Page 67 of Blue Arrow Island
Amira is cut off by the wail of an alarm through a speaker in the room, making her spine straighten. A deep voice follows the alarm.
“This is a shelter-in-place notification. Animal at the wall, shelter in place.”
I think it was Marcus’s voice. Vance’s hand goes to the holster at his waist, where he has a sheathed knife.
“You girls stay away from the door,” he says, walking over to it.
I exchange an amused look with Amira, both over being called “girls” and Vance seemingly thinking an animal will be able to turn a doorknob.
Vance opens the door, looks from side to side, then closes it and moves a heavy metal bar into place, securing the door against anyone who might try to come in.
“I wish I had my bow,” Amira says.
“I’ve got this,” Vance says. “I worked in security before the virus.”
I hold back about a dozen dry comments. It’s best to stay quiet around people I don’t trust.
To pass the time, I walk around the room and look at every painting. Some are realistic and others are abstract. One is a portrait of a woman with a lined face, her eyes telling a story of hardship and wisdom. Whoever made it is a talented artist.
There’s a savory scent coming from the area behind a door with a “Kitchen” sign on it. A big metal sheet covers the serving area, which has a smooth wooden counter.
I sit down, fatigue catching up with me. Amira is telling me about archery, but I can hardly keep my eyes open.
Marcus’s voice returns over the speaker. “The shelter-in-place order is lifted. The threat was eliminated.”
Eliminated. It’s a sanitized way of saying some animal that belongs here more than any of us do was just killed. That’s reality, though, both here and back in the continental New America.
Kill or be killed.
21
Three Weeks Later
I hope by semester’s end, you’ll never look at a field of grass or an ancient oak tree the same way again.
- Excerpt from a lecture given by Dr. Lucinda Hollis in her Introduction to Plant Biology course
“Mornin’, Briar.” Felix touches the wide brim of his hat as I walk into the garden.
“Morning.”
I turn and raise my palm in a cursory wave at Vance, who will return for me later.
It rained for a few hours last night, and the air in the garden this morning is lush and heavy. I breathe deeply, the rich, loamy scents of wet earth and vegetation infusing me with a sense of calm.
I’ve been working in the garden for more than two weeks. Every day, I wake up excited about coming to my personal ideaof paradise. I spend eight hours a day surrounded by plants—what could be better?
Felix is in charge, and the workers here say he runs the garden with a potting-soil fist, because he’s easygoing. He’s quiet, preferring to be wrist-deep in dirt. For a week now, Vance has been allowed to leave me under Felix’s supervision for the workday.
I haven’t wandered outside the garden because I don’t want to lose that freedom. Vance watches me too closely for my comfort. Even when we’re alone together in my small room at night to sleep, his eyes are always on me.
In my short time working here, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve ached to share this experience with my mom, who would have been blown away by it. The vegetables and fruits have been genetically modified in ways I never thought possible.
The garden is made up of raised beds built from lumber, laid out in rows that seem endless. Some of them stretch more than two hundred feet. There are lots of island critters that would get into the beds if they weren’t raised. Protective screens arc around many of the beds, keeping birds and other flying pests away.
I’m starting my day harvesting sweet potatoes, and then I’ll move on to lettuce and spinach. There are several varieties of lettuce in the garden: Batavian, Jericho, romaine, Boston Bibb, and buttercrunch. Like everything here, it’s been bred to be extremely heat tolerant, require less water to grow, and regrow very quickly.
The lettuce I’m cutting away would normally take at least two weeks to regrow. But this lettuce will be fully regenerated within forty-eight hours.
