“You alright?” Blue’s head tilted over 62’s and the lenses of his mask glistened in the bright light reflecting off the landscape.
“It didn’t hurt,” 62 whispered in amazement.
“Then why’re you lying there?”
“It’s kind of...” 62 wiggled his arms and legs in the snow. “... fluffy.”
Blue belted out a laugh again. Then his eyes went round and white around the edges as a ball of snow ruptured against his right shoulder. He turned around to face 00. “Oh, now. You think you’re going to get away with that?” He scooped another snowball and pulled his arm back to throw it, but 00 was faster. Another snowball struck Blue square in the chest.
“He got me!” Blue yelled. He crumpled at the knees as if the hit was a mortal wound and fell into the snow beside 62. “That good for nothing double Zero got me,” he wailed. “I’m a goner.” He twitched around, sinking deeper into the snow, making gagging noises as he went.
00 trudged forward, inspecting his handiwork. “He was a good soldier,” he said mournfully. He trudged over to the other side of 62 and fell in the snow, too. “Don’t just lay there like the dead,” he barked, “push your arms and legs around.”
62 sat up slightly to see what 00 was doing. He was sweeping his arms and legs from side to side, packing the snow beneath them. When he turned his head, he caught Blue flinging his arms around in a similar fashion. Without a word, 62 fell back down in his own imprint and swept his own arms and legs.
“Now get up,” Blue grunted as he pushed himself up off the ground, stepping carefully out of the packed snow.
The other two wriggled themselves up, standing next to Blue. They looked down at the ground, and 62 could see the shapes of their three bodies. The motion of their arms had made what looked like wings, and the snow cleared by their wagging legs looked like the wide fan of a bird’s tail.
“Snow birds,” 62 whispered, hardly able to believe what they’d created.
“Close,” Blue grinned. “They’re called snow angels. Mattie taught us how to make them last winter.”
“What else can we make?” 62 could feel the smile on his face freezing into place under his mask from the cold, but he didn’t want to go inside. He’d been longing for the comfort and consistency that Adaline had provided him before he’d begun dreaming, but now, having woken up to a world so wonderfully different than the day before, 62 was beginning to feel like maybe the differences in each day above ground is what made them special.
“Just you watch.” 00 ran toward the middle of the courtyard where some of the snow had blown into a bank twice as deep as where they’d been playing. 62 and Blue ran after him, too excited to feel the wet snow melting along their backs and trickling down their necks.
CHAPTER 16
WHEN 62 ARRIVED IN class, he was surprised to find small containers of a golden-brown mush placed on every desk. A silver-colored scoop rested beside each container. The room smelled sweet; a strange odor that tickled 62's nose. The smell was somehow deep and light, soothing and invigorating. 62 sat down and stared at the bowl, enthralled with the way the light seemed to dance across the wet surface of the stuff.
Parker grinned at the front of the classroom and winked at 62. He seemed to enjoy watching each of his students become overwhelmed by the sight and smell of the gloppy mess. “Welcome to today's lesson,” he said when the last person found their seat. “Today, we're going to start one of the most exciting experiences that you'll ever have in Hanford.”
The teacher raised his bowl up and tipped it toward the class, showing them his own pile of goo. “Can anyone guess what this is?”
62 looked around at the others, and they each looked back at him in turn with blank looks on their faces. When it was clear that no one had an answer, Parker continued. “This stuff is called applesauce. There is a grove of trees in one of the greenhouses that bear fruit, called apples, once a year. When the apples turn up, we pick them off the trees. Then, we turn those apples into a variety of food products. One of them is applesauce.” Parker plucked his silver scoop from the desk beside him and plunged it into his pile of glop. He filled the scoop up with a portion of the stuff, held it in the air for a moment, and then put the loaded scoop in his mouth. His eyes closed for a second and his grin spread a little wider. He hummed a few notes to himself and then said, “Applesauce is one of my favorites.”
62 waited. The classroom overflowed with a deathly silence as everyone waited to see what would happen to the teacher after consuming the applesauce. Parker opened his eyes and lifted the now bare scoop up in the air.
“This is called a spoon. It's one of three eating utensils you'll learn to use as we explore food. It's simple enough to use. When you have soft or liquid foods you simply scoop it from your bowl and then deposit the little bit of food that it holds into your mouth.” Parker dunked his spoon into his bowl and took another bite of the applesauce. “Dang, that's good,” he muttered to himself. He set the applesauce and spoon back down on the desk.
62 gripped his spoon in his hand and examined it. It seemed to be a simple bar of metal, formed at one end to hold a bit of food. He turned it over and noticed he could see his reflection in the shiny metal. On one side of the spoon his reflection peered back at him, round and misshapen. On the other side, his head seemed exceptionally small, and the reflection was upside down. He flipped it over again and again, marveling at the severe differences between the two reflections.
“Now, before we start eating, I've got to give you a warning.”
11 gave a heavy sigh. “Of course, there's a warning. Let me guess. This stuff will kill us?”
One side of Parker's grin turned up higher than the other. “Nothing as bad as that. But, because you all haven't eaten food before, your taste buds are dead.”
“Our what?” 62 looked up from his topsy-turvy reflection.
Parker stuck out his tongue and pointed to it. “Youh tasth budths.” He pulled his tongue back in. “In Adaline, you survived on meal tabs, which are designed to sustain you with all the calories and nutrients that you need to live but are not designed to please your palates. Above ground, you'll have to constantly find foods to fuel your body. Each of those foods have their own shapes, colors, smells, and tastes. Your taste buds make eating food less utilitarian and more fun.”
“Fun?” Boy 14 scrunched his face up. He poked at the applesauce in front of him and the short pile of glop slid from one side of his bowl to the other. “This doesn't look fun.”
“Well, for now, the fun factor doesn't exist. You'll have to eat a variety of foods over the span of a few weeks before your taste buds are triggered and activate themselves. And then, it’ll take months for you to figure out which foods you enjoy eating, and which ones you don’t. So, for today you'll just be going through the act of eating to get used to it. The real fun will happen later.”
“Anything else we should know about this stuff?” 62 raised a suspicious eyebrow.
“Yes, actually.” Parker reached behind his desk and pulled out a massive glass jar, about half way full of the shiny golden applesauce. He put the jar on the desk with a heavy thud. “There's plenty of applesauce to go around if you decide you want more. But, until your digestive system figures out how to turn this stuff into fuel, it's best to only have a couple of scoops at a time. Otherwise you'll be spending a lot of time in the bathroom.”
“Doing what?” 14 asked.
“Pooping your guts out.” Parker grinned and held up his spoon. “Now, let’s start. Put a bit of applesauce on your spoon. Hold it level so it doesn't fall off.”
62 slowly followed Parker's instructions. He dipped his spoon into his mushy pile and pulled a small amount up out of the bowl. He held the applesauce aloft for a moment and turned around to see most of the others doing the same.
“Next step, open your mouth wide, and put the spoon inside it. Take your time and feel the texture of the applesauce. Like I said before, you won't be able to taste it t
he same way I do yet. Don't get frustrated if it just feels like wet mush in your mouth. I promise, it'll get better.” Parker pushed his spoon into his mouth and when he pulled it out again the silver spoon sparkled. He smacked his lips and looked around. “Well, don't just sit there with your spoons out. Stick them in your faces!”
62 leaned close to the spoon in his hand and sniffed the applesauce. He poked his tongue out and licked the edge of the glop. It was cold and wet against his tongue. True to Parker's comments, it had no taste, only a mushy texture that squished between his teeth when he was finally brave enough to take a bite. 62 scrunched his face from the oddity of the experience and spat the applesauce back into the bowl.
“People eat this?” 62 looked dubiously at his teacher.
“Not just this,” Parker took another bite himself. “Lots of other foods, too. This is just where we're starting. Soon you'll be eating dozens of things, all with different feels and flavors. It takes an immense amount of food to equal the nutrition that you get from an average meal tab. A whole platter of various foods, in fact.” The teacher scraped the last dribbles of applesauce from his bowl as he was talking and took one final bite when he’d finished.
“Why don't people up here just eat meal tabs?” Man 11 asked. He watched the applesauce drip from his spoon back into his bowl. “They're a lot easier to deal with. The tabs are smaller than this pile of applesauce, and less messy.”
Parker crossed his arms. “Simple. There's not a lab up here to manufacture them.”
“Couldn't someone just build one?” 62 pushed his bowl to the edge of his desk, uninterested in eating any more.
“Well, as small as a meal tab is, it takes a mountain of resources to make them. It may not seem like it now, but believe me, it's a lot easier to go out and pick some apples and eat them than to process and compress them into a grape sized pill.” Parker pointed at the remaining applesauce in the jar on his desk. “This is about as processed as food up here gets.”
“What’s a grape?” someone in the back of the room asked.
“It’s another type of fruit,” Parker said. “They’re green or red, and are about the same size as the tabs you’ve been eating.”
“Are you sure it’s easier to eat this way? It's so messy,” 14 groaned. He had tried to pick the applesauce up with his hands and now his fingers had a shiny sheen to them.
“It is,” Parker answered. “And yes, it’s messy, but it's what we've got. You’ll get used to it.”
“What if I can't get used to it?” 62 asked.
Parker shrugged. “Don’t worry about that. You will. Or you'll die trying.”
CHAPTER 17
“IT CAN’T BE GOOD.” 62 sat at a table surrounded by books on anatomy, biology, and a few cookbooks that Mattie had suggested. Most of the books were open, strewn about in random order where 62 had left them. “All of that stuff. Coming out. Of there.” He gestured to a diagram of the digestive system, pointing toward the rectum.
Mattie sat opposite of him, her feet up on the desk. She was reading a book called Mordacious, a story about people coming back from the dead. They didn’t eat applesauce. According to Mattie, if someone comes back from the dead, they eat other people.
Mattie glanced up over the top of the thick book at him. “Where’d you rather it come out?”
62’s face blanched. “I don’t want it to come out at all!”
Mattie carefully turned the book over in her hands, laying it page side down in her lap to save her spot. “If it didn’t come out, it’d just build up inside of you until your guts exploded. Gastrointestinal perforation. Messy business.” She looked at him thoughtfully for a long moment. “Didn’t you poop in Adaline?”
62’s face scrunched in disgust. “There’s a name for exploding guts? How do you even know this stuff? Disgusting. Of course, we expelled waste in Adaline. But not like this. Not so... so...”
“Brown and squishy?” Mattie’s left eyebrow raised as she asked the question.
62 covered his ears. “Don’t talk about it like that! Ugh. How can you say those words?”
Mattie’s mouth turned in a half frown. “They’re just words. About poop.”
62 shivered in disgust. He pulled another biology book toward him and flipped the pages. “Well, they’re revolting words. Utterly putrid.”
“We eat, we poop, we live.” Mattie leaned back in her chair and picked her book back up. She gazed at the pages, and then looked over them at 62 again. “I pooped right before you got here.”
“Where?” 62 looked around the room, worry on his face.
“In the outhouse, you dolt.” Mattie rolled her eyes and then turned her attention back to her book. A few minutes later she pondered in a low voice, “I wonder if zombies poop?”
62 let go of an exasperated sigh. The pair read in silence for a long while, the quiet finally breaking when 62 emitted another groan. “This thing says that the human body can have bowel movements anywhere from three times a week to three times a day. I can’t believe anyone would survive doing it three times a day. How would they get anything else done?”
Mattie dragged the page she was turning. It scraped against its neighbor noisily. “I take a book with me. It helps pass the time.”
62’s mouth dropped open. “You take your books,” he gestured wildly at the shelves around them, “to the toilet?”
Mattie’s mouth twitched in a mischievous grin, but she didn’t look away from her novel. “Twice today, so far.”
“Why would you do that?” 62 whispered in horror.
“It’s the perfect place to read, actually. It’s quiet. The outhouses always have at least one light on, even in the middle of the night. And if you make enough fart noises, people generally don’t interrupt you in the middle of a chapter.” At this, Mattie gave a stern look over the pages of her book at 62. “Not like trying to read out here where just any ol’ yahoo can talk to you right in the middle of a fight scene.”
“But the books are so old.” 62 laid a hand on the worn paper of the textbook in front of him. “So fragile.”
Mattie snorted. “It’s not like I wipe my butt with them, geesh. I set them down when it’s time to get down and dirty.”
62 hunched his shoulders and gagged. He covered his mouth with his hand and blew out his cheeks. “Ewwww. Don’t talk about wiping down there.”
“It’s all part of the gig,” Mattie said cheerily. “I mean, every once in a while, your target is off and you miss with the wiping cloth and get poop all over the side of your hand... That’s gross. But, that doesn’t happen too often if you pay attention to what you’re doing.”
62 wrapped his other arm around his middle and bent over. He let out a dramatic wheeze and pushed himself back from the table. “Stop it. You’re making me sick.”
“All you can do is keep filling up the pooper. Over, and over, and over...” When 62 groaned once more, Mattie leaned over her end of the table and looked at him with intense eyes. She said in a low, slow voice, “You do know that if you’re going to throw up, you’ve got to go do it in the outhouse. Best to keep your applesauce and toast in your gut unless you want to lay your head down on the toilet seat.”
“Ugh. That’s enough!” 62 blew out his cheeks, stood up, and quickly slammed shut all of the books he’d been studying. He grabbed one of the cookbooks and took two steps away from the table, looking left and right as he tried to remember which side of the library the book had come from.
“Just leave ‘em on the table.” Mattie shooed him away with a wave of her hand before returning to her reading. “I’ll take care of them.”
62 threw on his coat and put his mask on. He raced out the door before Mattie could say another word about defecation, vomiting, or any number of other equally disgusting bodily functions. He jogged as quickly as he could back toward the cafeteria, thirsty for some juice to wash the acid burn of dry heaving from his mouth. The frozen ground crunched beneath his feet as he went, a thin layer of ice crus
ting the top of the snow piled up around him.
When he finally made it to the cafeteria, he rounded the building and headed toward the refugee side without giving the main dining hall a single glance. That side was bursting with food, which is what seemed to initiate the whole disgusting mess of increased bowel movements to begin with. Instead, he pulled the door of the smaller cafeteria open and gave a whooshing sigh of relief when it swung shut behind him.
His escape from thoughts of digestion were short lived, however. Lined all along the counter were small containers of the new foods that he and the others were learning to eat. The dreaded applesauce was paired with small squares of plain white bread, toasted until they were nearly the same golden color of the applesauce. 62 ripped off his mask, then held his hand against the side of his face like a shield, blocking the food from view. He rushed toward the juice bar. He quickly washed his hands, filled a cup, turned his back on the buffet of food and drank the grape juice down quickly. When he pulled the glass away from his lips, he panted, recovering from the long gulps of liquid that had drained the glass.
“You don’t look too good,” one of cafeteria workers noted. “Are you okay?”
62 shook his head from side to side. “I just had the grossest conversation with the Girl at the library. It about made me sick.”
The old Man nodded. “That Girl will do just about anything to scare the Boys off. Don’t worry. A bit of toast will get your stomach settled.”
Images of digestive diagrams flashed through 62’s mind. He could see the food being chewed, swallowed, driven down into the guts of a person, and being dissolved into a mash of poopy goo. His mind wandered to the digesting food being pushed farther and farther down. There was a strange twist in his stomach, and the burn of acid rose back up through his throat and over his tongue.
The Adaline Series Bundle 1 Page 44
