Jane and the Exodus

by T. R. Woodman

  “No.”

  “Jane, we have to figure out how badly you’re hurt,” Evelyn reasoned. “Stop the truck. It’ll just take a minute.”

  “No.”

  Jane was quiet. She didn’t want to see her face.

  “Jane—stop—now,” Evelyn said again.

  A moment passed while Jane continued to rattle the truck over the washboard dirt road. It had opened a little, and she felt less claustrophobic. Without saying a word, she took her foot off the gas and let the truck coast naturally to a stop.

  “Good, Jane,” Evelyn encouraged. “Now, I want you to look at yourself in the rearview mirror, but remember, head wounds bleed a lot, so expect to see that. They can look a lot worse than they are. Just—stay calm.”

  Jane still hadn’t taken her hands from the wheel, and she still hadn’t looked anywhere but straight ahead. She realized she had stopped sobbing, even though she was sniffling. What had just happened? Why did she do that? The questions whirled around in her head.

  She released her grip on the wheel, reluctantly peeling her hand away after having been glued to the leather by drying, sticky blood. Jane reached up to the rearview mirror and tilted it toward her face, careful not to look just yet.

  Jane took a deep breath and slowly turned to face herself.

  Evelyn was right. Head wounds bleed a lot. The whole left side of her face was covered in dried, crusty, browning blood. It had caked into her ear, and into her nostril, and was smeared all the way across her forehead, down her nose, into her mouth, and up into her hair, matting it into an unnatural swirl on the side of her head.

  Jane felt like she was looking at a stranger. She had never seen herself like this before. Swiveling her head back and forth, she tried to get a grip on the damage.

  Above her left eye where she had been hit, there was a large gash still oozing bright red blood, though it appeared to be stopping for the most part. It was swelling too, as was the skin surrounding her eye socket. Even the white part of her left eye, she noticed, was completely red with blood.

  “How badly are you hurt, Jane?” Evelyn asked.

  Jane was quiet for a few seconds. She had gone emotionally in completely the opposite direction she had been moments ago. She had a horrible pounding headache, her face was throbbing, and she could feel the rawness of the cut over her eye, but inside she felt nothing. She felt detached, but at the same time felt a cold darkness deep within herself.

  “I have a bad cut over my eye,” Jane finally responded. “It seems to have stopped bleeding … sort of.”

  Jane’s mind started engaging again, and she remembered the small first-aid kit in the glove box. “I’m gonna to try to clean myself up a little.”

  “That’s a good idea, Jane,” Evelyn replied.

  Jane reached toward the glove box and noticed the large river rock that had come to rest on the passenger’s side floor. It was mostly round, smooth, and about the size of a very large grapefruit.

  Jane paused only for a second and then picked it up off the floor. It was heavy and would have been beautiful in a natural sort of way, if it hadn’t been used to bludgeon her in the head. Tossing it out the window, she reached again for the glove box and the first-aid kit.

  “He threw a rock at my head, Evelyn.” Jane rummaged through the kit for something useful. The kit was too small to be of much use, but it did have a few small bandages, some gauze, and a tube of antibiotic ointment. “The little girl came out to thank me for the food I left for her, and then some guy threw a rock at my head.”

  Pouring some of the bottled water Tate had given her on the kerchief she had taken from him, Jane began to gently dab the blood crust from her face. “If that rock hadn’t hit the car door first … I think he might have killed me.”

  The kerchief was getting redder with each passing swipe of her face. With some of the blood gone, Jane began to recognize herself again in the rearview mirror, and then she paused.

  “How did you know?” Jane asked, staring through the windshield and trying not to cry again. “You started screaming in my ear to drive before anything happened. How did you know I was in trouble?”

  “It was the girl,” Evelyn replied. “I heard her say she was sorry. Children don’t usually apologize unless they know they have done something wrong.”

  Jane wrung the blood from the kerchief onto the floor of the cab, and tears started to prick her eyes again. It was all she could do to keep them from running down her cheeks. Wetting the kerchief again, she wiped as much of the blood as she could from her hair. Wincing, she worked on her eye. Every time she touched the cut, it started bleeding, and after a minute of frustration, she decided to leave well enough alone.

  Squeezing the antibiotic cream onto the cut didn’t hurt much, but it made a whole new pink jelly-blood mess over her eye. Wiping away the goo, she quickly peeled the backing from one of the bandages and folded it over the gauze she had placed on top of the cut. She figured she probably needed stitches, but that wasn’t going to happen, so she did her best to dress it as well as she could.

  Jane looked at her handiwork in the rearview mirror. She looked horrible. Oh well, she thought as she sat back into her seat, putting the truck in drive and giving it some gas. Driving with one hand, she continued to dab her eyes with the kerchief to keep them dry enough to drive.

  Even with her splitting headache, Jane went over the events in her mind. “You know,” she said, “she was holding her face in her hands when I drove off. She was probably crying. That poor girl … What kind of jerk would put her up to that?”

  “It was probably her father, Jane,” Evelyn answered.

  “What?” she asked, glancing in the rearview mirror as if her reflection might explain it to her.

  “Well, it’s just a guess,” Evelyn said. “But scavengers live harsh lives. Because they abandon their communities, they face prison, or execution if they are caught, so they are transients. I suspect that he was after your truck.”

  “He would kill me over a truck?” she mumbled.

  “It’s possible. You said the girl looked like she was starving. He may have been desperate, and the truck could get them deeper into the wilderness and further from the authorities, or it could have been worth a lot to them in trade. He probably figured if you stopped once to help the girl, you’d stop again if you came back.”

  “But the girl,” Jane responded. “I just can’t believe she would lure me in like that.”

  “Believe it, Jane,” Evelyn countered. “She may not have known her father was going to try to kill you, but she must have known he planned to take the truck, because she apologized.”

  Jane’s stomach knotted up again at the thought of the girl having to see her own father commit such an act of violence, and her heart ached over the girl’s father, so desperate to feed his daughter that he would resort to murder. She didn’t know whether to be angry or sad. She felt both.

  “I should have listened to you, Evelyn.” Jane pursed her lips, letting a few tears flow freely down her blood-streaked face. “I just wanted to help her.”

  Jane thought again about the ambush.

  “How could I have been so stupid?” Jane slapped the wheel with the palm of her hand. “All the stuff I left for her was gone. There’s no way that little girl could have moved that toolbox all by herself. I couldn’t hardly get it out of the back of the truck. I should have known there was someone else around. Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Evelyn counseled.

  “I have to be, Evelyn,” Jane retorted. “You warned me repeatedly and told me to be careful—and I ignored you.”

  She glanced again at her face in the rearview mirror. “I’m either going to have to get really smart really fast, or I’m going to have to toughen up a lot. I’m not going to last very long being stupid.”

  Jane motored along quietly, keeping the truck steady so as not to thump her headache any worse than it was with more jerky movements. She didn�
�t really want to mull over what had happened, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t think of anything else. It was like she was watching a freakish carnival sideshow, and she couldn’t look away. She just kept going over it in her mind and was surprised to find herself lingering on a series of strange questions. What would happen if I went back for the girl? Could I take her with me? Would her father let me take her? Jane just couldn’t get the image of the girl out of her head—how scared she was, how hungry, how sad.

  “The turn onto the maintenance road is two miles ahead,” Evelyn said, breaking Jane’s concentration. “You need to go through the same gate you drove through when you left. The security cameras at the main gate show that there are three patrol cars waiting outside, but they haven’t found the side gate. You should drive straight to the shuttle once you are on the campus, and park the truck on the tarmac next to it. Leave the truck there. Abandon it. As you get close, I will lower the ramp, and you can run in. Once the officers see you driving across campus, they may find the entrance you used and follow you onto campus. You may not have much time.”

  “I understand,” Jane replied, now planning to follow Evelyn’s instructions to the letter.

  “You know, my dad was right,” Jane added, still thinking about the girl and her father, realizing that she probably couldn’t save either one of them. “People have lost hope. We may have to find a new world—but I get it now—we have to come back.”

  WISTFUL

  Jane examined the cut over her eye in the mirror. It wasn’t looking nearly as bad now that she had showered and cleaned off all the dried blood, but her eye was horribly swollen and bruised, and though it had diminished a little, she could still feel her pulse throbbing in her face. She felt like her face would be okay; her blood-covered clothes, she wasn’t so sure about.

  Jane dressed herself quickly—faded jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers as usual—and other than a little ointment, decided not to bother with dressing her wound again. Leaving her quarters, she stopped at the emergency care cabinet for an ice pack and then headed toward the cockpit of the shuttle. The view was much better from the front than from the back of the shuttle when it was flying near the speed of sound less than a hundred feet above the ground.

  “How are we coming, Evelyn?” Jane asked, stepping through the door into the empty cockpit.

  “Fine, Jane,” Evelyn replied. “We’re only thirty minutes out, and we haven’t been detected.”

  Evelyn paused for a second and then continued. “I really wish you would reconsider this, though. Your dad is about to make his announcement, and he has me hacking into countrywide communication systems as we speak. Going for a joyride isn’t a wise choice when your dad is picking a fight with the government.”

  “I know,” Jane replied. “You would think I would have learned my lesson about listening to you, especially after getting my face bashed in, but where we are going, there are no people. I just want to visit one more time. I may never get to go back after today … and it’s a good place to hide out and think. I need to figure out what to do about Tate’s kids.”

  “Be that as it may,” Evelyn countered, “I couldn’t lie to your dad. He was asking me where you were, so I had to tell him, and while I think he understands why you came down, he wants you back to Vista soon. He’s worried about you.”

  “Did you tell him … about me getting hurt?” Jane asked.

  “Not a chance,” Evelyn replied. “You get to do that.”

  Jane sat in the captain’s seat and looked out the window at the world rushing by. She couldn’t help but feel a thrill at rocketing over the plains at almost seven hundred miles per hour. It was enough to take her mind off her face and her troubles, and she knew that with Evelyn flying so low and across areas of the countryside, which by the looks of them had never been touched by people, the chance that they would be detected was slim.

  Jane could see the faint edge of the Rocky Mountains on the horizon, but with the pale blueness of the cloudless sky, the washed-out grayness of the snow-covered peaks, and the sun blistering the unprotected landscape from directly above, she couldn’t tell where the mountains ended and where the sky began. The phenomenon didn’t last but a few seconds. Racing across the totally flat and barren desert toward the steep range, Jane felt like she was hurtling toward a great stone wall. The mountains were getting really big really fast.

  “You had better buckle into your seat,” Evelyn reported. “It always gets bumpy flying into the Rockies.”

  Jane pulled the safety straps over her shoulders and clipped them around her waist. Just as she finished pulling the straps tight, Jane could feel the nose of the shuttle tilt up. Her whole body compressed into the seat’s cushions as gravity reluctantly released its grip on the shuttle, allowing it to peel away from the surface.

  She stared out the window. Even though the shuttle was gaining altitude quickly, it appeared that the mountains in front of her were growing even faster. Higher and higher the shuttle carried her, roaring through high mountain valleys, cresting ridges between mountains that soared even higher, and rocketing at ever-frightening speeds. She gripped the armrests tightly, not just because the turbulence was causing the shuttle to bobble her around, but also because of the rush of adrenaline she felt at the thrill of the ride.

  Cresting a final ridge, Evelyn nosed the shuttle down, and for a moment, Jane felt the weightless sensation of freefall before the shuttle quickly slowed its descent.

  The small clearing Jane knew so well was below, and Evelyn powered down the shuttle to land gently on a grassy pad overlooking one of the clear crystal lakes.

  Jane sat still for a moment. “I’ll only be a few minutes, Evelyn,” she said, unbuckling her harness and walking toward the ramp.

  “Please hurry,” Evelyn replied. “I have finished hacking into the communications systems. Your dad will be broadcasting any minute now.”

  Passing by her quarters on the shuttle, Jane grabbed a sweatshirt and slipped it on. Even before she got to the ramp, she could feel the cool crispness of the dry high mountain air. Walking down the ramp, she stepped onto the native grass.

  As far as Jane was concerned, this was one of the most dramatic and unforgiving, yet beautiful, places in the world she had ever seen. At over twelve thousand feet above sea level, the ridge she stood on looked to be about a mile or so wide and was well above timberline. There were no trees or shrubs. The only thing bothering to grow at this altitude was the alpine grass, which had pushed its way up through the gravel, into the large rock outcroppings, and around the two large pools of water fed by mountain snowmelt.

  Directly to the south, the plateau rose dramatically to a peak over two thousand feet higher that, even toward the end of summer, still had considerable snow on the northern face. To the west, the plateau rose to a ridge protecting what was beyond, as if it were carefully hiding a secret from prying eyes. To the east and to the north, however, Jane could see for—what she thought was—hundreds of miles.

  She took a deep breath of the cold air, felt the warm sun on her face, and remembered all the smells: the almost undetectable smell of vanilla in the pines below her, the watery smell of snow blowing off the peak above her, the pungent smell of craggy rock, and the sweetness of the scrub and grass struggling to survive around her.

  Glancing at the northern tip of the ridge to the west, Jane noticed some movement out of the corner of her eye. Turning to look, she could see the silhouette of a large gray wolf, alone, trotting down the rocky grade not two hundred yards from her. Never had she seen such a thing up here, and the wolf didn’t seem to be bothered by her presence either, stopping on a large boulder to stare silently back at her.

  Jane loved this spot. There were no roads leading to it. There was no sign of people. It was isolated from the world, and it was protected like a fortress on all sides by steep rocky cliffs. If it wasn’t for Tate’s rebellious phase, she never would have found it.

  A horrible infection and fever, and the
resulting scar tissue in his brain from a childhood illness, had left Tate speechless and nearly paralyzed. True to form, Jane’s dad refused to accept that fate for his son, so he put a research team together to find a solution. They did.

  At first, the research team expected the microscopic robot nanites they developed would string together to make connections between different parts of Tate’s brain. The researchers and everyone else found out quickly, though, the nanites did a lot more. Within minutes of injecting the nanites into Tate’s spinal fluid, they had made their way into his brain tissue and had pierced scar tissue to rebuild some of the lost connections. Even from the moment Tate awoke from sedation, it was clear he was a different boy. His eyes had a sharpness and a focus to them that hadn’t been there before, and he was more alert, almost as if he had been given a shot of caffeine after having been in a deep sleep.

  The nanites had a simple function: connect with one another throughout the brain so his brain could communicate with his body the way it was supposed to—and they proved to be exceptionally efficient. The nanites didn’t make Tate smarter, but they helped build the connections he needed to recall information faster. The nanites didn’t make Tate stronger, but they helped his brain manage everything from his body chemistry to his metabolism better. Tate wasn’t perfect, but his mind and body worked perfectly together, all because of the technology in his head.

  Unfortunately, the nanites didn’t have much effect on the development of Tate’s common sense as a teenager, much to his family’s frustration. Getting into trouble almost became a pastime for him, as it often is for kids with too much brain and too few constructive distractions.

  Jane was an unwitting early victim of his rebellious phase. On a sunny summer afternoon, not unlike the one Jane was enjoying on the mountaintop, Tate took one of the shuttles for a joyride. Given his capacity for learning, he had taken it upon himself to linger in the science and technology labs of CP Interstellar. He quickly picked up on language and programming, and given that Evelyn wasn’t nearly as advanced then, Tate had little trouble hacking into her and overriding her security protocols.