Hungry

by H. A. Swain

  Basil grabs me by my shirt. “Roll on your back,” he splutters. “Point your feet downstream.”

  I do what he says and find myself swept into the current, but my head stays above the water.

  “We have to get to land,” he tells me with amazing calm. “Get ready.” I nod and take a deep breath just as he shouts, “Go!”

  We both roll to our stomachs and pump our arms and legs, furiously fighting the undercurrent trying to clear us away like flotsam, but we won’t give up. I kick and claw and fight my way to the side until I’m scraping up handfuls of mud and rocks, then I put my feet down and stumble to the slippery shore. “Basil!” I shout. “Basil!” I look around frantically, fearing that he hasn’t made it.

  “Over here!” He’s upstream from me, using old tree roots and rocks to climb up the muddy slope. I do the same, working my way toward him, until side by side we scramble over the top of the embankment and roll to our backs, panting and coughing.

  “Oh my god. Oh my god. What just happened?” I sputter and half wonder if I’m stuck in a nightmare.

  “Must’ve been in a riverbed,” he says, breathing heavily. “Must’ve been a storm.” That would explain my dream. Flashes of lightning. Explosions of thunder. Rain pounding the top of the car. “Those old riverbeds fill up fast when it pours, and once it starts, there’s nothing anybody can do to stop it,” he tells me.

  I sit up and take stock. I’ve lost my shoes, my brace, and my pants, but I still have underwear. Luckily the shirt I took from Basil’s mom is long enough to cover half of me. Somehow my pouch has gotten twisted tightly under my arm and miraculously my Gizmo is still inside. When I feel it, my first instinct is to make sure it still works and call for help, but then I remember, the people who would help us are the same ones who would throw us in jail.

  “Goddamn it!” I yell in frustration. I grab a handful of rocks and dirt and fling them at the unrelenting water surging downstream. “How much more could we possibly go through? This is getting completely ridiculous!” I pound my fists into the ground and fling more rocks and dirt against the air. “I’ve been chased! I’ve been shot at! I’ve stolen a car! Everyone knows I’m HectorProtector and now this! A freakin’ flash flood? You have got to be kidding me! I don’t even have pants anymore!” I rant.

  “But, Apple.” Basil kneels barefoot beside me and holds my shoulders.

  “What?” I seethe at him. I realize I’m acting like a toddler, but I can’t help it; I’m just so fed up. “What is it now?”

  “Look.” He points behind us, away from the river.

  Slowly I turn and see spread in front of us a thick tangle of green blanketing everything from the ground to strange foliage-covered figures reaching for the sky. “Oh my god!” I gasp as I try to take it all in, but my brain can’t make sense of what I see. “What is it?”

  “We made it.”

  “To what? Where are we?”

  Basil stands and shakes himself, flinging droplets of water from his hair and clothes. They sparkle like tiny prisms in the sunlight. He reaches down and pulls me up beside him. We stand side by side, looking out onto the green horizon, then a smile spreads slowly over his face as he says, “The Hinterlands.”

  * * *

  I limp down the other side of the embankment behind Basil. Little green wisps tickle my ankles and my feet. “What is this stuff?” I point to the leaves creeping up the hill toward us, because honestly I’m scared that it’ll swallow us up like it has everything else in its path.

  “Probably kudzu,” says Basil. “I’ve heard the stuff grows like a foot a day out here.”

  “But I thought … but everybody said … but … but … but…” I stammer and stutter because I cannot believe what I’m seeing. This is nothing like the desolate wasteland I’ve always heard was beyond the Loops. “This isn’t supposed to be here,” I finally spit out.

  Basil looks at me and grins. “But it is here.”

  On tender feet, we step carefully through the thick tangle of vines with heart-shaped leaves. Gigantic shaggy green creatures populate the hillside like some long-forgotten zoo of extinct animals. Grandma and I used to play a game naming shapes in clouds. Now I try to imagine what these beasts could be. Dinosaurs or elephants or giraffes? Maybe a fairy-tale giant reaching for the sun.

  I pull a leaf from one of the vines and rub it between my forefinger and thumb. It’s as soft as worn denim and has a pleasant, almost sweet soaplike smell, only there is something deeper and more complex to the scent. I press it against my nose and inhale again. “This is amazing,” I whisper reverently. “I had no idea anything could grow.”

  “Look up there.” Basil points high on the hill where a giant, white stone face with a long green beard peers out of the leaves. I squint at the shape of a man towering toward the sky in a long robe. He holds out his arms. His hands are missing, but his eyes are kind and they seem to follow us as we explore. At the base of the hill is an arch between two pillars. Basil pulls back some vines to reveal the words BETHLEHEM—OUR HOPE inscribed in stone. A tumbledown staircase made from rocks leads up the terraced hill. White stucco parapets push through the vines. Black windows peek out of the foliage like hidden woodland creatures watching silently as we pass a flock of crumbling white stone animals, sheep maybe, grazing on the leaves. We wind around a ramshackle structure, half the walls collapsed to expose pairs of fallen animals impaled on posts. Horses? Hippos? Some kind of bears? Basils grabs the end of a vine and tugs. NOAH’S ARK CAROUSEL reads the sign in the dirt.

  “What is this place?” I ask, half creeped out and half amazed as we pick our way through the rubble, avoiding the sharpest rocks.

  “I don’t know. Maybe some kind of religious park or something?”

  We come to another archway decorated with more lacy shrubbery casting shadows across another sign. I pluck the vines away to reveal GARDEN OF EDEN carved above the arch.

  Basil steps into the clearing, but I begin foraging around the edges, wondering what else might grow in the midst of all this kudzu. Could there be flowers? Bugs? Small animals burrowing beneath the ground? I pull apart a snarl of leaves. At first all I see is green. Then, a tiny spot of red. And another. I kneel down to get a better look and am nearly bowled over when I come across a cluster of bright fruit.

  “Look,” I say with wonder, pointing at beautiful red globs among all the green. “I think these might be … could they be…?” I reach cautiously through the brambles. Thorns scratch my hands but I don’t care. I pluck a few from the vine and hold them up, dumbstruck. It’s like if someone you thought was dead walks through a door and shakes your hand.

  “What are they?” Basil asks, peering closely.

  “Berries,” I whisper.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” I tell him, regaining my voice. “Grandma Apple told me about these.” I marvel at their color, their texture, their utter perfection. “They’re more beautiful than I ever imagined.” I can’t stop turning them over and over, exploring every facet that glistens in the sun. “They were one of her favorites. She told me so many stories about what they grew and what they gathered. Mushrooms, roots, ferns, and wild greens. We used to draw pictures of different kinds of fruit and vegetables or make them out of clay then pretend to cook. But I never thought…” I bring a berry close to my nose and inhale. The smell is subtle but sweet. A scent from my dreams.

  “Be careful!” says Basil. “What if they’re poisonous?”

  “It’s okay. See how it looks like lots of itty-bitty balls stuck together, but then it’s hollow on the inside?” I turn one over to show him the concave white belly. I put five on my fingertips and make them dance. “The poisonous ones were smooth and not as bright, and they didn’t grow on prickly vines like these.” I stop and laugh. “Just think, all that time Grandma was playing with me, she was really teaching me what you could and couldn’t eat.” I hold one close to my mouth. “Should I?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Are
you sure it’s safe?”

  “Only one way to find out!” A little thrill zips through me as I pop a berry in my mouth. Basil stares. I roll it on my tongue. The texture is strange. Bumpy. Almost rubbery. I start to gag but then my mouth fills with spit. The taste is fleeting and too unfamiliar to name, but I like it and I want more. I move the berry to the side of my mouth, between my teeth and my cheek and I suck, drawing out small gulps of pleasure. When that’s not enough, I cautiously bite down. A squish of sweet, tart juice is released. “Oh my god,” I say as the amazing new flavor spreads across my tongue and up into my nose. “This is incredible. Delicious.” The more I chew the stronger the taste becomes. Plus I love the satisfying crunch of tiny seeds grinding between my teeth. When I swallow the berry mush, I immediately reach for another one. “You have to try one!”

  “You’re sure?” he asks and I nod while I stuff myself with more. Carefully, Basil plucks a berry from the brambles and lays it on his tongue. When he chews his eyes get wide. “It’s like my mouth and part of my brain are waking up,” he says. “It’s like … like…” He swallows and reaches for another. “It’s like this is what we’re meant to do!”

  Basil and I laugh and chew berries one by one for several minutes. When he puts them on his fingers like I did before, I snatch them one by one with my teeth and growl, “More! Give me more!”

  “You’ve become a monster!” He pelts me with fruit, yelling, “Back! Back, you beast!”

  I roar at him then lunge and grab his waist. We spin around and fall to the ground with me on top of him demanding that he feed me.

  He pokes me in the armpit, which makes me squirm and squeal. Soon we’re wrestling, poking and jabbing one another, rolling across the soft ground, laughing until our noses are inches apart, and we’re kissing under the warm morning sun. I love breathing him in. Feeling his skin next to mine. Tasting him.

  “You are better than berries,” I whisper.

  When we come up for air a few minutes later, my lips sting and my whole body is warm. I roll away from him, unnerved by the yearning deep inside of me. Not just for berries but for him. I take a few shaky breaths.

  “Do you think this is…” I trail off, searching for the word. “Normal? What we’re doing?” I wag my finger from him to me. “I mean, we’re not even in the Procreation Pool. Our hormones shouldn’t be surging.” My cheeks grow warm just talking about this stuff.

  Basil props himself on one elbow and rests his hand where my shirt has come up over my hip. “Do you care? I mean would that stop you?”

  I tug my shirt down. “My mom and Dr. Demeter would say that our brain chemistry isn’t optimized. Or that we have some kind of mutation in our genes that makes us act this way.”

  “Guess that makes us mutants then,” he says with a grin.

  I look at his perfect face and can’t help but smile, too. “Fish with feet, like Ana said.”

  He chuckles. “So we’re the lucky ones?”

  I shake my head and look around. “You call this lucky?”

  “Maybe.” He shrugs. “If it means we can go back to the way nature intended us to be.” He puts his hand on my belly. “Like this.” He leans down to kiss me again.

  “It’s a nice idea.…” I say and squirm away. “But do you think it’s really possible?”

  “Why not?” He sits up and motions to the greenery. “Look at all this!”

  “It’s just kudzu and berries. How much of this would you have to eat to equal one bottle of Synthamil?”

  “Apple…” Basil looks at me intently. “If the soil can grow this”—he grabs a handful of vines—“then it’s good enough to farm. If you clear away all the kudzu, which by the way we can eat and make fuel from and even smoke, then you could grow more crops, different crops.”

  “If you had seeds,” I point out, but he ignores me.

  “Plus, bees and butterflies have to pollinate this stuff, which means there have to be animals out here somewhere. Maybe even birds and small mammals. Ana always said, ‘Life is powerful,’” Basil tells me. “This is proof that the earth is rejuvenating.”

  I gaze all around us, amazed and terrified. “Birds and bees are fine,” I say. “But what else could be lurking out here? Or who? Aren’t you even a little bit worried?”

  “It’s probably safer than where we came from.” He falls back into the leafy bed, beaming up at the sky as if in ecstasy. “Do you know what this could mean, Apple?” he asks but doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Never having to fight. To scrounge. Never having to ask for help. Not relying on anyone else. If I could find a way to make it work out here … if I could never go back…”

  “Really?” I ask, my heart pounding in my ears. “You would never go back. Ever? But what about…”

  He turns and looks at me sharply. “What do I have to go back to?”

  I swallow hard. My mind is filled with images of my family. Grandma Apple standing in our doorway, her sweater held close. My father’s face smiling at me from a screen. Papa Peter imploring me to come home. Even my mom and Grandma Grace searching my face with worried eyes. I can’t tell Basil this. To him, my family is the enemy, so instead I say, “But the other Analogs. Don’t you want them to know where you are? Wouldn’t it be better if we were all together?”

  Basil sighs. “I don’t know anymore, Apple. I truly don’t know.”

  I decide to change tactics. “Think about Ana then. What would she want you to do?”

  “She always said it wasn’t time yet.” He considers this for a few seconds. “I don’t know what she was waiting for.”

  “Maybe she didn’t want to lead people into uncertainty but now you know,” I say, getting to my knees. “We have to tell people about this. And not just the Analogs. Dynasaurs and people like Yaz and even my family because if they knew…”

  He scoffs. “I guarantee your parents already know about this.”

  “They couldn’t possibly know,” I argue. “If they did…”

  “Oh, they know, believe me.” Basil sits up and angrily plucks leaves from the vines around us. “They just don’t want anyone else to know. If everyone can go out and get their own food, it ruins One World’s little business model to control the universe.”

  “Could you exaggerate any more?” I snap at him.

  “I’m not exaggerating.”

  I shake my head. “Maybe someone at One World knows, like Ahimsa, but not my parents. No matter what you think of them, they’re scientists first and foremost. And scientists believe in the truth. If my mom knew about this…” I hold up a berry like exhibit A in my argument for why my mother can’t possibly know. “Things would be different.”

  “She’s an employee of One World, first. A scientist, second. And the truth is relative. At least as far as One World is concerned. So don’t delude yourself.”

  “I’m not deluding myself!” I argue. “I’m saying we have to go back and tell people about this because it changes everything.”

  Basil draws in a deep breath. “I don’t know that it changes anything, Apple.” He looks down between his knees. “And truthfully, I’m tired. Tired of living like a shadow for most of my life. And now, after all that’s happened to you and me … I just don’t know if I can fight a battle I’m not sure we can win anymore. As much as I admired Ana and as much as I’ve always wanted to avenge Arol’s death, I don’t want to end up in jail, or worse, die trying. Especially when I know this is here. We made it.” He jabs his finger in the ground. “We got out and we found food. We could just … stay.”

  “Stay?” I say. “Here? In some creepy park eating berries while One World is back there making life miserable for everyone but the privies!”

  Basil snorts. “Oh, so now all of the sudden you’re a champion for the common people?”

  “I meant what I said at the geophag camp. We are all in prison as long as One World has control.”

  Basil hops to his feet and marches angrily through the greenery. “You know, this is typical of som
eone like you!”

  I scramble up behind him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He spins around and shouts in my face, “You finally figure out that the world isn’t this perfect little place with perfect little hologram flowers covering up the hard dry dirt beneath your feet and perfect smell-o-blasters masking the stench of rot and perfect Whisson Windmills sucking water out of thin air attached to every roof. No actually, it’s a horrible, unfair place, where mothers would rather buy drugs than Synthamil for their kids and fathers go to jail because they can’t stop raging over the hand they’ve been dealt. And, oh by the way, news flash! One World is a big fat megacorporate oppressor!”

  “But…”

  “So now you’re freaking out and sure that you’re the only one who can save the rest of us! Just because you finally figured it out, Apple, doesn’t mean we have to go back and get our asses kicked. We got out. We don’t have to save the world.”

  “But I thought that’s what you wanted to do,” I argue. “I thought righting the wrongs and saving the world was our plan.”

  “No, that was never my plan,” he says. “This has been my plan all along. To walk away. And when I found you, I thought I had finally found someone to go with me.”

  I’m stunned. “Go where?”

  “I don’t know. Where the others have gone.”

  “What others?”

  “Other people have walked away,” he tells me.

  “But what if they didn’t make it? What if no one’s out here?”

  “We won’t know unless we look for them. And the only thing I know for certain is that they are not in the Outer Loop or the Inner Loop or anywhere I’ve ever been before. If they made it, they’re out here and I intend to find them.”

  “But Basil,” I say, imploring him. “We know something now that others don’t. Before we can truly walk away, we have to tell everyone back there about this so they have the option of leaving, too. That’s the only way One World will be forced to change.”