“Everybody on the floor!”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Aging Division burst through the door armed with submachine guns. Lita Hornwell looked up from her sewing machine where she prepared clothes to barter in exchange for food.
“No.” She stood up as cloth fell to the floor from her lap. “No! It’s not time yet!” Lita rose from her position and made a dash for the stairs. The officers took notice and headed for the stairs with only one ahead of Lita. The other officers were rushing directly behind her.
“Jeffery run!” Lita grabbed the back of the soldier’s shirt to no avail. Lita’s husband came around the corner intending to help Lita. He took one look at the federal task force in control of enforcing the aging policy and cut back in the direction he had come. Lita was grabbed by one soldier and dragged back down the stairs while the remaining five went to seize her husband.
Lita listened to the screams of Jeffery and the sound of furniture crashing to the floor and against the wall. She struggled to break free of the soldier’s hold. A short spray of gunfire rang throughout the house and Lita began yelling with a mix of rage and fear. “Let me GO!” Lita bit into the soldier’s arm as hard as she could. When his hold loosened, she ran towards the steps just as they were leading Jeffery down the stairs, flanked all around him with two of the soldiers holding him on either side.
Lita watched helplessly as they proceeded to take her husband away for the simple crime of living too long. It wasn’t right. ‘Land of the free’ had slowly become the land where your greatest mistake was living forever in a world that no longer possessed the resources to support the many citizens populating the planet, those who would never die through natural means and those that were being born into the world. What was she going to say to their kids, that papa was considered old when not a single wrinkle existed on his body? The kids…how was she going to take care of Linda, Trevor, and Cassandra on her own?
“I need him. Please. Don’t take him away from us, please.”
“We’re just following orders, ma’am. This is the law now; no one having a life span of more than seventy is allowed to live. It’s a matter of survival.”
“How do I explain something so heartless to his children!”
“You tell them that their father saved their lives. This is the only way to slow the process. So, tell your children their father is a hero.”
“This is wrong.” Lita went to her husband who was silently crying with his head bowed and eyes closed. She gave him one soft kiss on his lips and savored his presence in her life for the last time. The soldiers began to pull him away and Lita held on tighter as tears flowed heavily from her eyes. Though they struggled to stay together, Jeffery was hauled out the door to be put to death with one small pink pill to put him into the kind of rest only the dead can achieve.
Before the final soldier walked out of the door, they issued Lita an official document. She yanked the letter from his hand before turning her back on him to read the document. She saw the title of the document and her heart pierced with a mother’s sorrow, ‘Birth Rights Revocation’; they were denying her the right to give birth again based on the official three offspring limitation, only void if one or more of her children were to pass away through an unnatural cause.
“Wait, Lynnette, check out this fabric, 100% natural cotton. You can feel the quality when your hands glide over the thick surface of the fabric.” Lita slid her hand under one pant leg and let the fabric slide down her hand. She encouraged Lynn to do the same. The two women had been friends since their final release from the federal Braden Research Institute when officials finally decided they had stopped growing at twenty-three, that was twenty-seven years ago.
“I’m sorry Lita, but I told you, I’ll only agree to a trade if Jeffery can sneak us at least two gallons of gas from his checkpoint.” Lynn brought one hand up to her large protruding belly. “These little guys will need that if George and I are going to make it to the hospital when my water breaks.”
Lynn’s dark skin held a deceptive glow that hid the constant panic that weighed down her spirit every day. Lynn was pregnant with triplets and she already had one daughter, Marissa; she was over the limit for how many children couples were allowed to have. The government was debating viciously on either forcing all women to live barren or beginning enforced abstinence to prevent situations like this. The moment the news became public; it became a danger to walk the streets as riots raged in 84% of the United States.
“Jeffery’s gone Lynn, he turned seventy years old three days ago…they took him this morning.” Lita closed her eyes and forced the tears to stay hidden for a while longer. Her children needed to eat and they were already out of the meager amount of groceries the government permitted a family of five. But Lynn had one crucial skill that made her one of the top people to barter with for food, she knew the secret to using produce scraps to regrow certain vegetables and fruit. Since paper and plastic had become scarce over two decades ago, it wasn’t an easy feat to grab a book or pick up a laptop to discover this skill for yourself. Lynn held on to her skill as the ultimate trade; find someone trustworthy to adopt one child, and she will teach that person everything she knows. It was a skill many people were desperate to master, but first, you needed the funds to purchase government nutrients that were easiest to regrow, like avocados and potatoes…hard to achieve with three children to care for in today’s economy.
Lynn’s hand rose to her lips with a shocked gasp and for a moment she couldn’t manage the words to speak. Her eyes misted and I wondered whether her grief was for the wife and children Jeffery left behind or the fact that she was out of her biggest leverage for getting to a safe place to give birth. “My family doesn’t need clothes as much we need water and fuel.” Lynn’s compassion and loyalty pushed through feelings that were always costly. “Okay; come in.”
Lita walked through the front door into a cozy, but a swelteringly hot room. They both sat on the thick cushions of Lynn’s blue sofa before she spoke again. “I can only offer you one solution. Since George can’t walk, I need you to do something for me. George says Jeffery had arranged to get fuel from his station at pump 732 tomorrow night. The transaction was going to be covered under the pretense of fueling the ship leaving for the Pacific Ocean base station that’s taking another 500 people to the new 20.2 million square feet submarine underwater structure. I need you to go and retrieve that fuel in Jeffery’s stead.”
“Are you fucking insane!! Those pumps are guarded by the U.S. Army! How the hell do expect me to pull off something like that?” Lita exclaimed. Rather than reply, Lynn placed one hand on her belly and pushed herself off the couch with the other. She walked towards a scarred mahogany chifferobe on the wall behind me and opened a drawer. She walked back to the sofa and handed me a large rolled document before reclaiming her original position on the sofa.
Lita ran her fingers through the long dark tresses of her hair before opening the document; it was a blueprint of the property and an outline of the plan. Jeffery could pull something like this off without being shot on the spot or trusting the wrong people. Jeffery was strong enough to open the pump if he was to make it that far, but she was just a seamstress and a mother. There was no way she could make it. “If I die, my kids will be completely without a parent.”
“Then I suggest you live,” Lynn replied without breaking.
“That easy, huh?” came Lita’s sarcastic retort.
“Sew yourself a ski mask, Lita; be creative,” Lynn replied. “I’m coming to you with this offer because you’re a brave and a quick thinker, not because I’m some callous monster. We’re both mothers who would do anything for their children.”
“You’re right, I’m a mother, a mother who can’t afford to leave her children with no one else to love them.” Lita grabbed her bag of clothes off the floor and stood from her position on the couch. She headed towards the door leading outdoors as she spoke to Lynn without turning back or breaking stride. “I’ll just have to find other buyers. There’s more than just you Lynnette.”
“Ten large sun-dried fish, two salted fish, one basket of apples, a sack of bean sprouts, and two heads of lettuce with instructions on how to regrow them with a few leaves and a cup of water.” Silence fell in the room following Lynn’s words. It was as if they had both stumbled inside a tomb.
Lita dropped the bag to the floor and slowly turned around. “How can you afford to give up that much food? How do even possess that much food when everything we eat is meted out to us by the government?”
“I can afford it because where I’m going, I can’t take it all with me anyway? How I came across it is a secret I can’t tell you, even though you are my best friend. I can only share that secret with my sister Casey,” Lynn said.
“Going?” Lita asked.
“No one is going to kill a child of mine, Lita. No one. I don’t care if the whole damn world starves. Only God has that right. So the government better damned well hope He intervenes.” It was an offer Lita’s children could not afford to miss out on. She walked out the door with a promise from Lynn to protect her children if she didn’t make it back by Sunday morning.
Lita’s heart was pounding so hard she could feel the thumps beating against her chest like a jackhammer. She was breathing heavily more from fear than exhaustion. She knelt at the gate at 2 in the morning and opened the blueprint again as a stalling tactic. She watched the paper shaking as evidence of just how afraid and out of her element she felt. She put it away and took one last breath to latch onto whatever courage Lynn had claimed she held.
She peered around the corner to make sure it was clear before running at full speed towards the loading dock. Lita crouched up against the stone surface of the ramp still warm from the humid night air. According to the plan, the north wall would be more secured. Lita slowly made her way up the stairs that scaled the north side of the building all the way to the roof, her destination. Her steps had to be soft so the metal steps did not clang as she walked. Several windows were lit with guards and the night crew working within. Minutes passed as Lita stopped at one window after another and waited for the opportunity to proceed.
Over an hour passed by the time Lita made it close to the roof. She passed the last window before pausing for the sound of voices overhead. She scrambled back to the dark window and climbed the ledge with her back pressed against the glass and her knees pulled to the side. Lita made sure she was flat against the wall enough to let the darkness of the night act as extra cover. The two men approached the railing overhead while carrying on a conversation. She recognized one of the voices as Reg, but if he was considered an ally, he wasn’t listed in the plan. Jeffery must not have had much trust in him.
Lita listened as the two men continued to talk. Her legs began to quiver from pain and weakness the longer she tried to wait them out. The man whose voice Lita didn’t recognize finally said he was about to walk the fifth floor, but Reg didn’t follow suit. Instead, Lita smelled the scent of a cigarette and she understood why Reg wasn’t on the list. Cigarettes were banned a long time ago. When resources became scarce and the trees weren’t growing fast enough to replenish the land, cigarettes were one of the first things to go based on it being a waste of limited supplies. Now, you could only get it either underground or as a luxury when you spied for the government.
Lita’s legs began to quiver until she knew she couldn’t hold her position any longer. She slowly crawled from the window to the metal stairs, not for stealth, but because she lacked the strength to do anything more than stopping herself from falling to her knees. She heard the unmistakable click of a gun above her head.
“Who’s there! Step up where I can see you!” Reg yelled down. Although my face was in shadows, I could clearly make out Reg because of the security lights on the roof. He craned his neck trying to get a better look. “Come up now, or I will shoot to kill!”
Lita stuck the blueprint in the middle of her back and held up both hands as a sign of surrender. It’s me Reg, Jeffery’s wife.” Or Jeffery’s widow at least. Lita let go of that thought and focused on taking one step after another as the feeling returned to her legs.
“Lita? You’re trespassing. Any civilians on the grounds after hours are in violation of the U.S. law; I’ll have to report you and take you into custody.” Reg reached for the two-way radio hanging on his belt.
“Wait!!” Lita shouted as she made the last few steps up to the roof and stood in front of Reg. “Wait, Reg. Jeffery’s dead…I just came for some supplies he left behind.” Reg halted, but kept his hand on the radio; he had every intention of reporting her.
“I’m sorry about Jeff, Lita, but–.” Lita impulsively decked Reg in his nose. He stared at her in surprise, but it was obvious he was in no pain.
“Reg….” There wasn’t a single excuse that came to mind. Lita watched as his eyes hardened and he pulled the radio from his belt. His finger pressed the button, so she pulled her leg back and kicked him in the groin as hard as she could. Reg’s face didn’t turn red, it went completely white as he stopped breathing and fell to his knees. Lita took that moment to yank the M4 Carbine from his hand. She looked at the gun with no clue on how to use it. she did the only thing she could think of; she ran to the side of the roof perpendicular to where they stood and tossed it over the rail to the concrete ground below.
Lita turned around to see Reg limping towards her with so much rage that the fear she’d been suppressing rose to the surface. A short scream left her throat before she could stop herself. She searched the roof for a weapon she knew how to use to knock Reg out. She belatedly realized she could have used the gun to knock him out, even if she didn’t know how to shoot. Lita’s eyes landed on two black 25-gallon gasoline caddies, useless if she died tonight. She backed up until she was against the rail. Reg leaped towards her and Lita ran to her left with another scream.
“Shit!!” Lita looked back at the sound of Reg yelling out one curse after another. He hung from the rail with his muscles bulging with the effort to pull himself up. He managed to lift himself up to his shoulders before he went for a better hold on the rail. He looked at Lita with hatred while beads of sweat rolled into his eyes. “Don’t you fucking move, Lita. Don’t you fucking move.”
Lita walked to Reg as he hung from the rail, her hands tucked to her chest. Silent tears rolled from her wide eyes. Reg could read the thoughts crossing her mind. “Don’t do it, Lita. My boy’s waiting on me to come home. He needs me.”
“I’m sorry, Reg.” Lita’s tears fell down to Reg’s face as she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed. She waited for his screams, but Reg didn’t make a sound as he fell five floors down to the ground. Lita covered her own mouth to smother the screams trying to break free from sickening thud she heard and the blood and flesh that exploded from his body from the impact.
Lita crouched down as if by not seeing, she could erase the knowledge that she had killed a man–a father who knew firsthand what it was like to be a widow. Reg’s wife, Cirai, was the only woman in the last decade to live past the age of seventy; Reg and their son, Teddy, were allowed to stay by her side as her eternal youth was made fruitless against the effects of cancer.
Lita pushed the memory away by forcing herself to think of her own children who hadn’t eaten in two days until Lynn had sold her a little bread and milk. And Cassandra was only a year old and she was losing weight instead of growing healthy. Lita’s breasts had slowly dried out the more she skipped meals so her children could eat.
Lita crawled away from the railing before standing; she didn’t want to risk seeing Reg’s dead body down below. She grabbed the handle of each caddy and pulled the heavy load to the stairs. It took Lita twice as long going down as it did going up. It was after six by the time she made it down to ground level. She had a ten-minute gap to make it to her van and get away. Lita threw caution to the wind and ran as fast as she could manage across both lots without checking to see if it was still clear. Only desperation kept her on her feet. She fell to the ground a few times from exhaustion, but thought of her children starving.
After using some of the gas to fuel the van, Lita rolled the caddies inside using a makeshift ramp. She didn’t breathe until she was two miles away from the oil refinery. She pulled to the side of the road and laid her head on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry, Reg. Oh god, I’m so sorry Reg.” This time, Lita was powerless to stop her tears from falling.
Lita made it back to the neighborhood, parked George and Lynne’s van in their garage next to their mandatory solar-powered hover car and went to her own home. She went back in her hover car to collect the pay so her kids could finally eat before curling up in bed to pass out.
Lita woke four hours later to the sound of the television playing. It took her a moment to process the fact that it only came on so the nation could hear the decrees of their U.S. officials. The signal was issued directly from the FCC still based in Washington, but with the added duty of sending out a signal only on the president’s strict orders; energy was also a luxury the government was trying to preserve by limiting its usage by the people.
The big debate on how to slow the birthing rate had finally come to a close after 4 years and three days of heated arguments and rioting crowds. The president walked to his podium fully enclosed in bulletproof glass. His voice rang out over the largest crowd ever seen in one area.
“We have fallen as a nation. It’s time we went back to the old ways when living forever only happened in fantasies. Unfortunately, the efforts to develop a drug capable of reversing the genetic effects of Idris have not been successful. We can no longer afford to wait. It’s time we worked together as a nation to not only slow the death of our planet, but begin to rebuild. The Apocalyptic Era we’ve been in for over a Century doesn’t have to end the way society has predicted; with the extinction of humanity and the animals. We all have to evolve and make sacrifices, and the Apocalyptic Era can finally begin the long process of coming to an end, finally.”
President Landon Rayburn opened a red portfolio sitting on the podium. “To this end, laws had to be enacted that would bring about this change. The ethics of cryogenics has been debated for a long time, but the strides the process has made to improve the success rate can no longer be ignored. The birthrate here in the United States has climbed to well over 9 million births per year. There was a time when those stats were under 4 million, before the invention of Idris. So that we may see those numbers once again, every family is now allowed two children. Effective immediately, all other children will be cryogenically frozen.
Every citizen of the United States, both men and women will have to go through the Haveri Capsule Sterilization process. You can, however, choose to freeze your reproductive cells until the year we reach a census of 300 million; at the present, we are at a record 1 billion plus citizens.” President Rayburn paused while that number soaked into the people’s minds…those that were listening. Most of the crowd were yelling in outrage at the comment of the sterilization capsule, a large round vivid red capsule the shape and size of a marble. Some were beyond rational thought. They were minutes, maybe seconds, away from starting a riot right before his very eyes.
He ignored all protests and forged ahead; this had to be said today before troops were sent out to enforce the new laws. In his opinion, this was a mistake. The one thing you could never threaten was another person’s child. The call carried down from the Supreme Courts seemed more like an excuse to issue a quick fix; incite the nation and eliminate them when they undoubtedly resorted to violence. But it was hard to find another option when the public was clueless just how close every country scattered across the planet was close to depletion. President Rayburn dropped the final blow to his people, a population he was supposed to be finding a way to save.
“The final law sanctioned by the Supreme Court is to lower the allowable life span from seventy years old to sixty years old. Individuals having lived over this age limit have three months to say their goodbyes. I understand this is hard for everyone to accept, but think forward to a time in the future when our planet is once again stabilized. We can band toge–.”
An expected spray of bullets bounced off the bulletproof glass enclosing the President. The security agents surrounding him inside tried to usher him down the exit in the ground, but President Rayburn merely watched as his people closed in on the glass shouting out their anger, indignation, and fear. They pound on the glass until blood smeared the surface. More bullets bounced off the glass and killed several rioters hitting the glass; that is when they began to turn on each other. As far back as the President could see, people were dying by the hands of their neighbor. It was a cruel form of success. At this rate, the population would drop drastically.
Lita sat frozen in her husband’s recliner as she heard the decree of the new laws and watched anarchy break out in Washington. In all honesty, she never thought the government would make that call. Lita herself was fifty years old; she had ten more years to live, but not here. She had to run before the city fell. No one was going to stand by and watch as the government went to war with its own citizens. The streets were going to overflow with the blood of both the political and the common.
Forty-five years ago, Lavic Lake, Amboy, and the Salton Buttes were the three volcanoes in California to cause the biggest explosion ever witnessed. The Salton Buttes and Lavic Lake erupted on the same day, Amboy followed suit a week later. Just when the world assumed the volcanoes had fallen silent, the lava domes of the Salton Buttes erupted once again and sealed the fate of southern California. The state had been transformed into a large array of islands and the volcanoes settled once again, but the people no longer trusted their silence. It was the only location in this overpopulated world where people feared to live. Lita may be able to take her children there and settle on one of the many clusters of land that had broken away from the West end of the United States. When everyone was desperate to stay away, it made for the perfect location to hide.
It was a mildly feasible idea since Lita herself lived near the Arizona border. The real problem was the likelihood of Lita covering so many miles of rioters, desperate people willing to do anything to hold on to their existence, and terrorists waiting to kill anyone remotely looking like a politician. She had food, but with a solar powered hover car, she could only travel in the daytime, nights would become a matter of life and death. The best she could hope for is to run into as little trouble as possible. Getting past the California border from La Paz is less than a four-hour drive. Could she make it so far without putting her children in an extremely risky position? But if she didn’t run, soldiers from the Aging Division for Homeland Security were going to take one of her babies so that she met the new two child limit–it was time to leave.
“Linda! Trevor!” Lita called up to the two oldest of her children. Trevor was the first to make it down. Ever since Jeffery had been taken, Trevor had been trying to fill his father’s shoes. Lita hated to see him working so hard at just eleven years old, but innocence wasn’t a luxury Trevor or Linda could afford. Only Cassie was ignorant of the world Linda had conceived her in a mere year and four days ago.
“Yeah ma?” Trevor asked.
“Wait a minute, baby. Linda will be down in a minute and I will speak to the both of you at the same time.” Linda came down the stairs just then carrying Cassie on her hip. She looked weighed down by the effort at just seven years old. Usually, while Lita struggled to come across their basic necessities, Linda took over Cassie’s care. “Okay. Both of you sit on the couch; we have to talk.” Once they were all seated on the sofa, Lita let them know they were no longer relatively safe here.
They lived in a Lavine Home. In the year 2218, Rebecca Lavine constructed cubed dwellings that were divided into four levels and each level was cut in half, side A and side B. Lita and Jeffery had ended up on Level 3-A. For all intents, each section was a fully equipped two-story home, merely stacked on one another like the apartments from the 21st Century. Lita had learned in history class that the Bűvös kocka structures were once called apartments before they evolved into 404 square feet single room living quarters holding as many as 100 “homes”.
The Lavines weren’t much, but they were heaven compared to ending up in a Bűvös kocka where you could barely breathe, let alone walk. In the past, whenever violence erupted where they lived, the first and second levels were the main ones to take the brunt of the damage, a fact that worked in Lita’s favor. It also helped that La Paz was so close to the Fallen SunCity area.
“The thing is, there have been some changes in the way the world works. The law now will mean one of you will have to go with the government and only two will stay.” Lita explained. The truth was harsh, but she didn’t want her children to hold any illusions as to the kind of life they could expect.
“I don’t want to leave!” Linda jumped from her seat with Cassie still on her hip. Trevor remained quiet. He glanced towards Linda before turning his gaze to Lita. The only indication he was troubled was the sheen of his eyes.
“No one is leaving, honey; we’re going to a place where we’ll be safe. We’ll have to leave immediately, taking as little as possible with us. We’ll have to fight to survive and protect each other. The streets will be filled with people who are angry and mean because they hate the way things have changed. We have to leave now, but leaving won’t be easy.” Lita fell silent to give them time to process what she had said before continuing.
“Linda, go and collect clothes for everyone: me. Leave Cassie with me. Trevor, go and get the food from the cupboard. It’s important that you get all of the dried and salted fish from Lynn, all of the water, and as many of the fruit and vegetables you can get. Alright guys, let’s get moving.” Linda handed Cassie over before heading back up the stairs. Trevor got up and walked to the cupboard. Lita watched them go for a second before walking to the closet and pulling out a beat up briefcase. She took one breath to resolve herself to what she knew she needed to do before heading to the kitchen.
Lita sat Cassie in the middle of the room and opened the empty briefcase up on the counter. She placed knives inside, a rusty hammer, a meat tenderizer, and two partially full cans of ammonia based cleaning fluids. Lita checked on Cassie, pasting on a smile. She took a second to tickle and play with her before handing her a red ribbon and a yellow one to hold her attention. Lita then went to the adjacent storage room to collect rusty bent nails, four empty bottles from the recycle bin, scraps of paper towel, and tacks. Lita went back to the kitchen and glanced at Cassie before then grabbing vinegar and baking soda. She used her supplies to make four HCBs to go inside the suitcase. Lita, Cassie, Trevor, and Linda began their journey.
Tuesday, February 12, 2323
“Cassandra ‘Cassie’ Hornwell, take my red blouse and scarf off that scarecrow,” Lita said in a stern voice.
“But momma, she’s so cute.” Cassie pouted.
“Honey, scarecrows are typically male so their fiercer looking. I don’t know if you can scare many birds with a scarecrow who looks like a model on strike.” Lita pulled another head of lettuce from her cabbage garden and put it in the basket holding four potatoes. She rose from the fresh soil and brush the dust from her knees. When Lita looked to Cassie again it was to see deep soulful eyes filled with crocodile tears. Her bottom lip was quivering, which was obviously phony. Lita put her fists on either of her hips and added as many frowns as she could muster between her eyebrows, two can play that game. Cassie and Lita went into a stare-off with one wiping away an invisible tear and the other quickly losing ground from the effort not to laugh.
Trevor gave a rare fond smile as he watched from in front of the large rustic cabin at his mother teasing his baby sis. From the looks of it, the large garden was two seconds away from being protected by a supermodel scarecrow. He felt a shot of guilt pierce his heart and he stopped smiling. He looked down to the salmon he was smoking for dinner over the open fire. He sprinkled a little salt over it and placed some sliced mushrooms with the fish for flavor. It wasn’t much, but it was all they had managed to scavenge on the tiny island as far as seasoning went. He heard Cassie and his mom laugh, but he refused to look up. His father would be so ashamed to call him his son if he were still alive. As it was, he didn’t deserve to be happy; he had failed to protect Linda.
Not for the first time, he wished there was more than just the three of them on this island. He needed someone to talk to. The last time he forced his mother to talk about what happened, she had gone comatose for over a year. One second they were arguing, and the next she had sat still while staring off into a place him or Cassie no longer existed. When she’d finally come out of it, he had learned to let the memories fester in his heart and force himself to keep living, keep helping and working to care for his mom and Cassie. He figured if he worked hard enough he could make up for the night Linda died after they’d been captured and held prisoner. The memories soaked into his mind for the second time in one day. He wanted to push them away, but someone had to remember Linda was once a part of their lives, before they had been run off the road and dragged unconscious to the basement of an old shack.
Trevor was the first to open his eyes after the crash. His arm hurt. He looked down to see his right arm covered in burns from the sparks that showered them after the collision. He was slouched against the wall on a floor of broken boards and matted dirt. He looked across the basement to see his mother huddled on the ground unconscious while a wailing Cassie struggled to break free of the tight protective grip Lita had on her even in slumber.
Trevor turned his head, but Linda wasn’t in the basement. He ignored the wave of dizziness and tried to scrub some of the dried blood from his eyes while pushing himself off the ground. He staggered towards his mother lying unconscious on the ground and gently shook her shoulder.
“Momma. Wake up.” Lita let out a soft groan but didn’t immediately come to. She didn’t open her eyes until Trevor went to lift baby Cassie from her arms to soothe the cries still coming from her hoarse voice. Only then did Lita tighten her hold and immediately sit up from her position. She relaxed when she looked at Trevor. Lita lightly touched his cheek with one hand and then searched around for Linda.
“Trevor, where’s Linda?” Lita had asked.
Trevor shook his head. “She was gone when I woke up.”
Lita searched the basement again before handing Cassie over to Trevor. The memories of that day never seem to fade. He could even recount the number of times his mother hammered on the door that trapped them inside a small dim room. The thick dust in the air had covered them all. Twenty-seven times, that is how many times my mother yelled and pounded on the locked door. She marched up the rickety steps and began pounding and yelling at the top of her lungs. That memory is like a jack hammer ripping through my mind.
“Where’s my baby! Open this door right now!” Lita’s words reverberated through the walls for an entire night. Her bloody fists were relentless. An exasperated man with a bushy red beard yanked the door open and pushed Lita hard enough to send her tumbling down the stairs. He slammed the door shut again with an audible click when it locked. She lay there unmoving for the longest time at the base of the stairs. My legs had second-degree burns and shook with weakness, so I could do nothing but hold Cassie. I simply waited.
A very long time seemed to pass. Cassie continued to wail right up until the moment she passed out from exhaustion. It felt like hours before Lita shakily stood from the ground and used the rail on both sides of the steps as leverage to pull and limp her way back up to the locked door. One swollen and bloody fist clung desperately to the rail. The other resumed it’s violent pounding on the uncompromising wood. “Where’s my daughter?!” It came out in hoarse and ragged growl. Never in my life had I heard such an animalistic sound. I don’t know why, but I could no longer hold back the tears after hearing her desperate and furious growl. I pressed my lips together to muffle the sobs racking my body.
Lita never stopped. The morning light that peeked through the hole in the roof faded to dusk and Lita fell to her knees. “Answer me damn it! Where is my daughter!” Lita kept hammering at the door, never once acknowledging the pain. She punctuated her every sentence with the slam of her fist. “I know you hear me!” Boom! “Open this goddamn door!” Boom! “I’ll fucking kill you if you hurt her!” Boom! “You hear me you son-of-a-bitch! I will fucking kill you! Give. Me. My. Daughter!”
Trevor wanted to stop his mom. Lita’s once small hands had swollen to twice its size. A layer of skin from her knuckles was plastered on the door. But, if he called out, who would save Linda? The door was yanked open once again and the burly man with the red beard and bald tattooed head lifted Lita one armed over his shoulder and marched down the stairs with her. Lita slapped at his back the entire time, leaving bloody hand prints on the man’s filthy shirt. He threw Lita down next to me. Her whole body trembled, but she still glared fearlessly up at him from the floor.
“Her leg was crushed in the crash. The windshield sliced her up pretty good.” He said.
“Where is she?” came her fierce raspy command.
“You’ll see her in the morning. Sleep.” He went back up the stairs and locked them in.
All that night, Lita paced the floor on a limp as she listened to the loud racket of what sounded like a large celebration upstairs. She looked against the wall at Cassie sleeping and Trevor staring off to his right. Lita paced again until the pain became unbearable. The house eventually went silent, It’s uncertain how long we waited for morning. It felt like time stood still. But it also felt like forever. Sun peeked into our prison once more, signaling the night had passed. The same guy finally opened the door and brought down two plates of food. He sat the first dish in front of Lita before sitting the other in front of Trevor.
Lita looked down at the large roasted meat and a huge pile of runny mashed potatoes. She backhanded the plate hard enough to send it rolling across the basement floor.
“I don’t want your damn food! Where’s my daughter?”
“You just slung her across the room.”
“What?” Lita looked at his lumbering figure going upstairs as if he was simple-minded. She slowly looked at the overturned plate of food. The chunk of roasted meat about the size of Trevor’s palm lay on the floor. Confusion was etched into the lines of her face, but the tears streaming down her face was proof that her heart understood. “No”. Her long piercing wail drowned out Trevor’s cries.
Lita laid on the floor for days staring at the chunk of meat with a puddle of tears wetting one side of her face. Trevor saved the mashed potatoes from both plates for Cassie to eat from along with the glasses of water. The meat was abandoned. He couldn’t even look at it. Flies swooped down to gnaw at the flesh. The third day, maggots could be seen. The same man came down on the fourth day with two fresh plates. He looked at the three of us like disobedient cattle when he saw the rancid pieces of meat.
“You should get your son to eat even if you refuse to.” Lita gave no indication she had heard him. If Trevor had not crawled to her two days ago with his ear pressed to her heartbeat, he would have thought his mom had died too. The man sighed and sat the two plates on the floor. “The girl was young, not a lot of meat on her bones. ” He turned away and finished his conversation over his soldier. “Enjoy your son while you can.”
Those last words hung in the air like a battlefield after the war is done, but this war was far from over. Lita blinked. Her withered arms shook with the effort of pushing herself up to a sitting position. The man holding them captive had already retreated from the room. Lita looked at the fresh plate of food. The meat held her gaze. She reached for it, cradling it within the palms of her hands.
Jeffery, her husband, cradled Linda the same way on the day she made her way into this dying planet. Teaching Jeffery how to hold her was her first time having that sense of family, a place to belong. Linda was her first born. Lita bowed her head, but there were no more tears to cry. She still had two children to fight for. “I’m sorry.” With that, she placed the chunk of meat to her lips.
“Mom!” Trevor meant it as a question, a way of asking ‘What are you doing:?’. But it came out as a rebuke. Lita said nothing. She chewed three times and swallowed. Then she repeated the short process of eating. All of her attention went on not throwing it back up. She didn’t speak until dry heaves ceased to rack her body. “Eat, Trevor.”
“No! That’s-
“Don’t say it!”
“It’s Linda!” Trevor raged. “I’m not stupid! How could you just…just…!” There were so much more he wanted to say. How she failed to protect his dad. She failed to protect Linda. The worst mom! The worst! Those words however, remained in his head. Because the one he blamed the most was himself.
“Eat.” Lita begged wearily. Even at forty-six, she always carried a sort of youthful grace. But Trevor suddenly noticed how drawn her face had become. The white of her hair seemed to spread in these few days. For the first time ever, she looked old, older than she should. Lita reached up to caress Trevor’s hair. “We must fight, you and I. I need to strength to fight. Trevor, you need the strength to run.” The stricken look in his eyes began to give way to understanding. Lita pushed one last time. “We’ll protect Cassie together.”
Trevor opened his mouth to argue. But, innocence wasn’t a luxury he could have. Not when Cassie had barely moved all day. She was starving and weak. With his dad gone, and now Linda, he was the man of the house. It was up to him to protect his mom and baby sister. He looked at the meat that had been dehydrated this time. He could not be as resolute in his will to survive like his mother, but he began to eat.
Trevor cried the entire time. Never once did he look away from Cassie. Her warmth gave him enough courage to clean his plate, except he couldn’t look at Lita anymore. It’s not that he didn’t understand that his mom couldn’t fight a man that big and protect he and Cassie, she needed him. But, Trevor could not stop the part of him that hated Lita for needing him.
When he was done, Lita picked up Cassie and fed her the mashed potatoes left on her plate. This went on for a two more days. Their rations quickly shrunk and Lita knew that it was time to make her move. It would be a lie to say she wasn’t scared. One mistake will cost her another child. There was an incessant humming noise in her head. Often times her mind would go blank. These are the things that made her afraid, afraid she would break before saving Trevor and Cassie. Worst of all, she could hear Linda’s light melodic voice inches from her ear.
It took all of her will power not to answer that voice. She slipped once. Linda called out ‘mom’ in such a bright and happy voice. Lita turned her head slightly and there she was. Light flooded into the room and surrounded Linda’s entire body. The stiff muscles of Lita’s face creased stiffly with the first smile in days. “Linda.” With that whisper, a weight left Lita’s shoulders. She reached up to touch Linda’s pink cheeks, but her hand swept through empty space.
“Mom?” Trevor had shrunk into the far corner with Cassie’s head tucked under his chin. All of his lingering bravado had faded into fear. “What are you doing?”
“I…” Lita turned to look for Linda. “I…have a plan.” The humming in her head returned at a high pitch. She forced a smile and turned to Trevor. “I’ve thought of a way for us to leave this place. We’ll wait for nightfall.” She braced both hands on her knees. Her legs almost buckled under the effort to stand. Her footsteps faltered as she went to opposite side of the room and picked up a mangled, rusty wire and and a crate.
“This house is old.” She slammed his fist against the base of the stairs. “The would has dry rotted. There are deck screws on the stairs. If I work quickly, I can remove enough screws to topple these stairs the moment that animal comes down.” Lita’s smile was a mere stretching of her lips. It did more to unnerve Trevor than comfort him. She turned to the stairs and walked underneath.
Although the stairs were rickety, it was still no easy feat to remove its screws with a bent and flattened wire. It took the whole night and early morning to finish. She left enough screws in place to make the stairs appear as if it still stood strong and reliable. She was still finishing up when the lock on the door clicked. Lita held up her hand to stop Trevor when he moved to stand up. That animal, the man who’d killed her baby, opened the door with a large iron mallet in one hand. He began to walk down the steps with his gaze fixed on Trevor. On the fourth step he froze. “Where is your mother?”
“I’m right here!” Lita leaped from the old crate and latched onto one of the steps. Her added weight sent the entire structure rocking precariously. The red bearded man standing at 6″1′ with almost 300lbs of muscles and fat pivoted back to the door. The stairs started to swing wildly. Another screw hit the floor. Lita let go of her hold and ran to Trevor and Lita. The entire structure collapsed before the man holding them captive could reach the door, leaving him bloody and unconscious on the floor–but not dead.
Lita stumbled up the pile of debris with a bracing hand on Trevor’s shoulder to steady him. When she reached their captor’s prone body she paused. He was bleeding from the back of his head. Though his eyes was open his pupils were unresponsive and seemed dull, lifeless. The only proof he was alive was the weak moaning. Lita slowly crouched low and slipped the mallet from his hands. “You sonofabitch. Wait for me.”
She nudged Trevor’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.” They made their way to the top of the pile of wood. Lita jumped to grab the landing to the first floor and pulled herself up. She took a moment to listen for the other occupants of the house. After a long silence, she lay flat on her belly and set the mallet aside. “Pass me Cassie.”. Once the youngest was out of the basement she gripped the door jam with one hand and reached down to pull Trevor up with the other hand. The first part of her plan was a success. But Lita knew they were far from safe.
She picked Cassie up and passed her to Trevor before picking up the mallet. They stood in a dim and empty hallway. To their left was more halls. The right was an open door leading to a bedroom. Lita shoved her two children into the bedroom and knelt down on one knee. “I’ll be right back.” Cassie whined and leaned toward her to be picked up. Her round cheeks were wet with tears. Lita kissed her outstretched hand but did not pick her up.
“Where are you going?” Trevor whispered. “We have to run.” His mother looked over towards the basement and her mind began to drift. Trevor shook her shoulder with one hand, barely balancing Cassie. “Mom, we have to go!”
“The jingling….”
“Huh?”
Lita lowered her head to the palm of her hand and squeezed her eyes shut. “The jingling…there was jingling.”
His mom was acting weird again. Trevor sat Cassie on the floor at his feet and grabbed Lita’s hand. “Mom, we have to run. You said we would fight and run.”
Lita took a shaky breath and put a hand on Trevor’s cheek. “I’m…I’m okay.” She took another breath. “There was jingling in his pocket. Every day. There was jingling. Maybe it was the key to the basement, but it could also be a car.” She picked Cassie off the floor and put her back in Trevor’s arms. “Wait here. We need a vehicle.”
She shut the door despite the lingering anxiety on both of the faces. The basement door was fully open. In the doorway, chubby fingers had a tenuous grip on the landing. Lita held the mallet up like a shield in front of her. No one could ever accuse Lita of being a fighter. Before that day on the rooftop with Reg, she had never so much as scratched someone. That was no longer an option. The peaceful years of long ago could only be seen in history books. It was up to her to protect the future of her children, to protect their life.
Lita lowered to both knees still holding the mallet like it was her shield. They were eye-to-eye. The man who ran them off the road. A survivor of these final years on a dying planet. So he could survive, he treated her family like a resource. Lita’s fingers wrapped around his wrist. The burly man switched his gaze to the mallet in her hand. She no longer held it as a shield.
“Don’t,” he begged. “I’m sorry.” There were tears shimmering in his eyes. He used to be a father too. The pictures on the wall told his life story. The joy they reflected was a stark contrast to reality.
“She’s not here to hear it. My daughter deserved better, from you, and from me.” Lita brought the mallet down.
The first hit seemed to change Lita. It felt like she was destroying who she was. The third hit seemed to come from a distance. She could see the motion of her hand. Red filled her vision and blurred everything. Suddenly they were both falling. She was pulled forward by the grip he had on her. They were suspended there in the air for a fraction of a second.
Her mind was on autopilot. She was like a computer running a set of code one line at a time until the very end. And when the last line had concluded, two figures lay on a large pile of rubble. Both were bloody and staring off into the distance. Only one of their bodies gave a small jerk of their knee.
“Please” Every inch of Lita’s body hurt. She felt like she was spinning. “Please, God…help me.” The grip on the mallet loosened and it fell from her hand. Every bone and muscle and her body rebelled when she went set. Her teeth sunk into the soft flesh of her bottom lip as she muffled her scream of pain. Lita crawled along broken wood until she reached the body lying near her. The jingling in his pocket rang out like a whisper of hope.
She pulled the keys out and held them up to the light pouring in from the hallway. Memories flooded her mind. The deep rumble of her husband’s voice was like a balm. She savored visions of his smile as he bent over the hood of a car talking of motors, oil, and other things she never truly cared about. Cars represented change to Jeffery. Back then she wanted them to settled down in one place and build a life for the children. Even though she didn’t care, it’s good that she listened. Just be looking at the keys she could tell what model of vehicle they belonged to.
She pocketed one key from the chain and let the others slip from her fingers. Climbing to the first floor a second time was nearly impossible. The blood on her made slip and fall repeatedly. Her arms were so weak they shook like a leaf on a windy day. By the time she managed it all she could do was lay there on floor panting for air. The thought of her kids help push her to her knees. Fear of the looting, explosions, and street fights helped her to her feet. Lita clung to that desire to protect the two children she had left and let it fuel her survival instinct.
“Trevor,” she called, and he immediately opened the door as if he had not budged from that one spot.
“Mom” He saw the blood that barely left a clean spot on her clothes and he hesitated.
“Let’s go,” Lita urged. She didn’t wait to make sure he followed. There was no telling how long she could stay on her feet. The soft footsteps that sounded from behind her came as a relief.
“Where are we going?”
A good question. Through an unfortunate tragedy, they now met the population quota. The could return home. Yet, what about the next time and the next. The government was trying to extend the resources remaining on this planet by actively promoting civil war. Their home is likely caught in that war zone. There is no going back. “I’ll take you somewhere special. Someplace for the three of us.”
That day was over six years ago, but Trevor still remembered it as if the memory danced in the flames under the smoking salmon. Back then, when he opened the bedroom door and saw a bloody monster, he had thought they would never make it out of that house alive. Trevor lifted his chin and closed his eyes. The trees rustled in the breeze. Delicious aromas from the crackling of the fire, the sizzle of the fish. and the smell of the distant ocean, they were free.
But freedom didn’t come easy after climbing from that basement. He was old enough now to realize that nothing in this life came ‘easy’. The drive to the Nevada border six years ago had taken them to the North Pacific Ocean holding pieces of Southern California. They found a fishing boat bobbing in the water with the owner hanging over the side already dead. There was a lot of that. Trevor had yet to reach sixteen, but death no longer came as a shock. Him, his mom, and Cassie sailed away on a dead man’s boat with his supplies and left his corpse bobbing in the ocean.
After sailing for four months, Lita woke up one day with no memory of what happened after Trevor, Cassie, and her left the Lavine back then. In fact, she forgot the years prior to Trevor and Cassie’s birth. Lita’s first born had been avenged, but ultimately forgotten in the broken remnants of Lita’s mind. Trevor remembered. He held the memories to his heart more religiously than the words of a bible.
But, memories fade.
Trevor lived long enough to become a full grown man. Then he, momma, and Cassie all left. They left Earth for life on Mars. I never thought that would become a reality, but it worked. The government pulled it off. It’s just me on the island now. It’s lonely remembering alone, so I write this letter. I’ll bury it in the sand underneath the magnolia tree. Or maybe it’s a confession. If someone should find this letter someday, I’ll let you decide.
Love, Linda
Born May 17, 2317 – Eternity
