The Mother of Exiles, part I & II--- a novel in fifteen parts

The Mother of Exiles

by James G. Carlson

I.

Gideon awoke in the wintry palm of December’s hand, shivering and alone. It had been one of those uneasy nights during the long hours of which he had been certain that if he were to fall asleep he would never wake up. But the white clouds of breath rising from his mouth with each exhalation proved otherwise. He wasn’t dead yet.

With cold fingers Gideon fumbled about on the dirty plywood floor beside the mattress that served as his bed until finally resting on a pack of cigarettes. “I’m sure gonna miss these things when they’re gone for good,” he said matter-of-factly to himself, turning the half-crumpled pack over and over in his chilly hands. His hands shook slightly as he took a cigarette from the pack, placed it between his lips, and lit it with his last matchstick. Taking the burning match between thumb and middle finger of his right hand, he flicked it across the room and watched it suddenly extinguish mid-air, releasing one last tendril of dark, sulfur-smelling smoke up toward the low ceiling of his shack.

An anorexic moon still hung in the distance, just a pale sliver glowing above the smokestacks on the industrial horizon. It’s like a crescent blade slicing through the black fabric of the fading night, Gideon thought to himself poetically. But it was no longer night, was it? No, it was early morning. It was also a December morning and therefore dark, very dark, and it would remain so until well after six o’ clock…in varying degrees, of course. Even the stars were daring in their refusal to flee with the approaching dawn, remaining there like so many jewels lodged in the firmament itself…or rather, like tiny celestial beacons signaling the things of night to the inevitable and soon-to-come ascent of the sun in the east. If there was one thing that the world’s survivors had to abide it was day and night, as it was never safe to travel at night. Hell, it wasn’t even safe to so much as stroll around the block during the moonlight hours. Then again, there weren’t many things that were safe anymore. Such were the times in which he lived.

No matter what happens down here on the surface, thought Gideon, the night sky will surely always retain its beauty. It’s a shame how something so beautiful can be so goddamn dangerous. Of course, daytime isn’t always a picnic either. In fact, I can’t think of much that isn’t dangerous nowadays.

Numbness gradually gave way to pins and needles, finally, while Gideon stretched his achy limbs and rubbed his tired eyes, attempting to crawl forth from the depths of the blur. He was in that place where the corners of sleep curled in upon themselves much like the edges of burning photographs, and where dreams evaporated like so many drops of morning dew with the increasing dryness of the coming noon. In those days dreams came very strange and impossibly vivid or not at all---definitely more of the former than the latter---and sometimes he still dreamt of her. Luna. But she was with him always, it seemed, whether he was awake or dreaming. Such had been her place in his heart for what felt like a lifetime. And in a way that was true, for as far as Gideon was concerned Luna was where most of him began and all of him ended.

He may have dreamt of her that night, though he couldn’t be sure. Luna, with her jet black tresses, strikingly green eyes, and long, long lashes. Luna, with her athletic body and punk rock clothing, some form-fitting, and others fashionably baggy. Gideon hoped upon hope that his mental image of her would never become like the many ghosts that haunted his memories. He wanted for her to always be as clear and beautiful in his mind as she was when they were together, as if he were waking beside her in the mornings to breathe in her wonderful scent and watch her adoringly while she slept soundly. God, he missed those mornings. But he knew with no degree of uncertainty that those mornings were lost to him forever.

From a long tear in the tarpaulin-covered window of his little shack, through a section of chain link fence he had nailed securely in place, Gideon watched the soft pink of the cotton candy sunrise meet the gray apocalyptic skyline of the Utopia morning. Soon, dawn’s golden fingers would touch upon the hundreds---no, the thousands---of flat, tar rooftops of the ghetto, move downward across the redbrick walls and devour the shadows in the streets and alleyways. It was quite a sight to behold the city as it was following the war and plague years, which had become one huge, labyrinthine, makeshift world of crude architectural oddities: wooden planks laid from ledge to ledge all across the rooftops, ladders going from landing to landing, rope and pulley systems with which to haul things from street level to the higher floors, and networks of iron crossbars surrounding numerous structures for both support and the means by which to ascend that which would otherwise prove impossible to climb. Quite simply, the vestiges of the old world had been altered and built upon in order to create a new one, a far less attractive one indeed, but a new one nonetheless. Civilization had become something other than civilization, but rather a sort of urban wilderness surrounded by seemingly endless wastelands; a world unrecognizable in comparison to what it had been in the years following its birth, and certainly something far different than that which the early minds of humanity had envisioned.

With the sunrise, countless black-feathered birds would soon flock to the steeples of every Saint-something church and useless power line throughout the city, perch there upon the shit-encrusted eaves and statuary and observe the goings-on of the city through their beady, ink-black and ever watchful eyes. Those dead, glazed-over eyes, which were good for nothing but scanning the cityscape below for fleshy treats. These were carrion birds that had fed on the infected bodies of the wasted dead, thereby becoming infected themselves. First the infected birds fed on the smaller birds that had consumed nothing more than vegetation. Then, when all of those smaller, vegetarian birds had perished, the carrion birds and scavenger birds turned their appetites toward feeding on the piles of infected dead that littered certain parts of the city. More recently, however, they had become especially vicious, attacking the living as they walked about town…or what few survivors there were left, anyway.

Still, Gideon often envied them their wings. But…does not every wingless creature contemplate the heavens, once asked Gideon’s closest friend, Francis?

Francis Gray was a poet, at least he had been before the decline, and a fine one at that. In fact, had it not been for Francis, Gideon never would have been introduced to The Three Bards, as he referred to them, who, over the months, had become his favorite poets of all: William Blake, Walt Whitman, and Allen Ginsberg. Each of the three represented his era as a poet of extraordinary originality and vision. Collectively, the words of all three had irreversibly changed Gideon’s life from that point on. And he had taken on the responsibility of protecting what few books of poems he had obtained in the event that the world would ever regain its former state of normalcy, where one didn’t have to live in fear of the walking dead and swarms of flesh-hungry birds, and lately roaming bands of savage survivors.

Francis saved Gideon from a most unpleasant fate not long after the beginning of the contamination period, when the rioting and panic, and madness and confusion had been reduced to scattered handfuls of desperate survivors. The multitudes no longer crowded the bus stations, train depots and airports in hopes of escaping. There was nowhere to escape to, as the contamination had spread itself globally---at least as far as they knew, and as far as the last of the news broadcasts had claimed---leaving no geographical location a safe place for refuge.

II.

Luna had convinced Gideon with no small amount of pleading to flee Utopia with her. The city had been named Utopia jokingly, since undergoing the series of unnatural metamophoses which turned it into the exact opposite of a utopia. Ultimately it became, in truth, more of a hell than an ideal place to reside. And Luna was more than a little intent on getting the fuck out of Dodge, as the saying goes. Just sitting in the bay marina was her father’s luxury yacht, and her idea had been to sail to an island, preferably an uninhabited one, after having stocked plenty of food and water to last a good while. You see, she was of the mind that things would eventually blow over, as it were, that the virus or whatever it was would run its horrible course and die off, leaving them to rebuild their ravaged towns and cities. In the meantime, they could sit cozy and safe on a little island, where the only two things they would have to worry about were rising water levels during storms and running out of supplies.

On the day the two were to set sail, after having made several trips back and forth to load the yacht with supplies, they opted to walk an alternate route since their usual route was overrun with the living dead. They were nearing the marina, perhaps by a quarter mile, when in the street before them was yet another horde of the rotting masses. Some of them were hunched over a fresh kill, tearing out the best bits of entrails from its torn abdomen with blood-soaked fingers, while others simply shuffled aimlessly about. Gideon and Luna made a quick decision to cut through a ramshackle apartment building so as not to be detected. But as they slipped through a boarded-up window on the first floor they were spotted. They hadn’t noticed, though. And by the time they reached the other side of the rubble-filled building the two lovers were surrounded.

Thinking quickly, Gideon realized there was no other option than to climb to the higher floors and utilize a fire escape or another means of descent on the buidlings exterior. Much to their despair, the staircase had suffered some sort of explosion, undoubtedly during the fierce war that followed the contamination, which left it in ruined sections, the first of which was entirely out of reach. Suddenly, having surveyed the area for but the briefest moments, Gideon saw a way up. Jutting out from the crumbling, pockmarked concrete of the outer wall were several pieces of rebar. He guided Luna over to them and told her to climb, that he would follow.

Gideon turned and unsheathed a large bowie knife he kept as his waist. As they had approached the lengths of rebar near what was left of the stairwell their infected pursuers had gotten dangerously close. Gideon knew they wouldn't make it if he didn't do something. His knife was silvery bright in the half-darkness. That is, until he began slashing and cutting his way through the mob of living dead. The pungent smell of decay and blood was overwhelming, and it was all Gideon could do not to heave and vomit. That would have been the end of him, though, and he knew it. Blood splattered his face and clothing, but it was room temperature, almost cold, not like that of a living, breathing human being. For a few moments Gideon lost himself in the carnage, stabbing wildly at anything that moved in his direction. Even with lost limbs, severed fingers, and slit throats the ghouls continued advancing until Gideon had incapacitated the last one. In fact, as he was placing the final stab to the last one's neck, Gideon heard Luna call out in fear. She had reached the first solid section of stairs only to find that it wasn't quite so solid, after all. No sooner had she put her full weight on it than it began crumbling beneath her feet. Not wanting to fall the twenty feet or so back to the ground floor below, she lept towards the next suspended chunk of concrete belonging to the stairs, nearly missing it altogether. But she didn't miss. Her fingers curled around the edge as it swayed precariously at her impact. Eyes widening in fear, Luna realized her fingers were beginning to slip. There was nowhere else to go from there, which was more frightful still. Slipping, the jagged edge of the concrete began cutting into Luna's fingers, causing it to become slick with her blood. Gideon, meanwhile, was climbing as fast as could to reach her, hand over hand, up the rebar. He wasn't far when Luna lost her grip, falling, flailing her arms wildly the whole way down. She may have survived the fall, too, had it not been for the length of rebar upon which she was impaled. Watching what transpired in what felt like slow motion, Gideon cried out, descending just as quickly as he had climbed up. When he reached Luna's dying form, all he could do was hold her and release anguished sobs into the guts of the graveyard building.

Gideon would have grieved there for an extended period of time, certainly well into the night, had Francis not discovered him there and taken him to a safe place. For quite some time Francis was absolutely inconsolable, and deservedly so. It took weeks for him to come out of it and rejoin the world he had left behind when Luna died. After that, it didn't take long for Gideon and Francis to become very good friends, both dedicated to surviving the horrors with which they were faced on a daily basis by protecting one another and remaining ever vigilant. But as we all well know, the best laid plans can so easily turn to shit.