World War Moo by Michael Logan Page A

regular taker of cod-liver oil in her old sporty life, she’d been aware of the benefits of added omega-3s. Since then, she’d always kept an eye out for that particular brand and flavor and ate it even when human food was readily available.
    Scott, after a long puff on the joint he was clutching, reached out to take her hand. The contact from the massive paw was limp and fleeting, but it seemed to prompt palpable relief in him. Ruan turned her attention to the rest of the interior. A metal grille with an inset, padlocked door separated her from a windowless room lit by three harsh fluorescent strips. It seemed Fanny had a thing for locking people in. Bog-standard office furniture was crammed into every space above a snaking mess of cables connecting battered computers, monitors, and printers. The room was a fug of dope smoke, emanating from fat joints clutched between the fingers of three men and two women who’d risen from their seats to stare at her. Ruan curled her fingers around the grille.
    As one, they said, “I know you are here and it makes me happy.”
    A mass inhalation followed and the smoke jetted out added to the clouds swirling around them. Ruan coughed, beginning to feel light-headed.
    Give them a chance , she thought, and parroted the phrase back at them. They looked surprised.
    In the far corner of the room, half hidden by a stack of what looked like pamphlets, was a youth who hadn’t joined in with the greeting. Although he couldn’t have been more than seventeen and only had a light dusting of beard, he reminded Ruan of the Noels. He had to be local. His right fist was convulsing, mashing one of the pieces of paper into a crumpled ball.
    â€œWhere did you get all this stuff?” Ruan asked.
    â€œMy old friend Scott here has been putting this together for a few years,” Fanny said. “It was going to be our command-and-control post when the revolution came.”
    â€œWhat revolution?”
    â€œWe were never clear on that,” Fanny said with a rueful smile. “But I’m very glad he did it. Now we really are the resistance.”
    â€œThe resistance to the government?”
    â€œNo. To the virus.”
    â€œI don’t understand.”
    â€œRory,” Fanny called. “Hand me one of the leaflets.”
    Avoiding looking at Ruan, Rory scuttled out from his refuge like a furtive crab, handed a pamphlet to the woman with wavy brown hair who marked the end of the row of watchers, and scuttled back to his paper cave. Ruan rolled her eyes. Back before every human wanted to kill her, she’d often had this effect on teenage boys. Her Irish descent on her father’s side had given her creamy skin and big green eyes, while her mother’s Slavic genes provided jet-black hair, sheer cheekbones, generous lips, and a tall, lithe body—not to mention breasts that at one point she’d feared would keep growing until it looked like she’d been in a car crash and her chest had somehow fused with the inflated airbags. Even though she knew many women would kill for her figure and she found them useful on occasion, such as when she wanted to get served in bars, she’d hated those breasts. She hated them still. They got in the way of her athletic pursuits—she kept a stack of sports bras in her rucksack—and their sheer heft seemed to exert an extreme gravitational pull on any male eyes orbiting in her vicinity.
    Men employed a variety of techniques when faced with her breasts. They stared at the ground and turned an alarming shade of red (most of the teenage boys at school); they stared at her face with the occasional downward flick of the eye (the male teachers); they pretended to be interested in the design or logo on her T-shirt (the sneakier older boys); and, in the case of older, more-experienced tit watchers, they waited until they thought she wasn’t looking and drank their fill in long, greedy gulps or stood off to