He’s using my nickname—the one he gave me because I’m always watching everything, taking things in. Usually I like it and the way his voice warms when he says it, but not now. Today it just makes me feel weak.
He guides my rifle back up onto my shoulder and gently moves my braid from between it and my cheek. I focus in on the woman cutout first and level the gun. I have to do what he’s asking. I owe it to him, to all of us.
“When you pull the trigger this time, you will aim for the head or the heart,” Pioneer whispers in my ear. “Show me, show them”—he points at Will, Brian, and Marie—“how much you love us.”
He backs away to stand with the others. I can feel their eyes on me. I chew on my lip. Get ahold of yourself. They aren’t even real. I aim at the woman’s chest. Breathe in and out. Then I close my eyes at the last second and pull the trigger. When I open my eyes, there’s a hole in the cutout’s chest.
“Good. Now again,” Pioneer commands.
I aim at the smaller target. I try not to see its small hands and feet. I concentrate on the black middle of the plywood. Still, when the bullet explodes out of my gun, my chest tightens. Pioneer makes me shoot both targets again and again and again. They are mangled and unrecognizable when I’m through, but I’m not as sick as I was to start with. I still don’t like the shooting, but I can at least do it now without flinching each time.
Pioneer’s grinning widely at me. “That’s my girl!” He pulls me to him and kisses my forehead. His shirt smells like hay and grass and gunpowder. “Your sweet nature is what I love most about you. But unfortunately, until this world is no more, that nature is dangerous. To you and to all of us. You have to prepare for the months ahead of us yet. Get strong.” He tilts my chin up and looks me in the eye. “Let me prepare you, Little Owl. The more you fight what I tell you, the harder things will be for you.” There’s an edge in his voice now that undercuts the warmth of his embrace. It makes me shiver.
“You all will help her come around, won’t you? You’ll let me know if she needs my undivided attention again as we go forward toward these last days?”
My friends nod obediently. I swallow and focus on the grass beneath my feet. I’m everyone’s project now. I can’t look any of them in the eye. I’m just too embarrassed.
“Well, now, afternoon lessons begin in twenty minutes,” Pioneer says. “Hurry and clean up. I’ll be expecting you all to be on time.” He turns and heads for his truck without looking back.
Silence settles over us. We pull our targets off their mounts and replace them with new ones from the shed at the far end of the field. Dust still swirls in the air from where Pioneer’s truck kicked it up. I cough as some of it goes down my throat.
When the range is back in order, Will and I follow Brian and Marie to the cornfield and the road beyond. The air between all of us is still awkward and tense. I hate that I’m proving to be such a failure at defense—even Marie is more reliable at it. I’m not sure how to readjust my instincts, be as quick to shoot as everyone else. Pioneer’s help hasn’t changed this.
Halfway to the road, Marie turns and points her gun toward the range again. She lowers her voice, makes it sound vaguely mechanical. “I’ll be back,” she says. Her face is perfectly deadpan. It breaks the awkwardness between all of us, and I want to hug her for it.
Brian rolls his eyes and laughs. “What is it with you two and the Terminator movies? I thought they were supposed to be for guys.”
Marie and I look at each other and she grins. “Um, it’s impossible not to quote them when Pioneer’s shown them to us about a zillion times. And besides, when there are guys in them as totally hot as that Kyle character, they most definitely become girl movies.”
Brian plugs his ears. “Not listening,” he says a little too loudly, and we all start laughing.
Any remaining tension in the air floats away. I give Marie a grateful look and she winks. I know that I owe it to her—and to Will, Pioneer, and everyone else, for that matter—to come around. These are my people. My Community. My family. I can’t trouble myself anymore with the rest of the world. Their fate was decided a long time ago—as was mine.
If I can manage to help just one other person find peace and contentment, well then, I can die a happy man.
—Pioneer
The first time I laid eyes on Pioneer, I was just five years old. He went by another name back then, one closer to the kind the rest of us have, but I don’t know what it was anymore, since for as long as I can remember, we’ve called him Pioneer.
We lived in New York City back then, in the brownstone my parents bought just before my older sister was born. I remember the pink-and-white-striped wallpaper in Karen’s and my room and my sister Karen’s brown suede school shoes, the ones that she always left right in the middle of the front hall. My mom was holding those shoes when we found out that my sister had disappeared. Karen and I had been out in front of the house playing—well, fighting over what to play, anyway. Karen wanted to draw and I wanted to do hopscotch. I’d run in to tattle on her for pulling my hair, and when I came back with Mom, she was gone. No one saw anything. There were no clues to show where she’d gone or who might’ve taken her. There was only one bright yellow piece of chalk and a half-drawn picture of our family on the sidewalk out front. In the drawing, only our feet weren’t completed. I used to think that whoever took her made her stop there on purpose so we wouldn’t have a way to follow.
My mom cradled Karen’s shoes to her chest nonstop after that—when the cops showed up to ask questions, and especially a few days later, when the two big buildings downtown got hit by airplanes and the cops stopped looking for my sister and started looking for survivors.
Pioneer came to us not long after. I remember my father letting him in the house. The way he smiled seemed to brighten up the entire room. I hadn’t realized how dark it had become, even with the lights on, until he was in it. Something about the way his eyes filled with some unseen candlelight when he smiled made me think of Santa Claus or maybe even Jesus—even though he looked nothing like either of them. He was pale, with close-cropped black hair—nowhere near handsome, but he was kind. I could just feel it.
The few times my mom’s spoken about those days, she’s mentioned that Pioneer heard about us on the news. He’d told her that he couldn’t get Karen’s face out of his mind and that my mom’s pleas for help haunted him. When the towers fell and the world went crazy, somehow it was my family he felt drawn to. He thought that maybe helping to look for Karen might be a way to focus on one small piece of the giant tragedy surrounding all of us, that this might make it less overwhelming somehow. He offered to help continue our search, and for the next few weeks he made good on his promise. He even brought others along with him. Later, some of those people came with us to Mandrodage Meadows.
I’m not sure why we all took to him like we did. I think maybe we just knew he was special. My family was pretty shy. Quiet. We never needed anyone else around until one of us was gone. But we couldn’t find Karen on our own. We were too scared and sad to know what to do. Pioneer never seemed scared or sad. He seemed so sure of everything.
Almost every night, Pioneer sat with my parents in our kitchen for hours while my mom cried. I could hear their voices from my bed when I couldn’t sleep, when the emptiness on Karen’s side of the room seemed to grow until I was sure it would swallow me whole. I would concentrate on all of their voices, especially the deep tone of Pioneer’s voice, like it was the only thing keeping me out of that darkness.
The first time he talked to me, I was spread out on the living room floor underneath the window, where the sun kept the carpet toasty. By then it was the only place in the house where I didn’t feel frozen—inside and out. I was drawing the same picture over and over, finishing what Karen had started. I had to. If I hadn’t wanted to play hopscotch, if I’d only just decided to draw too, she wouldn’t be gone. I kept making my parents, my sister, and me, standing in a row on a thin green line of gr
ass with our hands connected in an unbroken chain. I think maybe I thought that if I drew us this way enough, it would make Karen come back. She was there on the page. Our family picture was complete. She couldn’t be gone, not really, not for good.
I’d never been very interested in drawing, not like Karen, but for days I did nothing else. I was hoping that maybe she was just mad and hiding, making me pay for leaving her all alone. If I could only draw enough, she might forgive me and come home. Besides, I couldn’t help look for her. My mom wouldn’t let me outside, not alone—and after the towers fell, not at all. My mom and dad spent most days on their phones or staring out the window at the sidewalk. It was like they didn’t see me anymore, or worse, saw Karen instead. Nothing was the same. I didn’t know what would happen if we didn’t find my sister. I just knew that what everyone needed most was for me to stay quiet and be good. By the time Pioneer showed up, I had filled four whole sketchpads with drawings.
“What do you have there?” Pioneer asked on that first afternoon as he entered the living room and discovered me. He pointed at my pile of drawings.
I studied the ground and shrugged. I liked him, but he was a stranger, which made him scary.
“May I take a look?” he tried again, and this time held a hand out.
My mom tapped me lightly on the shoulder. Her face was puffy from crying. It made her look scary too. “Go on, sweetie, let him see your pictures.”
I took a breath and handed one of my notebooks to him without looking directly at his face. I concentrated on his hands instead. They were soft and his nails were shiny. It made me want to turn his palm over and see if the skin there was just as smooth.
Pioneer held the notebook up in front of him for a while, flipping through the pages. His eyes got shiny and wet, making the light in them extra intense. He whistled softly and let the corners of his mouth turn up in a gentle smile. “Looks like we have a budding artist here. I bet your sister would love these. She looks exactly like she does in her pictures.” He pointed at the mantel, where my favorite picture of Karen and me was.
I looked down at the black stick figure that was my sister with spirally yellow hair and no real nose to speak of and felt my lips turn up all on their own. Even I knew that my sister looked nothing like the twig girl I’d created, but somehow what he said made me picture her that way—less real missing girl, more smiley cartoon character. It made me want to laugh. It was like I forgot for just a moment that she wasn’t coming back. I bit my lip and my face twisted with the effort to smother a giggle, which made his lips turn up a little more.
“Go ahead, let loose with that smile,” he said softly. “You are just too sweet to look so sad.”
I scuffed a sneaker against the carpet and tried not to smile. It didn’t seem right, not when Karen being gone was all my fault. But then I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. I looked up at him and grinned.
These last days leave little room for fear.
Fear eats away at faith, and so it must be immediately rooted out and stomped underfoot.
—Pioneer
My dad is on guard duty when we get back. He’s standing by the little one-room station just outside the front gate when we walk up. I concentrate on the wooden sign beside it. It says WELCOME TO MANDRODAGE MEADOWS. It’s painted so that the name is floating above a sun-filled field. A lot like the one we’ve just come from, minus the guns and targets.
I don’t want to meet my dad’s eyes. I don’t want to tell him that I’m still struggling with target practice, but out of the corner of my eye I can see his shoulders fall slightly and I know he’s already figured it out.
“It’ll be fine,” Will says quietly, and takes my hand in his. My dad notices our joined hands and his eyes light back up again. Ever since Pioneer announced that Will was my Intended—the boy he’s decided I’ll marry next year when I’m eighteen—my mom and dad have celebrated every tiny gesture of affection between us. I wonder if they’ve noticed that Will’s always the one making the gestures, not me. Will has definitely noticed, but he hasn’t brought it up so far. I doubt I have long, though, before it becomes the next problem Will—and everyone else, for that matter—feels I need to work on.
“Hey, kids, beautiful day, isn’t it?” My dad claps Will on the back and tries to tousle my hair even though it’s in a braid. I grimace and let go of Will’s hand so I can smooth the wayward hairs back into place.
Marie giggles behind us. “As if that’s going to help.”
I pretend to glare at her, but really she’s right. My hair has never cooperated with me, not even once. It always lands where it wants to despite my best efforts to tame it—a stick-straight mess. Pointy pieces of hair poke out of my braid like they’re trying desperately to keep from bending.
“Headed to class, right?” Dad says with a smile. He leans into the guard station and presses the button that opens the large iron gate to our development. The gate groans loudly as it shudder-slides behind the high brick wall that borders all of Mandrodage Meadows.
“Unfortunately.” Marie frowns. “It’s too gorgeous out to be cooped up in the clubhouse.”
Dad looks at Marie the same way most of the adults in the Community do—like he’s not sure whether to hug her or punish her. “Your lessons are important. How do you expect to accurately remember all of this”—Dad gestures to the wide-open spaces beyond the gate—“and learn from its mistakes if you don’t understand its history?”
I roll my eyes skyward. We don’t have time for one of my father’s impassioned lectures on how we are the only future this world has, the keepers of its doomed history and culture. Blah, blah, blah. He used to be a structural engineer back in New York, but I’d swear that he really should’ve been a history teacher, he’s so over the top about it.
“We’re gonna be late, Dad.” I point to my watch. Pioneer has the entire day scheduled, even our free time. Not showing up where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there only brings punishment. And I’ve messed up enough for one day, thank you very much.
“Yeah, okay, sorry,” Dad says with an embarrassed smile. “Go on. See you at dinner, Lyla.”
I lean up and give him a quick peck on the cheek, and then we rush through the gate. I can hear it rumble closed. I wave at Dad one more time before he disappears behind it, and then we pick up our pace even more.
Mandrodage Meadows looks like any other suburban gated development in America—at least that’s what my mom says. Beyond the entry gate is a large circle of houses, twenty in all, one for each of the families that live here. They’re made to look like mountain cabins, with lots of stacked stone and log siding. I’ve always kind of liked the woodsy feel of them.
In the center of the circle is a large green space with a pond, gardens, and picnic area, and beyond that—where the houses end—are our clubhouse, pool, wood shop, barn, and stables. The orchards are at the very back and border the brick wall just beyond the fields where the animals are let out to graze. And just below them is the Silo, our underground shelter, silently waiting for the next three months to go by and for the apocalypse to arrive. It makes my chest tighten to think about it, so I try to ignore it most of the time, but it’s hard, since some part of it is underneath just about every inch of ground we walk on here. I look up at the wide-open sky, take a deep gulp of fresh air, and try to focus on the upcoming lessons or Marie’s endless chattering. It doesn’t work very well.
Sometimes it seems like our families have put out a lot of wasted money and effort to make it so nice in the aboveground buildings, since everything will be destroyed in the end. Pioneer says that apart from giving our families a comfortable place to live for the past ten years, the cushy normality of it serves as a distraction to anyone who happens to find us. Visitors here would see us as very reclusive, eccentric suburbanites. They certainly wouldn’t expect us to have an underground shelter hidden beneath the orchards or an armory of guns to protect it. Even our development’s name enhances the il
lusion. “Mandrodage Meadows” sounds kind of uppity, vaguely French. We’re the only ones that know that it’s an anagram for “Armageddon Meadows”—a private joke that Pioneer made up.
We jog all the way to the clubhouse, making it to the meeting room just in time to take our seats before Pioneer arrives. He takes his place at the front of the room, sitting cross-legged on top of the Formica table there. He leans back on his hands and smiles at us. There are thirty of us in all—every child in the Community—all of us around the same age. There are equal numbers of guys and girls—something the Brethren had Pioneer be sure of when he picked families to move here. This way we each have an Intended. Will with me, Brian with Marie, and so on. No detail of our lives has been left to chance.
Pioneer picks up one of the thick books beside him and opens it on his lap. He clears his throat. “Today we will focus on history, specifically the characters throughout whose bad decisions—their … hesitations—jeopardized their countries as well as their fellow man.” He pauses and looks at me, his lips curling into a smile. “Historical cowards is our topic for today. Any thoughts on this … Little Owl?”
His words blindside me. My face burns all over. All eyes are on me, waiting. Even though Will, Brian, and Marie are the only ones who could possibly know what happened at target practice, I feel exposed. Is he really going to out me to everyone?
“Um, not really, no,” I say. The others laugh nervously. The air feels charged. I know I’m not the only one who senses it. But then Pioneer chuckles and launches into a detailed lecture about George B. McClellan, a Union general during the Civil War who kept refusing to engage in battle even when he had the clear advantage—my historical counterpart, I guess. Pioneer is obviously not done reforming me yet.
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