Twenty-Five to Life, page 26
Julie stood. “I’m Julie, this is–”
Ranger rose to her feet but collapsed into a coughing fit. Her breath whooped in and out of her damaged lungs.
“Shit!” Julie said. “Help me here!”
FIFTY-ONE
Bright, blurry lights. Words that made no sense. Warm water held her. The hand behind her head kept her face out of the water. Clean blankets tucked around her body. The bed was soft. It was the best dream she’d had in weeks, and she fought to stay in it.
She lost the battle. Her eyes opened and focused on a woman’s face. “Mom?”
“No, dear. But you’re fine. Don’t get upset.”
The rest of Julie’s vision kicked in. The room was windowless and dim. She really was in a bed. “Where am I?”
The woman put her hand on Julie’s arm. “Don’t worry about that right now.” She smiled, wrinkles forming around her mouth. “You’re safe.”
“Where’s Ranger?”
The woman’s forehead creased. “The doctor will be here in an hour or so. You can ask her.”
“Doctor?” Julie looked around as best she could. “Is this a hospital?”
“Close enough. And I’m close enough to being a nurse to know that you need to stay quiet and rest. You’ve had a rough time.” She smoothed the hair off Julie’s forehead. “How long were you out there?”
“In the parking lot?”
“On the road.”
Julie tried to think, and counted back as best she could. “Nearly five months, I think.”
“Well, I’m sure there’s no permanent damage.” She patted Julie’s hand. “Can I get you something? Some juice? Something to eat.”
“Water would be fine.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Julie’s thoughts were a broken kaleidoscope. The road. The caravan. The storage unit. The snow. The bodies in the dumpster. The van. Ranger and the gun. The family of Apes. The truck. She shook her head to settle the shards. It made her dizzy. Her head sank into the pillow, careful not to disturb the broken glass inside. She focused on her breathing. The air came in, the air went out. One. She sucked in another lungful and let it go, slowly. Two. She inhaled again – Clean. It smelled clean, like filtration and air-conditioning. Like her room at home.
She remembered getting into the truck. Did they drug me?
The nurse lady came back in with a plastic pitcher and a glass. She set the glass on a table near the bed and filled it with water from the pitcher. Ice cubes clunked against the plastic sides. “Let me unstrap your hands so you can drink this.”
Julie tried to lift her arms. They moved about an inch, kept in place by soft cuffs. She pulled again, harder, feeling the muscles bunch in her arms. “Why am I tied down?”
The woman had been reaching for the cuff on Julie’s left arm. She adjusted her aim and patted Julie’s arm again. “For your own safety, dear. We didn’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“Why would I hurt myself? What is this place?”
The woman picked up the glass of water. “If you calm down I can give you this. If you don’t, I’ll have to hold it for you.”
“Where’s Ranger?”
“The doctor will be here soon.” She waggled the glass. Julie could see the clear water sloshing around inside. She could almost taste its coolness on her aching tongue. “Make a decision.”
Julie took a deep breath. “I’m OK.”
“Good.” She put the glass aside again and unfastened the straps on Julie’s hands. They made a ripping sound as she pulled them loose. She handed Julie the water. “Drink now.”
The water was good. There was none of the rusty, stale taste Julie had so much trouble getting used to on the road. She drank greedily.
“Give it a few minutes to settle then you can have more.” She took the cup from Julie’s hand and put it on the table. She flipped the bottom corners of the blanket, one at a time, and freed her feet. “Don’t try to get up. We had to give you a catheter. Do you know what that is? I’ll check back in a few minutes. Try to rest.”
“Did you drug me?” Julie said.
“Yes. We also scanned every inch of you and drew blood. We had to make sure you weren’t contagious or dangerous in some way.”
“I’ve had all my shots.”
“As you say, but your emplant wasn’t working to tell us that. We had to figure it out the hard way.”
“Who are you?” Julie said.
She smiled, making wrinkles again. “I’ll give you mine if you give me yours.”
“Julie.” She stopped herself before saying her last name. The less they knew the better. “Just Julie for now.”
“That’s not one of the names you kept mumbling when you were asleep. Looks like I won the pool.” She held out her hand. “I’m Beth.”
Julie arm felt heavy as she lifted her hand for Beth to shake. “I guess I should thank you.”
“We’ll talk about it more when the doctor comes. Get some rest.”
Julie was asleep before Beth was out of the room.
* * *
In spite of the water, Julie woke with a dry mouth. She rubbed her eyes, dislodging a buildup of sleep. Her arms and legs felt like they’d been bolted onto her body as an afterthought, but they weren’t strapped down. She reached for the pitcher of water on the little table and slopped the glass full.
Julie drank carefully, not wanting to fumble water all over herself. Beth or someone like her would likely rush to her side to keep her from drowning. She put the glass back on the table all by herself.
The walls were a sunny yellow, a good complement to the green bedding, and an obvious attempt to make up for the lack of windows. The floor was dark gray tile, probably for easy clean up. There were no cameras that she could see, but they had to be keeping tabs on her somehow.
The only real hospital she’d seen was the one Ben’s dad spent his last few weeks in. Julie’s family had gone visit him, small and weak among the beeping machines and servo-nurse arms. He’d tried to talk, but Julie didn’t much understand what he said. One of the servo-nurses injected him with something. He had smiled at her before he fell asleep. It was the last time she’d seen him.
This place looked nothing like that hospital, nor like any of those she’d seen on the vid. She might as well have been in someone’s spare bedroom.
She slid her hand beneath the covers and slipped it under the waistband of the purple pajamas someone had put her in. Beth had said there was a catheter, but she couldn’t find anything unusual down there. To be on the safe side, she moved slowly as she slid her legs over the side of the bed and stood.
No alarms went off, and there was no sudden gush of pee or blood from a hidden tube. She put her hand on the table and waited for her head to stop swimming. There were two doors in the room. The one she’d seen Beth come through probably led to a hallway. The other door either led to a bathroom, which she didn’t need at the moment, or to a closet, which might have her stuff in it.
Julie shuffled to the door she hoped led to a closet. She started out with one hand on the bed but was moving just fine, albeit slowly, by the time she got around to the other side.
It was a closet, but there was nothing of Julie’s inside. It was full of shelves and plastic totes of craft supplies: spools of thread, glue, scraps of cloth, foam heads, jars of pins, and googly eyes. She grabbed a pair of scissors and slid them under the waistband of her pajamas. The tail of the striped-pajama shirt covered the handles.
Getting to the other door took only a few seconds. Her legs were feeling almost normal. She pressed her ear against the door and held her breath, hoping to hear if anyone was passing by outside.
She tried the knob. It turned smoothly under her hand and three moves later she was outside the room with the door closed behind her. The scissors fell out of her pajamas and onto the floor with a clunk. Beth looked up at the sound. “I was wondering when you’d try that.” She patted the couch beside her. “Come sit down.”
Julie used her foot to push the scissors under a chair. “You live here? I’ve been in your house all this time?”
“Apartment.” Beth gestured to the door Julie had just come out of. “Spare bedroom slash craft room.”
“Who are you?”
“Someone who had a spare bedroom. The doctor will be here to talk about that in a few minutes.” She put something down on the couch. She’d been knitting. Julie wondered if she knew how to make a hat.
“How are you feeling?” Beth said. “Any tenderness from the catheter?”
“I’m fine. How long was I out?”
“Nearly three days. Are you hungry? I made some soup.”
Beth left the room and came back in with a tray. She placed it on the low table in front of the couch and returned to her knitting.
Julie’s thoughts were as hazy as the steam rising from the bowl. “The last thing I remember is the truck pulling up. Was that you?”
“It was. Do you remember that I offered you some water? There was a sedative in it. Then you were in quarantine. So was I for that matter.” The door chime sounded. Beth put her knitting down again. “That should be the doctor now.” She patted Julie’s knee. “Stay right there.”
Beth opened the door for another woman, maybe fifteen years younger. They whispered to each other for a few seconds before Beth waved the woman in. “Julie, this is Dr Shah. If you owe anyone for your rescue, it’s her.”
“Nonsense. If we had not done it together, it would not have been done at all.” Dr Shah stuck out her hand. “You are Julie.”
Her hand was small and cool, and she had an accent like Anji’s grandmother crossed with Sherlock Holmes.
“Thanks for the assist. What the hell is going on?” Julie said.
The doctor flashed a smile. “May I sit?”
“Beth is the queen bee around here. Ask her.”
“I’ll make some tea while you talk.” Beth smiled. “Or would you prefer something else?”
“Tea’s fine. Maybe hold the knockout drugs this time.”
Dr Shah and Julie sat on opposite ends of Beth’s small sofa. “You are well, I trust,” the tiny doctor said.
“I feel kind of shitty, thanks.”
“Let me see your hands.” The doctor pinched Julie’s fingertips. “No numbness? No dizziness?”
“Not since I started moving around.”
“You are eating?”
“I had a couple of sips of soup.”
Dr Shah released Julie’s hand. “I do not expect you to experience any permanent trouble.”
“What was wrong with me?”
She ticked the medical issues off on her fingers. “Minor frostbite on hands, feet, and face. Bruises and contusions to the face and back of your head. A mild concussion. A vitamin deficiency.”
“But I’m fine.”
“That depends entirely on you. If you go back on the road, you will almost certainly get worse.”
Beth interrupted with the tea and sat in the armchair closest to Julie’s side of the couch.
It was peppermint tea. “When can I see Ranger?” Julie said.
Dr. Shah put her cup on the table, next to the cooling soup. “Whenever you please.”
FIFTY-TWO
Ranger looked tiny in the big diagnostic bed; the only sign of her personality were the telltale lights pushing into the red zone. She always has to live on the edge.
“Why is she still unconscious?” Julie said.
“Heavy drugs. She’s in a medical-induced coma to help her heal.” Beth brought up Ranger’s chart on the screen embedded in the foot of the bed. “Looks like she went into hypothermia at least twice. Frostbite, same as you. Pneumoconiosis.” She looked at Julie’s face. “Lung rot, but you knew about that.”
“Did you cure her?”
Beth wiped the chart. “It would take more than a few days to do that, if it could be done at all. She has a very advanced case. Come on, we’ll let her sleep.”
Julie followed Beth out of the room. “Where’s all of her stuff?”
“In storage.”
“I want to see it.”
Beth led the way to a small room bathed in ultraviolet light. “Let’s not linger or we’ll get a hell of a sunburn,” she said.
Ranger’s clothes had been laundered and neatly folded. Her heavy jacket was hanging from a hook. The contents of her pockets were carefully arranged on the table.
“We went through it to make sure there was nothing dangerous,” Beth said.
Some of the items were familiar, others Julie had never seen before. She picked up a heavy metal pin, a six-pointed star with the word “sheriff” engraved on it. The picture of Ranger and Euchre was folded under the clasp.
“Do you want to take that with you?” Beth said.
“I just wanted to make sure everything was here.” Julie put the pin back with the other items. “What is this place?”
“The future, maybe.” Beth smiled. “The past, too. It’s hard to say. It’s too new.”
“Are we in the city?” Julie said.
Beth shook her head. “We’re not in the suburbs, either. It’s a new place, a new idea. Dr Shah will tell you about it after we eat.”
They went back to Beth’s apartment. Beth went into her room and came out with a stack of clothes. “I washed them for you,” she said, handing her the neatly folded bundle. “Mended a few of the holes.”
Julie took the stack into Beth’s craft room and changed. After so much time in pajamas, her old clothes felt like armor against her skin, thick and stiff. She stomped into her boots and studied herself in the mirror. The face above the collar of her coat looked like it was better suited to the pajamas. Who is this woman, and why does she look so young when I feel so old?
“You won’t need a coat where we’re going,” Beth said, coming into the room. “It will be plenty warm.” She led the way up two flights of beige walls and concrete stairs. The stairs ended at another metal door. Beth pushed it open and stepped through.
The space on the other side of the door was like something out of ThirdEye. It was huge, bigger than anyplace Julie had ever been before, bigger than anyplace needed to be. Sunlight poured through a glass ceiling at least a hundred feet above her head. The floor was tiled, the wide path bordered on both sides by long, low boxes of plants. On either side of the garden space walls rose, five floors high with balconies, to meet the ceiling.
Beth twisted a ripe tomato from the box to her right and handed it to Julie. “This is where we grow our food,” she said. “We can have that for lunch.”
The air was thick with moisture and oxygen. It tasted cleaner and more natural than anything Julie had ever sucked into her lungs. She was dizzy.
“Let’s sit down for a minute.” Beth claimed a bench off to one side of the path. “It takes a little getting used to.” She handed Julie a bottle of water. “I told you you wouldn’t need a coat.”
Julie drank the cool water and closed her eyes until her head was less swimmy. Beth took the empty bottle back and tucked it into her bag. “Do you know where you are now?” she said.
Doors and huge glass windows led into empty storefronts all around them. “We’re in one of the ghost malls.”
Beth patted her leg. “Let’s go see Neha. Dr Shah.”
Dr Shah’s office was on the second level. It was small and plain, but, with its glass front wall overlooking the mall’s courtyard garden, the doctor had a hell of a view. Beth tapped on the glass, and the little woman beckoned them in.
“Tea?” she said.
Julie nodded dumbly.
Dr Shah slid cups in front of them and sat back behind the desk. She laced her fingers and rested her hands on the clean surface in front of her. “Welcome to Ark Four.”
“Like Noah’s Ark?”
“Minus the water and the religion, perhaps. We are a secret. One that you are most lucky to know.”
“Because of Gretchen.”
“Dr Frost is one of our founders, although she’s chosen not to work on site.”
“You called this Ark Four.”
“Of seven. There are more planned. The mission to PC may save humanity but will do nothing for the people remaining. The tower projects are little more than warehouses. Our founders see us as the last hope.” Dr Shah rubbed the bridge of her nose. “It will not be enough, of course. Many will die in the years to come.”
“So what’s the point?”
“To buy time.”
Julie laughed. “Time for what? Do you know what it’s like out there?”
“Time for you to have children, maybe,” Beth said. “And those children to have children.” She picked up her tea. “Maybe time enough to allow the world to heal, or for some of us to adapt to the new one.”
“That’s not much of a plan.”
“Not all of us can fly out of the solar system and not all of us want to.” Dr Shah stood. “It makes a good deal more sense than riding around in cars until you get cancer or freeze to death.”
“We didn’t know this was an option.” Julie’s eyes narrowed. “And it’s not an option for most of us, is it? Gretchen would have told Ranger about it.”
“Julie…” Beth looked down at her hands as if they contained the words she was looking for. “What we’re doing here is very important and very fragile.”
“And we will do our best with it,” Dr Shah said. “Come. Let me show you our ark.”
Outside her office, Dr Shah stayed a couple of steps ahead while Beth walked right beside Julie. The doctor led the way to a balcony overlooking a courtyard. Below, a dozen men and women were tending the fruits and vegetables. “We have forty-three people living here. In time, we expect to be able to support up to two hundred families.”
The Ark residents had set up their homes in the abandoned storefronts, each apartment looking out over the garden courtyard.
“With all this up here, why do you live in the basement?” Julie asked Beth.
“To be close to my work. We’re using the subbasement for biofuel production, using bacteria to convert waste oil and sewer grease.” She wrinkled her nose. “We expect to be able to use it to trade with members of the volksgeist soon.”
