by Bev Prescott
“Don’t you dare.” Annie lifted the crossbow.
“But he’s cold. You must care.”
“Of course I do.” Annie’s voice smoldered with anger. “Let him get his own blanket. Him I trust, you I don’t. You keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Bitte,” Inu said.
“You’re salt of the earth, boy. I can tell these things.” Annie lowered the crossbow again. To Sharon she asked, “Do we understand each other?”
“Yes,” Sharon answered with strained patience as Inu went for his blanket.
“Good.” Annie lifted the weapon’s strap over her head and laid the crossbow on the desk. “Now, let’s clean up those cuts and get some good salve on them. I’ve got enough bottled water that’s been boiled. You’ll feel better right away.” She went to the cabinet and unlatched the doors. She jutted her chin at the steaming pot on the hotplate. “I also have something special for . . .”
A deafening rumble blotted out Annie’s words and shook the room. The cabinet shimmied as its doors swung open. Annie slammed the door and held her back against it.
Sharon put a hand on a desk to steady herself. With the other, she held onto Inu to keep him from falling. The jostling of the room continued for several seconds until it slowed to a faint vibration. “What the hell was that?”
“The MagLev.” Annie reopened the cabinet. “It passes right under this room four times a day. I should’ve warned you. Guess I lost track of time.”
Inu, eyes wide, hung tight to Sharon’s hand.
“Do you know what the MagLev is, Inu?” Annie asked.
He shook his head.
“It’s a high-speed magnetic train,” Annie explained. “Its opposing electromagnetic fields make the train hover while hydrogen thrusters move it forward.”
The boy pursed his lips and nodded as if electromagnetic fields and hydrogen thrusters made sense.
“You’re a smart kid.” Sharon smiled, and noticed the scratch on Inu’s cheek continued to redden and swell. She tipped his chin and touched it. Heat radiated from it.
“The president of the United States at the time ordered that the MagLev track system be built one hundred feet below ground to keep the Chinese from destroying it,” Annie added. “President Bowman managed to save the train, but not her country. Now NONA uses it to move supplies and personnel.” From the cabinet, she retrieved a small wooden bowl and a purple box. “Let’s clean those cuts. A mild case of sporotrichosis will give you a painful nasty welt. A bad case will put you on your back for days.”
“That we can’t afford.” Sharon guided Inu by the shoulders to Annie.
Inu lifted his nose in the direction of the pot on Annie’s stove. His stomach gurgled loud enough to hear.
Inu’s hunger reminded Sharon of her own. She breathed in the earthy, salty scent. Wild greens in broth? She would’ve guessed artichoke, but artichokes, like most of the world’s vegetable crops, no longer grew anywhere on Earth. “Smells like artichokes. But that can’t be, since the last of them were lost when the seed banks were destroyed.”
“Ah, you noticed my lunch.” Annie picked up the wooden spoon next to the pot. “You two must be hungry. You can each have a bowl of my soup while you tell me why it is you thought you could travel through Gaia’s Wrath without getting your asses handed to you. Not a smart move.” She lifted the lid on the pot and stirred its contents. “Milk-thistle soup.”
“Thistle?” Sharon asked. “Around here?”
“Oh no. I had to forage for it many kilometers from here. Where it’s drier and a lot less stormy.”
Inu opened his duffel and extracted the neatly packaged NONA blanket.
Sharon grabbed the collar of his prized U.S. jacket. “Let’s take this wet coat off of you.” She slipped it from his shoulders.
Annie took the jacket and hung it on a hook near the cabinet. She pointed at an old machine with louvers and a switch. “Flip that on,” she ordered Sharon. “It’s a vintage water extractor. They called them dehumidifiers in the olden days. It’ll have your clothes, with you in them, dry in an hour. We’ll have some more water then, too.”
Inu unfolded the blanket and laid it on the floor by the cot. He sat and curled one end over his body, leaving the other half spread out on the floor. He looked up at Sharon and said, “Please.”
“Sit.” Annie handed a bottle of water and the bowl of witch-hazel salve to Sharon. “Spread this over your and the boy’s cuts while I pour you some soup. Use the cloth in the bowl to dab the cuts with water first. It’s clean.”
“Thank you for this. And thank you for taking us in.” Sharon wondered what the story was behind the tough-as-nails, kind old woman. “You saved our lives today.” She took the bowl and water bottle, and eased onto the floor next to Inu. “Do you live here alone?” She carefully cleaned and then spread the salve over the slices in the boy’s skin, then hers. It felt blessedly cool.
“I might tell you my secrets.” Annie placed three wooden bowls with matching spoons on the table next to the pot. “If you tell me yours. Where are you headed, to be so careless to come this way?” She lifted the pot of thistle soup and poured it evenly into the three bowls. “There’s not much, because I wasn’t expecting company. I can make more later. But here.” She set the pot down, opened a green box from the cabinet, and turned it so that Inu could see its contents.
His eyes widened and a smile spread across his face.
“Ha! I thought you’d like these.” Annie tousled Inu’s hair. “Fried beetles. I traded a basket of cut thistle for them. They’re really good with soup. Cup your hands.”
Inu complied.
Annie shook out a serving of the dried bugs. “You’re a fine and sweet boy.”
“There are people around here to trade with?” Sharon hungrily eyed the bowls.
“No.” Annie’s brow furrowed. “Well, sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of?” Sharon gingerly pressed her back against the wall. Her shoulder still ached from the soldier’s blow. She leaned into the pain, straightening and strengthening her spine.
“No one above our heads.” Annie pointed at a closed doorway where the room sloped downward. “That leads to a passage of tunnels that’ll bring you to where the MagLev stops for fuel. It’s also where the government-sanctioned costermongers are allowed to trade with the soldiers, passengers, and hydros.”
“What’s a hydro?” Sharon’s mouth watered when Annie handed one of the steaming bowls to Inu, who was crunching on the last of the beetles.
Using both hands, he lifted the bowl to his face. “Please.” He put it to his lips, blew on it, and took a sip. He closed his eyes and smiled.
“Thank you.” Sharon took the second bowl offered by Annie.
“Hydros are the people who refuel the MagLev with hydrogen. It’s a hard job to get and even harder to endure. Hydros sign a contract to live underground for two years without ever seeing the light of day. Can you even imagine going two years without seeing the sun?”
“It would be the end of me.” Sharon blew on the hot soup. “Why two years?”
“You see,” Annie answered, “every two years, NONA changes the places for fueling the train so that the United Kingdom of Asia can’t easily figure out where it’s located. If they did, they’d blow it up.”
Sharon put the bowl to her lips and sipped. She wanted to guzzle it, but it was too hot. Her body would better absorb the nutrition if she ate slowly anyway. “Ah, destroy the train and you bring NONA to its knees.”
“That’s right.” Annie seated herself on the floor across from them. “They’d be sunk without a way to move supplies and soldiers. NONA calculated that it takes about two years for the Chinese to figure out where the fuel is, so they keep moving it.” She put both hands to a bowl of soup. “Not for all the food and water in the world could you pay me to be a hydro. You can tell the new ones from the old ones. Their skin goes pale and their eyes dim. Like they lost a part of their humanity that only t
he sun can cultivate in humans. They’re given supplements, but it’s not enough.” Annie put the bowl to her lips and slurped. “They scare me.”
“More than NONA?” Sharon sipped another mouthful of the hot soup. It warmed her insides. What a pleasure after the trials she’d been through.
“No.” Annie shook her head. “Hydros aren’t evil. Just desperately sad, and desperate for the money NONA pays them. That’s why NONA lets the costermongers sell to them. It’s a way to keep them from losing their minds while being trapped underground for two years. We trade them everything from foraged food to water, tools, weapons, and sex.” Annie put up a hand as if to stop the next question. “I don’t trade sex. But others do.”
“You’re a costermonger?”
“Not exactly. You know, you’d be surprised what you’ll find when you’re looking for something else.” The old woman nodded at a chartreuse coat hanging on a hook near the door to the tunnels. “I cut the identity chip out of a dead costermonger who made the unfortunate mistake of being in the open during one of Gaia’s wraths. Wasn’t much left of her when I found her. But the chip looked to be in good shape. So I sewed it into the sleeve of my coat.”
“That gets you in?”
“NONA wands me every time. I keep my other arm down with my hand in a pocket so my real chip isn’t triggered. The soldiers don’t have much enthusiasm for checking the details. They’re not evil, either. They’re just trying to get by like the rest of us.”
“On that, we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
Annie paused, seeming to scrutinize the comment. “NONA’s predictable. Stay out of its way and follow the rules. That’s doable. It’s the Banditti who keep me looking over my shoulder.” She set her bowl down. “What’s your beef with NONA?”
Sharon leaned forward and placed her empty bowl next to Annie’s. “They kidnapped my wife for no reason other than she has Chinese blood. NONA’s rounding up people of Asian descent and herding them into an internment camp in Chicago. Eve is very sick. I have to find her. That’s why we came through Gaia’s Wrath from Maine.”
Inu lifted his empty bowl to Annie with a respectful nod of thanks.
She took it from him. “You poor child. To have a parent stolen. I know what it’s like to keep looking for someone you love.”
Inu curled into a ball and rested his head on Sharon’s thigh.
She hesitated before pulling a corner of the blanket over him. As her hand brushed the hair from his forehead, she considered her options. Every move she made was for Eve, yet the thing she contemplated doing was the last thing Eve would do. “I told you my story.” Her voice flattened under the heaviness of guilt. “What’s yours?”
Annie folded her hands together in her lap. “I guess a deal’s a deal. What do you want to know first?”
Pointing at hash marks etched into the wall, Sharon asked, “How long have you lived here?”
“Thirty-seven years.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, except for my demons.” Annie’s strong voice waivered. She swallowed and cleared her throat. “I was a schoolteacher.”
“Yeah? What grades?” Sharon moved her hand to Inu’s shoulder and laid her palm on him. He trusted her, and now she was about to break that trust. It felt like the worst thing she’d ever done, and she hadn’t even done it yet. It’s the only way. I hope he’ll forgive me. I hope Annie will forgive me, too.
Annie closed her eyes and breathed in. “The most beautiful, brilliant, lovely seven- and eight-year-olds,” she breathed out the words. “Thirty-seven years ago I was thirty-seven. It’s the year I stopped having birthdays, because my life ended, and this”—she lifted her hands to the room—“this limbo began.”
“Tell me what happened.” Sharon watched as Annie’s guard came down with the telling of her story.
“I was teaching school, here in State College.” Annie’s hands shook with a subtle tremor. “The War of the Second Crusade had ended, and the War of Earth’s Rebellion had begun. But we were all trying to maintain a sense of normalcy by keeping kids in school.” Annie wrapped her arms over her chest. “It was also around the time that the tornadoes and storms were becoming more and more frequent. Lots of parents wanted to take their kids out of school. Didn’t want to entrust their children to someone else for protection during the day when the storms were most violent. But we teachers convinced them that keeping their kids in school would be best for society going forward. That it was a must for all of our survival.”
“Obviously you had shelters like this one?”
“Oh, yes.” Annie’s eyes glassed over. “We had storm drills too. We did them routinely.”
Sharon suspected that no amount of preparation could’ve been enough. “A storm came, didn’t it? A bad one?”
Annie wiped the corners of her eyes. “One of the worst I’ve ever seen. And by far the fastest.” She lifted her legs to her chest and hugged her knees. “I’d brought my kids out into the country to teach them how to forage for mushrooms and berries. All I had to protect them was a bus. We were too far from the shelters.” She turned her eyes to the floor. “That was my fault. Once I realized the storm was coming, I rounded them all up into the bus and tried to outrace the tornado.”
Sharon noticed Annie’s body go rigid with the memory. “It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me anymore. I don’t want to upset you.”
“It’s okay, dear. Like I said, a deal’s a deal. I’ve never told anyone this story. Maybe if I tell it, the demons in my head will go quiet for a while.”
“I’m listening,” Sharon said quietly.
“In my rush to get the kids to safety, I didn’t bother to put my own seat belt on. But I’d trained all of them to instinctively put theirs on. I floored the bus down the dirt road. Just when I thought we’d make it, a second tornado dropped from the sky in front of us. I had nowhere to go. The storm sucked the bus into oblivion. I was thrown out and dropped in a field six kilometers away. I was naked.” She touched her left elbow. “And this arm was bent sideways, but I was alive. The scars on my body mark that terrible day.”
“And the kids?”
“I’ve been here for thirty-seven years, searching. I scrounged for all the stuff you see in this room, so that if they ever came back I could be their teacher again. Everything from the bus door to the clothes ripped from their precious bodies, I collected and dragged here.” Annie laid her head on her knees. “But they never came back. I miss them so.” Her shoulders shook and she gave way to sobs.
The woman’s grief sat heavy in the room.
“I’m so sorry. You really don’t have to go on.” Sharon put a hand to Annie’s shoulder. “It’s okay.”
“No, I do. Maybe the universe will finally redeem me for speaking the truth.” She lifted her head. Tears streaked her face. “I’d promised the kids I’d never leave them. Ever. So, every day I get up and search. I search for any sign that even one of them survived. I know that after all of this time it’s a futile endeavor. But, now, it’s all I know. When I close my eyes at night, I see them being torn apart by that monster storm.”
“I do understand.” Sharon wanted to move her bent leg. It tingled from lack of blood flow. If she moved, she might wake the now sleeping Inu, his head still resting on her thigh. “I’ll search every day for the rest of my life to find Eve. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to bring her home.” Sharon hoped her words carried no hint of the terrible thing she planned to do. Suddenly, her stomach churned with nausea.
“Then find her you must,” Annie said.
“Would you mind if we sleep a little before we’re on our way?” Sharon resisted the urge to hug Inu goodbye. But this was goodbye. Part of her, a big part, wanted to bring both Inu and Annie on her journey to find Eve. But it was too dangerous, and they’d slow her down. Annie shouldn’t have let her guard down. Sharon was as desperate to find Eve as Annie was for redemption. “We’ll have a long way to go, all on foot now.”
“Of course
.” Annie got up. “I’ll leave you both to sleep. I’m going out to forage now that the storm is past. I need some time alone with my thoughts anyway. When I get back, I’ll pack you some food and draw you a map for safely making your way through Gaia’s Wrath.”
“Thank you.” Sharon closed her eyes, wanting to sleep and wishing there was some other way. Inu had proven to be a brave and loyal boy. But the dangers ahead were likely going to get much worse. And she had to move fast; there just wasn’t time for a camping trip. As for Annie, she wasn’t crazy, only lonely like Inu. Why did the idea hurt so much if it was the right thing to do?
Chapter 6
Sharon pressed the pen to the sketch paper. It felt awkward between her fingers. The last time she had written by hand was when her mother had taught her how to draw her name. Electronic communication had replaced handwriting decades ago. Only artists wrote by hand. Sharon was no artist. In halting strokes, she drew large block letters.
Dear Inu, I am sorry to leave you. But it is better this way. I have to find Eve. I brought you as far as I could to a safe place. You are a good boy. Take care of Annie. I hope you find your family someday. Your friend, Sharon.
She lifted the pen to inspect the message. The slanted letters looked chaotic but legible. Inu probably couldn’t read anyway; Annie would have to read it to him.
Taking extra care, she pressed the pen to a second page.
Dear Annie, please forgive me for taking your coat. I know it does not make up for my bad deeds, but I am leaving all of my supplies for you. I should have asked first, but I could not take the chance that you would say no. Eve will die if I do not find her soon. Inu is a special boy. He deserves to be with someone who can take better care of him than I can. With humble thanks, Sharon.