Continued from yesterday:
“It’s almost dawn,” Sara murmured. “Everyone who can should get some rest.”
Mort made to find a space beside Sara.
“Not you, Mort. You hit your head. You have to stay awake for an hour, at least.”
A hand felt the back of his head. “That, and you’re bleeding,” said Callisto. “We have to do some wound-cleaning at least.”
“You’re taking him to the taps over the snow?” said Sara.
“How do *you* know it snowed?”
“The smell.”
Mort sniffed. He couldn’t smell a fucking thing, what with his sinuses tingling and jangling from their collision with her skull.
“He still needs that wound washed, and we don’t have many options, here.”
“We can still improvise.” Soft shuffling noises. The indistinct shape of someone finding things in the dark by feel and memory. “I’ll need your feet, dear.”
Perplexed, Mort put a foot up by her crossed legs. Something smooth and dry went over his foot, guided by Sara’s hands, twisted, folded and finally bound in place by the ankle strap of his unitard.
He examined her work as she repeated the process. It was white. Cotton. But beyond that…
“Don’t pick at it, dear, it could come undone.” Sara snugged the last binding tight. “It probably won’t last, anyway, but the point is to last long *enough*. I’m sorry, Callisto, but I’ve run out of available pillowslips.”
“I have one I can use,” she said.
“I have the other,” said Emilia in the dark. “Be quick, but be thorough. A little scuffing is better than a lot of blood.”
Soft noises in the gloom, such as those made by someone binding their own feet with a couple of pillowslips.
Mort let himself be guided to the door.
It had, indeed, snowed. Shallow drifts formed across the expanse of bitumen that promised more bitter cold to come. He could already feel it leaking into his bones. Mort hated the cold, but it loved him like nothing else.
“Try not to step in it,” Callisto advised. “Stick to the dry parts where you can.”
And that was the last thing he remembered her actually saying. The cold slid into his skull, effecting his mind.
There was snow in the trough. He remembered staring at it as she plunged his head under the tap again and again. Snow in his face. Cold. Bad.
Hold it *there*! You have a nosebleed. If you throw it away again, I'm tying an icicle to your face. How many fingers? Damn. Still bleeding. Crouch. Bend forward. Pinch your nose. No, *pinch* your nose. There. Stay still. Quit rocking. Head forward. *Quit* rocking!
Ouch. Hurt there. Get off. Been good. Never did nothing.
*Head*. *Forward*. No, you stay still. Look at your feet. *Feet*!
Blood dripping into the snow.
Hold your *nose*, damnit! And hold still. Jesus… Ha! There’s the bastard.
*OW*!
Well, I told you to hold *still*…
Again, he was plunged under the water. Mort yowled in the process. He’ll be good. He’ll be good. Never done nothing, and he’ll never do it again. Swear.
Where was Sara?
Had to find her.
Hard grip on his arm. Stay on the black. Stay on the black. This way. *THIS* way. Stay on the black. Left. Right. Left… *STAY* on the *BLACK*.
He wanted *Sara*… Where was Sara?
Nearly there, now. Come on. How many fingers?
Uhm… One? One? One?
A hand down his shirt. Ow! *HOT*.
Geez, you don’t keep a lot of heat, do you? Just a little more. Keep moving, now. On the *black*…
Door. Inside. Hot, here. He hissed, wanting to go back outside. Back to Sara. But the firm grip pulled him into the heat.
Let *go*! He had to find *Sara*.
And she was here. Weren’t they outside? How?
Hot. *Hot* blankets. All around him. Sit up, dear. That’s right. Take these wet things off your feet. *Good* boy… Tuck them in, now.
Vigorous hands, rubbing over him. Fit to wear him away. Mort swore he’d be good, just leave him *alone*… but they never stopped.
Lightning… no. Flourescant lamps. Flickering on. Hurt his eyes. White things hanging from the upper bunk resolved into damp pillowslips. Four of them.
Sara was right *there*. Beside him. Making friction burns across his back.
The buzzing around him resolved into words.
“…know what it’s like, being a heat-hog myself. Cold just seems to creep right in and it’s hard to get it to go away.” Sara. So glad she was here.
Emilia had dark eyes and cafe-o'lait skin. She had the look of a mother as she alternately breathed on or abraded his hands with her own.
She looked… *normal*.
“Ah. You come back to yourself at last. Wondering if I’m a hidden mutant?”
Mort nodded.
“I tell fortunes, I pretend I can see the future,” she smirked. “I was far too good at it for my neighbours, so… they report me and I wind up in here. They could not put me away from being Rom. They could not report me for running an illegal business… I was not. They had no noise, no illegal goings on to have me removed. I followed every letter of the law.” A bitter laugh. “And then the attack on the White House comes. Every mutant is a suspect… and they suspect me for being a mutant. At last they get rid of their ‘unworthy neighbour’.” Emilia spat on the floor. “New dawn of tolerance, *HA*!”
Mort smirked. He remembered that campaign. All colours united together. Very touchy-feely. Except when it came to the matter of those who were blue, green, and any other new hue cooked up by the X-gene. On that point, the government stalled, was stymied, and otherwise hemmed and hawed.
“There’s only so much tolerant men can tolerate,” said Sara. “To paraphrase the mahatma.”
Outside, trucks ground and beeped. Something was happening.
Nobody amongst the assembled quasi-slumberers was inclined to peek outside and see what was happening. At least, not until the indelicate sound of flamethrowers came from the east.
One bold soul poked his head out. “They’re clearing the area near the conveyor belt with the flamethrowers,” he reported. “The trucks are putting up those concrete barricade thingies.”
Sara laughed. “Anyone who previously doubted the power of reverse psychology… now owes me a dollar.”
The rest of the captives joined in. It was bleak humour, but they could take what they could get.
The PA squealed into life. “All prisoners now assemble near the food delivery system. Stand ready for a special announcement from the President of the United States.”
“At least they haven’t slid the word 'human’ in there, yet,” Sara's tone was bitter, but it earned another laugh.
Everyone filing out wrapped themselves in their single blanket before joining the group game of dodge-the-snow.
At least the tarmac at the conveyor was warm. If only for a handful of moments. The sun was starting to melt the rest of the snow and the last of dawn’s colours faded into day.
“Five days,” whispered Sara.
They grouped together in cliques. New friends or old, it didn't matter. People with some common thread stuck to that which they knew.
As some warmth slid gradually back into the day, those gathered under the guns murmured amongst themselves, shifted their weight, and watched the outside.
~
Sara was blowing steam rings[1] by the time the fanfare came to a finish.
“My fellow Americans… In this time of adversity, we are being offered a moment. A moment to recognise a growing threat within our own population, and take a unique role in the shape of human events…” A crackling buzz, a peculiar sound in the background… and then nothing but silence.
Sara counted in her head. _…four, five, six, seven, eight._
“We appear to be having some technical difficulties with the satellite link-up with the White House. We will return to the Presidential address as soon as this problem is cleared up.”
“Maybe the mutie assassin got his mark,” said someone.
Morbid laughter, which Mort, Callisto and herself did not share.
Sara listened with half an ear to the 'other news’ meant to fill in dead air. Imagining furious technicians sorting out tangles of cables, tapping away at computers and - in general - creating the sort of harassed melee that inevitably resulted from technical hitches at a very important time.
“And it sounds like the White House is back online. We return you to the Presidential Address.”
Silence.
_One,_ Sara counted. _Two, three…_
“..mr President…” someone whispered.
Tittering broke out.
The President cleared his throat. “My fellow Americans… In this time of adversity, we are being offered a moment. A moment to recognise a unique opportunity to alter the shape of human events…”
_Hell-lo… Someone’s altered the script._
“We stand on the brink of a choice. We can choose war. A war against a people we perceive as dangerous - a people who are also our children, our relatives, our friends… Or we can choose peace. The attack, just a few short days ago, was perpetrated by a member of mutant-kind.”
Sara reached over blindly, and found Mort’s hand.
“This mutant… attacker… bore a knife. A knife that had the legend 'mutant freedom now’ on a ribbon tied to the handle. This man obviously thought there was no other way to get his message across.”
Their hands tightened their grip.
“My fellow Americans; the fact that one man felt in such dire straights says too much about the current atmosphere of human-mutant relations. One mutant had the ability to overpower security, and come within inches of murder. I am… eternally grateful that he *chose* not to complete that irreversible goal.
"We must consider, as a nation, that there are mutants who live their daily lives without any cause to use their uncanny abilities against the human race. We must consider that there are those amongst us who, though they possess the famous X-gene, do not have any mutant ability. There are those who live each day in terror, because of *us*… because of *humans*.”
_Interesting correction,_ thought Sara.
“We must consider - and consider carefully - our next step forward. We stand at a crossroads, mutants and humans together, and must choose which path we will take.
"I hope that we shall together choose the path towards peace… towards an equitable arrangement between ourselves, and those amongst us whom we currently fear. To that end, I hereby grant an amnesty towards my attacker…”
Whatever he said next was drowned out by a joyous yawp from the assembled and incarcerated mutants. One that she, too, had to be a part of. Only later, much later, would she discovered that the man had *invited* his would-be-assassin for an official visit in which the official documents would be officially drawn up.
The party mood was unquenchable. Somewhere behind the din of mutant celebration and the spontaneous eruption of _This Land is Your Land_, there was a plea from the President for the mutants and assumed mutants in holding facilities to have their constitutional rights defended.
“…to the gulf stream wa-aa-aters, This land was made for you and meeee!”
“Good morning,” said the President in the lull. “And God Bless.”
Sara put her hand on her heart. “God Bless America,”
Others joined, “Land that I love. Stand beside her, and guide her… Thru the night with a light from above.”
Some were still dancing to _This Land is Your Land_, some were just jumping around like fools and yawping with glee.
It was chaos.
It was marvellous.
It was colder than Hell and she’d never felt so warm.
And Mort swept her over backwards and kissed her square on the lips.
Only in a moment like this, only in supreme and divine euphoria… could she ever accept such a passionate confirmation of their mutual feelings for each other. And especially, Mort’s feelings for her.
“Lord love ya, Sara Louise,” he said, helping her up.
“And God bless us, every one,” she chirped. There were trays lining up on the conveyor belt. Hot porridge and cereal and scrambled eggs with a carton of milk for each of them. Sara would forever remember it as the meal of freedom.
Even though freedom was a long time in coming.
[1] Like smoke rings, only harder to manage. And yes, I can do them.
~