by Jim Miesner
Jenny sighed. “No, put your whole mouth on it.”
“Has anyone else drank from this since it was last sanitized?”
Jenny reached for the canteen and Sam pulled it away.
“Kidding,” she said as she raised it to her lips and wrapped them around it. She tipped it back and as soon as she felt the water in her mouth, she brought it back down and held it there in her cheeks. It’s just water she told herself as she swallowed and felt the liquid slide down her throat. It tickled, and she coughed and sputtered at the taste.
Jenny smiled. “Keep going.”
Sam brought the canteen back to her lips again. She tipped it this time and let the water flow down her throat, took a bigger gulp, and another before she tipped it back again. It flushed through her system. Every cell felt like it was awakening from the dead at once. They were right, it really was like a drug. She felt the dull throbbing numb a little.
"It doesn't taste like I expected. Is there something in it?"
"Just a purification tablet," Jenny blurted out.
Her stomach growled so loud it startled Sam and they both laughed.
“I think you better go get something to eat.”
“Let’s go back together.”
Sam nodded. “Just give me a few minutes. You go ahead and get something. Let me rest a little here first.”
Jenny smiled and walked back down to the camp. She was just a kid, but at the same time stronger than most anyone Sam had known in the Covenant. Growing up out here, she had to be strong. This was where she had been suited for all along. If Jenny had been given the Sacrament, she wouldn’t have been the same Jenny anymore. Sam had seen it happen time and time again with the other children, they were always different after the Sacrament. Worry, anger, and fear were gone but something else was always missing. It wasn’t until now that she realized what that was. It was strength.
At the end of a long tough day in the Covenant, you went to bed. Overnight all the cares and worries from the day before were flushed away while your body was fed by the Source. The next day you woke up happy and raring to go, ready to perform and work to your fullest. Any worry or bad memory from the day before wasn’t forgotten, but it was almost like it hadn’t happened to you. You were detached from it as if it was a scene from a movie and not a day of your life. The Source made anything bearable, even the gravest loss. That was why she hadn’t recognized it until now. Strength wasn’t just a foreign concept to her, it was completely alien. Sam wondered if long ago she had ever known it.
She breathed in and felt the pain in her lungs, the dull throb of her headache as she watched Jenny sit down to eat. Then she picked up the spoon that Jenny had set on a rock and poured the water over it. It was the closest she could do to get it sterile as she walked behind a boulder and got down on her hands and knees. She had to do this quickly, if she thought about it even for a second, she would chicken out. She jammed the end of the spoon into her navel port as she pried it back. Just when it felt like it wasn’t going to open and the skin around it was on the verge of tearing, she heard the liquid gush onto the ground.
Spatters of blue, black and green liquid stained the dirt. It mixed with the earth and created toxic mud that sizzled in the heat. She waited there until the last of it dripped out on the ground and then let the port close back on itself. Dropping the spoon, she struggled back to her knees. She sat on the rock for several more minutes as she took small sips of the water. If she was going to die anyway, she wanted to die like them. Free.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
In just the few minutes it took Sam to walk down to the camp, Daniel and Jenny had passed out in a little bed of half-emptied wool bags. It could have been the heat or the fact that all the adults were cleaning up that caused their narcolepsy. She tucked the souvenir zoo pendant back into Daniel’s hand as he murmured something and turned over.
When Sam turned back to the others, she saw that John was helping Marlena seal the remains of their meals in containers. Emmanuel pushed the remains of the corn husks, egg shells and wood into a little hole and covered them with dirt. Sam wasn’t sure if this was done for her benefit or if it was some kind of measure to help ensure they weren’t tracked. Whatever it was, she didn’t ask. The cramps in her stomach had subsided enough for her mind to clear and she felt bad now for how she had treated him.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Emmanuel nodded.
“I… the water. I overreacted. It wasn’t that big a deal.”
“Uh huh.” Emmanuel turned away from her and packed up other stuff.
“I’m trying to apologize here.”
“Apology accepted.”
“No, it’s not. You can’t even look at me.”
He turned toward her. “What more do you want out of me? A hug? You want me to be excited that you figured out how to drink water? Wow, that’s great. Big accomplishment.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
He took a breath and finally looked at Sam. “I get it. We both know you can’t survive out here.” He pounded down the dirt over the hole with his foot. “It’s better for everyone if you go back. We will find Jenny’s parents and you can survive.”
“I can’t go back there.”
“Why not? John can take you back close enough that it will draw their attention.”
It was her turn to look at Jenny and Daniel now. “I broke the rules, and they killed someone I cared about. I think they tried to kill me. Even if they didn’t, if I go back there… They have ways of finding out what they want to know. We can’t risk that. It’s the only way to keep Jenny safe.”
Emmanuel stepped toward her. “Then it’s a death sentence either way?”
Sam shrugged her shoulders. “I suppose.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just-”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I’m sorry about what happened with Daniel. You’re not the first Coven rebel we’ve come across.”
“What?”
“It was only a few months ago that we came across some Coven close to here. They were doing experiments in these caves.”
“What kind?”
“We’re not sure. The one that we came across, her name was Rachel. At least that was what she told us. She wouldn’t tell us much else, except that she was a research scientist.”
The woman’s research in the desert, Sam thought. Her heart raced. Was it a coincidence?
“What happened?” she asked.
“She came to us in the night when we were tending our flock. She asked us to help her hide.”
“Hide what?”
“Hide herself.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know. She just said they wanted something. Something that could hurt many people if they found it. She hid it out here somewhere before she came to us. She was afraid if they found her that she would tell them where it was. Just like you.”
“So, you believed her?”
“Yes… There was something in her eyes.” He looked down at the ground and then back up at Sam. “It was desperation. You don’t see that every day in the Coven. We took it seriously.”
“Did they ever find her?”
He shook his head. “They never did… We knew she couldn’t survive out here forever, but we were all taken aback by how quickly she went.”
“How quickly?”
“When we first met her, she was fine. Then she got a cough, bad headaches, and cramps. She told us she wasn’t sick. It was just because she wasn’t getting a refreshing, and that it would all pass but then it got worse. She could barely walk, she had trouble breathing. Towards the end, the inside of her mask was so covered with that blue gunk that we couldn’t even see her face. She refused to take it off.”
“She was wearing a suit and still got sick?”
“Yeah. We think it must have breached somewhere. We did our best to take care of her. Finally got her to take it off toward the end but there was nothing we could do by then.
Her body was riddled with it all over.”
“Riddled?”
“The veins in her arms, chest, legs, and neck were black as the night. So were her fingers and toes. It was like she had frostbite in the desert, from the inside out. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Sam swallowed. “How long did she survive?”
“Three days.”
“I mean from when you first found her until she died.”
“Three days.”
“What?”
Emmanuel nodded.
“The way she died.” He shook his head. “I have seen a lot of deaths, but I never saw anything like that. That kind of pain. We had to…” He looked into the dirt.
“Don’t say it.”
He shook away the thought. “Daniel wasn’t the same after. He’s lived a hard-enough life, I didn’t want him to go through that again. He’s the reason we didn’t want you here.” Emmanuel looked at Sam right in the eyes now.
Sam reached out to put her hand on Emmanuel’s and then drew it back. “When we find Jenny's parents, I’ll go. That way he doesn’t have to see it.”
“You seemed to be doing better. I hoped that you were different. We all were.”
“Even Marlena.”
Emmanuel smiled then stared at her midsection. Sam looked down to see a blue stain where some fluid she had let out had trickled down her shirt.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. I emptied it out.”
“You can do that? Don’t you need it?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“There has to be something we can do, instead of letting you creep off like a wounded animal ready to die. There’s no way we can find a way for you to eat? We thought about it with Rachel, but there was no way she was in any condition to even try.”
“We can’t get nutrients from traditional food. It would be like you trying to eat sand. The only food I can digest is back in the Covenant.”
Emmanuel kicked at the dirt.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what? I’ve done nothing for you. One way or another you’re dead.”
“She isn’t though,” Sam said and pointed toward Jenny. “They’re after her for a reason. Just promise me, promise me that if you can’t find her parents that you’ll take care of her. That you’ll keep her safe.”
“I will.”
“Marlena is a very lucky woman.”
Emmanuel smiled so the corners of his eyes wrinkled.
“What?”
Sam blushed. “Nothing, I was just saying-”
“You think Marlena and I?” Emmanuel laughed. “I can understand from what they’ve probably told you about us but that kind of relationship is still frowned upon out here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She’s my sister.”
“She is? I just thought... because of Daniel.”
"Daniel is my brother. God, how old do you think I am?"
Sam blushed again, and a grin flashed across Emmanuel's face. “Before you ask, John and I aren’t together either. I mean he’s cute but we’re cousins.”
"I didn't mean to."
He put his hand up. “It’s okay.” He looked off at Daniel and Jenny still asleep. “Our parents died when Daniel was just a baby. Marlena and I had to raise him.”
“I didn’t expect you to be so young,” Sam blurted out. “When John and Kelly talked of you. I thought you would be older. I just kind of assumed maybe you were older than you looked.”
Emmanuel's grin widened.
“It’s because of your father isn’t it? He was a leader, you are following in his footsteps.”
Emmanuel turned his head and spat. “He negotiated the truce with the Coven. Then one day he and my mom left on a trip. They wouldn’t tell us where they were going, or why, only that they would be back soon. Before he left, he made me promise to make sure nothing happened to Daniel or Marlena. So that’s what I did.”
“Keeping the truce was your best way of protecting them?”
“Out here you can hide from dangerous people, you can protect yourself, but you can’t fight the Coven or run from them.”
“What happened to your parents?”
“Not sure. Whatever it was, they’re dead and not coming back. They wouldn’t have left us like this, for this long.”
“I’m sorry.”
Sam scratched at her chest and Emmanuel went to the buggy, rifled through a tote, pulled out a faded Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt that he tossed at her. “Here. You must be dying in that.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She looked down at the shirt, realizing the second she put it on the black tendrils would be visible to everyone. Squeezing it she looked back up to see the smile slackened from his face as he looked off into the distance.
“What is it?” she asked.
She turned to follow his gaze and saw a large cloud of black smoke rising into the sky. It was moving fast. Something was burning, something close, something big.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Emmanuel said he would be back in an hour, but an hour stretched into two and then three. An unspoken tension seemed to descend on the camp and hover there like a morning fog. Marlena kept finding chores for herself and when she ran out, she redid the same ones over again. Sam thought she must have refolded clothing five or six times. After that she found useless things to do like rid the camp of large rocks. John, on the other hand, kept a constant watch as he paced back and forth over a couple hundred yards, keeping a constant eye on their perimeter and the sky.
Jenny and Daniel had awoken from their nap and distracted themselves with some game Daniel called hide-and-seek. It seemed simple enough, one child would hide, the other would look for them. Eventually, the seeker would find the hider only to slap the hider on the back and reverse their roles. They played that for fifteen minutes before Marlena yelled at them for being too loud and they went off to play another game where they hopped between rocks.
Sam smiled to herself as she looked at Marlena. It was funny to think that she thought her and Emmanuel could have been together. It was so obvious now.
“What’s so funny?” Marlena asked.
“Nothing.”
Marlena rolled her eyes and went back to collecting rocks as John made his fiftieth pass through the camp.
“Maybe I should see how he’s doing,” he said. “Maybe he needs help.”
“He said to wait here,” Marlena said. “We can’t split up. If it’s dangerous, he’ll find a way back. The last thing he would want is for us to draw attention to ourselves, or to get separated. If he’s not back yet, there’s a reason.”
Despite everything, Sam couldn’t help but agree with her. No matter how much she wanted to see if he was all right, the best thing to do was to wait. Doing otherwise was irresponsible, especially with the kids. That was when she noticed it was too quiet.
When John walked away, Sam looked around for Jenny and Daniel. She waited to hear them somewhere and couldn’t. She spun around in place and there was no sign of them.
“Marlena?” she said.
“What do you want?” Marlena said and tossed a few pebbles away.
“Where’s Jenny and Daniel?”
Marlena looked left and right. “They were just here.” She stood up and went to the spot the children had been playing. Then walked back past Sam and climbed up a rock that sloped to about fifteen feet above the ground. When she reached the top, she looked around again. She looked in every direction but never fixed on any one spot or gave a sign that she saw anything. She sighed and opened her mouth to call for them but hesitated and closed it again. It was a few more seconds before she made her way back down.
“They couldn’t have gone far,” she said. “Daniel never wanders off on his own. You stay here and wait for them if they come back. John and I will look for them.”
“I know Jenny better than John. It would be better if I looked for her.
”
Marlena opened her mouth. Sam was ready for an argument.
“Fine,” Marlena said. “Start looking. I’ll tell John we’ll be back.”
She marched off toward him and left Sam by herself to figure out the next steps. Jenny and Daniel had been playing together after they were told to quiet down. Naturally, as kids do, they would have snuck away so that they could be kids without getting yelled at. Jenny was a few years older so she would have decided where they went. What direction would she have gone? Everything around them looked the same. The only difference was the black smoke. Would she be that stupid? Marlena was walking up to John still when Sam scrambled over some rocks and made her way toward the smoke.
When she was over the other side, the hills leveled out and there seemed to be no sign of the kids or Emmanuel for miles.
Whatever was in the distance seemed to still be burning, but it wasn’t pouring out as it had been when Emmanuel left. The blackest part of it was higher in the sky with the base of it more of a gray-black. Sam’s foot slipped, and a rock skittered down the embankment away from her. She wouldn’t die here but she could badly twist or break something among the large boulders. Making her way down the hill, bracing herself against rocks, she came to more level ground. She stopped to listen for the kids laughing or whispering but there was nothing. It was dead quiet on this side of the hill.
It was hard to believe it had only been a little over twenty-four hours since she had been chasing Jenny through the zoo. It seemed like a hundred years ago. Now here she was doing it again, except now she was in the desert instead of the swamp. Her worries back then seemed so silly.
She took stock of the landscape. Something scurried past her foot and disappeared behind a rock before she had a chance to see what it was. Rocks tumbled behind her and Marlena scrambled down the hill. When she reached Sam, she dusted herself off.
“Anything?” she asked.
Sam shook her head.
Marlena looked out on the desert and the black smoke. “Maybe they went the other way. There’s nothing out here. Just desert. Dammit, I wish he hadn’t gone.”