by Isla Morley
“What happened to my family, Bernice? Did any of them survive?”
She covers her mouth. “It can’t be.” Her hand reaches out to touch my arm, then stroke my face. As though to alleviate a sharp pain, she clasps her side as I tell her I just now got free, that I want to go home, if she could just tell me if anyone’s there. “Oh, honey, they never stopped looking for you. Not even after Diablo. Every time those posters faded, I’d see your ma out there putting up new ones, sick as she was.” She takes my hand and starts rubbing the back of it. “She took it hard, real hard. We all did. Your friend, Mercy, she was about the only one your ma could stand to talk to. Remember that boy you were with that night? What was his name?”
“Arlo.”
She snaps her fingers. “Arlo Meier, that’s right. You being gone tore him up something awful, too. He joined the force because of you. Swore up one side and down the other he was going to find you. Folks figured you had to have been taken by one of those rings—that you were probably in Mexico or someplace overseas.”
I tell her about the silo, about Dobbs Hordin keeping me there. Describing him in objective terms is near impossible. “He was a survivalist. He predicted all of this. That’s why he took me. I have a son, Bernice. They’ve taken him somewhere. He’s never been around people before. He’ll be scared. Please, you must help me!” Bernice looks terribly confused. I don’t know if it’s because of what I’ve said or what the woman whispering in her ear is saying.
“He’s not a trader, by any chance?” Bernice rattles off Dobbs’s weight, height, and hair color, all the details I should’ve been able to provide.
“Yes, that’s him.” A trader? Dobbs coming back to the silo with tinned food, that ridiculous prom dress, one time a full set of dishes—did he get our supplies here? And if so, in exchange for what? It occurs to me just how much stuff is left Below. Not only food provisions, but the books, the guns, Krugerrands, all those historical documents. Aren’t they going to be even more valuable now? And if he came here to trade, can I? Will these women help me find Adam if I promise them Dobbs’s nest egg?
“The Hoarder’s what we call him,” the tall one bellows. “Always suspected he was feeding an army, the amount of contributions he makes. He certainly never acts like he’s doing it for the enjoyment.”
“Contributions?” Besides those stupid tracts, I can’t imagine what Dobbs might have taken from the silo to trade. Unless. The thought stops the blood dead in its tracks. “Did he bring you a child?” Was Dobbs one of those human traffickers that Marcus was telling me about?
A snicker breaks the silence. The tall one gives herself away with a hee-haw. “A child? Can’t say the poor bastard didn’t try!” The group erupts into raucous laughter. Bernice’s deadpan splits into a wide grin, which she quickly covers with her fingers. Other women are not so similarly restrained. They hold their bellies and slap their thighs.
“You don’t know what he was up to?” Bernice asks me, putting her hand on my knee.
I shake my head. Something’s off about these women. I’m not at all sure I should bring up the idea of trading with them.
“He came here to trade his seed for supplies.” For a second, I think she’s talking about tomato seeds, his precious repository, and then she says, “We do it the old-fashioned way here, not like test tubes or anything. I think the only reason management kept him on as a contributor was because there are so few men who aren’t contaminated.”
The smell of lilac perfume, him not looking me in the eye when he put the duffel bag on the table, scrubbing his hands till they were almost raw. These were the women he was having sex with?
“Bernice, I need you to help me find my son.”
To signal that the time for discussing Dobbs is over, that we really must be about finding Adam, I stand. Bernice, though, is flagging over a tiny middle-aged woman with buck ears, a receding chin, and the beginning stages of a baby bump. “Fiona was the one most often assigned to him. This may or may not be his doing.”
The tall one snorts. “We’ll know if it’s born with horns and a forked tail.”
“He’s dead,” I say impatiently, because we must hurry now.
For a moment, the women fall silent. And then a couple of elbows are jammed into Fiona’s side, and she heaves a sigh, and the tall one makes a snorting sound. “Can’t say it’s a loss.”
“Where do they keep the kids?” I grab Bernice’s arm.
Gently but with a warning attached it, Bernice removes my hand and says the birthers are kept separate from the offspring.
“She’s not in enlisted in the program, is she?” asks the tall one. There is suddenly a straightening of maternity gowns, the shuffling of feet, clucking of tongues. What was camaraderie only a minute ago is now out-and-out hostility.
Bernice is directing everyone back to their respective beds, and I have begun to insist in a crazy banshee kind of way that someone take me to my son. “I’ll pay you!” I shout. “I’ve got money!” And all at once, I realize how ridiculous it is to offer money. Money is surely worthless now. But what do I have that would be of value to these people? I try to fight the panic, try to push it way down so I can think straight, but it only causes havoc with my innards. Everything’s coming loose. Bernice is ushering me to the back door, suggesting that I should probably leave, when it flies open. Marcus, sweating and breathing heavily, is on the other side of it. He has a plastic garbage container with him.
“All the trouble I went to find you a ride as nice as this, and you split.”
“That’s him!” I yell, pointing the walkie-talkie at him. “He’s one of them who took my son!”
Bernice and Marcus try to conduct a conversation while I pound on his chest.
He catches my wrists, but before he can drag me outside, my protests are interrupted by a pulsing, earsplitting ring. All heads swings in one direction. Near the front door is the tall woman. Her fingers are pressed against the red button.
Bernice and Marcus push me outside. He lifts the lid.
“I’m not getting in there!”
Bernice drops my backpack and suitcase on the ground, wishes me good luck, and hurries back inside, slamming the door.
Marcus grips me around the waist. I did not kill Dobbs for this. I did not live through that hell so someone could pull me into another one. I ram my hand up against his jaw and wriggle free. “Adam!” I call, taking off. I scream for him again, this time into the walkie-talkie. How far can he be that he cannot answer?
Marcus tackles me from behind. He clamps his hand around my mouth and tells me for the love of God to quit yelling. “I’m getting you outta here. Like I told you.”
I mumble against his hand and somehow he understands what I mean.
“We gonna go get your son. But you keep hollering, and it’s going to be next to impossible.” A big guy like this, you’d expect strong-arm tactics, especially with a siren going off, but he’s got his eyebrows raised, waiting for permission, and his eyes are wet with either apology or guilt. He pulls his hand away from my mouth just a fraction.
“How do I know you’re not going to turn me in?”
“You don’t. You trust me or you wait here for management, it’s that simple.”
There is no acclimating to a thing like trust. It presents itself, and there are but seconds to accept or reject it. A blink is all it takes for Marcus to lift me clear off my feet and deposit me into the trash can.
“Fight like a cornered cat and weigh just as much.” The lid slams shut, and Marcus starts wheeling me away. “Hold on tight now. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.” We both know a bumpy ride is the least of our worries.
THE LID FLIES open. Marcus hauls me into a cinder-block building. Its huge windows are open, but there is no breeze to dispel either the soapy smell or sticky air. Mounted along the sides of the interior are tub-size concrete basins with faucets. At each washing station is a freestanding vat with a handle, a canvas laundry basket, and a shelf stacked with box
es of Borax. Trestle tables are piled high with folded sheets and blankets. The middle of the room is taken up with a drying rack the size of scaffolding. From its steel arms hang dozens of uniforms in assorted colors.
Marcus snatches a green one-piece and holds it up against me. “That’ll do.”
I hurry into it, zipping up the front. When I turn around, Marcus has changed from his outfit into a green uniform, too. We put on matching screened helmets. He grabs sheets from the table and towels from the rack, tosses them into a laundry cart, and then wheels it to me. He does likewise with a second cart. Pushing it, he heads for the door.
“Act normal, and follow me. You’re on housekeeping duty now.”
The siren is still wailing, in the nearness or distance, it’s hard to tell which with this thing over my head. “Aren’t they going to recognize us?”
“Nobody sees the laundry people. Come on, we’re close. It’s only four blocks.”
We wheel our laundry carts outside just as someone approaches from the direction we aim to go. I am about to make a U-turn and retreat into the laundry room when I hear Marcus murmur, “Keep going.”
I can’t quite muster the strength to move, even though Marcus keeps urging me. The person is wearing a lab coat and carrying a tool tray of what look like milk bottles. He is seconds away, and still I cannot get my arms to push the laundry basket. My muscles have turned to dough.
Marcus spins around and drops to the ground beside me. “That wheel giving you trouble again?”
I hope my head is nodding. Through the mesh, I watch the person, wait for him to stop and jerk Marcus to his feet.
“How you doing?” Marcus says, tipping an imaginary hat.
Instead of answering, the man hurries around us without so much as a glance.
We roll the carts around the bend and into a great commotion. We are in some kind of courtyard, and the noise is not turkeys gobbling but a crush of young men, a few stooped and bald, some of them younger than Adam. I scan the group, quickly noting that Adam is not among them. They elbow and jostle one another to get closer to a concession stand from which food is being distributed. Those who are handed bowls eat standing up, tipping food straight into their mouths. Many of them are missing limbs. Marcus begins to steer us through the havoc when I notice a uniformed woman barking orders at the server. It’s Harriet Fletcher. The stand is in danger of being toppled by the boys. To avoid this, she grabs a bucket from the table and tosses its contents out into the crowd.
Sweat is pouring down my sides. I am sure Harriet Fletcher is going to notice us. A rush of blood fills my mouth when she flags us over. I must have bitten my cheek.
“Steady, now,” Marcus commands. He pushes the cart toward her. I swallow blood.
“Savages!” Harriet Fletcher complains. She leans into my cart to grab a towel. She wipes her hands, watching the mass of misery slither at her feet. She flings the towel into my cart and turns to me. “A little late for housekeeping, isn’t it?”
I freeze.
“Fecal emergency,” Marcus says in an altered voice.
“Is that what the fuss is all about? Every little thing, they sound the alarm.” She asks if we have a two-way so she might radio for someone to shut the darn alarm off, but Marcus shakes his head.
Dismissed with a wave, we pass by the crowd, turn right at the next intersection, and come to a huge glass building. Through the mesh, I read the sign out front, CONSERVATORY—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Beside it are half a dozen Airstream trailers. Marcus has us stop at the first one. A face peers from behind a curtain when he raps against the door. “Laundry services.” He steps inside and a minute later throws me towels. I look in my basket and hand him a couple of replacements. “Thank you,” he says, closing the door. We move to the next trailer as two cadets jog by. Only one of them looks our way.
A brief glimpse of an arm is all it takes to convince me that Adam is the one behind the open door. I barge up the steps and into the trailer. Wearing what looks like a Mylar poncho, Adam is sitting stiffly on the edge of the bed. I fly into his arms, but he recoils from me. “Son,” I say. “Adam, it’s me.” Even then, he seems unconvinced. I lift the edge of my hood.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” he says, embracing me. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be silly; you haven’t done anything wrong.”
I hug my son. He smells of antiseptic.
Adam wants to explain something, but Marcus shushes us both.
“Do as he says,” I tell Adam when Marcus starts wrapping him in a sheet.
Thirty seconds later, Marcus is carrying a very heavy bundle of laundry out of the trailer and into the laundry basket. And then we are off, pushing our carts as casually as possible through the late-afternoon sun.
VII
IT SEEMS UNLIKELY that Marcus would have gone to such trouble to get us away from Sunflower if he didn’t intend to come back and help us further, and yet with each minute that goes by I can’t help but wonder if Adam and I are on our own. Each minute I wait to hear the whine of engines, wait to see ATVs tearing across the prairie toward us. Under a sheet of corrugated metal at the foot of a windmill now seems the most obvious space to hide. I’m getting antsy. I don’t know how much longer I can sit here and do nothing. It’s not only arthritis that’s stiffening my joints, it’s also the dread of being found and dragged back to that place. If only killing Dobbs would be the end of him, but he’s taken up residence in my head, and in my head he grouses about my lack of skills, how I should have paid better attention to those lessons on survival. He grades our chances as slim, very slim. There is another soft voice, my own, that is inclined to agree with him.
Running all the way from the hole in the fence at Sunflower to this place, I thought I’d cough up my lungs. They are still sputtering. I fish around in the backpack for the pump and take two more quick puffs and peer out. The temperature has dropped suddenly, and the wind has picked up. Evening is approaching. I wonder if we shouldn’t take our chances, leave our hiding spot, and make a run for the forest.
We wait, and wait, until Adam announces he can’t hold it anymore. I stick my head out to check whether the coast is clear. From this distance, the camp is barely visible. It looks nothing like the rampart I took it to be. Nearby is a dense patch of ragweed. I tell Adam to crawl to it and find a spot behind it to relieve himself. He does as instructed. Even being separated by a distance of ten feet makes my heart pound. I call out to him, and the ragweed rustles back in reply. I keep a watchful eye until Adam calls for me to look at the sky.
“Get down.”
He ignores me, keeps his face turned to the west. In the last light, he is like a filament, bright gold.
“Get back in here.”
“Nobody’s coming,” he says. “Come out; you’ve got to see this.”
I wriggle out and stand up. I arch my back and shake off my stiff legs.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” he exclaims.
I catch my breath. Sundown on the prairie. Either this has become more spectacular in my seventeen-year absence, or I must have walked around half-asleep before. The sun looks like a single piece of confetti against a scarlet sky. Streaks of orange and gold are unrolled across it like streamers. If you’d never seen a sunset before, it would be easy to imagine this a once-in-a-lifetime event.
I tug on Adam’s sleeve. “We should get back under that cover. It’ll do this again tomorrow.”
He is a very old shaman, some holy man on a mountaintop, when he says, “But, it is happening now,” so we stay where we are. A perfect sky is mirrored in the nearby lake. On its dark surface, the lacy clouds look like doilies. There is a ravaged field beside the lake, but everywhere else the land is a thick green pelt. A bellow from the thicket startles a flock of birds into a waving flag. Cawing, trilling, tweeting—all of nature is engaged in some call-and-response, some primal litany. Adam watches the spectacle, and I watch him.
“They wanted me to be some lady’s boyfriend,” he says
after a while. He says it as though he’d been asked to eat worms. “They said I was to love her. I didn’t have to love her for very long, they said. I think they wanted me to, you know . . .”
One night when Adam was about three or four, he woke up from a bad dream, crawled over to my cot for comfort, and found Dobbs, rigid, on top of me. He tugged Dobbs’s arm, insisting he get off. “You’re hurting my mommy!” Instead of pushing Dobbs aside and taking Adam in my arms, I told him to do as Mister said and go back to bed. I can’t imagine Adam having anything but the same disgust for sex that I do. I hope that’ll change for him one day.
“Don’t think about it anymore, Adam. We’re not going back there.”
We watch the confetti-sun make landfall. A squawking flock of birds drops out of the sky and settles on the remains of an old barbed-wire fence. They peck at one another, jostling for more room. One voices its displeasure when it is knocked off its perch; a devious cackle rings out among the others. Adam finds this funny, too.
“What kind of birds are they?”
“Seagulls,” I answer, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world for seabirds to be nesting in the middle of Kansas.
Adam spots Marcus before I do. Hurrying toward us with a shopping cart, he is panting. Droplets of sweat roll off his forehead. He lifts a bundle out of the front seat. “She’s hungry.”
Amid the jumble of rags is a tiny face. A pert nose and a broad forehead and two dark, tear-filled eyes form the very picture of vexation. She opens her tiny mouth and belts out a full-throated yell.
“You’re going to have to wait a bit longer, little lady,” he tells the crying infant, while Adam and I both stand, stunned.
The cardboard box in the back contains a second bundle of rags, which I confirm is another baby.
“Careful not to wake that one; I only just got her to sleep.” Marcus holds out his little finger to the baby in his arms, and the tiny mouth latches on to it. “This trick won’t last long.”
Adam has not moved. He’s staring at the baby. Spellbound.