Loading ...Here is my first entry for the Story a Day. The Title was “Roscoe Falls Reflections” and I have to admit I hated the title. But it was the one I had to work with, so I started to work. Legion fans may recognize the name of the lead character, and that may give you a hint of where the story is going. So please, ignore her spoilery name!
Roscoe Falls Reflections
“Name?”
Drura looked up at the curt, overworked boarding attendant in front of her. She was completely surprised. She hadn’t expected to be asked any questions. The attendant sighed and demanded again, more forcefully this time, “Name!”
“I’m sorry,” Drura apologized, completely caught off guard. “Drura Sepht.” Damn! Why had she given her real name? Maybe no one heard her.
“Destination?”
Drura paused only a moment before replying, “Somahtur.”
“Identification?” There was no pause between questions. Although she had identification, Drura did not want to give it to the attendant. She looked around in her belongings before saying, “I had to leave so quickly. I don’t really have . . .
The attendant cut her off. She waved her hand indicating that Drura should go with those boarding in steerage. The thought of steerage was worse than the thought of losing her ID. All those people, pressed against her. It was more than she could stand. Maybe Drura should give the attendant some identification after all. She started to say something else to the attendant but the attendant was already on to the next person. She looked past Drura and yelled “Next!” and Drura quietly gathered her meager possessions and headed off into the bowels of the starliner.
It wasn’t Drura’s first time traveling between planets and it wouldn’t be her last. But all these people! All these refugees. It wasn’t usually like this when she traveled. She wasn’t sure that she could handle it.
Drura was pulled out of her reverie by a young woman standing next to her. “I’m sorry,” the woman said eagerly. “I didn’t mean to overhear, but did you say your name was Drura Sepht?”
Drura looked the young woman over. She looked like so many of the refugees Drura had encountered on her travels; her face a mixture of shock and emptiness, as if her mind knew it should react in some way, but could not comprehend that everything that it had ever known was gone. Completely gone, never to return. Drura wondered if she looked like that. She tried to adjust her visage accordingly.
She didn’t want to answer the woman, but she knew there was no way out of it. “Yes. It is.” she responded vacantly hoping that the woman would leave it at that. But there was no such luck.
“You’re her, aren’t you?” the woman practically spat out, unable to keep the excitement from her voice. “You’re the Survivor.”
Drura had certainly heard that name before. She hated that name. She hated the attention that it brought her. She silently wondered how she could easily get rid of this woman before realizing that there was no easy way. Not now. Not here. Not with all these refugees. Resignedly, she sighed quietly, “Yes. I am the Survivor.”
The woman seemed almost relieved. “I don’t mean to intrude. It’s just that you are such an inspiration to so many of us, so many of us who have lost someone.”
Drura had heard this before. She didn’t think that it was such an accomplishment just to keep living. Surviving in and of itself was unremarkable. She tried to tell people that. In fact, she said it repeatedly ever since Roscoe. But no one would listen. They needed a symbol, a face, an object to fetishize around their hopes that they too would survive. “I’m not an inspiration,” she repeated. “I’m just a person.” It was a mantra now. She knew the woman would not listen.
“But you are,” the woman practically beamed, a look of vague worship flashing over her features. “Everyone lost someone at Roscoe. Everyone. “ She looked off as if recalling her own litany of dead. “But you survived. You, alone. Every single person there – dead. All of them. All of them but you.”
Drura had to cut this off before everyone around them became aware that she was the famous “Survivor.” The last thing she needed was a throng of grieving desperate people hanging on to her, following her, not leaving her alone. No one understood it. No one possible could understand it, but she just wanted to be left alone, and she was willing to do almost anything she had to in order to achieve that goal. And she almost succeeded. Almost. Until Roscoe. After Roscoe she had been swarmed by people. All of them wanting something from her. Wanting to share their losses with her. She hated Roscoe. She hated thinking back about it. She hated being reminded that she, and she alone, made it off the planet alive.
She held up her hand to the woman. “I’m just an ordinary person. And as much as I can appreciate everyone’s need to make me something more, I’m not. And I really don’t like thinking about Roscoe. I lost too much there.”
The woman looked as if she had been struck in the face. Drura was afraid of this. It always seemed to happen when she told people how she really felt. The woman looked as if she were about to launch into a very loud apology, and that was the last thing Drura wanted. Too much attention. She could not risk a scene. She lowered her voice and said, “I’m sorry. I do not mean to snap at you. It is just hard to talk about. I really don’t want all these people making it difficult for me. If you are quiet, I will tell you what you want to know. I’ll answer any questions about Roscoe. Just please, don’t let the others know.“
The woman’s eyes practically swam with tears when Drura said this. She lowered her voice conspiratorially, “I understand. I won’t tell anyone who you are.“
Drura nodded her head. “Thank you.” The woman smiled at her, feeling an instant connection with the Survivor.
Even though she knew what the woman would say, Drura then asked, “What do you want to know?”
A mad eagerness seemed to radiate from the woman. Drura had seen this many times before. She was going to ask the same thing everyone asked, “How did you do it? How did you survive?”
When the inevitable question came, Drura told the woman what she told everyone who asked, “I really can’t tell you. It is something no one has been able to figure out – no doctors, no specialists. I survived and that is all there is to it.”
Far from making the woman disappointed, the answer did what it always did; it made her look at Drura with an awe bordering on the mystical. Drura tried to stop that cold. “It really is nothing special. I mean, you are leaving here unscathed. You survived. How did you do it?”
The woman pushed aside this question, “There are so many of us surviving here. I think they said five percent of the people Vortu survived.”
Drura said, “Even so. Why did those five percent survive?”
The woman once again pushed this aside, “Five percent is still millions of people. But you were the only one. A planet of 12 billion people and you were the only one!” From here the woman launched into a monologue that bordered on pressured speech. She just had to get it all out, to let Drura know how special she was.“
“ I mean, I couldn’t believe it when it happened. No one could. All those people dead, and on Roscoe of all places. It wasn’t the first planet to fall victim to the plague. I watched the news like everyone else as the planets were ticking off one by one. Telstock, 25 million dead. It seemed like such an unimaginably large number at the time, and like such a small number now. After all, something like 90% of the population survived on Telstock. But then the list kept on. Talkeneen 750 million dead; Nerox, 900 million dead. Sinec 1 billion dead; Gaiafrax 3 billion dead. Lenufrax 5 billion.
“And then it started to happen on Roscoe. No one thought that Roscoe would fall. It was the heart of the Confederation of Planets. The Capital. But it happened. And quickly. When the first victims were reported, we all knew that it was the beginning of the end. No one was safe. If it could happen there, it would happen any where. And then. . .” She drifted off for a moment before continuing, “The news we all dreaded was shouted everywhere. ‘Roscoe Falls!’ Shouted again and again, from planet to planet like a harbinger of impending doom. How could it happen? Roscoe! Every single person on the planet dead. The planet abandoned. Quarantined.”
The woman started to cry. Drura watched as the woman tried to compose herself. But it was too much for her and the woman began to shake a little. Drura simply looked on, not wanting to interrupt the woman’s grief.
After all, Drura knew the story. She was there. She saw it happen. She watched as 12 billion people died.
The woman was looking haggard, as if the story had taken more out of her than she knew. She glanced up at Drura’s face and smiled. “Until you. Until that science crew came back two years later. We were so hopeful. There had been no more outbreaks. People prayed the plague was over, hoped the answer to what caused it would be found on Roscoe, on the ruins of Roscoe.” The woman looked at Drura as if she were the most fantastic creature she had ever seen. “And when they came back, they found you. Alone. And alive. You had survived for over two years! It must have been horrible to be there amongst all the dead. Horrible. But then oh so fantastic to be rescued. That must have been the happiest day of your life. Of anyone’s life!” The woman broke down again, letting her joy and grief flood together until she dissolved in a coughing fit, the tears and phlegm overcoming her.
Shaking, she said, “It must have been so wonderful.”
Drura waited until she was sure the woman would say no more before she finally responded. “You are wrong. It wasn’t wonderful. It was horrible. I hated seeing that science team far more than I had hated seeing those people die. I had survived the plague. I didn’t know if I could survive being famous.
“And I was alone. For so long. Until they came, those damned scientists. I knew when I saw them that I would never be alone again. Everyone would want me. Everyone would want my story. I knew I no longer belonged to myself,” Drura stopped, her anger overcoming her. She then turned to the woman and looked at her coldly, “I knew that from now on, I belonged to all of you. I wish that science team had never returned to Roscoe.”
The woman was appalled. She shrunk back. “How can you say that? It had to be wonderful to be rescued from the ruins of your home like that! To be given new life after being amongst all those dead people, all of your family and friends rotting around you! Nothing could be worse.”
The woman started coughing again. People began to stare. In a plague area, the last thing anyone wanted to hear was coughing. Drura said, “You don’t look very good.”
The woman began to shake uncontrollably and sweat started to pour off of her. Now people were standing up and backing away from her. “No.” the woman swore almost silently.
Drura still sat by her side as everyone backed away. She said, “You have it. You have the plague.” The woman collapsed in a wail more horrible than anything Drura had ever heard, and she had heard many a death rattle. Drura watched as she did this, fascinated by the display. By now people were yelling “Plague! Plague!” and they were scrambling to get out of the steerage compartment. But it was no use. They were locked in. They would surely die. Every last one of them.
Every last one save one.
Drura patted the woman on the head and leaned down saying so quietly that only the woman could, “And you were wrong again. Roscoe wasn’t my home. I was born on Telstock. To quite a famous little family, in fact. My parents were virologists. They wanted to create a perfect lab in which all manner of disease could foment. And in that lab they would be free to study every complex virus and pathogen known to human kind.” As she said this, the woman started seizing, her muscles spasming. But the things that Drura were saying were far worse than the horrific pain the woman was experiencing.
Drura went on, “They were brilliant, but warped. They finally got what they wanted, but at a price. That price was me. I was their lab. Did you ever wonder who the first victims of the plague were? My parents. I watched them die, suffering from the diseases they had manipulated in me, their favorite little guinea pig. And after I put them in the ground, I moved to Talkeneen. Then to Nerox. Then Sinec, Gaifrax, and Lenufrax.
“And then I moved to Roscoe.”
Drura smiled as the woman began to vomit blood, “Oh, I think about Roscoe quite a bit. And how it fell. How all those people died. And how, for a very brief time, I was alone. So wonderfully alone.
“And now all I want is to be alone again.”
Buy me a beer!
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