by Isla Morley
I bring up the rear, all the time watching my son and his cargo. Moments ago, he’d been quick to dismiss the idea of love, and here he is, smitten. Without having to be told, he supports the baby’s head in the crook of his elbow and keeps her against his chest. As soon as her lips start to quiver, he offers her his little finger. Adam beams when she sucks it. He keeps a beady eye on the path, but every so often bends to her with an encouraging word. “Hold on, baby girl.” “We’re going to get you some food real soon.” “Who’s a clever girl?”
“She likes you.”
“You think so?” he asks, clearly pleased.
We continue weaving our way quickly through the scrappy, juvenile trees until we reach a jungle with nooses for vines and ground cover spiny enough to be barbed wire. Adam is careful to step over every tree root and around every rock. I trip enough times that Marcus offers to assist me.
“They’ll know you helped us escape.”
Marcus doesn’t understand that this is my apology for landing him in deep trouble, too. Instead, he assures me Sunflower doesn’t know where he lives or what paths he takes. We are headed to a safe house, he adds, and he’s taking us the long way because they won’t be able to drive the ATVs through woods this dense. They’ll have to pursue us on foot. No use in stating the obvious, that we won’t be able to outrun them if they come this way. Instead, I change the subject. “They wanted Adam for breeding purposes.”
“Everyone’s trying to forget Diablo, but they keep getting reminded all over again when them babies don’t come out right. Soon as the Confederacy can show folks a perfect baby, the sooner we can put the past behind us, is what they think. You have no idea what people are willing to put up with for the possibility of a perfect kid.”
“The booklet didn’t say what the Confederacy is.”
Marcus explains about an alliance between separate, loosely governed bands of people. First formed to keep disputes between neighboring camps and villages from mushrooming into wars and later to form a united front against the free-range bandits, it now mostly exists to promote trade. Overseeing the Confederacy is the Grand Council, its members former politicians from Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Fidel Castro’s second cousin sits in the big chair, Marcus says. The funding of places like Sunflower is his brainchild.
I look over my shoulder. Adam is singing the baby a lullaby. Lyrics about rolling rivers, mandolin players, and men home from the war. Singing so tenderly you’d think he has firsthand experience of such things. The last of the sunlight falls between the leaves, wafting down on him like Communion wafers. A Baltimore oriole chants. In the air is the faint smell of skunk. For just a moment, it is not the scary woods, but the Garden of Eden.
“These babies are, what, a month old?”
“Three weeks,” Marcus tells me. “Most of them that make it to term die the first week.”
It makes no sense what he says—unviable fetuses, late-term abortions on those that test positive for defects, infanticide in those cases where defects go undetected until birth. Very few are spared, he remarks.
“And these two?”
Marcus explains the arrangement he has with Sunflower. Rather than euthanizing all the defective newborns, they have agreed to let Marcus take those with the highest chance of survival. It’s not policy but rather a case of officials turning a blind eye.
Fortunately, Adam doesn’t hear any of this. “They don’t look defective to me,” I insist. I am about to ask Marcus where he takes the babies, but he silences me with his hand and comes to an abrupt halt. He motions for Adam to be quiet, for us not to move. He cocks his head. I can’t hear anything but the ringing of cicadas, the rapid clicks of crickets, the harsh singsong tone of katydids—it’s the sound of the daytime and nighttime critters changing guard.
“Is it them?”
“Ssh.”
After a while, he bids us move. We walk no more than ten paces farther when he stops us again.
Very quietly, he announces, “We’re being followed.”
I swing around and can’t be sure if several heads have just darted behind the spindly eucalyptus trees or if it is the trickery of fading light and shimmering leaves.
Marcus crouches. Adam and I do the same. Marcus makes some flicking motion with two fingers. I don’t know if he intends for us to head to the nearest tree for protection or to run like hell.
Adam creeps up next to me. “What is it, Mom?” He looks terrified, not just for himself now, but for his ward, too.
“Deer, probably,” I tell him, because this is better than saying, “Them.” I show him the same signal Marcus flashed me.
Instead of running, Adam stands up and points at what Marcus has chased out from behind a bush. “Is that a hog?”
It is a dog without any fur.
Marcus throws a stone at it, and the mutt scampers away. “Got separated from its pack most likely. It’ll get picked off by a bear or a mountain lion soon enough.”
There isn’t a mountain for a thousand miles. I pick up the suitcase and take off after Marcus again. “Mountain lions? In Douglas County?”
“A lot of game in these parts.” Marcus gives a rundown of what a diminished human population has done for wildlife.
I look behind me to see what Adam makes of all of this, and he is lagging behind. At first glance, it appears as though he’s taking a breather, but then I notice he has one hand extended. A few yards behind him is the cowering dog trying to settle an age-old dilemma of whether to risk its neck for the sake of a morsel.
“Adam! Get away from that animal!”
A stone goes whizzing by my head and finds its intended target. The dog yelps and falls back.
“What’d you do that for?” Adam straightens up with the baby and glares at Marcus.
“You give it something to eat, and it’s going to be a menace the rest of the trip.”
“It’s probably got rabies,” I add.
I know exactly what Adam is thinking. He is remembering an old conversation and now aims to cash in on the promise he’d extracted at the end of it.
“No,” I insist.
“You said.”
I clarify what I meant—a pet, not a cross between a pit bull and a coyote. Besides, what kind of dog doesn’t have hair?
“You said I could choose, and I choose this one.”
We argue back and forth until Marcus insists we get a move on.
“I’m not going.”
“Adam . . .”
“You can’t make me.”
“Son, your mother’s right. You don’t know where this stray comes from. Trust me, there are hundreds of dogs running around. You’ll have so many to pick from, it’ll make your head spin.”
While we are trying to talk some sense into him, he claps his hand against his thigh and the stupid mutt advances another two feet.
“He’s limping!” Adam notes.
Oh, dear God. “Injured animals bite, Adam. Just leave him be.”
The standoff lasts until Marcus strikes a bargain. “Let’s just keep walking. Don’t feed him. If he wants you for a friend, he’s going to have to walk on that foot a good way yet.”
Adam brightens.
Marcus leans over to me and whispers, “Trust me, the dog will tire of this in a few minutes.”
Having settled in the recesses of the forest, nightfall now edges toward us. We try to outpace it. Only once do I need to stop and use the inhaler. The rest of the time, I keep up with Marcus and try to ignore the fact that Adam has already named the dog Oracle and is giving it all sorts of commands, not least of which is, “Come.”
My eyes have adjusted to the dark, but my nerves have not. When Marcus leads us out of the woods, there is just enough light to make out the contours of the land, land that could easily be traversed by vehicles. I scan the hill, waiting for the beam of a headlight to skim it.
“Mom!”
I swing around, thinking Adam has dropped the baby or been bitten by the dog, but h
e is staring up at the sky. Swirls of bright green flick across the heavens, rolling into a curlicue, then falling like a curtain. The lights move so fast I get dizzy and reach out for Marcus’s arm to steady myself.
“Aurora borealis,” Marcus replies when Adam asks if they are angels. “Don’t see this nearly as much as we used to.”
We fall into single file on a narrow path that leads across another meadow and up a slight rise. Adam and I duck each time the lights swoop down, one time a vast skin that looked as though it would encase us. Both babies are asleep. Adam refuses to trade me a baby for the suitcase. He is ever more sure-footed; the dog, too, which trots on three legs beside him with the same kind of confidence.
That fishy smell I detected when we first drove away from the silo is strongest here. I now see the source. Mushrooms. They are strewn across the path and have claimed every inch of available ground in the clearing to our right. The smaller ones are the size of volleyballs, the bigger ones boulders. Adam kicks one and the dog chases after it. He brings it back to Adam and lays it on his shoe.
“What’s the deal with all these mushrooms?” I ask Marcus.
“This is nothing. Some colonies are the size of counties. Especially where the blood rains fall.”
“Blood rains?” Adam asks.
“Some say it’s dust from up north where the deserts are, and some say it’s iron oxide. With everything rusting, the powder gets blown up into the clouds and comes back down red. Most folks are superstitious now; they’ll tell you it’s the blood of all them people who died. Don’t worry; we don’t get much of it here anymore.”
My head starts filling up with pictures of corroding cities and deserts where Canada ought to be until a high-pitched howl is broadcast from the ridge above us.
“Come on,” Marcus urges. “Not much farther.”
When another howl rings out in reply from the edge of forest in reply, we break into a light trot.
NO MATTER WHAT we do, the babies will not be pacified. Marcus has moved the sling from his back to his front where he can pat his baby. In his other hand is a switchblade. Adam hands me the baby he’s been carrying, but she only cries louder, so he snatches her back. Darkness has a way of amplifying the sound. If the people from Sunflower are anywhere in the vicinity, they will be able to draw a bead on us without any trouble, and the same goes for the pack of wolves that have us pegged as easy prey. The only thing more frightening than their excitable yips and howls is when they fall silent. Several times, the mongrel dog stops to growl at the bushes beside us.
“See if she won’t take your finger again.”
I know I have taken a testy tone with Adam when he snaps back that it’s not her fault we’re out here in the middle of nowhere. He sets the baby against his shoulder and tells her what Marcus has been telling us for miles: not much longer now.
Through a stand of buckled trees, I see a pair of lights approach from the opposite direction. The ATVs have found us. No point in stifling the babies’ cries now. I can’t decide if it’s better to run into the woods and take our chances with the wolves or surrender. The lights slow down just ahead of us and turn off the street. I notice it is a car, not an ATV. We are only a few yards from a road.
Marcus nudges me. “You gonna just stand there?”
“That’s not them?” I whisper.
“No.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Hear that sound? That’s a bad axle. Can’t tell you how often I’ve worked on that old Ford. I know it like it’s my own flesh and blood.”
Marcus leads us across the street to where it turned.
Thanks to a rising moon, there’s enough light to see the mailbox, the flagstone paving, the appearance of normal. At the end of the driveway is a house. Each of its windows is lit by an orange glow. We can smell the smoke coming from the chimney. Family is what this scene spells, and the longing hits me hard.
Sunflower will keep up the search for a day or two, Marcus explains as he leads us through the front yard. After that, they’ll count Adam and me dead, or good as. We are to stay here until then, and afterward Marcus will either escort us to Eudora or help us with arrangements to rendezvous with a caravan.
But for the old pine standing guard at the front porch, every tree around the house has been cleared. Nothing is left of those pests except for a woodpile almost as high as the roof. Parked beside it are two trail motorbikes and the car, which can’t possibly be roadworthy. We take two steps up onto the broad wooden porch. Four rocking chairs are swaying, recently vacated. Inside, voices quiet down as soon as Marcus raps on the door. There is a braided doormat at our feet, and someone has gone to the trouble of making and hanging a pine-cone wreath.
“The Bowerses are good people. You don’t have to worry. They’ll hide you if anyone comes.”
A woman on the downswing of middle age opens the door. She is stocky, a feature she makes no attempt to hide with a man’s chambray shirt and grubby jeans. Her white hair is cropped close. Everything else about her is feminine—the way she holds herself; her soft, gray eyes; her fuzzy pink house slippers. She smiles broadly when she sees Marcus and keeps her smile in place despite seeing two complete strangers, a couple of squalling babies, and an injured, hairless dog. She reaches up to accept Marcus’s one-armed embrace.
“Any room at the inn?” he asks.
She replies with that same wide smile and waves us in.
“The dog will have to stay outside, Adam,” I say.
“You said we could feed him if he came all the way.”
I look at Marcus, who turns to the woman. She lifts an index finger and hurries into the house. A man joins us in the foyer. He is stoop-shouldered in the way very tall men are and has a face the color of eggplant. Where his nose ought to be are two slit-shaped holes, and because he has no lips, he appears to be grimacing. With a bloated, scarred hand, he shakes Marcus’s hand, then mine, and finally Adam’s. “Bill Bowers, pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Bill Bowers and Adam are equally dumbstruck at the sight of each other. I am about to make an excuse for Adam, about his being shy around strangers so the man won’t assume Adam thinks him a monster, when Adam says breathily, “Are you a cowboy?” Adam, who has always dreamed of meeting a cowboy, is riveted by the man’s large silver belt buckle and pointy boots.
You’d swear this was the funniest thing Bill Bowers ever heard.
“Outlaw’s more like it,” Marcus says.
Nodding in agreement, the returning woman puts down two bowls, one with water, one with pellets. Bill places one hand protectively around her shoulders, and says, “This lovely lady is my wife, Ginny.” Because of his disfigurement, he makes lots of hissing sounds. He and his wife commence staring at Adam. And then they stare at me, too.
They must notice my embarrassment because the woman makes hand signals that her husband is quick to translate. “She says you’ve got such beautiful skin. Like a porcelain doll.”
I can’t think what my response ought to be.
Adam is the one to speak. He gives our names. “And this is Angel. Say hi, Angel.”
The baby responds with a full-throttled shriek.
“She’s a cutie, isn’t she, Gin?” Bill responds.
Ginny smiles. Adam is flustered now on account of his ill-tempered companion, but Ginny does not race to remedy the situation by taking the child. Instead, she takes the other baby and motions for Adam to accompany her down the hallway. He gives the dog the command to stay and follows the woman into the warm house.
Bill offers to take the backpack and suitcase, but I hold them tightly. Marcus and I follow him into the living room, where half a dozen people are gathered. There is enough light from various oil lamps to notice that they are all disfigured. Most of them look burned, although not as badly as our host, and I can’t tell if it’s my imagination or if they really do smell of smoke. Names and how-dos are exchanged. The shriveled woman in the wheelchair who wheels herself up to me gives me
an unabashed once-over. Why, she wants to know, am I not burned or disfigured? Who has that much hair anymore? How is it a boy can be fifteen and not be confined to a bed? Marcus does my explaining for me. Only because he promises that Adam will soon be in to meet her does she not make a mad dash down the hall to find him.
A bearded man goes around covering the windows with horse blankets, while I take quick stock of the room. Walls covered with paintings, potted plants in hanging macramé baskets, cushions, clocks that run. In one corner is a small stand with electronic equipment. Marcus asks that the CB radio be turned on in case anyone’s broadcasting.
“What kind of nonsense is this?” huffs an elderly man. “We don’t want to get mixed up in your skullduggery, Hill. Sunflower’s not going to take kindly to those caught aidin’ and abettin’ fugitives. Remember what happened to the Pattersons—”
“Oh, hush up, Sheldon,” the woman in the wheelchair hisses. “Can’t you see the poor woman’s scared half to death?”
Bill clarifies that Adam and I are not fugitives but guests. Indicating that we are to be treated as such, he hands me a glass.
The bearded man who was talking when we first entered now resumes his speech. As he begins to tell of a study done on soybeans, I take a sip and wheeze.
Marcus whispers in my ear, “Bill makes a mean rosé. Best go easy.”
The storyteller is standing beside the fireplace with his elbow on the mantel. The others seem to find his story fascinating, but I am easily distracted. Facial expressions, how loud things are said, how they lean forward to listen, draw back to ponder, glance at one another. From some shuttered part of my mind come memories of youth meetings at church, of being part of a group that behaved like this. I was once part of a community. Belonging—it’s what I envy these people. I take another sip and am waylaid again, this time by how sharp everything tastes.
“The seeds were taken from the Inola Exclusion Zone fifteen years ago, about four months after Diablo,” the storyteller continues. “They were planted in uncontaminated soil, and now they are no longer producing mutant strains; they are becoming more genetically stable.”