Chapter 2

I lay in my narrow bed that butted against the wall of my small, but cozy, bedroom and focused on not vomiting my dinner. My conversation with my grandparents hadn’t gone as expected and my entire body was reacting. I practiced the controlled breathing method my grandparents were such strong advocates of whenever a stressful situation occurred.

It wasn’t helping.

I was about to give in and let it all purge forth.

I was sitting up and holding a bucket to my chin when I heard a light tapping on my door. I recognized the tap. It was my grandmother.

My emotions were mixed. I wanted nothing more than to be left alone, but I also knew the distraction would take my mind off my stomach’s rebellion and possibly quell it. Besides, there was no sense in delaying the inevitable. When my grandmother set her mind on a topic, getting her to drop it was like trying to get a dog to give up a juicy bone. I heaved a deep sigh; partly out of resignation and partly to control the urge to vomit. I put the bucket onto the floor and beckoned her to enter.

Long white hair fell across her still smooth, oval shaped face as she peered cautiously around the door. Even in her advanced years, her beauty couldn’t be denied. Deep brown eyes twinkled with mischief like that of a young girl’s as she smiled that pearly white, toothy smile I knew so well.

For the most part, my grandmother was a happy sort. The hardships we endured living in such a remote and baron part of the world didn’t dampen her inherent jovial spirit. The clouding of her face during our conversation at dinner was the first scowl I recall in a long, long time. As I watched her five feet, six-inch-tall, slender frame glide into my room with such self-assured stateliness, I was reminded of a regal queen entering court.

“Are you up to a little chat, dear?” she asked, sweetly.

I knew saying ‘no’ would be meaningless so I simply nodded.

“I want you to understand the reason I withheld the fact that your grandfather and I knew your mother lived,” she continued while positioning herself in the oversized chair next to my dresser. “As you know, your mother was seriously wounded. We all saw the bullets enter her chest. She gave your grandfather and me clear instructions to make sure you were safe, should she be killed. She made us promise to follow them to the letter. When we saw her go down, we honored that promise and scooted you out of there as fast as we could. We couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her body there since we knew mutants were spotted in the area. Your grandfather sent men back for it, but it was gone. It took the better part of a year for us to discover the truth of what occurred. We contemplated telling you, but you were so young and… well, your mother was no longer herself. We felt it best to leave things as they were.”

“She explained what happened in her note,” I choked out softly.

“Did she now?” my grandmother said with a raised brow.

My throat was so strained from trying to control the hurt I felt over my mother’s abandonment of us -and perhaps my grandparent’s apparent abandonment of my mother- that I could barely swallow, let alone speak again.

“Then you understand why we think it’s best to simply go on as normal,” my grandmother said as she stood up to leave.

“She knew where I was and didn’t want me. She didn’t want any of us. She left us here in this devastated hell while she lived in a lush underground kingdom,” I said. “I hate her.”

My grandmother moved to my side and held me close.

“Your mother hasn’t been the same since the shooting. Try to remember that. The mother you knew and loved is no more. Remember her, love her, but don’t expect her to return. She’s gone,” she said with soothing authority.

“She wants me to go with her now. After all these years, she’s finally decided she wants me with her,” I moaned.

“That can’t happen,” my grandmother said with a shake of her head and an icy tone. “Forget about it,” she continued insistently as she patted my cheek. “Now, get some rest. Tomorrow is a new day and all will look differently for you.” As she started to leave, she stopped with her hand on the door and looked at me. “We’ll work in the garden tomorrow. I have some new lessons for you.”

“Did you ever contact her?” I asked, wistfully.

“Your grandfather has had a few dealings with her,” she replied.

“She said she doesn’t know our whereabouts,” I mused.

“There’s a good reason for that, my child,” she said.

“How can you contact her and keep our whereabouts a secret? I don’t understand,” I said.

“There’s a force field of sorts around us,” she explained with reluctance. “If she really wanted to find us, she would. She has the ability. Now get some sleep.”

I watched her gently pull the door closed and rolled onto my side with my back to the room. It had been a long day. The hunt for that perfect picture proved grueling and arduous. That alone would have been enough to exhaust me, but the stress of running into Geo and receiving my mother’s letter on top of it put me over the edge. I was tired, cranky, and unreasonable. My grandmother was probably right. Sleep was what I needed. Tomorrow was a new day.

****

The morning proved my grandmother to be correct. I felt like myself again.

It was my intention to destroy my mother’s note, but something nagging at me in the recesses of my mind stopped me. Instead, I tucked it in the back of my underwear drawer. I was determined to forget about it.

I did fairly well at keeping the note and my mother out of my mind for the majority of the day. My grandmother filled the morning with botany lessons, which helped tremendously. I found the world of horticulture, botany, and herbology vastly interesting. I marveled over her ability to make things grow in such a baron and decrepit environment. Our little patch of home was a lush oasis in a vast desert of destruction.

I’ve been my grandmother’s student for as long as I can remember. I know the names and can identify plants that are, for the most part, long extinct in the world around me. Although, I have no idea why that would be something she wanted me to learn. She even taught me how to mix them to bring out their medicinal qualities.

When I asked her why she focused on teaching me about plants that were extinct in the world outside of our little cocoon, she simply shrugged, smiled, and said, “You never know when it will come in handy.”

My grandfather made certain we kept contact with the rest of humanity via the world wide web. It miraculously managed to survive the two minor and one major nuclear wars that occurred within the time span of fifty years. In fact, it improved. Since the minor wars occurred long before the major one took place, it gave time for the geeks of the world to prepare and create ways to save or salvage what they considered most important. The world wide web was top on their list.

Underground communities with methods of communication and transportation that exceeded that of the surface world were also created after the minor wars took place. There was speculation that the planet would be destroyed to the extent that life wouldn’t be able to exist on the surface if there was a nuclear war. Of course, that wasn’t true. The war did, however, alter the composition of much of the planet’s life. It destroyed or mutated the plants that weren’t hardy enough to withstand the toxic onslaught. This created a domino effect and the majority of the animals that remained on the surface either mutated at various intensities or were lost. In turn, this affected the survival methods of humans on the surface whose DNA was also affected by the radiation. Not only did they lose much of their humanity, but they turned to cannibalism.

The fact that the New World Order prepared in advance for the effects the nuclear war would have on the planet’s surface and were able to clean it up to the point it was livable again in a relatively short period of time was fortunate for the poor and middle class who survived the toxic onslaught without or with little mutation. The cost of retreating to an underground haven that those ‘in the know’ managed to have ready was astronomical and something only the wealthy could afford. It was this fact that made me curious about my mother. We were far from wealthy before we were separated in battle so how did she manage to live below ground? Did she have a wealthy benefactor? Were these renies wealthy protesters? Since I had no idea who saved her, there was no way of knowing.

Or was there?

Could Geo provide me with the answers that were grilling in my head? I wanted to know how my mother survived. Her letter left a lot unclear. From where I stood during Bartholomew’s army invasion, her chest was riddled with holes. How could anyone still have a heartbeat, even a minute one, after such an onslaught of bullets? Where did the renies take her when they found her? Who found her? Who were these renies? Who healed her? How did they heal her? How did she become the queen of a subterranean community? Was it simply because of her skills with horticulture and biology?

I smiled to myself at the thought of anyone being labeled a Queen. I didn’t think that antiquated type of monarchy still existed. Apparently, it did. Underground, at least.

As angry as I was over my mother’s abandonment of her own flesh and blood, I was equally curious about her. I wanted answers. I needed answers.

I knew I was going against my grandparent’s wishes and instructions but I just had to have these answers. I went to bed early and arose a few hours before the rest of the house. Packing a few necessities, I set out for the mountain to find Geo. I patted my bag as I carefully strapped it to my back. I hoped I’d find him within the day, but just in case it took longer I’d have a little water, a few toiletries, and a compact sleeping tent to get me through the night.

I had a stomach that rarely demanded sustenance. Because of this, I not only forgot to eat breakfast, I also forgot to pack food. I’d been walking about three hours when it woke up and spoke to me. Food was always plentiful in my household so hunger wasn’t something I was accustomed to. I didn’t like the sensation as I continued my search for Geo. If the drive to know more about my mother hadn’t been so strong I’d have returned home for a good meal.

It was early afternoon before I found him sitting in the shade of a thick foliaged tree on a large boulder near a clear, slow traveling stream. He had his feet submerged in the cool liquid. He was so clean I almost didn’t recognize him. In fact, if he hadn’t hailed me I might have walked right on by thinking him a stranger to avoid.

He’d removed the white soot-like dust from his body. His clean rich raven curls shone brilliant in the sun’s rays and he’d removed the hair from his face. His lack of that filthy trench coat and stinky turtleneck displayed a perfectly buff upper torso. His pants were rolled halfway up his strong, shapely calves. What an incredible transformation. Had I not grown so familiar with his sultry voice from his incessant talking while following me the other day, I think I would have refused to believe him the same person.

“You’re starting to tan,” I said uncomfortably instead of what I wanted to say, which was ‘You’re a hunk!’

“I see that,” he scowled. “This feels so good I hate to load up with all of those layers again, but at least I gave them a good wash.”

I shuffled uncomfortably under his scrutinizing gaze. His perfection magnified my imperfections to me. Because of my aversion to food, I was slender to the agonizing threat of being considered scrawny. The only things that saved me from such a stigma were my curvy hips and well developed bust. I suddenly regretted ignoring my grandmother’s pleas to eat more often and in larger quantities.

“Why aren’t you tanned? You’re as white as someone living below ground,” he said.

Phew! That was a lot better than if he’d ask why I was built like a curvy scarecrow with boobs. I smiled and reached for the small tub of my grandmother’s concoction I’d been sure to stuff in my sack.

“I use this daily,” I said as I handed it to him. “Put it on sparingly, but thoroughly.”

He reached for the tub with a nod of thanks and sniffed it as if it was something to eat. I raised my eyebrow in surprise when he mumbled the names of a few of the plants to himself before smoothing a thin layer of the goop down his arms and across his chest.

“You have to rub it in really good,” I added.

“Could you make this on your own?” he asked.

“I’ve never thought to try, but I’ve seen her do it often enough that I could probably manage,” I replied.

“This is like gold, you know,” he said as he shook the container in my direction for emphasis.

I did know. Between my grandfather’s insistence that it would be too difficult to distribute and my grandmother’s fear that it would bring too much attention to us and destroy our little world of peaceful living... or worse, bring Bartholomew’s attention to us… I’d stopped pressing the issue.

“I’ll need your help with my back,” he said matter-of-factly as he turned his back toward me and held the jar for me to dip my fingers into.

My hands trembled to the beat of my heart as I did his bidding. I’d never been this close to a man who wasn’t my grandfather. The fact that he cleaned up so well didn’t help matters. I picked up the faint scent of whatever it was he’d used to wash with. It smelled vaguely familiar. Was it Frankincense perhaps? I couldn’t tell for sure, but it blended well with his body’s inherent musky scent and left me a bit heady for a brief moment.

I shook my head as nonchalantly as I could to clear it and adjusted my waist long hair over my shoulders to help camouflage what I was actually doing. With a sigh of determination, I willed my hands to steady themselves while I smoothed my grandmother’s sunscreen all over Geo’s broad, muscular shoulders and down his narrowing back. His skin felt surprisingly cool, soft, and smooth as my palms gently pushed and kneaded the ointment into every exposed inch.

“It’s been a long time since I have been touched,” he moaned.

I pulled my hands back like they’d been burned on hot coals.

“Take it easy, princess,” he muttered with a sexy, gravel-like chuckle, “I didn’t mean anything by it other than the fact that it felt good.”

“I’m not accustomed to touching people like this,” I admitted.

He slowly surveyed our surroundings and beyond and with a quick nod and said, “I’m not surprised.” As if by second thought he continued, “How do you get it smeared all over you each day?”

“I have a… Oh no, I forgot my applicator,” I said with genuine dismay.

Without my applicator, I’d have to have assistance getting the ointment in places I couldn’t reach.

“Does that mean you’re coming with me?” he asked, hopefully.

“I came for answers,” I said, firmly. “Tell me about Sybil.”

“Sybil?” he asked with raised brow. “Do you mean your mother?”

“My mother died ten years ago. This woman is a stranger to me,” I patiently explained. “I can’t think of a woman who would abandon me for so many years without so much as a ‘how are you’ as my mother. Her name is Sybil. Sybil Camron-Merker.”

“Now, that’s a mouthful,” he said thoughtfully. “I had no idea what her real name was. No wonder everyone just calls her Majesty.”

I let out a groan and motioned for him to start talking.

“Wouldn’t you rather ask your mother?” he asked, softly.

When I vehemently shook my head, I thought I detected something in his eyes. Was it guilt? Sadness? Disapproval? I didn’t know enough about him to be sure of the emotion, but there was definitely something going on within him.

With a sigh of resignation, he invited me to sit beside him and dip my feet in the cool water while I hammered him with one question after the other. Although he answered each one as it was asked, there were times when his hesitancy made me wonder if I was getting the full truth or just a portion of it.

I discovered Geo wasn’t originally of my mother’s people. Until recently, he’d lived above ground in one of the surviving parts of the country. He made it clear that his home was far less affected and more habitable than mine. He was a member of a group that opposed Bartholomew’s tyrant ways. It was a small band of rebels that attacked and sabotaged his acts of tyranny whenever possible. One-day Geo’s band of rebels fell into an ambush. He was the only one left alive, and then just barely. His story sounded similar to my mother’s.

I outwardly winced when he lowered his waist band far enough to show me a super faint mark that he said was where a bullet passed through his gut. I inwardly battled jealousy when he informed me that one of the rebels who fought and died alongside him was his fiancé.

Silently chastising myself for being ridiculous, I continued with my chain of questions. He told me it was Sybil and a small band of her followers who found him and took him back to their underground community. Although she didn’t personally tend to him, she oversaw the treatment he received. He attributed his being alive to her wisdom and knowledge. When he was finally healed and given the go ahead to return to his home, he opted to remain and serve in her army since they seemed to be fighting for the same cause. He’d lost those he loved in the ambush and felt there was nothing to go home to anyway.

Geo freely answered my questions about what it was like to live underground. He explained how it took his eyes a while to get used to the unique lighting and his lungs to grow accustomed to the denser air. He freely admitted he preferred it on the surface and sought every opportunity to perform a task that required he spend time above ground.

It made no sense why he would remain in service to my mother below ground when he preferred it on the surface. Sure, she healed his wounds but did he owe her his life? I questioned him about it but he remained stubbornly elusive. I finally gave up and moved to a different topic.

We spent the next hour or so talking about life in his native home verses his new underground home. His land was spared much of the devastation that crippled the rest of the planet, so they didn’t have to rebuild or adjust as much. They also escaped the ordeal of dealing with mutants. I sat in awe as I listened to him tell me about the lush landscape and potable water there for the taking. It wasn’t just in small, elusive patches. It was everywhere. It didn’t sound real, and if it was real I wanted to know why they weren’t bombarded by the survivors to the point of overcrowding.

He admitted that, although many of the cities were packed beyond capacity, there were a few remote areas in the country that were still undeveloped. The majority of the people found this remoteness not to their liking or didn’t even realize it existed. It was in one of these areas that Verso was located. With a population of one thousand or so, it lacked the opportunities, conveniences, and amenities of a large city. Hamlets like Verso were often overlooked as a choice of places to live since they offered little opportunity for work and social life. Since Verso was the place of his birth, he much preferred it to that of a large city and would have happily lived out his life there.

He went on to describe my mother’s land.

Where life in Verso sounded like paradise, life in my mother’s subterranean society sounded sterile and restricted in comparison. Water wasn’t naturally potable for those who were still adapting to living under ground. It required treatment before it could be consumed by newcomers. Those who were born below or lived there for a lengthy period of time were able to tolerate the high mineral content in it, but a newly arrived surface dweller, like Geo, required it be treated before he could ingest it. When I asked him what would happen if he just drank it like the natives did, he explained the excess in minerals was too much for his digestive system to tolerate and it made him ill; sometimes to the point of vomiting.

Lighting was artificial, at a premium, and found only where the main populous lived. There were places where only candles or oil lamps provided limited illumination.

My mother managed to grow foliage of all varieties, but again it could be found only in specific places. This was for several reasons. First and foremost, oxygen was a precious commodity that they couldn’t afford to spare on plant life. The artificial environment wasn’t exactly conducive for the plant life my mother cultivated and it consumed oxygen in a manner similar to a human, rather than like a surface plant would do. Residents were actually competing for the oxygen and water with the plants. My mother called the situation a necessary evil. When I heard his description of her world, I once again was plagued with the question of why he would want to abandon life above ground for it, but I knew better than to think I’d get an answer if I pressed the issue.

Since I was a student of the same women who taught my mother the base of everything she knew about horticulture and who had encouraged her to go on to school to become a biologist, I was admittedly curious about the plant life she managed to cultivate in her subterranean world. Geo said it was similar to what was found in his land and more what was found in the world before it was hit with nuclear toxicity. She’d even managed to stumble upon some fossils of extinct plants and bring them back into existence. I wondered if any of these plants were ones I’d studied with my grandmother.

“I’ll admit I’m curious about it all,” I said, softly.

“Come back with me and quench that curiosity,” he urged.

“I don’t know if I can tolerate being underground like that,” I admitted.

He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked off into the distance toward my home and smirked.

“It can’t be any worse than here,” he said with haughty honesty.

My immediate reaction was to take offense, but I quickly put myself in check. He was right about my home. I’d often referred to it as the ‘armpit of the planet’ when begging my grandparents to move closer to civilization. It was ridiculous for me to be offended for him making a comment that I heartily agreed with.

I listened to myself tell him that I would go back with him while he held me in one of those captivating eye connections that sent my body into a tailspin. What was I thinking?

I clearly wasn’t.

Just what was it about this man that got me all twisted up inside? I felt like I was going when I should be coming and coming when I should be going. It was damned difficult to keep my head clear enough to manage the situation with caution. He’d told me just enough to peak my curiosity and now I didn’t know if I could prevent myself from following him home even if I was to listen to that nagging warning deep in my gut.

The loud grumbling from my stomach brought such color to my face it could have been mistaken for sunburn. It was well into the afternoon and I still hadn’t eaten. On top of that, I’d merely picked at my dinner the night before. I was seriously hungry.

He spared me more humiliation by saying nothing about my boisterous belly. Picking his feet from the cool stream he snickered at his water wrinkled skin, wiggled his toes, and announced he was hungry. With as much ado as one would expect to be showered on a guest in a grand home, he helped me to my feet, offered me his arm, and asked that I join him.

I was hard pressed to walk as regally as I could with my hand on his arm when all I wanted to do was shove him out of my way and race to the fire where a rabbit was roasting on a spit. Rabbits were a rarity in these parts and considered a delicacy. How he’d managed to acquire one was beyond me. At that particular moment, I didn’t care. My hunger overrode my curiosity.

It was almost painful holding myself in check. The aroma of spigot roasted rabbit permeated the air as we walked closer to his cooking camp. I wiped the saliva escaping the corners of my mouth as inconspicuously as possible. If he noticed, he was polite enough not to mention it.

Comparing the rude way I told him he stank when we first met to his polite ignorance of my loud stomach and drooling made me feel small and petty. It magnified the isolated life I’d led. I had a lot to learn about socializing with people.

“The sun will be at its hottest in a bit,” Geo uttered with a yawn. “I think it would be better to travel at night, don’t you?” Although he’d cooked the rabbit for me, he ate none of it. Even so, his hands were greasy from preparing and serving. Without waiting for me to reply he stood up and poured some water from his travel canteen over his hands and added, “Do you nap?”

I couldn’t remember the last time I slowed my body down enough to take a nap in the middle of the day. I shook my head to indicate ‘no’.

“Well, try,” he said. “I’m going over there under that tree.” He pointed to a tree thick with foliage that would provide sufficient shade during the sun’s hottest peak and then moved his finger toward the rocks behind us. “There’s a small overhang up there that should work for you. It should catch the breeze as well.”

He handed me the canteen so I could follow suit and clean my hands before heading off for his afternoon siesta. I shrugged my shoulders as I carefully replaced the cap over the canteen’s opening and set it down next to his supply pack. It suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t noticed this pack when we’d met on the road. I made a mental note to ask him about it and then headed off toward the spot he indicated.