Friday Snippet: From the Mouths of Babes

This week's Friday Snippet picks up with Dell in the wasted city of Columbia, Missouri. Her friend Daniel is dead. After her apartment collapsed and killed the family who lived above her, Dell has taken the last Tailor child, Caleb, under her care. This one is a little longer than the others, but it reads quickly with a lot of dialog. I wanted to get through this section so that we could meet Iris next week. Enjoy!

Copyrighted, do not reproduce, material liable to change. You know. Etc.

Dell hooked her arms more firmly under Caleb’s knees and paused in the center of a cratered street. The boy lolled against her back. Behind them, the mushroom cloud still clawed skyward. Dell was sure her lungs were full of ash and the dead. Caleb’s legs gave out two hours back and since she had carried him.

She wasn’t so concerned about that as the sense of vertigo that grew with every step and every squish of blood in her shoe. But she knew she couldn’t very well stop with the nuclear winds behind her.

That was when she heard the crackle of radio. She slid down the lichen-crusted side of a deep drainage ditch. Laying Caleb in the cool curve of a concrete pipe, she hunched in the shadows and listened. A jeep rumbled overhead and stopped just at the other side. She heard only snatches.

“Get out of this hellhole….fallout…not just here…St. Louis, Shreveport….Columbus, Richmond, D.C.” She slumped down beside the boy. Corleone curled against her and Dell heard her heart beat hollow in her chest. Surveying her two pillowcases, she made her decision.

No way could she take care of a child in her condition. There was not enough food. Not enough water. Not enough of anything. But she wasn’t going to a refugee camp. She wanted to settle accounts, here at the end of the world. She smirked at the melodrama.

The boy would get medical attention and food if she left him with FEMA or the National Guard. She bowed her head, covering her face with her hands. Crouching, she emptied the pillowcases on the dry walkway of the drain tunnel. She divided out the water and the food and what little medication she had. When she was satisfied that she would have enough to get where she was going, she packed the rest and set it aside for the boy. Her pile, she wrapped up and slung into the sheet with Corleone.

Dell woke the boy and forced him to sit up on the ledge. She pushed his sleeve up above his elbow. After fishing in her pockets, she found a permanent marker and uncapped it with her teeth. On his arm, she wrote his full name and address in capital letters.

“How old are you Caleb?”

“I’ll be nine on November 4,” he said. Dell added his date of birth and his home phone number. That was ridiculous, she knew, but it was instinct. She took his right arm, writing furiously now. Above, the engine rumbled to life.

“How many brothers and sisters do you have, Caleb?” She was careful to keep it in the present tense.

“Four.”

“And your dad makes seven to your family right?”

“We don’t count him,” Caleb said, dragging his nose across his sleeve. “But yeah." Dell scrawled 2/7. She capped the pen after adding a few more lines.

“What’s all that mean?” He was crying again. “You’re going to leave me aren’t you? I'll be all alone!”

"You're not alone," she said. She took the boy’s face in her hands and forced him to look at her. And then she lied. She hated herself for it, but she knew he could not crumble now in a drainage ditch. She needed him to listen. So she lied.

"I saw Joshua," she said. "I saw your brother. When the National Guard asks you, you say that you saw him. You tell them you're not alone. They'll try to find him. Understand?"

"He's alive?"

"Yes."

"Joshua's alive," he smiled, swallowing the lie and giving it back to her. Dell's chest ached with guilt.

“I need you to listen now,” she said forcing back bile at what she'd just done. She pointed to 7 MILES – SSE – G-ZERO. “This means you were seven miles south-southeast from where the bomb hit. Show this to the soldiers, and they’ll know how much medicine to give you.” She pointed to the O at his wrist.

“Do you remember last Christmas, when you got sick?” she said. "You needed blood and I gave some because our blood matched. This O means you have O kind of blood. Alright?”

“Alright. What’s the 2 slash 7 mean?”

“You don’t worry about those. The soldiers will know what they’re for.” She wrapped his fingers around the knot of the heavier pillowcase. “This is all the food I can give you, Caleb. You don’t give this away to anybody, you understand?”

“What if a grown-up asks for it?”

“Nobody.”

“What if they tell me–!”

“Nobody!”

“But I don’t want you to go," he choked. "I want to go with you. What if I don’t remember all that stuff you just said?” The car above was moving off. If she was going to do this, she had to do it now.

Next week, we pick up with Iris, Dell's estranged friend, 1500 miles to the east. Let me know what you think and be sure to leave your own link for me to read your Friday Snippet!



So say we all.
Bri