Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) (35 page)

But then there were times when it wasn’t so fun.  There were times when the power would go out and someone would scream “
dunomad!
” and the teachers would lock the doors to their classrooms and tell all the students to get under their desks while screams echoed down the halls.  And that was the scariest part, the part that scared Alex now.  They could be
anywhere
at
any time
, popping up from the sewers or climbing into a cargo container on the edge of town and then showing up in an electronics store ready to cannibalize the customers.  Alex was now on their lands.

B
y afternoon, it had turned cloudy and a thick short-grass carpet interspersed with endless weeds and even a few young trees covered the landscape.  Alex took his time navigating over a stream and then made a wide arc in the land beyond before returning to the same creek for nightfall.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Olesianna asked as Alex shut down the car and let its smooth gray bottom come to rest on the grass.

“The food they gave us in the crates will stay good for a long time.  We should eat what we can out here and save that for emergencies.”

“Eat what we can?  What are you talking about?”

“I read it in my book,” Alex said defensively.

“That old thing?”

“The United States Special Forces used it,” Alex said.  “They used to be some of the best commandos in the world.”

“I don’t care who used it.  We have canned food and we’re going to eat the canned food.”

“But I’m already sick of it.”

“Then build a fire.  Maybe it will taste different warmed up.”

“No, we’re near a water source.  No fires.”  Alex was about impress his mother with his forethought about remaining undetected near a possibly hostile area and quell her fears about the dunomads, when she cut him off.

“Then I don’t know what to tell you,” she said.  This was nearly his mother’s catchphrase and thus a glimpse of her former self, yet sadly, it was not so reassuring to Alex.  She
always
said this.  She didn’t understand that sometimes Alex just wanted to complain.  He didn’t want her to fix it, and he wasn’t blaming her for it.  He just wanted to say:
life sucks doesn’t it
, or
the world isn’t fair
, and have her agree with him.  But complaining was a luxury she had never enjoyed.   

Suddenly not hungry, Alex took out his notebook and continued to write.

I
never knew my father.  He died shortly after my mother got pregnant with me.  My sister was just one years old.  He used to work for First Providence which meant he was involved in our government.  I don’t actually know what happened to him but my mother says he died because he was going against the will.  And the will said that Teleopolis had to be ruled a certain way or else the dunomads would invade.  But he said the dunomads weren’t always a threat.  So the government said that the will made him sick, and he disappeared. 

My mother never agreed with the will or anything.  She didn’t believe other people could “define the divine,” but as far as the other people in the government cared, my father was what we called a
blasphemer
.  I never knew him, so I don’t know if I can really miss him or not.

After he was gone, my mother raised my sister and me with the help of the Mayor of Fifth Providence, Mayor Veresdale.  He didn’t actually help raise us, but he made sure that we were taken care of after those first three months of living in the car.  I think what made my mom accept his help was my birth.  My mom – oh her name is Olesianna – was about to have me in the back seat of the car, and on top of that, around that time, Veronicara was starting to get sick, so I guess she went to him for help.  He was a friend
of hers and my father’s before us, but I think my mother holds him responsible for my dad’s death or something.  Maybe I’ll find out some day.

“Alex, turn out the light please.”

Alex reached up depressed the light on the ceiling with a click, shrouding the cabin in darkness.

T
he following day progressed uneventfully as they traveled quickly over the open greenery.  It wasn’t until the last rays of sunlight shone down that Alex and Olesianna saw something in the distance.  To their eyes, the sight, though vague, was nearly inconceivable.  Far off ahead of them, stretching as far north and south as either could see, was a massive blue and green ridge.  It was too far away to make any sense to them yet, but its presence was clear enough to Olesianna.

“I think we should turn back,” she said as they both stared at the distant mountain range. 

“To the creek?”  Alex asked sarcastically.

“Yes,” she replied quickly.

“Let’s at least see what it is.”

“No.  It’s too dangerous, Alex.”

“We don’t even know what it is!”

“I am your mother,” her words started to break and the fear and the loss of the recent past welled up in her throat.  Forcibly she composed herself.  “And we are not going any closer.”

Alex sat back in his seat and folded his arms, staring at the nearly invisible barrier in the distance.  Tomorrow, he thought.  Before beginning to write, Alex propped up a pillow and took out a blanket from the back seat, but it wasn’t his and he felt odd using it.  A blanket is a blanket, he thought, but when you have lost everything you own, something like an old blanket is all the more reassuring an item and all the more missed if absent.  Then he remembered it.  Searching through a small backpack he found the last possession from his home: a tiny burnt piece of fabric covered in soot.

Just holding it made his face twitch and tears begin to stream.  His chin quivered and his eyes blinked hard, shedding several drops onto his cheek as he stared at the piece of fabric.  It was the last thing that remained of his sister’s fatherblanket.  Both Alex and Veronicara had been given one as children and his sister never slept a night without it.  Alex eventually outgrew his fatherblanket, but now, seeing what was left of his sister’s, he urgently needed his own.  He needed to feel its worn, soft – nearly threadbare – surface against his face. 

The death of his sister had somehow seemed to amplify the loss of his father, or maybe was it his sister’s death was amplified?  After all, half of his immediate family was gone.  Alex put the piece of fabric to his face and held it there, not willing to breathe in the scent of death and ash when he used to inhale the faintly clung musk of his father’s sweater.  The fatherblanket was of Olesianna’s making and consisted of a sweater Xavieric used to wear.  After his death, she cut it in half and sewed the front and back sides into two larger blankets, then gave one to each child.  And when they wrapped their blankets around themselves it was if their father was their wrapping his arms around them.

“Alex?”  Olesianna asked.

Alex turned around and wiped the tears from his cheeks then settled into his seat and opened his notebook.

T
he mayor did his best to give us a normal life.  He made sure we had a home, and that Veronicara had her medications.  He even made sure I didn’t go to jail the first time I went to the crevasse.  You see, I climbed down into the ravine at the edge of my city.  I don’t remember why.  I slipped through and fell to the bottom.  As it turned out, the bottom wasn’t that far away.  It was flat and black so it looked like it went down forever.  I walked to the other side and then climbed out.  And when they caught me, the first person I told this to was the mayor, and he made me swear not to tell anyone else.  He said that I had bumped my head and that we would tell everyone that I snuck along the bridge.  I only told my mother and sister about the truth, and they said the mayor was right.  Don’t tell anyone.

I remember how mad mom used to get at him when he would try to let me fend for myself.  I was always so protected by her.  She would fight anyone anywhere just to keep me and Veronicara from feeling even a little bad. 

One night after the mayor left, I came downstairs to find mom in the kitchen.  I was too young to understand but she was probably looking at bills.  There were papers all over the table.  I came down and I gave her my special blanket and after wrapping it around her shoulders, I gave her a hug.

She ushered me upstairs, but when I think back to it, that was probably the first and only time till now that I heard her cry.  It was just sniffles really, but I understand now why she cried.

“
A
lex?” Olesianna demanded, coming awake with a start.  “Alex!  What are you doing?”

Alex looked across the cab at her.  Both his hands were gripping the steering wheel tightly as they flew across the flat grassy hills at a high speed.

“We’re going to see what it is.”

“Alex, no!  Stop!  Alex!”

But Alex refused.  Instead, he began to accelerate.  Olesianna reared back in her seat, her feet pressed firmly against the floor and hands against the door and console.  The mountains loomed ahead.

“Aren’t they beautiful?”  Alex said, marveling at the gray, white and blue giants.

“Alex, stop.”  Olesianna wasn’t demanding it now, she was pleading.  She was terrified and at the mercy of his foot on the pedal.  At this sign of desperation, Alex slowed the hover car and came to a stop at the base of the sharp menacing ridges which had since swallowed the eastern sky. 

“Mom.”  Alex put his hand on Olesianna’s shoulder and she seemed to relax slightly.  “These are mountains.  Nothing more.  It isn’t the edge of the world and it isn’t the end of our trip.”

Olesianna’s mouth was dry and she tried to wet her tongue unsuccessfully.  “It’s too dangerous,” she started again but Alex was already shaking his head, no.

“I’ve read all about mountains.  As long as we follow the procedures in my survival book, we will be fine,” he said.

“Alex, no.”

“Yes.”

“No, Alex, we’re not going and that’s final.” Olesianna’s voice was trembling and her authority was spent.  Regardless, she refused to submit.

“Yes,” Alex said, undaunted.  “We are.”

“Why?  What’s on the other side of those mountains?”

Alex was still calm. “I don’t know, but that’s where we’re going.”

“No.”  Why didn’t he see how silly this was?  He was searching for something that didn’t exist.  “There’s nothing else out there, Alex.  There’s
nothing!
”

Alex’s frustration began to surface.  “I am going to head east.  East!”  With this, he held up a tiny piece of fabric and gestured with it.  “And when I can’t go any further,” despite the surge of tears and lump in his throat Alex forced his way through the rest, “then I’ll turn south or north and go until I can’t go any further…  Do you understand?”

“Alex, what are you expecting – ”

“I don’t care!  I’m going to head east.  And since those mountains are in my way, I’m going to find a way through them.”  Alex didn’t know what it was that made his mother agree, but he hoped that maybe she was learning to trust him.  They were, after all, all the other had.  With a deep breath and a nod, mostly to herself, Olesianna prepared for the journey into the mountains.

T
he mountains were like nothing Alex or Olesianna had ever dreamed off.  The magnificent splendor of the rocky behemoths was a daily reminder to them both that there was much to the world beyond Teleopolis.  For four days, Alex and Olesianna traversed the narrow valleys of the mountains, drinking from the cold streams and gathering food when they could.  During this time, Alex abandoned his notebook as a journal and instead filled it with illustrations of the new things that he saw.  The zoo, back in the third Providence of Teleopolis, now seemed childish to him as he came in contact with deer, fish, bears, foxes, hares, and even a few familiar – though much larger – snakes and insects.  Any time not spent navigating the mountain-scape, he spent reading and memorizing his survival manual and cataloguing all of the things that he saw.

He learned to make rope from grass and how to build simple pitfall-traps to catch food, though he never caught anything.  He learned how to make a fire,
skin a small animal – for the most part – and as one occasion necessitated, how to drive away from a bear that was trying to get into the supplies crate on the roof.

More than just becoming sufficient in the wilderness, Alex was beginning to see the natural world as it truly was.  Teleopolis had made some very specific and concrete claims
about the world, but now in it, Alex could muse that someone had made some terrible guesses.  At this, the whole structure of
the will
seemed inescapably fabricated. 

There was one thing, however, Alex had learned in Teleopolis which he would not contest.  In Teleopolis things were peaceful and calm; everything one needed was provided for with few exceptions, and strict organization kept this possible over hundreds of years.  Despite the freedoms Alex had in the wilderness, they were far more of a burden than a blessing.  He had the freedom to do whatever he wanted – nothing at all if he so chose – but he also had the responsibility of accepting the consequences of those actions or in-actions.  It made Alex appreciate what people could do when they cooperated.  There he was, making rope out of grass for hours, while with cooperation, it could be made in a factory.   As bad as things had been back where he came from, he would have traded all of his freedom for even t
he worst aspects of community.