The Last City Box Set

by Logan Keys

  And beneath this cascade of hair is a girl who’s survived, and survived, but who is now afraid to face this group of people alone.

  I hear Tommy’s voice, while still in the hallway.

  I want to run to him, but the conversation is low, rushed, and serious; a terse exchange that gives me pause. Curiosity drives me to hide by the doorway and eavesdrop.

  A man wearing a trench coat and a hat pulled low to shadow his face, stands at the end of Tommy’s bed. Something about him raises the hair on my arms.

  “I’m not back, Simon,” Tommy says. “Not like that. I’m out of the army for good.” He’s sitting up, hands fisted in the sheets.

  I dare to lean in farther, and relief pours through me when his broad shoulders tense beneath his hospital gown. He looks better. He’s donned a robe, too, and an empty plate sits near his elbow.

  The man he’d called Simon, stands immobile. “You’re a hero, Hatter. We’ll award you for your bravery, and if you’d like to be discharged, that’s going to take some time.”

  I chance a step forward to catch Tommy’s sneer. “You’ve had a year to discharge me. When I was a prisoner of war, remember?”

  Now I’m all the way in the room. Another man is standing right next to Tommy. An old and much decorated soldier. “Ripley, son, you’re tired and not thinking clearly. Rest. The council will be waiting.”

  Tommy’s face strains, sharp angles poking out as he struggles internally. “Where is she?”

  I’ve seen this man in all sorts of situations, but suddenly, he’s afraid. I can tell. Afraid to know the answer.

  The soldier hesitates.

  “Tell me!” Tommy snaps.

  “Joelle’s been laid to rest,” Simon answers. “We’re sorry for your loss.”

  The air feels sucked out of the room. Whoever Tommy was looking for is dead, not here like he’d hoped, and his expression will haunt me for the rest of my days. Guilt, horror, sadness, more guilt.

  “How?” Tommy says it so softly, I almost miss the word.

  The old soldier with a patch on his fatigue that reads “Nolan,” replies, “After you were taken, she found the team, but the team didn’t make it out before the main body of the Authority guards arrived. We didn’t find much left—”

  “We had a good ceremony,” Simon adds, stepping forward and cutting him off.

  Tommy closes his eyes. “Where is she?”

  “We have a memorial here—”

  “Show me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Tommy

  The blow is more crushing than anything I was prepared for, and her smiling face in my memory melts away. Innocent, happy, bubbly Joelle, crushed beneath the wheels of this war. And I hadn’t been there—I hadn’t!

  “I should have been there.”

  All of their condolences mesh together; it means nothing.

  And there she is—Daisy, in my peripheral, and behind her a small figure, blurry at first, but as Simon explains how her funeral was simple yet well done, and that her grave isn’t very far from where I sit, Joelle joins the gang of ghosts who visit me.

  I don’t see Simon or Nolan anymore. Joelle watches me with sad, dark eyes.

  My mind’s cluttered with dead girls.

  Someone comes forward to join them, and it shakes the image away.

  Her being real seems to make them disappear.

  Liza.

  Her gaze isn’t sad, but serious, concerned, and beneath blue coils of thought lies fire. What she’s made for is a mystery. Now that she’s here, I fear for her. What was I thinking, bringing her straight to the monsters who made mine?

  I glance at the bandage on her arm. Good girl.

  Nolan chatters on about my job with the army, but I cut him off to talk to Simon. I know who runs things. And I know who’s responsible for Joelle’s demise. Not Nolan. He’d never have experimented on people, made us outsiders, even to our own selves. He wouldn’t have made a little girl like Joelle pay for her mother’s sins by continuing the charade that children like her were made for war. Tampering with innocence.

  No. My old drill instructor and leader, while not exactly a nice guy, would have done everything straightforward, mono-y-mono.

  “I’m not your hellhound any longer, Simon. When you sent us here to battle, we barely made it to shore before the Authority’s guards blew us sky-high. Then they trapped me for a year in a bubble. Since you last saw me, I’ve lived in a prison, all the while thinking you’d protect her. Veronica … Joelle. Too many have died already. If you think I’ve returned to watch more people pay for your arrogance…” I look over at Liza, and they finally turn to notice her for the first time. “I can’t be your soldier boy anymore.”

  “Thomas,” Simon says. “You were made for this. We fight for freedom—”

  The monster tries to answer, and the sheets creak in my hands. “Made? Made! As long as I am me, not fully it, then I’m still my own being. This thing you created, it has its own will, Simon. Did you know that? How I can barely hold the leash you did not give? There’s nothing left of me that can keep it caged. I don’t even know who’s in control!”

  Simon has the wisdom to look subdued by my outburst.

  I laugh darkly. “If I let it, it will kill you, Simon. How do you love your pet now? It holds no loyalty. It’s promised to no one, least of all, me. When it can’t be kept from being the rabid thing, what’s left but for it to turn on its master?”

  Liza’s horror stops me from lunging out of my bed at the mad man, but it’s too late to stop him completely. Inside, the monster stretches, fights my weakness, and it takes control, uses my hesitation to spin me out of the bed and onto my feet, already halfway transitioned.

  Through the monster’s eyes, I glide through the hospital, running over nurses and doctors, and then soldiers without care; out through the hallways, crashing through the window, into the wind. For once, I’m present, watching without being sent away, because he can’t finish; I’m still too injured to be at full mast.

  Where it winds up is the most peculiar thing. Where it goes is the biggest surprise.

  I come to myself over a pitiful bit of stone with a marker that reads: Joelle. No last name. At least they understood enough about her to know her parents weren’t really who she was in the end. She was just Joelle.

  To me, she’d been so indestructible, but now, I see she was always a frail being waiting for the damage to catch up.

  “You did what you could for us, Tommy.”

  Daisy arrives while the monster rests again; they work on a revolving door—one in, the other out.

  I can still sense him, though, and he seems … sad. In my mind comes a mournful song, and it cracks my head open.

  “Is this to be my penance, Daisy? For not caring for you the way I should have? For not keeping you safe? I should bury them all? My sisters, you, Vero, and now Joelle?”

  She comes close to me, lays a cold hand on my shoulder. “There is no punishment, Tommy. No way to make sense of the senseless.”

  Then it dawns on me I have another one I’m now supposed to protect. “Will I bury her next? Do you know? Tell me.”

  “Is she already so important to you?”

  “Every life is important.”

  “Ah, there’s the boy I remember,” Daisy says.

  “Who are you speaking to?” Behind me, Liza’s voice comes as still and even as the pond from my home, and it settles me in one fell swoop.

  I look over to see Daisy’s left me. “No one,” I say. “Just this grave here.”

  Liza comes over to read the headstone, and her thoughtful, patient resolve helps to steady me.

  “You love her.”

  It’s no question.

  Chapter Forty

  Liza

  Tommy had been sad enough to sink into himself, and when he woke again, he told me I’d looked like an angel at her graveside. Tommy’s far more unwell than the doctors let on.

  He asked me how we got to the c
ity, and I explained as best I could. Then he shook his head at the very thought, and I understood the sentiment. It sounded all made up. I’d smoothed over the parts about the monster, about my doing anything and everything to get him to come with me, to finish our journey.

  On a day when his eyes were extra blurry with fever, he’d patted the edge of his bed, asking me to sit. I had, and we’d both looked out the window onto a city rebuilt.

  “Lost Angeles,” the nurse said, and when I corrected her, saying, “Don’t you mean ‘Los Angeles’?” she’d only shrugged.

  Today, I sit with Tommy again. He’s sweat-soaked and restless. After a time, I sneak my hand into his much larger one, my fingertips matching the pads of his before weaving through, and I’m blessed with brown eyes that slowly open to a side glance accompanied by a half-smile.

  For anyone who’d want to look deeper, his gaze is a reservoir of pain.

  “I guess this stupid-stupid boy is going to hang around after all…” he says, and I blush at recalling my screeching speech in the boat when I thought I’d lost him.

  We sit in silence; we don’t need to speak to fill the void. What more could be shared between two people, than near-death experiences?

  Soon, he sleeps again, tossing and turning, fighting nightmares, fighting for a girl he wasn’t there to fight for. My giant guardian is being guarded himself … by me.

  As he withers away, Nolan appears. I frown through the window at him.

  “Walk with me for a while,” he says softly.

  His path takes us outside, where the grass is freshly cut, and the streets look newer on one side, patched on the other. People go about their day. All military, I suppose.

  The old sergeant is weary with his weathered grimace, though his eyes watch the horizon, always checking for an enemy.

  Explosions crack and boom off in the distance. Dr. Chalberg had explained they were training in the field, and not to worry. It was normal for the windows to rattle, for the concussion to resound inside the chest, followed by the rat-tat-tat of heavy gunfire.

  Once we’re alone near a tree and a bench, Sergeant Nolan turns to me. “You hear that?” he asks, after another cannon boom. “That’s the sound of freedom.”

  I wait for him to continue. He, too, is patient for my reply.

  My lips are sealed. He’ll give me a grand speech, sure, but Tommy’s already said no to returning to their ranks, and before I’m on anyone’s team, I’m on his. If he doesn’t want to play hero to this Fort City, then he doesn’t have to.

  Besides, he’s not well—not even remotely well enough for anything physical—and the thought of him being forced to at this stage starts a fiery boil inside my guts.

  As if he reads my mind, the sergeant smiles. “Before you knew Thomas as plain ol’ Tommy, he was my fuzzy—Private Ripley, in training, turned sergeant first class. He was in my platoon, one of the finest soldiers I’ve ever had the privilege to work with. Do you know how we won the battle that got us this place, our very first foothold here in the US? He transitioned after we lost most of our teams and took out the remaining threat. But what he doesn’t know is, he took out the block. Theirs. Ours.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you know what I’m saying. Joelle, the rest of them, all taken out by Tommy himself … or rather, not as himself, if you get my meaning. Don’t worry, I won’t say a word if I don’t have to. Aside from that, the foothold held, and we arrived with the rest of our forces after. Haven’t been taken since. He’s a hero, and the troops need heroes.”

  If Tommy knew he killed that girl he loved, for him, all would be lost. He’s teetering as it is.

  My head snaps back in realization. “Are you blackmailing me?”

  Nolan checks to see if I’m following, before walking on through a hastily grown garden. “And we need more soldiers than anything else these days. But that’s not why I’m asking you to help us, and that’s not why you’re going to say no. None of it matters now, so I’ll just give it to you straight.”

  He keeps walking. “Tommy won’t be getting better.”

  I stop. Nolan turns around.

  “He won’t be getting better at all, little girl.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That you diced him up good. Something as strong as Tommy …? The doctor should explain; he’d say it better. But something like Tommy doesn’t run warm; he runs hot or cold, health-wise. Any little trip up and he’s vulnerable. We can fix this a couple of ways, but you won’t like it.”

  I don’t even consider the words coming out of Nolan’s mouth; I think of friendship first. For me, I was born into this world just weeks ago—no people to miss, no reason to stay alive, I was just spat out onto the land, and the only one who’d greeted me is in bed, alone, sad, and tired to the very depths of his soul. Part monster, part boy, and part man—a thing that must tear his fabric at every moment.

  How can I trust these people?

  Nolan sees the desperation hidden beneath, and he’ll exploit it … like any good military official.

  How can I possibly enunciate my thoughts when this man threatens me—threatens us.

  My words sound fake, but I try anyway. “I’m not going to talk him into doing something he doesn’t want. I’m not going to be a pawn.”

  Nolan is almost grinning at my false bravado. He knows he’s got me right where he wants me. I did this to Tommy. He’s sick, and they’ll take advantage of both my ignorance and his weakness.

  Deep down inside of me is a desperate girl who’ll do desperate things.

  The sergeant sees this.

  He opens his mouth on a grin, and it burns me from the inside. “Doesn’t matter what you say,” I snap at him.

  Despite his irritated look, I turn on my heels and stalk off to what does matter.

  When I arrive, amid the noise of the machine, four people hover over Tommy, who’s flopping like a fish in his bed, mouth foaming.

  I’m almost in the room, when an arm clotheslines me, then catches me. “You can’t go in there.”

  A gruff man with a military police patch and a nametag that reads “Bradford” ushers me away. But it’s too late. I already saw the monitors. The line that tracks Tommy’s heartbeat was zigzagging like an electric light show.

  “Let me go! I need to see him!” I fight like an animal, completely out of control. “What did you do to him?”

  Like paper, Bradford crumples my body to his chest, not out of comfort, but to trap me in the crook of his arms. His cheek is close, and I struggle against the insane urge to bite it. I can’t free my hands, so I slacken, looking for some room.

  He relents a tiny bit, and I quickly slide down and through. When he grabs my arms again, my sense kicks in this time and I practically dislocate his shoulder freeing myself before barging into Tommy’s room.

  Everything’s quiet now, except for the solid whine of the machine. I search the monitor to find no heartbeat. No heartbeat.

  No. Heartbeat.

  My mouth forms an O of horror.

  “Get him into the chamber!”

  Sergeant Nolan thunders in, glaring at me one moment, then barking orders the next for everyone to do what they all seem reluctant to do.

  “Do you want to let him die?” he shouts.

  They snap to action.

  A nurse who’s grabbed the defibrillator pauses long enough to say, “But Doctor Chalberg says—”

  Nolan whips out a piece of paper. “The Council’s signed—see? Dammit, do as I say! You don’t want to be the one to disable the most expensive piece of military equipment ever made, do you?”

  And just like that, the group pops loose the bed brakes, then wheels him away at a run. My feet stay rooted as they flow around my space.

  Doctor Chalberg’s running our way, and I melt into a pleading pile of need, moaning out, “Help him!”

  He pauses to take in what’s happening and, in a posture of defeat, avoids my eyes and follows the group away
from me.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Dallas

  “We’ve got to set fires—big ones!” Charles yells from the back of the room.

  Lotte nods while Morgan takes notes. We lost only five people last night, which is a miracle in itself. It seems, as Cara noted, they hadn’t come to feast, but to test our defenses and to scare us. They’ll be back.

  I’d come into the town meeting like the risen dead. Everyone was certain I’d been dragged away and killed, or worse. By Cara’s face, swollen from crying, they thought they’d never see me again.

  They acted as if I were a ghost. If only they knew.

  Luckily, they didn’t ask for any explanation, only well wished my return.

  What story would I tell them?

  Lotte figures the fiends had come to check the stalk of their food supply. Except for Joseph and Cutter, newly “made,” who’d come back to see their families.

  First, I demanded to see Angie. Took some searching, but after a time, we found her. Like I’d figured, she’d been prepared for Cutter and hadn’t been hurt; she’d worn a cross, and had made some weapons. “How’d you know?” Lotte asks her, but I already guessed the answer.

  When I saw Joseph return, after recovering from my shock, I immediately thought of Cutter, who would have risen well before Joseph had. Angelique would have visited his grave and already known, having seen the dirt dug up and his missing body. But instead of warning us, she’d considered it a miracle and had waited for him in secret each night.

  Angelique confesses that, out of fear of his being a zombie, she’d kept weapons on hand. And the cross, a curious decision, was his father’s; she’d wanted to use it to help him remember.

  But Cutter had come along with the group, just like Joseph had, and when he’d not been the man she loved, she’d thrown alcohol on him then lit him on fire in a dumb luck strike.

  Her anger at his return as something else had made her a fiery asset to Ironwood. Either way, she hadn’t warned us, and Lotte considered that offense enough to throw her to the wolves.