The Bar Code Tattoo

by Suzanne Weyn

The truck carried them for miles. They sat with their backs against the boxes, drank soda, and ate chips as they bumped along up the superhighway. She rested her head on his shoulder and he put his arm around her. “I’m glad I found you,” she said.

  “Me, too,” he agreed, holding her a little tighter.

  When the truck finally stopped nearly two hours later, they hid behind boxes in the back as the driver carried out the freight from the front. “Stay or go?” Mfumbe checked for Kayla’s opinion.

  “Stay,” she whispered. “We’ll keep checking that thing to make sure we don’t veer off course. But this truck could take us miles up the road.”

  They kept low until the truck motor started again. At the next stop, the driver removed four boxes, and they realized they were losing more and more of their cover at each stop. “We’d better get out or he’ll see us at the next stop,” Kayla said.

  While the driver was delivering his order, they hurried out of the truck. They emerged into the dark night to see a neon sign announcing that they were at the Adirondack Motel. “We’re here already?” Kayla asked as they ran to the back of the building.

  Mfumbe checked his GPS. “We’re at the bottom of the mountain range. We have to get up around Keene or Lake Placid. That’s where the resistance groups are. They like being near the Canadian border — just in case things get rough.”

  That night they found a discarded mattress in a Dumpster at the back of the motel and dragged it into the nearby trees. “It’s cold,” Kayla commented.

  “It’s always colder up north,” Mfumbe reminded her. “We’ve come pretty far today.” He pulled her close and his body heat helped take off the chill.

  Kayla awoke in the night, shivering. Several feet away a pool of moonlight broke through the trees. A figure took form in the moonlight. Eutonah was there once again. She raised her arms and seemed to be chanting, although Kayla heard no sound.

  Then a voice whispered inside Kayla’s mind, “Stay on my wavelength and I will pull you in.”

  Kayla got up and walked toward the sparkling image. But it faded slowly. By the time she reached the moonlight, there was nothing there.

  In the morning she awoke and saw Mfumbe coming across the parking lot and toward the trees, holding a brown paper bag. “Good, you’re up. I was just about to wake you.” He sat on the mattress beside her. “Two teas and two muffins.” He lifted the food out of the bag.

  “Did you steal this?” Kayla asked.

  “No. I asked for it at the deli down the road. I just thought I’d take a chance and it worked. The guy gave it to me.”

  “Astral,” she said.

  “Yeah. He told me a lot of people are down on their luck around here. They’ve been thrown out of jobs and can’t find new ones. He says it’s hard times since the bar code became law.”

  Not everyone was as generous as the deli man. As they continued north, they began shoplifting, taking only what they needed to survive on.

  The idea of stealing bothered both of them, but they could find no other way to stay alive. Kayla was amazed by how expert she had become at sneaking food and drink out of convenience stores.

  At one truck stop, Mfumbe’s photo stared back at them from a bulletin board. His parents were looking for him and had put up Missing Person flyers. “You should let them know you’re all right,” Kayla said to him.

  “I’d like to let my mother know,” he admitted. “But I can’t think of a way to do it.”

  Neither could she. Without access to a computer or a phone, they were completely isolated.

  Along the way they read discarded newspapers they found in garbage cans or Dumpsters. Kayla’s story had nearly disappeared. Did it mean they weren’t looking for her anymore? That seemed too good to really be true, but at least her picture wasn’t all over the place.

  David Young’s picture was all over the papers, though. After he’d resigned from the Senate in protest over the bar code, he’d set up Decode headquarters right in Washington. “This is still a free country and I have nothing to hide,” he told the press.

  Kayla studied his picture in the paper, a good-looking man in his thirties with dark eyes and tousled brown hair. “He has a kind face,” she observed to Mfumbe.

  “He’s a great guy,” Mfumbe said. “I’d like to go to Washington and work for Decode.”

  “Washington’s that way,” she said, pointing south.

  “I don’t mean right now. I can’t go now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because right now I’m with you,” he answered.

  She looked up at him and realized that the only reason he was there was because he wouldn’t leave her. He was doing this for her.

  She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek against his chest. He embraced her, holding tight. Then she looked up at him and they kissed.

  Three weeks later, Mfumbe and Kayla walked into the town of Keene Valley, New York. Both had lost over ten pounds. The walking had made them muscular. Their hair was knotted and wild. Their gaunt faces and wiry, strong-looking bodies made people stare at them as they went down the road. Kayla thought they must look like savages from some exotic and hard place. And that was what she felt she’d turned into.

  They came to a hillside nearly covered in juniper bushes and sat down, leaning against the flat side of a boulder. The juniper smelled so wonderful, although the plants’ rough foliage caught at her pants, snagging them.

  Kayla looked off at the towering peaks of the mountain range. It was vast and magical here.

  “In another couple of weeks I would have been graduating,” Mfumbe said a bit sadly, looking up at the mountains.

  “That’s right,” she said without looking at him. She was weary, and the blue-tinted mountaintops were soothing to gaze on.

  “Then I would have been off to Yale. Someone at Yale saw me on that Virtual Jeopardy show and offered me a scholarship on the spot.” He sighed. “They don’t give scholarships to guys without bar codes.”

  “No wonder your dad was so determined for you to get tattooed,” she commented.

  “I know. I can’t really blame him. But I’ll be eighteen next week — no longer a minor, and my parents can’t force me to do anything against my will.” He was silent for a while, and Kayla let her mind go blank except for taking in the scenery in front of her.

  “I love you, Kayla,” he said abruptly. “I’ve loved you since the first day we met, on the stairs. But I could never tell you. You were so crazy about Zeke and all. I thought I loved you back then, but that was nothing compared to the way I feel about you now.”

  Kayla listened, growing happier with every word. They were so close now. She’d known ever since they kissed at the truck stop that day that she loved him — was in love with him and loved him deeply as a person, both. She knew he felt the same. Why else would he have gone through all this with her? But hearing the words made it so real, so out in the open.

  And then she heard snoring.

  Whirling around, she saw that he was asleep against the rock. How long had he been like that?

  He was asleep but his words were still in her head as clearly as if he were saying them in front of her. But was love enough? Wasn’t she only getting him into more trouble?

  If that was true, she should leave him right now, while he slept and couldn’t stop her. Then he could go to Washington. He wouldn’t be stuck with her.

  Getting up, she walked down the hillside — but stopped.

  Zekeal stood there, right in front of her. He stared at her but didn’t seem to see her. Was he real or a vision?

  Kayla ran back to Mfumbe and shook him. “What? Wha —” he stammered as he came awake.

  “Zekeal is down the hill. Over there. I saw him!”

  He stood up and peered into the distance. “No one’s there.”

  “He is! I saw him!”

  “You must have been dreaming.” A sad, disappointed expression overtook his face. “Dreaming about Zeke.”


  “I wasn’t! I don’t care about him anymore. You’re the only one I love. But he was there!” She looked down the hill and saw no one. If Zekeal had been there, he was no longer present.

  Mfumbe wrapped his arms around her. “You love me?”

  “Yes, I do. I love you completely.”

  “Then there is no Zeke, no bar code tattoo, no Tattoo Gen. There’s only us,” he said.

  That evening Kayla knew something was wrong. Her arms and legs were heavy. Her head had become difficult to hold up and her forehead burned.

  She slept for most of the next day, curled beside a boulder. Mfumbe pressed cool leaves against her brow and fed her crackers they’d saved along the way.

  When she awoke the next day she felt well enough to walk into the nearby town of Keene to find food. But as they walked along the main street, she staggered.

  “We have to get something to bring your fever down,” Mfumbe said. Kayla pressed her palm into his and leaned against the cool bricks of the building for support. “You’re burning up,” he said, sweeping his hand along her cheek. “We just passed a drugstore. I’ll go back to it and grab some medicine.”

  “I should do it. I’m better at this than you are,” she argued when they were in front of the drugstore. “You almost got caught last time.”

  “No. You’re too sick. You won’t be quick enough.” They walked up a side alley. “Wait here,” he told her.

  Mfumbe went in the side door and Kayla followed, despite his advice. “The medicine is all the way in front,” she whispered to him. “The cash register is up there. They’ll see you.”

  “Not if I do it right,” he insisted. “Stay here and pretend to look at greeting cards.”

  He strolled casually to the front. “Hi, there,” the man behind the register greeted him, although there was only suspicion in his voice.

  “Hi,” Mfumbe replied. “Do you have thermometers?”

  “Over there, by the Adlevenol.”

  Mfumbe went to where the thermometers were stacked. As he stared up at them, he palmed a box of Adlevenol and slipped it into his pants pocket. “Can I help you?” the man asked aggressively. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Mfumbe the whole time.

  “You don’t have the kind I’m looking for,” Mfumbe told him.

  Kayla pretended to look at cards by the front door and stole furtive glances at the man behind the counter. She didn’t like the expression on his face. He wasn’t happy about Mfumbe being in his store. He suspected him.

  “There are more thermometers in the third aisle,” the man told Mfumbe.

  “Okay. I’ll go check those out,” Mfumbe said.

  The man bent down behind the counter. Kayla shifted from foot to foot. He was out of sight for too long. What was he doing under there?

  Mfumbe was in the third aisle, keeping up the charade of looking for thermometers.

  Something was wrong.

  Kayla went to Mfumbe in the third aisle. “Let’s get out of here,” she whispered, taking his arm. The fever made her weak and she leaned on him as they walked to the front door.

  A police car appeared, visible through the store’s plate glass front. A male officer got out. He wasn’t a Globalcop but a local police officer.

  Mfumbe crouched behind a greeting-card stand, drawing Kayla down with him. The officer walked in cautiously and headed to the front of the store.

  While the officer’s back was turned, Kayla and Mfumbe slipped out the side door.

  “There they go!” the store owner shouted.

  “Come on,” Mfumbe cried, grabbing her wrist and running.

  “Stop!” The officer had bounded out of the store behind them. Mfumbe pushed Kayla behind him and turned to face the officer. He held his hands high.

  “Run down that alley when I say ‘go,’” he muttered to her. “Go!”

  Kayla raced down the alley beside the store. “Stop!” the police officer shouted as she squeezed into a break in the wooden fence in the back.

  Mfumbe didn’t follow. She waited and still he didn’t come. Heart racing, she peeked out the opening in the fence. She couldn’t see Mfumbe or the officer anywhere.

  LETTER TO THE EDITOR FROM NEDRA HARRIS, NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON FOR TATTOO GENERATION

  Dear Editor,

  Your readers may not be aware of a sad event that took place recently. Mfumbe Taylor was, until recently, a brilliant senior at Winfrey High. He was the international winner of the Virtual Jeopardy Tournament last year and held a full scholarship to Yale University, which he planned to attend next fall.

  Mfumbe now sits in jail, accused of petty thievery. What has brought this promising young man to such a low place? Decode. Former Senator David Young’s organization has helped to corrupt the minds of impressionable youth like Mfumbe, inculcating them with his paranoid belief that some sinister plot lurks behind the bar code tattoo. How ridiculous!

  A further culprit in Mfumbe’s downfall is a wanted criminal named Kayla Marie Reed. This young woman, also once affiliated with Decode, is wanted for the murder of her very own mother. She is also a suspect in the deaths of Mava and Toz Alan, who mysteriously crashed into a cement wall while driving Kayla to an unknown destination. How or why she caused their car to crash is still a mystery, but the young criminal remains a fugitive from justice. Mfumbe’s relationship with the deeply troubled Kayla Marie Reed led him farther down the path to his current sad state.

  Parents, you are the guardians of your children. Safeguard their futures. Insist that they are tattooed on their 17th birthdays. Let the example of Mfumbe Taylor demonstrate how a brilliant future can go terribly wrong without the bar code tattoo.

  Sincerely,

  Nedra Harris

  National Spokesperson

  Tattoo Generation

  Nearly delirious with fever, Kayla walked on the winding country roads for miles, heading for the town of Lake Placid, as they’d agreed. Maybe August or Allyson would show up there. But she grew so weak, she became afraid she might collapse. She feared falling right there where she might get hit, or picked up by the police, so she stepped into the woods where she followed a trail the forest service had marked with metallic-blue octagonal markers.

  She pulled herself along the rocky path. Her feverish skin turned cold and clammy, and at times she felt as if it would slide off her bones. Nausea seized her, making her dizzy, and her hands trembled. She stopped to vomit, holding on to trees and rocks until nothing but liquid bile came up.

  Just when she couldn’t take another step, an empty lean-to appeared several yards ahead of her. She staggered to it and fell heavily inside onto its straw-covered wooden floor. Closing her eyes, she descended into a feverish sleep and lay there for two days and nights.

  Wandering in restless fevered dreams, she saw Eutonah five times. Each time, the woman had beckoned and told her to keep coming toward her. “Where are you?” Kayla heard herself say over and over. “I can’t find you.” Then she would open her eyes, see the pitched wooden roof of the shelter, turn, and return to her dream.

  On the third day, Kayla awoke. Her mouth was parched and her head throbbed, but she was able to pull herself up to stand, then staggered out of the shelter in search of water. A pond full of jutting sticks was only yards in front of the lean-to. There was a beaver dam at the far end. The water didn’t look good for drinking, but at least she could wash.

  Glancing at herself in the beaver pond, she couldn’t believe how she’d changed. Her hair was matted and filthy. Sharp cheekbones jutted from her thin face. Her hands had become scratched, hardened claws and her eyes were dull from sickness.

  She devoured some blueberries on a nearby bush, and then reached into the pond to rinse purple juice from her stained hands. Another hand roughly gripped her wrist. Turning sharply, she looked up into piercing blue eyes of a dirty woman’s face.

  The woman twisted her wrist, checking for a tattoo. Seeing none, she grinned and let go. A basket of food emerged from under a flap in her torn fu
ll-length dress.

  It held a hard-boiled egg, a banana, and crackers. The woman thrust the basket toward her. “Eat,” she said. Kayla devoured the egg and then unpeeled the banana. Slowly, she realized that she was able to keep the food down and she no longer burned with fever.

  Kayla began to cry soft tears of relief. “You came to a good place for healing,” the woman said after a moment. “The earth is a constant source of energy if we use it correctly. The feeling I experience when earth energy comes to me is so joyful. These mountains, these trees — they hold a lot of really strong energy.”

  The only thing Kayla knew for sure was that she was well again. “Do you know where I can find a woman named Eutonah?” she asked.

  The woman nodded. “I’ll bring you to my group. Someone there will be able to direct you to Eutonah.”

  Kayla followed the woman down the trail. After several miles, the woods let out into a field. Many people sat in the tall grass, and a low murmur that reminded Kayla of buzzing bees filled the area.

  “We have allies in the cosmos,” the woman explained. “We are trying to channel them, to draw them into our sphere. The world needs its friends now.”

  A man rose from the grass and walked toward them. She knew him. “August!” she cried.

  He smiled. August had also grown thinner and more muscular. When he was near enough, he clasped her hand. She noticed an ugly scar on his wrist and assumed it was where his bar code had once been. He saw her looking at it. “I made a big mistake and gave in. I see that you didn’t.”

  “What brought you here?” she asked.

  “After our last meeting, you disappeared and Mfumbe went off somewhere. Zekeal announced he was getting the tattoo. Nedra had already gotten it, and Allyson wanted her scholarship, so she got it. I couldn’t see why I should hold out. I felt like everyone had deserted me. By the end of that week, I had the tattoo.”

  “Then what happened?” she asked.

  “My parents didn’t have jobs anymore, so I took one after school. It was in a biotech plant, cleaning up. One day I saw some experiments. Honestly, I had no idea what I was looking at, but the people there got super upset with me for witnessing whatever it was I saw. They told me to quit school and come live at the place as a caretaker. It was as if they wanted to own me. They said that if I didn’t, they could alter my bar code so that no one else would ever want me around.”