by Kelli Kimble
I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d wanted Adam to die. I still wanted him to die.
Didn’t I?
“Can you walk?” I asked.
He squeezed my hand and rose to his full height. “I think so. I don’t think I have long, though.” He panted for a moment. “I want to go home. To the tanks. Will you take me there? Please?”
I nodded. I had no idea how to treat his wound, other than direct pressure. He was surely going to die. I might as well give him something to make his end easier.
I released his hand, grabbed what was left of the curtain, and tore it into two strips. “Lift your shirt,” I said.
He obeyed, closing his eyes. I crumpled one strip into a ball and pressed it against the wound. Air hissed between his teeth.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m going to tie this around you to hold it in place. It’s going to hurt. But, I think we need to keep pressure on it.”
He nodded, and I saw his muscles tense in anticipation. I got the curtain around him and tied it in front, holding the first bandage in place. He dropped his arms and wrapped them around me. At first, I thought he was trying to hurt me, like he’d hurt Willow. But then, I realized it was an embrace.
A hug from my only son.
My eyes misted over, and I relaxed. His arms tightened slightly, and I could feel him sobbing. Tears of my own washed down my face. I’d only ever wanted a child. And here, I’d been given one. I’d been blessed with one, and all this time, I’d turned away from him. If I’d only been there for him, maybe things would have turned out differently.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into his shoulder.
We cried together for a few minutes. But, I knew he was right; he didn’t have long. I gently moved out of from his embrace. “Let’s get you home, where you belong,” I said.
He nodded, and we left the house. He pointed to a rover parked in the distance.
“Wait here,” I said. I hobbled off towards it, my leg aching with each step. As I approached, a deepening sense of the challenges it presented came over me. I had no idea how to operate the rover. I’d never even ridden in one—except for when Eve had boxed me.
I opened the door and looked inside. There were four seats, arranged two-by-two. A tablet was mounted in front of one of the seats. There didn’t seem to be any other controls. I sat in the seat with the tablet and touched it. A message scrolled onto the screen: Start engine now. Below it, there was a button, and I pushed it. The rover rumbled slightly as the engine turned over. I could feel the vehicle vibrating ever so slightly beneath me. I closed the door. A map appeared on the screen, and I touched a point that I hoped was near Adam. The vehicle turned and went to the position I’d chosen. It wasn’t as close to Adam as I thought it would be, so I touched it a series of times, trying to get it near enough so he wouldn’t have far to walk. When I was satisfied, I left the engine running and helped him walk to the car.
“Whatever you did, I feel a little better,” he said. “I can breathe easier now.”
“Good,” I said. I wasn’t sure whether I believed him or not.
He folded himself into the seat, grunting as I lifted each of his legs into the vehicle. I pushed the door closed and went around to my side.
“Here,” he said. He held out a hand, but he was too far from the tablet to reach. I lifted it from its mount and held it for him. He tapped around a few times, and the rover started moving. “We should be there in about an hour,” he said, leaning back and closing his eyes. “Tell me about my father. I know he wasn’t a good man. But, he must have had some good qualities.”
“I didn’t know him well,” I said. “At my last choosing, his son . . . one of his sons, Elliot, chose me. Elliot was a good man. And he came from your father. And though Willow got a little lost, she was also a good friend. Good can be born from a dark place. It only needs the light to grow.”
“Leo wanted him to be my father because he knew it would make you angry,” he said. “I know that Leo was very good at manipulating people. And he might have made you think he didn’t care. But, I could tell from the way he spoke about you that he was hurt when you left.” He paused to take a few breaths. “I think he loved you.”
“He had a funny way of showing it.”
“Don’t we all?” he said, turning to look out the window. He was silent for a while. When the mountain came into view in the distance, he reached over and took my hand in his. It still felt oddly cold.
“Are you okay?” I said.
He shook his head. “No. It’s getting hard to breathe again.”
“What can I do? Let me check your bandage,” I said.
But, he held up a hand to stop me. “You’ve already helped me more than anyone else ever has,” he said. He smiled, and when he did, I noticed that he was having difficulty holding his head up.
“Here,” I said. “Lay down and rest your head in my lap. Would that be more comfortable?”
He didn’t answer, but he rolled onto his side, resting his head and shoulder against my good leg. His breaths were shallow and fast. “Can I call you ‘Mother’?” he said. His voice sounded far away.
“If you like,” I said. I had one hand on his shoulder, and the other was stroking his hair.
“This is nice,” he said.
I laughed. “What a thing to say right now.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I know,” I said.
“I know now, why I never killed you. It should have been obvious to me all along. Maybe it was, and I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.”
“Why?”
He sighed, and it seemed like a much longer exhale than the others. For a moment, I thought it might have been his dying breath. “It’s because I wanted you to be proud of me. Maybe even love me.”
“Oh.” I continued to stroke his hair. “I can’t exactly say I’m proud of everything you’ve done, I’m not proud of most of what you’ve done. But, when you came to protect me from Willow, I was proud of you in that moment. And I’m proud of you now, because you’re being very brave.”
He reached a hand up to me, and I clasped it. “I’m dying, right?” he said.
“I hope not,” I said. “But, I can see you are in a lot of discomfort, and you’re bearing it very well.”
“That’s a yes if I’ve ever heard one.”
“If you’re dying, you haven’t lost your sense of humor,” I said.
He laughed, but it made him cough, and he couldn’t stop. I waited for it to end, and I could feel something wet and warm on my pants, beneath his head. He finally settled down, and his breath became even more labored. He wiped his other hand across his mouth.
The wetness I was feeling was the blood he was coughing up.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to make you laugh.”
“No. It was good,” he said.
The rover pulled up outside the gate to the mountain. I used the tablet to guide it through the open gate. “Do you want to go inside?” I asked.
“No,” he whispered. “I never liked being under the mountain. It felt oppressive. I just wanted to be able to see it.” He tipped his head back so that he could look out the window.
“I always felt that way about the mountain, too,” I said.
“We share something.”
I nodded. “Can I ask you a question?”
He blinked and nodded slightly. I took it as consent.
“If I’d been here to be your mother and give you affection and discipline and love, do you think things would have turned out this way?”
“I know they wouldn’t have,” he said.
“I’m sorry that I denied you that.”
He sighed, and I could feel the crackling of his lungs against me. “It wasn’t your fault. I thought when you met me, you’d just know. When you didn’t seem to have that spark of curiosity—that mother’s intuition, or whatever they call it—I was a jerk. I shouldn’t have treated you like that. I held all the cards, and I set th
e tone. It’s all on me.”
“It takes a strong man to admit he’s wrong,” I said.
“Thanks.”
I tried to adjust his bandage a bit, but he pushed my hand away.
“Don’t fuss at it,” he said. “No point in prolonging the inevitable.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Yeah.”
“There must be a med kit somewhere in these outbuildings. Maybe in the guard shack? Maybe some painkillers would help.”
“No. Don’t leave me.”
“But—”
“I want you here. Please.”
“All right.”
We fell silent. I hummed a little song that we used to sing around the fire when I was a child. I’d not thought of it in years, but I needed something to cover the sound coming from his chest.
I don’t know how long we sat there. The sun started to go down, and the sky streaked purple and pink.
“Beautiful,” he whispered. He could barely get the word out.
Tears collected in my eyes. I tried not to let them fall. I tried to keep them from him. I’m not sure why. I suppose I didn’t want to make it more difficult for him. But, one or two dripped onto his face. He touched them with his free hand, then touched his finger to his tongue. He shifted his head enough to see my face. His mouth worked, but he couldn’t say anything.
“I’ll miss you,” I finally said.
He smiled and closed his eyes. His last breath expelled quieter than the others.
And then, he was still.
Chapter 13
I slept in the backseat of the rover. I didn’t want to leave Adam, but I wasn’t interested in going into the mountain for shelter, either. In the morning, I went through the various outbuildings, until I found something for breakfast—a pouch of dried fruit, and a canteen of water. It was early, and the sun hadn’t yet risen over the trees. Birds were singing, and insects were buzzing. Life would go on—even without humanity.
There were gardening tools in the greenhouse, and among them, I found a shovel. I took it outside the walls, to the meadow between the wall and the forest, maybe a hundred yards off. The shovel’s edge bit into the grass, and I worked first at peeling the sod back in a rectangle large enough to contain Adam’s body. It was important to me that the grave could be covered over with grass, and not just stay a pile of dirt.
Dirt didn’t seem special enough to mark the resting place of the world’s last son.
Once the sod was peeled and neatly rolled to the side, I brought the rover over and dragged Adam to the newly-exposed dirt. It was plenty long enough to contain him, so I started digging. I didn’t know how far to dig; it seemed like the length of the shovel handle was deep enough. But even after I came to that depth, I climbed down into the hole and dug more. The whole day went by, and I did nothing but dig. I didn’t eat or drink. I only dug. When the sun was starting to set again, I climbed out of the hole and studied it.
It wasn’t perfect, the way I’d seen so many graves dug before, with relatively straight walls and a rectangular opening. It was more of an oval, with angled sides. The bottom was angled into an uneven v-shape. It wasn’t right. I remembered that the rover had a large light on the front of it. I turned the rover around and pointed it at the gravesite. I drained the rest of the canteen, then went back into the grave to flatten out the bottom as best I could.
Lowering Adam into the grave wasn’t easy. I was afraid I would drop him. Not that he would mind, but it crushed me to think of his body being abused. I thought about all the others, scattered around the forest, and the village that would never be buried. Maybe the animals had already cleared many of them away. It felt like a respectful ending for Adam would count for them all.
There was a tarp in the guard shed, and I rolled him gently onto it. I got down into the hole and pulled his mass to the edge. Then, since it was at shoulder-height, I was able to cradle under the tarp and lift him into the hole. I set him down as gently as I could and arranged the tarp so that it opened with him in the middle. I fixed his hair, rubbed some dirt from his cheek, and kissed him once on the forehead. Then, I folded the tarp over him and climbed out.
I sang the fireside song again as I filled in the hole. It’s funny, how it took so long to dig a hole, but hardly any time at all to fill it. By the time the moon had risen, I’d produced a mound of dirt at the opening of the hole. I crawled inside the rover, turned the light off, and went to sleep.
In the morning, I unrolled the sod and covered the mound. My leg ached, and I realized I’d never really tended to my arrow wound. It seemed there was nothing for me to do but go inside the mountain.
I went up to the medical levels, where I’d seen so many people dying from the mountain sickness not that long ago. I put a hand on the door and stopped. There was a sound coming from inside, a sort of rumbling. I hesitated, but it seemed silly to be afraid. What more could happen to me, really? The door swung open. Instead of the beds and curtains that had packed the room before, the room contained four tanks and their associated equipment, one in each corner.
The rumbling was the bubbles of oxygen, filtering through the tanks.
I gasped and stepped back out into the hallway, afraid the tankers inside might have seen me. But, they were just babies, really. What would happen if they saw me?
I went in and found some bandages and ointment at a nurse’s station. I pretended the tanks weren’t there and went about my business. I removed my filthy pants and sprayed the wound with alcohol. The pain burned straight to my gut, causing me to double over. But, the wound itself wasn’t as deep as I’d thought. The edges were jagged, and after I inserted an anti-infection chip, I sealed the hole shut with medical glue as best I could. I covered it with a bandage.
I poked around the edges of the room. Towards the back, there was a locker room, and I pulled off the rest of my clothes and took the first hot shower I’d had in probably a month. I felt like a pound of grime washed off me and swirled down the drain. When I emerged, slightly scalded, I found some doctor’s scrubs and put them on. My stomach rumbled, and I headed for the commissary.
The tanks in the commissary weren’t set up yet. I felt much less self-conscious as I dug through the supply shelves for something edible. I found a lot of spiro, but I wasn’t sure if any of it was safe. Eventually, I found some dry cereal, which I ate right out of the container. It was bland and stuck to my teeth, but I had to take what I could get. I found a bottle of wine, and I took it with me.
I went to my apartment and curled up on the cot with the bottle. I kept the light on, just so I wouldn’t feel so alone. I drained the bottle quickly. Instead of giving me the freedom to forget my troubles, it only redoubled them, and I cried myself to sleep.
◆◆◆
When I woke, I had a splitting headache. I went back up to the medical level to look for something to relieve the pain. This time, the bubbling tanks didn’t give me pause. I picked through the remedies at the nurse’s station but didn’t find any of the familiar herbal remedies we’d used in the village. Intimidated by the technological devices for pain relief, I slumped into a chair and closed my eyes.
The bubbling sound changed.
I opened my eyes and studied the closest tank. The water was somewhat murky, and I couldn’t see anything specific inside. There was a dark mass floating in it, but it had no real shape. I approached the tank and activated the tablet mounted on the side. The records showed that the tank had been occupied for three months now, and that the boy baby inside was approximately 16 months old.
I pressed my face to the glass. Could the baby see me? I jerked back when a hand came from the murk and settled where my face had been. It retreated from view, but then the whole baby pressed up to look at me. His eyes were wide, and he had a delighted grin on his face. His pudgy hand swatted at the glass. Even though I couldn’t hear him, it was unmistakable that the baby was laughing.
I took several steps back. The baby’s features fell, and it slowly
drifted backwards into the murk.
Adam’s face came into my mind. “I know they wouldn’t have.” His words played over and over in my mind, what he’d said when I’d asked if things would have turned out the same if I’d only been there for him. I went to the next tank, and again, a baby made her way towards me, smiling.
They were just babies. Babies who craved interaction, who wanted to be cuddled and loved. I took down at the tablet on the tank. I went through pages and pages of documentation, but could find nothing about the tankers being touched while they grew.
I put the tablet back, stripped to my undergarments, and dragged a chair to the first tank. The baby immediately came back to the side. I stood on the chair, and it was just enough for me to wedge my armpits against the edge of the tank. I dipped one hand in. His chubby baby fingers instantly latched onto mine. I reached in with my other hand and cradled the baby’s body in my arms. I didn’t dare to lift him up out of the water; I knew he breathed through it, and I wasn’t yet sure how someone was born out of the tank.
I was going to find out. I was going to love every single one of those children as if they were my own. And they would rebuild humanity to value life and compassion.
I wondered if this is what Adam had wanted, what he’d been trying to say when he died. Maybe. I smoothed the wet hair of the baby in my arms. I wondered whom in the colony he’d been related to. It didn’t matter, really. They were all Adam’s children. And I would be their grandmother.
And collectively, they would be humanity’s last, best chance.
Searching
Book Six of the Repatriate Protocol Series
Kelli Kimble
Chapter 1
I stretched my leg to its limit, my toes spreading out and touching the lower corner of the tank. The tank was hastily built, and space for the growth of the occupant hadn’t been a priority. I longed to raise my hands above my head and stand up, and today was going to be the day to do it.