by Lynda Engler
Finally, he thought and turned the door knob. This time it opened easily.
Like the shower room, the locker room was empty. He sat down on a metal bench and waited as instructed. How long are they going to keep me in the dark? Why won’t someone just come and get me already?
As if in answer to his thoughts, a tall, thin reed of a woman entered the locker room from the other side. Her clothes were dull white like the walls of the locker room. “Please follow me.” She spun on her heels and walked back through the door. Happy to finally see someone who wasn’t toting a gun, Luke eagerly followed her.
They walked down a hallway, as nondescript as the previous rooms, turned a corner and entered some kind of medical lab or examination room. Luke didn’t have a lot to compare it to – at least not from his own experiences, just from books his grandmother had made them read.
“Sit on the table,” ordered the woman. She looked like a nurse. Deep set crescent eyes looked at him from a timeworn face.
“Why?”
“I need to take a sample of your blood.” The nurse moved intimidatingly close to him as she stood next to the padded table.
“Why?” Luke asked again, edging back further toward the wall instead of the table she indicated.
“To see if you’ve picked up any pathogens while wandering around out there. Then I’m going to give you all your inoculations.”
Finally Luke had gotten some information from these people without having to wrench it out of them.
“Fair enough,” he answered as he got on to the examination table. But when the nurse pulled the cap off a long, thin needle with a tube on the end to collect his blood, his eyes bugged out and his butt tried to move the rest of his body physically into and through the wall behind him to get away from her.
“Don’t be frightened,” she said in a voice devoid of all inflection and any empathy.
“Are you going to stick that in me?” His voice quivered, as he tried to be brave.
“I have to give you all the shots you should have received as an infant. Anti-virals, MMR, chicken pox and tetanus are required for all residents and visitors to US military installations. Please hold out your right arm.”
“Um…” was all Luke could get out. He lifted his arm to her, but as she came toward him with the needle, he reflexively pulled back.
The nurse glared at him. “Oh for God’s sake, it’s not going to pierce you like a stake. But if you’d like, I can call in an assistant to strap you down. Believe me; it will be better if you just do this the easy way.”
Luke tried very hard to be calm and slow his heart rate. He put out his right arm and allowed the nurse to take hold of it. She tied a rubbery strap around his arm and swabbed the inside of his elbow with a cotton pad of alcohol. He winced as the needle went into his vein and he watched with fascination as his blood filled the vial. It wasn’t that bad and was over quicker than he imagined it would be. When she pulled the needle out, she placed a cotton ball over the hole then taped it down to hold it in place.
He hoped that if he could retain control over his fears and engage her in conversation, perhaps he could find out more about this military complex. “I guess it’s a good idea to get the shots. I’d hate to get sick out there.”
“Yes, I think you are finally starting to see reason. Do you know how many diseases there are out in the world?” she scowled, like it was his fault he had missed his shots as a baby.
“Not in my shelter,” Luke spat out insolently but that one smart remark would cost him his only source of knowledge in this close-mouthed place. After that, no matter what he asked the nurse, she only scowled at him as she poked his upper arm with needle after needle. “Ow!”
Nurse Lady gave him his final injection and put the last needle in a metal box on the counter. She took off her latex gloves and tossed them in the trash, revealing hands that were long and withered and dotted with age spots.
“Am I done being a pin cushion now?” Luke rubbed his arm.
“Follow me,” Nurse Lady said, turning toward the door.
“Again with the orders! Do you just love bossing people around? Your name wouldn’t be Abigail, would it? You act just like my oldest sister,” Luke groaned.
She looked back at him again and repeated the order more sternly and left the room. With no evident alternative, Luke picked up his soggy backpack and hurried after her.
Eighteen
The Telemark community had gathered most of their books into one building, a monument to literacy in an illiterate world. It was a two-story, mahogany-colored log cabin which perhaps had served as a community center in the past. There was a wooden sign in front of the building, but the paint had chipped off and Isabella couldn’t make out what it used to say. “My grandparents kept a large library and I’ve read more than half the books in it. Granmama was our teacher and she made us study all the time,” said Isabella as they entered the structure during their tour of the village.
“Could you read to us now?” asked Kalla, eagerly eyeing the tomes lining the walls.
“I guess so,” said Isabella, looking to Oberon for approval. When he acknowledged the request, she scanned the neat shelves that lined every wall and finally selected a book of short stories and sat down on the floor. The group formed a circle around her, tucking their legs underneath them, Indian-style. Isabella chose a story called The Selfish Giant, by Oscar Wilde and began reading out loud.
The story was about a giant who had a garden. Children played in the garden while the giant was away. When he came back, he got angry that there were intruders in his garden, so he built a wall around it to keep them out. But then winter settled on the garden and wouldn’t go away, until finally the children snuck back in one day. The sun emerged from its long absence and the air temperature began to warm. The ice and snow began to retreat. The giant was so happy that winter had passed, that he let them come back and play all the time. There was one little boy who was too small to climb a tree, so the giant lifted him into the tree. The giant adored the little boy, but one day, the boy left and was never seen again. Although the giant was happy the children were playing in his garden, he was sad that his favorite child had gone away. Years passed and eventually the giant got old and was ready to die and then the boy finally came back. But he was injured – he had nail holes in his palms and feet. The giant got angry that someone had hurt his favorite child, but the child told him they were “wounds of love.”
“And the child smiled on the Giant and said to him, ‘You let me play once in your garden, today you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.’ And when the children came back that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms.”
“Well, that was interesting, but I don’t get who the kid was,” admitted Isabella, as she finished the story and closed the book.
Violet tried to help. “I’ve heard stories like that before. I think the child was God, or was meant to represent God.”
“Why do you think that?” asked Isabella.
“How else could the kid not age in all that time? The giant got old, but the boy didn’t. So he was obviously supernatural. And he took the giant to Paradise – Heaven, after he died.”
“But the giant was lying there, dead. He didn’t go anywhere!” said Isabella. She shook her head, not understanding.
“His soul did.” Violet smiled as she gently laid her hand on Isabella’s shoulder.
“Soul?”
“The part of you that lives on after your body dies,” explained Violet.
“That’s just a myth. There is no such thing as a soul. Your whole essence… held in an invisible cloud somewhere in your body? Ridiculous. If it existed, scientists and doctors would have evidence of it. My grandparents said God didn’t exist.”
Malcolm jumped in. “Maybe since they live so long, they don’t worry about where they’ll go after they die. They’re seventy. That’s forever to us. Maybe religion is just something we
mutants – sorry – my people – made up because we don’t live long. We need something to believe in, something to reassure us this short life isn’t all there is.”
“No, that book wasn’t written by anyone from Outside,” said Isabella. “It was written long before the wars. Religion has been around for a long time – your people didn’t create it.”
“Maybe,” said Malcolm.
“Malcolm, Oberon, would you mind if I skip the rest of the village tour and stay here and do some reading for a while?” asked Isabella.
“Stay as long as you like,” replied Oberon. “I’ll show the rest of the group around some more. Why don’t you meet us back at my house for lunch?”
“Okay,” said Isabella. She pulled another book off the shelf and eagerly began flipping the pages. The rest of the tribe left the building to continue the tour.
Isabella sat and read for hours. She read about Christianity from a thick book called the Bible, which she had never seen before but had heard referenced in other books. She found another called the Koran and yet another about Judaism. She had even located a book on Pagan rites called the Book of Shadows. By the time her stomach began rumbling and the sun was high in the sky, she understood that once most of humanity had held religious beliefs. She began to see that if God was just a myth, then it was one that billions of people believed in over the course of history. Could so many be wrong?
She thought of what her grandparents had said about God as she walked back to Oberon’s house. They had said God wasn’t real because how could an all-powerful being let this kind of destruction happen to the world? If God existed, then her grandparent’s must have felt deserted by him. No wonder they didn’t teach their daughters or grandchildren anything about religion.
But the mutants had survived. Maybe God helped them, like the giant helped the little boy. Maybe God kept the people outside alive through mutations.
But did he really abandon the people in the shelters?
* * *
After the shots, Luke was taken further down the hall to a sparse room, with a bed, a metal table and chair and a small bathroom in the corner. It looked like a jail cell and he felt like a prisoner.
Nurse Lady left the room and locked the door behind her. Having nothing else to do, Luke lay down on the bed and waited. The mattress was very thin and the bed was narrow, more a cot than an actual bed. Still, it was better than the sleeping bag on the hard ground he had been using since he left his shelter. The least they could do was explain why he was being held captive. Captain Alcott said they were taking him back home, so this didn’t make sense. Why lock him up?
He was just dozing off when the door opened.
“Lucas Bellardini?” asked the newcomer. He was an older man, with lots of insignia on his uniform, tall, clean shaven and bald. His eyes, narrow and small, regarded Luke with disdain.
Luke sat up and threw his legs off the cot. “You can call me Luke. Everyone else does. Why have I been locked up? I thought you were taking me home.” Luke’s mouth was crimped in annoyance and the veins in his neck were beginning to stand out in angry ridges.
“Luke,” said the soldier, “you aren’t a prisoner. You’re being quarantined until we’re sure you’re not carrying anything contagious. Standard procedure.” He flashed Luke a superior smirk.
“You catch a lot of shelter kids wandering the woods then?”
The decorated soldier actually laughed at him. “You get your sarcasm from your grandfather.”
“You know Granpapa?” How was this arrogant old man involved with his grandfather?
“Yes, Luke, I knew your grandfather before the wars. We grew up in neighboring towns and went to the same high school. He was always an odd kid. He was into survivalist stories – a bit of a radical at the time. When I joined the Army, I tried to get Anthony to join too, but he wasn’t interested. Said the world was going to end – that the religious fanatics would kill us all and he would rather not die on a battlefield. So he married his high school sweetheart and built that ridiculous underground shelter – straight out of plans from a survivalist internet blog.”
Luke didn’t understand what the old soldier meant but he stood up and faced him and said, “But he was right, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, son, paranoid as he was. We both knew what the future held. But we dealt with it in different ways. And we’re both still here, fifty years later, when most of humanity has perished.” The old soldier looked around the small room and then continued. “I’m Colonel Ericson. I head up the Medical Research Facility here. Someone will bring you dinner shortly. Eat, get some rest and by the morning we’ll know if you’re carrying any bugs. If you’re clean, we’ll release you from quarantine and give you the grand tour of the base if you want it. Then we’ll take you home.”
Well, that was simple.
“Thanks,” said Luke. “Did you find Isabella too? Is she here somewhere?”
“Isabella? Who is she?” He raised one eyebrow quizzically. The Colonel stood ramrod straight, in perfect military at ease position, even though conversing with a teenage civilian.
“My … sister. She took off four days before I left. That’s why I went out – to bring her back. Didn’t Granpapa ask you to retrieve her as well?”
“No. We only got the one radio call – for you. Anthony didn’t mention another missing grandchild.” The Colonel had a curious look on his face. “I wonder why he didn’t call earlier. If we’d known, we could have picked her up and you wouldn’t have had to be exposed at all.”
“She left with a mutant tribe that wandered onto our property. She snuck out of the shelter to see them a few times first, then eventually left with them. Granpapa wouldn’t go get her, not even in his chem-rad suit, so I went out to find her. I thought I could catch up to her quickly. I thought you knew all this. Could you send out your people to get her? She was headed northeast of Dover. I was following her trail – you guys should have no problem at all with your equipment.”
“Four days ahead of you? They’ll have reached Telemark by now. That’s the small community of mutants on the east side of the ridge from Picatinny – lots of wanderers wind up there. We round some of them up sometimes. But if she left with them, she probably won’t want to go back. Besides, she’s been exposed for far too long now anyway,” said the Colonel, frowning.
“Huh? You mean she really is going to die?”
“No, not right away, of course,” said Colonel Ericson. “But her genes are irreparably compromised now. She’ll never have healthy children. Her offspring will be born mutated. No point in getting her back now. After 72 hours of exposure, she’s a write-off. Too bad. There are precious few survivors. I hate to lose even one. We found you just in time.”
“You talk like she’s dead already!” Luke ground out the words between clenched teeth. He couldn’t believe they wouldn’t help him. He balled his fists together and paced the small room, not knowing what to do. He wanted to punch the old soldier for not helping.
“Sorry kid. But she would just run off again anyway. That’s probably why your grandfather didn’t call us. If she wants to be out there, it would be a waste of resources to send my men.” There was a click and the door opened. “Ah, here’s your dinner. Eat, get some rest and I’ll see you in the morning.”
* * *
When Isabella returned to Oberon’s home, the house was quiet. She had expected the boisterous kitchen of this morning’s breakfast. “Hello? Where is everyone?” she shouted.
Andra’s orange cat ran down the hall toward her at the sound of Isabella’s voice, followed quickly by his owner. “Isabella, come quick,” urged the child. “Davin’s sick.”
Andra scooped Pumpkin into her arms and raced back to the bedroom where her little brother lay, ashen-faced, under blankets in the late July heat.
Violet was alone in the room with Davin when Isabella entered. She held a wet rag on the boy’s forehead.
“What’s the matter with him?” asked Isabella
. She leaned over the boy and put her hand on his cheek. His teeth chattered violently, his face was puffy and his breath came in wheezy rasps.
“Fever. Andra brought him here from the sheep pen this morning,” said Violet. “Since the house was empty, she tucked him into the bed and waited till we got back. Such a responsible little girl!”
“Where’s Malcolm and everyone else?”
“He went out to get Shia and my boys,” replied Violet. “They are playing ball down at the field. He tried to take Andra with him but she refused to leave her brother’s side. Oberon’s off making more permanent housing arrangements for the rest of your group. On his way back he’ll stop at our medicine woman’s home and ask her to come see Davin.”
Violet turned her attention to Andra. “Child, if you won’t go out an’ play with the kids, then go sit on the front porch and watch for the medicine woman. When she gets here, bring her to this room straight-away,” said Violet in her thick Virginia drawl.
“Okay, Violet. But take care of him till I get back.” Andra, still clutching the striped bundle of fur, left the room as instructed.
“She told her mother she would take care of him. I guess she’s really going to make good on that promise,” said Isabella, kneeling beside Davin’s bed and grasping his small hand in her own.
“These two aren’t yours?”
“No, we picked them up along the way. Their mother was dying of the wasting disease. She asked us to take care of her children,” said Isabella.
“Well, Andra is amazing. Lake and Oak are both older than her and they barely take care of themselves, much less each other. What a surprisin’ child!”
Isabella took the compress off the sleeping boy and put her hand on his forehead. He was burning up. “Have you given him anything?”
“A bit of willow bark powder in a glass of water. He struggled to swallow it and then fell right asleep.” Violet swore. “Where is that woman?” Up until now, Violet had not appeared to be worried, or at least she had tried not to show it to Isabella, but she was clearly frustrated that the healer had not arrived yet.
