Reentry Read online

  “I see,” Tom nodded his head. “And where are these other people at?”

  “Down in the valley below where the mountains started.”

  “Lowlanders,” the man to the right of Tom spit on the ground. “Idiots think they can trust the government now?” Dreya turned to look at the man who spit. He put his hands into the pockets of his faded Levi jeans and shrugged at her.

  “Forgive my friend,” Tom said smiling. “He is a little rough around the edges and he never really did trust the government. Guess we all should have listened to him.”

  “Speaking of that,” the third man with the grey dreadlocks and tie-dye t-shirt interrupted, “I’m on edge myself standing out here in the open man. I think we should go.” He looked up to the sky.

  “Ziggy is right,” Tom agreed. “Why don’t you kids come back with me and my wife will fix you up some lunch.” He held out his arm.

  Dreya held her sister’s hand and looked back toward her friends. James shook his head still holding the rifle as Jayden stepped down from the porch.

  “I trust him,” Dreya said to Katrina. “I want to ask some questions.” Katrina nodded and put her hand on James’ shoulder.

  He sighed and lowered the rifle as they went to join them. “This is stupid,” he whispered and Dreya gave him a big smile.

  *

  Down the street, the Levi man left the group and went into an old log cabin sitting on the hill.

  “Where is he going?” Jayden asked.

  “Home,” Tom laughed. “We just met up this morning to go talk to you kids. Now he has to get back to work.”

  Tom and Ziggy led them into a cape cod style house with white shutters and a sloping roof. The interior of the house was covered in knickknacks and china cabinets displayed various painted tea cups. A grand piano sat against the sitting room parlor wall. Katrina looked around skeptically.

  “This isn’t mine,” Tom said. “Or I guess it wasn’t mine. It was the widow Farley’s. She went on vacation last month. I figure she isn’t coming back now. This is one of the only houses up here with a cellar.”

  They walked down a dark set of stairs leading away from the kitchen. The smell of earth filled Katrina’s nose before they even stepped foot onto the dirt floor. Her heart began to pound as she remembered being trapped in the shelter and digging their way out.

  The room was damp and musty. Two small oil lanterns lit the center of the room. Large seating pillows were strewn about the floor. Chinese room dividers sectioned off the three corners. Against the wall were shelves of food with a makeshift kitchen in the middle of them. Ziggy laid down on one of the floor pillows.

  A slender woman in a long skirt with glasses sliding down the bridge of her nose came out from behind the divider in the far corner. She smiled lovingly at Tom as he hugged her.

  “This is my wife, Sophie,” he said to the kids.

  “You all must be starving,” she said softly. “I’ll fix you something to eat. I just got the baby to sleep though so if we can try and be quiet, I’d really appreciate it.” Ziggy rolled over and put his fingers to his lips as he shushed the kids. “Not that quiet,” Sophie rolled her eyes. “Go sit down and make yourselves at home.”

  Dreya and Mia walked over to the cushions to sit down. Katrina and Jayden slowly followed. James leaned back against the wall.

  “You can come sit down,” Mia said to him. “They aren’t going to feed us before they kill us.” James didn’t move.

  “It’s okay,” Tom said as he sat down. “Let him stay where he is comfortable.” Tom winked at him. James stared straight ahead.

  Katrina sat cross legged on her pillow. “Thanks for inviting us in but I don’t know why you would do it.” She was nervous and uncomfortable, but she kept her voice steady.

  “She means to say thank you.” Dreya glared at her. “You have a lovely home.” Ziggy, Tom, and Sophie all laughed.

  “She’s right though,” Tom said after he caught his breath. “Except after what we’ve already seen, you kids are a sight for sore eyes. What did the president call them Zig? The hope for humanity or something like that?”

  “Us?” Jayden asked. “How does the president know us?”

  “Well not you five specifically but the whole Project Dandelion thing.” Tom smiled at him. “I think it was supposed to make the rest of us feel better, that humanity would live on even though the world was being blown to pieces. The television broadcast from the president right before the power went out was a tearful farewell. He said they had top secret locations around the country with teenagers hidden safely away to ensure the survival of our species.”

  “But they sure didn’t care about the other species on earth, did they now Tom?” Sophie called over from the kitchen area. She shook her head as she started the battery powered ceramic camp stove.

  “We knew that,” Dreya nodded. “At least that is what Nanny told us in the shelter.” She looked back to Sophie. “Nanny was the electronic system recording telling us what to do,” she explained. “But we don’t know what happened after we got there, the night the bombs went off. Can you tell us exactly what it is you’ve seen so far?”

  Tom looked to his wife. She wiped her hands on her skirt and nodded to him encouragingly. He ran his hand over his face. “Ziggy and I were drinking some beers that night watching the game. The broadcast came on towards the end. We never got to see the final inning. Sophie was upstairs putting the baby to bed. It lasted maybe five minutes. The president had sweat rolling down his chin. He said nuclear weapons had been fired and that more were coming. It was basically a hopeless apology with the dandelion kid thing thrown in there as a buffer. The broadcast cut out when the power went out. We thought for a minute that we wouldn’t experience anything way up here. We tried calling friends that lived far away but there was no signal. We couldn’t even get online.”

  He massaged his temples with his fingertips. “Ziggy was the one who saw the clouds coming over the horizon. This crazy guy climbed up on our roof to take a look. We grabbed Claire, our baby Claire, from the crib and we broke into Mrs. Farley’s house to stay down here. I remembered she had a cellar because she asked me to carry some boxes down last year for her. We stayed down here almost a week before we went outside. Claire hasn’t even been outside since then. Sophie takes her upstairs to sit by the windows a few times a day so that she can get some sun.” Tom leaned forward and draped his long arms over his knees.

  “About five days?” he asked Ziggy who nodded in response. “It was about five days later when the first of the people came up here. Those first ones were the worst. Their skin was falling off their bones and they vomited all over the street the minute they got out of the car. The old lady was gone before she stood up straight. Her son kept trying to save her with his blistered hands. He died a few minutes later. We had a break for a few days and then a whole bunch of them came. Spread out over about a week. These ones weren’t as sick looking, but they still had radiation poisoning. The shakes and bruises and weakness. They started telling us stories about government check points on the roads and the military shooting whoever came through. None of them made it for more than a few hours, except Lacy. She lasted two days. We’ve buried twenty people on the other side of the lake so far. No one has come by the past couple of days except you all though.”

  Mia looked pale. Katrina bit her lip as she turned her face to the ground. Government, military, shooting unarmed civilians? Her mind raced and her stomach was in a knot.

  “Why?” Dreya asked with tears in her eyes. “Why aren’t they helping them?”

  Chapter 12

  “Don’t you understand girl?” Ziggy asked from under his arm, still laying on the pillow on the floor. “It’s mass exodus. Global cleansing. They are literally killing off the population so they can build their new world.”

  Mia shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Haven’t you been paying attention?” Ziggy suddenly sat up. “They’ve been trying to
silence us for years. We keep hearing about overpopulation, starving kids no one seems to care about, terrorists, globalization going sour because no one wants to adhere to the rules that the U.N. or I.M.F. keeps shoving down their throats. They took it a step further, well like off the deep end further, and decided to downsize the population into a more manageable size.”

  Ziggy put his hands behind his head. “Now they can have their new world order controlled by a single government. They’ve been testing this plan for years, right under your noses. You think Chernobyl or Fukushima or Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania were just accidents? They’ve been studying how to best survive and what would happen to the earth during a nuclear disaster for a long time.”

  “Do you believe this guy?” Jayden asked Tom with his eyebrows raised.

  “I didn’t,” Tom sighed, “but now I wish I had believed him sooner. One of the guys who came up here said he talked to his mother in South Korea during the broadcast and their president was saying the same thing, like identical to what we were hearing. Almost as if the same message was sent to everyone to read. A woman whose husband was on a business trip in Sweden heard it too. “Maskrosbarn” is what they said, the dandelion child will carry on.”

  “But why us?” Dreya’s forehead was creased. “I know we have the dandelion gene or whatever but what makes us so important?”

  Ziggy laughed. Tom shook his head and gave her a sympathetic smile. “You’ll have to ask him,” he said pointing to Ziggy. “He’s the psychologist.”

  “That guy?” Mia asked in disbelief.

  Tom laughed. “Don’t let his dirty hippie hair fool you. Ziggy studied at Colby College and was a top psychologist at John Hopkins Hospital for nearly twenty years.”

  “That was a lifetime ago.” Ziggy turned to stare at Dreya. “Nothing is important about you, that’s just the point.”

  Sophie came over carrying lunch on a tray. “The bread’s a little stale, sorry. I’ve been trying to bake fresh loaves daily in my cast iron Dutch oven over the fire. Except we weren’t allowed to have fires last night or this morning because the scouts didn’t want us to advertise that we were here to you guys.” She carried a plate with bread, dried salami, and a cup of tomato soup over to James.

  “Why?” he asked her.

  “We didn’t know what you wanted until we saw you trying to get supplies from the rental down Main Street.” Sophie smiled at James and he nodded his head before digging into the food.

  Katrina’s ears grew hot. They had been watching them. How did she not see that? Probably because she was too busy cuddling up next to James. She quickly shook the feeling of embarrassment away. They’d be more careful next time. She spread grainy mustard onto the bread and wrapped the salami up in it. The sandwich tasted like heaven.

  “If we aren’t important then why go through all this trouble to save us?” Dreya brought the conversation back.

  Ziggy wiped away the breadcrumbs from the whiskers on his chin. “It’s the gene. They are saving you because the gene isn’t important. At least not in the traditional meaning of the word. This was all just a theory back when I was working at the hospital, but they’ve made great leaps in the research since. The gene that is the important one is the orchid gene. CHRM2 is what they called it. This is the gene that makes the artists, the intellectuals, the great leaders, the ones who feel things as long as they receive the right environment to grow up in. They need love and nurture in their childhood. If they don’t get treated well, then you get your criminals, your addicts, and your trouble makers.”

  Katrina stared at the old man as he continued. “Then you have your dandelion kids. Which is the opposite gene from the orchid one. These are the people with the genetic makeup that allows them to survive anything no matter the environment. No amount of suffering truly affects them. They can adapt to any situation. They don’t cause trouble and don’t do anything all that remarkable. They just are. The government wants only these types to survive in their new world. They want to breed out the ones that will change it.”

  Dreya’s eyes went wide and Katrina smirked. “They don’t seem to know us that well. Apparently, trouble is all we cause.”

  “I wouldn’t advertise that if I were you.” Ziggy looked straight at her with his piercing eyes.

  “How do they know what genes we have?” James asked from the back of the room.

  “Are you kidding?” Ziggy responded. “They’ve been testing you and recording you since birth. Right up there with your APGAR scores and your first prick with a needle for a blood draw. Your DNA is whisked away and analyzed in a government research center. They store it in the system so they can keep records of every citizen. Why do you think homebirths are considered so dangerous now? We’ve been born at home since the beginning of humanity but now they want to document your first breath so they can keep tabs on you.”

  Mia rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t conspiracy theorist fall somewhere in the spectrum of mental disorders?”

  “Little girl,” Ziggy sighed as he laid back on his pillow. “Can you honestly look outside today and think anything could be more shocking? Believe it or don’t believe it. This is your reality now.”

  The door to the stairwell leading down to the cellar opened. A teenage boy who had long hair to his shoulders and was wearing a black Nirvana t-shirt came running down the stairs yelling “dad!” He stopped at the bottom step when he almost ran into James.

  “Right here Tripp,” Tom said standing up. Tripp paused before stepping around James and entering the room. “It’s okay,” Tom reassured him. “These are our guests. What’s going on?”

  Tripp scanned the room. “There were tanks on the road heading up this way. I ran back as fast as I could.”

  “Did you tell Jones’ family?”

  “Margret saw the trucks. I met her at the creek as she was running home. She said she’d warn the Elisas too,” Tripp blurted out breathlessly.

  “It’s alright. You did a good job son. Go catch your breath,” Tom said.

  “Come here and get something to eat Tripp,” Sophie told him as she fixed a plate of food. He sat down on a pillow and Mia extended her arm gracefully.

  “Hi. I’m Mia,” she said in a low voice laced with honey. Dreya nudged her sister’s leg. “What?” Mia asked. “I’m just being polite.” She gave Tripp an adoring smile.

  “No,” Dreya said. “You’re being uncomfortably awkward.”

  “Well it wasn’t awkward until you said that.” Mia ran her fingers through her hair, tilting her head to the side. “That’s my much older sister,” she whispered to Tripp. He blushed as he took a bite of his sandwich. Ziggy and Tom walked upstairs to check out the street.

  “We need to go,” James said as they left.

  “Agreed.” Jayden and Katrina stood up.

  Dreya bit her lip and then pulled Mia to her feet. “Thank you so much for your hospitality and I hate to eat and run, but we should probably get going now,” she told Sophie.

  “Nonsense,” Sophie said. “You stay here where it is safe.” The baby began to cry, and Sophie ran to get her. They heard the vibrations of the treads on the asphalt as the trucks pulled onto Main Street above them just as Tom and Ziggy came running down the stairs. Tom bolted the door and Ziggy ran to the chest at the far wall. He pulled out rifles and ammunition from the crate while Sophie shushed Claire. Ziggy passed the guns around the room.

  James walked to Katrina. “We need to get out of here. This is suicide,” he whispered in her ear.

  Katrina’s brain kicked into hyper focus. They were trapped underground with no escape route. They could try and shoot whoever came through the door, she thought. But who knows how many were out there? Plus, what if they didn’t come through the door? What if they just burned them out? It’d be safer trying to run. They should never have come down here. She shouldn’t have listened to Dreya. They kept making too many mistakes. Ugh- think of a plan, Katrina screamed inside her head.

  There wasn’t
time for a plan. A man on a loudspeaker from one of the trucks spoke, “Come out now. We know you are hiding here and I’m not playing any games today. The drone flying overhead saw five of you in the street earlier. I want all five people outside in the street immediately. Otherwise I’m burning this place to the ground. You have until the count of ten. One.”

  Tom looked at the kids and then back to his own son and daughter. “I think it might be time for you guys to get going,” he said to Dreya.

  “Two.”

  “Tom. Stop it! They are just children.” Sophie’s chin trembled as her eyes welled with tears.

  “Three.”

  The baby whined and Sophie rocked her.

  “Four.”

  James walked to the stairs and lifted his rifle. Katrina grabbed a .22 from Ziggy.

  “Five.”

  “It’s okay,” Dreya said looking at baby Claire. “You’ve been so kind, and we don’t want her to get hurt.”

  “Six.”

  Dreya grabbed Mia and they rushed over to the steps.

  “Seven.”

  Ziggy yelled, “Go through the dining room on the right. The sliding door leads out back away from the street.”

  “Eight.”

  They unlatched the cellar door and went running through the house past the table and through the glass door that James threw open.

  “Nine.”

  Katrina heard another man call out, “Sarge! They are running through the trees.”

  “Open fire.”

  A bullet whizzed past Katrina’s head as she took off running. The next few moments were like a dream. Her focus slipped into tunnel vision as she saw the bullet fly into the bark of the tree beside her causing it to splinter into flying fragments of wood. She kept running.

  James was up ahead of her to the left. She watched him slip behind a growth of skinny aspen as he made his way forward. They were about to pass the last house in the village when she heard Mia’s blood curdling scream. Katrina jumped behind a large pine tree trunk and James locked eyes with her briefly before she peered around the tree to look at the street.