World Of Shell And Bone (14 page)

Thirteen miles pass in a fog of fatigue, fear, and numbness, all alternating through my body like psychedelic lights from before the War. At times I am so tired, I’m sure I fall asleep for miles on my feet. At other times, panic grabs me by the throat so I can’t breathe. I hear footsteps behind us, laughter as Drew plots which part of my body to shatter with bullets. But on we progress, and as the day gets lighter, so does my worry.

At dawn, we arrive at le marché noir to find it teeming with activity and noise. I’d imagined a dark, shaded street with people scuttling like beetles, refusing to look at each other for fear of being recognized. But here, people laugh and chat with each other like old friends. There is an atmosphere of party, of being on vacation and liking the people you are with. I suppose out here, miles from civilization, they aren’t afraid of being arrested.

Peddlers with their wares set out on blankets eye Carlos and me as we walk past. Some of them call out prices, but I’m clueless whether they’re competitive or not. My head swivels back and forth as I take in everything—glass bottles in mottled purple and flesh pink and the green of the sky after a bad acid rainfall; copper pots and pans that remind me of Shale so I have to look away; delicate sea shells in every size, shape, and color.

Carlos turns down an alley that smells like urine. I follow him, my stomach clenching when I see men leering at me. I flash back to Drew pushing his hand between my thighs. I remember the feeling of fog wrapping itself around my head as he pressed me into the mat with his weight. I force myself to keep walking.

We stop at a small doorway, and Carlos knocks. A man who is easily the widest person I have ever seen opens the door. They say Before was a time filled with people who indulged in hedonistic pleasures of every sort. People were larger, more complacent, used to getting everything their hearts desired.

It is different when you see it in person than when you read about it in textbooks at school. I’m surprised by the raw sadness that overcomes me at all we have lost as a people—the feeling of innate satisfaction of a meal well-deserved or eating a sweet simply because you crave it.

The man steps aside when he sees Carlos.

“Where’s Drew?” he asks, when the door has shut behind us.

Carlos darts me a warning look, but other than that, his face is placid. “Couldn’t make it today. Just me and the female.”

The man considers this, picking his teeth with a woman’s hair pin. “I don’t want no trouble,” he says after a long pause.

“Then we’re the same.” Carlos’s eyes don’t waver from the man’s.

Finally, the man sighs. “Alright. What you in the market for?”

Carlos reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a bundle of cloth. He unrolls it, and I see fat biscuits of gold. It looks unnatural and garish to me after years of seeing white plastic vouchers.

“Anything you can give me for this.”

Carlos and the man head down a flight of stairs to presumably look at weapons. The man sends a woman to sit with me. She is as diminutive as he was large, her arms and legs ropy and well-muscled. She frowns as I sway on my feet. “You sit. I’ll bring water.”

After I’ve had a glass and a half, I lean my head back against the wall and luxuriate in the feeling of being off my feet. I am sure they are swelling; I don’t dare take off my boots because I fear I won’t be able to get them back on again.

“Who are you?” The woman asks this without judgment or malice. There is open curiosity on her face. “Never seen Carlos with no woman before. ’Specially not in no Guard uniform.”

I rest my hand on my stomach. “I’m…no one, really. Just looking for my sister. She was taken to the Asylum in Toronto years ago. I’m told she’s not well.”

The woman sucks on her lower lip, shakes her head. “The Asylums in big trouble, now that the government tryin’ to get rid of ’em all. Draining the food and water, they say.”

“That’s why I have to get there fast. Do you know anyone who might help me?”

“Don’t know if anyone
can
help you. You might be better off lookin’ in the refugee camps, see if she escaped already.”

The nonchalance with which these two pieces of information are tossed my way boggle my mind. One: I did not know refugee camps existed, or what they offer refuge from, and two: why would she think Ceres might have escaped?

I ask her these questions, trying hard not to sound desperate. I want to shake her until her teeth rattle in her head and the information falls out, but of course, I do not.

“Radio said there was a big riot at the Asylum in Toronto couple days ago. Many Défectueux got out and ran.” She shrugs.

Carlos and the large man come back up the stairs. Carlos carries a large black bag, and I can guess at the contents. I am amazed that he thinks he will be able to get by like that, without Maintenance and Escorts converging on him like flies on a bloody carcass.

“This refugee camp, can you tell me where it is?” I ask the woman urgently as Carlos and the man discuss something, their heads close together.

The woman looks deep into my eyes for a moment. Then she says, “Go outside, back up the alley. Three peddlers down, you’ll see a red door. Knock on it and ask for Philip. He’s a good ’un, he’ll take ya.”

I stand up, and on impulse, grasp her hand with both of mine. “Thank you.”

After a pause, she hands me a small tin container. “Water,” she says. “Keep the baby healthy.”

I stare at her for a long minute before nodding and following Carlos outside.

Carlos goes up the alley, so I go with him. When we’re back out on the first street, he turns to me. “This is where we part ways,” he says.

“Thank you. For getting me out.”

He reaches his hand out as if to shake mine, but then presses something into my palm. I look down at a few gold coins and a small revolver.

“Keep them somewhere safe,” he says. “And if you see Drew, use the gun before you wait for an explanation.”

I nod, my throat working. I feel hollow. “Where are you headed?”

“Better if we don’t know each other’s locations. If we’re captured, we can’t rat each other out.” He looks away. “You take care of yourself, you hear? And the kid.”

“I will. You do the same, Carlos.”

He takes off in the opposite direction of where I need to go. After I stand for a moment, I put the revolver and coins in my pocket and begin to walk. Before I reach the red door, I stop at a peddler’s blanket and, using one of the coins Carlos gave me, buy a little conch shell.

Philip is barely a man. I don’t think he’s over eighteen. His face is pure and heartbreakingly eager. When I mention who sent me his way, he promises to take me anywhere I need. I tell him I want to go to the refugee camp, and he looks pained.

“That’s a bad place, madam. A very bad place.”

I don’t want him to elaborate, I don’t want my resolve to come under any burden, so I say, “Be that as it may, I need to go there. Will you take me?”

He sighs, then nods and points to the back of the building, where a small shed’s been constructed. Inside the shed is a hulking, tarp-covered shape. Philip pulls off the tarp to reveal a government-regimented taxi. I don’t know how he has managed to procure one for himself, and I don’t ask.

Leaning in the front window, he pulls out a taxi driver’s uniform and pulls it on. Then he gets in and gestures to the back door. I climb in and try not to remember my previous taxi ride with Shale. When the car chugs to life, Philip turns to survey me. I cannot imagine what he sees in my face.

“Are you sure you want to go, madam?”

“There’s nothing else in my life but this,” I answer.

He turns back around and we are on our way.

The roads are mostly empty, but occasionally we pass by a clot of Guards or Escorts. They eye us, like those old paintings where the people’s eyes seem to follow you no matter where you are in the room. My breath catches in my throat every time it happens. I’m sure they know I’m an imposter in spite of my Guard uniform. But Philip, with his sweet heart-shaped face and easy smile, just keeps driving. The scrutiny doesn’t seem to move him, and I wonder how he manages it.

When I ask, he laughs.

“I keep going because there’s nothing else to do,” he says.

After about forty minutes of driving, he turns into the desert. We rattle past bushes and trees every couple of miles. I bounce in my seat, my bladder screaming for release.

Finally, Phillip pulls up to a battered pair of iron gates. He taps his horn three times in succession and a pair of men step out of a small tent. When they see him, they wave and unlock the gates.

I look at the men as we drive past. It is only then that I notice their fused-together fingers, their missing lips. Nukeheads, employed as guards. I have never seen such a thing.

Philip pulls to the side of the dirt road just inside the gates and turns to me. “This is it, madam. I can’t go no farther in the taxi. It’s all on foot from now on.”

I reach for the door handle. “Thank you, Philip. I appreciate you taking me, in spite of the risks.” I take a deep breath and look out at the desert visage. The guards have retreated back into their tent. In the other direction, hills covered with large canvas tents dot the horizon like sand-colored sentinels. “I hope my sister’s here.”

Philip’s face is grim. “Madam, kids who end up here…they are different. Sometimes they are never the same as before. You understand?”

I don’t, not fully, but I nod nonetheless. “Be careful, Philip.” I step out and watch him drive away, puffs of dust clouds trailing after him.

I walk down the road several dozen yards, my heart beating in anticipation and fear. As I approach the top of a sloping sand dune, my ears are battered by sounds, voices. There are varying pitches and tones, lilting accents, and wordless moaning. I stop for a moment to let my ears adjust to the cacophony before cresting the top of the hill.

There are so many people.

My first thought is that the sky has broken open and spilled them out. I couldn’t see past the sand dunes and hills to see all of them from the taxi. They’re spread out on the grass, on blankets, in tents, on tiny hills of sand. There are boys and girls, of every age, men and women from all over New Amana. There are thousands of them, broken, beaten, tossed aside and washed up here.

As I look around, I wonder how I am ever to find my sister.

I am exhausted; I want nothing but to lie down and sleep until I am half-dead. But I have to find Ceres. I ignore the fumbling fingers of mentally-handicapped children as they pull at my clothes. Heartbreakingly, some of them call me Mama, as if checking to see if their mothers have come for them after all.

The first tent is set a few hundred yards from a sandy hill. Inside, there is a woman in the corner in a white shirt and loose, billowing beige pants. She’s kneeling in front of a child of five or six. The child is blind and screaming for his mother.

“Now, Jasper,” she says as she cups his cheek. “I know you’re hungry, but there’s nothing I can do. We’re out of rations for the time being. Would you like me to sing to you again?”

Jasper quiets down at this offer, and the woman smiles, though he can’t see her. “There’s a good boy. How about the one with the clock?”

She spots me then, and whispers something to Jasper before standing up to greet me. “Can I help you?”

“I’m…” I swallow, feeling suddenly nervous. Who is this woman? Can I trust her? I look around. I’m being stupid. She’s here, with all these Défectueux. She’s on our side. “I’m Vika Cannon. I’m looking for my sister, Ceres. She is—or was—at the Asylum in Toronto for a long time, but someone told me a number of them escaped a couple of days ago.”

The woman looks pointedly at my uniform and says nothing.

I smooth my skirt down. “I was with the Rads in Ursa, but we got ambushed. I just need to find my sister—”And then, without any warning, I begin to cry. Not just a trail of tears on my cheek, but sobbing, gut-wrenching, heaving sobs.

The woman’s face crumples and she gathers me into her arms, rubbing her hand in circles on my back as if to soothe a child.

“It’s alright, Vika,” she says. “Here, why don’t you have a seat? You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you?”

I sit down and swipe my fists across my eyes. “I’m sorry. I think I must be tired.” I take a drink of water from the tin the woman at le marché noir gave me. “Do you know if Ceres is here? Ceres Cannon?”

The woman smiles, her face kind but pitying. “Dear, there are so many children here, we’re not even sure how many exactly. They came only a few days ago, so everything’s still chaotic, I’m afraid. We have three caretakers, not including the guards. We do the best we can. I can point you in the direction the Toronto kids congregate—groups tend to stay with ones who seem familiar.”

I nod and refrain from asking questions because I can see she’s busy. “I would appreciate anything you can tell me.”

She leads me back outside the tent and points north. “That way. Good luck, dear.”

And with that, she goes back to Jasper.

I walk down a small sand dune encrusted with rocks and scraggly plants and up another before I come to a cluster of children wearing Toronto’s Asylum-yellow coveralls, the same ones I’d seen in the likenesses Shale had of the children. My heart is in my throat as I walk slowly toward them, my eyes roving over each of their faces. When I see a male, I quickly skip over him until I see another one who could be Ceres. I look for thin faces, petite builds, long black hair—everything I remember about her picture.

I go up to one young woman who looks like she might be around Ceres’s age.

“Excuse me,” I say, but she pays me no attention. Her fingers are combing through the air, as if she is sorting through sheets of paper only she can see.

I turn to another girl, who is glaring at me through the fringe of her hair.

“Do you know Ceres?” I ask. “Ceres Cannon?”

The girl glares at me. I’m about to turn away when she points behind me. I wheel around, expecting to find Ceres running toward me, her arms outstretched. But the patch of land behind me is empty.

“Where?” I ask, still scanning. “Where is she?”

And then I see her.

In the distance, a hill rises about a hundred feet into the air. On the top of that hill, at the very edge of nothing, stands a willowy girl with long black hair. Her stick-like arms are raised to either side as she looks down at the drop. The pants of her yellow coveralls flap around her legs in the wind, and her hair blows straight behind her like black streamers at a macabre party.

“Ceres!” Her name leaves my mouth before I can register that it is really her. On some level, my mind has recognized her. I run toward the hill, my feet bleeding afresh and screaming in agony. My heart throws itself against my chest over and over again. “Ceres, no!”

But she does not hear me. She stands there, suspended like a wraith, staring death in the face. Why can’t she hear me? What is she doing, all by herself? I get to the base of the sandy hill and begin to climb, doubling over as a stitch clamps onto my side. I keep running, the wind whipping my hair into my eyes.

“Ceres!” I keep calling her name, hoping that she will hear me, that she will know it’s not too late. That I am here. I am shamefully late, but I am here, and I will never leave her again.

Seeing my sister on the edge of the mountain, her arms outstretched like an angel in yellow, is a surreal experience. I lose count of how many times since Shale has come into my life I’ve questioned reality, or my tenuous grasp on it. I try to shake myself free of the stupor.

“Ceres.” I keep my voice soft so I don’t startle her over the edge. “Ceres, please turn around.”

At first I think she didn’t hear me, but then she begins to turn, very slowly. It’s painful—she reminds me of cancer-riddled Défectueux, one leg limping under her weight.

I am not sure what she will do when she recognizes me, but I should’ve given more thought to what I would do when I saw her. When her face comes into full view, I want to weep. There is a cloud-shaped scar on her cheek that could only have been caused by acid, and the inside of her right arm is branded with the alphanumeric code for her name.

I wait as her eyes run over me, wait for a smile or tears or cursing, but nothing comes. She remains staring at me blankly, as if I am a rock or a tree in her path.

“Ceres…could you come toward me? Away from the edge?” I hold out a hand.

My sister stares at it, as if confused about the gesture. Then, slowly, she limps toward me, making her way to safety inch by painful inch. When she is close, I take her hand, lace my fingers through it. Her face is blurry as I smooth her knotted, unwashed hair behind her ears and look into her face for the first time in my adult life.

The thought that echoes through my mind is, She is not Ceres at all. There is not a trace of my cheeky, adoring, playful sister in this young girl’s battered face. She is thirteen, but her eyes belong to someone generations older. I pull her into my arms and cry softly into her bony shoulder as she stands there with her hands by her side.

I finally step back and smile at her. “It’s me, Ceres. Vika. Your sister.”

“Sister.” She says the word wonderingly, turning the vowels and consonants over like sweets in her mouth.

My heart soars with pleasure at hearing the word from her mouth.

I nod. “That’s right.”

“Sister,” she says again. “Blister. Twister.”

I stare at her as her eyes flutter away from me, her gaze perching on everything around us. She is not there. They have taken my sister and done something with her spirit, ground it up under their dirty boots.

I put my arm through hers and guide her back down the hill to where the other children from the Asylum are gathered.

The entire time we’re walking toward the group, Ceres mutters under her breath. At first, I strain to hear her, but she’s only repeating strings of rhyming words. After I spend minutes trying to discern some meaning in the words she picks, I give up. There is no meaning. She is like a computer, simply spitting out a pattern her brain thinks up.

“Bird. Word. Heard. Curd.” Her voice carries on the slight breeze, and several children turn to look at us as we approach.

One of the boys smirks when he sees Ceres on my arm and pokes another boy next to him. They are younger than Ceres, probably no more than ten or eleven years old. The taller boy whispers something to the other one, and they burst out laughing. But I do not feel anger or indignation. I feel only a deep sense of loss. These boys are broken, too. Broken in a different way than Ceres, but still broken, their inner arms branded, their minds bent and twisted a million ways until they just gave. As they hoot like animals, I turn away and take Ceres to sit by a thin, small girl with black hair to her shoulders.

Ceres continues her litany. “Hill. Bill. Drill.”

The girl glances at her shyly. “Ceres is good with words,” she says.

I smile at her. “Thank you. I think so, too. I’m her sister, Vika. What’s your name?”

“Lynx.” The girl pulls her knees up and rests her chin on them. “It’s a constellation. Do you know it?”

I shake my head. “But it’s a pretty name.”

Ceres glances at me. “Pretty. Witty. City. Gritty.”

“Ceres is good with words,” Lynx repeats.

I don’t know what to say this time, so I simply smile.

“I’m not good at anything. I’m a waste of space and resources.” Lynx says this matter-of-factly, as if she’s telling me it’s hot today.

I stare at her, horrified. “No, you’re not. Whoever told you that is wrong.”

“We’re Défectueux,” Lynx continues, as if she hasn’t heard me. “Defective. That means we shouldn’t have been born. We’re mistakes.”

My skin ripples with gooseflesh, in spite of the sun bearing down on us. Is this what Ceres listened to for the past eight years? If her mind was pelted with hate and vitriol, it’s no wonder this is all her brain is capable of conceiving any more. My chest surges with a flood of anger as I remember my mother talking about the Asylum. “She’s helping humanity. They’ll treat her well there, give her food and shelter in exchange for participation in a few minor experiments. She’s helping generations to come, Vika.”

I look at Ceres, her blank eyes. There is no soul there.