by Nancy Isaak
We walked over to the far edge of the knoll and looked down. Sure enough, I could just see a dark figure slowly ambling along the rows of crosses on the bluff below.
“Does Jacob know that you’re here?” I asked Kieran—speaking quietly, so our voices wouldn’t travel.
Kieran shook his head. “I followed him when he left the compound.”
“I thought you guys were playing poker.”
“We were. A couple of hands, then Jacob suddenly had someplace to go…so I followed him. I was curious.”
“But that would mean that Jacob’s been here for hours.”
“Pretty much,” Kieran nodded. “And the sentry told me that Jacob comes here every couple of days…says he’s been like—taking care of the graves—brushing leaves off them, putting rocks around the edges, that kind of thing.”
As if to demonstrate Kieran’s words, Jacob went down on his knees, pulling out weeds from between two graves.
“I—I don’t know what to do,” I said, honestly. “I mean, I just don’t know how to help him. Jay says that we just have to be patient, but I’m worried that if Jacob doesn’t get better soon, that we might never get him back…I mean, not completely.”
Kieran pointed down the hill. “The end of those graves there…it’s a little hard in the dark to see…but Jacob’s added five rocks.”
Squinting, I could just make out the rocks—each about the size of a serving plate—laid end-to-end. “What are they for?”
“Three of them have names painted on them,” Kieran told me. “Andrei, Ian, Topher.”
“And the last two?” I asked—not really wanting to know.
“No names…nothing.”
Because Jacob was waiting to write down Cherry and Connor’s names, no doubt.
Those rocks belonged to them.
Jacob had given up ever finding them alive—and that made me furious.
* * * *
It was only after Jacob left the Nature Preserve that Kieran and I walked down from the knoll. Erroll met us at the bottom, stepping out from behind a prickly pear cactus, a grim look on his face.
“You’ve been very bad,” he reprimanded me, waving a finger in my face.
“I had a guard with me—I had you,” I insisted. “You don’t think I saw you following me? If you hadn’t of picked me up down near the cage, I would have grabbed one of the sentries at the gate…honest.”
Erroll looked to Kieran. “You think she’s telling the truth?”
He shrugged. “What would I know? Kaylee’s a girl—they all confuse me.”
* * * *
Kieran wasn’t the only one who was confused.
As the days passed into weeks and Jacob’s behavior and attitude only worsened, I became increasingly confounded. The boy that I loved had been gone for so long. When he had finally returned, I had thought things would return to normal.
But that’s not what was happening.
I had been so lonely when Jacob was gone. So, now that he was back—why did I feel the same way?
Sometimes—when Jacob didn’t realize that I was watching—I would see him looking at me. Usually, I’d catch his glance in the reflection of a mirror or a window as I passed by. He always seemed upset—angry, even—as if I’d done something to hurt him, something that he couldn’t forgive.
Only I couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong.
In a way, I could understand Jacob not wanting to talk about his feelings—about what had happened on the expedition. Except that I was his wife—we were supposed to work these things out together, to talk it out. And, even if he couldn’t talk it out with me, I still wished fervently that he would find someone—anybody—to talk to, some way to get all the pain and regret out of his system.
Because he wasn’t the only one struggling.
I was also struggling—to find some way to help him.
In the hopes that Jacob might get some relief by writing everything down, I took to leaving pens and paper in various locations throughout our rooms. It had been so long since Jacob had written in his journal—something that he done almost daily since the first day of the event.
But now—as far as I knew—he hadn’t written a word in months.
So, every morning I would walk through our rooms—checking to see if Jacob had picked up a pen, written down a word, even moved the pad of paper a millimeter—just enough to show that he was thinking about it.
But—it never happened.
* * * *
While Jacob drew farther away from all of us, the Crazies we’d accepted into the tribe slowly grew closer—becoming Locals.
As each week passed, there were less inappropriate comments and the taunting and fights finally ended. Often I would find myself in the food line talking to a guy; it would only be when he turned around and I saw the angel wings on his shoulder that I remembered that he was originally a Crazy.
Sadly—and too late—I realized that having Wyatt tattoo wings onto the guys had been a terrible mistake. While tattooing the Crazies we were sending back up into the Valley had made sense—for our own safety—marking guys who had wanted to join us had been wrong. Looking back, I saw that it had made it more difficult for everyone to accept that Crazies were assimilating into our tribe.
Because it made them stand out—marked them as somehow different from all the rest. It made their transition into a Local much longer than it should have.
Honestly—those angel wings—one of my worst mistakes ever.
Lesson hopefully learned.
* * * *
Luckily, I had been smart enough—thank you, Porter—not to have tattooed the three young kids who had been found in the Crazy staging house. And, even though they had been abused the most, they also seemed to have rebounded the quickest. Perhaps it was because of the resiliency of their young age—perhaps it was because of Peyton. Either way, the girl and two boys seemed to have become happy and well-adjusted—easily accepted as Locals by everyone.
The kids were still intensely shy, however, and didn’t leave the farm unless in the company of Lance, Peyton, or Frank. Lately, though, I had been noticing the boys hungrily watching the afternoon soccer game. And the little girl seemed drawn to Shawnee—enchanted by our dark archer—sitting beside her at mealtimes, listening closely to all of Shawnee’s stories.
* * * *
A week into August—the sun began to burn.
The temperature soared over the hundreds; day-after-day the Point sizzled in the heat. Green turned into brown all around us as the vegetation wrinkled, curled, then turned black on the vine. The creek—never big to begin with—turned into a trickle, and I realized how lucky we had been to have filled up the septic tanks; stored in the underground garage, the water inside remained fresh and cool.
Throughout the Point, the intense heat took its toll. The cracks in the roads seemed to widen over night; whole swaths of tarmac appearing to curve and warp as the afternoon sun battled with the cool of the night.
Buildings began to break down—their paint peeling, roofs heaving, shingles curling up to expose the black paper and insulation underneath. The pharmacy next to Pavilions collapsed; one day it was there, the next morning a flattened pancake of cement and rebar. The bank a short ways away appeared to be next; its walls were leaning in, its roof beginning to cave.
We continued with repairs wherever we could, but there were so many buildings on the Point that needed fixing. With an inexperienced Building team like we had and a limited amount of supplies, we were forced to concentrate our repairs on the houses we lived in.
Everything else—sadly—we allowed to fall.
* * * *
The one exception—of course—was Frank’s farm.
His buildings—storage units and personal houses—took precedence over everyone else’s. Fresh food and vegetables were essential to the continued well-being of the tribe and everyone took their place on a rotational team to help maintain the farm.
As a tribe, we repair
ed sheds for tools and the storage of the harvest, strung shade nets from one end of the field to the next. We even built a new water wheel—a complicated form of irrigation using ropes and buckets that brought up water from the larger creek below the cliff.
* * * *
Fire, meanwhile, became an added problem throughout August.
It was not unusual to have one or two a week—spot fires that sprung up suddenly, giving off wisps of gray smoke that, ironically, would send chills down my spine each time they appeared.
A Fire Patrol was set up—three guys on horses who constantly wandered Point Dume, 2-gallon bottles of water and heavy blankets on the backs of their saddles. I also placed two sentries on fire duty—one up on the knoll whose job was only to look for smoke; the other sentry was stationed just outside of the Point, high up on a hill. Between the two sentries and the three guys patrolling on horseback, we managed to extinguish every fire—although some came close to getting out of hand a few times.
Later—when the summer was over—I wanted to work on a fire suppression system. My thought was to cover the Point as best we could—lay down pipe, with turn-off valves at every junction, so that water could be diverted almost immediately to wherever it was needed for firefighting.
I still didn’t know how we’d accomplish it, however.
Sadly—Connor would have.
* * * *
Because of the extreme heat, none of us wore a lot of clothing during August; mostly it was shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt for the girls and just shorts for the guys. It was endlessly fascinating to me, how different our bodies looked now from before the ‘event’.
Everyone was lean, their muscles outlined, their cheekbones well-defined.
Back in high school, we weren’t supposed to notice, but there were so many chubby kids. Even the guys and girls who were considered normal had small pockets of cellulite here and there, usually explained away as baby fat. Looking back, I realized that it was only the athletes, the kids with eating conditions, and the ‘genetically-lucky few’ who didn’t carry extra pounds.
The rest of us had just been…well…kind of ‘fluffy’.
In the new world, however, it would have been weird to see someone with a pouchy belly. Six and eight-packs were the norm; muscle definition was simply part of a physical life. Frankly, if someone wasn’t defined, if they had maintained their ‘old body’, they would have been considered suspect—that they were taking more than their fair share of food.
* * * *
To make certain that all tribe members were eating correctly—their fair share and nutrition-wise—Porter worked with Sophia on creating meal plans that would give us all the vitamins and minerals we needed to keep us healthy. And, of course, Frank was being given suggestions on what should be planted—what we needed most to round out our diet.
“We’re damn lucky we live in California,” Porter told me one day. “At least we have citrus trees growing wild everywhere here. We don’t have to worry about Vitamin C deficiency, because we can just grab an orange or a lemon as we walk by. Can you imagine what’s happening to kids north of us—or in third world countries? They’ve probably got scurvy or rickets or whatever by now.”
Which got me thinking.
Could there be kids alive in other parts of the world?
* * * *
One of the funnier parts of growing older was our hair—and I don’t mean what was on top of our heads. Suddenly, a lot of us began to have hair popping out from the most inconvenient of places—legs, chest, armpits, privates. A few of the guys even had hair growing on their backs, which must have been sweaty and uncomfortable for them when they worked under the hot sun.
Like Jacob, some of the older guys began letting their facial hair grow in. It was mainly wispy stuff, but it still sprouted a competition—a summer-long contest on who could most look like those old musicians with the really long beards—ZZ Top.
So far, no one was a clear winner; if anything, Jacob had the most and his simply looked like a bad case of five o’clock shadow. Still, every night at supper, the guys would check out each other’s ‘beards’, counting each new hair with hoots of pride.
Poor Pauly wanted desperately to join in. Unfortunately, he was one of those guys who would probably always remain beardless. He barely had ten hairs under each armpit (yes, they were counted) and there wasn’t even a hint of fuzz on his chin. Pauly took a lot of teasing about that until—one day—Florenza had gotten irritated and flicked out her razor.
Not a word was said after that.
* * * *
While the older guys were all about the facial hair, the younger boys were excited about their muscles. Like the other guys their age, Ethan and Wester were getting taller, their faces were thinning out, and their muscles elongating. Yet, even as they were maturing, they were somehow—and very ironically—becoming younger in their actions and their emotions.
Perhaps it was the adolescent hormones raging through their bodies, but Ethan and Wester seemed to be conflicted; one moment they wanted to be big boys, the next they were bawling over some imagined slight. Their emotions seemed to be all mixed up; anything could set them off—and often did.
From calm to fighting to playing—the triggers seemed to be indistinguishable.
And all the younger boys seemed to have become so clumsy. It seemed like Ethan and Wester were always bumping into things. They became regulars at the Medical Clinic, their boo-boos minor—usually just bruises or little cuts.
A band-aid and a hug or a kiss on the forehead from Laura or Mia—and they were on their way once more.
Laura or Mia…hugs and kisses?
Hmmm…maybe the boys weren’t so clumsy after all.
* * * *
Our girls were just as fascinating as the boys to me.
Lily and Hannah still had baby faces—but like Ethan and Wester, theirs were becoming thinner and longer. I could easily see that they would grow into beauties. Even now, some of the guys were beginning to throw admiring looks their way.
Shawnee was also receiving more than her share of male attention.
She had grown another inch in the last month; with her almond-shaped eyes and her shiny, perfect dark skin, Shawnee was tall and striking. When she showed up in the compound, every eye followed her—some shyly, some openly. It seemed that half of the boys in the tribe were in love with the girl, while the rest were simply in awe.
Meanwhile—even though she hadn’t completely recovered from being sick—Jude was also on her way to becoming model-beautiful. She was still stick-thin, but her chestnut hair flowed in gentle, shiny waves to just below her shoulder blades, and her tight butt was a constant subject of discussion among the guys.
When I thought back to Jude in high school—pudgy and stooped, face full of acne, a head of dull, greasy hair—I was kind of tickled at how she was now giving Peyton and Shawnee a run for ‘most beautiful’ member of the tribe.
A few of the older guys in the tribe—including Erroll—had made a run at Jude, the bravest actually asking her out on a date. She had shot down all of them, however, her feelings still strong for Porter.
Also—secretly—I believed that Jude was still grieving for Topher. She truly had cared for the boy—more than she was willing to admit.
It was Jay who brought me the most amusement, though.
Her breasts were finally growing in; within a month, her bra size had easily passed mine. Jay was delighted, of course. She seemed constantly amazed by her bosom, in fact. I would often see her sneaking peeks in mirrors as she passed by, stopping to push her ‘new friends’ up if she thought that no one was looking.
And, certainly, there was always at least one person looking—Porter.
It made me giggle every time I saw it.
The Goddess of Victory finally had boobs…and she was loving it!
* * * *
I suppose if I was really being honest, I would also admit that I was fascinated by what was happening with my
own body. The truth was, I loved how I looked; I had become lean, muscled, and tanned—and my body moved in ways that I would never have thought possible before.
The day I discovered that I could do, not just one chin-up—but ten—was a revelation to me. For the first time in my life, I thought of myself as a true athlete—a physical being.
Oddly enough—I felt like a warrior.
* * * *
Meanwhile, while my body was becoming lean, Florenza’s appeared to be going in the opposite direction. She definitely wasn’t chubby, but there was a slight curve to her belly that only Jay and I appeared to see; and her long black hair—always beautiful—had taken on a glistening sheen.
I suppose that if someone else had noticed, they might simply have thought that Florenza was eating more than she should have been.
Jay and me, however—we thought that she was pregnant!
And we were ecstatic over the idea—a baby!—but we both agreed that Florenza and Pauly should be the ones to tell us; that we wouldn’t take that moment away from them.
So, we kept silent.
Which was difficult because Florenza continued to teach the girls’ self-defense classes. We worried that some of the moves she was doing would harm the baby—if there was a baby.
But—no matter what—it was Florenza’s body.
Jay and I had to trust that she knew what she was capable of doing; that if she was truly pregnant, she would do nothing that might harm the child.
And the truth was—we girls really enjoyed those classes. All of us—with the exceptions of Lily and Hannah—were becoming so much better at defending ourselves using Florenza’s dirty tricks.
Shawnee, of course, was a quick study; remarkably, so was Laura. Mia was not so talented at self-defense, but she still attended—which surprised me. For obvious reasons, I had figured that Laura and Mia would have wanted nothing to do with violence. Then again, I guess it made perfect sense, since—of all the girls—Laura and Mia would know exactly how important it was to be able to defend yourself against the evil that was in this new world.
