by Carol Riggs
That’s good to hear. It’s also great of Dad to support me even though I’ll be leaving soon and creating a big hole in our family. I wish he didn’t love this backward zone so much. All five of us could move to Promise City where my brother, Chad, lives. He loves it there, and the way he describes it in his letters sounds awesome. Not that I want to be under Mom and Dad’s smothering care any longer than I have to, but if they lived there, my sisters would be a lot closer whenever I wanted to visit. “Yeah, I definitely need to snag a skimmer so Aubrie and I won’t have to wait around for an airship.”
With a somewhat wistful smile, Dad dusts his hands together. “Don’t worry. I hear there’s a cloudskimmer in Fort Hope reserved in your name.”
I grin. Fabulous. The higher-ups have confidence in my ceremony results. I’m totally going to enjoy learning to fly that skimmer while I wait for Aubrie to join me.
Three hours later, I stretch my back muscles and put away my gloves. I hang the shovel in the supply outbuilding to keep the rising waters of the nightly ground-swells from rusting the metal. With my jacket tucked into my hoverbike’s rear compartment, I pedal down the road, gliding just above the pavement. My speed whips the air into a cool breeze across my face and arms, rippling my shirt over my chest.
Hoverbikes may be a majorly prehistoric form of transportation, but mine gets me where I want to go. It responds like magic to my pumping legs. No fuel required, like I’m part of the smooth metal and the circling track propulsion and the hand grips. It’s more than the “robust” exercise the Board members say it’s good for.
I ride past the north dwelling units, their compact yards trim and clean. The area is deserted this time of day, since everyone who isn’t working is assigned to sessions, preschool, or nursery care. The perimeter fence rises up behind the units, a meter higher than a man’s head, topped by seriously wicked loops of razor wire.
I glide up to the work area, then ditch my hoverbike near a cluster of others.
Mr. Redmond, Nash’s burly father, waves a hand. “We need you to haul boards, Jay,” he says in his booming voice. “The stacks are getting low.”
“I’m on it.” I slip my hands into a pair of heavy-duty gloves and head for the hewing station. I help another guy carry kogawood boards to the skeleton of the fence, where girls and guys on nail duty are hammering in noisy, overlapping beats. I haul for a good long while, building up a sweat that soaks my shirt and makes itchy streams trickle down my back.
Stopping to guzzle water at the break tent, I squint into the lowering sun and glance along the length of the tawny fence boards. Less than a kilometer of openness near the woods remains. I’ll be glad when we’re done, because this barrier will keep young children in and wild animals out, plus it will protect Sanctuary from marauders or banished kids. Although I’ve never heard of banished graduates trying to sneak back in to steal things. They know the patrolling guards will shoot them on sight—using high-powered laser pulses instead of tranquilizer darts.
Mick Garinger’s fate is more typical for kids who are banished.
I place my cup in the sanitation cube, my guts wrenching at that thought.
Mr. Redmond selects a log from the large pile of felled trees in the field, then lugs it to the two men at the hewing station, dumps it, and returns to the field to fetch another. Despite his hard work, he’s barely sweating. Still, he looks like he could use some help. The logs are long and awkward.
“Hang on, I’ll get the other end,” I call, as Mr. Redmond hefts one end of a huge log.
“It’s about time you noticed,” he jokes while I trot between two open posts into the field. As I’m about to lift the other end, a girl’s scream pierces the air, slicing through the sound of pounding hammers.
The hammering comes to an abrupt stop. I start to glance toward the workers, but my gaze snags on a scruffy four-legged animal hurtling from the woods and across the field. It’s muscular, the size of a goat, but more sleek and dark. A beast.
The animal growls deep in its throat, jagged teeth bared and eyes glinting. It streaks past Mr. Redmond like it doesn’t see him, and it aims straight for me.
Mr. Redmond drops his end of the log with a crashing bounce. I stagger back, searching for a weapon of some sort. Logs, weeds, flowers—
Nothing.
The beast gives a savage bark and lunges for my thigh with its jaws wide.
Chapter Two
I throw myself over the pile of logs. The animal’s teeth snap and miss.
It leaps after me, gnashing at my boots as I land hard on my hip. The air whips from my lungs, and time becomes crisp and strangely slow.
A loud humming noise slices the air. The animal yelps, twists, and falls next to me with a skidding thud. Its eyes and long snout quiver for a moment before going still. Its tongue rolls out like a bloody banner.
Panting as though I’ve run halfway across the zone, I scramble to my feet. My head spins from the fall. I stare at the dead furry beast near me, then turn as Mr. Redmond strides over with his laser pistol. He snaps the power off.
“Are you all right?” His voice sounds hollow. His face is maggot-white, his fearful expression at odds with his burly build.
“Uh…yeah. I’m okay.” My knees buckle as Mr. Redmond claps a large hand on my back.
“You were almost vermal chow right then,” Mr. Redmond says, straining for an obvious attempt at humor.
“Vermal—is that what it is?”
“Yes. Too small and lean to be a worfer.”
A vermal. Words fail me as my throat constricts. Working near the perimeter gap is more dangerous than I thought if this can happen. While I’ve seen holograms of the indigenous beasts in the education database, I’ve never seen one in real life. It reminds me of the coyotes in the Earth files—only bulkier and more powerful. I sway, eyeing the animal’s red-rimmed fur where the laser seared through its neck. Other workers edge closer to gape at the carcass.
Mr. Redmond secures his gun in his utility belt and grabs the vermal by its back feet. “I tell you, Jay, your parents and the commander would’ve strung me up if I hadn’t stopped this beast from ripping a hole in you.”
“I doubt it,” I say with a faint smile. “But thanks for the fast shooting.”
Mr. Redmond grunts in response and lugs the vermal toward the trees. He flings it like a sack of rotten tuber-squash into the woods. When he returns, he frowns at the gawking workers and waves a brawny arm. “All of you, get back behind that fence line. From now on, no one’s allowed on this side, not even to fetch logs. Adults with firearms only.”
Everyone shuffles to obey, myself included. My hip aches. I rub my arm where the logs I landed on scraped off skin, and I limp to safety as my breathing returns to normal. I look back to see the pair of men from the hewing station jog over to Mr. Redmond and launch into an intense discussion.
A wiry girl, her blond hair in two short ponytails, sidles up and slugs me on the shoulder. “Close call, bud.”
“Yeah, freaky.” This girl, Shelly, sits behind me in my technology session—when she bothers to show up. With all the color choices of our plain community uniforms, she always chooses to wear black.
“Makes you feel pretty helpless without a pistol, doesn’t it?” Shelly throws a scowl over her shoulder at the adults. “They should let us carry one. What’s the point of teaching us how to shoot when all we get to do is indoor target practice?”
“You’ll get a laser pistol when you turn eighteen.”
“Only if I’ve been good enough.” She spits out the words like they’re poison. “And I won’t get one at all if vermals or briarcats chew me up before I can earn it.”
“Mr. Redmond shot the vermal fast enough. And we don’t have enough pistols for everyone.”
Shelly throws me a disgusted look. “You wouldn’t be saying that if that little beast had flayed your leg wide open. Whose side are you on?” She stalks off, her arms swinging stiffly.
Sides. I didn’t know w
e had sides here in the zone. Does she mean kids against parents…rebels against rules? Sure, the rules are frustrating, but the guards need most of the weapons, and the rest are restricted for safety reasons. There’s no use kicking against the way things are set up. We get to leave as soon as we turn eighteen, anyway.
I exhale with force and head to the break tent to clean my forearm. With some extra work, Shelly might score over a hundred and win a pistol at her ceremony. Then again, she’s in my education tier, which means she’ll graduate soon. It might already be too late for her to rack up enough points.
With my hands still a little shaky, I ride my hoverbike at a slow pace back toward zone center. The thirteen-hour clock in the tower gongs out six tones for the evening half of the day a few minutes before I wheel behind the Nebula to dock. Good timing, right at the end of the workday and the beginning of dinner.
Everything about the Nebula saturates my senses as I walk in. The ceiling lights shine like small suns over the mismatched tables. The aromas of roasted chicken and herbed soup drift into my nose. Conversation and laughter reach me, along with the strumming of technoguitars and the lilt of a girl’s clear voice. This is the best spot in Sanctuary, even better than home sometimes. Eight days every week, Monday through Restday, it’s a great reward for our cooperation and hard work before we have our ceremonies.
Colors flash as secondary students move around the huge room. I search the crowd to find Aubrie.
“Jay!” She waves her hand from a round table, where a group of our friends sit. Everyone has already loaded plates and started to eat except Aubrie. I grin. That’s nice of her. Not even my best friend, Harrel Andrews, decided to wait for me, but Harrel’s an eating machine with a bottomless pit and doesn’t postpone chowtime for anyone or anything.
I walk over and say hello. Harrel waves a half-eaten chicken leg at me, and Aubrie rises to her feet with a smile. I kiss her. Her lips press against mine, soft and warm. I’m glad to see she’s more enthusiastic than earlier, although she seems tired from her preschool stint. No surprise there. I move with her to the serving line and grab plates for us. As Aubrie leans to scoop up mashed tuber-squash, the Spoken-For necklace I gave her swings and glitters by her collarbone.
Ahead of us in line, a freckled guy yells at the kitchen. “We’re totally out of chicken here already!”
Blake Zemik bursts from the kitchen’s swinging doors, carrying a steaming, loaded pan in his muscular arms. “It’s coming, don’t hyperventilate,” he says. “You’re not gonna starve.”
I narrow my eyes as Blake swaggers to the serving line. Self-important worm. Just because the guy is the eldest son of one of the lieutenants, he thinks he’s special. While Nash and Leonard can be annoying, like nettleburs in the sock of life, Blake is a spark to every single one of my internal fuses.
Blake dumps chicken into the warmer bin. He nods toward one of the adult supervisors standing by the musicians. “Remember, three pieces of chicken max, unless you want to get booted back to family dinnertimes like that redheaded kid last week.”
The line starts moving again. With her eyes downcast and a faint smile on her lips, Aubrie fidgets with her fork while Blake grabs a towel from his back pocket and wipes off the bin edges.
I bump Aubrie with my elbow to get her attention. “You’ll never guess what happened this afternoon. A vermal tried to attack me at the perimeter fence.”
Her head snaps up. “What! Really?”
“Yeah.” I notice Blake’s blue-green eyes shift from Aubrie to me. “It came charging out of the woods. Mr. Redmond shot it with a laser pistol just in time.”
“Oh my gosh. That’s scary.” Her eyes are wider than wide.
Blake steps closer, looking all-knowing under his blond crew cut. “Vermals don’t attack like that, Lawton. I’ve seen a few vermals and even a briarcat, and they ran the other way. They’re scared unless you corner them. You sure it wasn’t a wild dog?”
I frown. “Where have you seen vermals? The woods are off limits.”
“It was during a legit outing, don’t agitate,” Blake says. “Adult supervised. But you really should look up vermals in the database. You’ll see I’m right.” He gives Aubrie a lingering look, drops his gaze to her necklace with a slight curl of his lip, and struts back into the kitchen.
Aubrie touches my arm. “Maybe the vermal was starving or rabid.”
“It didn’t look rabid.” I stab a piece of chicken and dump it on my plate. A wild dog. Yeah, right. I’ve seen images of dogs, and that was no stinkin’ Earth dog brought to Liberty and gone wild. Mr. Redmond even said it was a vermal. What does Blake know? I don’t like the way he scopes out Aubrie. At least she gets quiet and almost cautious instead of going all giggly like most girls do when he’s around. Peyton seems totally immune to his “charms,” though. She treats him more like a friend or a brother, which is more than he deserves.
Either way, I’m glad Blake is graduating tomorrow night with Nash.
For the rest of the evening, I shove thoughts of Blake into a distant corner of my mind, where he belongs. Harrel and I talk with our friends about whether we think exploring the snow-covered Corveira Mountains to the east would be more amazing than swimming in the Magenta Sea, a thousand kilometers west of here. I argue both sides—I’d go for either place if I had the chance. I already know what a small safe zone nestled in the middle of a valley is like.
When the transport bus arrives for its last evening trip to the residential dwellings, I haul my hoverbike aboard and ride north with Aubrie. Herb-infused air circulates around our seat from the vents. It’s a nice, calming breeze. After we get off, I walk Aubrie to her unit, towing my bike on auto-glide alongside us, then kiss her good night.
I arrive home to find Mom and Dad in the lounge room. “Did you hear?” I ask. “A vermal tried to take a bite out of me at the perimeter fence.”
“We heard.” Dad’s expression is concerned, almost stormy.
Mom’s face pales. “Oh, Jay. I don’t even want to think about it.” She slips off to the kitchen, rubbing her arms as if she’s cold.
“The danger’s not over until that fence is finished,” Dad says. “Master Farrow has decided to post a pair of permanent guards in the gap. Obviously, the regular perimeter guards aren’t enough.”
“That’s a no-brainer.” Although I snort at Dad calling Commander Farrow “master.” Strict, evil overlord is more like it—I’ll be glad to get out from under his thumb in two weeks. I sink onto the couch, stretch out my legs, and grunt from stiff muscles. My stomach lurches as I remember the vermal and its jagged teeth barreling toward me. The other attacks we’ve had over the years have been from smaller animals. A skunkcat. A few black-eyed jervins. And once, a spike-tailed hawk.
Rachel and Tammi come bouncing in, already dressed in pajamas. My sisters leap onto the couch on both sides of me, sandwiching me in tight like enthusiastic pieces of bread.
Rachel squints and purses her lips, which makes her face look more elf-like than usual. “Did you have fun at the Nebula, dancing and stuff?”
“Yep.” I flip her light brown braid. “Cheer up. You’ll be thirteen and old enough to go there before you know it.”
She glares. “A year is a long time.”
“Sorry, that’s the rules.”
“Can you eat dinner with us tomorrow?” Tammi chirps, wriggling and making her dark curls tickle my arm. “Mom and Dad are boring.”
“I heard that,” Mom calls from the kitchen. Dad chuckles while settling into the lounge chair with a reader on how to rotate crop plantings. His expression softens, his wide mouth relaxing within his beard.
“It’d be great to have dinner with you,” I say to Tammi. “That way we can all go to the ceremony together.” My smile is forced. Now that Tammi has turned six and started education sessions, she’s required to attend the ceremonies that happen twice every month. No exception unless there’s an illness or emergency. I guess she’ll be okay as long as there’s n
ot a banishment, which unfortunately happens a few times every year.
“Can you read to us?” Tammi asks.
“Sure.” I wait for her to fetch a reader, and soon we’re deep into a tale of fairyland tree houses, red licorice, and gumdrops—tasty foods that Mom says are sweet and not nutritious, which is why we don’t have them. That’s all I know. The stash of children’s literature in Sanctuary’s database originates from Earth, full of stories written way back before settlers first colonized Liberty.
After I finish and Mom and Dad say good night, I make sure my sisters take their nightly pills to protect them against genomide traces. Tammi, still learning to swallow pills instead of drinking a dissolved dose, tries two times before hers goes down.
“Great job,” I tell her. Both she and Rachel plant kisses on my cheek and then crawl into their beds. I turn out the light to the sounds of their sleepy giggles.
“Nighty-night, little critters,” I say, and close their door. At the end of the hallway, I lean around the end wall. Mom and Dad sit in comfortable silence in the circular lounge room, sipping from steaming cups of their nightly protein broth. “Good night. The girls have taken their pills.”
“Thanks, Jay.” Dad nods at a water glass and a pill on an end table. “Don’t forget yours.”
I down the pill in one quick swallow and leave them to their adults-only drink. Gladly. Once, when I was eight, I stole a drink from Dad’s freshly brewed cup. I gagged and coughed until I drooled on the kitchen floor, earning a cuff alongside the head from Dad for trying it. I never did that again. Disgusting, grainy stuff. Now, the beefy smell alone makes me gag.
I slip into my room, a weariness settling over me. It’s been a hard day. Mick’s genomide-burnt body, bloody vermals, and that annoying conversation with Blake. Along with that, the weirdness of noticing Peyton—really seeing her in a way I haven’t for a long time. What’s wrong with me? Was I paying more attention to her because I was shaken out of my normal mode by Mick’s death?
I hope things will be better tomorrow.
