by Mark Kelly
“Come on sleepy-head, let’s go meet the people in the garden,” Saanvi said with a smile. The hours she had spent outside had turned her already brown skin the color of roasted coffee beans. She wore a pair of cut-off jeans and a faded t-shirt. She looked happy and carefree.
“You go ahead,” Emma said, suddenly feeling sad. She wiped away the tiny tear that formed in the corner of her eye.
“Are you all right?”
“Just have something in my eye,” she said, pretending to swipe at the non-existent dirt. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Saanvi gave her a worried smile. “Okay, but don’t be too long. Lucia said we should pick the beans before it gets too hot.”
Just hearing Lucia’s name was enough to make Emma forget about Gong. It was Lucia’s garden. She had made them start on it right after they arrived at the farmhouse. Everyone said they would die without the food it produced, but Emma detested it. It wasn’t a garden; it was a torture chamber.
She watched Saanvi disappear around the corner of the house. With a sigh, Emma climbed to her feet and followed after her. When she caught up, the younger girl was already in the garden, talking to their visitors.
“This is Samantha and Callie,” Saanvi said, bouncing on her toes with excitement. “They’re from Toronto.”
Emma didn’t even have time to say hello before Callie spoke. “How come you don’t wear a mask? None of you do.” Her eyes narrowed as she studied them.
“Callie!”
“Well, they don’t,” Callie said, crossing her arms and pouting at her mother.
Emma and Saanvi shared a look. Shortly after arriving at the farmhouse, Mei and Professor Simmons had immunized them in the same way they had cured Kateri. But they had been warned not to talk about it, or how they arrived in Canada, or even who they were.
Unable to think of an answer, Emma paused and then said, “We don’t wear them around the farm because we’re kind of like a family and nobody is sick.”
“But we’re not family,” Callie said, staring at Emma. She put an insolent hand on her hip and added, “And we might be sick. Aren’t you afraid?”
What a brat, Emma thought. I should tell her to mind her own business. Instead, she said, “Well, you don’t look sick, and what are you doing in the garden, anyway?”
“Working—just like you should be,” Lucia said from behind her. She handed each of their visitors a trowel.
The girl’s mother took the gardening tool. “Lucia was kind enough to give us a chance to work for food.”
Lucia, kind? Not in a million years, Emma thought. She laughed out loud at the ridiculous statement and blurted, “Most likely you’re just her slave labor.”
The expression on Lucia’s face could have turned the sun cold. She glared at Emma. “Why don’t you keep quiet when you don’t know what you are talking about. Go and be useful for a change. Take Saanvi and pick the beans.”
Saanvi tugged on Emma’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get started.”
Angry at herself and the world, Emma stomped away, following after Saanvi. Soon, she and Saanvi were making their way down one row after another, pinching the beans free from the plants with the tips of their thumbs and forefingers. The work was arduous and the temperature hot. By mid-morning, it was ninety degrees in the shade.
“I thought Canada was supposed to be cold,” Emma said, sweat dripping down her forehead onto the bridge of her nose. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and cursed.
Saanvi laughed. “It’s quite hot, but this is nothing compared to India. And Mei says it will get very cold here in the winter. She said it will go below zero. Can you imagine that?”
Emma shook her head. It never got that cold in Washington.
“Jeez—What is it with these things?” she said, swatting at the swarm of little black flies hovering around her. “They’re in my eyes and nose. Yuck…I think I swallowed one.”
“Lunch!” Lucia called from the back porch.
Saanvi giggled. “Tell her you’ve already eaten.”
Emma scowled and shot a withering glance at Lucia who waved impatiently at them.
“I hate her.”
“She’s not that bad.”
“She’s a witch,” Emma hissed as she climbed to her feet with a bucket of beans in each hand. She curtsied towards the spot where Lucia had stood a second earlier and said, “Yes, your Royal Highness, we’re coming.”
“Come on,” she grumbled to Saanvi, “Let’s go and eat. If we’re lucky, maybe she’ll give us water with our gruel.”
They took a couple of steps before Emma remembered their visitors, who were on their knees at the back of the garden weeding.
“Hey,” Emma yelled to them. “Do you want to come and get something to eat?”
“Thank you, but we’ll finish up first,” Samantha replied.
“They’ve been out here all morning,” Saanvi said, elbowing Emma. “They should take a break. It’s not fair they keep working while we’re eating.”
Samantha looked up and smiled. “Thanks, but we’re okay. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Emma placed the beans she and Saanvi had picked in the shade by the back porch. A portion of their bounty would be eaten at dinner, but most would be canned and added to the stockpile of food being saved up for the winter. As they entered the house, Lucia exited with a jug of water.
“At least they won’t die of thirst,” Emma muttered under her breath.
Mei and Professor Simmons sat at the ancient kitchen table, a wooden behemoth made of oak planks held together with pegs and square nails. Its surface was marked with burns and water stains from decades of use.
“Wash up and come eat,” Mei said. She gave them a half-smile. Her jet black hair was pulled back in a ponytail. A few wisps had escaped and hung down over her cheeks framing the dark circles under her eyes.
She always looks worried, Emma thought.
Since their arrival at the farmhouse, Mei had taken on the role of country doctor for the people in the surrounding area. Her very first patient had been the mayor’s son, Brandon, a nineteen-year-old infected with the pandemic bacteria. Mei had secretly treated him, and his subsequent recovery along with her doctoring skills were the only reason they had been allowed to stay in town.
“Mmmm…another fine meal in paradise,” Emma said sarcastically as she and Saanvi sat at the table.
Lunch was the same as yesterday and the day before. It never changed: eggs and occasionally jerky or ham from a local farmer, bread they baked every couple of days in the gigantic wood stove, and a glass of powdered milk to wash it all down. The milk was all that remained of the supplies Michael Otetiani had given them after he helped them across the border into Canada.
Emma stared at the half-full glass in front of her. With its light beige tinge and tiny lumps of undissolved powder, the milk was the most disgusting thing she had ever seen. She closed her eyes and gulped it down as the screen door squeaked and then banged shut.
“Did she tell you anything?” Mei asked.
Emma looked over her shoulder to see Lucia shaking her head.
“Tell you what?” Emma asked.
When Lucia ignored her, Emma turned to Professor Simmons and Mei.
“What’s going on?”
“Lucia thinks Samantha and Callie are in trouble.”
“In trouble—how?”
Mei brushed a stray strand of hair off her face. “We don’t know.”
“We will feed them as I promised and then send them on their way,” Lucia replied.
Emma swiveled in her seat. “You can’t do that. They’ll die.”
“Emma, you know we don’t have a choice,” Simmons said in a low voice. “We barely have enough food for ourselves.”
It wasn’t fair. People had helped them when they needed help and they should do the same.
“Can someone in town help them?”
Silence was the only answer she got. The discussion was finished.
>
“Speaking of town,” Simmons said, changing the subject. “I was planning a trip to Wilson’s store tomorrow, but I’ll do it today instead. Do you two want to come with me?”
Emma nodded half-heartedly. She didn’t want to be around the house when Lucia sent Samantha and Callie away.
“Go get ready. We’ll leave in a few minutes.”
“Do you want to say goodbye first?” Mei asked.
Emma looked away and shook her head. She jumped up from her chair and ran to the stairs as she began to cry. Damn it, that’s twice today. What’s wrong with me?
3
Taking a trip
Simmons glanced at the pickup’s gas gauge and frowned. There was a little over a quarter tank. At the most, they would have enough fuel for two more trips to town.
They used the truck sparingly, and if it weren’t required to carry the lumber they needed to build a chicken coop and the baby chicks to go in it, he and the girls would have taken their bicycles to town like they normally did.
“What’s wrong, Professor Simmons,” Saanvi asked. “Do we have enough petrol?”
He smiled at the word petrol. After three months together, he was used to her accent, but every once in a while, a word popped out of her mouth that reminded him she was special in more ways than one.
Stuck in Canada, thousands of miles away from her home, the British teenager was the only person known to have natural immunity to the pandemic bacteria, and he spent every waking moment thinking about ways to transfer her immunity to others on a larger scale.
“Professor Simmons?” she asked again. “Is everything all right?”
“Not really,” he replied truthfully. “We have enough gas for this trip and one more if we’re lucky.”
They didn’t just need gasoline for the truck; they needed it to generate electricity. Without electrical power, he was helpless in his efforts to develop a cure. It was virtually impossible to solve a twenty-first-century problem in an eighteenth-century world; a world with no computers, research labs, not even textbooks. It couldn’t be done, and he was slowly coming to the realization he would have to leave Douglas to accomplish anything meaningful.
He steered the truck to the far right as they approached a chestnut quarter horse trotting down the side of the road.
Saanvi was the first to recognize the horse’s rider. “Oh, Emma…guess who is up ahead?”
Emma perked up and craned her head forward. “Is that Brandon?”
“It sure is,” Saanvi said with a giggle.
“Slow down, Professor Simmons,” Emma cried out as she leaned over and reached for the control to lower the window. Unable to get to it fast enough, she poked Saanvi in the arm. “Geez, come on, would you help. Roll the window down!”
Simmons decided to have some fun at Emma’s expense. He elbowed Saanvi and batted his eyelashes as he spoke in a falsetto voice. “Hi, Brandon. How are you today?”
Saanvi giggled even harder as she played along. “Hi, Emma. I’m well thank you. You look very pretty today, almost like a movie star.”
Emma glared at them both. “Shut up, you two. I swear if you embarrass me, I’ll kill you.” She pushed Saanvi out of the way and reached across Simmons to jab at the power window control.
“Hi Brandon!” she shouted out the window causing the horse to rear up on its hind legs. Brandon pulled on the reins and fought to bring the animal back under control.
“Whoa girl…”
He looked over and gave them a wave as the horse settled down. “She’s not good around cars.”
Or screaming girls, Simmons thought.
“Are you going into town?” Emma asked.
“Yep.”
“Us too, see you there?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, bye.”
The enthralling conversation finished, Simmons eased the truck past the skittish animal. He glanced at Saanvi out of the corner of his eye and caught her smiling. “Shh…” he said as he ran his finger across his lips in a zipping motion.
“That’s right,” Emma said, angrily crossing her arms. “You both need to shut up.”
Thirty minutes later, they drove into Douglas. The small village sat at the intersection of two rural roads and boasted a handful of houses, a farm supply store, and a well-protected gas station.
When the pandemic struck, Brandon’s father, a widower and the de facto mayor, took control of the gas station, protecting its limited store of fuel from looters. He doled out gasoline and diesel on an as-needed basis, most of it going to the local farmers who needed it for their tractors. What little fuel Simmons and the group received was in payment for Mei’s services as the town’s doctor, but it wouldn’t be long—another month or two at the most, before the station’s tanks were empty.
Simmons brought the truck to a stop across the street from the store.
“Masks,” he said, reminding the two girls they weren’t at home. Useless or not, not wearing a mask in public was bad etiquette and in some places, it could get you shot. Saanvi and Emma pulled the surgical masks dangling from their necks over their mouths and crossed the street.
A dozen feet from the store’s front door, a horse was tied to a bicycle rack. A wooden hay wagon filled with freshly picked corn sat behind the horse. At the sound of their footsteps, the animal raised its head from the bucket it was drinking from. Water dripped from its mouth as it gazed at them. Emma reached out and stroked the horse’s nose. It nuzzled her hand with its mouth and she smiled.
“She thinks I have a treat for her.”
“How do you know it’s a girl?” Saanvi asked from a safe distance.
Emma squatted and motioned towards the horse’s rear. “There’s nothing there. It’s either a mare or a gelding.”
From the expression on her face, it was clear Saanvi had no idea what Emma was talking about. “What’s a gelding?”
Emma made a cutting motion with her fingers. “You know…snip-snip and the boy-parts are gone.”
“Oh…that must hurt,” Saanvi said, wide-eyed.
Simmons grimaced and shook his head. “I sure as hell wouldn’t want it done to me. Come on you two, let’s go.”
Emma gave the horse one final pat on the nose. It slurped at her hand and she wiped the gob of drool on her pants. Saanvi wrinkled her face in disgust. “Yuck, that’s gross.”
The inside of the store was dim and what little light there was shone through a pair of windows on either side of the door. The shelves in the store were gone and in their place, a handful of wooden pallets stacked with burlap bags of grain and animal feed sat in the center of the room. Everything else was behind the long counter.
A man, probably the owner of the horse and wagon, stood at the counter talking to the shopkeeper, Bill Wilson.
Wilson’s son, a young boy, around eleven or twelve years old, appeared from a back room. Simmons walked over to him.
“Can I help you?” the boy asked.
“I’m looking for chicks,” Simmons said. “Dr. Ling heard you might have some this week.”
The boy nodded. “They just came in. I’ll get them.” He disappeared into the back room, returning a minute later with a cardboard box that he placed on the floor behind the counter.
Wilson, the shopkeeper, glanced briefly at them. Then he turned his attention back to the farmer who he handed two silver coins to and said, “Billy will help you unload the corn. Bring the wagon around back.”
When the farmer had left, Wilson walked over to where Simmons and the girls stood. He looked down at the cardboard box his son had left. “Need anything else?”
Simmons shook his head. “Just the chicks.”
“How many?”
“A dozen.”
“How are you paying? Silver or trade?”
“Trade,” Simmons answered. “I’ve got one hundred rounds of .22 and a bottle of water purification tablets.”
Wilson shot him a disparaging look. “Don’t have much call for the tablets and .2
2 ammo isn’t good for anything but groundhogs and squirrels—got anything else?”
He’s just negotiating, Simmons thought. He’d learned that lesson the hard way during his first few visits to the store. But two could play that game.
“Before we talk price, can I see the chicks? I want to make sure they’re healthy?”
“Course they’re healthy,” Wilson said in a manner that suggested anything else was unthinkable. He lifted the box up and placed it on the counter. Then he glanced inside and raised an eyebrow.
“Are you sure you want a dozen Broilers?”
“Broilers? Are there different kinds of chickens?” Simmons asked, surprised.
Wilson stared at him like he was an idiot. “Course there’s different kinds. Depends on whether you want them for eggs or meat. These are Broilers. You’ll be able to eat them in about two months, but if it’s eggs you want, you need Leghorns.” The shopkeeper disappeared into the back room, returning with a second box. “These are the Leghorns. They’ll start laying in about four months. What kind do you want?”
Simmons had no idea. All Lucia had told him was to bring back a dozen chicks. She didn’t say anything about what kind. “I’ll take six of each,” he said, thinking in the worst-case scenario he’d only be half-wrong.
Saanvi smiled when she saw the baby chicks covered in their creamy-white down. They chirped as they pecked around in the straw looking for food. She reached into the nearest box.
“Touch ‘em and they’re yours,” Wilson grumbled at her.
“Sorry,” she said, jerking her hand back.
“I just don’t want them catching something and getting sick.”
Simmons kept his mouth closed, but it was much more likely the other way around. Chickens were notorious carriers of salmonella.
“Do you mean sick like that one?” Saanvi asked the shopkeeper. She pointed at a motionless chick and leaned in closer to study it. “Is something wrong with it, or is it just sleeping?”
Wilson grabbed the dead chick and quickly dropped it into a garbage pail behind the counter. “Nothing to be worried about. Some of them don’t survive, but the rest are good.”
