Famished

by Lauren Hammond

  I mentally drilled myself over and over again. I’d done this so many times since I had realized where I was, my brain was throbbing again. For a while, the pain had died down but now, I felt the inside of my head pounding, rippling, and sending shooting pains all across the top of my head.

  Closing my eyes, I sobbed, “Why me?” I placed my cheek flat on the cool rock as puddle of my tears formed. Snot dripped down my nose and I couldn’t even wipe it. “I might as well be a vegetable.” I’d seen a human other people called a vegetable once. When my grandmother was in the hospital I passed her room and saw a man hooked up to a ton of machines. “He’s a vegetable,” my mother said.

  “A vegetable?” I questioned. “Like a carrot?”

  My mother shook her head. “No dear, like a person who can’t function. He’s only alive because of those machines.” She grabbed my tiny fingers and walked me down the hospital corridor.

  “Mommy, what happens when they take him off of the machines?”

  My mother smiled. “He’ll go to a beautiful place.”

  No… I didn’t want to be a vegetable. I wished thatwhoever did this to me would have just killed me instead. Then again,maybe the paralyzed feeling would wear off? My attacker did crack me pretty hard on the head. And I was certain the liquid running down my face was blood, because some got into my mouth.

  When I glanced around the room for the umpteenth time, all of my depressing thoughts were interrupted. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed my knapsack, positioned in the right corner of the room, just beside the opening. All of the zippers were undone.

  The top had been left opened so I assumed someone had rooted through it and stole some of the items in it. The only things I could make out that were in it from where I was, the black tarp I found earlier and a white piece of paper.

  I squinted, trying to get a better glimpse of the new object that was obviously added to my knapsack. Even though it was pretty dark in the room, I could see some writing that was leaking through the flimsy piece of parchment. What was on that damn paper? Maybe it was a clue that would help me figure everything out.

  Desperate to get to my knapsack, I rocked myself back and forth, realizing that since I was on a bit of a slope, I would be able to roll off of the rock. I swayed to the right, then to the left. Finally, I flipped onto my back and rolled several times, landing right at the foot of my knapsack.

  Now that I was closer, I confirmed that there was definitely writing on that paper. A crimson red color leaked through the top and bottom of the paper in splotches. Whoever had written this letter, didn’t write in red ink. They wrote it in blood. And I assumed that the blood they used was mine.

  Some of the mobility in my body was starting to return. I could wiggle my fingers and wiggle my toes. But that wasn’t good enough. Ugh, I needed to see that paper.

  Arching my back as much as I could, I lifted my head and clamped my teeth down on the side of the paper. After I’d removed it from the knapsack, I laid it out in front of me and read what was written on it out loud. “Hello, dinner. It’s me, I’m starving. And I know where you live.”

  Chapter 11: You Found Me

  Mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven.~Psalms85:10

  Dinner? Was I dinner? And who was, I’m starving? I wished Colin were here. Maybe he’d be able to fill in some of the gaps in my memory. The last vivid recollection I had of him was when he played that joke on me and I left him at the rock mountain. Thinking about it now, yeah, it still wasn’t funny. And I didn’t know what happened to him after that. He disappeared. I wondered if we ever made amends or if he made it back safely.

  The chunk of my memory that was missing was weighing heavily on me. There were certain parts that played out in my mind like a movie. So why was I having so much difficultyremembering this tiny, little portion of my memory? It was so frustrating, especially because everything else was still so fresh in my mind.

  Planting my head against the white paper, I let out a long, ragged sigh. When I woke up, I immediately assumed that I had gone through something traumatic. That was obvious, and I’d heard plenty of stories where some of the same things happened to other people. Rape victims. Men and women who witnessed murder. In a lot of those stories, their memories were jarred or altered. And the human body could also be affected. That had to be what was going on with me.

  A sudden, repetitive scraping startled me. I tensed, and rolled my head to the side and watched as the rock that I was previously on moved. Inch by inch, scrape by scrape, it slid against the muddy ground and someone beneath it pushed it. Then the entire thing flipped over. An excited feeling swirled through my insides, someone was coming to look for me.

  “Doug, I don’t care what you or Mark Baker has to say,” my mother snapped as she hoisted her body up out of the hole. “I’m going to look for Georgie!”

  “Mom,” I called elated, but my voice wouldn’t come out above a whisper.

  My mother faced me, narrowing her eyes. “Oh God! Georgina!” she gasped and rushed over to where I laid. “Sweetheart, your head!” She pulled me off the ground and held me. “What happened to you? Thank God, you’re okay! We were so worried!” She kissed my forehead repeatedly and rocked me back and forth like an infant.

  “I don’t know what happened to me, Mom.”

  “We’ll worry about that later. I’m just so thankful you’re safe,” she said, with tears brimming in her eyes. “I was coming to look for you. I didn’t care what any of the council members said.”

  “They wouldn’t have let you back in.”

  “I don’t care,” she cried. “You’re my child. You’re more important than some ridiculous council rule.”

  “What about Frankie? Huh, Mom? She’s your child too.”

  She squeezed me tighter and smoothed my hair back. “Never you mind about Frankie. What’s most important now is that you’re okay.” She placed both of her hands on my cheeks and gazed at me directly in the eyes. My body slumped as she released me from the embrace. “What’s wrong with your arms and legs?” she asked, concerned.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I don’t know,” I repeated. “When I woke up, my head was split open and I couldn’t move any of my limbs.”

  Her voice raised a level. “You can’t move your arms and legs? Who did this? Huh? I will kill them! If they think cannibals are scary they haven’t seen anything yet!”

  “Mom, I’ve tried, but I can’t remember anything about what happened to me or how I got here. There is a huge chunk of my memory that’s missing.”

  She let out a frustrated sigh. Then she got distracted and noticed the paper on the ground. “What’s this?” she asked as she snatched it.

  “It was in my bag when I woke up.”

  She scanned the paper slowly. “And you don’t know who wrote it?”

  “I already told you, Mom. I don’t remember anything.”

  She folded up the paper and shoved it into her back pocket. Then she massaged my scalp, trying to get a better look at the gash on my head. Her fingers intertwined with my hair and she began pulling it. And it was really starting to hurt. The incessant stinging throbbed. “Stop it!” I said, “You’re hurting me!” At one point I tried to lift my arm to slap her hand away, but I still couldn’t move it fully.

  Unwinding her fingers from my hair, she located the cut and spread it open. “The cut is really deep. You’re going to need stitches.”

  She pulled the wound taught and I yelped. “Ow, Mom! Easy! You’re being too rough!”

  Then my mother removed her hands from my head, picked up my knapsack, and flung it over her shoulder. “Alright, honey. I’m going pick you up now, okay.”

  “Okay.”

  She slid her arms underneath my butt and back. “On three… One…two….three.”

  At first my
body folded and I heard every bone in my spine crack. Then my mother adjusted her arms and carried me over to the opening. Now I understood what people meant when they said mother’s had super-human strength when it came to their children.

  We hovered over the top of the hole and my father peered up at us from the bottom. He let out a sigh of relief. Oh, Georgina. I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  “Thanks, Daddy. I’m glad Mom found me.”

  “Me too,” he said. “You gave us quite a scare.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s not her fault,” my mother growled as she descended down the ladder.

  My father ignored her comment. Everyone knew my mother would hold Mr. Baker responsible for this. I thought she had a valid point. I still couldn’t understand why the men in the council weren’t doing the gathering. They were strongest people here. They could fight off the cannibals and other wild things. Aside from Colin and maybe Dylan Edwards, the rest of the teens here wouldn’t make it out there.

  When we finally reached the bottom of the ladder, my mother handed me off to my father. “Can you please take her to the infirmary? I’m pretty sure May’s working.”

  May Vickers was Grace’s and Monica’s mother. Before the Great Famine, she was the head of surgery at a hospital in Omaha. Shortly after the colony was built, the council decided that we had to have our own hospital, and May offered to run it. After all, she was really the only one who knew what she was doing.

  My father raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you take her?”

  “Because I’m going to climb back up the ladder and close off the entrance. Unless you’d rather do that.”

  “No,” my father groaned. “I’ll take her to the infirmary.” He turned his back to my mother and we started walking down the hall.

  “We’ll talk later!” my mother shouted.

  “Yeah,” my father said. “Later.”

  For some reason, my father didn’t like anything that had to do with hospitals, doctors, or sick and wounded people. His father died when my Dad was young, andsomething that happened with that changed the way he felt about the medical world. The reason was never explained to me and I never tried to pry it out of him. I just figured someday, he’d eventually tell me.

  May Vickers greeted me with a smile as my father strolled through the door with me. “What happened here?” May asked. Her voice was always so soft and sweet. Her smile was pleasant, and she always looked pretty. She had a round face and ivory skin. Despite everything She had went through with her daughter Monica disappearing, she always tried to be kind to everyone most of the time. Grace was like her in that way.

  My father laid me down on the cot and shrugged. “I’m not sure. I think I’ll let her tell you about it. I have to go talk with Marcy.”

  May smiled. “Okay.”

  My father gripped my hand, squeezed it, then went off to find my mother.

  May walked over to her counter, a small kitchen countertop that someone had salvaged from a building, and studied her row of supplies. There were all kinds of instruments, ointments, and band aids. She picked up a jar of salve, and removed a cotton swab from her pocket. She dipped the swab into the jar and set the jar back down. “So, Georgie. What happened?”

  At my side, she plastered the ointment across my cut. First, the ointment on my cut felt like little bubbles were popping across the wound and it kind of tickled. Then that tickling feeling turned into a full on burning feeling. It felt like my entire head was on fire. “Ouch! Ouch!” I cried. “I’m not sure.”

  “It’s only numbing ointment,” May said calmly. “Give it a second and it won’t burn so much.”

  Soon, the burning sensation died down. In fact I couldn’t feel anything at all. “That’s better,” I sighed. With the pain gone from my head, I felt like a whole new person.

  “You might want to close your eyes for the next part,” she stated as she removed a long sewing needle and surgical thread from the table next to me. That sounded like a great suggestion to me. May sterilized the needle, and looped the thread through it. “Lower your head, please,” she instructed.” I put my head down and closed my eyes tightly. I felt the needle pierce my skin, but other than that, I felt nothing else. “You know,” May began, “you’re a pretty brave kid.”

  “You think so?” So far, I thought I was acting pretty wimpy.

  “I do.” There was a warmness to May’s tone. “You have a minor concussion and you need eighteen stitches. You’re taking it like a champ. When Colin Martin came back he was in….”

  “Wait,” I interrupted. “Colin is here?”

  “He’s been here for hours.” She sounded confused. “He came back around five minutes to four. Didn’t you know that?”

  “No.”

  “Weren’t you guys together out there?”

  “We were, then something happened. And I can’t remember anything about it.” Colin would help me, he would help me remember. “Did he ask about me?” He had to be worried.

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “He never mentioned you.”

  An uneasy feeling circled my gut. There were so many things that seemed wrong. Why wouldn’t he ask about me? Why wouldn’t he be at the door the minute he heard I was back? The news of my return had to have spread around the colony by now.

  “May, is there is any way I could speak to him?”

  “Nope, not tonight, young lady. All I want you to do tonight is get some rest.

  The sound of scissors snapping caused me to open my eyes. May set the needle down and rolled some gauze across my forehead. After she taped it, she walked over to the sanitizing bin where she put all the dirty needles.Then I thought about Grace. I needed to talk to her. She’d definitely tell me what was going on or if Colin gave any indication about what happened to me. “Can I at least see Grace?”

  “No, ma’am. You can see them both tomorrow.”

  “May?”

  “Yes, Georgina.”

  “I know I’ve never said anything until now, but I’m really sorry about what happened to Monica.” That was the first time in months that anyone had spoken to May about Monica’s disappearance. But I decided that when it happened, she had enough people that were constantly approaching her about it. I knew it would probably hurt just the same now as it did then, but I didn’t want her to think that I just shrugged it off as nothing.

  She was quiet for a moment. “Tha-thank you, Georgina” she stuttered. I heard the sadness in her voice and felt sorry for mentioning it. Even though I was sincere about it, I could understand how it would be like pouring salt into an open wound.

  May faced me, swallowing hard. She did her best to smile, but she only made it halfway. Her eyes were red and I could tell that at any moment every tear in her entire body were going to flow out of her eyes. “You just get some rest, dear.” Her voice was trembling. “I’ll be back to check on you in the morning.”

  After she left the room, I felt like a total jerk. “You need to learn to bite your tongue,” I said to myself. With that, I buried my head into my pillow and closed my eyes, hoping that something, anything, from my memory would come to visit me in my dreams.

  Chapter 12: They Always Come Back

  The memory of the just is blessed.~ Proverbs 10:7

  Violet eyes! I remembered something! Violet eyes! My eyelids fluttered open and I gazed around the room. As I processed the memory about the violet eyes, two more memories flooded through my cranium. And both of them involved Colin.

  He was running toward me—like a charging bull—his face twisted and contorted, stricken with panic. Then he was running away from me. So far away that he looked like a tiny insect flitting across the air. But what happened in between? That part still hadn’t come back to me. And who did the violet eyes belong to?

  I closed my eyes and they were there again, radiant and hauntingly beautiful. A mixture of deep blue and purple hues. Yet, no matter how hard I tried to match a face to them I couldn’t. S
urely, with eyes that gorgeous, they would have a gorgeous face to match, right?

  Footsteps carried down the hall and my attention averted to the open door. Colin sauntered passed the door without stopping. From my viewpoint, it looked like he was in a hurry to get somewhere. “Colin,” I called out to him. He froze, just past the door and all I could see was his right arm. “Colin,” I called again. He backed up slowly and placed his left arm on the frame of the door.

  I studied his body language carefully. He was fidgety, like a drug addict, just coming down from their high. His shoulders were tensed and he seemed to be looking everywhere but at me. Something wasn’t right with him. Colin Martin had always been a direct person. That was something I always admired about him. This Colin Martin wasn’t the one that I knew.

  “Oh, hey, Georgie,” he chuckled nervously. I stared at his fingers intensely as he twirled them around and played with them. “How are you feeling?”

  I wanted to shout, lost, confused, and pissed off. Where was he when I came back? Did he think I died? He promised to protect me, and here I was severely injured. But what I needed most, was for him to fill in all the missing pieces so I glanced at his face and narrowed my eyes. “I’m okay.” I adjusted the pillow behind me with my head. “Colin, listen, I wanted to talk to you last night, but May wouldn’t let me. So, I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry for slapping you.”

  He looked over his shoulder and spoke with a detached tone, “Oh, you remember that?”

  “Yes,” I said with a bit of uncertainty. What was going on with him? He was really starting to freak me out. I kept trying to read the expression on his face but he was constantly turning his head. “Why?”

  He rested his forehead against the door. “I just heard you couldn’t remember anything, that’s all.”

  “I can remember most of what happened up there.” He was looking at the floor again. “Would you just look me in the eye for God’s sake!” He looked at me but I still didn’t feel like I had his full attention. “I need your help. There is a huge chunk missing of what happened that I can’t remember. I thought that you might remember for me.”