The Compound

  “Mom! How could you let her do that?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Watch your tone. And she spends so much time in there, anyway. I didn’t see any harm.”

  “Whatever. I just miss everyone being normal.” Then I smiled and tried to make light. “Actually I miss a lot of things.”

  Mom sighed. “I miss …,” she hesitated, her eyes on the wilting lettuce. “I would give anything for a huge, whole milk, four-pump latte right now, with loads of caramel sauce.” She shrugged and went back to the salad.

  I watched her for a bit. Her shoulders seemed slumped and her movements were mechanical, almost robotic.

  “Mom,” I ventured, “you happy?”

  She paused, staring into the salad bowl. “Happy? I’m alive. Warm. Reasonably fed. My family, most of it, is here with me.” Her eyes met mine. “I never dreamed I could be this miserable ever. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful. Grateful that my husband went to all this trouble …”

  I saw the question in her eyes at the same time I felt it in my gut. “What are we surviving for?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Did we survive simply for the sake of surviving? The rest of our lives, we just exist to survive?”

  Tears welled up as she set a hand on her stomach. “I wanted so much for my children. For a while you had it all. Good schools, everything you could want to make a great childhood. And I was happy. Down here, though …” She took a deep breath and let it out. Her voice had a slight quiver to it. “You are all so affected by this place in your own ways.”

  My first inclination was to disagree and I started to protest.

  Her expression shut me up. “Don’t deny it, Eli. I want us to thrive again. But this isn’t it. It isn’t even close.” Her hands went up to cover her face as her shoulders shook.

  I just sat there. Sat there and watched her weep.

  Part of me wanted to hold her. All of me knew that’s what a good son would do.

  Alas, I fell neatly into the category of lousy son.

  I snatched some napkins off the counter and set them down next to her.

  “Thanks.” She wiped her eyes, then blew her nose. “You know your father and I aren’t … sharing a room anymore.”

  I thought of the couch in Dad’s office, the pillow and blanket. Not like we had a guest room for him to retreat to. But I didn’t want her to know I’d noticed anything. “Since when?”

  “For a while. We don’t agree on a few things.” She patted her belly.

  It was pretty clear to me that the gesture referred to the Supplements. They meant only one thing to my father, yet clearly they were something else entirely to my mother. And all that time I had been suffering from the delusion that I could remain uninvolved, choosing to side with neither of them.

  I put both my elbows on the counter and rested my chin on my hands. “Mom, if you could leave here, would you?”

  She wiped her eyes again. “Only if it didn’t put any of you in danger.”

  “You just said you want us to thrive.”

  She nodded. “Yes. I do. But I also want you alive. And if surviving is all we can have at this point, I guess I just have to live with that.”

  I sat back up. My fingers pulled at the collar of my T-shirt. “Do you think things are really like Dad says?”

  She peeked in the oven door. “I have no way of knowing.”

  I had expected her to reassure me, tell me that Dad knew what he was doing like he always did. But her answer gave me an opening, an opening to see if I could trust her. And I needed to trust her.

  I swallowed. “Did he tell you the Internet is up?”

  Mom grabbed the edge of the oven to steady herself. “What?” Her surprise was definitely genuine.

  “I take it that’s a no.” I told her what Dad had told me.

  She sat down. Her face was pale. “You know, my mother never wanted me to marry your father.”

  “Why not?”

  She’d never talked to me this way before. Like an adult.

  “Oh, where should I start? He was such a complete package, you know. Smart, good-looking, rich. I usually liked taller men. But, you know, I figured he could always stand on his wallet.” She grinned, but it looked uncomfortable.

  My forced laugh felt the same way.

  She shrugged a bit. “Your gram just didn’t trust him. She said he seemed too controlling. All I saw was a man who could make my dreams, and the dreams of my future children, come true.” She paused.

  I really didn’t want to hear any more. Despite everything, that had always been a constant for me. Something to draw strength from. My parents and the life they made together. Not perfect, but strong nonetheless. It was not pleasant to find out the foundation of your house had dry rot.

  She continued, “And he was so involved with the orphanage. He never hesitated when I saw Lexie and knew I had to take her home with us. I knew my kids would never want for anything. I know it might sound shallow to you, Eli. But it was such a relief to know I was marrying a man I wouldn’t have to fight over money with.”

  It was my turn to say something. All I could come up with was “And now?”

  The oven’s timer buzzed.

  Mom stood, pulling on her thick red oven mitts. “I honestly don’t know.”

  I watched Mom pull a loaf of flat bread out of the oven. She chewed on the inside of one cheek, distorting her face. As she set the hot fresh bread on the cooling rack, the funny-smelling bread that no one but Dad would eat, I could tell what was running through her mind.

  Dad came in then, sat beside me and asked for my inventory sheets. He scanned the page, and then scratched his neck. “I’m not sure where I miscalculated, but my last figures were off.”

  Mom must have decided it was a good time to start talking to him again. “Is this where you tell us when the food will run out?” Her voice was full of worry, yet there was also a harsh tone to it.

  Dad didn’t even notice. His finger trailed down a paper on his clipboard. “About a year before the fifteen years are up. Depending on the hydroponics, of course.”

  He could have been giving us the weather report.

  Mom tapped the knife on the cutting board. “The vegetables will last. We’ll have enough food.”

  I spoke up. “Why can’t we just be vegetarians?”

  Dad laughed a little as he dropped his pen on the clipboard and shoved it aside. “They rely on eggs and dairy products for protein.”

  “What about vegans? They don’t eat any animal products, do they?”

  Mom answered me. “Because they have soy products and nuts for protein. Your father was never a fan of soy and the nuts are long gone.”

  Dad leaned his head to one side as he looked at her. He stood up and walked over to the counter. He sliced off a piece of bread and tossed it between his hands to cool. “By my calculations, protein will be totally lacking. We won’t have a choice.”

  Mom snapped at him. “There’s always a choice.”

  “Of course there’s a choice. Do you want to live or die?” He held out the bread to me. “Bread?”

  “No!” Mom’s face fell as she looked from Dad to the bread. “I mean, there’s another loaf for the kids. Still baking.” She gestured at the oven. “This one’s all yours.”

  Dad smiled. “Thanks.” He bit into the bread.

  My head started to hurt.

  Dad shifted his gaze to Mom. “Yes, there’s always a chance we won’t have to go to extreme measures. But we won’t know until that time and we need to set ourselves up now. We must do what we can. We need to bolster our supplemental food supply.”

  She glared at him. “Unless you’ve come up with something to guarantee multiple births, I’m already working at my quota.” But the look on her face showed she regretted her words.

  He cut another slice. “Eli, come with me.”

  Mom shook her head. “Don’t do this, Rex.”

  His voice was low. “Eli, let’s go.”

  She dropped the
knife on the counter and watched us leave.

  What was going on?

  Dad walked slightly in front of me as we headed toward the direction of his office. “Eli, I’m going to need your help.” Both his hands started to scratch his face.

  All that scratching was uncomfortable for me to watch. And it was making me itchy again. I wanted to grab his hands, make him stop. But I couldn’t. Instead, I looked down at my feet. “With what?”

  “Your mother and I can only, well, work so fast, so to speak.”

  My stomach lurched. “What am I supposed to do?”

  He cleared his throat. “There are other ways to … enhance our food supply.”

  I didn’t know where his reasoning was headed. Or maybe I didn’t want to admit it. My mind was so clouded that I missed his next few words.

  Dad kept on. “It would be a true experiment, since no one has done it before. But think, if I could pull it off …” He grinned. “I could patent the process and it could be used for generations. It would revolutionize medicine. People in need of organ transplants wouldn’t have to wait. And—”

  “I missed what you said. What would revolutionize medicine?”

  We reached his office and he unlocked it, ushering me in. Then he walked over to the padlocked door and pulled a key out of his pocket. With a twist, he had the padlock off and his hand was on the knob. “Are you ready?”

  As the door swung open, my first impression was a glare of white light. When I stepped inside, I realized it was the whiteness of the room enhanced by the fluorescent bulbs running everywhere overhead. The room was a laboratory, so full of equipment and so big, that it made the other lab look like a low-budget high school classroom.

  My jaw dropped as I took a few steps farther in. After all this time, a part of our world that I had no idea existed.

  Long white counters ran hundreds of yards in front of me, each lined with test tubes and beakers and enormous, intimidating microscopes. Along the walls sat machines I’d never seen before. A lump formed in my throat. “Dad? What do you do in here? What would revolutionize medicine?”

  His tone was matter of fact. “Cloning a human being.”

  I backed away from him. The words almost didn’t make it out of my mouth. “What in the world are you proposing?”

  Dad picked up a test tube and peered at the substance inside. He jotted something on a nearby clipboard. “We’ve been doing it the old-fashioned way. We need to step it up and make more Supplements the new-fangled way.”

  I retched, barely making it to a sink before I puked up all the jerky. As the faucet went full blast, I lifted up the bottom of my T-shirt and wiped my face. My back was to him. “You can’t mean that.”

  He grunted, annoyed, “Come on, Eli.”

  I whirled to face him again. “It goes against nature! You know that. Besides, none of those animal clones lived more than a short time.”

  Dad tilted his head a bit, looking at me. “Eli, Eli, Eli. When are you going to realize you’re just like me? Eddy isn’t … wasn’t, not by a long shot. But you? You are. You’ll do whatever it takes, anything, to make sure you come out on top.”

  “That’s not true!” His analysis was akin to that clown’s telling me I was the evil twin. My head hurt behind my left eye and my vision started to blur.

  He nodded. “Yeah, it is. You can’t deny what you are.”

  My head moved from side to side. “I won’t do it. You can’t make me help you.”

  He sighed. “No, I can’t. You’re right.” He drummed his fingers on the counter.

  Dad seemed like he’d actually listened to me.

  So I offered up an olive branch. “It’s just weird, you know?” I gestured at the scene around me. “Cloning people. And besides, don’t you need a human host at some point? And Mom’s already got a tenant, so to speak.”

  Dad shrugged a bit. “There’s Lexie.”

  Was he insane? “I know Lexie. She won’t do it.”

  He chuckled a bit. “Do you? Do you really know your sister?”

  Oh God. No. I probably didn’t.

  He set the test tube down and picked up another. “I’ve already spoken to Lexie. She’s waiting for you to get on board.”

  I turned, heading out the door and through his office, making it to the corridor mere seconds before I broke down.

  Harsh sobs racked my body as I leaned on a wall. Was this what our life had become?

  I hadn’t ever loved life in here. Tolerated it, maybe. But hearing my father’s plan for our continued survival caused a major shift inside of me. Any lingering tolerance, any sliver of ambivalence had fled. Gone for good. The space they left in me abruptly filled with hate for everything about the Compound.

  I refused to live that way. There wasn’t anything I could do about it by myself. Maybe it was time to take sides.

  I hoped I could find someone to be on mine.

  I CALMED MYSELF DOWN, CLEANED MYSELF UP, AND HOLED up in my room. I stayed there the rest of the day. Even skipped dinner. I didn’t want to see anyone. But I wanted to pick up my book from the library.

  As I left my room, I almost tripped over Mom, who was sitting on the floor, her back against the hard wall. I got the feeling she’d been waiting for me. I wondered how much she had heard of my earlier argument with Dad. Or how much she perhaps already knew.

  She looked up at me with gentle, wet eyes. “Eli, come see the babies with me.”

  My face must have given away my reaction.

  She held out a hand for me to help her up, then pulled back when I did. “I have stood by and watched your father do a lot of things,” she said, inching up the wall. “But this—I won’t give in.”

  Her tone told me what I had to do. I went to meet the rest of the family.

  How could I possibly have gone that long without seeing them? We were, after all, stuck in the Compound together. But it was a big place. Big enough to be able to avoid what I needed to avoid. But maybe I’d avoided enough: facing life without Eddy and Gram, surviving the worst disaster to hit the civilized world. Hell, I’d become a master at denial.

  Then Mom led me into the room with the yellow door.

  My first look around made me realize the depth of my father’s preparation for any contingency. Goose bumps covered my arms. I resisted the urge to let my hair down and hide from the truth.

  The walls were sunflower yellow, dotted here and there with painted handprints of pleasing greens and blues and oranges. The tone of the lighting was artificial sunlight. Did I imagine my skin becoming warmer? I felt like I was outside on a warm April afternoon. The scent of lilacs lingered, increasing the sensation of spring.

  There was a crib and two toddler beds, all oak, with fluffy down bedding in whimsical, primary-colored prints. On the floor beside them lay a mattress, topped with a twisted mess of sheets and blankets. Past the beds, into the second room of the suite, we entered the playroom. Castles of blocks were stacked against one wall, and another held shelves brimming with picture books, puzzles, and games.

  My eyes widened at the amount of baby and toddler things my father had stockpiled.

  Had Dad planned on Mom having babies here? Before the Compound, I never heard them discuss having more children. Everything in that room suggested otherwise. And when I saw the stacks of diapers, the changing table, and the rocking chair I realized this had all been foreseen by my father somehow.

  Maybe foreseen wasn’t the right word. Maybe he’d always planned to create a new generation.

  Someone took my hand.

  I recoiled, yanking it away. A small, dark-haired boy dressed in navy blue sweats grinned up at me. I recognized the fabric was from the piles of bolts in the sewing room.

  His face was also one I knew well. Eddy’s. My legs nearly buckled and I put a hand against the wall to steady myself.

  He still looked up at me. “Want to play Chutes and Ladders?”

  Terese stood behind him. “Eli, this is Lucas.”

  “Do
you want to play with me, Eli?” I wanted to shout no and run. But where? Mom said, “I’ll come by in a little while.” She backed out the door.

  Part of me was so pissed at her, for going along with all this. But another part of me was too surprised at the new world I’d stepped into. I was jolted by how much the little boy resembled Eddy at that age. And me.

  A brother. I had another brother.

  The boy must have equated my silence with agreement, because he walked over to a table with small chairs where a game was set up. He tapped one place. “You sit here,’ kay?”

  I tried to sit where he directed, but could hardly get my legs under the tiny table. I moved the chair and sat on the floor.

  He sat in a chair beside me, his eyes level with mine. “I go first, ’kay?” He counted the spaces and moved his piece.

  Curious fascination overcame the knot in my stomach. “How high can you count?”

  “I can count a lot. I’m almost five.”

  I took my turn. “Figured you were.”

  We kept playing. The boy, Lucas, chattered the whole time, telling me about what he liked to play. At one point he stopped and rested his chin on one hand. His big brown eyes contemplated my face. “You look like me.”

  My laughter came before I could stop it. “I was here first, so that means you look like me.”

  “And Eddy.”

  I felt my smile collapse. “How do you know about Eddy?” I glanced around for Terese, but didn’t see her.

  “Reesie told me. About Eddy and Eli, the twins. Eddy stayed outside to take care of Cocoa and Clementine. He’s going to come and get us out.”

  Lucas knew no life besides the Compound. Yet even he felt the need to get out. If that didn’t signify the strangeness of our life, I don’t know what would.

  Guess it was up to me to shatter his illusions. “Look, kid. Eddy isn’t out there. He’s gone.”

  The statement didn’t seem to unsettle him at all. He simply looked at me. And he sounded very confident. “Reesie said you’d say that.”

  I had no response.

  “Why didn’t you come see me before?”

  “Before what?”

  “Now.” Lucas blinked. His dark lashes were a stark contrast to his pale, perfect skin. Such a beautiful child.