Upon Us

by Blakely Chorpenning

  Lenna sensed my shift in mood. Leaning closer, she patted my hand and said, "He'll be fine."

  "You don't have much experience with the sickness." I wasn't being rude, just honest. "We've slept here for three nights. They could be eating dirt and choking each other to death right now."

  Lenna withdrew her hand from mine, sitting up uncomfortably. "Or Ren and Dr. Lowel could be finding answers."

  I acknowledged her confidence with one small nod.

  Standing, Lenna didn't wait for a response after saying, "I'll prepare the persimmons and black walnuts we foraged."

  Everything felt wrong. Empty, somehow. I wanted to leave them here and run back to the village, but Ren was right. I needed to help them, and I needed to stay on task. If I acted selfishly, many clanships could starve to death by next Frost. The eastern clans had the same abilities to forage and hunt, but they relied heavily on farming to supplement the nutrition they needed throughout the changing seasons. Without it, they would become ill and weak.

  As it turned out, Lenna, the girls, and I made a good team. We expended a lot of time and energy spreading the word of the manufactured sickness to the surrounding clanships, asking them not to accept goods or supplies from anyone. It was equally as horrifying each time I shared Dr. Turnig's deception with a clan. They believed me. They had no reason not to. Along with our message of warning, we armed them with knowledge for the fast approaching growing season. Lenna was naturally kindhearted, and the clans showed little hesitancy accepting her information and advice on greenhouse construction and dirt preparation. It was inspiring to watch as hope returned to the faces of many.

  It was the same in each clanship. They listened, and then the building began.

  The weather neared freezing as our campaign approached its end. Frost was well upon us. An early snowfall slowed our progress. At least two hands of snow blanketed the earth, making it treacherous for the little ones. They marched with their knees practically to their chests. Struggling to take the next step, each one expending energy, became harder than the last. I was thankful that my knee had fully healed before the snow or it would have been a mighty setback.

  The time had come to return to Bleeker Clanship. To Darsha and Tish's home. The three of us held our breath, not wanting to speak out loud the nightmares we envisioned the land to hold. Maybe the horrors would be blanketed fully by snow, like a bad dream wrapped in a warm hug.

  "We shouldn't split up. Let us go with you," Lenna begged.

  "No." Turning to the sisters, I said, "I'll go first. Do not follow me."

  Their tiny heads bobbed up and down, eyes wide.

  "I'll check on your mamma." As I began walking, I said over my shoulder, "Stay hidden until I say otherwise." I gripped my bag tightly in hand and whispered only for my ears, "Hope lives anywhere darkness blooms." It was a sentiment, a belief that had always carried me straight through the heart of the darkest times. Lately, it had just become a string of words. Their salvation disintegrated months ago, when Ren shoved me clear of that abominable gate.

  The walk, though short, was deceitful to my heart. I pictured finding a pile of distorted, half-burned icicles littering the center of their clanship. A scene so gruesome, not even wild coyotes would scavenge. An act so vile, feral creatures recognized it as being a crime against Gaia.

  Standing at the edge of the clanship, I inhaled a deep breath and listened. To my surprise, noises filled the void. I could hear the muffled voices of two people having a conversation. Though I couldn't make out what was being said, they sounded healthy.

  Rounding a tree, I stood in the open, searching each person for any signs of the sickness. No erratic movements. No physical impairments. No warning signs.

  A man turned his chin upward from his sawing to lay eyes on me.

  "She's come," he bellowed. Dropping his saw, he wiped his hands on his pants, grinning. "We've been waiting for your return." His hair was scruffy, streaked dark gray with bits of silver catching in the sunlight.

  I approached him as a few more people gathered around us. Smoke rose from the chimneys of the modest cabins, and I could smell a hearty roast on someone's fire pit. Setting my bag on the ground, I crouched and opened it. Everyone quieted as I pulled the small canisters out.

  "Tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, and more," I offered, holding them up as hands eagerly accepted them. "And," I pulled the small glass jar of seeds free from my bag, "I promised to bring these back."

  A set of steady hands took the seeds. The woman, around fifty-I-think, pressed the cold jar to her chest, eyes closed. "Some of these are from plants my father and grandmother sowed. Thank you for bringing them home." Tears of thanks flowed freely down her cheeks.

  As I searched the grateful eyes of the tiny crowd, I couldn't help but notice how small it was in comparison to seasons past.

  Closing my bag and standing, I asked, "How many survived the sickness?"

  "A good many of us," the older man boomed. "A good many more than we could give thanks for. But…"

  "What?" I prompted.

  "It took our healthiest, and many young ones."

  A woman stifled a cry.

  Focusing his eyes on nothing particular, he asked, "Why would it leave us and take them? It goes against the footprints of any hard illness."

  He was right. The sickness should have fed on the elderly as well as the young. How odd that it spared so many seasoned people.

  A thought sprang to mind. A curious thought.

  "How many of you were born here in Bleeker? Most of you, right?" The population of a clanship rarely changes, with the exception of marriage to maintain healthy bloodlines.

  "Well…" he thought, "That ain't the case here. A number of us were originally Jane's People. The others were born here. The babies we lost."

  A coldness sat in my gut. Jane's People came from Townsend Clanship. From Bea's clan. Was I staring at everyone who disappeared that day so long ago, when I returned to find only dirt and death?

  "Raise your hand if you're Jane's People," I directed.

  Everyone -the entire crowd of thirty-two- raised their hands.

  My breathing hitched. My heart skipped, creating a sickening pain in my chest.

  I stammered over my words. "I'm going to… I need you to stay patient while I try something." I reached my shaky hand into my bag, pulling out the special UV flashlight I had stolen from the hospital. Walking up to the older man, he was more curious than reserved. I turned the flashlight on. It took a moment to prepare myself before I shined it right on his neck, just under his ear.

  The crowd erupted with questions and shrieks when the lines of the symbol, my mother's symbol, manifested under the reach of the small bulb. Longevity.

  "What is it?" he asked me.

  I shined the light on a woman's long neck. She, too, bore the symbol.

  "That," I answered.

  Everyone was eager to step forward, and I found the inking on every one of them.

  "What does this mean?" someone cried out.

  "It means you were chosen a long time ago to be vaccinated for the sickness. Before there was a sickness."

  The man raised his hands in the air, demanding silence from his fellow clan before approaching me. "How can that be?"

  "I don't understand how none of you remember, but there would have been a syringe. The inkings would have stung like nettle thorns. Neither being easily forgotten experiences. I was very young. You would have been older."

  "A different illness befell the Townsend Clanship many moons before the sickness came," the old man remembered. "No one passed, but it wasn't something we ever experienced. Government even sent doctors. They set up tents and kept the ill separated from the rest of the clan. None of us remember much. We were unconscious for long stretches of time. When was the last time the government intervened after the New Beginning? Hadn't happened before that. Never happened since."

  "What do you remember, specifically?" I goaded.

  He thought for
a moment. "A rash." He grabbed his neck. "A rash on our necks."

  Another man agreed, "They said it would go away in time."

  "And it did," a woman chimed in. "It was pinkish, barely noticeable on most of us."

  The inkings had faded in time, becoming invisible, except under the UV rays.

  "Had everyone in Townsend contracted this 'illness'?"

  "No," they answered in unison.

  The older man shook his head. "Only…" Looking around, he realized, "Only us."

  "And me." I shined the light against my flesh, illuminating the telltale mark.

  Had we been experiments? No, I chose to believe that my mother was trying to give humanity a chance to survive our own pessimism. In my heart, I knew she was nothing like Dr. Turnig. Even he had commented as much.

  "This is a gift," I told them. "It will keep you safe, but not those around you. Refuse anything brought to you by outsiders. The sickness is being spread through supplies."

  "We had found a box," a wisp of a woman confessed. "Coats and hats."

  "I gave my baby one of those coats." Darsha and Tish's mother pushed through the crowd. "I washed it real good first, but that don't mean much." Her chin trembled and the sides of her eyes scrunched, pressing back tears.

  Reaching through the crowd, I gathered her hands into mine. "Your girls are safe."

  Her tears fell free as she collapsed. Her people caught her before she had a chance to hit the ground. "Thank Her!" she praised, head in hands, once I let go of her.

  "Thank Her for saving two of our precious children!" they celebrated.

  I held my hands up to stop them. "No, you did. You taught them well." Turning to the older man, I said, "I'll send them to you. They won't be alone. Please take in the others. I know I'm asking you to break a law-"

  "Done," was all he said.

  He moved forward and held his hand out, palm towards the sky. I wrapped my hand around his wrist and he did the same. This was an act of greeting and farewell, as well as a sign of trust.

  "My name's Sallish."

  "I'm…Jolee." It felt right to introduce that name into the clan. There was a stirring in my gut of fear, of self-acceptance, but mostly a warm feeling of knowing. I could be Jolee-I-Know instead of Jolee-I-Think. I could stand to hear it on the lips of others, though I only yearned to hear it from the lips of one man in particular.

  We said our goodbyes and I grabbed my bag. "They're not far," I yelled, as I rounded the edge of the trees, disappearing into the forest.

  I sent Lenna and the girls to the clanship with instructions to remain there until I returned.

  Tish and Darsha pulled me aside before we parted ways.

  "You need these more," Tish insisted as the sisters handed me the two petite knives.

  Darsha hugged me fiercely, whispering, "Bring them back." If the blades returned, it meant my return.

  "I plan to." I hugged them again and said my goodbyes.

  I hadn't anticipated the feeling that I was abandoning them, especially Shells. Lenna understood how to control her asthma. Had a bag full of medication, which was more than anyone else in the region. But I was charged with her safety. I would be at fault if something happened.

  Shells had an entire clanship to see to her needs. I was being ridiculous.

  Pocketing my knives sent a shiver of elation through my body. I felt whole again. That was especially good since I had set the village in my sights.

  Ren, what will I find?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Silently preparing to pick up the pieces of my broken heart, I hiked towards the village. The wind was unforgiving, the layer of ice overtop the snow brutal. I tugged at the collar of my best coat, raising it to cover my neck as the wind scratched at my skin. The ice made my footing suspect, constantly testing my balance. The muscles in my legs tensed and burned as I continued onward for two days, not allowing myself to stop for very long. I walked all through the second night, into the first rays of dawn.

  Once the back gate -the gate we had used to escape- was in view midday, I allowed my feet to finally stop. This was it. This was the moment I had avoided for three full moons. A heartbeat in the span of a lifetime, though a lifetime in its own right. If Ren were alive, how could I look upon his face, knowing I left him to die? And if he were truly dead, how could I look upon his bones and not mourn the future stolen from us?

  Standing there, I noted Gaia's voice in the form of her creation. Ice on underweight tree branches creaked in the wind, occasionally smashing to the ground below, bursting. The world was a photograph, if not for the shy whispers of snow caressing ice and ice ravaging snow. Otherwise, there were no voices or signs of work to fill the void. A nothingness swallowed the world.

  I wanted to remind myself that hope lives anywhere darkness blooms. I needed to feel the words, but I was too scared to be proven wrong.

  Walking towards the gate, my mind recalled every dead from my past. Images of Bea flashed behind my eyelids. The smell of her curdled blood on the knife as I pulled it free from her slack form. Her smile from before, because I stole that smile from the world with the swing of one piece of metal. The certainty resounding through Deacon's screams. He had been so sure, even in his last moments, like a kettle boiling over, that we were untouchable by death. And in death, I studied his expression. I had gotten down on my hands and knees in the wet, bloodied snow, feeling it saturate the material at my legs, and waited. His jaw was locked shut, his lips a straight line. His eyes were open a sliver, and only a minor crease between his eyebrows stirred the notion that he was disappointed. He looked as if he were sleeping off a day that hadn't exceeded his expectations. Nothing more.

  The charred bodies flashed through my mind. Piles of meat with nowhere to go because they were empty. Discarded in so many ways. Sloughed off like a second skin. They had all been people until they ceased being.

  I rattled the door. Of course, it was locked. Was it still trying to keep people safe inside, or was it trying to keep me safe from what I didn't want to know?

  My bag dropped to the ice as I retrieved a rope attached to a spider-like piece of iron. It only took a few seconds to swing it over the wall and catch it through the slats of the gate. After tying it off, I tugged the rope. It was solid.

  I jumped, grabbing the rope as I did, using the gate as a springboard, pulling my weight upward. Climbing the wall was fairly easy. It was hopping down that made me hold my breath. I hadn't forgotten Dr. Lowel's stern warning not to reinjure my knee.

  Landing with a sturdy thud, I tested my legs. No injuries.

  I wondered if I should leave my bag or bring it with me. I concluded that it wasn't worth the attention the gate might make with a loud squeak. If someone was here, I wanted to see them before they saw me.

  Cracking my neck and relaxing my shoulders, I skirted the wall, listening and watching for signs of life, whether they be healthy or deranged.

  When I saw the hospital -the black remains of the grand white beacon- I covered my mouth to strangle the horror. Bile rose in the back of my throat. The once impressive building was barely a few burned out walls. It was pieces of flooring and indiscriminate debris. It was a place where snow gathered and birds nested, no longer a place fit for people.

  As I scanned the courtyard, there was nothing of note. Nothing called my attention, but a piece of me begged to visit Ren's house. The house that would forever be a home nestled in my nomadic soul.

  It took little effort to direct my feet onto the right path. Nothing was out of sort, except for the abandoned landscape. The little homes sat just as before, glistening like a drained snow globe. Lanterns and empty planters hung from hooks, just as before. Though, there were no footsteps in the ice-kissed snow. No flames to give the lanterns purpose. Nothing to show that any one of those doors had been opened recently.

  Before I knew it, I was standing on Ren's doorstep. Gingerly, I pressed my ear to the door, listening for him inside, hoping beyond measure that I would ope
n this door to his glowing grin. I looked down. There was no sign that his door had been opened, either. The snow wasn't pushed at an angle. The only disturbance was that of my footprints. And as I looked skyward, I noted there was no smoke billowing from his chimney.

  Sighing, I turned the nob. It surrendered wantonly under my grip, inviting me into nothing but stony darkness. He wasn't there. He hadn't been there.

  Choking back tears, I searched through the tiny, forgotten house for any signs that he may have packed up and left. That he had moved on. Anything that might insinuate that the sickness hadn't reduced his life to a series of fragile moments before a blunt exit.

  "No!" I flung a kitchen chair across the room. It bounced off the horribly uncomfortable sofa, dropping to the floor without a fight.

  Walking closer, I saw the boat I had made of buttons for Ren still on the floor. They had never been put away. A feeling of despair wrenched my insides and I cried. I not only cried, but screamed until every bit of love I had ever felt turned to pure rage. It shifted inside me, threatening to reduce my muscles and organs to goo. My world was built on a mound of rotting flesh that ate everybody I loved. It grew and grew into a festering scab that never stopped consuming.

  A loneliness I had never known crept inside me. It extinguished the need to smile or laugh or speak. Breathing was my only companion. I counted as I inhaled, and counted as I exhaled, proof that I wasn't dead.

  Of course, I had Jane's People now, I reminded myself. They were like me. They wouldn't be put down so predictably. We could live together behind our own invisible wall. Our own version of a village. I had demonized Ren for living with an unfair advantage, for being 'Privileged.' And yet, upon peeking behind their walls, there was nothing great or privileged about it. In fact, they were worse off than any clan I had visited. Their ill population outnumbered any I had ever witnessed, disregarding the waves of sickness.

  Did I really want to shut myself off, whether alone or with others like myself, as a means to live? That wasn't living, that was surviving. Had you asked me before Ren what sounded viable, I would have chosen survival. I would have lunged at the chance to live comfortably with the idea that death wasn't stalking my todays or tomorrows. A warmth would have rolled around in my chest at the idea. Now, that notion simply rattled inside me, a hard, out-of-place thing.