Deceit: Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 3 (Caustic)

by Brian Spangler

  Janice pinched the tied strand of fabric, trying to loosen the knot. As the fabric unwound, she heard a small gasp, and then found Mary’s hands covering hers. Janice quickly tightened the knot, confused. She looked to Mary to ask what was wrong; Mary said nothing, just shook her head and pushed the pouch closer to Janice, keeping it concealed beneath a lace of fingers. When Mary looked over Janice’s shoulder, she realized that the mortician was likely still standing at the entrance, and that the contents of the pouch, for some reason, scared Mary enough that she thought the pouch should stay closed in public. Understanding, Janice tucked the pouch into her coveralls, nodding back to Mary, who’d already stepped back, tidying herself to leave.

  Mary forced a smile, and pulled her little girl closer to her side. “It was so nice to see you again, Ms. Gilly,” she said, her tone flat as she glanced once more past Janice. “And I am so very sorry for your loss.” Watching Mary’s eyes wander past her again, Janice felt a strong urge to turn around, but she refused it, playing along with Mary’s concerns.

  “It was good to see you, too,” she answered. Dipping her head to face Mary’s daughter, she continued brightly, “And I’m expecting that in a few years, we’ll see plenty of each other!”

  As Mary turned to walk away, Janice’s thoughts went to the small pouch. What could James have had that would scare Mary so? Certainly something so small wouldn’t be a danger. Or would it?

  ******

  Janice made herself an afternoon cup of root tea, then eyed the cycle in her dwelling. The tea was bitter and barely warm. Knowing that she’d have to ride soon, she frowned, and hoped that the chore could wait another day. For now, she couldn’t be bothered with the cycle. She sipped the tea, crinkling her nose at it.

  When she sat down at her center table, she held her tea, but didn’t drink it. Instead, she pushed her head back and rested, letting the day fall out of her. Within moments, her eyes had grown heavy and she’d escaped to that place between asleep and awake. Then her thoughts went to James.

  She thought of the door in the wall, and how the workers on the farming floor pulled on his legs, dragging him inside. She heard the sounds of his broken bones snapping against one another, and of his body sliding from the table. It was her James, her chosen, and her insides tumbled at the thought of his death. She pushed the image back, shaking her head, and tried to think of anything else. A question came then. Had the mortician been listening to her and Mary? She perked her head up, thinking of Mary and the pouch she’d given her.

  Janice pushed away the parchment with the mortician’s seal, avoiding the blood seal—once again abiding by her father’s warning. A thought went through her mind that made her father’s warning seem even more dire: what if you touch a blood seal after it’s been cracked? Thoughts of mortal wounds came to her mind, but she was quick to dismiss the consideration as just more folklore.

  She pulled from her coveralls the small pouch that Mary had given her. Turning it over in her hands, Janice brought the pouch to the side of her head and shook it. There was no sound: no rattle or bounce against her fingers. If not for the look in Mary’s eyes, she’d have thought the pouch was empty. Yet there was something inside, and Mary wanted whoever showed up at James’s rite of cleaning and passing to have it. She’d collected the pieces from the children… pieces of what?

  Janice pulled on the strands of knotted fabric until the cinched weave came loose. She set the strand of fabric off to the side, pushing it as she had with the blood seal, hoping the tie didn’t carry any of its own folklore. Lifting her hand to pour out the contents, she stopped. She thought of James, and wondered why he had jumped. The mortician had said nothing; he’d have surely told her if there was more, wouldn’t he have?

  Why didn’t he come to me? This last thought stirred a deeper hurt, an old resentment that she quickly pushed away. Janice swiped at her cheek, ridding herself of a pointless tear. She turned the small pouch inside out, picking at the rigid stitching that knitted the old coverall fabric together. The pouch was empty, and had served its purpose.

  Janice looked over the jumbled mess of ripped parchment. Even heaped together, she could see that the parchment was different, and she began to understand Mary’s concern. Janice picked up the biggest piece, pressing her finger against its edge.

  She raised her chin, and blurted, “Paper! This is a piece of paper!”

  Janice had watched every video and had viewed every photograph stored on the troublesome classroom android. She recognized that it was paper, but not the type; only that it had been manufactured, processed, and pressed, and that it wasn’t made from recycled fabric, repurposed and stiffened, like their parchment.

  “This can’t be,” she murmured, sitting back in her chair to sip her tea. Lifting one of the larger pieces to her nose, she realized something else.

  “No salt. This paper is new—but that can’t be!”

  Janice wanted to believe that what was in front of her was ancient: a left-over artifact from a time before the accident, preserved for hundreds and hundreds of years. She shook her head, knowing the paper shouldn’t exist. Not anymore.

  She sized up the pieces, studying the fractures that tore what was once whole. An image of James’s body came to her then, fractured like the paper. Broken. What did these pieces of paper have to do with him? Had he died for them? Had he died because of them?

  James, what did you have here? Carefully, she pulled the jumbled pieces apart, picking one up and flipping it over. She spread the pieces in front of her, peeling them apart from the lumped shape of the pouch they’d formed into. She sifted through the puzzle pieces, but the mystery on the table seemed to mock her, leaving her perplexed and baffled.

  Janice was only vaguely aware that she was smiling: her interest in the riddle was increasing. At some point, she’d leaned up onto the end of her chair, with her toe pinned to the floor and her leg shaking. It was a habit she’d formed years before, while grading schoolwork, trying to understand what answers her students were after. While she hated the circumstance that brought the small pouch to her, a part of her was enjoying the meditation of mulling over a mystery.

  When she found the blue lines, Janice started to see how the paper must have looked intact. Within moments, she cobbled the pieces of paper back together. But when her fingers rested on the last piece—the one with the ugly crimson stain—her eyes went to the broken blood seal. The last piece of the puzzle bore his blood like a badge of something horrific: a reminder that would forever identify how he’d died, and maybe why he’d died. She eased the last piece into place. The parchment was whole—all of the pieces were there—but it was only loosely mended.

  There were numbers on the paper, a new puzzle to capture her attention. Looking over the series of squared digits, her skin was soon abuzz again, and she gave them her full attention. Janice tried to make sense of what had made the glyphs, and what they were meant for.

  “No writing stone made these,” she exclaimed, taking another sip of her tea and pressing her finger against one of the inky numbers. Keeping her voice to a mere whisper, she read aloud what was on the strange paper. A sudden scurry of footsteps sounded outside her door, distracting her. With her concentration broken, a thought came. She knew only one other person who had any ties to the executive floor: Richard Chambers. If anyone could help her understand what this was, it would be Declan’s father. Janice could only hope that Declan’s mother, an executive like James, had shared some of her knowledge of the executive floor with her husband.

  Another pair of feet shuffled past her door, and Janice expected to hear the afternoon bell ring out to the Commune. She decided that it would be best to write down the numbers on her own parchment, for fear of losing just one of the pieces of the odd paper. Once the numbers were copied, Janice put the pieces back in the small pouch, hoping that Richard might recognize what the numbers meant. She needed there to be more to James’s death than just a despairing leap from the executive floor. After
all, his death was the real mystery, and now she had a clue.

  8

  30 YEARS EARLIER

  Her hand was tiring, so Isla put down her pen to read over what she’d written in her lab journal. It had been a long day of work, with at least twenty new earth samples, and all of them needed a completed fifth-level analysis. Rocking on her heels, feeling the consequences of hours of standing in one spot, she scowled at the new set of samples waiting to be analyzed. Swiping the back of her hand over her brow, she frowned when the lights on the wall told her to keep moving, to keep working.

  With the list of the day’s activities written in her journal, Isla turned to her terminal to enter the data. The dark glass showed a warped image of the lab behind her. She glimpsed her reflection, thinking that she didn’t look a hundred years old. The lab journals beneath her desk would lead her to believe otherwise. So who was right?

  But I feel at least one hundred today, she thought, and showed a hint of a smile before waving her hand across the glassy panel. Immediately, her mirror image was gone as the screen came alive. A white flash settled to a cool black background and rows of green text. She scanned the screen, finding the blinking line right where she’d left it during her last data entry. From the bottom of the terminal, an animated keypad popped into place, and she began tapping the screen, entering the data.

  Simple, really, she thought as she tapped the screen. Some days the work was a chore, with the fun of it drained and distant. Today was one of those days, and the sooner she was finished, the sooner she’d be back to her room.

  As she transcribed her day from the lab journal, her thoughts drifted to the farming floor, and to the memories of working with Nolan after class. Her mind then went to their younger years: playing in the Commune building’s courtyard, dodging outstretched hands in pickup games of fast-tag.

  Flipping the page of her journal, she reached over and ripped the corner, finishing that day and readying it for the next. When she turned back to the terminal screen, she found that she’d inadvertently typed Nolan’s name in place of one her notes. And not just his name, but also the date.

  Isla shook her head, remembering that today was Nolan’s birthday. That realization must have been present in the recesses of her mind, causing her fingers to enter his name. She paused, feeling some recognition of the day was in order.

  I’d never forget your birthday. Never.

  “Happy birthday, Nolan. I love you.” She spoke to an empty lab.

  Tapping the terminal’s screen, she moved the blinking cursor and started to correct the data entry. She typed over the letters of his name and his birthdate, but stopped when she came upon what followed. Immediately following his birthdate, she’d also entered the date of his death. She gripped her hands again as images of his death came into her mind.

  I’m tired is all, she thought, and pushed the images away, eager to fix the errors on the screen. You can’t wander like this.

  Isla cleared the dates and paged up the screen, checking her work. When she reached the top, she saw that entering Nolan’s name hadn’t been her only mistake. She’d foolishly entered all of today’s notes under today’s date, but of the previous year—thereby overwriting all of those older journal entries that had already been there. She thumped the desk with her hand, frustrated by the careless error. Her hopes of going back to her room were dashed; she’d have to stay and fix this before leaving.

  The thought of the previous year’s journal reignited her anxiety. She’d never been able to explain to herself how she’d authored a hundred years of lab journals, so she’d simply stopped looking at them. Yet her memory of this place was fresh again, beginning when she’d woken and expected to find the mortician staring down at her. But he wasn’t there; nobody was. Isla pulled her arms close to her chest, protecting herself, expecting the memory of what she’d done to open the wounds of the past.

  “You’re not doing this again,” she scolded herself. “Not now!” Isla pushed her arms down and closed her eyes. You’re fine. Just fix the mistake and get some rest. Taking a step back from her desk, she stretched out her arms and lowered her middle, trying to pull out the knots forming in her back.

  It’s a mystery… at least a hundred years old, she thought as a shelf full of lab journals came into view. Having pored over some of the journals, she had no doubt about who had written them: they were all hers. Word for word, letter for letter, her scratchy writing had started and ended each page. And there was no mistaking who’d been tearing the corners off the completed pages.

  Isla knelt to pull the lab journal from the previous year. She’d need it to re-enter the data that she’d overwritten, and finish the day.

  “Details and counts,” she mumbled. “If they’re not exact, then there’s no reason to enter them.” She laid the previous year’s lab journal beside the current one and pinched the bitten corners, fanning them, until she found the date she was looking for.

  Running her finger down the page, she came across Nolan’s name. The sight was unexpected and surprising. Bewildered, she brushed her hand over the inky black, checking her handwriting.

  I never wrote this. Shaking her head, she studied the handwriting, confirming it, adding certainty, conviction. But of course you did! And it wasn’t just his name, she’d also written his date of birth, and then the date of his death.

  Quickly she pulled the journal from the previous year, and turned again to the same month and day. The dusty scent of aged parchment irritated her nose. Again, she found that she’d written Nolan’s name. But there was something else, something different in this lab journal entry: a single letter: “E”.

  Isla spent the next ten minutes on the floor of her lab, pulling each of the lab journals, navigating the years, going backward. Each year on Nolan’s birthday, she’d written his name, and the two dates that meant the most to her, but she’d also written a clue. When she pieced the clues together, she came up with a single word: “reanimate”. The word was repeated every ten years.

  Isla’s breathing was heavy; thick and congested. Loose pieces of parchment hung in the air, tortured victims of her aggressive search through the old journals. When she stood, she felt the wetness on her cheeks. She’d cried through each year’s revelation. But these weren’t the manic tears of a person losing her mind. No, she had proof of having been here for the last one hundred years. But why were the letters staggered, and what did “reanimate” mean?

  Her suspicions blazed. The letters were staggered to keep the obvious from being seen. She’d cautiously sent herself a message from a hundred years ago.

  “R-E-A-N-I-M-A-T-E,” she spelled aloud. Her focus turned to the large steel door, standing alone at the back of the lab. She looked at the portal window—a lonely eye, blinking at her as one of the mechanical arms swung by.

  “I have to go in there,” she said, her tone flat and exacting. “I have to go in there, and look at the blood vials.” Then her heart fell to the deepest pit in her stomach, as she wondered if she’d had these same revelations before. Maybe a hundred times she’d asked the same questions. And then she wondered whether she’d already been inside the blood vault. Had she already found the answers?

  9

  “How can this be?” Declan asked, and then immediately clanked his spoon against the bowl, digging for another mouthful. “And what is this?” He lifted his head, grinning, eager to hear the name. Sammi’s heart warmed as she watched Declan devour what she’d given him. She wanted to please him, to give him everything she could. This was their home, and this last month had been like a dream: making love, playing games, and eating all the deliciousness the food dispenser could conjure up for them.

  But she could sense that Declan was growing anxious, becoming more curious every day. He wanted to know more about this magical place. He had questions she couldn’t answer. A sour feeling came to her then, and it wasn’t something that she could easily fix. She liked where they were, and didn’t want to change what they had. />
  Why does he want to know? she wondered, and then pushed the question out of her head, returning her attention to the far more important task at hand: eating dessert.

  “It’s called ice cream, and it’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

  Declan kept his eyes on hers, and nodded, agreeing. She loved his eyes. But it was different now, wasn’t it?

  We’re bonded. Things are supposed to be different. While Declan had questions, Sammi was content. And this place isn’t so different from the dwelling we would have had at the Commune, is it? She shrugged, and thought of the rule that had been lifted. In fact, to the best of her knowledge, it never existed here at all. Unlike in their Commune, here there was no limit to how long they could try to have a family. And then she wondered when she’d last seen a baby, or even a toddler or a child? Sammi stole a quick glimpse at the lights above the door, but there were no answers waiting for her. The only thing she saw was that it’d be time to go soon; she could feel it.

  “What’s this one called?” Declan asked. His words sounded garbled as he swished the ice cream in his mouth. When a chunk of the sweetness fell to his chin, he began to laugh, his expression turning playful.