The Crest

“Shhh.” She hissed.

They walked between the rows of seedlings to a far corner of the sector. The evening was dark and quiet. They could see the faint outline of the Crest a mile away, the battlement now under the cover of darkness. Around them were hundreds of seedlings, an awkward romance in the nobility of the plant world.

It felt odd to Lenore to be outside of the barracks. The Crest and the barracks were their lives, everyday it was the barracks to quadrant 28 and then back again.

Ben held her hand as they made their way to a flat piece of ground in between the rows of Western Red Cedar. Secluded, he put out a blanket, and they sat on the ground. The evening grew calm, no gunfire, a rare star peaked in the east.

She’d hesitated at first but he persisted. Getting caught outside of the barracks meant getting thrown in brig; they considered it AWOL. Lenore was different from most kids, she rarely complained and loved working on the Crest, she enjoyed the shooting, the excitement, and the camaraderie of it all. She also liked Ben. They were experimenting with love, and life, in a revelatory environment. Even with the Shift, love was love, wasn’t it? Maybe not. Lenore wasn’t sure.

Nobody on the Crest knew what a normal teenage life was. The rules of existence changed, schools closed and the chance to socialize with others declined. Their development as young adults postponed, intimacy denied.

Ben and Lenore met each other in the pod. They were from the same high school before it shut down, but they never met. They’d passed each other in the hallway, but, back then Lenore skipped school to take care of her parents. The Shift messed everything up for her family. They lived near the confluence of the Columbia, coming from the east, and the Willamette coming from the south. In the pre-Shift days, the area was a Pacific Flyway, thousands of birds migrated in and out of the lakes and swamps every year. Canada geese, snow geese, white-fronted geese, and ducks of all kinds. Lenore remembered the sandhill cranes and the blue herons. In an odd twist of river fate, the two courses flooded one last time, before drying up. The flooding dislocated Lenore’s family and they ended up in a run-down flat in Old Portland with the gangs. They couldn’t find work.

Lenore grew tired of home, and when the draft of high school seniors came, she was ready. Plus, she got paid $500 dollars a month which she sent home, and that made her feel good. At least she could put food on the table and buy medicine for her father.

Ben gazed at the dark-haired woman. She was nimble, agile, and skinny. The electricity between the pair was strong. Awkwardly, he shifted his gaze away from her eyes, unsure about himself.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Fine, and you?” she asked. More awkwardness.

“Doing okay I guess.”

They sat on the ground. He put his arm around her and she didn’t seem to mind.

“We could get in trouble for this you know,” he told her.

“I know,” she replied.

“I never saw you much at Sandy High.”

“Didn’t go much. I’m surprised they let me graduate.”

“As long as you volunteer for the Crest, they don’t care anymore.”

“I wanted to come. I’m different from everyone else.”

“How so?”

“I needed to get out of the house. I know everyone complains about the Crest but it’s not so bad here,” she told him.

“I agree, it was hard at first, but the attacks haven’t been that bad. Knock on wood,” he said.

“What’s to become of us?”

“I don’t know, we live to survive another day, I guess.

Finish out our two years, stay alive.”

“On quadrant 28,” she joked.

“Home away from home,” he said.

“Sorry.”

“I’m glad I got assigned with you,” he said.

“Me too.”

They sat there in the quiet of the nursery. Thinking about how to fill the silence.

“Have you ever wondered about the future?” she asked him.

“Like how?”

“Well like, relationships. I mean the planet is getting hotter and hotter. How will we interact as humans when our environment is destroyed? I can’t live depressed all the time. Did that make any sense?”

“Of course, it did. What you’re saying is how would me and and you interact with each other in an uncertain future.”

“Kind of, I mean, what if we lived together, would you be bitter all the time? That’s not what I want. I want a world of joy.”

“It would come down to our mindset. Our planet can be taken from us but we can still choose our own attitude. People have suffered worse. We could find joy in ourselves.”

“That’s why I’m hesitant about a relationship. It could be miserable.”

“I know things are pretty screwed up, but I’m not.” Ben smiled.

“We are the first generation to inherit the Shift.”

“We’ll have to create something new. The rules of life have changed.”

“I mean how? In my home, we can’t even find basic food stuffs. Plus, my dad needs insulin.”

“I’m sorry, it must be hard to find.”

“They use the money I send home to buy it, but it’s exorbitant and poor quality. He’s getting weaker.”

Ben didn’t say anything.

“That’s why I appreciate the Crest. The money I send home keeps my father alive. He’s everything to me. A wise man.”

“You’re lucky.”

“We are the first starving generation. We’ve lost so much with the Shift,” she said.

“Food is a concern.”

“The subject is always food on the Crest. Nobody gets enough to eat. Even at home, it’s hard to make tamales,” she said.

“Tamales, my mouth is watering,” he said.

“Of course, tamales are for special occasions. They are an Aztec tradition. In our house, it’s a tradition to kiss the person who makes the tamales.”

“Where do I sign up?” he teased.

The night wore on and they heard gentle clicking sounds emanating from the seedlings.

“They sound like crickets, almost,” she said.

“I’ve never heard them up close.”

“What do you think it means? The clicking.”

“Don’t know. Could be they are content.”

Ben spotted movement in the row of trees next to them. It startled him. He motioned to Lenore to remain still. Stunned, they looked up and saw a red fox staring at them.

The red fox, Vulpes vulpes, stayed for thirty seconds, gazing at the pair. Lenore and Ben witnessed the splendid creature but said nothing. The female fox moved its bushy tail back and forth, contemplating the humans. This mammalian castaway scavenged the nursery for the odd mouse or rat that it could find. Lenore wondered, did this beautiful animal feel hope for its future? Such was the fallacy of the young human—a fox that possessed hope.

They watched the fox for a few more contemplative seconds and then it moved on. In those moments, time stood still; the fox put the couple into a contemplative state.

Lenore became introspective. Despite all the torment of the Crest, this one animal seemed worth it all. During that time, she understood more clearly why FORC existed. She knew why those five million seedlings were needed to restore the void. She couldn’t pinpoint the emotion, but it felt sublime. As for Ben, something deep inside his soul stirred. The splendor of seeing the vixen summoned an emotion buried beneath months of worry on the Crest. Tears came to his eyes.

They sat there quietly for the next few minutes and then the clicking noise enhanced an octave.

“A warning?” Ben said.

They heard footsteps in the dark rows behind them. Behind them, a man stalked the pair with a ten-inch Bowie knife.

Dark now, the pair could see nothing and panicked.

“It must be the MPs. They probably checked our quarters. What should we do?” Lenore whispered.

“Let’s go before they catch us,” he murmured back.

They heard the steps coming closer, but then came a wave of shrill clicking and the couple ran back to the barracks.

Only a few rows behind, the FORC stalker fumed.