by Hakok, R. A.
He shakes his head, offering me an apologetic smile.
‘I’m afraid I can’t have you just roaming around outside, either, Gabriel. You seem lucid right now, but from what you’ve told me the progress of the virus can be somewhat…unpredictable. Our friend in the basement seemed to have little difficulty scaling our walls, and he is a rather fragile specimen next to you.’
He presses one gloved finger to his lips, as though considering the dilemma, then his eyes brighten.
‘Ah, I think I have it.’ He turns his head. ‘Mr. Goldie.’
Goldie appears at his shoulder.
‘Yes boss.’
‘Do you think you and a couple of the men could open up the hotbox for me?’
Torches are lit from the fire pits; the inmates set to work with shovels. Finch watches their progress for a while and then gestures for the Ziploc bag with the books I’ve brought him. He opens one and starts flicking through it. I hunch forward in the chair, desperate for whatever I can get of the fire’s warmth. Tully and Knox keep their pistols trained on me the whole time. I can’t see how it’s necessary; I’m not sure I have it in me to stand, let alone do them harm.
When enough snow has been cleared Goldie hurries over to fetch us. Finch hands the book back to Knox and retrieves his cane while Goldie holds the gate open for him. Tully waves me up with the gun.
As I get to my feet the pain in my head flares; it feels like my skull might explode with it. My vision narrows and for a moment I’m unsure if my legs will bear my weight. I get no offer of assistance from either of Finch’s minders. The hulking inmates keep their distance, unwilling to come any closer.
I stumble across the yard to where the prisoners have gathered. They have the look of a crowd that’s gathered for a lynching, or to see a heretic get burned. They part before me, those with torches holding them out as though to ward off the evil I have brought into their midst. I lower my head as I pass among them. It hurts to look directly at the flames now.
Finch stands to one side of a newly excavated hole. I shuffle up to the edge and peer down at the hotbox. There’s little more to it than a rectangle cut into the frozen dirt, no wider than a grave, and not quite as long. A wooden trapdoor sits back against the snow. The timber is rough, gapped, but the hinges and bolt look sturdy. Tully gestures with the pistol for me to get in. I glance over at Finch, but he just spreads his hands in an expression of apology.
‘I am sorry, Gabriel. I’m afraid it’s the best I can offer.’
I ease myself to the ground, sit on the edge and lower myself down. It’s not quite deep enough for my height; I have to hunker low as they close the door until all that remains of the light from their torches is what seeps through the gaps in the timber, barely enough to let in the air a man might need to breath.
The wood creaks as someone steps on it to slide the bolt into place, and then one by one the prisoners leave for their cells, taking what remains of the light with them.
I press my hands to the sides in the darkness. I’m glad there’s little more than the memory of Claus left inside me. I don’t think he would have cared much for this.
I find if I scrunch myself up I can just about sit, and so I settle to the bottom, my back flat to the rough planks behind me, knees pressed to my chest. Finch said the hotbox had been put there to punish inmates, back when Starkly was first built. Its location was chosen with that purpose in mind: slap bang in the middle of the yard, where for most of the day not even the prison’s high stone walls would have offered any respite from the Carolina sun. A man left in here for a day would literally bake to death, he said. Right now that doesn’t sound so bad.
I close my eyes and press my mittens to my temples, trying to drive out the pain in my head. I think about where Mags might be tonight. The note she left me is in the inside pocket of my parka, but I don’t need to take it out. I’ve read it over in my head so many times I know every word by heart.
Gabe
Peck is here, with Kurt and the other Guardians. He just killed Angus, right in front of me. Whatever it was he used, it was quick; there was nothing I could do to stop it. Peck said they had canisters of it. They’re going to dump it into the vents unless I go with them. Gilbey thinks I’m the key to the cure she’s been working on, so Kane’s done a deal with her: if Peck brings me back she’ll let him go.
I’m not going to let that happen. Truck told me a little of what Gilbey does in that other room, when I was in the cage. I won’t be something for her to experiment on.
When you read this you might think of coming for me, but you need to be smart now. There’s too many of them. And there’s something else. I think you’ve begun to suspect, but you can’t know the extent of it. I’m not sure I know it myself. I’m not the person I was before. I can do things now. So you see, I stand a better chance by myself.
Besides, you have another job, you and Jake. Once I get free Peck will come back; he has no other choice. You can’t still be in Fearrington when that happens. You need to get the Juvies somewhere else, somewhere safe.
I know you can do it.
M
I want to believe it, that she’ll find a way to escape before they get her back to The Greenbrier. But that’s not the way it’s going to go. Those were Jax’s prints I saw; there was no mistaking them. They mean to bind her tight, like they would a fury, carry her back.
The tracks were headed south, but that road curves west soon after. My guess is they’ll follow it as far as Greenboro. From there they can pick up 220 and then it’s a straight shot all the way up to I-64. They might be on it already; it’s been two days since Peck arrived at Fearrington. He’ll push hard to get back, to set Kane free. He should be able to make good time, too. It’s mostly flat country, at least until they’re past Blacksburg. Carrying Mags won’t slow them down. I doubt Jax will even notice her weight.
I start to feel the panic rise. I need to get there before them; if I let them take her back inside it’s over. I take a deep breath, push it back down. Finch said he needed to sleep on it, but he’ll go for it, I know he will. I saw the look on his face when I told him about Mags and Johnny, and what the scanner did for them. I figure by sometime tomorrow I can be on my way again. Peck has a head start on me, but Starkly’s almost a day closer to The Greenbrier than Fearrington. I saw how fast Mags was, after. Whatever time I’ve lost coming here I can make it up on the road.
Assuming you survive what comes before?
A fit of shivering hits me, rattling my teeth together. When it finally subsides the voice is quiet again.
I can’t let myself dwell on that. What it might be like. Whether it will even work.
I tell myself it just has to.
*
HE WAITS UNTIL THE REST OF THEM HAVE GONE THROUGH, then steps into the airlock. The outer door is open; he can see the snow beyond, littered with cans. He holds his breath and hurries out, picking his way among them. The wind carries most of the smell away, but it is still pretty bad. He finds a spot away from the others and sits to strap on his snowshoes, keeping his head down. The sky is gray, brooding, but after the darkness of the plant room it seems impossibly bright.
The girl with the blond hair pulls up her hood, hoists her pack onto her back and starts making her way towards the gate. The three bodies that lie in front of the entrance are mostly covered over now, only their outlines visible. She takes a wide path around them all the same. One by one the others follow until there’s only him and the boy with the curly hair left. The boy heaves the blast door closed and turns the handle to lock it. He tightens the bindings on his snowshoes and then they both set off through the clearing after the rest of them.
At the guard shack they stop, waiting for those ahead to climb over the barrier. Nobody speaks; there’s only the crunch of snow as one by one they shuck off their packs and clamber over. When it’s his turn the boy with the curly hair reaches down for him. The others are already shuffling into the woods so he lets himself be picked up. The boy climbs
over after him, then tells him to wait. He disappears in among the blackened trunks and when he returns he’s holding the green plastic case the tall boy carried with him on the way down. They set off into the woods. Before long the trees end and they make their way out into open fields. The others are strung out in a raggedy line ahead of them, lifting their snowshoes high as they trudge through the deeper powder.
When she reaches the road the girl with the blond hair waits for them to catch up. The others gather around, hands gripping the straps of their packs tight as they lean into them, their breath smoking in the cold. The boy with the curly hair stops, sets the container down. He pushes his goggles onto his forehead, turns his gaze south. There’s little to see that way; the wind has already scrubbed the snow of the tracks they made. He bends down, his fingers tracing the crusted outline of what might once have been a snowshoe print.
‘They need our help.’
The boy’s voice is low, barely a whisper, as if he’s talking to himself. He shuffles a little closer.
‘Do you have a plan?’
A troubled look crosses the boy’s face. He shakes his head.
‘Plans were more Gabe’s thing.’
He says nothing for a while.
‘Perhaps if we follow them something will come to us.’
The boy’s eyes don’t leave the tracks, but he nods his head, like he’s reached a decision. He calls the girl over. The others start shuffling their snowshoes around, anxious to know what’s happening.
‘Lauren, I’m going after Peck. We can’t leave Gabe to do this by himself.’
She lifts her goggles onto her forehead and stares at him in disbelief.
‘You’re crazy, Jake. You know what he meant to do. You can’t help him now, either of them. You’ll just get yourself killed as well.’
The boy reaches into his pocket, like he hasn’t heard. He pulls out a map, holds it out to her.
‘I marked the route Gabe told me to take. It shouldn’t be hard to follow; mostly it’s the way we came down. Can you get them back?’
The girl takes the map, opens it out. She pretends to study it, but her eyes are elsewhere. She points down.
‘And what about him?’
The boy with the curly hair looks undecided.
‘I don’t…’
He doesn’t wait for him to finish whatever he was about to say. He tells him he’ll need him. He’s the only one who’s been there. Inside. He knows it’s sort of a lie, even as he says it. He doesn’t remember much from that place, mostly just the cage. But as frightened as he is of going back, he is certain he does not wish to stay with the others.
The boy stays quiet for a long moment, considering. Eventually he reaches a decision.
‘I’m taking him with me, Lauren.’
The girl folds up the map, slips it inside her parka. She says Alright. It’s hard to tell behind the mask she wears, but he thinks she might be smiling.
*
I HUDDLE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIT, my knees tucked up to my chest, shivering like a beaten dog. It doesn’t seem like sleep will ever come, but at some point I must drift off.
I’m not sure how long I’m out, only that when I wake it’s still dark outside. The wind’s picked up again. It blows ashen flakes through the gaps in the timber that settle on my parka. I slide off one of my mittens and reach inside my thermals for the dog tags. I poke my finger through the slit in the liner (I wonder when that happened. I keep my gear pretty good) feeling for any changes in the metal. But the only imperfections I can feel are ones I think I recognize.
I pull the mitten back on and just sit there, counting out the seconds as they tick into minutes and those slowly become hours. The cracks in the trapdoor grow visible again, as somewhere off to the east the first lifeless grays of dawn break over the horizon.
It won’t be long now. I pull my hood back, making an effort to stop my teeth from chattering so that I’ll be able to hear whoever Fitch sends to let me out. But there’s nothing other than the wind. I press my back to the plank sides. The cold has crept into my muscles, stiffening them; they cry out in protest as I shuffle myself upwards. I stay like that for a little while, one ear pressed to the timber, just listening. It’s not long until the muscles in my legs are trembling, however. I slump back down to the bottom of the box before they give out.
An hour passes, two. Far above the clouds the sun continues its slow pass over Starkly’s stone walls, its crumbling watchtowers. The gaps between the planks are narrow, but somehow inside the hotbox it gets uncomfortably bright. I shuffle my head as far back into the parka’s hood as I can and close my eyes.
Finch said he needed to sleep on it, but it’s been light for hours now. I don’t understand. Has something caused him to change his mind? Maybe he thinks it’s too dangerous to let me into the prison. There are things he could do, to make it safer. I try to remember whether I made that clear, last night, in the holding pen. But when I search for the details of what I told him they’re muddled, fragmented, like a conversation held years before and not revisited since.
I feel an uneasiness growing inside me.
That was only a few hours ago.
Mags had forgotten all about Watership Down.
The kid can’t remember a thing from before he got infected.
I tell myself it was because I was sick, exhausted, but what the voice said has me worried. I close my eyes, trying to ignore the pounding in my head while I call up the map Marv gave me. I can picture it. Blue and red. It had a logo across the front. But when I try and picture it I can’t remember what it said. Something Oil. Shell? There were fourteen facilities in total; seven on the map itself, another seven listed in his neat hand at the bottom. Thirteen codes between them; we never had one for Eden, I’m sure of it. But when I try and list them off I manage no better than ten. The codes are wrong, too. I used to be able to just close my eyes and they’d appear, but now the letters and numbers are fuzzy, indistinct, and when I read them out it seems like parts are jumbled up.
All winter I studied that map. I knew it like the back of my hand.
What else might be slipping away?
The Juvies. I list their names, girls first, then boys.
Mags, Ruth, Angela, Beth, Fran, Amy, Jen, Beverley, Lucy, Stephanie, Alice. Jake, Tyler, Eric, Kyle, Michael, Ryan, Carl, Nate, Leonard, Kali.
That’s twenty-one. Including me, twenty-two.
Somehow that doesn’t seem right. But when I run through the names again the number doesn’t increase.
There were thirty of us in Miss Kimble’s class.
Six of the Guardians stayed behind when we fled Eden. Kurt, Angus, Hamish, Zack, Jason, Seth.
Twenty-four.
There was a girl that died. I can picture her face. She was pretty; she made me nervous. She asked me to get her something once, from the outside. Her name is on the tip of my tongue but I can’t remember. I’m almost positive it was Lauren, but it might have been Laura.
Twenty-four less Lauren would leave twenty-three. Twenty-three sounds right. I’m almost positive that’s how many we were over the winter.
So who am I missing?
I go back over the names again, but no matter how many times I list them out the count remains at twenty-two.
I’ve known each of the Juvies for almost as long as I can remember. How can I have forgotten one of them? But the answer is obvious; I don’t need the voice to tell me. The thought of it suddenly fills me with dread, a terror I have not felt since Claus. I need to get out of here, before I lose anything else to whatever is coursing through my veins.
I struggle to my feet, my knees popping like dud firecrackers. I brace my shoulder against the trapdoor and push for all I’m worth. The old timber creaks, but the hinges and bolt are stout, designed to resist attempts like this. I slam my shoulder into the wood, over and over, until at last a coughing fit takes me and I have to stop.
I slide back down to the bottom of the box and pull my parka tight
around me. I start to make lists of everything I remember. Not just the Juvies, or what was written on Marv’s map, but everyone and everything I have ever known. Books I have read, the characters in each. Articles I found about the virus. Places I have been, before the Last Day, and since. Things I would carry in my scavenging kit. Flavors of MRE. I recite each out loud, one item after the other. When I get to the end of a list I come up with another. When I can think of no more things to list I go back to the first one and start over.
The light coming through the trapdoor grows steadily brighter. I shrink back inside my hood, pull the drawstrings tight and continue on, stopping only to holler at Finch from the bottom of the hotbox. But the rest of that day I don’t hear from him.
Dusk settles slowly over the yard. Little by little the pain behind my eyes abates, enough that I might even sleep. I don’t allow it; I’m afraid of what I might lose to the darkness if I let it take me again. So instead I sit there, rocking backwards and forwards as I work my way through my lists.
As the last of the light slips from the sky I shuffle my way up to the trap door and call out to Finch, but a coughing fit forces me back down before I can get very far into it. I continue hacking until I can taste the blood in my throat and when I slump back down it feels like something inside me has broken.
I reach for the dog tags, probing the slivers of pressed metal with my fingers. They feel rough now, grainy. We’re coming to the end of the third day since I infected myself. Whether Finch ever intended to let me out of this box, soon it won’t matter. Because the same thing that’s eating away at the tags is gnawing away at me now, too, hollowing me out from the inside. I can feel it, stripping away what’s there so it can rebuild me, rewire me, make me the way it wants me to be. Not just flesh and bone, muscle and sinew, but the important stuff, the things I know, the memories I have.
The things that make me who I am.
*
I WAKE TO A LOUD THUD as someone jumps down onto the trapdoor. I open my eyes to scorching brightness. I squeeze them shut again, yank my hood forward.
Where am I?
