Barren Waters - The Complete Novel: (A Post-Apocalyptic Tale of Survival)

by Julia Shupe

  Without further delay, he lifted Sam and let her bike fall to the ground. It was useless to them now, but it had done its job and he left it where it fell. He carried her to his bike and propped her against his chest. Seth gently splayed her legs across the handlebars and accepted the additional weight of her pack without protest.

  This was how they’d traveled the last fifty miles. It was nothing short of grueling. Jeremy’s legs burned from the effort. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen, his breath a painful burn in his chest. He’d clenched his teeth against his many discomforts: the sliver of seat that pressed uncomfortably against his groin, the trembling of muscles in arms that had to remain taut to keep Sam from falling to the side, and the unbearable thirst he couldn’t quench with the bottle of water strapped beneath the bike’s frame. He couldn’t stop now. He wouldn’t stop.

  Wordlessly they’d ridden all night and saved their breath for the last miles ahead. At certain points, Sam was somewhat lucid, but most of the time she wasn’t. She’d fallen into a deep sleep for most of the way. At least that’s what Jeremy told himself. For a diabetic without the proper amount of insulin, there was a fine line between deep sleep and coma. But he didn’t want to think about that. He’d propped her arm against her belly, in a way that provided him visibility of the numbers at her wrist, and he fought to contain his panic as he watched them rise. Her sugars were high. Unacceptably high.

  Though he and Susan had never truly known, they’d always suspected Sam suffered the worst kind of diabetes. Some sufferers seemed able to produce small amounts of insulin, but Sam seemed unable to produce any. He further suspected that about two days ago her body had gone into diabetic ketoacidosis, which meant the pills were all but useless. After she’d ingest them, her sugars would decrease slightly, but the dosage required to accomplish even that was staggering. At that pace the bottle would be empty by tomorrow morning—tomorrow afternoon at the latest.

  He’d tried his best to keep her alert, to engage her in conversation and keep the wind in her face. And he didn’t allow her to eat. It was a cruel and desperate measure—one that his father had mentioned years ago. It was an effective treatment in the most critical of situations. Maybe it was helping now, but to Jeremy it only seemed to weaken her further. He tried to talk to her softly as they rode, tried to liven her spirits as best he could.

  “Ten more miles to the ocean, Pike. Can you believe we made it?”

  Sometimes she’d answer, a small grunt of acknowledgment or a fluttering of fingers against his wrist. And the times she didn’t, he took comfort in the slow rise and fall of her back against his chest.

  Behind Jeremy, Seth struggled in stoic silence. They stopped once for water and a small bit of food, but that was all Jeremy had allowed. Each moment they were idle felt like an acceptance of defeat. Neither Seth nor Jeremy was able to stay still for long. As night slowly progressed into day, she became less and less responsive and Jeremy found his mutterings beginning to border on maniacal.

  “See Pike?” he begged of her, “See? I wasn’t wrong. All of this would have happened no matter what we did. The pills don’t work. So we need to forgive ourselves. No,” he shook his head desperately, “I mean you need to forgive me. Please forgive me, Sam. Peter’s leg was bad because of the crappy pills—not Meghan’s struggle to find them. Maybe I hastened what was bound to happen anyway. The leg I mean,” he insisted to her softly. “The leg was a sure sign that the pills were becoming useless, right? But still I didn’t act fast enough. I should have gone with my gut months before I did. I should have seen it. I was such an idiot. We should have left sooner. We could have been there by now.” He blinked tears from his eyes. “Sam, It’s my fault. If I had acted sooner, we’d already have our house at the top of the hill. If I’d acted without hesitating—like Grandpa always said—we’d already have our garden in the back yard and our rain catchers on the roof.” He hiccupped through a sob and laid his cheek against the top of her head. “Just hang in there for me. Just a little bit longer. Please.”

  Overhead the sky had brightened into a kaleidoscope of purples. Streaks of amethyst and lilac were beginning to brighten deep pockets of eggplant. They had finally crossed into San Diego and were speeding down Point Loma Avenue toward Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. Jeremy cast a glance over his shoulder.

  “Seth?” The boy’s cheeks were red and puffed with air. His legs were pumping fast. Jeremy was certain he was suffering the same discomforts. “We’re almost there, son. Hang in there. Suck it up.”

  Seth raised his face to the sun and Jeremy’s breath caught in his throat. Tears glistened in the boy’s brown eyes, reflecting gold in the morning light.

  “Sam?” he inquired breathlessly, the word cut short by a sob.

  Jeremy didn’t answer. He turned his gaze back to the road and bore down hard with his legs. Putting on a burst of speed he nearly screamed aloud as the immense ocean began to materialize in front of them.

  “Sam,” he whispered. He shifted slightly and tried to prop her up without decreasing their speed. “Look. We’re here. Look at the water. We made it.”

  Her eyes fluttered and opened, and the corners of her mouth lifted into a thin smile. “We made it?” she questioned faintly. She tried to raise her head and Jeremy risked a moment to slow and cup her chin with one hand. “It’s beautiful,” she murmured. “Like diamonds on silk.”

  Once she’d seen it, her eyes slid closed. She looked like a frail doll, eyelashes splayed across a delicate cheek. Fluttering once more against him she forced her eyes to open and focus. Her words were so faint that he had to lean close to her mouth to catch them. “You did it Dad. You got us here. We need to get Mom and take her to the beach.”

  Her words were slurred and didn’t make sense. Jeremy choked on his reply. “Yeah, honey, we’ll get her. We’ll get her and have a picnic. Okay? I think she’d like that.”

  Sam smiled and let her eyes slip closed. Jeremy’s heart skipped a beat. He turned left on Sunset Cliffs, his bike skidding dangerously on the sandy road. The ocean was breathtaking. It was a beauty he’d long thought absent from this world. The waves barreled toward the shoreline and broke against the cliffs in refreshing sprays. The sea was vast, a glittering blanket of stars reflecting the sun. It was like diamonds. As usual she was right. In that radiant moment, the only thing that could have eclipsed its beauty was the tall glass building that shimmered at the edge of the cliff in the distance.

  Bigeye Pharmaceuticals.

  It was a contemporary building of steel framing and glass. Glass—not reflective like the pink-and-gold of a Las Vegas Casino— but clear and limpid and transparent on every side. To Jeremy it was like a beacon, like a lighthouse or flare; a sanctuary that beckoned and shone bright beneath a rising sun.

  He sped toward the structure, the sound of Seth’s spinning tires close at his heels. Pulling his bike to the edge of the overgrown lawn he whisked Sam into his arms. He just needed to check her first. Just for a moment. Just to see. She’d made it this far—made it as far as the damn door. “Please,” he prayed aloud. Please just let him get her across the threshold.

  “Look,” he said excitedly as he held her up, “Look! We’re here!”

  Her head lolled against his shoulder then fell dangerously limp across his arm. A sob tore from his throat. If she fell into a coma it would be over. He couldn’t let that happen. Lowering her to the grass he searched her pockets for the near-empty bottle. Beside him Seth dropped silently to his knees. Tears were streaming down his face. Reaching for her hand he held it tight and watched Jeremy push pills into her mouth. She was too far-gone. The pills fell from her lips to her chin then rolled onto the grass.

  “No,” Jeremy whispered. She could be brought back from this. This wasn’t it. This wasn’t the end. It couldn’t be. He shoved the bitter pills into his mouth, softened them with his saliva then smeared the paste against her lips. He pushed it into her mouth and coated the insides of her cheeks with as much as he could manag
e. “Just a little longer baby. Please don’t leave.”

  He poured water onto her lips, tried to push as much of the white substance into her mouth as he could then scooped her up and sped toward the doors.

  His mind wandered as he ran, and he suddenly remembered that very first morning—the morning after his father had killed those two men. He remembered asking his father how long he could survive on half a dose of pills. Liam hadn’t answered, but the answer had come soon enough.

  Sixteen months.

  Liam had survived for sixteen months. He was an older man by that time, and the inappropriate level of medication further hastened the aging of his body. His death had been slow and agonizing. He hadn’t lost a leg or suffered a gangrenous wound as Peter had. His pain was relegated to places they couldn’t see. His deterioration was internal—which was exactly the way he wanted it. It allowed him to keep up appearances, allowed him to continue his suffering alone. Jeremy knew his father’s fear. By the end, Liam must have known just how weak the pills had become. It was as if he’d come to believe that by keeping them for himself he was killing his granddaughter. It was madness. It was twisted. It was love.

  Toward the end he’d lost weight quickly, and once his pain had become too great, he’d simply allowed the inevitable to happen. But he’d been happy till the end and that was what was important. What he did was a personal choice, and it was one he had made willingly. He was alive when Sam had first learned to read. He loved to listen to her struggle through sentences, loved to watch her face by the light of the hearth. Jeremy and Susan owed Liam so much. It was his death in the first place that prompted them to look for other alternatives for Sam. It was the blessing of his gift that propelled them to find the disks. Sacrifices sometimes beget other sacrifices. Acts of love are a never-ending chain without a clear beginning.

  He and Seth reached the entrance and Jeremy frantically cast his eyes about the ground. Motioning toward a stone he nodded his head.

  “Seth. There. Back up and throw it. Hard.”

  Seth picked up the stone and backed several paces, reared back his arm, and with a small grunt let it loose. With a sharp clatter, stone crashed through glass, the sound a harsh counterpoint to the breaking waves below the cliffs. Jeremy kicked the glass to widen the hole, and the two of them pushed through the opening.

  “Where?” Jeremy screamed aloud. He spun in circles. “Where?”

  They ran first to the deserted reception area, and if Jeremy weren’t holding tight to his daughter’s limp body, the sight would have dropped him to his knees. Beside the front desk was an old and faded display, a towering twenty-foot image of a beautiful woman, hair blown back by the wind. Beneath the fabric of her white bathing suit, a familiar green glow shone luminous at the side of her belly. Jeremy nearly lost it. He’d been right. Though he’d gambled terribly, he’d been right.

  Seth saw it too and spun wildly around the room. “Where?” he moaned. “Where are they?”

  Jeremy draped a limp Sam across the glass case of the reception desk, pressed two fingers to her throat and held his breath. Her pulse was faint and fluttering, her breath gone ragged, but she was alive.

  “Where?” Seth sobbed. “Jeremy, what do we do? Where can we find them?”

  Jeremy took a breath, wiped the tears from his eyes and spun around. He swung his head from left to right then pointed to a set of white doors behind the reception platform. The two of them sprinted for the doors, footfalls sharp staccato notes that echoed against white marble. They passed through the entrance then spread out. Seth chose the hallway to the left, and Jeremy the one to the right. Some of the doors were open, some locked, and Jeremy searched each room with trembling hands.

  His thoughts were electric, sharp and jagged behind tired eyes. He thought of Susan and Sam, of the morning of Sam’s birth and his mother’s calm presence during the labor. As everything in the Colt household had always been, Sam’s birth was a family affair. They’d staged a tub of water in the baby’s room, one of those kiddie pools with flimsy plastic sides and a bright blue bottom. He remembered how his father had paced the hall outside the room, remembered Susan’s fear of the pain, the clutching of her fingers, and her iron grip.

  “Women have been giving birth for thousands of years, Suse,” Jeremy had reminded her for the tenth time. “For thousands of years—and without epidurals.”

  “Not this woman! I want drugs!” she’d screamed.

  He remembered the birth fondly. Susan had always been strong, and true to form, hadn’t wavered in this. People always said the birth of a baby was the closest thing to a miracle, and to Jeremy it was. He would never forget that day. It brought their family together as nothing else had before or since. Olivia tended mother and baby with quiet assurances while Liam panicked outside the doors. Jeremy still didn’t know how his mother had done it, but remembered later how she’d confessed that her confidence had all been an act. She’d laughed, eyes glittering, and shrugged her shoulders.

  “I just figured a woman’s body would do what a woman’s body was supposed to do. My job was just to be there to cheerlead.”

  Jeremy thought of that day and of all the days since. They’d been through so much: all the planning, all the secrets, all the wins and losses and countless sacrifices. Liam’s death, and Susan’s, it had all led up to this single moment—a moment that would matter little if Jeremy lost her now. He couldn’t. Couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t lose them both in the span of a single year. He couldn’t live through that. Not even for Seth.

  A sob tore from his throat as his eyes searched each empty room after the next. He thought of the sparkling sea glittering just outside the glass siding of the building, imagined its shimmering surface and the silence of its depths below. He pictured the miles and miles of empty water, turquoise slowly fading to black. Nothing existed in that void. Nothing lived. It was a tub filled with water and a graveyard of bones.

  He imagined the hills and valleys of the ocean floor, of the smooth curves of jutting whalebones in castles atop the sand. He thought of the hundreds of shark teeth covered by a fresh layer of sediment each year, and the trash that would forever be mixed in. Perhaps if Sam died then he would join the bones, he thought suddenly. Perhaps if she died then he would find a small boat, row past the breakers and white caps, find a place where the shoreline wasn’t visible. Perhaps then he’d cast himself over the side and join the silence of the dead. Perhaps his bones would settle with the teeth, be covered by sediment and forever captured in a sandy tomb. It was fitting really. It was where he belonged. He had done terrible and monstrous things to get them here, and after all was said and done, all those things may have been for nothing. She might die anyway, and he would belong in the depths of those barren waters.

  He sprinted from the room and sighted the last set of double doors just down the hall. Entrance to these required a thumb or palm print against a scanner—he wasn’t sure which. He slapped it in anger and flung himself against the door. How was this happening? After all this shit? How?

  He startled to the sounds of Seth’s running feet and turned, unable to draw a breath. The boy stopped short, empty hands lifted high. He wilted. He’d found nothing. Jeremy whirled in anger and slammed his shoulder against the wall. He was sure the disks were in there. It made sense. It was the treasure vault—the treasure that always seemed to elude him. He howled with rage and hurled his body against the door.

  “Wait!” Seth screamed. “The counter!”

  Jeremy turned and growled. “What counter? What are you talking about?”

  “You laid her across the counter. But I remember there was something inside the glass.”

  Jeremy froze.

  The unconscious mind works in mysterious ways. People see thousands of things in a day—hundreds of thousands in fact—yet often don’t process the images till much later. The concept was actually one of the scientific theories behind dreams. Dreaming, scientists believed, was the mind’s attempt to assemble and org
anize images as it rests. And so Jeremy’s mind organized. It tripped over the images as he replayed them in his mind: their entrance into the structure, both wild and chaotic, the beautiful figure of the cardboard woman, the pallid tone of Sam’s cheeks, the dustiness of the counter where he’d lowered and left her body, the oblong cylinder resting on sapphire velvet inside the glass case.

  He sucked in a breath. Dear God! An applicator was right there. Just below he glass. It had been there all along.

  He raced back to the reception area and pushed through the white double doors. Sam was still breathing, though just barely so. Jeremy lifted her from the case, set her gently on the floor. He pushed himself to his feet, viewed the case with fresh eyes and wept. It was there. He just hadn’t seen it.

  The pressure of a stone pressed against his palm and he dropped his eyes to Seth. The boy nodded and stepped back, and Jeremy approached the glass and slammed the stone against its lower right corner. It splintered but didn’t break, an intricate pattern spidering from a small hole. Again and again, Jeremy dashed stone against glass till it shattered.

  Lifting the small applicator from the cushioned velvet, he was suddenly aware of his own sobbing. He knelt at her side, lifted the corner of her shirt, and inserted the applicator in the unit at her belly. It clicked into place and he held his breath as he pressed the plunger. Seth’s hand found his own as the numbers began to rise.

  The sea is nature's vast reserve. It was through the sea that the globe as it were began, and who knows if it will not end in the sea! Perfect peace abides here. The sea does not belong to despots. On its surface immoral rights can still be claimed, men can fight each other, devour each other, and carry out all earth's atrocities. But thirty feet below the surface their power ceases, their influence fades, their authority disappears. Ah, sir, live, live in the heart of the sea! Independence is possible only here! Here I recognize no master! Here I am free!