Into the Yellow Zone Read online

  The sun had just disappeared behind the tree line and if it were not for the pain in his muscles and the fear of poisons accumulating in his body, Luke might have enjoyed the colorful show over the horizon. As it was, he could hardly see, and he would probably trip over yet another fallen tree or boulder in the dark. His knees were already bruised and scabbed.

  “Halt!” came a shout from the trees.

  Damn. How fast could he run? No matter; the soldiers would be faster. He wished he had some of Jon Bjork’s fancy weaponry now, especially the twin .45’s he carried. With no other option but surrender, Luke threw his hands in the air.

  “Okay! I give up. I’ll go back,” he shouted toward the voice, his body shaking from both exhaustion and fear.

  “Back where?” A lanky boy with shaggy brown hair, younger than himself, stepped from behind a wide tree trunk. Soon other kids gathered behind him. Mutants, nearly a dozen of them.

  “Thank the stars! I thought you were soldiers,” said Luke. “Is Isabella with you?” There were six girls in the crowd but Isabella was not one of them.

  “Are you a friend of Isabella’s?” asked the boy. His voice was high-pitched, not quite fully mature. Luke wondered how he could have mistaken it for a soldier’s. He must be more tired than he thought.

  “I’m her cousin-brother, Luke. Where is she?” he demanded with as much authority as he could muster.

  “She was here for a while but left three days ago, with Malcolm.”

  “Left! Where did she go? I’ve got to find her.” The fatigue was evident in his voice and suddenly his legs were made of rubber. He fell to the ground, unable to get up. “Help me find her,” he pleaded to the mutant boy.

  The lanky mutant boy took the heavy backpack from Luke’s shoulders and the other kids helped him to his feet, all but dragging him along. “Come on, Luke. You need rest and food. We’ll take you to Telemark and you can go after Isabella once you’re rested.”

  Powerless to argue, Luke complied. The adrenaline he had been running on since escaping Picatinny drained through his pores, leaving him exhausted, jittery, and nauseous.

  * * *

  Isabella

  The remnants of the Calloway tribe reached an impasse. They stood beside a wide river staring at the remains of a bridge that had washed away in a storm lost to the unwritten annals of unrecorded history. They scanned up and down the bank, but there were no other bridges. The river ran heavy from last week’s storm, washing contaminated waters down from the highlands to dump them – eventually – into the Atlantic Ocean. They could not get where they were going without crossing the river.

  “Okay, this isn’t as bad as it seems,” announced Malcolm. “There’s enough wreckage here to build a ship. All we need is a small raft to keep our gear dry. We couldn’t swim across it even if Isabella and Andra knew how – we’d be swept downstream. So let’s get to work!”

  The damage to the riverside town was recent; at least much more recent than the war that destroyed her grandparent’s world. It looked like a hurricane had destroyed it. The map was no help with a town name, but the river was a winding blue line that snaked through this part of New Jersey, and was named the Passaic River. Buildings had collapsed in heaps of wood and steel. The houses had been reduced to jagged fragments of wood and sheetrock. The good news was that all of this destruction would give them the raw materials they needed to build their raft! Isabella did not know how long it took for nature to take back man’s handiwork after a storm tore it apart. She did not know if the town was destroyed last year or ten years ago. It didn’t matter. There had not been any people here when the hurricane came through anyway.

  Clay was the first to drop his pack and begin dragging wooden planks from where they lay scattered. Once upon a time, they had been the walls of a house. Some still had sheetrock attached. Kalla and Isabella selected the best wood, anything that was not rotted.

  Once they had a good collection of beams in a pile – she remembered they were called two-by-fours but could not remember why – they put together the frame that would hold the rest of the boards. They placed two pieces of wood on the ground about eight feet apart. Clay and Malcolm tied two additional pieces of wood across them, at the ends, to form a square frame.

  They lashed together the raft with rope they found in a shed. The shed also contained some rusty tools, and Malcolm used a rough saw to make each crossbeam about the same length. Then they laid each one on top of the square frame and wound a piece of rope around it, weaving it over and under the log, so it formed an “x,” and secured the two-by-four to the casing beneath. They made sure each knot was tight and secure so the board would not pull away from the wooden frame.

  Isabella surveyed the knots and said, almost inaudibly, “We really don’t want this to come apart in the middle of the river.” She did not know if anyone was listening, and didn’t really care. Her words were more for her own reassurance that this bundle of wood was a good idea.

  Before dark, they had a halfway decent raft that measured roughly eight feet long and almost as wide. Malcolm surveyed the fruits of their labor. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

  “Yeah, it’s actually a pretty good feat of engineering for a bunch of people who’ve never done this kind of thing before,” commented Isabella.

  Andra’s tabby cat had sat on a low concrete wall, watching the humans’ activities with disdain all day long. Every few minutes Pumpkin would pace the wall, then settle back uneasily to watch again. Clearly, the cat was nervous being so near a body of water. It was evidently true that cats did not like water and Isabella sympathized with Pumpkin’s concern.

  Isabella was exhausted and hungry. “Are we crossing tonight?”

  “No, I deem we’d better pitch our tents here and set out in the morning. We should do it when we’re fresh,” answered Malcolm. He sat down on the edge of the raft and began taking his shoes off.

  Isabella sat down next to her husband, tired. She lay back down on the wooden surface and her mind began to wander. She loved the odd words that her new family used sometimes. Vocabulary and expressions had diverged between the shelter folk and the people Outside in the fifty years since the Final War. “Deem” meant that he thought something was a good idea. Sometimes someone referred to being dressed as being “garbed.” Malcolm often referred to themselves as “hale and hearty” which did not take too much translation in her head to figure out what he meant.

  “Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m taking a bath,” said Kalla. She stripped off most of her clothes and waded into the river in an area protected by rocks so the strong current would not wash her downstream. Her pale skin never seemed to gain any color, even in the strongest rays of summer.

  It was dreadfully hot even though the sun was near setting. Sweat dripped off Isabella’s brow and soaked her shirt and shorts, but lying in the sun was peaceful and serene. She almost drifted off when a fly buzzed by her head and she sat upright and found she was alone. Listening, she heard the voices of her tribe coming from the river. She decided to go to them.

  Like a scared child, Isabella waded into the water, clothes, sneakers, and all – after all, her clothes needed a bath as much as she did. Although she knew the area Kalla had selected was safe enough, she was still nervous and stayed close to the shore near Andra and Shia, only going in thigh deep. One more thing I need to learn – how to swim, thought Isabella. Otherwise, I’ll be left with the little kids forever.

  Chapter Three

  Luke

  Luke awoke in an unfamiliar bed surrounded by strange people – and not just strange because they were strangers. Looking around, he saw people with assorted mutations ranging from webbed fingers and mottled skin to shortened or missing limbs. “At the risk of sounding cliché, do you mind telling me where the hell I am and how I got here?”

  He surveyed the room and finally recognition dawned as he stared at the boy who answered him. “Telemark. We brought you in last night. Don’t you remember?
We fed you and tucked you in bed. You’ve been asleep for hours.”

  Luke’s body felt like lead and his stomach was empty again. “Sorry, I don’t remember that. No, wait; I do remember some of it. You told me Isabella had left.”

  The tall boy nodded. His shaggy brown hair fell in his face and he pushed it back with a grin. Dust particles shimmered in the light beam streaming from the window behind the boy, silhouetting him in the mid-morning light.

  A short woman who looked almost as old as Luke’s mother pushed past the boy and said in a thickly accented voice, “Y’all let me through now. Archer, let the poor boy be. Shoo, shoo!” She ushered the crowd out of the room to protests from the scouting party that had found him and stayed in his room all night until he awoke.

  “Thanks,” said Luke quietly, sincerely thankful not to be the center of attention for the moment.

  “Don’t you fret. They mean well. They found you, so you’re kinda’ their pet project now, of all the silly things. But they are a good group of kids. I’m Violet and you’re the second guest we’ve had in as many weeks, by golly. This is the village of Telemark and my mate Oberon and I are its leaders. You don’t remember me telling you this last night?”

  Luke shook his head.

  “It’s alright, child. You were exhausted. I understand you are Isabella’s brother. The family resemblance is remarkable.” A broad grin spread across Violet’s face.

  “Well, she’s kind of half my sister and half my cousin. We share the same father and her mother and my mother are sisters. It’s kind of complicated.”

  “I’ll bet. You shelter folk sure are strange,” she said, but smiled sincerely.

  “We’re strange?” asked Luke.

  The woman had the tiniest ears he had ever seen, purple eyes that were far too big for her face, and skin so pale you would think she had lived in a shelter all her life.

  “To us you are. But come on now, I’ll bet you’re mighty hungry. I’ve got leftovers from breakfast. Are you strong enough to come to the table or should I bring it here?”

  “No, I’m fine. I really need to get back out there and find my cousin-sister. She’s in terrible danger – actually, you all are. Do you have any idea where she went?” He pushed himself out of bed and stepped into his jeans he grabbed from a bedside chair. The pants were cleaner, and smelled better than they had in a week.

  A movement above drew his attention. A small spider had built a web in a high ceiling corner and now dangled precariously from it on a gossamer line above his head. Luke stepped out of its path with a shudder.

  “Yes, I do. But come eat first. You cain’t go chasing after her in a weakened state. You’ll fall in a ditch or something.”

  “Tell me about it,” muttered Luke under his breath. He wondered if she could read minds too, but followed the odd mutant woman downstairs regardless. He could smell the food and he was famished. He followed Violet through a large living room that connected to a dining area and kitchen. The lower level had a hardwood floor that might have been centuries old.

  The kitchen was warm and sunny and smelled wonderful. He sat at a large wooden table and ate a meal of fresh baked breads, assorted red and purple berries, scrambled eggs and a spicy meat patty Violet called sausage. Picatinny had fed him unusual foods as well. The foods Outside were so tasty! He had not realized just how boring and bland the food in his shelter had been. All they had were the vegetables they grew in their hydroponics garden and the few supplies the trucks brought once a year.

  When he was done with the serious business of eating, Violet asked, “You said we’re all in danger. What kind?”

  He had no idea how these mutants would react to the military’s secret plan. How could they protect themselves anyway? Luke decided only to reveal the treatable problem until he figured out how they would react to the rest of his news. He swallowed the last of his food before replying. “When I was following Isabella, I came across a mutant girl in the woods. She had a terrible coughing disease and I picked it up. I think Isabella did too. And she may have passed it on to you without knowing.”

  “The wasting disease? Isabella didn’t have it. She wasn’t coughing. None of the Calloway tribe was. You can see for yourself – most of them are still here.”

  “Calloway?”

  “Yep, that’s Malcolm’s tribe. Malcolm Callaway.”

  Luke had not realized that mutants had last names.

  He continued. “I wasn’t coughing either, but when the soldiers picked me up, they tested me and said I had it. It’s called tuberculosis, or TB for short. They gave me medicine to cure it – and I stole more! I’ve got a bunch of it in my pack for all of you, but if I don’t find Isabella, she’ll start coughing and eventually die from it, like the girl in the woods will.”

  “You got picked up by the military?” asked Violet, her face pinched in an odd way. Something concerned her but Luke did not think it was tuberculosis. Why did mention of the military frighten her? Did she already know what they were doing? Had he underestimated their knowledge?

  “Yes, but… I… got away. I will give you all the extra pills I have, but I’ve got to go after Izz now. Thanks for breakfast and everything.” Luke started for the bedroom to retrieve his backpack but she stood in the doorway, blocking his way, her violet-colored eyes boring into him.

  “Luke, wait. You need to speak to Oberon first. He’ll want to ask you some questions before you go.”

  “What kind of questions?” Was this mutant going to interrogate him? First, the military, now these people. And, he realized, they were people. They looked funny and lived differently, but they were very much people. He was beginning to understand why they fascinated Izz so much. But he refused to be cross-examined by them!

  “You look scared. Oberon won’t bite ya’. No need to be frightened, child. Why don’t you go take a shower and get cleaned up? You look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards. I’ve washed your clothes already and we’ll get ya’ all ready to go find your sister. In a few days, you’ll catch up to her and see for yourself that’s she’s fine. Malcolm will take care of her and anyway, she’s pretty tough. She’ll be okay.”

  Luke wanted to say, Izz tough? Since when? Everything he thought he knew was changing – the military, the mutants, and now his sister. Instead, he asked, eyes wide, “You have running water?”

  * * *

  Isabella

  An hour after sunrise, Malcolm and Clay shoved the raft into the water while Kalla and Isabella held on to anchor ropes to steady it. Isabella was glad they had built it out of wood from houses and not out of tree trunks. It would have been way too heavy to move if they had. Still it was good that they built it right at the water’s edge. Even constructed of two-by-fours, the raft was exceptionally heavy.

  “Hop on, girls!” said Malcolm and two eager little imps scrambled aboard, taking great care to get as wet as possible.

  “So much for them staying dry,” mumbled Isabella under her breath. Her clothes and shoes had dried overnight and she had hoped to keep them that way. As she had recently found out, walking in wet canvas sneakers caused painful blisters on the backs of her heels.

  Andra’s cat, however, was not excited about being dragged onto a plank of wood bobbing on a rushing body of water and clawed desperately at Andra, but she did not let go.

  Isabella glanced downstream at the rushing waters. That way, eventually, laid the Atlantic Ocean, where great ships once carried commerce and vacationing passengers. Now only waves traveled across its mighty distances. Overhead the cloudless blue sky poured its unrelenting heat on the group and an eagle soared high on the thermals.

  Isabella remembered Araddea’s story about letting her mind soar inside an eagle’s body and watching the world through its eye. Was the seer watching them now?

  Malcolm shouted enthusiastically, “Everyone get on. Let’s go for a ride!”

  Isabella launched herself onto the raft, sat next to Andra with her legs in front of h
er and coiled up the rope. Clay placed their packs on her lap. Bodies would dry faster than wet tents.

  Kalla climbed aboard, shielding the little girls from the rush of the river between herself and Isabella. Clay and Malcolm pushed the raft into the gorged Passaic River, and then swam out, clutching its edge.

  Poor Pumpkin clawed at Andra until they were too far from the shore for him to jump to dry land. Andra put her arm around Pumpkin’s body, carefully placing her small hand over the cat’s head and face and talking gently to him telling the cat it was okay. He finally curled up warily between the two little girls, mewling pitifully.

  Andra said, “Maybe if he can’t see the water that’s rushing ’round the raft, it might calm him.”

  Isabella was finding out just how smart and resourceful the people Outside were, even the littlest of the children.

  Clay and Malcolm used their legs for propulsion and kicked the raft midway into the current where the river took up the job and propelled them into its riotous torrent.

  “Too far! It’s taking us too far downstream,” huffed Clay. He kicked harder against the rough water. White-capped waves splashed the small raft, soaking the occupants.

  Malcolm shifted hand over hand to the other edge. He kicked with all his great strength but the current was stronger than both of them. Kalla lowered herself into the river next to Clay and added her muscle to the effort.

  The raft began to move toward the opposite shore now, though still coursing downstream more than they were progressing across.

  Isabella shouted to Malcolm, “I’ll help too.” She was about to slide into the water but Malcolm stopped her with a harsh shout.

  “No! If you lose your grip, you’ll drown. Stay there and keep the girls in the middle!”

  He was right. Isabella felt helpless and unsuited to this unforgiving world she had chosen.

  Just then, Isabella heard a muffled scream. Clay’s tenuous grip on the raft had failed and the current dragged him downstream.