“I’m not upset,” I said simply. “I’m just tired. Not thinking clearly. I need a nap.”
I wasn’t lying, I was tired. Not that I actually wanted to nap, but I needed to walk away. It bothered me that Mera simply blurted out she wanted Michael to go along, as if I weren’t even a consideration to look out for Jessie. I felt at times that I was sinking lower and lower on the responsibility ladder.
While they stood in the hall outside the cell block door, I went in. The kids were in there alone anyhow. I knew well enough that twelve of them without adult supervision could be dangerous.
Most of the kids rushed me when I walked in as if I were Saint Francis of Assisi and they were my animals. They hugged me, greeted me, excited that I was home.
Jessie was playing with the babies, and she glanced up and smiled at me. “Alex is home,” she said.
“Yes, Alex is home.” I winked. “But Alex smells. He stepped in Sleeper poo.” All the kids groaned out, “Eeeeewwww,” which made me laugh. “I’m gonna change and then I’ll be back down.” I walked over to Keller and Phoenix, giving both of them a kiss. They were building Legos, and Phoenix was helping Keller. “You’re a good brother,” I told him, placing a second kiss on Phoenix’s head.
No sooner had I hit the stairs to the upper level of the cells when I heard them come in for Jessie. It pained me to hear how excited she was about leaving and she was more excited that she was going to ride in the truck with Randy and Michael to look for wild horses. Jessie loved horses.
I really wanted to go, though. No, wait, I wanted to be the one that Mera needed to protect her daughter. I don’t know why, but it gnawed at my gut that I wasn’t a consideration.
In my personal cell space, I sat on my bunk, fresh clothes beside me. I listened to the sounds of talking fade as Beck and Sonny took Jessie with them.
“Alex,” Mera said softy.
I looked up to see her standing in my cell door.
She spoke almost humbly as she leaned against my doorway. “Hey, don’t be mad at me, please.”
“I’m not.”
“I know you, Alex, you are. Just please know I had my reasons.”
I nodded and was going to let it go, then I raised my eyes and looked at her. “Michael?”
“I knew it.”
“Michael? Really, Mera? Michael? You know damn well I’d put my life on the line for Jessie!”
“And that is the reason I didn’t want you to go.” She folded her arms. “Alex, you may not know or remember, but I do. I lost you already. I lost you when you put your life on the line for my daughter. I saw you die, I held you when you died. I died, from the pain I felt.” She scrunched up her face and brought her fist to her chest. “I was crushed. Never again. So excuse me if I don’t chance fate again and have you go out with my daughter.”
“I’m sorry you went through that.”
“No… it was worth it to have you back.”
A tenseness took over my face. I felt the emotion and forced a smile. “I understand now.”
“Thank you. Don’t be mad, and … I have a favor to ask.”
“See? I’m good for something.”
“You’re good for a lot. Anyhow, Javier wants me to bring Phoenix to his clinic.”
“For what?”
Mera shrugged. “He didn’t say. I don’t want to go alone, will you go?”
“You don’t want to take Beck?”
“Alex you’re like Keller’s father.”
“I am, yes. Yes I will. Let me change clothes.”
“Thank you. I’ll be downstairs.”
I felt a little better, relieved that it wasn’t my abilities that caused Mera to not want me to go, it was my death. I could deal with that reasoning.
After putting on a stiff, yet fresh pair of jeans and a new shirt, I was ready to go. Stomping into my boots, I headed to the door of my cell. For some reason, I paused there. From my vantage point I could see the common area below. Mera was picking up tiny scattered Lego blocks. She stood up and cringed. It was the cutest look on her face as her hand went to her back and she arched.
“Oh, God, I forgot I was pregnant,” she said.
She was wearing one of my tee shirts, and old one. I didn’t notice at first. It was one I brought with me when I joined them on the trip to find Jessie. A faded black tee with a pretty cool cross on it. There was a band name on it, I don’t know who it was. Maternity clothes weren’t plentiful and Mera had resorted to wearing men’s clothing. When she arched back, I could see her tiny pregnant stomach protrude against the fabric of the shirt.
What the hell was the matter with me? Why was I watching her?
It was Mera, that’s why.
My mind flashed back to our first night. A night long before the baby was conceived. I wondered if she felt the same way about that night as I did. Probably not. If she did, Beck certainly wouldn't be running around calling her his wife.
I can’t slight Beck. He’s a really good guy. Nevertheless, he wasn’t around.
Granted, he was with Phoenix, and that sacrifice to go to the ARC made Mera hero worship him even more. He wasn’t there to walk the floors through fevers and the flu. He wasn’t there when all hell broke loose with twelve kids running around. Or the time some damn stomach bug hit everyone in the house but me. He wasn’t there for the first post-Event Christmas. Sonny and I went to the old toy store and rounded up what we could. We even found Christmas trees, and Michael had rocked the Christmas service.
The kids from the future had to be told the Santa story. They had never heard of Christmas or Jesus. We started in November and by mid-December they were darting out of sight so the elves didn’t see them misbehave. It was awesome.
Beck had missed all of that. Of course, in my memory, he wasn’t away and well ... dead.
Now there’s a baby because I was foolish enough to think that something was going to transpire between Mera and me. It did, but not the way I wanted.
That first time, we were watching a Heston film. We weren’t drunk, only mildly inebriated, enough to laugh a lot. We were sitting on the floor, backs against the sofa. By the last twenty minutes of the apocalypse flick, we were shoulder to shoulder. Nudging, joking.
“Go on, Alex, keep drinking,” Mera said. “Next thing you know, you’ll be hitting on me.”
“And if I did?”
Pause. “I’d let you.”
Before she could say another word, I turned my body to her, placed my hand on her face, pulled Mera into me… and she laughed.
“Aw, now see, kill my ego.”
“Is this us?” she asked, giggling. “Really? You’re doing that I am about to kiss you thing. Would it really work?”
It worked alright.
I kissed her and Mera responded. It was right. It was like nothing I had ever felt before in my entire life. I felt it in my head, my heart, and gut. I just wanted to consume her, breathe her in, take in every single moment, every single feeling.
That first kiss was so intense, it didn’t stop. I pulled her into me, she naturally draped across my lap and I held her tight. Her chest to my chest, pressed so tight you couldn’t slip a hair between us. My hands never really moved anywhere except her back and hair.
It wasn’t sexual.
I loved that moment. We were like teenagers, and truth be told, it didn’t have to go any further. I could have kissed and held her all night.
We ended up in my room, in my bed and we made love. I made love to her with every ounce of my heart and soul.
I was stupid. I told her how badly I had wanted her and for how long. You know all those sappy things said in the heat of the moment? I meant them. I expected to wake up and find her in my bed. She wasn’t. For the sake of the kids, that was probably a good thing. Sonny, too. He would have been traumatized.
I expected her to act like it didn’t happen.
She did, and that in turn made me believe it would never happen again.
It did.
I
t happened frequently and for a while. We had such chemistry. The best was when we’d fight, the community would send us to see Michael and he’d make us go off somewhere to work it out.
We worked it out alright.
No one knew. No one even suspected that behind closed doors, Mera and I were a hell of a lot more than housemates who fought a lot.
Then it kind of faded. That wasn’t her; it was me. Not because I wanted to stop, but because I wasn’t to Mera what she was to me. I loved her. I was falling in love with her… no... I was in love with her. However, to her, I was just Alex. I wasn’t going to be that man she called her life partner, the love of her life. I couldn’t compete with the ghosts in her life that had her heart. Beck. Daniel. Sonny was a constant reminder of Daniel. They looked alike, walked alike and even had the same job.
I wanted her heart but there wasn’t enough room in it for me. That was confirmed when she really didn’t bat an eye about my decision to stop. A month later, we brought back Beck.
It really was for the better, Mera was happy. That’s all I wanted.
I guess.
“Hey, Alex,” Mera called, snapping me out of my reverie. “You ready, or is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Why would you say that?”
“You’re just standing there.”
“I was thinking of something.” I stepped from my cell. “Just a memory I got lost in.”
“A good one?”
I came down the stairs. “Eh, so-so. Ready?”
She lifted Keller to her hip. “Yep. Danny’s back in his room. He’s keeping an eye out.”
“Put Keller down, Mera,” I told her. “He needs to walk.”
“It’s so far, he’ll have problems.”
“Then he’ll have problems, but he’ll learn how to walk there.”
Mera set Keller down, she took one of his hands, I took the other, then after a quick check of the kids, we headed off to see Javier.
11. Mera
Alex did something odd during our walk with Keller to see Javier. I never noticed him doing it before, then again, I can’t recall ever taking a walk with Alex and Keller.
He was doing something with Keller’s hand.
“What did you just do?” I asked.
“Oh, I use my index finger on the palm of his hand to indicate what way he has to go. I move it left, he goes left. Right, he does right. If I flick upwards he has steps.”
“Really? I never knew that.”
“That’s because you carry him everywhere.”
“That’s because he’s blind.”
“He needs to learn to walk on his own.”
“No one is always going to be around to hold his hand and use a finger,” I said.
“Then we find him a guide dog.” Alex paused. “What the hell happened to all the dogs anyhow?’
“I think the Sleepers ate them.”
“Makes sense.”
At that moment Keller laughed. That silent kind of airy with a gag laugh.
We arrived at Javier’s office. He was the big doctor with all the toys and no one to play with. It made sense that I, as his only pregnant patient, would be called there often. What of Keller? Why was he so anxious to see my son?
“People talk,” Javier said.
Here we go again, I thought.
“I am a man of science. Not religion. I don’t think God placed a good and evil child both on this Earth to do battle as foretold in the so called prophecy of the Book of Revelations. But people talk, and they think something is up with this child.”
I knew what he meant. The calling of the Sleepers.
“If this was the world before the Event,” Javier stated, “and Keller was born like he was, what would you know of his condition? A lot. Because he would be examined and reexamined by doctors. Well, he hasn’t been, so I’d like to run some tests on him.”
Alex asked, “What kind of tests?”
“He reacts,” Javier stated. “Many people have said this. They say he is psychic. They wonder how a blind and deaf child can react. I don’t have a machine to test physic ability, if one even exists, but I want to look at him to see what we are dealing with. He is the first partial Ivory Statue baby born alive. No one has ever taken the time to study him.”
“He’s a little boy,” I said.
“And an awfully sweet and cute one,” Javier added. “I was a father. I know what you feel. He’s not evil, and if I can scientifically show the reason for his abilities, then people will stop talking.”
I breathed out with relief. Javier was actually trying to help. I kissed Keller, explained to him what was going on, and Javier took him, leaving Alex and I in the waiting area.
There was silence between Alex and I for a few minutes after Javier left. Then I broke it, asking Alex, “What do you think he’s doing to him?”
“Scans. He has that equipment he never uses,” Alex answered.
“Alex, he does have ability.”
“I know.”
“I hear him. In here.” I pointed to my head.
“Me, too. So do Jessie and Phoenix.”
“Danny, too. And Beck heard him.”
“Anyone else?” Alex asked.
I shook my head. “Not that I know of. You know they say we use only ten percent of our brain.”
“That’s a myth,” Alex said. “We use all of our brain. We just don’t use it all at once. Maybe that’s the secret. Maybe because Keller is limited, he learned to use his brain all at once. Maybe we don’t really hear him.”
“Do you think that?”
“I don’t know. His mother was a Sleeper, so he may have, in some way, inherited the ability to communicate telepathically, like Levi said. Maybe he learned early on to compensate.”
For the following hour, Alex and I discussed ‘what ifs’. Then Javier opened the door. Two hours had passed. Alex had even dozed off.
Javier asked if we could come in to his office. We did.
Keller was sitting in a chair and I lifted him to my lap. Then Alex and I sat in the two chairs in Javier’s office. We faced Javier like patients waiting for some sort of bad prognosis.
“I ran two tests today on Keller,” Javier said. “An EEG, which measures brain activity, and an ultrasound. Back in 2007 the Army was working on Synthetic Telepathy, a way to read things without words, write letters and so forth. The key was to tap into portions of the brain that were inactive. Keller uses every portion of his brain at a higher than normal ratio on the EEG.”
Alex asked, “Which means?”
“He has ability, intelligence. What that consists of, I don’t know. It’s the ultrasound I wanted to talk to you about though,” Javier said. “As you know, right after the Event, every baby born was born an Ivory Statue stillbirth. No features. No life. In the last two years about half the babies born are born that way.”
I nodded. I knew this. “What does this have to do with Keller?”
“I had one chance, at the ARC, to examine an Ivory Statue stillborn. They have no features. It was as if they were sculptured to look like they had a nose, mouth, ears and so forth. Upon autopsy and x-rays, they had no eyes, no eye sockets, no brain. Nothing from the neck up. No vocal chords. They had a heart and all internal organs, except they were stone. It was an odd phenomenon. Keller appeared to have started to become an Ivory Baby, but nature was stronger.”
“Get to the point,” Alex said impatiently. “You’re telling us Keller has no internal organs?”
Javier’s hand slammed to the desk and he stared at Alex. “Really? Your child walks and moves about. I would think you’d want to know what was under that skin.”
“We do,” I said. “Alex is being an asshole.”
“Yes, he is.”
“Hey!” Alex protested.
“Back to my exam,” Javier said. “Keller’s brain activity is high functioning. Above normal. Way above normal. Unlike other Ivory Babies, he obviously has a brain. His internal organs are all there. Normal
sinus activity. Lungs normal. He has no eyes.”
“No shit,” Alex stated.
“Alex!” I snapped.
“What?” Alex said. “He’s telling us something we already know.”
“But,” Javier held up a finger, “he has eye sockets. His eyes started to form, but stopped. Behind that smooth exterior are partially formed eyes. They don’t work. Won’t work, because there’s no connection that I can see to the optic nerve.”
“Oh my God,” Alex stated. “Are you saying our son is blind?”
“You’re an asshole,” Javier stated.
That made me laugh.
“He has vocal chords,” Javier told us. “The stillbirths did not. He has the ability to make sounds.”
“What is the point of this?” Alex asked. “We know his limitations.”
“Do you?” Javier questioned. “Do you really know all he can and can’t do? Medically, he was never examined like he was today.”
“Okay then,” Alex said, “tell us something we don’t know.”
“He doesn’t have any ears.”
Alex laughed. “Really? No kidding.”
“People are talking about Keller’s reaction to things. Of course he reacts, he just can’t understand why. He has ear canals, eardrums, cochlear; he has every single part of the inner ear.”
The look on Alex’s face was the same as mine. Shock.
Javier continued. “I want to do surgery. I want to open up that cartilage covering all that.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“I’m saying Keller is not some spiritual phenomenon. Yes, he reacts. It isn’t a psychic thing. He’s limited because of a physical barrier. Once we remove it, he’ll get even better. I tested him, and I’m pretty certain,” Javier said, “that Keller can hear.”
The news took my breath way. I was excited and immediately grabbed onto Alex and hugged him.
Keller was limited only by a physical barrier of flesh. He could hear. That explained how he understood. It still didn’t explain other things, like how he communicated telepathically to us and how he knew about my old house.
However, if Javier’s diagnosis would satisfy the community and keep my child from being ostracized and thought to be evil, then I would keep my mouth shut about the other abilities Keller had, ones that couldn’t be explained by an EEG test or ultrasound.
Sleepers (Book 5) Page 5
