Shalia's Diary (5 page)

Do you know what she said?  Do you know what my deranged mother said?

“It’s too hot in here.  I wanted to stand in the breeze.”

Fuck me.  Here I am, doing my best to keep her hidden and safe, and she goes parading around in her drawers, inviting everyone to have a look.  Adding insult to injury, I’m also busy doing my impression of Frosty the Snowman, feeling like a huge block of ice, and she’s hot.  She’s sweating.  Matter of fact, so am I.  I’m sweating and cold all at once.  I guess I am getting sick, though I’m going to have to fight through it.  We cannot afford for me to be down with a cold or flu or whatever I’m getting. 

Now I’m crying.  And shivering.  And coughing.  And choking on an ocean of phlegm.  I swear, sometimes I wish we’d been in D.C. when the bombs went off.  Being dead has got to be better than living through this constant hell of pain and fear.

August 31

I’m going to make this entry short.  We moved into one of the houses I broke into the other night for food.  Mom seems happier, though she still wants to go to the Academy.  I can’t get her to shut up about it.

I am really, really sick.  I can’t stop coughing.  I’m burning up one second, shaking from cold the next.  I finally found some aspirin, thank God.  It helps with some of the aches and hopefully is taking the fever down.  I keep getting dizzy though.  It feels like I might pass out sometimes. 

Mom is scared.  She thinks I’m going to die.  She sits next to my bed, rocking and moaning like she’s already in mourning.  I told her, “I lived through Armageddon, so no stupid flu is going to knock me down.”  I just need to sleep for a bit.  So tired.  I’ll check back in later.

September 1

I don’t know what to do.  she’s gone.  Moms gone and I can’t fine her  Woke up to she up and left.  In broad daylight.

I went out to find , hacking and bringing up garbage out of lungs  I think this flu turn into broncitis.  So damned sick.  But I looked for her.  I swear I lookd everywhere.  I went up and down streets, check in ever house.  If it not for the alien shutles I kept to hide from. I swear I was last living person on Earth.

MOM WHER ARE YOU?

I failed her.  She probably dead in middle of some street.  Is all my fault.  I let my guard down I let her down.  She gone and I’m going to die here all by myself just like I deserve and no one

Okay.  Getting hold of myself.  Crying not going to fix this.  I got to keep tryin  got to keep looking.  Can’t give up.

September 4

So much has happened.  I’m still recovering from pneumonia and I am so weak right now.  I’ll probably pass out pretty soon from both that and the medication they keep loading me up with.  I’ll write as much as I can, but getting it all down might take a few days.

The last thing I remember is going outside to look for Mom a second time after she disappeared.  Things were really blurry, and I can only recall bits and pieces as I wandered around, crying and trying to find her.

Then I found myself lying on the ground.  Guess who I saw looming over me?  That Kalquorian Dramok Dusa.  I’d passed out in the middle of someone’s overgrown hydrangeas, and he found me.  So here’s the big alien guy crouched over me, staring at me with those funky purple eyes. 

I tried to scream and ended up coughing instead.  I nearly choked on the stuff I brought up (sorry to be so gross).  Dusa rolled me on my side so I wouldn’t drop dead drowning in my own phlegm.

Between spells of hacking, I heard him say, “Easy, Matara Shalia.  Emergency transport is on its way to get you to our medical facility.”

When I could catch my breath to send some oxygen to my brain, I had only one thought.  “My mother.”

It was all I could gasp, but Dusa quickly told me, “She’s fine.  Matara Eve came to the Academy and told us you were sick, but she couldn’t remember where you were hiding.  We had to backtrack her trail, and then I had to locate your scent to trace you to here.  It took me some time to find you.”  He grinned, his expression a little shamefaced.  “I can’t believe I let you get away.  I completely lost you when you left your first home.  By the time I tracked you to that transportation repair place, you were already gone.”

I gave him my best mean look, though with the state I was in I’m sure I was as big a threat as a fluffy little kitten.  “My mother is okay?  You didn’t hurt her, did you?”

His eyes went wide with shock.  “Of course not.  We’re here to rescue as many of your people as we can.”  He stroked my hair.  “Matara, you have nothing to fear from my people.  We only wish to help.”

And breed us like prize mares, I wanted to point out, but another fit of coughing seized me and I passed out before I could skewer him with that little factoid.

When I next came around, I was in a small, all-white room that hummed, flat on my back on what seemed to be a table.  I had what felt like a couple of small rubber tubes shoved in my mouth and down my aching throat.  I couldn’t breathe, but I felt my chest rising and falling as it filled with pressure and then deflated.  Two Kalquorians stood over me.  One waved a scanner up and down my body while the other injected something in my neck.  Dusa stood back, looking over their shoulders at me.

Not being able to breathe on my own sent me into a panic.  I started fighting to get up, trying to get away from whatever torture they were putting me through.  The Kalquorians talked in their language – it sounded sort of like dogs barking in staccato bursts – and my entire body froze.  I couldn’t move shit and I couldn’t breathe.  I tried to scream, but I couldn’t do that either.

From his position a few feet away, Dusa called to me.  “It’s all right, Shalia.  The machine is breathing for you.  You’ve been placed in a suspension field to keep you still until we get you to the facility.  Please try to stay calm.”

Try to stay calm?  Right.  I’d been captured by Kalquorians who also had my mother, I was too sick to fight even if I wasn’t being held helpless, and I was being worked over by alien Dr. Frankensteins.  Calm, my big fat ass.

I didn’t have too long to worry over it though.  Everything drifted away again, to my very great relief.  The next thing I knew

Dr. Nayun is here and wants to talk before I fall asleep again.  More later.

September 5

Let me start today’s entry with the observation that Kalquorian drugs are wonderful.  I feel better than even before I got sick, though they tell me I’m not ready to be up on my feet yet.  I’m being nagged at that I need to build up my strength, get some more vitamins in me, etc., etc.  I’m told I’m malnourished and anemic.  Dr. Nayun is such a mother hen.  I think that must be what ‘Imdiko’ translates into.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.  Back to where I left off.

When I woke up again after my terrifying shuttle ride, I was in another white room.  Only this time it was an actual room and not the cabin of an emergency medical shuttle.  There were strange machines and weird sounds all around.  Several Kalquorians bent over me.  I would have panicked, but I felt so woozy.  I couldn’t keep my eyes open even after just a few seconds.

That kept happening.  I’d come around for a moment or two and find myself in an all-white room.  Everything fuzzed around me in soft focus, I guess because I was mostly out of it.  If not for the machines, I might have thought I’d gone to Heaven.  Yeah, me allowed in Heaven.  Let there be hysterical laughter. 

Sometimes I’d be alone when I woke.  Sometimes I’d see my mom sitting in a chair nearby, knitting.  At least she wasn’t making baby booties anymore.  She seemed to be working on a winter scarf.  In muggy-ass south Georgia.  Hey, it might get below sixty degrees for a week or two in six months.  We can’t have the Kalquorians’ necks getting cold, right?

Sometimes I’d see doctors and orderlies.  These were big alien men in green tunics standing over me, muttering to each other or busy doing stuff I couldn’t comprehend.  I especially got used to seeing the one older guy, Dr. Nayun.  I saw him so often in fact, that about the fifth time I woke up I fought to stay conscious so I could ask him his name.

He told me and then said, “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” I croaked.  I was glad he spoke English.  I didn’t know if he spoke profanity.

Apparently he did because he laughed.  He has a nice laugh, by the way.  All warm and rolling, like the world’s happiest giant.  He even kind of looks like a storybook giant, sort of like an illustration I once saw in a copy of Jack and the Beanstalk.  He’s big with lots of curly, gray-tinged hair tied back in a ponytail.  He has a mustache that covers his upper lip as well as a nicely trimmed beard.  A wide nose.  Fat cheeks that make his eyes look all squinty when he smiles, which seems to be all the time. Plus he’s as wide as a barn door.  I kept waiting for him to bellow, “Fee-fi-fo-fum!”

“Go back to sleep,” he told me.  “You need the rest.”

Exhaustion was already trying to claw me back under, but I wanted to know how much trouble I was in and mostly how Mom was doing.  “Has my mother been here, or was I just dreaming?”

“Matara Eve spends most of her day in here with you.  I think you’re her one anchor to reality.”

“She’s okay though?  She’s eating?  Not scared?”

He put his palm against my cheek.  For such a huge guy, Dr. Nayun has an amazingly gentle touch.  “Physically, she’s doing very well.  She doesn’t always rest well, but when we get you out of semi-isolation, she’ll be able to sleep in your room.  I think that will help.”

I don’t know why I asked the question.  Maybe I did because I was so out of it.  I mean, I had no reason to trust Dr. Nayun, not one bit.  But my mouth opened, and the words just kind of popped out.  “Can you fix her?  Can you make the dementia go away?”

He blinked at me.  “You mean the buildup of proteins in her brain?”  He patted my cheek, but his look was sad.  “We don’t have the resources here, Matara.  You’ll have to take her to Kalquor for such procedures.”

“But it’s possible on your planet?”

“I couldn’t say.  Brain treatments are tricky.  I’m not qualified for such delicate work myself.  All I can do is perform a basic diagnosis and keep her comfortable until she sees someone who specializes in such matters.”

He’d held out a carrot, and like a stubborn mule I didn’t want to let it out of my sight.  “Still, there is a chance she could be made better, right?”

Nayun nodded.  “There is a chance.  Now I insist you close your eyes, Shalia, or I will be forced to sedate you.”

See what I mean about him being a mother hen?  Or a father giant, ha-ha.  Fee-fi-fo-shut up and go to sleep, Shalia.  But I had run out of steam by then anyway, so I closed my eyes and was out like a light.

I hear someone coming up the hall outside my room.  Probably Nayun again, ready to cluck over me some more, even though I’m no longer on the endangered Matara list.  He’s a good guy.  I don’t know about most Kalquorians, and I’m still leery over what they have planned for me when I’m better, but at least one of them seems decent.  Maybe they can do something to get Mom back into fighting shape.  Look out, Kalquor.  If the real Eve Monroe shows up on your doorstep, you may wish you’d never met Earth.

Well, hello.  Dramok Dusa is walking into my room.  Later.

September 6

I know I’m getting better, because I’m going stir crazy.  I swear, if Nayun doesn’t let me get up and go for a walk soon, I’ll yank his beard. 

He’s like a big alien dad.  He told me on more than one occasion, “Take your time.  I’m not going to let you relapse.  Get strong for your mother’s sake if not your own.”  The man must stay up all night writing lines to feed to his patients.

I had a visit from Dramok Dusa yesterday.  He’s another surprise like Nayun in that he seems to be a nice person.  In fact, with the orderlies and Mom’s babysitters (she has three that rotate shifts, keeping tabs on her and seeing to her needs), I have yet to meet one of the monsters we were told Kalquorians are.  Really.  Truly.  They’ve all been nice.