Born and Raised

by R A Doty

  Janette’s thoughts turned back to Cain. Nobody would ever understand what her life was like with him. She would never be able to truly forget, but she could pretend it didn’t matter. Only she would ever know the truth. “All right, I’ll give you that. We’re even.”

  Crickets chirped, and in the distance a bullfrog croaked as they neared the stream they had crossed earlier. A comfortable warmth hit Dan’s face as he walked beside Janette. He realized he didn’t know anything about this girl walking next to him.

  “What was your past life like?” he asked.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m not dead and reincarnated.”

  “You know what I mean; your real life before. Do you have any family left?”

  Janette walked silently, remembering her sister. Nobody’s ever asked about her family. The question caught her off guard, made her feel vulnerable. Her first instinct was to avoid the question, but maybe it was time to face the past. “My parents died when I was young. I lived with my sister for a while until the church took me in. I’ve been living there ever since.”

  “Where’s your sister?”

  That was a tough question and released feelings Janette had suppressed for years. She shook her head, trying to speak, but was unable.

  “I’m really sorry,” Dan said. “I gotta learn to mind my own business. Sometimes I’m too nosey.”

  Two minutes of silence passed as Janette tried to compose herself. She took a deep breath and wiped each eye on the shoulder of her T-shirt. “I act tough because I’m really a coward.” She faced Dan. “I guess all cowards act tough, don’t they?”

  “You don’t act like a coward to me.”

  “That’s the point. How could you tell if I’m putting on a front? My sister and I were nine, and we were identical twins. We were surviving okay on our own—had a nice apartment all to ourselves, managed to fill an entire room with canned goods we scavenged from an abandoned government food warehouse. I remember the day we found it. We were so hungry we ate too many beans and crapped for a week straight. We even had a cat!” Janette smiled. “Can you believe it? A cat. We named it Alley, because that’s where we found her.” The smile faded. “But then one day we were playing catch with a ball in the street. Things almost seemed normal that day, like our mother would call us at any moment to come inside for dinner. We’d race each other to the door and sit down at the table, trying not to giggle. But my mother never called. It was just the two of us. At first I thought it was just thunder because the sky looked a little dark, but then it got louder. We both turned in the direction the noise was coming from, and Amy dropped the ball.” Janette looked at Dan. “That was her name. Amy. There were so many of them running toward us that we froze. When we finally turned to run, Amy twisted her ankle and fell. I tried to help her up, but they were coming so fast.” Janette paused, her hand over her mouth. “They were so fast.” After a heavy breath she continued. “I ran like the fucking coward I am. Before I left I said, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and never looked back. She called me Jan. I could hear her screaming my name as I ran away. When I passed the church, a man named David Crullen grabbed me and pulled me inside. He was the head of the congregation. I guess I have a way of running away.” She thought of the man lying on the ground with the arrow in his eye. “And now, Cain.”

  “Was he your relative?” Dan asked.

  “No. Just someone I met at the church.”

  A dark blue sky became visible as Colton, Dan, and Janette cleared the woods and entered the field just before the Steinberg compound. Janette turned to Dan and continued. “Funny thing is, I can’t stop wondering what ever happened to our cat, Alley.”

  “There was nothing you could’ve done for your sister,” Dan said. “If you stayed any longer you’d be dead.”

  “Probably. But if I could do it over I’d stay until the end. It would’ve been better to die by Amy’s side than survive as a coward.” After a few seconds, Janette faced Dan. “What about you? What’s your story?”

  Thomas Steinberg took every measure possible to protect himself and his family from the outside world when he built his fortress, including installing motion activated lights on top of the fence. When Colton, Dan, and Janette reached the gate the lights snapped on.

  “Jesus Christ that’s bright,” Janette said, her hand blocking the light.

  “Janette!” Dan protested.

  “I’m sorry, but you gotta admit they are.”

  “I know, but you don’t have to swear.”

  The house door opened, and Luke came rushing toward the fence. He smiled at Janette. “Hey, you made it back,” he said, opening the gate. “I guess you passed your initiation.” He stepped aside as the three walked past. “Did you find any penicillin?”

  “Not as much as I would’ve liked,” Colton said.

  On the way to the house, Colton explained what happened, with Dan occasionally interrupting with the missing details. Once inside, he went to Steinberg’s lab to get a hypodermic needle and immediately went to Monica’s bedroom where Thomas was sitting by his wife’s side. Thomas stood and met Colton as soon as he walked through the door. Dan, Luke, and Janette were right behind him.

  “Well?” Thomas said. “Did you get it?”

  “Just one vial of Ampicillin, so I’ll have to inject it.” Colton administered the medicine in Monica’s arm and taped a cotton ball over the puncture. “Time will tell if it’ll be enough.”

  “Now what?” Dan asked.

  “In about four hours I’ll give her another 400 milligrams and repeat the process until the medicine’s gone. Then we wait and hope it works.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Janette said, staring at Monica’s face. She went to the bathroom and returned with a damp washcloth and wiped the sweat from Monica’s forehead.

  “Thank you,” Thomas said.

  She then wiped Monica’s cheeks and neck. “I’m sorry all this happened. You seem like really nice people.”

  Thomas studied Janette. Her hair looked as though it hadn’t been washed in months, her clothes were soiled and tattered, and she was severely underweight. Her nurturing disposition made him think of her as something other than a threat, something other than an animal that came from the city searching for food. “Here, let me,” he said, taking the washcloth. “You look to be the same size as my wife. Why don’t you go to her closet and grab some clean clothes and then take a bath. There’s a bathroom at the end of the hall.”

  Janette was speechless. The thought of clean clothes and a bath was unimaginable.

  “Well go on,” Thomas said. He nodded. “The closet’s over there.”

  Janette walked over and opened the door. She turned her head slowly, ogling the shelves filled with shoes, pants, shirts, and dresses hanging from rods. It’s been so long since she’d seen so many beautiful clothes in one spot.

  DAN AND COLTON SAT at opposite ends of the couch, and Luke sat in a chair perpendicular to them. They each had a glass of wine and sipped it sparingly while listening to each other’s hunting tales. A colossal fireplace was centered on a wall opposite the couch, and above it hung the head of a moose, twisted in their direction as if listening.

  “I can’t imagine what it would have been like to hunt a bear,” Dan said. “Especially a grizzly. When Luke and I were little our parents took us to a museum and I saw a stuffed one. It was huge!”

  “They’re nothing compared to a Kodiak,” Colton said.

  Dan’s eyes widened. “Really? How big are—” He stopped mid-sentence and turned to the doorway when Janette entered the room. The conversation ended, and the three men turned in her direction.

  “What?” Janette said, wearing a smile.

  “You look really nice,” Dan said, admiring Janette’s white blouse tucked into a pair of denim, calf-length jeans. A pair of white sneakers covered her feet. Her face and hair shined equally. She walked over to the couch and sat between him and Colton. “And you smell really good,” Dan added.

  Ja
nette felt her face get hot. “It’s just shampoo.”

  “That’s incredible,” Luke said. “You don’t look anything like the girl I was about to evict.”

  “So how do you like your new home?” Colton asked Janette. “It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what to say. I didn’t think places like this existed anymore. It’s like a fairy tale, and I’m just waiting to wake up in a pile of rubble in the middle of the city.”

  The four of them talked and laughed and lived life as it was meant to be lived—without the worry of death; four strangers whom, if not for the earth naturally finding a way to manage its population, may never have met. When their conversations began to subside, and the pause before the next became increasingly longer, they each turned in for the night.

  Janette was given one of the guest bedrooms, where she stood in front of a tall mirror mounted above a mahogany dresser. She stared at her image for what would have been a long time to most, but not long at all for somebody who hadn’t seen who they really are in years. She reached out and touched the reflection of her face on the glass. “You would have loved this place, Amy.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  BILL WESTON HOPED HIS suspicions were correct, as he walked down the hall toward the kennel’s main office. This would change everything. He would have the perfect nutrimen to use as a test subject for his new growth experimentation, and Donald Wilkinson would be imprisoned when the Power Elite find out he’s harboring a nutrimen in his home—which would leave an opening for a new leader of Ancada. He hurried along, his shoes rapidly tapping the shiny floor as he neared the door. After entering the office, he immediately powered-up one of the computers and opened all the file folders of the nutrimen Calla was responsible for. He skipped the red, pink, and green folders and went right to the yellow folders representing the nutrimen that would soon be ready to harvest. Faces quickly appeared on the monitor, and he scanned each one before moving on to the next. When none of the faces looked similar to the girl with Calla, he quickly began to open the green folders, assuming that he may have mistaken her to be younger than she was.

  “This is impossible,” he said, unable to find a match. He was certain he felt the triangular chip on the girl’s wrist. He searched all the other folders, hoping that she was mistakenly placed in the wrong place, but nothing promising appeared. “Dammit!” His hope of becoming the new leader of Ancada ended as quick as the monitor turned black when he powered down the computer.

  SLEEP CAME HARD TO Bill Weston that evening. He tossed and turned in bed, continually thinking about the girl with Calla. April, he remembered. She was still the only thing on his mind as he sipped his coffee the next morning. But, if she was indeed a nutrimen, how could she speak? It was the Wilkinson girl. She must be involved somehow. He unconsciously mouthed each scenario while staring down at the table.

  “You’re talking to yourself again, Bill,” his wife said, pulling out the chair across from him.

  Bill slowly raised his head and looked at her.

  “You always talk to yourself when there’s something on your mind. Do you want to talk about it?”

  Bill forced a smile to divert her attention. “No, I’m fine. I’m just thinking out loud.”

  “I know you too well, Bill, to know you’re not fine. First you sit quietly staring blankly into space, and then you begin to whisper out loud to yourself.” Jillian sipped her coffee and then continued. “It never ends until you go to work and find the answers to whatever’s on your mind.”

  Sarah trudged into the kitchen with her hand on her stomach—her hair had flattened to her head on one side as she slept and fluffed in the air on the other. She pulled out a chair and plopped down between her parents.

  “Honey you look terrible,” her mother said. “Are you feeling okay?”

  Sarah shook her head. “I feel horrible. I think I’ve got the flu or something. I puked in the bathroom as soon as I woke up.”

  “Your face is pale.” Jillian turned toward her husband. “Doesn’t she look awfully white to you, Bill?”

  Bill sat motionless, thinking about what his wife had said earlier. He nodded. The answer is in the kennel. He looked at his wife and daughter, who were waiting for his reply. “What?”

  “I said Sarah looks pale, don’t you think?”

  Bill turned to his daughter. “A little, I guess.” He no sooner got the words out when Sarah sprang to her feet and ran to the bathroom.

  Jillian slowly shook her head, listening to her daughter empty the contents of her stomach into the toilet. After a heavy sigh, she got up and dumped the remainder of her coffee into the sink.

  Bill Weston was less sympathetic to his daughter’s ailment. It was a necessary evil that balanced the scales to their survival—along with the survival of every other citizen in Ancada. It was a price that eventually had to be paid by every daughter of every family. His was no exception. He drank the remainder of his coffee and pushed the cup to the center of the table. “I’d better get going.”

  “Isn’t there anything we can do for her?” Jillian said as he passed toward the door.

  “Not really,” Bill replied, without slowing his stride. “Tell her she can take a few days off from the kennel until she feels better.” He turned back to his wife before opening the door. “It’ll pass. Just give it time.”

  Jillian stood quietly at the counter as her husband closed the door behind him. The sounds of her daughter’s moans could be heard coming from the bathroom.

  MANOLIN PULLED OPENED his eyes as the sun crept above the ocean, with longs beams of amber light stretching all the way to the kennel and shining into the window on his door. He rolled over and reached under the mattress, searching for the tablet. Looking at the tablet before he went to sleep and as soon as he awoke had become a ritual. He yawned, pushing his hand under the mattress farther. After a few seconds of sliding his arm up and down, he hopped off the bunk and lifted the mattress. There was no tablet. He dropped the mattress and looked around his pen. Where is it? He tried to remember the last time he used it, and then it came to him. The cube. When he was sitting on the cube, he shoved the tablet inside and must have forgotten to take it out. He walked to his door and stared at the cube through the window. When he saw the kennel door opening, he rushed back to his bunk and covered himself with a blanket.

  BILL WESTON ENTERED the kennel yard and closed the door behind him. His eyes scanned the perimeter. There has to be an answer here somewhere. He flicked on the light and walked forward. Every object became the focus of his attention, as he walked to the utility room. He searched along the counter and opened the cabinets. He needed to find a clue, any clue at all, to prove he wasn’t going mad. When he found nothing, he walked back into the yard and sat on the cube. You need some time off, Bill.

  CALLA RUSHED ALONG the sidewalk heading to the kennel. Her heart raced as she thought what would happen if her tablet was discovered by another staff member. It would be disastrous! She knew all too well what the rules stated about communicating with the nutrimen, and she also knew that the punishment for such disobedience would be devastating. She felt like crying as the thoughts played over and over again in her head. She began to run. When she reached the kennel, she opened the door and rushed down the hall. It was too early for anyone else to be there. It’s almost over, she thought, eyeing the door down the hall—the one she opened every morning and closed every evening before going home. She remembered the first time she opened the door and met the nutrimen she was now responsible for. She stared at each of them without making a sound. “Speaking is forbidden,” they told her, and she wished she had listened. She never considered what would happen if she ever got caught talking to the nutrimen, but now it consumed her thoughts as she entered the kennel. Just get the tablet from Manolin and put it in your bag and that will be the end of it.

  “You’re here early,” Bill Weston said, greeting her at the door.

  Calla chirped with fright. �
��You startled me, Mr. Weston.” A sickened feeling overcame her stomach as she stared down at his hand. “You found my tablet. I’ve been looking all over for that.” As she reached for it, Bill Weston pulled his hand back.

  “It won’t be much use to you with a dead battery. I’ll charge it up in my office and bring it back later.”

  Calla smiled, her lip quivering. “Thank you so much, but that’s not necessary. I’ll just charge it when I get home this evening.”

  “Nonsense. I insist. It’ll be ready in a few hours.” Weston headed for the door, then stopped and turned. “Oh, bye the way, Calla. You’re doing a great job. I can’t tell you how glad I am for taking Sarah’s advice and appointing you to the kennel crew.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Weston.” Calla stared blankly at the door as it closed behind Weston. Her first reaction as soon as he left was to cry, but that would mean she had accepted the fact that he was going to find out everything. She couldn’t allow herself to do that—it’d be impossible to get through the day. Her knees felt weak, so she walked over to the cube and sat. It seems odd, not having April here, she thought. Her pen looks so vacant. That’s what it will look like when she’s eventually harvested. She hated herself for thinking like that, but deep inside she wondered if she could keep up this charade forever. Must all good things come to an end?

  She realized the odds were pretty good that Mr. Weston was going to power-up her tablet, and if he did that it would soon be over. A glimmer of hope entered her thoughts. But it was all in my journal, and he doesn’t know the password. With this new hope brightening her attitude, she hopped off the cube and began her duties.

  EVERY FEW MINUTES, Calla stared at the clock. One hour went by, and still no tablet. Two more hours passed and then three. She couldn’t possibly ask Weston for it, because that would be too obvious. Another hour passed and still no tablet. She watched the nutrimen walking aimlessly around the yard. Occasionally, she would catch one staring back at her. Can that one talk? she thought. What about that one staring out at the city? Does he now long to be free? Do they all long to be free because of me? And then she spotted Manolin lying comfortably on his bunk. She walked into his pen and stood beside him. “Well?”