I was confused. “If they are alive, why do you call them
decayed ones?
“When the asteroid hit, there were a select number of humans who became disfigured from the radiation. Their eyes would not be like yours and mine. Their skin melted and their eyes dropped down into their cheeks. Or they developed hunchbacks and so on. You get the picture, right?”
“Yeah.” I got the picture all right. Now I wished I wouldn’t have asked what they were. And now, I understood why she didn’t tell me about them.
“Anyway,” she went on, “part of their brains fried along with other parts of their bodies and their mind’s no longer function normally. Their speech is limited and they can’t write a lot—childlike, really. Like an adult with the mind of a child. They’re malicious—violent. They too eat humans but unlike cannibals, they will torture you first.
Most cannibals still have a sound mind. If they had the nourishment that they needed, they wouldn’t kill at all. And cannibals will always kill you first before they feed on you. Not the decayed ones, they eat you alive. They enjoy watching a person squirm up until they take their very last breath.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“Once.” Then she quickly changed the subject. “We’re here.”
I walked into my room and sat down on my bed. “It’s good to be back.” I smiled.
“I’m going to go get you some food, okay. Stay here,” my mother commanded as she walked out the door.
She returned minutes later with a tray full of food. She handed me the tray then went off to find my father. I took a few bites, but after all the talk about cannibals and the decayed ones, I was having a really hard time finding my appetite.
When Frankie got home from school she spent some time with me before dinner. She tried to entertain me, to snap me out of my sullen mood. Doing her famous Mrs. Edwards impression, she plugged her nose and raised her voice up a level. “Now students,” Frankie mocked, “everyone turn your textbooks to page two!” I giggled softly, pretending to find her impression funny. Normally I would be laughing so hard I’d have a hard time breathing. But not today.
My accident had sparked a change in me. A change that I couldn’t explain. There were times where I wanted to be the old me, with my obedient yet sarcastic attitude, and the old me who thought about living life to the fullest extent and making the best of what my life had become. I had to face it, the old version of me was gone. And I didn’t know when or if that version of me would ever come back.
Later on that night, while my family was sound asleep. I lied awake, listening to the sound of Frankie’s soft snoring. I’d dozed off several times since everyone went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep soundly for some reason. My legs were restless, trembling, and twitching while I tossed and turned, so I decided that a walk down the hall might do me some good.
On my feet, I took one last look at Frankie as she thrashed, rolled over and yelled, “French Fries!” in her sleep.
I caught
myself laughing and held my breath for a moment. “Yeah,
Frankie,” I mouthed. “I miss French Fries too.”
After observing her for another minute, I assured myself that she wasn’t going to wake up. Then I tiptoed quietly toward the door.
Standing in the hall, I paused briefly before continuing. What if I get caught? I glanced back at my empty bed. Once I was up, I was up. There was no way I could go back to sleep now. If I got caught, I’d just explain that I was feeling a little off and needed to take a walk.
The hallway was so quiet, the soft thudding from my bare feet sounded loud. How would I explain the dirt on my feet to my mother tomorrow morning? Sometimes, pieces of the dirt wall fell off onto the concrete. I knew she would question it. I hatched a plan about making up some story that I heard something in hall and went to check it out.
As I strolled forward, dimly lit flames from the candles perched along the wall danced along the border and kept me from being submerged in total darkness. The darkness frightened me. Mainly because I it disabled me from using one of the most important senses: Sight. How can a person form a plan of action if they couldn’t see what they were in for?
During the early days of colony life, we didn’t have candles in the hall and only a few lights that my father set up using a couple of our generators and several that the gatherers found when they were out searching for supplies. I never left my room back then. I didn’t want to get lost. Our home was still new and that brought fear and uncertainty.
After walking the entire length of the hallway, I stood at the entrance to the mess hall, gazing out into the black abyss of nothingness. I realized that tomorrow, I would be back there, at my usual table, sitting next to Grace and Colin.
Colin….
I wondered how he would act toward me when he saw me again. If I based that on our last encounter, tomorrow was going to be awkward. And it was because of that last encounter that I came to the conclusion that Colin Martin wasn’t going to be of any help to me when it came to my absent memories.
Turning to go back to my room, I was caught off guard by the sound of footsteps plodding against the concrete floor. Panicking, I spun around in a circle. I needed to find a hiding place until I could confirm who was walking down the hall. I squinted at the boulder covering the hole. I wasn’t strong enough to push it yet, and pushing that massive rock would make more noise than I wanted anyway.
The open doorways that lined each side of the hall wouldn’t work either. I blanched when I thought of walking through a door and waking up a sleeping family. And not only that, but I’d be in so much trouble for being out of bed after hours.
The sound of the footsteps grew louder and were accompanied by a whispering voice. “Shhh!” a deep manly voice said. “Not yet!”
If I ran forward, they would see me for sure. If the footsteps and voices belonged to any of the council members I would be punished for being out of bed after curfew. The men around here weren’t as lenient as the women. Glancing over my shoulder, I centered on the mess hall.