Since the Great Famine began, I’d only seen a couple of things that made my heart break in such a way, that the only thing I could think about doing after witnessing it, was curl up in a corner and ball my eyes out.
One time, in particular, was right before the colony had been built. Two little boys, who couldn’t have any older than six and four years old, laid beside a rotting corpse, hysterical. The woman was their mother. “Mommy!” they wailed—all day—and all night.
Nobody cleaned up the body. Nobody cared. They were way too worried about taking care of themselves, and the fermented dead were useless to cannibals. Human organs rotted just like old meat.
Most of the time, I’d sit in the hut with my hands over my ears and my eyes squinted shut, humming quietly to myself to drown out their torturous cries.
During the day it was impossible to avoid them. I couldn’t face them. Somehow, I saw me and Frankie in those little boys. And even being a teenager, I didn’t know how I would survive if I was in their situation. The answer was I wouldn’t have.
Then one night their cries started to weaken. Starvation was sneaking up on them and pretty soon they would join their mother, rotting away from the outside in. That was when I broke. I couldn’t handle it anymore. I needed to feed them. They needed a home. And I swore that I would kneel on the ground until my knees were bloody at my parents feet, begging, until my parents helped them.
First, I did the unthinkable. I stole food from my parents little makeshift garden inside of our hut. Since I took food before the rules were established, I’d gotten away with it. Then, I stalked across the street, in the dead of night, clutching what I could and knelt down to the little boys.
Both of the boys had ivory pallor’s and big, round blue eyes that stared up at me. They whimpered softly. Their teeth were cracked from eating rocks and their bones were showing through their thin, translucent skin. The stench from their mother’s corpse wandered up my nostrils and I gagged, turning my head away.
Sharp sobs caught in my throat and I sucked them back, trying to be strong. I smiled, tears watering up in my eyes as I handed each of them two large carrots. “Here you go, little guys.”
They snatched the carrots from my hands and gobbled them up in one breath. “Do you have anymore?” the elder one asked in his soft child-like tone.
“Not right now,” I said tearing up again. “But I’ll tell you what, if you’re good little boys, I’ll bring you more tomorrow.”
They smiled and nodded.
I didn’t hear a peep from them the rest of the night. When the following morning came, I begged my mother. I begged her for hours to let us take them in. “Mom, they’re two little boys! How much could they possibly eat?”
My mother shook her head. “You know I would in a second, but we barely feed ourselves,” she said, her voice hushed.
“Then, I won’t eat. Give them my portion.”
“Georgina, don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous. I won’t eat.”
My mother glanced at her garden, then at me. She paused for a moment and then finally, she caved. “Go get them. We’ll just eat a little bit less than usual.”
Only when I went outside to find the little boys, they were gone. Next to their mother’s body, there were two pools of blood and four carrot stems. The cannibals had gotten to them first. After that, I lost control of my emotions. I sobbed so hard that I could barely breathe, lost the small appetite I had, and I didn’t leave our hut until the colony was completely finished.
My mother and May caught my attention when they came to a halt and I stumbled forward. May gripped my arm tightly, steadying me, and my mother shot me a disapproving glance. “Georgina! Pay attention!” she scolded.
I blushed, embarrassed that she snapped at me like that in front of May. “Sorry.”
She exhaled. “Just watch where you’re going, please. You don’t need to have another accident.”
I nodded. “Will do.”
We stood in front of the infirmary and May unhooked her arm from mine. “Take it easy, kiddo,” she said, then pulled me in for a short hug.
“I will. For now,” I answered with a cheesy grin.
May laughed and turned to my mother. “Glad I could help, Marcy. I’ll talk to you soon.”
My mother let go of me and hugged May. “Thanks for everything May. Talk to you soon.”
After May made her exit and we started walking back to my room, I thought that now was a good of time as any to ask my mother about the letter she and my father took to Mr. Baker. “Was Mr. Baker able to help you?”
“Help me?” she questioned. “With what?”
“That letter you found with my stuff.” She was so adamant about getting to the bottom of it, I couldn’t believe that she didn’t remember.
“Oh, no. He said there was no way he could tell who wrote it. He assumed that it was probably a cannibal or a decayed one.”
“Decayed one?” That was the first time I’d ever heard anyone mention a decayed one. “What are decayed ones?”
“I’ve never told you about the decayed ones?”
“No.” Now, I’d come to the conclusion that Mr. Baker and the council weren’t the only ones keeping secrets. Or perhaps it was something my mother didn’t want me to know.
“Are they like zombies?”
My mother shook her head. “No. Not at all. Decayed ones are a lot like cannibals.”
I was confused. “If they are alive, why do you call them decayed ones?
“When the asteroid hit, there were a select number of humans who became disfigured from the radiation. Their eyes would not be like yours and mine. Their skin melted and their eyes dropped down into their cheeks. Or they developed hunchbacks and so on. You get the picture, right?”
“Yeah.” I got the picture all right. Now I wished I wouldn’t have asked what they were. And now, I understood why she didn’t tell me about them.
“Anyway,” she went on, “part of their brains fried along with other parts of their bodies and their mind’s no longer function normally. Their speech is limited and they can’t write a lot—childlike, really. Like an adult with the mind of a child. They’re malicious—violent. They too eat humans but unlike cannibals, they will torture you first.
Most cannibals still have a sound mind. If they had the nourishment that they needed, they wouldn’t kill at all. And cannibals will always kill you first before they feed on you. Not the decayed ones, they eat you alive. They enjoy watching a person squirm up until they take their very last breath.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“Once.” Then she quickly changed the subject. “We’re here.”
I walked into my room and sat down on my bed. “It’s good to be back.” I smiled.
“I’m going to go get you some food, okay. Stay here,” my mother commanded as she walked out the door.
She returned minutes later with a tray full of food. She handed me the tray then went off to find my father. I took a few bites, but after all the talk about cannibals and the decayed ones, I was having a really hard time finding my appetite.
When Frankie got home from school she spent some time with me before dinner. She tried to entertain me, to snap me out of my sullen mood. Doing her famous Mrs. Edwards impression, she plugged her nose and raised her voice up a level. “Now students,” Frankie mocked, “everyone turn your textbooks to page two!” I giggled softly, pretending to find her impression funny. Normally I would be laughing so hard I’d have a hard time breathing. But not today.
My accident had sparked a change in me. A change that I couldn’t explain. There were times where I wanted to be the old me, with my obedient yet sarcastic attitude, and the old me who thought about living life to the fullest extent and making the best of what my life had become. I had to face it, the old version of me was gone. And I didn’t know when or if that version of me would ever come back.