Exodia

by Debra Chapoton

  “What?” I say.

  “I was wondering … how you two met. What have you been doing all this time? Where did you live? You never reached Ronel.” I hear the accusation in his tone. So many questions tumbling from his lips, things unsaid. Bitterness. My tongue stays glued. I see a dozen words, anagrams. You never reached Ronel. You never learned chore.

  “Dalton helped us,” Kassandra says. I blink her words away: Ten should plead. What could that mean? She turns her whole self into my side and puts a hand protectively over Gresham’s head, pets him. “I come from a family of seven daughters and he showed up just when we needed a big strong man to help with all the things we couldn’t do.” I know she’s smiling though I don’t look at her; there’s something phony in her tone. Instead I watch Barrett’s face. He has a secret. If I could extend my foot and touch his boot that secret would be mine. I’m sure of it and suddenly I have more questions for Mira and Harmon, about our parents, about their exposure to radiation, because right this instant, out of the blue, I’m certain that I’m a gemfry, same as Barrett. Fiery gamma. I am a gemfry.

  * * *

  Barrett sat between two men who’d been selected along with him to take Dalton and the others to a safe house. He braced his back against the metal support and pressed his feet down to keep from sliding sideways into one of the men as the truck careened around a corner. Across from him Kassandra, Harmon, and Mira slid a few inches into Dalton who stayed rock steady, planted on the bench with the baby in his arms, strong and firm with barely a trace of that insecurity Barrett had seen two years ago.

  Barrett’s eyes flickered across all four faces, but he stretched the seconds to look intently at Dalton’s wife. She looked beat, road weary no doubt. There was sadness there, too, as if she wasn’t happy with Dalton, though why Barrett should imagine such a thing he wasn’t sure. He was attracted to her despite her ragged appearance, and there was something in that first smile, her steady gaze when their eyes met, and her body language. He had grown reasonably proficient at reading girls. Something was off base with Kassandra. Something very right and very wrong.

  Dalton asked him what? and Barrett spewed a handful of questions, sure that Dalton would choke on the answers. He was right. Kassandra answered for him.

  It was a thoughtless impulse that made him ask, “Kassandra, do you have a sister named Katie?”

  The abruptness of the question, the question itself, made both Dalton and Kassandra stiffen.

  “Yes. How would you know that?” She gave Dalton a worried frown and looked back at Barrett. “We were all taken–” Her throat grew tight and she clutched at Dalton’s arm, shaking her head. She looked up at him. “You tell.”

  Dalton gave the briefest of details: the town meeting, the march, the escape. “Katie is the next oldest sister after Kassandra. There are five more plus her mom and her dad. We left them all two days ago. Have they reached Exodia? Do you know where they are?”

  Barrett didn’t want to answer. He’d give up all his gifts to never have to answer. Stupid fool. He knew the immeasurable sorrow his words would bring.

  * * *

  I have to keep my eyes down, concentrate on not gripping the baby too tightly while holding very firmly to Kassandra’s heaving shoulders. Her head’s pressed against my left shoulder, her hair beneath my chin. I brush my lips lightly on her scalp. I knew Barrett had a secret. I could kill him now … to spring such news on us without a warning. Kassandra’s startling screams have given way to unbearable weeping.

  I focus as well as I can on the floor of the truck. It seems to ripple. I blink and the floor is solid for a moment until I picture Flor’s face and Sana’s and Araceli’s and Marcela’s and Deandra’s. And Kassandra’s mother.

  That the evil of this Blue-run world would bring this misery to us suffocates me. My fault. My fault from day one. When I killed that man. When I hid my deed, my shame. When I ran. I don’t need a prophecy or a message in the stars or an anagram of died gone to know how guilty I am.

  Mira reaches over and takes the baby from me. I wrap both arms securely around my wife; her incredibly deep grief cannot be reduced by simple hugs and yet she softens a bit and the sobs grow weaker. She tries for words between trembling breaths and I decipher her desire. She wants to be with Katie.

  The men in the truck are uncomfortable, hesitant to veer from Korzon’s order, but Barrett taps on the window, makes the driver stop and goes out to give directions. When I hear him give what I know is Lydia’s address I start to sweat.

  * * *

  It was as good a safe house as any, Barrett thought as he directed the group quickly through the side door. The truck would make a wide loop and return in ten minutes. That wouldn’t be enough time, he knew, but it couldn’t be helped. If only he hadn’t opened his mouth.

  “In there.” He pointed to a small room off the kitchen. He and the others stayed back and let Kassandra and Dalton enter the room. He felt bad not giving Lydia a heads-up, just springing Dalton and a wife on her.

  * * *

  I see Lydia sitting next to the bed before I see Katie. It seems too short a second to process how Lydia has changed and how she hasn’t changed at all. Kassandra doesn’t even notice Lydia. She goes straight to Katie, plops onto the bed and grabs her sister. I hear a tiny gasp from Lydia and the quietest of thankful sighs from Katie, bandaged and pale and looking like a ghost. The hollows of her eyes and cheeks hold dark shadows of pain and grief.

  Lydia mumbles, “Oh, you must be … I’ll just leave you … uh.” And she stands, her face a mix of two emotions. She tries to scoot past me and her hand brushes mine. Her raven black hair frames her face; her eyes and the touch of her hand tell her story to my soul. I read the look she gives me. A second, maybe two, and I try to explain these two years in a moment’s fragile gaze. As if we need no words. She lowers her eyes and passes through the door.

  I look back toward the bed where Kassandra holds Katie and they cry, soft at first, and the door clicks shut. I take the seat that Lydia had vacated and wait.

  When the volume of their grief exceeds what I can stomach I reach over and pat them both and offer a single word repeated. There, there, there, like the calming rhythm sung to a baby. I take Katie’s hand. “Tell us what happened.” And before she speaks I know exactly what transpired and I see the round-faced guard, the Blue lieutenant, the horse, the blood, the cold slaughter. My stomach twists with nausea.

  Katie tries to begin, drops my hand to take her sister’s, and makes an accusation, “You shouldn’t have left us.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Kassandra wails.

  There’s a knock and the door opens. Barrett’s head is down, but he speaks with mature authority. He tells me I must leave, that Mira will stay with the girls and that Harmon and I can take our threatening weapon and speak our cause to Truslow, but first we must get to the safe house.

  I leave the room without a word and Mira goes in with the baby. Lydia’s nowhere to be seen. Barrett rushes out the door. I glance at Harmon whose frowning face seems too sad for what he knows–the abbreviated version that Barrett revealed in the truck–but perhaps he has a gemfry gift beyond what I can guess. Or perhaps he simply reflects my own expression. He turns and follows Barrett outside.

  I close my eyes and listen. The sobs in the room nearby are what I expect, but fainter sobs from above reach my ears, and then footsteps. I’m frozen to the spot, both hoping and fearing that Lydia’s returning to the kitchen.

  A tall thin woman comes into the room, eyes like Lydia’s, but with a stern, pinched look on her face. I nod, briefly smile, but of course my words catch in my throat. She introduces herself as Lydia’s mother, Jenny Sroka. She bends her left arm as if to greet me in the customary way, then changes her mind and thrusts out her right hand. Her grip is strong, her fingers warm in mine, but I’m still reluctantly quiet.

  When I finally say my name she jerks her hand away. There’s a second, maybe only half a second, which is just eno
ugh time for me to read her thoughts. She hates me. She doesn’t even know me and she hates me.

  I don’t know what I should feel now besides fear. To meet with Truslow, the cruelest man alive, should have me quaking, but it is Jenny Sroka’s grief that makes me tremble.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I say. I picture the birthing clinic in my mind, the letters carved into the wall that Lydia had me trace: Dalton Battista is not Lucas Sroka.

  Tears spring to her eyes. “It was a long time ago. And it wasn’t exactly your fault. Your mother was only trying to save you–as I would have tried to save Lydia’s brother.”

  “You knew my mother?” She won’t look at me now.

  “Yes, I knew Jacky. Some of us knew what she did, knew the Culling Mandate was because of you.” Her voice grows as tight as her fists. “I carved your name everywhere. I tried to stop the madness, the killing of the innocents. It didn’t stop.”

  Chapter 11 The First Plague

  From the fourth page of the Ledger:

  When he saw that the ruler brought more trouble upon the people he asked, “Why did you send me? Why haven’t you rescued these people?”

  TRUSLOW MAKES US wait two days before he’ll see us. Two days full of hourly reports that describe hard-hearted strikes against our people: a new tax, a higher toll, another right repealed, a punishment imposed, a penalty for this or that. And worse things on this second day: raids, imprisonments, executions.

  We walk through the capitol gates, Harmon and I, with only Barrett and two others as unarmed escorts. Harmon carries the case which will have to pass inspection before we can enter. A slight breeze sends my hair across my face and hides my identity from the duty guards, men I’ve known since I was little. I brush the strands aside and they look me full on and are surprised. Harmon says he is Harmon O’Shea and I am Bram O’Shea and the guards laugh. I say, “Dalton Battista,” and I ache to show them my red elbow, but they push us on and give Barrett and the others a thorough search.

  A crowd has followed us and they bravely line themselves along the fence, hushed and expectant. The doors ahead burst open and at least twenty soldiers precede the Executive President and his son, my former classmate. The soldiers take their positions and hold their nano-guns ready, most of them pointing at the crowd but the ones next to Truslow aim directly at us. I wonder why he meets us here, outside; my grandfather never would have allowed a crowd to watch.

  We stop a respectful distance away. I stare at my old classmate, Jamie. He stands shoulder to shoulder with his father, equally rigid, face taut. I expect to see him break out of this serious mask at any second, come running up to me and give me that old grin, but he remains unmoving as if he’s lifeless or under some spell.

  Truslow speaks. “Show me this powerful new gadget.”

  “Mr. Executive President,” Harmon begins, and I’m so thankful that he speaks for me, “we have a simple request. Our people, the Reds, need to rest, recharge their panels, so to speak, and then they will work all the harder for you. Give us, please, just three days that we might have a festival.” The festival was Ronel’s idea, Harmon told me last night, a festival to be held in the fields to the north where we would have a three day head start on escaping Exodia.

  “And why should I be so obliging? What do you have to show me there?” His eyes flicker to the case and I help Harmon unclasp the latches. The soldiers move one step closer.

  Harmon takes the first part and, as he did before, slowly joins the sections. “A revolutionary weapon, Mr. Executive President.” He clicks the head and the snake-like apparatus begins its dance.

  “This is what you have to bribe me with?” Truslow scowls, waves a contingent of officers forward, and laughs. “Show them.”

  Five uniformed men hold short staffs of ten connected cartridges. They snap them one to another and their final weapon looks nearly identical to ours. They set it on the ground and it wiggles its way toward us. Harmon holds our serpent high above his head and turns a full circle. He stretches out his arm until the tail waves directly above the head of the other. Like a magnet the metal ends clip together until he holds a doubly long twisting eel. An angry Truslow makes a move forward then halts as Harmon thumbs the snake’s head and it stiffens, one hundred individual cubes snapping into place. There is a thunderous boom and a second and third weaker crack and forty-seven more bangs as each one of the government’s sections implodes, fizzles, and turns to smoke and ashes. Serpent devours serpent. Spurned potent reserves.

  Harmon speaks again, brave words, true and honest and full of hope, and the crowd hums with delight at every phrase. Encouraged, expectant. I see the tiniest wrinkle of a smile on Jamie’s face, but his father boils.

  “Nothing! You get nothing!” Truslow whips his head to the side and glares at his son. “Have those two locked up and take that … that weapon to the arsenal.”

  * * *

  When Barrett had introduced Harmon and Mira to Lydia and told her that Dalton was married and the baby was his, it was all she could do to conceal her feelings. She’d made an excuse and hid in her room. She heard her mother go down, suspected an uncomfortable meeting between her and Dalton, then felt the air pressure in the house change as the door opened and closed. From her window she’d watched the men leave then sat in a hazy stupor of depression for an hour. When she returned to the kitchen Mira handed her the baby then made a rude comment about how pale the baby looked next to Lydia’s skin. Mira laughed and offered a pretentious smile, then took charge of making sleeping arrangements in the living room. Lydia’s throat choked up as she held the baby. She’d never imagined that Dalton was living a domestic life somewhere. She examined the tiny features, so perfect, and she stroked the wisps of black hair on the top of the baby’s head. Then Gresham cried. Kassandra appeared and with a forced smile took the baby and introduced herself. She dropped the smile when Lydia said her name.

  The week dragged by in an awkward waltz of avoidance. Lydia kept her distance from the Luna girls. But her mother was gracious to the unexpected house guests; she fawned over the baby and comforted Katie and Kassandra when she came home from work, though she stood aloof whenever their talk concerned Dalton.

  Lydia’s day job, the one she’d worked since she was sixteen, was as an En-tech rotating through Exodia’s seven factory centers. She had always taken advantage of her job skills, her phenomenal aptitude and speed, to cheat the system. She could do a week’s worth of tasks in a day and a half, which she spread over the week, careful to appear at each center twice. This gave her some flexibility to run missions with Barrett, to spy, travel, and help plan and execute things like rescues.

  Rescue was on her mind when she walked through the kitchen late one evening and found Mira, her mother, and the two sisters drinking smuggled coffee by the light of a single candle and consoling one another on their personal losses.

  “Join us, dear,” Jenny said. She scooted to the side of her chair and patted a space for Lydia. “Would you like some coffee or chocolate?”

  Lydia shook her head and squished herself next to her mother. Mira smiled at her, but Kassandra had a blank look and Katie’s face held a perpetual scowl, ghoulish in the flickering light. A fog of silence filled the dreary room.

  Lydia was burdened by having seen firsthand how Katie was attacked and her family butchered. She didn’t know what to say or how to comfort Katie and had refrained from forming any kind of friendship with her.

  Or with Kassandra, whose every word, every look, every gesture claimed title to Dalton.

  This night was only the second time all five women had been in the same room at the same time. All eyes were on Lydia and she knew they were waiting for the latest news.

  “We’re planning a rescue.”

  “You’re going to rescue our father?” Kassandra’s face changed, brightening in the candle glow.

  Lydia took a moment to process the question. She expected Kassandra to be more concerned about her husband’s welfare–h
e’d been imprisoned for a week now. She looked down her nose at the young wife and answered. “No, we don’t know where they took your townspeople yet. Bear is working on that. Rather, we’re planning a rescue of Dalton and Harmon. I thought you’d want to know that.” She felt her mother shift in the chair at the mention of Dalton’s name. She took a fleeting look at her, sensed the iciness from the tightly pursed lips. Lydia’s words had changed the mood in the room for everyone. She rose up, went to a cupboard for a glass and poured herself some water.

  Katie spoke to Lydia’s back. “We need to find our father. We need to go home.”

  Lydia leaned against the counter and took a slow sip, ignoring the sharp flavor of the rusty water. “Both of you? You’d just leave Dalton behind?”

  The sisters shared a quick glance. Kassandra looked at her coffee mug and answered, “We had two years. That’s all it was destined to be. My father read the stars.” Her voice tapered off and she kept her eyes down.

  Mira patted her hand.

  An electrifying shiver rippled across Lydia’s skin. She couldn’t absorb all the implications of this young mother’s declaration. She stared at Kassandra’s lowered head. No one said another word.

  The silent spell broke with a gust of air as Barrett opened the side door and hurried into the room. The candle went out but Lydia hit a light switch and they all blinked in the brighter light from the ceiling.