Exodia

by Debra Chapoton

  I look desperately at Kassandra and she understands.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “The ceremony will be fast and I’ll change him while you and my father do the trading.” She waves her sister over.

  Good. I take her hand, hoping for that electric tingle, but feel only warmth. We are eighteen, almost nineteen, and we have fallen into a complicated friendship that has little of that first passion. My father-in-law has spoken to me of these matters. I’m infinitely grateful for the parenting he bestows on me. He has told me to wait, that the baby will grow and our relationship will change, but I’ve doubted Kassandra’s feelings from the beginning. And I doubt my own.

  I squeeze Kassandra’s hand and she squeezes back. When we met I thought she had the gemfry ability to send her thoughts to me through touch. I was sure that she had sent me those images when our feet touched under the table at our first meal together. It has never happened since. She swears that I pulled the thoughts from her, that I’m the one with special powers.

  We reach the town center and join the throng. Deandra sets the bag down at my feet and turns to go off with her twin. They are followed by two boys who likely will be the next to join our family. Katie has found a suitor, too, but is more obstinate in her courting style. I see her search the faces and look away when an older boy heads our way. I wish him luck.

  A drum begins to beat. In the past a whistle was all that was needed to get a TM started. They’re making this an extra special meeting for some reason. I’ve been to two other baby ceremonies here and there was no music. A few odd instruments start to play a tune I’ve heard before. Kassandra drops my hand as if it burns her.

  A few voices begin to sing. Kassandra knows the words and sings them as softly as my nanny used to. There’s a variation in the rhythm but the lyrics sound as foreign as the first time I heard this song in the Red slum, with Lydia. And the second time, in Vinn’s cabin, when I felt that I was called to some special mission. And the third time, at Usala’s Rock, when I first saw Kassandra. Kassandra has not taught me this song though she has made me learn several lullabies. I listen carefully.

  Her mother stands behind me and her voice gets louder.

  Araceli and Flor are nearby and I hear their sweet soprano tones. Deeper voices harmonize. My son cries out as well. Only Sana and I are silent.

  The song reaches a crescendo and the drum beats wildly. I have my left arm under the sling, giving extra support, but I cross my right over the baby, protecting him. I feel vibrations through my old rubber soles. An unexpected flash of adrenalin surges through my veins. I’m ready to flee.

  The last words are strange. The song ends but the sound of it does not. The resonance changes to a buzzing and everyone reacts as one. We duck as the noise changes pitch. I know what it means and my stomach shoots up as if the ground has dropped from under me. A spotter plane dips and tilts over our gathering. It circles and most of us scatter away.

  Most, but not all. Kassandra stays at my side. We stare upward. The old plane dips again and levels out. My two years are up, obviously. This is a sign. No doubt someone has tipped off the government as to where I’ve been. Perhaps it was Ronel. He means to give me no options. My time here is over.

  I’m relieved because I don’t want to hide forever, but I’m scared because something horrid is about to happen.

  “We’re leaving,” I say to my wife. “We’re going back to Exodia.”

  I jiggle the baby to quiet his cries and Kassandra stops me, lifts him out and cuddles him to her shoulder. There are tears running down her face and she won’t look up at me. She focuses somewhere beyond. Suddenly there are shouts and screams, whip cracks, and bursts of gunfire. Her face changes, now holding a look of terror. She screams out the names of two of her sisters. I turn to see them scooped up by soldiers on horses.

  All around us I see horsemen and foot soldiers, heavily armed, closing the gaps and pushing the crowd back unceremoniously into our previous circle. I can’t move. The drum is trampled. Children cry for their mothers. A soldier grabs my father-in-law and pushes him away into a line with other men and boys. A giant of a soldier works on tying their hands behind their backs. Sana runs over and spits at the large soldier and he curses her. Her eyes roll back in her head before she whispers a strange anagram and points to me.

  * * *

  Barrett came back at nightfall from the fifth scouting mission in as many months and slowed as he passed Lydia’s house. The light from the half moon outlined his former home. He didn’t live there anymore. He had moved out when his dad returned alone, without Lydia’s stepfather or the little kids’ dad. Barrett’s father had sneaked back, left a bag of money for Lydia’s mom, and took Barrett and the little kids to live in a reclaimed hovel. His father acted ashamed when he finally revealed that Lydia’s stepfather and the other man were caught, conscripted, and sent to work in the mines. The new Executive President, James Truslow, former President of Defense, won the ninety state election in a political takeover that resembled the Suppression of 2071. Then things got even worse for every red tattooed man, woman, and child.

  Barrett was tempted to stop at Lydia’s house first just because he wanted to see her. He had grown taller in the last two years, enough to match her height if he stood straight. He was more muscular, too, and had become somewhat of a street fighter among the younger faction of the resistance; his nickname of Bear had evolved into The Bear. Girls were continually putting themselves in his path, hoping for a chance to catch his attention. At sixteen he was as eligible a catch in the Red slum as any storybook prince. He had until the end of the summer to find an apprenticeship or go into Truslow’s CC militia. Too many youths had to make the difficult choice to stand with Blues and use brutal force against their own people.

  “Hey!” Lydia popped out the door and rumbled down the steps. “I was watching for you. Saw you coming. You seem a little slow. Run out of solar power?” She smiled and gestured to him to sit down with her on the bottom step.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I know you’d rather come on a mission than work. Just thought I’d be quicker alone.”

  “It’s okay.”

  He settled on the dirty stoop and let his backpack rest on the step above. He twisted his body and offered his left elbow for the usual greeting bump. He wished the custom would devolve back to the earlier practice. A kiss on the cheek or even a hug would be preferable to touching someone’s least appealing body part.

  “So, did you get them?” She eyed the pack.

  “Get what?” He loved to tease her. She pinched his shoulder and pushed him sideways. He relished the contact and pretended she had hurt him, groaning and making a face, while the buzz of being in her presence spiraled through his chest.

  “Don’t make me pull your beard,” she said.

  “Fine.” He lifted the pack onto his lap and opened it. Lydia leaned in and looked. The moonlight was enough to see the round white objects.

  She lifted her head, frowned, and said, “But there are only five scrolls. Added with the others that only makes nineteen.”

  “Not as bad as you think,” Barrett closed the pack and dropped it between his feet. “I met a dozen other runners when I got to Ronel’s camp. Which, by the way, has moved twenty miles closer. Anyway, there aren’t ninety states. We’ve been lied to. The coastal states along the Atlantic and Pacific are decimated. People have been trekking inland pretty steadily the last couple of years. Estimates are that there are only twenty-five governmentally functioning states.”

  “So with the scrolls proving that Executive President Truslow doesn’t have the governors in his pocket we won’t have to launch the rebellion.” Lydia clapped her hands twice, interlaced her fingers, and dropped her chin onto her knuckles.

  “Don’t get too thrilled. Teague will present the scrolls and Truslow will no doubt toss him in prison and then it will be war.”

  Lydia closed her eyes. “But we don’t want war,” she whispered. She was as ready to fight as
anyone else in the Red slum. Enough was enough. Battista had been a monster but their lives had only gotten worse under Truslow. He made them work until dark. He no longer supplied them with equipment or even the raw materials. Those who had to lay bricks now had to work twice as hard and make the bricks, too. The carpenters had to lumber the forest first. The miners had to build their pulleys and carts. Women who used to mind the younger children so mothers could work, now found themselves teaching the youngsters to sew and cook, and made them hike out to the fields to help plant, water, weed, and harvest. Schools were non-existent; homeschooling was dying out, too.

  Lydia groaned. These people couldn’t go to war and win. They were hungry, weak, and tired.

  Barrett slipped his arm around her shoulders. He didn’t want to say it because he knew where her heart was, but he also knew that a little bit of encouragement was all she needed. “There’s still a chance that Dalton will return,” he said. He felt her shoulder muscles slacken. “There’s a rumor–”

  Lydia raised her head.

  “–that Dalton has been living in a secret town. I heard it from Vinn.”

  Lydia dropped her gaze again. When she didn’t shrug herself out from under his arm Barrett took a chance.

  “Lydia,” he breathed in through his nose, took his time, “I think you’re the prettiest girl that ever–”

  “Bear, stop. We have to work together.” She twisted out from under his shoulder and stood up. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Barrett listened to the door slam and pushed a shock of hair out of his face. The futility of his devotion was like hammering nails with a pillow. Feathery shafts of moonlight turned his face blue.

  * * *

  Kassandra wanted to scream, but she choked down her hysteria instead and jiggled the baby, clutching him a little too tightly to her chest. When the spotter plane flew over and Dalton told her they were finally leaving the ranch she hadn’t been able to stop the tears. For years she had longed for someone to rescue her, to take her away, and then Dalton had come along. After they were married she tried her best to be a good wife, but she would have left him behind too if the chance occurred.

  Dalton stood rigid beside her, casting his eyes right and left, but not moving as the soldier advanced toward them. The young officer held Sana with one hand and kept his gun pointed at her head.

  “Is it me you want?” Dalton spoke with a calm authority, his head high. “Let her go. Take me.” He offered up his hands and the soldier pushed Sana to the ground.

  Sana lifted herself to one elbow and looked to her family and Dalton, whispering, “Altogether meek.” Her mom and sisters clustered around her. Dalton immediately dropped his head, bent forward, and assumed the meek attitude that Sana’s gemfry gift had advised.

  “I’m the grandson of the last Executive President.” He willed himself to speak an even longer sentence. “I have an inheritance which I’ll give to you if you let these girls go.”

  The soldier said nothing. His face was round but his eyes were narrow; his lips curled downward as if he never smiled. He took a step backwards and motioned with his gun for Dalton to move left and join the line of men being marched out of town.

  Two more soldiers, their uniforms tattered and faded, stepped up with clubs and ropes. One bound the girls together in pairs at their ankles while the other one slowly looked each girl over. Mrs. Luna, linked to her youngest daughter, retrieved the backpack before their captors jabbed at them to move. Araceli picked up the sling that had fallen to the ground and helped Kassandra settle the baby into it. The soldier had left about two feet of rope between their legs so they weren’t completely hobbled. The Luna family took reluctant steps forward.

  The chaos of the day was punctuated with screams and bullets, but by nightfall the CC militia had complete control of the townspeople. Every man and boy was laden with food supplies and blankets which were lashed to their backs and chests as if they were pack mules; every woman and girl was given as much as she could carry as the soldiers looted each house they passed.

  There was no sleeping that night or the next day as they trudged down the middle of the silent highway, through woods and fields, straight for Exodia.

  * * *

  Pretending to be meek is no problem for me now. My back, shoulders, thighs, and feet alternate between blinding pain and brief bouts of numbness. I started out near the front of the line, but I walk slowly on purpose. I keep my head down when the whips start cracking, and I persist in lengthening my distance from the front of this crowd of captives. I’m now surrounded by old men and young boys, and nearer to the group of women and children lagging behind. I hear them many yards back. I concentrate on listening, convinced that I have Barrett’s intense hearing. I curse under my breath when I identify the nagging cries of a newborn among the children’s bawling.

  I step over a clump of steaming horse manure, already punched flat with the prints of human prisoners pressing onward. The trail is wide here with luxuriant green hills on both sides and an intensely bright blue sky above. Clear enough for God to see the pain in every face.

  I haven’t seen my father-in-law since the start of the march and I pray that he wasn’t one of the “examples”, whipped and shot and left for dead before the journey began.

  A mosquito buzzes my ear. I almost like the sound; it masks the sobs of full grown men … and infant sons.

  The few cars that come into view have just as quickly veered away, smartly choosing woods or median or racing back the way they came. I wonder if the soldiers would even want a car. I doubt it since we seem to travel a rugged yet true southern line over stream and hill and rough road, through forest, field, and abandoned towns. Horse and human legs work better on this course.

  I have a plan.

  “We camp here,” shouts the highest ranking officer.

  We’re close to Exodia. I can smell its stink. I collapse to my knees and wait for one of the soldiers to reach me. He unties my burden so that I can lie upon the ground. We’re docile prisoners now, too tired and weak to run away. The men relieve themselves where they are. I rest a few moments then force myself to sit up and look back.

  “Stay down or you’ll be shot,” another soldier yells. He cracks his whip for emphasis and moves around the outside of our group, yelling and snapping, but never unholstering his gun.

  For my plan to work I need those last four coins from Gresham’s diaper bag to use as a bribe. I’ve watched the round-faced soldier all day. He has given me inscrutable looks, impossible to interpret, and looked my way often, but I’m sure he can be bought. If this new army of my grandfather’s successor is made up of drafted Reds who outnumber the officers I’m certain I can at least free myself and Kassandra and run away.

  * * *

  By sunset the soldiers let them camp on the hard-scrabble surface of a parking lot which hadn’t held a car in half a century.

  Kassandra and her sisters and mother were still tethered to one another though some of the soldiers had released other women, taking them into the woods one by one.

  They knotted themselves into a tight, warm nest with Kassandra, the baby, Flor, and Sana in the middle. Flor pestered her mother with questions about their father, their home, and their helpless sheep. Kassandra rocked the baby and scrutinized the townspeople around her. She had known them her entire life and thought they were defiant and rebellious, not subservient. Except for a few brave souls who stood up to the soldiers at first, everyone had acquiesced. Including her husband.

  She looked to the far side of the encampment where it seemed the men had dropped where they stood. She couldn’t see Dalton or her father. If she had she would’ve screamed angry words at them. They’d been meek and passive when they should’ve fought.

  The twins begged extra water from their guards and passed it all to Kassandra who needed to keep up her milk for the baby.

  “Hush, it’s all right,” she soothed her tiny son. She leaned against Katie and wrestled the baby out of the
sling. She caught the eye of a nearby guard and gave him a withering stare. When he looked away she lifted her shirt and tucked the newborn in for a feeding.

  “How’s Gresham doing?” her mother asked. She tried to smile as she spoke the baby’s name. Her son-in-law honored her by using her maiden name for his first born. She had grown to love Dalton as the son she never had.

  “He’s okay, but I only have two dry diapers left.” She lowered her voice and asked, “Do you think our guards expect the money Dalton offered? Is that why we’re getting special treatment?”

  Her mother shrugged. “Did you know about the inheritance?”

  Kassandra studied the guard, sure he was listening, and lied to her mother, “Yes, he is worth quite a bit of money.” The truth was something different. Dalton had confided his feelings for his grandfather, his indifference, and his certainty that though his mother may have access to a fortune, there would be nothing left in Dalton’s name. Definitely not if there had been an execution order on him.

  * * *

  I lie back next to my pile of stolen goods and stare up at a silvery half moon. I wonder what Kassandra’s father would see in this night’s selection of stars. I close my eyes for a moment. The moment stretches to an hour. I open my eyes. The moon has moved across the sky. A stiff breeze whisks the leaves in noisy breaths around us, echoing the snorts and snores and whimpers on the ground. I risk a slow movement to my knees and crawl in and out around the sleeping men. There’s no angry shout, no shot, no crack of a whip to discipline my action. I pause at the end of the men’s area and lie on my stomach for a while. A boy lies spread eagle next to me, his face molding around a pile of sharp gravel. I gently lift his head and brush the stones away. I recognize him as the boy who has a crush on Deandra. He doesn’t wake.

  The darkness hides any sign of my family so I’ll have to creep among the sleeping mass to find them. I gamble on a bolder move. I rise. If I walk with shoulders back and hands on my belt sacks as if they are weapons then in this gloom I might appear to be a soldier.