by Lynda Engler
“If you’ll follow me please,” the cadet said.
Luke needed no further encouragement to vacate the conference room. A tour was all well and good, but what he really needed was to find out what happened to Isabella – and getting out of that room was his best chance.
As they walked down the corridor, the cadet in perfect military fashion, Luke more relaxed in a typical teenage slouch-gait, Luke read the boy’s name tag. The kid could not be more than a year older than he was. “So, Cadet Schmidt, you have a first name, or do they take those away from you when you join up?”
“I didn’t join up. I’m a student at West Point. I graduate next year. We are still a Military Academy, although the New York and New England Division of the Joint Military Forces of the USA has been headquartered here since just after the Final War. Cadets are proud to share our campus with the ‘shiniest of the brass,’ as we call them.” The cadet was tall and dark haired with icy blue eyes and a mouth apparently incapable of smiling even when regaling visitors with tales of his school pride. And apparently, he did not have a first name.
“Okay, Schmidt. So show me around your school.”
Schmidt began a running commentary about the Military Academy as they walked.
“West Point is the oldest continuously operating army post in the United States, being first occupied by the Continental Army in 1778. Cadets started training in artillery and engineering studies at West Point in 1794 but Congress did not officially create the Military Academy until 1802. The Academy grew over the centuries and by the time the Final War occurred, West Point was graduating 1000 cadets a year. The campus sits on 16,000 acres but also utilizes surrounding land, such as the oil tank farms that run along NY Route 9W. We have been using those oil reserves to power the campus for the last 50 years. We also converted the Athletic Center’s nine gyms into hydroponics farms and its five swimming pools into fish farms. West Point is quite self-sufficient,” Schmidt said proudly.
“You memorized that speech? Congrats, Schmidt. You get an A in regurgitation skills.”
The cadet’s only response was a low grunt.
Luke looked out the windows as they walked, nodding occasionally at Schmidt’s tour guide monolog. The outer shell of all the buildings had been covered in some kind of thick plastic decades ago, no doubt to protect the building’s occupants from radiation and chemical poisons in the environment Outside.
“What do you want to see first?” asked Cadet Schmidt expectantly.
“Where do you keep the mutants?” asked Luke.
“Ah! I figured you wanted to see that.” Now the cadet finally smiled. Luke had hit on a subject that amused the other boy. They turned down a corridor that lead to an airlock to which Schmidt pointed.
“Outside?” asked Luke, raising one eyebrow.
“Where else? They are already contaminated, so there’s no reason to waste space inside on them. You don’t mind putting on an NBC suit, do you? Unless you’d like to go back Outside without one?”
“I don’t need one. I’ve been inoculated.”
“That crazy scientist in there… he really shot you up with something that’ll keep you safe from the poisons? Is that even possible?” Schmidt stared at him while slipping into a safety suit hanging from a hook on the wall. It was standard military-issue khaki-colored chem-rad suit just like the patrol boat troops wore, not like the active camouflage suits he had seen at Picatinny.
“We’ll never find out if I don’t keep exposing myself, will we?” Luke waited for Cadet Schmidt to finish securing his helmet, and then followed him into the airlock.
“But what if he’s wrong? What if you aren’t protected? You’ve volunteered for a dangerous mission, Luke.” Sound carried through a chem-rad suit but always sounded weird to Luke.
The airlock finished its cycle and both boys stepped Outside onto the green lawn that Luke had observed from the upstairs window. The mutants who had been mowing the lawn were nowhere in sight now.
“No worse than being in the military, Schmidt.” Luke followed the cadet across the lawn, past a fenced-in area with long tables along the inside and finally to a steel building with double doors that opened inward.
Schmidt entered the building first. “Unfortunately we shipped out the latest batch this morning so there’s no freak show to watch. Shame though – I like coming down here to see all the mutants. You’d be amazed at the weird things that can happen to a body left unprotected Outside.” He seemed to realize too late that Luke had been Outside for quite some time. “But then maybe you’ve seen some cool things too!”
Remembering the horror he had witnessed in the factory at Dover, the dead Eaters whose blood slicked the floor and metallic stench that filled the air, Luke said, “I’m not sure I’d call the things I’ve seen cool.”
Misunderstanding his response, Schmidt said, “Um, right. Some of the mutants are more than freaky. They’re downright horrid. Extra arms, missing legs – weird stuff! Anyway, after we round them up, the medical staff at Indian Point examines them and ships them up here. We can store up to a hundred in this cellblock until we have enough to truck off to Mt. Weather. Seventy-four left this morning.” Schmidt wandered around the empty cells, all the electronic door locks open when not in use.
“Any pretty girls my age in that last batch by chance? One’s that didn’t look mutated, maybe just tired and dirty?”
“You dawg! You like the dirty little things, don’t you!” Schmidt smiled conspiratorially at Luke and offered his gloved palm for a very unmilitary high-five.
“No, man, I’m looking for my sister! I think she was accidentally rounded up with some mutants. Her name is Isabella Bellardini. Long curly brown hair, about five foot four, skinny. Seen her?”
“Oh, sorry man. I don’t know their names. We just give them numbers.”
“Aren’t there any records you could check or something?” asked Luke. The empty cells stood on both sides of the aisle like discarded underwear – dirty, dingy, and forgotten.
“Nothing that would give us their descriptions. Our records just show vitals: age, sex, health, and exposure level. Maybe the doc downriver will remember her. I have a friend who works at the medical lab down there. When we get back inside I’ll see if I can reach him once he’s off duty.”
Luke gave Schmidt a description of the “vitals” of the group Isabella was with to the best of his knowledge.
“If she was sick, like had TB or something, the medical exam would have shown that, right?” Luke paced the hall of the detention building.
“Yeah, I’m sure it would. I’ll see if I can find out.”
“Thanks Schmidt. This really means a lot to me.”
“Sure, no worries, Luke. If you’re done looking around, I need to get back to my duties. Luckily, I have no classes because its break, but I am aiding General Harmon this summer to get promoted. I miss my family though. I would have liked to go home for vacation.”
“Where’s home?” asked Luke, looking away from the empty cells. Isabella could have been here just this morning. He ached to scream! All this searching and it was a good possibility that just when he had almost caught up to her, they had dragged her away like a common criminal.
“Mt. Weather. My parents and kid brother are there.”
Schmidt walked toward the double doors. “I’ll let you know if I find out anything about your sister. If she was here, we’ll track her down.”
* * *
Isabella
HSPCs, or Specs as the troops called them, were rolling torture devices. The Specs were thirty feet long and had a troop capacity of twenty-four each, plus two in the cab. Four soldiers accompanied the twenty-six mutants into the back of the over-capacity truck. Twenty-six prisoners sat in twenty seats. Isabella sat next to Malcolm, Andra on her lap, and Shia on his. With no room for the children, Andra and Shia were not the only ones sprawled across people’s laps.
The three large vehicles bumped their way down the old Palisades Parkway, a
road even the military infrequently traveled.
The truck was hermetically sealed against the poisonous Outside, allowing the soldiers to remove their chem-rad suits. They even had a bathroom.
Too bad they don’t have any shock absorbing capacity, thought Isabella as the truck bounced her bladder for the umpteenth time.
Isabella read the tag on the front of the female soldiers’ uniform. “Noble. Nice name. That your first name or last?”
“Last.”
She was not the most talkative person Isabella had ever encountered.
“Do you have a first name? I’m Isabella.”
“Daphne. And we are only allowed to call mutants by their numbers.” She inspected the paper pinned to Isabella’s shirt. “You are number 3846.”
“No, I’m Isabella. None of us are numbers. We have names. We have families. And we have lives, no matter how different from yours. We deserve at least to be called by our names while you take us to die.” Isabella was insistent because she no longer had anything to lose and everything to gain. Whatever she could learn might help them save themselves.
“That’s fair,” said the girl, almost conspiratorially. “I hate numbers anyway.” She smiled at Isabella, and then stopped, as if she had caught herself doing something illegal.
The soldier was only a few years older than Isabella was. Daphne could be pretty if she grew her hair longer, but even with the military crew cut, she had attractive features. A cute little pug nose sat in the center of a chubby, round face and full lips that rarely smiled stretched sanguinely from cheek to cheek. Isabella thought the girl should smile more. She wore small, flower-shaped blue earrings, clearly visible beneath the khaki-colored cap.
“I don’t hate numbers,” replied Isabella. “I’m good at math. But I have no desire to be called one.” Isabella smiled at Daphne, hoping she had made a friend, but certain that no one in the military would ever treat her as a human being.
“A mutant that can do math, huh?” The other three soldiers snickered along with Daphne Noble. “How high can you count? Ten?”
“Funny,” Isabella sighed. Perhaps friendship with this girl was too much to ask for. She obviously hated mutants as much as the rest of them. Stirring up conversation with this girl was a pointless waste of time, but then again, Isabella had nothing but time right now.
“Okay, show me some math. What’s the Pythagorean Theorem?”
Did the girl really think she was stupid? “The hypotenuse of a right angled triangle squared is equal to each of its sides squared added together. A2 + B2 = C2. Everyone knows that. Geometry isn’t my favorite subject though. I prefer Algebra.”
Daphne stared at Isabella with her mouth hanging open. “And you can read too.”
Isabella simply nodded.
“You aren’t a mutant, are you?” she asked quietly, realization dawning on her that they had made a terrible mistake.
Isabella shook her head slowly.
“You shouldn’t be here. Do you know where you are being taken?” The blood drained from the girl’s face as her eyes became transfixed with horror.
“Back at West Point some of the other prisoners said we were being forced to clean cities; clean up radiation and chemical poison. I can’t think of a worse job,” said Isabella, staring straight into the soldier girls’ eyes, unblinking.
Daphne Noble jumped from her seat. “You won’t be given any protective gear, Isabella! You’re going to be forced into Washington or Los Angeles. You’ll die of radiation sickness in two weeks!”
Isabella looked up at the girl soldier and remained seated, Shia stirring in her lap but not waking. “Why does it bother you that I might be killed? Isn’t that why we were rounded up?” she asked calmly.
“But you aren’t a mutant! We need to get you out of here. When we get to Mt. Weather, I will make sure they don’t put you in with the mutants. Thousands of people live there too – it’s an awesome city. You’ll be okay – I promise.” The girl returned to her seat, relaxing again, certain that as long as she did her duty as a soldier, everything in the world would be all right.
“What about the others? Will you help them?”
“Others? Are there other humans we have in custody?” Daphne replied, her lips pinched, her chubby face now looking like she suffered from constipation.
Isabella squinted at the soldier. “Yes, everyone in this vehicle!”
Malcolm, Clay, and Kalla had followed the conversation but remained silent. Now they looked to the girl with expectant eyes. Every person in the Spec eyed the soldier now. Could she save them all?
Daphne’s face relaxed into a small look of amusement. “Why should I? They are mutants. Why would you care? Why are you with them anyway?”
“Malcolm is my husband,” said Isabella taking his four-fingered left hand in hers. He gripped her hand lovingly in response.
“Oh,” said the soldier quietly, exhaling slowly and deliberately. Daphne Noble examined the mutants in the Spec as if really seeing them for the first time. She eyed them up, down and sideways, slowly scanning their hopeful faces, then dropped her eyes to the laps that held two little girls, each only three years old. Innocent babies.
But would she help them? Could she help them?
* * *
Luke
The turbo-prop plane sat on the tarmac like a dragonfly poised to take flight. The morning sun glinted off the wings, forcing Dr. Rosario and Luke to squint from its reflection.
They turned at the sound of a voice behind them. “General Harmon sends his apologizes for not being here to see you off,” shouted Cadet Schmidt over the roar of the engines. “He sent me in his stead. The scientists at Mt. Weather are eagerly awaiting your arrival, sir, so you may continue your research on the inoculation once you arrive. The general sends his wishes for a safe journey.” Cadet Schmidt saluted them. He wore a complete NBC suit on the tarmac.
Dr. Rosario extended his hand instead and the boy shook it.
“May I have a word with Luke before you leave, sir?” asked the young student and soldier.
“Certainly, cadet,” answered Dr. Rosario. “Glad to see you made a friend, Luke.”
The old man turned and lumbered up the metal steps to the plane, his body almost audibly creaking with the effort.
Schmidt extended his hand to Luke now and spoke just loud enough that Luke could hear him over the whine of the planes propellers. “I found your sister. She was on the truck with the last group of mutants en route to Mt. Weather. You’ll meet up with her there. Her med tests came out okay. She has some gene damage from exposure, but nothing immediately deadly like Tuberculosis, or any other disease. Good luck, Luke.”
Luke grasped Schmidt’s chem-rad suited hand and laid his other hand over the cadet's in a double-handed handshake. “Thanks Schmidt. You don’t know what this means to me!”
He ascended the steps, stopped half way up, turned back to Schmidt, and waved. He thought he saw a smile on the cadet’s face through the suit’s facemask. Taking a seat, he looked out the window to the skies above to see what lay ahead.
Acknowledgements
Thank you for reading! The response from readers has been one of the most enjoyable aspects of writing this series. If you enjoyed the book and would like to share the experience, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.
Check my website for news of the third book in the series: Under the Mountain.
If you would like a copy of the first book in this series, Into the Outside, you can find it at Amazon, now available in Kindle Unlimited, and as an audio book on Audible. Want to stay up to date on the latest books in this series? Sign up for the newsletter at
www.lyndaengler.com
I am deeply thankful for the beta readers who read my early drafts and kept me encouraged: Zora Marie, Jenna Whittaker, Elizabeth Burns and Veronica Jorden. For Henry Dixon, who shared in this book-writing journey and gave me a wealth of encouragement.
For all the amazing friends and family wh
o have loved and supported me through this entire adventure, this book is dedicated to you.