Into the Outside: A POST APOCALYPTIC NOVEL Page 15

  Isabella relaxed back into the Adirondack chair now that Davin wasn’t in her lap. “When I heard about your herb garden, I thought my place here in Telemark, if we stay here that is, would be to help with growing plants. My grandparents always said I had a way with plants back home in the hydroponics garden. I would love to share my skills with you. You know, pass along my knowledge? But maybe I can pass along more than just gardening. After all, Telemark has done well enough with agriculture for all these decades without my help! But I’d never really thought that reading was anything special, because everyone I’ve ever known can do it.”

  “Maybe not special to you!” exclaimed Violet. “To you, reading is like breathing. Automatic. But when no one can do it, it’s pretty darn special.”

  She’s right, though Isabella. It’s like flying to the moon would be to her. Or saving the world.

  Isabella thought back to her goal and dreams when she left her compound. Was it only two weeks ago?

  She had not only left for love and adventure, but to spread word to all the communities Outside about their future.

  “There is something very important I must tell you. It’s the reason I left my shelter to travel with Malcolm and his tribe.” Isabella sat forward on the chair and leaned her elbows on her thighs. “Listen to me; this is vital to your future, your very survival. Government scientists have estimated that in another fifty years, the Outside environment will be safe enough for the shelter people to come out. The radiation will have diminished to survivable levels and the chemicals and poisons will have dissipated to acceptable amounts. And the government doesn’t like mutants. They want the Earth all for regular humans. They plan to exterminate every one of you! You need to prepare yourselves – and we need to tell all the other tribes and Outside communities as well!”

  Oberon croaked in his deep and raspy voice. “That’s ridiculous. There is plenty of land for everyone. The Earth is almost empty. I don’t mean to doubt you, Isabella. But your information must be wrong.”

  Isabella shook her head. “It’s true. My grandfather told me, and I have no reason to disbelieve him. It’s pretty much common knowledge among the shelter people, at least among adults anyway. I only found out about it recently.”

  “But even so, we have fifty years!” exclaimed Violet, with relief. “Seems we have a bit o’ time, don’t we now? That’s five generations away! If they were coming next week I’d be worried.” She smiled broadly.

  “I know it sounds like forever,” insisted Isabella. “That’s two lifetimes from now. But if you’re not ready, how will your descendants protect themselves? The future of your people is at stake.”

  Oberon jumped in. “We’ll be long dead by then – even our children. I understand that we need to do something, but I don’t know where to start. How will anything we do today protect our descendants fifty years from now?”

  Malcolm replied, “Oberon, I know it’s a big job to prepare for an event that far off. But you must. You have created something good here. Telemark is almost a utopia. How would you feel if your children’s children didn’t have it? How can you raise your boy’s to continue this community, when you know that someday they will be your age and they will be raising children who will NOT have that some future?

  Oberon leaned back in his chair, coming to terms with this new reality suddenly thrust upon him. No one spoke for a long time.

  “Maybe learning to read and discovering our history is a better idea than I originally thought. There might be something in all those books that can help us learn how to preserve our future,” said Oberon.

  Malcolm concurred and nodded his agreement, the two leaders like minded now for the future of the Telemark community.

  * * *

  It was well past mid-day, the sun was high in the sky and it was very hot. Luke had been trudging through the dense undergrowth of the forest for hours and the noonday sun was raining down relentless heat. He was very thirsty and needed relief from the temperature so he sat down on the cool rocks in the shade of a tree and made his lunch.

  Most of the food Luke ate back home in his shelter was grown in their hydroponics garden. Because the annual re-supply trucks had to bring supplies for ten people for a whole year, they didn’t get a lot of their food from the government. Those trucks brought everything from replacement clothes and shoes to staples that the family just couldn’t produce themselves, and couldn’t live without. The shelter had a large supply room that housed everything from toilet paper and toothbrushes to cooking oil, rice, salt and sugar. Like all shelters, his had a small supply of emergency MRE’s in case something happened to the hydroponics and they needed to resort to stored food. But those were containers with enough food to feed all ten of them for a day. And while their pantry had cans and cans of food, Luke had not wanted to carry the heavy cans in his pack.

  Luke had brought a small amount of fresh vegetables from the garden but he had only been able to bring items that wouldn’t decay fast or get squashed in his backpack. That meant tomatoes, his very favorite food, had to be left behind. He now pulled a carrot from his pack, two rolls and the second container of vegetable stew. And as much as he didn’t really enjoy carrots or apples, they were solid food that would remain fresh for quite some time, so he had a lot of those stuffed in his backpack.

  Luke filled his container with water from the stream and dropped in a purification tablet. Once it was dissolved, he had to let it sit for half an hour before he poured the purified water through the filtration system. The tablets killed all the bacteria, viruses and parasitic organisms in the water, but it made the water taste abysmal.

  While he waited for the water to be purified, Luke ate his stew cold because although he had matches, he was too tired to start a cooking fire just to heat his lunch. He could have boiled water if he had made a fire, and boiling contaminated water did the same thing as using the iodine tablets, but he had to admit that he just wasn’t good at starting fires. But Luke promised himself that tonight when he stopped for the night, he would make a proper fire and eat the second half of the stew warm.

  Luke poured the purified water back and forth between his water bottle and the filter. Filtering it took out the purification chemicals along with any toxins left over from the wars that destroyed the world, plus the inert bacteria and viruses. And it made it taste like pure water again.

  It had been hot all day, hotter even than yesterday. The air hung heavy like a thick, wet blanket. The bugs were eating him alive, leaving welts all over his body. Luke wanted to jump in the stream not only to cool off but also to soothe his swollen, bug-bitten skin. But there weren’t enough purification tablets in the world to clean that much toxic waste. The problem with bathing in the water wasn’t so much the bacteria or viruses, or even the solid particulate matter left from the chemical toxins. It was the radiation. Radiation was heavier than water, and it hadn’t taken long after the nuclear bombs had been dropped during the Final War for all that radiation to fall harmlessly through the water and into the soil beneath it. Drinking the water wouldn’t cause him radiation issues, but if he walked into the water and stirred up the soil, the radiation would be released and it would leach through his pores. So swimming was out of the question. The background radiation he was spending his days in was doing enough damage to his body. Adding more to it, just to cool off, would be irresponsible and stupid.

  After Luke finished his meal and drank his water, he put his empty container in his pack and went off to pee. Then he went back to his rock in the shade and opened the map to check his progress. He wasn’t entirely certain how far he had traveled in the woods, but if he was correct about where on the map he was, Dover was still a few hours away.

  Luke folded the map roughly, almost ripping it in his frustration. Oh the heat! It was unbearable. He was losing his mind from the heat! Anger welled up inside him like a pot of water about to boil over on the stove. How could my idiot sib go off with these people? He wasn’t sure if when he found Isabe
lla he would hug her, beat her ass, or kill her.

  He continued on his rescue mission, pushing branches out of his way, and climbing over fallen tree limbs, following the trail toward Dover that the tribe had left in the now-hardened mud. Because the tribe had young children in tow and had to cut a path through the woods, Luke figured he was moving at least twice as fast. He should be able to catch up to them in the next day or so. Perhaps even sooner if they were still in Dover.

  Within a few hours, Luke began to see the outline of crumbling buildings on the horizon. The trail he had been following seemed to lead directly to the small city. As Luke got closer, his pace quickened in excitement. Suddenly the trail ended. He had hit pavement. Unbroken pavement. He had never seen that before. What was left of paved roads was barely recognizable as a road. Weeds, trees, streams that had changed direction, weather and erosion had eaten through the blacktop over the last fifty years.

  All the maps Luke had ever seen were from half a century before, including the one he now had. It clearly showed a lot of roads that were much more visible on paper than still existed in the world that now was.

  As a sickly sweet smell blew in with the wind, Luke thought, This place reeks! Why would the tribe want to come here?

  It took Luke about half an hour to cover the distance to the city, and a road sign confirmed his location. He was on the main road into the Dover when his thoughts were interrupted by a loud bang from behind him and to the left. He wheeled around in alarm. “What was that?”

  He froze in his tracks and studied the brick building he stood in front of but didn’t see any movement. But the building was his best guess at where the sound had come from. Luke unglued his feet from the concrete sidewalk and walked around, trying to see inside the building. He peered cautiously through a broken window. He thought he saw something moving in there. Yes, thought Luke, there is definitely something moving inside the building.

  Then the smell hit him, the same smell as on the outskirts of the city. It almost knocked him to his knees.

  A broken door clung tenaciously to its hinges and as he pushed it open warily. If someone was in there, it would be the first people he had come across since leaving the girl in the woods. Maybe whatever mutants were in there had information on Isabella, so he went inside.

  Two large desks lay on their side next to the door. The desks seemed out of place, as if they had been put there at one time to guard the door. But now they had been knocked over. It was the first sign that a large struggle had gone on there.

  The putrid stench was so strong that it was making Luke dizzy. He tried not to gag. He had no doubt where the smell was coming from but he still did not know what it was. What if someone was trapped in here? How could anyone, even people used to living out here, stand this smell? He’d come this far – he had to investigate.

  He shouted, “Hello? Is anyone in here?”

  There was no reply but the sound of his voice echoing off the walls.

  Luke grasped the thin handrail and edged out on the catwalk that ran the length of the hallway to look down on the floor below him. He heard a sound, like footsteps. There were bodies lying everywhere! What if one of them was Isabella? He was half way down the stairs when he heard another noise, this time above him. He looked up and thought he saw the wall move, but there was nothing there. Huh? I must be imagining things, he thought as he continued his descent of the open steel steps two at a time, rounding the three landings and finally coming to rest on the level below him.

  Luke stopped short. In front of him on the floor lay creatures unlike any of the mutants he had seen in the pool, or like the girl in the woods. He didn’t even know if they were human. Thick gray hide, huge misshapen bodies covered with the gore of some horrendous fight – no wonder the place reeked! The beasts had wounds in their chests and necks and blood had dried on their faces where it had flowed out of their hideous mouths; mouths that held fanged teeth. The walls and floor were covered in dried blood that splattered in thick sprays. Whatever these things were, they weren’t the tribe Isabella was traveling with. The thought occurred to him that the dead beasts could be the Eaters the mutant girl told him about.

  Again, Luke was disturbed when he thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He sensed movement behind him, glanced left and right, and slowly turned, now taking the time to let his eyes search the room. But he didn’t see anything, other than the dead, gross creatures on the floor.

  What made the noise he had heard?

  Suddenly something huge and powerful grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him up the stairs and he screamed. But only the sound of his own voice screaming echoed back.

  * * *

  After being assured by Oberon that no harm would come to them within the boundary of Telemark, and Malcolm giving his approval, the little ones of the tribe ran off to play with the local kids. Isabella heard Shia’s non-stop chatter through the bathroom window as the kids ran down the road, eagerly running after Violet’s own two children.

  Violet showed Isabella and Malcolm to the upstairs washroom. They had seen it last night when they had each used the toilet, but Isabella had been too tired to really take notice that there was not only a tub, but a shower stall.

  “I can’t believe you have hot, running water,” marveled Isabella.

  Violet replied, “The water heater is over fifty years old, so mostly we have hot water, but it acts up every now and then and Oberon has to repair it. We can’t make new parts for things like this anymore, but there are so many empty houses all over outside of the boundaries of Telemark, that it wasn’t tough to collect spare parts for everyday appliances.”

  Violet gave Isabella a towel and a bar of soap. “I’ve got some clothes that should fit you. I’ll leave them on the bed in your room while you two both shower.”

  Isabella replied, “Thank you.”

  Isabella got into the shower first and it dawned on her that she was being selfish in showering first, as Malcolm probably needed it more than she did. But he had followed Violet out of the small bathroom without saying anything, obviously willing to let his new wife go first.

  The water pressure was good and was indeed hot. Isabella washed the weeks of grime and gore off, trying to scrub away the memories of the battle with the Eaters. When Malcolm came back into the room, she let him have the shower while she toweled off. It was magnificent to be clean and refreshed again. After she got dried, she twisted her long, thick hair up over her head in a towel and went back to the bedroom down the hall. Violet had left a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, along with clean underwear. Violet was small like she was so all the clothes fit her petite frame perfectly.

  Then she met Violet in the living room.

  “You look like you feel better,” said Violet, who was sitting on the couch with a glass of unsweetened tea. A cool breeze was blowing in through an open window.

  “Yes, thank you. The shower did make me feel better.”

  “Well, it can’t wash all your bad memories down the drain, but it’s a good start,” said Violet.

  Isabella sat down on the couch. “I never expected a village like this to have electricity and running water. How do you do it?”

  “We have wells and pumps to bring the water out of the ground. I’m not too technical minded. Oberon can explain it better. He’s gone outside to check on some things, but he’ll be back in a jiffy.” Isabella couldn’t help but smile. She wasn’t used to hearing different accents and she found Violet’s particularly delightful. She adored Violet’s singsong speech.

  Violet put her glass down on an end table and said, “Let’s go get your dirty clothes so we can get them all clean for you.” The pale woman with the violet colored eyes stood up and headed toward the stairs leading back up to the bedrooms. Once there, Isabella unpacked her backpack and the little kid’s duffel bag and Violet collected their dirty clothes and put them in a wicker basket.

  That was when Isabella wondered what all the “things” were th
at Oberon was checking on.

  * * *

  Luke struggled with all his might, kicking and pounding at whatever was gripping him by the shoulders and dragging him backwards up the stairs. He had barely managed to pry what felt like fingers off of him when he was unceremoniously dumped on the hard metal floor of the catwalk above. As he rolled on to his knees, desperately trying to get to his feet to run, five men in almost clear NBC suits materialized directly in front of him.

  Shocked, Luke stood up slowly and began stepping backwards away from the men and bumped into the sixth man, the one who had pulled him up the stairs. And he was a man – not a mutant or Eater. Luke’s first thought was to run but two of the six men shouldered their rifles, taking aim directly at his chest. It made him think better of trying to escape.

  The man who had dragged him up the metal stairs moved around from behind him and demanded in a gruff voice that left no doubt that he was in charge, “Are you Lucas Bellardini?”

  “How do you know my name and who the hell are you?” Luke demanded back at the man. He was surprised at the forcefulness of his own voice. His body hurt from being manhandled and dragged, but his anger at being mistreated was greater than his physical pain.

  “My squad was dispatched to find you and bring you back. You must come with us.” Luke recognized military insignia on the strange chem-rad suits and the man speaking to him was obviously in charge of the other soldiers and was accustomed to people following his orders.

  “You’re kidding, right? How did you know where to find me? And how did you suddenly appear out of nowhere like that?” Luke had no intention of blindly following this man’s orders, without an explanation first, rifles or no rifles. Whoever sent them probably didn’t want him returned dead.

  “Active camouflage. Our suits adapt to whatever background we stand against, effectively making us invisible. I’m Captain Alcott and you will come with me now, Lucas Bellardini.” Something in the tone of the man’s voice convinced Luke that he was serious and would be going along with them no matter that. With a nod that signaled his compliance, Luke followed Captain Alcott out through the broken door with the rest of the soldiers behind him. He was lead around a corner where more soldiers were standing guard. Two large trucks were parked in the road.