The Last Girl

by Joe Hart

  Zoey frowns, trying to absorb the idea of two women falling in love. For a second it seems odd to her, very foreign. But then she thinks of the absolute darkness of the box, the phantom bugs, the thing with the red eyes.

  “It’s not any different than being a woman now,” Zoey says finally. Tia twists the last bolt tight but doesn’t look up from the tanks. “They kept me controlled just because I was born a girl.” Zoey shifts in place, glancing down at the cluttered floor. “No one should tell you you’re wrong for who you are. I don’t think you’re strange at all.”

  Tia remains motionless for a time, still not looking at her before standing and hauling the tanks up onto her shoulder. “Let’s head back,” she says quietly.

  They move back through the length of the warehouse, and Zoey spots Chelsea and Newton at the far end carrying a satchel between them down from the second floor. Outside the day is a filmy gray, the sky scudded with thickening clouds. Zoey watches Chelsea and Tia open the satchel on the ground.

  It is full of guns.

  There are several pistols like the one she used in the ARC, rifles of different lengths, and a long, padded case lying at the bottom that barely fits in the bag. Ammunition jingles in a second bag that Newton sets down in the dirt.

  “Enough to kill everyone in the ARC three times over,” Tia says. “Hope we don’t need a quarter of it.”

  “We’ll need it,” Zoey says, looking down at the weapons. When she glances up, both Tia and Chelsea are watching her. “You’ve never been there, it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen,” she says.

  Tia nods, still looking at her. “Chelsea, you want to help me load the boat in the trailer on the other side?” Chelsea gives Zoey and Newton one last look before following Tia out of sight around the corner of the building.

  Zoey glances at Newton, studying the boy again. His eyes are locked on the distant lines of the mountains, his mouth open a little.

  “They’re really big, aren’t they?” Zoey asks. Newton closes his mouth and shoots her a look before shifting his eyes back to the blue-black smudges farther away on the horizon. “I never imagined that the world was this big,” she says, absently wondering if Newton is registering anything she’s saying. “I always knew there was more out there, but these last few days have been almost too much to understand.” Newton blinks in rapid succession. He’s listening. “Merrill said that you don’t have your parents anymore. I don’t either. I never knew them.” Newton’s hand lifts from his side, and he gently presses it against his ear. “I’m sorry, Newton, I didn’t mean to upset you, I was just trying . . .”

  But he is gone before she can finish the sentence. She sees the black streak of his hair disappearing around a pile of scrap iron, and then she is alone. “. . . to talk,” she says under her breath.

  Within the next hour they gather the last remaining items they need. Tia shows Zoey the inverter that will interrupt the power flow to the ARC. It is an unremarkable steel box containing a mass of electrical components and a shining coil of gold wire so thin it looks like hair. After all the other supplies are packed within the Suburban, Tia backs it up to a two-wheeled trailer, which holds a cupped length of aluminum nearly twenty feet long.

  “The sides fold out here and here,” Tia tells her, pointing to several hinged flanges that are bent over the main body of the boat. “You flip them out when you launch it and then it can hold more people.”

  “It won’t sink if we’re all riding in it?” Zoey asks, running her hands over the smooth aluminum hide.

  “Not a chance, girlie. I modified it myself. This thing would float in a hurricane.”

  Zoey moves up beside the Suburban to where Chelsea stands, sweeping the heaps of junk with her eyes.

  “Are you looking for Newton?” Zoey asks.

  “Yes. Have you seen him?”

  “Earlier when you went to get the boat ready. He went that way.” She points in the direction of the road.

  “Damn it. He does this sometimes, just wanders off. Once about a year ago we stayed out all night looking for him. He was hiding behind a chair in our house. He must’ve crawled behind it and fallen asleep there. We were worried sick.”

  “I think it might be my fault he ran away,” Zoey says.

  Chelsea looks at her, eyebrows drawing together. “Why would you say that?”

  “I tried talking to him. I told him I didn’t know my parents.” She shrugs. “I guess I didn’t know what to say, but it upset him.”

  Chelsea looks toward the road once more before turning to Zoey. “You didn’t do anything wrong, but just so you know, Newton does seem to react strangely when the word ‘parents’ is mentioned. We think he may have seen something, something terrible happen to them and that’s part of the reason he doesn’t speak. Don’t feel bad, it’s just one thing about him you should be aware of.” She jerks her chin over Zoey’s shoulder, and when Zoey turns she sees Newton making his way between the piles of scrap toward the Suburban. “He never goes far, though,” Chelsea says.

  Zoey is about to return to the vehicle as well when Chelsea stops her.

  “I never got a chance to say thank you for helping us,” she says. “For helping Merrill. It’s the greatest gift you could give him.”

  Zoey can’t stand the warming gratitude the other woman exudes, so she drops her gaze to the ground. “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s everything.”

  “You care about him very much, don’t you?” Zoey says.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I didn’t know that you were . . .”

  “Together?”

  “Yes.”

  “We didn’t mean to be. When I found him, he was a broken man. Hopeless, destructive, filled with so much hatred it came off him like heat. But I saw something in him that made me keep trying. Underneath all the hurt was a deep love. That’s rare in this world now.” Chelsea smiles and Zoey realizes she’s quite beautiful when she lets go of the serious façade that normally resides on her features. “Come on, it’s almost time to go.”

  As Zoey follows Chelsea back to the vehicle, she tries to leave the singeing sting of guilt behind in the refuse, but it follows her like a predator that’s tasted blood.

  32

  “Something’s wrong.”

  They’re sitting in the Suburban pulled to the side of the road at the rendezvous intersection. The wind sweeps over the foothills to the west and fans eddies of dust across the plains creating a multitude of capering waves that speckle Zoey’s face hard enough for her to shield it down in her collar.

  They’d waited nearly an hour before Tia said the words that were growing inside them all unspoken until then.

  Tia turns in the driver’s seat, glancing back at Zoey and Newton, who sit behind her, before picking up the binoculars that rest on the center console to scope the surrounding area for the tenth time in as many minutes.

  Chelsea clears her throat. “They’re just running behind. They might’ve had trouble getting the gear.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Tia says, still passing the binoculars slowly over the land. “Town’s rough, always has been. They had to be careful getting the things we need. The wrong people see what they’re buying—”

  “Tia, enough. They’re fine. They’ll be here soon.” Chelsea is like a stone in the passenger seat, but Zoey can see her eyes playing across the land, searching. Newton fidgets with his hands in his lap, winding his fingers into and through one another over and over. There is a strangely beautiful pattern to it, almost as if his hands are dancing.

  “We’re going to have to go in after them,” Tia says quietly, dropping the binoculars from her eyes. “I say we give them another fifteen minutes and then we go.”

  “Are you insane? We’ll be captured within five seconds of stepping into town. They’d sell us into the Fae Trade by nightfall.”

  Tia is about to respond when Zoey breaks the silence she’s held since leaving the warehouse.

  “What’
s the Fae Trade?”

  Chelsea and Tia exchange a glance, a conversation taking place within seconds without words. Finally Tia looks away, picking up the binoculars again, and Chelsea turns so that she’s facing the rear of the vehicle.

  “The Fae Trade is a traveling market that deals in women,” Chelsea says. “It roams from coast to coast, north to south, seeking women of all ages and those that harbor them. They’re bought, sold, traded for, treated like breeding stock or worse at times.”

  “Why?” is all Zoey can manage.

  “Because they can,” Chelsea says. “Before everything happened there was a myth in Africa that if a man raped a virgin he would be cleansed of all diseases. The Fae Trade is built upon the same ideals. Every woman sold could be the one that will give birth to a girl, and you know how valuable that woman would be then? Men pay the highest for the youngest women they can find, but most of them are in their mid-thirties or early forties. Someone younger . . .”

  Chelsea stops talking as if she’s hit a wall.

  “You mean someone my age,” Zoey says. Chelsea starts to reply but is interrupted by Tia’s shout.

  “There they are!”

  All eyes turn to the direction Tia points. Three figures have emerged from a cut in the land. Merrill’s height is unmistakable along with the gray swinging of Ian’s long hair. But there is something wrong. Zoey can feel it the second she sees them.

  “Oh no,” Tia says quietly. “They’re running.”

  She throws the Suburban into drive and they launch forward toward the ever-growing figures. They slide to a stop several feet from the three men but Merrill barely slows his run. He tosses a large bag into the rear of the vehicle and swings himself up into the very back seat.

  “What is it?” Chelsea asks, twisting around.

  “Trouble. We need to go. Now.”

  As soon as Ian and Eli climb aboard, Tia guns the engine and they cruise up a low hill back to the suggestion of the road running east.

  “Gotta get off the highway as soon as you can,” Merrill says. Tia nods and takes the next gentle grade that leads up to a series of lonesome pines growing from a low ridge.

  “What happened?” Zoey asks, running her gaze from Eli to Ian to Merrill. All of them look haggard and exhausted.

  “A few guys started following us after we made our first stop. We were casual, but more kept joining their group until there were six of them. After we got the last of what we needed, we lost them behind the row of abandoned houses on the north side and ran the rest of the way here. I didn’t like the looks of them, though.”

  “Why? Were they NOA?” Chelsea asks.

  “No. But one of them had a radio that he was talking on.”

  The sound of the wind is nearly deafening as it howls through the open cab. Tia guides the Suburban over a rough track that might’ve once been a well-maintained trail that winds through another patch of trees. They climb higher into a foothill, the electric green of the blooming foliage almost too bright to look at. Merrill busies himself in the rear hold of the vehicle and after a short time produces several dark hats with long bills. He passes them out to Tia, Chelsea, and Zoey.

  “Wrap your hair up and put them on,” he says.

  Zoey tries twice unsuccessfully to bind her hair tight enough to hide beneath the hat, cursing the tangled curls all the while. Finally Chelsea motions her closer and helps tame the locks into a bun that they’re able to tuck beneath the hat. As soon as Zoey sits back in her seat, Merrill pushes a pistol into her hand.

  “You know how to use that, right?” he asks.

  “I think so. Where’s the safety?”

  “Next to the trigger. Down is safe, up is off. There’s a round ready to go.” Zoey flips the safety down and up several times, getting the feel for it. Merrill continues to pass out weapons until everyone is armed.

  “You think we’ll need these?” Chelsea asks.

  “God, I hope not,” Merrill says.

  The trailer and boat rattle loudly behind them as Tia steers off the small trail and into a field carpeted with sprouting grass. In the distance a machine with huge wheels and a tall cab lined with shattered glass sits mired in the ground, a broken barn and matching house rising up behind it like ailing parents watching over their child. Zoey turns and gazes at the mountains that are growing more indistinct with each mile, their tops fading into an oblivion of clouds.

  “We’ll see them again,” Ian says from beside her. The old man gives her a smile out of the side of his mouth. She nearly reaches out to grasp his wrinkled hand, but instead she clutches the pistol tighter.

  Tia brings them down several overgrown back roads that pass decaying properties. Yards tangled with dead weeds, a smattering of trees growing in to hide the roofline of a home, washed-out driveways that gape like broken mouths.

  As the sun is nearing the westernmost peaks of the dwindling mountaintops behind them, Merrill tells Tia to return to the highway. “I think we’re okay now,” he says. “We’ve traveled quite a ways.” Tia takes a right, bringing them down out of the bruised hills and onto a dirt track that spills them into the edge of some rolling plains that are still tinged with brown amidst the growing green. After several miles of bumping over a barely discernable road, the Suburban rises onto a wide slash that cuts through the countryside, winding beside a twin artery separated by tangles of scrub. Here and there the sediment that covers the road breaks and Zoey sees ghostly lines of yellow and white.

  Her face stings from the constant wind and she’s slightly chilled, but she can’t help the awe she feels looking at the land washed in the last rays of the day. The openness of it all induces both terror and exhilaration as her eyes drink the world in. How would it feel to just run across the open plains and hills without fear of being followed or killed? How would it be to sit quietly on the side of Ian’s mountain without some other place to go?

  She stanches the wistful thoughts. They are leaks in a boat and if too much water comes in, she’ll drown. She focuses again on the highway ahead, readjusting her grip on the gun, but not before the image of the other women and Lee standing beside her on a hill takes shape in her mind.

  The road curves into an incline, cutting through the hill instead of climbing over it. To the right the matching highway drops down almost out of sight to the bottom of the ravine.

  “We’ll stop somewhere soon for the night, there’s enough ground between us and town now. You don’t know of any other settlements out here, do you, Ian?”

  “Not that I can—”

  The old man’s words are cut off as they round the next corner and two trucks come into view, blocking the center of the road.

  Men stand in the truck beds holding guns, and several lean casually against the bumpers.

  Tia jams on the brakes and Zoey feels herself being flung forward. Ian grips her arm and holds her in her seat as they slide to a stop ten paces from the front of the right truck.

  “Oh no,” Chelsea whispers.

  Three men detach from the group and saunter forward; rifles nosed to the ground, fingers on the triggers.

  “Everyone buckle their seat belts,” Merrill says through clenched teeth. Ian drops a belt attached to the seat into Zoey’s lap and motions to her opposite side. She digs for a moment and finds a metallic end that she snaps into the buckle that Ian gave her.

  “Tia, keep it in drive and be ready,” Merrill murmurs. Tia’s head tips forward a fraction of an inch. There is a metallic ping from the back seat where Merrill sits.

  Zoey’s heart double-times as she slides the safety off her pistol. To their left is the high embankment of rock and dirt, to the right the steep decline to the other highway, a sagging steel rail guarding the drop. Nowhere to go.

  “Keep your heads down,” Merrill whispers, and Tia as well as Chelsea glance at the floorboards, letting the bills of their hats cover their faces. Zoey follows suit. She tilts her head just enough to keep one eye trained on the armed men that are now at the
bumper.

  “Where you guys headed?” one of the men asks, stopping several feet from Tia’s door.

  “Out on a supply run for our settlement in Easton,” Merrill says.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hmm.” The man walks closer, and Zoey catches a glimpse of piercing blue eyes and scraggly red stubble covering hollow cheeks. “You wouldn’t have been the ones back in town gathering up some interestin’ supplies, now would you?”

  “Haven’t been to town in months,” Merrill says, his voice steady.

  “Yeah, I figured. You all look like you’ve seen better days.”

  “Everyone has.”

  “True, true. We’re keeping an eye out for three guys who stole something from friends of ours in town.”

  “What did they look like? Maybe we saw them on our way out here,” Merrill says.

  “Well, they kinda look like you, blackie there, and the old man.”

  Time stops and Zoey’s stomach seizes with ice. The hand holding the gun shakes against the side of her leg.

  “But they was on foot, and you all are in this big ugly piece of shit, so it couldn’t be you, am I right?” The bearded man’s voice has taken on a mocking tone that sends ripples of goose bumps up Zoey’s arms.

  “Right,” Merrill says.

  “Say, you all wouldn’t know of any girl wanderin’ around, would you?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, just askin’, cuz we’re hearin’ all sorts of strange tales. That maybe she’s the youngest woman been seen in over twenty years.”

  The man is closer to Zoey’s door now, approaching with inevitable clunks of his boots on the road.

  “Heard crazy stuff, like she’s real pretty, and might be still around here.”

  Zoey registers the flicker of movement even as the man lunges forward. She leans away, bringing the handgun up, but his hand is quicker, knocking her hat up and off her head.