Into the Yellow Zone

by Lynda Engler

  “That’s not my first choice,” replied Malcolm with a sarcastic smirk.

  “So, we’re up a creek without a paddle?” asked Kalla with a disappointed half-grin.

  Isabella raised an eyebrow at Kalla’s knowledge of that old expression – one that her own grandmother had used a hundred times.

  “Maybe,” said Malcolm. They walked outside to admire the replica. Even five decades of dirt and mold did not diminish its beauty. The sleek, white boat was wide and low, with only a single hull. It was maybe 50 or 60 feet long; Isabella was not a great judge of distance. It sat in front of them like a work of art; a useless work of art.

  “There has to be something else here we can use,” said Malcolm, walking back toward the museum building. Andra and Shia chased each other around in the grass on the museum’s back lawn. Malcolm called for them to rejoin them back inside. Isabella knew that even though there was no sign of trouble, it was not safe for the girls to play outside unsupervised. They had no idea what dangers lurked in this area, this close to the Yellow Zone.

  “Maybe a rowboat?” asked Clay. He and Kalla held hands as they walked behind Isabella and Malcolm. They had been doing that a lot more often since they left Dr. Rosario’s lab.

  “Sure, if no one’s had that idea in the last fifty years,” answered Malcolm with a half-smile.

  “Umm, right.” Clay shrugged his shoulders.

  There were no rowboats or other small craft they could use. Inside the great empty room, plaques showed where once an Inuit kayak and a Cherokee canoe had been on display for museum visitors, but they too were long gone.

  In the corner of the dusty room, a creaky door led to a dark staircase. Devoid of electricity, much of the world was dark these days. Without a window to let in light, the stairs were difficult to manage, but Isabella groped for the handrail, found it, and crept down the stairs, feeling each step through her thin cotton sneakers. At last, she reached the bottom and stepped ankle-deep in a stagnant puddle, more mud than water.

  “Yuck,” she said as she turned the door handle. She did not want to know what was in the disgusting water.

  “You should’a asked for the torch!” Malcolm yelled down the stairs and then descended after her, the flashlight illuminating the stairwell as if it were day.

  Flashlight. What an idiot I am, thought Isabella. Now she was thankful she had not tumbled down the dark stairs. She had given Malcolm that flashlight, and some spare batteries, when she sent him and his tribe away from her grandfather’s land. As much as she had hated to send away the man she loved, she knew that if she did not, her grandfather would come out of the shelter and force them to leave. Maybe even worse.

  That was before she decided to leave her shelter with them.

  The lower level had narrow windows placed high upon the walls; just enough to let in a few slanted rays of light. The workshops were downstairs.

  “Workers must have repaired or restored boats down here,” concluded Isabella, using the beam of light that shone from Malcolm’s flashlight to inspect benches of rusted tools.

  “It doesn’t look like it’s been disturbed either, except by the rain,” said Kalla, stepping out from behind Malcolm. She and the others had followed him down the stairs.

  Other puddles were scattered about the room. It smelled dank, musty, and stale. The building had sprung a leak or three over the years. Everything in it was moldy or rusted after decades of exposure to the water.

  “I guess looters didn’t want to risk the dark stairway,” guessed Malcolm.

  “Or they couldn’t figure out how to get anything out of here even if they had found a useful boat,” said Isabella as she opened large, floor-to-ceiling cabinets, looking for anything that might be useful. Behind the last cabinet before a plain, unbroken wall laid a lever marked with a small sign. “Manual Lift,” she read aloud.

  “Anyone wanna’ try it?” she asked with a smile.

  “Huh?” asked Malcolm, coming over to see what she had found.

  “Well, who would build a workshop in the basement without a way to get the boats upstairs?” asked Isabella.

  “Anybody used to elevators.”

  It was Isabella’s turn to stare at him in confusion. “What?”

  “Just because I was born into a world without electricity doesn’t mean I don’t know about the stuff! How many elevators have you seen? Just the one at Dr. Rosario’s building? Well, I’ve seen hundreds of them. Ewr is riddled with buildings with elevator shafts and little boxes inside that don’t move anymore. I know what they are! When they built this place, I’m sure they relied on electricity and elevators. So I’m echoing your question. Why a manual lift?”

  “Backup system, I guess.” Isabella pulled the handle with all her might. Unused for decades, the lever did not move easily, but it did finally budge a bit and eventually she pushed it all the way down. They all heard the click.

  Malcolm’s ears pricked up and he cocked his head toward the wall. His hearing was beyond that of any normal person’s – one of his better mutations. He reached past Isabella, and gave the back of the cabinet a forceful shove.

  The wall slid sideways slowly, opening an eight-foot door into another room. The manual lift turned out to be an industrial-sized elevator, its door camouflaged in the wall behind decades of dirt and fungal decay. Malcolm’s torch illuminated the entire room. To their great luck, someone had left a boat inside. A rowboat.

  “Okay, does anybody besides me find this just too lucky?” asked Isabella, tentatively stepping into the little space to get a closer look at the small boat.

  “Uh huh,” replied Malcolm. “Why on Earth would anyone leave a rowboat inside a hidden elevator? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Suddenly, Kalla yelled, loud and shrill.

  A horrifying sensation gripped Isabella. Instinctively, she knew there were Eaters hiding in the elevator! She grabbed both little girls’ hands and pulled them to her. Her eyes jerked wildly as she turned to see what Kalla had noticed in the half-lit room.

  A skeleton lay sprawled on the floor of the lift just behind their feet. A human skeleton.

  Isabella let out a breath she had not realized she was holding; then released her death-grip on Shia and Andra’s small wrists. Isabella’s instincts had failed her. She mentally kicked herself. Hysteria and panic were unbecoming character traits.

  Malcolm whispered close to her ear so only she could hear. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve been jumpy at times too.”

  She rolled her eyes at him, embarrassed. Jumpy? That was an understatement!

  Clay took Kalla’s hand, comforting her like a parent would a child. It was hard to remember that they were both only eleven years old. They were only children!

  “It’s okay; it’s been there a long time. Look at the dust on it,” said Clay.

  Kalla looked down at the pile of bones and took a step backward as Malcolm illuminated it with the flashlight.

  Isabella had never seen a human skeleton before and had no frame of reference for how long it would take a body to disintegrate into bare bones. The skeleton had indeed been in the elevator for a long, long time.

  Malcolm held Shia’s hand and Andra stood next to him, but neither little girl seemed the least bit frightened by the bones, just curious.

  Shia asked, “Did he bring the boat in here?” She stepped forward to get a better look.

  “Probably,” answered Isabella, kneeling down beside the bones to make a closer inspection.

  Shia left her father’s side and stood on her tiptoes to peer inside the small boat. “There are paddles in it. Guess he put them there. Why didn’t he take it upstairs?” She settled down on her flat feet again then shifted her weight onto her shorter leg. Andra stood beside her silently.

  “They are called ‘oars’,” said Isabella.

  Malcolm let go of Andra’s hand and inspected the working mechanism of the manual elevator. “It’s well rusted. Water probably leaked through the roof into the elevator s
haft. It’s gonna take more than one person to work the pulley.”

  Malcolm looked down at the skeleton again. “He couldn’a run it alone. Clay, give me a hand.”

  Malcolm handed the flashlight to Kalla so he and Clay could pull on the rusty chain. They heaved and pulled but it would not move at all. They kept pulling and finally something went snap! Creaking and moaning, the room-size elevator began to move, slowly at first, but steadily upward.

  “Yay!” shouted Andra and Shia together, clapping their hands as if they had just seen a wonderful magic trick.

  They watched the basement room disappear below them as they rose up one level of the building. When the groaning metal chain settled and ceased its complaint, Isabella saw the latch to open the door onto the main floor and pulled it. The door slid into a recess in the wall next to it and they dragged the boat out of the lift onto the main floor of the museum. Isabella wondered at the long-dead man who had left them this small gift. Did he work in that shop? Or did he find the boat years later? Was he a looter?

  Kalla asked the question she would not. “Why didn’t the man in the elevator leave when he figured out he couldn’t make the lift move? Why did he die in there?”

  Isabella looked back at the skeleton on the floor of the elevator before grabbing a corner of the rowboat.

  As they hefted the boat and began dragging it through the empty museum and outside across the dried, yellow grass to the river, Malcolm answered. “My guess is he got locked inside. Couldn’t get out. Poor guy.”

  Poor guy was right! Isabella felt bad for the man, starving to death inside the elevator, even if he was stealing the rowboat. Of course, the rules had changed since the old world died. Anything you could find Outside and make use of was yours for the taking, as long as no one else had claimed it first or it was someone’s personal property. Scavenging was a way of life, not a crime.

  “We’d better make sure this thing floats before we all get in,” suggested Clay as they reached the edge of the river. Small waves lapped at the rocky shore, but the river was relatively peaceful and the water almost calm. Isabella thought the engorged Passaic River had been huge, but that was nothing compared to the Hudson. She did not know how it compared to other rivers, but it was magnificent. She looked across it to the city of New York. That city had not been the target of nuclear bombs; but dirty bombs had irradiated it. Most of its buildings still stood. They were like giants guarding its treasures; or perhaps warning of the deadly creatures that lived among them. Isabella imagined Eaters hiding in every dark corner, lying in wait for any creature – animal or new human – that unknowingly came within smelling distance of it.

  She tore her eyes from the skyline and concentrated on not tripping over the uneven ground.

  They set the rowboat down and Malcolm checked for holes in the hull and the oars for cracks before pushing it into the water. They let it float for a few minutes and when no leaks were evident, Clay climbed in. A few moments later, Kalla joined him and when the boat remained floating at the edge of the river, Malcolm allowed Isabella in, and then lifted the two little girls and their gear inside. Once they all were settled in the small boat, Malcolm finally climbed in and pushed away from the shore with one of the oars.

  He said, “My plan is to take the boat upriver until we see some signs of people. If we don’t find anyone, or even if we do, we are turning around in nineteen days and heading back. Are we agreed?”

  Isabella was glad for even the short time granted her for the trek and nodded her agreement. “Fine. I won’t argue for any more time Malcolm. We’ll find people. Dr. Rosario said we would. And we’ll spread the word about the government’s plan.”

  “I’m still not sure what good the warning will do, other than frighten some. Belle, I know you want to help, and I do too, but people whose lives pass in the blink of an eye can’t plan that far into the future. So don’t be disappointed if no one believes us – or they do, but they ignore us anyway,” said her husband.

  He rowed the little boat, unsteadily at first, but finally figured out how best to dip the oars into the water. Malcolm had powerful muscles and once he worked out the timing and angle of the oars, and managed to get both oars into the water roughly simultaneously, he developed a rhythm.

  Isabella steadied herself in the rocking boat as Malcolm rowed farther and farther into the river. “They’ll learn to protect themselves – once they know they need to.”

  Since the new humans lived in peace with each other and the Eaters kept to what remained of the cities, they had not generally needed to think about protecting themselves or their families. There were plenty of things in this new world that could kill them – predators, diseases, and eventually the environment itself – but a government that would actively seek to exterminate them was a whole new danger.

  Andra, always listening but rarely joining the conversation, made a quiet observation that said it all. “Dr. Rosario will find a cure. Pumpkin will help him and the people will come out of the holes in the ground.”

  “She’s right. The mutants won’t have fifty years to prepare, Malcolm. They’ll be out soon,” added Kalla. She was listening intently to the conversation but her eyes were glued to the river ahead of them.

  Isabella cringed at Kalla’s use of the term mutants but ignored it as she expanded on the younger girl’s observation. “And once the shelter folk are out, the government will make sure they have the land all to themselves. We need to warn the new humans outside.”

  Malcolm nodded and continued rowing the little boat into the Hudson River.

  Chapter Ten

  Isabella

  They had no way to track the time since the clouds had been blocking the sun all day, but Isabella estimated that half an hour was about her limit for rowing. She had a difficult time pulling both oars with the same strength and tended to veer left so she was constantly correcting her course. Her arms ached in ways she could never have imagined a month ago. Kalla was no better and could not row more than maybe twenty minutes before being relieved.

  Clay might not have been fully grown yet but still had considerably more upper body strength than either girl, having the physical maturity of a fourteen-year-old. He and Malcolm had wound up sharing most of the work. They kept the boat far enough off the shore so they did not hit any submerged rocks, but close enough that they stayed out of the downstream current. They switched off whenever anyone got too tired, carefully getting up and changing positions in the cramped space of the small craft.

  The little girls sat at the front of the boat, with their knees pulled up tightly to their chins, trying to stay out of the way, but keeping sharp eyes and ears attuned to any signs of human habitation on the west bank of the river. They would not cross to the east side this close to New York, even if they saw signs of life. It was simply too dangerous until they were significantly father north of the city. Isabella was glad they had left the cat behind. She remembered the feline’s hatred of the raft they had used to cross the Passaic River and had scratches on her arms as a lasting souvenir of that event. Pumpkin would have only added to her scars if she had forced him into a rowboat.

  Shia spotted thin wisps of smoke rising from the densely wooded area. “Look!” she called out, pointing to it. The trees were almost impenetrable here and there was little if any place to leave the river.

  Malcolm saw a break in the trees and pointed to a clearing. “Let’s check it out,” he said.

  Clay pulled the oar on the left side of the boat and steered them to a placid section of the riverbank where they could secure the rowboat.

  Malcolm hopped into the shallow water at the river’s edge. “Throw me the rope! I’ll tie it to a tree.”

  Clay did as instructed, but the tree trunks were so wide that their rope was not long enough to encircle it. Ten feet of rope would tie them to a dock, but was not nearly enough to reach up the beach and circle a huge tree trunk.

  Malcolm rubbed his chin, and looked at the boat, the tree
s, and the shoreline. “Okay, everyone out. We’ll drag the boat onto the shore.” Once they were all on dry land, it was relatively easy for Malcolm and Clay to drag the rowboat out of the water and position it out of sight under leafy branches of trees that stretched to the river’s edge. Scavenging may be the law Outside, but they had no intention of being its victims.

  An overgrown and weedy trail was barely visible through the trees. Isabella never would have spotted it, but Clay found it easily enough. The narrow trail snaked up the steep slope, winding far to the left, before making a hairpin turn to the right as it reached the top of the hill. Malcolm led the way, following the scent of chimney smoke, just like the smell that had led them to Telemark. “If it is a community of Outside people, I hope they have sentries to lead us in.”

  “Stop there!” came a shout from the top of the hill. Malcolm had gotten his wish.

  “They’d better be friendly,” he said in a soft voice to Isabella who stood only inches from him. Shia glued herself to his leg and Andra clutched at Isabella’s pants leg once again with her skinny-fingered death grip.

  “They are.” Isabella relaxed her stance, moving almost imperceptibly out of Malcolm’s space.

  Both Clay and Malcolm had their bows strapped to their backs, arrows in a quiver hanging beside them. They were hunting tools, not weapons. Usually. Just like in Dover when the Eaters attacked, Isabella knew they functioned as both, and Malcolm was the best shot she knew.

  “How do you know?” whispered Andra, looking up at her with trusting eyes.

  “They are, I just know.” Her assurance calmed the girls, but Malcolm and Clay maintained their vigilant position, ready for anything that might come their way. The new humans were generally friendly to each there, but there were exceptions to every rule.

  Isabella fervently hoped her instincts were on target this time. It could mean their lives if she was wrong.