by Lynda Engler
“Now gently release it,” instructed Malcolm.
Isabella let go and the string sprang back and hit the inside of her left arm. “Ow!” she exclaimed, feeling the sting of the bowstring hitting her soft flesh. But she inhaled and tried again, trying not to look at the dark red welt that swelled as the training session went on. She fought back tears; she was getting used to experiencing pain Outside.
“I’ll have to make a bracer to protect your inner arm,” said Malcolm. “For now, keep your arm straight so you don’t twist it and have the string hit it again.”
The target Malcolm set up seemed to move like leaves in the wind every time she aimed, thus she missed most of her trial shots. After shooting twenty arrows, she had enough. Her arms were so tired she did not think she would be able to lift the bow, much less pull the string ever again.
Malcolm gave her a reassuring smile. “It’s getting dark now, so we really couldn’t go on much longer anyway. You should rest.”
Isabella was grateful for his patience, but she knew he could walk all day and pull bowstrings all night. Malcolm had limitless energy. Once past their prime, by about age fifteen, the people Outside had absorbed so much background radiation that they began to slow down, like a shelter person of sixty or so would. Malcolm seemed to be the exception.
Tonight Isabella felt like she was her grandmother’s age.
Clay volunteered to take first watch. He would patrol the perimeter of their camp until about midnight, and then he would wake Kalla who would take a turn for a couple of hours. Malcolm would relieve her when she got tired.
Isabella got their two daughters settled on their side of the four-person tent. Drained to exhaustion, she curled up next to Malcolm’s warm body on top of their double sleeping bags, and fell into blissful hours of oblivion. His musky, masculine scent made her feel secure as his arms twined around her body.
When Isabella woke, Malcolm was gone. He had been careful not to wake her when he went to take over the watch at some point in the early morning. She extricated herself from the sleeping bag and winced as she sat up. Even with a soft sleeping bag, sleeping on the ground was not any softer than concrete, and waking up with a backache was no fun. The bruise on her arm had swelled even more during the night, adding to her misery. Moaning and groaning, she woke up the two little sleeping girls and then packed up their gear in preparation for the trek east. Shia and Andra did not seem to have been bothered by the hard ground at all, proving that little kids really could sleep anywhere.
With their breakfast eaten and their tents carefully repacked, the six of them, plus Pumpkin, Andra’s orange tabby, hiked back to the road tangle. That cat would follow the girl anywhere.
Malcolm surveyed the landscape while Isabella read the map. “I think this one…” she pointed to one of the orange lines on the map. “It goes due east. Araddea saw the roach factory before the great river – I think she meant the Hudson. If it’s on this road, we should find it in the next few days.”
“We have to go into the Yellow Zone, don’t we?” asked Malcolm, peering over her shoulder at the large sheet of paper.
“Looks that way,” replied Isabella quietly as she carefully folded it back up along its crease marks. The deadly Yellow Zone, where the chemical bombs landed, terrified all of them. The maps highlighted the areas in yellow. However, even in a contaminated world, some areas were worse than others were. Malcolm Calloway and his tribe of a dozen people had left Ewr – left the Yellow Zone – to get out of that poison. Now they were voluntarily heading back into it, with only the vague directions of a Wiccan seer to guide the way.
“We must be crazy,” Malcolm said, shaking his head. “Okay. Here’s the plan. We go in quickly, look around and if we don’t find the factory, we come back toward Telemark on this other road marked in orange on the map. Maybe it’ll be on that one. If it’s not, then we can simply go back to Telemark. We don’t want to stay in the Yellow Zone any longer than we have to.”
Isabella nodded in agreement while twirling a lock of her long, curly hair. Living Outside had done nothing to alleviate the nervous habit she had had since childhood. Kalla and Clay straightened their packs and the group set off down the overgrown highway toward the Hudson River, into the Yellow Zone and its danger.
Chapter Two
Luke
Luke was exhausted. He had traveled all night and so far, there were no signs that he was being followed. The first hints of dawn were peeking over the surrounding hills. He paused for a moment to rest and focused on calming his labored breathing, and stretching his aching muscles. His body ached in ways he never even imagined it could.
The unfamiliar sounds of the wilderness had kept him moving. Unseen insects chirped, squeaked and buzzed and shadows ran past his feet. Wildlife had prospered since the Terror Wars nearly wiped out humanity fifty years ago. Oversized caterpillars munched, crunched, and gnawed at the canopy above. A four-inch-long furry creature fell on Luke’s arm and he gave an involuntary yelp as he brushed it off with the back of his hand.
“Damn bugs,” he mumbled, stepping over the orange and black banded caterpillar and picking up his pace.
An hour later, unable to go on any further, he tripped and fell into a ditch. Exhausted and aching, Luke thought maybe he should just stay there. The ground felt damp beneath his back, but at least he was hidden in the hole.
As the sun rose, he looked up at the brightening horizon that framed the mountains. Jon Bjork had made it seem so easy. The physical exhaustion, the sweat dripping from his brow even at night and the strained muscles – the author never mentioned those agonizing miseries a body could endure. Or maybe his fictional hero was always strong enough to overcome them so the author never felt a need to mention them. Luke felt weak and pathetic for complaining about trivial inconveniences.
He reminded himself that Bjork was not real and gave himself permission to wallow in self-pity for a moment. And then he thought of Isabella. If he did not find her soon, she would get sick from the TB bug she was harboring. Maybe the mutant tribe she was with would be fine – they probably had some resistance to the disease – but he and Isabella were shelter folk – life without the exposure to the Outside had afforded them no such immunity. If he had contracted TB after such a short time Outside, he was certain that Isabella had as well.
Too tired to even complain any longer, he fell into a fitful sleep. Nightmares about Isabella eluding capture by the military, only to be brought to her knees by the disease inside her soon wrestled him awake. An image of her lying on her deathbed with sores all over her skin, her eyes bulging and blood pouring out of her nose and mouth brought him into full consciousness.
The ditch he had fallen into was actually a shallow gully. He lay in an awkward, position, face down in the dirt, his heavy pack still secured to his shoulders. He pushed himself into a seated position spit out a mouthful of grime and dirt. His neck was stiff and sore and he wiped at the thick layer of dirt that covered his face. The bright yellow sun was inching westward, marking it as mid-afternoon. He guessed it had been more than nine hours since collapsing into the ditch at dawn. Forcing himself to his feet, he shook his head, trying to dislodge the images from his dream. The visions from his dream were not how tuberculosis killed; even he knew those nightmare symptoms were not TB. Whatever he had seen had been much worse.
Luke removed the heavy pack from his shoulders and glanced at the clear sky. At least it was not raining. His stomach gurgled and complained of inattention. Last night’s dinner at the military base, as satisfying as it was, seemed like forever ago. He checked his canteen. It was nearly empty. He had consumed most of his water during his midnight escape. Knowing that finding clean water would be a priority, he chugged what little water remained.
Then, after dumping the contents of his backpack out around him, he took inventory. While a prisoner at the base, he had not risked this task afraid it might alert his captors that he planned to escape, though any military commander worth
his salt would have recognized that Luke’s escape was inevitable. The day he arrived at Picatinny was still fresh in his memory. They forced him to endure a horrendous decontamination shower - first fully clothed, then naked as a newborn babe. And not just my body! The shower soaked everything inside my backpack, thought Luke. Afterward, he dried out all his belongings, but the map was problematic. He had carefully laid it out on the table in his room and kept it flat while it dried by placing several books they had given him to pass the time on top of it.
Now he stowed that map, the compass, and his water bottles in the backpack’s outer pockets for easy access. He could still see a thin film of water on the inside of the compass face. The spare shirt, shorts and underwear he tucked back into the pocket within. He put bottles of TB pills into the cavernous middle of the pack and covered them with the tarp and thin blanket. Then he organized the first aid supplies, wire, tools, and water purification equipment into smaller compartments. His food supplies, however, were severely lacking. That damned caretaker girl watched him and waited at each meal until he finished, and then took his tray. He only had a few carrots and one apple left from home. He ate the apple with ravenous speed, then half of one carrot with less haste, reserving the other carrot and a half for dinner.
Repacked and fed, Luke considered his options. He picked up a small branch and worked at the loose bark, breaking off chips that were as ragged as his fingernails and he thought. If he was going to find Isabella and successfully evade the military in the process he had to be smart.
If he went on during the day, they would spot him easily in the open. If he waited until dark, he would be able to restart his journey in cooler weather and under the cover of darkness. Luke needed water, though, and that would be harder to find at night; although he had accidentally splashed through a few small streams last night. Miserably, Luke thought, I should have refilled my bottles then.
He was not as good at this survival stuff as he had convinced himself he was, but he was learning! He was sure he would get better at it as he went along. Actually, Luke thought to himself, I really have no choice but get better at surviving Outside. Get better, or get dead.
Unsure whether the military was even going to bother following him, Luke checked his map and compared it to his compass. As far as he could determine, he was still on Picatinny’s property. He estimated that he was at least four miles north of the domed section of the base. The lake should be due west, through the dense trees, but he needed to turn east to get to his sister. The roads on his map had long since returned to the wild, but so far he was making good progress, despite the difficult terrain and his clumsy inexperience.
Luke made a decision. Rechecking his compass, he climbed out of the ditch and back up onto more solid ground. He would go to the lake first, and run three bottles of water through the water purification kit he had brought with him from his grandfather’s shelter while waiting for the temperature to cool off. A few hours later, just before dark, he would set out for Telemark.
The plan was to get as far as he could during the night. He would push himself until he was too tired to go on, but this time he would stop before falling over from exhaustion and set up a proper camp. He did not want to wake up with a mouth full of dirt ever again. Who knew how many bugs he had swallowed!
* * *
Isabella
Isabella and her group examined the tangle of roads by the shopping mall. Some of the road signs were still readable and Isabella finally identified the one that was marked in orange on her map. The ramp that led downhill to it was broken in sections, but the left lane remained passable, as if someone had pushed the stalled vehicles out of the way. Perhaps the military had opened lanes at one time, as Malcolm had suggested. Rusted cars littered the road everywhere they had traveled and this road was no exception. Hundreds of thousands of people had been driving on the roads when the bombs hit half a century ago and most never made it home. The cars had been abandoned where they stopped or crashed. Some still contained skeletons, picked clean by birds or time.
Not everyone had been in the direct path of the bombs and those who lived in outlying areas, farms and the western desert were able to escape death. There were always survivors of any disaster, natural or man-made. No matter how hard the human race tried recklessly to annihilate itself, it still managed to cling to life. For what it was worth, humanity was incredibly stubborn, thankfully.
“Clay,” Kalla said, as she took the lead. “Do you remember my Mama’s story about her father’s father who walked across the desert?”
Isabella still did not know anything about Kalla and Clay’s past, other than that they came from Ewr with Malcolm. This was the first she had heard of their families.
Clay picked up a handful of small rocks from the road and threw them out in front of them, trying to better his distance with each toss. “We were just children when she told that story. I don’t really remember all of it.”
Children! thought Isabella. At eleven, that’s all they were now!
Kalla went on with her story. “His name was Fargo. Mama said he walked for days and days and never saw a single person. He ran out of water and was almost lizard food bunches of times. No shade, just hot, hot sun. Finally, Fargo fell down a sand dune and didn’t get up.”
“Did he die?” asked Andra, who had been attentively listening to the older girl’s story.
“Of course not, silly girl,” replied Kalla and smiled down at the child. “How could I have gotten born if he did? No, some passing tribe found him and gave him water. Nursed him back to health. He was so grateful that he walked with them the rest of the way across the desert and took one of them for his mate when they stopped their wanderin’ in Miss Cippi. They stayed there a lot of years, all the way until him and his mate died. But they had a son first, my Mama’s daddy. And when he became an almost-adult, he started his own trek, just like his papa had. He walked and walked, east until he got to the ocean. Then he headed north.”
Isabella stopped Kalla’s story. “Why did he walk to the ocean? Or north after that?”
“Because he could,” replied Kalla, as if that was the most obvious reason in the world. “Mama’s daddy just liked to walk and see everything.”
“How far up the coast did he get?” asked Isabella. Kalla had left Ewr with Malcolm’s tribe months ago, but Isabella had no idea if the girl had lived there all her life, or if she had been born somewhere else.
“He got as far as a place called Holly’s Shelter. He stopped there for the winter and he met his mate, late in life. He was fifteen and his mate was twelve. They had my Mama the next summer and when my Mama turned one-year-old, they left to travel north.
By the time my Mama was five, her Daddy died. She stayed in Penns Vania with her mother, up in the mountains, with a tribe they found there. But my Mama got bored. She’d grown up walkin’ and wanted to go again. When she came of age at twelve and married my Daddy, they left and headed northeast. I was born the first year they walked. They kept walking, with me in a pack for the first year of my life. They’d stop in places and stay for months, always for the winter, because everyone knows you can’t be out here in winter. When I was five, we reached Ewr. That’s when I met Malcolm’s tribe, and Clay. Mama lived another three years after that, Daddy half a year longer. She told us the story of her travels across the country with her parents and her papa’s and his papa’s travels before him.”
Kalla turned to face Clay and said, “She told us that story many times, remember Clay?”
“I remember that when you came into Ewr with your Mama and Daddy, I thought how I’d like you to be my mate someday, Kalla. I knew it right away.” Clay smiled at her in a way that seemed to Isabella way too grown up for his eleven years.
Kalla elbowed him playfully in the ribs. “You were only five! Silly boy. You didn’t know nothing back then.” Despite her response, she smiled; clearly flattered that he had loved her for so long.
It was amazing how the descend
ants of that lone boy, Fargo, carried on his legacy of travel, even now as they walked the cracked and broken highway searching for a man who might – or might not – have the means to save survivors from the lingering death that surrounded them.
Isabella shuddered to think of the scary stories she had heard about the Outside all her life. Kalla just taught her that while death surrounded everyone Outside, there was still joy to be found; the joy of exploring, the joy of travel and friends and family and love. Kalla’s family had sounded happy. She must miss her parents terribly.
Why had Isabella’s own family, her own grandmother, told them horrible stories as little kids? She and her sibs had learned the details of the terrorist attack when they were eleven. Isabella had had nightmares of bombs falling on her for weeks after that particular history lesson. She had been so intent on telling Shia and Andra fairytales as they walked, even making up stories about rusty cars that talked and skipped rope; anything but the stories she had learned.
Kalla’s story left out anything about starvation or people dying of diseases during their travels. Those things probably had happened, but her childhood memories did not include them. The Outside could be deadly and dangerous, but Kalla was genuinely happy with her life. The way she looked with so much love at Clay, Isabella knew how much joy could be found Outside for all of them.
* * *
Luke
Hunger drove Luke to distraction. It had been six hours since he had eaten the last of his carrots and he had a hollow pit in the center of his stomach. He glanced around him, wondering where he could find something to eat. Perhaps, he thought, I need to teach myself to hunt. He wondered what eating an animal that had lived Outside in the chemical poisons and radiation would do to the inside of his stomach. He laughed at himself. What would I hunt with, anyway?
There were plenty of berries and mushrooms, but he was not hungry enough to trust his survival skills. Jon Bjork would have known which fruits were safe to eat and which would kill him faster than he could say “dead,” but Luke had no misconceptions that he could do likewise. Keeling over from exhaustion was one thing – poison berries he could do without.