Untitled Agenda 21 Sequel (9781476746852) (7 page)

Nigel and Adam took their positions at the edge of the area, back to back, one looking upstream, the other downstream. The dark moving water was louder than the sounds of their breathing.

Winston and Guy sat propped against tree trunks, arms across their chests, hands under their arms for warmth. The night air was cool and smelled of musty wet leaves.

Julia stretched out on the ground.

“Get up,” Steven commanded. “Sit like they do, against a tree.” He pointed to Winston and Guy. “Their backs are protected. They're less exposed, less of a target. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Got it, what?”

“Got it,
sir
.”

She pulled her backpack close and leaned against a broad tree trunk. Steven leaned against the same tree, on the other side. He could smell her hair, the clean smell of sanitizing solution. It was a sweet, lemony, yellow smell. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and waited for sleep. It took a long time. The lemon smell kept him awake. It was a distraction. Steven hated distractions.

He reviewed the assignment he had been given.
Unbelievable
, he thought. A total of six people. Two men, two women, a boy and a baby. And nobody knew if they escaped all together or in separate groups. They might even have a gun. Fools. The Authorities must be angry, losing control of those children, those workers. The Authorities were the ones who should be punished, for allowing this to happen. He closed his eyes, trying to decide who was more likely to have a gun. Odds were in favor of it being one of the men. But still, he'd have to be cautious approaching anyone they encountered.

Julia's breathing had become slow and regular. It had a gentleness that made his face feel warm, his mouth dry. He tried to picture
what she looked like, softly asleep and vulnerable. The rustle of leaves nearby startled him. An animal, pale white in the moonlight, passed by his outstretched legs, dragging its long scaly tail behind it. When he bent his knees and pulled his feet close to his body, the animal rolled over, motionless. Damn possum, one of the ugliest animals on earth. He'd sit motionless and listen to Julia breathe. Focus, he told himself.
Focus
.

Should he tell his team about the missing gun? No, why should he? The Authorities hadn't told him; only the lowly guard at Re-Cy had. Information was power, and withholding it was the same as withholding power. If they could do it, so could he.

Finally, the possum slunk away, dragging its prehensile tail through the leaves.

He heard Winston and Nigel waking Adam and Guy. He watched as their dark shadows walked past him, then back, settling against trees nearby. He wished they weren't so close. He wanted to be alone with Julia.

Finally, he dozed off into a light sleep. Light enough that he was still aware of the sounds around him, muffled noises that floated into his mind, his dreams. Winston coughing. Damn! That cough could be heard at a distance. He opened his eyes, giving up on the idea of sleeping for the moment. He heard Julia shifting her position, the sound of her legs moving on the ground.

The night dragged on and on, cloudy, with the stars blurred and indistinct. The moon slowly slid across the sky, slipped behind branches of the trees, then reappeared in open spaces.

Adam touched his shoulder. He must've slept more than he thought as it was already time to switch guards. Steven stood, his feet numb from sitting so long. Julia was awake quickly, pulling on her beret, picking up her backpack.

“Stay on guard,” he said to Adam. Turning to Julia, he commanded, “We're going to relieve ourselves. In the woods. Come with me.”

She hesitated, then followed him. She stood with her back to him until he was finished.

“Now you,” he said.

“Turn your back,” she said.

“Turn your back, what?”

“Turn your back, sir.”

“That's better,” he said as he slowly turned. “Remember that in the future.”

*  *  *

They took their positions, back-to-back, one looking upstream, the other looking downstream. A bat swirled over their heads, then flew in circles over the stream. Another bat appeared, followed by another. Soon there was a black cloud of them, screeching, and hunting for food.

Steven shifted his weight and felt Julia's slim back against his, warm and firm. She leaned forward, moving away from him. But again, he shifted his weight against her back. “We're a team. We need to lean on each other for support.”

“Yes, sir.”

A few minutes passed. Steven slid his hand back, laying it on her leg. She didn't move. He began to rub his hand up and down her leg. Moving slowly, she reached into her backpack, groping past the items, until she found what she needed. Pulling the item out of her pack, she aimed it above and away from them and squeezed the nozzle several times, shooting large volumes of the mixture in the air.

The ammonia.

The smell was acrid. The bats flew away.

She pointed the bottle at Steven.

“You wouldn't dare,” Steven said.

“Yes, I would.
Sir
.”

He took his hand off of her leg.

He would be patient, for now. But not forever.

I
thought as I walked. How many days and nights of this could we endure? Three nights of walking so far, but it felt like ten times that. We were so hungry. David said we could go ten days with absolutely no food, but that didn't mean much to my growling belly. I ate the bugs we caught: grasshoppers, beetles, and caterpillars, because I had no other choice. David told me the names of the bugs and I quickly learned where to find them. They lived under rocks, in deep grass, and on leaves. I became a hunter and a woman determined to feed her children. The insects crunched when I bit down and exploded into wet masses in my mouth. I forced myself to swallow even though nausea always passed over me in relentless waves.

Micah didn't complain, but he also didn't smile anymore. David's arm was more swollen and red than before; he cradled it in his other arm, so I carried Elsa and Micah carried our supplies. Our progress was slow. Our thin-soled shoes were padded every day with fresh moss and cattails, but they barely protected our swollen feet.

We occasionally found other small things to eat besides bugs. Some berries, if we were lucky, and a few hard apples that made our mouths
pucker. We even ate the bitter leaves of cattails. I chewed whatever we found into a pulpy mass and fed it to Elsa with my fingertips. It was hard to find food in the dark, but at least we had the stream. It was larger now, wider and deeper. David said it would soon be a river. Whatever it was, we always had plenty of water, and I was thankful for that.

Today may be better
. That's what David and I whispered to each other. That's what we said to Micah. He nodded, but still he didn't smile. We didn't smile, either. We just walked in the dark, placing one foot in front of the other, every sharp stone on the soles of our feet a painful reminder of what we were doing.

The harsh clanging of the bell for half hour till dawn rang out. My heart jumped. Confused, I looked around, but it was too dark to see more than a few feet in front of me. David looked frightened. Micah's face was twisted, ready to cry. We all stopped, frozen like statues mid-stride. Where had that bell sound come from? We had been walking away from the Compound for four nights. Had we become disoriented and walked in a circle? My mind swirled as panic overtook me.

David crouched down, and slowly moved forward toward a cluster of low shrubs. It wasn't a very secure place to hide, but it was all that was nearby. Micah imitated him, and crouching, he made himself small. I did the same, holding Elsa low, like an anchor. Behind the shrubs, we huddled close to each other, but we were still exposed. I smelled our odor, unwashed and sour.

The sun rose slowly as we waited, a golden globe that both warmed and exposed us. It was round and yellow as an egg yolk. We heard distant voices, male voices, giving what sounded like commands. David stretched his head above the shrubs, scanned the area, then fixed his gaze across the stream. He slid back down, his face near my ear.

“The farm commune,” he whispered. “There, on the other side of the stream.”

I raised myself up a little and allowed myself to breathe for the first
time in what seemed like an eternity. There was a large flat area, and an expanse of brown earth with rows of plants. I saw a long straight line of tents with people coming out of them, stretching, bending, like they were performing some kind of morning ritual, their movements in unison. Men with guns on their shoulders watched the routine, then one of them blew a whistle. The people moved forward, their backs to us, and took their places at the ends of each row. The guards along the edge of the field moved forward alongside them.

The workers picked up baskets and began bending and picking things off the crops. They put what they picked into the baskets, dragging them as they moved forward. They worked slowly, no one any faster than any other except for one man, who was bigger than the rest. There was something vaguely familiar about him, though I couldn't see his face. Often he pulled ahead, but the pickers on either side of him made hand motions to slow him down, to make him pick at their rate.

David whispered, “The farm commune isn't that far from the Compound. Even though we've been walking for three nights, our path has been along the stream and it meanders. And we can't cover much distance in the dark. I don't think we're all that far from where we started.”

My heart sank. All that painful walking! My bones shouted out to me as though angry at what I'd put them through.

David leaned close to my ear and whispered. “They're picking the food used to make the nourishment cubes.”

Food! My mouth watered.

David pulled some clumps of grass and did his best to shake the dirt off them. He handed it to Micah and Micah chewed it eagerly, bits of green sticking to his teeth. David gave some to me; I chewed and swallowed, then chewed some more until it was pulpy and put it on the end of my finger. Elsa, still asleep, sucked my finger. Green drool ran down her chin.

David whispered again. “Quick, while their backs are to us—” He motioned with his head toward some bigger, thicker shrubs a short
distance away. We scurried toward them quickly, like I've seen animals scurry through the woods.

We sat there, behind the shrubs, watching the farmworkers. At the far side of the field was a bus-box, filled one basket at a time by workers who'd reached the end of their row. Six men in the orange uniforms of the Transport Team stood in their harnesses, standing straight and stiff, just as Father had when he was on the Transport Team back in our Compound.

When the bus-box was full, they strained forward, their harness straps tight against their chests and shoulders, and moved the bus-box forward with a little puff of dust. I guessed they were taking the produce to the Nourishment Center, where it would be dehydrated and condensed into nourishment cubes. I remembered the brown taste of those cubes, gritty against my tongue. I hated them at the time but what I wouldn't give for one now. Another bus-box pulled up, waiting to be filled.

“The train. Do you see it?” David asked me.

I squinted and saw a row of old rusty train sections, connected, but motionless and useless. Faded letters on the sides of the cars read
P & LE RR
. Beneath the train were parallel tracks that had become overrun with small trees that had sprouted up in front of and behind the train. It was trapped by neglect.

“I see it.”

“They used to transport the food, people, and lots of other things by train a long while ago. Then they switched to bus-boxes because trains need energy and that energy has to be drilled or dug out of the Earth. The Earth had to be protected,” David whispered to Micah.

Clearly, the train and its tracks had been mismanaged by the Authorities and their policies. It was as useless as the bus-box with the broken wheel in our Compound that had never been fixed.

The bell rang and the workers stopped picking, stood, and repeated the ritual of bending, stretching, and moving their arms in circles, until the whistle blew again. On that signal, they bent and began picking.
When they reached the end of their rows, they marched single file to new rows and resumed picking, heading back in our direction. We kept our heads down and stayed below the top of the shrubs.

Confined to a small area, we found no bugs to eat that morning. By noon, we'd consumed most of the grass around us, but we were still hungry and too close to being detected to sleep. David stroked Micah's thin back. How much weight had the child lost? David's face was gaunt, his cheeks sunken, and my hip bones felt sharp. Even though I had eaten little, I was almost always nauseous.

Yet, on the other side of the stream on that flat piece of land, food was growing. Food that would be dried, condensed, and molded into nourishment cubes.
Control the food, control the people
. I heard Mother's voice in my head.

David rummaged through our little bag of treasures that Mother had saved and pulled out
The Little Prince
. Micah leaned against him and pointed to the picture of a boy on the cover of the book. “How old is he?” Micah asked.

“Six years old,” David answered.

“I'm eight years old. I'm older than him.”

“Yes, you're quite a big boy,” David said. He opened the book.

“What's that ugly thing?” Micah said, pointing to a picture on the first page.

“A boa constrictor,” David said, his voice patient.

“What's a boa constrictor?”

“It's a big snake.”

“Are there any here?” Micah looked around at the packed earth.

“No boa constrictors here. They live in the rain forests.”

“What's a rain forest?”