by Lynda Engler
Luke had always planned to take Isabella back to the shelter, or at least find her quickly enough that he could get back without too much harm to his own body. Now he had to decide if he would go back there, alone. He knew his family would take him back, even if he could not get married because of his damaged genes. He would be stuck in the shelter for the rest of his life. It was all he had ever known, and for most of his life, he had thought there were no other choices for him. Now … now he was not sure anymore where his future lay.
He had seen too much of the world now to be satisfied being cooped up in the shelter anymore.
He did not have many other options. He could not go back to the military base at Picatinny, although they would welcome him as a lowly worker. They would not allow him to get married and have kids but they might educate him and he could move up in society. But knowing now what the government was doing to the mutants… no. He could not work for them.
Perhaps he would go back to Telemark with Isabella and her new family. He had seen at least a few good looking girls there, if he could just learn to look past the mutations. They would value his genes!
A large bird – an eagle or a hawk – flew overhead in the clear summer sky, its shadow passing over him. Luke followed its path, wondering if that was Araddea’s spirit up there, following him and watching over his travels. Could she really set her mind free from her body to soar through the sky like a bird? Or were her visions just the delusions of a mutated mind? His brief meeting with the village seer before he left Telemark had confused him. She told him about her visions and the instructions she had given his cousin-sister and her family. He did not understand everything she said, but he had gotten enough information – hopefully – to find Isabella.
His eyes tracked the bird of prey as it flew over a weed-infested parking lot alongside an ancient shopping mall. At one time, concrete had covered the flat area but now it looked like a grassy savannah. The middle of the grass was flat so Luke headed out to investigate.
A path cut a swath through the meadow to the flattened section in the center. Someone had been through within the last few days. No military vehicle could have made this narrow trail. After a few minutes, Luke reached the heart of the empty lot and confirmed his suspicion.
The wild grassland had been compacted flat by two tents. He could clearly make out the holes where someone had pounded in tent stakes. Of course, Luke could not be certain it was Isabella, but he was positive that it was a small group of people traveling on foot. If it was them, they had reached this spot late enough in the day to make camp. It seemed as safe a place as any to stay for the night; there was good visibility if anybody – or anything – threatened them. He was definitely catching up and hurried his pace to make the best of the remaining daylight. Besides, there was no shade on the grassy lot to rest in anyway.
Luke made his way back to the interstate where giant signs hung over the wide road on skeletal metal structures and even larger signs stood on the edges of the roads. Whatever the signs had once said was long ago lost, along with every other bit of digital data that the 21st century contained.
Luke could not find any indication of which road the group had traveled. Without any good clues, his best guess was that they had continued down the relatively clear interstate, heading east, in search of the mysterious man in Araddea’s vision.
Luke walked along the highway, avoiding collapsed overpasses by walking through the brush on the side of the road. Just before full dark, he stopped and camped on the side of the road several miles east of where he was sure his sib had made camp on her first day out of Telemark. He was confident he would find them within the next two days.
Chapter Six
Isabella
An unbroken section of wall stretched from end to end at the base of the tall building. The six travelers walked around investigating, hoping to find an entrance. They found it easily enough but it was locked. A locked door was not surprising to any of them – finding one open would have been a small miracle.
At the back entrance, another camera watched them. Isabella wondered who was on the other end of it.
“I’m scared,” said Andra, scooping up the cat in her arms like a security blanket. “Why is it following us?”
Click. A mechanism on the non-descript door suddenly unlocked and the door sprang open a crack. Isabella expanded the opening enough to stick her head inside. A brightly lit hallway extended through the length of the building, a central corridor to the inner bowels of the structure.
Malcolm pushed her aside and went in first, and Isabella followed anxiously. Clutching Pumpkin, Andra followed so closely that she stepped on the heel of Isabella’s right sneaker. As she bent down to fix her shoe, Shia darted past with her lopsided gait and clung to her father’s dark legs with all ten little fingers. Clay and Kalla entered the building last, but Clay wedged a small rock into the doorframe to keep it from locking them in. They might need a quick exit!
“Where should we go?” whispered Isabella.
“Why’re you whispering?” Malcolm asked, rather loudly in the silent corridor. “Whoever is here knows we are too. He just invited us in. Come on.” Malcolm led the way down the straight passageway, trying each side door until one opened to his touch. “In here.”
The room revealed an airlock. This was not a personal lock that admitted only one person at a time, like the one at Isabella’s shelter. This was a room-sized marvel that would allow a team of people to enter all at once. Good thing too, as they had a ‘team.’
A sign on the airlock read “Le Rochér Research Lab 1.” Isabella pressed a green button on the panel next to the door and the airlock door slowly cycled open. Its walls were three feet thick, much thicker than the walls of her family shelter’s airlock. The group entered without a sound. They looked terrified – especially Kalla – but Isabella calmed them. “Don’t worry. It’s just a way to keep the polluted air out and the clean air in. It’s bigger than I’m used to but otherwise very much like the airlock where I grew up.” Isabella pushed the START button and a series of green indicator lights illuminated on the door.
There were no shower nozzles in the chamber, but the heavy blast doors slowly closed on their massive hinges, the ultraviolet lights engaged, and the chamber began to hum. “Close your eyes. The light kills bacteria we’ve brought into the airlock but it’s not good for your eyes.”
She did not wait to see if they listened but clamped her own eyes shut. Belatedly, she shouted a second warning. “Make sure they’re closed! This stuff can blind you!”
When the humming stopped and the airlock door opened with a pneumatic wheeze, Isabella finally dared to open her eyes. There was a sterile-looking white room on the other side. “This way,” she said.
Showers lined the walls and a rack of coveralls hung nearby. “I guess we should wash up, huh guys?” The little girls had experienced their first clean showers at Telemark and now eagerly stripped off their clothes. Pumpkin, freed from Andra’s constraining hold, dashed around the room inspecting every nook and cranny.
Isabella recalled the stinging, burning chemical shower she had gone through at home when she had run Outside without her chem-rad suit. “Keep your eyes closed and breathe through your nose. This won’t be pleasant. This is decontamination.”
But the water that fell from the nozzle was cool, clean and odorless. After washing for a few minutes, Isabella turned off her shower, grabbed a towel, and dried off. Clay and Malcolm were waiting their turn, giving the girls some measure of privacy by talking with their backs to them, but she knew they were eager to get this over with and meet whoever must be waiting for them on the other side of the sterile room.
Decontaminated and dressed in matching light blue coveralls, the barefoot group stepped through a second door to meet their host. Shia and Andra looked like circus clowns, the oversized garments hung loosely from their little bodies. Whoever lived in this ancient building certainly was not expecting children.
* * *
Luke
Luke rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as the first rays of sunlight spread over his tent and shimmered through the screen. He lucked out that his sib’s group only took two of their tents and that Oberon gave him the one they had left behind. The synthetic material was rip-proof, waterproof, and with the zippers pulled up, it gave Luke the illusion of security, even on the side of a highway. Not that he expected any traffic! He could appreciate his grandfather’s longing for the return of old technology. A society that turned out materials like this tent was something he would welcome as well. You can’t go back in time, Luke reminded himself.
The Telemark community had supplied him with food and water for his journey and all this traveling through the woods had gotten him used to using the great outdoors as his toilet... but he still missed his morning shower and his toothbrush. He wished he had thought to bring that one little item, even if there wasn’t anybody nearby to breathe on.
The solitude of Outside still awed him. He was so used to having other people around all the time; being alone was alien to him. His capture and what he had come to think of as his subsequent imprisonment by the Picatinny troops, and later his short visit to the mutant community, made him realize how much he hated to be alone. The quicker he caught up to Isabella, the sooner he could return to people. Once again, he considered his options for the future. He could still go back to his own family. Even if he could not have a girl, at least he would be with people again. He missed his cousin-brother Mark and all the idiotic stunts they pulled on each other. Moreover, although he would not admit it to anyone else, he even missed his mother. He broke camp and hurried down the interstate, chasing his sibling and the dream of his family in hopes of getting some sense of normalcy back in his life.
An hour later, the interstate met a broad river, swollen from recent rains, and he paralleled it for a short stretch. Luke sat down to consult his map. The road crossed the river about a half-mile ahead. He hoped the bridge would still be intact.
As he folded up the map, his eye caught something on the other side of the river. A wooden raft lay on the muddy riverbank. The water lapped at its edges, threatening to pull it into the river if the water level rose even a single inch. It could not have been there long – it looked as though one good rain would wash it downstream.
Racing down the highway, Luke arrived at the bridge quickly. Was it safe to cross? Abandoned cars littered the bridge, giving Luke the confidence that it was structurally sound. If it could support their weight, then it would undoubtedly handle his. He sprinted across the bridge, weaving through the abandoned vehicles, and then hopped over the safety barrier on the far side. Climbing down the embankment, he inadvertently slid down the steep slope and came to rest in a prickly bush.
Luke swore. He pulled brambles from his hair as he extricated himself from the prickers and brushed dirt and leaves from his clothes. He followed the river upstream to where it met the highway. It was slow going. The rocks were slippery along the riverbank and he almost fell into the water a few times. The last thing he wanted to do was touch the polluted waters Outside. While he had welcomed the shower at Telemark village, he had known that its water was relatively safe because it came from deep underground where fewer chemicals had leached over the last five decades. Out here, he had to be careful. Just because he was no longer a candidate to pass along healthy genes did not mean he wanted to shorten his own life any more than necessary!
He could see the raft dead ahead. Running toward it, he slipped on a wet rock and his left leg flailed under him. His right leg slid dangerously close to the contaminated water. He wrenched it away from the river and then tumbled backwards, away from the water. Luke’s right leg came down hard, his ankle hit a jagged rock, and his body landed in a heap on the damp earth. He screamed in pain. Tears started to form and he inhaled deeply to try to stop them.
Slowly, painfully, he pulled up his pants leg and peeled back his sock, which was already soaked through with dark, red blood. Groaning with the pain, he twisted around to remove the backpack and take out his first aid kit. He was glad he had appropriated the important things from his Grandfather’s shelter. Toothbrushes be damned!
After taking off his shoe, then the bloody sock, he removed a package of white gauze from its plastic covering and wrapped his ankle tightly with it, staunching the flow of blood at least for the time being. He probably needed stitches. Right, he thought, like I’m going to find that kind of medical care Outside. He tried to control his ragged breaths and wiped the tears from his eyes with his shoulder. Get it together, Luke! You’re acting like a little kid!
Luke sat for a few minutes, applying pressure to the wound, through the tight gauze. The pain burned and stabbed through his entire leg. His ankle throbbed. He gritted his teeth and waited, pushing the gauze against his leg as hard as he could for as long as he could.
Eventually he removed the cloth to see that the blood flow had tapered down, and now he could apply some of the liquid bandage from the bottle in the first aid kit.
Exposing the inch and a half long open wound, Luke clamped it together tightly with his fingers and used his other hand to brush the cut with the liquid bandage. It burned when it hit the gash and he choked down a solid scream, clenched his jaw, and held in the pain. Once the bleeding stopped, he tossed aside the bloody gauze and put a new one on his ankle, in case it started to bleed again. He worried about infection and checked the first aid kit to see how many bandages were left. Five. Good enough, he hoped. He tossed his bloody sock into the river and watched it float downstream.
After pulling a clean sock from his backpack, repacking the first aid kit and putting his shoe back on, he continued toward the wooden structure he sought, each step more painful than the one before it.
The discarded raft clung tenaciously to the river’s edge. It was made of dilapidated lumber and ropes. The rope was wet, but there was no moss or mold on it, which meant it was new. Who else but Isabella and her traveling companions would have made this? If they had followed the highway like he had done, though, why would they have needed a raft to cross the river?
Luke now realized he had made the wrong decision to stick to the interstate, and it was only by chance that he had not wandered too far from his sib’s path. The raft was proof that Isabella’s group had crossed farther upstream. They had taken a different road than the one he had been following, and whatever road that was, it obviously did not have a bridge.
He needed to take the weight off his ankle, so he sat on a large dry rock nearby, pain shooting through his ankle as he did. Moaning, Luke pulled the roadmap out again and found his location. Sure enough, the other major thoroughfare east of the tangled intersection crossed this river upstream, about a mile from his present location. The powerful water must have pushed the raft down here.
So the big question was, after arriving on the east bank of the river, did Isabella and her group backtrack to the road they had been on, or did they just continue on the interstate?
Having guessed wrong once, Luke no longer trusted his intuition. Instead, he relied on what little knowledge he had about tracking. Sure enough, he soon found footprints embedded in the mud and followed them, hobbling slowly and favoring his injured ankle. He thought he heard something behind him and turned to look, but there was no movement in the bushes and he did not see anyone.
An hour later – pain and all – he was on the east side of the Passaic River, following the smaller road that he should have taken in the first place. This time he was lucky. The map showed another fork in the road coming up, just inside the Yellow Zone, and Luke knew that if he did not find them before that, he would have to choose again. With any luck, he would find a clue to which way they went. He was not eager to follow Isabella into one of the most toxic areas of the world but he had no choice.
Once again, he thought he heard a sound behind him and turned, but there was nothing there. A shiver ran up his spine. Pull yourself together, y
ou dumb twit, he thought, and kept on walking.
Chapter Seven
Isabella
An old man stood in the brightly lit laboratory. Beakers, test tubes, and strange equipment littered benches and tabletops throughout the room. His long, scraggly gray hair floated over his forehead in thin wisps as he devoured the silent group of children with his eyes.
For several long seconds no one moved or spoke. Isabella knew that as de facto leader of this expedition – it was her idea after all to set off on this mission – she should say something, but all she could do was stare at Araddea’s vision materialized in the flesh. A part of her knew all along that the priestess’ prediction would turn out to be correct, but facing the reality shocked her dumb.
The old man inspected Isabella, then Malcolm, his gaze wandered slowly to Kalla and Clay, the little girls and finally back to Isabella. “Welcome. I am Dr. Rosario. And you are…?”
“Is… Is… Isabella,” she stammered. A lock of her long hair unconsciously worked its way into her fingers. “Ah, and my husband Malcolm.” Then she slowly stuttered out the names of the rest of the group.
“And who is this?” He knelt next to Andra and reached a withered hand out to the cat. One long, skinny finger scratched gently under the cat’s neck.
Andra clutched Pumpkin tighter and drew back from the old man, pushing her little body into Isabella’s left leg so hard she almost knocked the older girl over.
“It’s okay. I won’t hurt you,” said Dr. Rosario soothingly and withdrew his hand. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen a cat. Or kids. Or talked to anyone for that matter.”
He stood up and walked to a bench across the room. Andra released her vise grip hold on Isabella’s thigh as he moved away from them.