Famished (13 page)
An hour later my mother came in and brought my lunch. She set the tray down next to me and kissed me on the cheek. “And how’s my brave girl doing?” she cooed.
I rolled my eyes. “Mom, you’re talking to me like I’m two years old. I’m a big girl. I’m fine.” Now I was walking. I was able to use my arms too. The only part of me that wasn’t the same was my memory. Not all of it had come back yet.
Frankie checked in with me every few hours reporting some piece of gossip that had no value to me. Like Colin flirting with Molly Edwards or that Mr. Baker had a massive booger hanging out of his nose and no one bothered to tell him. She might have more to report but she was probably waiting until my mother left. My parents were always scolding her for being a big mouth.
What pissed me off more than anything was that Colin didn’t seem concerned at all? He went right back to his flirtatious ways. Closing my eyes, I envisioned him running his hand along Molly Edwards thigh and it made me grind my teeth. I thought there was something between us. I thought he cared about me, the way I cared about him, but I guess I was wrong.
“So, Mom,” I changed the subject. “What am I missing out there, anything good?”
My mother rubbed my hand. “Not really, if you ask me, you’re better off in here alone. I’m sure you don’t want everyone asking you a million questions if you don’t even know the answers to them yourself.”
I nodded. She was right. I didn’t feel like facing the crowd. For one, like my mother said, I didn’t know the answers. And two, even if I did, what if I couldn’t handle the truth? Then I’d be barraged by question after question, feeling like I was drowning in a deep, dark pool of misery. I imagined I would feel a lot like May did, every time someone asked her about Monica.
My thoughts were interrupted when my mother rose out of her seat. “Where are you going?” I asked. She just got here and she was already leaving.
“Your father and I gave that letter we found with your things to Mark Baker. We’re supposed to meet with him to discuss it.”
I nearly shot up out of my bed, outraged. “What? Why in the hell would you do that?” Mark Baker was a sneaky, conniving weasel of a man who could not be trusted.
My mother shrugged. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but your father thought he might be able to help.”
“Right,” I said sarcastically. It pissed me off that my father was such a poor judge of character. Mr. Baker, walked around here like he owned the place. Technically, my father owned the place because he was the one who started building the underground colony and invited the other families to join. Mr. Baker took his position on the council way too seriously. I said before that we needed the rules and order to avoid chaos, but he took it to the extreme and the cost didn‘t matter. Mr. Baker would sacrifice his own children for the sake of our little colony, and that struck me as the type of person who was obsessed with control, order, and being superior to everyone else. A lot like someone else I learned about when I went to an actual high school—Hitler.
“I’ll be back later,” my mother announced as she waved goodbye to me at the door.
“See you later, Mom.”
Shortly after my mother left, Grace stopped in to check on me. We made small talk for about an hour, then she left because she said she was on kitchen duty for dinner. Which meant that she was serving the food.
Frankie rushed in minutes after. She lingered at the foot of my bed, with both of her hands clamped over her mouth. Her eyes were bulging out, like she was going to explode if she didn’t say what she needed to soon.
“Well.” I looked around the room, warily. “Did you find something out?”
She nodded, lowering her hands. “Something. Something big!”
“Tell me!” I yelled, then caught myself. “Tell me,” I repeated in a lower voice.
She skipped over to the chair next to my bed and plopped down into it. “After lunch,” she began, “I followed Colin Martin to Mr. Baker’s quarters.”
My stomach lurched. “Did he see you?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Are you sure?” Sometimes when she was hiding, she wasn’t so subtle.
“Yes!” She waved me off. “Just be quiet and let me finish.”
“Fine.” I urged her to go on with my eyes.
“So, where was I? Oh, yeah. I followed Colin into Mr. Baker’s quarters and his father and Mr. Edwards were already there. And then, they all started whispering amongst each other.”
“Well, what were they saying?” I found it odd that they were all meeting in secret like that. And why without the other council members?
“I could only make out two things,” Frankie said.
“And?”
“And the only two things I could make out was the word lottery and a name. Your name, Georgina Carver.”
* * * *
After Frankie left, I replayed several different scenarios out in my head and none of them worked out right. Maybe they wanted me to go back out there because I’d only found one thing on my list. Or maybe it was because I disobeyed and wandered off when I was told not to. Yeah, I wasn’t buying any of it. The lottery was supposed to be random. So, why was my name being brought up again?
Seriously, hadn’t I suffered enough? Mr. Baker should have hoisted his own rotund body out of that hole and went looking for supplies. Someone needed to kick that bastard off his high horse and it looked like I was going to be the one to do it—as soon as I got out of this damn bed.
Chapter 14: Same Old Me But Not
Let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness. ~ Leviticus 16:10
“Good morning, Georgina,” May greeted me with a cheerful spike in her voice.
“Morning,” I said glumly. I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, but I was still seething over the information I collected from Frankie the night before.
If I offended May at all, she didn’t act like I did. She continued on with her polite tone, “I think I should have you walk around the room one more time before I send you back to your quarters. You okay with that?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
During my stay in the infirmary, I’d grown fond of the time I spent with May. Grace was lucky to have her for a mother. She was kind, generous, and selfless. I truly appreciated all the time she had taken with me these last few days.
May strolled over to the side of my bed. “Place both of your arms over my shoulders,” she instructed. I made a circle with my arms and lopped them over May’s head. “Okay. Good,” she said. “Now on three, you’re going to stand.”
“Got it.”
“One….Two….Three.”
I squatted and pushed with my legs as hard as I could. When I stood, I latched my hands onto May’s shoulders and steadied myself. I beamed proudly. My legs felt sturdy, not at all wobbly like they had been the day before. I almost thought about jogging from my bed to the opposite side of the room, but I didn’t.
With May guiding me, I walked slowly, deciding to play it safe. “Did you ever figure out why I couldn’t use my arms or legs when I came in?”
May put a tighter grip on my shoulder as we glided across the floor. “Without a cat scan, I don’t know for sure, but I will say that you took a very hard hit to the head. And you’d be surprised how that can affect the brain. When I worked in surgery, there
were a lot of brain injuries and I’ve seen much stranger things than a person not being able to use their limbs for a day.”
That was interesting. I assumed that my immobility had something to do with the hard hit I took to the head. “Really? Like what?” I asked as we turned to walk back the way we came.
“This one time, they rushed in this woman who had a skull fracture and a piece of the skull about a half an inch long got lodged in her brain. She actually started barking at me.”
I laughed. “Like a Golden Retriever?”
“I’d say more like a Yorkie. She was very yippy.” May laughed with me when we stopped at the foot of my bed. “You’re as good as new,” she complemented.
I beamed. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
* * * *
May hand delivered me to my mother, who was waiting just outside my room. “Look at you!” my mother squealed as she enveloped me into her arms.
“Back to normal again,” I joked
My mother kissed my hair. “I’m so glad.” She turned to May. “When will the stitches have to come out?”
May smiled. “They are self-dissolving so we don’t have to take them out.”
“Great,” I commented. I had stitches cut out once. I didn’t want to go there again.
“Sweetheart,” my mother began, “why don’t you go into your room? I’m going to walk May back to the infirmary.”
I peeked inside the empty room. “Where’s Frankie?”
My mother smiled. “It’s a Wednesday, silly. She’s in school.”
“Oh.” I had completely forgotten about school. In the back of my mind, I hoped that she wouldn’t make me go back until next week. “Well, I think I’m going to walk around then. I’m so sick and tired of lying down.”
She gave me a stern look. “You’re not going anywhere by yourself. When I come back, I’ll take you on a walk.”
I placed both of my hands on my hips. “Mom, are you serious! Quit treating me like a child! I’m seventeen years old!”
She wagged her finger at me. “Let’s get two things straight. I don’t care how old you are, you’re always going to be my child. Also, you have just been through something traumatic and you need to take your time and recover. I don’t want you running around here making yourself sick.” My mother gave May the come-on-back-me-up look. “Right May?”
May nodded. “Listen to your mother, Georgina.”
I sighed, defeated. “Fine. But can’t I walk with you guys?”
My mother smiled. “Sure.” My mother laced an arm through mine and May did the same with the opposite arm.
As we walked through the chilly, empty hallway I thought that it was kind of nice that nobody was around. Even though we were a small group of people it got overly crowded down here
sometimes. Usually the worst when it was around meal times. I wondered why the people here were still so obsessed with food. True, it was a luxury, but we had been eating good for the last two years.
In that moment, I thought of the cannibals and outsiders who lived above us. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. The outsiders, because they would ultimately become a meal for the cannibals. And the cannibals because they were just doing what they had
to survive. Eating other humans was grotesque and disgusting, but it made me think of what I would do in their situation. Would I resort to eating my own kind?
A queasy feeling bounced off the walls of my stomach. Never. I just couldn’t do it. No matter how hungry I was, I’d rather starve to death than kill and eat another human. I stole a glance at my mother and May, who were chatting quietly amongst one another. Would they? No. I knew my mother and I knew May. They wouldn’t be able to do it. Then again, you’d be surprised how fast the people you knew could change when they’re starving to death.
Since the Great Famine began, I’d only seen a couple of things that made my heart break in such a way, that the only thing I could think about doing after witnessing it, was curl up in a corner and ball my eyes out.
One time, in particular, was right before the colony had been built. Two little boys, who couldn’t have any older than six and four years old, laid beside a rotting corpse, hysterical. The woman was their mother. “Mommy!” they wailed—all day—and all night.
Nobody cleaned up the body. Nobody cared. They were way too worried about taking care of themselves, and the fermented dead were useless to cannibals. Human organs rotted just like old meat.
Most of the time, I’d sit in the hut with my hands over my ears and my eyes squinted shut, humming quietly to myself to drown out their torturous cries.
During the day it was impossible to avoid them. I couldn’t face them. Somehow, I saw me and Frankie in those little boys. And even being a teenager, I didn’t know how I would survive if I was in their situation. The answer was I wouldn’t have.
Then one night their cries started to weaken. Starvation was sneaking up on them and pretty soon they would join their mother, rotting away from the outside in. That was when I broke. I couldn’t handle it anymore. I needed to feed them. They needed a home. And I swore that I would kneel on the ground until my knees were bloody at my parents feet, begging, until my parents helped them.
First, I did the unthinkable. I stole food from my parents little makeshift garden inside of our hut. Since I took food before the rules were established, I’d gotten away with it. Then, I stalked across the street, in the dead of night, clutching what I could and knelt down to the little boys.
Both of the boys had
ivory pallor’s and big, round blue eyes that stared up at me. They whimpered softly. Their teeth were cracked from eating rocks and their bones were showing through their thin, translucent skin. The stench from their mother’s corpse wandered up my nostrils and I gagged, turning my head away.
Sharp sobs caught in my throat and I sucked them back, trying to be strong. I smiled, tears watering up in my eyes as I handed each of them two large carrots. “Here you go, little guys.”
They snatched the carrots from my hands and gobbled them up in one breath. “Do you have anymore?” the elder one asked in his soft child-like tone.
“Not right now,” I said tearing up again. “But I’ll tell you what, if you’re good little boys, I’ll bring you more tomorrow.”
They smiled and nodded.
I didn’t hear a peep from them the rest of the night. When
the following morning came, I begged my mother. I begged her for hours to let us take them in. “Mom, they’re two little boys! How much could they possibly eat?”
My mother shook her head. “You know I would in a second, but we barely feed ourselves,” she said, her voice hushed.
“Then, I won’t eat. Give them my portion.”
“Georgina, don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous. I won’t eat.”
My mother glanced at her garden, then at me. She paused for a moment and then finally, she caved. “Go get them. We’ll just eat a little bit less than usual.”
Only when I went outside to find the little boys, they were gone. Next to their mother’s body, there were two pools of blood and four carrot stems. The cannibals had gotten to them first. After that, I lost control of my emotions. I sobbed so hard that I could barely breathe, lost the small appetite I had, and I didn’t leave our hut until the colony was completely finished.
My mother and May caught my attention when they came to a halt and I stumbled forward. May gripped my arm tightly, steadying me, and my mother shot me a disapproving glance. “Georgina! Pay attention!” she scolded.
I blushed, embarrassed that she snapped at me like that in front of May. “Sorry.”
She exhaled. “Just watch where you’re going, please. You don’t need to have another accident.”
I nodded. “Will do.”
We stood in front of the infirmary and May unhooked her arm from mine. “Take it easy, kiddo,” she said, then pulled me in for a short hug.
“I will. For now,” I answered with a cheesy grin.
May laughed and turned to my mother. “Glad I could help, Marcy. I’ll talk to you soon.”
My mother let go of me and hugged May. “Thanks for everything May. Talk to you soon.”
After May made her exit and we started walking back to my room, I thought that now was a good of time as any to ask my mother about the letter she and my father took to Mr. Baker. “Was Mr. Baker able to help you?”
“Help me?” she questioned. “With what?”
“That letter you found with my stuff.” She was so adamant about getting to the bottom of it, I couldn’t believe that she didn’t remember.
“Oh, no. He said there was no way he could tell who wrote it. He assumed that it was probably a cannibal or a decayed one.”
“Decayed one?” That was the first time I’d ever heard anyone mention a decayed one. “What are decayed ones?”
“I’ve never told you about the decayed ones?”
“No.” Now, I’d come to the conclusion that Mr. Baker and the council weren’t the only ones keeping secrets. Or perhaps it was something my mother didn’t want me to know.
“Are they like zombies?”
My mother shook her head. “No. Not at all. Decayed ones are a lot like cannibals.”
I was confused. “If they are alive, why do you call them
decayed ones?
“When the asteroid hit, there were a select number of humans who became disfigured from the radiation. Their eyes would not be like yours and mine. Their skin melted and their eyes dropped down into their cheeks. Or they developed hunchbacks and so on. You get the picture, right?”
“Yeah.” I got the picture all right. Now I wished I wouldn’t have asked what they were. And now, I understood why she didn’t tell me about them.
“Anyway,” she went on, “part of their brains fried along with other parts of their bodies and their mind’s no longer function normally. Their speech is limited and they can’t write a lot—childlike, really. Like an adult with the mind of a child. They’re malicious—violent. They too eat humans but unlike cannibals, they will torture you first.
Most cannibals still have a sound mind. If they had the nourishment that they needed, they wouldn’t kill at all. And cannibals will always kill you first before they feed on you. Not the decayed ones, they eat you alive. They enjoy watching a person squirm up until they take their very last breath.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“Once.” Then she quickly changed the subject. “We’re here.”
I walked into my room and sat down on my bed. “It’s good to be back.” I smiled.
“I’m going to go get you some food, okay. Stay here,” my mother commanded as she walked out the door.
She returned minutes later with a tray full of food. She handed me the tray then went off to find my father. I took a few bites, but after all the talk about cannibals and the decayed ones, I was having a really hard time finding my appetite.
When Frankie got home from school she spent some time with me before dinner. She tried to entertain me, to snap me out of my sullen mood. Doing her famous Mrs. Edwards impression, she plugged her nose and raised her voice up a level. “Now students,” Frankie mocked, “everyone turn your textbooks to page two!” I giggled softly, pretending to find her impression funny. Normally I would be laughing so hard I’d have a hard time breathing. But not today.
My accident had sparked a change in me. A change that I couldn’t explain. There were times where I wanted to be the old me, with my obedient yet sarcastic attitude, and the old me who thought about living life to the fullest extent and making the best of what my life had become. I had to face it, the old version of me was gone. And I didn’t know when or if that version of me would ever come back.
Later on that night, while my family was sound asleep. I lied awake, listening to the sound of Frankie’s soft snoring. I’d dozed off several times since everyone went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep soundly for some reason. My legs were restless, trembling, and twitching while I tossed and turned, so I decided that a walk down the hall might do me some good.
On my feet, I took one last look at Frankie as she thrashed, rolled over and yelled, “French Fries!” in her sleep.
I caught myself laughing and held my breath for a moment. “Yeah,
Frankie,” I mouthed. “I miss French Fries too.”
After observing her for another minute, I assured myself that she wasn’t going to wake up. Then I tiptoed quietly toward the door.
Standing in the hall, I paused briefly before continuing. What if I get caught? I glanced back at my empty bed. Once I was up, I was up. There was no way I could go back to sleep now. If I got caught, I’d just explain that I was feeling a little off and needed to take a walk.
The hallway was so quiet, the soft thudding from my bare feet sounded loud. How would I explain the dirt on my feet to my mother tomorrow morning? Sometimes, pieces of the dirt wall fell off onto the concrete. I knew she would question it. I hatched a plan about making up some story that I heard something in hall and went to check it out.
As I strolled forward, dimly lit flames from the candles perched along the wall danced along the border and kept me from being submerged in total darkness. The darkness frightened me. Mainly because I it disabled me from using one of the most important senses: Sight. How can a person form a plan of action if they couldn’t see what they were in for?
During the early days of colony life, we didn’t have candles in the hall and only a few lights that my father set up using a couple of our generators and several that the gatherers found when they were out searching for supplies. I never left my room back then. I didn’t want to get lost. Our home was still new and that brought fear and uncertainty.
After walking the entire length of the hallway, I stood at the entrance to the mess hall, gazing out into the black abyss of nothingness. I realized that tomorrow, I would be back there, at my usual table, sitting next to Grace and Colin.
Colin….
I wondered how he would act toward me when he saw me again. If I based that on our last encounter, tomorrow was going to be awkward. And it was because of that last encounter that I came to the conclusion that Colin Martin wasn’t going to be of any help to me when it came to my absent memories.
Turning to go back to my room, I was caught off guard by the sound of footsteps
plodding against the concrete floor. Panicking, I spun around in a circle. I needed to find a hiding place until I could confirm who was walking down the hall. I squinted at the boulder covering the hole. I wasn’t strong enough to push it yet, and pushing that massive rock would make more noise than I wanted anyway.
The open doorways that lined each side of the hall wouldn’t work either. I blanched when I thought of walking through a door and waking up a sleeping family. And not only that, but I’d be in so much trouble for being out of bed after hours.
The sound of the footsteps grew louder and were accompanied by a whispering voice. “Shhh!” a deep manly voice said. “Not yet!”
If I ran forward, they would see me for sure. If the footsteps and voices belonged to any of the council members I would be punished for being out of bed after curfew. The men around here weren’t as lenient as the women. Glancing over my shoulder, I centered on the mess hall.
Inside, I scaled the wall about four feet in. The footsteps were still carrying down the hall so I knew I still had time. Crouching down, I winced out in pain as my knees cracked.
The multiple, loud cracking
sound echoed throughout the mess hall and I heard another voice, “What was that?” Another man said.