“What is that taste? It’s the stuff on the outside. What is that?”
Q had met loads of people after joining the Navy. They’d done a humanitarian relief thing when he lived on a ship before he became a SEAL. Every man, woman, and child he’d run intohad known what chocolate was. How did this woman in the USA not know about chocolate candy bars?
Something was wrong, something terrible, and he couldn’t let her just wander off. He had to do something to help, but what?
2
Flora had done it. She’d run when they buried her. She knew they wouldn’t come back to check on her for another two days. That was the tradition. They buried women for three days to purify them before marriage. She’d been given an air tube so she could breathe, but nothing else. She was supposed to stay in the ground and think about all the bad things she’d done in her life and let the dirt take them so when she joined with the man who was to be her husband, she would be pure.
Some women died during the cleansing. Those women were deemed truly evil. They deserved the fate given to them. Because she had a rebellious streak, she’d been buried three other times as punishment. But those times, they’d come back after twenty-four hours. The cleansing burial was supposed to weed out the bad seeds. Maybe they’d think she’d been taken by a bear or something.
Accepting the punishment without resistance was one of the tenets of their life. Few people fought the word handed down through their leaders. But Flora couldn’t accept their decision about who she was to marry. There was no way she would ever submit to marrying the old man her father had picked from the elders. She was done with the community and its rules. Shewanted something different, even if it meant she would be alone for eternity.
Marriage meant punishment for someone like her. When her second sister married, she’d learned that leg and feet beating was the usual punishment for obstinate women. The bruises she’d seen on her sister had scared her. She never wanted to be subjected to something like that. Being alone was preferable.
She’d had no clue where she was going, or if there was anyone else out there who would help her, but she couldn’t stay. She would live on her own in the woods if she had to, making clothes from animal pelts and preparing her food from what she found in the forest. She knew which plants were okay to eat and how to fish. She just had to get far enough away they couldn’t find her.
Running would give her the distance she needed to survive. If they found her, the punishment would be death. Not that they’d put anyone to death for running before because no one had ever escaped.
There were other people in the world, but not many. The great purge had wiped the population off the surface. Her father had explained to them that those living outside the boundaries of the community were to be feared. The one time she’d traveled away from the community, she’d not spoken to anyone. Her father had driven them to a farm, and they’d picked up a few pigs.
When they’d returned from buying the pigs, her father had been punished along with her mother. The dirt had taken her mother, proving that she’d been the one with the idea to get the pigs. Her father had survived but never left the community again.
She’d asked once why the leaders had punished them for getting the much needed pigs which had gone on to replenishtheir stock, but the beating she’d received had kept her from asking anything ever again.
The next week, the elders had spoken during assembly about how the people in the outside world were demons, and if the people from their community traveled amongst them, they would perish, too, just like her mother had. Flora feared that maybe she’d been infected after that trip, and that’s why she’d had the idea to run.
The sun would be gone soon, and she would have to stop moving through the forest. She hated not moving in the night, but she couldn’t see well enough in the dark and she might fall off a cliff or run into something that could hurt her.
When she found the bottles of water, she’d known what they were because she’d seen them before. She drank, letting the water fill her belly as she quenched her thirst. Since she was naked, she knew she wouldn’t be able to carry more than one of the bottles with her, so she needed to drink her fill.
She had almost finished the bottle when she heard someone behind her. She spun, seeing a man. He had a beard and curly hair, but he didn’t look mean like the men in her community.
For one, his gaze stayed on her face though she was naked. He offered her food. It was weird, wrapped in a package. It didn’t taste great, not like the food she made, but it was okay. She would survive longer if she had food like this.
He kept talking, telling her he had clothes. If she had something to cover up with, it would be easier to survive.
He put something else on the table. “In case you want more.”
She opened the package and took a bite. The flavor was shocking. Sweet like the honey she gathered, but different.
“What is it?”
“It’s a candy bar. It’s full of fat and sugar, but it will give you fast energy.”
“What is that taste? It’s the stuff on the outside. What is that?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment, but she took another bite, surprised by how good it tasted. Something made a noise behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder, realizing it was a bird and not someone from her community chasing after her.
“It’s chocolate.”
“I can see why you worship demons if this is the food they give you.”
Laughter was the last thing she expected from this man. “I don’t worship demons, but I agree. This food makes people do crazy stuff.”
She heard another noise and turned around. There was nothing there, but if she stayed here, they would find her.
“I need to leave. The clothes. I need them.”
