“Who’s your friend, Cocaine?” The tallest boy’s lips curl into a grin so ugly, it should be smacked off his face. He hovers over me and glides a smelly finger down my cheek. If he’s not careful, I’ll sock him like Jon taught me. Sure, it wouldn’t be very ladylike to punch a guy in the balls, but it isn’t very manlike to harass a woman because she has different parts and a sweet face. “You’re a pretty Lister. If you ever get bored with him, come find me.”
“Belt up, Bollocks.” Charlie shoves the kid backward. “Keep your scummy mitts off her.”
“Come on, Coker the Joker. Lighten up.”
“This is Lieutenant Stryker’s little sister. Sergeant Buchanan will shoot your head off if I tell…”
“Okay, sorry. I didn’t know.” He throws his hands up and in a split second, puts distance between us. “She should be wearing a nametag or something.”
Guys can be like little boys who throw rocks at girls with the nicest pigtails or middle schoolers who date for a day. Some abuse and betray. But there are those who watch from a distance, give of themselves without asking for a reward. They wait until the girl is the strongest, most empowered version of herself because the challenge of winning her heart is greater and so is its value.
“Who was that?” I ask as Charlie pulls me to a ladder.
“Bellamy Bolstick. He and his mate Brady enlisted last January.”
“Why’d he call me a Lister?” Sweat bursts from my pores when I lift myself onto the first ring and then the next. My muscles burn and quiver. How did that cot steal so much of my strength?
“A Lister is someone who enlists in the Vestige after the breach. You’re new here, which makes you a Lister,” he says. “Push open the door. I’ll meet you up there once I fetch supplies for Nash.”
I shove my weight against the ceiling panel and clamber from the shaft, out of hell. Soldiers in street clothes move past me with stacks of files, rank patches sewn onto armbands.
Jon lied.
The Command Center is composed of three double-wide trailers welded together, gutted and remodeled, transformed into a state-of-the-art military base. Computer screens cover the walls, monitoring statistics, news reports, social media, and displaying security feed from various cities. A large map hangs in the center of the main room, pinned to an old American flag. Like the one I found in Jon’s backpack, it too is streaked with black lines, handwritten coordinates, and a red circle. Severance.
Let me off this merry-go-round. I gave it a try. Believe me, I tried. But I’m about to get sick. Spinning. Faster. Dirt and strangers. Too much information. Stop the ride before I jump!
Jack hunches over a worktable, inspecting documents. Familiar. Safe. I run through the bustle and collide with his chest. He emits a gasp—I hit him pretty hard—and hugs me without inquisition. His fingers comb through my shortened hair, slowing the whirlwind to a steady pulse.
“I like the change.” When I don’t release my grip, he squeezes tighter. “You’re okay.”
The way we hold one another isn’t seductive. It’s almost as if we both need to be reassured that we’re not facing this chaos alone, link our lives together instead of running parallel. And as he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, our surroundings fade—irrelevant, incapable of damaging us. We’re together in some tenuous third-space that can only be visited by touching each other.
“You and Jon lied.”
“Yes,” he whispers, “to keep you safe.”
What hurts more, that he deceived me, or the perfect world we created together was nothing but an imaginary house of cards destined to crumble?
“I trusted you and now … what am I supposed to do?”
His eyes widen when I break our physical connection as if he might be afraid of losing me, as if I’m more to him than his dead best friend’s little sister. “I’ll tell you everything. No more lies.”
“You must be our new guest.” A man in his early sixties appears in the crowd clothed in an ornamented uniform. He’s the general from Dad’s office. “Sergeant, now is when you introduce us.”
“Uh … my apologies, Sir.” Jack salutes the man. “General Ford, this is Julie Stryker.”
“You have my condolences, Julie. Your brother was a friend of mine. He’ll be missed.” General Ford extends his arm to shake my hand. It’s an empty gesture that stabs me in the chest. “If you need anything, let me know. The Vestige is at your service.” His wrinkled face beams with sympathy, but in its dapper creases, hidden beneath his slate-gray irises, are streaks of remorse.
Jon and our parents sat at the kitchen table, whispering, arguing. His backpack held maps and a gun. Dad was terrified when I brought him lunch. It all makes sense now.
General Ford destroyed my family.
“We missed you at the range this morning,” Jack says.
“I didn’t want to show you up in front of your squad, Sarge.”
“Oh, I’m a better shot than you, Old Man.”
“Is that a fact?” General Ford grins. “Bet you a hundred bucks…”
“A stick of gum will do just fine.” Jack laughs.
“You killed them.” Anger tenses my muscles, sends heat stampeding across my skin. “It was you at Dad’s office. Whatever secret Jon told our parents … it was connected to you somehow, wasn’t it?” I fly forward, clutch the decorated collar of his blazer, and shake him until his head bobbles. Dead eyes. Empty house. A single shot. “They’re gone because of you!”
“What the hell, Julie? Stop.” Jack pries me off the general. His scolding stare burrows through my rage. “No one here is your enemy. Jon was part of our family, which makes you family.”
“Anyone who lies to me is my enemy.” I glare at him and then at the general. The problem with being surrounded by brilliant liars is that I have to assume they’re always lying—a lie is only innocent fiction until someone believes it.
General Ford clears his throat. “Sergeant, take her to the Overlook.”
Jack nods and drags me to a metal door concealed behind a panel of computer monitors. “No random freak attacks, okay? There’s something I need to show you.”
The girl who’s more explosive than a firecracker—I’m already a stigma.
We go where the world is vast and clear. Birds twitter. Paramount pinnacles crowd the landscape like a mass of rioters refusing to budge. There’s so much earth beyond Charleston, but I was happy in captivity, and happiness isn’t something to leave.
Jack moves through the sea of dilapidated trailers. From out here, they appear to be uninhabited—abandoned and expired like animal corpses left to rot on the roadside. Tarps and tunnels camouflage all signs of life. Where is everyone? Why are they hiding?
Levi scampers from a muddy crawlspace and joins us for a trek into the woods. He pants and wags his tail, patrolling at Jack’s side. Together, we wade through the overgrown lawn, past faded flamingos and a rusting bicycle.
“Where are we?”
“North Carolina,” Jack says. “We call this place the Underground. It’s where my platoon and I have being living for the past year, our military base.”
“You told me you weren’t in the military anymore.”
“I’m not.” He moves toward the trees separating us from miles of woodland. Perspiration beads on his forehead and forms a ‘V’ beneath the neckline of his t-shirt. “It’s time to tell a story.”
“Ooh, a story. Sounds thrilling. What’s it about?”
He gives a look that says ‘you’re annoying the crap out of me so shut up.’
Security cameras track our movement as we enter the forest. We push through brush and scramble over rocks. Jack hikes as if he’s made this trek a thousand times before. I stumble behind him, out-of-breath, and scrape myself on a vine of thorns. Another wound to add to my extensive collection.
“Dad was a bigwig colonel,” Jack says. “He saw me as a disappointment so after high school, I enlisted as a Marine to attract his attention. Within a few years, I passed bas
ic training with letters of recommendation from my commanding officers. I was then recruited into the Air-Ground Task Force.” He shoves me up a damp embankment. I clutch roots, claw at dirt. The high altitude burns my lungs—I cough and breathe through the fabric of my sleeve.
Where are we going?
“I aced my Ground Combat training, was certified in emergency and wilderness medicine. Not to sound self-absorbed but … I really was the best … and Dad still didn’t notice. I was promoted, ranked a Sergeant, and transferred to Parris Island where I met Jon. We became friends almost immediately…” He trails off, continuing to move at an insanely fast pace.
“Can we slow down a bit? I’m about to die.”
“Nope. You need to get stronger.” He smiles. “My platoon was transferred to a base in south Tennessee and ordered to patrol a sector of deserted land. I’d been training for years, hoping to be deployed overseas, so it came as a shock when my superiors assigned me to guard an unpopulated town.”
“Jack, my legs are cramping.” He’s such a chatterbox.
“They told us there’d been a nuclear leak from a nearby factory and everyone had been evacuated as a precaution. I knew it was a lie. There weren’t any factories within a hundred miles that used nuclear power. Besides, why would the government send their best troops into a radioactive area? We should’ve been overseas fighting a war. You probably don’t remember the news broadcasts eleven years ago, but every country on Earth was facing turmoil—natural disasters, political instability, economic collapses, and then the outbreak of some unknown virus followed by nuclear bombings. The world had fallen apart. And things that are broken cannot be mended with time but effort and sweat.”
A wasp darts around me—I sprint past Jack and scramble up a slope before collapsing against a tree. “War? No, I don’t remember a war.” Bugs. I hate bugs. Especially the ones with stingers.
He laughs. “Wow, you’re already getting stronger.”
“So … what was the government hiding?”
“The truth.” He stops moving long enough for me to catch my breath. “It was Jon’s birthday and some of the soldiers had organized a surprise party, just sheet cake and a game of darts. I volunteered to take his night shift and arrived at my post, prepared for the long night ahead.”
Mildly intrigued. “What happened?” If I ask enough questions, maybe he’ll get so caught up in the story, he won’t walk as fast. Is it bad that my legs are numb? Should my head be throbbing? Hmm, I’ve never had red blotches on my forearms before.
“I found something.” He shrugs. “It’s ironic, really. All along I’d been protecting the Feds’ dirty secret. Once I realized a bit of what was happening, it was too late,” he says. “General Ford said to stay quiet about the whole thing so he could protect me, but my discovery was too huge to remain confidential. I told Jon. He told Tally. The information leaked throughout my squad like a virus and infected the entire platoon. Everyone asked questions. Everyone wanted the truth.”
“I’m guessing that was a problem.” Praise the Lord—Jack is slowing down.
He nods. “General Ford called me into his office days later. He was in a panic, rushing around the room, stuffing things into bags. The Feds were coming to wipe us out.”
“You had to run because you knew their secret?”
“Yeah, in a matter of hours, my platoon packed and left base. We traveled on foot for a week, divided into fireteams to remain unnoticed. It was a stroke of luck we found this place—prime location, off-grid. We spent several months digging tunnels and restructuring the camp to camouflage it from aerial view. We titled ourselves the Vestige, which means surviving evidence, because we’re determined to find what remains of the truth.”
“What were the Feds hiding?”
Jack reaches the mountain’s peak and pulls me up beside him. “See for yourself.”
Wind whips my hair as I tiptoe toward the cliff’s edge. Mountains clutter the horizon like waves on a heart monitor. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”
“You see the world for what it is and what it could be,” Jack says. “What you don’t see is the gaping chasm in between … and that’s what I found.” He snatches a rock off the ground and throws it a few feet to his left. Bounce. Hiss. “The gaping chasm in between.” He finds a stick and strikes, causing light flickers to appear in midair. Waves of energy ripple across what appears to be a translucent dome, a force field. It slices through mountains and fades into the distance.
Psychologists classify fear as an emotion, but I’m certain it’s a physical state. Muscles shrivel inward to protect themselves. Adrenaline releases to prepare the body for action. Heart pumps a surplus of oxygen into the blood. A physical state. That I’m experiencing.
I clutch my mouth as the electrical pulse outlines the dome. Meteor shower. Mirage at sea. Severance. What’s going on? Who created the wall? And why has it been kept a secret?
Jack squats and fingers the smoking stick. “I’ve been searching for answers, all of us have. We’ve studied the molecular density of the barrier, mathematically calculated its diameter, but other than observations, we know nothing about its purpose. I can only guess.”
“What’s your guess?” I swipe the tears from my eyes.
“People have always expected the end of the world to be a dramatic, thematic event: war, disease, a sudden explosion. But what if the end of the world has already occurred? What if our final demise happened slowly, secretly … and we’ve been oblivious to it all?” He smiles. “There might be some truth in those end-of-the-world scenarios I read.”
“So you’re saying this wall … is protecting us from the apocalypse? You think the world has ended and for some reason, we haven’t noticed?”
“It’s a theory.” He nods. “We live in a multilayered world. The first layer is what you can see. The second, what you know is real. And the third layer is made of things you can neither see nor know are real. That’s the world I believe we are living in, the third layer. We’ve been kept oblivious to it for years and deceived into thinking all is as it seems.”
No. This is crazy. “Why hasn’t anyone else found the dome?”
“I’m not sure, yet.”
“You do realize you sound insane.”
“Yeah, but I’m not insane if I’m right.”
Any other weird news heading my way, like, that I’m a mermaid or secretly married? I thought finding out Jon had a crush on Queen Bee Rebekah was the most outlandish information I’d ever receive, not that I’m living in an actual snow glob, possibly ignorant to civilization’s end.
“You’re handling all this like a pro.” Jack motions for me to sit next to him. Why is he happy? The world might have ended. We should be getting drunk and talking about the things we won’t be able to do. Wait, why am I frustrated with him? Why aren’t I screaming and crying like usual?
“Please let me go back to Charleston. I’d rather spend what time I have left at home.”
“After the end of the world, there is a world. Life doesn’t stop. It changes,” he says. “Think of it as like living with cancer. As long as you don’t go to the doctor and confront the possibility, you can convince yourself it’s not there, but you can only live with cancer for so long before it kills you. Wouldn’t you rather know what’s growing inside of you and fight it?” He yanks me down and wraps his arms around my shoulders. “We can make time and rebuild your home. Don’t be an ostrich.”
“An ostrich?”
“They stick their heads in the sand. Don’t be like them.”
“You talk a lot, Jack Buchanan.” I laugh and lean against his chest. “Be patient with me.”
“I’m used to being patient with you, Julie.” He throws another rock at the force field. Bounce. Hiss. His smile shrinks and his grip tightens. “You should know everything about Jon’s death.”
A breath catches inside my throat—Jon is dead—and the pain comes rushing back.
“Once a month, two of us drive into t
own to purchase food and supplies. Usually we go to Asheville, but … Jon decided to return home for a few days. He wanted to take you and your parents away from Charleston, bring you here to live with us, keep you safe from the Feds.” Jack’s cheek brushes mine. His words sink into me. “The first few days, we shopped for our month’s provisions. It was a coincidence you and I met when we did.”
“So you weren’t planning to say goodbye? You and Jon wanted me to come here?”
“Yeah. Tally was bringing a van to drive you, your parents, and your belongings to a house half-a-mile from the Underground. You would’ve been secluded but safe, had a chance to start a new life away from the Feds’ control. Everything had been organized.”
In an almost perfect world, we made it. Mom and I hung curtains in our new home, built an art studio made of camouflage tarps for her in the garden Dad and I planted. Jon took me to the Underground every afternoon. We crawled through tunnels, practiced our shooting at the range. Jack came to the house for dinner on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. He’d bring tapes for us to watch on the outdated television, left me books in the lopsided mailbox. What a happy snow globe that would’ve been.
In an almost perfect world, we made it.
“Jon told your parents too much. They freaked. Colonel Stryker leaked information at work that traveled to the wrong ears fast. General Ford tried to smooth things over with your dad, keep people quiet, but the Feds became aware of Jon’s knowledge and decided the only way to keep their secret safe was to wipe out your entire family.”
We were normal people with a mortgage, not names on a hit list. Life has tricked me into believing all is as it seems and now the strings of truth are slowly unraveling.
“This is a lot to digest, I know, and I can’t lie and say everything’s going to be all right because I’m pretty sure it won’t be. The only promise I can make is that I’ll do whatever it takes to get your parents back,” Jack says. “Once we know what’s happened to the world, we can use our knowledge to blackmail the Feds into releasing them.”
The Vestige Page 10
