The Last Girl

by Joe Hart

  She is about to retreat to her room to compose herself when the boy in the chair nudges the tall man’s arm and points to where she stands.

  The room hushes, and the crackle of fire and gentle tap of rain against the house are the only sounds.

  “Hello, Zoey,” the tall man says. “Please come in and join us.”

  She steps around the wall and stops beside the hearth, the door to outside still calling her even though no one looks as if they have any intention of moving from their places.

  “My name is Merrill Grayson. I’m sorry we alarmed you earlier.”

  “That’s really my fault,” Ian cuts in. “I was trying to get around to telling you that they were coming, but an old man tends to wander when he begins a story.” He smiles sadly and pets Seamus’s large head with one hand.

  “This is Tia Ferrone,” Merrill says, motioning to the woman with the black fabric tied on her head. “And that’s Eli Weston beside her. You’ve already met Chelsea, and this guy here we call Newton.” Merrill claps the boy on the shoulders with two large hands. Newton stares up at her with wide eyes before jerking his gaze down to the floor.

  “What’s his last name?” Zoey asks, nodding to Newton.

  Merrill frowns, glancing at Chelsea before tipping his head to one side. “We don’t know. We found him, or he found us a few years back.”

  “Fell out of a tree and almost crushed my boy Merrill here,” Eli says, his deep voice booming easily throughout the room. “That’s why we call him Newton.”

  Zoey frowns and shakes her head. “I don’t get it.”

  Merrill smiles. “No, I suppose they wouldn’t have had much purpose in teaching you about gravity, would they?”

  “I know what gravity is.”

  Merrill nods. “Well, we’ll fill you in on the rest some other time.” He surveys her, his eyes losing some of their lightness. “I suppose you’re wondering why we came to see you.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “If I may,” Ian says, glancing at Merrill. “I told you I’d enlighten you on how I knew of the ARC, but I didn’t have a chance to finish my story. You see, Helen passed away over fourteen years ago. It was cancer, though we never had a formal diagnosis. She slipped away in the night while I slept beside her. I didn’t get to say goodbye properly.” Ian’s voice falters but he clears his throat and continues. “Merrill here was my son’s best friend, and after Helen passed he came to me asking for my help. My soul was full of vengeance for the government that took away my children, because if NOA hadn’t enforced the mandatory draft of women who had given birth to females, the rebels may have never have had their uprising and all of this might have been avoided.

  “Helen made me promise,” Ian continues, “to never seek out revenge on those we felt were responsible. She was a wonderful woman, my wife; strong, beautiful, and much wiser than I’ll ever be.” The old man hesitates and glances at Merrill, who pauses for a moment before beginning to speak.

  “I came to him with a force of people that were like-minded. We all had lost someone because of NOA and had learned of the ARC in the eastern part of the state. There were forty of us, and we had a plan along with weapons, equipment to scale the walls, everything we thought we’d need. Ian was to be our lookout and sniper.”

  “Sniper?” Zoey says, shocked though she realizes she shouldn’t be after seeing how the old man dispatched the intruder a hundred yards away in the trees. Ian nods, though there is no hint of pride on his face.

  “We executed the plan perfectly,” Merrill continues. “We went in at night in boats and on land, but they knew we were coming. There was a spy in our ranks who had been keeping tabs on us for months while we prepared the assault. He tipped the soldiers off days before we attacked. They wanted to draw us out, wanted us to come to them.” Merrill swallows loudly and grimaces. “It was a slaughter. Thirty-five of our forty died, and only a few of us got away unscathed. Myself not included.” Merrill draws up his right pant leg, and Zoey blinks at the shining aluminum shaft protruding from the bottom of his knee joint. He drops the material, hiding the amputated limb and shrugs. “There’s no excuse. It was my fault. I trusted the wrong man.”

  Zoey studies the group while something rises in her memory. Her hands pressed to the glass in her room, looking out at the white streaks of fire burning in the night sky. The gunfire, explosions, distant screams. Simon bursting in with Lee, the gun in one hand. She and Lee huddled in the bathroom while something neither of them understood raged on outside the walls.

  “It was you,” she says, looking at Merrill. “That night, I remember it. It was you attacking the ARC.”

  Slowly he nods. “I didn’t know if any of you girls would be able to see the flares or the gunfire. The interior layout of the ARC was one thing we knew nothing of.”

  “We could see,” Zoey says. For some reason, this seems to upset Merrill. He bites his lower lip and paces away from the group before coming back.

  “How many of you are there?” Merrill asks.

  Zoey hesitates. The thought of revealing something about the ARC, about the other women, gives her pause. But the stricken look that’s overtaken Merrill’s face nudges her forward.

  “Six besides me,” she says finally.

  “What are they doing with all of you?” Tia asks. It’s the first time she’s spoken, and she has a smooth voice that is striking in comparison with her smashed nose and aggressive stance.

  “They’re . . . they’re using us. Trying to have one of us give birth to a girl.”

  The entire group grows rigid. Even Newton sits stock-still in his chair.

  “Are you pregnant, Zoey?” Chelsea asks.

  “No. I got out before my birthday. They take you when you turn twenty-one. It’s called the induction. They take you to the fifth level and that’s where they . . .” She can’t bring herself to go on. The words are hooked inside her.

  “Take your time,” Eli says.

  Slowly she begins to speak again. She tells them of the ceremony, of the fifth level, of the lies. It pours from her as if a dam has broken. Years of insecurities, misgivings, mistrust, theories, all of it comes rushing out. When she’s finished, there is a stunned silence that hangs in the room like fog against the mountains. Merrill and Chelsea exchange a look and Ian moves to the corner of the room, where he opens a glass decanter and drinks from it before handing it to Tia.

  “We suspected as much,” Ian says as the bottle is passed around. “We knew NOA would go to great lengths to try and find a solution, but this is simply monstrous.”

  “A plague and a safe zone,” Eli rumbles after taking a long pull from the bottle. “Those bastards.”

  “How did you get out, is what I’d like to know,” Tia says. She takes a second drink from the bottle before handing it back to Ian.

  “I took a guard’s bracelet and made it up to the fifth floor. After that Terra helped me get onboard one of the helicopters and then lied to the guards about me jumping over the side of the wall. The helicopter crashed and I made it out alive.” Zoey keeps her eyes locked on a spot on the wall over Tia’s shoulder.

  “I think there’s a bit more to it than that,” Tia says. “You don’t have to be ashamed of what you did. Whoever you hurt deserved as much and more, don’t worry about any of them.”

  Zoey nods, but in her mind she sees Crispin crumpling to the floor, his last spasms and the look of disbelief on his kind face.

  “They’re looking for something, too,” she says, mostly to rid herself of the horrid vision. “Something called the keystone.”

  “Keystone?” Ian says. The old man rubs his jaw and glances around the group. “Does that term mean anything to the rest of you?” There is a chorus of ‘No’s and a shaking of heads. “Do you have any guesses as to what it is, Zoey?”

  “No. Terra didn’t know either, and I didn’t really have a chance to ask anyone else.” She glances at Merrill, who has been staring at her intently since she started speaking about th
e inner sanctum of the ARC. His jaw is trembling, and he swallows before addressing her.

  “You said they take the women when they turn twenty-one?”

  “Yes,” Zoey says.

  “Do you know why?”

  “No.”

  “I need to ask you something, Zoey, and please, this is very important. Did you ever know a girl by the name of Meeka?”

  The house starts a slow spin around her and she grits her teeth to keep from toppling over. “Why?”

  “Please!” Merrill yells, startling everyone. The group gives him a look and Eli places a hand on the tall man’s shoulder. “Please,” Merrill says again, quietly this time. “Just tell me if she was ever there.”

  “Yes,” Zoey says, unable to say anything more because she sees something in Merrill’s eyes that she’s seen before. When Simon held Lee’s foot for a moment in the infirmary after his injury, the same look had been on the older man’s face.

  The face of a worried father.

  Merrill sags a little but doesn’t drop his gaze. “Is she alive? Is my little girl alive?”

  Zoey reels internally, a thousand abject paths opening before her, her choice limited to one and one only. She hovers over the thousand forks and finally chooses, plunging headlong and screaming inside.

  “Yes,” she says evenly. “She’s alive.”

  28

  The storm comes in layers from over the mountain, each harsher than the last.

  First there is the rain, then the stitching slash of lightning through the great trees with its counterpart of thunder following close behind, then the wind that blows so hard it’s as if it intends to tear the mountain from the earth and crumble it back to whence it came.

  Zoey sits in her bedroom and listens to the sounds of the tempest, more muted since this part of the house is mostly underground. Every so often she glances at the window that has grown almost black, then to the closed door, then back to her hands that lay in her lap. She turns them over, looking at their creases, the cuts that are healing into fine, red lines that will scar. All the while the words she spoke to Merrill echo in horrifying clarity through her mind.

  Yes, she’s alive.

  She puts her palms to her eyes, pressing the tears away that threaten to come spilling out. How could she have done it? How? The immensity of the lie hangs over her, pressing down as if she is buried beneath a million tons of rock instead of resting upon it. But the question is an easy one to answer, isn’t it? It’s easy, because its answer is the same that she would have given to Ian if she had been honest with him before.

  Do you want to save the others?

  Yes.

  She wants it more than anything else in the world. The hatred she feels for herself over leaving the other women behind hasn’t dulled with the days since she escaped. Instead it has increased like a spark being constantly fanned until it bursts into flame. Running so far from the ARC was her way of dodging the guilt, but the distance hasn’t helped.

  She always knew she would go back. It was that or die.

  And in Merrill she sees her chance.

  Here is a group that will either help her or leave this place broken, for she can tell that Merrill is the one who binds them together. He is the knife edge and the driving force. The love for his daughter is the fuel that kept his will burning through all these years.

  And now she has used it against him.

  The tears come, and she can’t stop them this time. She sees Merrill’s face after she told him the lie, how he couldn’t bear to look at her, at any of them. How he strode out into the rain, so overcome with emotion that he didn’t bother to grab his coat from the hook by the door.

  How much is a life worth?

  Zoey sobs into her hands as quietly as possible. The grief wracks her in time with the storm outside, the gale within her just as powerful.

  It is a long while before the tears taper off, and even longer before sleep takes her and folds her away from the storm.

  She wakes to a knock at her door and sits up. She is still fully clothed and on top of the covers. Daylight streams down from outside and flattens itself against the floor.

  “Zoey?”

  Merrill.

  “Yes?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  She gathers herself to one end of the bed, wiping the sleep from her eyes as Merrill enters. He wears the same clothes as he did the day before. His eyes are narrow, weary, and bloodshot. He leaves the door partially open and lowers himself into the wooden chair beside the bed.

  “How did you sleep?” he asks.

  “Good. How about you?”

  “Not so good, but that’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “And I really should have given you guys my room. Where did you all sleep?”

  “Ian made us comfortable. Believe me, this is very nice compared to some of the places we’ve had to bed down in.”

  “Where do you live?”

  Merrill stretches back, and the chair creaks with his weight. “Outside a city, really just a town. There’s only one real city now that I know of. Seattle, or what used to be Seattle.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Over the mountains.”

  “And your town, how many people live there?”

  “A hundred, maybe a few more.”

  “And the men there don’t bother Chelsea or Tia?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s why we live outside of town. We have to be especially careful because you never know who’s watching or what they want. It’s amazing that Chelsea and Tia are still alive and free, really. We keep them hidden very well, and they only come into the open when it’s absolutely necessary. Eli, Newton, and I travel into town for supplies about once a month. It really pisses Tia off that she isn’t able to go.” Merrill utters a short laugh.

  “She doesn’t seem like the type who would be afraid.”

  “She’s not. I once saw Tia knock out a two-hundred-fifty-pound man with one punch. She’s as tough as any of us.”

  “And what are you? Really?”

  Merrill studies her. “We’re survivors.”

  “That’s what Chelsea said.”

  “She’s right. Sometimes that’s the best you can do. But you already know that, don’t you?”

  Zoey nods. They both fall silent. She struggles with a question she knows she shouldn’t ask, but can’t help herself. “How did Meeka come to be at the ARC?”

  Merrill visibly stiffens, and he casts his eyes across the floor. “She was taken from me.”

  “When?”

  “It was two years after the Dearth began. She was just a little over a year old. I met her mother on a trip to China ten years before.” Merrill still isn’t looking at her, but his lips quiver with a sad smile. “Jia was a software engineer for a large company that was adjacent to my hotel. I bumped into her the first day trying to leave the parking lot. Literally bumped into her, with my car.” He shakes his head. “Man, I felt like such an idiot, even though she wasn’t hurt. I insisted on taking her to the hospital, and she kept saying things in Chinese and I knew she was swearing at me.” Zoey can’t help but smile. Merrill sighs and rubs at his brow. “I went to her office the next day with flowers, and the day after that. Finally after a week her workspace was so full of roses and lilies she agreed to go to lunch with me just to get me to stop.” He pauses and bobs his head several times. “She was beautiful, just like Meeka.”

  Zoey’s throat tries to close as she sees Meeka lying in a spreading pool of blood, her eyes vacant and staring. Merrill’s voice snaps her back to the present.

  “When I saw what was happening, the road the government was going to take, I started working on a place in the Canadian wilderness fifty miles across the border near a glacial lake. It was five miles from the nearest road, and I didn’t own the land, but there was nothing but woods and mountains
as far as I could see. I built a little cabin there, large enough to hold the three of us, and hauled supplies up with each trip. We had plenty of fresh water, food, shelter, everything we needed to survive. We were planning on leaving the next morning when they came.”

  “Merrill, you don’t have to tell me this,” Zoey says in a soft voice. She doesn’t want to hear it.

  “There were five of them, all armed, black ops by the look. I knew the signs from being in the military for a few years when I was younger. I tried talking with them at the door, stalling for another day because I knew we could be long gone by the time they came back, but they weren’t having it. They were there to take Jia and Meeka both.” Merrill’s voice grows flatter and colder with each word, his eyes glazing over. “I had a gun hidden underneath a chair in the living room. I went for it as they were carrying them away. I shot one of the soldiers before they were able to open fire.” He points to his left shoulder and lower abdomen. “The bullets hit me here and here, but one of the other soldiers must not have had his rifle on safe. Jia grabbed it—I could see her from where I was lying on the floor. She grabbed the gun and it went off.” Merrill grimaces and looks at the ceiling. “It hit her directly in the heart, there was no way of saving her, so they just left her there in the doorway like a piece of trash. I managed to crawl to her but she was already gone. When I looked out through the door, they were climbing into their vehicle, and one of them was holding Meeka and she was looking back at me. But she never cried, she was always such a good girl.”

  Zoey shudders with a restrained sob and blinks away the tears that have doubled her vision, the memory of Meeka telling them what she recalled about her parents flooding her mind.

  I remember someone lying on the ground, not sure if it was my mom or dad. I don’t know if they were hurt or playing.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispers without raising her head.