Half Lives (41 page)

If I marked the mountain in some way, would others be curious? Think this place was special? Wonder if it held treasures? I thought of all the Egyptian ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs –
the threats of curses – that hadn’t stopped anyone from entering sacred tombs and looting the treasures. Modern-day museums were filled with Egyptian relics that were never supposed to
have been uncovered. Locked doors and ‘keep out’ signs sometimes tempt rather than repel. How could I ever convince future civilizations that what was buried in this mountain was
deadly, not special?

I felt powerless. There was nothing I could do or say. This poison would continue to kill forever. My body tensed and a scream started at the tips of my toes and jolted through my body,
gathering momentum and volume. A primal scream erupted from me and filled the space. I hoped somehow it would embed in the rock.

Then I did something I hadn’t done since we entered the tunnels: I prayed. I prayed to any god that was listening. I prayed to the ghosts that might be lingering and any angels watching
over me. I prayed to anyone who was still breathing in any far corner of whatever was left of my world and to those who had passed on. I asked for Chaske to be spared. I asked that they guard this
place of death and keep the living away.

I wished I had explosives to collapse the tunnels. But even that didn’t seem enough.

I filled Chaske’s backpack with our remaining food and hauled jugs of water outside. I kept Chaske’s copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
, but left
Godot
behind. Samuel
Beckett might be right about the absurdity and futility of it all, but I didn’t need the reminder. I dragged Tate’s body, wrapped in the sleeping bag, and laid it parallel to the
zombie’s decaying corpse. It wasn’t easy, but I couldn’t bear the thought of him back so close to the poison that killed him.

I took one final look at this place that had somehow grown to be my home. I felt no nostalgia. I didn’t know if this place had saved or killed me. I locked the door. I used Tate’s
pocket-knife to scratch the symbol for radioactivity in the door. I scribbled those lines over and over. Would it even mean anything to anybody in a few hundred years? But it was something;
something was better than nothing.

By the time I resurfaced the sun was setting. I built a fire and snuggled up to Chaske for the night. We were finally warm. I’d thought I’d never be warm again. Chaske and I split an
MRE, but this time we warmed it over the fire. I fed him as best I could. We both needed to keep our strength up.

‘Do you think it’s smart to have the fire?’ Chaske asked. He didn’t have the energy to open his eyes. ‘What if someone sees it?’

‘What can anyone do to us now?’

He rested his head on my shoulder and fell sound asleep. I lost myself in the crackling of the fire and the dancing orange flames. It was beautiful. Even with Chaske dying in my arms, the
tiniest spark of life was rekindling in me, but what was waiting for us out there?

It took Chaske and me hours to walk to the vantage point we had climbed to the night we closed ourselves in. There was a poetic symmetry to standing there, staring out over the
silent, barren landscape. There wasn’t a crater where Las Vegas used to be, but the skyline wasn’t the same. The buildings appeared broken. The landscape dull and dead. There were cars
lined along the road, but it was obvious even from this distance that they were abandoned, some even burned out. We strained to see any signs of life. Nothing moved or sparkled. There was no whoosh
of planes or helicopters overhead.

‘This doesn’t mean anything,’ Chaske said. I knew what he meant: there could still be life out there.

As the final rays of the sun faded, Chaske raised a weary finger. ‘There.’ He pointed.

I followed the line from his finger. A thread of smoke twisted skywards, blending with the low-hanging clouds that looked heavy with rain. I kissed him on the cheek. ‘Maybe,’ was all
I said.

I woke with a jolt. Chaske was rifling around in my backpack.

‘What do you need?’ I scrambled to his side, my body dull with sleep and my eyes barely able to focus.

I instinctively inched away when I saw Tate’s knife. ‘What are you doing with that?’ I swiped at it but he moved it out of my reach.

‘I had an—’ His thought was interrupted by a hacking cough. ‘An idea.’ He panted, but he was intent on continuing. ‘When I was sitting by that . . .’ He
mimed the infinity symbol.

‘Yeah,’ I said, my eyes focused on the blade.

‘I want us . . .’
Gasp.
‘To be . . .’
Cough. Deep breath.
He finished with a blurt, ‘Together forever.’

My stomach lurched. Was he proposing joint suicide?

‘Is that what you want?’ I asked.

‘Trust me,’ he whispered. His brown eyes held the same fire I’d seen when he’d shot the rattlesnake and saved my life.

He took my wrist, palm up, in his hand. He gathered his strength. He traced the symbol on my wrist across the bulging artery and the crisscrossing blue veins. I bit my lip to mask the sting of
the cut. A slip of the knife and we could end it here together. Red lines emerged where the tip of the blade had broken the skin. I didn’t dab it away; I let the blood collect and drip onto
the ground.

He handed me the blade and I carved an identical symbol into him.

‘Now, no matter what . . .’

‘We’re together forever.’

We lay on our backs and dozed in the warm desert sun. Every muscle and bone was drained of energy. I memorized every inch of Chaske. His long black hair, fanned out under his head. His broad
nose. The scar that ran diagonally through his left eyebrow. High cheekbones that flushed pink when he smiled that half smile of his. His full, rosy lips that gave his smile substance and
softness.

‘What are you thinking?’ I asked.

‘Something my mom said: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil”,’ Chaske took a deep breath, ‘“is that good men do nothing”.’

‘Who said that?’ I asked as the words plunged deep into my soul.

‘I don’t know. Some Irish guy, I think.’ He bit his lower lip. ‘Edmund Burke. That’s it.’

I stared at the sky, now dotted with a million stars. The night sky looked the same as it had that night we buried ourselves alive. Still beautiful and mysterious. All those dots made me feel
less alone, as if maybe those lights were living beings out in the universe.

‘What made you think of that?’ I asked after a while.

I felt Chaske shrug. My eyes were closing and my thoughts blurring with sleep when Chaske whispered, ‘I was thinking of you. Do something, Icie. Don’t let evil triumph.’

I fought sleep. I didn’t want to waste a minute with Chaske. But my body felt heavy, as if I were wearing one of those sumo-wrestler suits. My eyelids slid shut. I tried to open them, but
my eyelashes felt magnetized. The rhythm of his breath eventually lulled me to sleep.

I woke up to the image of Chaske standing naked, arms open wide against a field of blue. His long black hair fluttered down his back. His once muscular body had withered, but he
still looked majestic as he lifted his face to the sky. His skin glistened.

Then he took flight.

‘No!’ I screamed, and scrambled to the edge. At the last moment, I pulled back. I didn’t want to see his broken body below.

I didn’t wonder why. He’d told me already. A flood of grief the size of a galaxy-wide tsunami crashed over me. I collapsed into sobs that I was sure made the mountain quake. I cried
until everything else faded away. I don’t know if I slept or lost consciousness, but when I opened my eyes, grief hit me all over again. The sadness hollowed me out. My eyes were open but I
wasn’t awake.

I searched the pale blue sky for a cloud or bird or anything. But the sky seemed vast and lonely. I inhaled but the air soured in my nostrils. I could somehow smell the damp, stale air of the
bunker and the sour scent of Chaske’s decay. The once warm sun now seared my skin. The pasty white of months underground was being toasted into a harsh pink.

I didn’t want to move. Leaving this spot felt like leaving Chaske behind. I closed my eyes. I could picture him vividly. This spot couldn’t hold him, only his death and whatever
remained of his flesh.

I walked back to the bunker. I studied the symbol that had already scabbed over on my wrist. Chaske’s body was at the bottom of the ravine but I felt as if he were still walking beside
me.

A wave of nausea overwhelmed me. I dropped to my knees. My stomach convulsed and my mouth and eyes watered. I gagged and retched but nothing came out. My stomach rolled as if something had found
its way inside me and was knocking like a pinball into my internal organs. This was it. The poison had finally grabbed hold.

The next thing I remembered was waking up on the ground, my limbs sprawled at awkward angles. I drew my knees into my chest. My breasts felt tender and sore. I didn’t want to die here like
this, defeated, curled like a baby in a womb. If I were going to die, I was going to do it my own way.

As the sun set, I ate a whole power bar and gulped water, no longer worried about conservation. I felt exposed and helpless on this mountainside now. I went back into the bunker but kept the
door open. I sat in that space with its walls covered in Marissa’s faces.

I took out my pen and notebook. I finally knew what I wanted – no, needed – to say. I wrote our story. I wrote until my hand cramped. I wrote in long, rambling sentences with no
punctuation and questionable spelling. It took me days but I wrote until I’d said everything I needed to say. The ink was fading and the last few words were only indentations on the paper. I
wrapped the notebook in heavy plastic bags. The Egyptian-like relics that would remain in my backpack would include: candy-corn-flavoured lip gloss, a keyring with my purple sparkly initials, my
Capital Academy ID card, four stale Tic Tacs and two mismatched earrings. I shoved the notebook to the bottom of the backpack and folded the canvas around it. My shiny
Save the Planet, Rock the
World
badge glinted in the flashlight.

And I waited for death to find me like it had everyone else.