by Micah Thomas
Eva’s self disgust at her complicity in these acts took a shape of its own in her dream space. She visualized an oversized mason jar and willed those feelings into it. After she screwed the cap tight, she felt better. The swirling violet inside made for a shameful lava lamp, but the glass held and didn’t explode as she feared it would. Eva made a dozen more jars and packed away every bad feeling one by one. She almost did the same with her anger, but she kept it out. Eva would bide her time. She’d make sense of herself. And when she was strong enough, she’d get out of this.
If I can get control, even for a minute, I’ll end this.
***
It was a contradiction. Thelon fully believed he wanted to be in the upper city, the clouds of delight and pleasure domes. Yet, when he was alone, he was walking through the old parts of the city. This part was the real. Too much time in those layers up above put so much pressure on one to play along as though everything was perfect. It was cool, but it was fake. He could walk down here without a nano cloud popup add smacking him in the brain. It was quiet, too. He liked the quiet.
On one hand, this was his time to be somebody. Thelon could feel it. He was making it. However, he could scream instead. Why am I in the city? It made sense. It had made sense. Even though he hated the uptown bullshit, Thelon wanted the fame, too. He couldn’t lie about it, but when he saw the streams filling up with fame-whoring, attention-thirst, he got angry. Shit, maybe he was jealous. He wasn’t supposed to be angry. It could be that expectation of how he should feel bothering him. Why wasn’t he experiencing the happiness seemingly everywhere? There was no one—not even Marcus, his closest friend—with whom to share these thoughts.
He walked passed an old house and got the chills. Someone had stepped over his grave. Thelon stopped in his tracks and suddenly thought about that goddamn huckster vision trip he’d had with Marcus.
A crackhead looking mother fucker came out of the house. Thelon knew the look by their spindly arms, scratched up and infected, lank, unwashed hair, and eyes that darted suspiciously and way too fast. “Who are you?” they asked. Because they were so emaciated, Thelon didn’t even know if it was a man or a woman.
“Yo, I’m just walking by.”
“Did you come to see the secret?”
“Naw, friend. I’m just passing through.”
The stranger seemed unsure of whether they were coming or going before deciding on shambling his way off the porch and down the stairs. Thelon was glued in place. He’d met all sorts of strange people in the city, but this creature was terrifying. The closer it got, the more zombie-esque it appeared to him. How, in this place, could someone look so fucked up?
The thing clutched Thelon’s arm and pulled him back towards the house. “Come inside. She sleeps. She sleeps but she will wake.”
Thelon’s paralysis broke as he took one step closer. “No fucking way am I going in there with you.” He wrenched his arm free from their grasp.
As first, they looked offended. Then, they looked pissed. Their eyes were wide, red rimmed, filled with puss, and unsteady with rage inside their skeletal confines. They threw back their head and let loose an awful howl after howl—a shrieking banshee scream that confirmed for anyone listening that there was evil left in this world.
Thelon felt the danger. This was bad. Really bad. These things didn’t happen here. He took off in a sprint. The hot breath of the thing was on him, but something worse followed. It was the worst thing of all. Something terrible was waking up inside the house. Thelon ran blindly, unsure if he was heading north or south. He had to get away. After a dozen blocks, he was back amongst other people. Comiskey Park. The Cubs2 were playing the Sox5 again. He checked, but no one was behind him. He was fine. Thelon caught his breath and looked for a Copper. He wanted to report this thing.
One was in sleep mode near the stadium, chilling like a recycling bin. Thelon said, “Hey, Copper-top, you listening? I’ve just been harassed, and I want to make a report.”
The Copper didn’t respond.
Thelon tapped its blank face panel. “Knock knock, anybody home? Yo, Tinman, you rusted shut?” Still nothing. Thelon took out his mini-tablet and started typing out a message on the streams but deleted it before sending. Why should he announce to his followers that he was a big-time scaredy cat?
He was still looking at his phone when the Copper activated, but something was wrong. Instead of a cheerful, helpful robot grin, the face panel was solid red. The autonomous cop machine shook, steam rising from its vents.
Thelon was suddenly thrown to the ground—tackled by some guy who had come out of nowhere. He would have been pissed, except within a split second, the Copper imploded into a melted heap and Thelon felt a wave of heat and vibration though his entire body. The man stood and helped him up.
He was short, slim, brown guy rocking an oversized Cub’s jersey. Thelon was surprised he’d been strong enough to knock him over. “Wey,” he said with a Chicago Chicano accent, “Didn’t you see the thing was about to pop?”
“I—uh…I didn’t know they did they could explode.”
“Yeah, me neither until a few days ago. Shit’s starting to break down. I saw one slag and burn down a bodega.”
“That’s fucked up. Thanks for the save. I owe you.”
“We’re cool. You should watch where you’re going.”
Thelon stared at the black spot of melted robot on the concrete. I was almost toast twice tonight, he thought. Maybe he’d stream about this later after all. Lucky son of a gun. Got a guardian angel watching out for me. This could be cool. Yeah, yeah. Another day in the city of wonders.
CHAPTER NINE
THE CAMP WAITED out the fall and the following winter in Florida. It had been a quiet time. As Spring sprang, the humidity and giant bugs infesting any open bag of food were Cassie’s only real concerns. Now, directed by their wise woman and Jeff’s leadership, they’d moved back up in a slow crawl to central Ohio. It had only been a few weeks, but Cassie already knew more about the state of things here thanks to having more interaction with the various townspeople than they’d ever had in Florida. She’d healed. She’d made herself busy. Cassie no longer thought of running off. Instead, she thought about what Don had said. Maybe they were dead already. She could submit to this afterlife. She thought she could.
Still, there was a pretense of being on the run. Their community didn’t go long without some mention of staying ahead of the ‘bad men’. Cassie didn’t know if they were even being sought out. She stayed away from the weird woman. Despite making herself medical knowledge useful to the townies they encountered, she found herself staying surface level with the camp, and in downtime, avoiding everyone except Jeff. For his part, Jeff came to her, often now, as he did on this day, carrying a bouquet. This time they were violet irises.
“Flowers? Again? What grave did you steal these from?” Cassie asked. She didn’t want to be excited by the gift, but she couldn’t deny that she enjoyed it.
“My own,” Jeff said.
“Oh? And how did Jeff die? We’ll miss him.” Cassie smiled.
“Poor bastard. Death by heartbreak.”
Romantic bastard, more like it. He’d wooed her, and she’d allowed it. The silence in her head and the ache of loss would never be far, but it was so nice to lean on someone with a plan. Not that his plan ever made real sense to her, but he had faith enough to spare. At night, Cassie begged Henry’s forgiveness. She pictured him sullen, hating her for giving up. If you’re so mad, do something! I’ll leave this place and all these people. We can burn across the sky and be as free as we want. Just say the word—any word. She heard only her own heart beating fast.
It had started almost immediately. Jeff was her nurse and she depended on him. In a literal sense at first, but week by week, she succumbed to the relief of letting someone else lead. There wasn’t anything he didn’t have a plan for; a way to deal the problems. He knew how to lead. He knew when to swallow his pride and go to the right person to as
k when he didn’t know the answer. For Cassie, relinquishing the burden happened gradually, but it happened.
“Isn’t it about time we got moving?” Cassie said as she finished unpacking medical supplies in their tent.
Jeff laughed. “Have you been talking with her? I thought you hated her.”
“I don’t hate her. I don’t hate anyone.”
“But you don’t trust her.”
“I have woman’s intuition. Don’t you trust me?”
Between the two of them, they were almost a complete package: a doctor, a surgeon, and barber. They were also a bit of Robin Hood—at least when they needed to be. They didn’t initiate interaction with the townies. The good tax paying citizens would at first be wary and later come to them for bartering the treatment of minor aches, pains, and the occasional assistance in birth or abortion.
Cassie had learned a great deal about life in America, and she inferred that globally, things were not much better. Credits had replaced cash. Work went on for the stay-behinds while common pleasures became rare. This was the apocalypse people had dreaded in 2017, and yet, despite the oppression of thought and limited luxury items, people didn’t seem to be simmering with rebellion. They’d been invaded. The world had ended. The population divided in some unstated ratio. She’d seen from the road there were such empty expanses—whole abandoned towns. Yet where there were people, the routine persisted.
This must have been how distant Europeans felt after the fall of Rome, Cassie thought. This analogy wasn’t her own; Jeff loved history. He talked about it all the time. When they packed up for the next move, he made sure his books, various volumes on colonial America, Rome, ancient China, and law all made it onto the truck. Cassie thought he was kidding himself about rebuilding the world. How many travelers did they have now? Thirty? Not exactly a starting population for a new world. Still, Jeff was charismatic—for a veterinarian—and they followed because he had a vision; a principled rejection of both the invaders and what the government did afterwards.
Oh, this merry band. Oh, this happy life. Cassie didn’t know if it was holdover from Henry or if he was still inside, radiating these feelings, but she almost couldn’t stand it. When she was a girl, she’d wanted to be a doctor. Life—or death rather—had interrupted her plans when her father died, almost directly leading to her enrollment in the Army as a medic. After service, she became a nurse. Now, here she was, finally a doctor, but the fulfillment of this wish didn’t fix Cassie’s heart. She was agitated and withdrawn from the day to day joys and struggles of their community. In no small part, the more recent development of her secret joy and struggle was bleeding into how she felt. Pregnant. She would start showing soon and still hadn’t told anyone.
The word was disaster.
Wasn’t it?
Was it not?
She sent a thought out while she folded up her clothes from the line: Henry. She waited and felt no response. Cassie tried less frequently now. What had been a constant flow of information between them and later, slightly moderated out of a respect for each other’s boundaries. Always with the knowledge that the other was there. Now there was only silence. Her own abilities were equally quiet. Cassie was simply a doctor. A pregnant woman with a past.
Things in camp were still being setup when a motorcycle pulled up with two people on it: a man and a woman. She hadn’t even fully lurched off the crotch rocket when Cassie saw the woman was extremely pregnant. No helmet with a watermelon-sized baby bump. Her ankle was crudely wrapped in gauze and Cassie could see she couldn’t put weight on the foot, even with the support from the man coming in with her.
“Heard you got a doctor here,” the man shouted.
“We do,” Jeff shouted back, running over to them.
How had they known about them? This was too soon. Surely, they’d not been in town long enough for word to spread. Cassie put these thoughts aside and joined them, helping the woman to a bench. “How far along are you?”
The woman cast her eyes downward. The man paced and kicked at the dirt.
“Jeff, why don’t you take this gentleman over to see if there’s anything good to trade?”
Both the woman and man seemed relieved.
“What’s your name?” Cassie asked.
“Lizzie.”
“Do you have a regular doctor, Lizzie? An OB-GYN?”
“We don’t have the credits for anything but the birth part,” she said. “Mike works at the plant. We can’t keep the power on half the time, but with all the burnouts…nothing works right anymore.” She said this as if it explained everything. Maybe it did.
“Can I see your foot?”
Lizzie nodded.
“Why don’t you lie down and I’ll unwrap it and see what we have.”
She complied and added, “What if Mike doesn’t have anything ya’ll need?”
“I’m not worried about that.” Cassie carefully removed the gauze from the ankle. Red swollen tissue; warm to the touch, but no black or purple.
Lizzie was much more relaxed once she had been sitting for a minute.
“Do you have names picked out?” Cassie asked.
“Leo if it’s a boy. Donnie if it’s a girl.”
She grinned. “Those are awesome names.”
“Thank you. This is my first. I thought I was going to be a nervous wreck, but I’m not. It feels really good to know they’re coming, whoever they are. I’ll have someone to take care of soon.”
“Yeah?”
There must have been some cloud of doubt over Cassie’s face because Lizzie touched her arm. “It’s going to be okay.”
Jeff came back with Mike, who was carrying a duffle bag. He must have found some useful things; probably oranges and lemons from Florida. “Mike’s gonna come back tomorrow or the next day with some tools we can use. Isn’t that right, Mike?”
“Yup.”
“How’s our patient?” Jeff asked.
“All set with a prescription for rest, ice, antibiotics, and no more motorcycle rides.”
Their camp was fully setup by nightfall and the aromas coming from the mess station were intoxicating. Someone must have bagged a deer. Cassie smelled meat cooking as she finished up in the medical tent. More and more, she was taking ownership of their supply of medicine. Organization wasn’t Jeff’s strong suit. Procurement, however, was an area in which he was very gifted. Satisfied with her work, Cassie joined Jeff on a seat by the fire.
“Do you love me?” he asked as they held hands in the dark.
“Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
She stared into the night sky.
“Are you still trying to talk to him?”
Cassie didn’t exactly regret telling Jeff about Henry. Jeff had his seer, so he might have believed her. Still, she didn’t like it when he probed. “I’m just howling at the moon for sympathy.”
“Did you ever read the Narnia books?” Jeff asked. “The Magician’s Nephew was my hands down favorite in the series.”
“I was never into fantasy.”
“Not even when y
our life became one?”
“You call this fantasy?”
“It feels pretty damned magical.” He dug in his pocket.
This made Cassie uncomfortable. She thought, Don’t propose. Don’t you fucking dare propose.
“Hey, I got you something,” he said, producing a bottle of prenatal vitamins.
Cassie took the pills and sighed. “You know?”
“I may be a vet, but come on. We ration the tampons and you haven’t taken any. Think you’re the only one who checks inventory?”
She gave him a skeptical look with an added frown for extra disbelief.
“Fine. And the woman with the busted foot—”
“Ankle.”
“She told me you were pregnant. Said it was woman’s intuition.”
Kate was singing to the dog inside the tent. They listened to her silly little song and smiled at each other. This was
nice. Cassie turned away. This was nice, but this was not her story.
***
Things were going well in the great state of Ohio when the weird woman went missing. Little Kate had gone in to bring her breakfast and she wasn’t there. Old and frail as the woman was, how far could she possibly have gotten? The whole camp dropped what busywork they were doing and set out on the search.
Cassie didn’t care on a personal level, but Jeff and the others trusted this woman and her wonky eye to keep them safe. Cassie had her doubts. If the authorities had wanted to crack down on them, if anyone had really known who she was and what she was wanted for, Cassie believed no amount of predicting the future would have saved them. Still, Jeff approached this as a crisis. He was freaked out. She didn’t like seeing him this way.
“Look, you said yourself that this place was a good fit to stay until summer, maybe even through summer. Were you following her advice then?”
Jeff didn’t meet her eyes.
“Oh my god, you were. We can think for ourselves, Jeff.”
Jeff didn’t take the bait. Cassie was annoyed. She and Henry had argued often, but Henry would face her temper and not cower.
Jeff shrugged but kept his eyes downcast. “You can stay here or you can help. I’m not telling you what to do.”
Fine. Cassie played along with the search. Trusting mystics did not ever improve one’s life in her opinion, and Cassie had met a few. Hell, she was one—kind of—once. Her senses still seemed dull. Shouldn’t a near-death experience have given her more insight rather than less? It didn’t matter to Cassie. They’d find the old woman, dehydrated and possibly dead, and life would go on.
She walked off into the woods by herself, enjoying the smell of spring. A twinge of pain ran down her back and into her left leg. Cassie paused and caught her breath. Yoga. She should see if anyone in camp did yoga. Her hands instinctively rubbed her belly with a vague contemplation of the life growing inside. Her bad back would get worse as the baby grew, but it hardly mattered. Who will you be, little one? What will we call you?