Following the Strandline

by Linda L Zern

  “Would you like to see the theater rooms? There were eighteen movie theaters up here before.” The girl stopped, embarrassed.

  “It’s okay. I remember coming to the movies here once upon a time, with my mother.”

  “Oh, good. A lot of people don’t like it when we talk about before, you know.”

  “Not a bad rule. What’s your name?”

  “Aster, like the flower.” She smiled. She was missing her front teeth. It made her look like a homeless baby. “I help teach the children. There’s a classroom up here and a clinic and . . . I help.”

  “Thanks, maybe in the morning. I’ll look around in the morning. Pretty tired right now. I was told to talk to El. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Oh no, I don’t know about El. I was just told to bring you that.” She pointed to the sleeping bag.

  “I’ll just find a corner near the stairs to crash. Okay?” Tess was too tired to even ask for water to wash. Tomorrow. She’d get out of here tomorrow.

  Aster nodded and started to back away, only turning her back to Tess when she hit the top step. It was a shock to realize that the girl hadn’t wanted to turn her back to Tess until the last possible moment—a hard enough lesson to learn—to never, ever turn your back to a stranger.

  “Aster?”

  The girl looked back.

  “How did you come to be here, at this place, teaching school?”

  A frown moved across her face like a cloud. “They found me. I don’t remember much about it. I think my family is all dead.”

  “I’m sorry for that.”

  “Oh no. I’m here.” She smiled her toothless smile and stepped down the escalator, head lowered, hands folded.

  Saddened, Tess threw the sleeping bag on the ground near El’s rocking chair. She listened to the Marketplace as it buzzed with the energy of dozens of people settling into the graveyard shift. The routine softened and stilled as the night deepened. Before she finished pulling off her clothes, Tess fell asleep to the sound of a baby crying.

  The shrieking cry of agony jumped through her dreams like a runaway rabbit. Someone needed help. Someone from another world needed Tess—to get up. Her heart battered against her ribs. She blinked awake. The candles had guttered out, and the atrium balcony grew crowded with shadows. The screaming had not stopped. Other voices joined the screaming—earnest and determined. Tess stumbled over her boots as she headed in the direction of the noise and the faint glow of torchlight.

  El leaned against the wall, one hand grabbing the open doorway to one of the women’s barracks. At her feet, two others wrestled a third woman, who writhed on the floor. El kept up a running stream of what sounded like baby talk. The woman on the ground, thin to the point of frail, thrashed against the hands restraining her. She managed to get one fist free, and backhanded one of the much bigger women holding her down.

  Blood gushed. The woman didn’t seem angry when she stepped back to swipe at her dripping nose.

  “Help her,” El said. She handed Tess a torn corner of terrycloth towel, waved her on to help the one with the bloody nose. Tess shoved the towel at the bleeding woman and bent down to help hold the flailing woman still. Her shoulders felt like chicken bones under Tess’s hands. Her eyes were blank and staring, fixed on some unseen nightmare.

  The old wound on El’s face stood out like a fresh assault. “Don’t worry, Baby Girl, Hurley-Girl,” El said. “It’s a dream, just a bad, bad dream. Don’t cry, Sweetie. Don’t let them hurt you anymore, even in your head. Hush now. Hush now. Come back, Hurley-Girl. Come back to us.”

  “Don’t hurt her.” The Amazon still wrestling Hurley blinked back tears. “She’s not awake. She’s not even here.”

  “Night terrors,” El explained. Her voice sounded breathy and weak. She fell silent.

  “Stop, Hurley, stop.” The woman holding the towel to her nose shot a worried look at El.

  The woman on the ground howled.

  “Clara, make her stop.” El sounded beaten.

  Voices from inside the barracks whispered and echoed concern. Someone called out, “Everyone, back down, they’re taking care of her. No one’s going to thank you for being sluggish at your posts tomorrow. Stand down.”

  The woman El had called Clara reached out and slapped the stricken woman across the face. Hurley didn’t react. Tess gasped.

  El sagged against the door jam.

  Clara began to stroke Hurley’s hair, whispering, “Please. Please. Please,” in a soft, droning monotone.

  There seemed to be magic in Clara’s touch after the slap. Or the woman, Hurley, had exhausted herself with her thrashing. She grew calmer under the woman’s hand. Tess relaxed back onto her heels.

  Hurley went still. Her eyes closed.

  El whispered, “Take her to the infirmary. She’ll be bad in the morning.”

  Clara stood and reached down to pull Hurley into her arms. She staggered under the weight of the sleeping woman. Bloody Nose walked beside them, bracing her free hand under Hurley’s body.

  Silence fell after the noise like a winter coat—muffled, heavy, and close. El reached out an arm to Tess.

  “Help me back to my cot.”

  The woman leaned on Tess. In the corner where El made her bed, Tess helped her onto the cot. Before she could comment, El grabbed her by the arm, eyes blazing.

  “What’s wrong?” Tess asked.

  “With Hurley or me?”

  Tess shrugged. “Okay, either one.”

  “I’d rather talk about Aster.”

  “The girl who brought me the sleeping bag?”

  “What did you think of her?” El lowered herself flat.

  “I think she’s happy to be working with the children in your school.”

  Torchlight flickered and went dark. El became a voice in the gloom.

  “Did she tell you her story?”

  “Didn’t have a lot to say. Told me that you’d found her. Says she doesn’t remember it. Did she mean you personally?”

  “Yes.” El took a deep, ragged breath. “That time I was part of the scouting party. Someone had left her in a shallow grave. Maybe thinking they’d be back when she’d finished dying. We discovered her before they found their way back, if they ever were going to find their way back, which I doubt.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” It almost sounded like a statement. “Why would they leave her that way? Kindness. Laziness. Efficiency. Not cruelty. They expected her to die.”

  “Was she going to die?” Tess squatted next to El’s cot. Her voice felt like a cord in the darkness, drawing her toward the promise of information.

  “Pretty close to dead.”

  “What was wrong?”

  “Scurvy. Losing her teeth. I don’t think her people were cruel. They just didn’t know. Doc Midge has a tonic that fixes scurvy. The Doc’s the one that saved Aster.”

  “El, why did you want me to know all this? What are you after? Sympathy?”

  El’s laugh was surprisingly clear and loud. “Sympathy? You think this is about getting you to feel bad for us? That’s not what I want from you.”

  “I’m glad. Because I haven’t forgotten what you did to take over the Marketplace, and I won’t forget that, or that you haven’t agreed to help me find your brother.

  “Who is probably already back at your place.” The cot creaked when El shifted. “I’m a little surprised that you would object to ‘what we did here’ when I think about what was done to your sister. Does she suffer from night terrors?”

  Tess shook her head, knowing El wouldn’t see her.

  “Why would you tell me about that girl? And letting me see that woman’s nightmare. What are you doing?”

  “Not pity, Tess. Believe me,” El said, with a heavy sigh. “Don’t fret, tomorrow will be here soon enough. By the way, I’m not worried about you ending me in my sleep. I sleep on my combat knife.”

  “Fair enough. And I sleep on my conscience.”

  “I’m counting
on it.”

  Cool water everywhere in Tess’s dream, and purple water hyacinths bobbing at the edge of the Green Spring. They made her feel like one of the quicksilver bream that swam among the trailing lilies. How fun to have a tail. She looked—no tail—just Tess and nothing but Tess. She let herself float like one of those flat platters of green.

  A water dream because it was so hot inside the Marketplace. Hot and stuffy in her nest of blankets. She’d slept, but not well.

  “Just a dream,” the rational part of her brain said, sounding small and weak coming from inside a conch shell, far up on the white sand beach, a lonely reminder of the sea. What was her voice doing inside a shell? Who cared? Tess floated.

  The water of the clear spring was all she needed. Tiny schools of fish flashed by. She let go and existed like one of the flowers: light, weightless, buoyed up. Nothing tethered her to the earth; nothing pushed at her, nothing demanded. Not here, not at the Green Spring.

  Except that she was alone—too much alone. Even the fish had friends, and the ache of it started small inside her heart like a voice nagging at her from inside a forgotten shell on a beach. Nonsense worries. Nonsense feelings that became a gritty wave of worry.

  Angry, she stood up in the water, let the night air chill her skin.

  Then he was there—staring—and she should have been embarrassed. But she couldn’t remember why when his eyes were so warm.

  “Not even when I am an old, old man, Tessla Lane. I will never forget the look of you, the feel of you.”

  Then he wasn’t just looking at her, and she wasn’t alone, and there was only the two of them. He reached for her, and he was a fascination, his skin fascinated: dark and then light and then shadowed where the curve of muscles met bone. Water swirled at his hips.

  Where the water touched her skin she shivered, where his fingers trailed down her ribs she burned. He pulled her close. Perfect. It was perfect.

  Loneliness. It was a small worry for another time. How could she be lonely when they fit so perfectly.

  “Tess. My Tess.”

  He’d said her name. She should say his name back, but which one? To her, he was just Parrish.

  He had that other name, but she couldn’t remember it. He needed her to remember that other name, the real one, to call it out, so he’d know that he was more than a dream. She couldn’t think. Not now, not when he touched her so.

  Another hand on her shoulder, but this time to shake her awake.

  “Hey now, that’s some dream. Probably should get up before you say something you’d not want anyone to hear.”

  Tess blinked awake.

  Blue eyes and a twisting scar—El. The puckered mark was a brutal thing, but her smile seemed warm enough today. Tess sat up.

  Otherwise, El looked emptied out. The army jacket she wore like a uniform swallowed her tall frame. The skin of her face had a grayish cast. She still held herself as straight as any soldier, but it seemed like a point of pride more than strength.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were dreaming about a boy.”

  A boy? The dream image of Parrish flashed in her head. What had she said in her sleep? Heat rushed up her neck and into her cheeks. Tess pressed the back of her hand to her flushed face.

  El laughed. It was a fun, hearty sound. Britt had his eyes; El had his laugh. Tess’s face burned hotter.

  “I don’t blame you. He’s always been a beautiful boy, our Ryan.” El set a bowl of soft cheese and finger-sized bananas next to Tess’s sleeping bag. There was a bowl of warm water to wash with.

  Fresh torches and candles had been lit. Night. Morning. Breakfast. She felt disoriented and groggy. What time was it? Shocked, Tess bolted to her feet. “How could I have slept like that? And dreamed . . .”

  “Don’t go too hard on yourself. Life has a way of going on, regardless of what’s burning down around us. I get it.”

  El walked away down the escalator.

  No one worried too much when Tess wandered down the steps to the busy lower level of the building until she tried to walk out into the open air of the parking lot. The guards pushed her back into the atrium, and said, “Can’t let you pass. Take it up with El. Try the kitchen.”

  Inside, the workers barely gave her a look as they stacked and tucked away a crazy assortment of cans and sacks—preparing day and night. It never stopped, even seven-year-old canned goods, outdated and bordering on toxic. Tess couldn’t imagine where they’d managed to find so much old stock. Better to look for canning jars and preserve fresh food: time-consuming and labor intensive. She was starting to sound like Gwen.

  Gwen. What was happening to her family out there? If only she’d left Golda to die and went to them. Please, don’t let it be too late.

  Spotting El, Tess saw her patting a short, quick woman on the shoulder. El pointed in Tess’s direction and then left the kitchen workers to their job.

  “Tess,” El said, “you ate, I hope?”

  “Goat cheese. Good. Someone knows what they’re doing.” Tess shook her head, holding back impatience to be gone. She pushed the curls back out of her face and tried to keep the panic from her voice. “That’s not important. I need to talk—”

  “Sure. And someone does know what they’re doing. That’s Lizzy. It pays to find people who can do the things you can’t do and keep them close. That’s a recipe for building an alliance of the like-minded, a village. Right?” El didn’t wait for Tess’s answer, glancing back at the woman in the kitchen. El kept her hands buried in the pockets of her jacket.

  “Sure. I get that. Family. Like my family.” Tess couldn’t keep her voice from rising. “I need to get back to them. I won’t even ask you for the mule. I won’t. I’m going.”

  El stared. Turning, she walked away, expecting to be followed without question. Tess scrambled after her.

  In the center atrium, El headed out through the enormous open doors and windows where glass had kept the outside out, the civilized air conditioning in, and where the guards had kept Tess from leaving. She stopped, waited for Tess to catch up, and then pointed upward.

  A black cloak covered the sky. Fire. It was a blunt statement of fact. Tess staggered. It was dark out, but it wasn’t nighttime. Pouring smoke had turned the daylight into dusk. Tess raced to climb the wall and saw another kind of wall when she reached the top: a solid sheet of flames stroking the belly of the sky, cutting off the world outside the fortress. The sun peeked through the haze of red and black, a blistered eye overhead. It had passed the S-Line —the devourer had come.

  “Nothing could live in that. Nothing. Could it?” a man staring at the sky next to her asked. His two eyes blinked at her from a mud mask. He held a bucket in his hands, forgotten. He didn’t seem to expect an answer. Good thing. She didn’t have an answer to give him.

  Back on the ground, workmen stood ready with buckets of water. They were going to close the gates and soak the wood under the sheets of tin.

  “You can’t close them out. Stop!” Tess shoved around a woman watching the bucket brigade getting organized. Mindless, she scrambled down the ladder. “There are people out there. There’s still time.”

  Hands caught her, dragged her back. Someone spun her around, shook her. El.

  “Stop this. You can’t help them. You can’t.”

  “My family, your brother!”

  El’s fingers on her shoulders dug in hard enough to leave bruises. “Tess, they’re gone.”

  “Let go of me!”

  El shoved. Tess slammed into the dirt near the gate. Men heaved on ropes, the gates swung shut. Above them workers started splashing their buckets of water over the panels, soaking them. Women on the ground tossed water against the gate. The backsplash drenched Tess in water that smelled like rotting eggs.

  CHAPTER 28

  “Get her out of here.” El was in command mode again. “And someone get up on that wall and wet this gate from the top down or none of what you’re doing is going to matter. We need this gate.�
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  Two girls dragged Tess back from the towering structure.

  She didn’t fight, but she didn’t help them.

  “Knock her out and drag her if you have to.” Whatever softness Tess thought she had seen in El was gone. “Take her to the infirmary. Tell Midge to keep an eye on her. I mean it. Tess, save your energy for a sure thing, because it’s coming. And plan on being our guest for the time being.”

  They dumped Tess in the infirmary: next to the children’s classroom, in one of the gutted theaters, high above the day-to-day living still going on in the long main hall. Not long ago, the Fortix family had been the powerful and important people at the top of the escalator. Now the important people were children, the sick, injured, and El—always El and Britt. Makeshift cots and bedrolls lined the long, deep walls of the infirmary like fat cocoons.

  The woman they called Midge looked up, harassed. She was all no-nonsense with her hair pulled back into a short, stubby ponytail and her sleeves cut off to the elbows.

  “What am I supposed to do with her?” Midge crabbed. She was stitching up a pretty good slash in a girl’s arm.

  “El wants her here with you, Doc Midge. Just keep her busy while we deal with things.” The Amazons backed away, made themselves small in the doorway of the room. When the doctor went back to her patient, Tess’s jailers slipped away.

  “Come back here, you two! Help me with them.”

  But they were gone.

  “You!” She jutted her chin at Tess. “Bring me another of those folded cloths. Wash your hands before you touch anything. You look like you’ve been crawling through the stock pens.”

  What was Tess supposed to do now? Everything was gone. Tess forced her arms and legs to obey. It was as if she’d stepped into a poisonous fog that dragged at her body. It was an effort to move, to obey. A dented metal bowl of water rested on a cypress stump and next to it, a cake of homemade soap. She plunged her hands into the water, ignoring the steam that misted up.