by Isla Morley
“Time is time; it’s the same for everybody.”
“But who decides what time it is?”
I don’t know anymore. Is there still Greenwich mean time?
“There’s something wrong with this clock,” Adam says two minutes later. “It was going much faster last night, and now it keeps stopping.”
I look at the clock; the long hand snaps to the next marker. I suggest Adam open his notebook and work on some of his designs.
“Why does time go slower in the day than it does at night?”
“It only seems that way because you are waiting.”
“Last night was ten hours and thirty minutes long,” Adam announces. “That means today will last thirteen hours and thirty minutes. Is that normal? Shouldn’t it be equal?”
I don’t know any more what’s normal. I still can’t tell from the weather what season it is. “It means it’s probably late spring, or else early fall. Nothing to worry about.”
But Adam does look worried. He keeps his attention fixed on the clock. “Do you think he’s going to come back?”
Don’t get your hopes up about people, I want to tell him. Don’t get your hopes up about anything.
I should keep reading, but every page I turn, I see more of Dobbs’s disaster play out. The world is not my home. Instead of returning to the scene of my youth, I am set down among the artifacts of Dobbs’s invention. Between every line, lines he could have written himself, his face appears, taunting. How you going to protect him now? I hear him wheeze in my ear. What are you going to do without me? I don’t know what to say to him.
* * *
Marcus returns a little before noon. Besides the deaf woman, he is the only other face we’ve seen all day.
“I come bearing gifts,” he proclaims, dropping a flat brown slab on my lap. “Hershey’s counts as food, don’t it?”
I finger the shiny foil paper.
“Brought something for you, too, Sunshine.”
Adam perches on the end of my bed and eagerly accepts the small yellow pillow in a plastic wrapper. He’s elated. “What’s it for?”
“Eating, kid! That right there is the genuine article. I have a friend who’s a trader; says they’ve got another factory running again. On the black market, Twinkies used to fetch an arm and a leg. Now, you can trade as little as a sack of flour for one.”
Marcus has something else tucked behind his back. “Got you another present, but you have to guess first.”
I catch the look on Adam’s face: oh no, not another birthday—something bad’s about to happen.
Something bad has happened.
“Hey, don’t look so worried.” He hands Adam a silver bar not much bigger than the Twinkie.
“Thanks.” Adam inspects it one way, then another, and holds it up for me. “Isn’t it great?” He has no idea what it is.
“What’sa matter? Never taken a bite out of a tin sandwich before?” Because Adam still looks foggy, Marcus shows him. The instrument disappears in his palm. He cups his hand around his mouth, and the room fills with honky-tonk. After a few bars of “Oh! Susanna,” he rubs the harmonica on his trousers and gives it back to Adam.
Nothing has ever fit Adam properly, not the clothes Dobbs occasionally brought for him or the sweaters I knit; not the belt to hold up his pants or his newly acquired pair of shoes. But this harmonica seems custom-made for him. Who knew the first thing to fit my son so perfectly would be music?
Adam runs the instrument back and forth across his lips, puffing out one chord after another. He beams at Marcus.
“You’re welcome, Sunshine.”
Adam takes off to the far side of the hut looking like a drum major in front of a marching band. For him, the world is emerging one note at a time, one new face at a time; my world, however, continues its retreat. Beloved faces turn out like lights, one after another. Like cardboard cutouts, Mama’s house, Grandpa’s farm, the old redbrick schoolhouse fall flat. The longed-for is now a parched idea existing only in my faulty memory. I wanted so much to give Adam a tour. I wanted the forgotten things to pull me from the tomb. I am not resurrected; I am merely aboveground.
Marcus takes a seat, folds his arms across his chest, and seems perfectly content to watch Adam. Adam told me earlier that Marcus is his friend, told me to be nice to him. He said the way I talked about Mercy, the way we’d become instant friends, how we’d just looked at each other and knew right away we could tell each other things we’d never tell anybody else, that’s how it is with him and Marcus.
With Adam out of earshot, I ask Marcus if things are as bad now as the brochure makes them out to be. Marcus keeps his seeing eye on Adam. In his voice is nothing but patience. “Folks don’t talk anymore about what’s bad, what’s good. Bad and good all got mixed together. Still mixed together. Nobody can say for sure which is gonna come out ahead.”
Marcus smiles at the string of flat notes. “I had a boy. About the same age as Adam when he died. He and his mother lived in Wilmington, eighteen miles from the Salem plant. The government had to send people door-to-door with orders to evacuate, the communications satellites being fried and all. Turns out, they get to the poor neighborhoods last.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sometimes, I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better for a bomb to drop, ended it right there in one fell swoop instead of being hit with wave after wave of radiation. Folks starving. Cities on fire. Armed militias gunning people down for stealing bread. You can be glad he missed all that.”
Marcus clearly divulged more than he ought to last night, but I’m not sure he won’t rat on us if I ask him straight-out about the closest community and how we might get there. I feel him out by asking him about tent cities. “People are pack animals,” he says. “All those preppers from before Diablo—the one thing they failed to prepare for was our need to congregate.”
“Are any of these places near Eudora?”
He shakes his head. “Except for a few, these are mobile villages. The most they spend in any one place is a couple of months. A certain caravan might pass by here every four or five years, depending on how big their loop is. Some folks, their whole entire lives are spent on one migration.” Marcus explains how each nomadic group establishes its own migratory pattern, some tied to seasonal availability of wild crops, others to trade exchanges. “Chances of survival went up once people started to move. You settle down somewhere and you have to defend yourself against looters, wildlife, squatters. If the fires come through, there go all your provisions.”
I tell him Harriet Fletcher mentioned a few old people in Eudora.
“Some of us ain’t cut out for a life on the road, the old-timers, especially. Some of them get road-weary, and some are still perfectly capable of keeping up with their group, but they opt to move back to their hometowns anyway. Homesick is what it is.”
“What about kids?” Adam has stopped playing. The images that sicken me, tales of a land gone to seed, seem to have no effect on him. And why should they? This is the boy who has been immunized against disaster, who has been told his entire life that the day would come for him to fulfill his destiny in a postapocalyptic world. Why shouldn’t he look as if he’s poised to do exactly that?
Marcus pegs his nose with his fingers, as if he’s equalizing pressure in his ears. “You don’t see many kids out there.”
“Where do you live?” Adam asks.
“Where I live ain’t no picnic.” Marcus studies my face, sizes up my intentions. “Look, folks would be lining up to get into a place like this. Round-the-clock security, health care, three squares a day. You gone and won the lotto, they’d say.”
From outside comes the sudden sound of marching. Adam goes to the window to check.
“Yes, but what do you say?”
“I don’t tell you this to scare you,” Marcus says quietly, leaning toward me, “but out there, you could cross paths with traffickers, and if they get their hands on him, there’s no telling where he’d end up. I
n the early years, you’d hear the occasional story of a family popping up from their storm shelter or crawling out of a cave, and you couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. You knew they were going to die from exposure or starvation or because they hadn’t become part of a pack, like the rest of us. But we haven’t heard of survivors for years, and now I’d say the premium for an untainted boy, one with clean genes, is sky-high.”
When two men wearing hoods and army fatigues come in, Adam races back to us and takes shelter behind Marcus.
“We’re here to escort Adam Hallowell to the conservatory.”
I begin protesting, but the cadet pulls out a piece of paper. “Dr. Fletcher signed an order for tests.”
I ask Adam for the walkie-talkie. “I’ll straighten this out.”
While I am scrambling among the sheets looking for the darn thing, one of the cadets has whipped some kind of canvas sack over Adam’s head, transforming him into a beekeeper.
“Mom,” he mutters through the mesh.
I throw myself at the cadet, but it is like trying to move a tank. They hustle Adam out the door despite my thrashing. “There is some mistake! Let go of him!” The fight spills out onto the path where I am almost knocked off my feet by the noonday brightness. Light can be a violent thing, a thing that screeches and howls so loud you have to force yourself not to turn and run the other way. It is a pushy thing, greedy. Daylight lathers my face and spreads down my neck. I can’t help but gasp as it forces its way down my throat. Searing, scalding, like acid. Still, I keep screaming for them to unhand Adam.
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m okay.” Adam’s had to grow up with Dobbs clanging on about how unreasonable survivors are—fear-riddled, squabbling rumormongers who’d sooner slit a man’s throat than shake his hand. If anything, Adam is at risk of believing people aren’t nearly as bad as they’ve been made out to be.
“Do something!” I yell at Marcus, who just stands there, running his hand back and forth across his head.
The cadet makes the mistake of assuming phrases like “just a few doors down,” “back by dinnertime,” and “painless procedure” are going to change my mind. I lunge for Adam and get shoved hard enough that I lose my balance and land on all fours. I look up. Already Adam is ten yards away. It’s like watching a maple leaf on the surface of a rushing river. A picture flashes into my head of Mama standing at the back door. In her face is the tepid morning sunlight. She blows me a kiss, then waves as I rush to meet the bus. I don’t want to blow my son a kiss because this is not a good-bye. This is a rescue.
I stumble to my feet, rub the dust out of my eyes, and start to run after Adam just as the sky turns grainy. Oddly, the grains shift and swoop into a dense shadow eclipsing the sun. A sudden wind stirs up more dust, and I hear the whining of a two-stroke engine. I realize the sound is the massive shadow plummeting toward me. For some reason my legs will not move. I am in that dream where I’ve gone lame. Run. Run! Somebody is screaming at me.
An arm scoops me up and yanks me back inside. The door slams. It sounds as if an army has opened fire on it. I cover my face, but it doesn’t help. Flapping, creeping, biting things are all about my head, tangled in my hair. I flog my legs, but three-inch bugs with wings are glued to them.
“Get them off!”
“Locusts.” Marcus is picking them off me. “They come out here from the east, looking for food.” Some fly about the room, dive-bombing me and taking off again for the windows. Before Marcus has clobbered them all, I run to the window. The day looks benign, sunny once again. Picnic weather. Adam is gone.
There is only one place to start my story. With him, my story begins. Without him, it might as well end, too.
I SLING MY backpack over my shoulder, grab the suitcase, and check through a crack in the door for foot traffic. No sign of Marcus. He said he’d be right back. I am to wait for him to return. I am to trust him to help us escape. Trust the man who did nothing but watch Adam get carted off against his will. Trust the man who is on Harriet Fletcher’s payroll. It’s been five minutes. If he went to get a trash can to hide me in as he said, he’d be back by now. What’s to say he isn’t part of a plan to move Adam out of the complex entirely? What’s to say this wasn’t Harriet Fletcher’s doing, that it is the work of those traffickers he was so eager to tell me about? What’s to say he isn’t one of them?
I pick up the walkie-talkie, check to make sure it’s on channel thirteen, and then transmit. “Marcus, are you there?”
Nothing.
I try a second time. “Marcus?”
Again, nothing but static.
I’ve already wasted too much time. I dash outside and dart down the side path. No use consulting my instincts—they are entirely useless to me here. Other than a desperate need to hurry, I have no sense of where to go next. I am right-side up after all these years, and everything feels upside down. I have become hopeless at anticipating. If I guess left, trouble is likely to come from the right. I follow the row of sheds. Each screened window I pass is thick with odor. I am about to cross an intersection when I hear what sounds like a squadron approaching from the side street. I dash into the nearest shed and close the door. Quite miraculously, the footsteps race by without stopping. Relief is so overwhelming I have to keep myself from collapsing to the floor.
I spin around, aware that I am not alone. Sitting on a small wooden pallet are a middle-aged man and a boy so hunched he could be ten years old or a hundred. Both of them have thick, white padding bound to their necks, with plastic tubing leading from the dressing to bottles beside them. Each is naked from the waist up. On their chests are several circular white stickers, each with a metal nipple. The man has a thick black mustache, but no eyebrows and no hair. The boy’s head is too large for his body. He looks like a cartoon character, only one with no laughs in him.
Neither seems surprised by my intrusion.
I say very quietly, “I’m looking for my son.” I lift my hand a couple of inches above my head. “About this tall, blond hair.”
The man clears his throat, gargles, “Operating room.” He points to the way I’ve just come.
“No, he’s not having surgery. The conservatory?”
I want to get him by the shoulders and shake him so he will spit out the words he seems to have such difficulty forming.
“Is he. A candidate?”
I have no idea what this means. I nod vigorously.
This time he points in the other direction. “Big. building.”
“Thank you.”
The man shrugs. The boy never looks up from the dark stain on the floor beside the bed.
* * *
At the end of the row is a warehouse-looking structure with a sign on it that reads, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. I try peering in the side windows, but the dark tint makes it impossible to see anything. Through the air vents come strains of classical music and the faint smell of lilacs. The door around the back is unlocked. The handle turns without making a sound. I slip in.
Women. About a dozen of them. Some of them are resting on their beds, some are seated in chairs next to their beds, their feet propped on stools. One woman is picking out a book from a tall shelf. The walls are painted a cheery yellow, lace curtains frame each window, and the floor is carpeted. All the women are barefoot. Without exception, all of them have swollen bellies, all of them too old for having babies.
I turn around to leave, but the one nearest me calls, “You can have Linda’s spot.” A tall woman with graying hair in a loose bun ambles over. She points out an available bed. Everyone turns to stare. “We ain’t going to bite you.” She stares at my shape, as though trying to assess how far along I might be. “Bashful one, Bernice,” she says over her shoulder to the woman with the book.
“Sorry, I think I have the wrong place.” I try to retreat, but the tall woman blocks the door.
“Bit late for second thoughts, don’t you think?”
“Leave her be.” The one called Bernice steps forward. She might have
been pretty once, if it weren’t for the dark blemish that covers one whole side of her face, the discolored teeth, heavy hips that come from bearing many children. “It’s all right; we’re all just girls here.” There is something about her voice, something about her soothing tone. “Name’s Bernice.” She sticks out her hand. “I’m the Supervising Birther. Why don’t you put your things down and introduce yourself.”
I don’t want to raise the alarm, so I ask her as casually as possible if she would direct me to the conservatory.
Her head falls to the side, and her eyes soften. “Oh, honey.”
Some alarm goes off inside me. I stare at the woman, Bernice, but there is nothing familiar about her face. It’s that word—honey—and the way she uses it on me, as though she’s sorry for all the things I have yet to learn. Bernice. Bernice. A tendril of a memory, a voice from long ago.
“Lord help us, Bernice, but I think they sent us another soft-boiled one again.”
“Bernice,” I say, tentatively, because I’m not sure I ought to risk it. “From Eudora?”
Her widening eyes and smile confirm she is. “Do I know you, honey? Have we met before? Here, sit down; you’re looking a little peaked.” She tells the tall one to fetch some lemonade. Patting my arm, she says, “This can’t be your first time, can it?”
All those years ago on the phone, Daddy’s lady-friend told me to go looking for rainbows. It’s a wonder cracked lips can form words, a throat this parched can issue sound. “I’m Blythe.”
She starts to say what you’d expect from someone with good manners—what a nice name—but stops. She draws in her lips, frowns. I let her search my face. Her chin begins to quiver. So she will not have to ask, I tell her my last name.
The instant Bernice starts to cry, the women rise up. They close in and form an outer circle of murmuring. “Didn’t like the looks of her the moment she walked through that door,” I hear someone say; meanwhile, Bernice might as well be watching the dead being raised.