The Light of Hope

by Ernie Lindsey

  If only I’d known…

  “Anyway, I’m Dr. Walsh. We haven’t officially met yet.” He offers his hand to shake and I do. He adds, “And you, ma’am, are Caroline Mathers, and I’m required to inform you that you’re officially a prisoner of war. I think it goes without saying that I’m not on the best terms with those boot-stomping hooligans who’re trying to intimidate my patient, so let me just say this—I can only hold them off for so long but I’ll do everything I can to keep them out of here until you’re ready.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “Honestly? Like I fell out of a huge tree and bounced off of every branch on the way down. It almost hurts to blink.”

  Dr. Walsh lifts his glasses and rests them on top of his head. He has a stack of papers in his hands, held together by a flat board and a clip. He lifts a couple of sheets and frowns as he reads. “I’d say that’s about right, but you could probably call it fifty trees. Multiple fractures, punctured lungs, a concussion, fluid on your brain, and that’s barely scratching the surface. It’s a miracle you made it. My theory is that you might have a minuscule amount of Kinder still in your body. Don’t look so surprised—they told me already. Maybe the serum didn’t eradicate it entirely, but you’d need a powerful microscope to see the one or two remaining cells that kept you alive. That’s my speculation. Could be you’re just strong-willed and you simply refused to die.”

  He pours a cup of water for me from a nearby table and I manage to get a few sips down. Even the act of swallowing hurts neck muscles that I didn’t know existed. “Are there others here?”

  “Other prisoners, you mean?”

  “Slaves here in the hospital. My people.”

  “Unfortunately, no. They arrived two days ago, and the military currently has them scattered in a few refugee locations set up around the city. Buildings, tent communities, wherever they can fit them. Plenty need medical attention, but we were only able to spare so many doctors and nurses. We’re doing the best we can with what we have.”

  “Sad. You’d think the blackcoats would want them in better shape before they’re forced to work.”

  I can tell he agrees with me, but all he offers is a tip of his head and a solemn, “It is what it is, unfortunately, and they’re… Well, you’ll see.”

  “I’ll see what?”

  He ignores my question. “Is there anything else I can help you with for the moment?”

  I try to think about what I might want to know. The simply act of looking at the pictures in my mind is painful. “Oh, have you heard anything about my parents?” I doubt that he has, because to the people in charge, they’re another face in the crowd or another piece of stolen property.

  “Actually,” he says, scratching his beard. “I wanted to talk to you about that. An officer by the name of Captain Tanner was here this morning and said he had word of your folks. Seemed like he had details about your history that nobody else did, and I thought if you were familiar with him, we might be able to bend some rules and get him in here. None of the others, though. You’re too fragile, and I’m still of half a mind to have that moron I ran out of here reprimanded.”

  So Blotter was telling the truth. Tanner really wants to see me.

  He adds, “Is that okay for you, Miss Mathers? I can certainly have him turned away tomorrow. I didn’t want yet another visitor in here without your permission, but I also figured you’d like to hear some good news.”

  My spirits lift a little. “He says it’s good?”

  “Assured me it was.”

  Dr. Walsh doesn’t know that Tanner has something else planned.

  I don’t know how many times I’ve sworn to myself that I should’ve put an arrow through that man’s heart weeks and weeks ago, yet I have this unrelenting urge to know why he wanted Blotter and Chalmers to track and capture me.

  Was it to deliver me to Crake himself and get the glory? What news does he have of my parents? And why was Blotter—who actually seems like a decent man—so insistent on me listening to what Tanner has to say?

  I tell Dr. Walsh, “Yeah, it’s fine, but…”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you maybe have a guard posted outside the door while he’s here?”

  “Of course. May I ask why?”

  “He may have some familiar details about my life, but we’ve been on the opposite side of a few battles, doctor.”

  Dr. Walsh frowns and sighs. “So it goes. You’ll be safe in here.”

  I wish I was as confident as he seems.

  17

  The next morning, I wake up to the sound of booming thunder, and somewhere up in the heavens, another angel is screaming with a broken back. Rain pounds the windows and lightning flashes frequently enough to keep the entire countryside illuminated. It’s almost as if the sun is shining in streaks of pinks, blues, and yellows. Captain Tanner of the Democratic Alliance of Virginia is supposed to visit me today, and I wonder if the raging storm outside is yet another omen.

  It stormed like this early in the morning of Finn’s betrayal. The memories remain raw and always will. For as long as I live, which may not be much longer, whenever I see a streak of lightning or hear a clap of thunder, I’ll think of broken angels and Finn’s broken promises.

  Minutes later, a nurse—not the one from my dream—enters with a smile, carrying a tray of food that I don’t want. Eggs, bacon, toast, and something called strawberry gelatin. I’ve never seen this wobbly goo before, but she insists that I’ll love it if I try it. I scoop up one of the blocks and watch it wiggle on my spoon.

  “You’ve never had this before? Seriously?”

  “I’m from the PRV…uh…”

  “Lilly.”

  “Lilly, the last thing I ate before your soldiers invaded my encampment and killed everyone was an undercooked frog. So, no, I’ve never had gelatin.”

  She’s young, maybe only a few years older than I am, and appears easily excitable. She ignores my jab about the DAV army destroying my village. “Try it,” she insists, beaming. When I hesitate, she adds, “Trust me, out of all the crap we serve here, this is the only thing that tastes like it’s supposed to.”

  “Okay. Fine.” If it’ll shut you up.

  I put the squirming mess into my mouth and it immediately begins to melt in a sweet blob of flavor dancing all over my tongue. I can’t hide my smile.

  “You like it?”

  “That’s amazing.” I shovel in another spoonful.

  She grins and claps. “See? I told you. I can sneak some more in if you want.”

  “Please do.” I’ve been wary about talking to anyone—at least while I’ve been awake and conscious enough to know someone was in here—but Lilly seems nice and naïve enough to ask a couple of questions. Still, I want to be careful about what I say. “Hey, so, I’ve been trying to remember everyone’s name. There’s a nurse that wears a purple uniform. She’s a little taller than you with long hair in a ponytail. Looks maybe like she used to get a lot of sun, you know, back before the rains came. Oh, and a scar under her left eye, like right along the cheekbone. What’s she called?”

  I remembered at some point that the nurse Finn talked about in his dreams wore a pink uniform, but the image of the woman in my dreams remains the same.

  Nurse Lilly cocks her head to the side and gives me a quizzical look, the same way the stray puppies in the encampment used to do, and pretends to frown. “I’m not sure. She doesn’t sound familiar.”

  I don’t know how else to describe the woman I’ve seen in my mind so many times. I don’t know anything else about her, and obviously I can’t tell Nurse Lilly that this woman has access to a blue liquid that’ll make me a Kinder again. “Are you sure? I’ve seen her in here a bunch.”

  Nurse Lilly shakes her head and clasps her fingers at her belly. “Not that I know of. I’ve been here five years. Never seen a nurse with a scar under her eye.”

  My first thought is, she’s old enough to have been her
e five years? And the second is—then who is supposed to give me the shot?

  Or, is it nothing but a stupid dream, and I’m really and truly destined for life as a citizen-slave of the DAV?

  Nurse Lilly feels my forehead. “You feel okay, and Dr. Walsh says you’re definitely on the mend, so I’d say no hallucinations. Maybe it’s just the medicine you’ve been on? Half in and half out of your dreams? That’d be my guess.”

  Half in and half out of my dreams sounds like the last couple of months, starting the moment I heard those godforsaken drums. More like half in and half out of my nightmares.

  “Yeah, maybe.” I scoop up the last of my strawberry gelatin and ask if she wouldn’t mind getting me some more right away. It’s a letdown that Dream Nurse doesn’t exist, and I want to be alone.

  Nurse Lilly is way too excited that I have an appetite and practically skips out of the room.

  The next clap of thunder is so loud I can see the windows vibrating. I only woke up twenty minutes ago, but if I can sleep through such noise, maybe I’ll dream of the nurse again. I’ll try harder to remember more details this time. It’s possible that I’m describing her wrong or picturing her incorrectly. I’ll look closely for a nametag, too, just in case.

  No sooner than my eyes close, I hear a knock on the door and expect it to be Nurse Lilly back with more gelatin. Instead, the man at the door manages to send cold shivers down my back and spark a burning fire in my belly at the same time.

  “Mathers,” says Captain Tanner.

  “Tanner.”

  “Captain Tanner.”

  I subtly shake my head. “Nope. In here, you’re Tanner. My room, my rules.”

  He smirks and holds his arms behind his back, chin up and chest out like a good soldier. He’s wearing a shiny new uniform that shows no signs of wear and tear. The seams are crisp and tight. His medals gleam over his left breast. He’s ready for display, not battle. “Trying to claim dominion on foreign soil, Mathers? How very brave of you. Then again, you’re one of the bravest fools I’ve ever met, so I’m not surprised.”

  “I guess that’s a compliment?”

  “Take it for what you will.”

  “Why’re you here, Tanner?” I ask, as he approaches agonizingly slowly.

  He surveys the room as if he’s taking stock of it, trying to decide whether my quarters meet his officer’s standards. “Do you remember the first time we met, Mathers?”

  I glare at him. “That’s a stupid question.”

  “Perhaps. We talked about death before dishonor. And God, among other things.”

  “I remember telling you that leaving me alive would be the last stupid mistake you’d make.”

  He lifts his chin higher. “Yes, yes. Probably the wisest words you’ve ever spoken.” He pulls up a nearby chair—hard metal painted brown—and asks if I would allow him to sit.

  I don’t answer. He does anyway.

  “Dr. Walsh said you knew something about my parents.”

  Tanner crosses his legs and holds his knee with both hands. He nods. “They’re fine. Alive and safely secured.”

  “And?”

  “And what? That’s not enough?”

  “Where are they? What’re they doing? Are they sick? Did they get hurt on the march?”

  “These are details I’m not privy to, I’m afraid. I inquired about their status, thinking I might be able to offer you a slight measure of comfort, and that’s all I was told.” He reaches into a jacket pocket and removes a folded slip of paper. “I quote, ‘Captain Tanner, as to your inquiry. Stop. Mathers One and Mathers Two alive. Stop. They will be remanded to work detail. Stop.’”

  “Stop?”

  “Message delivery nonsense. It’s in there, so I can’t help but read it. Old habit of mine.” He crumbles the slip of paper into a ball and tosses it into the trashcan beside my bed. I want to ask him if I can have it, because it may be the last proof I have that my parents made it here alive. It could be the last thing I’ll ever know about them. However, begging him for a scrap of paper is a sign of weakness, and I refuse to grant him that.

  Stay strong. Get it when he leaves.

  “You didn’t come here to tell me that, Tanner. Why are you being…nice to me?”

  “Oh, well, now I wouldn’t say nice, specifically, but let’s just say that I’ve come to understand a few things.”

  “Like what a bastard you are?”

  My words have no effect. His face remains flat and calm. “For starters, I asked if you’d remembered our first conversation because we also talked about the Bible. Do you recall that?”

  Like I could ever forget. That day, that moment, those seconds are burned into my mind like I lived it minutes ago. I say, “And the meek shall inherit the earth. You told me it was a bunch of nonsense.”

  Tanner lets that float out there for a good, long while before he says, “I’m still not wrong about that, but my views on the matter may have shifted slightly, and here’s why: Mathers, you have to understand something. I don’t know how things went down there in your little huts made out of twigs and dreams, but up here, we’re born into the military. We eat, sleep, think, and shit military. There are no other options. We train until our service reaches a transition point at our eighteenth birthdays. By then, every single one of us can be called a child of war. We know how to fight from the moment we can hold a knife in our grubby little paws, still sticky with that morning’s breast milk. At eighteen, then and only then, are we given the option to choose our destinies. We head into public service or we remain in the military. A or B. One or two.

  “We’re taught discipline and order. We’re efficient machines whether we’ve got a rifle to our shoulder or we’re stirring a pot of soup at a restaurant. It’s a little droll, really, being so regimented. Sure, we have wants for unnecessary things, and we indulge that on occasion, but the fact remains that we’re rather boring with our rules and obedience. We’re trapped in a prison without walls.”

  I know a similar feeling, yet I keep my mouth shut. I let him talk. I don’t know why. Could be because I’m not going anywhere. Could be because I feel like he’s getting at something important.

  “My point is, we live our lives for the sole purpose of prosperity and succeeding at whatever we do. Up until I met you I’d never been defeated on a mission.”

  “What do you mean defeated? The DAV isn’t at war with anyone else and hasn’t been for decades.”

  Tanner scoffs. Some of the flying spittle catches on his beard and glistens underneath the bright bulbs. “And what does a PRV urchin know of DAV movements?”

  “But Finn said—”

  “Finn, Finn, Finn. We’ll get to that monster in a moment.”

  Monster?

  “For now,” he continues, “let me finish. As to your question, yes, we’ve had territorial disputes and minor hostage situations, special forces entering Pennsylvania and Maryland—other clandestine operations that are too top secret to discuss. However, and, as I was saying, I was always successful. Then you came along, and no matter how much it wasn’t your intent, you showed me something, Mathers.”

  He waits for me to ask, and I oblige once I can no longer stand the relentless beeping of the machines above my head. “What’s that?”

  “You showed me what it’s like to be on the other side. I’ve never been more humiliated in all my life, being led around by your heathens like I’m a farm animal with a ring in its nose, having someone drag me from one spot to another. I hated it. I hated every second of it.”

  He’s calm, not showing any signs of anger, which is odd. For a few seconds I was quite positive that he was here to tell me all this and kill me in my hospital bed.

  I ask him, “How did you get away? Weren’t you supposed to have an accident in prison?”

  “I had a number of accidents. Scars you can’t see. Broken bones barely healed. This right here.” He points to a scar underneath his left eye; it’s a thin white line across the cheekbone. It looks famili
ar. “But, in the end, some of the PRV men who were so happy to have a blackcoat officer under their boot heels were also Larson loyalists, and they thought they might get a nice reward if they handed me over. I’m afraid the story is too long to share every detail, but, in short, those men didn’t make it, and I got shuffled in with the rest of your lot.”

  “Did your men think you were one of us?”

  “They had us cordoned off into manageable groups, and none of the DAV guards knew who I was. You try convincing an eighteen-year-old child with a lust for war that you outrank him by four decades, especially when you’re wearing a prison uniform from the PRV. I might as well have been trying to convince the sky that it’s pink.”

  His next statement is so unexpected, I’m positive I’m dreaming.

  18

  “I saw unacceptable things, even for my wizened, crotchety old beliefs, and…I’m here to help you. At least a little.”

  “You what?” I can’t stop myself. I’m flinging my body upright before I can think about the consequences.

  Tanner stands up from his chair and moves to the window, staring outside as lightning flashes, illuminating the wrinkles around his eyes. I can only see half of his face, but I can tell he’s tired.

  “I’m not a traitor, Mathers. At least I don’t consider myself to be. However, in the eyes of my government, I could easily face a firing squad, or a more pedestrian method of execution like hanging.”

  “But—but why? How?”

  Lightning flickers and the rumbling thunder sounds more distant. The storm is moving on, but it doesn’t change the cloud of discomfort hanging over Tanner’s face.

  “Eventually, I gave up trying to convince these young bucks that I was a commanding officer in my own army. I figured we were on our way back here, I could wait until we got home before I tried convincing someone else in charge who I was. These kids weren’t going to listen to some old fool in a ragged prison uniform, and I was dangerously close to getting a bullet in the heart. That first night, this little bugger named Pollard had his sidearm jammed on the bridge of my nose with the hammer cocked, Mathers. I’m lucky his finger wasn’t twitchy.