The Last Girl

by Joe Hart

  “Thank you. I don’t mean to put all this on you after everything you’ve been through.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “When I learned about the ARC, I knew that’s where they’d taken Meeka. The birthrate for girls had dropped to almost nothing, and I had already scoured every other possible place she could be. When I failed to get her out, I wanted to die. I knew I’d never be able to raise another army that was like-minded. Most men nowadays are either in league with NOA, or religious fanatics, or worse, they’re part of the Fae Trade.”

  Zoey flinches at the mention of the Fae Trade, the slurred voices of the men coming back to her from the night in the pine forest.

  “I gave up,” Merrill continues. “I was wounded and could barely get around by myself. I drank for years and tried to forget my family, even tried to kill myself a couple times, but couldn’t do it properly. Chelsea found me after my last attempt. I’d swallowed a bunch of old painkillers and had wandered out of town. She got me to throw them up and nursed me back to health.

  “Slowly our group came together, mostly out of necessity. I found Tia living in an industrial complex. After she held me at gunpoint for the better part of a day, I learned she was a welder—one of the best in the world, if the truth is told. She built me this.” He raps on the fake leg beneath his pants. “Eli came later, wandering into our camp delirious with some kind of fever. Chelsea helped him, and he stayed with us. He’ll tell you it’s because of the danger and that he’s a thrill-seeker, but he’s got the biggest heart of anyone I know. And of course, we kind of adopted Newton. He didn’t have any family that we could find. I’m guessing they abandoned him.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Zoey asks.

  “He’s mute. Never said a word to any of us. He communicates sometimes through gestures or grunts, but other than that he can’t speak.”

  Merrill watches her for a time, and with each passing second she grows more uncomfortable under his gaze. It’s like he’s looking inside her, and soon he’ll discover the lie she told to him. Maybe he’ll kill her right where she sits, and truthfully she deserves exactly that.

  “I’m sorry, you need your rest,” Merrill says, standing. “There’s food in the kitchen if you’re hungry.” He turns to leave.

  “How do the others feel about the ARC, about NOA?” Zoey asks.

  Merrill pauses at the door, looking down. “You know how I said I was sure I’d never find another army?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I did.” He gives her a fleeting smile and is gone through the door.

  The hours pass in a gray-tinged impression of day. Zoey ventures into the kitchen when her stomach refuses to quiet and finds a plate of dried meat that is tangy and very salty, along with some fresh bread. The house is vacant, though she catches flashes of movement out in the trees from time to time. She is about to retire to her room again when Newton steps through the front door. He freezes in the entry, eyes wide and unblinking.

  “Hi, Newton,” she says. He stands his ground for a second, his gaze flicking to the remaining meat on the plate, before he flees back outside, as skittish as some small animal. Zoey watches him sprint into the woods past Tia and Chelsea, who only stare after him. Both of them glance at the house, and Zoey moves away from the window and back to her room.

  She remains there for the rest of the day. No one comes to disturb her, and she sleeps off and on, fatigue still taking its toll on her body. She dreams of the greenish-blue river, of flying over its surface. It is dawn and she skims over the water without resistance. Ahead the shape of the ARC solidifies in the early light. She slows as she nears it, hovering in place a good distance away.

  There are five forms hanging by their necks from ropes over the side of the wall.

  Slowly the swaying corpses raise their arms and point directly at her.

  Zoey wakes to the early dusk of evening with a strangled scream bubbling from her that she manages to stave off. She grips her pillow and twists it until her heart returns to a normal speed. The dream’s hold on her slowly loosens, decaying into a softened memory, leaving her with only a paralyzing sense of dread.

  She doesn’t want to go back, she realizes. She’s terrified of returning to that place. A greed-plated voice begins to speak in the back of her mind, telling her that she has every reason to stay away from the ARC now. It was a miracle she escaped at all and little as she knows about the outside world, she can learn. She can learn to live, learn to have a life.

  Zoey rises from the bed on unsteady legs, a burning thirst sending her in search of water. She leaves the darkly seductive voice behind in the room and moves to the front of the house.

  It is quiet and empty, as it was earlier when she encountered Newton. Outside the sun has disappeared behind the mountain and a surreal shade coats the forest. She pours a glass of water from a pitcher beside the sink and drinks until her stomach is full and sloshing. When she moves to the farthest window she sees a fire burning a short distance from the house. The hunched outlines of the group sit around it.

  Zoey slips out the door without a sound and creeps down the steps. She stops a dozen paces from the border of firelight and listens.

  “Might be wasting our time, you know,” Tia says. “I’m not taking anything away from her, but I don’t think she’s willing to do what we want.”

  “You don’t know that,” Merrill says from across the fire. He holds a long stick that is singed black at one end from prodding the flames. “She’s very strong. Determined.”

  “I’m not saying she isn’t,” Tia replies. “I’m saying she may have zero interest in helping us.”

  “When I asked her what she wanted the day you all arrived, I saw something in her even though she declined to answer me,” Ian says. He is smoking some kind of long pipe, the white smoke trailing up from its bulbous end to mingle with its kin from the fire. “There is a deep hatred burning inside of her, more so than I’ve ever seen in anyone, including you, Merrill. She may have an incredible fear of NOA and the ARC, but her anger is stronger, I believe.”

  “Anyone who can do what she did and survive is okay in my book,” Eli says. “Tough girl, you know?”

  “Look, I want to go, you all know that,” Merrill says, staring into the fire. “But to actually have a chance, we need her help. No one else has seen the inside of that place, no one knows the layout and security. Without her it’s a suicide mission.”

  “It’s probably a suicide mission regardless,” Tia grumbles.

  Merrill shrugs. “Probably. But every one of us has our reasons to go.” He gazes around at their firelit faces. “All we can do is ask her.”

  “I’ll help you,” Zoey says, stepping into the ring of light.

  Every head snaps toward her and Eli even reaches for something beneath his coat.

  “Holy hell, girl, you scared the bejeezus out of us,” Eli says. “Try making some noise next time.”

  “Sorry,” Zoey says, coming closer. Ian gazes at her with a knowing look. He doesn’t appear surprised by her presence in the least as he continues to puff his pipe.

  “How long have you been standing there?” Tia asks, scowling over one shoulder.

  “Long enough.”

  “Look, Zoey, we were only discussing some options. There’s nothing written in stone yet,” Chelsea says, throwing a look at Merrill, who hasn’t moved since Zoey stepped into the light.

  “I understand,” Zoey says. “But you were talking about trying again, weren’t you? About attacking the ARC?”

  “Yes,” Merrill says. “We want to try again.”

  “You want to destroy it?”

  “We want to rescue the remaining women,” he says, glancing away into the shadows that drape the forest. “If we save them, that will be enough to destroy NOA.”

  “This is all noble and good,” Tia says, shifting on her seat. “I hate the idea of what they’re using them for as much as anyone, but have you guys considered the sheer mechanics of gett
ing into that facility and out with half a dozen women in tow? We would need a miracle.”

  “Miracles are just really good plans with a little luck,” Merrill says. Tia makes an exasperated sound and leans back in her chair. “If anyone doesn’t want to be a part of this, tell me now, because I’m going ahead with it regardless.” He gazes around at the circle. Tia casts her eyes downward into the flames but doesn’t move otherwise. “Okay,” Merrill says after a long moment of silence. “We do this. And as far as miracles go, we already have one of those.” He points to Zoey. “She’s standing right there.”

  29

  Ian brings out the glass bottle from the house and they pass it around.

  When it comes to Zoey she tries to hand it off to Eli, who pushes it back.

  “Nah, see, this is how we celebrate, girl. You’re twenty-one now, so you’re legal and everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Twenty-one was the legal drinking age for alcohol before everything fell apart,” Chelsea says. “But you don’t have to try it if you don’t want to.”

  Zoey frowns at the bottle but brings it to her nose to sniff. The smell bites her sinuses and makes her eyes water. “Wow, that’s really awful.”

  “Yeah, but it tastes so good,” Tia says. Eli laughs.

  Zoey musters some courage and puts the bottle to her lips, tipping some of the liquid into her mouth. The liquor burns a fiery path down her throat and detonates in her stomach. She gasps, sitting forward, and shoves the bottle into Eli’s waiting hand. The entire group chuckles as she sits back, fanning her mouth.

  “It’s horrible,” she chokes out, and this only makes them laugh harder. Even Newton smiles and tries to hide it behind one hand. The night deepens, and the fire grows higher as Merrill adds more wood. The small conversation dies down and trickles to a stop. The pines creak and crack with the wind that never seems to cease. Zoey sits forward, holding her hands out to the flames. The fire feels good on her skin, but something is different. It takes her the better part of a minute to realize what it is.

  She’s relaxed.

  The constant hammering of fear and trepidation that she’s felt over the last two weeks is gone. But it is more than that. It’s the relief of years of control as well. The last two weeks were the culmination of her entire life, but the time before that is what is leaving her now. She can almost feel it peeling away like dead skin, revealing a new, healthy pink tissue beneath. She allows herself to bask in it for a moment before the guilt comes flowing back in with the images of the other women asleep in their small rooms right now. The quiet halls of the ARC, the pacing of the snipers on the walls, as well as the new weight she carries.

  She glances at Merrill but he is focused on the fire, moving the logs around systematically with his stick.

  “Man, why you always gotta mess with the fire? Shit’s gonna burn whether you poke it or not,” Eli says, not unkindly.

  Merrill doesn’t respond for a long time. He shifts the burning wood again, sending a shower of sparks upward in defiance of gravity. “Because there’s a perfect way to set the logs. You can construct a fire to burn slow and low or fast and hot, but you have to learn how the flames move, how the air fuels it.” He looks up and fixes Zoey with a stare. “There’s a way to do everything if you want to learn it.” He turns another piece of wood over, and the fire leaps high from the pit, licking at the night air. Merrill sticks the poker in the ground and sits. “When we attacked the ARC before it wasn’t only the foreknowledge of the guards that destroyed us, it was their position high on the walls, the way the building is situated in the river, the auto-guns mounted on the sides, everything. They picked the perfect location to build it: defendable, unlimited power from the hydroelectric dam. If we’re going to succeed this time we not only need the element of surprise, but the perfect way to infiltrate the compound.”

  “Explosives,” Eli says. “My main lesbian over here knows a thing or two about blowing shit up, am I right, darlin’?”

  Tia smiles grimly. “I could set a trip wire in your bed that would blow off your legs. Is that what you mean?”

  “Mmm, wish you’d just climb in there with me some night, I could show you what you’ve been missin’.”

  “Pretty sure you don’t have anything I’d miss, unless not being able to see it counts?”

  “Ooooo, deep burn!” Eli says, throwing his head back and laughing. Tia rolls her eyes but smiles and shakes her head.

  Merrill is unperturbed by the banter. “No, explosives won’t work. They’ll know right away that we’re inside. It’s not an option. We need to slip in and out as quickly as possible. Some sort of distraction would be good.”

  “Without blowing a hole in the damn place, how are we going to get in?” Eli asks.

  “We could cut through,” Tia says. “The plasma cutter I built would do it.”

  “The concrete is two feet thick or more in most places,” Zoey says quietly.

  Tia pats her on the knee. “Did I mention I built the cutter?” She gives Zoey a quick wink.

  “Okay, we can cut through, but where?” Merrill says. “The outer wall only leads us to the gap between it and the building, correct, Zoey?”

  She nods. “Yes. You’d still have to get through one of the doors and inside, which would trigger an alarm without a bracelet with the right clearance.”

  “Then we need to come up from the bottom,” Merrill says. “Come in under it in a boat and cut through the floor.”

  “How do we know where’s a safe place to cut?” Chelsea asks.

  “I know where it’s safe,” Zoey says after a pause. “The laundry room has a blind spot beside the folding area. We could come up there.”

  “How would we find it?” Eli asks.

  “The washing machine dumps its water out through the floor. I’ve listened to it a thousand times. If we can get under the ARC, I can lead you to the exact spot.”

  The group hushes, and looks are exchanged. “Okay, if we get in through there, how do we get to the women?” Merrill says.

  “They’re on the third floor, but Terra is on the fifth. We’ll need a guard’s bracelet to get through all the doors.”

  “Not with my cutter,” Tia says. “I can zip through a lock in under two seconds, guaranteed.”

  “But then we face setting off an alarm, like Zoey said,” Chelsea says.

  “Not if we cut the power first,” Eli says.

  Merrill shakes his head. “That won’t work. We tried that on our first attack. We managed to cut the power, but they had backup generators that kept some of the lights on and the auto-guns working.”

  The group falls into a brooding silence. The wind has increased to a low roar and the trees are talking more and more, their branches creating an eerie cadence.

  “We’ll keep at it,” Merrill finally says. “The plan has to be perfect for it to work. We’ll start up again in the morning.”

  They all rise, and Ian produces a shovel to toss dirt on the guttering fire until it is snuffed out. Zoey hugs herself, the cool air caressing her bare neck and face. She begins to follow the others to the house when Merrill speaks from the opposite side of the fire pit.

  “Zoey?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you for helping us.”

  She tries to form coherent words but they wither before she can utter them. Instead she nods quickly, hunches her shoulders, and hurries away.

  Zoey lies in the dark quiet of the room on her back, listening to the distant howl of wind. Each time the memory of Merrill thanking her rises in her mind, she thrusts it away, concentrating on the obstacles that face them as a distraction. The plan seems plausible to her, even more so now that she’s escaped. If someone had laid out the idea months ago she would have told them they were insane. But now, in the darkness of the room with people who are willing to help her nearby, there is another feeling tingeing her emotions.

  Hope.

  She rolls to her side, smelling the soft
cotton of the quilt that she’s sure Ian’s wife, Helen, stitched. She closes her eyes, but sleep refuses to come. There is something about the generators that keeps surfacing in her mind. Something about the power itself that she should know. It is like some wispy material being drawn through her fingers that she’s trying to grasp but can’t. Lee would know. He would have a quick answer to nearly every question. That’s the way his mind works. He is a solver, a walking solution to problems. Zoey recalls the way his lips felt against hers, and a hollow need fills her unlike ever before. It is beyond the hunger that nearly consumed her on the plains, above the fear when the helicopter was plunging to the ground, larger than the sorrow of knowing her death had been close during the fever.

  She closes her eyes again, breathes in the old smell of the fabric, and falls asleep imagining the warmth of Lee’s fingers intertwined in her own.

  There is only darkness. She is lost in it, suffocating from it. She can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t feel. She floats in a sea of midnight, towed by an invisible force toward something that slices through the black far away. Soon it is closer and she sees it crawling like a serpent overhead. It is everywhere and gone all at once. The lightning emerges from the dark like a living thing, rippling down closer and closer to where she is. It is going to burn her, blacken her bones, and she will die with the language of electricity on her tongue, blue flame dancing from tooth to tooth like the worker the guards killed with their prods. Now she can feel it, straightening her hair, lifting it from her skull as the charge builds above her. The crackle of it starts, not far away, but in her ears, climbing in decibels until the sound of fire is all around her.

  The lightning arcs down out of the blackness and doesn’t branch out but comes like a spear that slams into her chest.

  Zoey jerks, kicking the covers away as she tumbles off the side of the bed to the floor. She lands on her hands and knees, breath coming in pants between clenched teeth. Her hair is sweaty, as are the clothes she fell asleep in. There is a taste of bile in the back of her throat. The room is still mostly dark with only a hint of pallid light spilling in through the window. She rises to her knees and stares at the corner where the shadows hold sway.