Resistant: A World Divided, page 1
Resistant: A World Divided
Erika Modrak
© Copyright Erika Modrak 2019
Black Rose Writing | Texas
© 2019 by Erika Modrak
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.
The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.
First digital version
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Print ISBN: 978-1-68433-393-6
PUBLISHED BY BLACK ROSE WRITING
www.blackrosewriting.com
Print edition produced in the United States of America
Thank you so much for checking out one of our Sci-Fi novels.
If you enjoy our book, please check out our recommended title for your next great read!
People of Metal by Robert Snyder
The well-intentioned leaders of China and the U.S. form a grand partnership to create human robots for every human vocation in every country in the world. The human robots proliferate, economic output soars, and the entire world prospers. It’s a new Golden Age. But there are unintended consequences—consequences that will place biological humanity on a road to extinction. Ultimately, it will fall to the human robots themselves to rescue biological humanity and restore its civilization.
For Payton,
Holden,
& Rylan
who first gave me inspiration and then gave me the room to write
and for all my students past, present, & future who appreciate the written word as much as I do—
You are why I write.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Recommended Reading
Dedication
Part I
1: Cat
2: Wren
3: Cat
4: Wren
5: Cat
6: Wren
Part II
7: Abel
8: Ryder
9: Abel
10: Ryder
Part III
11: Cat
12: Wren
13: Ryder
14: Abel
15: Wren
16: Cat
17: Wren
18: Ryder
19: Cat
20: Abel
21: Wren
Part IV
22: Ryder
23: Cat
24: Wren
25: Abel
26: Ryder
27: Cat
28: Abel
29: Wren
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Note from the Author
About the Author
BRW Info
“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall.”
“The Masque of the Red Death”
~Edgar Allan Poe
Part I
1: Cat
The sun is setting on The Community when I find myself at last on the way home from clinical. The sky, a perfect blend of hazy pinks and oranges, does its best to mock me and my contradictory somber mood. I climb the steps of the rowhouse slowly, the muscles in my legs exhausted from the long hours of standing hovered around microscopes and lab results, the medicinal smell of the building wafting from seemingly every fiber of my jeans and snug, white T-shirt. Pungent. I wrinkle my nose.
I am glad that at the close of each school day, at least my lab coat stays behind to be bleached. It’s the little things I am thankful for these days. A new start for a new day, I think wearily as I scan my identification bracelet across the small glowing screen above the door handle. Though the daily smell of defeat isn’t ever washed out.
Hearing the anticipated click, I turn the knob and enter the shadowy hallway of the two-story house I share with my mother and her part-time nurse, Rhema. I don’t bother to turn on the lights as I head toward the rear of the house, old wooden floorboards creaking with a sad familiarity. This evening darkness feels like a friend.
At the end of the narrow hallway, I pause, leaning my shoulder into the wall, a sudden dizziness clouding my vision. Closing my eyes as tightly as I can, I hold this pose for a couple minutes, bright stars streaking across the backs of each eyelid. It’s as if I believe that by shutting my eyes, the harsh realities of the remaining world can be willed away. That I can shut out the agony of another failed day in clinical.
Because today marks yet another day where we hadn’t found a cure. Another prominent red X on the calendar in my mind. Another setback that I will be forced to dismiss tomorrow and the next day and the one after that.
Forge ahead.
My breathing slows. My heartbeat settles. And as I count each inhale and exhale of my lungs, each time filling them entirely and holding onto the oxygen for as long as I can, my body gradually relaxes, and the dizziness subsides. I am fortunate to have a healthy pair of lungs; I realize this. I also realize that I can’t afford to fall apart because I’m suddenly overcome with the raw emotion of the moment.
Still, I can’t ignore just how long and challenging today had, in fact, been for me and the dwindling class of 2085, what’s left of Generation R as we are called. Not one but two of our schoolmates failed to show up this morning, which usually means one of two things: they are sick with the Virus, or someone close to them is.
It also means the remaining students—me included—were made to suffer through the rest of the day’s requirements with heavy hearts and two fewer able minds and bodies to do the work.
Never a day off. Not from clinical and not from the reminders of how bad things in The Community have actually become.
Gathering my strength, I bypass the cramped kitchen, deciding I’m not at all hungry despite my rumbling stomach, and make my way instead to the far back of the house where I find a handwritten note from Rhema pin cushioned to the communication board just outside my mother’s small room: Your mother is resting. Last intravenous bag @ 4:00. I twist my arm, look to the bracelet encircling my wrist that immediately illuminates: 7:30. There is still time.
I take the note from the board, fold it, place it in my pocket, and make my way into the sitting area that Rhema and I attempted only a few short weeks ago to transform into a makeshift bedroom for my mother. The word hospice worms its way into my thoughts for what’s probably the millionth time, but I dismiss it quickly because upon entering my mother’s pathetic excuse for a bedroom there’s soft music playing, a beautiful Old-World album that my mother has refused to throw out. I smile, in spite of the grim situation, and stand motionlessly in the doorway listening to the quiet instrumental that brings me a sudden sense of peace.
It’s just like her, my mother. Listening to something so beautiful, so full of life, when she, in fact, is dying. She isn’t like the rest of The Community members who have been conditioned to forget. She instead chooses to remember.
“Always remember, Cat.”
And for a second I can’t tell if this is her speaking now or just a memory, floating alongside the crescendoing music. I walk to the old disc player and turn the volume down. My mother doesn’t speak too much anymore. It takes too much effort. But if and when she does, I want to be sure to hear her. On her better days, it’s not uncommon for my mother to whisper through haggard breaths that sound more like a broken cellular connection than a conversation, “Always remember, Cat. No matter what. Ignorance isn’t bliss when you’re dying.”
It’s also not uncommon for a story of the past to follow.
This morning when I left for school, my mother seemed to be having one of her “better days”, which isn’t exactly saying much since by definition “better” means she is awake. On these days, she is more aware of her suffering—as am I. But, sensing that she is now asleep, I immediately make myself busy, organizing the multitude of medicine vials littering the dresser and refolding the piles of clean bed linens, my back to the skeletal figure that has become my mother.
For all of my sixteen years of life, I have never been good at handling any sort of illness or bad news. In the face of death, words abandon me. And it’s not often I cry unless I’m alone. I feel more like a fish out of water when faced with any type of tragedy, so it’s no surprise, really, that in the face of my mother’s death, I haven’t quite figured out how to just be with her.
An
She was beautiful once. Before the Virus. Really beautiful—her ebony hair tumbling in soft waves down to her slender waist, a stark contrast to her fair, porcelain-like skin. I would sit for hours brushing what seemed to a seven-year-old like an endless sea of night while she softly hummed a now long-forgotten Old World tune.
We couldn’t have looked more different.
“Cat, who’d you get your lion’s mane from?”
“Cat, were you adopted?”
“Cat, you’re nowhere near as pretty as your mom.”
Too often as a child, I was teased for looking nothing like my mother. I was awkward, clumsy, a little rough around the edges, my wavy blond hair and deep blue eyes wild. But if ever my kind-hearted, graceful mother was within earshot of the taunts and jeers, she would swoop in to save me and my fragile self-esteem.
“She’s me and more,” she’d tell them, a twinkle in her eyes, and I knew in my heart that she meant it. “Me and more.”
“Me and more,” I whisper now without realizing I’ve spoken the phrase aloud, and I find myself smiling for the second time today.
We were—my mother and I—happy once. Happy and healthy. Or so she’s told me. It was too long ago, and I was too young to remember much about the time before. I mean, of course, we got sick occasionally. A stuffy nose or a rotten cough. Fevers that for me meant a few days off from everyday life and maybe a trip to the doctor’s office. A listen of the lungs, a check of the glands, a tousle of the hair followed by a lollipop and a few days on the sofa. And the remedies? Popsicles, flat soda, over-the-counter medicines.
Antibiotics.
The truth is, illnesses were as common in my earlier years as they are now. The difference? When you get sick today, you die. Always, you die.
In today’s world, you are never told, “Take two of these, sweetie; you’ll feel better in the morning.”
Instead and all too often, once you begin to show symptoms of the Virus, there is no promise of another morning.
Feel better never, is more like it.
And just like that, the harsh reality of the present returns along with a heavy weight against my heart. No music, no memory of what once was, could ever erase the fact that my mother and the world around us is, in fact, dying. It’s a miracle she’s held on as long as she has.
Most victims of the Virus don’t last so long.
Without turning around, I brace myself against my mother’s bed, my hand grabbing for a fistful of blanket, and I am suddenly startled as my mother’s now-brittle hand grasps mine.
Caught off guard at first, alarmed, I cry out softly. Since her symptoms started, we have kept contact to a minimum. Oddly enough, she’s not contagious. We both know this. In fact, the Virus isn’t really—by textbook definition—a virus at all but an incurable infection stifled temporarily by the required vaccination given to each member of The Community upon admittance. The original disease was left to die outside the walls.What we brought in? A silent killer masked by the appearance of beautiful, thought-to-be healthy people.
Still, I pull my hand away quickly when my mother attempts to take mine because, lately, illness—whatever the form—seems to spread to anyone who gets too close.
A long, painful, suffocating moment passes. Awkward. I don’t know if I should apologize. I want to hug my mother and at the same time, run screaming from the room. Instead, I inhale deeply, letting the breath linger in my lungs before releasing it, and press the palms of my hands onto the folded pile of linens before turning to face her.
Her dark muddy eyes are uncharacteristically clear. And for a fleeting moment, I catch a glimpse of the vibrant woman she once was.
“Mom, I—” I begin, but she cuts me off. She’s not looking for an explanation from me.
Instead, her eyes shining, she says, “I still remember the night your father brought you to me,” and pauses, inhaling two deep breaths of oxygen from the mask that has become her daily accessory. “You were so tiny. So perfect.” Another break for oxygen. And a rare gentle smile that reaches the corners of her eyes. “I thought nothing in the world could be more beautiful. One of life’s greatest miracles.” She squeezes my hand ever so slightly, and I am at once overtaken with a mix of contradictory emotions. Often my mother, in the haze of her illness and morphine, reminisces dreamily about times before the Virus, but she has never spoken to me about my birth. She isn’t supposed to talk about any of it.
Conversations of the Old World aren’t exactly encouraged here in The Community.
It’s difficult to forge ahead when your head is stuck in the past. Or so we’re all told.
And you never know when someone might be listening. My eyes flash upward to the far corner of the room where a camera stares steely back at me, its red eye blinking.
Still, much of my mother’s mumblings of her own younger years are forgiven—she’s dying for crying out loud! But the story of my birth is one that’s never retold. I have come to believe that it’s just too painful for my mother—a time of immense joy she refuses to cloud with the horror of what our world has become.
Despite the anxiety that accompanies every rule I break—and, for this reason, I don’t break many—my heart swells with intense longing—I want to know this story. What child wouldn’t? And it’s a few seconds before I recognize the sudden and uncharacteristic dampness on my cheeks as tears.
My mother, seeing that I’ve started to cry, turns back to the window, wheezing from the effort it has taken her to speak. She holds onto my hand and stares out into our small backyard. I am desperate to hear more. I wish more than anything I could wait for her to continue, that she were healthy and could talk freely about our past.
But I can’t wait. Because she’s sick. Probably days from death. There is no time for hesitation in these rare, cherished moments. I cannot spare even a fraction of a moment. Not to satisfy my own curiosity, my own longing.
I turn my head to check the time, not willing to let go of my mother’s hand, and the red numbers on my mother’s bedside clock seem to grow enormous, filling the entire space of the room.
8:23. I’ve waited too long.
And as if on cue, my mother winces, violent coughs seizing her, and panic sends my heart racing as I feverishly work to replace her intravenous bag of morphine before her pain becomes unbearable.
“Mom, I’m so sorry,” I whisper, my hands as steady as they can be while frantically filling the syringe full of the liquid pleasure that in a few moments will pass through her ravaged veins. I squeeze the newly-filled bag to flush the medicine through her body more rapidly.
She settles after a brief shudder and closes her eyes, and I wait an eternity before lowering myself to her bed softly, not wanting to cause her any more pain and cursing my selfishness quietly.
I know better. I have been here before. Tempted by these brief, dream-like moments—when my mother’s held captive by her memories and not her pain. I know these moments of clarity are rare, the only opportunities I have where I might just be allowed a glimpse into the past. Our past. My past. A story saved for our time alone as my father and the rest of The Community regard these tales as a waste of valuable time—time reserved for finding a cure.
But I know better.
I lie with her for a while, gently stroking her brittle hand, careful of her fragile skin, speckled with needle marks and bruises, and pray silently for her to wake up even though I know, I know, she suffers more when she’s awake.
Outside the city’s lights twinkle one final moment, and then everything is dark. Nine o’clock.
By habit and with automaticity that is well-rehearsed, I reach for the candles beneath my mother’s bed and light them.
