The Enoch Plague (The Enoch Pill Book 2)

by Matthew William

  “Maybe we have a job you can do in the basement,” the mayor said from behind Kizzy, staring out the window with a troubled look on her face.

  Outside, the constable pulled up in her jeep. She and Paige entered her office together.

  Kizzy followed the mayor down to the basement of the courthouse. There sat a huge labyrinth of filing cabinets. In these halls was the information on everyone in the entire country. The mayor pointed her to a monstrous stack of files that sat on a table and needed to be put away.

  “Have fun,” she said and went back upstairs.

  Kizzy took a small pile of files and wandered through the maze, finding their correct resting places. It wasn’t long before she became bored and went in search of her own file. She found it in C, right where it was supposed to be. It was surprisingly sparse. A few medical details from Dr. Fuentes explaining Kizzy’s condition, her birthday, her occupation, what would have been her graduation date had she stayed in school. Apparently that summed up her whole life. It was pathetic. Was that information all that she was? What had she actually even accomplished with her life?

  Next to her own she saw her mother’s file.

  Medea Cartwright

  Strangely enough Kizzy had never known her first name. She had always just been mom.

  Birthday: November 7, 1982.

  Occupation: Enoch bean farmer

  Whereabouts: unknown.

  Pre-Plague occupation: registered nurse

  Kizzy thought back to the picture of her mother at the hospital with the other nurses. It was a mixed blessing that the lack of sickness the Enoch Pill had brought made her occupation relatively obsolete. Kizzy continued.

  Marital Status: Married

  Spouse: Leo Cartwright

  Kizzy’s heart skipped a beat. Her mother had never told her her father’s name. She read the name again and again, as if she could gain some new information by doing so. Before that moment, all Kizzy had was the scarce information she pieced together from her mother’s stories and an old black and white photograph. He wore sunglasses and had an odd patch of hair on his upper lip. Kizzy didn’t know it was called a mustache. He remained a huge question mark in Kizzy’s mind, one that would always make some part of her feel empty.

  She thought about him in light of the information she now knew. He was the one who had sex with her mother in order to make her. The thought made Kizzy nauseous, and she put her mother’s file away.

  Since Kizzy was already in the C section, she decided to take a look at her aunt Patty’s file, her last name was Callahan. She was a farmer too. Had been an office manger Pre-Plague and was married to a man named Larry. She had a daughter named Cynthia. Kizzy stopped and read that again. That couldn’t have been right. Had she died in the plague? Kizzy looked at her date of death. It was 2033, only 15 years ago. Kizzy’s heart sank. How could she have not known about this? She dropped Patty’s file and found her cousin, Cynthia Callahan, who up until a few seconds ago Kizzy hadn’t known existed.

  Cynthia was 14 when the plague hit and had died 4 years later. She was studying to be a veterinarian and received good grades in school. She broke her collar bone while playing field hockey when she was 17. She lived with Patty until she died.

  Cause of Death: see file - The Curiosity.

  Kizzy put Cynthia’s file under her arm and searched for “The Curiosity,” but it was nowhere to be found. Immediately, Kizzy went back up to the mayor’s office, clutching Cynthia’s file close to her chest. Half afraid, half ashamed that she had been snooping. She just needed answers.

  The mayor had her back turned when Kizzy entered her office. She was staring out at the crowd that had grown bigger in the street.

  “Are you done already?” the mayor asked, when Kizzy approached.

  Kizzy laid the file on the mayor’s desk. “Who is this?”

  The mayor squinted at the name, then raised her eyebrows. “I guess you found your cousin.”

  “I never knew about her,” Kizzy said.

  The mayor nodded and went back to looking outside.

  Kizzy opened the file and pointed to the cause of death, “The Curiosity”.

  “I couldn’t find this file,” she said.

  The mayor went red and let out a sigh. “I keep that file in my desk.”

  “Why?” Kizzy asked.

  “Because it had to. To protect everyone under a certain age.”

  “From what?”

  “I can’t...” the mayor stopped. “Although, I suppose that since you know what you now know, none of this applies to you anymore.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kizzy asked.

  “Your cousin was part of a lost generation. You ever wonder why there were hardly any girls about 10-20 years older than you? They grew up with the truth of the matter about sex and the pill and they got curious about boys.

  “In truth there used to be more contact between us and the city. More than one phone line anyway. And it turned out that a few of the girls from the country and a few of the boys from the city would meet up with each other. And they did what their bodies and millions of years of evolution told them to do and they all died because of it. They got curious. And we decided that the only way to keep it from happening again was to keep the youngsters away from each other and the best way to do that was fear and ignorance. You can’t be curious about what you don’t know exists. And if you’re told that members of the opposite sex are mutated monsters that want you dead and have to be confined in a city, or in their case, that the wall was built to keep the monsters out, then you’re not so curious about meeting them. It’s because of your cousin’s generation that we changed the curriculum in the schools.”

  “That... seems wrong somehow.”

  “I agree, but honestly that’s the only way you’d survive. Girls who were too young to know about sex were kept in the dark about it. Same with boys in the city. And everyone who was old enough to remember the horror of the plague knows better. It was those in the middle that we lost most of.”

  “But couldn’t something like this happen again?” Kizzy asked. “If they knew the truth?”

  “The Enoch Pill kills most of the hormones required for that sort of thing, so much so that young kids like you don’t even seem to have the tendency.”

  Kizzy thought back to Sandy Hook. “It can’t be that simple can it?” she asked.

  “It mostly is. There are a percentage of people who are attracted to their own sex, gay is what they used to be called. There’s still some, out here and in the city. They keep to themselves more than others do and don’t like people knowing. It’s a tough way to live. Constantly afraid of feelings that might kill you. You really have to watch your thoughts. And there are kids who might have been that way under normal circumstances, but have shown no indication of leaning that way or any way at all. Sexuality has been phased out. But there hasn’t been a single death since the curiosity.”

  “But you’ve lied to so many kids.”

  “If it keeps them alive, then so be it. Life is more important than truth.”

  “It all just seems so wrong,” said Kizzy.

  “Most necessary things do,” the mayor said. “Now finish the filing please.”

  Kizzy went back down to the basement, her head spinning with all the new information; the new way of looking at her life, the stories they had told her, the wall of lies they had built around her.

  In the afternoon she went back up to the office after she had finished filing. The mayor was talking on the phone with somebody as she came up the stairs.

  “Yes, she is. No, I have her here with me.”

  Kizzy noticed that she was speaking into the bright purple telephone, the one that was just for talking with the city. It must have been Patel on the other end. Kizzy stopped halfway up the stairs and climbed back down out of sight to see if she could catch any more of the conversation.

  “I see,” the mayor said. “Is it that bad? Alright. We’ll do it that way then. Wh
en will you be here? I’ll have her ready…”

  The mayor hung up.

  Kizzy waited a few seconds, then went the rest of the way up the stairs.

  The mayor smiled. “Kizzy, I was just talking to the constable. She’ll be coming back soon.”

  Why was she lying?

  “I guess we better get the handcuffs back on you.”

  Kizzy nodded. Should she be going along with this? What wasn’t the mayor telling her? What was her plan? Kizzy went and sat by the window. The mayor approached with the cuffs, but stopped short and stared out the window with a worried look in her eyes again.

  Kizzy turned to see a mob of 100 women was standing outside on the street with Paige Palmer at the forefront.

  “I hope she’s been taking her medication,” the mayor said to herself.

  The constable came walking up the stairs and into the office. “Why aren’t her cuffs on?” she demanded.

  “You’re here early. She was helping me with the filing, you can’t expect her to do it handcuffed.”

  Without a word the constable snatched the cuffs from the mayor’s hands went to putting them on Kizzy.

  “Can you do something about that, Theresa?” the mayor asked, pointing out the window to the crowd of women down below.

  Theresa clamped the cuffs on Kizzy’s wrists and ankles. “Well, that’s actually what I’m here for. Are you going to go along with the execution or not?”

  “Not today,” the mayor said.

  The constable waived up Paige through the window. There was an audible grumble from the crowd as Paige marched towards the office. The front door opened and footsteps came stomping up the stairs.

  “Enough bullshit, mayor,” came a distressed voice. “This needs to be done today.”

  “Nice to see you too, Paige.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Things are more complicated than that.”

  “How so?”

  “She can have kids for one,” the mayor said.

  “So what?” Paige asked. “I had a kid once and Kizzy killed her.”

  “She can fix everything.”

  “Look, I don’t care about that. I just want things to be made right. And if you can’t solve that, then you are part of the problem.”

  “Just give us one more day to sort some things out,” the mayor said.

  “That’s not going to work for us,” Paige said. “We want her now.”

  “Who’s the us in this situation anyway?” the mayor asked.

  “I have all the members of the farming board. And we want to have an execution.”

  “You can’t have her,” the mayor said.

  “We’re not leaving without her.”

  “Just give us tonight to sleep on this whole thing,” the mayor said.

  “Am I being unreasonable?” Paige asked. “Because I don’t feel like I am. We have a law that clearly states that if a life is lost, the person at fault needs to pay for it.”

  “Look, I understand that you’re mourning, but don’t let that cloud your judgment.”

  “I lost my daughter!” Paige yelled. “And a price has to be paid. I didn’t write the law, I’m only the victim. You have to do your part now.”

  “I’m not doing anything illegal,” the mayor said, maintaining her cool despite being visibly shaken. “If you think I’m doing something unethical, then you can take that out on me at the next election.”

  “We can take it out on you now if you want to play it that way.”

  “Theresa, can you do something about this?” the mayor said.

  “I’m with her,” the constable said crossing her arms.

  “Have you lost your minds?” the mayor asked. “You’re talking about an execution here, of someone I don’t feel is 100% guilty. I can’t let you do this.”

  Paige grabbed Kizzy’s chains and began to pull her towards the stairs. The metal cut into Kizzy’s wrists.

  “Hold on, Paige,” said the constable, grabbing on Kizzy’s shoulder. “You’re not going to do it like this.”

  But Paige continued to drag Kizzy along. Kizzy tried to dig her feet into the floor, but Paige was stronger than she was and pulled her off balance. She tumbled forward.

  “Paige, stop,” the mayor said.

  “You can’t do this!” the constable yelled.

  But Paige heard neither of them. Kizzy looked at her face and realized she was beginning to cry as they descended the stairs.

  When they emerged from the front door of the courthouse the crowd of women cheered. Paige pulled Kizzy towards a lamppost on the edge of the street.

  “Hang her from there and we can pelt her with stones,” a woman said nonchalantly, as if this was a simple problem they were trying to solve.

  It rang in Kizzy’s ears. Her body went numb and tingly and she seemed to be watching it all happen from above. There was no choice but to go along with it.

  “Please,” Kizzy said to Paige.

  The woman turned and slapped her across the face.

  Kizzy fell down and into a puddle. Someone pushed her face down in the mud, it hurt Kizzy’s nose when it hit the pavement at the bottom. She struggled to hold her breath.

  There was a deafening blast. Was it a gun shot? Kizzy’s ear rang and the woman that held her down in the mud let go. Kizzy sprung up and gasped for air. The constable, armed with a shotgun, marched through the crowd and grabbed her by the arm.

  “If you want her executed then you have to do it legally.”

  “How is that supposed to happen?” Paige asked.

  “You have to vote in another mayor, one with a conscience. Then we can have a legal execution. We’re not doing it like this.”

  The crowd began to boo. The constable walked Kizzy back to the courthouse. Kizzy could feel the woman’s hand shaking with fear, the rest of her body was numb.

  “I’m sorry, Kizzy,” the constable whispered as she walked her from the crowd.

  Kizzy couldn’t answer.

  “Where are you taking her?” Paige asked.

  “Away from you.”

  “What, so she can drink martinis with the mayor?”

  The women in the crowd were growing angrier. They began to fling mud at the constable and Kizzy.

  “You have to go home,” the constable turned and shouted, dodging the mud that was flung at her. “You’re disturbing the peace.”

  “Give her to us!” Paige said.

  The mayor came out onto the front step of the courthouse and waved Kizzy and the constable inside.

  “You know what they want,” the constable said to the mayor as they approached, holding on to Kizzy’s chains tightly.

  The mayor shook her head no.

  “It’s not happening today then,” the constable announced to the crowd.

  The crowd charged towards the courthouse. Quickly, the constable pushed the mayor and Kizzy inside and closed the door.

  Upstairs, the mayor sat down and spun in her chair while letting out a long groan. “This sucks,” she announced.

  Kizzy sat in a chair and replayed in her mind what had just happened. Her head was spinning, her nose was sore. Some part of her was still out there among the crowd. She wiped the mud from her face.

  “Thanks for this lovely situation,” the constable said, peeking out the window. The crowd was screaming and chanting out in the street.

  “They’ll calm down,” the mayor said, strangely detached. “You alright, Kizzy?”

  Kizzy shrugged. She had never been handled so roughly by other humans.

  “They’ve never rioted before,” the constable said.

  “They’ve never had a reason to,” the mayor said. “They want something I can’t in good conscience give to them.”

  “You’re instigating this,” the constable said.

  “I am not.”

  “Yes you are, you’re dangling Kizzy up here, right out of their reach.”

  “I had her working in the basement for that very reason, so don’t give
me that crap,” the mayor yelled. “I’m not doing anything illegal. And I’m perfectly comfortable sitting in this loophole. If they want to riot, then let them riot.”

  “And when they vote you out?”

  The mayor paused for a second. She looked out the window, as if she was expecting to see something there. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

  “The worst part is, I’ve got to protect you through all this,” the constable said as she set her shotgun against the wall and laid down on the couch.

  “I appreciate it, Theresa.”

  “I’m not enjoying it.”

  “I know.”

  The screaming out in the street was intensifying. They were working themselves into a frenzy

  “What in the hell is going on out there?” the mayor asked with a nervous look on her face.

  This couldn’t end well Kizzy thought. She felt oddly helpless, like a small child that had to cling to somebody else for help.

  “I’ve never seen them like this,” the constable said staring out over the crowd. “Oh geez, look out!”

  Suddenly, a stone came bursting through the window, showering the room with broken glass. Kizzy watched the rock bounced across the office floor. She couldn’t help but imagine a bunch of them pelting her until she was dead.

  “Damn it,” the constable said, backing away from the window. “They can’t be doing this.”

  “It’s just a window,” the mayor said, but with definite worry in her voice.

  “That’s not the problem,” the constable said. “They’ve lost all respect for you. All respect for law and order.”

  The mayor stood and looked out at the crows. “Oh no.”

  Down at the entrance the women were bashing at the door

  “Help me,” the constable yelled to Kizzy.

  Kizzy followed her to a bookshelf that they slid to the staircase and pushed down the stairs. It rumbled down and came to an awkward stop in front of the door. They followed with the couch. The pieces of furniture seemed like enough to prevent anyone from opening the door.