A Single Light

by Tosca Lee

  Piper groans as Jax sits back on the floor, rocking her.

  “Baby,” he cries. “What did you do?”

  By the time Rima rushes into the room, it’s too late.

  We are no longer sixty-three, but sixty-two.

  DAY 73

  * * *

  We have nowhere to bury a dead body.

  The next morning, we wrap Braden in plastic and prop him up in the back of the kitchen’s walk-in freezer as Reverend Carolyn says a few words.

  “I’ll never eat anything that comes out of there again,” Julie murmurs as the Reverend leads us in prayer.

  But now there’s the question of what to do about Piper, who spent the day locked in a custodial closet.

  “She can’t just roam free!” Nelise says that night. “God knows what she might do next, and I don’t trust him.” She points to Jax, pacing off to the side.

  Piper sits in a chair brought in from the library, cleaned up and eerily quiet, her hair drying in ropy strands, bound hands resting in her lap.

  Jax stops. “He had a knife to my wife’s throat!”

  “How do we know that kook didn’t damage the door in his attempt to get it open? That he hasn’t killed us all?” Rudy demands.

  “From what I can tell, it’s fine,” Micah says.

  “How do you know?” Rima asks.

  “I don’t. But it doesn’t look damaged.”

  “It was self-defense,” Jax says. He turns to Preston, and then to Chase “You saw! He was raving. He would have killed her!”

  “No,” I say, my voice garnering surprised glances. “He wouldn’t have. Because he was out cold. Your wife stabbed an unconscious man in the neck. And I do not want her around my niece—or any child.”

  “She needs to be locked up!” Nelise says.

  “Noah thought of many things,” Chase says. “But a jail isn’t one of them.”

  “I suppose we could rig something up,” Irwin, the former hospice center janitor, says.

  “She was sleeping with him,” someone blurts out.

  Heads turn in the direction of the voice, seeking the person it came from.

  Delaney.

  The room goes still.

  “Uh . . .” Preston says awkwardly.

  “Your wife,” Delaney says, staring point-blank at Jax. “Was sleeping with Braden.”

  Jax comes to stand beside his wife. “That is a lie!”

  Piper stares at her lap.

  “It isn’t true,” Jax says. He crouches down and takes Piper’s hands. “Baby, you have to tell them.” When she doesn’t respond, he looks desperately around the room and stops at me. “What about her?” he says, pointing.

  “What about her?” Chase says.

  “She tried to kill my wife!” Jax says.

  “Jax,” Chase says and shakes his head as though to say just don’t.

  “It’s true,” Micah says, turning to regard me. “She could have killed Piper.”

  “Have you lost your ever-lovin’ mind?” Julie says.

  “Hold up,” Chase growls, getting to his feet. “Piper killed Braden. She stabbed him in the back of the neck. We’re all clear on that, right? And she took a swing at me before Wynter neutralized her the only way she could have. What part of that did you not see?”

  “I said it’s true that she could have,” Micah says. Preston gives him a sidelong glance.

  “Oh. So you’re just being an ass,” Chase says. “I get it.”

  “I’m saying it’s possible she might have had a vendetta against Piper.”

  “What?” I give a harsh laugh.

  “She’s openly flirted with Chase for weeks,” Micah says.

  I roll my eyes. “Everyone flirts with Chase. Including you.”

  “How do you know she hasn’t given my wife permanent brain damage!” Jax yells, throwing a hand out toward Piper. “Look at her. Does she seem right to you?”

  “She never seemed right to me,” Sha’Neal mutters.

  “I examined her,” Rima says. “She’s traumatized and likely has a concussion, but she’ll be fine.”

  “A person can’t be held responsible for damage they may cause stopping a killer,” Karam says and turns to me. “You did the right thing.”

  “I agree,” Ezra says. “We’re all here for one reason: survival.”

  “The way I see it, anyone who robs another member of that doesn’t deserve to survive themselves,” Rudy Bryant, CLU, says, pointing at Piper.

  “Hear hear!” Nelise says.

  “Wait, what?” Julie says, looking at them like they’re both crazy. “You can’t be serious.”

  Nelise straightens. “If it means protecting the rest of us—”

  “If you’re saying what I think you are, you’re talking about murder!”

  “Not murder. Justice,” Rudy says.

  Reverend Carolyn gets to her feet. “And who’s going to carry that out?” she says angrily. “You?”

  “Whoa!” Chase says. “We are not having this conversation.”

  “I think all options deserve to be on the table,” Rudy says. “Maybe there’s a reason Noah didn’t build a jail.”

  “Because he believed better of us!” I say, stunned we’re even talking about this.

  “We’re already past that,” Rudy says. “There’s a murderer among us!”

  I feel the color drain from my face, and it takes me a minute to realize he isn’t referring to me. By which time he’s involved in a heated debate with Delaney.

  “Let’s all take a deep breath,” Preston says. “Irwin, how long before you can rig up some kind of holding cell?”

  “Few hours?” he says, looking around uncertainly. “Day at most.”

  “I propose Irwin and his crew get to work and we let the authorities deal with Piper when we get out.”

  Ezra barks a laugh. “Authorities? What authorities? No one’s going to be prosecuting anyone for crimes that happened during the blackout for a long, long time.”

  “Then we let Noah decide,” I say. “If he wants to turn Piper out based on what she did, it’s up to him. His silo, his decision. Can we all agree on that?”

  “Turn her out to—what? Hurt someone else?” Karam says, raising his palms. “I’m not advocating for capital punishment here. I’m just saying that seems irresponsible on our part.”

  “We don’t even know if Noah’s alive,” Rudy says.

  “I promise I’ll look after her,” Jax says. “I’ll never leave her side. She won’t harm a soul.”

  “She already has!” Nelise says.

  “There’s only one moral choice here,” Julie says, as though not believing her ears. “Separate her from the rest of us for our safety and that of our children. And then decide what to do after Open Day based on what we know then.”

  “Obviously your morality and Rudy’s are completely different,” Micah says.

  “Well he’s wrong!”

  “I say we take it to a vote,” Rudy says, crossing his arms.

  “Fine,” Julie says, angrily. “Then let’s get this over with. All in favor of jail?”

  Chase, Preston, and I raise our hands, as do Delaney and a dozen and a half more.

  A few others hesitate.

  “Are you kidding me?” Julie shouts at them. “What is wrong with you?”

  “What if the doors don’t open on time?” Ivy, our resident barber, says. “We’ll need the extra rations. Has no one noticed that there’s sixty-three of us—”

  “Sixty-two,” Micah says.

  “That there were sixty-three,” she says, ignoring him, “but there are only beds for sixty? That when we reassigned quarters to make room for the new arrivals, two children ended up with makeshift cots?” She looks at me.

  “What are you getting at?” I challenge. But even as I say it, I realize she’s right; Truly has never had her own bed, having slept with Lauren since we left quarantine, where she slept with me.

  “This ark was only designed for sixty,” she says. �
�Sixty beds. Rations for sixty.”

  Delaney hesitates. “True—but the gardens are producing more than expected. Isn’t that right, Nelise?”

  The other woman doesn’t respond.

  “We also have more meat because of Jax. Plenty to get to Open Day. For all of us.”

  “That’s right!” Jax says. “I’ve fed you all. You owe us!”

  “I’ve got a kid, too,” Sabine, who works kitchen prep, says. “And you might say that Piper will never be able to harm anyone else, but I can’t take that chance. I won’t.”

  I sit forward. “Sabine. That is not what I—”

  “We’ll assign a guard,” Chase says. “Piper won’t escape.”

  “I’ll do it. I volunteer,” Reverend Carolyn says. “Sabine, I promise Evie will be safe.”

  Sabine sits back. “Sorry.”

  “I’m just curious, how are you planning to explain two missing people to your daughter?” Julie says.

  “I’ll say they died.”

  “If we go down this road,” Chase says, “we will not come back.”

  “Can you at least give this decision a few days?” I say. “We’re all in shock. Everyone’s afraid—for themselves, for their children, about what’s going on above us . . .”

  “For God’s sake,” Julie says. “We’re talking about a life!”

  “No,” Ivy says. “We’re talking about sixty-one lives, including eight children. We can’t afford to live with a killer among us.”

  “Just give this a week. She’ll be locked up and under guard,” Preston says. “You have my guarantee.”

  “What’s a week, if we know we’re safe?” Delaney says.

  “Seven days I won’t let my daughter out of my sight,” Sabine says. “That’s what it is.”

  “It’s nothing until she kills someone else,” Nelise says. “Or it takes us an extra month to find a way out because the door won’t open and there is no food. We still don’t know what Braden did to the door!”

  “Three days!” Reverend Carolyn says, trying to speak over the others. But no one’s listening.

  “Three days!” Chase shouts. “If only to prove this isn’t a lynch mob!”

  “Why should she get three days?” Nelise says. “Braden didn’t.”

  “Not for her,” I say. “For you. So you don’t do something you’ll regret!”

  But it’s too late; their minds are made up.

  “All in favor?” Rudy says, his baritone carrying throughout the room.

  I stare around us in disbelief as hands raise, one by one.

  Piper’s, last of all.

  “I killed him,” she says simply, her voice strange. “I wanted him dead.”

  “No,” Jax cries, gathering her in his arms, his sobs tearing at my heart. “No!”

  • • •

  MY MIND IS still reeling when Chase pulls me aside in the tunnel after the others have gone below. Even from here I can hear Jax pleading, his choked words drifting up the spiral staircase of the silo’s upper levels.

  “What have I done?” Chase whispers, eyes wild, fingers digging in his hair.

  “What do you mean? You had no idea what she was going to say!” Piper had gone on at length after the vote about how Braden had grown increasingly unstable and threatened to tell Jax about them when she tried to break it off—and then threatened to hurt Jax when she said she’d tell him herself. In the end, he’d snapped, and so had she. She’d recounted it all in that same detached tone after the vote, her expression distant and childlike at once as Jax covered his face and wept, rocking where he sat. “Chase, it isn’t your fau—”

  “I said your name!” he hisses.

  I blink. “What?”

  “When I was refuting that ridiculous claim that you tried to kill Piper. I didn’t even realize until after I’d said it. I called you ‘Wynter’!”

  “Are you sure?” I ask, thinking back through that horrible debate. Because I didn’t notice.

  “Yes.” He turns away with a curse. Slams a fist against the tunnel wall.

  “Stop,” I say. I’ve never seen him like this. “Come on. How many people who actually heard the broadcast would even remember my name? Especially in the middle of a conversation like that?”

  He lowers his head and shakes it. “I hope you’re right.”

  • • •

  THAT NIGHT WE watch in horror as Ezra and Rudy walk Piper into the freezer, zip-tie her hands to a shelf post, and leave her, shutting the door behind them.

  It’s too quiet. Too peaceful. Too painless for those who demanded it.

  On the way down to the chain-link pen cleared in storage for Jax’s “well-being and observation”—meaning the peace of mind of those afraid to sleep around him—Jax breaks free of his escort, flees up the stairs to the kitchen freezer, and jams the latch from inside.

  DAY 74

  * * *

  The lies we tell ourselves.

  That we’re civilized. That we are sane.

  This place was supposed to protect us. But concrete walls cannot keep out the fear infecting the ark with its own form of lunacy.

  The maintenance crew works feverishly for hours to get the freezer open.

  By which time we’re down to sixty.

  DAY 81

  * * *

  It’s storming in the atrium, a dark bank of clouds on the ceiling pelting the LED meadow with rain. Except for a dead patch of pixels the size of someone’s head on the right side of the screen. It’s less obvious in the storm, but shows up in stark relief with each flash of silent lightning.

  I’ve quit coming up here in the morning, when the sun rises promptly at 5:19. The real sun doesn’t rise this time of year until 7:00, and then not as a molten orb but a wan disk against the late winter sky. I used to think of this room as a fake window to the real outside. But now I know it isn’t a window at all—just a lie on a repeating loop.

  I’m sick of the blue sky and flowing grasses. The butterfly that appears for exactly fifteen minutes every sunny afternoon. The stupid bee with the same route through the same white and purple flowers. The rain is the closest thing to the snow I imagine above us blanketing the lunatic world white. I miss the drifts, the smell of wood fires, the ice storms that turn trees into standing chandeliers.

  By now, every infected person I encountered before we came down here is probably dead. And many of those infected since then are, too.

  I finish outlining the week’s lessons and glance over at Truly, asleep on the sofa next to me beneath the churning clouds.

  It’s four o’clock. The younger kids are napping after school as work shifts break until dinner.

  Two nights ago Chase and I argued. He said he’d seen Micah and the others talking. That they fell silent whenever they saw him.

  I know what that feels like.

  “Why’d you and your fiancée break up?” I had asked.

  He blinked at me as though I were mental.

  “Don’t you think we have more important things to talk about?” He was planning to confront the others, to get them alone. Threaten them if he had to.

  “No. Promise you won’t,” I said. I told him the best thing he could do was be predictable. Dependable. And barring that, invisible.

  “That isn’t the Wynter I know,” he said, searching my face as though for a trace of someone else.

  I gave a harsh laugh. “Wow. Really? Three whole months and you know me?” I said, irritated that he wouldn’t answer my question about his fiancée. Two months ago, we’d told each other everything.

  Or so I thought.

  “Better than most people, yeah. Maybe better, even, than you do.”

  “Then you’d know I spent fifteen years of my life living behind walls like this.”

  “It wasn’t living, Wynter,” he said, shaking his head in a way that only made me angry.

  “No,” I said. “But it’s how I survived.”

  We haven’t spoken since.

  I glance at Truly, unw
illing to wake her. Brush away the tendril of fine hair matted to her forehead. She’s always been a sweaty sleeper. And is the only thing down here that makes me wish time would stop, or at least slow to a crawl.

  “You know, when Micah told me . . .” someone says from across the room. I jerk, startled, and glance up to find Preston standing near the tunnel. I hadn’t heard him come through. “I didn’t believe him.”

  Something about the way he’s moving . . . Too carefully.

  “Told you what?” I say as Truly murmurs and rolls over, roused by my sudden movement.

  “That Noah’s harboring a fugitive.”

  “What?”

  “But then, this is no news to you, is it?” he says, coming toward me as two more figures emerge from the tunnel behind him.

  Karam.

  And Micah, carrying a phone.

  I get to my feet, pulse ratcheting. Position myself between him and Truly.

  “I don’t have any better idea what Noah’s doing right now than you do,” I snap.

  Micah tosses me the phone—an object most people down here, Julie and Lauren included, cling to for the solace of their playlists, videos, and photos. Some even have movies stored on them that they trade with others.

  But when I look, there’s no playlist or movies on the screen. Instead, a news article with a photo that never loaded, an error message in its place.

  MURDER SUSPECT DISAPPEARS WITH PROMISING RESEARCH

  It’s dated December 6.

  Chase was right.

  “It’s the last news that ever got pushed to this phone,” Micah says.

  “Okay . . . ?” I say, forcing my shoulders to shrug.

  “What do you have to say about that?” Preston asks.

  “Preston, I have no idea what you’re talking about and I’m busy planning school for our kids,” I say, indicating Micah and me with one hand as I thumb the article closed with the other, knowing it cannot reload.

  “I think your teaching time is over,” Karam says, looking not at all pleased to be involved in this conversation until he tilts his head, gaze fixed on something behind me. “Hello, Truly. How was your nap?”

  I whirl around to find her sitting up, hair mussed, looking from me to Micah.