Wasteland

by Noah Mann

  “You want to take a look?” I asked.

  Neil shook his head and used his Benelli like a walking stick, gripping the barrel and planting the butt on the ground to push himself up from where he sat, standing before either Elaine or I did. His struggle was no less, but he was pushing, digging deep, refusing to give in to the hunger and illness chipping away at his physical and emotional self.

  “Let’s check it out,” he said.

  He walked past us, his gait steady, pace slow. Elaine and I rose and started off, following, letting Neil lead us. Fifteen minutes later we were close enough that the layout we’d spied through the binoculars became plain to the naked eye. A layout that was, at the very least, interesting.

  “This couldn’t have been built like this,” Elaine said. “It makes no sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Neil agreed, hearing us just behind. “That silo’s been moved. It’s like it was dragged over and connected to the barn, or whatever that is.”

  We reached the stream, waters flowing lazily along its wide, shallow path. This was its summer state. In spring, after the melt, icy torrents would be raging.

  “Fletch,” Neil said, stopping mid-stream, water just below his boot tops. “Look.”

  He was pointing to the bank of the waterway maybe twenty feet away, on the far side. I looked and saw what had caught his interest. A black pipe about two inches diameter emerged from the bank and reached out into the stream, an angled fitting ten feet out directing a shorter length of pipe downward, its end disappearing beneath the bubbling surface of the water.

  “Intake for a pump,” I said.

  Neil nodded. That was a positive sign. Someone had wanted to ensure a near constant supply of water. Combined with the unusual appearance of the property, its odd grouping of structures, large array of solar panels, our interest was piqued.

  “Let’s move carefully,” I said.

  Neil nodded at my cautionary directive and led us fully across the stream, up the far bank, and to a spot less than a hundred yards from the cluster of structures. There was no sign of movement other than the windmill now turning almost as an afterthought in the nearly still air. There were windows, most blacked out in some fashion, but, to add even more interest to our find, sunlight sparkled off the intact panes. No one had broken in and shattered the glass. No weather had left only shards hanging in the frames.

  Or, someone had repaired any damage that occurred. That implied life. At one time in the recent past, at least.

  “What about that door in the main building?” Elaine asked and suggested all at once.

  “I’ll take point,” Neil said.

  Once again he moved before we did, eager, though still focused. Still wary. He held his Benelli at the ready, head on a swivel, gaze sweeping left, then right, but always coming back to that door. That way in. To whatever it was that we’d found.

  Elaine and I spread out behind my friend, my place at the rear. Every ten yards or so I looked fully behind. I’d seen nothing, nor heard anything. No motorcycles like the night we approached Cheyenne. No reflection off the lenses of some distant pair of optics like the day we entered the barren woods. It was dead silent, a sound too common in our reality. Completely normal.

  Still, I felt something. I wasn’t sure if it was a bout of wariness rising, or a quickening of my pulse from the unusual find we were approaching, but it was there, and each time I shifted my position to glance behind, I sensed it even more.

  I forced the worry down. Forced myself to focus. A threat not seen, a threat only imagined, could not pull me away from what mattered now. From our mission of the moment.

  Getting in this building.

  Neil reached the door and stopped, standing just to the lock side of it, a small window set into the wall there, its inner surface seeming filmed over, by time or on purpose we could not tell. Elaine and I took a position on the hinge side of the door as my friend reached to the simple knob. He twisted it back and forth. No latch clicked.

  “Locked,” Neil said.

  I stepped away from the wall and surveyed the opening. The door wasn’t exactly flimsy, but little about it screamed ‘security’, weathered wood frame surrounding a simple slab with lock set into it. Yet everything else about the location pointed to its preservation. To a state of slowed decay, not trashing by ravenous mobs who’d invaded it, smashing and searching, leaving shades blowing through broken windows, unlocked doors swinging in the breeze.

  “We could look for another way in,” Elaine suggested.

  I considered that for a moment. Just a moment, because every second we remained outside we were exposed. Glancing behind, across the flat prairie we’d crossed, I felt the unease bubble up again, muscles in my neck tightening.

  Nothing...

  I told myself that. There was nothing out there. But in the same instant a clarifying reminder chattered about in my thoughts, that there was nothing out there I could see.

  “Get a grip,” I muttered low to myself.

  “What?” Neil asked.

  I looked to him, and to Elaine.

  “Let’s get inside,” I said, covering my vague worry. “Kick it.”

  Neil looked to Elaine and shook his head, surrendering to her the honors. She stepped back from the wall and positioned herself in front of the door, gripping her MP5, ready to react as she drew a foot up and back, then slammed her boot next to the lock.

  Wood splintered and hinges screamed as the door burst inward to a space lost in deep shadows. Weapons ready we eased toward the opening.

  That was when we smelled it.

  Twenty One

  The space stank of wet death. A few steps inside we were able to see why.

  “Dammit...” Neil swore.

  I moved forward, past a closed interior door to the left. The day’s yellow light bled through windows set into the ceiling above. To one side, a camera rested atop a tripod, cables snaking from it through a hole in the wall, its lens aimed at a sight only half familiar.

  “No,” Neil said, dropping to his knees next to what had, at one time, been a thriving tomato plant. “No.”

  “We’re too late,” Elaine said

  Neil reached out and pinched the plant’s drooping brown leaves between thumb and finger, caressing bits of the dead plant. I joined him, crouching and poking a finger into a soil around its base. It came out caked with saturated earth.

  “It’s too wet,” I said, looking to the watering tube and the mechanism that controlled it. “It must have malfunctioned.”

  Neil shook his head at the sight. On the soggy earth, near the base of the plant, a shriveled oval of the fruit it bore lay. He took the rotted tomato in hand and held it in his palm, like one might a baby bird kicked too early from its nest.

  “All for nothing,” Neil said, his hand fisting around the discolored tomato, squeezing its putrid contents, the pulpy black flow oozing through his fingers. “We came all this way for not a damn thing!”

  He stood and hurled the smashed tomato against the wall. It splattered and trickled down the planked surface.

  Something, though, was working on Elaine. A thought. A realization that cut through the dejection she’d felt in concert with us.

  “You’re missing it,” Elaine said, looking to both of us. “It’s dead, but how did it die?”

  Neil calmed and thought on that, looking to me.

  “Like any other plant would,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Elaine said.

  Neil went back to the plant and cradled its drooping stems in an open palm.

  “Brown,” he said, almost marveling at the word. “Not grey—brown.”

  “The blight didn’t kill this,” Elaine said.

  She was right. I stood and looked down upon the plant. The plant that was, oddly, still a survivor in death.

  Bwoooosh...

  Neil jumped at the sound, jerking himself back from the plant just as the nearby pump activated, sending a thick stream of water onto the earth, runn
ing too long, building a deep puddle around the tawny stalk of the tomato plant. The source of its demise was on display, plain for us to see.

  Click...

  We heard that sound, too, a few seconds later, but the pump kept running.

  “That wasn’t from this pump,” Elaine said.

  “No,” I said, bringing my AR up and shifting its aim toward the far wall of the space. A space that was lost in the shadows beyond the warm day slanting through the skylight.

  Neil and Elaine readied their weapons as well. I stepped past them. Taking the lead. Stepping into the dim section of the room, my eyes adjusting to the reduced light, focusing in on what lay ahead.

  “I’ve got a door,” I said quietly.

  Neil and Elaine moved up and past me, taking position on either side of the simple, solid slab of wood that blocked the way ahead. That hid what was beyond.

  Our eyes adjusted to the din. I looked to Neil and gave a single nod. He returned the same gesture as acknowledgment and reached to the simple knob set into the nearest edge of the door, turning it.

  “No lock,” he said.

  I raised my AR fully and looked past the sight, centering my aim about chest high on the door. Elaine crouched slightly and tucked her MP5 close, ready to react quickly to any threat, stationary or moving.

  “Go,” I said calmly and Neil pulled at the knob.

  The brown wood door swung slowly outward, opening toward us, dry hinges creaking, a skim of dust waterfalling from its top edge. It hadn’t been opened in a long time. As the rain of fine grit cleared, I was able to see what lay past the simple wooden barrier.

  “Okay...”

  My quiet exclamation did not describe in any way what I saw. Both Neil and Elaine peeked around the opening to bear witness to what I was.

  Another door.

  But not in any way related to the one that had just opened, this one sporting a polished steel frame, and opaque glass filling the space in between from nearly bottom to top, some brightness beyond casting a milky white glow upon us.

  “This doesn’t fit,” Elaine said.

  “Maybe it does,” I countered. “Depending what’s on the other side.”

  “There’s a handle,” Neil said.

  I approached. There appeared to be no keyhole. No lock of any kind. Security for this point of entry appeared to exist only in the form of an outer door to disguise it.

  “You hear that?” Elaine asked, leaning close to the glass.

  I listened, and I heard what she was. What we all had before, only clearer now.

  “Water,” I said.

  “There’s a pump still running on the other side,” Neil said.

  The other side...

  My heart sped up a bit. The combination of what we’d found and what we were sensing quickened my pulse as some hope renewed. A plant, a dead plant, lay behind us. Light flowed in above it. Water spilled at its base. And beyond the translucent door before us, light flowed. And water ran. What else might exist in the space on the other side?

  “Please,” I said aloud as I reached to the handle and pulled.

  The sweetest scent slipped out. Just a hint, like perfume on a breeze, but so true, and so real.

  “Whoa...”

  Elaine was the first of us to react verbally to it.

  “Do you smell that?” Neil asked, seeking no answer, just confirmation that he, that none of us, was imagining what we’d almost certainly found.

  “I do,” I said.

  Life...

  That was the aroma. Green, earthy life. Not the stale odor of grey dust and foul death, but something alive. Something existing. Something real.

  I opened the door fully and looked through. We all did.

  “My God...” I said.

  Twenty Two

  I stepped through first. Elaine followed, then Neil, the three of us standing together to take in the sight. The impossible, miraculous sight.

  Trees. Plants. Bushes. Stubby six inch heads of lettuce to six foot tall, spreading limbs bearing oranges. And pears. And peaches.

  “This is real,” Elaine said, no question at all in her words or tone.

  “Damn straight it is,” Neil said.

  He walked forward, to the closest tree, bunches of apples hanging from heavy, drooping branches. His hand rose almost reverently and gripped one of the speckled red fruits, plucking it from its stem. He looked back to me and smiled.

  “Garden of Eden,” he said, then brought the apple to his mouth and bit into it.

  The satisfying crunch filled the air. Then again as he took another bite. And another. Chewing seemed secondary to actually getting food, real food, into his mouth.

  “This is amazing,” Neil said, juice dribbling past his lips and down his chin. “An apple. It’s an apple!”

  He slung his Benelli and grabbed another apple, eating two-fisted now. Elaine walked to a nearby tree, a dwarf cherry it appeared from the bunches of succulent red dangling from its branches. Its supple, leafed branches. She plucked a single cherry and slipped it into her mouth. Her eyes closed briefly as she chewed. When they opened again she spit out the seed and looked to me.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said, emotion edging her words.

  My friends continued to eat. To gorge themselves. I walked along a row of raised planting beds, my gaze taking in the space around and above, walls solid, ceiling a vast expanse of skylights, sun streaming in at a gentle, early afternoon angle. From the flatlands surrounding the property, the building, this massive greenhouse, had looked like little more than a warehouse built of corrugated metal. Without a nearby vantage from above, its true use had been masked.

  “You have to eat something,” Elaine said from behind, a peach in her hand now.

  I nodded, still processing this waking dream. This waking dream come true. I reached to a planting bed and took hold of a burst of leafy green rising from the soil, pulling until what was growing beneath was revealed. A carrot. A wonderful, orange carrot, flecked with moist, dark earth. A brush of my hand cleaned the root vegetable and I brought it to my face, taking in its fresh, earthy scent before slipping its end between my teeth. I bit, and chewed, and tasted, and I was transported to a place I had dreamt of. To the old world. The good world.

  The green world.

  “You did it.”

  I turned to see Elaine standing close. Beyond, Neil was moving amongst the fruit trees, picking a sample of each, filling his pack.

  “You got us here,” she said.

  “We got here together,” I reminded her.

  She looked to the third of our number.

  “He needed this,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  My friend’s health had taken a beating on our journey. Hunger. Injury. Illness. But he’d pushed through it all. To see him with a bounty to eat was about the most beautiful thing I could imagine right then.

  “I’m going to have a look around,” Elaine said. “There was another door in that room we passed through.”

  “Be careful,” I said.

  She nodded and smiled and leaned close, kissing me with lips sweetened by our find. After a moment she eased back just an inch or so, her gaze fixed on mine.

  “I want to make love to you,” she said.

  I smiled, my gaze sweeping the lush space around us.

  “Maybe not right now,” I said.

  “Soon,” she said, kissing me again, quickly this time, before stepping back. “Very soon.”

  She turned and headed for the door through which we’d entered, snatching a pear from a tree on the way. I watched her until she was gone, wanting her.

  I was surprised at the feeling. Not the existence of desire, but that I was capable of it in this world. In this time. What she wanted, what I wanted, implied more than an acceptance of hope. It, at the very least, hinted at a future. We were far from that as any kind of certainty, and I had not expected to allow any such view. Caring for Elaine, even in its nascent state, was good. For us both.
Wanting her, too, was wonderful.

  Wanting that to lead to more, to permanence, was the truth I hadn’t prepared myself for.

  Neil had embraced the idea of family with Grace and Krista, while I had been ready to leave Bandon, and all those I knew, including Elaine. I’d told myself then it was because the community had settled into a false normalcy, ignoring the fact of starvation creeping toward them on the horizon. But now I wondered if it was more than that. If I’d feared that staying, that accepting the simple everyday life, meant that I was ready to write off the rest of the world and live only for myself.

  Or did I fear living for another? For Elaine?

  Not anymore, apparently. The tomorrows we might know together only added to the desire I felt. I wanted, now more than ever, to live, and to not be alone.

  “Eat up, Fletch.”

  Neil stood behind me, a peach in hand, held out to me. I took it from my friend and bit into it. The juice slopped over my chin. That sensation, so alien for so long now, filled me with such relief, such assurance, that it felt as though I could breathe easier. A weight was lifted.

  “Plums over there, buddy,” Neil told me.

  “Let’s give them a try,” I said.

  My friend showed me to the tree and we ate. And ate.

  Twenty Three

  “Eric...”

  I looked to Elaine. She stood in the passageway between the greenhouse and the room with the lone tomato plant, glass door held open with one hand while she motioned me over with the other. I gave Neil a quick glance, my friend wandering slowly amongst the rows of plants, a childish grin upon his face, fingers gliding gingerly over the impossibly green leaves.

  “Eric...”

  Her repetition of my name drew me out of the moment. The magic moment. The realization of where we were, and what we’d found, had almost overwhelmed me. But I left it and the greenhouse behind and went to Elaine.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She reached out and wiped a smear of plum juice from my chin.

  “I found something,” she said, tipping her head toward the way we’d entered.