The Buried

by Melissa Grey

  “Mama?” Lucas asked, voice soft. Scared.

  She didn’t answer. Her eyes were locked on Gabe’s. Her mouth twitched at the corner, as if she were holding something back. Tears. A scream. He didn’t know.

  What he did know was the way his heart sputtered and stalled when her free hand—the one not holding Lucas—inched upward. She squeezed her eyes shut, hard enough to send a tear sliding down her cheek.

  “Mom?”

  She couldn’t have. She didn’t.

  She did.

  His father stared at her as if he had never seen her before.

  “Linda, what are you—put your hand down!”

  He reached for her but she shrugged out of his grasp, crying now. But she said nothing. Nothing to explain herself. Nothing in her son’s defense. Nothing.

  Gabe’s chest cavity felt weirdly hollow, as if someone had taken a spoon and scooped out all the important bits.

  He watched in a silent stupor as Moran unearthed what looked like a ceremonial dagger. It was long and shiny and had a slight curve to the end of it.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Gabe’s father tried to surge forward, but his mother—no, she had become something else, someone Gabe didn’t recognize—grabbed his arms and tugged him back.

  “There must be rules, Gabriel.” Moran smiled at him sweetly. “Surely you understand.”

  What he understood was this: A psychotic charlatan was about to exact her pound of flesh. What would she do? Cut him? Carve some symbol of shame into his chest? Maybe more, if she liked the way it made her feel. Gabe strongly suspected that she already did. There was an eager gleam in her eyes that made him want to cry and scream and maybe wet himself a little.

  “Misha. If you will.”

  Oh, he would. Misha broke away from the rest, tugging a table closer to where Gabe sat as he did so.

  Gabe tried to stand, but Misha was too fast. He pressed down on Gabe’s shoulders, rooting him in place.

  The knife caught the light as Moran drew it, again and again, across a whetstone. Where had she gotten a whetstone? And when? He’d been eyeing Misha and now there was a whetstone. The blade hissed as she pulled it over the stone, her movement slow and deliberate, calculated to give him plenty of time for his dread to build.

  “We can end this now,” Moran said. “No one has to get hurt. Just tell me where you found the radio.”

  Sash’s voice flitted through his head as Gabe met Moran’s eyes. In that moment, he knew the truth, as bare and hideous as it was.

  She’s lying.

  She’s been lying the whole time.

  Twice he had to swallow past the cloying lump of fear in his throat. It was sour, like bile. He rolled his eyes upward to meet Moran’s. She peered down at him, her face the same placid benevolent one she wore during their one-on-one sessions. He made sure to hold that gaze when he spoke:

  “What radio?”

  The knife froze, scraping against the stone. The sound made Gabe’s body seize, the way it did when he heard nails on a chalkboard or metal utensils scraping against a plate.

  “You know what radio.” Moran’s voice had lost the sheen of benevolence. Her consonants were hard, clipped. Impatient.

  “This is ridiculous!” his father shouted, barging through the others, or at least attempting to. But his progress was stalled by Yuna’s mother and father. And Sash’s mom, even after what they had done to her own daughter. The three of them held him back while Gabe’s mother wrapped both her arms around Lucas, turning his face away to hide his gaze against her collarbone. As if not seeing what was about to happen would scar him any less.

  “He’s just a child!” Gabe’s father shouted.

  “There are no children here,” Moran intoned. “Only survivors. And we all must do our part.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Gabe shook his head, even though he knew it was futile. It was all futile. This interrogation. This mockery of a trial. His father’s protests as Yuna’s parents held him back. “I didn’t do anything.”

  A lie. And they both knew it.

  Moran smiled at Gabe, satisfied. She knew she had him. She knew she had won.

  “Misha, hold him still.”

  Gabe thrashed in Misha’s arms, but the young man was strong. His arms pinned Gabe to the spot with the surety of iron bands.

  “No!” Gabe cried.

  Then Misha held his entire body down with one hand, while the other slammed his wrist onto the table. The force of it sent shockwaves of pain up Gabe’s arm, but he knew it was nothing compared to what would come. Futile. Futile, futile, futile.

  Moran placed one hand on his outstretched fingers. He tried to curl them in, to do something, anything, to make this not happen, but Moran leaned her weight against his hand, flattening it.

  Futile.

  “Please.” Gabe’s voice cracked over the word. He was too scared to hate how awful it sounded. “Please don’t.”

  Not his hands! They fixed things. They were useful. They were his.

  Moran’s own fingers—thin and wiry but strong—pried two of his apart from the rest. The littlest finger and his ring finger. His left hand. Not the one he used the most. She wasn’t stupid. She was smart and she was cruel and that was the worst combination of all.

  Gabe’s eyes rolled upward as she drew in a steady, calm breath. When she looked down at him, there was a fire in her own eyes that made him colder somehow.

  “With this blade,” Moran said, lifting the knife high enough to catch the recessed light bleeding from the corners of the room, “I cleanse you.”

  With that, she brought the knife down, hard and swift and merciless.

  “Sash?”

  Something rapped softly on the door, or at least what Sash thought was the door. It was too dark to tell. Left had become right. Up had become down. Silence was deafening, and noise was a far-off dream.

  Sash squeezed her eyes shut.

  It’s not real.

  You’re hearing things.

  No one is coming for you.

  You’re going to die here.

  In the dark.

  Alone.

  But then, the knocking came again, more insistent this time.

  “Sash, are you in there?”

  It was the inanity of the question that drew Sash to the surface of her tormented solitude.

  “Of course I’m here.” Her voice cracked, hoarse from disuse. “Where else would I be?”

  “Why are you always such a b—”

  Sash scrambled toward the door, banging her knees into it in her haste. “Nastia?” She pressed her forehead to the door, her palms flattening against the metal. “Is that you?”

  “She hurt him, Sash.” Nastia’s voice didn’t sound like her. It was thin and reedy. Not self-assured and petulant. Not like Nastia at all.

  Maybe you are hearing things. Maybe none of this is real. Maybe—

  “Wait,” Sash said, stopping her own poisonous thoughts in their tracks. “Who hurt who?”

  She rose up on her knees, feeling at the door, cursing its seamless construction. There was no handle on this side. No lock. No hinges to take apart, even if she had tools to do it. No way out.

  “Gabe.” The girl who only vaguely sounded like Nastia sniffled. (Or at least Sash thought she did. It was hard to tell through a thick layer of metal.) “His fingers. Misha held him down, and she …”

  Nastia fell quiet, her words trailing off into nothingness. It was possible she said something, finished the thought, completed the horrid sentence she didn’t really need to complete, but Sash couldn’t hear it.

  Her fists were raw and bloody and bruised. Her skin was abraded. Torn. Her voice hoarse from screaming into the void, but still she began hammering at the door. Nastia was quiet for too long. It could have been seconds, it could have been minutes, Sash was well past the point of following time with nothing—no light, no sound, nothing—to track it. All she knew was that the silence was even more madde
ning than it had been before that wretched, aborted sentence hung around her like a noxious cloud.

  “Nastia!”

  “I’m sorry.” A choked sob. “I’m sorry. I never should have … I’m sorry.”

  Something on the other side of the door jingled.

  Metal against metal.

  Something small, something Nastia could carry without being caught.

  (Keys.)

  Sash scrambled back, away from the door. The tumblers rattled against one another as the door was unlocked. Then the groan of a rusted handwheel creaking, creaking, creaking, and then—

  Light.

  Sash squeezed her eyes shut, clumsily raised her hands to cover them.

  “Get up.” Now, Nastia was beginning to sound like herself. Horrible child. A brat. A savior. An angel. “Misha will be back any minute. I told him I’d watch you so he could go wash up and get something to eat.”

  Sash blinked, her vision blurry. The light burned after having been in the dark so long.

  “Come on.” Nastia wrapped her hands around Sash’s bicep and pulled, but Sash collapsed against her sister. Her equilibrium was shattered from the isolation, the darkness, the absolute bone-crushing despair.

  “How long was I in here?” Sash’s mouth felt somehow both dry and sticky.

  (Gummy bears sizzling on the hot roof of a car. A man laughing—her father—as she squished a handful between her palms. Her mother in the front seat, aggravated, angry.)

  “Half a day, maybe.” Nastia poked her head out of the small room. It looked so much smaller now with the low, red light from the hallway dripping in, filling up its empty spaces. Not much space to fill.

  Half a day. Twelve hours, give or take. It felt like longer. So very much longer.

  “Wait.” Sash paused the moment both her feet were over the threshold. She was out of that room. Out of it. Never going back in. Never, not ever. “What did you say happened to Gabe?”

  Nastia tried pulling Sash along, but she remained stubbornly rooted to the spot. “Sash. Come on!”

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what happened to Gabe. Where is he? Is he okay?”

  “He’s alive.”

  “That isn’t as reassuring as you think it is.”

  Nastia rolled her eyes but the gesture was a shadow of its former self. “It was only two fingers.”

  Sash’s hand tightened around Nastia’s forearm. The other girl tried to pull back, but Sash’s grip was iron. Solid. Unyielding. “What do you mean ‘two fingers’?”

  “Sash, you’re hurting me.”

  “Nastia.”

  “She found out about his radio.”

  Something clicked in Sash’s jaw. Her skull ached from how hard she ground her teeth together. “How? Did you tell her?”

  The hurt that shot across Nastia’s face was unjustified. Like she hadn’t done the things she did. Hadn’t sold her own flesh and blood out for a pat on the head from a madwoman. “No. I didn’t.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Sash bit out. Radical honesty. If not now, when?

  “I don’t care if you believe me,” Nastia said. “Let’s just get out of here before we get caught. Be mad at me later, or at least somewhere else.”

  She was right. Of course she was right. Now wasn’t the time or place for vengeance. (Is that what she wanted? No. No, not really. Not at all.) Now was the time to rally. To escape. To plan. To find Gabe and Yuna and—

  As if summoned, the girl in question rounded the corner, her sneakers skidding over the metal tiling with such alacrity their rubber soles squealed.

  “Sash!” Yuna called out upon sighting her. Those long, nimble legs ate up the distance between them. Nastia tensed at Sash’s side.

  Yuna’s hair was in complete and utter disarray. It was so wildly unlike Yuna that it took Sash out of her body for a second. Made it harder to notice what other things were wildly wrong.

  “Why are you covered in blood?” Sash reached for Yuna, her hand smearing red across the other girl’s cheek. “What happened to you?” And then, when she saw what Yuna was holding in her hand, she added, “Is that a sword?”

  Yuna nodded once, then shook her head. “I went up. To the surface. Had to see”—her breath broke over the words as she gasped for air—“if I could find something to prove Moran wrong. Prove you right. It was worse than we thought. So much worse.” Another shake of the head. “You don’t know.”

  She reached behind her to retrieve something tucked into the waistband of her pants.

  A notebook. Leather-bound. Old. Sash took it from Yuna’s trembling hands.

  “What is this?” She squinted as she flipped through the pages. Numbers, numbers, more numbers, all arranged in orderly rows, like soldiers lined up for inspection.

  “Experiments,” Yuna gasped out. “Moran. That’s what we are. That’s what this is. The bunker. The Cataclysm. All of it. It was her. Lumnezia.”

  Sash mouthed the word Lumnezia silently. The scrapbook. The photo. The newspaper clipping. The mysterious illness cutting a path through a boarding school in the Swiss Alps.

  Experiments. That was what they were. That was all they were.

  Yuna heaved herself upright, sword trembling slightly in her hand as she tightened her grip on it. “The air outside … it’s been safe for seven years. It’s all there.”

  Seven years?

  Seven years?

  Nastia yanked the book out of Sash’s hands. Sash didn’t put up a fight. Her fingers tingled, her skin oddly numb.

  “That’s ridiculous. Let me see.”

  Seven. Years.

  “There’s no time!” Yuna shouted, snatching it out of the younger girl’s hand.

  “Hey!”

  “Yuna—”

  “They’re here!” Yuna’s voice was shrill. High and scared, but controlled somehow. “In the bunker!”

  Sash’s throat seized like it might close. She thought she understood. But—no. It couldn’t be.

  “What’s in here?” Her voice sounded distant to her own ears, like someone else’s words were coming out of her mouth.

  She knew. But she didn’t know. She had to know.

  “The monsters. From outside. They’re in here. With us.”

  “There’s no such thing as monsters,” Nastia said, but her tone was soft and unsure. Her eyes locked on the blood splattered across Yuna’s fair skin.

  A sound from the other end of the hallway cut off any clever retort Sash’s brain was attempting to brew.

  Misha stood at the far end of the corridor, his shirt darkened at the sleeves by something that Sash did not want to think was blood. (It was definitely blood.)

  Only two fingers. And yet. All that blood.

  “I knew I couldn’t trust you.” Misha spit on the floor in front of him, something like revulsion clouding his eyes. “Can’t trust any of you.”

  “Yuna, Nastia.” Sash didn’t take her eyes off her brother. He was big and he was dumb, but he was fast. “Gather the others. Get them to safety. Tell them what you told me. I’ll handle him.”

  “What do you mean ‘handle him’?” Nastia asked, voice an octave higher than it should have been. “How are you going to—?”

  But Yuna was already tugging the other girl down the hallway. She paused only a few feet away. Her brow hardened. She looked so determined.

  Yuna grabbed Sash by the arm and spun her around.

  “Yuna, what are you—?”

  The question ended with a collision of lips.

  Sash froze, her eyes going wide. Yuna’s mouth moved under hers, just the tiniest increment of an inch, but it was enough to spur Sash to action.

  Yuna pulled back, her lips shiny and swollen, her eyes wild. “Don’t die.”

  “I won’t.” It was a ridiculous promise to make, but in that moment, Yuna could have asked for every star in the sky strung together like pearls and Sash would have promised to have it done by morning.

  Misha spat again. “Disgusting.”
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  “Screw you, Misha,” Yuna said. She flipped the blade in her hand, offering the hilt to Sash.

  That, at least, was enough to give Misha pause. He stopped, brow furrowed, face pinched, waiting.

  “What?” Nastia’s eyes bounced from Yuna to the sword to Sash to her brother and back again. “You can’t use that on our brother.”

  Sash’s fingers brushed Yuna’s as she wrapped them around the sword’s handle. Their eyes met for the slimmest of moments, but it was enough.

  “Protect my sister,” Sash said.

  Yuna nodded, just once. “I will.”

  A smile, entirely out of place. The world they knew was a lie. And even that falsehood was falling down around them, threatening to leave nothing but rubble in its wake.

  With a grin, Sash called out her fighting words: “Catch me if you can, Misha.”

  And then, in the opposite direction of Yuna and her family and her friends, she ran. Toward the monsters and not away.

  Yuna ran through the corridors of the bunker with Nastia at her side, trying desperately not to think of Sash facing down her own brother. Sash, armed with a sword she didn’t know how to use. (Yuna hadn’t either, but as it so happened, sticking the monster with the pointy end worked just fine.) Sash, confronting someone nearly twice her size.

  If anyone can, it’s Sash. The thought was almost a comfort. Almost. Repeat that until you believe it.

  “They’re in the common area,” Nastia said, her words labored. Her breathing harsh. She shouldn’t have been out of breath; she was in good shape like Yuna, almost as dedicated to learning ballet from Mrs. Eremenko as she was.

  (Years of malnutrition. Not enough food. No sunlight. Nothing good. The body withering away.)

  Yuna pushed the thoughts aside. They served no purpose now. They would only weigh her down.

  “Is Moran with them?” The question burned Yuna’s throat. Too much running. Too much fear. Too much everything.

  What she wouldn’t give for a dull moment when all of this was done.

  “No,” Nastia replied breathlessly. “I don’t know where she went, but she wasn’t with us. I haven’t seen her since the meeting.”

  Well, that can’t possibly be good.

  But one problem at a time. That was the only way through anything.