I got to stay in my hammock for nine awkward minutes. An old wall clock ticked away the moments. I liked how Sadie filled the time with joyful hammock. Harrison didn’t care to. He just stared at the clock while I sat in a dead man’s bed. When he did speak I wished he hadn’t. “He had some shoes I think are your size.”
I looked at my boots. They were falling apart. “No thanks.” I didn’t want to fill Tory’s shoes. Metaphorically or literally. I wanted his death to matter. I don’t know why. He shrugged and waved for me to follow him. I wondered if I was eaten how quickly my space would be given away. I was so cold and pessimistic about everything then. If the next guy would want my shoes. There isn’t much trust to go around in the apocalypse.
“Normally I am on raid duty, but I went out yesterday so it’s my break day. We brought back a lot of battery powered things. You AB’s never remember what it was like when the Atoma were in charge. No war, no sickness. Perfect, clean energy. They took it all with them. Our only hope was to get 100 year old technology back up.”
I didn’t have a response so I just followed him down a tunnel with a cardboard floor. We started to pass more people that were out and about. Some carried boxes, some chatted in pairs. Others carried garden tools or weapons. This places was a machine. I already was mental exhausted and I could feel the psychical fatigue coming. Is dying here my only option? Will I ever see the sun again. Could I not have a moment to myself to process? I burrowed my brow and frowned. Can I knock out Harrison? My face stayed like that. I was done. I wasn’t going to slave away for people I didn’t know for an unquestionable leader. Most of all I hated that Harrison was so quiet. Did he know what it was like to have so many questions?
Signs with directions were at every turn. I felt like I was in an ant farm or a mundane series of hamster tubes. We moved upwards as we walked. I noted men with guns. They were holding them in an obvious fashion and watching the moving people. Guards. So we arn’t free here. We have guards. The silence stretched on as I carried an empty milk crate after Harrison following the signs marked storage. The lighting was dark and somehow I recognized the hum of a generator. I also heard what sounded like human suffering. A constant moaning filled every inch of any room I found. I noticed the people moving about wore earplugs. “Excuse me-“ I stopped walking to listen “What is that noise? Where are we going”
“We are getting cans put in the entryway storage room and taking them down. The entryway is close to above ground. That is the sound of the breathless. Should smell them soon. We will write down how many cans of what we have and then take them down to the pantry by the kitchens. Okay?” That seemed simple enough. We kept going up for a few more minutes. We walked slowly. Harrison nodded to some girls carrying carrots down and they had a short wordless encounter.
I could smell them now. I ran over to the wall and leaned on it for support. I vomited. I didn’t have much in my stomach so it turned into dry heaving quickly. The smell of death and decay filled my lungs from that point on but I got used to it. I rubbed off my chin with a handkerchief that Harrison had ready. A room marked storage was full of shelves and food. It was roughly organized. Fruits filled one shelf, vegetables another, beans and so on and so forth. Items that didn’t seem to fit on a shelf were lined against the wall. “This is all from last night” he must have been more tired than I was. “It was I that found you firing about. We used 15 bullets to save you.” His mustache curled with a smile. “Sadie is always so pleased to have new people around here.”
We spent the next two hours organizing the room by expiration date and type of food. We made a careful list of everything according to the week it expired. We spent another two hours filling milk crates and carrying them down to the pantry by the kitchen. Over that time Harrison slowly spoke a bit more. It helped me ease up. It pushed the dread back so I could deal with it later. Most of the talking was done by Curtis. A tan skinned teenager who seemed to be very happy to tell me about why he should be put on the raid team. It was clear he was a bit of a hot head who thought he was tougher than he was. I wouldn’t put him on a raid team either, but I was happy to listen to him blow off some steam. He did his share of work and Harrison smiled at most of his comments. The teens cockiness seemed to amuse him.
“If I had been on the raid you were found on Tori would have survived” he shot Harrison a look. Harrison’s smile quickly faded. Curtis got quiet.
“You weren’t there, you don’t know” he said icily. We spent the last hour working in silence. I hadn’t imagined what had happened the day I was brought to Rascals last stand. I hadn’t realized that the man’s hammock who I took died and somehow I came back. Did he have family? Are they bitter? We worked in silence from that point on.
When we were finished Curtis went off to clean up after the pigs. “You used to be a solider?”Harrison asked breaking the silence.
“Yes, I think that’s right.” He nodded. I waited for a follow up question that never came. He took me back to the room where I had a hammock.
“I am going to a raiders planner meeting. We have a raider to replace. You will be with Sadie in the garden for the rest of the day. See you at dinner.” Was he really a film major? Was that a real major? Walking away he looked like he had been military. Did this world remove who you once were? Did it matter if you remembered life before or not? Or did everyone end up the same. Sadie was hanging some of their laundry from the rod that hung their curtain.
“Hey Lucky, ready to garden?” she kissed Harrison and he left for his meeting. I settled into my hammock. I wanted to rest. I didn’t know if that was an option. How much free will could I express?
“I would rather rest.” She looked up at me. Was that not an option?
“Oh…” she shook out water from a shirt and laid it flat on the edge of her bed to let it dry. “Well, you don’t have to.. it’s just. Lucky, we need every person to chip in.” She came over to me. She answered my question. There was an illusion of choice but there was no free here. You had a weight to pull. I suppose that is fair.
“I’ll pull me weight tomorrow” I told her. Someone sat up to listen to our conversation from a bunk over. How much was I pushing the envelope here?
“You shouldn’t stay here and sulk. Come on.” I got out of my hammock. Now was not the time or place for testing limits. Besides how hard can gardening be?
We joined four other woman and one other male. He gave me a bucket of water to carry up with us. We took another tunnel upwards. We stopped along the way and Sadie and the other four women stopped to get a wheelbarrow filled with tools. The gardens were the highest section of the compound. There was a large garage door that led outside to the fenced enclosure above us where the vehicles for raise were kept. The ceiling was very thick glass. It made the air stuffy and warm. The compost smell actually helped with the smell that overwhelmed me earlier. I got to work with a woman named Velma pulling up radishes and the girls began distributing the buckets of water over some mounds with nothing showing. Velma had hair with black roots and blond ends. She was short and less talkative than the other women. She did enjoy explaining how we fetched water from underground wells and how to adjust soil pH. She apparently helped set up the irrigation. Some of the moving water from below was moved into barrels up here. It was a smart system that arose from deep need and desperation. Working with the woman was more pleasant. They didn’t allow for long painful silences.
We left a lot of the tools up and I then went with Sadie to take a wheelbarrow full of beets, carrots, and potato’s to the kitchen. It was nice. Working. It was wise for Sadie to make me do something. “See? It always helps men to be physical. Makes them feel better. Men only mope when they sit around Wspecially if there are things to be done.” She stopped me from pushing to pick up a potato that rolled out.
“What about the women?” I asked picking the handles up again and controlling the speed down the slope.
“We need some work, it’s good for us to pull our weight. But in the end girl’s just want to have fun. Like midnight swimming in the underground river. Dancing after lunch. We even are trying to repair an old projector for a movie night once a week. Heard of DVD’s?” I told her I hadn’t. She started to tell me about how her and a band of women host weekly events to keep people light hearted. We kept on a down slope. A group carrying wet clothes was making their way up.
“Why is the kitchen and pantries so far from the garden and store rooms?”
“Because we didn’t build this before hand. We added where things fit as we needed them. We collapsed part of it expanding the sleeping quarters. So we put it down here.” We got to the kitchen and some women helped us unload. They began to clean them as soon as they got them. We grabbed our dinner rations and ate them in a few minutes. It was carrot soup and beans. Not exciting. “You adapt as you go. You just keep going with no real plans.” She had taken awhile to
“Yeah sorta” she smiled. “We must persist in kindness” she said. “Maybe one day the breathless will leave.” We went back to the garden and I helped Velma until it was dark. I went back to my hammock and Harrison came back from his meeting. He went to Sadie and spoke with her in low tones I couldn’t overhear. It was long enough for me to find a clean shirt and change in the bathroom. When I came back Harrison wanted to speak with me this time.
“Come with me” is all Harrison said. He motioned for me with two fingers. “Rascal wants to see you.”
On This Side. 