by Lynda Engler
“Milora, my mate and my love, I know you are sensible – you wouldn’t be a tribal elder if you weren’t. But I agree with Malcolm – we should stay here and build a shelter. There is food plenty here – woodland deer and squirrel. The water’s drinkable and there are no ferocious animals. We haven’t seen one tiger! Think about it – we can be safe here and so can our son. Malcolm isn’t leader for no reason. His father knew he could lead and he has guided us well so far. Please think again your decision when we vote tomorrow.”
From the yellow tent Isabella heard a child crying and she inched across the grass to listen, careful not to step on any twigs that would give away her presence. Having left the safety of the trees, she was now very visible in her big white suit if anyone came out of those tents.
She heard a male voice, “Shhh, Shia, it’s all right. I’m right here.”
“Papa, I had a bad dream,” said the child’s voice. “I was in the jungle and tigers were chasing us and I couldn’t run fast enough and one caught me in his huge fangs and then I woke up.”
“Oh, Sweet Pea, it was just a dream,” replied the male voice. I’ll never let you get caught. That’s why I’m here – to protect my tribe, especially my daughter. No tigers will ever hurt you. I promise.”
The yellow tent grew quiet and Isabella imagined the father hugging the child and thought of her own grandfather who hugged her all the time. Isabella suddenly felt very frightened to be Outside. Her lower lip began to tremble and her legs shook. She wanted the security of her shelter and couldn’t believe she had actually been stupid enough to leave that safe place! She wanted to be back where Granpapa could hug her and keep her safe like that little mutant girl in the tent.
She ran toward the big elephant-eared trees that concealed the entrance to the shelter compound. The entrance was well camouflaged and she couldn’t see it until she was right on top of it. She lifted opened the trap door, bounded down the five concrete steps, then reached above her head and secured the metal door. She made her way across the basement, entered the airlock, and sealed it behind her. The decontamination shower started automatically and the little room was filled with a blue light. She clenched her eyes against the glaring UV as it killed the pathogens brought in from outside.
When the decontamination was complete, the inner airlock door swung open automatically, releasing her to the chem-rad suit storage room where she hastily removed the suit and hung it up, mindful to arrange it exactly the way she had found it. A million thoughts raced through her head as she quietly slipped into bed.
The boy’s voice in the yellow tent was the leader, the one they called Malcolm. He was the father of the little girl, who must be the chocolate-colored redhead with one ear and a short leg. That meant that Malcolm must be the ebony teen with the yellow hair that was always with the little girl. How could someone who didn’t look any older than she was be the father of a five-year-old? Which of them was the little girl’s mother? If they voted to leave tomorrow she would never have her questions answered.
Isabella never managed to fall back to sleep that night.
* * *
“Four to stay, two to go. I guess we’d better start building a shelter!” Malcolm was happy that Milora had changed her vote and he was excited to be staying. He liked this area – something felt right about it. He knew his people would prosper here and maybe even live longer if the poison content was less concentrated than in Ewr. It had been agreed. Milora would take care of the three little ones while everyone else got busy chopping down trees. If nothing went wrong, Malcolm was sure that within a month their first permanent shelter in the woods would be complete.
Three
Hydroponics was hot and humid as usual so to be comfortable Isabella wore a loose T-shirt and shorts, her thick brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Today her grandmother was working with her.
“Granmama, what do you know about mutants?” Isabella picked red cherries from a miniature tree that, like so many species, had been bio-engineered for eco-conservative city rooftop farming so many decades ago.
“Oh honey, don’t worry, I’m sure they will leave soon. You needn’t worry about them hurting you.” Her grandmother snipped a dead end off a tomato plant and it fell silently to the floor of the garden.
Isabella and her grandmother had always had a special relationship. In many ways, Isabella considered her grandmother to be her best friend. They often finished each other’s sentences. Sometimes it was as if they could read each other’s minds. But not this time. Isabella’s grandmother had completely misunderstood her. “I’m not worried, Granmama. I’m curious. Besides, if you haven’t noticed, they don’t look like they’re leaving and they don’t look terribly ferocious either,” Isabella said sarcastically. “They look like a family out on a camping trip, frolicking in the pool. How and why would they hurt us?”
“They don’t really look dangerous, do they?” replied her grandmother. “Most of what I know about mutants goes back seventeen years to stories your father told. So my information is admittedly a bit out of date. Maybe some things have changed in the last decade and a half.”
Isabella’s father John, had been a soldier who arrived in their compound in an NBC suit. Her mother had been twenty-five at the time. When her grandfather conceived his idea of a shelter to keep himself and his wife safe in the event of war, he had made it big enough to raise a family. Soon they had their first child, and ten years later, their fourth was born, Isabella’s mother. But Granpapa’s hopes of “repopulating” the earth were dashed – all his children were girls. Thirty-five years after they moved in, a healthy male traveler finally arrived. When that soldier left three months later, he didn’t know it but he was a father four times over. Granpapa’s family was growing, but since all four of his grandchildren shared a father, it still wasn’t a great way to repopulate the Earth, not even their little corner of it. Isabella understood the problems between a pairing between her or Abigail and one of their “cousin-brothers” and cringed. They wouldn’t be mutated like those living above ground but Luke and Mark were like brothers, and were both absolutely obnoxious anyway. Who’d want to marry one of them, much less do what it took to make babies? Gross!
“What exactly did the great Johnny Appleseed have to say about the mutants anyway?” Isabella had never met her father, that unknown soldier who probably spread his healthy genes everywhere he went that had young, healthy girls. She often wondered why he hadn’t stuck around at least until his four children were born.
“Isabella! If not for that man, you wouldn’t exist. Have you forgotten how soldiers like him were sent out to search for survivors? He couldn’t have stayed. His mission wasn’t to come here and get four girls pregnant. It was to reconnect the government with as many shelters as possible. Once he repaired your grandfather’s communications equipment and we were able to contact Mount Weather, we started getting annual supply visits. And without him, we wouldn’t have the information about the mutants that we have or know how many inhabited the cities. You know the cities were the hardest hit by the fanatics and the mutants are what’s left of the people that used to live there. John told us horror stories of the mutants. That they were awful, disgusting, ugly creatures, no longer human. He often said that the dumb, short-lived cannibals would have been better off if the chemicals just killed them all outright.”
“But Granmama… they don’t seem very dumb. Maybe some of them are a lot more like us than we ever imagined. Maybe they are just trying to survive in a hostile world. The fact that any humans at all have survived the poisoning of the world is incredible. You taught us that nature is resilient. Life has survived out there – in the form of mutated human beings and animals. All without the help of that government you so devotedly talk about holed up in some mountain!”
Granmama shook her head. “But what kind of humanity is it, Isabella? What kind?” She spoke no more while she snipped yet another dried-up vegetable branch.
Isabella wondered if sh
e had made any impact in Granmama’s ideas. She was now questioning everything she ever knew about mutants.
That evening, Isabella planned another expedition above. This time she packed a flashlight, some vegetables and a book. She intended to leave the food and the book where the mutants would find them, then watch their reaction. I hope it’s the tall, dark, strong leader, Malcolm, who finds it, she thought. She wanted to get a glimpse of that intriguing boy without looking through twelve feet of water. Thoughts of him made her skin tingle.
Sometime after midnight, Isabella donned the NBC suit. She had more confidence than on her first escape from the underground shelter. She cycled the airlock and emerged above ground a few minutes later. She moved away from the basement doors that hid the airlock entrance.
She pushed her way through the thick underbrush and quickly surveyed her surroundings. Good, no one around, she thought. Isabella hurried to the front of the yellow nylon tent where she carefully placed her gifts and returned to the bushes to hide and observe and wait.
It was miserably hot in the chem-rad suit, even at night. Sweat dripped from her brow but she couldn’t wipe it without removing the helmet and exposing herself to the poisonous environment. She suffered in silence, waiting for someone, anyone, to step out from a tent. The yellow tent flap was finally pushed aside and the dark skinned boy appeared.
Oh my, he’s magnificent! she thought. By the light of the mutant’s campfire, she could see that he was tall, muscular and nearly naked. She watched him disappear into the woods and smiled dreamily.
* * *
The oppressive heat of the day had not let up at all when Malcolm left the tent in the middle of the night, so he didn’t bother with any clothes other than the loose shorts he slept in – since he was just going out to pee in the woods. When he returned, he was shocked to see a small brown bag and book on the ground and wondered how he had managed to not notice them before.
Malcolm looked around half expecting to see someone. Was the bag even there before? Could someone have just left it and he hadn’t seen or heard them? Who could have left this behind?
Malcolm cautiously opened the bag. It contained green beans, peas and some kind of round red fruit he had never seen before. The book was equally confusing. He could barely read, so it took him some time just to figure out the cover. A Modern History of the United States – 21st Century and Beyond. He recognized the word “history” and of course, everyone could identify the words “United States.” But the remaining words on the cover were a mystery to him.
Whoever left the book and the bag certainly wasn’t someone from his tribe. Could somebody have followed them from Ewr without his knowing? Were they really alone? Was it another tribe? The only books left were in libraries. That meant it had to have come from a city dweller, maybe even a Jet Believer.
He leaned up against a tree to watch. He couldn’t go back inside now that he knew they weren’t alone in the woods.
* * *
He took the book! thought Isabella, barely able to contain her excitement. He had looked at it, but didn’t even open it. Maybe he couldn’t read. She thought disappointed. She was lucky he hadn’t seen her. She had chosen her hiding place well.
With him standing guard now, she was pushing her luck in not being discovered, not to mention being gone so long from the shelter. It was definitely time for her to return to the shelter. Cautiously, she edged away from the thick bushes and made her way quietly to the hidden airlock.
* * *
Malcolm held perfectly still and watched the figure in white creep out from the greenery, sneak across their camp and not knowing that he was watching, slip into the bushes further away. Whoever it was that had been watching him was clothed head to toe in some kind of weird clothing that even covered the head and hands. Why would anyone wear that much on such a hot night?
Keeping his distance, Malcolm followed the path the person had taken into the woods but found no trace. It was as if both the path and the person completely disappeared. Examining where the path abruptly ended, Malcolm discovered a door cleverly hidden in the ground under the brush. It stood only a foot above the ground and lay flat to the earth. He pulled on the handle but couldn’t make the door open. There must be a way to open the door if the person he had followed had gone in there. Whoever had been in the woods that night observing him must be on the other side of that door.
* * *
“Granpapa, what if the mutants are really human? What if they’re just like us – smart, have families and worry about survival?” Isabella asked the next morning at breakfast, absent-mindedly twirling her hair.
“Izz, you are really weird,” Luke said. “What would make you think that? Girls are so odd!” He crunched a green pepper and a piece got stuck between his front teeth. He smiled widely at Mark, the pepper wedged like a vampire fang and growled.
“Gross!” replied Mark but chuckled at his brother’s antics anyway.
“Luke, I’m serious. What if they really are more like us than we think? Shut up and let Granpapa answer my question.” Isabella silenced her cousin-brother with a glare.
Her grandfather paused and thought for a few moments before responding.
“They were human once, but the chemicals and radiation Outside have changed their bodies and their minds. They don’t live long, only a couple of decades at most. They don’t have time to learn everything that takes humans a lifetime to absorb. What they do absorb is chemicals.”
“Yeah, but not that much right away Granpapa,” replied Isabella. She rolled her eyes at what seemed like “official” rhetoric coming from his mouth.
“No Isabella. It starts even before they are born. There is damage to the DNA of their parents and then their cells start degrading right from the womb. The poison chemicals unleashed upon the world caused hereditary disorders and mutations. Mutations are actually alterations in the genes that parents pass on to their children and their children’s children. The poison environment causes cancer and further diseases, drastically shortening their lifespan.”
“But what if they could live in safe places like our shelter, free from danger? Would they live as long as us?” Isabella asked.
“I don’t know,” replied her grandfather. “I have wondered if some of the less mutated ones could live out a normal life if they didn’t live in such a dangerous environment. But why? You aren’t thinking of actually inviting that group in here, are you child?” Her grandfather put down his fork and straightened in his chair, looking directly at her as if he suddenly guessed some hidden meaning behind her questions.
“Of course not, Granpapa.” She shrugged; then continued. “But what if we took in just the little children? There are only three of them. Couldn’t they grow up human, other than the birth defects they have?”
“No. They’ve already incurred too much damage from the environment. I doubt there is anything that would make them survive more than another twenty years,” he said, shaking his head and returning his attention to the food on his plate.
“But we have room for them!” continued Isabella. “They could contribute to our family. They could work.”
“And eat our food too, my Bella. You have a kind heart, but it’s leading your head. The older mutants wouldn’t allow us to take them anyway. They would fight to get them back.”
“So, you agree they’re human enough to fight for their children!” Isabella snapped and stormed off to her room.
“What’s with her?” asked Luke.
“PMS?” suggested Mark, and both boys laughed.
Four
The tribe worked hard all day cutting and slashing hardwoods, stripping them of their branches and bark to transform them into useable building material. Wood piled up slowly but by the end of the day they had ten good logs. Another few days working like this and they would have enough to start building a sturdy log home, just like the Lincoln Logs Malcolm had played with as a child.
Malcolm jumped into the pond to cool off
, get clean and take a long drink. Shia sprang in splashing water in his face. “Milora took us squirreling and we got seven fat ones for dinner and I even got one with my slingshot Papa! We cleaned them too. Milora’s cooking them now and tomorrow I’m going to sew their hides into a blanket,” she said without taking a single breath.
“Shia, you can’t make a blanket from seven squirrel pelts. It will be tiny!” laughed Malcolm as he pulled her from the water and shook himself dry. The smoky aroma of fire-roasted meat drew him back to the tents.
“Papa, you can’t build a house from ten logs either.”
* * *
Isabella woke after midnight and couldn’t get back to sleep. Above ground beckoned again and this time she didn’t fight the call. She dressed lightly to keep cool in the NBC suit and went Outside. No gifts this time, only a pair of binoculars and a flashlight. She hid in the low weedy bushes and waited for someone to come, glasses glued to her face mask. The land above their shelter had become fairly overgrown in the 50 years it hadn’t been maintained.
Suddenly Isabella was grabbed from behind. Her screams bounced off the faceplate and echoed inside the helmet. Her heart pounded and she stood frozen with terror.
She had been caught and the mutants were surely going to kill her and eat her, hopefully in that order. She struggled to get away and instantly found herself pushed to the ground, a big six-fingered hand pressed to the faceplate of her helmet. She thrashed and wiggled to escape his grasp but he was bigger than her and much stronger.
