The Flight of the Butterbies

I was working in the insect house at the East Counties Zoo when the asteroid hit. Now let’s get this straight. I wasn’t, and had never been, afraid of insects (fair enough, maybe low-level arachnophobia, but pedant that I am, I can’t help but point out that spiders aren’t insects) but nor was I a massive fan of them. I knew they were incredible creatures, and the most populous on the planet and also a vastly under-tapped source of protein, but unlike some colleagues, I couldn’t wax lyrical about them. Well, apart from the butterflies. My work was mainly on the admin side. I told my workmates that, if asked to, I could handle an insect, in the relatively sure knowledge that I wouldn’t be asked to. It was a pleasant enough job, and I was at the stage of not regarding it as a stopgap any longer, but certainly not being inclined to make it my permanent employment. I was a quick and accurate typist, and even when word processing programmes were the default, that still helped and, thanks to my schooling at old fashioned girls’ grammar school, I knew Latin, which also helped. In fact, far more than my much more recent degree in English Literature, but I told myself that it was temporary. To put it mildly, I was no classicist. I was Amy, the admin lady (I never minded being called a lady, even if I wasn’t always one) in the insect house, and that was fine. At least for a while.

     But then came the time when those comforting clichéd phrases like for a while became both hollow and things to yearn for. 

     There was some warning, but not enough. Still, what would have been enough? And there were no more operational space shuttles, no more Saturn 5 rockets to make life mimic art. Another hollow phrase was it could have been worse. It wasn’t entirely untrue. Someone even invented the word Halfageddon, but it never caught on. A few lucky folk in the southern hemisphere escaped the effects of the immediate physical impact. Some major cities and the swathes of green and gold and flat and mountainous terrain between them were obliterated. I suppose we were in one of the neither/nor zones. We knew, even though we never actually did see it coming, at least not in the literal sense, that some of us, at least, would survive. We knew the way of life we were used to would not. There was a strange, layered, shifting mixture of resignation and hysteria. I suppose I acted in the latter when I let the butterflies fly free. I only even had a key to the butterflies as a formality, because an extra keyholder who could be trusted was always a good idea. Well, it seemed I could not be trusted, and it was not a good idea. But for a few seconds, as they fluttered from their captivity – admittedly a humane captivity, but still captivity – into air that was still clear, and up towards a sky that was still blue, I had the sense of doing something when we could do nothing. 

     After that, I don’t remember anything until waking up in the ruins of the zoo, realising that I had been injured, but not too seriously – my left arm hurt, but I could use it, and a wound on my head was still bleeding, but not gushing. I wondered how everything could be so light and so dark at the same time. A residual practical pulse in my brain was working and I wondered if any second I might be attacked by a lion or tiger. But all was silent. Or at least, there was no sign of life. I realised that bold and beautiful and shy and fierce creatures lay beneath the wreckage, crushed and contorted, and with the breath of life gone from them forever as that cruel rogue star rained down its debris. 

     There was a strange smell in the air, both elusive and blatant. Some of it was the smell of burning, and that, at least, made sense. But there was something in it that was both sweet and acrid, and I vaguely remembered my colleague Robin (whom I supposed must have lost his life) talking about the cocktail of chemicals in an asteroid, and how we could not really know what they would do. 

     It was a few moments before I realised I was not alone in the wreckage. There were other creatures there. The butterflies had returned. Or at least, they were still recognisable as terrible travesties of butterflies. The basic shape was the same, and some after-shade of their colours was there, but these were no beautiful, ephemeral, delicate creatures, transparent and fragile and only living for a few months. These were bloated and it was as if some elements of their caterpillar stage had been reborn. Two of them, one blue and white, the other yellow and black, were making their way towards me, and I was afraid. I was terribly afraid. A few days earlier I would have found the notion of killing a butterfly obscene and unthinkable, but now I would have had no compunction. I grabbed a shard of wreckage in my “good” arm and slammed it into one of the creatures. I may as well have just flicked it with a leaf of tissue paper. Its eyes were expressionless, but if they had borne an expression, it would have mocked as if to say, “Oh, you surely didn’t think that would do you any good, did you?”

     But when I backed away, they seemed to make no particular effort to pursue me. Desperately trying to get my thoughts into some semblance of order, I told myself that there must be other survivors, some probably quite near by. I was proven right. I wandered and stumbled out onto the prosaic ring road that ran around the periphery of the zoo, and only a little while later, ran into a middle-aged couple, the kind of pleasant, ordinary people who had never done harm to a living soul and looked puzzled and betrayed at what had been done to them. And to all that they held dear, and had hoped that their children and grandchildren would hold dear. The man was limping a little, a makeshift bandage around his shin, exposed by the ripped grey trousers that would once have been smart, even when they were no longer new. He was leaning on the woman, who seemed able to bear his weight, though she was slight and a little stooped. Almost as if things were halfway normal, we exchanged names – they were called Brian and Sophie. When I told them I had worked at the zoo, Brian asked, urgently, and yet as if he already knew the answer. “Tell us – the rumours about the butterflies – are they true? About the zombie butterflies?”

     His phrase, said almost practically, shocked me to the very core – and yet I knew it was an appropriate one. “Yes,” I said, in a flat, quiet voice. “It’s true.” I did not tell them that I was the one who had opened the cage door. That I was the one who had set the fluttering, beautiful creatures free. Free to fly into the potent, poisoned cloud of chemicals unknown to the human race, emanating from the fatal fiery star. Free to be turned into a hideous tragedy of their very essence. As if to try to atone for what I had not admitted, I said, “I – encountered a couple. They don’t really seem to wish us any harm.” 

     They invited me to come with them to a little makeshift settlement of survivors that had been established on a grass verge, or what once had been one. By one of those caprices of the elements, a few trees on its edge had survived the impact, but we could still see the corpses of cars and not help but be aware of the corpses within them on the redundant, pitted, smouldering road. Sophie insisted on binding my wounds with strips of cloth she had salvaged, and I let her, realising it was as much for her sake as mine. 

     Someone had a radio that was still just about functioning, but the fizz of static was only intermittently mingled with voices that never quite made sense and never quite became articulate. “Maybe we just need to give it time,” its owner, a shy, studious looking young man called Jonas, said, “I think it’s a little better than it was yesterday.” As I had not been there yesterday, I was not in a position to comment, but others had, Brian included, and he put an arm on the younger man’s shoulder and said, “Well, lad, it’s certainly no worse.”

     We sensed, as much as knew, that the butterflies were coming. With the amazing resilience of children, a brother and sister called Marcus and Shannon, who were still half convinced that their Mum and Dad would find them, had nicknamed them the Butterbies. I couldn’t help thinking they had shown more imagination with their portmanteau words than the adult inventor of Halfageddon, and yet at the same time, it summoned up some half image of a benign, rosy-cheeked old couple living in the West Country on a diet of cider and cream. Perhaps precisely because of that, the term caught on. And the next day, they came. The Butterbies came. Some in lumbering flight, reminding me of those billow-bellied aircraft designed to carry other aircraft, some along the ground, sluggish and speedy at the same time. There were a couple of people in the settlement who had been in the local rifle club, and they stood sentry, yet we all knew that even the most lethal assault weapon would have no effect on them, let alone those air rifles. Even the asteroid that had spawned them could not destroy them. 

     Once more, they did not harm us. They sat still for a while, their dead and forever living eyes intent on us, their bloated, once beautiful bodies twitching. Eventually, even the markspeople gave up their watch and put their guns to one side. Why carry on with the pretence? 

     Intermittently, and in shifts, we slept. If you never die, do you need to sleep, I wondered. I was nominally on watch, though it was a going through the motions. I realised that one of the butterbies had shifted, was moving. I could observe it in the light of the distant, benign stars and the still living moon, and saw it make its way towards one of the discarded weapons. For a couple of seconds, I wondered if there were some way it could pick it up and wield it. No such thing happened. It came to a halt by the gun, and looked at it, looked at what, a few days previously, could have killed a flight of butterflies and was now utterly powerless. And for another couple of seconds, I realised that those bulbous eyes had an expression in them after all, and it was one of longing. A single tear glistened before it lumbered away.