The next morning they were roused from their bunks early and escorted over to the mess tent. Ben hadn’t had eggs in many months, and even though these were powdered, they weren’t bad.
As expected, they were assigned an area to clean up. It was gruesome work. They had shovels and would scoop the hair, bones, and ragged clothes of the dead into a waiting wagon. In all this time, he had rarely had to touch any of the corpses, and even though these were lacking skin and bodily fluids, it was somehow worse. But he did it, day after day. There was no chance to escape. The guards were always there and were smart enough to keep far enough away so Ben couldn’t rush them without getting shot. The days turned into weeks. The frustration of being away from Lila at a time she needed him so badly just ate away at him.
As for his plans for President Tillman, Ben never saw the man. He stayed locked up in the White House, far away from his subjects. Dan told him that that was much of the criticism of him even before the events of that day. He had been the least accessible president in history.
Time passed by slowly. Almost two months after arriving in Washington, Ben figured Lila had given birth. Was she okay? Was his child okay? Would he ever know? Then, out of the blue, a slight hope for escape was provided. They had just come back from another mindless day of clearing out remains, when four guards entered the tent carrying handcuffs and leg shackles. They approached Ben, who was lying on his bed, and ordered him to stand up. Ben looked at Dan, Gordon, and Jake, and lifted his eyebrows. Dan shrugged back in confusion. He stood up and let them put on the irons.
“Your presence has been requested,” said one of the guards sarcastically. They brought him out of the tent and put him in the front seat of a Jeep. The guards then piled in around him and the Jeep pulled out.
“Where are we going?” Ben asked. No answer was forthcoming, so he sat back and tried to figure it out himself. In a minute he knew. Up ahead were the gates of the White House. He stayed silent as they drove pass the guard house, and up to the entrance. Ben heard the humming of a couple of dozen generators powering electricity into parts of the building. He was pulled from the Jeep and escorted through the doors, where he was searched by a secret service agent. The agent, accompanied by another, took him from the soldiers and headed down a hallway to a set of double doors. They knocked, and the doors were opened by a third agent. He was ushered through, and Ben found himself in the Oval Office, looking at President Tillman sitting behind his desk.
“Put him on the couch where he can be comfortable,” said the president, who got up and came around the corner of his desk. He was a squat man in his sixties, completely bald, with a perpetual pained expression on his face. He came over to Ben and shook his hand, the chains rattling as he did so. Then he went over to the opposite couch and sat down.
He looked Ben over, then said, “So, I hear you’re famous. I’ve got to say, you don’t look like much.”
Ben wanted to say, you don’t either, but held his tongue.
“Throughout the camp,” continued the president, “I have a few people here and there who keep me updated on happenings. I must say though, that they were slow about this one. I’m told you’ve been here two months.”
“I have.”
“Don’t I rate a ‘sir’ or a ‘Mr. President’?”
“From what I hear,” answered Ben, “you might rate a firing squad.”
The president smiled.
“I think maybe you have wrong information.”
“I know that you’re responsible for the deaths of billions of people.”
“You have me confused with the Pakistan government,” answered the president.
“Whatever.”
“I’m here to offer you your freedom, so you might want to temper your answers a bit.”
Ben let him talk.
“My sources tell me that you and a woman named Lila are quite the heroes in this part of the country. Although my guess is that some of this has been exaggerated a bit,” he said, looking down at a clipboard. “No matter. It’s probably better this way. I take it Lila is not among us here?”
“I was not allowed to go back for her when I was kidnapped.”
“Drafted.”
Ben looked at him and made a face of disgust.
“Where is Lila?” asked the president. “No one seems to know.”
“That’s because I never said,” replied Ben.
“Well, let me tell you my proposal. As you can see, my soldiers haven’t been very good at picking up volunteers to help rebuild this nation. The civilian population here only numbers a bit more than 130. That’s pathetic, as we know that there are a lot more out there.”
Ben noticed he said “my soldiers” and not “our soldiers” or “our country’s soldiers.” He thought that said a lot.
“We need a recruitment drive,” continued the president. “We need someone they know and trust to go where my soldiers wouldn’t know to go.”
“I assume you’ve figured out that I don’t like you,” said Ben. “What makes you think I’d do this for you?”
“Not for me. For your country.” Realizing he wasn’t putting anything over on Ben, he stopped that line of thought and got back to his subject. “You haven’t seen Lila in a couple of months. She must be frantic. I can guarantee her safety. We’ll send off a group of soldiers and they can pick her up where you tell them. They will bring her back here, and we will find some nice quarters for her. You can go into the hills—by yourself—and talk to people. My men will drop you off and pick you up at certain spots so you don’t have to walk from here.” He smiled, as if he had just told a joke. “You can come back every few weeks to see Lila, then when the weather turns cold, you can come back for the winter.”
“What about my friends in my tent?”
“We will release them back into the general population, so they can have the same privileges as everyone else.
Ben desperately wanted to see Lila, but this would put her in harm’s way. And even if it didn’t, she would be miserable. This would be no life for her. It certainly wasn’t for him.
He had no idea what this man was capable of. He couldn’t even string him along. The minute he steered them in the wrong direction for Lila, they would be on to him. He was trying to think fast as to what to do. The president could see his mind racing.
“It’s a sweet offer,” said Tillman.
“Not sweet enough,” replied Ben finally. “Let’s face it, you need people, and I’m the one who can get them for you. Lila would be unhappy here. Let the two of us recruit for you. We’re a pair. They know us as Ben and Lila, not just Ben. That’s our world out there. That’s where we’re comfortable. We will spread the word of the new government and check in here from time to time.”
“You’re joking, right?” answered the president. “Do you think I’m stupid?” He was raising his voice. “I know your opinion of me. I knew it before you even came in here, so if you had tried to bullshit me by telling me what I wanted to hear, I would have known it. At least you were honest about that.”
His face turned red as he worked himself up. “Lila was my carrot on a stick. It was the only way I would be able to control you, knowing you could see her from time to time. But I was being honest when I said it was a sweet deal for you, because it was the only way you were ever going to see her. I take back the offer.” He looked at the secret service agents behind Ben. “Take him away. Make sure he doesn’t go back to the camp. Take him to a cell and lock him up. He’s officially an enemy of the state.”
And that was it. I’d blown my only chance to see Lila. Yeah, it wouldn’t have been perfect, but we would have seen each other. Who was I kidding? One look at the soldiers and she would’ve split for the hills. And would I have been able to recruit for him? Of course not. I could never compromise myself in that way. Unless a miracle happened, I’d never see her again.
Chapter 24
(Lila)
It had been two days, and Ben hadn’t returned. Lila
was frantic. She took one of the boats over to the dam to look for the truck. It wasn’t there. She tried the other cars in the lot, hoping to find one that worked, but to no avail. Most were locked, and the couple she found keys for were too recent and wouldn’t start. If she weren’t pregnant, she would have walked to Waynesville. A couple of months earlier, sixty miles would have been nothing, but now it was just too taxing. She had been more tired of late than normal, and she had read in her books that there were often problems with teenage pregnancies. She needed to take it easy.
She took the boat back home to wait. The days passed. She spent hours each day sitting on the deck, listening for the sound of the outboard or the sight of Ben coming around the bend. Nothing. When she wasn’t waiting, she was tending to the plants in the starter kits. Two weeks went by. She had to force herself to spend less time each day looking for Ben. It was planting time, so she focused all of her energy on the garden, recognizing the importance of its success.
At night, the loneliness would set in.
More than once I considered suicide. Early in our journey, we knew that we needed each other in order to survive, and it was an unspoken assumption between us that if one of us did die, the other would take his or her own life. That was then. So much had happened since those early days. We were now able to survive without the other. We had learned so many skills and had worked so hard to gain our strength and independence. So I could survive. But did I want to? If I weren’t pregnant, I honestly don’t know what I would have done. I think I would have been afraid of the whole Romeo and Juliet thing—I kill myself, then he shows up. So I probably wouldn’t have … I guess. It was moot anyway. I did have something to live for. I was going to bring a child into this screwed up world. I had confused thoughts about that, too. On one hand, I was already fiercely protective of my child—and she wasn’t even born yet—and thought we could live a good life together in the wilderness. On the other hand, what kind of life would she have in the remnants of our old civilization? Maybe the best. Maybe growing up in the thick of nature would give her something I never had as a child—an understanding of her real self. She might develop the kind of spirituality that I was only now beginning to see. One that had nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with rules and laws, but had to do with your heart and your connection with something greater. Would that be such a bad life? I had been thinking of all the things she would miss. All the “things” in life. How could she miss them? She would never have them. I went from being afraid to bring a child into this world to being excited to provide the opportunity for someone to grow up with a deep passion for nature and understanding of peace. No, suicide wasn’t an option.
However, it didn’t make me miss Ben any less. My heart broke every evening, when the darkness set in and there was nothing left for me to do to keep busy. I cried. I cried every single night, and pleaded for Ben to come back to me. I thought of every possible reason for his disappearance, but it didn’t help. I didn’t know if it was better to declare him dead in my mind—but never in my heart—and try to move on, or hope that someday he would come around that bend, with the sound of the putt-putting of the outboard signaling his return. It really didn’t matter. He was gone from my life and the hole was enormous. And I had no control over whether he would ever return.
Two months passed. The garden was flourishing, and as long as Lila didn’t overdo it, she could take care of it. She was forever grateful to Ben for preparing the garden. She wasn’t sure she would have been able to do it otherwise. The space was large, and she had it packed to the gills with every vegetable she could think of. Up until a month earlier, she had hunted. Not knowing what effect the sound of a rifle would have on her child, she had become proficient with Ben’s crossbow, and was never lacking for meat. If things got really bad, she knew she always had the jerky. She smiled when she thought of the jerky, and how proud Ben was of his find. The last month she abandoned the hunting and just fished. The lake was abundant with life, and it never took her more than a few minutes to catch a meal or two.
Meanwhile, she read constantly about childbirth and how to have a child on her own. Most of the books stressed going to a hospital, but when she could get beyond that, there was information to be had—even little things such as massaging herself daily in that area to make it more flexible to help prevent a tear when the baby came out. The last thing she wanted to be doing after the birth was stitching herself. At first she was scared of the prospect of giving birth alone, but as time went on, a stubborn determination took over, and she knew that she could do it.
It was a mid-summer day. She was sweeping sand out of the cabin and she felt a warmth on her leg. She looked down to discover that her water had broken. There was a puddle under her on the floor. The time had come. She had already sterilized some scissors for the cutting of the cord, and had accumulated blankets and towels.
She laid down in bed on her side and talked to her child, assuring her that everything would be fine. She was nervous, but not scared. She had prepared for this for a long time. She wasn’t sure what more could be accomplished by having Ben there—except for the love and support. This was between her and her child. The contractions came and went, but slowly the time between each one and the next decreased and they became more powerful. When she felt the baby was ready to come, she slid off the bed into a squatting position over a soft pile of towels. She had decided early on that this was how she was going to give birth.
The pain was intense, and she cried out, all the while trying to remember to stay calm and breath. Finally, she felt the head crowning, and then suddenly the baby squirted out. Lila managed to catch her … barely—she was right, it was a girl!—then waited for the placenta to emerge. It came in a gush, and blood was everywhere. She cleaned out the baby's mouth and was rewarded with a cry. Later, when she was cleaning up, she thought back to how much blood she’d seen over the last ten months. This was the first time that blood made her happy.
She leaned back against the bed with her daughter against her chest. She had wet cloths all ready to wipe the baby off, and following the directions of the books she had read, cut the umbilical cord. She put her finger in the baby’s mouth, and she immediately began to suck. A good sign. She then put her up to her nipple. At this point Lila began to cry. But it was a happy cry. All kinds of things could have gone wrong, but they didn’t. She gave a silent thank you and sat back, basking in the moment. The only sadness was that Ben wasn’t there to share in it. Was Ben even alive?
When she eventually got up, she was unsteady on her feet, but made it to the bed, where she slept with her daughter. Katie. That was the name she chose. She looked up all kinds of names in the baby names book—names that had to do with nature, with peace, or significant attributes. In the end, however, she just liked the name Katie.
The next two months were frantic times. It wasn’t easy being a mother. And yet, she felt lucky. She had none of the distractions of mothers before the disaster. She had no job to go to, bills to pay, groceries to shop for. She had Katie. She and Ben had found a baby pack in their search, and she would take Katie out to the garden with her to pick vegetables and to weed. The garden had turned out better than she could have hoped for, and, following instructions from books, she was able to can many of the vegetables for the winter.
Even after only two months, Katie was enormous. She ate constantly and was strong and healthy. Lila was so in love with her. She read to her all the time, and told her stories about her dad. Since Katie was so healthy, Lila debated walking to Waynesville to see if she could find some clues to Ben’s disappearance, but she hesitated. If she didn’t find him, the questions would still persist. And if she found his body, she didn’t know what she would do. No, for now, she would concentrate her attention on Katie.
It was mid-September by her calculations, and she suddenly realized that it had been about a year since their old world had ended, and four months since Ben had rounded the corner into the main part of the
lake, and out of her life.
She was sitting on the deck one day when a kayak appeared in the distance. Ben? She was shaking with the hope that he had returned. She ran into the house for the binoculars. It wasn’t him. It was a man, but not Ben. She was wearing a long simple cotton skirt, which was cool in the hot summer sun. She went into the cabin and strapped her knife to her leg under the skirt, put her Sig where she could get to it quickly, and emerged back out onto the deck with her Bushmaster. Then she waited.
The kayak finally arrived and the man stepped out. He was tall, in his late twenties, and had an intelligent look about him. He waved as he got out of the boat.
“Saw your smoke and thought I’d stop by. Hope that’s okay.” He saw the rifle in her hands. He smiled and said, “I come in peace. Seriously though, if you’d rather I leave, I will. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
I made the decision to let him come up. Looking back, I don’t know if it was the right decision or the wrong one—I think the right one—but the need for adult contact was strong inside me. I loved being a mother, but I also needed to go beyond that. Here was my chance for some real conversation. Maybe he had news about Ben, as well.
She welcomed him into the house and asked if he was hungry. He admitted to being famished. She prepared a large salad while they made their introductions. The garden was mostly gone now, but she was still able to pick a few things. He set his backpack down—a rifle was strapped to it—and accepted a glass of water.
“I’m Peter.”
Eden Rising (Eden Rising Trilogy Book 1) Page 21