The Last Girl

by Joe Hart

  “We switch every hour until dawn. Everyone should try to get some sleep.”

  Zoey helps Chelsea spread out the sleeping bags they brought from Ian’s and lies down to the right of the fire. Merrill is propped up against the wall, staring across the room at the jittering shadows thrown by the flames.

  “I wanted to thank you for saving me today,” she says after a time.

  Merrill cocks his head toward her. “You would have saved yourself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You had your pistol up in that guy’s face the moment he knocked your hat off. You would’ve pulled the trigger if I hadn’t. Am I right?”

  Zoey swallows, her throat very dry. “Yes.”

  “Then there’s no need to thank me,” he says, and slides himself down onto his side opposite his injury. Chelsea lays her sleeping bag between them, giving Zoey a quick smile before climbing beneath the thick cover. Eli sits in the wooden chair in the corner of the room holding his rifle. He is no more than a shadow amidst the gloom.

  “Chelsea?” Zoey whispers.

  “Yes?”

  “What is that writing on Eli’s arm?”

  “It’s a tattoo. Ink under the skin.”

  “What does it say?”

  “It says ‘Ella.’”

  “That’s a name, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Who is she?”

  “I don’t know. Eli told Merrill who it was when he first came to us, but he made Merrill swear not to tell anyone else.”

  “Not even you?”

  “Not even me. But everyone’s entitled to their secrets, even in the world that’s left.”

  Zoey’s stomach clenches, and she gazes past Chelsea to where Merrill lies. “Someone he’s lost,” she says, when she’s able to speak again.

  “Yes, I’m sure it is. He covers up his hurt by being upbeat and laughing, but it’s there. It’s there for all of us.”

  “Did you lose someone?” Zoey asks tentatively.

  Chelsea sighs. “Yes. My younger sister, Janie. She was fifteen when she was taken by NOA. It was at the point of no return for the country. There was fighting in every street of America. Our parents were already gone then, thank God—they wouldn’t have been able to handle it if they’d been alive. We only had each other. We were living in an abandoned house outside of Tacoma—that used to be another big city. We had a special hiding place we made in the house’s back wall, kind of a false panel that swung out. There was enough food and water there for a few days and flashlights. We had to spend a couple nights in there when we saw either government forces or rebels coming. One night a rebel faction stayed in the house and never knew we were there.”

  “You must have been terrified.”

  “We were, but we had each other, and that made it bearable.” The older woman seems to go somewhere else for a moment before blinking. “One evening when things were quiet we decided to go out scavenging, just in our neighborhood. We’d found some bottled water and a can of tomato soup. I remember we were laughing because Janie used to hate tomatoes, but after we found the soup she couldn’t wait to get back home and warm it up.”

  Chelsea pauses, and Zoey hears her sniffle quietly. “A group of soldiers were making a sweep on foot when we got back to the house. They spotted us from down the street, and we tried to lose them through a couple backyards, but they were too close. We barely made it into the house and to the hiding place when they busted in the front door. Before I could stop her, Janie ran out the back and drew them away. I was already inside the wall, and she knew they’d find us both if she tried getting in too.” Chelsea sniffs again. “She said, ‘I’ll be right back.’ And that was the last time I saw her.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Zoey whispers. “You didn’t have to tell me.”

  “I wanted to. Each time I talk about her, it gets a bit easier. Time helps too, you know. It softens the edges, but memories almost always slice you open a little.” Zoey stares at the flames, each one a swirling blade of orange. “We better get to sleep,” Chelsea says. “I’ll wake you after my shift.”

  Zoey lies still for a long time, waiting for sleep to come, but it eludes her. The shadows on the wall become faces, figures moving menacingly through a dark landscape, intent on evil. Her mind keeps returning to the ARC, and each time she thinks of entering the compound again, her stomach curdles with fear. She has to make sure they can all escape together, and the iron assurance of what she will do if she’s captured is still strong.

  She’ll die before she returns to the room she spent all her life in. Kill herself before they violate her like they did Terra.

  Zoey tries to focus on the plan, searches it for flaws but can find none other than the obvious danger and the luck they balance on to complete the task and get everyone to safety. The nagging feeling that she’s forgetting something keeps returning, but she knows it isn’t a lapse in her memory. It’s the thought of what will happen if they succeed.

  How she will have to face Merrill, face all of them with the lie she told.

  The prospect of it is nearly as frightening as being captured again.

  She rolls over to her side and thinks of Meeka, of how much the man lying only feet from her now loves a daughter who is already dead.

  Sleep finally comes without her knowing, and with it nightmares of clawed things that speak in choked voices, and beneath it all the sound of locks snapping shut in metallic finality.

  She wakes later to a gentle sound that draws her up out of the black box of her nightmares where the skitter of bugs is all she can hear. It is vaguely familiar and she isn’t sure it’s truly real until she sits up and surveys the room.

  Tia and Ian stand in the far doorway, their figures barely discernable. The fire has burned down to a pulse of embers and Chelsea and Merrill are still sleeping, their hands locked together on the floor separating them. Eli is a large bulk beside the farthest wall, snoring softly.

  The sound comes again and she pinpoints it to the direction from where Tia and Ian are, from the direction where she found—

  —the piano. Someone’s playing the piano.

  The music floats throughout the room, gently echoing off the walls, and the sound of it fastens her to the floor.

  It is beautiful beyond words.

  She can’t begin to contend with or unravel the feeling that the music creates within her. Slowly she rises and crosses the room, carefully stepping over bags, around a rifle, worried that the slightest interruption will make the piano stop and the music go away. Zoey is carried toward the door by the melody, which is so haunting and breathtaking that she wonders if she is actually awake.

  But even as she nears the doorway, Tia and Ian parting enough for her to see the moonlight-dappled room beyond, she is already taking inventory, her mind telling her who is playing before it fully registers.

  Newton sits on a low bench with his back to the door. The silver illumination pouring in through the high windows lands across his bent neck, back curved over the keys, along with his hands.

  His hands.

  Zoey watches them, transfixed as they flutter across the keys, their movement so elegant and practiced they are like separate entities from the man. The notes, so soft and low when Zoey first woke to them, are gradually picking up speed. The intricacies and pattern growing until Newton’s fingers fly in the moonlight and it seems he plays the beams themselves instead of the keys.

  She doesn’t realize she’s crying until Ian puts a hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t make a move to wipe the tears away. There is nothing but to listen, listen to the magic that pours from Newton across the room in the moonlight.

  The melody lessens again, growing slower, quieter, until only one of his hands teeters between two notes that sound like heartbreak.

  Then he draws his hands back and sits still.

  Zoey moves to the side of the bench, her throat completely closed to words. She kneels and waits until Newton looks down at her
. His face is lost in the darkness but she can feel his eyes on her, hesitant but probing.

  Zoey reaches out and touches his fingers.

  They stay that way for a moment that stretches out, and she is about to speak, about to try to convey how beautiful the song was when he stands and rushes out of the room past the crowd that is gathered there. Merrill, Chelsea, and Eli all stand in the hallway behind Ian and Tia. They part like water around a stone as Newton moves through them.

  Then he is gone and the house is quiet once again.

  Zoey stands her watch looking out into the darkness beyond the front door. She waits until the end of her shift to see if Newton will return, but as the sun begins its birth in the east there is still no sign of him.

  Merrill tells her to rest again and she lies down on her sleeping bag, sure that sleep won’t come, but she falls into a dreamless slumber almost immediately.

  When she wakes there is a delicate fan of blue flowers lying next to her on the floor.

  34

  “Press the button on the grip. Good. Now switch the magazines out. Press the lever beside the slide. And now there’s a round in the chamber.”

  Merrill guides her through the pistol again, having her load it and unload it twice more before Zoey nods.

  “I think I’ve got it now. I never had to reload before.”

  “Let’s hope you won’t have to tonight. Line the three dots on the sights up when you aim, and keep both your hands on the grip when you fire.” She holds the gun out at arm’s length and gazes down the barrel while Merrill turns to survey Eli, who is tightening the last of the cargo down in the back of the Suburban.

  “Thank you for showing me,” she says, bringing the pistol back to her side.

  “You’re welcome. I know you can shoot, otherwise you wouldn’t have made it out of that place alive.”

  “I was lucky.”

  “No one in that place is lucky,” he says, studying her. She hesitates, the words almost sliding off her tongue. I lied. Meeka is already gone. I’m sorry. But she steps back from the precipice and drops her gaze to the weapon in her hands, flicking the safety on once again. She can still feel his eyes on her, but after a taut moment Eli’s voice breaks the tension.

  “Good to go there, Captain!”

  “Don’t call me that,” Merrill says, and starts toward the vehicle.

  “What should I call you, then? Major Douche Bag?”

  “You can ride in the boat the rest of the way.”

  “You’re very nasty in the morning, anyone ever told you that?”

  Zoey follows them to the Suburban, where Ian already waits in one of the rear seats. The rest of the group files out of the house, and together they give it a final look.

  “Beautiful place,” Chelsea says. “Actually feels safe here.”

  “Too uppity for me,” Tia says, testing a strap holding down the boat. “Give me a hole to crawl into and I’m good.” Eli opens his mouth and Tia jabs her finger in his direction. “Don’t even think about it.” He grins.

  Newton climbs into the vehicle and sits in front of Ian. No one has commented on his performance the night before. It is like something delicate that they are all afraid will crumble if even mentioned. Zoey begins to hum the melody under her breath, and the slightest of smiles curves Newton’s lips.

  “Let’s go, people,” Merrill says, climbing behind the wheel. “Lots of ground to cover.”

  They drive through the day that began bright and becomes a dusky orange by afternoon. Zoey can’t help but look back in the direction they came from, the mountains long gone now. Clouds dominate the sky to the west, their bellies low and swollen. She watches for lightning but sees none.

  It is late afternoon when they reach a turnoff that Merrill guides them onto, coaxing the rattling Suburban off the side road on which they’re traveling. The land has become rockier again, the smooth roll of the plains slowly giving way to jutting outcrops that tower a hundred feet over the vehicle at times.

  They follow the winding road through several caverns, a sapphire lake appearing and then fading to their right behind bunched hillsides. A herd of deer flees from the sound of their passage as they crest a final rise in the road, white tails flicking indignantly as they bound away. At the bottom of the hill they round a bend, and Zoey finds herself looking at the rushing blue of the river.

  The sight of it solidifies what they’re going to attempt later that night, and when Merrill pulls to a stop parallel to the water, she has difficulty rising from her seat.

  “Stiff?” Eli asks, hauling himself out.

  “Yeah,” Zoey says, unbuckling her belt.

  “Me too. Damn long ride.” When she still doesn’t make a move to leave the vehicle, Eli draws closer. “Hey, you okay, girl?”

  “Yeah, I’m . . .” She glances at the rushing river over his shoulder.

  “You don’t have to do this, okay? You can still go with the others, join Ian way up high and guide us through the radio.”

  “No, I need to go,” she says, steeling herself. She jerks herself free of her paralysis and jumps out of the Suburban.

  “You don’t owe anyone anything,” Eli says, placing a large hand on her shoulder.

  “You’re wrong. I do.”

  The next hour is spent loading the correct equipment into the boat before Merrill backs the trailer into the river. There is the vague shape of a ramp disappearing into the current and he guides the trailer down it, letting the boat float free. Tia uses a rope to pull the boat to the shore and ties it to a large boulder. They split into two groups, one that stays, the other that will go. They say their goodbyes punctuated with the occasional hug and handshake. Ian embraces Zoey gently. He feels thin and fragile beneath his coat.

  “I will see you very soon,” he says, his voice rougher than usual. “I’ll be watching over you the whole time.”

  Newton rubs at the dirt with his shoe and shoots her a glance. “Thank you for the flowers,” she says. He tips his head to one side, and the suggestion of a smile is there again as she turns to Merrill.

  “Be vigilant—we’re in their territory now. Don’t take any chances,” he says, putting out his hand to Zoey. She places her hand in his, and he squeezes it with callused fingers. “We stick to the plan, everyone makes it out fine.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “I know you will.”

  Zoey moves down to the water’s edge. Looking back once, she catches a glimpse of Merrill and Chelsea beside the Suburban, their embrace fierce and full of passion. Chelsea holds Merrill’s hand until he begins to drive away, their fingers sliding free of each other. All of them wave as the vehicle glides around the corner.

  Then they are gone in a cloud of dust, the rumble of the engine quieting into nothing and there is only the sound of the river.

  35

  They use most of the afternoon traveling up the winding river.

  The electric motor Tia brought hums with next to no sound, propelling them along faster than Zoey would have expected of the little apparatus. It is nearing evening before they leave the water, pulling the boat up onto the bank and covering it with a tarp roughly the same color as the gray rock surrounding it.

  “It’s barely a mile around the next corner,” Tia says in a low voice after they finish securing the boat. Zoey stares upstream, the knowledge of how close she is thrumming in her veins with adrenaline-fueled bursts.

  The sky begins to glaze with a thin coating of clouds by evening, but there is no smell of rain in the air and no thunder in the distance.

  They make a rudimentary camp at the base of a hill behind a towering rock shelf and eat a cold meal of biscuits and sweet jam. Zoey sits with her back to the stone and wishes for a fire to stretch her feet and hands out to.

  “When did you last talk to Merrill?” Eli asks Chelsea.

  “About twenty minutes ago. He said Ian’s in position, and they’re stationed behind the relay building. From what he could see, he thinks there’s
only one worker and one guard. It should be easy for them to get in undetected.”

  “What do we do if it doesn’t storm?” Zoey asks.

  “We might have to stay here for another day or so,” Tia says.

  “What if it doesn’t storm for a long time?”

  “Then we’ll have to regroup, try again. Don’t worry, Merrill won’t give up, not as long as Meeka’s alive.”

  Zoey rubs her finger against the nearest rock. Part of it has been smoothed by the river at a time when the water was much higher. She is like the stone, pieces of her eroding away. The parts that are most important.

  They wait late into the night but there is no activity from the sky, only a mockingly calm quiet that grates on Zoey’s nerves. Eli offers to take first watch and the rest of them bed down, the river a rushing lullaby that does nothing to help Zoey sleep.

  The morning dawns in a brilliant cascade of reds that give way to a hazy blue sky. They spend the hours before noon checking in with Merrill and Ian, inspecting gear that has been gone over a dozen times, and casting glances at the traitorous blue canopy overhead. The sound that Zoey fears the most, the chop of helicopter blades, doesn’t come, even though she expects it to at any moment.

  The afternoon and evening pass in a moldering of time that grows from minutes into hours, and slowly night creeps in like an assassin from the east.

  As the last light fades, Zoey settles herself beneath a heavy overhang of flat rock that leans against another boulder near the edge of camp. The stone creates a natural shelter from the wind and weather.

  The weather.

  She glances up at the mottled sky. The wind that was nearly nonexistent in the afternoon has risen to a constant pitch that sweeps over the hills and hums between rocks. The first clouds appeared just before dark and have taken on a poisonous shade of gray. But there is no thunder, and more importantly, no lightning.

  For supper they had eaten dried meat and drank what Chelsea called “coffee.” It was black and bitter, but hot from Tia heating the water they used to make it over a hand torch from her bag.