by Cole, Olivia
“Why didn’t you visit her?” he asks.
Enough of this shit, she thinks.
“Do you know my sister?” Tasha demands. “She knew your name. You seem like you know hers. How?”
The pause is long and heavy. Behind his eyes, something is pacing.
“We worked together.” The stupid mystical smile.
“My sister isn’t a doctor. She’s a lawyer. Where did you work with her?”
“Why didn’t you visit your sister in California?”
Tasha just scowls at him.
“Alright then. Anyhow. I’ll need your help,” he says mildly. “As we prepare to go West, I’ll need your help.”
“I am helping,” she says, more petulantly than she intended, and gestures at the backpacks.
“Yes, yes. But there is more to be done.”
“About what? About leaving? Or about the Minkers?”
Something in his face opens like a crack in the earth, the hot red center glaring through at her like a glimpse into the pit. It scares her. But then it’s closing up again, the crack stitching together, the hot thing buried under cool doctor exterior.
“About Cybranu,” he says coldly. If they were on the phone he would have hung up without saying goodbye. She gets the feeling the conversation is over.
Shaking her head, Tasha folds the letter and tucks it back into the front pocket of her backpack, along with the sunglasses. Then she picks up her Apiary badge and starts to slip it back into the pocket too.
She gasps as Dr. Rio snatches it from her hand before she’s able to tuck it away. Even Ishmael is a little startled at the suddenness of the motion and watches, puzzled. Rio holds the badge close to his face, looking over the top of his glasses.
“Is this yours?” he demands, his eyes still fixed on the ID.
“What?” she stammers, even though she’d heard him. “Yes, it’s mine. What the hell?”
“You were an employee at the Apiary.”
“Yes, I did, but I quit,” Tasha lies. She’s less worried about him having the badge than she is about Ishmael or someone seeing her picture on the front of it, her tight ponytail, her lipsticked mouth.
“For what purpose did you use this badge when you were employed by the Apiary?” He’s staring intently at the badge, at the face in his hand. She’s annoyed.
“Employee doors, the employee elevator, conference rooms. The trash room. The stores.” She could go on but doesn’t—what’s the point?
“But you didn’t turn in your badge.”
She considers snatching the ID back. Who gives a shit if he’s a doctor, she thinks; it doesn’t make him a saint. Jesus was a carpenter, not a neurosurgeon, so Dr. Rio can piss off.
“No, I didn’t give the badge back. I got fired and kept it. Okay?”
He’s not angry, as she thought he might be. Instead, he smiles at her and picks up his mug of tea from where he’d set it on the arm of one of the chairs, holding the badge out to her like an olive branch.
“Fired?” he asks.
She wants to punch him.
“Yes.”
“You’re a lucky girl.”
Z enters the conversation mercifully, seeing how uncomfortable things are becoming. Tasha wonders at her silence throughout the exchange with Rio. Malakai’s too. And Ishmael’s. Each probably thought there was something to learn.
“I said the same thing,” says Z, laughing her merry laugh. “I mean, who wants to work at the Apiary? That uniform—Jesus!”
Ishmael scoops up the rolling ball.
“Oh yeah, that uniform was the worst! They had you guys in there looking like Martians’ wet dreams.”
“That’s what I always said!” Tasha laughs, relieved.
They talk a little longer, Rio in the background listening to their chatter and smiling and nodding. But his mind is elsewhere, and every once in awhile Tasha glances at him, still angry, and sometimes she catches the crack in his face opening, or looks at him just as it’s closing up. She wonders what magma is inside him that keeps him so close to breaking open. She wonders if Ishmael knows that Dr. Rio is on the edge, that he is at the lip of a deep canyon.
Dr. Rio sees them off that evening, sending them home with cornbread he baked in his gas oven. As they pass through the garage, she notices the distinct smells again: the almonds, the tar, the cabbage. In the corner is the shadow of the unwashed sickle. She’s grateful to gain the open air of Lafayette, its clean, silent smell. Dr. Rio waves at them from the door of the garage as they head back to Perry Avenue, reminding them to be back tomorrow at eight in the morning to see off the next group bound for California. Tasha doesn’t look back as she walks, her Wusthof held at the ready in case they should attract the attention of any Minkers in the area; but the only eyes she feels upon her are Dr. Rio’s, burning into her back.
Chapter 27
It’s Saturday. The people who gather at Dr. Rio’s in the morning are multi-colored—men, women, kids, pressing together in the rooms of the big old house, their voices filling the space. Tasha blends in.
At one point, the kind of people who went to California looking for dreams were young, idealistic; wearing tie-dyed shirts and carrying headshots and scripts. This group lacks that spark. Their optimism is small and hunched, peering out of shuttered windows. Geese know no joy in their flight from north to south—they migrate because they must, and the Chicagoans are no different. To the West lies a new life, one they have little choice but to begin. Tasha figures they liked their old lives just fine, thank you very much. Or did they? She thinks of her closet full of shoes, how leaving them behind had felt like an act of unspeakable treachery. She wonders if the shoes would still even fit. She feels as if it’s been years since she’s worn them—surely she has grown?
Tasha, Z and the guys are helping the caravan make final preparations before the journey, and Tasha watches the group packing final objects, imagining them folding up their memories, sticking their pressed dreams in between the yellowed pages of books. She sees their turmoil as they decide what to leave behind, and she remembers trying desperately to make the green Jimmy Choos fit in the Prada backpack. Some of the people in the group carry an extra small bag or have an item tied to the back of the backpack—things they can’t part with. These objects might become burdensome on the journey, but some burdens can’t be put down.
Tasha is helping an old woman, Bianca, who tells Tasha that she was born in the year 2000. She has fine copper skin and says that one side of her family was Sioux. Tasha helps her repack a backpack after Dr. Rio tells her that the things she has packed—picture frames and jewelry—will become too heavy for her on the long walk ahead. Tasha sits in the living room of the doctor’s home—crowded again with the appearing and reappearing chairs—once more, helping Bianca remove the photos from the frames and tuck them between the pages of a diary, which Bianca insists she is taking with her, even if it does take up space that could be used for food. She is tall for a woman her age, but delicately boned, her wrists as slender as Tasha’s.
“Telling me I can’t take my picture frames,” Bianca whispers conspiratorially as they slip the photos gently into the pages of the diary, which is bound in worn velvet and yellowed at the pages’ edges. It’s the kind of thing Tasha would like to read, leafing through the dates for significant days in history and seeing what Bianca had to say about them. She’s a little younger than Tasha’s grandmother would have been if she were living—they might have had similar movie tastes in the old days. Tasha has to stop herself from asking to read the diary.
“It’s alright,” Tasha tells her as they stack the now-empty frames. “The pictures are what really matter.”
Bianca hums at this, stroking the edge of one frame, which is metal and decorated with butterflies. It’s commercially made, generic. There are millions like it, Tasha is sure.
“Yes, I suppose they are. But this was such a pretty frame. I got it at Target, I think. Years ago. It’s only ever held the one photo,
the one of my son, there.” She points. The young man in the picture is beautiful, his skin almost black, with slanting, smiling eyes. Tasha wonders where he is. Is he dead? By the Chip or by other circumstances? It’s strange for Tasha to think that she classifies all deaths in this way now: death, and death by Minker. She is glad her parents are not just dead, but dead. Not killed, not eaten, not torn apart. Safe.
Around them are other people packing last-minute nonperishables and testing the weight of their backpacks. There is a steady hum of conversation, colored with excitement but also tension, the stiff anxiety of a platoon being deployed.
Dr. Rio has a system, which Ishmael explained to Tasha and Z the night before. The group as a whole—around thirty people, as Dr. Rio had said—is headed by six captains, each leading a small group of their peers which, including themselves, consists of five people. Each quintet gets a can opener, a compass, and a first aid kit. In addition, each person in the pod carries the backpacks that Tasha and Z packed, stocked with canteens, hunting knives and solar-powered maps, along with any personal objects. Some people take tampons and shoe inserts, sunglasses and tech toothbrushes like Tasha’s, combs and sunblock, nail files and muscle rub. Some people have been assigned to carry the tiny packaged inflatable tents that she’s seen sold at Columbia. Tasha wonders what will be the item that is most often forgotten, most desired after the journey begins. She imagines many things they need might be acquired along the way. The walk west is not as it was in the time of oxen, covered wagons and cholera: there will be Wal-Marts every twenty miles, especially in states like Nebraska. There will be the hordes of Minkers to watch for, of course, and avoid, but things they lack will be found. Tasha assumes this is why the backpacks’ food stores are so unsubstantial. The packs of Ramen noodles and bread and dried fruit are not meant to last the entire journey— only until the next town or pit stop they might come across, where they can stop and forage. It’s a little daring, but without the actual oxen to which Tasha has been mentally likening the travelers, the food packed must weigh as little as possible. She wishes they had NASA food: powdered nutrients that take up very little space but nourish the body. But she figures the “food” of astronauts isn’t very comforting, and the people walking to California will be in need of comfort. She imagines the long-stretching expanse of land between where she currently stands and where her sister, far away, sleeps to be much like Mars: vast, empty, strange, and possibly populated with hostile life forms. She has never been to Iowa, or Utah, or Nebraska. Or Nevada. Or California. They might as well be alien planets, sixteenth and seventeenth rocks from foreign suns.
Bianca, finished repacking her diary, is looking around at the others making final preparations for the trip. Tasha finds herself wondering if Bianca, in her late seventies, is too old to make such a journey. She seems spry, and the people in her assigned pod seem smart and strong. The pod’s captain is Elmo, a youngish Puerto Rican guy with long shiny hair. He addresses Bianca as “mother.” The group also includes a woman with a heavy Nigerian accent named Kimberley, a nineteen-year-old boy with braids called Juno, and a quiet balding man named John. None of them knew one another until they’d been grouped together by Dr. Rio.
Tasha wonders at Rio’s selection process. He can’t have randomly paired these people—Rio doesn’t strike her as the type of man who leaves things to chance. Elmo isn’t very buff or massive, yet he’s been put in charge of Bianca and the others. Perhaps he is deadly with the pool cue he carries as a walking stick. Or perhaps he’s merely navigationally gifted, and making him responsible for the group’s compass was logical. Tasha wants to ask, but she’s been avoiding Dr. Rio since their bizarre conversation the day before. Ishmael has skirted the subject carefully, venturing onto the topic only to ask about her former employment at the Apiary. He’s both interested and amused by the fact that she had been one of the blue-clad drones in the platform boots.
“You just seem too…smart for the Apiary,” he’d said the night before when they’d arrived back at his mother’s house. “Let me see your ID again; I don’t believe it.” She had refused, not willing to allow him a prolonged examination of the badge and her permed, make-upped features. He hadn’t really seemed surprised.
Dr. Rio comes near to exchange a few words with Elmo, and Tasha drifts away, trying to make her retreat seem casual. She spots Z in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and watching the proceedings. Z had spent the morning by the atlas on the wall, double-checking the route drawn on the maps each captain carries. By now she must know the route by heart, Tasha thinks.
“So many of them,” Z says as Tasha leans beside her. “How many do you think will make it?”
Tasha laughs.
“I don’t think they have a choice once they leave Chicago.”
“You don’t think any of them will die?” Z asks quietly.
Tasha isn’t prepared for this question; she hasn’t even considered it. The challenge she’s been weighing in her mind has been whether they will make it to California with their shoes intact, not whether they will make it there alive.
“I mean…” She doesn’t know how to finish.
“There’s Minkers, illness, injury, starvation, dehydration…” Z makes circles with her wrist, indicating that there are dozens of other ways one of them could die that she just doesn’t care to expound upon at the moment. Tasha continues the list mentally: snake bites, meteor showers, dart frogs, packs of vicious roving hamsters recently emancipated from domestication…
“Rio said if they avoid cities, they can avoid big groups of Minkers,” Tasha says, keeping her vision of rampaging gerbils to herself. “And illness? It’s not like it’s the nineteenth century. Nobody’ll die of pneumonia or anything, and Dr. Rio is giving every group pouches of medical supplies. He’s even putting in those X-packs, the super antibiotic cocktails that cost like $600. It knocks out any virus. Even, like, rabies.”
Z nods.
“Yeah, that’s true. He must have spent a ton of time stealing all that shit from the research center. I really wonder how long he’d been planning on deserting.”
Tasha shrugs, watching Rio move about the room, putting a reassuring hand on an arm here, smiling encouraging words there. He’s like Captain Kirk, minus the spandex, preparing his crew for a galaxy they’ve never seen before. He walks past Tasha and Z with a pod captain, a woman named Yani, into the garage, which has been lit with large battery-powered lanterns, the garage door cracked to let in more light. It doesn’t smell of cabbage and tar anymore, Tasha had noticed when she arrived. Rio must have taken the trash out. Somewhere.
“Such a weirdo. People really seem to trust him,” Z says after Yani and the doctor have passed.
“People always trust doctors.”
“Yeah, except when they’re suing them.”
Tasha laughs.
“Yeah, except when they’re suing them. Hey, there’s Malakai. Where’s he been? Hey, Malakai!”
Malakai hears his name and looks over. Seeing them, he picks his way through the crowd and comes into the kitchen.
“Hey,” he says. “Good thing Dr. Rio has a big house, right? There’s more people in this group than the last two. He says a few more people showed up this morning asking to come. He doesn’t say no.” Malakai clearly admires the man, and Tasha can see him look around for Rio.
“He’s in the garage with that really small lady,” she tells him.
“Yani?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“I like her. She’s cute.”
Tasha rolls her eyes.
“Where have you been?”
Malakai tilts his head toward the garage.
“I was in the other garage putting some stuff in Dr. Rio’s car. He’s got some project he wants to do before we all leave on Sunday.”
“What stuff were you putting in the car?”
“Just a couple backpacks. Nothing big.”
Bianca comes wandering over to them. She’s wearing the backpa
ck Tasha helped her pack.
“Well, I think I’m all set.” She tugs on the straps. “It doesn’t feel too bad. But we’ll see how I feel after a thousand miles or so. I may just decide to resettle in Utah if I can’t make the whole trip. There’s towns in Utah,” she says, more to herself, “that wouldn’t mind an old lady renting a room. Although the rent would have to be free.” She cackles before moving into the garage, still talking to herself about Utah.
“Think she’ll make it?” Z murmurs to Tasha. “She’s pretty old.”
“She’ll make it,” Tasha says.
She sees Ishmael across the room in the doorway that leads from the living room to a foyer inside the front door, through which Tasha has yet to enter. He’s looking around, moving his head slightly back and forth as milling people interrupt his view. He’s looking for her, she thinks. His eyes drift farther than the living room and search their way into the kitchen, and he sees her. His eyebrows relax and his head moves to one side, then back to center.
“What’s up?” she says when she reaches him. It took a few moments, picking her way through the crowd. They let her pass when they notice her, but most are too concerned with finding their captain, staying with their captain, eyeing their pod, counting their bags of dried fruit. It feels like a strange, strained summer camp. When Tasha had left the kitchen, Z had started to come with her, but had stopped. She must have seen Ishmael. Wing-woman.
“There’s something I want you to see,” he says, turning and walking down the hall to the foyer. She follows him.
“What is it? Is everything okay?”
He’s silent as he pulls open the front door, and they slip out onto the front porch together. He shuts the door behind them and it closes with a soft click. It’s quiet here, the bustle of summer camp shut out by the brick of the big old house Dr. Rio has set up shop in. She doesn’t look at Ishmael; she thinks he might kiss her. But instead, he points.
She follows his long dark arm, her eyes stopping to admire his fingers. They are smooth and well made. A sculptor’s hands, she thinks. Beyond the hand is the yard, and the street, and a row of ancient clipped hedges growing beyond their neat boxes with no one to tame their ambition, and beyond the hedge is a humming line of Minkers.