In the After (14 page)

Eventually I could breathe again. I raised my head and wiped my nose. My mother gazed
at me, beaming. Tears had stained her face.

She touched my head and studied my newly cut hair. “You always did want a Mohawk,”
she said. I managed a laugh.

“Baby cut it.” It was strange to finally talk, to say Baby’s name out loud. I’d only
ever signed it. As soon as I said it, though, I noticed she was no longer clutching
my waist. I turned to find her crouching on the floor against the wall, her hands
covering her ears. I went to her quickly, bent down, and touched her arm.

“Are you okay?” I asked. Then I realized she wouldn’t understand what I was saying
and signed it instead.

She looked at me like I was a stranger.
Yes. You talked loud
, she accused.

I did Before. You know that
.

It just scared me
.

I’m sorry
. I smoothed down her hair.
We’re safe here. I promise
. I was sure.

Did the princess tell you that?

Princess?
I turned and looked at my mother with a smile.
She’s not exactly a princess. She’s my mom
.

Baby stared at me, astounded. She was as amazed as I was to see my mother in front
of us, alive. I took Baby’s hand and helped her stand up.

My mother placed her arm around my shoulder. “I have so much to tell you. Let’s go,
you and . . .”

“Baby,” I offered.

“You and Baby can come with me. I’ll show you where you’re going to live.”

“Mom, where are we?” I felt like at any moment I would wake up and discover it had
all been a dream.

“You’re in New Hope, the largest postapocalyptic community of survivors in the Northern
Hemisphere.”

I smiled at the words:
hope, survivors, community
. Baby and I followed my mother back down the corridor and into the light of day.
We were home.

We saw very little of New Hope that day. We were poked and prodded by doctors, since
my mother insisted on a complete medical evaluation. She stayed by my side the entire
time, fawning over me. It felt so good, almost unreal, having my mother back. I’d
always hoped she was alive, but after so many years, the hope had seemed more like
fantasy. My mother rubbed my back and played with my hair. She whispered how much
she’d missed me as tears welled up in her eyes.

I was in a hospital room for several hours while they took my blood and conducted
a full physical. My shoulder turned out to be sprained, and I was warned to be careful
with it for a while. Then came all the medicine. I explained shots to Baby and how
they were a good thing, despite the pain.

“Richard,” my mother told the boy from earlier. “Do a complete workup on the child.”

“Yes, of course.” He took Baby’s hand to lead her to another room.

“Wait,” I said tentatively, the word not as forceful as I had hoped with my newly
found voice. “I want to stay with her,” I insisted.

The boy smiled. “Sure. I can examine her in here, if it makes you more comfortable,”
he offered. Grateful, I gave him a faint smile back. Baby looked around uncertainly.

“It’s okay,” he told her kindly.

“She doesn’t understand you. We never spoke out loud at home. She’ll have to learn.
. . .” I paused, thinking of Amber whispering to Baby secretly. “I’m not sure if she
remembers any English. . . . It’s been a long time and she was only a toddler when
I found her.”

My mother took charge of Baby and helped her onto a hospital bed. “A lot of the children
we find don’t talk at first,” my mother told me. “They’ve learned to be quiet to survive
and have a hard time adjusting. We’ll put Baby in a language class and I’m sure she’ll
regain her ability. You’d be surprised at how strong the language instinct is in children.”
She returned to my side and hugged me close. I nodded but still wondered. Baby had
never even attempted to speak.

The boy examined every inch of Baby, pausing only for a moment at the nape of her
neck, peering closely at her scar. He glanced around quickly, placing her long hair
back over the mark. He caught my eye and for a moment I saw he was afraid, but the
look passed quickly and I wondered if it was really there at all.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“Of course,” he smiled, adjusting his glasses. “Do you know how she got this wound?”
He motioned to her leg.

“No. She had it when I found her.” I licked my lips. I was sweating, although the
room was chilly.

“Probably a dog bite,” the boy told my mother, but he called several other people
over to Baby’s bed, where they all made a commotion over the scar on her leg. My mother
examined it herself, taking photographs and measurements. I held Baby’s hand and signed
to her that everything was going to be okay, although the attention being paid to
her was making me nervous.

After they took her blood and gave her a few more shots, my mother informed us that
we were in good health, if a little malnourished. “Time to go home,” she said, stroking
my hair.

“Excuse me,” the boy addressed my mother, his tone surprisingly authoritative, “but
I believe Dr. Reynolds wanted to complete a psyche-eval.”

“It can wait,” my mother said firmly. “I’ll speak with Dr. Reynolds tomorrow about
rescheduling. Right now I am taking my daughter home.”

My mother took my hand and I took Baby’s. As we walked out of the room, I glanced
back. The boy was staring at me. He smiled, but he had a worried look in his eyes.
He raised his hand to wave. I nodded and smiled back, then turned as my mother led
us down a corridor and outside, into the sunlight. I shrank back, but she put her
arms around my shoulders and whispered, “Be strong, Amy. I’m here.”

I mostly stared at my mother’s face as we traveled in a golf cart on a short ride
to her apartment. Her building was large and white and looked like every other structure
in the town, which seemed more like a college campus with bland buildings and shabby,
weed-infested lawns.

My mother’s apartment was a few floors up. She paused as we walked in the door, hugging
me. Inside there was little furniture, but it looked cozy.

I was home.

• • •

When Dr. Thorpe comes again, I’ve been awake for what seems like several hours. My
head pounds and I know that something is very wrong. I’d tried the door, but it was
locked. Why did they need to lock me in? I don’t belong here. I’ve decided to refuse
my medication
.

“This is all for your own good. You aren’t going to get better if you continue to
refuse treatment,” she tells me
.

I stare at her, upset. “You’re drugging me. I don’t even remember how I got here.
How is this helping?” I ask. “And why is the door locked?”

“You’ve had a very traumatic experience. It’s better this way. . . . You can’t handle
everything you’ve been through. This treatment should stabilize you.”

I ignore her, focusing on a spot on the wall over her left shoulder. I hate not being
able to remember, but if I concentrate, I get flashes of memories; a small man with
silver hair, a toddler playing with a toy truck, a blue-eyed teenage boy with glasses
and shaggy, blond hair. Baby’s smile
.

I stay stubbornly motionless and eventually Dr. Thorpe sighs and puts the tray with
the pills down next to the sink
.

“I didn’t want it to come to this,” she says sadly. She leaves the room and I steel
myself for what is about to happen. I hope I am strong enough to resist
.

• • •

I sat on a couch in the living room while Baby rested her head on my lap. She’d long
since fallen asleep, after I’d talked for hours about my life in the After. How I
found Baby, how we survived. Now it was my mother’s turn.

“I was at the lab when it happened,” my mother explained. “We were on lockdown immediately.
That’s what saved us. We had a secure perimeter, electric fences, top-notch security
team. We weren’t allowed to go outside for a month. Luckily there were plenty of researchers
who lived on the compound premises. We had supplies and sleeping quarters. I tried
to call the house, but none of the outside lines were working.” She stared through
me, haunted by her memories.

“It was clear by then that the Floraes had taken over.” The people in New Hope called
the creatures “Floraes,” short for Florae-sapiens, what the remaining scientific community
had named them. “There weren’t many people left out there, in the cities and rural
areas. Maybe one in a million survived. We’d been in contact with the military research
division at this university and decided this was the best place to relocate. That
was nearly six weeks after the first Florae sighting. I . . . I ordered a search team
to look for you before we left.”

She paused and gazed at me. “When they said the electric fence was intact, but you
weren’t there, I was sure that you went with your father to the farmer’s market that
first day. If you were outside, you wouldn’t have had a chance.” She began to tear
up at the memory and I couldn’t help but cry too.
How did they miss me?
What was I doing while they searched the house, gathering cans . . . pilfering books?
If I’d only been home that night I could have avoided years of fear. I could have
been here, with my mother. But then, where would Baby be?

My mother continued through her tears. “Researchers in the private sector with facilities
on the college campus were working on a stealth helicopter for the army. You would
have been picked up in one.” I nodded, instantly understanding that this had to be
the ship. “It was incredible. They were developing a silent technology just when we
needed it. Hover-copters. We could go out to other secure facilities and bring survivors
here. We could remake society.

“After a while we sent out patrols, to check on the Floraes, to see how many were
left, what they were doing, how they were surviving. But the patrols weren’t just
finding Floraes; they were finding people, living out there in silence, just like
you. We started a program to integrate them into our systems and it’s worked amazingly
well . . . although, you were the first to ever pull a gun on my assistant.” My mother
shook her head at me, incredulous.

“He was going to take Baby away! I didn’t know what was going on yet,” I explained.

“Usually we send post-aps to an orientation to clarify things and ease people in,
but you were classified as hostile, so you were going straight to your psychological
evaluation. You should have been handcuffed and you definitely should not have had
a gun.” She was no longer amused.

“That woman, Kay, took one of our guns away as soon as she captured—I mean rescued—us.
I was fighting with her. I think she assumed we only had one.”

“It doesn’t matter what she assumed, she knows that she should search everyone, even
children,” my mother said firmly. Her tone again pulled me back to my memories of
her, how she was always the stern one. She sent me to my room when I was bad as a
child and it was always my dad who let me out after she went to work.

“You know, it scared the hell out of us, that hover-copter thing and the secret agents
in their black suits. We thought they were the aliens, a new kind sent after the first.

My mother blinked at me. “You thought the Guardians were aliens?”

“They don’t exactly look human. What are those black suits they wear?”

“It’s a protective fabric. . . . They scared you?” she asked, concerned.

“Yeah, I mean, if you’re looking for survivors you might want to write something on
the side of the copter like ‘we’re here to rescue you, don’t try to shoot us’ or even
just a symbol that everyone knows, like a peace sign or smiley face or something,”
I said.

My mother put her hand on my head and stroked my short hair. “We’ll certainly take
that under consideration,” she said. “You know, I thought about you every day, Amy.
I had the security team bring me a photo album from the house. Would you like to look
through it?”

“I would, but I’m exhausted.” And the memories were still too much.

“You and Baby can sleep in Adam’s room,” my mother told me.

“Who’s Adam?”

My mother took a deep breath and sighed uneasily. “He’s my child, Amy . . . your brother.”

“Oh.” It was too weird. “How old is he?”

“Two.” She held my hand. “He’s two years old.”

I stared at the floor, suddenly furious. “You didn’t waste any time,” I mumbled.

My mother sighed. She took my head in her hands and made me look into her eyes. “It’s
not how it seems. I know you’re exhausted now. If you want to get some sleep, I can
explain everything tomorrow.”

“Do, um, I have a stepfather?” I asked, feeling shaken to my core. My face burned.

“No . . .” My mother shook her head. “There’s only me and Adam.” She put her hand
on my cheek. “And now you.” She looked as if she was about to cry again.

I didn’t want to see her sad. “Can I meet him?” I asked, the bitterness gone from
my voice.