Forager

“One hundred years ago, this world was ravaged by the disease of pollution. The waters became sludge where no life could live. Contaminants in the soil made it impossible to grow food. Earthquakes broke gas lines and brought down roadways. In the shortages that followed, mankind unleashed the Great War, a desperate battle for sustenance. Radiation from bombs and chemical warfare made the land virtually unrecognizable.

As the air was fouled with fumes from war machines, some people began to change. Their skin, deprived of the life-giving pigmentation from the sun, became deathly pale. The foreign substances in the air caused people’s eyes to turn red and watery. Their teeth became gnarled from lack of care, and were said to be able to tear through human flesh. Those who had changed began to terrorize the others, forcing them to flee into colonies hidden away in remote parts of the world. 

And that is why we must never go into the city. Those who changed are still out there, just waiting for those of us who are safe to go astray. Though it is hard to live in the Pod, adversity will make us stronger.”

Elder Clapman finished his daily speech, his deep, booming voice echoing throughout the cafeteria. Everyone clapped loudly as he smiled and bowed. 

I gripped my spoon more tightly, grimacing into my bowl of berries and roots. Andy, my sister, nudged me and gave me a warning look. I clapped perfunctorily for a few seconds, then stopped. 

Everyone got up and made ready to leave, the adults to their jobs and the children to school. I walked eagerly towards the airlock at the front of the building.

“Sandra, where are you going?” Andy asked. “We have school.”

“It’s my foraging day, remember?” I replied. 

Her face fell. 

“Come on, Andy,” I said. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“I wish I could go with you,” she replied, looking towards the airlock. I bit my lip, guilt writhing in my gut. 

Andy had never left the Pod in her whole life. Life in the Pod was tedious for everyone, but it had to be doubly bad for her. I looked forward to my weekly foraging days more than anything else. I’d been given the foraging job for my ability to spot things that others missed, something I’d inherited from my mother, but Andy had no excuse for going outside. 

“You’ve got that history test today,” I said, trying to sound encouraging. “I bet you’ll ace it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course I will,” she replied. 

She wasn’t trying to sound pretentious. Not only was Andy smart, but the test was on the events from the story we’d been told that morning, a story we heard every day.

“I gotta go,” I told her. She turned and trudged slowly down the hall towards the classroom. I felt like a complete jerk.

I made sure that the cuffs of my khaki suit were tucked into my gloves and hiking boots, and that my helmet was locked securely. During daylight hours, everyone in the Pod wore this uniform. Elder Clapman cautioned us never to remove the suit, due to the possibility of contamination within the building. Only our sleeping quarters were safe since the hallway leading to the rooms had an airlock and a decontamination device that constantly re-circulated clean air.

The Elder himself met me at the door as I was about to leave. 

“Make sure, Sandra, that you don’t stray too far from the Pod,” he instructed. I caught the warning note in his voice even through the helmet. I nodded curtly.

Many months before, Elder Clapman had spotted me staring out at the city from a hill very close to city limits, and well outside the five mile radius. He’d told me sharply to follow him home. I’d been subjected to a disciplinary hearing from the council for being too close to the city. I’d gotten off with a warning, but they’d told me that if it ever happened again, I would have to spend time in the Cell. It was a dank and filthy little room where they kept rule breakers for a time. The incident still rankled me.

At only nine in the morning, the heat was already intense. I headed into the trees and rocks surrounding the Pod, creeping carefully over the carpet of pine needles, sagebrush and weeds, pausing occasionally to pick up a mushroom or a tiny pine nut. 

I headed to the patches of wild strawberries next. They were finally ripe and ready for the picking, so I gathered several handfuls. Then I checked the snares. I’d caught three rabbits and a decent amount of quail. Finally, I finished at a nearby stream, filling up several canteens to the brim and strapping them to my belt. 

The stream lay at the very edge of the five mile radius, close to the small hill where I’d looked out at the city. With a defiant look back at the Pod, I scurried down to the hilltop and ducked behind a rock. As I stared out at the glass and metal buildings in the distance, I wondered for the millionth time what life had been like here when the city was busy and populated. Given its size and proximity to the ocean, several thousand people had lived here. They must have loved to go to the beach, when it still existed. 

Despite the threat of the Cell, the yearning to travel into the city threatened to overwhelm me most days. The story of the war and the changed people had scared me as a child, but when I learned that the monsters had once been human, my curiosity began to overtake my fear. I began to question everything.

The valley seemed like a better place to try to survive than the foothills and slopes of the mountains. Why else would people have built an entire city there? I’d seen the ruins of a few homes among the mountains, but most of the people who used to live here had settled in the city.

I thought of my father, who used to ask the very same questions. He’d been taken by a fever when I was just six years old. Mother had foraged before me, but a snake had bitten her while she was out one day, and the poison took her. Without the antidotes that used to be abundant, she’d died. At just ten years old, I’d become my sister’s guardian. Though Elder Clapman had offered to help raise her, I always felt somehow that it wasn’t what mother and father wanted. Only Andy kept me from straying into the city and leaving the Pod forever.

As I gazed out at the city, a bunch of crows suddenly flew up from a cluster of palm trees. They were clearly startled as they soared into the sky, squawking loudly. 

My breath caught in my throat. In all my days of looking out at the city, I’d never seen anything that startled me. I peered more closely. Sure enough, the underbrush near the cluster of palms moved slightly.

I took half a step forward, still crouching low. The slope that led down to the city wasn’t that steep. 

I took another step. And another. 

Pausing, I glanced back. I could just barely see the domed roof of the Pod. For a moment, I hesitated, the thought of the Cell looming in my mind.

No, I told myself. Even if they put me in the Cell, I had to know for myself who, or what, was in the city.

I assured myself by remembering that my muscles were strong from the days spent roving the mountainside. I could keep up a running pace for several minutes before tiring enough to walk. 

I jogged the last few feet down to the valley. 

Silence pressed upon me as I passed crumbling houses covered in ivy. Small animals scurried across the road as I passed, eyeing me suspiciously. 

In the distance, I could see the huge buildings reaching up to the sky, the glass facades broken and stained with years of age. Twisted metal jutted out of some, the results of the Great War that had ravaged the city. The roads remained, though tree roots and grass burst through cracks in the pavement. The only sound in the desolation was the occasional chirping of a bird or the distant buzz of insects in the hills. 

I turned down another road that seemed to lead to the buildings in the distance. These structures fascinated me, the way they stretched so high into the sky. I wanted desperately to stand next to one, to see how tall it really was, to go inside and imagine what it must have looked like before the Great War. 

Ancient cars lined the road, some rolled up onto the old sidewalk, all of them rusted with the years. I peered into one and drew back in horror as a racoon poked its masked face out of the open window at me. 

The incident made me walk a little faster. It was just a racoon, I chided myself. 

I turned a corner and came to a road lined with palm trees. My heart began to pound in my throat as I walked slowly down the weed-covered road, looking left and right for any sign of movement. 

At the end of the road, I found a cluster of overgrown bushes. White splatters covered the leaves, clear evidence of the departing birds. In the time it had taken me to climb down the mountain and enter the city, the person or...thing would have had plenty of time to get away. 

Disappointed, I turned around. My heart stopped. Standing in the middle of the road was a man, about my height. He wore the exact same clothing as me, but no helmet.

Worry overtook my panic. He must have somehow escaped from the Pod, but I’d never heard of such a thing. No one left the Pod without Elder Clapman’s permission.

“Where is your helmet?” I shouted, trotting closer to him. The man didn’t move or flinch as I came close. I noticed that his green eyes didn’t contain even a slight trace of red. His hair was shaggy and he sported a short beard, but his skin was clear and smooth, not deathly pale at all. I concluded immediately that he was definitely someone from the Pod. 

He shrugged good-naturedly when I came within speaking distance. 

“Don’t need it,” he replied. 

“Of course you need it!” I shot back. “The air isn’t breathable!”

He shrugged. 

“See for yourself.”

“What...you mean, take off my helmet?”

He nodded. 

“I guess you think I’m really stupid.”

“It’s your choice,” he replied. “But how do you think I’m breathing right now?”

“How did you leave the Pod?” I asked, ignoring his question.

The change in tack didn’t even seem to phase him. 

“The Pod?” he asked. “You mean that weird dome up in the mountains?”

Though I’d described the Pod as weird many times, I couldn’t help but feel a little offended. 

“How did you leave the Pod?” I pressed. “How long have you been in the city?”

He gave me a long stare. “I don’t come from the Pod. I’m from a settlement further south of here. I came here just this morning.”

I frowned in confusion. 

“But how can you just walk around here?” I asked. “The changed people could kill you.”

“The changed people?”

“The people who reacted to the pollution,” I said, my voice rising in pitch. “They have pale skin and red eyes…”

He shrugged. “I heard that happened a long time ago, when the pollution was really bad,” he replied. “But no one like that exists anymore.”

“But…”

I trailed off, my head swimming. This man contradicted everything, absolutely everything I knew to be true. 

“Look, what’s your name?” he asked. 

“Sandra,” I replied. “What’s yours?”

He smiled. “Owen.”

We regarded each other silently for a moment. Then slowly, I reached up and released the airtight lock on my helmet and took it off.

So many smells! In the Pod, the only smells were the cooking of food, the stale, re-circulated air and the odor of too many bodies in one place. Out here, I picked up a faint tang in the air, the cloying scent of the greenery, the metallic odor of sun reflecting off of glass and metal. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. 

“That’s the ocean you smell,” he said. 

I shook my head slowly. “How is this possible?” 

“It’s been a hundred years since the war,” he replied. “My family and I, and the others in our group, we’ve planted trees and other things that helped clean the soil. We got the trash out of the ocean and other water supplies. When you get rid of the pollutants, the environment can go back to normal. It takes a while, but it works.”

It sounded absolutely crazy, but somehow more believable than Elder Clapman’s daily cautionary tale. 

“What do you know about the Pod?” I asked.

“We thought it was abandoned,” he said. “We were going to explore it in a few days.”

“No,” I replied sharply. Owen raised his eyebrows. 

“They won’t take kindly to outsiders,” I explained. “Elder Clapman doesn’t encourage exploring the outside world.”

“And yet, here you are,” he pointed out, his lips quirking into a smile. 

“I was foraging, and I saw you,” I said. “I mean, I saw the birds you startled. I’ve never seen any disturbances like that in the city, and I wanted to know what scared them.”

He looked confused for a moment, then shrugged. 

“Why do they allow you to forage? It sounds like they don’t want anyone leaving.”

“I’m good at it, and we need the food,” I replied. 

“Do you...want to leave? Permanently, I mean?”

I hesitated. 

“My sister is in the Pod,” I replied. “I do want to leave, but I can’t leave without her.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

Both of us spun to the left where the growling voice had sounded.

“Elder Clapman?”

I stared at him in stunned silence. Even with his helmet covering his head, I could tell it was him by the simple star insignia on the front of his suit.

He yanked off his helmet and I yelped. Bloodshot red eyes stared out from a skull-like, white face. His bald head made him look even more like a living corpse. 

“You need to come with me now,” he growled. 

Like some sort of morbid puzzle, the pieces fell into place with horrifying clarity. 

“You knew…” I murmured faintly.. “You knew that the air was clean. We had to wear helmets all the time...so you could hide.”

“We couldn’t very well have you and your sister running off, now could we?” he sneered. “You’re the last of your kind, and I’m not letting you go. I told you not to go into the city. Just like your mother and father, always questioning, always nosing around!”

His eyes bulged alarmingly.

“My kind?”

“The immune,” he snapped. “Your parents and grandparents, all of your ancestors were immune. There used to be more of you, but all of you Nosy Neds figured out what we were, and why we needed you. None of you seem to be capable of minding your own business!”

I stared at him, mouth agape. The monthly blood draws...he’d told us that everyone in the Pod got them to check for any contamination in the blood, but clearly everyone in the Pod was just like him. It had to be the reason they went along with his lunatic whims. Panic clutched my heart as I thought of my sister, alone in the Pod with dozens of other monsters like Clapman.

“My parents…” I murmured as another realization hit me. “They didn’t die the way you said they did.”

“Of course not,” he growled. “I had to get rid of them, or they’d have left with the two of you. Now you come with me, or your sister will go the same way.”

“You came down here while I foraged,” I said, realization crashing over me. “You came here before me, just in case I decided to go into the city.”

“Enough of the detective work! Let’s go!”

Adrenaline coursed through me and my fists clenched at my sides. This man...this monster, had murdered my mother and father. 

I took a step forward, ready to pummel him, but a gentle hand on my arm stopped me. I looked back to see Owen staring intently at me. He gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod towards the ground at Elder Clapman’s feet. I looked and saw a Pacific Rattler coiled in the underbrush next to the Elder’s foot. The creature’s tail shook warningly, but the Elder didn’t notice  as he turned to go back up the trail. The snake struck in a blinding flash, biting the Elder’s leg through his suit. He looked down as the snake slithered away. 

“That was a rattlesnake,” I said. “The poison takes a while to work through the system. If you run after us, it will circulate through your bloodstream faster. You’d better stay put, and maybe we’ll send help.”

“You can’t just leave me here!” he screamed. 

I looked him in the eye and shrugged. 

“Adversity will make you stronger.”