Harbinger

by Sara Etienne

  “I get these panic attacks.”

  “No, stupid. Why are you wearing dead cow on your feet? You know there used to be National Forests in this country? National Parks too. After the Peak War started, they cleared them all. Some they strip-mined for coal. Some they cut down for wood. But some they clear-cut for cattle, to replace the meat and leather they couldn’t import anymore. God forbid we stop killing animals. Or that you have to go without.”

  I looked down at my hiking boots, the only clothes of mine I still had, besides my underwear. We’ve just been tased and she’s worried about my shoes? Unbelievable.

  “Why do you even care?”

  “Because someone has to.” Maya’s voice was quiet, and she stared down at her empty hand like she was looking for something she’d lost. Then her face went stony again and her words came out in a long tirade.

  “Because no one else is even thinking about how screwed we are. You think cellophane-wrapped meat just magically appears in your fridge? You think ninety-degree weather in September is normal for Maine? You think it’s okay for people to wipe their asses with thousand-year-old trees. No!” Maya shouted the last part, sitting straight up in bed.

  I hadn’t ever heard anyone talk like this before. I mean, I’d heard about rumors of sabotage from Greenpeace extremists, but they never showed that stuff on TV. Everyone at the Cooperative, my parents, teachers, kids at school, acted like this was all just a temporary glitch. For now we’d throw up some windmills and combine our food resources, but soon we’d win the war and there’d be plenty of oil again.

  My dad still talked about going back to the city to work at his PR firm. My mom insisted that once the Cooperatives turned back into suburbs, the housing market would be the first thing to rebound. She’d look around the neighborhood and say, “They’ll be clamoring for realtors once this is all over, and I’ll be back in business! Some people just hate staying put.”

  But nothing ever got better. When oil peaked out and China started hoarding barrels, the news channels said it was just a phase. When war broke out, the President said it was a strategic strike. Now, four years later, the Peak War was still going strong and everything that could be used for energy in this country had been drilled and mined and slashed. Maya’s rhetoric sounded a little crazy, but maybe it was saner than everything else.

  “The Earth’s been raped and the Cooperatives are pretending it’s business as usual. A water quota here, a food ration there. Just bribe enough people and keep quiet and hope it won’t affect you. But it will. Because no matter how much money you have, no matter how deep you bury the problem, it’ll never go away. You know what it took to raise that cow?”

  She jabbed her finger at my leather boots and started rattling off facts. “Too much! Enough water to float a destroyer. Not to mention twenty-five hundred pounds of corn, three hundred and fifty pounds of soybeans, and a ton of black market gasoline to haul all that crap around. And after all that, let’s not forget they murdered the innocent animal. All so you could strut around covered in skin while people in the cities starve.”

  Strut around? Maybe. Maya’s rhetoric was getting muddled in my drugged-out brain. Murdered animals, government bribes, starving people, the screwed-up environment. I wasn’t sure I got what she was saying, but what kept sticking in my mind were the news reports I’d seen of Pittsburgh. It was like a war zone there. Scared kids, gaunt faces, and all that anger. “They don’t have to stay there.”

  Disgust registered on Maya’s face. “Right. ’Cause I’m sure your Cooperative is throwing open its doors, offering to share its wealth. Just because there aren’t any fences keeping people in the cities doesn’t mean they have a choice.”

  Kel’s words echoed in my head: “Did they really think there was anywhere better to go?”

  I couldn’t process all this. My whole body ached from the day. Every inch of me was sticky from the heat. My muscles burned, bruises throbbed. I rubbed my hand.

  Was I imagining it? Or was it still sore from where Kel had touched me? A woozy feeling swept over me as I untied my boots. I shut my eyes and all I could see was Kel. The ache of his eyes cutting into me. The drugs were really kicking in now.

  I shoved the offending boots under my bed and searched my blurry mind for anything I could say to shut Maya up.

  “Um . . . sorry” was all that came out.

  “Save it for the cow.”

  I can’t take this. Not after today.

  I crawled into bed, and turned my face to the wall just as the room went dark.

  9

  THE FLOOR WAS GRITTY and hard under my body. Despite the stifling heat of the room, my teeth chattered. I wasn’t in bed, and my jumpsuit was soaked with sweat. I must’ve had one hell of a nightmare.

  The overhead lamp buzzed on and I covered my eyes, blocking out the gloomy fluorescent light. There was a steady shunk-shunk noise of bolts being unlocked, and a loudspeaker crackled on.

  “You girls have ten minutes to be in the shower room at the end of the hall,” Nurse’s pinched voice squawked through the intercom. “Anyone who’s late will be scrubbing out toilets during Free Time. Understood?”

  My hands. My hands were covered in red. Not a bright stop-sign red or an orangey clown red. It was the terrible brown red of blood. The whorls of my fingerprints stood bold against the deep crimson. I’d fallen out of bed before, lots of times, but this? This was new. What’s going on?

  I looked over at Maya’s bed, but she wasn’t in it. Instead, she was sprawled, unmoving, on the floor on the other side of the room. The same red smudged and streaked the floor between us.

  I stared down at my red hands.

  No. I couldn’t have. I crawled toward her, trying to make out the rise and fall of her chest. Daring myself to touch her foot. To wake her up. But I couldn’t make myself.

  “Tell me you’re not sitting there watching me sleep.”

  I choked back a yelp. Maya’s voice was muffled by her arm, but she was very much alive. “I’m going to count to sixty, and when I open my eyes, you’d better be gone.”

  I forced out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. I don’t know what I’ve done, but not that. Never that.

  Maya pushed herself up on one arm. “What the hell? Is this some kind of hazing?”

  She pushed the bushy hennaed hair out of her eyes. Her fingers left a smear of red across her face, and I saw, with a strange sense of relief, that Maya’s hands were also stained with red.

  “I woke up on the floor too. I don’t know what happened.” It was true, I didn’t know. But I also didn’t mention that the window was open a crack. Which was impossible, since they’d nailed it shut yesterday.

  Something happened to us last night. Something bad. I didn’t know if it was the drugs or this creepy school, but somehow, without either of us remembering, we’d gotten out of our sealed room. Or someone else had gotten in.

  Maya scrutinized me. But when I met her eyes, I saw that she was scared too. She twitched and dropped her gaze to the linoleum. Then, just as quickly, she stood up and circled around the red blotches on the floor. Her voice quivered just the tiniest bit. “What is it?”

  I’d thought they were just random smears, but there, in a sea of smudged red handprints, was a rough design. My lungs cinched tight as I asked myself the same question.

  The picture reminded me of something, but I couldn’t quite place it. The music I’d heard up on the roof drifted into my head.

  “Is it a bird, maybe?” Maya squinted down at the design and I saw what she meant.

  From this direction, it looked a little like the way kids draw birds flying through the air. A V-shaped body with two lines for wings coming out on either side.

  Tilting my head, I looked at it the other way around. “Maybe a mountain?”

  Or some sort of symbol? A chill of recognition gripped me. I tried to focus on the shape, but as I reached for it, the memory disintegrated. Like scraps of a nightmare in the morning sunshine.
>
  Footsteps smacked down the hallway. Girls running to the showers.

  “Whatever it is, we’d better clean it up. I don’t think they’d believe anything we said, even if we had an excuse to give them.” Maya stomped into the bathroom and turned on the sink.

  I hurried over to the window to shut it. A red handprint smeared the frame, and I laid my hand on top of it. A perfect match.

  Somehow I opened the window. Did I draw that symbol too? A hot breeze pushed its way through the narrow opening, carrying the smell of salt and dead fish. A silvery trickle of water spilled over the windowsill.

  No. No. No.

  For a second I stood frozen, watching the puddle growing on the floor. Shimmering against the pale linoleum. It’s all in your mind. Fear is just an illusion.

  Then I noticed a rusty nail lying on the floor. I spotted three more nearby, bent and tarnished. Nails that were no longer holding the window shut.

  Are the nails real? Is the handprint? How can I tell?

  That was the scariest part. Knowing that I wasn’t sure anymore.

  A freezing wave gushed through the window and into the room. I snatched the nails off the floor right before they got swept up in the ice-blue current.

  I squeezed my hand tight, feeling the heads of the nails pressing into my skin. They were real. I was real. But I had to find a way to control the water. Before I passed out again. Before Maya decided I was too messed up and reported me. Before I got pulled under.

  “I’m in control.” Blood rushed through my ears. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. I gripped the nails tighter, the points jabbing my palm. Even though the metal was corroded, I still felt its strength.

  “Fear is an illusion.”

  “Did you say something?” Maya called from the bathroom. Her voice was muted by the spit and splash of water frothing over the windowsill. Churning around my bare feet.

  I shivered and focused on the feel of the nails against my fingers. I stood taller, letting the cool steel anchor me to the here and now. “I’m in control.”

  Outside the window, a wave hovered on the horizon. The color of thunderclouds.

  My legs grew steady under me as I conjured images of massive bridges and impenetrable tanks. Hammers rang out against anvils, filling my head with their terrible noise. A strange exhilaration gripped me, and my skin burned. The taste of iron filled my mouth.

  “Fear is an illusion,” I whispered to myself, hurling the handful of nails out the window. Four shiny flecks of metal caught in the sunlight. A shower of silver tumbling to the ground.

  I’m in control. I closed my eyes and slammed the window shut.

  “Here.” Maya’s voice startled me. She stood there with a strange look on her face, holding out a damp clump of toilet paper. The water was gone. No more waves. No puddles. Only the red handprint broadcasting my guilt.

  I snatched the toilet paper from her and turned the print into a red smudge before Maya could make the same connection I had.

  While Maya worked on the floor, I went into the bathroom and turned on the faucet as hot as it would go. Dirty, bloodshot water spilled over my hands and swirled pink and gray down the drain. I longed for privacy. A bathroom with a door. A few minutes to pull myself together. But I didn’t have any of that. All I had was the minute or two left before we had to be in the showers.

  Hurrying, I scoured my already ragged cuticles and scraped at the red grit pushed deep under my fingernails. I scrubbed at my palms with the scalding water. But I could still see the stain.

  This isn’t going away.

  Maya squeezed around me in the tiny bathroom and flushed a clump of pink-tinged toilet paper. “I’m going. Don’t want to give them a reason to come in here.”

  I nodded, brushing dirt off the bottoms of my feet and raking my fingers through my tangled hair. Then I followed her down the hall.

  We made it to the showers with only seconds to spare. One other girl slipped in behind us, and I recognized her from the courtyard yesterday morning. Mohawk Girl. Nami, I think that was her name. She looked like she hadn’t gotten much sleep, and her blue spiky hair was smushed over to one side.

  The rest of the girls from the floor were already lined up outside the shower room. Dragon was there, gripping a stopwatch in her hand. Standing flush against the wall, I hoped to hide my stained hands and dirty feet. I was grateful there was only one dim hallway light.

  “We do this seven girls at a time. When it’s your turn, strip, put your dirty clothes in this basket, grab a toothbrush set, and go stand under a showerhead.” The Taker’s bark ricocheted down the narrow hallway. “Your morning routine has been designed by Dr. Mordoch as an exercise in efficiency. You will have exactly two minutes of water for showering and brushing your teeth. Use the soap dispensers on the walls for washing your hair and body. The plastic toothbrushes already have toothbrush powder on them.”

  I guessed that the timed showers had less to do with us learning efficiency and more to do with water rationing and the high price of heating it. Dragon clicked the stopwatch on and off, in rhythm with her staccato words.

  “At the end of the two minutes, you will have three minutes to towel off, put on new underwear and jumpsuits from the cabinet, and exit the room. At the end of the five-minute cycle, the showers will begin again with a new set of girls. The system is on a timer. There will be no exceptions or complaints. Any problem students will be assigned bathroom duty for the rest of the week. Is that clear?”

  I counted down the line. I was number nineteen of twenty. While the groups of girls filed in and out of the shower room, my thoughts went back to my fingerprints on the window.

  It seemed impossible. First of all, nails don’t just rust overnight. Second, no one could’ve gotten to the nails from outside the window. But then again, how could I have pulled them out? Not to mention balancing across that ledge, climbing down the ladder, and going wherever without remembering any of it.

  And what about Maya? Had she followed me?

  A shiver of fear played down my neck when I thought about the Takers all over Holbrook. What if we’d gotten caught? What if we did get caught and something happened? I looked down at my red hands again. Well, if something had happened to one of the guards last night, I was sure to hear about it soon enough.

  “I said, next group!” Dragon shoved me, and Maya and I stumbled into the shower room. I pulled off my clothes, plunging them as far down into the dirty-clothes basket as they would go so no one would see the mud on the cuffs. The smell of bleach and mildew made my empty stomach turn. I grabbed a toothbrush packet and splashed over the moist, salmon-colored tile to one of the spigots jetting out of the walls.

  Some of the other girls were embarrassed, their arms wrapped across their chests, shielding themselves. But standing next to me, Maya’s discomfort went deeper. Shame dragged at her thin body, her hands falling limp at her side. Like she didn’t even have enough strength to try to cover herself up.

  When the showers finally sputtered on, the tepid water was practically icy on my too-hot skin. The sudden temperature change made me giddy, and when I turned my head into the coolness, water rushed up my nose. Choking, I soaked my hair as fast as possible and pushed the lever of the metal dispenser on the wall. Horrible pink powder spewed out and instantly clumped on my damp hand. My long hair knotted as I tried to work the harsh soap through it.

  Across the room, Nami was singing her head off, her voice a sultry hybrid between a growl and a purr. Blue dye splashed against the walls as she flung her hair around to the beat. Does anything faze that girl?

  “Four minutes left!”

  I yanked my fingers through my tangled hair and a twig washed free, riding a current across the floor. It circled around and around the floor drain. Soap stung my eyes, but I ripped the plastic off the toothbrush and shoved it in my mouth. Maya muttered as her toothbrush slipped out of her hand and landed in a pool of congealed soap and hair. Over the sound of the water, I could only make out the words di
sposable fuck.

  “Three minutes!” Dragon shouted from the doorway.

  The showers trickled off again, leaving me with a mouthful of awful mint powder.

  I spit out the gritty paste and surveyed the carnage. There was soap in girls’ eyes, in their hair, globbed in gummy piles on the floor. A shrill whistle blasted in our ears.

  “Hustle, girls! Get dressed and get out.”

  We mobbed the basket of tiny, scratchy towels, trying desperately to mop off the crusty soap. I didn’t have time to be grossed out by the communal underwear cabinet. I just grabbed a dull gray pair out of the medium section, a pair of socks, and a stretchy exercise-looking bra, throwing them on with a fresh jumpsuit.

  “One minute and counting.”

  I raked a comb through my hair and stole a glance in the mirror. My skin was red from the abrasive soap, and dark half-moons hung under my eyes. Keep it together, Faye. You haven’t even made it to breakfast yet.

  Clumpy oatmeal and gritty orange drink didn’t improve anything either. At least there was no bacon, so Maya didn’t have to give a repeat performance of last night. Kel, Zach, and the Marine were already sitting at the table, decked out in lime-green jumpsuits. But Kel was still wearing fingerless gloves and the same hoodie pulled over his uniform.

  I took the seat I’d had at dinner the night before, between the Marine and Zach. Nami sat down on the other side of Zach. That solved the mystery of the empty chair. Despite her performance in the shower, Nami didn’t look so good. Her skin had a sallow tinge to it, and her strip of aquamarine hair was limp and clumped.

  No one else looked much better. Whatever Zach had been on yesterday had obviously worn off. Unfortunately, the zoned-out look was replaced by a kind of frenetic energy, his jittering hands and knees vibrating the whole table.