The Last Girl

by Joe Hart

  It is all she can do to hold herself back from clawing his smirking face to ribbons like she did Dellert’s. “You can’t do that. The rules say—”

  “The rules,” Carter says sharply, “are adaptable to each situation. You would do well to keep that knowledge close the next time you consider breaking them.”

  They stare at one another for a lengthening span that snaps audibly as Carter stands and turns toward the door where the Redeye waits, expressionless as ever.

  “I trust we are at an accord then,” Carter says over his shoulder. “See to it that you don’t let me down, Zoey.” He pauses in the hallway and glances at her one last time before smiling again. “Better yet, see that you don’t let Lily down.”

  And with that, the Redeye swings the door shut and it locks with a clack, leaving her alone once again.

  When Lee enters her room just before midnight, Zoey is awake and waiting. Carter’s visit still hangs over her like a foul smell that won’t dissipate. She didn’t even attempt to sleep.

  Lee steps inside, placing something over the door lock before shutting it.

  “What was that?” Zoey asks, pointing at the lock.

  “Something I came up with while I was tinkering in the shop. It’s a thin piece of steel that molds when the lock striker hits it so it doesn’t latch all the way. I put a little reusable adhesive on one side so it will stay in place.”

  “That’s ingenious,” Zoey says. Lee beams.

  “It was fairly simple once I started working on it.”

  “And you started working on it because you were planning on breaking into my room at night?”

  Lee’s face flushes bright red. “Well, I was going to tell you but I thought . . .”

  Zoey hides her smile. “That brings me to my next question. How do you get in? Your bracelet doesn’t open the women’s doors.”

  Lee brings something out from his pocket, and it takes her a split second to recognize it, mostly because she’s never seen one that wasn’t wrapped around someone’s wrist. She reaches out and takes the bracelet from him.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “In the guards’ dorm. Dad and I were in there the day after Lowe died. You remember him, right?”

  Zoey recalls the eldest guard, who passed away in his bed over a year ago. He had been the one who helped Simon carry her to the infirmary when she was fifteen after tripping during exercise hour and twisting her ankle so badly it swelled three times its normal size. She remembered his eyebrows the most, how gray and long they were, their tips nearly touching the fringe of his thinning hair. He had been only second in kindness to Crispin.

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “This was sitting on his bedside table when we went through. I waited until no one was looking and took it. I was almost sure it wouldn’t work, but it does.”

  “But they’re supposed to be destroyed after they’re removed.”

  Lee nods. “I know. I think someone assumed that another guard disposed of it after it was taken off of Lowe’s body. The code inside the bracelet is still active.”

  Zoey turns the item around in her hands. Here it is, exactly what she was hoping for. It is literally the key to their salvation.

  “So how do you sneak through the halls without Becker seeing you? It seems like he’s always in the observation room.”

  “He is,” Lee says, strolling across the room. “He only exchanges duties with another guard once a day, usually around three or four in the morning. He’s off for four or five hours before coming back to his post.”

  “But that doesn’t explain how he doesn’t catch you.”

  “Becker sleeps at his desk during the night.”

  “What?”

  Lee smiles. “He props his hand under his chin and faces the monitors, but he’s asleep. I watched him for a half-hour one time from the hall, and he kept jerking awake but went right back to sleep. If there isn’t an alarm going off in the middle of the night, he’s not going to catch anything.”

  “I always thought they had motion sensors on after dark,” Zoey says, looking at the bracelet again.

  “Nope. The guards patrol during the night, so they’d be setting them off when they come through.”

  “So how do you get past them?”

  Lee smiles, taking a step closer to her. “I’m sneaky.”

  “That,” Zoey says, shoving him playfully away, “I can vouch for.” She moves to her bed and sits. Lee joins her and the mattress squeaks under his added weight.

  “I know you have a plan,” he says after a long silence. “Tell me.”

  Zoey takes a deep breath. “I’m going to kill the Director.”

  10

  “What?”

  “It has to be done,” Zoey says, glancing at Lee.

  “You said you wanted to escape, not kill the Director.”

  “I want to escape, but I want everyone else to be free too.” She sees him wince at the word. He’s still not used to hearing it.

  Lee stands and paces to the door. For a moment she thinks he’s going to leave, that she’s nudged him too hard toward something he’s not ready for, but he stops and turns back.

  “There has to be another way,” he says, stopping by the desk.

  “How? How do we ensure the other women’s release and safety if the Director is alive? With him dead, there will be no order, no command except Assistant Carter, and I think half of the guards hate him as much as I do.”

  Lee opens his mouth, then closes it. He shifts, running his fingertips across the desktop. “It’s suicide. There’s no way we’ll get out alive.”

  Zoey is on her feet before she realizes it. “This isn’t living,” she says, pointing out the window at the walls, palely illuminated in the artificial light. “I’d rather die trying to get out than walk willingly into something worse.”

  “Do all the other women agree? Would they go with you if you let them out? Do you really think Rita and Penny and Sherell are going to band together with you?”

  “I don’t know, but I can’t leave them behind either. They’re not my friends, but they don’t deserve being kept here any more than I do.” Lee shakes his head, staring down at the floor. She steps closer to him, and he raises his eyes to meet hers. “Lee, my birthday is in four days. I’ll be gone no matter what then. I want to try. Will you help me?” She’s very close to him and can smell his scent. It’s a mixture of steel and sawdust from working in one of the shops, a smell of strength and comfort. He puts a gentle hand to her neck and guides her face to his. He kisses her again, and this time she’s ready for it.

  She presses her lips against his and discovers the feeling that eluded her earlier that day when they were interrupted by Simon. An unfamiliar giddiness blooms within her. She’s felt echoes of it before when their hands would brush or when he would smile at her in the hallways, but now it is a force of its own, wild and frightening in its intensity.

  Lee pulls her closer along the length of his body. She melds to him, conscious of every centimeter of their skin that’s touching, heart picking up speed as she runs her hands up his back. He slides his fingers gently beneath the hem of her shirt, the delicious tactile sensations beginning to resonate in her core, urging her to strip away their clothing as fast as possible.

  She breaks away at the last second, one of the hardest things she’s ever had to do.

  “We have to stop.”

  “Why?” he says breathlessly.

  “Because.” She steps away from him and a new sense of weakness encloses her legs and overrides the pain from the box. “I’m afraid, that’s all.”

  He seems to digest this before nodding. “It’s okay. I guess I am too.” She wonders if they’re talking about the same thing.

  Zoey moves closer to the window, slowly clearing her mind of the passion that nearly overcame her. She shifts her gaze to the rim of the walls. A sniper turns, and she sees the glowing tip of a cigarette before his face.

  “Can you imagine som
ewhere that we aren’t watched or told where to be and at what time?” she says. “Where we could make our own decisions about what we wanted to do or where we wanted to go?

  “I used to try to picture what my mother and father looked like by studying myself in the mirror. Do I have my father’s eyes or my mother’s nose? Does she have dark hair like mine, or is it blonde? How do my father’s hands look? I always imagined them scarred and pitted from the fights he had gone through trying to save me from this.” She turns back to Lee and rests on the bed. “But I stopped that a long time ago. They’re dead, most likely, and if they are living up there on the fifth floor or in the safe zone, then what does it matter? They won’t recognize me when we’re reunited, and I won’t recognize them. We’d be strangers. I’ve come to terms with that even if it hurts to think I’ll never truly know them. What I have is my life and those that I can save.”

  “What about the greater good? What if you and the other women are the last hope for humankind? What if by leaving you seal everyone’s fate?”

  She looks up at him. “The greater good isn’t what they enforce with rules and guns and punishment. It’s being free to decide for ourselves what’s best for each of us.”

  They are both quiet for a long time before Lee comes to sit beside her once again. His head droops forward as if his neck has given up. He closes his eyes.

  “Okay. Tell me.”

  “I’ll need a weapon to do it,” she begins, letting the warmth of Lee’s shoulder seep into her own through the point where they lean together. “I’ll need a gun.”

  “You don’t even know how to use one.”

  She snorts. “Dellert does. How hard can it be?”

  “Fair enough. But the only place you can get a gun is from a guard, and I don’t think they’re going to hand you one.”

  “You said you’ve been in the guards’ dorms. Maybe—”

  Lee shakes his head. “They lock their belts up when they’re not on duty, in a container beside their beds. It takes a numbered code to open it.”

  Zoey ponders the problem for a moment. The guns are almost a useless adornment because deadly force is strictly forbidden unless absolutely necessary. Even when death is the penalty, Reaper carries out the sentence. She shivers, thinking of his masked face, only his eyes visible, their color the same as burnished steel knives. No, the guards’ weapons are mostly for show. She wonders if they’d even miss them . . .

  Zoey inhales, her eyes opening wider.

  “What is it?” Lee asks.

  “I can just take one,” she says.

  “A gun?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine, listen to me. Have you ever seen a guard draw his handgun?”

  Lee thinks for a second. “No, I guess not.”

  “It’s because they’re forbidden to use them. The prods are what they’re allowed to use, especially on the women, because they don’t want us hurt beyond repair. The guns are mostly for show and for extreme situations.”

  “Okay, but how does that help us?”

  “Don’t you see? If I managed to take one from a belt, they might not notice until that evening or even the next day. There’s so many things on their belts—”

  “Zoey, that’s insane. What if you got caught?”

  “They’d probably kill me,” she says simply.

  “How would you even do it? There’s no period of time that you’d be alone with a guard to take it from him.”

  Zoey falls silent, drumming her fingers on the tops of her thighs. “Crispin.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s the nicest guard here, right?”

  “I would say so.”

  “He hasn’t been on duty near the laundry in a while. I’m guessing he’ll be there soon. When he is I can jam some laundry in the delivery elevator and ask him for help, it’s happened before. If his back is to me, I can take his gun and he won’t ever know the difference.”

  “When he realizes his gun is gone, he’s dead. You know that, right?”

  Zoey grimaces. How much is a life worth? “I know. But he’s one of the few guards that won’t be suspicious of me.”

  Lee stares at her for a time. “You’re different than before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before the box.”

  The memory of the darkness is almost overpowering, and she struggles against it. She hears the scritching of the insects and jumps when something touches her leg. Lee’s hand rests there, and he’s looking at her with concern.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. And yes, I am different. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same. But that’s not what’s driving me.”

  Lee frowns and fidgets on the bed. “How will you smuggle the gun back up here?”

  She thinks for a moment. “I’ll need some heavy tape. I can make some kind of a holster in the small of my back. Our clothes are loose enough to hide it. As soon as I get it, I’ll find a reason to come back to my room and hide it here.”

  “Where?” Lee says, motioning to the walls. “They found your hiding spot.”

  “I’ll think of something new.”

  Lee rubs his forehead and sighs in exasperation. “Say you do manage to do all that, what’s your plan to, you know, to . . .”

  “To kill the Director?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When is the only time we see him?”

  “At the induction ceremonies.”

  “And?”

  Lee shrugs. “That’s about it. I never really see him in the halls or anything. And he’s always got guards around him.”

  “He goes for a jog every night around the promenade unless it’s raining.”

  Lee blinks. “Yeah, I guess I have seen him from time to time there.”

  “Meeka told me weeks ago that she heard a couple of Clerics say they’d love to use the sauna in the exercise room, but it’s for the Director only.”

  “So you think he uses it every night after his run?”

  “I do. And that’s where he’s most vulnerable.”

  “But how will you get down there? There’s at least six doors between here and—”

  She cuts him off by holding up the empty bracelet. “After Simon locks me in for the night I’ll get out using your trick and sneak down to the exercise room. When the Director comes in, I’ll kill him, and the two guards if need be, then use his bracelet to get to the uppermost level.”

  “Someone will hear the shots.”

  “Not on that level. You know how loud the mechanical room is.”

  “You’ll never make it up to the fifth floor without someone seeing you.”

  “Not without the diversion you’re going to make.”

  Lee points at himself. “Me?”

  She nods. “You can sabotage a piece of equipment in one of the shops, light a fire, something. Then, when all the commotion starts, you meet me in the bathroom on the second floor. I’ll give you Lowe’s bracelet back, and you let the other women out of their rooms and bring them to the infirmary. I’ll be waiting there. And we’ll need some rope, a lot of it.”

  “What for?”

  “For climbing down the side of the ARC once we cross the bridge on the roof.”

  “Zoey, this is . . .”

  “Crazy, I know. It’s absolutely insane, but it’s the only way. The bridge to the wall is on the roof. The only way to get to the roof is through the fifth floor. You need to take the elevator in the infirmary to get to the fifth floor. It has to happen in a succession. Then when everything is done, and if the Director is dead, we’ll be able to slip away.”

  “You think Reaper and his men will give up that easily?”

  “No, he won’t. But we’ll just have to deal with it when it happens. Maybe they’ll leave on another reclamation mission like they did a few days ago.”

  “And what about my father?” Lee asks. It’s the first time throughout their discussion that his voice h
as taken on an edge.

  “Do you think he would help us?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.”

  “So what then? We leave him here? Forsake him so that you and the others can be with your parents?”

  Zoey frowns. “I already said I’ve made peace with never seeing them.”

  “But you’re asking me to give up mine.”

  “I’m asking for your help.”

  “You’re asking for more than that,” he says quietly, rising from the place beside her. He moves across the room, glancing at the calendar as he goes. “I should get back to my room. It’s getting late.”

  “Lee,” she says, standing up. “I don’t have much time. I need to know if I can count on you.”

  Lee pauses at the door, his hand on the handle. “I’ll have to think about it,” he says without looking back. “Give me until tomorrow. Will you give me that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Goodnight, Zoey.”

  “Goodnight.”

  He pulls the door open and is gone in a whisper of clothing. Zoey sits and stares at her hands until she can fight the fatigue pulling at her no longer. She slumps to her side, drawing her knees to her chest, and closes her eyes to the swirling questions without answers.

  11

  Zoey looks for him the next morning in the halls and in the cafeteria during breakfast, but Lee is absent from the small throng of Clerics’ sons who eat quietly in the far corner of the lunchroom.

  Rita, Penny, and Sherell stare at her as she sits beside Lily. It’s the first time she’s seen Penny since the other woman was locked in the box. Other than a fading bruise on the side of her forehead, Penny is unchanged, the same flatness to her eyes.

  “I won’t ask you what it was like,” Meeka says between bites. “I wouldn’t want to talk about it so I won’t make you.”

  “Good,” Zoey says.

  They eat in relative silence save for Lily’s slurping of milk for nearly a minute before Meeka says, “Was it really dark?”

  “God, Meeka.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know it was terrible in there,” Meeka says, shooting a glance at Lily’s wounds. “But you know me, I’m curious.”