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by Robison Wells

Page 5

 

  I turned away from the opening and laid one of the blankets—the thickest I could find—on top of the rough boards.

  None of this was supposed to be happening. This wasn’t what our escape was going to be like. We should have been running, not hiding.

  Harvard and Birdman were both on the bed now, with Mouse holding the cloth picture out of the way. They lifted Becky, and I gently pulled her in. I tried not to let her arm drag or pull too much on her shoulder, but it was an awkward move. My hand slipped off her wet sweater, and even though I caught her, the jolt caused her to gasp and groan.

  But she was in the Basement now. I put my hand on her forehead, which was red and hot. Her hair was wet with snow and sweat, and I brushed it away from her face.

  Jane climbed into the hole, a Ziploc bag of medical supplies in her hand.

  Birdman looked in after us, speaking to Jane. “We’re clearing out—need to make sure no one saw this. ”

  Jane nodded, and Birdman stepped down. I heard the bed scrape across the floor as he pushed it back into position. Mouse let the picture drop over the entrance.

  “There are vents that open up on each end, and one in the ceiling,” Jane said. She was obscured by the dark, but I could tell where she was pointing.

  I crawled to the end of the room and saw that the slit of light was a loose board. I pulled it out, creating a hole about a foot long and three inches tall. From here I could see the empty courtyard of the fort and the doors and walkway on the other side. Two girls were standing there, talking. I didn’t recognize them.

  Jane crawled to the other slit and removed that board. She spoke again before I did. Her voice was soft and pained. “I thought you died last night—both of you. ”

  She moved back to Becky’s unconscious body, but was looking at me.

  “What do you mean?”

  She forced a small, humorless laugh. “We can see some of the stuff our dupes—duplicates—do. ” She opened the bag, pulled out a pair of blue latex gloves, and began to untie the dark bandage around Becky’s upper arm. “The last time anyone saw you, Mason was running behind and then his dupe popped. We thought he killed you. ”

  “She fell on a log,” I said, suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. “It was a broken branch—stabbed her. ”

  “Tripped?” Jane asked hopefully.

  I shook my head, the images replaying in my mind. “Mason hit her, and she fell. ” It hurt to even say his name. He’d been my friend, my roommate. “Is he here, too?”

  She nodded. “But you have to understand. It’s not the Mason you knew. ” Jane raised the bandage on Becky’s arm to peer at the gash. “The one who … who did this—it isn’t him. Isn’t the real him. When he did this, it was after he popped. ”

  She pointed toward a cardboard box in the corner. “There should be a lantern in there. ”

  I dug through what looked like an emergency kit—matches, first-aid supplies, packets of crackers, a milk jug filled with water. Everything was covered in dust and grit.

  The lantern looked antique—glass with a cloth wick—but it didn’t seem too hard to figure out. I turned the handle to raise the wick like I’d seen her do minutes earlier, and then lit it with a match. A bright yellow flame flickered to life.

  “No electricity?” I asked, moving the lantern over to Jane.

  “Not here,” she said absently, her eyes focused on Becky’s bandage. “But there’s running water and lights in the washroom and commissary. ”

  “What’s the point of that?”

  Jane removed the last strip of cloth from Becky’s arm and looked up at me. “Gives us more work to do. Keeps us out of trouble. Idle hands and all that. ”

  In the full glow of the lantern, the gash looked bigger and deeper and far more violent than I’d remembered. It wasn’t a clean stab—the broken branch had torn into Becky’s muscle, ripping and tearing it. Her skin was caked with dried blood, but with the bandage removed the gash had begun to ooze again—dark red and thick.

  My stomach churned.

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  Jane bit her lip and moved the light closer.

  Somewhere a bell rang. It sounded like the old bells of the cathedral back home.

  Jane’s head popped up, and she looked into my eyes, terrified.

  “I need you to do something,” she said.

  “What?”

  “If I pass out, push me out of the hole and close it up again. ”

  I almost laughed, but I knew she was serious. “What do you mean?”

  “If you promise me you’ll do it,” she said, “I’ll stay and clean her arm. If not, I need to go. ”

  I nodded, though I didn’t understand what was going on. Jane immediately turned back to Becky.

  I wanted to watch, to make sure everything would be okay, but every time I looked at Becky’s arm I was overcome—with nausea, with panic, with guilt. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen.

  Jane was working fast, scrubbing out the dried blood, the splinters of broken wood, the dirt. Becky was stirring, unconscious but in pain. I was at her feet; the Basement was too narrow for me to get up to her head while Jane was at Becky’s side. The best I could do was lean across her, holding her good hand while Jane worked on the other arm.

  Jane paused, looking at my fingers intertwined with Becky’s, and then she focused again on the gash.

  “You’re going to need to rebandage this,” she said, still scrubbing, using a toothbrush that she’d doused with rubbing alcohol. “It’s bleeding a lot, but I think that’s a good sign. ”

  “What about gangrene?”

  “I don’t know. ”

  “Is it infected?”

  “I don’t know,” she said again, agitated. “I’m not a doctor. ”

  She set down the toothbrush and picked up a small silver packet.

  “What’s that?”

  Jane tore the top off and sprinkled a white powder onto the bare wound. “It comes with the supplies they send us. Good stuff. Amazing stuff. ”

  She laid a small piece of what looked like aluminum foil over the wound, and then opened a packet of gauze. She looked up at me. “Can you help?”

  I nodded and let go of Becky’s hand.

  “There are gloves in there,” she said, gesturing to the bag.

  The cloth over the entrance moved, and a face peeked in. Carrie.

  I froze. The last I’d seen Carrie she’d turned on us, taking the gun from Curtis and shooting Oakland in the chest. I remembered the drawings on the wall of the room below us. Three of Curtis. This must be Carrie’s room.

  This Carrie was human. The one at school was a robot. That didn’t help my nerves.

  She didn’t look at me. Her voice was timid and soft. “Birdman rang the bell. ”

  “I heard,” Jane said. “It’s okay. ”

  Carrie nodded grimly, and then let the cloth drop back into place.

  I pulled on the latex gloves. “What’s going on?”

  Jane kept her eyes down. She pulled Becky’s arm away from her body. “Can you hold it like this?”

  It didn’t seem like enough—there were no stitches, there was no surgery—but as I held Becky’s arm, Jane placed a thick gauze pad over the wound, and then gently began wrapping the soft white gauze around the arm.