Humanity

by J. D. Knutson

  “Why not?”

  He tightened his grip on me, lifting a hand to caress my face. “Because you and I are in love,” he said. “It would feel wrong to use them like that.”

  “What are our other options? What about when I am ready to have sex with you?”

  He smiled. “I’ll be very happy when that day comes.”

  “But you don’t want any babies while the world’s like this.”

  He was silent for a moment, playing with a strand of my hair. Finally, he said, “What do you think about jumping the border to Mexico?”

  My lips parted as I stared at him in shock. “Jumping the border? I thought you were joking about that.” He had only mentioned it a few times since we’d met, but I had never thought he was serious.

  He shrugged. “You’ve made me consider it as a real option.”

  “How have I - ”

  He met my eyes. “Because not only do I want to have sex with you, but I want to start a family with you. Just not here.”

  I tried to find some words to reply to this. “I don’t know how I feel about any of this. Not just sex, but babies. And about illegally leaving the country.”

  “That’s okay. You have all the time in the world to think about it.” He leaned in and kissed my eyelid. “There’s no rush, especially if you’re not ready for sex.”

  “But how would we even get across? As you pointed out earlier today, we have no idea how technology has advanced since the U.S. has been cut off. They probably have weapons we have no clue how to evade.”

  “We’ll have to meditate on the issue when it comes up – some way to overcome whatever patrol they have.”

  “I thought the point of the patrol was that it was successful at keeping people out. How would we get through when no one else can?”

  “How about I think through all that while you decide whether you want to do it or not?”

  I frowned uncertainly at him. “Whether I want to jump the border,” I clarified.

  “Yes. And whether you want to have sex with me. And whether you want to have babies with me.”

  There was a certain hilarity to this conversation, but the laughter wouldn’t leave my chest. “You’ll have to be very clever to come up with something without even going near the borders.”

  “We are near the borders, darling. Perhaps we’ll take a field trip and look at them in a few more weeks.”

  I grunted. “No promises.” I rolled over, facing my back to him and getting into a comfortable position so I could fall asleep.

  He pushed my ponytail out of his face and kissed my neck. “I’ll take that as a maybe.”

  ~ * ~

  The weeks did pass, getting away from us quicker than I could have imagined. December turned into January, and January into February. All thought of exploring all of the southern U.S. disappeared in the promises the grove offered: unlimited food, and no visitors.

  How could it be that absolutely no one would venture here? Did they not know about it? Did the ones who did know truly fear the bears that much? Or was the U.S. population dropping at an increasing rate?

  Gideon had been right about the bears: they weren’t a problem. More of a comfort, really, for the peace they brought, and the food. They rarely came near the place we set up our camp and, when they did, I tried to pretend I wasn’t there until they left again.

  Our grove had always been warm, but we knew when spring began approaching, because it became even warmer.

  “Should we stay here? Or go?” I asked.

  “Do you want to eat oranges and bears your whole life?”

  “Not really – it gets old eating the same thing – but at least we’re not hungry. And I feel like this is our grove, since no one ever comes here.”

  “It’ll get hot in the summer. Very hot.”

  “Mexico’s hot, and I seem to recall you wanting to go there.”

  “Speaking of which, if we go back north for the summer, I’d like to visit the border first. Then I can at least think up strategies while we’re gone. I assume we’d return again when the cold came back?”

  “I like that idea – coming back here for the winter, not necessarily visiting the border and thinking about how to cross it in the meantime.”

  “Candace.”

  I turned to look at him from where I was straddling a tree branch; he was in the tree opposite me, and now gave me a deep, penetrating look.

  “I want to start a family with you,” he said meaningfully.

  I flushed; I had gotten so comfortable with him over the winter that it was almost unbelievable that we hadn’t had sex yet. But we hadn’t, even as I grew closer to him every day. Even as I trusted him more and more, unbelievable as that might seem. I trusted my entire being to him, and would have let him do anything.

  Except he wouldn’t have sex with me within the U.S. borders.

  Now, he climbed down from his tree, holding my gaze, and came over to mine. He took me by each of my ankles, still watching my eyes.

  “I want to start a family with you,” he repeated. He pulled himself into the tree until he sat right in front of me. “Do you want that?”

  I wrung my hands. “Parts of it. I’m only eighteen!”

  He took my hands and smoothed them out in his. “We can take it one step at a time. How about we cross the border, then worry about the rest later?”

  “The rest,” I echoed.

  “Like how we’ll support a family. I definitely want a roof over your head before I knock you up. And a steady supply of food.”

  “Like this.” I pointed at the oranges above our heads.

  “A man can’t live off oranges alone.”

  “There’s the bears, too,” I replied, raising an eyebrow.

  “Candace, I don’t want to live with the knowledge that it all might be taken from us some day.”

  “Who’s going to take it? There’s no one around. We don’t have to go back north for the summer.”

  “There might not always be no one around. I don’t want to take that risk. I want you and I to be safe, where no one can harm us.”

  “Where love isn’t weakness?”

  He smiled faintly. “Exactly.”

  I sighed, looking around at the ground.

  He leaned in so that he could catch my gaze again. “Is there any reason you don’t want to go to Mexico?”

  “It just seems risky. Don’t they kill you on sight if they notice you trying to cross?”

  He frowned. “That’s a rumor, yes, but I’ll bet they aren’t quite that harsh. Their country’s still civilized; my guess is they’ll just force us to leave the premises.”

  I pursed my lips. “Comforting.”

  “Just one visit. Okay?”

  I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and relaxing my shoulders. Then I nodded. “Okay.”

  His smile could have split his face; he leaned in, grabbed my face, and kissed me hard on the mouth.

  “That’s not a yes to Mexico!” I protested, pushing him away.

  “I know,” he replied, still beaming, “but it’s close.”

  Chapter 17

  “Just two weeks,” I said, looking back at our now-empty orange grove campground.

  “Just two weeks,” Gideon affirmed. “Four days to get there, six days to watch the border, and four days to get back.”

  “Then we’ll stay here for another month before heading up to Idaho.”

  “Correct. We’ll go wherever you want.”

  “Then why does it feel like I’ve been tricked into going to the border?”

  Gideon leaned in, his beard tickling my cheek. “Because you love me and want to make me happy.”

  “Isn’t it also the other way around?”

  “Of course. But this is a partnership, remember?”

  I rolled my eyes, securing my pack to my back. “Whatever.”

  We walked. We first reached the coast, then traveled along it. The trip was uneventful, and ended abruptly when a tall fence came into view.r />
  “Is that the border?” I asked.

  “We shouldn’t have hit it yet,” Gideon murmured, taking in the sight of the fence. “Mexico must have taken the liberty of stretching their boundaries.”

  “Why would they do that?” I asked, bewildered.

  “Why wouldn’t they do that? All this land, not being used for any other purpose than allowing a bunch of blood-thirsty nomads to run around unsupervised. And the U.S. population has dropped rapidly since the government ended. And this land used to belong to Mexico in the first place. It makes perfect sense; I just hadn’t thought of it.”

  “Well, we’re here early, then; we’ll be able to head home sooner than planned.” I tried to keep my voice from sounding quite as perky as I felt, but Gideon heard it too well.

  “Candace, the grove isn’t our home. The way I see it, the other side of that fence is our home.” He nodded southward.

  “The fence that’s probably electrified,” I clarified.

  “You promised me two weeks; we’ll be back at the grove after we’ve been gone two weeks. Fair?”

  “I’m not happy about it, but I suppose that’s fair.”

  His face relaxed. “Thank you. Let’s see if we can get a little closer, okay?”

  We did, and then settled in to watch.

  It would have been helpful if we’d had a set of binoculars, or anything that could help us see. However, we were close enough to recognize the figures walking about, changing shifts, climbing up and down the watch towers. Gideon stayed up late into the night, figuring their patterns. There was a watch light that traveled back and forth across the landscape, watching for anyone who got too close; a few birds each day would accidentally fly into the fence and get zapped, falling back to the ground. They wouldn’t die, but they would be stunned for several minutes before rolling back up and taking off, this time over the fence.

  “It would be nice if we could just fly over, like those birds,” I murmured, watching.

  “It would be nice to be birds, too,” Gideon replied. “But then I wouldn’t be me, and you wouldn’t be you, and we wouldn’t be in this situation, and the world would be way too simple to live in.”

  “Maybe the birds have it harder than we think,” I suggested.

  “Maybe. We’ll never know, because we’re not birds.”

  I scratched my head, watching as a man on the other side of the fence came to the watchtower and began climbing. The man who was already at the top turned to greet him, then left him there as he climbed down, his shift over. The remaining man had a purple streak in his dark hair that we could see from where we sat, and he pulled out a pack of something, lighting the end and sticking it in his mouth; he leaned back, not even glancing at the border.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked, my eyes trying to make sense of what I saw.

  “Smoking a cigarette,” Gideon murmured. “It was a common pastime here before smoking could get you killed for not having your guard up; I guess it’s still common over there. At any rate, that’s our man.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When we cross, I’m going to make sure it’s on his shift.”

  “When we cross? I think that’s still an if. Besides, it sounds like that’s the only part of the plan you’ve got worked out right now.” Though I could see why; if I could look closer at the guy, it probably would have revealed that his eyes were closed, the perfect time to dart across the field to the fence. The problem was . . . “What would we do once we got across the field? The electric fence. . .”

  “Rubber,” Gideon replied.

  “What?”

  “Rubber doesn’t conduct electricity, and we’ve got loads of it lying all over the place here. Pick a deserted car, any one of them on the side of the road. We cut up the tire, form it to our shoes and hands, and then we climb. We reach the top, barrel in, and knock him out. Then we climb down his ladder with any essentials we find on him, and make it through the security building.”

  “We have no idea how to make it through the building, though. And what do you mean by essentials?”

  “He’ll have a more up-to-date, more powerful gun. And he’ll also have keys or identification – things we might need to get through the building. And we’ll be taking his uniform.”

  “I don’t think you wearing the uniform is going to work,” I said wryly. “For one thing, you look a lot bigger than him. For another, you’re obviously white, and so am I – and I won’t be wearing a uniform.”

  “Any edge will help, I think”

  “There’s still the building. And what if someone sees us climbing up or down?”

  “We’ll do it at nighttime, of course.”

  “Of course,” I parroted, a hint of sarcasm in my tone. “I’m really not convinced, Gideon.”

  “Fine. But I’ve got one more day.”

  “Yes, one more day. Then we’re going back to the grove.”

  “Agreed.”

  I felt dread at the determined look on his face as he continued watching the fence. Even if we didn’t go into Mexico now, coming to the border at all had given him all the fuel he needed to obsess over the idea for years – until I gave in.

  And I just wasn’t convinced it’d work. Not one bit.

  ~ * ~

  As promised, we left the next day. The walk back to the grove was quiet and uneventful. The bears didn’t bother us as we entered our campground and set our things down; I only even saw the tail of one.

  Gideon watched me as I settled against my usual tree. “It’s getting warm,” he commented.

  I shrugged. “I’m not quite ready to go. We said one month, right?”

  “We could stay even longer, if you’d like,” he replied, coming over to sit beside me; his arm wrapped around my shoulders, and his body was warm against mine.

  “I don’t like getting sweaty, but I guess we’ll see how I feel in another month. Sound okay?” How did he always smell so good? I knew for a fact that he hadn’t bathed recently.

  “That’s what I agreed to, right?”

  “You’ve basically agreed to do whatever I want to do; it leaves me a lot of wiggle room.”

  “I want you to be happy,” he said, leaning in and kissing me on the cheek. I turned and caught his eye. As if he had been waiting for this, he leaned in and kissed me on the mouth.

  How did he always taste so good? He tasted way better than oranges and bear meat.

  His fingers laced through my hair, holding my face to his, and then they were gone, exploring my shoulders, my arms, my waist.

  How did he feel so good? I moaned, already knowing where he’d stop. His hands made their way down my legs, and then they halted; he took them back, pulling away from me and smiling.

  “Makes Mexico sound pretty good, doesn’t it?” he asked.

  I shoved him. “Gideon, that’s infuriating.”

  He shrugged, sitting back. “I like knowing you’re attracted to me. Sorry that I take advantage of it.”

  The most frustrating part of it was, no matter how often he’d been doing that lately, I could never hold it against him for long.

  I snuggled into him, watching as the tree branches that surrounded us danced in the wind, the sunlight that filtered through them hopping to and fro.

  That perfect moment – Gideon and I, happy together under the trees, in our spot – carried none of the forewarning that it ought to have. How could we be so happy? And why would I have even deserved that happiness, when it had been found with the man who had killed my parents? The grove might have felt secluded from the dangers the world carried, but that was only an illusion.

  A doe stepped through the trees.

  She walked hesitantly, carefully, right into our campsite. Her fur was the color of maple, and her black eyes gleamed in our special, filtered sunlight.

  I could feel Gideon freeze under me, and I knew what his thoughts must be. This doe was so beautiful here, in the grove. She was so peaceful.

  But how could we let her
go? We hadn’t eaten anything but bear and oranges for months – that food was plentiful, but it didn’t vary. She, this beautiful deer in front of us, would taste divine.

  How had she even come to be here? The bears seemed to keep all other wildlife away, save for a few trace birds that also feasted on the fruit. Why was she here?

  I sat upright and, with a grimace, Gideon raised his gun. The doe seemed to look right into my eyes as he pulled the trigger; she fell to the ground, blood seeping from her neck.

  Gideon pushed himself up from the ground, and then, as he always did, he held a hand out to me.

  A gun went off from somewhere to my right; Gideon let out a cry of pain, grasping his shoulder.

  “Gideon!” I shouted, jumping up; I got behind him, easing his fall back to the ground. I snapped my head around, looking for who in the world it might have been – who shot him? Where had they come from? Why were they here?

  A man, shorter than Gideon, but built similarly, darted into our camp, hauling the doe up by the legs and swinging her around his shoulders.

  Anger boiled through me, coursing through my fingers; I lifted my gun, taking aim.

  “Candace, no,” Gideon said, his tone short; he lifted his uninjured arm – the arm that had never been injured previously – and placed a hand on mine, on the gun I had raised. He pushed the gun down, then pulled it out of my grip and laced his fingers in mine.

  The man disappeared into the trees; the doe’s head lulled against his shoulder as he ran.

  “Gideon, I could have killed him,” I muttered, eyes still watching the place where the man had vanished.

  “I know you could have, but that doesn’t mean you should have.”

  “Why would he shoot you for that doe? There are plenty of bears around here; it was not a starvation type of situation.”

  “We don’t know what type of situation it was, Candace. Just let it go.”

  I didn’t feel ready for that, but it couldn’t be helped at the moment; I pulled my hand out of Gideon’s and twisted around to look at his shoulder.

  “This doesn’t look too bad,” I said, relieved. “Seems like there was more force in the gun than in the bullet itself.”