by Jim Miesner
The woman huffed. “I’m reporting this as soon as I get home,” she said then held out her hand for her son to grab. “Let’s go, Phillip… Phillip?” She turned back to see her son wasn’t there and spun around three hundred and sixty degrees. “Phillip?”
“He left. Embarrassed by his ignorant mother,” said Sam. She turned around to smile at Jenny and it dropped from her face when she saw no one was there. “Jenny?” she called out. “Jenny!”
CHAPTER FIVE
She turned back around to find the woman had gone as white as a sheet and had one hand against the trunk of a tree to balance herself.
“Alert,” she whispered and then cleared her throat. “Alert!” she yelled now. “Security alert!”
In an instant, the blue hologram of the woman appeared. “How can I be of assistance?” she asked.
“There is an untreated chewer lose. She’s taken my son.”
“That’s not true,” Sam said.
The hologram turned red and flashed on and off. “Zoo staff have been alerted and will be with you shortly.”
It was only a moment before there was the sound of footsteps running toward them and then two men in navy blue uniforms appeared, out of breath. Across their pockets the words, New Covenant Zoo Security was written. Underneath the words was the image of a wolf with its head resting on a lamb, asleep between its paws. One man was in his forties, underneath the logo his name tag read Darren. The other looked like he was barely shaving. Instead of a name tag, he had a badge that said, Trainee.
“What’s wrong?” Darren asked.
The woman drew out a deep breath. “There is an untreated chewer loose and unsupervised in this zoo. She’s taken my son.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “She’s just an eleven-year-old girl.”
Darren nodded. “Are you the guardian?” he asked.
“No. I mean yes. I’m with rehabilitation.”
Darren nodded. “How big is the girl? Is she strong? When did she last feed?”
“What?” Sam asked.
The woman nodded with a smug look on her face. “I’m glad someone is taking this seriously.”
The man nodded and turned back to his trainee. “Go get the restraints,” he said to him.
The young trainee turned and jogged back down the path.
Darren cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted to the trainee as he ran. “Bring the net, too!”
Sam backed away. She didn’t know what to say, but she knew she had to find Jenny before these lunatics did. She jogged down the path hoping to see them hiding among the large fronds or close to where she had been, but they had disappeared. Where would she have gone?
“Jenny?” she yelled out. “Jenny?”
Sam barely felt the air blow over her as she ran through the doors into the wetlands sanctum.
“Jenny?”
Then she saw the young boy run past her.
“Stop,” she yelled out.
He continued on along the path and then she lost sight of him, but picked him up again crouched on the edge of some reeds. Where he ran his hand over the wet snout of a large alligator floating in the water.
“Excuse me?” she said. “Where’s Jenny?”
The boy turned around with wide eyes, but it wasn’t the same boy as before.
“Who?” he asked.
“I’m looking for a girl,” she said. “Have you seen her?”
He shook his head from side to side.
Sam swallowed. “She might have been with another boy. She wasn’t a regular girl. She was fuller. An untreated girl...”
“A what?”
Sam hated herself for letting the words come out of her mouth as she said them but there wasn’t time to be politically correct. “A chewer.”
The boy nodded now. “They told me not to tell. They said she would eat me if I did.”
“It was a joke. Please. I need to find them.”
The kid nodded and pointed on the other side of a wooden footbridge. Into a section of trees that were younger than the rest.
“They went through there,” he said.
“Thank you.”
She turned, jogged across the footbridge and down an old path of the forest. The bushes seemed to split here and she could see patches of an old moss-covered concrete pathway that had once existed in between them. An old sign she couldn’t quite make out lay covered by vines alongside. She brushed the dirt and sticks from it but it was impossible to tell what it had said.
As she pushed further along the path the prickers and bushes seemed to encroach farther and farther in until every step was a battle. It was at this point she began to second guess herself, wondering if the kid had played a joke on her and sent her on a wild goose chase. That was until her eye caught a glimmer of light on the ground and she reached down through the bushes and pulled out the little white plastic suit and domed helmet.
CHAPTER SIX
Branches snagged Sam’s hair and prickers pulled at her clothes. The mossy concrete had disappeared a few hundred feet back, and she was questioning if she was even traveling in the right direction anymore until she picked up the two sets of tracks in the mud.
She followed them, trying to keep to the sides of the path, taking wide steps where the mud was thinner but somehow her feet kept sliding toward the middle. Her shoes disappeared below the surface of the muck, with both her feet and ankles caked she was greeted with a slurping sound with every step. Every step a battle as the earth tried to claim her shoe as a prize.
She steadied herself when it got difficult on a tree or a rock and when it seemed like it would never end; she pushed her way through a thorn bush, to reveal a small clearing that ended at an old building shrouded in vines. Every single shingle was covered with green moss, its windows long gone, just above the entrance was the word Comissa y. The R missing. That was when her feet finally slipped out from under her.
“Dammit,” she said, sighed and flicked the mud from her hands.
It was rank. She looked around for a clean place but there wasn’t any, then she pushed her hands into the muck with another slurp as she steadied herself and got to her feet. In a few steps she was in the grass, and cleaned her mud-caked feet off in it as she wiped her hands on her pants. Walking up to the rusted metal door she pushed her hand against it, but it didn’t budge. She put her full body weight into it, but nothing happened. Maybe the children had locked it she thought, but felt stupid when she saw the words PULL written on the handle. When she yanked it, it came open with a loud squeal. The inside was dark, lit only by the light through where the few windows had been. Still, she could pick up the two sets of muddy footprints into the building that disappeared into the shadows.
“Jenny,” she called out.
The only answer was her own voice as it echoed back to her.
“Jenny,” she called out again.
She took a step into the dim room, bracing herself as her feet slipped on the tile, but she managed to remain standing. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light as she squinted. Further in she could see peeling and cracked tiles that lined the walls. Counters were pushed to one side, leaving the other side empty.
“Jen-” she called out as something under her left foot made a squishing sound and her feet slipped out from under her again, before she found herself back on her hands and knees. The palm of her hand landed right in a sticky mess, the smell curled up her nostrils, her insides flipped and her tongue tried to escape her mouth as she retched and spit onto the floor. Her body heaved and shook as she wiped her hand on her pants, but she couldn’t escape the putrid stench that enveloped her.
Whatever it was she needed to get away, and she crawled along the floor as she coughed and sputtered until an intense pain shot through her abdomen and she flopped to her side. It was on both her hands, her arms, her hair. Was it in her hair? She couldn’t escape the stench as the world all-round spun and pins of lights twinkled around her. Her abdomen was about to explode. Noises echoed around her. Footst
eps?
“Jen?” she called out. “Jenny?”
She hacked again and her esophagus burned as something leaked over the corners of her mouth and slid down her chin.
“Jenny,” she sputtered out in a whisper.
Her heart pounded in her head, getting louder and louder. Someone's hand slapped her across the face, but it felt wrong, numb. Then the cold water hit her. Some of it went down her nose as she coughed and the world grew brighter again for an instant.
Jenny was over top of her now. She was scrubbing her hands with a weird circular shaped brush and dipping them in a bucket. She wiped Sam’s mouth then stuck something soft into her nose.
“Jenny?” Sam asked and touched her cheek. “What was that?”
Jenny’s eyes were wide as she worked. “It was just an orange.”
“What?”
“An orange.”
She stopped working and looked back at the door then to Sam. “Come on,” she said and pulled her to her feet.
Sam steadied herself as she leaned against her. The stars were still there, but the room was slowing as they limped across it and through some doors.
Question upon question flicked through her mind but all she could get out at that moment was, “Where?”
“Through here,” Jenny said and led Sam around the corner and through a door that had a picture of a stick man with a detached head on it.
“Hurry. He’s not waking up.”
Sam doubled over and retched again as the cramps rocketed through her body. Jenny lost her grip on her and she fell to her knees. Her arms cradled her stomach. It felt like someone had just kicked her in it, but not as bad as before. The boy lay on the floor in front of her, motionless, his eyes closed. His face and neck were red and swollen as he wheezed through his nostrils, and froth dribbled down his chin into a puddle on the tile.
“What’s going on?” Jenny asked. “Why is it making you so sick?”
Sam held her breath and put her shirt over her face as she leaned closer to the boy to see hives breaking out around his lips and throat. She touched a finger to his lips, and the skin stuck to the tip. She turned, felt the acid rise up in her throat again and spurted some out as she crawled away.
“Get it off of him. Get it all off of him,” she said and wheezed. She could feel her own throat closing up now.
“I cleaned it all up.”
“It’s still on his face and in his mouth. You need to…” She heaved. “You need to turn him on his side so he doesn’t choke.
Jenny disappeared and Sam looked back at the boy as he was turning a shade of purple. Oh God, please don’t let him die.
Jenny ran back through the door as the bucket sloshed. She slid across the floor until she was upon the boy, and used the brush on his face and hands. Turning him on his side, she poured the bucket over him as he spasmed to life and his bloodshot eyes burst open. He took little shallow breaths and arched his back like a fish trying to breathe out of water.
Jenny ran to a stall and returned with some kind of paper wrapped around a tube. She wiped the boy’s face and the floor before returning to the stall, and throwing it into a white chair with a large hole in the middle.
“Is he going to be okay?” Jenny asked.
Sam spit on the floor. “I don’t know. Where did that come from?”
“We found it,” she said, while looking back at the boy.
“You found it?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“I am.”
“Jenny, if you don’t tell me the truth, I can’t help you.”
“Are we in trouble? He said if I didn’t share, he would tell on me. That I would never see my mom and dad again.”
Sam rubbed her eyes. They were burning and full of tears but the wheezing was fading now. It seemed so was the boys as he gasped with his cheek pressed against the puddle of water on the floor.
“Miss Samantha?”
“This is bad Jenny. Very bad.”
“It’s just an orange.”
“It’s contraband.”
Jenny cocked her head. “Contra- what?”
“You have to get out of here. I’ll stay with the boy until they come. They can’t find you here.”
“Why did it make you so sick?”
Sam steadied herself and got to her feet. “There isn’t time to explain. You need to leave, now.”
Somewhere a door creaked. Sam and Jenny both froze as the footsteps echoed on the tiled floor.
“This way,” Sam said as she made her way to a frosted window along the back wall of the bathroom.
She tried to pop open the latch, but it didn’t budge, being rusted shut.
“Why does it make you so sick?” Jenny asked again.
Sam listened to the footsteps as they grew closer and she shook the handle, trying to loosen it as rust flakes fell away.
“It’s a defense. Keeps us from ingesting anything.”
“Why?”
Sam eyed the door as the footsteps stopped. She looked to the stall and pushed Jenny toward it but it was too late as the door burst open and the net shot through the air.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A holographic projection of seven council members loomed over her in long robes that started at their chins, and disappeared behind a holographic desk. Sam sat in the middle of the room. Except for the holograms, she and her chair, the room was empty.
“Is that all you have to say for yourself?” asked a bald man. His hands were folded out in front of him and his eyes bored into her and weighed every word and gesture.
Sam cleared her throat. “I’m sorry about the boy. I take full responsibility. It never occurred to me that-”
“I’m sure that is very comforting to his mother, as she sits by his bedside in the hospital,” said a woman with salt and pepper dreadlocks. “He almost died, you realize?”
Sam swallowed a lump in her throat. “I’m so sorry.”
The woman with dreadlocks shook her head. “Is there any word on his condition?”
“No,” said another woman. Her beady eyes squinted through big round amber glasses. She reminded Sam of a nocturnal, squirrel-like creature she had seen in the zoo once, but the name of it escaped her.
“It’s not just about the boy,” said the bald man. “It’s the blatant disregard for public welfare. Do you have any concept of the seriousness of this?”
Sam nodded.
“You took an untreated girl out of quarantine. A girl who could be carrying who knows what contaminants. You know the Shell is up for a reason, don’t you? It’s not just there for ambiance.”
“Yes.”
“That Shell keeps us alive. Men, women, and children. You put us all in danger.”
Sam wiped her face. “I know.”
“Do you?” asked the woman with dreadlocks.
“Yes. I do. It protects us not just from hostiles but contaminants.”
“Then why did you let a little girl out of quarantine whose body carries those contaminants? Didn’t you see the possibility she might have taken off the suit or that a layer could be breached?”
“No, I didn’t. Jenny was in danger of losing her chance. They had deemed her unsuitable for the Sacrament.”
“Tell us the real reason you had taken her out of quarantine.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Was this an act of sabotage?”
“What? No. I thought if she saw with her own eyes the wonders that surround us… the Covenant itself then maybe she would… that maybe she would…”
“That maybe she would make the right decision and choose the Sacrament?” the woman with amber glasses asked.
“Yes.”
“So, you put others at risk?” said the woman with dreadlocks.
“Let her finish,” said a man with white hair.
Sam looked back and forth between the two before she spoke. “What I did wasn’t right. It was stupid. I know the Shell protects us and the Source sustains us.
Not just from what is out there but from what is in here.” She pointed at her chest. “From the pain, temptations, and struggles of the old ways. From loneliness, depression, fear, anxiety, addiction. All the monsters that once lived in us. I just didn’t want that little girl to miss out on that. Her only chance at happiness. Her only chance to do great things. Her only chance at a healthy life.”
“Really?” asked an Asian woman. “That was your only purpose for breaking this girl out?”
Sam’s jaw hung open a moment as she looked between them all. They all stared at her in silence. How could they even question that? What other purpose could she have?
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t understand. Why would I… Do you think I gave her the fruit? I swear I didn’t.”
The man with white hair raised one hand in the air for Sam to stop as he scribbled with the other. “When did Dr. Tesla give you the key card that allowed you to take the girl out of quarantine?”
“He didn’t. I took it. Why would you think he would?”
The woman with dreadlocks flicked through a screen on her desk. “That’s not what Dr. Tesla’s testimony says.”
“His testimony?”
“The testimony from Dr. Tesla was that he gave you his keycard. That he fully authorized you to take the girl, Jen…” the bald man said and looked down at his table a moment. “…nee out of quarantine. That he had hoped it would motivate Jenny to alter her behavior.”
“No, that isn’t true. He’s lying,” Sam said and stood up. Her chair screeched on the floor behind her and echoed in the huge empty room.
The woman with amber glasses closed her eyes and put a hand to a vein in her temple.
“Please sit down, Miss Lewinson,” she said.
“He’s just covering-”
“Sit down, Miss Lewinson.”
“I can assure you.”
“Sit down right now, Samantha Lewinson,” the woman with amber glasses growled through her teeth.
Sam sat back in her chair. “I can assure you he took no part in any of this. It was all my fault.”
She stared at Sam. “Are you done?”
“Yes.”
“We have already made our decision concerning Dr. Tesla,” said the woman with dreadlocks. “He is permanently disbarred from further service. If there is an objection, you are welcome to submit it in writing concluding this hearing. We will now adjourn while we weigh the evidence and decide your punishment.”