scared!” Winnie shouted in his little boy’s voice. “We’ve got food
and water for you!”
     
    Unbroken lines of
LDUs, loaded with food and tree-house seeds, were still streaming out of the
valley, heading north, to go through Alaska, swim the Bering Straits, and enter Asia,
Europe, and Africa by way of Kamchatka. As many others were headed south, to
try to alleviate
the chaos in South America. Thousands more fanned out over the North American
continent.
     
    The Los Angeles zoo
had been abandoned by its keepers, mostly because they simply couldn’t get from their homes to work.
    Metal-eating larvae
swarmed over cage bars and door hinges and the valves that kept the moats
filled.
    Gazelles, zebras, and
mountain sheep hungrily, timidly, made their way out to the tall grass of untended lawns and munched
contentedly.
    Other animals were
neither contented nor timid. Lions, tigers, and wolves, unfed for a week, quietly prowled about
looking for warm meat.
    The years they had
spent in captivity had softened their muscles, and some hungry lions
couldn’t catch a mountain goat, let alone a gazelle. Still, there was a lot of slow-moving meat
around. The two-legged variety.
     
    Antonio Biseglio was
a chef, as his father and grandfather had been chefs. His kitchen was his
kingdom and his kingdom was under siege.
    With fly swatter and
mallet, he had put up a noble, if useless, defense. In a week’s time his stove
was worthless,
his pots were like colanders, and his pans like sieves. In the end he salvaged nothing
but a copper omelet pan, and with that he joined the crowds abandoning the city.
    Tom Greene County
Hospital was left with only one Filipino intern and a single nurse to care for
the 230 surviving patients. The nurse, tired to the point of hallucination, dropped the
buckets of water she was carrying and screamed as the LDU entered the
stairwell.
    “Don’t be
afraid. I am a friend.”
    “Wh—what are
you?”
    “I am Labor and
Defense Unit Alpha 001256. My friends call me Tao.”
    “Oh, yes. We
heard that you—uh—folks would be out.” The nurse tiredly massaged her
temples. “Look. Can you help me? We’ve got water in the basement, but the
pipes to the other floors are out. People on the fourth floor are dying of
thirst.”
    “I’m afraid that
there are more important considerations. The steel framework of this building
is infested with larvae. It will collapse within three days. We must evacuate it
immediately,” Tao said.
    “But how? And
where to?”
    “I will organize
a human labor force. The patients tell me that there is a doctor around. Find
him, and together place all salvageable medical supplies into the hallways. I
will have it hauled out to the courtyard, along with the patients.”
    Relieved that
someone—or something—was taking responsibility, the nurse said, “Yes,
sir.”
    Within an hour, using
persuasion and offers of food, with threats and demonstrations of force, Tao
collected a group of one hundred healthy men to assist him.
    As they approached
the hospital, they heard the nurse screaming from the second floor, where he
found a Siberian tiger busily devouring the body of a woman who had been dying of
cancer. The tiger viewed Tao’s appearance as a threat to its first meal in eight
days. Roaring, it charged.
    The tiger weighed
seven-hundred pounds, more than twice that of the LDU, but in speed,
intelligence, and ferocity, there was no contest. As the tiger leaped, Tao dropped below him.
Thrusting a foot-long dagger-claw between the tiger’s swinging forepaws, he
slit its throat to the spinal column. As the dead tiger hit the floor, Tao was already examining
the patients in the room.
    Both were dead.
    The nurse entered as
Tao was tying the tiger’s carcass upside down to the ceiling with Venetian
blind cords.
    “Oh, thank you,
Tao. The patients—”
    “Are both dead.
I’ll attend to their bodies. You must care for the living. Get the men in the
courtyard working. I want this building evacuated by evening. And send one of them, Antonio
Biseglio, up here.”
    “Yes, sir. What
are you doing?” the nurse asked.
    “We have three
hundred hungry people here, and this carcass is protein edible for your
species.” He had the tiger skinned and gutted, and was slicing the meat into one-inch cubes.
    “But it’s a tiger!”
    “Protein. Look, they’re eating a
rhinoceros in