The Last Girl (20 page)

19

Blades of sunlight force their way beneath her eyelids and she groans, turning her head to the side.

She is warm and comfortable, and there is nothing else she would like to do but lie there, affirmed by the knowledge that if she moves it will hurt.

A faint popping floats through the open doors, and it takes less than a second for her to leap to her feet, eyes wide, fully awake.

The helicopter is coming.

She scrambles to the front doors on legs made of wood, hobbling so badly she almost stumbles. The world outside is bathed in golden light, the storm long since departed to the east. Everything shines with moisture, and a vaporous fog rises from the ground in hazy tendrils. The rotors continue cutting the air, louder than before. Zoey grips the rifle so tight her knuckles crack.

Where? Where is it? How close?

She strains her eyes against the blinding light, frantically searching. She has to know which way to run. The copter is closer, she can feel its beat in her ears like a second heart.

It emerges from behind the farthest hill she can make out, its shape detaching from the land to steadily grow. She waits two seconds, confirming its direction.

It’s coming straight for the farm.

Zoey runs.

She scrambles to the rear doorway and explodes through it into the morning light. Legs pumping, hands clutching the rifle, the sound of the copter mounting between each hurried breath.

The land dips hard behind the barn, and she nearly loses her footing as her momentum takes her faster and faster. There is a dotting of pines and sage to her left. Not enough cover for her to hide. Ahead the ground falls away harder, the land becoming more and more rocky. She risks a glance over her shoulder, but the barn is almost out of sight, the chopper hidden behind it.

When she looks forward again, the ground has disappeared.

Zoey releases a small cry of terror and jams her feet to a stop. The rocky outcropping ahead ends at a razored edge that leads into open air. Beyond is the twist of a narrow river far below.

She slides over the brink, falling hard to her side, feet flying into nothing.

She drops the rifle, her hands scramble, slide on stone, slip free, catch again.

Zoey jerks to a stop and flops against the side of the stone wall she hangs from. Her feet pedal but find no purchase. She squints through tears that turn the sunlight into a thousand bleeding prisms. She pulls, trying to hoist herself up, but the strength is gone from her arms. Slowly it leaches from her hands as well.

The skin of her palms tears.

She utters a hoarse cry as her fingers rip free of the rock and she falls.

Her feet land a foot down, jarring her to a stop.

The arrestment from her fall is so sudden and unexpected she can’t breathe.

Eyes bulging, she turns around. She stands on a narrow outcropping of rock. Below the drop is at least sixty feet, straight down with no hand- or footholds. To her right the outcropping widens and descends in a ramp-like fashion to a silt washout that ends just before the riverbank.

Zoey glances up and sees the rifle sling hanging over the edge. She leaps and snatches the loop, yanking the weapon down to her. The helicopter’s thrum is slower.

They’re landing.

She sidles close to the cliff wall, her shoulder blades rubbing against the rough rock, until she can walk comfortably. As soon as she’s able, she runs. She jogs down the path and descends to the washout of loose rock and sand. Her feet sink in the softness of it and she slogs on, falling twice before making it to clearer ground.

How long until they check the house? A minute? Two? Will they see her footprints from her inspection the day before? She’s nearly sure of it.

Zoey runs between the flowing water and the sheer cliff face, the land chunky with broken rock. The unstable footing tries to turn her ankle twice but she remains upright, skipping along as fast as she can while the sound of the copter slowly lessens to nothing until she can only hear the rush of the river.

She stops beneath the shade of a lone pine tree after what feels like a lifetime of running. The sun has risen high enough to shine into the river valley and its warmth is now uncomfortable. Zoey sits on a wide, flat boulder below the tree’s heavy branches and lets her heart come back to a normal pace. She’s thirsty again and makes her way to the river’s edge to drink. The water is a pale greenish-blue in the light of the sun, a color she’s never seen before. She lets herself marvel at its beauty for a moment before stooping to drink. The river tastes clean with a slightly chalky undertone. When she’s finished she returns to the tree and sits once more, gazing back the way she came.

“Maybe they didn’t see the footprints,” she says aloud. Her voice is coming back to normal, but she can still feel Carter’s hands there, squeezing the life from her. She grunts, placing her fingers beneath her chin, traces the tender flesh. “Never again,” she murmurs. Her eyes unfocus and she stares through the opposite valley wall, not seeing anything that surrounds her.

After another five minutes of rest, she hauls herself to her feet, wincing at the pain in her stomach as she straightens. When she checks the wound beneath her shirt, her mouth goes dry.

It is bleeding again, but that isn’t what concerns her. The edges of the gash are an inflamed red and a milky coating rims the borders of dried blood. When she places her palm over the wound it is hot, much warmer than the flesh surrounding it.

Zoey blinks, swallowing the knot in her throat. She considers washing the cut in the river, but thinks better of it and simply covers it again. The sun ripples across the water, blinding and harsh.

She continues on throughout the morning, climbing over ragged boulders and the odd trunk of a decaying tree that has washed up on the bank. Several times she has to wade into the river to circumvent a cliff face that is so sheer it actually curves out as it rises. The wound gains a heartbeat of its own, throbbing in time to each step she takes, but the pain is nothing compared to the hunger that gnaws at her stomach like a starving animal. More water does almost nothing to stop the pangs that fill her. She begins to imagine the food being served now in the cafeteria. All disgust she harbored for the mostly tasteless meals is gone. It is replaced by the certainty that she would shove handfuls of the food into her mouth if set before her now. She wouldn’t even bother with utensils.

She is so engrossed by the fantasy of consuming a buttery pile of potatoes, she doesn’t hear the rotors until the chopper appears over the rim of the canyon.

It erupts into sight a hundred yards ahead, its black form like the carapace of some flying beetle. Zoey reacts immediately, collapsing to her left behind a slanted piece of rock twice her height. She squeezes into the angle created by the boulder and the valley wall, pressing her shoulder into its uneven hardness.

Did they see her? Oh God, did they? Are they making a turn right now? Maybe priming some type of tranquilizer to shoot her with? She risks a glance around the side of the rock and sees the copter disappear over the opposite ridge of stone that rises a hundred feet into the sky.

She waits, her senses screaming for her to run. How far does she have to go before they quit searching? How far until she’s out of their dominion?

The copter’s sound fades before vanishing completely. Again she’s alone with only the sun and the steady rush of the river.

Near mid-afternoon the river widens out into a flat, calm stretch, and the harsh cliffs give way to gentle rises covered with more trees than she ever thought existed. Her legs ache, and the back of her neck is burned from the sun. The hunger has taken on a new life, something wholly separate from the burning fist it was that morning. It now seems to speak to her directly from her center. The small plants that grow from the banks have become delicacies, the moss from rocks delectable appetizers. Even the bits of brown flotsam that bob along the river’s edge tempt her.

She tries to ignore the hunger’s voice, but her body is beginning to tremble with each step, and soon her steady pace slows to a hitching plod. She stops to rest beneath the closest tree, leaning against its bark, its smell enveloping her. How long since she last ate? She can’t stop herself from remembering this time.

At least forty hours ago. Almost two days.

The thought increases her trembling, and she closes her eyes. She can still taste the last bites she had, how the bread crust crunched between her teeth, the soft vegetables in the soup sliding down to the pit of her stomach, warming it, and . . .

“Stop it,” she says. Her voice is weak, and she hates the sound of it. A gust of wind rustles the branches of the tree, and several pine needles brush her hair. She reaches up and grasps a handful, tearing them free. And before she can think about it, she shoves them into her mouth.

The taste is a lot like the fresh smell they give off, but much thicker. It envelops her senses, clogs her nasal passages. She chews until the needles are a sludgy paste and swallows, managing to get them down before she gags. Zoey shudders, both at the pleasure of swallowing something solid and at the revolt of her stomach. It twists upon itself, trying to send the needles back into her mouth. She breathes deeply, and to distract herself, climbs to her feet and begins to walk again. She makes it a dozen steps before she stops in her tracks.

The end of something red pokes from around the next bend in the river.

She raises the rifle, sighting down its length at the object and slowly approaches. With each step more of it is revealed, and soon she sees she’s looking at a strange boat. She’s seen boats before in the NOA textbook, but this one is narrow and long, with an oddly curved front and rear. It is maybe large enough for two people.

As she studies it, she notices more of them farther back in the woods that have thickened in the last several miles. It appears they were once on some sort of rack, but time has weakened its structure and sent the boats into a pile, the paint on their hulls dull in the afternoon light.

Zoey’s heart quickens. Past the boats is an overgrown trail, barely visible, extending through the trees. It twists out of sight, but between the large trunks she can see the side of a building that it must lead to.

She listens for a long moment before hurrying away from the river. Pine needles crackle beneath her feet as she climbs the trail. There are portions of manufactured stones protruding from under decades of dirt and refuse of the forest. Stairs—these used to be stairs.

Zoey steps into a clearing before a row of very small houses, all painted the same drab brown and speckled with moss and mildew. They all share identical steel roofs that are slanted hard in upside-down Vs. All the windows are whole, the doors closed.

As she stands at the edge of the small clearing, her stomach growls so loudly, if anyone were nearby, they would’ve heard. Food. There has to be some kind of food here.

She moves forward and begins to search.

There are five “cabins,” as she learns they’re called from a small wooden sign in the first of them. It says
Welcome to Pine Ridge Resort. We hope you enjoy your stay in our nostalgic cabins that offer the antiquity of former years and all the present amenities of today.

The only amenities she can find are beds with decaying quilts nestled across them and old video screens mounted on the walls that reflect her dark image through a layer of dust.

She looks in every cupboard, every closet, every nook and cranny.

There is nothing.

The last building she searches sits above the other structures and is three times the size of the cabins. The door is wide open, and it appears that animals have made it their home in the past. All manner of branches, grass, needles, and brambles cover the floor. She moves through the rooms, opening doors, checking beneath beds, but there is nothing that even resembles food. Not that she would know exactly what she’s looking for. All of her meals have been served to her, always waiting to be eaten whether hot or cold. She curses the dependency that has been forced upon her. Just another form of control. Reaper’s words float back to her then, eerily disembodied.

You need us.

Zoey returns to the front of the lodge and sits on the broken porch. She stares out at the forest. How ironic—to escape imprisonment and a certain fate, to overcome all odds and elude capture, only to starve to death here by herself.

She begins to laugh. She can’t help it. The giggles become belly laughs that hurt her stomach both inside and out, but she can’t stop. She succumbs to the insane mirth that pours from her. The rifle drops from her hands and she holds herself, quaking with the gales that aren’t funny at all. And before she can register it, she’s sobbing.

After a time the tears slowly stanch as a memory rises within her. Terra, stricken with fear, and something else. Some unspeakable secret behind her eyes. She was absolutely terrified the night Zoey escaped, and something kept her from leaving. What could have enough power to hold her in that place?

Her sobs slacken until they are gone completely. She clenches her hands into fists, and though the weakness is still there, rage overcomes the sorrow, batters it, beats it into an insubstantial feeling that no longer has meaning. There is no use in regret. What’s done is done. There is no changing her actions, who she has become in the last weeks.