Little White Pills

"Mom, have you really never opened this?"

My mom looked down at my hands, which were holding the heart-shaped locket that belonged to her. She usually wore it around her neck, but it had been ripped off not hours before.

"Really, never. I never got the key,” she said.

My mom was driving us north, away from Toronto. The “AC-9” virus was travelling swiftly through the city; being air-born and travelling effortlessly from person to person. It had been 3 months since the virus was first contracted in Canada, and all chaos had broken loose in the big cities. The virus affected persons over 20, and one only had to inhale to become infected. Then, from what I’ve seen, you turn into a mindless creature with a mind to kill.

I picked up the broken chains of my mom’s necklace and looked at them closely, wondering if I could repair them. We had just barely escaped from a neighbour who had contracted the virus. He lived down the hall from us and had broken through our door. Thankfully, we were able to quickly distract him with the buzzer before bolting for our car. By the door, the neighbour grabbed at my mom and ripped the chain from her neck. Luckily I caught onto it just in time, before we were able to outrun him. My mom and I lived alone together in an apartment building along the outskirts of the city, and had already prepared our vehicle for the pandemic by covering up every hole, crack, and crevice that the virus could potentially seep through. While I was not yet vulnerable, my mom was. We spent days packing and preparing to travel north, to Nunavut. It was a rush to get out of our home, but I felt grounded and ready… and that was because of my mom.

"Your grandmother taught me everything, except how to open that damn locket," my mom joked.

“I wish I remembered her more,” I said. My thoughts strayed to my only memory of my grandmother, running through the darkness towards me… “I only have one memory of her.”

My grandmother was locked up most of my life, but my mom told me she was an extremely strict, anti-government advocate who favoured skepticism and conspiracies. My mom was taught about survival from an early age, and to be prepared for any global disaster. This training helped her through many near-fatal situations in the past, I knew, but it also made her quite jaded as she distanced herself from government and activism. And from what I knew about my grandmother's past, she was a senator before starting a non-profit and funding anti-government work. She witnessed a lot of corruption, and was ultimately sentenced to prison for her behavior. My mom called it, “knowing too much.”

“I know she wishes she got to know you more,” my mom said as she veered onto the freeway running north. “But I know she would be very proud of you, and of how you handle yourself. She'd think you could handle yourself better than me,” my mom giggled. “She saved us from burglars once, you know. A few days after you were born, some men broke in while we were alone. I was lucky she was there, because I was so weak at the time from the C-section.”

"She took them on all by herself, and won?" I gasped.

"That's right," my mom chuckled. "And she knew everything about political schemes. I remember, she would blame corporations and weather networks for everything… but I guess she was right in some of those instances...”

My mom got quiet. I knew then that this was the opportune time to ask her the question that has been burning inside my head for 3 months. Hopefully, now I would get my answer. I implored quietly, “my only memory is of her running through the darkness toward me, shouting about a virus. I wanted to know, how much she knew… I wanted to know if... she knew what was going to happen."

I looked down again at the locket. Surely, my mom would answer some of my questions now. She had to know that I would think the timeline is too coincidental to not be connected.

My mom looked at me quickly, then back at the road. She was quiet for about a minute before she said, “and she looked beautiful with her long hair.”

I hid my confused and dissatisfied face because I could see my mom was swallowing hard. Then, against my expectations, she continued. “Just before she went to jail, your grandmother told me that she had made a pill that was going to make everyone immune from this new... Elder virus, she called it. The Elder virus was supposedly created by the government to kill off the older generation, and/or to steady our population growth, and/or to control a brand-new generation... there were a lot of reasons. And this little white pill that she produced; anyone could take it, young or old. If you didn’t already have the virus, you would allegedly be immune."

I was quiet for a second. Finally, I was getting the answers I wanted. “How did she figure this out?” I asked excitedly.

"She said she developed the pill in her friend's lab, when she found evidence of what the government was doing," my mom said. "But I’ve talked to her friend, and he's never seen or heard of this magic pill."

"So... the night she died..."

“Your grandmother was failing mentally; you have to understand,” my mom said. "She said and did some very questionable things towards the end of her life. That night, I remember her yelling about the virus as she ran towards us, and I also remember her speak about the pill again when she gave me the locket, before she was..."

My mom trailed off, but she didn't need to continue.

I gazed into the distance letting this sink in. My mom was right, my grandmother knew too much. It seems she paid a price for it.

“See that hill up there? After we pass it, we’ll be able to see Quebec,” my mom said.

As we cruised over the hill, the sun completely set and I saw lights on the horizon. They grew in beams towards the night sky, raising up silently to the stars. I’ve never seen so many stars. I wish I could roll down the windows to let the breeze rush over me, but that’s impossible.

“Oh,” said my mom. We began to slow down, and I slowly registered the tone in my mom’s voice. It was defeat, and I rarely heard it from her. It scared me to my core.

I slowly brought my eyes down the beams of lights until I saw their source. Ahead of us, a line of police cars blocked the road and the land. There was no way around them. Large policemen were inside of the cars, dressed head to toe in anti-virus gear. They wore large helmets and thick gloves. I heard a lone muffled sound through the darkness and a few muted shrieks. Then, a man began to speak through a megaphone that was attached to his car.

“Your path is blocked, and you have been followed. You will not go any further, ma’am. Exit the car.”

My mom breathed quickly as she brought the car to a full stop and sat frozen.

“Mom?”

She didn't speak.

“Mom?” My voice broke.

My mom looked at me with eyes full of tears. I had never seen her cry before. She was beautiful, even when she was sad. But it wasn’t just sadness, I realized… it was every vulnerable emotion she had never shown on her face. My hard-headed, resourceful, ingenious mom… was trapped.

“I’m not going with them.”

“I’m not making you,” she said.

It dawned on me that the police were lined up along the border. There was no way my mom was going to make it to Quebec.

"It’s okay, mom. Open the door."

She looked deep into my eyes.

“You know I can’t do that,” she said.

“You can,” I choked. “We’ll do it together.”

“You know I won’t do it,” she whispered.

“Then how will we get through?”

“We won’t,” my mom said. She leaned over and opened the glove compartment. I looked down and laid my eyes on the last thing I wanted to see. My grandmother’s gun.

“Darling…” My mom said through her breath, and I finally saw the tears slide down her cheeks.

"I know." I said.

She took the locket from my hands and held onto it for a few seconds, before finally kissing it and whispering, “thank you for having me, and saving me, mom.” She placed it on the dashboard, her hands shaking, and motioned for me to switch seats with her. Then, she took the gun, carefully arranged herself so as not to pierce any holes in the car, and took one last deep breath. With that, she said the last words I will ever hear her speak.

“I love you, darling. I’ll see you there.”

“I love you, mom.”

And with one last deep glance in her eyes, I looked away.

A crack. Then silence.

The stillness was piercing. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. My mind flashed to many visions of her before I could finally open my eyes. Blood was everywhere.

I heard yelling, and finally sirens. I wiped my face and my hands, and found that I was crying harder than ever before as I propped her upright and wiped her hair away from her face. Hearing the sirens and yelling grow louder, I revved the engine and looked forward. It was then that I noticed the locket, lying slightly open from impact on the dashboard. I reached out with trembling hands and moved aside the locket to see two little white pills.

Two little, anti-virus pills. Meant to save us a second time.