BY LAUREN NICOLLE TAYLOR
Clean Teen Publishing
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Wall
Copyright © 2013 by: Lauren Nicolle Taylor
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address:
Clean Teen Publishing
PO Box 561326
The Colony, TX 75056
www.cleanteenpublishing.com
For my sister Kristen, your strength and courage were the inspiration.
Chapter 1: Waiting
Chapter 2: Hope
Chapter 3: Blood
Chapter 4: Gifts
Chapter 5: Gone
Chapter 6: Cal
Chapter 7: Wrong One
Chapter 8: My Heart
Chapter 9: Insights
Chapter 10: Recovery
Chapter 11: Reunion
Chapter 12: Collapse
Chapter 13: Tunnel
Chapter 14: Questions
Chapter 15: Farewell
Chapter 16: Spinning
Chapter 17: Music
Chapter 18: Walls
Chapter 19: Contained
Chapter 20: Saved
Chapter 21: Release
Chapter 22: The Black
Chapter 23: Home
Chapter 24: More
Chapter 25: Reminder
Chapter 26: Meeting
Chapter 27: Warning
Chapter 28: Not Yet
Chapter 29: Menace
Chapter 30: Wishful
Chapter 31: From His Eyes
Chapter 32: Resolved
Chapter 33: Fragile
Chapter 34: Facing
Chapter 35: Fire
Chapter 36: Agreement
Chapter 37: Healing
Chapter 38: Training
Chapter 39: Final Day
Chapter 40: Lies
Chapter 41: Beginning & Ending
Chapter 42: Goodbye
Chapter 43: Leaving Home
Chapter 44: Late Snow
Chapter 45: Feat
Chapter 46: Run
Chapter 47: Refuge
Chapter 48: Before the Storm
Chapter 49: Rescue
Chapter 50: Rescue Me
Chapter 51: Ghost
Acknowledgements
About the Author
You tell yourself, I won’t survive this. If one more bad thing happens, I will shrivel up and die. But there’s always something more you can take. Because what’s the alternative? Death? Death would be easy. Death would be boring too. I have too much to do, too many things to complete. Death clips my wings, leaving me stunted. An unfinished person with her legs half-buried in the ground. Yes, death would be easier. But living is what I have to do.
I was waiting for something to happen. Anything at all. Bad or good. But time continued on, soundless and dull. After everything we had been through, all the walking, and then the running. Dying. I was stuck in the mud—the more I wriggled, the deeper it pulled me in. I didn’t want to be this person, this pathetic wretch, so I fought it, my feet making sucking noises as I managed to pry one foot out, only to have the other foot sink deeper.
We sat like rounded pebbles at the bottom of the stream, uncomprehending. Not hearing because of the rabbling water overhead and only seeing a distorted, blurry version of the world above. We didn’t know where we were and why we were here.
People came in and people went out, and Joseph stayed the same like an epitaph to what could have been.
After a two-week break, Deshi returned on most days to lecture me. We argued. A lot. It didn’t take much to set me off. I was throttling for a fight. I needed somewhere for my frustration to go. Otherwise, I may have leaned over Joseph, lying in the bed next to me, and shaken him senseless.
Deshi brought Hessa to me, swinging him in the crook of one arm. He was a real child now. Aware. Sitting up with the aid of a pillow, blinking and grasping at things. And he smiled, a smile that broke my heart and rejuvenated it at the same time, because it was his mother’s.
As I watched them, so comfortable, so natural, I wondered what Clara would think of me now. I wanted to believe if things were different, if she were here, somehow, I would be different too. I could be the mother my baby deserved. But I was never like her and I never wanted this. I was drowning. I struggled with everything. Without her slender hand to hold onto, I was lost.
“How’s it all going?” Deshi observed me over the tip of his nose, disapprovingly. His dark face was perfect and thin, self-righteousness emitting from his dark eyes. He knew exactly how it was going.
“It’s hard,” I complained.
“You’re making it much harder than it needs to be.” He shook his head in disappointment. I peered into Deshi’s face. Joseph already had a light beard. Deshi’s face was smooth. He was a boy, I thought, unkindly.
“Being a mother doesn’t come as easily to me as it did to you,” I snapped, trying to upset him.
He raised his eyebrows and pushed his lips together in a fake pout. “If you’re trying to insinuate that I’m a woman, then I think you need to come up with something a bit more clever than that.”
I poked my tongue out at him. The corner of his mouth twisted up, just a little.
This was our relationship now. We bickered like an unhappy, married couple. But no matter how rude I was, he kept coming back. His love for Joseph, and his dissatisfaction in me, was motivation enough. He had the wrong idea. Forcing me was the wrong tactic. Making me feel guilty was superfluous. I already felt awful about it, all the time.
I leaned my cheek towards him, “Why don’t you just do it?”
Deshi raised his eyebrows in surprise, “Do what? I’m not going to be your surrogate Joseph!”
I blushed. He thought I was asking him to kiss me, which would fit with the married part of our scenario. “No. Slap me. I know you’ve wanted to since the day you met me.” I lowered my eyes. “Maybe even before that.”
Seriousness created pinched ridges along the top of his thin nose. Slowly, he brought back his arm, sweeping it through the air. I squeezed shut the eye closest to him, imagining it would feel like being slapped with a wet towel. It would sting, but wouldn’t have much force behind it. I felt a breeze, but when I looked up, his hand was hovering millimeters from my face, and then he dropped it into his lap.
“Don’t be stupid. I don’t want to slap you. I just want you to realize you can do this. With or without Joe, you will be able to do this. You don’t really have a choice.” He patted my arm awkwardly and stared longingly at the beautiful, sleeping man behind me. He missed him almost as much as I did.
I looked down at the new life in my arms. This rounded blob with simple but unending needs. I sighed. I knew the baby was part of me and, in some ways, I was more sorry about that than comforted. I knew I was supposed to be his mother. Things would be so much easier if it had just clicked, but it didn’t. I felt disconnected. I said I would try harder but the more I did, the worse I felt.
At night, when no one was around, I would climb into Joseph’s bed.
His face was scruffier now. A light beard touched his face. He was alive, his hair grew, his nails grew. He had a pink flush to his face. Blood was pumping, but not enough. I whispered into his ear, “Wake up, wake up, wake up,” over and over. But he never did. Sometimes I envisioned punching him, straddling his ch
est and hitting him over and over until I had startled him out of his sleeping state. That was when I truly wondered if there was something seriously wrong with me, something more than defective.
One night, I turned the light on above his bed and crept over, the glow of his life-support machines illuminating my face and hands in reds and blues. I bit my lip and let out a breath through my nose. I just wanted to see them. I needed to see that green, with flecks of gold in it. I gently peeled back one of his eyelids, but his eyes retreated. I tried the other one, so frustrated, so ashamed of the way I was behaving. I didn’t hear the footsteps coming towards me until a hand was on my back. Matthew.
“Ahem,” he coughed, but I could sense there was a laugh in the back of his throat. “You won’t be able to wake him up like that.”
I scrambled back off the bed and stood, looking up at him, my hands behind my back like a naughty child. “I... I know... I just wanted to see him, see his eyes, just for a second.”
He nodded. Of everyone here, he had been the most patient with me. He wasn’t judgmental; he didn’t force the baby on me like Deshi. He understood I needed time.
My eyes flitted to the door. I had requested they move the baby into the room opposite mine so I could go in there at night, to feed him or attempt to comfort him. It was difficult. Every now and then, a feeling would start to rise inside me. I jumped on it, trying to trap it like a mouse that had run across the floor. But every time I thought I had it, it wriggled out of my hands and disappeared down a crack in the floorboards.
Matthew interrupted my thoughts saying, “Actually, Rosa, I’m glad you’re up. I was hoping you might join us tonight. We need to discuss something with you.”
His face was casual but his tone was serious. I nodded my head and followed him, not bothering with shoes—the cold floor kept me alert. The baby cried out just as we passed his doorway.
“You can bring him with you,” Matthew said.
“Ok. Umm, Matthew?” I said, blood rushing to my face. I wanted to say something, but it was difficult. My instant reaction to things was always suspicion, defensiveness. But these people took us in and I was grateful for that. I didn’t understand it but I was grateful.
“Yes.”
“Can I say thank you?”
“Yes,” he said, amusement tickling his tone.
“I mean, thank you. You could have left us to die. But you rescued us. We would all be dead if it wasn’t for you and the others.”
Matthew stared down at me with an unnerving, determined expression.
“It is our responsibility. Our duty.” Shaded memories of Class rules echoed in my head, and then he said, patting my pointy shoulder gently, “Rosa, this is what people should do for each other.”
I supposed he was right, but selflessness was not big in the Woodlands. It was microscopic.
He resumed his casual demeanor and leaned against the doorframe, waiting. I fumbled around in the dark, trying to find the blanket I usually wrapped the baby in. Giving up, I just pulled the crying child out of the cot and put him on my shoulder. He started to calm. Despite my ill treatment of him, he always wanted my presence. Soon, I could hear his breath slipping into a dozy rhythm.
I followed Matthew down the corridor, still not used to the quiet. There were no trees rustling, no animals disturbing twigs as they padded along the earth. Sound was swallowed here. Like the place was designed to absorb it.
Matthew told me the Russians built it. A contingency plan in case the Woodlands didn’t succeed. They hid people here during the time when the Superiors were ‘cleansing’ the earth of the remaining occupants. Cleansing. What a word. Like scrubbing dirty laundry, like the earth was refreshed and sparkling clean from all that death. It made my stomach twist in dark nausea.
The dwelling had provisions, cleverly hidden solar power, and enough space to survive for at least one generation.
But as the Woodlands became a success, the Russians on the outside, the ones originally settled in Birchton and Radiata, abandoned the people inside. They locked them in and left them to die. Powerful cowards. They couldn’t even kill them; they shut the door and walked away like somehow, they could pretend it was never there. Squeezing my eyes shut, I pictured the people drumming on the doors, trying to get out, their screams bouncing back on themselves like a loop of never-ending pain.
I shook my head in disbelief. “I don’t understand—why didn’t they try to get out when they realized they were locked in?”
Matthew frowned. “They didn’t know. Not at first. The orders, as far as they knew, were to stay underground for one generation. They fulfilled their mission but by then, it was too late. They were locked in, they had run out of supplies, and foolishly they sat and waited for the Russians to come back. Even when some decided they’d waited long enough, they were locked up and punished. By the time they had accepted that they had been abandoned, most were too weak from starvation and dehydration, so that only a handful of people were strong enough to tunnel out. Even then, there were several failed attempts and collapses before they succeeded.”
“Jeez, they shouldn’t have waited so long,” I said, tucking a strand of wild hair behind my ear.
“You, of all people, should understand the power of orders and rules. People follow; they don’t think they have a choice. Sometimes the threat of certain death is the only thing stronger than the fear of your superior,” he said tiredly.
He was right. I did understand. I looked at the floor. “Sorry. I do. Understand, I mean.”
He shrugged. “It’s all right, Rosa. Luckily for us, after two-hundred and fifty years of Superior rule, records of this place appear to have been lost. And lucky for me, some of them did get out, or I wouldn’t be here,” he said, smiling sadly.
I cast my eyes around the hollowed-out hill. Now it was like a tomb. A reminder of where we started and how far we had come, which was not very far.
Matthew turned to me as we walked. “Have you been outside lately?”
I shook my head. I barely left Joseph’s bedside. He knew that.
“The snow is starting to get heavier now.”
“Hmm,” I murmured absently.
I pictured our little cabin with a thick blanket of snow on its roof and smoke coming out of the chimney. My heart squeezed and then a little sliver slid off. We were such idiots, coming from where we had, to think we could make a life out here. Our knowledge was so limited. I should have known better. I clenched my fist, feeling like I could punch something. But there was a baby on my shoulder so I settled for digging my nails into my palms.
I wondered where this was leading. I knew that this was not the Survivors’ home. When I had asked about it, Matthew had been a bit closed off. He dodged my questions, smiled, and said, ‘Oh, you’ll see soon enough’. We had been here for six weeks. Maybe it was time to move? I half-hoped so. I hated being underground. It felt like we had gone backwards. It hurt me in an unexplainable way that my child had been born down here, unlike Hessa, whose first experiences had been stars, firelight, and swaying trees. My baby was born under fluorescent lights. It angered me that part of what was planned for him by the Superiors had come true, in a way. I resolved to take him outside and show him the trees.
After several unnaturally shallow footsteps, we arrived at our destination. A strong shaft of light streamed out of the doorway, along with smells of food, coffee, and the whisper of hushed conversations.
We walked in and everyone looked up at me from their cups and meals. I knew what they were thinking. There’s that poor girl who lost her love and rejected her baby like a broken animal. How damaged she must be. I tried to stop myself from glaring. I then registered the shame on their faces as I glared at each and every one of them anyway. Apella was there, as well as Alexei, Deshi, and five other people I didn’t recognize. Careen was absent. They offered me coffee, which I declined. It kept me and the baby up. Apella also declined. She looked green, covering her mouth while waving away imaginary smells
from her nose. She was suffering from nausea with her pregnancy. I took a sick kind of satisfaction in it. It shouldn’t be easy for her.
Matthew sat down and I sat next to him, feeling eyes on me the whole time. A man spoke first. He was older, maybe fifty, with grey hair and a full beard. He was thin and wiry, like everyone here. He seemed to be the leader. I scanned the others at the table. They all looked like survivors, quite literally, like they had come out of the forest swinging axes, with dead rabbits hanging over their shoulders. It clashed so humorously with the way they were sitting, hands clasped with serious expressions in a carved-out, metal-clad room, small, shiny readers in their hands, the screens illuminating their faces. Like technological cavemen. It was a world away from Pau, the Classes, everything.
“We need to talk about the move,” he said, his voice deep and scratchy, full of authority. “We’ve already stayed longer than we should have. The diversions we have set up are running out. They will turn around soon. The boy has not woken. One has already left with the first group.” So that’s where Careen was—nice of her to say goodbye. “I think we have to make a decision sooner rather than later, before we get trapped here, under meters of snow.”
I leaned into the table, squishing my poor child against the metal rim. He squeaked, and I eased off. Anger was bubbling up. The boy? He had a name. Matthew put his hand on my shoulder and pulled me back, gently. Across the table, Deshi had the same offended look in his eyes.
“I hear you, Gus. But we can’t move him like this. The life support is not portable. Can you give me a few more days? There is one thing I haven’t tried,” Matthew said evenly.
Everyone shifted in their chairs. The metal legs screeching on the stone floor made my teeth ache. They were waiting for the bearded man to speak. One woman looked bored, rolling her eyes and looking longingly at the door. Get out, I thought. If this doesn’t interest you—why are you here? Gus stared at his nails; they were caked with forest floor. I inhaled deeply, trying to calm myself. I could almost smell the layered leaves, the decomposing matter that held such richness and life. Gus picked at his nails and flicked a bit of scum onto the stone. Mulling.
The Wall (The Woodlands) Page 1
