We understand that, despite their vague inferences to the contrary, they have no intention of converting us. We’ll no sooner be exposed to the blight than we’ll be given an all-expenses-paid trip to join the rest of the remnants in the green colonies (oh yeah, they do exist…). In fact, they have taken great pains to ensure that we won’t even sniff exposure.
How do they do it, you might ask? Good question, dear readers. General Ambrose has turned about two dozen of our ranks against us. These surrogates operate as the voice, the mind, and the fist of the blighted leadership for as long as we’re stuck here in captivity. They carry weapons. They give orders. They dispense punishment and dole out the pitiful remunerations that serve as rewards around here. Dad has wondered a few times out loud what they were promised in order to betray us, but nobody seems to have any idea why they’ve chosen to throw in with the blighted.
Maybe they arranged to be on that last truck to the cannery. Who knows?
There is a man stuck inside here with us—Dad calls him a genius, and he’s not one to blow things like that out of proportion—who has managed to outsmart their X-NET filters. I won’t type his name out here, but he was kind of a big deal back before the blight. He heard about my record, and he has promised me as much time as I’m apt to have left to use his technology and get things right.
And that’s just what I intend to do.
First thing’s first. Billy’s getting better. Dad was really worried about infection in those first days after the Red Lion, but big bro seems to have turned a corner, thank goodness. He’s just as ornery as ever, which fills me with hope. But his energy…gosh, he gets tired pretty easily. Even if those traitorous goons didn’t have those automatic rifles, I’m not sure we could even make good time back up to Mt. Tabor if the situation presented itself.
And then there’s Mom. She’s reached out to us twice, both times in writing.
More about her in a little while.
Man, we never should have come here…
In reading back through all of this, I see that I’ve missed a few pretty important details. You’ll have to forgive me—I’m still a few weeks away from that magical thirteenth birthday. Age is no excuse for an incomplete record, but it’s what I’ve got, so I’m using it…
Mom survived her treatment. Camille and Marshall and Dad took turns staying with her through every minute of that first day. Dad said that her heart stopped twice, and both times Dr. Camille brought her back from the edge.
I wasn’t allowed to see her, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Dad said she had a respirator tube in her mouth, and she couldn’t speak. Still, I’m sad that I wasn’t able to say goodbye.
Mom, I love you. I know you’re out there, and I know you still love us.
Please, Mom. I know you’re reading this. I’m your daughter, your Allie bird…
Please.
Anyway, it was touch and go, as they like to say, for two days. Billy and I kept ourselves busy, just praying from time to time that Mom would make it out okay. We met up with a couple of nice people that were leading the efforts to restore some of the homes up in the hills. Owens’s scouts had brought back an entire truckload of building supplies, and we spent an afternoon ripping out charred two-by-fours with a couple of other kids our age.
It was happy, destructive, messy fun. I had no idea how much I might have enjoyed working in construction if things had turned out differently.
On our third night in town, we actually met up with Pete and his sisters at dinner.
“Quarantine was kind of rough,” he said. He had dark circles under his eyes, and I’m sure they’d all been crying recently. “Seventy-two hours of isolation. They separated us. It was…it was pretty hard being away from each other.”
Little Annie nodded. “Lots of kids were crying in there. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see Pete and Mary again.”
“What about your folks?” Billy asked. “Are they okay?”
Pete shrugged and looked away, and that was that. We ate with them and it was nice. Very pleasant. It was reassuring to know that there was an actual system in place, you know? Smart people were using science and medicine to give the remnants a chance to move forward.
We were working on dessert—some yummy sheet cake and ice cream for me and the girls, and coffee for Dad, Billy, and Pete—when things went crazy.
Dr. Camille had a habit of giving a nightly debriefing after the supper dishes had been cleared. Without mentioning names, he would stand and grab a microphone and run through the successes and losses in the medical district before concluding with some positive comments on the future of our (yes, I’d already come to think of it that way, and that makes me feel a little bit silly to write that down here) little community.
In just those few days, I’d come to understand that there were inevitable deaths every night, but there were also many more success stories. There were now eight cohorts of blighted patients convalescing inside the RZ. The first three were consuming almost exclusively an herbivoracious diet. Dr. Camille said they were rebuilding their strength. After most of a year away from fruits and vegetables, it was a pretty bumpy road back to reintroduction.
On that terrible night, Dr. Camille stood to give his speech and had just opened his mouth when gunshots echoed through the cafeteria. Had it happened outside of the RZ, I doubt our reaction would have been so lazy. But even in the short time we’d been there, we’d been conditioned to…well, to relax, I guess. Just three days inside, and the sound of a gunshot had already taken on the feeling of something like a scene out of a play, or some elaborate hoax.
Only this was no play. One of the bullets winged Captain Perez. The soldier sitting next to him took a bullet in the face, and then people were scrambling and ducking under the tables. It was terrible, and Perez snapped right into it and returned fire with his pistol. It was one of Owens’s scouts that had started the shooting, a large man with this creepy pale skin who had never said so much as a word to me or Billy, even though we had seen him every day since our first morning in the RZ.
It became suddenly clear why Owens had enjoyed such success while out on his supply-gathering missions. The bastard (sorry again, Dad) had sold us out to General Ambrose, and after Perez eliminated the shooter and we all began to scatter, streaming out of that building like rats out of the proverbial sinking ship, we understood in full what the blighted were capable of.
They’d come ashore somewhere north of the RZ, and they streamed into our community through every adjacent street in what used to be Chinatown. Ambushing us in the cafeteria was perfect. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, and they could take down a couple of hundred targets without much resistance.
I longed for the shotgun and Billy’s pistol. They’re still in the Uptown Apartments, if anyone reading this is crazy enough to go after them. They’re upstairs, and I bet you that they work, for whatever it’s worth. Dad was always a stickler about cleaning and oiling that gun.
“Kids!” Dad yelled, and we followed him south, keeping our heads down. A throng of remnants was heading for the bridge, and you know the old adage about safety in numbers. Well, when we got there, they opened fire on us. Billy took that shot in the shoulder. It was enough to take him up and off of his feet, and Dad and I had to stop and cover his body while panicked remnants stepped on, over, and through us on their desperate quest to make it to the bridge.
In actuality, Billy’s wound probably saved our lives. We’d been at the front of the cavalcade. Had we not stopped to tend to my brother, we’d have been cut down by the blighted Ambrose had positioned there to flank us at the bridge.
They unleashed hell on the remnants at the front, but there were still so many of us that it didn’t take us long to breach the far end of the bridge. By the time Dad and Billy and me had snuck through, scores of both blighted and remnants lay dead in the street.
We kept our eyes straight ahead, though, and we slunk through the night until finding that brief respite in the Red
Lion.
From there, it was just a matter of time. The blighted fanned out throughout Portland. They moved methodically through the husk of the hotel, turning out disheveled little pockets of people like us. We gave ourselves up when the man with the bullhorn began his spiel about Veggieville for what felt like the four hundredth time.
And there you have it. Well, actually I guess that’s most of it. There’s still that little bit to tell about the canneries.
The blighted are ravenous. They’re as hungry as we are. Maybe more so, as it turns out. You see, according to the X-Net there are some seriously large and prosperous colonies of remnants out there. There’s a big one in Utah, and another in Idaho. Those are the closest to us, but they’re sprouting up all over.
People are rebuilding.
They’re farming. They’re ranching. They’re thriving.
Only, now it’s the blighted that are struggling. For them, food is most certainly a finite resource. My techie friend showed me a pretty interesting story just this morning here on the X-NET.
TWELVE BUTCHERED IN CARAVAN NEAR JOHNSON CITY
That’s kind of a garden-variety X-NET headline nowadays, only this one wasn’t about a group of unfortunate remnants biting the dust.
No siree, that little story detailed a military attachment of the Red Rising that was ambushed by another platoon. Another platoon within their own ranks!
Dad’s theory of halves might very well be playing itself out, only it’s the blighted, it seems, that are destined for extinction.
Dieback. Remember that little beauty?
Well, it’s happening folks. If only we could hang on a little bit longer...
Oh, so back to the canneries. The blighted have repurposed the old Del Monte factory up near Lombard. Every morning, two large trucks visit us here at Veggieville. Every morning, our number is reduced by eighty.
Less than half that many are brought in on a daily basis. You do the math. This won’t end well for us, but it’s not going to end well for them either. At least there’s that, right?
The X-NET is humming with images and news about what’s going on out there. As it turns out, it was folks like my fine benefactor here that actually got things back online. Anyway, you can do the research yourself, but this is just one photograph that came up just this morning. I’m not saying that you should take a look at it, because it’s really gross and I had to fight to hang onto my breakfast bar after I saw it, but it might put some things in perspective for you—if perspective’s really what you need at this late hour.
Speaking of perspective, I asked Dad about that last night. He and Billy and I were laying out, watching the stars emerge from the darkness. We’ve had two dry nights in a row. It’s cold as all get out, but at least we’ve been dry.
“What did Dr. Camille say to you, Dad? Right before he died.”
Dad swallowed. He took my hand. He took Billy’s. “He told me to run. He said to take you kids and run away and not to ever look back. He said,” his voice caught, “he said that Mom wouldn’t be the same to us. That we had lost her. He told me to get you kids out of the city, and that things would work themselves out in time.”
Billy and me didn’t have much to say to that. I gave Dad’s hand a squeeze and he returned the favor, and then we went to bed shortly after that. I think I dreamed about the cabin last night. Man, I just want to go home.
So Dr. Camille said that things will work themselves out in time. Huh.
Speaking of time, you want to hear something crazy? It’s almost Christmas. Just a few shopping days left for all of you procrastinators out there (har-de-har-har, right?)…
In all seriousness, time is a funny concept.
In one year’s time, the world fell apart. Just one little measly year. So where will be next Christmas?
Will we be next Christmas?
Mom?
Are your reading this?
Mom?
Chapter Ten: Life in Veggieville
A pack of remnants tried to take down the guards last night. They were promptly executed. The guards disemboweled the one they claimed to be the leader. They left the poor man out there in the rain, content to let him die slowly, and he howled for help for most of the morning.
Life in camp is hard.
We eat three times a day, if you can call it that. A breakfast bar in the morning—another at noon. We eat warm “food” at night. If they’re trying to fatten us up for the canneries, they sure aren’t doing a very good job of it.
Last night was boiled cabbage and boiled chicken.
The trucks come in the morning; they take people away. It’s terrible, and there is a lot of crying around camp.
But the place isn’t utterly without hope. I’m writing this out here on a technology that hasn’t ever appeared on the market before. It’s a brand new deal, a prototype, and the blighted won’t be able to confiscate it because they’ll never even be able to find it.
That’s right, you idiots. I know that you’re out there reading this, and I know for sure that you’ve tried to hack my site. I know you’ve tried to block the X-NET feeds into Veggieville.
You might have captured us, but you can’t silence us. The world will know, and one day they will come for us. It’s only a matter of time.
According to some figures coming out of the green colony in Salt Lake City, there are an estimated four million blighted now living in the I-5 corridor, from Salem up to Vancouver, B.C., in Canada.
Four million may seem like a lot, but when things go south, I think they’ll go south pretty quickly. There are more than twice as many remnants living in the green colonies, and they are building a war machine.
Things are about to get very interesting.
So will we be around to see it?
Well, let me tell you about Mom’s letters. The first was a request for us to join her. A simple blood transfusion would ensure the deal, and then we could all be together again.
Simple as that.
You see, Dr. Camille’s treatment didn’t quite eradicate her illness. Sure, she won’t rely solely on the products of the canneries on Lombard Street for her survival anymore, but it turns out that, at least in the short term, she actually prefers her new period of “enlightenment.”
That’s how she put it in her note to Dad. “Cliff, I feel stronger than I ever have before. I know it sounds bizarre, but this virus has given me a new perspective. I feel…enlightened.”
Dad wrote her back, of course, begging her to come to her senses. Begging her to use her influence with the Red Rising to get us out of here.
He begged her to come back to help us. To save us.
Her reply was very short.
It was simply a goodbye.
And I can’t accept that, Mom. I can’t accept goodbye. Not me—not your Allie bird.
Not from you, damn it. You’re our mother!
We came back for you, Mom. We came back to bring you home.
Can’t you see how you’re hurting us?
I…wait just a sec. There’s some kind of commotion over at the far gates. The guards are shooting.
That’s never good, but hopefully it’s just a minor deal. They always seem a little bit testy in the morning, and there’s been a little more push back from some of us here in the stadium lately. Clearly, that attack last night didn’t leave them in good spirits.
Ambrose keeps making promises, and nothing ever gets done…it’s no wonder that folks are talking about revolution. It’s that, or it’s the trucks. What would you do?
Oh…
Something’s definitely happening out there. It’s chaos, even from my perspective in the back of Miller’s tent. It looks like the blighted are actually here—there are soldiers in red, and they’re not shy about using their rifles. Remnants are surging for the walls, scrambling over each other in an attempt to get out of here.
I’ve got to go find Dad and Billy. I’m not sure if I will be able to finish writing this, as it looks li
0
Greetings!
My name is Marjorie Keane. Perhaps you’ve heard of me.
My Allie bird has been quite the busy little bee, has she not?
That kid! What a good little girl she was. She always has been a bit of a scribbler. I’m glad that she was able to get so much accomplished here. I think, for the most part, that her accounting has been quite thorough. Her beloved Mrs. Cranston would approve.
With that being said, I think it’s time to finally conclude this little journal here. No doubt you’re wondering where my little Allie bird and her brother and my dear husband have gotten off to.
Why, a truck took them away about an hour ago.
Let this note be a lesson. Those standing against the tides of progress will be met with terrible force.
Such is the new reality of survival.
And what of love, you might ask? What place is there for love in the world that is now emerging?
Oh, don’t fear—love remains. It persists. I think I shall love my dear Allie bird and her noble brother William and my fine husband Clifford forever. They will, as a point of fact, be with me for all the rest of my days.
In fact, I think it’s very likely that I’ll never have a better family—not a one in all of these many years still ahead of me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel teaches a variety of writing courses at Florida State College at Jacksonville. He is entering the second year of a doctoral program in digital media studies at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, and is working on a horror novel set high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. His short stories have been collected in These Strange Worlds: Fourteen Dark Tales and The Silver Coast and Other Stories. You can learn more about upcoming writing projects at The Byproduct, Daniel’s web journal on speculative storytelling.
Other works include:
Frozen
Torched
The Reaper’s Harvest
Remnants: A Record of Our Survival Page 7