Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
Cargo
Jen Castleberry
CASSIDY
Prologue
The extra-terrestrials are aggressors. They're hostile, right from the start. That's what my father tells me. He says hostility is potent when it's quiet; he says the ETs are as quiet as mice.
My mother doesn't like it when he says things like that. "You'll scare her," she says. "She's a child, for god's sake."
"For god's sake? God's sake?" He throws her bible on the ground. He likes to do that when he's having a fit. Sometimes, I think he only does it to get her hackles up, to see her scowl.
They didn't always fight like this. I'm sure I can remember them loving one another once. They were silly when I was very small; they made each other blush.
Now I think they'd say good riddance to each other if they could. But neither one of them can say it to me. I'm all that holds us together anymore.
The world used to be much bigger. My father tells me that. It's nothing but a continent now, a hub for the refugees of fallen countries.
The ETs have taken control of the Continental Order. Their hybrids enforce a new law. I'm too small to remember what the old law was; what life was like when we were alone on the continent. My father remembers, though. He says life was better before the Order reigned supreme. He calls the ETs names that would put soap in my mouth, if I said them.
The Order says that mankind ruined the Earth. They say we flagged them down with champagne and roses, whatever that means. They say they'll restore the vitality of Earth, that they'll make a better home for us, that they'll save the very best of us.
Some people believe them. Not my father. He doesn't believe in anything, I think. My mother believes too much. I just want to believe something, but I'm not sure what it should be.
I haven't seen an ET before. They don't mingle with mankind. I don't think I've seen a hybrid, either, but some people say they look like us.
"How do we know we're not hybrids, then?" I say.
"We're people," my father says, like being people is a lofty, unobtainable thing.
My mother says the ETs and the hybrids are people too. My father goes at her with teeth and talons whenever she says something like that.
The Order wants peace. That's what they say, anyway, and some people believe it.
"Peace," my mother says. "We have peace. The North has always had peace."
"We do not, and we have not," my father says. He always sounds like he's scolding her. "There's never been peace in the North, or in Central, or anywhere else. It's a nonsense word." My father doesn't believe in peace.
My parents still call the three states by their old names: North, Central, and South. Once, before what was left of the world encroached on our continent, we were all Americans. Now we only call ourselves American in the North. The central region speaks French. That's Nouvelle France now. The southern region is a dead territory, smoking and flat, wearing the blemishes of many bombs. Nobody lives there anymore.
It doesn't matter where we reside, if we call ourselves American or French, northerner or southerner or something in between. We're all citizens of the Order. We're all that's left of mankind. We should all be special. But the Order says the very best of us will carry on without the rest.
Under the Order, hybrids and men work side by side. Government jobs are granted by selection, and it’s highly prestigious work. I'm just learning to tie my shoes when the Order asks my father to join them. They send a benefits package by courier. It's an offer that could set us up for life, my mother says.
He turns it down, with choice words, and my mother calls him a fool. She watches the courier leave. She presses her nose flat against the glass of our living room window like a child looking after an ice cream truck.
My father doesn't like that. He prefers to keep the blinds shut. He says we're safer that way. He keeps the curtains drawn too. Our house is muggy and dark and the three of us are sardines in a can.
Our house was bright once. I think I can remember that. Now my father keeps the sun outside. All we have of it are dusty bars of light, bronze threads that filter in through loose stitches in the drapes.
My father was bright once, too. He had bright eyes and a bright, sun-washed face. He made my mother smile. Now there's a shadow over his eyes, a shadow underneath them. He used to sing, but nothing comes between his teeth anymore unless it's a spitting, spiteful thing.
My father hates the ETs. He hates everything they touch, which is everything. He hates the North, but Central is the same and there's nowhere else in the world to go. All the disagreeable nations of the earth have convened here. There's nowhere to ex-pat; there's nothing but death in the old ruined places. Apart from the continent, there's only desert and ice. We're all stuck, really, but my father minds it more than most.
My father stays up late some nights, packing a suitcase, but he always unpacks it in the morning. He wants the tomorrows of his childhood back. He talks about the old days, but they're as stale as old crackers, as stale as the South. He's not happy, regaling memories; he has too much remorse to fawn over nostalgic things. He never smiles, telling the tales of his youth. He's angry, and my mother is angry and I'm angry, too. But I think I wouldn't be so angry if my parents weren't around.
My father likes to shout. I don't know why; he's only angrier after he's done it, and our house is as hot as the blood in his cheeks.
My mother doesn't shout back when he's shouting at her. She knows how to cut him down in a quiet way, like catching a wildebeest in a snare.
They fight all the time and I watch them do it: two dark figures and a stark divide. The Offer cameos in almost every argument. My mother won't let it go; not till the mists fall, and by then she's got plenty of spite up her sleeve.
I dislike the both of them more and more, the older I get. Every argument, every hot glare that brings them nose to nose, like rams caught by the horns, makes me pine for a parentless existence. Maybe that's why I don't cry when Dr. Brant takes me away.
--
The ETs procure continental annihilation in stages. The mists come first, in waves that make everybody sick. I don't get sick, my parents don't get sick, but most people do. And then the air raid begins. Bombs fall like asteroids, the way they fell on the South. They pock-mark the earth, making craters where towns and cities used to be.
"We should've left," my father says. "We should've left the North. Now we're going to die."
"We're not," my mother says. "Look at us! We're not dying. We're not."
It's true. We aren't dying. Everyone else seems to be, but we aren't. We're as healthy as we ever were. The mists have no effect on us. We take up residence in the basement whenever a strike begins and no shrapnel finds us there. But we miss the upstairs. We miss the outside, too.
"I don't understand it," m
y mother says, like she could fix things herself if she could figure it all out. "I don't understand what we've done. We're good people."
"There's no such thing as good people," my father says. "Or good aliens. We're all going to die."
"Language," my mother says. She doesn't like to talk about death in front of me, but I know it's everywhere, now. Everyone is sick since the mists came. When the air raid started up, some people died straight away. Everything that was green in the North turned to sand, and people's bodies flew off on the wind like dust.
--
I’m small when the mists come to the North, and the first bomb comes later that same year. Between one sort of ambush and the next, there’s the census, a massive undertaking of records orchestrated by the Order.
A man comes to our house, after the mists, before the air raid. We're in the living room when he arrives, my mother and father and I. We all give a start at his knock on the door, a quick rap three times over. We haven't had a visitor in months.
My mother is playing jacks with me on the carpet when he comes. She pauses with her ball still up in the air. It bounces off her knuckles and sling-shots somewhere, out of sight. I strain my eyes to see where it goes, but the shadows are quick to claim it, like a hoard of black ants over a crumb.
I hear the soft thump it makes, hitting the floor. My eyes dart to my mother’s hand, but she's scooped up nothing in the interim. She's watching the front door like my father, so I watch it, too.
No one moves to answer the knock, so I think I'll answer it myself. I've hardly raised a heel to stand before my mother's hand is on me, pinching my elbow and making me pause. "Don't cross your father," she says.
He’s scowling at me, I realize. He usually reserves all of his frowns for my mother, but now he’s staring at me. I look at my knees so I won’t have to meet his awful gaze.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. My heart dips a little bit. Maybe we won't open the door. I should've known better than to think that we would. We keep our door locked ever since the mists came. We’re like inmates in our own house, but my father calls us safe.
It's afternoon now, the hottest part of the day, and my father's eyes are as red as the sun. I shouldn't know the hour so well, not with our blinds shut and all the curtains drawn and only one stub of a candle lit. But I'm sure of it, somehow. I’ve always had an acute sense of time.
I cross my fingers behind my back. I want my father to open the door, but he’s still sitting at his desk. He hasn’t moved a muscle except to glare. The knock comes again and he crosses into the foyer. Now my mother is watching him, so I follow suit.
My father’s hand is steady, flipping deadbolts with the barest of tremors. There's a patch made of duct tape over the peep hole, but he doesn’t bother to peel it away. I think he must know whose knocking. There's something expectant about him, something resigned. He's not surprised the way my mother and I are.
When he opens the door, sunlight comes wailing in. It strikes my eyes with the weight of a cast iron pan. I throw my hands up at the brightness of the day.
All the little muscles in my forehead want to crunch down, to block out the light, but I manage a squint. I see my father standing at the door. There's a black halo around him, but it disintegrates as my vision adjusts. He assesses our guest with blood in his cheeks and knuckles as white as the sky.
My mother hasn't moved from her spot on the carpet. She tucks her dress under her knees so I tuck mine up, too.
It’s my least favorite dress, a brown shift without sleeves. It sticks to the sweat on my skin like saran. It used to be white, a bright, starchy white with a flowery, decoupage fringe. Now the rosettes adhered to its hem are wilting, the way flowers wilt when they've been out in the heat.
My mother’s dress is just as filthy and timeworn, and my father’s trousers have lost the old shape of the seams. We wear the same items over and over since the mists came. We haven't had spare water to wash our clothes in weeks, and just barely enough to wash ourselves.
My mother folds her hands together in her lap. I sit on top of mine. I want to spring up, to leap through the open door, to stand outside for just a moment. To run and run until I find a happier home. But I stay put.
My father says there are no happy homes anymore. He says that no one goes outside. Everyone is sick since the mists came, everyone but us. Porch swings only rock at the whim of the wind. Yellow grass stands knee-high, and the streets are always empty.
The man at the door has a badge that says CENSUS. He doesn't look sick to me. He's not even that thin. I wonder if he's an ET. I hardly know if I've seen an ET before, or a hybrid, for that matter, but I still wonder: is he human like me?
He's dressed all in beige. He's wearing long sleeves and long, airy slacks and heavy boots. He has short hair and dark skin, red at the back of his neck. He's got a pack on his back and a leather bound portfolio in his hands.
My father steps aside and the man in beige comes in. My mother says nothing, but I see her jaw twitch. I think she would stammer if she could muster up a sound.
The man in beige hands each one of us a census form. He watches us as we fill them out. He stands just inside the foyer with his hand very close to the knob of the front door like he can't wait to leave. Like he knows something bad is coming. Like he thinks it might come today.
He checks his watch a couple of times. The room is very quiet. Nobody smiles. Nobody offers him a cup of tea the way we used to do when guests stopped by. My father sits back down behind his desk. He’s got the devil on the bridge of his nose, stitching up the space between one brow and the other.
I’ve seen my father mad before. He shouts and makes great, flailing demonstrations with his hands. But he’s quiet now; simmering, I think. The silence of our living room bears down on my nerve and makes my heart race.
My mother stays beside me. She holds my fingers, guiding my pen across the page as I sign my name on a blocky, dotted line. I try to write as well as she does. I bite my tongue as my loopy letters wobble from left to right.
When we're through writing, through making checkmarks in some boxes and x's in others, my mother pricks the pad of her finger with a pin. She presses her bloody fingertip to her census form in the designated spot - a glossy circle with words underneath it too big for me to read. "Verification," she says, whispering into my ear, "Method B, Type 2: Blood Sample."
There's a glossy circle on my form, too. I thrust my finger into her lap and squeeze my eyes shut. She turns my palm over and gives me a fresh pin. "I can't do it for you," she says.
The man in beige is watching us. I have to stick myself three times before I bleed.
The man in beige takes our forms. We don't see him again. The first bomb comes two weeks later. It shakes the earth for miles. It knocks everything over, breaking apart all of the things I've ever known into a thousand irreparable pieces.
We live in a broken house after that, with only a frame where the door used to be. The bombs always drop in the middle of the day, so we keep to the basement while the sun is still up.
My father wants us to stay in the basement all the time, but at night we sneak upstairs, my mother and I. We find a new place where the roof's come undone and stare up at the stars.
I'm still not allowed to go outside, but now, the outside gets in. Our locks and curtains can't bar it from the house. I see pieces of it whenever our walls splinter off. The world looks so different now. It's changed in an instant. Everything that has ever been green is just dirt and gravel and sand. Bark peels away from the trees, flaking off like dead skin. Our town is a desert. A fog sits on the air at eye-level, made of grit the color of smoke. I cough sometimes, but I'm not sick, not the way most people are. My lungs are just penned up by sand.
My father patches up the holes in our walls with planks of wood falling down from the roof. He stays awake all the time, keeping watch. Our neighbors aren't neighbors anymore. They haven't been, not since the onset of the mists, and especially not since the ai
r raid began. Everyone who is sick or hurt or desperate has become a stranger.
I'm sick of my parents, but I'll have no one else if they're not here. I just want a friend, human or hybrid or ET, I don't care. But it's just the three of us now, my mother and father and I. Sometimes, I think we might be the only people left in the entire world.
I don't sleep well after the air raid begins. My mother tells me things about the Reservation - rumors, mostly - like bedtime stories to help me fall asleep. She says it's the last place on the continent unaffected by the bombs, too far away for the winds to carry the mists, the only place left on the whole planet that's peaceful and safe, a place where nobody is scared or sick. A place that's still green and blue. That's what the Reservation is supposed to be.
"Not everyone can go there," she says. "There's not enough space, and the sick people would just bring all their sicknesses with them."
She tells me we're lucky. We aren't sick. We're special. Soon, very soon, the Order will come and hand us our tickets to the Reservation.
My father doesn't tell me stories like that. He hates the ETs. I think my mother might hate them too, but she never says so. She says the Reservation is our only chance of survival. She says my father has too much pride. I don't know what to believe. I don't want to call either one of them wrong.
When Dr. Brant comes, he only comes for me. My parents have to stay behind. My mother cries and kisses me and says how lucky I am. Over and over again, she calls me lucky.
My father says nothing, not even goodbye. I think Dr. Brant must be human. Surely, my father wouldn't let an ET take me away without a fuss. But I can't be sure.
I think Dr. Brant will take me to the Reservation, but he takes me to a convent in Nouvelle France instead. I don't see my parents after that. The nuns at the convent are my parents and the bunker beneath the convent is my home.
It's peaceful there, and safe, exactly the sort of place my mother said we'd be lucky to find. The sort of place that shouldn't exist anywhere but the Reservation. But it does exist, underground, and I live there, mostly happy, mostly unafraid, for eleven years.
Cargo (The Reservation Trilogy Book 1) Page 1