The Woodlands

by Lauren Nicolle Taylor

  I said plainly, “I will think about what you asked.”

  Joseph handed Alexei his glasses, which he put on, dirt still clinging to the thin wire frames. He walked past me, without saying a word. I was tempted to say boo to his back, to see if he would scamper away.

  Joseph lugged me to my feet. “I think you scared him,” he said, lips crooked to the side, a wicked glint in his eye.

  “Good.”

  I started to think that Joseph, Deshi, and I needed to make a plan—one that didn’t involve Apella or Alexei.

  Lying with Joseph by the fire, it was hard to concentrate. I needed to ask him a question, but I kept forgetting my words. His lips on my neck, his hand running up and down my forearm, the gold took over and I lost my place. I grabbed his hand and stopped him, difficult as it was.

  “I want to talk to you and Deshi.” My eyes looked to Deshi and Hessa, sleeping peacefully, light snuffly snoring coming from the beautiful baby.

  “Uhuh…” he managed, as he ran the tip of his nose along my earlobe, I shivered. “Stop it!” I whispered harshly, squeezing his wrist. He stopped.

  “What is it?” he asked, unapologetic.

  I looked over to make sure Apella and Alexei were asleep and whispered, “I think we should leave them.”

  I could feel him shaking his head behind me. “No, we can’t. I know you don’t like to think about it, but that baby is coming. We will need Apella’s help when the day comes.”

  I thought about it. “But she pretty much left Clara to die. What makes you think she wouldn’t let me die too?” If it came to that. I felt my body tensing.

  Joseph loosened his hold on me and whispered, “You’re not remembering things clearly. You were in shock. Think back to that morning.” His voice was steady.

  I didn’t want to.

  “I can’t,” I said, feeling my breathing getting quicker. It was a strangling feeling. The idea of remembering that day squeezed the air out of me.

  He pulled me closer, warm arms encircling me, lulling me into a false sense of security. “I think you need to.”

  I closed my eyes. Memories of the darkness, the fire, the noise, filtered in. I remembered voices. They came back to me in snippets, pieces of time cut out and brought back to me, frayed and dirty.

  “Come on, breathe.”

  Muffled thuds, compressions.

  “What can I do?” A calm voice, strong. Joseph.

  “Put your hand there,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “Yes, there, push down. Hard. Harder than that. We need to slow the bleeding. Rub while you compress. There may be a clot.”

  “Thump, thump, thump.”

  The memory floated away, as did the voices, flying out the tunnel, softer and softer until there was silence.

  “Oh!” I gasped. After I had given up and clung to the rails, disconnected. Apella had returned to try and save Clara.

  Joseph was quiet for a while. He was stroking my arm. My eyes were heavy. I could feel myself drifting off. Then he stopped.

  “You know, we had to pull her off Clara. She never gave up.”

  Sleep was yanked away from me, like losing a tug-o-war, burning the palms of my hands. “And you didn’t either. But I did.” I could feel the blade turning in on myself. I sat there and let it happen. I was useless.

  “You can’t do that. You can’t blame yourself. You were in shock. You need to realize that maybe, no one was to blame,” he said earnestly. It was so easy for him to see the best in people. I wasn’t like that.

  “You loved her too. You didn’t go into shock.” I sounded like I was accusing him, but that’s not how I meant it to come out.

  “I did. But, you…you loved her more. She was your sister.”

  I sighed. To me, that wasn’t really good enough. And without Apella to blame, where could it go?

  I felt this nasty, gulping feeling, like air going down the wrong hole. Acid rising. Thinking about Clara was too painful. I turned my head, and whispered angrily, “Will you…just, please. Shut up!”

  I was annoyed at him. He was stripping away my ammunition. My reasons. Apella still had a lot to answer for. I wasn’t going to let her off the hook so easily.

  “All right, easy,” he said, “Just promise me you’ll think about it.”

  I was silent. I knew he was right. I supposed being together also meant I should probably listen to him, at least some of the time. I didn’t like the idea and I hardly slept thinking of ways around it, coming to no solution.

  After days of walking though long grass and bendy saplings, the terrain changed. The line we were following sunk down like all of a sudden it was too heavy for the earth to shoulder it. We were between two raised platforms, running parallel to each other. Familiar concrete edged the platforms. I couldn’t see over the top. It occurred to me that this was what it would be like for me. Loving Joseph would leave me stranded, stuck in the sunken part, both futures running parallel to each other, never touching, and me, never being able to see how it might play out. Jumping up, trying to look over the edge, never quite making it. Because the truth was, I didn’t want either future.

  I shook it out. Just keep moving, I thought, don’t be a coward now. Be stronger.

  We were approaching the ruins of a city.

  The greenery still dominated, cascading up and over everything. But in between there was evidence of crumbling stone buildings. Rotted holes where the doors once were. Painted, metal window frames in yellow and peeling, aqua-painted walls. It was ghostly and dead.

  The comforting sounds of the forest existed in the city, in a strange collision of what should and shouldn’t be. So this was how our ancestors had lived. It was a confusing sprawl. There was no order to the layout of buildings. It was like people had built them wherever they pleased.

  I was carrying Hessa on my back. He was gurgling, making little squeaking noises as we walked. Apella announced that she would like to scout around, see if there was anything useful left inside the buildings. I shrugged. There was no harm, I thought. Besides, I was curious to look around too. We decided to find a decent place to camp, make that our meeting place, and allow ourselves a couple of hours to explore.

  We worked our way into the disintegrating city, the buildings getting higher as we went. After about half an hour of walking, we had pushed our way into several buildings, finding them all to be unsound, too dangerous to sleep in. I rolled my eyes as Alexei ran his hand over a doorframe, knocking in various places like he thought it would welcome him, tell him a secret and say you’re safe here. I turned away. None of these building were safe. They were held together by the fact that no one had touched them in years. One sharp shove and they would collapse.

  I scanned ahead and was shocked to see the silhouette of a man. My heart stopped. I tugged on Joseph’s sleeve.

  “Look over there,” I whispered.

  We both stared at it for a long time. The man never moved, never made a sound. He kept the same pose, one hand across his chest, the other outstretched as if asking for something. When we approached it slowly, we noticed there were plants growing up and around his legs. It was a statue.

  I approached, sweeping back the vegetation from the iron man’s feet to reveal a plaque. Vladimir Lenin. I guess he must have been an important man many years ago. Now, he was one of the only reminders that people had ever lived here, barely maintaining himself against the rule of nature.

  The area around the statue was flat and sheltered by surrounding trees. Apella seemed anxious and readily agreed to making this the meeting place, before she and Alexei hurriedly disappeared between buildings.

  With Hessa on my back and the two boys leading the way, we ventured forth. It was an eerie atmosphere and the stillness solicited silence. It felt like we were walking in a graveyard. Black windows stared at us like empty eyes, doorways opened like screaming mouths. I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to all the people. Did they leave in a mass exodus, or did th
ey suffer the fate of most of the ones left outside the Rings? Bombed to bits.

  Hessa’s snuffling was the only sound to punctuate the silence. Gurgle, snuffle, breathe, stop breathing, breathe again. I kept timing my steps to his breath, walking in a sporadic, staccato motion, like I was stealing through the shadows on a secret mission.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Joseph looked down at me with a smirk. “Do you need to use the bathroom or something?” I must have looked funny, dancing around, fast step, slow step.

  I rolled my eyes. “Nah, I’m just defective.” They both looked at me like I was crazy. I swiped my arm at them. “I’ll tell you later.”

  We seemed to be entering what was once a commercial area. There were remnants of signs with numbers on them, written in a language I didn’t recognize, all loops and long lines, but some of the writing was numbers, prices. I stopped to investigate a light shining from within one of the openings. Joseph and Deshi were laughing at something up ahead, pointing through a broken window. Through what was left of a shop front, something sparkling caught my eye and I went to examine it more closely. Piles of gold and silver chains were tangled on the ground. Jewelry. There amongst them was a shiny white ball surrounded by sparkly crystals. I reached down to pick it up, mesmerized by its perfection, when weight hit me from above, followed by an unearthly shriek.

  I screamed and saw Joseph and Deshi turn towards me in the corner of my panic, before something tore at my face. Then all I could see was blood. Hessa.

  It was clawing at my back and I did the only thing I could think of. Stumbling backwards against a wall I tried to knock the thing off. It didn’t work. It was caught in my hair, screeching and hissing, tearing chunks of it from my head. I reached my hands back, trying to punch it, finding fur and claws and teeth. Hessa was screaming. I fell to my knees disoriented. I couldn’t see. The panic spread like a shock as I scrambled to protect my baby.

  Somewhere in the chaos, I felt the weight lift and I was able to pull Hessa from my back and bring him to face me. I wiped my eyes, thankfully, it was only a cut above my eye that had blurred my vision. Hessa was mostly unscathed, with a few small scratches on his arms and face. The cradle had prevented the creature from getting to him with its teeth.

  Joseph had pulled it from my back and now it was attacking him. It’s muscled body frantically scratching and hissing as it tried to find a soft piece of flesh to bite into. Joseph had his hands around its hideous face, pulling back its open jaws.

  “Do something!” I screamed to Deshi, who was standing there, mouth open wide in shock. He didn’t move. I ran to Deshi and almost threw Hessa at him in my haste, scanning the area for some kind of weapon. There was nothing, just grass and rubble.

  I decided I would just have to try to pull or kick it off. As I approached, Joseph yelled at me, “Get back!”

  I wasn’t going to watch him get mauled to death. I kept coming. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I clenched my fists, ready to jump, when something flew past me and landed on the beast. It squealed, but kept snapping despite the stick protruding from its abdomen. I could see blood, but I couldn’t tell whether it was Joseph’s or the creatures, a mess of black spots and yellow fur, solid and really strong, with only a stump of a tail. I looked at the long, carved spear waggling around as Joseph wrestled with it. Where had it come from?

  My question was answered as a tall girl with reddish blonde hair walked towards the cat-like beast, pulled the spear out, and stabbed it again, using the crude weapon as a lever to throw it off Joseph’s body. I ran to him. He was alive but badly scratched and cut up. We both watched as she punctured the agonized creature again and again, blood oozing out of several wounds. It twitched and writhed one last time, a strangled yeow escaping its jaws as it died. Its tongue grotesquely hung out of its feral mouth.

  She turned to face us and I recognized her immediately. I recalled her crazed face as she stabbed that poor White Coat through the eye. She didn’t look hysterical or feral anymore but there was a wildness to her I didn’t trust.

  I noticed she was no longer pregnant. Her stomach was flat, as mine used to be. She was wearing tight, shiny pants and a low-cut top that barely contained her breasts. I suddenly felt conscious of my own appearance. Looking down at my round form sticking out of my grey cotton uniform I felt stumpy and ugly.

  “Thank you,” I managed to stammer. I envied her lithe body as she took quick steps towards us and introduced herself.

  “I’m Careen.” She shook her strawberry hair, the bloody spear still gripped tightly in one hand. We cringed away from her as she approached. “Sorry,” she muttered as she dropped the spear with a clank.

  “You’re from the facility, right? I remember your face from the clearing. How’d you get here?” I said, trying to sound unthreatening.

  Careen regarded me with a slow face, her mouth twisting into a broad smile. But I could tell she didn’t recognize me. She bent down and pulled a knife from her hip. She talked as she worked, slowly carving the animal into small pieces, teasing the rough fur hide away from the muscle, and skillfully managing to keep it in one piece.

  The knife scraped against bone, a sound that itched my teeth. “How was that purple smoke?” she said with her head down, “Weird, right?” I nodded. She tucked her hair behind her ear and paused, “Pretty colors though.”

  Joseph chuckled, “Yeah, we paid particular attention to making it look pretty.”

  I gave him a scornful look for mocking her and he put his arms up. “No really, that was all Desh.”

  Deshi grinned proudly. “Well, why create something that sophisticated and not make it aesthetically pleasing?”

  Careen looked up from the carcass, narrowed her eyes for a second, and then blinked it away. “Anyway, I didn’t know what was going on but, I guess, I must have known in my…” She pointed to the back of her head.

  “Subconscious?” I volunteered.

  She arched one perfect eyebrow at me. “If you say so.”

  “I saw you run into the forest…I…” I started to say but she cut me off.

  “Yeah I ran. I ran forever, for miles and miles. The white coats were searching during the day so I climbed trees to avoid them and at night, I just kept running.” She separated parts of the carcass into piles, her hands covered in dark blood. “I was like you,” she pointed to my belly and shrugged, “but I didn’t know.” Her voice was light as air and she didn’t seem upset when she said, “I buried it next to a nice tree. It was only this big,” she indicated by pointing from her outstretched thumb to her finger how small it was.

  I felt my stomach roll and my heart strain in sympathy at the thought of her delivering a baby on her own.

  She leaned back on her heels and smiled. “So do you hunt? I hunt. I can help you,” she said eagerly.

  “You’ve already helped, Careen. You saved my life,” Joseph said gratefully.

  She stood and kicked her hip out, running her hand down his arm, she said, “Anytime, handsome.”

  Joseph regarded his arm with newfound fascination and then looked to me with his eyebrows raised.

  I clenched my fists trying to get a handle on this odd girl. It was getting dark. I interrupted their little moment. “We’d better find the others; it’s about time to meet.”

  Careen collected the meat and piled the dark flesh into the skinned hide. All that was left behind was a disgusting pile of guts and bones. I felt sick but I kept it down.

  Hessa fell asleep despite his scratches. The cradle I built acted as a protective cage around his delicate body.

  I helped Joseph to his feet and we made our way back to the statue, Careen walking next to Joseph, swinging the skin and meat by her side like she was carrying a shopping bag.

  When we arrived, Apella and Alexei had already built a fire. Apella had her face buried in her hands. She was crying silently.

  “I don’t understand. They should be here,” she said, unaware we were standing right
there, listening.

  “We are here,” Joseph bellowed. He looked scary, crusted blood streaks across his face, blond hair matted. His shirt was torn to shreds and his arms were scratched.

  Apella jumped. I got the feeling she wasn’t talking about us. “Goodness! What happened to you two?” she exclaimed, quickly following it up with, “Where’s Hessa? Is he all right?”

  “He’s fine,” I said. Apella got out her pack and searched around for a suture kit.

  “Wow! You’ve got your own doctor! Lucky,” Careen said excitedly. She was weird. She said it like, ‘Wow! You got the last piece of cake! Lucky.’ She seemed to get excited about the wrong things.

  I introduced Careen to Apella and Alexei, explaining how she had saved us from the creature. Careen then dumped the remnants of the ugly cat by the fire. Apella left my face half-stitched up and turned to Careen, clasping both hands around the surprised girl’s own dirty ones saying, “Are you one of them?” Apella’s eyes were desperately hopeful. Careen looked at her, not confused exactly; her eyes were wide and mirroring Apella’s excitement like she couldn’t form her own reaction.

  Joseph spoke before I could, “What are you on about, Apella? She’s one of us; she came from the facility.” Apella’s mouth snapped shut but it was too late for her to cover herself with more lies. I’ve never seen Joseph so angry before, he held his face close to hers, his eyes intense as she leaned backwards in fear. We’d all had enough of them lying. Alexei went to assist, but Deshi held him back.

  “I, I…” she stuttered, “I’m sorry. There were rumors that there were people here. Survivors from before the Woodlands were built. I was hoping we would find them and get some help.”

  Joseph released her from his gaze. “I didn’t think you were that naive, Apella. There’s no one here. There hasn’t been anyone here for hundreds of years.” He waved her off dismissively. She returned to stitching me up shakily and then Joseph reluctantly let her see to his wounds.

  “What have you got there?” Alexei inquired, pointing at the pile of meat and fur. He used a stick to lift the hide, its hollowed-out face looking even scarier now than when it was alive. Its over-sized, pointed ears, no longer sitting upright, curled down over its forehead, looking like the top of them had been lightly dipped in black ink. Inspecting the pattern of the fur, he typed things into his reader. “A lynx, strong, cat-like animal, jumps down on its prey from above. Hunts alone.” I didn’t need a reader to tell me that.