by Billy Dering
“Very funny, Jess,” Maria jumped in. “I hate to tell you, but you could use one yourself.”
“Are you guys kidding? Elder-1 and his militia could find us at any moment, and you’re worried about a bath?”
Kid watched as Heidi went to speak and paused. “Jess, I’m tired of feeling so unclean. Anyway, I need to do something. I’m restless, and nervous, and cold and don’t feel like just sitting around all day waiting.” Her voice was rising.
“Alright, alright, hold on,” Jess called out. “Actually, we do have something. Maria, can you send Kid down to help me, and take lookout for a while?”
“Sure.”
“And nobody touch the frying plan on the shelf in here,” Jess added. “It’s now part of the alarm system.”
When entering the main room, Kid saw that Jess had grabbed the large, round galvanized steel beer tub from the third room of the cabin where it was stored.
“We just need to fill it with water and heat it up on the stove. Come on Kid,” Jess said as he dragged it to the stream. He and Kid, each holding a handle, filled the tub half way and trudged back up the hill with it. “Now we need to lift it and put it on top of the wood stove.”
Kid looked skeptical. “Will it hold?”
“Don’t worry, the stove is old, but sturdy.” Jess kicked it with his foot. “She won’t buckle. Lift!” he barked, and they hoisted the tub. Placing it on top of the wood stove and taking a few steps back, he smacked his hands together. “See?”
Heidi sat the table and watched expectantly as Kid added logs and stoked the fire. “It’s going to be a while before this baby gets boiling,” he noted.
A half an hour later, Heidi said, “I see bubbles!”
“They say a watched pot never boils,” Kid commented.
“It’s not a pot, it is a tub,” she snipped.
He rolled his eyes.
Jess and Kid grabbed some rags, wrapped their hands, and lifted the scalding hot tub off of the wood stove. Kid’s neck veins felt like they were going to pop. “Damn that’s heavy.”
“Wait, can you guys put the tub in the middle room?” Heidi asked. “Sara should bathe first, and she’ll definitely need us to help her out.”
With great effort, they carried the heavy tub into the middle room. Dipping his finger into the now three-quarters full bath, Kid quickly retracted it. “That’s hot.”
Heidi did the same. “Actually, it’s perfect.”
Kid walked to the doorway and yelled up to the roof. “Come on down Maria. I’ll take over.”
I cannot wait to jump in that water, Heidi thought.
Coming into the room, Maria said, “Jess, do you think you can take our clothes down to the stream and wash them while we take a bath?”
“Wash them? With what?”
“There’s a bar of soap under the trapdoor in the other room.” Pushing him back, she said, “Just wait there Jess.” She then closed the curtain between the rooms.
Walking over to the bed, Maria pulled back the blanket and said to Sara, “Let’s get those clothes off.” Helping her sit up, she unzipped the uniform and rolled the gray jumper over Sara’s shoulders, down her back and pulled her arms from the sleeves. Heidi worked the uniform over her feet. Sara didn’t seem to have the strength to help at all. She barely even woke up while she was being stripped down, and proceeded to roll over and fall right back to sleep.
Maria and Heidi disrobed and wrapped themselves in blankets.
“Jess!” Maria called out.
“Yes,” he responded from behind the curtain.
Maria pushed aside the divider, threw all of the uniforms over his shoulder and put the undergarments in his hand. “There. Now you’re all set. Give them a good wash.”
“Anything else?” He rolled his eyes.
“No, that’s all for now thanks. Hurry back though.” She patted him on the head. “Hang the uniforms next to the stove so they dry.”
Heidi and Maria lifted Sara and put her in the tub. Although she was thin, Sara’s legs had to be crossed for her to fit in the round metal basin. “Let’s wake up here.” Maria tapped her shoulder. “Wake up!”
Sara, appearing groggy, opened her eyes and stared into space. Her breaths were very shallow and seemed to require much effort.
Heidi finally made eye contact. “You’ve got to get better soon. We can’t stand seeing you this way. You’re just not yourself.” Her concern was growing exponentially.
There was no response or reaction. Sara’s mind was seemingly vacuous.
“Go ahead and say it Sara, ‘Leave me alone. I feel like hell’,” Maria urged as she rubbed her back with soap.
With much effort, Sara shook her head once, and for just a second was able to raise her hand and point at the corner of her eye with her finger.
“I know, right?” Maria commented from behind her.
Heidi was face to face with Sara, and froze upon seeing her expression.
“Duh, here there is no ‘I’,” Maria added as she mockingly pointed at the corner of her eye while making a face. “What is that all about?”
Heidi stared with her mouth open until a splash of water hit her hand, snapping her out of it. After the girls washed Sara, they lifted her out and dried her using a soft blanket as a towel. They gently laid her back down in bed and pulled up her blanket.
“I’m worried,” Heidi whispered.
“Me too,” Maria said in a tone that made them both pause.
Peering down at the still steaming bath water, Heidi snapped out of it. “That looks like heaven at this point.” She turned and waited for a response.
“Well don’t just stand there, go for it.”
“Close your eyes.” Heidi dropped her blanket and climbed into the tub.
“Oh please. Like my grandmother used to say, nobody can ever look something off of you.”
Heidi’s bath was quick. She said, “I’m done. The water is still pretty hot.”
“And I get sloppy third’s,” Maria quipped as she tossed her blanket aside and climbed in next.
“Trust me, you’ll feel better.”
“I do already.” Maria rubbed soap up and down her arms, and then cupped the warm water in her hands.
As Heidi entered the main room, Jess stepped in and started hanging uniforms next to the woodstove. He said, “These will take some serious time to dry, but at least they are clean. I hope the soldiers don’t show up now, or you girls will be running in the nude. How was your bath?”
“Surprisingly refreshing,” she remarked as she sighed. She wrapped herself in a heavier blanket and pulled the ripped, thin blanket out from underneath and handed it to him. “Can you give this blanket to Maria? She’s still in the tub.”
“Nice. Sloppy thirds with the towel now too?” she yelled from the middle room.
On the roof of the cabin, Kid kept a watchful eye to the east, while the sun hovered behind him. As he glanced over his shoulder, he noticed the sun was starting its descent, like it did every other day. On the western horizon it looked like a red and gold globe. Everything looks so normal, he thought. It was eerie in light of the circumstances.
He looked down to see Heidi, wrapped in a blanket, coming up the ladder. She appeared to be struggling to keep the blanket around her while climbing at the same time.
“What are you doing?” Kid could see nothing but the top of her blonde head, and the cleavage of her breasts.
“We need to talk, and my uniform could take hours to dry.”
He offered his hand and helped her up. She sat next to him and gazed at the ocean.
“See anything yet, besides woods and water?” she asked.
“Not a thing.”
After a silent moment, she blurted out, “Kid, I’m worried about Sara. I think she’s getting worse.”
“Why?”
“She’s having problems breathing, and can’t even sit up in bed without help. Mentally, she’s just not there at all.”
“The shot didn
’t even hit her. It just grazed her shoulder. It’ll take some time for her to recover. If she was going to die, she would’ve already,” he said, knowing he sounded defensive.
“You’re acting like she’ll be fine,” she said as she put her hand under his chin and turned his head, forcing him to look into her eyes, “but she won’t, unless we do something.”
“What? What can we do?” He pushed her hand away. “I know we should, but…” Kid was getting flustered and snapped, “Can you do me a favor, and shut up about it?”
In the stillness that followed his outburst, he had a strangely-timed recollection of a traumatic event from two summers ago. For his entire life, Kid was close to his first cousin, Dawn. She was more than a year younger than him, and was like the little sister he never had. He was there when she got her first period. He took her to her first concert. He went to all of her softball games. When her heart was broken for the first time by a boy, Kid spent that whole day cheering her up. But three years ago when she was 17-years-old, after her parent’s ugly divorce, Dawn retreated from the world and was soon hooked on heroin. He did everything in his power to help her, but she could not unravel the noose the drug had tied around her neck. And despite her fragile state, her divorced parents could not stop fighting and putting her in the middle. Kid’s relationship with her became an emotional roller coaster because time and again she would call and he would have to talk her off of the ledge. He could not count how many times he saved her from overdosing, inadvertently or otherwise.
Finally, he forced Dawn to enter an inpatient program. She came out clean and seemed to have beaten away the demons that had haunted her once and for all. But in the ensuing months, his Aunt Ginny, Dawn’s mother, kept calling Kid and voicing her fear that her daughter was doing drugs again. When he would see his cousin, her face would be tight and her eyes would be a little sunken, but he would always rationalize that she was fine and had not gone back down the dark road. He would assume that she just hadn’t slept well, or was stressed from life, but he refused to accept that she had gone back to drugs. She couldn’t. She had worked too hard to clean herself up. And he had worked too hard to help her, and was exhausted from his efforts, both physically and emotionally.
But one humid, suffocating night this past summer, he made a phone call that would haunt him forever. Dawn was driving in the early afternoon to Camden, New Jersey, allegedly to look at a used car she was considering buying. Aunt Ginny called him, panicked and fearful that the trip was really for a drug binge. She begged him to intervene, saying, “Kid, you’re acting like she’ll be fine. Are you blind to what’s going on here?” In his worst moment of denial, he choose not to intervene and call his cousin, believing that she was just shopping for a used car.
As day turned into night, he began to feel uneasy. He tried to call Dawn over and over on her mobile device. All of his calls went unanswered, as did his texts. Finally, he called again and some strange man picked up the phone, laughing maniacally. “Sorry. She is unable to… speak!” he had snarled and hung up the phone. Further calls to her phone went unanswered so Kid and his Aunt Ginny called the police. Two days later Dawn’s body was found in a dumpster in Camden. Kid had wept on his knees in front of her coffin for almost an hour, apologizing for not protecting her. His denial had cost Dawn her life.
It was then that Kid, sitting on the roof of the cabin, had a moment of frightful clarity and realization. The gravity of the situation was overwhelming.
Heidi began to weep and the muffled words, “I’m sorry,” escaped her lips.
Kid rocked in his seat. “No, I’m the one who should be sorry.” He knew she was right. His moment of clarity had exposed the true depth of his denial. “You were doing me a favor, and being honest.”
He felt horrible for talking to Heidi the way he did, and he tried to affectionately hug her. To his surprise, she didn’t resist, and actually reciprocated. They held each other tight for a minute. When they separated, Heidi had tears running down her face. “We can’t lose her.”
“I was sure she would get better on her own. I guess I just wanted my Sara back so badly that the reality of the situation escaped me. For crying out loud, she still doesn’t even recognize me, or know who I am. Me?” he repeated, shaking his head as he looked down.
“I was hoping she would get better too. Especially since the cure…”
“What?” he turned to her, fear and hope showing in his eyes, “What about the cure?”
“Hear me out. When they shot Brian on the beach, he froze in the same position as the second he was shot. When I was first on the ship, I asked Elder-1 if Brian would be alright. I asked if he was just stunned. He told me Brian was initially stunned, but would die within minutes since all of his muscles were frozen, even his lungs. I begged him,” large teardrops started streaming again, “begged him to radio back to the ones left on the beach and save him.”
Kid put his arm around her, trying to calm her. He needed to hear the rest of this.
“No use. He said that besides too much time having elapsed, the only antidote is on the ships.”
“You’re saying that an antidote exists, one that could save Sara, but it can only be found on those ships?” He was incredulous.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Since Sara was grazed, maybe it only froze a few muscles.” His response was reactionary, a remnant of his previous denial pattern. Even he didn’t buy it for a second.
Heidi looked sad. “At first maybe, but it’s obviously shutting down her body a little at a time. She gets worse every hour. It’s consuming her like a damn cancer, or poison.”
Unable to hide the quiver of panic in his voice, Kid said, “I can’t believe it. After all we went through to escape, the only place we can find a cure is back on the same forsaken ships that we just escaped from?” His own words seemed to knock the wind out of him as he stood up.
“Let’s talk to Jess and Maria about it. With all of us brainstorming, we should be able to come up with something.” She also stood up.
Kid followed her down the ladder. His core had been shaken by his moment of clarity. It had revealed more than just a truth. With no obstructions or filters, such clarity provided a front row view, in vivid and stunning detail, of his deepest fears.
He realized that even in the mind’s eye, some images cannot be unseen.
Chapter 28
December 31, 2044
Saturday, Early Evening
The Pine Barrens of New Jersey
Five days after the event
As night fell, Kid and Heidi talked quietly with the others in the cabin. The main room was lit by one candle, which was situated in the middle of the table. Damned if we do, and damned if we don’t, Kid thought. After pacing around the room for a moment, he proclaimed in a forceful whisper, “I have to get her to the ships and fast.”
“But how can we get her there without all of us getting killed?” Jess sat with his face close to the window, watching for soldiers.
“Maybe we could take two boats out there, wrap her nice and warm and leave her in one tied up to their ships. We could alert them as we take off, and then they will take her aboard and cure her?” Kid suggested, and then turned on his heel. He was battling conflicting thoughts. “Damn it, I don’t want her captured again! It was hard enough to get her off the ship the first time. It’s going to be just about impossible to do it again.”
“If they even decide to cure her,” Maria said. “We are not talking about a compassionate and caring group of people out there and that’s what scares the hell out of me. They could care less about one life.”
“I really don’t think they will save her,” Jess whispered.
“It’s a chance we have to take. What choice do we have?” Kid sounded flustered.
“When we were captured we found out that they were in desperate need of females. So there is a chance they won’t harm her,” Heidi said. “After what happened with us escaping, they just may beef up se
curity.”
“They also just may kill her!” Jess voiced with frustration.
Kid turned. “They may kill her, but staying out here with us, with no cure, will kill her. Not may… will kill her.”
“Shh!” Maria put a finger over her mouth and pointed toward the middle room where Sara was lying.
Jess opened his mouth to speak, but only sighed and turned away.
“I have no choice. Even if I have to do it alone,” Kid added as he pushed aside the curtain and entered the next room.
Sara was staring at the ceiling. Kid got down on one knee next to the bed. She could no longer move at all without help, and could not even raise her hand. She was like a sailboat without sails, sitting on the smooth but stagnant surface of an open body of water. He had to find the inner-strength to maintain his composure and appear in control.
“In a little while, we have to take you back to the ship so they can cure you,” he said evenly. “You’re getting sicker and sicker from the shot that hit you, and only they can save you. Don’t worry though, we’ll come back to rescue you as soon as you’re well again.”
“These last few days… were the best of days,” she strained to reply.
Her words chilled Kid to the bone. Her tone resounded like a harsh and definitive foreshadowing. As he grabbed her hand, she whispered, with her lips quivering and her face wincing as she fought back tears, “We can’t… go back.”
“It’s only temporary, and it’s killing me to do it but, please,” he pleaded. “They are the only ones who can cure you.”
She went to respond, but he cut in, “Not another word. We have to leave soon. Please, just rest until we go.” He gazed deep into her eyes and gently brushed his hand against her right cheek. Leaning close to her face, Kid whispered, “I love you too much. I’m not going to lose you.”
Her arm twitched as she tried unsuccessfully to move it, but she was able to lean forward ever so slightly and give him a tender kiss.
This small act gave Kid a shred of hope, a glimmer. As he pulled back from her, she was smiling with a tear rolling from the corner of her eye. She squeezed his hand weakly but affectionately. He was melted by a sudden swell of emotion as he pulled the blanket under her chin and walked away. He pushed aside the curtain and stepped with purpose into the main room.