by H. R. Romero
Shaw, lying, all this time. How could she not have seen it? She wanted to believe him. As much of a struggle as its been. She made herself believe he was on her side. A joint venture to save the world. She asks herself, how can she have been so gullible, trusting everything he’s been saying to her. He never intended anything more than purging the planet of what he believes is an incurable curse.
She places the folders back where she found them, keeping one as proof. The gig is up. There’s enough evidence in this one folder. She doesn’t bother to cover them with the jacket, nor does she attempt to hide the fact she’d gone through them.
She rushes straightaway across the courtyard to the building where the surgical suites are located. Her face is flushed from the heat of the sun. Liar, the accusation repeats over and over in her head, liar, liar, liar. Her rage intensifies, she feels as if steam is coming from her ears. She envisions different ways she could cause injury to Shaw with each stalwart step she takes, small puffs of dust rising in her wake.
The operating room door is closed. It’s not heavy enough or thick enough to protect him from her. She blows past the two soldiers keeping guard and pushes through it like it’s made of chiffon. Her father would have called her a raging wildcat. She’s pumped full of piss and vinegar. Her adrenal glands pump adrenaline throughout her system.
She throws the folder in his face as she enters. A few loose leaves of paper fly out, floating to the floor like feathers, but the rest land and slide across the prep stand, filling the room with the sound of a nervous clatter. She glares into his eyes.
“I’ve given you everything. All my notes. All my observations, while you’ve been conniving, and planning, and weeding your way to your own selfish agenda. Pretending you were helping me all along. You secret-keeping piece of…”
“Now, now, that’s not very ladylike.” He’s turned away from her.
“You are a dirty, no-good excuse for a man. Do you have no morals? No ethics? What’s your plan?” she says.
She doesn’t expect an answer, and if she gets one, she’ll have to weed through more lies to get the bit of truth sandwiched within. It could take her weeks to find it. He’ll dodge her and deceive her all he can. It won’t matter she’s got his number, and she’s calling him on it.
He reaches for a towel, covering up the ugliness of what he’s been working on, hoping she hasn’t seen anything. It’s a piece of the riddle he chooses to keep to himself for as long as he can, but unfortunately, the limit of secrecy might have just been reached.
“You don’t want to save anyone, much less the children. You want them eradicated. Don’t you? Don’t you? Don’t You, damn it?” She’s asking him the questions at the end of a jabbing finger, but if he says anything she’ll be tempted to punch him square in the mouth, and if his teeth come out, the more that fly, the better.
She asks a question gnawing at the back of her mind. It’s been there for quite some time, but she’s never bothered to ask. “Why did you name them all after plants and trees?”
He’s obviously hiding things. She’s digging in, getting closer to the root of the deception. Her attention is drawn to the small body he was working on before she came into the room. He’s reluctant to show her, moving to hide something.
Without answering her allegations, he explains, “They are not names, they’re only labels. It’s the small traits and diminutive behaviors that I’ve witnessed over time. Things which reminded me of the behaviors of plant life. I’m no horticulturalist. And trust me when I say, I’m not up on parasitology. I was a small town general practitioner before everything went south. I think what I’ve just discovered will prove what these things are is both plant and parasite. You call them children. They are not children. You’re living your life; thick with guilt. You try to console yourself to sooth the sting of your tears. You’re trying to redeem yourself for what you did to daughter, and you’re angry. I understand completely. You feel you failed as a mother.”
She slaps Shaw so hard it turns his face away from her. He rubs the heat growing in the shape of her palm print away. She’s too hurt to say what she wants to say. It’s what I had to do for her. It was mercy. She hates the fact that she ever shared that part about her past with him, about Savannah, about that night.
Shaw lifts the towel, now saturated in blood and saline. Her hand flies to her face, to cover her mouth. It has fallen open with the shock of the dreadful sight before her.
“Your daughter would have recovered. You didn’t know it at the time, all the children were falling ill; just like your daughter. You feel guilt tearing at you. Believe me, I know. In time she would have recovered, but what you fail to accept is that what survived would have been something else entirely.”
Her approach to the table is deliberate, but gradual, walking as if her shoes are filled with lead. In awe, she witnesses what Shaw is revealing to her.
“I believe this is what they are. The thing inside, controlling them, and blessing them with random unearthly talents.”
Merna’s eyes are fixed on the squirming thing laying before them. It’s hard to convince herself that she’s looking at such an unbelievable and unimaginable sight as what she’s seeing.
It’s a small creature, squirming helplessly in a metal specimen pan. It bears a strong resemblance to plant-life with leaf-like skin and veins which cover its delicate form like vinery. It’s drowning in an odiferous broth of seedy-yellow fluid; an alien lifeform defying her understanding.
“Lily’s body eventually surrendered to the drugs I administered. It was a peaceful passing, within reason. But whatever this is… it’s resistant to every drug, every chemical, I’ve injected into it. I’ve even tried applying acid to its epidermis. So far, other than a little wilting of its… leaves, if you want to call them that, its biological makeup seems entirely unaffected by both toxic and caustic substances. Nothing I have available to me has any influence on it. I suspect the only way to euthanize it is to utterly destroy it. Fire should do the trick. I’m not sure though, and I’m not ready to try it yet. I want to run several more tests on it before it comes to that.”
Stunned and pale, Merna is still standing with her mouth gaping open. She’s shaking her head in denial. This creature could exist in a little child. She feels nauseous and chilled. Everything is moving in slow motion. She moves toward the vacant rolling stool, almost missing the seat and nearly falling to the floor before Shaw catches her.
“Where did you find it?” she says.
He reaches for a pair of bloody forceps to poke at the brain and maneuver it, so Dr. Valentine can observe, while he sets out to answer her question. “It hollowed out the interior of sweet little Lily’s brain. And here,” he directs her attention to a certain position on the brain, “the corpus callosum, for the most part, has been eaten away. The thing cleared out a nest and nuzzled down, here, just above the fornix, and sent these, uh, well, for lack of a better word… roots, I guess you might call them, into the cerebellum, midbrain, pituitary, medulla, and into the spinal cord respectively. There is something else which I think you might find very interesting. Let’s take a few of these ‘children,’ as you like to call them, out for some sun. Shall we? They haven’t had any for a very long time.” He replaces the blood-bogged towel over the parasite. They leave the operating room behind them, along with their understanding of the world as they once knew it.
Chapter Ten
“All cats are gray in the dark. And besides, her actions have less to do with her, and everything to do with you.”
-Jaye Frances, The Kure
Dr. Shaw arrives in East Wing with a Cheshire cat’s smile on his face, and Dr. Valentine in tow. She’s lost some of the golden-sand color from her skin, her affect is flat and her spirit, lethargic. Some unknown thing has dampened her front of strength. She has all the earmarks of a person who has just seen the vilest of phantoms.
Shaw is leading her by her elbow like an unruly toddler, and she lets him do it. Perhaps in
his own way, he believes he’s helpful, escorting her like a regretful blind date. Or, perhaps it’s exactly what it seems, he’s nothing but overbearing. Yes, that’s far more likely.
Above all, one thing is certain, and that thing is that Dr. Valentine realizes she doesn’t like it and pulls her elbow out of his hand with an over-exaggerated jerking motion.
“I’m not comfortable with being led anywhere by you.” Her eyes drill into his.
Shaw’s smile fades.
Oh, that’s perfect. Is that embarrassment on his face? So, what if he’s offering me an olive branch now? Too little too late.
He says nothing to her. His smile fades.
There’s a reason she and Shaw are here, and she’ll be patient long enough to get some answers.
“Uh, Private, uh…,” Snapping his fingers as if it will help Shaw recall the private’s name.
“Tummons,” says the private, yawning widely, a mouthful of crooked teeth shine in the hallway lights before he makes eye contact and winks at Merna.
“Right, Tummons, right, of course, I knew that. I wish to collect two, no, no… make it three subjects.”
“Children.” Dr. Valentine corrects him. “Not subjects. Children.”
“Not children,” Shaw inserts. He corrects her under his breath, “subjects.”
The problem is she’s made it all too clear her fondness for Rose, and she knows he’ll use it to take little digs at her.
After what she’s experienced in the OR she’s not quite sure how she should feel about it either. But, every so minutely her original thought on the subject shifts back into place. These are children who were affected by something that no one understands. It wasn’t what they wanted. They’re just as much a victim of circumstance as every other survivor on the planet.
“Bring, Rose,” he says, looking for a pat on the back for acknowledging that the kid has a name, but he won’t get one from her.
She nods. Resigning her immediate concerns on the matter giving into curiosity. She knew he’d include Rose in whatever demonstration he has planned. She braced herself for it the best she could.
“And also, bring R – Zero – Four – E, and R – Zero – Six – E, to the main courtyard,” Shaw continues.
On these two, Merna agrees, Hawthorne and Ivy are both special cases. She hasn’t connected with them the same way she has with Rose.
Tummons shouts down the hall to another soldier who runs off to collect the children from their rooms.
Chapter Eleven
“Don't judge someone by how they look, judge them by how many people they've harmed.”
-Carisma Sechrest
Something feels different. This is out of order, Rose can hear keys rattling in the corridor. Lab Work Day normally ends with an early day back to her room, and a chance to read more of The Wizard of Oz.
The keys on the big ring jingle. A green man throws her door open wide. He’s a big gawking man.
“What’s happening?” she asks. The man only stares at her with dark, beady eyes. She doesn’t like him, she decided it without giving him a chance, but she’s no fool. She can tell he doesn’t like her, just like the rest of the green men.
“Get your arse up,” he says. His accent is thick and as guttural as they come.
Rose has seen this green man before, and she knows how to get under his skin. She looks him right in the eyes. It makes him uncomfortable. She knows it, and that’s why she does it.
“Aye, aye, aye, aye aye. None of that lookin’ into meh eyes like that. Yeh gonna make me crazy, like a hornet in a bottle.” He jostles nervously from one foot to the other and back again like he’s barefoot on hot pavement. He pokes at her with his weapon. “I’m dead serious so, if yeh get yeh arse up, that’d be ripper.”
He has a bad temper. She’s seen it before, with the other children, and it’s never a good thing when they test him. There was this one time when he shoved Ivy so forcefully, it sent her rag-dolling across the floor.
He’s scared of Rose, and all the other children too; wet-your-church-pants scared. That’s why he acts out the way he does.
“Right-o. Out now. Yeh just be all apples and I won’ have to pop yeh head wide open, now will I? Ay? Ay?” He motions with his rifle for her to move through the doorway and out into the hall.
Once out of her room, she finds Hawthorne following her with his eyes. His expression is one of repugnance. What does he expect her to do, but follow directions?
Saying nothing she takes her place; standing in front of the boy just like during morning line-up. Now she’s certain that something wrong, because no one else is with Hawthorne, and usually the others are already lined up too. That and protocol isn’t being followed, and the green men didn’t bother to call out the Wayfinders. Ivy is the last to be collected from her room before they are marched to a place that Rose has never been before.
The green men take them to a side door. It’s reinforced, like the operating room door. The only difference being there are extra steel plates welded onto it.
They wait while Private Osbourne holds a rifle on them, pointed at their heads while another green man, one that Rose has never seen before, uses a big keyring and initiates a lengthy search for the key that will open the door.
“Cam on, Cam on. Open it already, mate,” urges the Australian soldier. “Marcia’s waiting for me, and I need to get over there before she cools down.”
“Don’t flip your wig, Ozzy,” says the key holder, and mutters something about, being dizzy with a dame, as continues to search for the key. When he finds it, he slips it into the lock and turns the key.
The lock is hesitant but grinds open with a bit of force. The door swings back. It claps hard against the courtyard wall, and a loud metal boom echoes through the corridor. Ivy gets the muzzle of the key holder’s rifle against her shoulder, and she moves forward and through the door.
A fierce light, far brighter than the little one hanging in Rose’s room, and far, far brighter than the ones where Dr. Shaw cuts up children when he wants to look inside them, causes her to blink her eyes, and they water with big salty crocodile tears. She feels dazed, but the feeling isn’t unpleasant. To the contrary it’s euphoric. She almost falls, but its as if the rays of the light catch and support her.
Rose is sandwiched between Hawthorne who is standing at her back and Ivy who leads the section of three. If it weren’t for Ivy pulling her along she wouldn’t be able to move at all.
As it is, Rose thinks that Ivy feels the same way she does, because the soldier with the keys has to push into Ivy’s spine with the muzzle, to get her to move. Hawthorne is dragging behind; she can feel his weight preventing her progression into the courtyard.
It’s hard to concentrate here in this place. Her head swims, but Rose manages to inspect her surroundings, as best she can muster under the circumstances. Her heart beats become erratic, and her rate of breathing quickens.
The small yard in which they’re corralled, is surrounded by tall fences with endless jumbles of wire around the tops and each coil thereof have pointy, triangular pieces of sharpened metal welded all throughout.
Rose chances a glance skyward searching for the source of the delightful, life-giving warmth beaming down on her. It’s coming from a yellow smudge way up in the sky. The sheer radiance of the thing forces her to squint and pushes her head down; her eyes water from the spectacle of it. What is it? She braces herself for the power of the golden star above and lifts her face again to confront the radiant disk She is doused in the golden, sweet rays of the Sun. Tingles and tickled creep along all her delicate skin. Energy swells deep within her and finds its way to every one of her fingers and toes. She imagines that tiny pinpoints of light flow from the ends of her hair.
Currents glide up and down her body, and she can concentrate on nothing else as she as she drinks in power. Her body is nourished by the yellow dwarf hanging from an invisible string. Her body is flooded by the release of human/alien hybrid growth horm
one. Rose’s metabolism quickens, and her alien-occupied brain matures in leaps and bounds by the second. Her body seems light, as the weight of a raven’s feather, floating on the thermal updrafts of life and death.
The sensation isn’t like the time that Dr. Shaw gave her the medicine. It’s different because his medicine made her feel all heavy on the inside. It weighed her down and stapled her body to the gurney. No, now she imagines she can fly far away from here. Rose is very, very happy. As she had been the night, she sensed the rain.
Oh, only if she could fly away, but even if she could sprout wings and lift from the ground she could never leave the others. The overpowering feeling that she must care for them that they are family would prevent her from leaving. Her wings are clipped. She’ll never fly without the others. She can’t bring herself to imagine leaving the children behind. Ever.
Rose, Hawthorne, and Ivy stand chained to one another. Rose, only slightly aware of her surroundings, fading in and out of reality, perceives the others swaying as if they are stalks of corn blowing lazily in a gentle summer’s wind. And she sways too. Three small faces against the blue sky, like young birds in a nest, take in the power that the dark prison of Camp Able has drained from them.
The doctors, Shaw and Dr. Valentine, come into the courtyard with the soldiers and the children. They settle in for what promises to be a long, but interesting observation of the children’s reactions to the Sun.
One thing in particular that Dr. Valentine notices, not immediately because this particularly remarkable observation can be made only with the passing of some time, is that the children are purposefully tracking the sun.
