Gods of Anthem

by Keys, Logan

  This book is dedicated to my Nana.

  She loved scaring kids.

  It’s my day in the meadow today. Once each quarter, I’m allowed to apply for outside duty, and I missed the last cycle due to rain. The roads are still wet, but it’s nice out, for what constitutes as nice these days. Rarely are there animals, but sometimes deer approach me while I’m cleaning up trash.

  These deer look healthy, free, and fast—everything I’m not. It’s wise to keep your distance, though, because even the seemingly gentle will attack you, especially after a storm.

  The sky’s redder than usual, like tears of the sun. My locater bracelet’s clamped around my arm, pinching my non-bicep. Why they insist on using it is beyond me. Where would I run? This place is surrounded by an ocean of clear emerald-green that is deceivingly inviting, but sharks swim the coastlines in hordes, unfished. Hard to imagine we’d swum in them once upon a time. Now it’s not even safe to venture past ankle depth.

  I’m cleaning up pristine, rarely used areas not far from the gate. Even this little bit of work is making me breathe hard and perspire.

  From every place on the island, the compound is visible, sprawling out in a maze of corridors. Camp Bodega holds only a million people now. I say “only” because once upon a time, it held ten times that amount. How many have come and died here is impossible to know. Either fewer people are born with the cancer gene, or more are developing the aggressive cancers and dying off more quickly. The last reason is harder to accept, which probably makes it the truer one.

  Up ahead, a man emerges from the bushes into my path.

  He waves. “Hallo.”

  My steps catch, then stop. He’s wearing a grey smock, and his shiny dome sweats in the heat. A prisoner.

  At once, my legs pedal backwards and my nervous fingers drop my bag. Most of us prisoners are teens or children. Adults are rare because doctors find the gene immediately.

  “Don’t worry!” he calls in a deep timbre. “I won’t hurt ya!” But he takes a few steps forward.

  We stare at one another, and the sense of foreboding hangs over me like a canopy. I take three breaths before I start to run.

  “Hey!”

  But I’m already gone, weaving through the forest toward the compound. Never had I thought I’d view that lump of industry as a savior.

  My body’s so weak, and all too soon, rubber replaces my legs. Hopefully this man is sicker than I am because, unless I’m mistaken, he’s given chase and is crashing through the bushes only a few feet behind.

  I’m a stage four, though in better shape than most on my block. A four is it. A four is the worst.

  I’m hoping … I’m hoping he’s a four, and further along than me. Near death.

  Eyes squeezed shut, I push for more, but I’m slowing, and he hits me hard from behind. A scream bursts from my throat while I tumble to the ground. He’s a large man, especially fit; he must have been called out to help with tree removal after the storms and wandered off from the guards. Bigger than anyone I’ve seen here, his body’s pinning me down easily.

  “No! Nonono!”

  He twists me around to face him, and my nails scratch red lines across his face before he traps my wrists in one hand. Regret tinges the grey depths of his eyes, until they glaze over with lust. He rips my pants with his free hand.

  “Please stop!” My words will him to see me, the human left inside.

  We die here in this place; we’re already dead to some, and most do whatever they can before the end. When visiting the meadow, it’s alone—always. But not today. And no one’s around to stop him.

  My top rips down the middle. “No!”

  He freezes. An inexplicable shame fills me. Underneath my shirt, there’s nothing for him to gawk at, yet he’s gawking nevertheless. Scars. Just scars where my small breasts had once been.

  My virginal body jolts, and embarrassment heats my skin. Hatred toward this man for staring at my flat chest, almost caved in where my life-saving double mastectomy had been performed, coils deep in my belly.

  Breast cancer. This dawns on him, and though he glances at me in pity, he’s still removing his smock.

  “Get off … off!” I yell. “Get. Off. Of. Me.”

  My weak attempts to stop him are easily batted away.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Like magic, a black bar appears beneath my attacker’s chin. Another guard comes from the woods in addition to the one that’s got the grey-eyed man in a choke hold.

  The opportunity to free my hands is not wasted; I’m already pulling my ripped shirt together and crawling away.

  The second guard charges through the brush, baton raised above his head like a warrior, and they descend upon the grey-eyed man. I’ve seen them in action before. They’re like machines.

  Sadness should be the last thing felt as the guards beat him, yet it sneaks up on me. He’s cowered next to a tree while they take turns like wolves, arms swinging and swinging in rhythmic thuds that only they understand, and it’s like they’ll never run out of energy.

  Now his screams rent the air as mine die down to small hiccups from shock.

  And still the guards don’t stop.

  He squeals and grunts, and then falls silent. A bloody mess lies on the forest ground, red rolling down the slight incline toward the guards’ feet. They move aside in unison before motioning for me to follow them back to the compound.

  They leave the grey-eyed man to die.

  No one glances back but me.

  I glance back just once.

  It’s time for my monthly chemo. The room’s packed with prisoners waiting for poison to be fed into our veins. Mr. Grey Eyes now lives in my dreams. I’m afraid he didn’t really die, and that he’s actually back among Bodega’s general population.

  I’ve searched the halls for him … just in case.

  A nurse passing by looks at me for a beat longer than necessary. She can tell I’ve got something to say, but when she draws near, I pretend vague confusion. Mentioning the beaten man in the woods won’t do anything. These people aren’t exactly my friends.

  After treatment, it’s the showers. The girl after me takes one look at my huddled form in the stall and leaves. She’s given me her turn. Nowadays, that type of kindness is in short supply, but we still find some here and there.

  My skin’s raw from scrubbing as I try to scrub away the feeling leftover from the meadow. Still, no tears. Under the nozzle, I’m waiting for the spray to mix with the salty drops, but nothing comes. It’s worrisome that I’ve become so detached. So unlike me to lose this last bit of humanity.

  My spine isn’t just stiff anymore—it’s ice. There’s nothing left. Pale and thin, my spirit is as sick as I am. Sicker, with this new thing. Even if Mr. Grey Eyes is dead, who’s to say another grey-eyed man won’t replace him?

  I’ll do what I always do: stay on guard and let bitterness eat another chunk of my heart.

  The very guards I’ve hated since arriving at Camp Bodega four years ago, had saved me.

  Now that’s something new, indeed.

  My knees are raw from crawling to the bathroom and back. After chemo, and since I receive the strongest type of medicine, my insides turn outside for about a week. This round’s built up and has now peaked after three months of heavy doses. So much so that I can barely lift my head.

  Mimi thinks I’m dying, so she stands next to my bunk, crying. I’m always careful to flush before she sees my urine’s red color, and I keep my mouth closed, too, to hide my radiation blisters. She doesn’t need to see my pain. Yes, Mimi needs to know these things, but she won’t find them out from me.

  A nurse comes in to check and makes a note to lessen my dosage next round. The mere thought has me rushing back to the t
oilet to try to throw up what’s not there.

  Upon my return, a guard blocks my path.

  We stare at each other, while he seems concerned…?

  No, that’s not it.

  Interested. Yes.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  The helmet tilts.

  Is that a nod?

  Seeing us in the hall, Mimi rushes forward and helps me back to bed, her round eyes taking in the scene with worry. Her tiny body tries to support my weight and aid my steps.

  “What are you doing talking to them?” Mimi demands. “They’re trained zombies. I just know it.”

  My small bunkmate is fiercely protective. I shuffle back to my bunk without answering. Talking expends too much energy, and I don’t want her to know that chemo will be like this, so it’s easier to let her think I’m sick from something else.

  “Psst …” The little voice in the darkness slices through my thoughts.

  I’d been attempting to sleep, but mostly fighting nausea.

  Mimi’s thick whisper spurs my eyes to open, and I focus on the above bunk’s rickety metal and dingy mattress, before I turn onto my side with a creak of coils.

  She waits to see that I’m truly awake and, seeming satisfied, she says, “Can you keep a secret?”

  Giant brown irises dart through the shadows—wary, careful. Wise. They brim with hope, too, like only a child’s eyes can in this place. I’ve tried not to look into them too often.

  Deborah, the unofficial hall monitor, leans off of her own bunk down the way to hiss a “Shhh!” at us.

  We ignore this and inch forward into the tiny light produced by the square window between our sides of the aisle. Bunks lined from wall to wall in our large section host many, but it’s quiet tonight. Not a lot of tears for once.

  Mimi sits up, because apparently this announcement is too great to be told while lying down.

  My heart breaks to see her silhouetted there; a slight figure draped in a smock two sizes too big. At age nine—almost ten, as she’d remind me, and not much younger than when I’d arrived—her cheeks are still baby-fat-full, like a chipmunk hiding food, and her freshly shaved head makes her ears stick out.

  Those ears are the sweetest things I’ve seen in what feels like a thousand years. But I’m certain, someday, maybe soon, when her adolescence has broken, she won’t see them as cute. She’ll feel ugly and realize her shaved head means only one thing: she’s sick. And if she’s sick, she’ll never leave this place. And to add to that insult, she’ll die without hair.

  No little girl should have to lose her hair, her decoration.

  “What?” I’m trying to smile, but it’s been so long since I’ve aimed for something between congenial and amused. By the twist of Mimi’s face, it’s not very convincing.

  She cups her small hands around her mouth to muffle the sound, but she’s still at an age where her idea of “hushed” is a breathy tone of normal level. “My mother’s going to come for me.” Mimi nods in assurance. “She promised. She’s a politician! I’m getting out of here soon.”

  I freeze. Spit sticks in my throat, and I’m choking back a strangled sound. Turning toward the wall, I hide my honest-to-a-fault face.

  I’m blessed with a pout like my mother’s, an expression that bends low whenever frowning, so every nuance shows clearly the denial of what I’ve been told. If someone’s lying to me, my two very high and telling brows, even bald, knit together with such vehemence (as they’re doing right now) people often think I’ll cry, when I’m not sad in the slightest.

  Fact is, the last time I’ve truly cried is too long ago to remember. But that’s never stopped my face from taking on a similar expression.

  With a voice like breaking glass, I tell her, “Go to sleep, Mimi.”

  “You believe me, don’t you, Liza?”

  That last sentence has bent my larynx straight in half, and my features feel as crumpled as the pillow beneath my head.

  Little pieces of plaster from picking at the wall break off into my hand. The bitter distraction fills my mouth from the paint under my chewed nails.

  Mimi’s mother could be God in Heaven and it won’t help her. She’ll die in this camp. Just like her friends.

  Just like me.

  She gives up after a time and, with a sigh, flounces down before soft snoring begins minutes later.

  Forcing myself to drift off is a losing battle, so I’ve rolled back to face her, knowing she won’t hear me now. That tiny head pokes out of her covers, one perfect shell ear luminescent, and the sight brings unwanted emotions. “No one leaves,” I whisper.

  Still no tears.

  “Not ever.”

  The sooner she knows the truth, the better.

  I’ll have to tell her that someday.

  Another day …

  I jolt awake, and my plasticware clatters to the floor in a rain of sporks. For a moment, I’m confused as to where I am.

  Mimi sits across from me, and her nimble fingers catch my water cup before I spill that, too. “You fell asleep … again,” she says.

  The cafeteria is quiet. Some of the nearby prisoners are watching me to make sure I’ve not turned. They blur into a sea of grey smocks, bald heads, and wide eyes that are every color but grey.

  My table of girls go back to talking amongst themselves. The arguments that usually ensue begin.

  “I’m telling you, they say that Anthem’s just like how it used to be. The old days. They’ve got everything there,” Deborah says. “Real food, too, not like this slop.”

  Mimi shakes her head and talks with pudding still in her mouth. “Nuh-uh. It’s noffing like how ith used to be.” She swallows. “It’s … well … I dunno how to explain it.”

  Sharon scoffs. “How would you know? You weren’t born before it happened.”

  “Yes I was.”

  Sharon shrugs and turns to me. “What about you, Liza? What do you think Anthem is like?”

  I’m still staring at my full lunch tray, trying to stay awake. I so rarely eat anymore. We hear rumors of what it’s like in the last standing city back on the mainland—some bad, some good. But even if it is how it was before, I try not to think about it.

  That word “before.” Before the undead. Before we got sick. Before Bodega, and being forced by the Authority into a concentration camp on a man-made island to protect what’s left of the world … which isn’t much.

  They wait for my answer.

  I rise with a noise of derision, tray in hand. “Does it matter? Are any of you planning a visit?”

  Mimi looks down, and I feel low for making light of their guesses.

  “But—”

  “I’m going.” I cut them off, but then I pause and turn back. “What was her name?”

  “Who?”

  “The last girl from our section who passed.”

  Sharon frowns. “She was so new, I never got a name.”

  “Abigail.”

  At a table near ours, a boy sits playing with his food. “Her name was Abigail.”

  He meets my eyes, his gaze the saddest of gazes. I nod. “I’ll add it to the wall.”

  He seems grateful. His expression doesn’t change, but there’s the sense he’s glad someone will do something for her. We don’t get to have funerals at Bodega. We don’t even get to say goodbye.

  A long, cold corridor leads me back to my bunk, to what counts for a home. With arms wrapped around myself, I try to get warm. You’d think being an island Bodega would be sunny. But with the electrical storms, the warmth comes and goes. On any given day it can be over a hundred degrees, then suddenly drop below zero with even bits of ice on the ground.

  It’s the nature of what’s left of our world.

  Two guards appear at the end of the hall, batons in hand, their stillness menacing, strange, and inhuman. Their visors are impenetrable but somehow still convey genuine dislike. They’re never seen outside of their outfits and helmets. Under that high black collar, long sleeves, and gloves, not a spec
k of skin is shown. They do speak, however, albeit rarely.

  The Authority does something to their guards. Hard to imagine what that might mean, but my nightmares provide enough vivid imaginings.

  Most prisoners run away, scurry like rats to another room, or back to their bunks. But not me. I stay where I am, chin up, and stare right back at them.

  It’s a wonder what we must look like with our pointy cheeks and bruises. We aren’t far from being zombies ourselves.

  My message is clear: I am not a nobody. I’m the daughter of a great dancer and a world-renowned composer. They may be dead, but I am very much alive. My name is Liza Randusky, and I come from a long line of somebodies.

  The guards move on; their place isn’t with us. We’re the lost souls, and they don’t have souls anymore.

  The janitor, Desi, is making his rounds. He’s pushing a mop, dreads swaying with his lofty gait, head bobbing to a tune only he knows.

  The walk of the healthy is so peculiar here. Add to that the bushy hair of a man who doesn’t have poison in his veins, and the set of broad shoulders only true of a person who’s eating and keeping it down. He’s as tall as two of Mimi.

  Desi has earbuds in and is whistling loudly a happy tune that strikes me in the homesick bone. He pulls out one earbud to ask me to guess the song.

  I whistle the rest when I’m sure that no one else is around. There’s trouble for talking to him—isolation, or worse.

  “I forget that you’re a fellow music lover,” Desi says. “Ah, why so down, Miss Leeza?”

  My eyes shift to the side. “Just not feeling well.”

  “Ah, well you-ah-in for a sooprise, den. Don’t let the concrete fool you, pretty. Dis be a magical island where gels like you get better.”

  “You’ve been saying that since I got here, Des.”

  He laughs and winks at me before going back to mopping. “It’s hard being right all the time,” he calls back to me.

  The bunks surrounding mine are mostly empty; the one above it, made recently so. Melony’s dead. She’s been dead for three weeks. Her bunk’s without an assigned prisoner yet, so I can see out through the window whenever.

  Her name’s there, etched into the wall beneath the ledge, still fresh. I take some time with my plastic knife to scratch A-b-i-g-a-i-l.