“Sir, how can you expect our chances of survival to be better in the wilderness, divided into travel crews with limited rations and communication? Here, we have an effective system. Here, we are united.”
Geez, when did I become such a loudmouth?
“Thanks for your input, darling, but leave the world-changing decision-making to the big boys. We’re protecting more than our crappy house.” Abram laughs and turns his back to exile me.
What a jerk. I am strong and human with a mouth that works like a man’s and a more intelligible brain, and I demand to be heard.
My hands are shaking. I ball them into tight fists. There’s a crazy pressure in my chest, building, strengthening until the explosion is inevitable. “Do you call your other fighters darling, or just the ones with boobs?” There it is—another tension to add to the room’s charged, magnetic air.
Men tend to treat women as fragile creatures, but our bodies were built to withstand pain and hard work, think with profound insight. We were created to do what men can’t. And if that isn’t reason enough for us to be treated equal, I’m not sure what is.
He glances at me, still laughing. “What?”
“You said to leave decision-making to the big boys, but I’m not okay with that because some of the big boys in this room spend more time screwing Lieutenant McConaughey and bossing around tunnel-diggers, laundry-washers, and cooks than actually doing their jobs.” Oops, I said it. There’s no going back now, not after the screwing and bossing remark.
To cherish my purity and set boundaries are, in my opinion, the highest forms of feminism—a woman who saves her body proves she is strong and secure enough to resist the men who seek to claim her, that she’s more than what lies between her legs.
Abram leans forward until our faces are inches apart—I stare him dead in the eyes because there’s no way I’m letting him catch a whiff of my fear. “You’re treading on thin ice, Stryker.”
“I am here as a gladiator for the Listers, and I’ll fight for their voice by making sure you don’t muffle mine with sexist comments.”
“Amazing, isn’t she?” Jack clutches a hand over his mouth to hide a smile, but his crinkled eyes and raised cheeks give it away. He plops onto a stool and sneaks me a thumbs-up when no one is looking.
“Enough,” General Ford shouts. “Sergeant, explain your reason for wanting to remain at the Underground. All information needs to be offered before the council makes a final decision.”
He called me amazing in front of the other soldiers. Amazing. For being bold and empowered.
“Nash and I have been conducting experiments. We found a way to break the dome’s magnetic membrane so we could retrieve samples from the outer world.” Jack stands and circles the table like a professor pacing his classroom. “Our goal was to find out what caused the collapse of civilization.”
I straighten my back when he moves behind me. For that split second, when he’s inches from my back, I hold him close in my mind, his subtle dimples and flashy smile, the warmth of his summer-tanned skin. I reach out in our third-space and love him from a tenuous distance.
General Ford rubs the notch in his chin. He watches Jack drift with mild amusement in his baggy, bulgy eyes. “What’d you find, Sergeant?”
“Not only are the radiation levels disastrously high, we detected a toxin in the air—an unidentifiable pathogen. Viruses can’t last years without a living host, which means this virus isn’t natural. Someone must have mutated and weaponized a strain of a common virus, maybe Ebola or influenza, and released it as a universal, airborne attack.”
“Strains mutate,” Abram says. “Remember the 2009 swine flu outbreak?”
Yes. Jon made me get vaccinated. He was super paranoid about disease after Sybil died and took me to that doctor downtown with the big hands and fake teeth.
“You have to understand—whatever sickness spread across the globe couldn’t be identified because until the first outbreak, humankind had never experienced it before.” Jack stops at the head of the table, opposite of General Ford. His brow furrows to a dramatic line. “All this didn’t happen by accident.”
People writhed on the floors of their homes, coughing up blood, fevering until their hearts stopped—not an accident. Cities rolled into waves of dust and rubble while nuclear plumes adorned the horizon—intentional events on a global scale. Why? What’s to gain?
“Someone evoked the apocalypse.” I sink into a chair and hug my churning stomach. Charlie’s chocolate protein bar hates me now. “You think the Feds caused the end of the world.”
Jack nods. “Relocating will move us too far from the dome. We must stay here so Nash and I can continue our research. Two weeks is all we need. Once we’ve gained answers, I will personally pack up the trucks and move us out of camp.”
Their pathogen blotted civilization, but we have become its counterpart within a place of safety and sameness where our ideas grow to destroy the secret-keepers and define those willing to listen. We are resilient and highly contagious. Our virus gets people cozying up to the truth before sneezing into their faces. We infect. And we will save.
“Answers to what questions? We know how the world ended. We know who we’re fighting against,” Ezra says. “We have enough information to bring down Severance.”
Bring them down hard. Make them pay for what they’ve done. We deserve to have our lives back, to sleep without fear of being killed at night, to speak and be heard. We deserve freedom.
I’d kill to see Mom and Dad again.
“No, there’s so much we don’t understand.” Jack patrols the room, arms stretched behind his neck. “This is a mind game. They’re telling us what to believe.”
Shouts disrupt the order like starbursts of light on a dark canvas. I hold my ears while the soldiers scream in protest. Why won’t they shut up long enough to ponder Jack’s hypothesis? Why are people so narrow-minded? Even when they consider themselves freethinkers, they’re still closed up to certain ideas, chaining themselves in an illusionary box of liberty. That must’ve been what caused the world’s end—people stopped thinking beyond their boxes.
“You’re a bunch of crazies!” I throw the half-eaten protein bar at Abram’s bald head. Probably shouldn’t have done that to a commanding officer. Might wake up in the lake tomorrow. Oops.
“Jack…” General Ford’s break of formality silences the debate. He stands, and we sit. “You might be right, but there are too many lives at stake. We must relocate.”
“You want questions? Fine, I’ll give them to you.” Jack keys something into the computer system. Images from the drone’s footage flood the tabletop: crumbled skyscrapers, vacant neighborhoods and cracked highways littered with rotting corpses. “Someone caused the world to end. Why? The dome is shrinking. Why? Will more people be killed because they’re too close to the truth? What is the government’s reason for doing this? What more are they hiding?”
A breath catches inside my throat as the footage pans over a forgotten swing set, now rusted and lopsided. I cough, but the ability to inhale remains wedged within my esophagus like a beaded whim in a dreamcatcher. This is what becomes of us. Our greatest achievements decay and disappear over time, leaving only a footprint of the civilization we built.
Against preservation efforts, we all shall vanish and be forgotten.
“Survival must come first,” Ezra yells to muzzle Jack’s rant. “There’s a town south of here that’s off-grid and accommodating. With your permission, General, I’ll send a fireteam to scout the area for potential base locations.”
“They leave at dawn.” General Ford shuts his manila folder as if saying ‘case closed.’ “Initiate relocation procedures within the camp. Everyone else departs in three days.”
“Three days? That’s not enough time.” I need to wash my hands—they won’t stop itching. Maybe the dome’s penetration spit the virus into our bubble. “We have to bury our dead, pack, salvage what we can from the tunnels. To prepare, we need a we
ek, at least.”
“Four days.” He deactivates the table’s screen—it dies to black. “You’re dismissed.”
I clench my jaw to contain the swell of something more complex than fear or anger, something that reaches deep into my chest and makes me shake with adrenaline. I dig my heels into the floor’s thin, mildewed layer of carpet to stake claim. This is our home. This is where we bleed and sweat and die.
“Forgive me, General, if I sound disrespectful, but … you know Jack is right,” I say once everyone has filtered out of the rickety conference room. “You believe him.”
“Yes, I believe him.” He tucks a stack of folders beneath his left arm.
“Then, why are we leaving?”
“I must do what’s best for my soldiers.” General Ford musters a stiff smile that belongs on the face of a politician or Ken doll. “Jack is radical. Not everyone is like him.”
“But he’s right. You know he’s right.”
“We’re confronted with many different paths in our lifetime. It’s not always a fork in the road, more of a major intersection with multiple routes to travel. We can pick a road that follows the rules, gets us where we need to be … or we can pick a road that follows the rules but gets the people we care about where they need to be. The choice isn’t always black and white, and it’s not always easy. Right now, Jack’s path is the route I want to take, but it’s not the path that will get my soldiers where they need to be. I choose the majority. Do you understand?”
“Risks are sometimes necessary, sir. Safety doesn’t accomplish much.”
“Except keeps people alive.” He plants a hand on my shoulder and lowers his voice to a gruff whisper. “Would you do something for me, Julie?”
“Yes.” If he asks me to make him a sandwich, I’ll be pissed. “What can I do for you?”
“Jon’s assignment.” He opens a filing cabinet, removes a handgun, and sets it in my palm. The weapon is small and heavy, built to use high-capacity magazines. “Protect Jack. His importance to this mission is greater than you’ll ever know.”
Wow, that’s a funny request. Jack has saved me a dozen times, been my bodyguard even when I told him to get lost. General Ford must be kidding. But he looks serious. Why does he look serious?
“I’m pretty sure Jack can take care of himself, sir.”
“Yes, but I want to know someone else is looking out for him. He has a gift. He understands things. If we want to win this war, we need him. He’s our weapon.”
“Why do you want me to be his protector? I almost broke my wrist in the shower this morning. Yesterday, I dropped a stack of wood on my feet. He’d be safer with a toddler.”
The general casts a fatherly, supportive look—I’m almost convinced he believes in me. “Jack trusts you. It won’t be difficult to keep an eye on him. Please. Make sure he stays alive.”
“Okay.” I trace the firearm’s barrel with my thumb. Until recently, the gravity of holding such a dangerous device hadn’t occurred to me. But I now know how it feels to be shot, the excruciating pain.
I now know what it means to kill.
“What if he dies?” I tuck the gun into my belt, beneath my sweaty t-shirt. “If I fail, will the Vestige die, too? Our survival can’t be reliant on me. I’m not Jon…”
“Be his gladiator. Fight for him like you fought for the Listers today.” General Ford saunters to the doorway and glances at me a final time. His crow’s feet deepen into cursive signatures, signing Jack’s life over to me, the eighteen-year-old barista who shoots targets at the range and still has nightmares about her brother’s death. He wants New Julie to protect Jack. But she’s fiction. I’m the real version.
And I have no idea who I am.
****
Tarps flap in the night breeze like leftover flags from a battle. I skulk past their writhing hides, into what remains of the Overhang. Crates and tools from the tunnels litter the ground—I have to use one foot to feel for possible stumbling blocks and both hands to grapple gravity. Lights out at ten o’clock. No exception. Not even for Sergeant Buchanan’s newly appointed bodyguard.
I cringe when my calf brushes the slimy lichens growing on a table leg. Brady was supposed to scrape them off. They should be in a compost bin behind the Command Center, not oozing down my leg.
A lantern and mud-caked shovel rise from the gaping chasm that used to be a shaft, followed by a chiseled arm and shoulder. I reach for my gun and duck behind a wooden slat. No one is supposed to be out of their barracks. Why can’t one thing go right today? All I want to do is eat a meal, wash this filth off my skin, and sleep so I’ll feel human again, not get in a fracas with a disobedient recruit.
Jack emerges from the hole with a bag of salvaged equipment slung across his back. He groans and dumps the load. Shadows dart across his body, outlining his shape, giving way to golden beams that crisscross his face and illuminate slivers of skin. Jack. He’s working. Past curfew. And he sees me. He’s looking at me. Why can’t I breathe? What’s wrong with my legs?
“Thought I’d get a head start on the relocation procedures,” he says after several of the most awkward seconds of my life. His electric eyes peruse me—they have fingers of their own. “You were incredible during the council meeting. The Listers couldn’t have picked a better representative.”
I force a smile and take one step toward the barracks. One step that seems like a mile because it’s one step away from him. But he didn’t want me. He chose duty over emotions. He left me in the water, freezing, vulnerable, with a heart that ached for him.
“Speaking against the majority because you believe they’re wrong is an intense display of courage.” Jack moves toward me faster than I can distance myself from his arms and chest, those soft, thin lips that form the most perfect smile. He grabs my hand, touching me. “When you find a truth that surpasses your desire to fit trends and meet approval, you can be certain it’s worth fighting to spread.”
He’s my weakness. I’d pour out my heart for him.
General Ford must know I’d do anything to keep Jack alive.
“Jon would be proud of you.” He lingers inches from me. Sweat rolls down his temples, creating clean streaks in the film of dirt. “I’m proud of you, Julie.”
“He wouldn’t be proud of me. I’m all grown up now because I’ve lost almost everything. Fear gives me a sharp tongue, not courage. And I don’t know who I am anymore. Why would he be proud of that?” I shove Jack backward and chew my quivering lip when I’d rather be biting his. Pain floods a deep part of me I didn’t know existed, a place so buried and intimate, I choke when it’s stabbed.
The air between us is charged and unstable like it was in the conference room, as if the universe is holding its breath. I lean my weight against a moss-covered table. Need food. Soap. And lots of sleep. Not a man who makes me wish and dream and hope for the love he won’t give.
“I know who you are,” Jack whispers. “I’ve always known you.” His hands glide up my arms, from the angles of my wrists to the creases of my elbows. He presses his mouth to my left ear—I shiver from his breath. “You’re a force to be reckoned with.”
Crema glistened on his upper lip.
Lightning shot up from my toes as he danced with me in that fountain.
His pen drew The Living on my forearm, branding me a part of something bigger than my tiny snow globe of sameness and ignorance.
“You don’t stay down when someone throws a punch.” He squeezes my waist, holds me like a girlfriend, not a sister. “You fight to stand because you’ve spent enough time on the ground to know the importance of a strong spine.”
I dig my fingernails into the tabletop when his hands reach my neck and comb through my matted hair. This is stupid. If he didn’t love me yesterday, he doesn’t love me today.
“When I look at you, it’s as if I’m reading a novel. No matter how much time I spend studying your pages, there will always be more for me to learn, deeper layers of complexity to baffle me, and plot tw
ists that’ll leave me speechless.” He snickers and draws closer until our chests are fused. His heart beats through his t-shirt, against mine. Together, they make sense.
Together, we make sense.
“You’re the person I want to see every moment of every day.” Jack cups my face in his hands and whispers a confession that sets me ablaze. “My feelings for you are what keep me going. I know you. And I love you. Even if loving you is wrong. Even if Jon’s soul is cursing me.”
He makes eating food and maintaining hygiene seem like bad ideas.
“Okay.” I dive into him and kiss away my tornado of butterflies. Gasp. His lips move against mine slowly, lingering, strange and perfect and warm like drinking coffee for the first time. Gasp. I wrap my arms around his shoulders. Gasp. He sweeps me up and presses my back against a support beam.
To describe a kiss is to describe a diary entry or a pair of underwear—each is personal and private, slightly awkward. Very awkward. But necessary.
There are fireworks in our tenuous third-space, vibrant bursts of light that turn to skin and thoughts, embers smoldering where light never reaches. I find him there, drifting in the darkness, and when he collides with me, the world becomes simple and clear.
Loving him is an instinctual action, like reaching out my arms to catch myself when I fall, like screaming on a roller coaster ride. First kiss. That seems too natural to be a first.
“You’re a great friend, Jack. I needed a kiss goodnight.”
“If you want to be just friends after this, I must be doing something very wrong.” He laughs and kisses my forehead, then my cheek. “Want to be my girlfriend? Check yes or yes.”
“Yes,” I say through a smile.
Making out is one thing that won’t change even if civilization fizzles and humanity is reduced to two people. So each time Jack and I kiss, it’s as if we’re flipping off the jerks who destroyed our planet, as if we’re screaming at the top of our lungs…
We know your secret.
And we won’t be made invisible.
The Vestige Page 15
