“Kizzy, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Sure I do.”
“Guilt is one of the strongest emotions we have. It’s what made the world the way it is now. It’s what made the older generation lie to you.”
“It’s not guilt that’s making me do it,” Kizzy said.
The woman stared at her. “If you don’t take this, you’ll never have another chance to live forever.”
“I know.”
Josephine paused for a moment, looking at the elixir, then up at Kizzy. She sighed. “You’ve got 25 years of peak fertility. That would mean about 25 children. If this new compound doesn’t work, you have to promise me you’ll come back and do your part.”
Kizzy nodded. She kissed Diego on the forehead and walked out onto the catwalk.
“Wait, don’t you want to see him?”
“I don’t want him to know I’m a freak. I’d rather he remember me the way he thought I was.”
Kizzy emerged from the well. It was dark. Fortunately the black Cadillac she had driven from the church was still there. It seemed no one else around. She climbed down onto the ground and snuck towards the car.
“Stop right there,” came a man’s voice from behind her.
Kizzy turned.
There stood a police officer with salt and pepper hair.
Kizzy’s heart sank. To come so far to only be stopped short of escape. “Please just let me go.”
“Did you come from down there?” he asked. “Were you in the laboratory?”
Kizzy kept quiet.
“Answer me!” he yelled.
“Yes, I was,” Kizzy said.
The man was quiet for a moment. “How was she?” he asked finally, his voice all of a sudden showing a certain tenderness.
“Josephine?”
The man nodded.
“She was fine.”
“She seemed happy?”
Kizzy shrugged. “She might be coming out soon, if things go according to plan.”
“Are you serious?” he asked.
Kizzy nodded.
“It’s been a long time,” he paused. “She was... I’m just glad to know she’s still alive.”
He walked Kizzy to his car and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. “Is that ok?” he asked.
“Yes,” Kizzy said, even though it felt lonesome underneath.
He drove her in his cruiser to the canal door.
“What’s your name kid?” he asked as he drove.
“Kizzy.”
“No last name?” he asked with a smile.
“Cartwright,” she said.
His face went deadly serious. “You’re joking.”
“What?” Kizzy asked.
“That’s my last name. What’s your mother’s name? I wonder if we’re related.”
“I don’t know,” Kizzy said.
“You don’t know your mother’s first name?”
“Am I supposed to?”
He shrugged. “Does Medea Cartwright ring a bell?”
Kizzy shook her head. “Sorry.”
“Hmm, well maybe that’s a good thing. She was my ex-wife.”
Kizzy didn’t know what that meant, but she assumed it was somebody he didn’t like very much.
They arrived at the canal door and got out.
“Do you have someplace to go?” he asked as they approached the tall metal wall. He took a key for the door from his pocket. “Anyone to take care of you?”
“I used to,” she answered.
“Sorry to hear that,” he said as he opened the door. “Fix it if you can. It’s the only thing we’ve got in the end.”
Kizzy choked back the tears and walked out from the city lights into the darkness of the country.
27
Kizzy awoke in the panic of being in a strange new place. Only this place wasn’t new, in fact she had been there for over a month now.
For breakfast she prepared some of the oats she had taken from her mother’s house. They were stale and they had been for a week. How long would she have to stay here? As long as necessary, she guessed. Until she was needed.
The night before she had heard a motorcycle driving in the distance. At least she thought she did. Was it Diego out there looking for her? Or was he just doing what he had planned on doing before she screwed it all up. Maybe it was all in her head. It didn’t matter, she didn’t want to see him again anyway.
On the table next to her bed sat a small shiny key. It was the one he had given her when they first met to get back into his warehouse. Kizzy had wanted to throw it away, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. So it sat there, reminding her of everything she almost had.
After breakfast she went out for a long walk among the dunes. It helped her think, to be in motion in nature. As she reached the crest of a hill she spotted the ocean and her heart skipped a beat. But it wasn’t like the first time she had seen it. Back then it had felt eternal and hopeful, a fellow entity in the world that, like her, was going to last forever. But now it was imposing and dark and relentless. Why did people want to live by the ocean in the old days? It only reminded you of how temporary everything was.
A storm was brewing in the clouds above it. The waters were becoming sloshy and gray, like a slate milkshake. Kizzy shuddered. The sea was never satisfied. Every night she had the nightmare of the water rising and covering all the land. What prevented it from flowing up in the middle of the night and overtaking the house? The laws of nature? Kizzy had seen firsthand how flimsy those were.
She wondered where her mother and Laura and Banshee were now. Only in her memories of them? She had spent the past few weeks sobbing because of the pain she felt, thinking that they were no more. Thoughts of her mother hurt the worst. She only wanted her to back, so that she could say all the things she needed to say, the good and the bad. But all of that was lost now. It felt as if the light of Kizzy’s life had been extinguished.
She sat up there on the dune for a long time. Salt and water forever in front of her. Dirt and life forever behind her.
On the way back to the beach house she came across little tracks in the sand, headed for the ocean. Her eyes followed them to find three baby turtles making their way to the water. Kizzy scanned the horizon, no crows in sight. She smiled. The turtles would make it.
That afternoon she picked out a record to put on. She was now the proud owner of a huge collection she had salvaged from the ghost town. It would be a whole year before she needed to listen to the same album twice. Music from before the plague was her new favorite. It just seemed more intense, like they knew they were going to die and they only had so much time left to say something.
Suddenly, in the distance Kizzy heard an engine’s rumble. She glanced out the window and saw someone on a motorcycle coming down the hill. She gasped and dropped to the floor. Quickly she crawled over to the wall to remain hidden. A few moments later the motorcycle pulled up near the house. Its engine stopped. Please don’t come inside, Kizzy thought. Please don’t find me.
“Kizzy!” came a voice from outside.
It caused thunderstorms to rumble in her heart. It swirled the calm that she had managed to cultivate over the past month, like footsteps in a muddy river.
“Kizzy! Kizzy are you here?”
She began to cry and shake her head. He’d reject her. If he knew the way she really was, he would reject her. In that moment she heard something that made her guts twist. She had forgotten to turn off the record player. Kizzy stared as it happily spun on the other side of the room, oblivious to everything. Secretly she hoped Diego would hear it. Secretly she hoped he would come to inspect and find her there. Secretly she hoped.
But instead she heard his footsteps walking away f
rom the house and the motorcycle’s engine starting up. This was where her lies got her. Safe, but completely alone. Hiding from the only person in the entire world who had ever given a damn about her.
The motorcycle began to drive away.
Get up. You’ve got to get up. Go and tell him everything. The way you feel, the way you are, all the secrets you hide. Don’t leave out a thing. It’s the only way. The motorcycle was climbing the hill. Kizzy bolted from the house, hoping she wasn’t too late.
The motorcycle reached the top of the hill. Kizzy fell to her knees. She was too late. At the apex he turned and looked back. Kizzy gasped. He saw her!
He came flying back down the hill at a reckless speed. Kizzy stood frozen, anxiously awaiting whatever came.
Diego pulled up with a nervous smile on his face. His cheeks were rosy red, his hair was windblown. “I had to find you,” he said, after he had turned off the engine.
“I’m here,” she said. “Why did you leave? That woman said you saved me, but she didn’t say how or where you went or why.”
“I had to go,” she said. Her head began to sway, her feet felt less connected to the ground. This was it. This was the real moment of truth. Kizzy never felt so vulnerable in her life. “Diego, the truth is... I’m dying. I’m going to grow old and I’m going to die and there’s nothing I can do.”
She watched his face as she said these things, the sparkle fading from his eyes and the smile vanishing from his mouth.
“And I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. It’s just... I feel like you’re special to me. And I don’t want to lose you... And telling you the truth seems like the only way to do that.”
He pounced and wrapped his wiry arms around her. She could smell the scent of his neck, she had missed that. She held him tight, tighter than she ever held anyone else ever before, as if she was holding on for dear life.
“When I was in the box,” he said, his voice vibrating through her chest. “It became unbearable when I thought you’d never forgive me.” He started to shake. Kizzy realized he was crying. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“Then don’t,” she said. Kizzy climbed on the back of his motorcycle.
With a kick he started up the engine and it roared to life. In a cloud of dust they rolled out. The road curled up and over the hill. They flew so fast Kizzy wondered if they would become airborne. She held on tightly to Diego’s ribs. She looked back. For a few minutes the roof of the house was visible among the trees, a gray square among the dunes, but it grew smaller and smaller, until finally it was gone.
That night they had a small fire on the beach, in between the grass that grew from the sand. The stars were brilliant up above them.
“You think we’ll ever be perfect like them?” Diego asked, his arms folded back behind his head.
“They only look perfect cause they’re far away,” Kizzy said.
“Do you think we look perfect from far away?” he asked, turning to her with a smile.
Kizzy thought for a moment as the breeze blew through her hair. “Probably not.”
“They’re all fading you know,” he said, looking back up at them.
Kizzy stared up at them too. “Some just fade faster than others.”
“Those are the only ones worth watching,” he said.
They sat in silence for a while.
“Should we have a plan?” he asked finally.
“A plan for what?”
“A plan for everything, for where we’re gonna go, what we’re gonna do.”
Kizzy didn’t know, but she didn’t care. In that moment everything seemed perfect.
“It’s just... I’m kind of terrified,” Diego said. “What are we doing?”
“We’re running away from everything,” Kizzy said. She would never go back to the city, never go back to humankind. They had been the one’s that rejected her. She reached out and held Diego’s hand.
He brought her hand to his lips and gently kissed it.
Kizzy sighed and decided not to worry. Sometimes it was comforting enough to have someone who understood your fears. Someone who knew all your secrets, and knew just how far from perfect you really were. Someone who made your numbered days on this earth actually worth living. Someone who would miss you once you’re gone and would carry your memory with them afterwards, like an old Polaroid in their mind. In the end that was all that really mattered.
The next day would bring all the problems and all the solutions. And bit by bit they would lose their footing and find their way, but tomorrow would always bring hope, as long as a tomorrow there was. Kizzy bid goodnight to the day that was and all the weight that was upon her shoulders. She only had so many tomorrows left, but she didn’t care, because they would all mean something now.
There was a beautiful feeling that the nighttime brought, as if it was too dark for your problems to find you. Kizzy closed her eyes, certain that all of her problems had given up and gone back home. Certain that the darkness would always bring her peace.
The Enoch Pill Page 29