by T M Edwards
“You are not here on a whim. No one travels here unless they have a purpose.” I didn’t miss the fact that the man hadn’t shared his own name.
The other people stepped inside the store’s entryway, and Sam shook hands with each of them. I didn’t move. I was a ball of feelings rolled into one: lingering guilt, fear of the unknown, embarrassment at being caught in my vulnerability, mixed in with the almost unbearable need to ask them if they’d seen a black egg. Each person murmured their name to Sam as he shook their hands, even the children. I only caught a couple: the Asian man was Yin and one of the blond women was Allie. They barraged Sam with questions, obviously unused to seeing new people in town. While his answers were cautious, he was friendly, and I saw flashes of the charming facade he so often wore. After Honey Badger was convinced by Sam’s ease and left me to introduce herself to the rest of the group, I was left alone by the cart.
“You are less easily convinced than your friend.” I jumped, and looked up from where I’d been staring at the spot where my hands were wrapped around the cart’s handlebar. The Native American man stood just a few feet away. Up close, I could see the streaks of gray in his hair and the tiny wrinkles around his dark eyes. “My name is Mankato. Your friend says yours is Deidre.”
I nodded.
“The marks on you tell me the story of a perilous journey. I do not blame you for your lack of trust. Whatever your goal, if it does not involve ill-will toward my family, you are welcome here.”
Pinching my lips together, I watched Sam talk to the others. His charm was a protection tactic, just like my reticence. The soldier in him would pay attention to everything they said, searching their faces, voices, and words for any sign of malice toward us. Then, once he had answers, he would likely withdraw and act more like his normal introverted self.
“We are here to save our people. We don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Mankato’s mouth twitched in a small smile. “Good. Then, as I said, you are welcome here.”
“Are there more of you?”
“There are small groups, but we are few and far between. Your timing is fortuitous. This is the first time we have ventured as far as this market. As winter draws in, food becomes more scarce. If you had come a day earlier or later, we would never have met at all.” He glanced down at my cart. “Your journey is not over, it seems.”
“We’re looking for something. An e--well, it looks like an egg. It’s huge and black. The size of a school bus. Have you seen one?”
He nodded, his long black hair moving as his head did. “Yes, we have seen it. But if you are here to shut it off, you are too late. We disabled it two months ago.”
My heart sank. “But we thought…”
Mankato sighed. “Come.” He gestured for me to follow him. “We must gather supplies, but then we will take you home with us. The story of the spores and what it will take to stop them would be better told in a warm room over hot food.”
20: Oopsie
“Can we trust them?”
Sam shrugged. “Do we really have that much choice? They know this town better than us. Even if we turn down their help, it wouldn’t make much difference if they wanted to hurt us. Maybe they really do have answers, and if they’re serious about having disabled the egg here, we need to know whatever information they can give us.”
“Okay.” I was too tired to argue. I listened as the group roamed the aisles of the store, the two children running and calling to each other as the adults loaded up a whole convoy of carts from the nearly untouched building.
“Are you okay?”
I sighed and slumped down against the back of the bench we sat on. “I feel like crap. Maybe those granola bars really were bad.”
Sam reached out and placed a hand on my forehead. “You don’t have a fever. You’ve been acting strange for days now. Food poisoning is usually a lot worse and a lot more short-lived.”
“Maybe it’s just almost four months of apocalypse catching up with me. I dunno.”
“Could be.”
Mankato approached up the aisle between two checkout registers. He looked odd pushing a cart. His long hair and noble face gave him an almost ethereal air, as if he was the sort of person who would feel far more at home among the wind and wildlife than here, pushing a metal and plastic cart filled with packaged food. The rest of his group followed. As they passed us, Mankato gestured to us, and Sam and I took our carts and let them lead us out to the parking lot.
There, parked neatly in the faded lines of a parking space, stood a faded church bus. It even had the name of the church on top of the white paint, but all of the pigment was so scratched and worn as to make the words illegible.
I lagged behind, still struggling with the anxiety roiling in my head. The last time we’d met someone out here in the wilderness, they’d tried to kill us--and in Sam’s case, nearly succeeded. The rational part of my brain knew not everyone had turned into a monster. After all, we watched over two hundred people in the bunker that proved differently. People were still just people, apocalypse or not.
Finally I had no way to delay any longer and I had to follow the others’ example and push my cart up to the back of the bus. Within a couple minutes, it was all loaded. I felt my heart sink a little, watching all that food I’d gathered disappear into someone else’s vehicle. Sam’s right. We need to know what information they have. Suck it up and deal, Deidre.
Once I’d gotten my cane back and my cart had been sent rolling off to the side like all the others, Sam reached down and helped pull me into the bus. Someone closed the door behind me, and I slumped wearily into the nearest empty seat I found. Despite the cold air, once closed the bus smelled of sweat, making my stomach twist with nausea. Forcing myself into motion, I stood and unlocked one of the old-style windows to pull the top half down. Then, as the fresh and frigid air drifted in, I plopped back down on my seat.
The bus rumbled as the engine turned on, then with a jerk we were moving. Sam swung into the seat next to me. “Mind if I sit here?”
“Knock yourself out.” I let my head fall back against the seat, trying to breathe shallowly enough to avoid the stench of unwashed bodies. “Did they say how far away their home is?”
Sam shrugged one shoulder. “They said the other side of town, which I imagine isn’t quite as far as it was in Vegas.”
“Mmm.”
Sam’s hand closed over mine where it lay on the seat between us. “Still not feeling good.”
“Yeah.” I kept my eyes closed and hoped the movement of the bus would lull me to sleep rather than make me feel sicker.
It did neither, but thankfully Sam was right about the short trip. Perhaps twenty minutes later, the bus slowed to a stop and I opened my eyes. We were far enough outside of town that all I could see was rolling hills and dead grass.
Sam rose from his seat and I followed suit. One by one, the people descended the steps to the dirt below. My cane clanked on the metal floor as I took up the rear of the line.
As I stepped down onto solid ground, the home of our new friends came into view and I was hit with a massive wave of deja vu. Except for the flora surrounding it, the concrete pad abutting a small entryway into a horizontal half-cylinder of corrugated metal looked exactly like the home we’d left a little over two weeks ago. I glanced up at Sam in shock and confusion, and was gratified to see him just as unnerved as I was.
“Sam…”
“I see it.” From his eyes, I could see much of his complacence fading away, to be replaced with a cold wariness. Yin called him to help unload the van, and with a last meaningful glance at me, he headed for the back of the bus. I guess my cane marked me as someone who was unlikely to be much help, so I was left alone.
“You recognize it.” I jumped, and spun to see Mankato standing next to me. His hands were in the pocket of his jeans as he gazed out across the space separating us from the all-too-familiar bunker. It was not a question.
“It looks just like the other one.�
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Mankato nodded. “I am not surprised. You are not the first to come to us from another of the devices. They all seem to be located near similar compounds.”
“All…” I trailed off as a wave of nausea overwhelmed me. Groaning, I lifted my face to the breeze and sucked in cold air, the arm not holding my cane curling around my rebellious stomach.
“You are not well. We will tell you the whole story later.”
“I’m fine. It’s just been a long apocalypse.”
When the sick feeling subsided enough for me to open my eyes and look at him, he was gazing at me with a curious expression on his face. He reached out one weathered hand and gently touched my arm where it was still covering my belly. “No, young one. It is not the ending that causes your distress, but a beginning.” As soon as these odd words left his mouth, he dropped his hand and walked away. I watched him, his strides long and graceful as he joined the line of people carrying boxes of food toward the bunker. What the hell does that mean?
Mankato wasn’t telling, which meant my only hope for answers was to follow the tail end of the line, which was now over a dozen people strong, as they carried food and supplies into the bunker.
As I walked through the door and stood on the little landing at the top of the ramp, a deep sense of loss clutched at my chest until I could barely breathe. I half expected to see Zena ducking through the crowd, her eager face searching until her eyes landed on me. If I walked through the common area to the kitchen, I might see Cook, red-faced and pretending to be angry as he wielded a wooden spoon with unerring accuracy at any bit of food that might be burning or sauce that needed tasting. I could imagine Dr. Haroun in her white lab coat, her gentle hands fastening a bandage or using her stethoscope to check a heartbeat.
But as I limped down the ramp, my cane sounding counterpoint to my footsteps, the common area I stepped into was not the one I knew. The bones of it were the same. The great arch of the hangar soared above our heads--this one with both skylights intact. Along the left wall were the same doorways leading to the hydroponics lab and the bathrooms. To the right was the control room, the kitchen and the laundry/storage areas. But there the similarities ended.
Instead of tents, this bunker had little lean-tos lined up against the walls, made of plywood and random boards. As I walked past the first one, I looked through the open door to find a bunk bed, a wooden bench covered with flat cushions, and wooden shelves covering the wall opposite the beds. Belongings were neatly folded on these shelves. Three sets of shoes lined up next to the door’s exterior--two adult-sized pairs and one obviously meant for a child.
The rest of the tiny buildings were similar. There was no dorm tent here, no giant blue electronics tent, and rather than two long tables for eating, there were smaller ones surrounded by folding and wooden chairs.
People milled around, dozens of them. They congratulated Yin, Allie and the others who carried food. Children shrieked as they chased each other through the gathering, and I could just see a glimpse of Honey Badger as one of the children tossed a tennis ball and the dog leapt after it.
Mankato caught my eye from the opposite side of the open area and waved to me. When I crossed over to him, he pushed open the door of one of the lean-to buildings and gestured at the inside. “You and your companion may stay here for as long as you remain with us.” There was sadness in his eyes as he gazed inside. The cushions on the bench, made of scraps of multicolored fabric, had been stitched with far more love than skill. A glass vase and an old book sat on one of the wooden shelves.
“Did someone else live here?” I found it hard to believe they had extra spaces just waiting around in case people showed up.
“Yes.” Mankato ran his hand over a scratch on the plywood door. “A young family. Mother, father, a little girl who has only seen the world race around the sun five times. She is an orphan now, since her parents’ truck slid on a patch of ice. He gazed into my eyes. “Now it will house another, and be filled with life again.” With a nod to me, he once again walked away and left me feeling he knew something I didn’t about myself.
***
“You said if we came with you, you would tell us about the spores.” Sam pushed his bowl aside, and clasped his hands with his elbows propped on the table. I listlessly pushed the chunks of meat and vegetables around in mine, hungry but unable to contemplate putting any of the mushy chunks in my mouth.
Mankato, who sat across the rectangular table from us, nodded. Sam and I filled one side, Mankato and Yin the other, while two women sat on the ends. The woman who sat next to Mankato was as beautiful and elegant as he, with a long, thick braid of black hair wound around her head like a crown. Her name was Chumani, and she was Mankato’s wife of three decades. The younger woman appeared to be Yin’s wife, who so far had sat shy and silent without anyone telling us her name.
“There have been others.” The rich timbre of Mankato’s voice carried across the room so clearly that many people at nearby tables stopped to listen. “Like you, they’ve come seeking the egg to disable it and allow their people to walk the ground again. Through their stories, we have come to learn of four other devices. One here, one in Nevada, one in California, and one each in Texas and Florida. Through the power of eastward-drifting winds and storm systems, this has effectively allowed the spores to spread throughout the country. We don’t know whether the spores have gone worldwide, or if their effects faded out before they reached the eastern countries.”
I pushed my bowl aside, no longer interested in even pretending to eat. “So we just have to make sure they’re all shut off, and everything will go back to normal.”
Mankato gazed at me with sympathy in his eyes. “I am afraid it’s not so simple.”
“How? When we turned ours off, things got better for a while, but then they stopped progressing, which we thought meant another egg was still producing spores.” I kept my mouth open to continue, but Sam’s hand covered mine.
“I think if we let Mankato continue, he’ll tell us what’s going on.” I grimaced at him, but fell silent.
“Yes.” The weathered man exchanged a glance with Chumani. “We have been in contact, briefly and sporadically, with a facility in Atlanta that has enough infrastructure left to do some study on the spores. They informed us that the spores have begun replicating on their own, much like a normal mold or bacterium.”
Sam’s hand tightened over mine. I stared open-mouthed at the man across from me, as if studying the lines on his face would force his words to make sense.
Then the significance of what he’d said hit me, and I was left breathless as if someone had just punched me in the chest. “That…” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “You mean, they aren’t going away?”
“That is what I’m saying, yes.”
I met Sam’s gaze, silently pleading with him to tell me Mankato was wrong. But all I saw there was sad acceptance. It was what we’d all known deep down. Maybe not this, exactly. But we’d all known on some level that the spores were here to stay. We just couldn’t accept it--because how does one accept the fact that those they love are in a slow spiral toward an inevitable death by fear and famine?
“So if there’s people studying them, does that mean they have a solution?” This came from Sam.
Mankato shook his head. “Not yet. They have theories. They believe they are close to identifying a substance that may block the ability of the spores to cause such detrimental effects on the brains of humanity. There was a child born two months after the spores’ release who did not appear affected, a great breakthrough, as infants are not born with the fears and anxieties of their parents.”
“But if children are the key…” I couldn’t make myself finish the sentence. If babies were the ones who possessed the cure for the spores, it would be months or years before any kind of help existed. Our people didn’t have months. Unless they’d come up with some brilliant solution, they didn’t even have weeks. They had days. That was assuming they hadn’t kil
led each other in spore-induced paranoia or rages. Even if they’d found some way to get people into the city to search for food, even if they’d managed to repair the broken-down vehicles, they were still running out of time.
Sam spoke thoughtfully. “Why the babies, and not the rest of the Resistants?”
Mankato shrugged. “All I know is what I have been told. It seems they have tried using the blood of, as you say, Resistants, but with no success.”
“Then Deidre is right. And many more will die before a cure can be created.” Sam withdrew his hand from mine and leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed.
“Sam, we have to get back to them. If the spores aren’t going away, we’re their only hope.”
“I am afraid that will be impossible.” I glanced over at Mankato. “There are many miles of harsh winter between here and there. You would not survive, and I cannot spare any vehicles. I must care for my own people before I can concern myself with the rest of the world, and my people face the famine of a northern winter with no hope of replenished supplies beside what we can scrounge from the city. We will need every vehicle and every gallon of fuel to survive.”