Amber Skies: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (Book 2 of the 2136 Trilogy)

CHAPTER 2 - PART 2

The pod had no windows, but the image of the tossing waves were permanently etched in my memory. The dampness on my skin and in my hair held the vines of the sea as long as the could before relenting.

"Yes it is," she said, but that was the last of the small talk until me made it to our destination.

The last soldier stepped down the ramp and hauled the door shut. He latched the bolt and motioned to the captain in the front control booth that all was good to go. I felt the engines thrum to life beneath my seat. My shoulders were thrust back suddenly against the plastic frame as they shot off from the dock. The pod rocked and shifted with the pounding of the waves. The soldiers sitting next to Doctor A looked like stone statues with their thousand yard stares. Doctor A on the other hand didn't look like she was fairing too well.

Her hands were white around the knuckles gripping the armrests, and her face inflamed like a puffer fish. If I hadn't known any better, I'd say she had the sickness too. But if she did, she was hiding it well. I had only seen two with the virus I had inside me. The girl and the boy. I began to wonder if that's why my parents had hid me from the authorities at birth. Was SIND harvesting children for their experiments? Was that why no one else seemed to have it? Doctor A claimed they had several human volunteers, but I had never seen any of them, except for two kids.

I decided to keep my mind busy from such thoughts.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

I had to shout over the thrumming of the engines just to hear my own voice. Doctor A never raised her eyes from the downward gaze they were in. When she didn't respond, I turned to the soldier next to me and nudged him with my elbow.

"What's your name?" I asked.

The soldier, no older than me if I had to guess, brown eyed, brown haired, and blank as the sand glanced my way, eyed me up and down, then returned to his distant expression.

Great I thought to myself. I'm traveling with a bunch of emotionless robots. Doesn't anyone have conversations in this government? I sure hoped this wasn't how it was going to be from then on. If I had known no one would speak to me, I would have voted on staying back in the cell. At least there I got to interact with the other doctor. My elbow twitched, remembering the not-so-friendly shock treatment from the day before. On second thought, I'll stick with the silent treatment over that.

With the Doctor hunched over with her face between her knees, and the soldiers matching expressionless stares at one another, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I shut off my mind and focused on the sound of the engines, and the rhythm of the waves bouncing us along. My body relaxed and the internal heat from my core seeped out to dry the rest of my body. I pulled the towel they had tossed me upon entering the pod, and held it close to my chest.

I didn't know what was happening inside my body, nor what the future held, but for now, things were quiet. 'Enjoy the good moments,' my father used to say. 'You never know when they'll go away.'

At the time, I thought I knew everything. I was an immature, ignorant, innocent child who didn't know any better. But, my father was right. When you live in a world full of death, every moment is a blessing. And if I was honest, I'd have to say, out of all the things that had happened to me in the last year, this was definitely at the top as one of the better moments.

Thanks, dad. You always knew just what to say.