Talitha stood still for a moment, looking at Helen’s hand covering hers. None of it surprised her, but it was the first time she had heard it from them.
“I understand,” Talitha said after a short silence. “I’m sorry that I’ve caused so much trouble.”
“No, no,” Helen said, shaking her head. “You haven’t caused any trouble. Sure, you were caught up in the middle of it, but you aren’t the reason for it. We shouldn’t have been so afraid of the Deathlands.”
Helen dropped her hand and put it on her own head for a moment.
“What am I saying?” she continued. “We shouldn’t even be calling it the Deathlands. We should have explored it years ago – generations ago. We shouldn’t have been afraid of something at the edge of our own fields. And it took Jonah’s curiosity for us to start to understand it. I completely believe that he was led there by the same God that causes our crops to grow and our babies to be born. And in the midst of that, He brought you to us.
“We’re definitely not worried about who you are anymore. After a while, we saw you and saw your heart. But sometimes we’re still worried for you. We’ve only had to adjust to having a new friend and daughter with us. You’ve had to adjust to a new everything. That can’t be easy.
“I just want you to know that we love you, and you’re our daughter either way. But it’s now up to you for whenever you want to make that official.”
The two of them smiled at each other for a moment.
“Thanks,” Talitha said, pausing before ending with “Mom.”
The thick wooden door opened suddenly, breaking the sentiment of the moment. Jonah walked in followed by his father. Their heads and clothes were lightly dusted with fresh snow. Helen moved around the table while Jonah made his way to Talitha. He hugged her from behind while she put her focus back onto the frying chicken. His nose and ice cold lips pressed against her cheek.
“You’re freezing,” she squealed with a smile.
“You know, I tried talking to the Weather Committee about the temperature, but there’s nothing they can do,” Jonah joked as he moved away from her and hovered close to the wood stove.
“Ha ha,” Talitha said dryly, though still smiling. “You should have gone through the Technology Maintenance Committee, but complaining about it might get you a Diplomacy and Sensitivity meeting.”
“What on earth are you two talking about,” Thomas asked, shaking his head with a subtle laugh while making his way towards his wife, who was placing silverware. “Do you mean to tell me that there’s a group of people in charge of weather down there?”
“Well,” Talitha answered, “not so much the weather – we never have snow or rain or anything in the Facility. But if the air temperature is not within seventy-two to seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit, then someone is bound to lose their purpose assignment. Er, their job.”
“Enough about that mumbo jumbo – dinner smells amazing, Talitha,” Thomas said. “And it looks like my darling wife came in just in time to steal a little credit?”
Thomas smirked and moved Helen’s red hair and kissed her neck. She jumped with a shiver then turned around to hug her husband while playfully smacking his shoulder.
“Thanks, Mr. Whitfield,” Talitha said, smiling. She had never seen her own parents act very lovingly towards each other, so she was happy to see another difference from the Facility. “She helped quite a bit because I was starting to get overwhel—”
“She’s being modest,” Helen quickly interjected, winking at Talitha. “She had everything under control and I just came in to help set the table.”
“Well, it smells and looks great, young lady,” Thomas repeated. “And I must say I’m impressed. To go from eating mush to making a meal like this, you’ve adjusted quite well.”
Talitha smiled and thanked her future father-in-law.
Jonah walked to the front door of the house. Opening it just a crack, he yelled to his brother and sister who were trying to make snowballs with the small amount of white that covered the ground. Their projectiles ended up being mostly dead leaves and grass with just a little snow mixed in. They quickly lost interest in their battle when they heard dinner was ready and ran inside.
When they were all seated around the table, Thomas gave thanks, especially noting Talitha’s effort in the meal and her presence with the family. Small talk was exchanged for a while, and everyone complemented Talitha on the food.
After a while, Helen made a few awkward faces towards her husband, obviously trying to give him a signal. Thomas’ eyes lit up and he smiled before he spoke.
“So, when are you two love birds going to get married?”
CHAPTER NINE
Yidel walked into the small dingy room, relieving the laborer who was previously guarding the prisoners. He brought three bowls of gloppy Food Substance and sat it in front of each of the men who were chained to grates in the walls. They all quickly grabbed the bowls and devoured the paste, paying no attention to adding more stains to their dirty white undershirts.
They had already been pumped for all the information that they knew, which wasn’t very much. In fact, all three of them talked about how much they wished that they knew more, so that the men and women of the Midlet would trust that they were telling the truth. Unfortunately for Reena and Hokmah, it seemed that these three were simply following orders that were handed to them only moments before arriving outside the sleeping unit.
It was not uncommon for the control officers to know nothing. They said that on a daily basis they would simply be told where to go and what to do, without any context or reason. They had always assumed that if the Leaders or the Regulation Committee felt it necessary to act, then it was justified. Their normal routine was anything from simply flexing their muscles to show their commanding presence to beating a laborer to keep everyone else within earshot in line.
And once again, the order came from Quilen Coomy. His name had not been uttered in the Midlet before the attacks by the alleged terrorists – but after that point, it was the only name from the Upper Levels that anyone cared about.
If the three officers could betray their superiors at all, they would gladly do so in order to sleep in the comfort of their own beds. They weren’t loyal to the leaders for any moral reason; rather, they just assumed it was the only way they could act since the day they were given their assignment posts.
They were admired by the rest of the citizens, as if their bodies were the result of hard work and training. When they were younger, they started undergoing regular surgeries and chemical treatments to keep their physiques trim and muscular. They still gorged themselves on Food Substance and ChemVapor, but the Medical Officers would simply compensate with the procedures that they grew accustomed to. They had no training except on how to incapacitate someone using their Stunner.
Now that they were the ones that had been incapacitated, all of their surgeries and medical procedures proved to be completely useless. Their Stunners were in the hands of the laborers, and they would do anything not to feel their electrical pulse a second time.
Yidel sat nervously in a chair by the closed door, watching the three men eat at a feverish pace.
“You can slow down,” he said, his leg bouncing up and down to a quick rhythm. “I’ll get you more if you’re still hungry after you’re done with this.”
The three disregarded him. Even though no further harm had come to them, they still seemed to be afraid that each meal and moment could be their last. They had not been in the Midlet long enough to see that the laborers had the same fear, and that the difference was the laborers’ fears were justified.
Yidel opened the door for a moment, glancing both ways down the hall. He silently shut it again, as if preparing to tell them a secret.
“Quilen Coomy has been posting alerts since your capture,” he said as he sat back down. “He’s been trying to get us to turn on each other and give up our leader.”
The three persisted in their feeding.
“He said that things will get much worse unless we hand her over,” Yidel continued. “All of our doors are locked from the inside, so they can’t easily come in to get you. But he keeps threatening us. Says we have one more day, and then things will get really bad.”
Almost all of the laborers in this sector had stopped showing up to their purpose assignments. It was not part of the original plan – they knew that one sector alone ceasing their work would cripple the Facility – but after the officers had been captured they were on lock down. If anyone wanted to leave in order to continue at their assignment shifts, they were allowed to. But if they did so, they knew that they would be branded cowards. They also knew that they might not be let back inside, and that the citizens in the Upper Levels would not quickly open up their family units to them.
Yidel watched the three men finish the remaining Food Substance and scurry back to the wall. He turned his head, as if he were listening hard to noises beyond the door.
“He hasn’t even asked about you three,” he said. “All Quilen wants is Reena.”
There was silence.
“Did you hear me? All your Leader wants is Reena.”
One of the tired officers briefly looked at Yidel, then again looked away.
“I’ve been working on the Resource Harvesters for ten years,” Yidel said, feeling like he was talking to himself. “It’s not an easy purpose assignment. First, I have to disconnect everything from the main pipes. There are a bunch of different lines that have to be unbolted, and they weren’t made for that. The man that trained me said that if the people that built the equipment in the Facility knew they were also going to have to maintain it, then they would’ve designed it a lot different.
“Anyhow, I’ve got to get my arms in this tiny little space, and there are sharp edges all over it. There’s not enough room for one of the air drills, so I’ve got to get my ratchet in there just right, then tense my whole body up to keep it on the bolt. Every time I turn the ratchet, my arms get scratched and scraped up. Look.”
He held his arms up, showing off old scars and the fresh red scabs. When the three officers didn’t look, he walked over to them and shoved his arms in their faces until they stared at the wounds.
“And that’s not even the worst part about it,” he said as he walked back to the chair, shaking his head. “Every single one of those lines is filled with chemicals. Some of them are for sanitizing the incoming resources, some are to keep the pipe lubricated. But every single time I get one of the lines loose, these chemicals spray all over me. I rip my arms to shreds trying to get the lines off, and then it’s like I dip them into a pool of burning acid as soon as I’m done.
“That’s just for one line. There are twelve lines on each pipe, and if I don’t disconnect and connect at least 6 pipes each assignment shift, one of you comes in and hits me with a Stunner. Sometimes I choose the Stunner, because at this point the pain is the same either way, but the Stunner is faster.”
Yidel leaned back in his chair, staring at the lights in the ceiling. It was normal for him, but it was quite dim for the three officers, who were used to light pouring out of every surface. He sat for a long while, lost in a thought.
“Sorry,” one of the officers eventually said.
“What?” Yidel shook his head, as if to come back to the room.
The officer who spoke shifted his weight and glanced at the other two prisoners before looking at his guard. “Sorry,” he said again, with an honesty in his face. “It sounds pretty terrible, what you’re describing. I’m sorry that you have to do that.”
“It is terrible,” Yidel confirmed.
“We’re just following our orders when we come down here, you know,” the officer continued. “We never know why we’re punishing any of you. We assume that you deserve it. Or, really, we don’t think about it at all – we’re just doing what we’re told.”
Yidel snorted.
“Yeah, I know,” he said with a slight snicker. “We’re nothing at all the same, but all of us down here are just doing what we’re told, too.”
The four of them sat in silence, exchanging nervous glances.
“Look,” Yidel spoke again after a moment. “You want out of here, right?”
The three men nodded.
“And Quilen Coomy wants our leader, right?”
The three men nodded again. They had seen the alerts on the single wall tile in the unit that they were being kept in.
“Well, I want out of here, too,” Yidel finally said. “And if you promise me that you can get me out of here and put me up in the Upper Levels, then I’ll help you escape. And I’ll deliver Reena to Quilen.”
He finally had the full attention of all three of the officers. “What?” one of them asked with surprise.
“You heard me correctly,” Yidel said. “If you agree that you will get the Leaders to move me into the Upper Levels— Not just physically put me there, but give me a life up there. If they agree to that, then I’ll let you out and have Reena alone in a unit that is accessible by one of the outside service tunnels.”
The officers began to show more signs of life than they had in the last two days.
“We’ll do it,” one of them said, nodding at the other two officers.
“I figured you would,” Yidel responded. “But there’s a handful of information that you need to remember for me to know that the Leaders will do it, and so that I’m not sticking my neck out for no reason.”
“Of course,” the officer said again, as confidently as he could.
Yidel looked outside the door once again, confirming that no one could hear them. When he was happy with the silence, he moved in closer to the prisoners.
“My name is Yidel, but none of the Leaders or even the Central Facility Computer know that. They would know me as Y9023482.”
He forced them to repeat his identification number several times, to be sure they would remember it. He went over his simple plan – when and where he would have Reena alone, the specific message that would need to be posted for him to know that his terms were accepted.
In a short time, he was holding the keys to their chains.
.- -.-. -
Jonah sat in the outpost near the Deathlands, opposite of Gabriel Proctor and Zeke Waterford. Zeke fed the wood stove while Gabriel stared out the foggy window toward the cracked plain, focused more on the distance than on the room. Gabriel would occasionally lift up a telescope to the window out of habit, never really expecting to find a change.
Jonah had dropped off more supplies, topping off a stockpile that would last two people several months. The other two men had arrived only slightly earlier in the day, replacing the pair that had been there before. They were prepared to be there for a week before two more townsfolk would replace them.
Jonah and Zeke were about the same age, and spent much of their childhood evenings running around in the woods together. As they got older, Jonah took on more responsibility because of his dad’s accident, and the two hadn’t spent a lot of time together. Zeke was busy in his own right; he was the oldest of twelve children, and there were quite a lot of chores to be done. His youngest siblings were just starting to get old old enough to learn to take on some of the workload.
“So, less than a week, huh?” Zeke said to Jonah. He had only briefly met Talitha a few times, but was not completely surprised to hear that the two of them were making plans for their wedding ceremony so soon.
“Yeah,” Jonah confirmed. “It probably would’ve happened a bit earlier, but we were kind of waiting for the craziness of the whole situation to blow over. You know – making sure we didn’t have to deal with some alien army like Raymond was afraid of.”
Zeke laughed.
“Raymond’s biggest fear is that the people from the Deathlands would come and steal all of his liquor,” Zeke joked.
The two of them laughed, and Jonah was surprised that even Gabriel snickered.
“I’ve been out here for two separate weeks
and I haven’t seen a single sign of life out there,” Zeke continued. “Not to say that I’m one hundred percent comfortable with all of those people so close to us, but I’m starting to think we’re not going to have to defend ourselves from them. We would’ve seen them by now.”
Jonah nodded. “It’s kind of disappointing for Talitha and me,” he said, “knowing who it is that is down there. We’re sure that some of them don’t want to be there, but they don’t even know that they can come to the surface.”
Zeke shrugged.
“Maybe they want to be there more than you think,” Zeke said, peering past Gabriel through the window. “Even if some of it is hard, it’s still their home. Especially if they’ve never seen how the world really lives – maybe they’d rather live in the difficulty they know rather than chance it up here. From what you’ve said, it’s not like they’re struggling down there.”
Jonah looked beyond the window as well.
“You might be right,” Jonah said. “I didn’t see the people that do all of the manual labor – that’s who Talitha talks about. I don’t even know if she’s ever seen them, but there were just a lot of rumors of how bad they all have it.”
The two of them sat in silence, staring at the glowing coals and subtle flames through the glass doors of the stove for a moment. Jonah often thought about the Facility, and wondered how the people in his town imagined its citizens from the stories that he and his fiancée had told them. If he hadn’t seen them with his own eyes, he would also be assuming any number of things.
“I guess that means I won’t make it to the wedding,” Zeke said, joining the crackling wood to break the silence. “Sorry for that – I wish I could be there, but I’ll be here, trying to keep this guy quiet.”
He motioned to Gabriel with a smirk.
“That’s okay,” Jonah said, waving his hand is if to swipe away any sense of guilt. “That’s why I asked to be the one to drop off these supplies today. I didn’t want you to just find out that we were married when you were gone, when we’d been waiting for the past few months. I guess it wouldn’t matter either way – I’m not exactly coming out here for your permission or anything.”
The Dirt Walkers Page 9