by Tom Abrahams
“The banter,” said Dallas. “The back-and-forth. It gets old.”
“Not as old as Marcus,” said Lou.
Marcus snorted, stuck a finger into the jar, and slathered it with the smooth, sweet and salty paste. How long had it been since he’d eaten peanut butter? He couldn’t remember. He wasn’t even sure if he could recall the taste of it.
“Where did you get the peanut butter?” Lou asked the conductor.
The conductor sat on the edge of the catafalque platform. She finished a swig of water from a canteen and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Marcus noticed, for the first time, the radio on her hip.
“Atlanta,” said the conductor. “Peanut farming is still a thing near the city. That and corn.”
“Even with the drought?” asked Dallas.
“It’s modified,” the conductor explained. “They take a lot less water.”
Marcus sucked the peanut butter from his finger and relished the taste. Memories flooded back to him. His childhood, eating peanut butter and honey sandwiches on the front porch of his friend’s house, swatting the interested bees that buzzed around them as they ate. He remembered Wes eating sandwiches cut into four corners, raspberry jelly leaking from the edges of the sopping white bread.
He finished the mouthful and joined the conversation. “Same in Virginia,” he said to the conductor. “There are crops. Tobacco mostly. And all of it is genetically altered to withstand dry conditions. I’d worry about the long-term health effects of all of these modified foods, except that I don’t worry about it.”
Dallas shook his head and chuckled. “That makes no sense.”
“The genetics?” asked Marcus. “It makes sense.”
“No,” said Dallas. “You make no sense.”
Dallas cleared his throat. Doing his best Marcus impersonation, he lowered his voice, pulled his chin into his neck, and affected an air of self-importance with a stiff neck and squared shoulders. “I worry about things,” he aped, “except I don’t worry about things. I say things. But I don’t say them. I don’t eat with my fingers except when I eat with my fingers.”
“Jumping on Lou’s bandwagon?” asked Marcus.
“Always been on it,” Dallas shot back. “I started it.”
Marcus smiled. He took another finger pull of peanut butter. Before he ate it, he motioned at Dallas. “My reasoning makes sense even if you don’t get it.”
“It’s old-man reasoning,” said Lou. “He’s got three brain cells left, and two of them are packing up. The third one doesn’t blame them.”
The radio on the conductor’s hip chirped, drawing everyone’s attention. Even Javier opened his eyes and sat up. The radio chirped again. Static filled the room.
The conductor plucked the radio loose and lifted it to her face. She glanced at the display and twisted a control at the top of the device. With her thumb, she punched a series of buttons on the face of it. Then she lifted the radio to her mouth and pressed a transmission key on its side. “This is conductor 416. Status, please.”
She let go of the key. Looking at the display again, she narrowed her focus. She was reading something on the display. The radio chirped. Her face twitched, her eyes reacting to whatever she saw.
“What is it?” asked Marcus. “Everything good?”
Looking up, a serious expression on her face, the conductor shook her head. “We need to go. There’s a tribal caravan on its way here.”
“Why?” asked Lou.
Dallas stood and helped David with his things. Lou took his cue and stood too, putting her hand at the small of her back. She winced as she got up.
The conductor clipped the radio to her belt.
“How could they know we’re here?” asked Andrea. It was the first time she’d said anything since Marcus had entered the room.
She had one hand on Javier’s back, rubbing it up and down, the other resting atop her belly. Her small features were tight with concern.
The conductor sidestepped a couple of the chairs and moved toward the door. She glanced through the archway and then at her charges. “They’re not here for us,” she said. “They don’t know we’re here. They’re here for the water. But if I don’t get you on the road and get those women to safety…”
It wasn’t necessary for her to finish her thought. Marcus understood the sudden gravity of their situation.
“We’ve got another conductor coming this way,” she said. “They should make it in time. But I’ve got to start moving the women now just in case.”
“How long do you have?” asked Marcus.
“An hour. Maybe less. They’re coming from the west. You should be okay, but you’ve got to go. You’ve got enough on your plate as it is.”
Truer words have never been spoken, thought Marcus.
CHAPTER 3
APRIL 20, 2054, 3:50 PM
SCOURGE +21 YEARS, 7 MONTHS
BAIRD, TEXAS
Norma stepped from the barn into the warm, cloudless afternoon. The door creaked on its hinges and rattled shut. She’d been meaning to grease it, silence the noise, but hadn’t gotten around to it.
Exhaustion seeped into her bones as she crossed the property toward her front porch. It was the kind of tired she felt in the backs of her eyes, her shoulders, her feet. She was certain that if she laid down on the dirt and rested her head on an outcropping of weeds, she’d be asleep within a minute.
When was the last time she’d gotten good sleep? Her mind, foggy from the lack of rest, couldn’t remember. Then she kept thinking about how she wasn’t able to think clearly.
She rested a hand on the short wooden railing that ran alongside the steps to the porch and used it to guide her toward the front door, which she’d left open. She kicked away a rock from the bottom edge of the screen door and let it slap shut behind her as she entered the house.
Norma’s vision darkened until her eyes adjusted to the interior light, or lack of it, and she turned to close the heavy door. With it shut and locked, and the space darker still, she blindly walked the hallway from memory. Her feet trod the familiar seams and boards in the floor, and she edged toward the kitchen and the stairs.
Her hand on the round finial at the base of the balustrade, she hesitated, considering whether or not she was hungry. Deciding she wasn’t, she gripped the finial and spun herself onto the stairs.
The quiet unnerved her, and the steps creaked under her weight as she ascended.
There was no Lou and her strongly held opinions. No Dallas and his affable acquiescence to everything Lou. No David and his smile-inducing giggles or balance-threatening leg hugs.
She missed them already. The ache was in her gut. It churned there, drowning out the other sensations.
Norma reached the landing on the second floor and trudged to her bedroom. She pressed one hand against the door and slowly turned the knob with the other one. As quietly as she could, she pushed it open.
“I’m awake,” said Rudy.
He was sitting up in bed, having scooted his back against the headboard. His color was better, though not good. A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. Then he smirked.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked. “I was calling you, but it wore me out. Your boyfriend got you too busy?”
Norma chuckled and dropped onto the edge of the bed. The mattress gave and bounced. Rudy winced and gritted his teeth.
Her eyes widened and she put a hand on his leg. “Oh! I’m sorry. You okay? Did I hurt you?”
Rudy opened his eyes. “I’m good,” he said. “Just sore. I’ll be good as new in a couple of days.”
She rolled her eyes. Rudy was always the optimist. “My boyfriend will be so disappointed.”
“I bet,” he said. “Especially when I get out of this bed and pummel him eight ways to Sunday. Nobody touches my Norma but me.”
Her face flushed and she pursed her lips into a flattered smile. “You’re getting possessive in your old age, Rudolfo Gallardo. I think I like it.”
Norma stood from the bed and moved to the window. She shielded her eyes and pressed her nose to the glass, scanning the property for the source of the noise. She saw nothing, but the noise repeated itself. It sounded like wood banging against metal.
“Is it the barn door?” asked Rudy.
Norma stepped back from the window and shook her head. Her eyebrows were drawn with concern. Her expression tightened. “I don’t know. I closed it.”
“That’s where you were?”
She nodded.
“Radio?”
Another bang. And the distant sound of voices.
She looked toward the bedroom door. Her pulse quickened. “Did you hear that?” she asked in a hushed tone.
Rudy lowered his volume too. “Voices?”
She nodded and moved to the bed. “I don’t like this,” she said. “Could be Pop Guard.”
“Already? That’s awfully fast.”
“Who else would it be?”
“If you were just outside,” he said, his eyes shifting between the window and his wife’s worried gaze, “how come you didn’t hear them? Would you hear them?”
“I don’t know. I guess. Maybe. Could be they came from the back side, by the highway.”
“From the north?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m gonna go look.”
Rudy frowned. “No, stay here. You locked the door. We’ll have time to figure something out if they break in.”
Norma steeled herself. Her jaw tightened and the muscles in her neck flexed. She shook her head. “No, Rudy. I’m not waiting this time.”
She moved to the nightstand next to Rudy. There was a loaded handgun there and a spare mag. She stopped short and reconsidered. Her rifle was next to the front door. She’d left it there before going out to the barn. “Stay here.”
His expression soured. “Where else am I going to go? C’mon, don’t do this, Norma.”
She winked at him and blew him a kiss. “Stop me.”
CHAPTER 4
APRIL 20, 2054, 3:55 PM
SCOURGE +21 YEARS, 7 MONTHS
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Sally ran her shaky fingers along the dark semicircles that punctuated the exhaustion on her face. They were a lighter shade than before, more lavender than deep purple. The lines that defined her forehead and radiated from the outside corners of her eyes towards her temples weren’t as pronounced as she remembered them. Her reflection was as repulsive as she’d found it two days before. That was all good.
What wasn’t good was the withdrawal. Despite Gladys’s insistence that she was ready for the trek, Sally wasn’t so sure.
This wasn’t her first detox. She’d tried, and failed, to stop cold turkey before. She could get the shakes up to ten days after going clean. Her memory might lapse. Things that weren’t there would cloud her vision, disorient her.
Her stomach pressed against the sink, she leaned into the mirror in the powder room. She stretched back her lips and studied her teeth, her tongue, her uvula.
For the first time she noticed thin wrinkles in her earlobes, like someone had folded them and left a crease right down the middle. Had they been there before?
She was running a fingernail along one of them, her thumb on the back of the lobe, when Gladys knocked at the door.
“You okay? Need anything?”
Rather than carry on a conversation through the door, Sally unlocked the knob and opened it. Gladys stood there with a thin smile, her plucked brows arched high.
“I’m fine,” Sally replied. “Where were you? You disappeared.”
“Business,” said Gladys. “Making sure the logistics of your upcoming trip are taken care of and that everything is—”
Sally waved Gladys to the side with her hand. She tugged at her shirt and walked past her host. “About that…” she said, making her way toward the kitchen. “I’m not clean.”
Her bare feet were sticky with perspiration and made peeling noises on the tile with every step.
“It’s been less than three days since I got here. Less than three.”
She held up three fingers to illustrate. The kitchen was warmer than the bathroom or the hallway. The oven was on and the dry heat hit her as if she’d stuck her face into it. She stopped and turned to face Gladys. “Could you turn on the air? I’m burning up in here.”
Gladys eased past her around the kitchen island and over to the double ovens on the far wall. With a flick of her wrist, she wiggled her fingers in the air dismissively. Sally was certain the woman was mocking her. “It’s you that’s hot, not the air.”
Gladys opened the refrigerator and pulled from it a large pitcher of water and got a glass from the cabinet, filled it with the water, and set it on the counter. She motioned at the glass with her eyes. “That’s for you. Nice and cold.”
Sally plucked at the front of her shirt and fanned herself. “Thanks,” she said and moved to take the glass.
Gladys reached into the top of her dress and pulled out a small folding knife. She used the knife to slice a lemon on the counter next to the sink and offered a piece to Sally, who declined.
“What’s with the knife?” she asked.
“You can never be too careful,” Gladys replied. “And nobody would ever think to check an old woman’s breasts.”
Sally almost laughed. It sounded more like a grunt.
The glass was cold in her hands and Sally thought about pressing the side of it to her cheeks but gulped half of it before taking a breath like a four-year-old drinking juice from a sippy cup. Another couple of healthy swigs and she’d finished it.
The cold water helped. Her gums, teeth, and throat were cooler, her throat soothed. Still, she sweated. In her gut, she felt a constant unease. It was as if she knew something was off, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Like she’d entered a room to do something but couldn’t remember why she was there.
Her heart thumped unevenly. At least that was how Sally perceived it. It fluttered, skipped, and her balance was off. She was not ready to lead anybody into the fire, let alone along an increasingly challenging underground railroad.
Sally leaned against the kitchen counter, the glass still in her hand. She focused her gaze on Gladys, who, as always, appeared unaffected by everything around her but the wrinkles in her skirt or tuck of her blouse.
“I’m not ready,” said Sally. “If it’s today, tomorrow, or three days from now.”
Gladys was unmoved. She wiped the knife on a towel, folded it, and stuffed it back into her bra. “And you know this because…?” she asked, straightening the collar of her dress.
“I’ve done this before. I’ve gone cold turkey. It’s not pretty. And if you’ve done this before, you know, helped addicts like me, then you’d know too.”
“You’ll be fine,” said Gladys. She tugged at the cuff on one sleeve and then the other. “I have no doubt.”
“I don’t get what we’re doing here,” Sally said. “Why not put me out to pasture without this one last mission? Get somebody better?”
Gladys pursed her lips and lifted her chin. “There…is nobody better,” she said in a halted cadence that sounded like it was painful for her to admit.
Sally laughed. It was a sudden burst that surprised both of them. Gladys’s eyes widened; then she frowned disapprovingly.
“Sorry,” said Sally, “but I find that hard to believe. You’ve got a gazillion people who are better than me for this job. And truthfully, I still don’t know exactly what the job is.”
Gladys shook her head. “I don’t have a gazillion people. Not by a long shot.”
She lifted a hand and motioned to
ward the kitchen table. She crossed the room and pulled back a chair for Sally. The feet squeaked across the floor and echoed. It amplified the quiet in the house to which Sally had become so accustomed she wasn’t aware of it. Gladys sat next to her and put her hands on the table.
“We’re struggling,” she said. “And I don’t know how much longer we can keep the train running.”
Sally’s expression hardened with concern, though she remained silent.
“The Pop Guard has gotten serious about stopping us,” Gladys said. “That’s why they’ve sent more exploratory teams to Texas. It’s why they are in Arizona and Illinois and Nebraska. They want to put an end to us.” Gladys scratched her forehead. “And they know about the Harbor. They know we’ve established our own colony of sorts, free from their control. We have information that tells us they’ve renewed their efforts to find it.”
“I didn’t even know the Harbor was a real thing until a couple of days ago,” said Sally. “I always thought it was a rumor.”
“We wanted it that way,” said Gladys. “It had to sound too good to be true. It had to be something the Pop Guard dismissed as fantasy.”
“What changed?”
“We don’t know for sure, but in the last few months, several of our conductors have gone missing. We’ve had seasoned people disappear. We’ve had new people work with us for a few weeks and then they’re gone.”
“I still don’t get why this means you need me for some special mission,” Sally said. “I’m not the best choice. There has to be somebody.”
“The passengers on this trip are special,” Gladys said. “They’re connected to a close friend. I needed somebody I can trust. I trust you.”
Sally’s brow furrowed. “You don’t know me.”
“I know more about you than you think,” said Gladys. “And I know enough about what you’ve sacrificed. I also know how skilled you are.”
Sally leaned back in her chair. She swiped her fingers across her forehead and rubbed the sheen of sweat on the thigh of her pants. “Skilled?”
Gladys pressed her palms flat against the table. Her expression flattened. “Here’s my dilemma. Our conductors are either too inexperienced to do the job or they’re like you. The inexperienced ones, I can’t even trust half of them. And there’s no middle ground. There are those infant conductors and there are the older ones. The ones like you. They’ve seen too much. They’ve done too much. And those experienced conductors are worse off than you. Or they’re…”
