Out of Exodia

by Debra Chapoton

  The smoke that ringed the mountain broke away and flattened itself twenty feet above their heads without barring the sun’s light. The black ceiling hardened into a reflective surface as smooth and shiny as the tablet Bram held.

  “We have instructions,” Bram began. “There are ten rules. Just listen.”

  He flipped the tablet over and the first phrase appeared. Those closest beneath him strained to read the glowing letters, then gasps and whistles turned everyone’s attention upward. Like an ancient billboard the letters appeared above them as well and a voice unlike any they had ever heard boomed around them.

  “I AM YOUR GOD.”

  Instantly there were bolts of lightning on the mountain. Thunder exploded. Between the rumbles there was a high vibrating note that sounded like a trumpet, a sound those born after the Suppression had never heard before. The letters snapped into the right order, but the Reds panicked. Those farthest back turned and ran. Others scrambled to follow. They shouted to Bram their fear at hearing the inexplicable voice.

  “NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME. NO IDOLS.”

  Bram held the tablet tightly and watched the words swirl into sense. He thrilled at the sound of the voice; its mystifying resonance no longer frightened him. When he saw the people’s panic and finally registered their shouts he lowered the tablet and pointed at them with the rod.

  “Don’t be afraid!”

  But the people kept distancing themselves.

  “He’s come to test you,” he said.

  People shook their heads. Teague raised an age-spotted hand to his heart and spoke, “You tell us, Bram. We’ll listen to you. But don’t have Ronel or God, or whoever that is, blare at us. It’s too painful. We’ll go deaf. We’ll die from this torture.”

  * * *

  I nod at Teague’s request and hand the rod down before I descend the ladder. The tablet shakes in my hand, its surface a dull black now. There’s a lingering pulse in the air, but the smoke has cleared and there’s not a hint of it in my nostrils. In fact, I realize that the scent that came with the smoke was neither sharp nor sweet, just aromatic, like a musical tone. A tone that would dance in the air partnered with the color gold. I look around at the people. Most have stayed. They watch me with peculiar stares, some still pressing hands against their ears.

  My equilibrium is off and with my first step I stumble into Harmon. His right hand grips beneath my left elbow, upholds me.

  “Are you all right, Bram?”

  I straighten, frown at my brother, and hand him the tablet. I pull up my sleeve and twist my arm, bend my elbow. I can’t see my tattoo.

  “Is it gone?” I ask. I tap the round starry splotch on my joint, the spot that used to be blue when I lived in Exodia, the spot that when I was sixteen faded to reveal the underlying scarlet tattoo.

  “As red as ever,” Harmon says. He gives me that concerned look. “Why would you think it was gone?”

  Someone shouts from the crowd. A child cries out. A mother hollers back. Hands wave for my attention. More voices join in and they begin to chant their wishes: Go on! Tell us what God says!

  I sag and even Harmon’s strong arms can’t keep me from lowering myself to the ground. I kneel, drop my forehead to the earth, and dig my fingernails into the dirt.

  “Bram. Have you gone crazy? Get up.” He pulls at my sleeve, jostles me with a foot, and enlists Blake to help him raise me. But they don’t know what is hidden in the people’s chant. And I don’t want to tell them.

  They help me back to Harmon’s tent; the crowd parts like the spreading of a butterfly’s wings. The chanting has stopped, replaced by whispers that ripple out like leaves in a breeze. We enter the tent and I wobble to the center.

  “Give him some water. He probably hasn’t had any food or drink in days.”

  I sip the warm water Marilyn offers me. She keeps one hand on her stomach as if to keep the baby inside. She’s not going to like what the chant reveals. I’m dizzy again with the implication.

  “What’s the matter, Bram?” It’s Lydia’s soft voice right next to me. Her even softer hands pull me down onto a blanket. She sits beside me while Harmon and Teague and Blake and Marilyn block the tent’s opening. I’m glad the light is behind them and I won’t see their expressions when I tell them we are turning back.

  “We have to turn southwest,” I say.

  “But Ronel’s camp is north.” Blake lifts an arm to point.

  “It doesn’t matter. We go on as gladly southwest.”

  “We can’t just walk in circles, Bram.” I look up at Harmon. He’s never questioned me before.

  “Harmon’s right. We might as well go back to Exodia.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Teague?” Harmon’s jaw sets in that defiant way of his.

  “Everyone, please,” Lydia twines her fingers in mine. “Bram gets these messages. Trust him.”

  “What about the rest of those rules or directions that are in the tablet?” Teague has a point. I thumb the tablet and the words scroll across.

  “See?” I tap each word and show them what each jumbled phrase really means. Marilyn gasps at number eight, load tents, and then lets her breath out when I speak the solution.

  Number nine makes Teague’s anger rise again. “We can’t go southwest. Don’t you see? Ten abreast snowfields is clearly a reference to the north. Ronel himself told me we have to continue north.”

  I speak the four word anagram which challenges his bold-faced lie: “Don’t bear false witness, Teague.” The old man snorts, his chiseled face masks his feelings, but he’s been chastened.

  I finish with the tenth condition of this odd agreement. Blake leaves to gather the other judges and to find whatever he can to write these rules on.

  * * *

  Blake returned with a large aerial map, coated with a shiny laminate on one side, but backed with a papery substance, easy to write on with the tattoo ink still in Mira’s possession. A young boy, just old enough for a fuzzy upper lip, had swiped the airport map with another purpose in mind, but gave it up in exchange for a promise from Blake to take him on the next scouting adventure.

  Blake entered the tent, unintentionally woke Bram, who was sleeping in Lydia’s arms, and set to work copying the ten decrees. The three of them discussed in hushed and clipped words the trouble with changing their northern course to southwest.

  “Harmon’s already said he and Marilyn are staying behind until the baby’s born. The midwife and her family have agreed to stay. Mira, too.”

  “What about their food?” Lydia pressed. “What if the bread and meat stop falling here?”

  “They’ll have to hunt. Harmon can have the nano-gun. There are rabbits and squirrels and deer. They won’t starve.”

  “We’re not leaving tomorrow, are we? What about all that work we did to make a barrier to the mountain?” Blake said, peeved that they labored so hard for nothing.

  Bram shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I just know we’re going in a new direction. Maybe the cloud will lead us tomorrow. Maybe next week. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  They finished the writing on the map and Blake stood up, held the words to the light and read them aloud while Bram concentrated on the side facing him, the map itself. He picked out Exodia, the river, the monument, the airport, the expanse of ground that hid the cave-dwellers’ city, the mountain, the old rail route, highways, villages, a national forest. They’d made half a circle of the area and now if they went southwest they were bound to arc their journey back around too close to Exodia. He never wanted to go there again. The memories … the murders. Yet if the circle hooked back sooner they’d pass by the Lunas’ ranch and he could see his sons.

  Lydia watched his face as he studied the map.

  * * *

  The cloud didn’t move the next day or the day after that. On the third day Harmon and Marilyn had a son.

  It was another month before Malcolm’s box hummed and the cloud moved. When the sun cascaded over the mountai
n its rays danced in the center of every drop of dew. Loaves fell. People ate. The air smelled of damp pine and yeasty bread. And the Reds were ready to leave. The morning held no curl of dread, but stretched out straight, the southwestern path back-lit, the shadow of the mountain pointing a new way. Some were still frightened that the powerful earsplitting wonder would be repeated. They followed closely on Malcolm’s heels. Harmon’s baby boy was strapped to his mother’s chest to start this leg of their broken journey. Harmon walked proudly at her side the first hour and then carried the babe while she rode their well-packed horse.

  At noon they trekked past an eerie ghost town. Small pre-fabricated houses lined the road, scabby looking, all with broken windows, front doors hanging open, unwelcoming. Trash piled high in the weedy yards did nothing to entice the Reds to impose themselves on the once quaint village. They walked and rode on quietly.

  The muddy ribbon of road held pools of rainwater, reflecting the guiding cloud above until the tromping children and the weary horses splashed them dry.

  “This isn’t so bad,” Lydia said. “We could clean this up and make a nice little city of our own.”

  Blake’s wife, Onita, who was leading a horse next to Lydia’s mare interjected an expression of surprise, “Oh, this seems familiar.”

  “Familiar? Like how?”

  “We had a little house. I remember it had round solar windows in the roof like that one. But we had to leave … when I was five … my family and all our neighbors were marched to Exodia. I had a baby brother.” Her voice cracked. “But when we got to Exodia I didn’t.”

  Lydia reached a hand out to her friend. “I’m sorry.” Onita gave a token nod of thanks for the sympathy.

  Bram looked away. The Culling Mandate. There couldn’t have been anything worse in all of history. Even Truslow’s mass murders in 2094, when Onita and Marilyn both lost their parents, didn’t compare.

  They continued on in silence past all the squat one-story dwellings until they came to the center of town and found a circle of taller structures. The cloud hovered over the one that had suffered the most ruin.

  Bram found his tongue. “That one looks like they bombed it.”

  “You’re going to think I’m crazy,” Onita said, lifting a shaky hand to point, “but I’m pretty sure that was a wedding chapel. A place of worship.” She looked at Blake. “We could renew the vows we made in the underground city.” He winked back at her.

  * * *

  I take hold of Lydia’s hand. Onita’s comment makes me think how there’s nothing more I want than to make Lydia my wife. I wish I had never made that promise to her mother. She’ll only approve our marriage when I fulfill my destiny, which as I see it now will never be completed. Walking in circles. Living like gypsies. Fighting as warriors while being fed by an invisible parent. This endless journey is ripping my heart apart. I go from mountain highs to desperate lows. Heavy, discouraged. Onita talks of renewing a marriage that hasn’t marked a single anniversary yet and here Lydia and I are … waiting … waiting.

  “Down there!” Someone shouts. “An Exodian truck. It’s moving!”

  “Down where?” I pull the nano-gun from my belt sack and look past the chapel, down the wide street, but I see nothing moving. The streets to our left and right are just as still. I turn my head to find the one whose shout put us on alert. Cleavon’s brother. He draws his arm back and shakes his head.

  “Sorry,” he says. “Thought it was Truslow’s army come to find us. But that vehicle’s broken down. Abandoned like this town.”

  “Down where?” Lydia repeats. Down where.

  Suddenly it doesn’t matter. Message received. Wed her now.

  Chapter 15 The Revolt

  From the eleventh page of the third Ledger:

  He followed not the tracks of the sheep, but the path of lions. He chose a wife, strong and brave. Because she was darkened not by the sun, his mother’s daughter was angry with him. His mother’s son withdrew from him.

  IT’S SUCH AN impromptu thing, our wedding, and yet all the Reds rejoice with us. Barrett’s father twines a silver cord around our wrists; Teague gives us cool water from a golden pitcher; Jenny lights an oil lamp for Lydia to hold. I’m more than pleased, relieved really, that Jenny accepts this sudden marriage. We make our promises into Malcolm’s contraption and our simple words boom out from the cloud above. We laugh. We blow out the lamp. We kiss. The Reds cheer loud and long.

  We bump elbows with nearly everyone as they circle past us, some we hug. They head on down the road, leave the tiny village to follow cloud and signs toward the forest. Josh and Blake lead our horses on and take our bags.

  We linger long at this spot. Alone for a moment.

  “I love you, Bram.”

  “I love you, Lydia.” I have a thousand things I want to say to her, but I hold her lovely face in my hands and speak with my eyes. Tenderness, devotion, love.

  “I know,” she says. “I feel that too.”

  Never before has my gemfry gift worked both ways. Tears streak down her face. Mine too. I drop my hands to encircle her and she tightens her embrace. Our lips meet in the longest, most satisfying kiss. She is mine; I am hers. She knows I’d die for her; I know she would have waited forever for me. Our thoughts mingle and merge into a single desire.

  * * *

  The large carved panels spelled out Hazel Roth Campground. The wood on the sign was weathered and worn. It was doubtful, Teague lectured, that anyone had been to the campground in decades. He tried to explain the concept to the younger ones who expressed their skepticism that a pre-Suppression society would choose to spend their free time living so primitively, but they were pleased to find toilets and wells they could pump by hand.

  The roads and trails forked off into several sections and the Reds who were first in claimed what spots they could find that were free of forest debris. Where once there had been cleared openings to pitch a tent or park a vehicle, there now lay fallen logs, mounds of leaves, or thick beds of pine needles. Every forty feet or so they found a rusted ring the size of a truck tire protruding from the ground. Teague had no explanation for the buried iron, but suggested that perhaps they provided a base for early century electronic devices.

  By the time everyone was settled they had only a couple of hours before sunset. Their evening meals began to drop from the sky, but in the campground the tree branches caught nearly half of the packages. Older kids and young men climbed the oaks, jostled the pines, poked the limbs, and managed to free enough to feed every hungry Red.

  Lydia and Bram were the last to arrive and found their friends cleaning out a room in what Teague called the park ranger’s lodge, a small log cabin that must have been a hundred years old.

  “This is where you two will stay,” Blake said. “For your wedding night. But it’s not ready yet. We’re sprucing it up.”

  “And we’re going to do the same to you,” Onita giggled.

  Lydia scratched her fingers through Bram’s beard and raised her eyebrows.

  Onita nodded. “Go with Blake, Bram. They’ve heated some water and sharpened some razors. And for you, Lydia, well, you’re going to love what we’ve prepared.”

  An hour later Bram was still in Blake’s tent, fresh, clean-shaven, even his hair was trimmed above his ears. He kept eyeing the tent flap like he wanted to flee, but Blake made him wait until Onita had Lydia ready. Finally, just before the sun set with ruby and ginger flames, Onita returned with a pampered bride. She wore new clothes, pale iridescent green, loose and flowing. Her scrubbed face glowed and her shiny hair gave off a fragrance that reminded him of the first time they met. Her scent then, he remembered, was an earthy bouquet unlike any flower he knew. Sensual, fragrant. But he was even more aware of her eyes. They spoke to him. He smiled. He took her hand and wordlessly led her back to the cabin. Friends and children followed singing and laughing.

  Their friends had done a good job. An old-fashioned wooden bed stood overlaid with piles of blankets and the wi
ndows were covered with the banners and flags that the jubilant Reds had fashioned for their escape out of Exodia.

  The newlyweds closed the door, ignored the hooting and whistling outside, and set the double portion of meat they’d been given on an old table. Lydia removed her boots and climbed onto the soft pile of blankets. She smiled at Bram as he loosened his shoes. As soon as he lowered his weight onto the bed it collapsed with a bang and a puff of dust. There was laughter outside to match Bram and Lydia’s, then the voices receded and the newlyweds were alone.

  Bram entwined his fingers with Lydia’s and the feeling of mutually reading the other’s mind returned. The spiritual union overwhelmed Lydia and humbled Bram.

  * * *

  “I’m not happy about this,” Harmon complained to his wife.

  “Neither is Mira, but why?” Marilyn kept her eyes on her baby as she asked. “Isn’t Lydia a Red? Like us?”

  “Jenny’s a Red, but obviously Lydia’s father was from … from somewhere else.”

  “Don’t let it bother you so much. You’ve always liked her.”

  “Didn’t think she’d be my sister-in-law.” Harmon would have been pacing if there’d been any room. Instead he stroked the baby’s bare foot, alternating light squeezes and rolling his thumb along the tiny heel. “Maybe he shouldn’t be the leader. I could do what he does. I can speak. I can lead. I know better than he does how that rod works.”

  Marilyn nodded but she wasn’t listening anymore. She was much more interested in the perfect lips, the fuzzy hair, the dark eyes of her son.

  “We really need to settle on a name,” she said. “It’s been a month already. We can’t call him baby or junior forever.”

  * * *

  Mira walked back and forth in front of the wash house mirror. It didn’t reflect much more than shadows in the dark room. As she practiced what to say she imagined her audience to be not the row of porcelain sinks, one with a critter’s nest beneath the lime-encrusted faucet, but rather the twelve judges.