Deserted Lands (Book 2): Straight Into Darkness Read online

  “I’ll take your word for it. So, you think having a money system will help keep us from slipping back into the dark ages?”

  “I think it will help. People need something to put their faith in. Mr. Ray kind of has that wrapped up right now, but once the major crisis is past and we have to move forward with life. In seven years or so, all the food that’s stored and canned and saved… Most of it will start going bad. The City is doing a good job of preparing for that.”

  Zach took in the changes in the city as they walked and she talked. The Collectors had cleared almost all the houses inside the walls and planned walls. The population was stable. People were getting back to getting by. Resilient. The humans that remained, seemed pretty tough. The first month here, there had been a steady rise in suicides. Thank god, Lizzie hadn’t been successful.

  “Come on, they’re closing the doors.” Nev tugged at his arm.

  He broke into a jog alongside her. He loved to run with her, but a better destination would be good. Mr. Ray slammed the gavel down as they slipped into the second to the last row. It was empty, but the council meeting was well-attended.

  As someone read the minutes, Nev focused in on the meeting. Who came to these things? He and Nev were the youngest adults by a decade or so, there were a few small children, bounced on laps, but no young people in between. Every one of the twenty-five council members was a man. And all but a few appeared to be well over fifty.

  Within minutes, Zach stifled a yawn. Their arguments about how to tag the money the Collectors had brought in so that it could be validated as Provisional Utah Government currency made no difference to him. He’d keep bringing it in, and he hoped his pay would continue to provide for Nev. He fondly watched her intensity as she took in every word.

  Mannie settled in with Saj still sleeping on his chest. He pressed his lips to the toddler’s sweaty brow. He was worried about Saj’s fever, but coming home to them lit him up inside. The questions of how his absence from Lizzie’s life affected her would continue to haunt him, but it was hard for anything to bring him down when she dropped by for a visit with grand-kid in tow. And Rachael was probably right, nobody had seen any sign of the Flu in months.

  Lizzie came back down the hall. “When I was still in Bellingham…” her voice was quiet now. “We were talking on the phone. You told me you’d tell me about you and mom.”

  Well, that did it, he thought as his mood came crashing down. “I could use a drink for that one.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No. It’s part of your story, of course you want to know. It’s part of my story too—and the truth isn’t something that can be changed.”

  “If it helps,” Lizzie said. “I forgive you. There may be times I throw things back in your face, but it’s just me being nasty. I’ve done enough to others that I need forgiveness for…”

  “Yeah, I understand.”

  Lizzie gave him a hug, nestling in against Saj.

  “You were about this size when I left.” He watched Saj’s slightly wheezing breath.

  She smiled at him, uncharacteristically patient.

  He took a breath and continued. “You were older, but you were always on the small side. Meant you were more coordinated, I think. You walked early. You climbed onto things very quickly.” He brushed aside the hair on the left side of her forehead. “Here. You’ve got a scar. Running down a hill. You totally did a header and scraped up your head. Right before family pictures. Have you seen that? You’ve got a big bandage on.” He dug through his wallet and pulled out a photo torn in half leaving just him and Lizzie. He fingered the edge. “Sorry it’s torn.”

  “Some things are hard to take back.”

  “Yeah...” He slipped it carefully back in his wallet.

  He worked up the courage to go on. “I was back from Iraq. Finishing up my Ecology degree at Western Washington University. You were a loveable handful and your mom and I were learning to live together again. I was figuring out how to forget the war, and the desert, and the death. Then—

  “Then things happened. The nightmares came. Death in the desert. I started drinking again.” He pinched the bridge of his nose to take the sting out of his eyes. ”After that, your mom was always screaming.” He gave a helpless shrug.

  “Her screaming was something else,” Lizzie agreed.

  “I don’t know how I managed to finish my degree. But I did. Then I tried to find work. Got some internships that I loved, being out in the North Cascades with kids... But none of the jobs I got paid the rent, and that just led to more screaming. In the end, I don’t even know whose decision it was, I just wasn’t part of the family anymore. Eventually I hit the road. And for a good long time after that, all I can remember is drunken brawls or shooting up in some scummy restroom with whatever I was using to kill my pain. Stuff I’m glad you missed.”

  They sat in silence, until Saj fussed awake. Lizzie stood. “I’ll get him some food.”

  “Good idea.” He already missed her warmth, though Saj was more than making up for it.

  “Thanks for telling me your side.”

  Chapter Eight

  THE NEXT DAY IN CLASS LIZZIE dragged her chair closer to the exit from the classroom. It also gave her a view of the hills outside. Not much to see but the giant, white cement Y on the hillside. What was the point of the letter? The foliage around it, faded from green to gray with tufts of white snow, held her interest more than these vapid baby-makers.

  Saj had to stay home from daycare, and unfortunately, Rachael volunteered to babysit, giving Lizzie no excuse to miss happy, hungry hippo class.

  The class sat in a circle on hard plastic chairs that were killer on the tailbone. It was like being back in high school. Many of the giggling gaggle of girls opposite Lizzie looked and acted like they still belonged in high school. The class was divided into two facing semi-circles; one of girls hoping to become pregnant and another of expectant mothers in varying stages of pregnancy.

  The mothers to be were a mix of ages. One of them, an older woman that Lizzie had caught staring at her a few times, dragged her chair over to sit beside Lizzie.

  When they were all seated, Mrs. Margent spoke, “Who wants to share first today?”

  A hand shot up from the excitable wanna-be mothers across the way. “My dad said Jimmy and I can have a pre-honeymoon.”

  Lizzie almost choked on a laugh, and covered it with a cough. It’s like I’m starring in my very own reality web-show.

  Another hand, this time from the pre-hippo group. “Nate likes that my boobs are getting big.” Lizzie wished her boobs would somehow shrink—the last thing she needed was bigger boobs. But she was pregnant. She already had a stock of bulky sweatshirts stashed in her closet in anticipation of the inevitable.

  Lizzie stared back out the window as more comments were added to the mix, some less ridiculous.

  “I felt the baby move this weekend.”

  “I can’t wait until my baby’s in my arms.”

  Lizzie wrote lyrics on her notebook. Or were they just poetry until she could set them to music? If and when she ever did.

  Sitting in a circle, spilling all our guts

  Never really sharing, never really caring

  I see all their faces, but they don’t see me

  Never really baring souls, always ever staring

  Smiling happy faces, holding hands and glancing

  Saving selves for marriage

  Lizzie scratched a single red line through the phrase. Unless that was ironic.

  “Next,” the teacher asked. “Betsy?”

  “Pass,” said the woman next to her.

  “Elizabeth?”

  Betsy hissed, “Lizzie?”

  “Huh?” Lizzie glanced up from writing down makes my mind start swearing in her notebook.

  Mrs. Margent arched her eyebrows. “Anything you’d like to share, Elizabeth?”

  Everyone was watching Lizzie now. Someone tittered. “I stopped puking, I think. Now Saj has go
t a snot-cold, so he coughs until he pukes. Oh, and his shit is really stinky and blackish green.”

  The classroom fell silent, and Lizzie delighted in their sudden discomfort. Some of the girls’ faces were green tinged. Betsy’s mouth twitched.

  “Well.” Mrs. Margent recovered. “Before I forget, Mr. Ray, our future Mayor, will be visiting us this afternoon.”

  Ray was running for Mayor of Provo, looking for an official endorsement of his leadership. As far as Lizzie knew, no one was running against him. How perfectly democratic.

  “Let’s get back to our seats and prepare for our quiz on potential pregnancy side effects.”

  “Pregnancy is an effing side effect,” Lizzie muttered as she stood and lifted her chair. Betsy snickered. Lizzie couldn’t help but grin as they went back to their tables.

  The first thing she did when settled into her seat was to pull out her sketchbook and set it beside her notebook. Her pen etched in the shading around the belly on the pregnant nude she was working on. It was totally on topic for the class.

  The clock on the wall was nowhere near calling an end to her misery. Like the world never ended and she was still trapped in high school, forever. She didn’t need this stupid class—real life was the only class she needed. Saj and the new baby would teach her everything she needed to know.

  “Lizzie?” Betsy whispered, leaning over her desk.

  Betsy tilted her head toward the door and spoke more loudly, “Excuse me, Mrs. Margent, could I go to the ladies’ room?”

  “Certainly, Mrs. Krieg.”

  Lizzie’s hand shot up. “May I go, too?”

  The teacher nodded, distracted by a non-cooperative projector. Lizzie jumped up and turned to go, as the projector clicked on and displayed a giant cervix on the screen.

  Betsy held the door as Lizzie slid past. Her eyes sparkled with mischief like the giant diamond ring on Betsy’s hand. As soon as Lizzie was through the door they sighed together as if they’d timed it.

  Lizzie giggled and then slapped a hand over her mouth. “Ugh. Sorry. I am starting to sound like those inane girls—thanks for getting me out of there.”

  “Why are you sorry? There is so much to giggle about!” Betsy pasted on an extra dopey grin.

  “Like—I know!” Lizzie said in her best sing-songy airhead voice. “I’m Lizzie by the way.”

  “I know. What I don’t know is how much of this are we supposed to be able to take.”

  “Yeah. I just keep staring at the Y on the hill and wondering why the hell it’s there.”

  “It was supposed to say BYU, but they ran out of energy. A few years back, some enterprising folks took up seven big buckets of colored paint and poured it down in stripes. It was rainbow colored for most of a week.”

  Lizzie could see a fire in her eyes. “Was one of those enterprising folks named Betsy, Mrs.—?”

  “Krieg, Betsy Krieg, the one and only. But not Mrs. No, definitely not!”

  “Okay, Betsy, not Mrs., where to now?”

  “Well, I really did have to pee, and I wanted to talk to you. You never stick around long enough to chat. Not many of the others have brains enough for conversation.”

  “Yeah, I feel pretty much like the only girl in there who isn’t ecstatically pregnant.”

  “Well, I’m not a girl, but ecstasy had very little to do with my pregnancy.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “No. Don’t be. It’s just that it was planned. Right down to the smallest detail. My wife’s egg, a mutual friend’s sperm. All mixed together in a cute little petri dish.” Her smile held more pain than Lizzie had noticed before. “A miracle,” she said dryly, “or an abomination.”

  “Well, congratulations. You’re giving birth to the new generation,” she spouted the propaganda.

  “Thanks,” Betsy said.

  “I kind of wish someone had made a conscious choice to have me. I was the happy accident that paved the highway to hell.”

  Betsy took Lizzie’s arm and led her toward the bathroom. “Are congratulations in order for you?”

  Lizzie puffed out her cheeks and told the story of her one night stand with Zach and the current level of aftermath.

  Betsy placed a comforting hand on Lizzie’s shoulders. “And I thought I had problems.”

  “I think we’re all going to be okay. I mean we go back to middle school as friends.”

  “And you all survived?” Betsy’s eyes pressed into Lizzie. “That is really strange.”

  Lizzie pushed open the door to the girl’s restroom and held it for Betsy. “What’s the deal with Mr. Ray? He seems too good to be real.”

  Betsy chuckled. “Yeah. That’s about it. Not sure that anyone has googled him to find out what the skeletons are in his closet.”

  “Where’d he come from?” Lizzie hopped up on the counter as Betsy found a stall. “Gawd. I could really use a smoke. Trips like this to the school bathroom usually ended with a smoke.”

  “Oh my god. Please don’t talk about cigarettes. I think they execute pregnant women by firing squad for smoking in this town,” Betsy said as she peed. “Mr. Ray was a school board member, former city councilman. Before that? I don’t know.”

  “And he really did walk all around Provo spreading calm? The way people describe it, you’d think he was Jesus.”

  Betsy snorted, coming out and washing her hands. “He was always there. He helped nurse the sick, buried the dead, gave us a plan to collect stuff we needed—he’s the reason I put up with all this shit.”

  Betsy’s brow knitted into a frown. “Plus, when someone started making a fuss about my sexuality, he shut it down.” Betsy turned away. “We better get back before Margent sends out a search party.”

  Back inside, the room had dimmed, Margent was showing a film on fertilization. Lizzie slid into her seat.

  As the film mentioned menstruation, Lizzie pulled out her red pen. It scraped across the paper of her notebook.

  Spewing red ink onto white paper. The blue lines like veins, running, an underground river of blood, waiting to be exposed to the air and make the parchment scarred red with slashes.

  The words didn’t satisfy her. How could any words do justice to how she felt? Hopeless. Trapped. Despair. All hollow. Black birds clawing at my eyes. Won’t let me see the death around me. Make me blind like the man in the snow. Why did her family want to stay in this place? Why were they making her stay?

  As the video ended, Mrs. Margent flipped the lights back on and cleared her throat. “Please, take out a piece of paper for the quiz.”

  The door opened and a man with thinning gray hair walked in. Mr. Ray. She understood what Betsy was talking about. He carried himself with a good-natured confidence. It was a kind of confidence that crept in and infected anyone in the same room. Even Lizzie was having a hard time shaking off the feeling that as long as he was in charge everything would be okay. She gripped her red pen tightly. It was not okay—would not be okay. Just because her body was capable of producing another human being did not mean they could take away her choices, and her freedom. Everybody is so god-dammed happy to be alive they don’t notice.

  Mr. Ray swept the room with his gaze, seeing each person. Lizzie lowered her eyes before he made eye contact, scratching a few more blood ink words to her page: Mr. Ray, I want a say, or I won’t play.

  “Well, class. Mr. Ray is here early.”

  “I try to be prompt,” Mr. Ray said, his voice a kind baritone rumble.

  “I’m sure they’re happy to see you.” Mrs. Margent squeezed his bicep. “You’re saving them from a quiz. Class, please put everything away.”

  Dammit. She raised her hand.

  “Yes, Elizabeth?”

  Lizzie put all her charm into her smile. “Can we take notes, Mrs. Margent?”

  “Mr. Ray?” Mrs. Margent deferred to him. “Would you like them to take notes?”

  Mr. Ray chuckled. “I wouldn’t mind. Though I’m not certain I’ll have anything worth taking notes about.�
�

  “Oh, I’m certain that’s not true,” Mrs. Margent said. “Please welcome, Mr. Ray to our classroom.”

  As the girls clapped; Betsy whispered, “Anyone’s better than Margent?”

  Lizzie nodded with a grin.

  “Thank you all for welcoming me into your classroom. How many of you are 18 or older?”

  Several hands shot up. After a moment, Lizzie inched her hand up halfway.

  “How many of you have ever voted?”

  The hands went down except Margent, Betsy, and a few of the other pregnant women. Lizzie wondered if school elections counted, though she’d never voted in any of those either. She’d campaigned against the Shell Oil Tankers, and promised she would vote against a lot of things. She smirked, but she kept her hand down.

  “How many of you would vote if you had the chance?”

  Half the girls raised their hands, the other half looked afraid. Afraid to have a say in how things ran, or afraid to admit they wanted it? Lizzie looked down at the red scribbles in her book. Voting was the only way she would get any say in a group like this. She stuck her hand up high this time.

  Margent’s mouth dropped in surprise, but she snapped it shut and beamed a smile of approval at Lizzie. Lizzie pulled her hand back down and rolled her eyes. It wasn’t that big a deal. How much effect could her one vote have anyway?

  “I would like to invite you all to vote. Not for me. But for whoever or whatever you care about. We’ve decided to lower the voting age to 16.”

  Excited murmurs spread through the room.

  “There will be a number of things to vote on. Our temporary charter for self-governing, officially starting up a militia and of course, government officials. Please, listen to all the people who run. Ask them questions. Vote with your hearts.”

  Lizzie held up her hand.

  Mr. Ray nodded to her. Before she could speak, he said, “Stand up. Stand up. Don’t be shy. What’s your name?”

  “Lizzie.”

  “Nice to meet you, Lizzie. What’s your question?”