by Logan Keys
It occurs to me. “So, your eyes …”
“Augmented.” Jeremy shrugs. “I was once exactly like they are. You can hate me now.”
“What changed?” I ask, and he leans back as if he won’t answer. Suddenly, my palm itches to slap him. “I need to know, Jeremy. I need you to tell me why you lied. I asked you if you were a spy, and I was warned not to trust you, but I chose to anyway. Now, I see you in there with your father—you’re not even you!”’
His mouth doesn’t fully commit to a smile, though it tries. “You’re angry. Good. You should be angry. I did lie. ”
“That’s not an answer, Jeremy. They carted us away to the Island, millions of children, and then let them die in captivity like animals. I need to know who’s side you’re on, because I’m not going to fall for this. I don’t want a single thing from your family; they must pay.”
“Shh …”
“Don’t shoosh me! I don’t care who hears. Are you with me or not?”
“I—”
“Answer the question! Are you with me?”
“Yes, Liza. Yes. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but yes. Of course I’m with you.”
My voice wavers only a tiny bit this time. “Till the end?” I ask.
“Till the end.”
“For justice.” My smile is cautious.
“For freedom,” he replies, returning to his old self.
The comforter in my room feels like a sin, but I’m asleep straight through until the next night, even before I’ve finished promising myself I’d sleep on the floor. It’s been three days since I’ve last slept. Foolishly content, maybe, but contentment is in such short supply. I’ll be a revolutionary tomorrow … after sleep.
Chapter Sixty-Six
When they let me down from my room in the evening, Jeremy’s sitting next to the pond again, this time with a pen and paper. “My father’s asked that we make our demands,” he says.
I hurry over to him, grinning.
“Oh yes, Liza. You’ve made quite the impression. But don’t get too excited. He can’t be trusted.”
I lift a stack of pages he’s already written. “You’ve been busy. So, are you going to tell me now what happened to make you go against your own family?”
“Yeah.” He sighs. “I’ve not spoken about it since that day,” he says, then pauses to gauge my reaction. “I have a sister. Another sister.”
Jeremy runs a hand through his hair, tousling the thick coffee color. “It feels so strange to actually talk about her. She’s younger than Carolina; little. And when I was just turning sixteen, she was diagnosed with cancer.
“Of course, my mother was beside herself. But instead of telling anyone, they covered it up as best they could, secretly had every doctor try to help, but—” He swallows. “It wasn’t long after I’d gotten my eyes altered when it all came crashing down. Word got out that my father had a sick child and that he’d let her stay. Our family fought constantly. My parents had justified it to us, to the world; they had to make a decision.”
“They sent her.”
“Yes.”
At once, the countless faces from Camp Bodega appear in my mind. “What … was her name?” I ask, and he smiles.
“Melissa,” he tells me, while the fond memories visibly wash over him. He loves her. “But we all called her Mimi.”
My hand grabs his sleeve to hold me up.
“I’m not even sure if she’s still alive …” His voice falters.
I’m not here anymore. I’m there: Bodega, and the alarms are blaring. She’d said her mother was a politician … and the small voice from alongside my bunk strikes me in the gut.
“What, Liza? What is it?”
When I try to tell him, second thoughts arise. It feels like more of a wound to give Jeremy false hope. What if saying I’d seen Mimi makes him think that she still lives, but …
A choked sound helps me begin. “We have to get her home, Jeremy. All of them.”
He can’t know—not now. Not yet.
Jeremy nods and, staring at me strangely, lifts his pages. “Read these. Tell me what you think.”
Jeremy curses and shakes his pen hand some time later. He’s been writing for hours and must have a terrible cramp.
“You should take a break,” I say.
He sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose, and tosses the notebook aside.
“I should,” he replies with the reluctance of a returned zealot. Then, he repeats, “I should,” with the voice of a man who’s come back to the real world from wherever he goes to write his pamphlets.
Jeremy regards me for a moment, then joins my spot by the pond. His strange eyes rest on my hair. I hold some pride in my appearance again. Not having the assets of a girl my age is hard to accept, but my hair had always been beautiful. Neither of my parents had given me this springy silver-blonde; rather, my aunt had ringlets so white-gold and so heavy, they’d given her neck aches. I’m curious if mine will be just as full when regrown. Already it feels so thick that my head’s hot at the root, and the strands take larger and larger curls the longer it gets.
“I’m sorry, Liza. Here I am writing instead of spending time with you. Our time could be short.”
“I get like that with my music, where I lose myself. Plus this … it isn’t about us. I’ve seen what you’ve put together so far, and it’s brilliant. No more purging. No more islands. What if they say yes? I mean, with Kiniva’s help … The fight’s still going. I just wish I could help you more, is all.”
Something distracts Jeremy, and I nudge him with my shoulder. “What is it?”
He blinks wide purple eyes slowly before grinning.
Even here, even on the brink of it all, he steals my breath away.
All this talk of borrowed time makes me drink him in: his hands are large, but with long, graceful fingers; his lean frame still borders on teenaged, yet hovers closer to a man, with promise of stature.
Something blossoms in my chest but I’m quick to stuff it down.
My father always said love is a reaction. My mother disagreed. Behind his back, she told me she’d chosen quite willfully to love my father, and it had grown from there. She said it was in rebellion against her English-born family to be with my father, an American of Russian descent—he was just the kind of man to set her own very uptight British father on his head. In one rare moment of mother-daughter giggling at the vanity, she said her father was so uptight, it was a wonder he’d loosened up enough to have children. My mother had told her own mother that she’d counted at least two times her father had “loosened up,” since she and her sister were around. My grandmother had quipped back over a glass of sherry, “One and half, Minuette. And not a moment longer.” My mother further proclaimed, in her fading accent, that she’d only had a kernel of love for my father to begin with. After he wrote his first song and offered it to her so sweetly, so demurely, and without boast, her heart had been moved; what had once been a mere seedling sprouted into a great oak that withstood even the worst of her sickness. She said from then on she’d lived as a shield for my father.
Yet she’d not been so fully enthralled with me, her own daughter. I hadn’t seen it as clearly back then, but in hindsight, with my own emerging affections for Jeremy, my mother’s dedication to my father echoes hauntingly.
My father, on the other hand, had been no one’s shield, but he’d been my very heart.
Either version of falling in love—immediate, or willful rebellion; at “first sight,” or the kernel that springs eternal—it all ends the same way.
Falling is hard. Scary.
Here with Jeremy Writer in the moonlight—I’m not calling him by any other name—I realize I’m going to be that shield for him. No good reason to feel this way other than what it is.
He’d been so fearful of his parents finding me. It makes sense now, all of it. His reluctance to be with me.
Our only distance before was misunderstanding, and with that vanished …
He laughs. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“You, either.”
Jeremy’s eyebrows rise in admission. “Touché.”
With this boy, it’s a reaction-type love. Like a knee jerked; something that happens in a snap when he watches me.
We could be the strong roots for one another forever if only fate would allow.
But here in our new world of Ash, oaks burn like tinder.
“Are you an Aries?” Jeremy asks some time later.
“Huh?” I look up. My eyes are sore and tired from reading in the dark.
“Your sign, Liza. What is it?”
“Not sure. My birthday’s in October. The fifteenth.”
He nods and, with a mischievous smile, leans back against the grass at the edge of the pond. “Ah, that makes sense. A Libra, then. You seem to weigh things.”
“What does it mean?”
Jeremy shrugs. “You’re the judges. Might be why we first met.”
“Oh. Hm. And you?”
“Gemini.”
He laughs at my blank stare. “You’ve not been warned, then. The twins; two people. We change moods.”
I nod, wizened, though I bite back a comment that he’s more than just two. “That makes a lot of sense.”
Then, we laugh until Jeremy’s more serious expression brings us back.
“What’re you thinking?” he asks, now on his elbows, plucking grass. Mystery plays with his lips.
“Did you have someone,” I blurt out, “a girl before this? … I mean, before the flood, I should say.”
He chuckles. “I’m not that old. There have been a couple after. But I wouldn’t say they were anything, really; mostly missed connections. I’ve always been a busy person, I guess. A lot of faces have caught my eye, I won’t lie about that. But I’ve always had the Authority to fight, and even before Mimi, I knew something had to change. As soon as I understood what they were to us, I focused on that: what freedoms we were losing, what my parents have created … ”
It nicely sums up our lives. “So many ‘might have beens,’” I mutter bitterly.
Jeremy closes his eyes. “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’”
“Is that yours?”
He chokes back a laugh. “God, no. John Greenleaf Whittier, circa 1856.”
My mouth forms an “O” at the thought of so much time having passed.
“Tell me more,” I say, folding my arms around my knees.
A blush starts from my stomach and travels up my chest, working its way to my face, and I’m feeling the glow as Jeremy tries to recall poetry for me. He, the boy who speaks for an entire rebellion, sits by the pond and recites for me alone.
He starts quietly, as if embarrassed, “Maud Muller, on a summer’s day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.
Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.
Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.
But when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,
The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast―
A wish that she hardly dared to own,
For something better than she had known.
The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse’s chestnut mane.
He drew his bridle in the shade
Of the apple-trees to greet the maid,
And ask a draught from the spring that flowed,
Through the meadow across the road.
She stopped where the cool spring bubbled up,
And filled for him her small tin cup,
And blushed as she gave it, looking down,
On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.
“Thanks!” said the Judge; “a sweeter draught
From a fairer hand was never quaffed.”
He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,
Of the singing birds and the humming bees;
Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether
The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.
And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown
And her graceful ankles bare and brown;
And listened, while a pleased surprise
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.
At last, like one who for delay
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.
Maud Muller looked and sighed: “Ah me!
That I the Judge’s bride might be!
“He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine.
“My father should wear a broadcloth coat;
My brother should sail a painted boat.
“I’d dress my mother so grand and gay,
And the baby should have a new toy each day.”
The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
And saw Maud Muller standing still.
“A form more fair, a face more sweet,
Ne’er hath it been my lot to meet.
“And her modest answer and graceful air
Show her wise and good as she is fair.”
But he thought of his sisters proud and cold,
And his mother vain of her rank and gold.
So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love-tune;
And the young girl mused beside the well,
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.
He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door.
God Pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.
For all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Tommy
At first I think it’s Cory that’s come back, but then I realize a more wily zombie has climbed through the window to get at me where I sit.
He’s realized his luck and speeds up, mouth bloody. My hand won’t work long enough to do more than grip my gun. Too bad it’s at my side and useless. If I fire now, it will go through my leg.
Just when I’ve decided to put some holes into myself and speed up the process, Cory’s outline appears. He shoots the stiff, making head pieces land in my lap, while Vero hops through, diving beneath the heavy layer of smoke.
She bends down next to me, touches my head, and her hand comes away with blood. Must be why I’m such a bump on a log.
I try to stop her, but her hands light up anyway.
Slowly, my hearing returns. “Stop, Vero…. Stop.”
“Let me help.” Her face drains pale as she finishes.
I sit up, achy, but repaired. And I’m still holding onto her.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” I say.
Vero wipes the blood from my face. “Me, too.”
“Guys,” Cory says, and we both turn to see that other stiffies have figured out where the live ones are at.
Two fall through the window, and more burst through the half-burned door. They flood into the room, and Cory, Vero, and I pick them off, one by one, until the pile of undead keeps the doorway blocked. We focus on the window.
“Better hope none of these guys are bombers,” Cory calls over his shoulder.
I nod, but keep firing.
“Let’s get out of here.” Vero yanks on me until I see her pointing toward the stairs.
In a fire, “up” is the worst way to go, but … like we have a choice.
We run to the second floor, Cory at the front, myself at the back. Vero’s weak and slow, and
guilt turns my stomach as her feet stumble against the edges of the steps, hands sprawled out to catch herself.
The second floor has a balcony, where we finally escape the smoke. The remainder of the team fights on the street below us. They’re completely surrounded—at least a hundred soldiers in the group—but zombies line the blocks in all directions, thousands more funneling this way.
All those good men and women down there will be torn apart, and I’m helpless to do anything but watch.
Another explosion shakes our building, but it’s done by one of ours who’s decided to kamikaze out versus being eaten. He blows a hole through the stiffies’ ranks, and the rest use the space to trailblaze out of being surrounded.
And they keep on, until they’re out of sight.
The main door to our floor starts to bang.
“What do we do?” Cory asks.
“The roof,” I say.
Vero’s eyes round at my plan. In a burning building, the roof will be first to go. Again, though … what choice is there?
We use the balcony railing, boosting one another up, before I start to scale the side in rock climber fashion. The door gives before I’m finished, and the undead pile out onto the balcony, reaching for my dangling legs.
Vero and Cory have to drag me the rest of the way.
The roof’s flat with no way down, except for a concrete pool dive, hold the water. Still, we search all four sides more than once.
Finally accepting the inevitable, we sit against the wall to wait.
Cory’s down a ways from us, though I ignore the urge to thank him for saving me. For sure he’s got some angel on his side, but he owed me after the Murphy incident.
Vero takes a swig from her canteen before handing it to me.
I drink the water in large gulps, forcing myself to stop. My throat feels blistered.
Watching me, she laughs. “At least the suckers can’t―”
The roof collapses, and she disappears.
“Vero!”
Immediately, I dive for the hole, nearly sliding through. The shingles have caved in, and the smoke screens all but the flames. I rush back to the side and scramble down onto the balcony.
