by E. A. Darl
Hands clutched at Alexa’s skirt as she walked by, begging for food and water. A wave of helplessness overwhelmed Alexa. A sense of shame dimmed her earlier joy of her pretty party dress. Sunny yellow with tiny blue flowers stitched around the hem, she had thought it would cheer the sick people in the hospital, but she no longer cared to attract attention.
It was just a dress but to the sick hoard in the hallway, she appeared rich, healthy and most importantly, like she had eaten recently. To them, she was wealthy beyond measure.
“Do not look at them, Alexa.” Peet murmured in her ear as he tugged her along, weaving in and out of the people.
The odor of sickness and unwashed bodies was overwhelming. Alexa wrinkled her nose and tried to breathe through her mouth but then she imagined she could taste the air and she clapped a hand over both to try to block the smell.
A woman lurched to her feet, screamed a name and then ran at her, eyes wild and crazed.
“Mandy! Mandy it’s you. You’re safe! Oh my darling, I found you at last!” She staggered toward Alexa, hands outstretched.
Alexa screamed. The woman’s hands were covered in blood. As her hair swung away from her face, deep red gouges were revealed, her skin clawed by her own fingers.
Peet stepped between the woman and Alexa, pushing her behind his body. The woman was oblivious to his presence, trying to slide around his bulk to reach Alexa’s trembling form.
“Now see here, woman. That is not your Mandy. Stop right here.” He gripped the woman’s arm, pulling her to a halt.
She blinked at the hand on her arm and then met his eyes.
“Not my Mandy? But where is she? I can’t find her anywhere.”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. You need to see a doctor for those cuts. Here, come sit down.” He led her over to an empty chair and pushed her down into it. “Stay here. If I find Mandy, I will send her over, but you must stay here or she won’t find you.”
The woman nodded, mumbling under her breath. Her words trailed away and then she lapsed into silence. Alexa slid her hand into Peet’s as he hurried her away. She glanced back just before they turned the corner into another hall, to see the woman arguing with another woman that the child she held in her arms was Mandy.
“What is wrong with her, Peet?”
“A great shock, I suspect. She has lost someone dear to her, probably a daughter or granddaughter.”
“Oh. That’s sad. She really should be stronger though. What if Mandy is found?”
“Not everyone is strong, Alexa. Some people are weak. Those will be the first to suffer in trying times. I suspect all of these people are homeless. Hospitals always have food so they come here, looking for help and a handout. They are usually sick too.”
He veered down a corridor and pushed through a set of swinging doors. The howling din from the corridors cut off abruptly. The silence was profound and welcome. It left a slight ringing in Alexa’s ears.
“Where are we going Peet? Are we allowed to go back here?”
They passed a door with a glass window in it and a sign that read “Radiology: Admittance Restricted To Grade 3”. So far they had not encountered any hospital staff. Hospital security had its hands full with the corridor, but they did not bother Peet in his doctor scrubs and fake photo ID badge that announced him as Dr. Peet Anders. Alexa looked up at him as they strode down the hallway unchallenged.
“Are you really a doctor, Peet?”
He chuckled. “Yes, I am. But my education is in literary history. My doctorate is in archeology. This way.”
He came to a plain green door with no window. The bronzed plate beside it read “Records”. He pushed open the door and a light turned on. The room was filled with dozen of rows of metal shelving containing binders and books, stacked floor to ceiling. At the end of each row an alphabetical directory indicated what was to be found in that row. Cubicles lined the windowed wall on the far side of the room, each with a computer terminal blinking sleepily.
Alexa grinned at Peet then ran over to the computer terminals.
“I love libraries!” she said, and plopped herself down into one of the chairs in front of the screen and jiggled the mouse.
The screen awoke and she typed in a password. The screen saver of bouncing stethoscopes disappeared and a menu appeared, asking for her search terms.
“How did you do that?” Peet asked, amazed.
“The password is taped in the corner of the keyboard” she said, pointing at the curling paper. “So what are looking for?”
Peet stared at the piece of paper and laughed. “I thought you might like to search your parents, see if there are any records of their research in the data base. All the computers in the country are interconnected.”
“Ok.” Alexa typed in her father’s name and hit enter.
Peet sat down at the terminal beside Alexa and after entering the password, typed in ‘search by stats’ then ‘search by cases between:’ and selected ‘one month prior’. The screen flashed then cases scrolled by on the screen, before coming to a stop. Ten thousand patients were treated in the last month. Peet raised an eyebrow at the number. He typed in ‘narrow by diagnoses’ and ‘sort alphabetically’ and scanned the listing. The vast majority of cases were listed as “Unknown Disease Element” or “Cause Unknown”. Frowning at the unhelpful screen, he broadened the search. The cases of unsolved or unclassified illness remained steady, reaching back over ten years of data. Peet raised a hand and scratched at his encroaching daily growth of beard, puzzled.
“That is really odd,” he muttered, sitting back and staring at the screen, willing it give up its secrets.
Several moments ticked by, then he leaned forward and resorted the information. He typed “Search by assigned physician” and hit enter.
The correlation slapped him in the face. He ran his finger down the list of physicians on the right side verses the diagnosis on the left. The pattern lined up perfectly. All the undiagnosed cases involving skin lesions, seizures and early onset dementia were assigned to the same two doctors. ‘Research Doctor 1’ and ‘Research Doctor 2’ were the only two doctors listed handling their cases. He plugged in a thumb drive and saved the search information and their case files to the drive, then did a search for the employee profiles for the two Research Doctors. There was no record of them in the hospital system. Frowning, he repeated the search and once again it came back “file not found.”
At that moment, the door opened and a security guard entered, hand over his baton.
“Identify yourself, Doctor,” the balding man said, his eyes flitting from Peet to Alexa.
Peet rose slowly to his feet, hitting the clear key and palming the thumb drive up his sleeve. Alexa did the same, and slipped her hand into his.
“I am Dr. Peet Anders, on loan from Solace University. Is there a problem?”
The guard looked at Alexa.
“Ah, this is my niece, Alexa. Her parents had to work late, so I brought her along for the evening. I could hardly leave her at home alone with the current state of things.
The guard frowned. “There was a report of an unauthorized entry in this area of the hospital. This records room is off limits to civilians.”
“Of course it is, but I am hardly a civilian, am I?” Peet walked toward the guard, Alexa’s clutching his hand tightly. “Well my shift is nearly over. Please enjoy the rest of your evening.”
Peet made to walk past the guard but he pulled his baton and placed it across his chest.
“I must search you first. Your entrance was the only one to register in this room in the last hour.”
Peet nodded and dropped Alexa’s hand then grabbed the lapels of his lab coat as though to open it to inspection. Quicker than a flash, his left elbow rose and smashed into the guard’s nose.
“Owwww!” howled the guard, grabbing his nose, bending over with the pain.
Peet’s knee was rising at that exact minute and smashed into his face, sending him sprawling, blood spurtin
g everywhere. He crashed into a metal cart stacked high with x-ray plates and sent both the cart and the plates clattering to the floor.
Peet grabbed Alexa’s hand and ran out the door, racing down the corridor deeper into the hospital. He took a series of turns and had just slowed to a walk when alarm bells went off. He walked casually along the hall, nonchalantly strolling toward the side entrance that led to the employee parking. Guards ran past him, heading to the source of the alarm. Once they were safely past, Peet opened an emergency exit and let them out into the side alley between wings of the hospital. Once clear of the building, they ran for the safety of obscurity in the greater world beyond the hospital grounds.
Chapter 6
Frankie’s Finger Foods
Avalon let her body go limp, sagging in the arms of the two husky teens who had clamped their beefy hands on her upper arms. At first they’d tried to grab the bike away from her but she’d see a passive resistance video once when she was younger. Make your weight impossible to bear and they would drop you, giving you a chance to escape. They did indeed drop her, but as she hit the ground a sharp boot kicked her in the ribs. Avalon cried out, hands clutching her side against the sharp, stinging pain.
“Get up, bitch!”
A hand leaned down and tangled in her hair, dragging her to her feet by its roots.
“Stop!” she yelled. “I tripped, ok?”
“Let her go,” said their brooding leader, frowning at her.
The husky lad shoved her away from him, watching as she stumbled, breaking her fall on the handle bars of her bike. They yanked the temporary support out from under her and she tumbled to the pavement.
“Give it back to me!” she yelled, hand clutching her aching ribs as she staggered back to her feet, reaching for her bike for support. “It’s mine.”
Green and gold eye stared at her then he held up a hand.
“Let her be. Her bike is hers.”
Avalon’s head came up, making contact with that beautiful eye. He appeared to be three or four years older than her. Tall and lean, he was well muscled. She found she could not stop staring. She gripped the handle bars tight, knuckles whitening. Her eye contact was broken when a pimply scar-faced girl forced her way into the circle. She had shaved the sides of her head, above her ears, leaving a Mohawk of spiky hair, dyed bright orange. She glared at Avalon, drawing a short switchblade and testing the edge of her knife against her tongue, drawing blood.
“Ok, princess, bring your bike in. Don’t worry, I don’t bite,” she said at Avalon’s look of surprise. She bared sharpened teeth at the assembled gang members and as they backed off, she took Avalon by the arm. “This way, princess.”
Avalon gasped as her fingers dug painfully into her flesh. With a stubborn set to her lips, Avalon dragged her bike behind the toothy troll as she now thought of her. The street ended at an alley way that fed between tall brick buildings, blackened with age. Her companions were forced to narrow into three rows, the central position taken up by her bike, which she now hugged close to her. Avalon faced forward, staring at the blond head and refusing to look at the rest of the gang.
When the group squeezed in tight to get around a dumpster, Avalon tripped over her bike pedal, scraping her ankle against the metal. Swearing under her breath, she licked her dry lips. She was thirsty and hungry. Her stomach growled and someone behind her laughed.
As they reached the end of the alley, it opened onto a square. There was no exit; rather, it was by framed by the remains of a partially collapsed building, the shell of which was four stories high. Avalon stared in awe at the towering structure. All the upper floors had long ago been harvested for firewood during the winter, cleared away leaving concrete ribs in blocks that rose through the floors and defined the balance of the interior space. The crazy patchwork walls were fascinating to Avalon. She could see aged wallpaper and faded paint, snippets of lives frozen in time. A nursery with cartoon animals sat beside a dark painted wall with a sailboat wallpaper border. The wainscoting had long ago been stripped from the room. Beside it was a kitchen with a stenciled saying on one wall. “Live for the moment. Hope. Pray.”
She was jerked to the side by the troll, bringing her back to her immediate surroundings. Troll hauled her towards a staircase located at the base of the wall. It disappeared into ground. She realized suddenly that it was the basement of the ground floor unit. An old wooden floor board had been carved to look like a hand with a painted finger. On the sign was painted the words “Frankie’s Finger Foods” in bright red paint. Indeed, the finger was cut off and dripping blood. Avalon stared at it, shocked. I’ve found it! she thought, but that sign was not what she had thought of when she had seen the matchbook cover. Swallowing past an exceptionally dry mouth, she followed the tall form of their leader down the stairs, her bike jumping as it rolled down the concrete steps.
As she crossed the threshold at the bottom, a dimly lit restaurant was revealed, complete with tacky green booths and prints of actors whose popularity had faded several decades ago. Heavy navy blue velvet curtains hung on a rod above each booth. A quick glance showed that all the booths were empty except for three located at the very back. The privacy curtain was drawn tight across the end of the tables, hiding the occupants from view.
Halfway down the aisle, Avalon was shoved into a booth, followed by the toothy troll. Her bike was taken out of her resisting hands and wheeled over to lean against the table of the booth across from them. Green-gold eye slid in across from Avalon followed by Cris. The table was scarred with carved hearts and initials. A grimy green pendant light fixture with a single bulb was suspended above the table.
Green-gold eye stared at her.
“Name. What is your name?”
Avalon’s eyes flitted around the circle, weighing the unfriendly gazes. She knew that none of them used their real names, but she could not see any reason to withhold her own. She was not from here. They would not know her name if she spoke it.
“My name is Avalon.”
They waited. The silence stretched.
“Last name!” snapped the troll, knife flipping into her hand.
Gold-green eye grabbed her wrist, not breaking eye contact with Avalon.
Suddenly, Avalon was afraid. They wanted something from her. Badly. But still, it was just a name, wasn’t it?
“Gainsborough,” she whispered, watching the reactions.
Eyes widened and silent messages flashed around the table.
“I thought so,” said the gang leader.
This time Avalon’s eyes widened.
“You know... you know my name? My parents? You know where they are! Where are they?” Avalon made to rise and the troll grabbed her arm and made her sit. Avalon ignored her. “Who are you?”
He frowned, clearly struggling with how much he should tell her.
“Trevor Trench. But my friends call me Trench.”
Trench. Avalon mentally tested the name on her tongue. She liked Trevor better.
“This is Megan, we call her Magnum,” gesturing to the trollish woman whose fingers still dug painfully into her arm. “And this is Francis. She goes by Cris.”
The blonde-haired girl by his side glared at Avalon, in challenge, winding her arm possessively through Trench’s.
Definitely not friendly, Avalon thought.
Avalon nodded to each in turn, nervous suddenly. She had not expected them to know her name.
“How do you know my name?”
They exchanged glances.
“We know your parents. They came here once,” said Trench.
“They did?” Avalon leaned forward, excitement shining in her eyes. “When? Where did they go? Where are they now?”
He hesitated. “Magnum, get us some drinks,” he said. “Root beer will do.”
Magnum looked pissed at the request, but she rose nonetheless and left to gather the drinks.
Once she was gone, Trench pulled the privacy curtain closed then leaned across the table.
<
br /> “It was three or four years ago. They came through here, looking for someone that could help them gain safe passage away from Solace for four passengers. I assume it was for them and you... and a brother? Sister?”
“Sister,” whispered Avalon. “My sister Alexa.”
Avalon shot a quick glance around the dilapidated restaurant.
“What is this place? How did you know who I was, back on the streets?”
“Frankie’s is our headquarters, the headquarters for the Firebrand gang. We operate from here. We stop everyone that comes into our territory, but never has one come bearing that symbol.” He pointed to the sleeve of Avalon’s jacket where a stylized bee was stitched on to her right sleeve.
“I got this jacket from my father. Why, what does it mean?”
“It is a symbol of the revolution. Of the revolt.” At her puzzled frown, he continued “You know the rebellion against the government? They have been suppressing information about the blight. It’s like the environment is cursed. We use this sign to identify those that can be trusted. It is very, very secret. We did not know who you were, yet you wear it openly.”
Avalon frowned. “My father said that I should always wear the jacket. He said it could save my life.”
Trench grunted. “We are also a refugee way stop. By refugee we mean political refugees. There is good money to be had in selling falsified passports and passage out of the country. Your parents came to us to make a deposit, passage for four out of the country. We saw them that day but we never saw them again.”
Avalon’s face fell.
“Avalon. I’m afraid they are dead.”
Avalon studied the scratches on the tabletop, tracing the patterns, letting her mind drift. Sadness welled within her, tightening her throat. She swallowed past the painful lump. Then her head came up. Her eyes blazed with determination.
“I do not believe they are dead. They were too clever for that. I intend to find them, and I will not stop until I do. So you can either help me, or get out of my way,” she said, a fierce light in her eyes.