by Ann Christy
Next time there is an opportunity to pet a cat, with their sweet faces and soft fur, it’s something worth considering.
One
The breeze was cold and the temperature as low as Lillian had ever felt inside the silo. It was the kind of chilly where jackets were needed and an extra blanket a must for sleep. It was too cold for a skin suit, particularly a wet skin suit. She wanted to keep walking around and showing them what was out here, but she was out here alone and needed to take care of things.
If anyone did come out to join her—and she didn’t know how that was going to happen any time soon—it wouldn’t be before she got too cold to function. There was no way she was going to die after surviving to this point. No way. There was too much to see and be excited about and start anew. But first things had to be done first if that was going to be possible.
Placing the ball on the ground and sitting in front of it, far enough back that she hoped she could be seen, she held up a hand to the camera and folded her fingers into a fist. Please let someone smart be watching, she thought. She pointed her index finger up for a quick second, folded it back down and shook her head. Then she pointed it up twice and nodded her head. She repeated it just in case they had missed it.
She couldn’t know if they understood that she was using the keying sequences with a pointing finger instead of a key but it was all she had.
“Fine here”, she signed, hoping she wasn’t screwing up the letters. To emphasize the point she mimed putting up her arms and flexing her arm muscles.
“Cold. Need warm. Food. Come here.”
It was painfully slow to spell out the words with a single finger, but she was heartily glad that she had buckled down and practiced the key codes. Looking around, she didn’t see much that she recognized. The plants were strange to her as were the trees. Greg would probably know what they were. The only plants Lillian knew she would recognize if she saw them were ones already full of what was harvested from them and there was nothing like that around her. She also didn’t feel comfortable this close to the dead line, though she knew that was probably unnecessary because all here was alive and untouched.
“Need medical,” she signed, putting a hand near her stinging face. Her eye saw nothing but that same haze, but at least it didn’t hurt. It felt a bit like when she got soap in her eyes after the soap had been washed out, sort of raw and delicate.
“Must get warm,” she signed after a particularly hard shiver. The sun, something she had only ever seen clearly as it set, was high in the sky but she had the feeling that time was passing. Eventually, night would fall.
“Scared. Little.”
It suddenly occurred to her that her family was about to get some strange news. She was simultaneously elated and ashamed that her first signs hadn’t been for them. “Family. Love. Safe.”
Greg was watching. She could feel it like a warm hand on her own. He might even now be looking for a message or he might be yelling at the screen and telling her to get moving. “Greg,” she signed, settling for just his name. He would understand.
She stood and looked at the ball, nestled into the ground with its merry green light. It would last a few days, maybe a week, but the transmitter she had dropped might stop even before that. She would never know if that stopped working. She had only that tiny green speck of light to link her to home.
It was much harder than she thought it would be to walk away from the ball and toward those tall trees and the shadows beneath them.
Two
It was nice in the sunlight and it warmed her as she walked across the field. Was this what it felt like to work beneath the grow lights? It was clear to her that the lights were meant to mimic this for there were no giant racks of bulbs here, only the warm, yellow light of the sun. When she walked into the shadows under the trees, the warmth was sucked away almost from one step to the next. As was the sound. Under the trees, the sounds of those flying things with their loud chirps and beeps diminished and softened as the rustling of leaves and branches increased.
Her options for warmth were limited. She could use her running suit to cover up once she got it completely dry and her skin suit would dry out eventually. There was no store where she might get blankets or clothes but a blanket was nothing more than something one put over them to hold in heat. That was what she needed. She bent and scooped up some of the litter on the ground but it was all old leaves and crumbles of dirt. She could pile up this dirt and debris on herself and that would do. She’d rather find something a little less dirty, a little less like being covered in her own grave.
Many of the trees had no low branches, standing straight and tall. Thankfully, not all of them were like that. Others looked more like the ones in the silo, except very large and a few had branches she could reach if she jumped. Perhaps she could strip the leaves off of those and have a cleaner bed than just dirt. She hopped up, pulled one of the smaller branches downward and stroked the supple foliage. To do this inside the silo would be an unthinkable act and it was hard to imagine doing it here. Would the tree be hurt? Might it die?
Leaning her head back, she gazed up through the leaves. They glimmered in the breeze as the sunlight came through in bright shafts of golden light. It was breathtaking. She let the branch go and it sprung back up and away from her as if relieved that she had decided not to harm it. No, she would look for something else before she did that.
Afraid of losing her way, she scuffed her slipper in a long straight line though the litter, creating stark black marks that would lead her back the way she had come. When she looked back to be sure she could see, it looked like a long dashed line weaving through the trees. She made another dash and walked on.
Not a hundred paces in she found a fallen tree, or at least part of one. Something had split it and a mark that looked like a scorch or burn scar marred the split. On the ground, a big chunk of the tree had broken free and she found scorch marks there, too. It was one of the tall straight ones and she could finally examine the strange bristling leaves for herself. She tested the tip of one with a finger and found it sharp. Not like a knife but certainly sharp enough to be called pokey.
This tree was destroyed, though the long needle like leaves were still green and smelled delightful. She would be doing it no harm if she took from it. It was harder than she might have thought, breaking off the smaller branches. In the end it took bending, twisting and a few choice curse words to get some of them free. When she swooshed the branch out and let it fall flat, with the needles laying sideways, it made for a not uncomfortable layer on her legs. She gathered up all that she could, piling up the smaller ones onto the largest she was able to break free, and dragged them all through the trees and back to the clearing.
She arranged them in the lee of a group of shrubs where the little red flyers were before, then laid down on the bed to test it. It was a bit prickly if she moved too much, but otherwise soft and comfortable. She needed more to cover herself. Her hands were stained and sticky with something that came out of the tree. She licked it and made a face. It tasted like medicine even though she liked the smell. They were also sore from all the tearing and breaking. Then she remembered her knife.
“I’m an Other’ed idiot,” she muttered and went to retrieve it and her other things. The suit she emptied and laid out in the sun with the boots propped up on rocks she dragged from the water’s edge. That would help ensure every drop drained out and down the legs to empty out of the ragged gash along the front.
She was thirsty and she considered the water in front of her. If there was any contamination, it was certainly already inside her after her extended plunge, but she had an ingrained hesitation about drinking it. Every child knew that only water that came from a tap marked in blue was meant for drinking or washing with or cooking with. Not all water in the silo was safe to drink and some was best left for toilets or use in fire hoses. This wasn’t coming from a tap and she had no way of knowing where it came from. The stream stretched far beyond where
she could see but it looked clean and clear to her.
There was really no other option so she rinsed out her helmet and dipped some out. It tasted wonderful, with none of the flatness of the water that came from the vapor distillers in the silo. It tasted almost alive. That was somewhat creepy at second thought, but it was no less true. The helmet smells would make the water taste less nice quickly, so she drank her fill, emptied the rest and laid her helmet on her new bed where a pillow should go.
Back into the woods for a second load of branches she went, deepening her marks on the ground as she passed them. All the gear under her skin suit was still in place—air tank, air scrubber, battery packs—and they chaffed terribly at her damp skin. She wanted to take it off and lie down under the warm sun to dry off. Lillian quickened her steps at the thought of being warm, suddenly needing to hurry.
At the tree, she struggled to get off another load of the small branches. The only parts that were useful were the softer small ones and the split portion on the ground only had so many. Some were trapped under the large piece of wood and she wasn’t able to budge that at all, no matter how she tugged at it. When she had a pile almost as tall as her hips, she stood back and looked at it, hands on her hips. So much wood. It was mindboggling that such an unheard of treasure could be discarded here, stripped of its needles and left to lie. With a shake of her head, Lillian decided that she was even more amazed at how quickly she could change how she thought about something.
Once she left the trees, she wouldn’t be coming back in for a while. There were too many pokey and prickly things for her to walk around without her suit on and the light was shifting, the sun moving toward the cap of brown sky she had left behind. It would be dark under here once that happened. This might be her last chance to explore the trees and see what she might find. There might be food plants she recognized or chickens she could get eggs from. All the other little flying things looks like tiny chickens so maybe they had eggs she could filch, though she had no way to cook them and no idea if eggs could be eaten without cooking.
Careful to make more marks on the forest floor to mark her way, she walked deeper into the trees, looking at every plant as carefully as she could. Nothing looked familiar and she hesitated to even touch things she didn’t know. Small, sudden noises followed by silence greeted her and she called out, “Hello,” just to break the quiet once in a while. No one answered. The only response she received was from birds taking flight when she neared and the scurrying of some sort of small animal with a fuzzy tail. It looked like a big mouse, except for cuter, and seemed to be able to scrabble up even vertical trees with no effort at all. When she approached one staring at her from its spot on a tree, it made a chirping bark and ran away up to the top of the tree, where it shook and jerked its tail in what could only be indignation or anger. Her laugh was a sharp sound in the forest, quickly dampened by the trees around her.
The smell of decay hit her nose. It was the sweet rankness of the farm sections where those that died were planted and a new grave was dug. There was nothing around that looked like the mounded hillocks of the graves, though they may look different out here. From the trees nearby she heard the soft thud of something landing on the ground and she squatted where she was, suddenly afraid. Her first thought was of Others. Could they be alive and out here where she was? The smell of death didn’t bode well.
A deeper shadow detached itself from the trees and came toward her in a sinuous motion that sent the hair on her neck straight up. The leaves on the forest floor made noises far louder than she liked as she scrambled backward, keeping the dark shape in sight. It stopped while still in the shadows and didn’t move closer, though Lillian could sense it was watching her, taking her measure. Some instinct inside her whispered urgently that she shouldn’t look small or afraid. Her fingers brushed one of the innumerable dead branches that littered the ground. She gripped it and stood, legs braced and arms wide.
The shadow shifted and leapt upward, shaking the tree limb it landed on violently. The light was poor there where the trees were thicker, but Lillian could see the large, low branch moving as whatever the creature was stalked along its length. Lillian pivoted slowly to keep the thing in sight but silence fell and nothing moved for long minutes. Her arm grew tired so she shifted the branch from one hand to the other. After another eternal span of time that probably only lasted another minute, she wondered if it was gone and she had missed its leaving.
That thought gave her another shiver and a feeling like she should look behind her just to be sure it wasn’t creeping up on her while she stood there looking in the wrong direction. She craned her neck but saw nothing save more shadowed forest. She backed up against a tree, looking up to be sure it wasn’t above her, and tried to tell herself it was gone and she should just go back to the field.
Her indecision point had almost passed when the creature leapt from the concealing foliage of the low branch and landed across the little clearing from her. In the dappled light it wasn’t black at all and instantly recognizable.
“Kitty!” Lillian squealed, then took in its size. “Big kitty.”
It was a beautiful buff tan color all over and its eyes blazed like golden fire. When she’d squealed it had lowered its head and turned away a little, like her human noises had alarmed it. It made a low rumbling noise and looked at her again but it wasn’t looking at her like any kitty she’d ever seen before. It was a dangerous look. The lips skinned back from gleaming teeth far larger than any she had ever seen. The size of it was unbelievable. If she dared to stand next to it, it would come up to her mid-thigh easily and was probably as tall as she was if it stretched out. Kitty was probably technically appropriate, but it was not the right sentiment at all.
She hefted the branch again, making herself as big as possible and stared at the cat. That could be the wrong thing to do, but when a cat was naughty in the silo, looking at it usually was enough to let it know it was caught so it would move on to other mischief.
The cat stared back, but an ear kept twitching backward, as if it were hearing something that bothered it and kept it in place. Was it protecting something? Something like whatever was dead and stinking? Perhaps it was like the cats allowed to breed and wary of people while it had kittens to care for? Perhaps she had simply stumbled into an area it didn’t like company in and she should leave. There was no way she was going to turn her back so she shifted right, toward the first line of her path. The cat backed up a step, ears flicking warily.
When she reached the path she had made, she hurried backward, allowing only quick glances over her shoulder to ensure that nothing would trip her up. The cat made no move toward her and its head rose a little as she backed away. Just before she lost sight of the big brown cat, the attitude of it seemed to have changed. It tilted its head enough to keep her in sight as well, a look of curiosity on its bold face.
At the pile of branches, she didn’t hesitate, picking up the branch end that served as a handle for her big pile of brush while keeping her weapon branch in the other. As tired and sore as she was, her feet surprised her by almost skipping in their haste to reach the field again. She wanted a nice open area where she could see what was coming.
Her pile was more than sufficient for warmth so she ducked behind her shrub and stripped the skin suit, yanking up her undershorts when they came off with the suit and looking around in embarrassment. It was silly but being undressed out here with no walls was almost unbearably uncomfortable. The air tank, scrubber and battery packs were still strapped to her body but now she could finally get rid of the weight of those as well. Each one falling away was a relief and she felt light as a feather when the last battery pack hit the ground.
The stinging on her back was worse now that the air could reach the spot. Taking another quick peek around first, she pulled her undershirt off and checked the back. A streak of drying blood, but not a particularly big or alarming one, marked the center. No matter what contortions she tried, she couldn’t
reach the spot, only the soreness around it. Her shirt back on, she picked up the skin suit and saw the problem. Where her air tank had been there was a small hole, most likely rubbed through by the connector. She draped the skin suit over her shrub.
“I knew I should have paid more attention when they were checking for this stuff.”
It was strange to hear her voice outside. She should go back and check in at the ball so they would know she was alright, maybe figure out a way to tell them about the huge cat. Thoughts of the cat brought something else to mind. If cats were that big out here, what might the other animals be like? Her stomach grumbled unhappily and she mused that perhaps chickens would lay eggs as big as her head. A drumstick the size of her arm would come in quite handy. She had no food so it was best not to think too hard about it. Lillian turned and looked at the wall of brown air that separated her from everyone else. The light was less bright now and the wall darker and more ominous. Soon enough it would be dark. Then what? She searched the ground for as far as she could see in that dusty air, looking for someone, perhaps Leo. When would they come for her and how would she get home?
Three
The sun was high and bright in the sky when she woke. Stretching under the pile of scratchy but warm boughs, Lillian longed for a cup of tea more than anything in the world. It had not been a restful night. It was, if she thought about it, the least restful night of her life.
She had signed all that she had found, hoping that at least some of it made sense and then looked around the field for anything that might fill her stomach. When she spotted the dandelions on the far edge of the field, she whooped with joy, silencing the flying animals for a moment. Dandelions, with their dagged leaves and tight yellow flowers, were a staple of the silo. They couldn’t be eliminated and popped up everywhere but at least they were delicious in salad and the blossoms fried crisp in old crumbs were a favorite.
