Lucie's Promise

Lucie

As she finishes collecting the water from the creek, Lucie rises and checks her energy level; was today the day she got the tired?

She was only three when the pandemic happened. Lucie doesn't remember much from before, but she remembers things weren't always this bleak, this dire.

Before she died, her momma told Lucie the earth was everyone's mother. And like with people, the planet got sick. When sick, momma earth needed downtime. So that was the tragic logic behind the virus. Folks got sick and tired, many of them withered away to nothing, literally sleeping themselves to death as the doctors scrambled to find a cure.

Lucie stands, begins testing her muscles. They felt heavier today. That was one of the symptoms. But were her limbs heavy because she had the tired or because she and her brothers had dug the new latrine yesterday?

She looks towards the hills past the coop. Was this the day she should fulfill the promise she had made to her dying mother? The sky is the same mustard yellow, but the dismal cloud cover is somewhat subdued. She can sense a vague lightening of the sky to the east. She knows it is the sun rising behind the heavy blanket of yellow air. No one has seen it in years.

Her heart skips a beat when she sees the apple trees are bearing fruit. Not one of their three sickly trees produced anything last year. She cautions herself not to be optimistic. She walks to the tree, sets her bucket down, pulls out her knife, and plucks a small apple from the lowest branch. Lucie shuts her eyes as she prays a quick prayer. She had missed apples.

She cuts into the apple; the rancid smell makes her gag. There was a worm in the tiny apple, but it was bloated and dead.

An idea forms in Lucie's brain - the heaviness in her isn't from digging the latrine. She believes she has the tired. She closes her eyes, prays for strength, and touches the heart-shaped locket.

Last fall, after Zeke had broken his clavicle, Lucie thought she had caught the tired. She had gone to see the woman then. But it wasn't the virus; it was the arrival of her first menstrual cycle.

On her deathbed, Lucie's mother had clasped the locket around Lucie's pale neck and made her promise never to take it off, never open it, and when the virus found Lucie, she was to go to the woman who lives in the valley past the third hill beyond the coop. The time for fulfilling her promise had arrived, but Lucie had a problem.

-

Lucie remembers it wasn't a woman who answered the door last fall. It had been a man and his daughter. The daughter, Melinda, had shown Lucie what she needed to during her monthly cycle.

"She's dead?" Lucie said repeatedly. She had gone numb and was unable to hear either of them.

How could she keep her promise now?

---

Lucie's World

It was the pandemic that had started everything.

The 'tired' is what they called it. The virus caused billions to sleep themselves to death. As deaths go, dying in one's sleep would seem a desirable exit. It was the whimper, not the bang.

-

Then the political rift that lay hidden in the very fabric of the nation reared its ugly head. The result was another civil war. Both sides were highly polarized, and the notion of compromise was anathema. There was no give-and-take. Both sides dove deeper into their entrenched positions. The result of this inflexibility was violence, ugly, raw, violence.

-

With complete environmental collapse looming, and news of fresh ecological disasters every day, there no longer was any debate over climate change. The only sticking point was whether humans had in any way accelerated or added to the natural cycles of warming and cooling. That was still a fine and stupid point that people were willing to fight and die debating.

The country divided itself not along anything as prosaic as north and south. The dividing lines were everywhere.

-

When the internet failed, the United States dissolved. For a while, the states tried to step up and be a new authority. That worked about as well as one might expect it to, which is not at all. When things started going sour, they didn't mess around in getting there as quickly as possible. There had been too many asymmetries in place for it not to.

Small communities popped up. Violence was rampant and unchecked. Law and order had given way to a 'might makes right' mindset. Everyone carried a gun.

---

Lucie's Walk

Lucie packed her bag. She knew she would be gone for several nights, so she sits down with her brothers. They were identical twins, eight years old, and she had to leave them for a spell. It was too dangerous to bring them.

The conventional wisdom had been that it was selfish to have children in these times since the tired and the war and the fall. That was what her teachers at school stressed.

Once Lucie had asked her mom about why she'd had Zach and Zeke. Her mom didn't answer.

Later, Lucie learned why. Things had changed. Men were different now, not all men, but enough to make every woman think twice about walking anywhere alone. Her mom had turned away quickly, but not quick enough for Lucie to miss seeing the tears.

-

"But you said Auntie had died," Zeke says.

"Ma said she had people. Maybe one of them can help me," Lucie says.

Her brothers approach and hug her fiercely.

There was something about their blood type that meant neither of them would ever contract the tired.

Lucie pushes both her brothers back a bit, studies their faces, remembering them for later.

"You boys take care of the place. Zeke, clean the coop soon. We need a new water filter. So you both go to trading day tomorrow. Don't let Clem take advantage of you. You can trade up to three cans of the pickled beans, but no more. He'll act like he can't go so low, but he'll come round if you both stand firm. Got it?"

The boys wipe their eyes and nod in their bizarre synchronized fashion.

"Ma would be so proud of you both." Lucie had made a practice of saying such things to the twins ever since she'd asked her careless question years ago.

---

Lucie's Peril

Lucie stops and looks again at the map the man in the blue tent had drawn for her. She thinks she is lost.

She is exhausted. She doesn't want to take a nap; she needs to take a nap. But she knows that only accelerates the tired, so she keeps moving as her limbs slowly fill with lead. Her head is an enormous boulder.

-

She stops again. Each step is more taxing than the previous.

Lucie hears a dry crack from behind. She turns.

There in front of her is, she knows, without doubt, the father of her two brothers. She is sure of it.

She reaches for the pistol. Only to remember that she had thrown the heavy thing away yesterday. The act had left her so buoyant that she foolishly discarded most of what she was carrying, even the little foil packets of dried veggies that weighed no more than a hummingbird egg.

-

Lucie is too tired to run away. And she sees her momma's fate rising to meet her.

-

She must be hallucinating or dreaming. Somehow her mother is there, wearing the same hooded cloak, carrying her trusted walking stick. She deftly hooks and sweeps the man's legs out from under him. He does a complete flip in mid-air before landing on his shoulder. Lucie hears the loud snap of bones and thinks, 'clavicle.'

The hooded figure doesn't cease her attack. She continues to rain down a flurry of flashing blows with her staff as the man struggles to crawl away on his back. He whimpers and pleads for mercy.

The cloak stops the spinning staff, then pulls the longest knife Lucie has ever seen from some secret pocket.

Slowly her hero leans forward and delicately slashes the air in front of the man's groin. He receives the message. He will not die today. But then he starts crying, and Lucie finds herself feeling sorry for her would-be attacker.

The cloak walks both of them away.

-

The hooded figure isn't her momma's ghost; it wasn't even a woman. It was a strong, not-tall man. With one arm over his shoulder, Lucie could walk without feeling like she was melting into the earth.

---

Lucie's Promise

"You were looking for my sister?" the cloaked figure asks Lucie when she wakes by a tiny campfire.

Lucie is resting in the roots of a thick tree. The man sits cross-legged on the opposite side. Lucie raises one heavy hand to her face wipes the sleep from her eyes.

Then she remembers the man, the twins' father, and how her mother had appeared. But then her mother wasn't her mother; her mother was a man who had rescued her from another man that could've been her step-father. Her head swims with the improbability of it all.

"Yes. I was looking for auntie, but she died."

The man says nothing.

Lucie says, "I promised my mother I would come to auntie, with my locket. Momma said she could save me from the tired..."

The man's eyes go wide, focussed on the locket. He steps closer.

"She was my sister," the man says, his eyes never leave the locket.

Lucie senses the man's sorrow, but even now, she would like nothing better than to shut her eyes and let the virus take her. Her limbs want nothing more than to sink into the earth.

"We go now," the man says. "My sister told me you would come."

The man lifts her into his arms. Lucie is thankful and shows her gratitude by falling asleep.

-

When she wakes, Lucie is in a bed and surrounded by softly beeping machines. She thinks she is dreaming. Now there are only two-headed baby goats, inedible apples, and orange skies; Lucie knows little of this magic - thinking the time for such marvels had passed.

"You're awake. May I?" he says, gesturing at her locket.

Lucie says nothing, so the man takes it gently from her neck. He opens the locket and removes a small, pale blue pill from it.

"Swallow, Lucie," he says, offering her the pill.

Lucie swallows.

-

When she wakes again, he is there, and so are her brothers.

"We thought your blood was the key. But it wasn't. It was the blood of your brothers," he says.

She smiles at her brothers, wonders who is taking care of their home.

"Your blood was the foundation. After you took the pill, you slept for three days. We took a blood sample, but it wasn't right. Then I remembered, my sister mentioned you had brothers. We found them. We took a small sample from them. With their blood and your's, we created a powerful medicine, a vaccine. And it works. We have already cured dozens of the tired, thanks to you and your brothers."

Lucie senses this is a 'big moment,' but she is exhausted. Not from the virus now, but from being so close to death.

As she closes her eyes and slips quietly to sleep, she sees her brothers' faces. She wishes her mother was here to see this. Her boys performed a miracle? Was that what the kind man had said? She is sure her mother's eyes would again fill with tears at the sight of her boys, but this time the taste of those tears would be very different.