Botanicaust

by Linsey, Tam

  Copyright 2012 Tam Linsey

  Cover art by Tam Linsey

  Visit the author’s website

  All rights reserved. Published by Tam Linsey.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or borrow it through an approved lending agency such as a library, then please purchase your own copy, available from many online retailers. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

  Digital Version

  ISBN: 978-0-9859013-2-5

  Story Navigation Prologue

  Conversion Laboratory

  Blattvolk Prison

  The Reaches

  Fosselite Mountain

  The Amarantox Plains

  The Holdout

  The Garden

  Afterward

  Secret Page

  Glossary

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Amarantox Plains “Run!”

  The girl didn’t know much of the Cannibal language, but she understood that word.

  In the sky, a strange flying machine had appeared, its curved, metal belly glinting in the desert sun. Twigs of desiccated bushes trembled as the near-silent thing descended, and dust swept into the girl’s eyes and filled her nostrils. The woman gripping her hand lurched into a run, jerking the child off her feet and dragging her a few steps before abandoning her.

  The girl twisted to squint at the sky. A cone of flame erupted from the machine and pounded the parched ground a few steps away, engulfing shrubs and people alike. Screams, worse than when Brother Eli was butchered, cut through the fiery roar.

  As the familiar scent of burning flesh filled the air, the girl’s stomach cramped; she’d eaten to survive, but the smell made her want to cry. Hot embers settled around her, singeing her skin. She pressed her hands together like Mama used to.

  “Jesus loves me, this I know …” The song scratched from her throat, as dry as the dust she knelt upon, tears cooling her heated cheeks.

  Blackened cannibals lay scattered across the cracked earth, either screaming in pain, or silent in death.

  The stream of fire eased as the bird settled to the scorched soil. Several figures emerged from inside the belly of the beast.

  “Little ones to Him belong …”

  They moved toward her.

  Angels?

  They had come from the sky. But these men were green, not cream or tan like her or the cannibals. A hazy sunlit halo surrounded the nearest man’s face. When he held out his hand to her, she thought of her last meal with the fingernail still clinging to the charred flesh.

  She took his hand without hesitation.

  Conversion Laboratory Haldanian Protectorate

  One of the insipid overhead bulbs in the Confinement Lab had developed a mild flicker, not strong enough to demand replacement, but enough to bring on the beginnings of a headache. The smell of antiseptic and the sweat of the frightened boy strapped to the lab table didn’t help matters. Tula checked the monitor for the third time. The boy’s blood pressure spiked above one-eighty. Not ideal, but within tolerances.

  “Okay, Jo Boy. You good. Good.” She looked into his frantic eyes and willed him to be calm. Preparing captives for the experience of conversion was next to impossible because the Cannibal dialects were too simple and straightforward. But Jo Boy was a quick learner, and she’d spent the last ten days building his trust.

  Tula pulled a piece of candy from her sheer lab coat pocket, an expensive treat, but one of the best motivators when it came to teaching new converts. “Is it okay?” she asked the gene tech.

  He nodded his permission and bent over the screens, his bare, green skin stretching tightly over each vertebrae.

  The equally naked adolescent on the table jerked against his restraints as the IV dripped conversion fluid into his veins. “Ow, ow, ow.”

  “I know, it hurts.” She spoke in Cannibal. Time enough for him to learn Haldanian during Integration.

  She placed her palm on his shaven head, looking for the telltale hint of yellow in his skin signifying the chloroplasts were taking hold. The jade tint of her own hand would have been vibrant if not for the sickly florescent lighting down in Confinement. She spent far too much time down here.

  “Like tattoos. You will be strong.” The only way to convince cannibals to accept conversion was to give them a choice in terms they understood. Strength. Survival. After Integration they would understand how they were making the world better.

  Jo Boy flailed against his bonds, a high-pitched squeal rising from his throat. Tula cringed, remembering her own conversion and the burn of the genetic cocktail coursing through her cells — worse than any sunburn.

  Showing him the candy, she asked, “Be still?”

  He quieted a little as she pressed the sweet into his mouth.

  A voice boomed from the door, “Sure it won’t bite?”

  Tula jumped, but didn’t turn to look at her supervisor. She could picture the scowl on his sickly green face. Had she ever seen Vitus smile?

  Vitus marched into the room and leaned over the terrified boy. “Dr. Macoby, this one has not been cleared for conversion.”

  Her attention darted to the electronic gamma pad next to the tech’s computer before looking up at her glowering supervisor. Copper strands around his neck matched beaded hoops dangling from his ears, but the adornments failed to disguise his yellowing skin. Must be due for another treatment. She didn’t dare say it out loud. Vitus was full Haldanian, born and bred, but to his shame, suffered from a medical condition called ripening. Every few weeks he underwent gene therapy to fortify his chloroplasts.

  In spite of Vitus’s looming, Tula kept her voice firm. “The Board approved his conversion this morning.”

  “Where’s the Telomerase Acquisition form?” Vitus crossed his arms. “And he seems a bit old. Did you get a Verification of Consent?”

  “He’s in the early stages of puberty, but still a child by Ordinance three-one-seven. No need for consent.” Barely. Tula had rushed Jo Boy’s conversion because getting Verification of Consent from an adult within the time allotted was nearly impossible. And non-converted prisoners were euthanized. “I have the telomerase form on my gamma pad.”

  Vitus snorted. “I’m sure he considers himself quite grown up. These mongrels breed at the first sign of a pubic hair.” He rearranged his necklaces over his own hairless chest and peered at the quaking Jo Boy. “If I don’t have the proper forms on my desk, the conversion stops. Now.”

  The tech jumped to his feet. “Sir —”

  Tula stood as well, shouldering herself between Vitus and the boy. “Don’t be an idiot, Vitus. Stopping the procedure now would kill him and waste the resources we’ve already put into him.”

  “You’ve put into him. Without permission. And I still think he needs a Verification of Consent.”

  “The Board doesn’t agree.”

  “The Board know how old he is?”

  This was an old argument. Tula retrieved her gamma pad. “He doesn’t even know how old he is. I thought our mission was to bring enlightenment to the Outside. To make the world safe again.”

  Vitus shrugged, his earrings swaying. His gaze lowered to her wrist where a shiny patch of pink scar tissue over most of her right forearm had not taken the chloroplasts during her childhood conversion. “You can’t trust a convert.”

  Tula’
s face burned. The scar served as a constant reminder of her outsider roots. By force of will, she met his eyes. “You look like you could use a little therapy yourself, sir. Jo Boy should be done in another forty minutes, if you want to come back.”

  An angry flush obliterated the remaining green in Vitus’s skin. The tech covered his jolt of laughter with a cough and turned to his computer. No one liked Vitus, and it didn’t help that he thought he was too good to allow his own Conversion Team to oversee his treatments. “I want to see that paperwork before you go home today.” He pivoted on his heel and stalked from the room in a jangle of copper beads.

  Old Order Holdout

  Amarantox Plains

  Levi stuffed his rain poncho into a sturdy leather rucksack resting on the foot of his bed, avoiding his brother-in-law’s eyes. Above his beard, Samuel’s solemn face was ruddy from working the fields, but Levi knew him well enough to detect a flush of controlled anger. “Brother Levi, you cannot go against the Ordnung.”

  Levi continued packing. “I accepted Gotte’s Wille when the cannibals carried off Papa Lapp. And found peace in my son when the Lord took Sarah from me. But I will not accept the death of my little boy when there’s a chance to cure him. You were by my side when my brothers died. When Sarah let out her last breath—” He forced himself to breathe deeply, suck back the grief. “Surely, you would not see Josef suffer so.”

  Samuel’s single-minded focus didn’t waver, even at the reminder of his sister’s death. “The Elders forbade it. You’ll be shunned.”

  “Then shun me.” Levi pushed past to retrieve his shaving kit. Samuel always asserted the Elders’ decrees came straight from God. “Too many children die before they reach Rumspringa. If it’s Gotte’s Wille that they die, let Him stop me. But don’t you try.”

  “Brother Levi, you know no one will lay a hand to stop you.”

  Levi stared past Samuel at the quilt Sarah had made while pregnant with Josef. It was true. The Old Order did not believe in violence of any sort, even in the dry years, when cannibals broke past the electric fences and carried off those who didn’t make it to the underground passages.

  Samuel continued. “This silly intuition of yours isn’t a call from God. It’s a selfish excuse to do as you wish. Leaving here, you risk falling to the cannibals. Or worse yet, the atrocities of the Blattvolk. Would you leave your son an orphan?”

  The Blattvolk. Genetic abominations who hunted humans to drag them into Hell. “The green people are far to the south. I shouldn’t run into them at all. I’ll be back by harvest.” Levi shrugged with feigned nonchalance and looked Samuel in the eye. “And if it means saving my son, then I’m willing to risk my place in Heaven.”

  Samuel gasped at the blasphemy and stiffly turned away. Levi clenched his jaw and went back to packing. After all their years as friends, Samuel should be used to his irreverence. But his long-time friend’s mind remained as closed as the Holdout’s gate.

  Levi pulled his notebook from the rucksack to make room for the shaving kit, and hesitated. Only a few blank sheets remained, but the rest of the pages were covered with sketched memories of Sarah and the past four years with Josef. He was already breaking the Ordnung by leaving the village and venturing into the world in search of a forbidden miracle. Foregoing shaving would be the least of his law breaking. He put the kit to one side and secured the strap over the notebook.

  “Won’t you at least wait until tomorrow?” Samuel didn’t turn around to ask.

  Settling his wide brimmed straw hat in place, Levi stood beside his friend. The street outside the window was dead, everyone already inside for supper. He held out a hand to shake. “I’ve already said goodbye to Josef. The new moon is tonight, and I must use the dark.”

  Samuel didn’t take his hand. “We will take care of Josef for you.”

  Levi dropped his arm. The offer was the best he could hope for. “Thank you.”

  He exited the room that he and Josef had shared in his brother-in-law’s house until the boy came down with pneumonia three weeks ago. Now, Josef was in the Ward with the other cystic fibrosis children. Beds filled with listless young bodies, malnourished and fighting for every breath. Most lived until their early twenties, but some, like Josef, became sick early in life, and from there the slope toward death grew steep. Levi meant to level that slope.

  In the front room, Samuel’s wife, Beth, left her loom to hug him goodbye in spite of her husband’s dark gaze. She pressed a fabric package into Levi’s hands. “May God be with you, Brother Levi.”

  Chest tight with gratitude, he tucked the gift beneath an arm and pushed open the light screen door to the porch. The wood frame clattered shut behind him as he descended to the street.

  A breeze lifted the evening air as the sun settled below the horizon. Word of his intent had spread quickly through the township, and now people left their supper tables to stare from windows and covered porches as he passed the weathered brick homes. Cannibal dogs, trained to kill intruders in the event of a fence breach, sensed the tension in the air, taking up a howling bark that spread across the silent village. He hoped the cannibals didn’t know what the baying chorus meant.

  He slowed as he passed the Ward. A child sang Grace, high and sweet, the piano accompaniment thrumming through an open window on the lower level. Josef would miss his nightly visit to tuck him in bed. You already said goodbye. Staring resolutely at the dusty street, Levi squared his shoulders and picked up his pace. He had to be through the gate before the perimeter lights came on.

  Only the salt trader walked without harm through the cannibal lands beyond the fence, stopping at the Holdout once a year. He claimed he paid a heavy toll of the precious mineral to the cannibals to come and go. Levi had no such leverage. He simply hoped the cover of dusk and the moonless night would allow him to safely cross the territory that roaming bands scoured for anything edible.

  After twenty minutes he reached the edge of the Holdout where a small stone outbuilding housed the gatekeeper and protected the controls for the electric fence. The generator in the methane pits kicked on, humming in preparation for perimeter lighting. High-pitched squeals echoed from the swine sheds as the animals fought over their nightly slops.

  Levi focused on the gate, designed to power on and off without lowering the charge on the rest of the fence. The only way in or out of the Holdout. The only connection to the world. The only hope for Josef.

  On the fence directly above the gate a weathered wooden sign read, The Gate is Narrow, in plain, black letters to remind those inside of their salvation. Stopping at the small stone building, he knocked and waited for Peter the Gatekeeper to answer.

  The old man took his sweet time opening the door. He’d lost both son and daughter to cannibals ages ago. “Goin’ through with it?”

  “Before the lights come on.”

  Peter put a finger over the switch box near the door. “I’ll watch you from here. Give me a hand up if the way is clear.”

  The shed was about a hundred paces from the gate, and Levi kept a sharp eye on the low greenery outside the fence, alert for any sign of hunting parties. Here and there, broad-leafed trees drooped over the landscape like umbrellas, holding their own against the waves of noxious amarantox — ideal hiding places for cannibal bands. Nothing moved in the fading light except the wind over the foliage.

  He put up a hand and waited for several heartbeats to be sure the charge was down. A shock wouldn’t be fatal, but it would put him out of commission for a few days and leave a nasty burn.

  With a tentative fingertip, he touched the metal and then freed the latch, slipping through and securing it behind him. A nearly imperceptible hum told him when the power once again flowed through the wire. His pulse roared loudly in his ears as he stepped away from the only home he’d ever known.

  Over the last four days, between the impassible thickets of tamarisk trees and the tall sea of broad-leafed amarantox, Levi saw little in the way of edible plant life. He paused in the p
ale light of dawn near a stand of bull rushes at a bend in the river. Cracked and marrow-less bones, blackened by the ash of a campfire, littered the area. At the water’s edge, the vegetation had been recently crushed, and the distinct imprint of a human foot remained in the churned mud. But the ashes were cold, and Levi was hungry. Watching the camp in both wariness and morbid fascination, he dug up a few cattail roots and fled into the chest-high amarantox. He didn’t need to be far from the camp to become completely hidden behind a screen of leaves. Hopefully, the cannibals weren’t nearby.

  Not daring a cook fire, he gnawed on a fibrous root and allowed himself a few bites of goat jerky before taking off his boots. The air on his blistered feet cooled and hurt at the same time. The best thing for blisters would be a few days free of boots, but he couldn’t afford to stop. He shouldn’t take off his boots at all, in case he had to flee, but he couldn’t bear to encase his feet in leather again.

  An hour or two of rest.

  At least he had Beth’s parting gift — a mottled goat-hair blanket that served well to camouflage him. He looked back along his trail in the burgeoning daylight and was pleased to see the path he’d cut already springing back into place in the morning breeze.

  Plucking a few wide leaves from the nearby amarantox, he arranged them over the blanket before crawling beneath. The action brought back childhood memories of hiding from his father, taking an afternoon to dream and draw instead of hand-weeding the invading amarantox from the fields. Later, he and Sarah used to slip away from prying eyes and make love beneath a blanket of camouflage, much to her father’s disapproval. The Order forbade sex out of wedlock, but many broke that ordinance. Like most of the afflicted, Sarah had been forbidden to marry. But she’d wanted a child so badly. And he’d wanted to make her happy…

  Levi grimaced away the sadness. To avoid wallowing in memories, he opened his notebook and flipped to the last page. He would record his journey by sketching. A journal to pass on to his son. But so far all he’d encountered were waves of noxious amarantox. Nothing different or exciting to draw. Not that he wanted exciting; he’d settle for a boring trip all the way to the Fosselites and a boring trip back. If only he didn’t have the blisters.