by Joe Hart
Zoey brings the pistol up, trying to aim as she runs.
Lightning sizzles across the sky.
Lily is there in front of her, her small face tilted in question.
Flame leaps from the Redeye’s weapon and Lily jerks, her eyes going wide.
Zoey fires a round that misses, hitting the steel behind the soldier’s head. His gun bucks again and Lily falls to her knees, mouth open in a silent scream. She tips to the side as Zoey shoots three more times, one of her rounds finding its home below the Redeye’s chin.
He tips back, a final burst coming from his weapon.
Something tugs at Zoey’s shirt beside her belly button. The strength goes out of her legs and she tumbles forward, landing in the sodden ground beside Lily.
The night becomes a cacophony of shouts. There is more gunfire that cuts the air over them, but she can only stare at Lily’s face, which has slackened, her beautiful eyes filling up with rain. Zoey drags herself closer to the girl, using her arms because there is something very wrong with her legs. She clutches at Lily’s shirt as strong hands roll her onto her back.
Merrill’s face hovers over her and then Lee is on her other side, gripping her hand. His fingers are as warm as ever. Or maybe hers are cold.
“You’re going to be okay,” Merrill says.
She blinks rain from her eyes and draws in a shaky breath. “I’m sorry,” she says, the words as heavy as stones on her tongue. “Meeka, she’s, she’s . . .”
“I know,” Merrill says, his eyes locked on her. “I knew as soon as I asked you about her at Ian’s. I could see it in your face.”
“Why? Why did you help?” she gasps. Now the pain is coming. It’s building like the fever she nearly died from, the heat of the agony growing exponentially from her center outward, but her legs remain alarmingly numb.
“Because I wanted to,” Merrill says, and he gives her the barest of smiles.
Lee grips her other hand harder, his fingers beginning to stroke the side of her face. Behind him Chelsea comes closer, her red hair fiery in the glow from the helicopter.
The sky begins to swirl beyond them all. The cloud’s color bleeds from black to gray to a wispy white. Zoey tries to swallow but loses the strength halfway through. Voices say her name, over and over, but they’re growing faint, her name nearly meaningless. The numbness in her legs spreads past her stomach, snuffing the pain there with its frigid touch, and she’s grateful for it. It flows upward, cooling her skin and draining away the panic.
She floats in the whiteness, alone on a soft bed that she can’t see.
The voices still say her name, and she wonders if it is her parents, finally calling her home.
36
Zoey opens her eyes to the ceiling of the little bedroom.
Her mouth is scorched with thirst, and pain near her navel throbs with each heartbeat. She tries to swallow, but there is no saliva to lubricate the process. Her small cough sharpens the pain in her stomach to a knife’s edge.
“Zoey? Can you hear me?” Ian’s worn face slides into her field of vision. She turns her head slightly and waits for her eyes to focus.
“Yes.” Her voice is as quiet as a draft through a window.
“Here,” he says, placing something between her lips. “Drink.”
She does. The water is cold and sweet and she’s sure that she will drink for the rest of her life, there’s nothing that could come close to the ecstasy of it. But Ian draws the straw away after only a dozen sips.
“You don’t want to make yourself sick,” he says. “You’ve been hooked to an IV for the past several days, and we’ve been giving you water through a sponge, but I’m sure you’re still thirsty.”
“Why am I here?” she asks.
“Do you remember what happened after the ARC?”
She tries. She recalls the scene in the infirmary. Terra’s and Simon’s deaths. Their escape. Penny trying to murder her. Then a veil of darkness in the form of storm clouds obscures her thoughts, and no matter how hard she tries to circumvent them, she comes up with nothing.
“Somewhat,” she finally says. “The helicopter was chasing us, and then . . .”
“It crashed,” Ian finishes in a gentle voice. He watches her, pensive, as if there is something he needs to tell her.
But then the veil parts and she sees Lily’s staring eyes, the rain glazing them like liquid diamonds.
“Lily,” she manages, and tries to curl in on herself, but her stomach erupts into a bed of hot coals and she gasps with the pain and the memory of Lily’s death. It hollows her, drains her of everything but the grief and the guilt. She’s sure she must die then, that there’s nothing for it. Terra, Simon, and Lily—all of them gone.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Ian says. “No one thought that anyone could survive that crash. We thought we were safe for the time being.”
Zoey clenches her eyes shut. She won’t open them ever again. Never. Seeing the world while it was ripped away so quickly from Lily isn’t fair. She would blind herself if she had a tool to do so.
“Are you in much pain?” Ian asks. “We medicated you with what we had but ran out of the more powerful painkillers after the first forty-eight hours.”
“Was I shot?” she asks, keeping her eyes shut.
“Yes. In the stomach. I won’t lie to you, Zoey, you nearly died. If Chelsea hadn’t been there, you would have.”
“The others? Lee?”
“They’re here. Safe. Lee has barely left your side since you were wounded.”
The memory of telling Merrill about Meeka surfaces, and she slowly opens her eyes. “Merrill?”
“He’s okay. He knew, Zoey. I think he might’ve known in his heart even before he met you. He blames himself for not trying another attack earlier.”
“He wouldn’t have made it.” A bout of dizziness washes over her and she blinks, attempting to arrest the room’s spinning. Gradually it comes to a stop.
“That’s what I told him. Without you, we wouldn’t have had a chance.”
“Do the others hate me?”
“No. They understand why you misled them, why it was so important to you. And I’m glad you did, because who knows how things would have turned out if you had been honest.”
“I need to sit up,” she says, reaching out. Ian grasps her hand but doesn’t help her.
“Zoey, you have to lie still, you’re very weak and—”
“Why can’t I move my legs?” She tries again to bring her right knee up, but the command from her brain fails and her leg remains motionless. Her heart begins to pick up speed as dread flows through her. “Ian, why can’t I move them?”
“You need to calm down, Zoey. You were badly injured, and there were complications.”
She tries to sit up, tries to see her legs to make sure they’re still there, but spangles of darkness appear at the edges of her vision and flood inward. She reaches out, the sensation of falling almost bringing a scream from her, and the last thing she feels is a warm hand that she knows so well gripping her own.
Moonlight streams in through the tunneled window, splashing in silver puddles on the man who sits beside her bed. His head is bowed, but she knows he’s awake because of the way he rubs her hand softly every few seconds. She shifts on the bed and his head comes up, though she can’t see his face for the shadow that drapes it.
“You’re awake,” Lee says, scooting his chair closer.
“Yeah. How are you?”
“I’m not the one that got shot.”
“I know.” She lets the silence between them hang.
“I’ve been better,” he says after a long time.
“I’m so sorry. It’s my fault.”
His head dips forward, but he doesn’t refute her words. “I keep seeing him right before . . .” Lee’s voice strangles in his throat and he clears it. “. . . and I can’t get it out of my mind.”
She watches him through the dappled darkness. She wishes she could rise and hold him, kiss
his hands and face and lips, try to pour whatever comfort she can into him, but her body resists even the slightest movement.
“He was all I knew,” he says after a time. “And now he’s gone, along with the only life I had.”
“I understand.”
“I’m not sure if you do.”
She has nothing to say back.
They sit silently for a long while, hands still linked, until Lee says, “What you did was incredible. I always knew you were strong, but I had no idea until I saw you in the infirmary. They told us you were dead, that you’d killed guards and Meeka to get free and that you died outside the walls, but I knew better. I knew you’d never hurt Meeka, and I could feel that you were out there, alive. And I know you’re going to survive now.”
Lee rises from his seat and bends over her. His whisper tickles her ear as his lips brush gently across her temple to her forehead where he lingers with a long kiss. He draws his fingers gently over her cheek, and then moves away through the shadows of the room to the waiting door, and passes through it out of sight.
37
6 Weeks Later
Zoey sits in the small front yard, a knitted blanket covering her legs.
The fresh scent of pine fills the air that is warmer now. The greenness of the forest is almost too brilliant to look at. A southern wind tips the tree branches and makes them talk in cracks and groans, with the feathery rasp of needles a steady undercurrent to the conversation.
She watches Rita helping Ian weed the garden that he’s expanded to nearly double of what it was last year. He’s said more than once he might have to double it again if she, Rita, and Sherell keep eating like they do.
Zoey glances over her shoulder to where Sherell sits on the narrow porch, head bent low over her latest drawing. By tonight she’s sure that it will join the half-dozen others that Ian has made frames for and hung over the mantel in the living room.
She adjusts herself in the chair, the last of her bedsores itching almost to the point of madness, and cranes her neck around to see down the narrow path that she knows leads to the road. Merrill said that they would return today with a few more supplies and promised that they’d have a fire tonight, complete with something he called hot chocolate, but wouldn’t elaborate on further.
Zoey knows the enthusiasm he infused in his voice before they left was for her. She knows he’s worried about how quiet she’s become over the last several weeks. She should try to put his concerns to rest, but somehow she doesn’t have the energy.
Maybe it’s because he’s right. There is something wrong with her.
Ever since the night at the ARC, there’s been a void inside her that’s only grown. No matter how many times Sherell tries to get her to draw with her, or how Rita tries to involve her in chopping vegetables or making dinner, she can’t pull herself fully away from the deadened grayness inside.
The sun moves between two of the biggest trees in the yard and shines onto the place where she sits. Slowly she pulls a piece of paper from where it rests beside her in the chair. She unfolds it and reads the words again, even though she memorized them the morning after Lee sat in the moonlight next to her bed. The letter had been tucked beneath her pillow, and the moment she saw it, she knew.
Zoey,
I know you won’t understand why, but I have to leave. The world is too strange for me here, and each time I look at you I see my father dying on the floor. It is too much for me to bear.
I meant what I said tonight; you are the strongest person I know and you’ll survive. You have friends here who will always take care of you and keep you safe the way I wish I could.
Goodbye, Zoey. Maybe someday we’ll see each other again. Until then, know that I love you with all my heart and that there won’t be a day that goes by I won’t think of you.
Yours always,
Lee
She refolds the paper and places it by her side again. The trees shush one another, and a bird trills somewhere farther down the mountain. Ian and Rita approach the house, their hands stained with the rich soil. Seamus trails behind them, huge head hanging low.
“Would you like some water?” Ian asks on his way by.
“No thanks.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
He gives her a long look before moving up into the house. She hears Rita and Ian murmuring to one another for a time, their voices low, and she knows they’re talking about her.
Seamus places his chin in her lap, and she strokes his fur. The dog has become a near constant companion since she returned, his soulful eyes finding her whenever they’re in the room together.
“I’m okay,” she tells him, but it’s a lie neither of them believe.
Zoey folds the blanket up tighter around her legs and unlocks the brakes on the wheelchair that Tia brought her on their last supply run into town. The older woman refitted the wheels with wider treads that roll well over the uneven ground of the mountainside.
Seamus steps aside as she pushes herself across the yard, pausing at the border of the forest before rolling deeper beneath the canopy of branches. She stops near a rock that’s she’s dubbed “the lookout,” since she can see for hundreds of feet in all directions, the ground falling harder away from the natural point. The air is cooler in the forest, and she re-spreads her blanket out, covering herself all the way down to her woolen socks that sit on the chair’s footrests.
Everything is still before her save the sway of the branches and the silent flitting of a bird here and there, only shadows that move in bursts of flight. She doesn’t know how long it is before she hears footsteps behind her, but she can tell who it is simply by the gait.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Ian asks as he stops beside her. “I love spring in the Cascades. There’s nothing like it anywhere on Earth.” She doesn’t acknowledge him, only continues to stare out through the melee of green. “You miss him, don’t you?”
Zoey blinks and turns her face toward the old man, who gazes down at her. “Very much,” she says finally.
“As much anger as I harbor toward him for leaving you, I understand it just as well. And understanding breeds empathy, and empathy leads to forgiveness, which is the ultimate gift you can give someone. Sometimes it’s the hardest gift to give to yourself.”
Tears well up in her eyes but she looks away into the breeze to let them dry. A weight settles on her arm, and she sees the copy of The Count of Monte Cristo there in his hand.
“I thought you might want some reading material.”
“I’m tired of that story.”
“Hmm, well, I can see that. But I was thinking the other day and meant to tell you that I realized you’re more like Edmond Dantès than you know.”
“Why? Because so many people were hurt and died around him, because of his wrath and rage?” Suddenly she’s shaking, the brake handle on her chair rattling. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.”
Ian remains silent beside her for a time before saying, “No, that’s not the similarity I was thinking of. You’re right, though, Dantès was full of anger at those who wronged him, and his revenge was momentous. But I was thinking of another aspect of his character that you share with him. He never gave up. Even when all seemed lost, he continued on. And that’s what we all must do if we want to survive.”
“What if I don’t want to survive?” Zoey asks, the tears now flowing free. “What if I don’t want to live like this?” She gestures at her legs. “What if I can’t stand thinking about Terra and Simon and Meeka and Lily every day?” She tries to say more, but a soft sob wracks her, and her throat closes.
Ian kneels down, one wrinkled hand squeezing her shoulder. “There are prisons of all kinds, Zoey, they take every shape imaginable. They aren’t just concrete, and steel, and stone. They’re everywhere. And even when you’ve escaped one, there’s always another waiting. But you must remember that the first step to freedom doesn’t always start with picking a lock.” He reac
hes out and touches her temple. “It begins here.”
Slowly he rises, tucking the book into her chair beside her and moves away through the soft pine needles.
It is a long while before her crying tapers off to a few hitching sobs, and even longer before her vision is no longer blurred. She gazes out at the expanse of forest for a time before bringing her eyes back to the two outlines of her feet beneath the blanket. She draws the woven material up until she can see the knitted socks on each foot. She has tried thousands of times over the last weeks to make them move—the moment they transferred her out of bed and into the chair, she made a silent vow that she would walk again. But each time her efforts have failed, no matter how long she concentrates or visualizes the movement that she wants so badly.
What a princess, Meeka’s voice says quietly in her head. Giving up already?
I’ve tried.
You haven’t. You only started to. Try again.
No.
Good, feel sorry for yourself.
I will. Get out of my head.
Done. Who wants to hang around a worthless, sniveling, weak princess like you?
Shut up.
All of that effort, all of us dead so you can sit in that chair and feel sorry for yourself.
Shut up!
I always knew you were weak. No wonder Lee left.
“Shut up!” Zoey screams, pushing herself forward in the chair. Her breath comes in heaving blasts, her upper body trembles with rage, and sorrow and a self-hatred so thick she can taste it like bile in the back of her throat. She screams again, this time without words. It is a raw, primal sound that sends the birds zipping away down the mountainside.
Zoey sinks back into her chair, utterly drained, shuddering with the turmoil that burns within her like acid. She’s about to close her eyes when she notices something that freezes her where she sits. She waits, her anger still simmering amongst the disbelief and the thrill of excitement that spiked in the split second before she told herself she was seeing things.
