Foreverland Is Dead

by Tony Bertauski

  “Look at this.” Jen digs to the bottom of the hamper. “Soap.”

  Cyn had forgotten what clean smelled like. She’s afraid to take the soap, nervous that if she gets clean she’ll just be more aware of the filth. Maybe it’s better to just wallow in it.

  At least for now.

  Miranda comes around the cistern, head down, hair in her face.

  “You all right?” Cyn pushes the hair away. Her skin is clammy, the color sort of yellowish.

  “Well, look who’s here.” Roc peeks out of the kitchen. “Don’t tell me you fed your breakfast to the outhouse. That’s a waste. Give her a demerit, Cyn.”

  “You need some water?” Cyn doesn’t wait for her to answer, whispers to Mad to bring a cup.

  “What’d you see in there?” Roc says.

  “Give her a second,” Cyn interrupts.

  “She’s had twenty minutes. What’d you see in there, Shiny?”

  Miranda hides her right foot behind her left. The shoes are scuffed but still reflective. She can’t hide them both; instead, she backs up.

  Mad hands a plastic cup to Cyn. “Here, have a sip. You don’t want to dehydrate.”

  Miranda holds the cup with both hands. She takes a drink.

  “Look, I know you’re traumatized.” Roc steps outside, gets between Miranda and Cyn. “It’s a big, scary house, but we could use a little help, here.”

  “I brought the food,” she mutters.

  “Yeah, thanks. But boiled yams ain’t going to call for help. Did you even look around?”

  Miranda shuffles her left foot behind her right.

  “Give her some space.” Cyn gently grabs Roc’s elbow. She pulls away, eyebrows wedged together. “Just give her a minute to think. Go count the food—she’s not going anywhere.”

  Roc continues staring. She doesn’t want to do what Cyn says, but she does it anyway. The cans slam together. Mad and Jen stand back.

  “Something’s dead in there.” Miranda doesn’t look up.

  “Did you see it?”

  “I could smell it.”

  “Where was it coming from?”

  She shakes her head. “The doors were all closed.”

  “Was it coming from upstairs? Downstairs?”

  “Downstairs. I think.”

  There’s a dead body in the woods; no surprise there’s one in the brick house, too. Cyn feels sad for the old women. She knows she shouldn’t, because they were apparently living in luxury and the girls in filth, but she doesn’t like to hear that people are dead.

  “What else did you see?” Cyn asks. “Besides the kitchen.”

  The cup is shaking in Miranda’s hands. “It just looked like a nice house. The front room has a television and coffee tables with magazines. It was all very clean. The davenports aren’t faded—”

  “The hell is a davenport?” Roc asks.

  “It’s a couch,” Cyn answers. “What about a phone or a laptop or tablet? Did you see anything electronic besides the TV?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Did you open any doors?”

  The water lightly splashes inside the cup. Cyn takes it before she gets wet.

  Metal cans tumble across the kitchen floor.

  “You didn’t even look.” Roc comes out again. “You just went to straight to the kitchen and didn’t even—”

  “I looked!” Miranda screeches. “There’s no phone, all right! There’s no one to call, it’s just a house with no one in there but a dead body, all right?”

  “Yeah, a house you woke up in. A house only you can go in. You didn’t look around, Shiny. You walked your little white ass in there and clicked your heels, hoping you’d be back in Kansas when you opened your eyes. And when that didn’t happen, you grabbed some food. Well, good for you, you’re a hero. We should all kiss your ass that we’ll starve to death in three months instead of two.”

  “I looked.”

  “No, you didn’t. You didn’t go upstairs, you didn’t open a single damn door. You didn’t look, Shiny.”

  “Don’t call me that.” Miranda wraps her arms around herself, rocking.

  Roc goes inside the kitchen. A can of green beans ricochets off the sink and rolls out the door. Mad and Jen get out of the way. More cans crash. Cyn reaches out but Miranda jerks away. She bows her head, quivering. Her sobs are silent thumps inside her throat.

  “You’re going back in there.” Roc comes out, points a can at Miranda, the label hanging. “You’re going back in that big ass house and opening those doors, and you’re going to find out what the hell is in there—”

  “NO!”

  Miranda runs.

  Roc swipes at her. Cyn flinches, wants to stop Roc from chasing her, but she doesn’t have to. Instead, Roc rears back and throws the can. The label shears off, flapping to the ground. The can misses, wide left. It rolls into the tall grass.

  “You need to go get that,” Cyn says.

  “Yeah, I’ll get it when that little bitch goes back in the house.”

  “She’s scared.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  Roc watches Miranda sprint deep into the meadow, swallowed by swards of wildflowers and grasses. Disappearing on the other side of the slope. For a second, Roc tenses. She might give chase. Cyn would have to stop her if she did. She couldn’t let her go after Miranda. She’s just a little girl. And their only hope.

  But then Roc kicks an errant can toward the garden and curses. She stomps around back, out of sight.

  Mad and Jen start cleaning up.

  Cyn considers going out there. If she goes too far, if she doesn’t come back, she’s a goner.

  She’ll never survive the night.

  8

  In the formless gray void

  Lost forms appear.

  Two distant lumps

  Coming closer.

  The wind harvesters lift her out of dead sleep. That’s what sleep feels like: death. Cyn lies beneath her warm blankets, listening to the chop-chop of the wind harvesters and the soft breathing of her bunkmates.

  The last thing she remembers is eating. If she concentrates, she recalls walking through the grass, her hand on the door…

  And then gray.

  Something’s out there. Something’s coming.

  Someone.

  It’s just a dream, but it’s not the random images of dreams. She feels like she’s somewhere else when she sleeps. Somewhere, but nowhere. It makes no sense.

  She reaches under the bed without letting the cold air inside the covers; rolling over, she scores another line on the wall.

  Day three.

  She tries not to look at the endless bundles that are stacked like sticks below her puny new lines, too many to count.

  Cyn slides the box out from under the bed, blindly pulling out a second heavy sweatshirt and jeans. She pauses for a moment, bracing for the morning chill.

  The boots feel like reinforced cardboard. It’ll take several steps to loosen them up. The soles bang against the wood planks. She walks to the back door and see the lump beneath the covers of the last bed on the right, blonde hair splayed on the pillow.

  She made it.

  Cyn smiles. Miranda must’ve snuck in when they were asleep. Good.

  She runs to the dinner house. The wind smacks her, grit biting her cheek. The egg collection will have to wait. The dinner house creaks. Cyn considers firing up the wood stove, but doesn’t want to waste wood. She has no idea how much wood it’s going to take to survive the winter.

  Cyn rubs her hands for warmth. The scent of fresh vegetables instantaneously reaches deep inside her. She’s tempted to sneak a bell pepper, maybe one that’s half rotten, one they wouldn’t likely use. No one would know.

  She distracts her senses while she waits for Mad and starts taking inventory of food. Black beans, garbanzos, corn, and tomatoes on the top shelf. More of the same on the second shelf. Canned fruit is on the third shelf, with a gap on the far right.

  No cherries.

 
Cherries.

  She shifts the cans around to fill the hole. She’ll bring it up at breakfast, see if anyone has anything to say. Maybe making everyone aware that she’s watching will put a stop to it.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  Cyn jumps. The pencil rattles on the floor.

  The sound on the outside door is small. She opens it. Miranda is outside, her arms wrapped around herself. Her clothes are smudged with dirt and grass stains.

  She’s shivering. “Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  Miranda looks down, still shaking. She doesn’t have to say anything else. Cyn knows she feels bad about not going back into the brick house. She’s their only hope to see what’s in there. But she’s so meek. So scared.

  She goes back to the inventory. Cyn gets down to the bottom shelf with Miranda watching her, grateful there are no more gaps to hide.

  “Can I help?” Miranda asks.

  The dinner house groans against the wind. “You can get the eggs.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “It ain’t hard. You just go in the coop and pick them up and bring them in here.”

  Cyn fires up the griddle. Mad should be waking up soon. Miranda stands next to the door, shuffling her feet. She’s not asking to help so she can really help; she’s just asking to be polite. Or maybe she’s waiting for Cyn to help.

  “Look.” Cyn pulls plates out of the cupboard. “I didn’t make you go back in the brick house yesterday, but things have got to change. You can help out. Those shoes ain’t made for working, but we ain’t got the luxury to do what we want, understand? It’s cold out there and maybe you’re scared of chickens, but those eggs need collecting.”

  The door shuts. Miranda’s gone.

  Maybe she thought Cyn would take care of her, protect her. Well, maybe so, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to hang around while everyone else carries their weight.

  Cyn eyes the shelf with the missing can of cherries.

  There are enough problems already.

  9

  The clouds roll over the sky like a lead blanket, blotting out the sun for a week. Rain leaks from the dreary sky, the wind throwing it against the buildings like pellets. The wind harvesters churn, ceaselessly.

  Miranda stands inside the barn. The doors are wide open, but the wind and rain can’t reach her. The cold, however, always finds its way in.

  She looks puffy, wearing three sweatshirts. If there were more, she’d be wearing them, too. She doesn’t care that they’re stained and slightly damp, or that they smell like mold. The barn smells better. If she hand-washes them with water from the cisterns, they’ll never dry. She’ll never be warm.

  She shivers beneath layers of grimy cotton.

  Filthy. Just like them.

  Jen and Mad spend their time in the dinner house. The kitchen is clean and orderly. The cans are stacked in straight lines and the inventory posted. They found a pack of playing cards in the back of the pantry. Sometimes Kat joins them.

  They never ask Miranda.

  Roc hardly ever leaves the bunkhouse. Except to eat.

  And steal.

  Miranda hears her leave the bunkhouse at night when everyone is sleeping. Miranda hears the back door open, hears her come back thirty minutes later. No one seems to care that she’s stealing.

  Cyn doesn’t.

  She’s out in the meadow. Despite the bitter rain, she paces across the open field, counting her steps. If she’s not chopping wood, she’s out there. Doesn’t say what she’s doing. No one really talks about what they’re doing. Not anymore.

  “Chickens need fed.” Kat drops two steel buckets on the dirt floor.

  Miranda leans over, looks inside: seeds mixed with food scraps from the garden. The wire handles are cold. She carries them through the breezeway and braces for the weather as she steps outside. Mud sloshes beneath her rubber boots. No more shiny shoes. Kat lets her use the work boots as long as she helps with the animals. It’s the price she pays to keep her feet dry.

  The chickens come out squabbling. Miranda quickly heaves the contents through the wire fence, a pathetic attempt to spread the food, but she’s not going inside. Chickens freak her out, the way they peck. She’s afraid one will pluck out her eye. Chickens can do that, they can fight.

  She runs back to the barn.

  “Wash them out,” Kat says before Miranda can put the buckets down.

  She knows but she wouldn’t have cleaned them and Kat knows that, too. The water from the cistern is cold—always cold. She dries them with a damp towel, her hands stiff and slow.

  There’s a horse in the breezeway when she’s done. He jerks his head in her direction, nostrils exhaling like exhaust. Kat puts a brush in her hand.

  “Brush Blackjack while I tend to his hooves.”

  “How do you know his name?”

  “I don’t.”

  Kat’s got a dingy rag tied over her head, covering her red hair. Probably full of lice. She digs through a plastic toolbox.

  The horse’s coat is matted in patches, what Kat calls rain rot. She minds not to get behind him, in case he kicks. “He can snap your bones,” Kat had told her.

  Kat begins digging into the bottom of the front left hoof with a tool.

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” Miranda asks.

  “Keeps the thrush out.”

  “But it doesn’t hurt?”

  “Not any more than if you cut your hair.”

  Kat reaches for a pair of long handled pliers that pinch off the end of the hoof like nail clippers.

  “How do you know how to do all this?”

  Kat shrugs. “Thinking about it don’t do you no good. Like Cyn says, we got to survive until we figure something out.”

  Her dialect had changed. She sounds so country.

  “How come everyone gets to be good at something? You got horses, Mad’s a cook, and Jen does the garden.”

  “And Roc does the stealing.”

  Kat drops the hoof and goes to the other side. Miranda looks down the breezeway, hoping no one is around. She walks a safe distance from Blackjack’s rear end, starts stroking his right flank. Kat digs the packed dirt out of another hoof.

  “You know about that?” Miranda says.

  “Don’t take a genius.”

  “I thought I was the only one that heard her getting up at night.”

  “I don’t know anything about that, but I see her hanging around the kitchen when no one else is around. She’s got that key around her neck, what do you think she’s doing?”

  “Why don’t you say something?”

  “Like that’s going to do anything.”

  “Tell Cyn.”

  Kat snorts while reaching for the hoof trimmers. “Cyn can’t do anything. I mean, she’s trying to be a leader and everything, but what’s she going to do about Roc? Seriously.”

  The rain patters louder on the barn roof. Cyn’s still out in the meadow with a sheet of plastic over her head. She looks lost.

  “What about me?” Miranda runs the brush through the horse’s tail. “What am I good at?”

  Kat stifles another laugh.

  “What?”

  “I ain’t going to say.”

  “Go ahead. I can take it.”

  Kat finishes filing the hoof and stands up. Straight-faced, she says, “Ain’t it obvious?”

  Miranda shakes her head.

  “You’re nice enough and I appreciate the help, but I think there’s something missing in you. Something fake. You’re a beauty queen.”

  Miranda picks the long hairs from the brush. She tries not to let her lips flutter. “That’s mean.”

  “You asked.”

  Kat taps the horse’s back leg and gets to work on the next hoof. Miranda drops the brush into the bucket. She doesn’t feel much like helping anymore, even though it proves Kat’s point.

  She’s a beauty queen.

  The rain sounds like falling rocks.

  10

  The pencil isn’t workin
g.

  The paper is limp in Cyn’s hand. She can’t hold the sheet of plastic up and write without the rain falling on her notes. Maybe she’ll just walk to the east end of the meadow and make observations; she doesn’t necessarily have to write everything down. So far, there’s nothing but trees and grass.

  She’d already determined that the house and cabins faced south and the trees were approximately six hundred feet away if she walked straight out of the dinner house. If she went west, the land rolls for quite a while—maybe miles—before the next dense stand of trees. It’ll take a full-day excursion to explore that. Once she gets a feel for the surrounding area, they’ll do that. The only thing left to explore is the trees behind the cabins.

  Where the body lies.

  Cyn studies her notes where she’s sketched the outline of the meadow. She puts the point of the pencil in the middle, about where she’s standing, and twists back and forth to mark where she’s starting when the hard rain comes, hitting like cold bullets, running down the plastic, marring the world around her.

  She runs for it.

  The puddles seep through the holes in her boots. She splashes a path straight for the bunkhouse, smelling smoke. She rushes inside. The bunkhouse is warm and dry. Warm?

  One of the beds is only a few feet away from the stove, the seams glowing.

  Cyn strips off the wettest layers of sweatshirts and wrings them out near the door. Her feet slap across the floor. She sits as close to the stove as possible, hands out. Heat is welcome. She drags the blanket off of her bed, strips the rest of her clothes off, the fleece rough on her skin.

  “Cold as a witch’s tit.” Roc’s head appears from the bed.

  “I’m going to need help cutting more wood,” Cyn says.

  Roc settles back inside her blankets. They sit in silence, absorbing the heat. Cyn doesn’t move. She can’t put those clothes on. It’ll take hours for them to dry.

  “You having dreams?” Roc’s voice is muffled. “About the gray?”

  Cyn doesn’t answer.

  “You see the lumps coming for us?”

  A shiver runs through her. We’re having the same dream.

  “Someone’s coming,” Roc says.

  “Don’t say that. It’s just a dream.”