by L M Lacee
Now it was like she was another person. For a fleeting minute Peyton wondered if the body snatches had taken her over, like in the vid she had watched several nights ago. After some consideration, she thought it was unlikely.
‘I do not hear you moving, young lady!’
Peyton grinned, now that sounded like her grandma. ‘I am getting up now.’
‘Well hurry, I am making hotcakes.’
‘Yummy.’ With the promise of hotcakes, Peyton quickly showered and dressed.
FIVE:
Peyton’s grandmother seemed to be her old self again, she spent weeks cooking and preparing meals, she even traded for a cryovac that stored food. She baked for weeks, making cakes and cookies and storing them away, Peyton’s home was the best smelling house in town for weeks.
She purchased enormous amounts of pre-packaged food and stored them in containers in an unused bedroom they had emptied. Peyton thought her grandmother was on a mission to fill the house with food. Then her grandmother filled the cupboards with containers of dried meals that only needed water to re-hydrate them. Peyton enjoyed eating them more than she liked some of the meals her grandmother cooked. After she finished with all the cooking, she traded for a growing structure and tutored Peyton in gardening and growing fresh vegetables. In between all that, she taught Peyton how to do simple housework and tried to teach her to cook.
Which resulted in exasperating her grandmother and made Peyton laugh when something she made exploded or tasted revolting. Sandra St Hill could not understand how her intelligent granddaughter was unable to follow a simple recipe. Eventually she accepted defeat and showed her how to use the rehydrater and solar stove instead.
Her grandmother spent months cleaning the house from top to bottom and then throwing out tons of what she called unwanted junk. After twelve months of industrious work, the house was cleaned, repaired, and redecorated. Only a minimum amount of furniture had survived her grandmother’s purge.
The freezers were filled, pantries and new storage rooms stocked, and new appliances had been purchased for the house as well as new lawn bots. She even purchased a housekeeper bot which she had refused to get for years. The most startling purchase was the small magbike for Peyton, which she had refused to allow her to have in the past. When Peyton had asked her why she was doing all this, she had looked her straight in the eye and told her. ‘My dearest granddaughter. I will tell you when I am ready and not before.’
Peyton had nodded and carried on doing her chores, sometimes her grandmother could be stubborn and when she used that tone, it usually meant she would not talk.
Not long after her grandmother declared everything was completed to her satisfaction, she seemed to run out of steam and took to her bed again. She seldom ate unless Peyton begged her too, and most days she could barely shower.
Days would pass where her grandmother did not have the energy to remain awake, and sadly it seemed to Peyton she had no will to try. Some nights, Peyton would wake and find her rocking in her bed and calling her husband’s name. It hurt Peyton’s heart to see her like that. She too missed her grandfather it was a hurt she carried all the time. Sadness ate at Peyton’s heart and soul and stripped the once happy home of joy.
A year after she had taken to her bed, Sandra told Peyton the reason for all the food, lessons and cleaning. It had been because she wanted to make sure Peyton would be self- sufficient before she left. Sandra St. Hill planned on joining her husband, she had no desire to live without him any longer.
She told Peyton; she was not brave enough to kill herself with a gun or knife. So she had chosen a slow acting poison and had been dosing herself with it for the last twelve months. Peyton was unsurprised at her grandmother’s confession. In the back of her mind she had known that her grandmother was planning something.
Sandra St Hill was not like her husband or granddaughter, she was a gentle woman, who was ill-prepared to face the world on her own. Peyton knew her grandfather had been his wife’s shield against the harsh realities of the world. She knew her grandmother never found out what had taken place in that motel room when she was five, or when the government people had taken her away. She was not even sure her grandfather had told his wife that their daughter was dead. She rather thought he had not, and Sandra would never have asked. It was not in her nature to do so.
Eric St. Hill had warned his granddaughter before he died that she would have to stand between the world and his Sandra. He had explained that this did not make her grandmother weak. In fact, he asked her to imagine how strong she had to be, to get up and face each day. Knowing that at any minute she could become overwhelmed with a world that was forever changing. He had explained that was why he loved and respected his wife so much, her strength of character and her belief in the goodness of people. And especially her faith in him had filled his life with joy. He had smiled and hugged Peyton, saying that one day he hoped she found a love that enriched her life like his Sandra’s had enriched his.
Peyton loved her grandmother, but she was honest enough with herself to admit she did not agree with everything her grandfather had told her. She thought her grandmother could have tried harder; people died and went away all the time. This was a harsh reality of their world. To her way of thinking, it was the duty of the living to make a better life for themselves and for others left behind. But she did not say these things to her grandmother, and on the nights she heard her grandmother sobbing. She could not help but wonder if it was because she felt guilty for leaving her or if it was because she was taking so long to die. At those times she remembered what her grandfather told her and just held her grandmother until she slept once more.
Three years almost to the day Eric St. Hill left the world. His devoted wife made Peyton promise to find love and to be kind to those who did not have her strength, proving she knew the type of person she was. Then in the early hours of the morning, Sandra St. Hill left the mortal world to join her husband who had waited so patiently for her.
Peyton was with her when she died, sitting alone in the large old-fashioned leather armchair that once belonged to her grandfather. The same one she and her grandmother had struggled to move into her bedroom. Her grandmother explained, having the chair with her so she could see it before she went to sleep, and again when she woke comforted her. And now as Peyton sat cuddled within her grandmother’s favorite blanket and listened to her take her last breath, she finally understood what she had meant.
Hours later, she watched the sun peek its head up and say hello to the day. And felt the warmth of her grandparents’ love, in the comfort of the small gold ring her grandmother had placed on her finger as she whispered. ‘Honey, wear this, to honor your grandfather and me. Let it remind you that no matter what happens, there is love in the world.’
Peyton sniffed back tears that threatened as she thought of her grandmother’s last words. She knew tears would change nothing. They had not changed a damn thing when her grandfather had died. So she sat dry-eyed and waited for the frost to clear from the ground, so she could fulfil her grandmother’s last wish.
SIX:
Sandra had wished to be buried next to her husband, in the grave Peyton, under her grandmother’s supervision, had dug over the previous summer. She knew it was still against the law to bury a body. All deaths had to be reported, and the bodies turned over to the authorities, so they could be placed on the funeral pyres.
Peyton had not told her grandmother that the law had been re-established when another outbreak of the Virus spread throughout the world. It was just another thing in a long list of things she had never told her grandmother.
As with everyone on Earth, she knew what the symptoms of the Virus looked like. But she was intelligent enough to understand the authorities would not believe her grandmother had just grieved herself to death.
She was old enough to know her grandmother had loved her; she had just loved her husband more, and Peyton understood that she had loved Eric St. Hill more too.
> When the frost cleared, she would bury her grandmother and not worry about the authorities. Because with the Virus raging throughout the world, there was no one to report her to. Already bodies were piling up at the designated site for Runnerdale and the surrounding towns. She had gone to see it when the warning siren had sounded, alerting their town to another outbreak.
The Net said this outbreak was worse than the last one. Peyton found that hard to believe. She remembered the bodies lining the streets when her mother had taken her from the cities. But as the days turned into weeks, the Net said this outbreak was indeed worse because it was killing women and men. The scientists reported that the Virus seemed to have mutated. Peyton had to look the word up to understand what they had meant.
As she waited for the sun to do its work, thoughts of the Virus and the town circled around her mind. Along with the need to be doing something to help the world, or at least the people in her town. Now she was on her own and had no fear of her grandmother worrying about her, she was free to explore the possibilities waiting for her.
Finally, when the air was warmer, she moved the stretcher she had made from spare parts next to her grandmother’s bed and cranked up the hydraulics. She locked it in place and with gentle hands and a set face slowly rolled her grandmother over until she lay on the stretcher. Then she went about getting her ready. She brushed her hair, applied her lip dye and dressed her in the outfit she had chosen. With one last kiss goodbye, Peyton wheeled the stretcher to the prepared grave.
She had modified a small crane arm for her grandmother so she could lift heavy objects and move furniture, today she used it to lift her grandmother into the grave. With care, the arm lowered her to rest on the mattress she had placed at the bottom of the grave. Peyton covered her with a cloth, as they had done to her grandfather. With a small amount of effort, she swapped out the arm for a shovel, and fifteen minutes later the grave was covered. She stood with her head bowed and said the prayer her grandmother had said for her grandfather.
After she had tided everything away, she stood next to her grandparent’s graves and looked up into the sky and felt numb. She was alone, truly alone for the first time in fifteen years. There was no one to tell her to do anything or when to do something. Some part of her was excited by that, and another part was terrified. Overriding the fear was the determination to never live with anyone again. It hurt when they left.
She turned from the graves and stared at her house with fresh eyes. Her home was her castle and she would do whatever she could within its walls to make her life mean something, and to improve other people’s lives. She had been lucky to know what genuine love was and knew she was a better person for that knowledge. Her grandparents had given her life tools to enable her to live a moral life, to know right from wrong and to recognize injustice when she saw it. And if she could do something about it, to do so. Life had shown her that sometimes there is only one way to fix what was broken. She decided she was prepared to do that.
The first night on her own as she lay down to sleep, she felt a deep sadness invade her soul accompanied by a sense of relief. Knowing she would not wake to a house filled with sorrow made it easy to fall asleep on her own. For the first time in three years, she slept without the sound of crying in her dreams.
Fifteen, almost sixteen years old for many girls, would have been a terrible time to be alone, for Peyton it was liberating; she read whatever she wanted, ate whatever she wanted. Listened and watched whatever she wanted, and through it all she secretly hungered for contact with others. Loneliness ate at her soul constantly.
Halfway through the following year the government told the world that the Virus had run its course, and the world was once again restructuring. To the relief of Peyton and millions of others, the news on the Net said that scientists had discovered that not everyone would contract the Virus. Unfortunately that immunity was not transferable and they could not culture a cure from the immune nor could they create an antidote.
Peyton laid awake for several nights deciding if she was capable of creating a cure. In the daytime, she scoured the Net and the library for information about viruses. Finally, weeks later, she came to the conclusion that she could not develop a cure. Whatever had caused the Virus was far beyond her understanding. She returned to her appliances and bots; these she could make right. Viruses were beyond her ability to fix.
SEVEN:
Age Nineteen.
Frederick Lawton sat behind his large desk which resembled wood but was in fact carbontrol; a combination of carbon fiber and technology. A substance that was harder than any known material in the world and was virtually indestructible. He looked out at the dark city and thought about his assignment.
For the last three months, he had been tasked with making the world work again. After the last outbreak of the Virus, Institutes and Companies worldwide had ground to a halt, nothing was being produced in the quantities required to supply the world. Services were still automated but producing consumable products was stalled.
This new government as with the former government had only two main concerns and as always they remained unchanged. Find a way to arm the army and troopers. And secondly; find a way to manufacture and produce food and clothing for the population. Sadly, it just went on from there, demands for more crops, more ways to power the country, products to clean bodies and homes. The demands were relentless as was the pressure to provide the country with something other than fear.
He placed his head in his hands and wanted desperately to sob like a little girl. After three months he had nothing, not even a working solution, there were no solutions. Every time he had something that could be viable, people died or were drafted to other assignments. Now it appeared he had very little time left to fulfil his mission.
This morning he had tested himself like all government personnel were required to do, and amazingly he had tested positive for the Virus. As he stared out the window, he knew if he was lucky. He may have a few weeks left to find a solution, but it was looking increasingly unlikely that would happen. He had spent the greater part of the day arguing with himself and so far still had no answer. Did he really want to waste the last days of his life in a fruitless search, resulting in nothing? If he could not find a solution in three months, why would another few weeks change that? Thankfully, his computer chirped with an incoming vid call, distracting him from his thoughts.
Straightening in his chair, he tidied his hair and placed a welcoming expression on his face as he ordered.
‘Computer on.’
Frederick stared at the last person he ever expected to see again and felt his body tense in remembered fear. ‘Wha… what are you calling me for, you aren’t here, are you?’
Peyton grinned and said. ‘Hello to you to Freddy, and no, I am not there.’
Feeling braver, now he knew she was not in his city, he muttered just loud enough for her to hear. ‘Well, thanks for small mercies.’
Peyton scowled as she said. ‘I heard that.’
He snarled back. ‘You were meant to.’
‘Aww, come on Freddy, we have history.’
He snorted at her tone, and with a grin playing around his lips at her audacity. He remembered, even at ten-years-old she had an innate sense of humor that was without a doubt amusing and ingenious. As he studied her, he did a quick count of how many years had passed since he had seen her last, and realized she would be nineteen, maybe twenty now.
He thought she had changed very little in the passing years. Her face was more mature than he remembered girls of her age being when he had been twenty. Although life now was not like it had been when he was that age, now it was harsher and tougher to survive. People walked around with heavy hearts and haunted eyes, knowing they could be the next victim. Freddy thought it was a shitty way to live or die. He smiled as he saw her hair was the same sandy color, but not as long as it once was. Although she still had a few freckles left from when she had been ten. Those green eyes of hers, he swore c
ould still see into his soul. Peyton St. Hill may look like any other average girl of nineteen, but he knew the difference, she was anything but average. As far as he was concerned, she was deadlier than the Virus, and it had destroyed the world.
‘Our history, as you call it, is nothing I wish to remember. Why are you calling me? You are meant to be dead, why aren’t you still dead? I explained this to your grandfather, and he swore he would keep you hidden.’
‘He died nine years ago, grandma four years now.’ She told him with just a hint of emotion shadowing her words.
Fred sighed and closed his eyes for a minute as sorrow swept through him. He had liked Eric St. Hill, respected his determination to keep his granddaughter safe. He felt sad for a young girl who had lived and grown up on her own, in an ever changing and dangerous world.
He shook his head as he opened his eyes. ‘I am sorry to hear that. Peyton, are you safe?’
She smiled sweetly at him and said. ‘I am, thank you for thinking of me.’
He returned her smile as he asked. ‘Now tell me why you have called; it could be dangerous if your transmissions are discovered.’
‘That won’t happen, I made sure of it.’
He knew that was no idle boast, if she said she had circumvented the government’s security. He did not doubt her for a minute.
She grinned, then said. ‘I had a question for you. Now I have two, maybe three.’
Smiling at the young woman, who despite what he knew of her, amused and intrigued him, he asked. ‘What can I answer for you?’
‘Okay, so my original question is, I have sent you some schematics and scans of complexes. Also, equipment that can be scavenged from companies no longer operating. As you will see, some of these complexes can be built and or downsized from other complexes and easily maintained. They will produce just about everything the world needs, and I also included an experimental automated growing complex for fruit and vegetables. I adapted some plans from the complexes that produced robotics to produce weaponry for the army and troopers.’