Epoch Earth; the Great Glitch

by Toasha Jiordano

  Chapter Thirty

  “I’m not eating that.” Brooks pursed his lips.

  “Bit you’re getting skinnier by the day.” I dropped my fork and picked his up. He slapped it away.

  “Don’t you dare. I’m eight! I’m not a baby!”

  “Then stop acting like one and eat your potatoes!”

  “I’m so tired of potatoes Syn. I’m gonna turn into a potato.” He whined.

  “Good. I hope you do. They’re nice and round.”

  “You know what else is round? Peas! I don’t see any peas in our garden,” Brooks challenged.

  “And you won’t either.” I smiled wide, mashed potatoes threatening to ooze out of my mouth.

  “Both of you are acting worse than babies, and I should know.” Howie towered over us, holding Evelyn. The four-year-old couldn’t walk, and Howie still had to feed her by hand.

  “Here I’ll hold her. You eat something.” I stood, swallowing the last gulp of mashed potatoes. I took Evelyn and laid the frail girl on the old couch in Howie’s living room. As I performed her daily exercise routine, stretching her arms and legs to keep them from drawing up to her center, Evelyn stared blankly to the sky. We weren’t sure how far in front of her face she could see, but I liked to think she was looking at the pictures of her family that lined the wood panel walls. I kept them dusted and straightened for the little girl, even as the rest of their house fell in disrepair.

  Howie shoveled the potatoes and squirrel gravy in his mouth with a tablespoon, standing over the kitchen counter. Seconds later he dashed back toward the front door. “Marc, get your butt down here and eat!”

  A frail voice carried into the living room. Howie’s mom, who’d never recovered from the Glitch and subsequent birth of Evelyn, called from the dining room. We’d moved a bed in there for her after it was obvious she’d never be strong enough to climb the stairs again. “You mind your brother, Marcus.” Her voice, barely a whisper, wouldn’t make it up the stairs either.

  “Come on Marc, you’re upsetting Mom.”

  At that, the boy—a little older than Brooks but smaller and barely a skeleton,—lumbered down the stairs. “I hate potatoes,” he moaned.

  “That’s what I said!” Brooks piped up in the kitchen.

  I shushed Brooks. “Both of you eat or you’ll never be as strong as Howie.”

  Marcus bared his twig arm and squeezed his fist. “I could totally take him!” He begrudgingly pulled out a chair beside Brooks and scooped the last of the potatoes onto his plate.

  “You wish!” Howie yelled from the other side of the house, opening the door. //You got this?// He chipped to me.

  //Of course. I could totally take both of these twerps.// I laughed out loud, making Evelyn grunt what passed as a laugh beside me.

  //You gonna be here when I get back? Just have to catch a couple more rabbits before it starts to get cold.//

  //If Evelyn gets to sleep early enough I’ll head back. Bit seems to think he’s man of the house these days. Won’t go to bed unless I’m in my room.//

  //Tell me about it. I’m having the same problem with Marc. Sometimes I really do pass out when I’m trying to pretend.//

  I giggled again and Evelyn grunted even louder.

  Brooks yelled from the kitchen, mouth full of food, “you two stop chip kissing! It’s rude!”

  “We’re not chip kissing! We’re talking about what babies you two are being. Now eat!” I called over my shoulder. “Silly boys,” I cooed to Evelyn.

  //Can you make sure my mom gets something to eat?// Howie asked as he closed the door. The bike revved up.

  //No problem.//

  With Evelyn content, scooting around the floor on her newly stretched muscles, I picked up the feeding tube and supplies.

  As I entered the dining room I eyed the thin frame of Howie’s mom, which barely made a dent on the bed. We’d wrapped the eternally cold woman up like a taco in as many blankets as they could spare. I unraveled her to attach the feeding tube. She shivered and tugged at the blankets. “Here Mrs. Anderson,” I said as I turned on the small space heater and pointed it toward us. The blast of hot air instantly made me want to hurry with the feeding. “This should help.”

  “Please,” she feebly pulled the blankets back up to her chin, shaking her head.

  “It’s OK, the heater will help while you have your supper.” I smiled at her.

  “Give it to the babies.” The faint whisper of her voice faded further still.

  “They’re full. This is just leftovers.” I knew the drill. I’d had the same struggle with my own Mom at the end. Even with her last breaths she’d tried to refuse food, always telling me to save it for Brooks.

  IT WOULDN’T BE LONG now. I tore open the last packet of morphine suppositories with my teeth. It brought back memories of the first time I’d done this, about a year ago, after trading Dr. Kaolin our last bundle of firewood for the medicine. It was deep winter and the opportunist didn’t bat an eye. I’d been terrified. My hands had trembled and nearly dropped the suppository.

  Now, sitting on the coffee table, I lifted my mom’s shriveled leg in the air and shoved the tiny squishy blue pill where it belonged. Tugging the flimsy latex glove from my hand, I felt a familiar snap. Dammit! The last pair of those, too! I covered my mom, who was quietly mewing in the thin haze of comfort the morphine provided, and tossed the ripped glove in the trash can across the room.

  “More,” she begged.

  “There aren’t any more.” I patted my mother’s forehead. “Just rest. I’m going out for a supply run.”

  The edges of her cracked lips twitched. “I must tell you,” she forced the words to form.

  “Sshh, Mom. Sleep. While you’re feeling alright, you should sleep.” I fluffed the pillow behind her head and made an attempt to turn away.

  “I’ll sleep soon.”

  I didn’t want to admit to myself just how right that statement was.

  Mom raised herself slightly off the pillow. “Where’s Brooks?” She’d taken to calling him that after the eight-year-old indignantly refused to be addressed by his pet name anymore.

  “Upstairs trying to get his holo to work. I keep telling him it’s no use. Dropped it one too many times.”

  “Good. I need to speak to you in private. We have work to discuss.” Mom ran her fingers through my hair. “You’re such a big girl now.” Those fingers got caught in my rat’s nest. “I wish you’d—”

  “Mom.” I stood and combed my own fingers through the mess. “I’m gonna be in fatigues anyway. My hair will be fine.”

  “Fine, that’s not important anyway. But be careful out there.”

  The normalness of the statement stung. How many times had she said those very words? Even long before the Glitch when ‘out there’ was a safe happy world. “I will, Mom. I always am.” I smiled for her benefit and sat back down.

  “We need to go over a few things.”

  I could tell from the tone of her voice that this was happening, so I nodded. Better to let her get it all out so she could rest. Before the morphine wore off.

  “You need to leave here. Find Mr. Anderson.”

  What? Of all the nights we’d sat just like this, Mom teaching me survival tactics, never once had anything as ludicrous as Howie’s father come up. He was long gone. “Mom I think the morphine’s kicking in.”

  “I’m serious. You and your brother need to leave here. It’s not safe. Mr. Anderson will know what to do.”

  “But Mom—”

  “Just trust me.”

  “OK. I’ll find Howie’s dad... somehow.” I threw my arms up in frustration.

  “He’s in Atlanta, at the GSA headquarters.”

  My hands rushed to my mouth.

  Mom continued. “Promise. When I’m gone. You leave this house, this place, and you find him.” Coughing and wheezing interrupted her words.

  “Stop talking like that. You’re not going anywhere,” I lied.

  “That brings me to
my next request.” Tears glossed her eyes. “I need you to get me more morphine.” The words were ragged now, her energy spent.

  “I’m going, Mom. Don’t worry. I’ll find some. I’m sure my bike will make it to the hospital.” I twitched my eye for the map to pop up in my retina. “It’s only twelve miles and it’s still daylight out.”

  “I need all of it.”

  “What?” I can’t. You can’t... It’s too much.” Shaking my head I jerked my hand away and stomped toward the kitchen, then slowly walked back. “You’re not asking me to—”

  “This has to be the end for me, Syn. I’m weighing you down. It’s been years. You and your brother should have gone long ago.” Her voice cracked. “I need you to be strong for me.”

  “I’m not that strong. Nobody’s that strong.”

  “If I could do it myself, I wouldn’t be asking. I’m not even strong enough to open the packets now.” The far-away look in her eyes told me she’d already tried.

  “Maybe we can—”

  “No. We can’t.” Mom waved her arms over her emaciated body, half of what it was before the Glitch. “I’m a burden and I won’t be the reason you miss the ship.”

  Ship? “Ship?”

  “Yes, it’s the only way to get you off this Stone forsaken rock!”

  “Mom you’re not making any sense. Howie’s Dad left after Mrs. Anderson got pregnant.”

  Mom attempted to shake her head. “He didn’t leave because she got pregnant. He probably didn’t even know she was pregnant. And who told you that?”

  “Howie. He said...”

  “Well he’s wrong. Franklin would never do that to Carolyn.” Hearing Howie’s parents referred to by their first names only intensified the eerie feeling creeping up my spine. This was so wrong. Mom sighed, pulling as much oxygen as she could through the mud in her lungs. “But he probably would have left anyway. Even with the baby. They knew the risk.” She collapsed into a coughing heap.

  I smoothed the damp thinning hair on her forehead and tried to soothe her. “I’m going to make my supply run. You get some rest and maybe you’ll start making sense later.” I pulled the covers high over her bony shoulders.

  Tangie stalked into the room and pawed at her blanket. I picked him up and sat him on her lap. With a strong sense of duty, he curled up and started purring in Mom’s face.

  “I’m making sense, Synta.” Mom raised a weak hand to Tangie’s head and rested it there. “Please promise me you’ll do as I asked.” Her dry red eyes bore a hole into me. “I love you, baby.”

  My throat seized. The words were unable to form. Hot tears spilled onto my arm and I kissed my fingers and placed them onto Mom’s dry lips.

  A few minutes later, after a brief stop on the porch to collect myself, I was riding my now modified to accept ethanol scooter down the deserted streets. I barely noticed the flashing blue lights or blaring sirens. They’d become commonplace. But more than that, my mind reeled from the shock of my mom’s request.

  I can’t.

  I must.

  The two thoughts warred in my mind. When I came to the corner where Dr. Kaolin had introduced me to his ‘guy’, I didn’t even knock three times. I flung open the door, waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, and called out, “Merch! It’s Synta. I need more morphine.”

  “Damn, child.” The grizzled voice came from the back room, behind a beaded doorway. “Tell the poh-lice out there while yer at it, why don’cha.” The rotund man barely squeezed his ample backside through the door frame, filling it completely, at least the lower half. His head, if he was lucky, was level with mine. He stood there, sizing me up, a long train of ash limping off a thick cigar clutched between his yellow teeth. He flicked his jaw outward and the ash fell to the carpet. “What you got for me?”

  I held up my backpack, showing the sagging weight.

  “Better not be no damn peas, I swear.”

  I pursed one side of my mouth, not wanting to confirm or deny.

  “Come on now, girl. You know I ain’t gonna take no more peas. Every damn time.” Merch removed his camouflage cap, revealing a shock of white curls around the ears and nowhere else. He rubbed his forehead with the base of his palm and slid the cap back down. “How much you need? One week?”

  If that. I was glad that didn’t come out of my mouth. I unzipped the bag to dig for payment.

  “Alright. Alright. But next week you owe double. And if I even hear cans clankin’ around in there.” He pointed the cigar at my backpack.

  “I promise.” I raised two fingers in the ‘scout’s honor’ symbol my dad had taught me when I was little. A tiny stab of pain hit my heart at the little things that brought him flooding back.

  Merch keyed a five-digit code into the lock of a large metal safe, shielding it with his other hand. “You want some patches? I got new ones.”

  My ears perked. “What kinds?”

  He rummaged through a container of chip cases. “Some books, transcripts of the hearings. That’s popular these days.”

  “You can keep those. I’ve seen enough.” The constant updates from the Citizen Network were more than enough for me.

  “Oh, got some movies.” He held one mini-chip up as if to hand it over, but pulled it back before I could take it. “Uh, sorry. You’re not quite old enough for that yet.” He cough-laughed and dropped it in the plastic container. “Ah, here you go. This is that skinny kid you girls all went crazy for before, right?”

  Dayne! I snatched the chip and placed it in the portable reader on Merch’s dusty corner table.

  “Uh, you gonna pay for that?”

  I dug in my backpack, pulled out a trial size bottle of Jack Daniels and tossed it his way.

  Merch snatched it out of mid-air. “You been holding out on me.”

  “Emergencies.”

  “Well gimme another and we’ll call it even, including the meds.”

  I felt in the bottom of the bag for another bottle and found a clear one with the label torn off. “Mystery flavor.”

  “That’ll work.” Merch set his bounty on the desk beside the chip reader. “Alright, Channel Two.”

  Nodding in the affirmative, I blinked my right eye. Moments later a goofy grin spread across my face as Dayne came to life in my mind’s eye.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me,” Merch hinted, picking the tiny bottles of booze up and shaking them at me.

  “Sorry. Thanks so much!” Taking the seven packets of morphine from his hand, I shoved them in my backpack and slammed the door behind me.

  The entire ride home I was able to push the will I/won’t I fight to the back of my mind. Surely with another dose Mom would feel better and stop talking that nonsense, I assured myself, allowing Dayne to take over.

  “Mom I got you some dope!” I called as I threw open the door. Only one of us thought that was funny, and it was never her.

  “Syn!” Brooks’s tear-stained voice wiped the smile right off my face. I ran to the living room to witness my little brother shaking, bent over our mother’s body. Her skin had gone ashen, almost white, and her chest didn’t move.

  I dropped my backpack, not even hearing the heavy canned peas clang to the floor. Running to Brooks, I enveloped him in my arms, tearing him from Mom’s corpse. “Oh, Bit I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “She...she...help her Syn.” Brooks ripped himself from my grip and pushed me toward the body. “Help her!”

  All I could do was look back and forth between the cold form of my mom and the wet face of my little brother. Brooks stood, hunched over, arms wrapped around himself in a bear hug. “Help her,” he muttered to himself repeatedly.

  AFTER FEEDING MRS. Anderson and finally getting Brooks home and in his own bed, I dragged myself to my room and dropped onto my soft inviting sheets. It may not have been dark yet, but it was definitely bed time, or so my bones told me.

  Without thinking, I clicked on the radio, letting the sound of Fox’s voice carry me into the sweet beyond.

&
nbsp; “Ladies and gentlemen, I have no words to describe the horrors I’ve seen since the Glitch. Every day surprises me more with the carnage, not only toward our physical selves, but to each other’s personal selves as well.

  “But this. This is the worse catastrophe I’ve seen in the four years I’ve tried to stay on the air for you. I’m disgusted by my fellow man.”

  Bolting upright, I rubbed my eyes, sleep fading. I turned up the volume and sat still, hugging my pillow.

  “For those of you just joining us tonight, there have been reports of riots. Protesters for the Truth Movement have broken into GSA Headquarters. They’re destroying government property, and worse. My sources tell me they’ve taken hostages and are killing them off, one by one, at the top of the hour. We have just fourteen minutes until 7p.m. How many more people have to die in this monstrous situation before we learn to treat each other with respect?”

  //Are you listening?// I transmitted to Howie.

  //Yeah what’s this about?//

  //I don’t know. I just laid down. He said hostages.//

  //It’s crazy Synta. He’s right. Every day I get more worried about the kids. Mom’s so bad now.//

  //Sshh. Don’t think about that right now. Do you want to turn it off and just go to bed?//

  //No, I have to see what’s happening. Pettine’s still out there.//

  //She’s not near the GSA, Howie. You don’t have to—//

  //We don’t know where she is Syn. She was protesting on campus long before the Glitch. We just don’t know.//

  //Alright, alright.//

  I turned the radio up a bit more and Fox’s voice filled the room. “If you’re a Truther and you can hear me, I’m chipping on Public Channel 3 also. I want someone from your organization, your leader, to chip in to me so we can try to end this peacefully.

  “Anyone with contacts inside the Truth Movement please get me someone. We have to stop this madness. You can’t treat your fellow man like this. Those aren’t just government drones you’re killing. They have families. We’ve tried so hard to rebuild from the desolation that was left after the Glitch, and now this?”