Gated

by Amy Christine Parker

  I’m tired because I didn’t sleep well last night. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back outside and running for the Silo—only this time I was being chased by the rest of the Community. They were trying to drive me in the opposite direction, away from the shelter. I kept startling awake, breathless and panicked.

  The air is already hot and heavy with humidity. I regret wearing my hair down to cover my bandage now. It feels like a heavy wool rug on my back. I wave limply at Marie as she leaves her family so she can walk with me.

  Her hair and face both look smooth and neat, like the weather and our recent punishment have had little to no effect on her appearance whatsoever. The speed of her steps is the only thing that suggests that she’s still hurting as much as I am. They’re slow and measured.

  I watch her get closer. She’s wearing the exact same purple-T-shirt-and-white-shorts combo that I am, but she manages to make it look sexy—even coupled with her white bandages—whereas I just manage to look rumpled. I don’t care, though. She tries harder to look nice than I will ever want to. She earns her sexy.

  Wearing the same thing as someone else happens a lot in the Community, since we buy all of our clothes in bulk and each of us has the same limited choices to pick from each day. There will be at least five to six other girls dressed to match us this morning. It doesn’t really bother me, but I can tell by the way that Marie has tied off her shirt around her waist and carefully shredded the hemline of her shorts that it bothers her. She almost always alters her clothes to make them original creations. Once she even used beets from the garden to dye one of her shirts just so it wouldn’t look like anyone else’s.

  Marie grabs my arm and pulls my ear to her lips. “Come to my house today after chores, okay? I have something I want to show you.”

  “What is it?”

  I have to work to sound interested. My neck is still shrieking at me. It feels swollen and my muscles have tightened up, making it difficult to turn my head. All I want to do is stay still, lie down, and wait for the pain to stop. And this heat isn’t helping. The sweat on my shoulders stings and makes me fidget—making my desperately wished-for stillness impossible. I’m tired and hot and in pain—not to mention worried about what Pioneer has planned for us now. He’d hinted that things were going to change today, and I can’t imagine that those changes will be good ones. I can only hope that it won’t mean more chores, because my head is starting to feel like it’s wrapped in a hot, wet towel filled with spiky nails. I swallow the pair of aspirin that I’ve been carrying and hope that they start to work on my headache soon. My throat is so dry that they stick halfway down and I have to work to swallow them.

  “Can’t tell you now, not with all the parentals around,” she murmurs, and turns to wave to my parents, who are watching us. “Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton.”

  “It’s not something that’s gonna get us into trouble, is it? I mean, after yesterday …,” I begin.

  Marie laughs—a light, breezy giggle. “You worry too much. It’ll be fine, just meet me, all right?”

  I look back at my parents and then move in a little closer to her. “No, I won’t. One punishment is plenty, Marie. I’m not risking another one and you shouldn’t either.” Her refusal to acknowledge what happened in the corral is freaking me out a little.

  I give her my best stern look, the one I learned from Pioneer. If she’s going to try to pretend that everything’s cool, then I’m going to try even harder to remind her that it isn’t.

  Marie likes to put unpleasantness behind her as quickly as possible, always has, but especially after her brother, Drew, and his Intended, Kelly, decided to leave the Community last year. Pioneer said that as far as we were all concerned, Drew and Kelly didn’t exist anymore, just like all the other family members everyone in the Community left behind when they came here—only worse because they knew the truth and turned their backs on it on purpose. To Pioneer, they were no better than traitors. But Marie pretended that they were on a special supply run that we weren’t supposed to know about or something. Of course she knew that that really wasn’t true, but she pretended it was anyway. Maybe so we wouldn’t ask her about it or maybe so she could keep seeing her brother as one of the chosen or something. And it looks like she’s trying to do it again now.

  I get why she does it, which makes me the best person to try and call her on it. I know how tempting it is to try to pretend things aren’t what they are. I used to do it all the time after my sister disappeared. But it never brought her back. After a while, the pretending gets too hard, changes you in a way you can’t change back. I only have to look at my mom to know that that’s true.

  Marie stares at me and her lips quiver a little. “I’m not trying to get punished again. If we had any time left at all, I’d wait. Swear. But, Lyla, the end is getting really close now. If last night’s false alarm did anything, it was to remind me of that.” She looks past me at my parents, who are now starting to look suspicious. “I need to check some things out before … and what I’m planning isn’t a big deal, really. Not like sneaking out. I just want us to hang out and have a little fun. Right here, safe and sound, behind the gates. Talk and stuff with the other girls. Try to just forget about this.” She points at her back. “It’ll be fun. Come on. Don’t tell me you don’t want to at least a little.”

  “Well, I don’t,” I say, and not too kindly. But when I see how disappointed she is, I cave. It’s impossible to deny her. Maybe because she’s the same as me, an only child by default now, a sister in misery, our bond forged out of an all-too-similar pain. I want to get past all of the bad memories too. The only difference is that I don’t want to deny them altogether.

  I nod at her and she goes to hug me, but I wince and then so does she and we end up just smiling at each other instead. Then she spots Heather and Julie and quickly turns away from me before I have a chance to say anything more. Her black ponytail swings back and forth as she trots over to the other girls and begins whispering in their ears. Looks like it’ll be a party, whatever it is.

  I push out my bottom lip and blow air at my bangs to try to cool off my forehead, but they’re already hopelessly plastered to my head and won’t budge. I can only hope that whatever Marie has planned includes a trip to the pool, because after the past twenty-four hours, I am more than ready to cool off.

  On the outside, the clubhouse mirrors our homes, with its wood-and-stone front and deep porch. Inside, there’s a banquet space for when we come together for holidays and special occasions, and beyond it is the meeting room. Mom says it reminds her of a conference room, the kind found in most hotels, but somehow I doubt that any of those rooms have pictures of natural disasters and their aftermath papering the walls. To me it’s more like a shrine to pain, a reminder of how fragile our world really is.

  One of these pictures is of a tiny girl dressed in pajamas holding a filthy stuffed animal in the middle of the rubble that once was her house. It calls to me every time I’m in here. I’m unable to look away from it now as we wait for Pioneer to arrive. I think it’s something about the girl’s face that attracts me the most. She has this look of bewilderment mixed with defiance, like she’s daring the tornado that crushed her world to come back again. I’ve always wondered why she isn’t crying. She has nothing except a bedraggled bear—and yet there’s an eerie calmness in her expression. I want to be like this girl when the end finally comes—mad or brave, not cowering in fear.

  Pioneer enters the room flanked by Mr. Whitcomb and Mr. Brown, his two constant companions at meetings and most of the rest of the time too. They were the first ones to sign their families up for the Community and have always been the most supportive of Pioneer’s plans. They’re both quieter than usual. They motion us over to the rows of metal chairs set up to face the front of the room church-style. The room is buzzing with the drone of a dozen conversations. No one seems to know what’s going on.

  Pioneer watches us take our seats. He looks awful. His face is drawn. Lack of
sleep has deflated it. Still, he stands ramrod straight in front of us, eyes glittering. “I trust you have all had time to reflect,” he begins.

  I watch as all the adults bob their heads up and down in agreement, each one looking a little bit more embarrassed than the last. More than a few people look over at Will, Brian, Marie, and me. I nod along with the others, anxious to put my best foot forward. I’ve decided that I will try to do whatever is expected of me from now on. I don’t want to be the cause of worry for my parents or Pioneer or Will anymore. Even though yesterday wasn’t the end of our time above ground, it has to be the end of my pining for it. I can’t keep wishing for things that I’ll never have.

  “I have been up all night trying to determine how best to serve you, how best to help you protect your families,” Pioneer says.

  I’ve heard that Pioneer spends most nights pacing the halls of the clubhouse, where his private rooms are. I’ve always felt a little sorry for him. Being our leader and having no family to share the hardships of the job with has to be lonely, especially when he’s puzzling things out. He says that his burden is too great and a family is not his destiny. But right now I’m kind of glad he doesn’t have anyone. I’m not done being mad at him for yesterday just yet.

  “I struggled last night, brothers and sisters. I found myself looking for a sign or a message from the Brethren—anything at all that could tell me the right way to lead you. They graced me with a vision and that vision helped show me the way.” Pioneer hesitates and more than half of the room leans forward.

  We’re always curious about Pioneer’s visions. He’s our prophet, so they reveal the last days and many of them seem to confirm what Pioneer’s scientific research suggests about what they’ll be like. None of us want to miss whatever’s next, because it’s bound to be important. I wipe my palms on my shorts to dry them.

  “In my vision the Brethren appeared in the sky. They told me that the time has come. The world is already starting to experience the pains of change. I saw a great flood, the water high enough to cover whole towns, and a great shaking of the earth. When I woke, I began searching for news from the outside. I searched for anything that might tell me what I could already feel in my bones. And I found what I was looking for. There are very clear signs that the earth is shifting its rotation. The end has already begun.”

  Pioneer nods to Mr. Whitcomb, who’s been standing in the back of the room and now starts fiddling with the electronic equipment there as his wife dims the lights. Pioneer switches on the two televisions in the front two corners of the room. We only use them when Pioneer has some news like this from the outside world to show us, or on Friday nights, when we’re allowed to watch a movie he approves of. At first there’s just a blue screen, but then it’s interrupted by a flurry of sound and movement.

  “What you are about to see happened just three days ago,” Pioneer says.

  My stomach flips over and I grip both sides of the chair as Pioneer steps away from the front of the room and sits down. We’ve only watched newscasts a handful of times. Pioneer says that we don’t need to keep up with the outside world. He says that most of what’s on television is lies and junk—time-wasting distractions to keep us from our daily tasks at best and a way to keep us too attached to an evil and dying world at worst. He’s the only member of the Community with access to a television on a regular basis, and he only watches it when he’s looking for some sign that the end is coming or that the outside world has realized that it’s coming. It’s just another of the many burdens he’s willingly taken on for us. Whatever this is is bigger than big.

  There are two newscasters on the screen now, a man and a woman. The woman captures my attention first. Her brown hair is streaked with blond. It’s beautiful, but impossible, the streaks almost perfectly placed around her face to make the most of her blue eyes. She’s wearing lots of makeup, just like the actresses in all the movies we’ve seen. I can’t quite wrap my head around the idea of getting bad news from someone so pretty. It makes everything seem less real.

  “We have just learned that there has been a devastating earthquake in the Indian Ocean, resulting in a series of tsunamis which have attacked a number of coastal communities in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand. Scientists believe that the magnitude of the quake might be as high as nine-point-three on the Richter scale, making this the third-largest quake in recorded human history. There is no word yet as to how many lives have been lost as a result of what many are already calling the Super-Quake, but many experts estimate that the death toll could reach into the tens of thousands. We will have more information about this tragedy for you within the next hour.”

  I grab my mother’s hand. The screen blanks out for a moment before starting back up. There’s a new set of newscasters on the screen now and behind them is video of water rushing through the center of a town. I find it strange that some of the people in the street are just walking, not running, as the great wall of water comes up behind them, knocking cars over and pulling whole sides off of buildings. It’s almost like they’ve already given up on surviving or maybe they can’t quite believe what’s happening.

  Before yesterday I might have thought something was wrong with them—that maybe they weren’t very smart or something, but now I think I know how they feel. The suddenness of the whole thing must’ve produced some kind of shock—right up until the time that it reached them and they understood that it was really the end. By then it was too late, though. I can’t stop watching as the water reaches them. It isn’t long before they’ve disappeared beneath the wreckage of cars and buildings as the water surges down the street. And all the while I can see other people on the screen, watching from somewhat safer perches on roofs and light poles as this giant wave washes away everything and everyone below them. It makes me think of my parents down in the Silo yesterday, waiting to hear the sounds of the end, waiting to know that I was dead, but doing nothing to stop it.

  The screen blanks out again before flickering back to life.

  “And this happened two days ago,” Pioneer says.

  Another newscaster comes on.

  “Hurricane Katrina has just hit New Orleans. Water levels are rising fast and many experts now believe that the levy will not hold. Most residents evacuated before the storm hit, but others decided to stay and ride out the weather. It is now feared that those who chose to sit tight are in grave danger, and with winds gusting up to one hundred miles per hour, any efforts to rescue them have had to be put on hold. Please stay with us for up-to-the-minute information in the coming hours.”

  Behind the newscaster are pictures of trees being lashed by wind and rain. Boats slam up against docks and water washes over stone walls, crashes into buildings. Their walls buckle and then the buildings fold. They move out into the newly created river around them, no sturdier than if they were made of matchsticks.

  The screen goes blank again and the room erupts into noise. Everyone seems to be talking over everyone else. Some people look terrified, but others look excited, almost eager. I can’t stand to see it, so I look away. I concentrate on the girl in the picture on the wall instead. Nothing about the last five minutes seems real.

  Pioneer claps his hands, shushes us. “And this last is from just this morning.” His voice is somber, but his eyes are all lit up, just like the others’.

  “Japan has been hit with an earthquake today. It looks to be one of the largest in recorded history. Within half an hour of the quake, a tsunami battered the country as well, sending a wall of water that reached almost a hundred thirty-four feet slamming into its shoreline. The entire area is now underwater. Many fear that the death toll will rival any other natural disaster to date. No word yet as to exactly how many are thought to have perished, but as we get new information in, we will update you.”

  The screen goes blue and then black. Mr. Whitcomb doesn’t turn on the lights right away. He looks too stunned to move—and so does everyone else around me. So much destruction has taken pl
ace in just the past few days. It’s hard to comprehend it all. These reports are concrete proof that Pioneer has been right all along—not that any of us have ever really doubted, but still, there’s a big difference between believing and knowing. We’re no longer acting on faith.

  My parents huddle around me, hold me tight like the very waves and quakes we’ve just seen on the screen will be arriving at our door any minute to try to separate us.

  “This is exactly what I saw in my vision last night. This is what we’ve been waiting for, the first signs, brothers and sisters,” Pioneer says as the lights come back on and he stands in front of us once again.

  I can’t help noticing that his face is etched with lines and his eyes are rimmed with dark circles. The effects of the end are rearranging the features of his face, changing the once-attractive angles into sharp edges. And his eyes are missing the warmth that they normally have. Right now his usual glow is more like a laser beam, too concentrated and bright to make me comfortable. It’s enough to make my fear, an ever-present flutter in the back of my head since last night, an almost unbearable throb.

  “This is a flare sent out into the world too late to warn most of them that the end is coming. But there will be those who will recognize it for what it is. They will be hit with the sudden urge to survive, and that urge may very well drive them to our door. They will demand our care, and if we don’t agree to give it, they will try to take it by force. And if we fail in keeping them out, they will surely take all of what is ours—our food, our supplies, our very survival. So we are faced in these last days with some very clear tasks: to defend what is rightfully ours at all costs and to make our final preparations for entering the Silo as quickly as possible so that we are already inside before panic can lead others here.”