Famished (11 page)

Paralyzed. Could I have been paralyzed? It was either that or my whole body was extremely locked up. A part from the minor movement I made with my head, no other part of my body was budging. I went as far as trying to wiggle my toes. No movement. It didn’t matter how hard I tried to move, none of my limbs were cooperating.

Now, I was truly terrified. My body wouldn’t move. My head had to be split in half. And I had no recollection of how I got home. I felt like a science experiment gone bad. The person who put me here should have inserted bolts into my neck and painted my face green. I could have been Frankenstein. Oh, wait. Frankenstein could walk.

I was going to die on top of this stupid boulder. I had no protection, no way of defending myself. Any monster that lived out there could waltz right through the open door and find
 
me, Georgina Carver, bleeding, paralyzed, and ready to be consumed. I’d die without ever seeing my family again. And I’d die without ever fully living my life.

It wasn’t like me to feel sorry for myself or ever want any type of self-pity, but even though most of the time I was a logical person, I was still human and humans were flawed. They made mistakes. I made a mistake. I had to have made a stupid decision that led me to where I was. And that stupid decision was going to end with some kind of consequences. If only I knew what kind.

I began to drift in and out of consciousness. I’d pass out for a minute, maybe two, and every time I woke up the same questions replayed in my mind. Who did this to me? And how did I end up at home? Amnesia sucked.

I mentally drilled myself over and over again. I’d done this so many times since I had realized where I was, my brain was throbbing again. For a while, the pain had died down but now, I felt the inside of my head pounding, rippling, and sending shooting pains all across the top of my head.

Closing my eyes, I sobbed, “Why me?” I placed my cheek flat on the cool rock as puddle of my tears formed. Snot dripped down my nose and I couldn’t even wipe it. “I might as well be a vegetable.” I’d seen a human other people called a vegetable once. When my grandmother was in the hospital I passed her room and saw a man hooked up to a ton of machines. “He’s a vegetable,” my mother said.

“A vegetable?” I questioned. “Like a carrot?”

My mother shook her head. “No dear, like a person who can’t function. He’s only alive because of those machines.” She grabbed my tiny fingers and walked me down the hospital corridor.

“Mommy, what happens when they take him off of the machines?”

My mother smiled. “He’ll go to a beautiful place.”

No… I didn’t want to be a vegetable. I wished thatwhoever did this to me would have just killed me instead. Then again,maybe the paralyzed feeling would wear off? My attacker did crack me pretty hard on the head. And I was certain the liquid running down my face was blood, because some got into my mouth.

When I glanced around the room for the umpteenth time, all of my depressing thoughts were interrupted. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed my knapsack, positioned in the right corner of the room, just beside the opening. All of the zippers were undone.
 

The top had been left opened so I assumed someone had rooted through it and stole some of the items in it. The only things I could make out that were in it from where I was, the black tarp I found earlier and a white piece of paper.

I squinted, trying to get a better glimpse of the new object that was obviously added to my knapsack. Even though it was pretty dark in the room, I could see some writing that was leaking through the flimsy piece of parchment. What was on that damn paper? Maybe it was a clue that would help me figure everything out.

Desperate to get to my knapsack, I rocked myself back and forth, realizing that since I was on a bit of a slope, I would be able to roll off of the rock. I swayed to the right, then to the left. Finally, I flipped onto my back and rolled several times, landing right at the foot of my knapsack.

Now that I was closer, I confirmed that there was definitely writing on that paper. A crimson red color leaked through the top and bottom of the paper in splotches. Whoever had written this letter, didn’t write in red ink. They wrote it in blood. And I assumed that the blood they used was mine.

Some of the mobility in my body was starting to return. I could wiggle my fingers and wiggle my toes. But that wasn’t good enough. Ugh, I needed to see that paper.

Arching my back as much as I could, I lifted my head and clamped my teeth down on the side of the paper. After I’d removed it from the knapsack, I laid it out in front of me and read what was written on it out loud. “
Hello, dinner. It’s me, I’m starving. And I know where you live.”

Chapter 11: You Found Me

Mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven.~Psalms85:10

Dinner? Was I dinner? And who was, I’m starving? I wished
 
Colin were here. Maybe he’d be able to fill in some of the gaps in my memory. The last vivid recollection I had of him was when he played that joke on me and I left him at the rock mountain. Thinking about it now, yeah, it still wasn’t funny. And I didn’t know what happened to him after that. He disappeared. I wondered if we ever made amends or if he made it back safely.

The chunk of my memory that was missing was weighing heavily on me. There were certain parts that played out in my mind like a movie. So why was I having so much difficultyremembering this tiny, little portion of my memory? It was so frustrating, especially because everything else was still so fresh in my mind.

Planting my head against the white paper, I let out a long, ragged sigh. When I woke up, I immediately assumed that I had gone through something traumatic. That was obvious, and I’d heard plenty of stories where some of the same things happened to other people. Rape victims. Men and women who witnessed murder. In a lot of those stories, their memories were jarred or altered. And the human body could also be affected. That had to be what was going on with me.

A sudden, repetitive scraping startled me. I tensed, and rolled my head to the side and watched as the rock that I was previously on moved. Inch by inch, scrape by scrape, it slid against the muddy ground and someone beneath it pushed it. Then the entire thing flipped over. An excited feeling swirled through my insides, someone was coming to look for me.

“Doug, I don’t care what you or Mark Baker has to say,” my mother snapped as she hoisted her body up out of the hole. “I’m going to look for Georgie!”

“Mom,” I called elated, but my voice wouldn’t come out above a whisper.

My mother faced me, narrowing her eyes. “Oh God! Georgina!” she gasped and rushed over to where I laid. “Sweetheart, your head!” She pulled me off the ground and held me. “What happened to you? Thank God, you’re okay! We were so worried!” She kissed my forehead repeatedly and rocked me back and forth like an infant.

“I don’t know what happened to me, Mom.”

“We’ll worry about that later. I’m just so thankful you’re safe,” she said, with tears brimming in her eyes. “I was coming to look for you. I didn’t care what any of the council members said.”

“They wouldn’t have let you back in.”

“I don’t care,” she cried. “You’re my child. You’re more important than some ridiculous council rule.”

“What about Frankie? Huh, Mom? She’s your child too.”

She squeezed me tighter and smoothed my hair back. “Never you mind about Frankie. What’s most important now is that you’re okay.” She placed both of her hands on my cheeks and gazed at me directly in the eyes. My body slumped as she released me from the embrace. “What’s wrong with your arms and legs?” she asked, concerned.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I don’t know,” I repeated. “When I woke up, my head was split open and I couldn’t move any of my limbs.”

Her voice raised a level. “You can’t move your arms and legs? Who did this? Huh? I will kill them! If they think cannibals are scary they haven’t seen anything yet!”

“Mom, I’ve tried, but I can’t remember anything about what happened to me or how I got here. There is a huge chunk of my memory that’s missing.”

She let out a frustrated sigh. Then she got distracted and noticed the paper on the ground. “What’s this?” she asked as she snatched it.

“It was in my bag when I woke up.”

She scanned the paper slowly. “And you don’t know who wrote it?”

“I already told you, Mom. I don’t remember anything.”

She folded up the paper and shoved it into her back pocket. Then she massaged my scalp, trying to get a better look at the gash on my head. Her fingers intertwined with my hair and she began pulling it. And it was really starting to hurt. The incessant stinging throbbed. “Stop it!” I said, “You’re hurting me!” At one point I tried to lift my arm to slap her hand away, but I still couldn’t move it fully.

Unwinding her fingers from my hair, she located the cut and spread it open. “The cut is really deep. You’re going to need stitches.”

She pulled the wound taught and I yelped. “Ow, Mom! Easy! You’re being too rough!”

Then my mother removed her hands from my head, picked up my knapsack, and flung it over her shoulder. “Alright, honey. I’m going pick you up now, okay.”

“Okay.”

She slid her arms underneath my butt and back. “On three… One…two….three.”

At first my body folded and I heard every bone in my spine crack. Then my mother adjusted her arms and carried me over to the opening. Now I understood what people meant when they said mother’s had super-human strength when it came to their children.

We hovered over the top of the hole and my father peered up at us from the bottom. He let out a sigh of relief. Oh, Georgina. I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks, Daddy. I’m glad Mom found me.”

“Me too,” he said. “You gave us quite a scare.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s not her fault,” my mother growled as she descended down the ladder.

My father ignored her comment. Everyone knew my mother would hold Mr. Baker responsible for this. I thought she had a valid point. I still couldn’t understand why the men in the council weren’t doing the gathering. They were strongest people here. They could fight off the cannibals and other wild things. Aside from Colin and maybe Dylan Edwards, the rest of the teens here wouldn’t make it out there.

When we finally reached the bottom of the ladder, my mother handed me off to my father. “Can you please take her to the infirmary? I’m pretty sure May’s working.”

May Vickers was Grace’s and Monica’s mother. Before the Great Famine, she was the head of surgery at a hospital in Omaha. Shortly after the colony was built, the council decided that we had to have our own hospital, and May offered to run it. After all, she was really the only one who knew what she was doing.

My father raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you take her?”

“Because I’m going to climb back up the ladder and close off the entrance. Unless you’d rather do that.”

“No,” my father groaned. “I’ll take her to the infirmary.” He turned his back to my mother and we started walking down the hall.

“We’ll talk later!” my mother shouted.

“Yeah,” my father said. “Later.”

For some reason, my father didn’t like anything that had to do with hospitals, doctors, or sick and wounded people. His father died when my Dad was young, andsomething that happened with that changed the way he felt about the medical world. The reason was never explained to me and I never tried to pry it out of him. I just figured
 
someday, he’d eventually tell me.

May Vickers greeted me with a smile as my father strolled through the door with me. “What happened here?” May asked. Her voice was always so soft and sweet. Her smile was pleasant, and she always looked pretty. She had a round face and ivory skin. Despite everything She had went through with her daughter Monica disappearing, she always tried to be kind to everyone most of the time. Grace was like her in that way.

My father laid me down on the cot and shrugged. “I’m not sure. I think I’ll let her tell you about it. I have to go talk with Marcy.”

May smiled. “Okay.”

My father gripped my hand, squeezed it, then went off to find my mother.

May walked over to her counter, a small kitchen countertop that someone had salvaged from a building, and studied her row of supplies. There were all kinds of instruments, ointments, and band aids. She picked up a jar of salve, and removed a cotton swab from her pocket. She dipped the swab into the jar and set the jar back down. “So, Georgie. What happened?”

At my side, she plastered the ointment across my cut. First, the ointment on my cut felt like little bubbles were popping across the wound and it kind of tickled. Then that tickling feeling turned into a full on burning feeling. It felt like my entire head was on fire. “Ouch! Ouch!” I cried. “I’m not sure.”

“It’s only numbing ointment,” May said calmly. “Give it a second and it won’t burn so much.”