The Waking Dark

by Robin Wasserman

  Once Cass was awake enough to make it on her own, at least to the point of putting one foot in front of the other, Jule turned back. The screams had fallen silent. She crept quietly and, because it couldn’t hurt, she prayed.

  She got close enough to hear the murmurs of the Watchdogs. Through the branches she caught a glimpse of Ellie’s golden hair, and the stocky arm encircling it.

  “It’s all right, my child. You’re safe now,” the deacon’s voice said. “You’re with us now, child. All your sins will be forgiven.”

  There was a low complaint from one of the players, and the deacon boomed, “Not this one. Consider her under my protection. The Lord has plans for her.”

  Jule was caked in dirt, her hair matted with blood and sweat. Blood streamed from the wound on her cheek. It hurt to blink, it hurt to talk, it hurt to breathe. Baz would have killed her. She was sure of that, as sure as she’d been of anything. All those things he’d promised to do, make her scream, make her beg, make her hope and pray for death, he would have done, and then he would have slit her throat with her own knife. Baz would have killed her, but Ellie had rescued her, and now Jule was going to leave her behind.

  Jule couldn’t fight anymore. Not now, not while she was still bleeding, while Baz had her knife and her scent and the taste of her blood. She was too afraid to lose.

  She peered through the branches. Ellie was smiling. Deacon Barnes was nuts in his own special way, but Ellie was like his wayward child. He wouldn’t let the Watchdogs touch her. Not with the Lord watching. She was safe for the moment, Jule assured herself. Safe from Baz, safe with the deacon, who would keep her safe for his God. Jule could slip away with the semblance of a clear conscience. Ellie had saved her; the deacon had saved Ellie. Maybe this was how the day would continue, a chain reaction of unexpected gifts. A happy ending.

  None of you are safe here, the doctor had said, and Jule believed it. So maybe she should have known better.

  The shadows lengthened and the shouts quieted. Night was a bad time to search the woods and, as if one catch had satiated the hunger for the hunt, the Watchdogs faded away.

  Daniel and Milo had made it safely to the edge of the highway hours before. They crouched in the bushes, Milo’s pale moon of a face more pinched with worry than an eight-year-old’s should be, watching the soldiers who stood before them and the acres of woods that lay behind. There were shouts in the distance, and, more than once, he thought he heard a scream. What if they’d all gotten caught, or worse?

  What if he was the only one left?

  “I’m tired,” Milo whispered.

  Daniel shushed him.

  “But when can we go home?” Milo said.

  “I told you, we’re not going back.”

  “Ever?”

  “Ever.”

  “But what about Dad?”

  What about Dad, who – unless he managed to untie himself or, in his first brush with the kind of luck the universe had always denied him, attract the attention of someone willing to do the job for him – would languish in that shed indefinitely. But he’d be back before his father could starve to death, he told himself. If he made it back; if he made it out.

  There was no alternative. Milo was the important one. And if it came to the worst, he’d have to forgive Daniel for saving his life.

  Presumably, Daniel would find a way to forgive himself.

  He brought his finger to his lips. “Remember, quiet.”

  Beyond the woods, a barbed-wire fence stretched across the deserted highway. Two tanks awaited anyone foolish enough to venture over it, and before them stood armed soldiers, gas masks hiding their faces. Daniel couldn’t fight that. Not on his own, not with the others. If the doctor was wrong, if the soldiers wouldn’t let them cross… Daniel clung to Milo and thought about going back. He wouldn’t do it, not until he had to.

  He would wait. For as long as it took, he would wait.

  They trickled in one by one, first West, then the doctor, then Jule, half dragging a dazed-looking Cass. Daniel hugged the two girls, surprised by how relieved he was to see them. Milo hugged everyone.

  “Let’s do this thing,” Jule said. She was bleeding from a nasty cut across her cheek, but wouldn’t say what had happened. “I’m ready to get out of this hellhole.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for Ellie?” West asked.

  “Ellie’s not coming.”

  Daniel swallowed. “Is she…?”

  “The deacon showed up. He promised to protect her.”

  “And if he’s lying?” West said. “We should go back.” Daniel held Milo’s hand, wanting to believe Jule. Wanting to go forward.

  “She came for me,” Cass said softly.

  “And look where that got her,” Jule snapped. There was something in her face, in her voice. It reminded Daniel a little too much of the Jule who’d shown up on his doorstep the night before, and he wondered what had happened in the woods.

  “Enough,” the doctor said. “I’m going now. You want to go, it’s now or never.”

  They looked at each other, and Daniel wondered if the others were feeling it, the sense that the decision should be unanimous, as if they had somehow become part of a whole. Jule watched him, waiting – then, like a gift, nodded first. “I think we have to.”

  Daniel nodded, too, and Cass, her face bloodied and her eyes glazed, murmured something that sounded like agreement. West hung his head for a long moment, then, slowly, raised it. “We go,” he said.

  Daniel took Milo’s hand and started toward the highway, but Jule clamped down on his arm. “No. Let her go. We’ll watch from here. Where it’s safe.”

  “You’re safe with me,” the doctor said. “Trust me, I —” The snarl on Jule’s face stopped her cold. “Point taken.”

  This time, the doctor came through on her word. She strode out of the woods and faced the soldiers and the tanks, hands in the air.

  “No one passes through, ma’am,” the smallest soldier shouted to her. “You’ll have to go back. It’s for your own safety.”

  “I’m Dr. Cheryl Fiske. Access #78634. I’m inoculated. And I have Subject Four with me, along with four of the R8-G exposed carriers.”

  “That means nothing to me,” the soldier said.

  “I should hope not. Which is why you’re going to radio back to your base and ask them to put through Colonel Franklin. You tell him who I have and what I can deliver, and he’ll tell you what to do.” She spoke like someone used to giving orders, and the soldier was apparently enough used to following them that he did so.

  “Frying pan, meet fire,” Jule murmured.

  Lab rats, that’s what lay in store for them. Daniel had no illusions. Not the best way to begin a new life. But a way. Beyond the borders of Oleander, away from his father, away. And Milo had nothing scientists would care to study, which meant at least he would be safe.

  From their perch in the tall grass, they could see the soldier speaking into some kind of headset, nodding at whatever he heard. His voice carried on the wind.

  “Yes, sir. Dr. Fiske. Yes, sir.” He put down the radio for a moment. “He wants to know whether you’ve apprised anyone in the quarantine zone of the situation.”

  “No,” she said. The soldier relayed this to his superior. “But if I’m stuck in here any longer, I might have to.”

  “Understood,” the soldier said, and repeated this into the radio as well. “He wants to know about the subjects?” he added. “Where are they?”

  Daniel tensed.

  “Somewhere safe,” she said. “Waiting for my signal.”

  “And do they know about —”

  “They know what they needed to know,” she said. “Nothing more.”

  Daniel’s mind boggled at the prospect of more. What was left?

  The soldier put down the radio. “He says well done.” Then, almost casually, like scratching an itch, he raised his weapon and shot her in the head.

  Daniel’s hand was across Milo’s mouth before the shot’
s echoes faded away, just in time to muffle the boy’s scream. Cass was out again, either from shock or concussion. West was cartoonishly slack-jawed, and Jule grabbed Daniel’s forearm with a vise grip that seemed stronger and tighter than a girl her size should have been able to muster. He was glad of it, not just of the contact, but of the pain. It gave him something to focus on. Something other than the body on the ground with the hole in its head and the blood and… brain matter – was that what they called it on TV? – leaking away.

  The soldiers had already started rolling the body in a tarp. “We taking her back with us?” one of them called.

  “You heard her, she’s inoculated,” he said. “No use to us. Dump her in the woods.”

  They stayed very, very still. Daniel held Milo wrapped in his arms, trying to stop the boy’s trembling and warm his clammy skin. The soldiers dragged the body to the edge of the woods and, on the count of three, slung it into the trees.

  “Forty-eight hours on shift,” one complained. “Even Uncle Sam doesn’t make you do that kind of overtime.”

  “Uncle Sam doesn’t pay you enough to retire in the Caribbean,” the other said. “I’ll stick with GMT.”

  “I’ll tell you, though, I’m not going to miss this hellhole.”

  “Who would? These suckers would probably thank us if they knew. At least we’re putting them out of their misery.” They both laughed. “Two more days till final containment, and then it’s mai tais and bikinis from here to the horizon.”

  “Your ass is kind of big for a bikini.”

  “How many times I got to tell you, stop staring at my ass.”

  No one spoke until the soldiers – who apparently weren’t soldiers after all – had finished and retreated back to their side of the highway. No one spoke for a long time after that, not until they’d picked their way deep into the woods, away from the soldiers and the body already surrounded by flies. Not until they had come to terms with the fact that there was officially nowhere to go.

  “Final containment,” West said. Though his limp had gotten even worse, clearly paining him with every step, he’d insisted on carrying Cass. Daniel doubted unconsciousness and shallow breathing could be a good sign of anything, and vaguely remembered – again from TV – something about keeping concussion victims awake. But they couldn’t exactly take her to a hospital, and there seemed little to do for her otherwise but make sure she didn’t get left behind.

  One by one, Daniel thought, thinking of Ellie, who he didn’t know well enough to miss, but missed nonetheless. That’s how we’ll go. Till there’s nothing left.

  Milo had, somehow, fallen asleep in his arms.

  Small favors.

  “The whole town’s a laboratory,” Jule said. “An embarrassing one. You think GMT wants people to know what they did to us?”

  “I knew it couldn’t be the military,” West said. “The government wouldn’t do that.”

  “Yeah, big relief,” Jule said. “Because we’re much better off dealing with a massive defense contractor with all the money in the world and a huge incentive not to go to prison. You think they’re not going to do whatever they can to shut us all up?”

  “So they cut off the phone lines,” Daniel said.

  “Cut us off completely,” West said.

  “They wait,” Daniel said. “They watch.”

  “And when they’re done?” Jule mimed an explosion. “They put us out of our misery.”

  “They can’t just erase an entire town,” Daniel said. “That’s crazy. Even if anyone would do something like that – you don’t think people would notice?”

  “Who’d notice if Oleander wasn’t here?” Jule said.

  “They could blame it on the storm,” West said. “Maybe they already did. The whole world probably thinks we don’t exist.”

  “We could try to turn ourselves in,” Daniel said. “If we’re immune —”

  “If they cared, you don’t think they would have tried to get their hands on us before they put a hole through her brain?” Jule said.

  “We could go back,” West said. “Tell people what’s really happening.”

  “You want to try that?” Jule asked. “You want to go tell Mom and Dad they’re maybe evil and definitely about to get blown up by the fake U.S. government?”

  West didn’t answer.

  “Over at my place, that’s just another day,” she said. “But I still wouldn’t count on them not to shoot the messenger.”

  “We could hide out here,” West said, “but…”

  But in the morning, the Watchdogs would be back. And even if they survived another day, there would inevitably come another night, and then another morning, and how long could they survive in the woods, getting chased, getting hungry, foraging for berries none of them were equipped to identify or squirrels none of them were willing to eat. Long enough to last until a bomb dropped and ended all their problems at once?

  They hiked along the edge of the woods, searching for a weak spot, but the barbed wire stretched along the perimeter, dotted with what appeared to be motion detectors and cameras and nasty-looking wiring that suggested an electrified fence. If they were going to escape, it wouldn’t be here, and it wouldn’t be tonight.

  “She’s not breathing right.” West lowered Cass to the ground. Her breaths were too shallow and too few, with alarmingly long pauses in between. Daniel shook her and called her name, but her eyes stayed closed. Her forehead was hot to the touch. West wasn’t looking too good himself. And despite the sleeve she kept pressed to her wound, Jule was still bleeding.

  “We have to get out of the woods,” he said.

  “We can’t let them find us,” Jule said, a hard edge to her voice. “I won’t go back to… that.”

  “I think I know a place,” he said. They would have to make it back through town without being seen, and once there, they’d be stuck in the heart of the town they were so desperate to escape. Which wasn’t as daunting as the fact that they’d need to trust someone to keep their secret. Someone who was a child, and thus safe from the R8-G – but someone who was a child, who they had no reason to trust.

  But then, they had no reason to trust each other.

  “Somewhere no one would ever think to look for us,” he said.

  He didn’t say: Somewhere we’ll be safe.

  That seemed too much to ask.

  Grace was awake when the knock on the door came. She was nearly always awake these days. Sleep didn’t seem like something she deserved, not until she succeeded where she had failed, twice now. Not until Cass was gone.

  Her mistake, she decided, had been outsourcing the job to someone else, to a whole town of someone elses. That had been the coward’s way out. “If you want something done right…,” she murmured, from her makeshift bedroll beneath the crib. Do it yourself. That was her father’s voice echoing in her head, her father before Owen’s death, when he had talked too much, embarrassingly much, always spouting his shopworn words of wisdom, proud as if he’d coined the phrases himself.

  Do it yourself.

  When she was very small – older than Owen had been, but not much – her father had briefly convinced her he had magical powers. It wasn’t so much the coins he pulled from her ears or the thoughts he managed to successfully “read” (most of them about dessert) as it was her eagerness to believe that her father had powers commensurate with his wisdom. He seemed to know everything – so surely, if magic was possible in this world, if you could control events with your mind and predict the future and see through a face and into a soul, her father knew how to do it. And she’d been so desperate to believe she lived in that kind of world.

  He had turned out not to be omnipotent, or particularly potent at all.

  He had turned out not to know everything.

  But for a moment, when the knock came again and she swung the door open to reveal a bunch of teenagers on the doorstep, all of them smeared with dust and blood and fear, she was inclined to believe once again. She barely he
ard them explain what they were doing there, or beg for her mercy, or promise they had answers to all her questions and could reveal terrible things. It didn’t matter why they thought they had arrived at her house, because she knew the real reason. They had – she believed, she finally had to believe – been guided there. Because the football one was cradling a limp body in his hands, a limp body that was still breathing. It would, as directed by Grace, be carried up to the guest room and laid out on a bed, where it would wait for her, like a present, unable to defend itself. Where it would sleep like a baby, one might say.