Mr. Williams did something.
Monster.
She saw what he did to Jen—she watched it on the security camera. Sid was right there with him, stood there like a lobotomized goon and watched, doing nothing.
Miranda did something.
She hauled food out of the pantry, as much as she could get before they returned. And then she locked the door. All it took was an override command on the computer. She’d been watching Mr. Williams operate the system, learning where to go and what to do. She acted stupid, like she didn’t understand.
But he found out when he got back.
He and Sid banged on the door for hours. Mr. Williams begged and pleaded, promised he wouldn’t hurt her. He just needs to use the computers, that’s all. “Please, Miranda. This is hurting all of us.”
Liar. Monster.
And when the promises didn’t work, he proved it. He threw every name ever invented at her. Whore. Bitch. Murderer. A few others. None of them made sense.
He quit after a few days. But he left Sid to hammer the door with the back side of an ax. The clank of metal on metal drove deep inside her skull. It went on for weeks. If there were a button to end her life, she would’ve pressed it.
Finally, that stopped, too.
Miranda takes another sip, replaces the lid. She takes a package of Ramen noodles out of box and tears open a corner, saves the packet of seasoning for later. It will spice up the water, provide a dose of salt. The noodles are brittle, chalky.
She sits in the office chair, taps the keyboard, and leans back. The monitors come to life. The old man is in the kitchen, preparing tea, looking out the window at a bleak and angry world. Sid is vegetating on the couch. He probably wouldn’t eat if Mr. Williams didn’t put food in front of him.
The big monitor shows the view from the brick house across the garden, only hints of crops long since shriveled and buried beneath snowdrifts. Only one lump remains in the garden. It shouldn’t be there.
She doesn’t look at that.
Winter wind continues to scour the land, piling snow against the buildings and sides of trees. The charred remains of the bunkhouse are visible, skeletal and empty. Only two wind harvesters spin near the barn, the other a bladeless post pointing at the sky, rendered useless during a bitter storm.
Smoke puffs out the dinner house chimney. The girls are walking past the windows. They usually huddle around the stove, a stack of wood pilfered from the bunkhouse wreckage. The kitchen is nearly barren. They only move to keep the fire stoked. Or to do business in the corner.
They don’t even have a bucket.
There are no footsteps in the snow. Winter wiped them out of existence. The sun went missing behind the steel clouds weeks ago. The forecast is easy.
Misery.
With one wind harvester down, power is limited. But that’s not why it’s so cold. Thankfully Mr. Williams can’t shut the back room down from out there. He would if he could. And then Miranda would surely die.
Miranda learned the computer system. She could remotely lock and unlock all the doors, including the kitchen doors in the dinner house. That explained the electronic keycard locks.
In a fit of dreadful boredom, Miranda popped open the very back room once, her pulse bouncing in her throat, but when the smell oozed out she kicked it closed with a definitive snap.
There are things worse than a bucket full of crap.
She even turned off the fence. It’s a huge power hog. Roc isn’t going anywhere near the brick house. Not anymore. And even if she did, she’s not getting into the back room.
No one is.
Miranda nibbles on the block of noodles, stopping when it’s half gone, wrapping up the remains for later. She chases it with a swallow of water and sits back to watch the cameras, the scenes rarely changing. Patricia looks like a dried apple, her lips puckered with radial lines. Why won’t she die?
She puts her head back, closes her eyes.
Sleeping is hard. She tried to do push-ups and sit-ups to wear herself out, but got too weak. There’s just not enough food to burn calories. But she’s tired, figures she can get a couple hours of uninterrupted sleep. She crawls under the counter next to the computers where it’s warmest, where there’s a bed of coats to curl up.
She drifts off. No dreams. Never a dream. Just sweet, sweet slumber. The only joy to be found in this dreadful world.
Bang.
She lifts her head, not sure if she heard that. Sometimes she hears voices when she’s falling asleep, like someone is right next to her, whispering in her ear. Did she imagine it?
BANG.
The front door.
Miranda scurries out from under the counters and, getting down on her knees, taps the monitors awake. She cycles through the cameras…
Sid is running alongside the garden, forcing his way through the dinner house front door. Mr. Williams trudges along the path Sid left in the snow, walking as fast as a shrinking old man can walk.
Miranda punches a key.
The dinner house interior flickers on one of the smaller monitors. The girls are gathered around the stove. One is leaning against the wall. Her face is agony.
It can’t be.
58
Sid’s mouth hangs open. A tooth is missing.
Kat and Mad scramble to the corner, come up wielding broken table legs like crude swords. Each takes a side of the table, ready to cut him off. Roc stays put.
He doesn’t come after them, instead acting more like a roadblock, letting the bitter chill steal warmth from the stove. Cyn chatters, looking for an extra club, something she can swing. Nothing’s within reach, not that she could grip it.
Sid steps aside.
The old man climbs the porch, limping inside.
A ball of anger erupts in Cyn’s belly, burning through the fear and hypothermia, a hearth trapped inside, artificially warming her will. If only she had the strength to stand.
He’s weathered, like the sky leached gray into his flesh. A withering leaf. A decaying soul.
Sid closes the door behind him.
Mr. Williams rubs his hands, surveys the room. His dead gaze falls on Cyn. “Your stupidity is my good fortune.”
“I know who you are,” Cyn says.
“Your moronic friends could not find their way back to the gate. You will take me there now.” He flicks his hand. “Pick her up.”
Sid comes around Mad’s side of the table. The club glances off his forearm. He snatches her by the coat, slams her into the wall. The club clatters on the floor. Kat comes over the table, but Sid wields Mad like a shield.
“Stop!” Cyn tries to shout. “Stop it!”
Sid charges Kat, using Mad as a battering ram. Kat jumps on the table with a club.
“Stop.” Mr. Williams raises his hand.
Sid freezes like he pushed a button.
“He killed her, Cyn!” Kat points at Mr. Williams without taking her eyes off of Sid. “He killed Jen!”
Cyn sits up, but all the anger in the world can’t help her stand.
“He took her out back and killed her, dragged her into the garden. I saw it. I saw her body.”
Mad sobs quietly, the coat bunched around her face, hiding her tears.
“This is a dream; she is not dead,” Mr. Williams says to Cyn. “You know that to be true now.”
“She still suffered.”
“And suffering will continue unless you take me to the gate!”
Blood vessels emerge on the old man’s gray complexion. He paces at the front of the room.
“I am out of patience, girls. Your suffering ends when you get me to the gate. I will leave this world and you’ll be relieved of your suffering.”
“Kill me,” Cyn says. “I’m not taking you.”
“There’s a problem with that, young lady. Death will not relieve you of suffering—you will simply be reborn in the dream to suffer again. You will forget, I will find you, and then here you’ll be in the cabin again. But you have a choic
e. Take me to the gate and you will never see me again. It’s your choice to suffer.”
Cyn shakes her head. “Liar.”
“Use your head!” He thumps his scalp with a single finger. “Why do you think there are so many marks on your wall? Our worlds were linked. You came to Foreverland, you interacted with the boys, but now Foreverland is dead and this godforsaken place cycles over and over and over. You wake up with no memories and I am sent back to the Nowhere, into the gray, lost until I can find my way back. I will not go back there, not again. This time it ends. I am leaving this world.”
“Where will you go?”
He stops pacing. They share a knowing glance. His body is dead. Where will he go?
She knows.
He’ll take one of their bodies. He’ll wake in the bunkhouse in Cyn’s body or Kat’s or Roc’s. Linda will be there and Thomas will ask him to remember how he got out and how the girls are doing…
And they’ll have no idea.
“Sid,” the old man says, “push her face against the stove.”
“No!” Kat grabs the back of Mad’s coat. Sid lets go with one hand, pops her in the forehead. Kat grabs Mad with both arms, pulling her back.
Roc grabs the table, stands.
“Stop it!” Cyn says.
“Where is it?” The old man holds up the fob, thumb on the button. “Where is the gate?”
“Call him off!”
“Tell me! Now!”
“Make him stop!”
Roc starts around the table. Mr. Williams points the fob at her—
“I’ll tell you,” Cyn says. “Make him stop.”
Mr. Williams raises his hand. “This is your last chance. If not, I put all of you asleep. You will wake with half your faces melted to the stove. And I will continue experimenting with you until you do.”
“It’s due south—”
“No!” Kat shouts. “Don’t tell him—he’ll kill us once he knows.”
Mr. Williams aims the fob at her like a weapon. The button clicks. Kat cringes.
Click. Click, click, click.
She opens her eyes. Still awake. Still standing.
Mr. Williams looks at the ceiling. “You little bitch.”
“It doesn’t work,” Kat says.
“Sid, get over here.”
Sid throws Mad and runs to his master’s side. The girls pick up their weapons. Roc, too. The old man pockets the fob, lifts his chin, masking the doubt and fear quivering just beneath the surface.
“Girls,” he says, “if you do not drop those sticks, I will have Sid beat them out of your hands. You know what he is capable of doing.”
He nods at Roc.
“Stalemate,” Cyn manages to say. Her legs are coming alive, waking in pain. “If that animal comes, girls, break his legs. Both of them. Without Sid, the old man is helpless. He’ll never reach the gate.”
The girls lift the clubs, each big enough to snap a bone, shatter a knee. He can’t take all of them. They’ll lose, sure. But so will the old man.
Stalemate.
The old man blinks, heavily.
“I’m taking the girls to the gate,” Cyn says. “I can’t stop you from following, but if you interfere with us, then I’ll stop and you’ll never find it. We all die. We start over and you go back out to the Nowhere.”
Mr. Williams’s lips stretch over his perfect teeth. He calculates the offer. Without the fob, without Sid…there is no counter.
“Do we have a deal?” she asks.
He opens the door, says with his back turned, “If you attempt to lose us, someone will suffer greatly.”
He goes outside, waits on the porch. Arms folded. Sid follows.
“Can you walk?” Kat squats down.
No way she can walk. She closes her eyes, puts her arms up. Kat and Mad pick her up. Her skin burns with fever. The pressure on her legs is too much, like a thousand hot pins stabbing in and out.
The room dims. She loses a few moments of awareness, panting to stay alert. Yearning for the cold to take the pain back.
This body is almost done.
Just a mile, that’s all. A mile and it’s over. One way or another.
“Stop,” she grunts, leaning against the table.
Mad gathers up the extra coats and sweaters they were using for bedding. The old man is still on the porch, huddled against the cold. He turns to see what the hell is taking so long. Roc is just inside the doorway, glaring back.
Her eyes are dead and buried in bruised flesh. She swapped out her club for a broken chair leg that’s splintered and shaped like a blade.
“Don’t,” Cyn says.
Roc adjusts her grip, her knuckles white.
“Whatever happened, drop it. They’re nothing. You understand, Roc? Nothing. You can escape.”
“Here.” Mad shoves gloves at them, wraps a scarf around Cyn’s neck. Kat stretches another coat over the ones she’s already wearing. Mad pulls a hat over her head.
Roc stares.
“You need to say it,” Cyn says. “I need to hear it.”
Her jaw flexes. Nostrils flare.
Roc puts gloves on. Mad hands her a wad of scarves and hats. Those go on, too. She nods once.
Good enough.
Cyn throws her arms over Kat and Mad’s shoulders. They prop her onto her feet. She can’t support her weight. Just moving steals her breath. They drag her to the door.
“We need to get Miranda,” Mad adds.
“No.” Cyn grits. “She’s dead.”
“I just saw her in the window this morning.”
“Not what I mean. Miranda’s dead, she just doesn’t know it.”
Mad pulls back. “You serious? You really going to leave her? Kat? We can’t do that; we ain’t like the old man, Kat. We got our differences, but we can’t leave her, you heard what he said—”
“That’s not Miranda!” Cyn grabs a handful of Mad’s scarf, hisses through clenched teeth. “Trust me. She’s dead.”
She lets go, lunges forward. Kat keeps her from falling, hauls her through the door. Roc follows, weapon in hand.
Mad eventually comes out.
59
They march into the meadow, a desolate stretch of snowy dunes. The figures fade into the blizzard, icy wind swirling, scraping the land, enveloping the small band of girls in its cold grip. Disappear.
Miranda pushes buttons, zooms the camera’s view to maximum, focusing on the two figures that straggle behind them. The old man leans heavily on the boy, pushing through the snowy mounds.
The men fade in the swirling snow, too.
And she’s alone.
This time, she’s really alone. They’re not coming back. They’re escaping. Or dying.
Her hand shaking, she clicks through multiple screens. The door clicks. Miranda yanks it open, rushing into the hallway and through the house, pulling on the front door. The storm throws it open, the hinges groaning.
Barefoot, Miranda runs down the steps, snow pushing up her pant legs, reaching her knees. The world of white blurs, her eyes filling with water.
The wintry blast snatching the air from her lungs.
The cruel world grinds her pursuit to a halt. Even if she got dressed, if she traipsed over the frozen meadow, she wouldn’t find them. The wind has already scoured their tracks from existence.
If they don’t escape, they’ll die. Either way, they’re not coming back.
Really alone.
She begins shivering, her chin rattling uncontrollably. She runs inside and closes the door, sliding to the floor. Melting snow puddles between her numb toes.
The smell of death fills the house.
Cyn abandoned her. Miranda was the one that saved them. She was the one that disabled the zapper. If it wasn’t for her, Mr. Williams would have knocked them out; he’d be doing things to them right now, like the things he did to Jen. And they couldn’t stop them.
Miranda saved them.
And they left her.
Miranda is dead.
She said it, she knows something. Miranda isn’t dead; she’s sitting on the floor, holding the panic at bay. Staring down the hall, the metal door swung open.
The back door in view.
Cyn said it like she knew Miranda would hear it. She wanted her to hear it, wanted her to know something. Miranda looks at her hands, turns them over, runs her fingers over the bracelet and the name engraved on the gold plate like they’re proof she’s alive.
I’m alive.
But even she knows something isn’t right. She’s always known. Miranda pushes herself up, wiggling her fingers and toes to bring back sensation, wishing the cold could snuff out the fear squirming in her stomach. Wishing she didn’t have to do this.
Wishing she wasn’t alone.
She pauses in the back room. There’s nothing holding her back now. No reason to wait. A few clicks with the mouse, and the lock on the back door whirs.
Snick.
The door moves but doesn’t open. Waiting for someone to pull, to make the decision to go back there, to look, to see what’s been hiding in the back all this time. For someone to summon the courage to see the truth.
Her hand quivers on the knob, but not because it’s cold.
This time, she grabs it.
This time, she pulls it.
The moist odor of death hits her, filling her sinuses, sticking to the back of her throat. She gags before covering her face, her eyes tearing up. She uses both hands to filter the foul air.
It’s dark.
A small green light glows on a monitor somewhere in the back. She doesn’t search for a light switch, lets her eyes adjust, lets the smell seep out like a tomb that’s been steeped in death for far too long.
Two examination tables are in the center, side by side.
A large metal lamp hangs from the ceiling directly over them. One table is empty. There’s a bag on the other, brown vinyl. A zipper bisects the center. The corners bulge with liquid.
There are no clear windows to see inside.
She wouldn’t look anyway.
She knows what’s in there.
A white tag is attached to the zipper dangling at the top. She pushes through the dense air, adjusting one hand over her face, pinching her nose. She flips the tag over, bends over to read it.
Foreverland Is Dead Page 21
