Alive (12 page)

“Em, open your eyes.”

—can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe. I’m trapped in the dark in a coffin where no one will come save us and Mom and Dad
abandoned
us and left us to die left us alone, I have to—

Strong hands grip my shoulders.
Warm
hands, hands gritty with dirt and slick with sweat.

“Em,
calm down
.”

It’s Bishop, talking to me, holding me. I draw in a big, slow breath, and this time I feel the air go in deep.

“That’s better,” he says. “Now open your eyes.”

I didn’t even know they were closed. I open them, expecting endless, mind-numbing dark…and am surprised that there’s enough light to make out the shape of Bishop’s face. He’s close. Close enough to kiss.

He lets go of my shoulders. He points to his right.

At first I don’t understand what I see. It looks like a wall with hundreds of little bright spots, like tiny, glowing jewels. But it’s not a wall…it’s a mass of curved bars, twisting in and around each other. There is depth to it. The bright spots, they aren’t jewels…they are spaces, showing light coming from the other side.

Bishop walks to this strange wall. I follow him.

They aren’t bars…they are
plants
. Dead wooden stems with rough bark, each as thick as my wrist. Here and there I see a few brittle, brown leaves. Some withered stems grow along the floor, reaching into the room as if they sought sunlight, and, finding none, simply died.

I grab one of the curving plants, feel the rough bark against my skin. I give it an experimental shake. It barely moves. The stems have grown together, fused with each other into an impenetrable weave that might as well be a cage. The weave is so thick I can’t quite see all the way through it—whatever lies beyond looks like a big, brightly lit space.

“Bishop, what is this?”

He shakes his head. “I’m not sure. The word that comes to mind is
thicket
. Do you know that word?”

I don’t. It means nothing to me, the same way
pig
meant nothing to him.

Bishop kneels, hands exploring the stems. I see white spots among the brown. I kneel next to him and take a closer look. Some of the stems have been sliced through: the spots are pale wood that lies beneath the bark.

He touches a severed branch.

“I don’t get it,” he says. “If someone cut through this, why cut so low?”

That trip to the farm…something about that memory flares to life. A man…an old man, wearing a funny hat, talking to me. No, to
us,
to the class. Something about what a pig can eat…

“Not
cut
,” I say. “
Gnawed
. The pig did it, Bishop.”

As if to confirm what I said, Bishop reaches in a little farther, touches another gnawed bit of white wood. When he pulls his fingers back, there is blood on them.

We both see it at the same time. The gnawed branches outline a half-circle of empty space—a tunnel that leads deeper into the thicket.

Bishop looks at me.

“If the pig made it through, so can we,” he says.

He doesn’t ask for permission, doesn’t wait to hear what I think. He lies flat, and he starts in.

W
e crawl across dirt.

The little tunnel’s sticks scrape at my arms and shoulders, snag on my shirt and snarl in my hair. I didn’t realize that my ponytail has been coming apart. It’s hard to keep the hair out of my face. I must look like an even bigger mess than I thought.

Bishop struggles to crawl through. He’s much bigger than I am. The sharp edges tear into his bare skin. I’m behind him, his feet not far from my face. We’re both flat on our bellies. Twice I see him tangle in the thicket, gnawed wood stabbing into him, and I know the pain will make him turn back, but he snarls and growls, either forces his body through or uses the knife to cut away the offensive branches. He presses on.

He is big and fast and strong, but he is also
tough
. He doesn’t ignore pain as much as he endures it. He will not quit. The twelve-year-old me looks up to Bishop, wants to be like him in that way.

At any point since the vote, he could have taken the spear from me and claimed leadership. I couldn’t have stopped him, yet he hasn’t done that. He’s been true to his word.

Is he my friend? I feel that he is, and I am grateful for it.

When our torch went out, I thought the darkness would eat me up and swallow me down. But ahead of us, light, coming through the thicket. No, not just ahead of us—light filters down from above.

I stop crawling.

Plants…light.

Is it
day
light?

And that awful smell, the pig crap, it’s gone. The air here smells fresh and clean.

Have we made it? Is this the way out?

I scramble to catch up to Bishop. He’s grunting, forcing his way past another tangle. He wants through so badly he’s willing to pay for it in pain, in blood.

And I wonder: is blood the true cost of all things?

He crawls free and stands. I speed up, unable to control myself, feeling the cold dirt scrape against my belly and thighs. I try to rise too early and am rewarded with a small, jagged branch digging deep into my shoulder.

“Ow,
ow
!”

“Hold still for a second,” Bishop says. He snaps the branch off the thicket, then gently pulls the bit of wood out of my skin.

“Are you okay?”

If his expression wasn’t so serious, I’d think he was mocking me: bleeding scratches cover his shoulders, arms and face.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Thank you.”

He smiles.

I look out at a sea of green. Grass and trees, the first living things I have seen other than my friends and the pig. Then I glance up, and anguish overwhelms me. My heart cries out for someone to make it all stop, to finally
let us go
.

This is another room. Different, massive, but still a room: we are not outside.

The ceiling glows brightly. I have to shield my eyes to look at it. Unlike the hallways, the ceiling here is arched, as if we’re standing inside the end of a long, wide pipe. It curves high above. I doubt I could touch the top of it even if twenty of us stood on each other’s shoulders.

Thick groves of trees line the sides, reaching up to the bottom edges of the ceiling arch. On some of those trees, I see bits of color in different shapes.

It’s…it must be fruit.

Food
.

If we can eat it, we are saved.

Before us is a wide clearing of knee-high green that leads up to something just as beautiful as the fruit:
water
. It’s a spring bubbling up out of the ground, a sparkling, glorious, living jewel that rises as high as my face before tumbling down into tall reeds. The reeds run down the center of this room, a wide swath of them that is oddly rectangular in shape. At the far end of that rectangle, more grass, and beyond the grass, a line of trees that are so tall I can’t see past them, can’t see how far the arched roof goes.

“Food and water,” Bishop says. He looks at me, astonished. “Savage…you did it.”

I shake my head slowly. “But I didn’t get us
out
.”

“You will,” Bishop says. “I know you will.”

I look behind us. Here, the thicket is far different than it was in the dark room. Leaves cover it, making it look like a sloped, uneven blanket of deep green that lies comfortably under the shade of fruit trees. The thicket spreads left and right into the dense woods that line either side of this huge room. Through some spots, I can make out a stone wall.

We must have crawled through a hole in that wall.

Bishop stares at all of it, wide-eyed and smiling.

“This place, Savage…this place will keep us alive. We can rest.”

That word,
rest,
it triggers something inside me. I’m hungry, thirsty, and so tired. I haven’t slept since I came out of the coffin.

But I can’t rest yet.

“We need Spingate,” I say. “Maybe she can figure out if the fruit is safe to eat.”

Bishop shrugs. “If it’s not, does it really matter?”

He walks to a nearby tree dotted with blue, fist-sized fruits. He reaches up, pulls at one of them. The branch bends for a moment, then a stem snaps free and the branch springs back into place with a rattle of leaves.

I start to speak, to tell him to wait, but I say nothing. Bishop is right: if the food or water is poisonous, what difference does it make if we die from that or from starvation and thirst? I’m exhausted, drained. So is Bishop. So are the rest of our people. I’m not even sure if I have the strength to get back to them and bring them here. If we don’t eat and drink what we see before us, we’re finished anyway.

Bishop puts the blue fruit to his mouth. He bites down—it sounds crunchy. He chews. A bit of clear juice squirts out of his mouth, runs down his chin. He reaches up, snaps off another piece of fruit. With a wet smile, he offers it to me.

I take it. The fruit is firm and light, its surface cool to the touch.

Maybe it will kill me. If so, I don’t care.

I take a bite.

Flavors explode across my tongue:
sweet, cool, tangy
. I know that I have never,
ever
tasted anything this good. I chew madly as I take a second bite, then a third.

Bishop pops the last of his blue fruit into his mouth. His teeth crunch noisily on hard seeds even as he reaches for a different tree, a different fruit, one that is long and purple. Then he stops: something has caught his attention.

Knife in hand, he walks out into the knee-high grass. I see the deep scratches in his back, crisscross lines leaking blood. There are rips in his pants. I can see little glimpses of his thighs.

My face flushes hot, and I look away. His pants are the only clothes he has left. If those go, he’ll be naked. A grown man,
naked
. My stomach feels queasy, and I don’t think it’s from the fruit.

The grass seems to close in behind him. He bends, touches something, straightens, rubs his thumb and forefinger together.

I see redness on his fingertips.

He continues on, moves closer to the bubbling column of water. His limp is almost gone.

Finally, he stops. He stares down. He doesn’t have to call for me, because I know what’s there.

I walk to join him. The stiff grass feels sharp against my shins and knees.

Near Bishop’s feet, the pig lies on its side. Grass is flattened around it, pushed down by its body. In this bright, clear light, it’s like a different animal. Black fur gleams. Ears twitch, flicking this way and that as if the pig hopes to hear someone coming to save it.

Poor thing…there is no help in this place, something I’ve already learned.

Bishop’s spear throw opened up the animal’s thigh, an awful gash that makes me wonder how it could run at all. There is also a slash on its upper flank, a straight line that starts at the neck and ends past its shoulder.

That cut was mine.

Blood oozes across the black fur, blood that is littered with dirt and small sticks, dotted with crumbled leaves.

Yes…blood
is
the price of all things.

The pig’s ribs and stomach rise and fall in a ragged rhythm. Every breath in is a sucking snort, every breath out comes as a thin whine of misery. The pig’s legs twitch, like it would run away if it could just find the strength to rise again.

Worst of all are the animal’s eyes. They are brown with big, black pupils. They flick to me, to Bishop and back again, over and over. The wide eyes show obvious terror—they look almost human.

We stare at it for a moment.

“I had a dog,” Bishop says finally. “I can’t remember her name.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I simply nod.

“The pig is dying,” he says. His voice is small, quiet, not at all at home in a body his size. I understand why. This was a game to him. Now he’s looking at a frightened, exhausted, bleeding animal.

It’s not a game anymore.

Despite its wounds and the filth covering its fur, in this light, I find the pig beautiful. The wet nose, the wide eyes…if we had seen it here, in this clearing, running and scampering and full of life, would we have tried to kill it?

Part of me wants to say
Of course not,
but I know that part is from the little girl I used to be. Twelve-year-old Em—well-fed, well-rested,
safe
Em—would have wanted to make the pig a pet.

If I had understood how this hunt would end, I would have stopped it. We were hungry; now this animal will die in a place with more food than we could ever eat. This is awful. The pig did nothing to us.

“It’s in pain,” I say. “We have to help it.”

Bishop’s face is pale. He knew how to hunt; he didn’t realize what he would have to do when that hunt was over.

“We can’t help it,” he says. “It’s wounded real bad. It will be dead in a little while. Maybe an hour, maybe more.”

I shake my head. “That’s not what I meant by
help it,
Bishop. You have to end its suffering.”

He looks at me, a tortured expression on his face.

“You mean kill it
now
? Why? It’s going to die anyway. Why can’t we let it die?”

Why? Because I don’t need memories to know right from wrong. Because Bishop insisted on hunting this animal to exhaustion. Because if I was a better leader, I would have stopped him from hunting it in the first place. Because Latu was hurt and we should have stayed with her. Those and a hundred other reasons, but there is one reason that stands out above all others.

“Because it’s not
humane,
” I say.

The pig lets out a high-pitched whine. It tries to get up, but can’t.

I feel a cool tickle on my cheeks. I touch there, look at my fingers…
tears
. I couldn’t cry for Yong, but I can cry for a pig?

The knot in my chest is as hard and tangled as the branches we crawled through to get here. Just as sharp, just as jagged.

That voice in my head stirs, the one that said
Crying doesn’t fix anything,
the one that told me to
always attack
. It’s a man’s voice, swirling up from somewhere in my hidden memories.

It says,
Choices have consequences
.

The voice is right.

“You wanted to hunt it,” I say to Bishop. “So finish the hunt.”

He says nothing. The pig continues to whine, each small sound a pointy stick jabbing into my soul.

Knife shaking in his hand, Bishop kneels next to the pig. It tries to lift its head. Its hooves twitch—it wants to run because it knows what is coming, but it has nothing left with which to fight. Even now, with blood seeping onto the grass, this animal wants to live.

In that way, it is no different from us.

We know the pig can bite. Bishop isn’t taking any chances. His free hand shoots out, pinning the black furred head to the ground. Bishop leans forward, using his weight to hold the animal still. The pig squeals and grunts, breaths ripping in and out. The legs kick a little bit more, then it stops struggling.

Bishop presses the knife’s edge against the pig’s thick neck.

I wait.

I wait some more.

The pig’s eye looks up at me.

“It’s terrified,” I say softly. “It’s hurting. Please, finish this.”

The knife hand trembles.

I see the muscles in Bishop’s shoulders twitch and bunch up. He’s trying to cut, but his hand won’t obey.

He lets out a soft little moan.

Bishop knows how to hunt. He knows how to throw a spear. He knows how to hit people and how to yell and scream.

But he doesn’t know how to kill.

He lets go of the pig’s head and sits back on his heels.

The animal is still breathing. Each breath is a spasm of torment. I can’t let this continue.

“Give me the knife.”

Bishop’s head snaps up. He looks at me like I am a total stranger. “Just let it die on its own.”

I hold out my hand, palm up. “Give it. You’ve never killed anything before.”

Bishop stands. A wave of anger visibly washes over him. He leans toward me, trying to intimidate whether he knows he’s doing it or not, but his anger isn’t because of me—he’s frustrated, furious with himself, and will take it out on anyone or anything.

“No, I’ve never killed anything before,” he says. He sneers. “Have
you
?”

I look into his eyes, and I nod.

There is a moment of disbelief, then his anger drains away. He knows I am telling the truth.

“What did you kill?”

“A boy,” I say. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else, someone incapable of emotion. “His name was Yong. He attacked me.”

It was an accident, I didn’t mean to do it, he gave me no choice
.

Bishop is stunned. He is the biggest, he is the strongest, he is the loudest. And me, tiny little me, has done something to another human being he can’t even do to a wounded animal.

“You killed,” he says. “A
person.
You killed a person? You can’t…I don’t understand. But…
how
?”

While he stammers, the pig suffers. We’ve talked long enough.

I hold my hand out again.

“I killed him with that knife,” I say. “That’s how. Now give it here.”

He offers it to me. He forgets to do it hilt-first. I reach around the blade and take the knife from him.