The Last Girl (27 page)

“They’re . . . they’re using us. Trying to have one of us give birth to a girl.”

The entire group grows rigid. Even Newton sits stock-still in his chair.

“Are you pregnant, Zoey?” Chelsea asks.

“No. I got out before my birthday. They take you when you turn twenty-one. It’s called the induction. They take you to the fifth level and that’s where they . . .” She can’t bring herself to go on. The words are hooked inside her.

“Take your time,” Eli says.

Slowly she begins to speak again. She tells them of the ceremony, of the fifth level, of the lies. It pours from her as if a dam has broken. Years of insecurities, misgivings, mistrust, theories, all of it comes rushing out. When she’s finished, there is a stunned silence that hangs in the room like fog against the mountains. Merrill and Chelsea exchange a look and Ian moves to the corner of the room, where he opens a glass decanter and drinks from it before handing it to Tia.

“We suspected as much,” Ian says as the bottle is passed around. “We knew NOA would go to great lengths to try and find a solution, but this is simply monstrous.”

“A plague and a safe zone,” Eli rumbles after taking a long pull from the bottle. “Those bastards.”

“How did you get out, is what I’d like to know,” Tia says. She takes a second drink from the bottle before handing it back to Ian.

“I took a guard’s bracelet and made it up to the fifth floor. After that Terra helped me get onboard one of the helicopters and then lied to the guards about me jumping over the side of the wall. The helicopter crashed and I made it out alive.” Zoey keeps her eyes locked on a spot on the wall over Tia’s shoulder.

“I think there’s a bit more to it than that,” Tia says. “You don’t have to be ashamed of what you did. Whoever you hurt deserved as much and more, don’t worry about any of them.”

Zoey nods, but in her mind she sees Crispin crumpling to the floor, his last spasms and the look of disbelief on his kind face.

“They’re looking for something, too,” she says, mostly to rid herself of the horrid vision. “Something called the keystone.”

“Keystone?” Ian says. The old man rubs his jaw and glances around the group. “Does that term mean anything to the rest of you?” There is a chorus of ‘No’s and a shaking of heads. “Do you have any guesses as to what it is, Zoey?”

“No. Terra didn’t know either, and I didn’t really have a chance to ask anyone else.” She glances at Merrill, who has been staring at her intently since she started speaking about the inner sanctum of the ARC. His jaw is trembling, and he swallows before addressing her.

“You said they take the women when they turn twenty-one?”

“Yes,” Zoey says.

“Do you know why?”

“No.”

“I need to ask you something, Zoey, and please, this is very important. Did you ever know a girl by the name of Meeka?”

The house starts a slow spin around her and she grits her teeth to keep from toppling over. “Why?”

“Please!” Merrill yells, startling everyone. The group gives him a look and Eli places a hand on the tall man’s shoulder. “Please,” Merrill says again, quietly this time. “Just tell me if she was ever there.”

“Yes,” Zoey says, unable to say anything more because she sees something in Merrill’s eyes that she’s seen before. When Simon held Lee’s foot for a moment in the infirmary after his injury, the same look had been on the older man’s face.

The face of a worried father.

Merrill sags a little but doesn’t drop his gaze. “Is she alive? Is my little girl alive?”

Zoey reels internally, a thousand abject paths opening before her, her choice limited to one and one only. She hovers over the thousand forks and finally chooses, plunging headlong and screaming inside.

“Yes,” she says evenly. “She’s alive.”

28

The storm comes in layers from over the mountain, each harsher than the last.

First there is the rain, then the stitching slash of lightning through the great trees with its counterpart of thunder following close behind, then the wind that blows so hard it’s as if it intends to tear the mountain from the earth and crumble it back to whence it came.

Zoey sits in her bedroom and listens to the sounds of the tempest, more muted since this part of the house is mostly underground. Every so often she glances at the window that has grown almost black, then to the closed door, then back to her hands that lay in her lap. She turns them over, looking at their creases, the cuts that are healing into fine, red lines that will scar. All the while the words she spoke to Merrill echo in horrifying clarity through her mind.

Yes, she’s alive.

She puts her palms to her eyes, pressing the tears away that threaten to come spilling out. How could she have done it? How? The immensity of the lie hangs over her, pressing down as if she is buried beneath a million tons of rock instead of resting upon it. But the question is an easy one to answer, isn’t it? It’s easy, because its answer is the same that she would have given to Ian if she had been honest with him before.

Do you want to save the others?

Yes.

She wants it more than anything else in the world. The hatred she feels for herself over leaving the other women behind hasn’t dulled with the days since she escaped. Instead it has increased like a spark being constantly fanned until it bursts into flame. Running so far from the ARC was her way of dodging the guilt, but the distance hasn’t helped.

She always knew she would go back. It was that or die.

And in Merrill she sees her chance.

Here is a group that will either help her or leave this place broken, for she can tell that Merrill is the one who binds them together. He is the knife edge and the driving force. The love for his daughter is the fuel that kept his will burning through all these years.

And now she has used it against him.

The tears come, and she can’t stop them this time. She sees Merrill’s face after she told him the lie, how he couldn’t bear to look at her, at any of them. How he strode out into the rain, so overcome with emotion that he didn’t bother to grab his coat from the hook by the door.

How much is a life worth?

Zoey sobs into her hands as quietly as possible. The grief wracks her in time with the storm outside, the gale within her just as powerful.

It is a long while before the tears taper off, and even longer before sleep takes her and folds her away from the storm.

She wakes to a knock at her door and sits up. She is still fully clothed and on top of the covers. Daylight streams down from outside and flattens itself against the floor.

“Zoey?”

Merrill.

“Yes?”

“Can I come in?”

“Sure.”

She gathers herself to one end of the bed, wiping the sleep from her eyes as Merrill enters. He wears the same clothes as he did the day before. His eyes are narrow, weary, and bloodshot. He leaves the door partially open and lowers himself into the wooden chair beside the bed.

“How did you sleep?” he asks.

“Good. How about you?”

“Not so good, but that’s okay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“And I really should have given you guys my room. Where did you all sleep?”

“Ian made us comfortable. Believe me, this is very nice compared to some of the places we’ve had to bed down in.”

“Where do you live?”

Merrill stretches back, and the chair creaks with his weight. “Outside a city, really just a town. There’s only one real city now that I know of. Seattle, or what used to be Seattle.”

“Where is it?”

“Over the mountains.”

“And your town, how many people live there?”

“A hundred, maybe a few more.”

“And the men there don’t bother Chelsea or Tia?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Oh.”

“That’s why we live outside of town. We have to be especially careful because you never know who’s watching or what they want. It’s amazing that Chelsea and Tia are still alive and free, really. We keep them hidden very well, and they only come into the open when it’s absolutely necessary. Eli, Newton, and I travel into town for supplies about once a month. It really pisses Tia off that she isn’t able to go.” Merrill utters a short laugh.

“She doesn’t seem like the type who would be afraid.”

“She’s not. I once saw Tia knock out a two-hundred-fifty-pound man with one punch. She’s as tough as any of us.”

“And what are you? Really?”

Merrill studies her. “We’re survivors.”

“That’s what Chelsea said.”

“She’s right. Sometimes that’s the best you can do. But you already know that, don’t you?”

Zoey nods. They both fall silent. She struggles with a question she knows she shouldn’t ask, but can’t help herself. “How did Meeka come to be at the ARC?”

Merrill visibly stiffens, and he casts his eyes across the floor. “She was taken from me.”

“When?”

“It was two years after the Dearth began. She was just a little over a year old. I met her mother on a trip to China ten years before.” Merrill still isn’t looking at her, but his lips quiver with a sad smile. “Jia was a software engineer for a large company that was adjacent to my hotel. I bumped into her the first day trying to leave the parking lot. Literally bumped into her, with my car.” He shakes his head. “Man, I felt like such an idiot, even though she wasn’t hurt. I insisted on taking her to the hospital, and she kept saying things in Chinese and I knew she was swearing at me.” Zoey can’t help but smile. Merrill sighs and rubs at his brow. “I went to her office the next day with flowers, and the day after that. Finally after a week her workspace was so full of roses and lilies she agreed to go to lunch with me just to get me to stop.” He pauses and bobs his head several times. “She was beautiful, just like Meeka.”

Zoey’s throat tries to close as she sees Meeka lying in a spreading pool of blood, her eyes vacant and staring. Merrill’s voice snaps her back to the present.

“When I saw what was happening, the road the government was going to take, I started working on a place in the Canadian wilderness fifty miles across the border near a glacial lake. It was five miles from the nearest road, and I didn’t own the land, but there was nothing but woods and mountains as far as I could see. I built a little cabin there, large enough to hold the three of us, and hauled supplies up with each trip. We had plenty of fresh water, food, shelter, everything we needed to survive. We were planning on leaving the next morning when they came.”

“Merrill, you don’t have to tell me this,” Zoey says in a soft voice. She doesn’t want to hear it.

“There were five of them, all armed, black ops by the look. I knew the signs from being in the military for a few years when I was younger. I tried talking with them at the door, stalling for another day because I knew we could be long gone by the time they came back, but they weren’t having it. They were there to take Jia and Meeka both.” Merrill’s voice grows flatter and colder with each word, his eyes glazing over. “I had a gun hidden underneath a chair in the living room. I went for it as they were carrying them away. I shot one of the soldiers before they were able to open fire.” He points to his left shoulder and lower abdomen. “The bullets hit me here and here, but one of the other soldiers must not have had his rifle on safe. Jia grabbed it—I could see her from where I was lying on the floor. She grabbed the gun and it went off.” Merrill grimaces and looks at the ceiling. “It hit her directly in the heart, there was no way of saving her, so they just left her there in the doorway like a piece of trash. I managed to crawl to her but she was already gone. When I looked out through the door, they were climbing into their vehicle, and one of them was holding Meeka and she was looking back at me. But she never cried, she was always such a good girl.”

Zoey shudders with a restrained sob and blinks away the tears that have doubled her vision, the memory of Meeka telling them what she recalled about her parents flooding her mind.

I remember someone lying on the ground, not sure if it was my mom or dad. I don’t know if they were hurt or playing.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers without raising her head.

“Thank you. I don’t mean to put all this on you after everything you’ve been through.”

“It’s okay.”

“When I learned about the ARC, I knew that’s where they’d taken Meeka. The birthrate for girls had dropped to almost nothing, and I had already scoured every other possible place she could be. When I failed to get her out, I wanted to die. I knew I’d never be able to raise another army that was like-minded. Most men nowadays are either in league with NOA, or religious fanatics, or worse, they’re part of the Fae Trade.”

Zoey flinches at the mention of the Fae Trade, the slurred voices of the men coming back to her from the night in the pine forest.

“I gave up,” Merrill continues. “I was wounded and could barely get around by myself. I drank for years and tried to forget my family, even tried to kill myself a couple times, but couldn’t do it properly. Chelsea found me after my last attempt. I’d swallowed a bunch of old painkillers and had wandered out of town. She got me to throw them up and nursed me back to health.

“Slowly our group came together, mostly out of necessity. I found Tia living in an industrial complex. After she held me at gunpoint for the better part of a day, I learned she was a welder—one of the best in the world, if the truth is told. She built me this.” He raps on the fake leg beneath his pants. “Eli came later, wandering into our camp delirious with some kind of fever. Chelsea helped him, and he stayed with us. He’ll tell you it’s because of the danger and that he’s a thrill-seeker, but he’s got the biggest heart of anyone I know. And of course, we kind of adopted Newton. He didn’t have any family that we could find. I’m guessing they abandoned him.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Zoey asks.

“He’s mute. Never said a word to any of us. He communicates sometimes through gestures or grunts, but other than that he can’t speak.”

Merrill watches her for a time, and with each passing second she grows more uncomfortable under his gaze. It’s like he’s looking inside her, and soon he’ll discover the lie she told to him. Maybe he’ll kill her right where she sits, and truthfully she deserves exactly that.

“I’m sorry, you need your rest,” Merrill says, standing. “There’s food in the kitchen if you’re hungry.” He turns to leave.

“How do the others feel about the ARC, about NOA?” Zoey asks.

Merrill pauses at the door, looking down. “You know how I said I was sure I’d never find another army?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I did.” He gives her a fleeting smile and is gone through the door.

The hours pass in a gray-tinged impression of day. Zoey ventures into the kitchen when her stomach refuses to quiet and finds a plate of dried meat that is tangy and very salty, along with some fresh bread. The house is vacant, though she catches flashes of movement out in the trees from time to time. She is about to retire to her room again when Newton steps through the front door. He freezes in the entry, eyes wide and unblinking.

“Hi, Newton,” she says. He stands his ground for a second, his gaze flicking to the remaining meat on the plate, before he flees back outside, as skittish as some small animal. Zoey watches him sprint into the woods past Tia and Chelsea, who only stare after him. Both of them glance at the house, and Zoey moves away from the window and back to her room.

She remains there for the rest of the day. No one comes to disturb her, and she sleeps off and on, fatigue still taking its toll on her body. She dreams of the greenish-blue river, of flying over its surface. It is dawn and she skims over the water without resistance. Ahead the shape of the ARC solidifies in the early light. She slows as she nears it, hovering in place a good distance away.

There are five forms hanging by their necks from ropes over the side of the wall.

Slowly the swaying corpses raise their arms and point directly at her.

Zoey wakes to the early dusk of evening with a strangled scream bubbling from her that she manages to stave off. She grips her pillow and twists it until her heart returns to a normal speed. The dream’s hold on her slowly loosens, decaying into a softened memory, leaving her with only a paralyzing sense of dread.

She doesn’t want to go back, she realizes. She’s terrified of returning to that place. A greed-plated voice begins to speak in the back of her mind, telling her that she has every reason to stay away from the ARC now. It was a miracle she escaped at all and little as she knows about the outside world, she can learn. She can learn to live, learn to have a life.

Zoey rises from the bed on unsteady legs, a burning thirst sending her in search of water. She leaves the darkly seductive voice behind in the room and moves to the front of the house.

It is quiet and empty, as it was earlier when she encountered Newton. Outside the sun has disappeared behind the mountain and a surreal shade coats the forest. She pours a glass of water from a pitcher beside the sink and drinks until her stomach is full and sloshing. When she moves to the farthest window she sees a fire burning a short distance from the house. The hunched outlines of the group sit around it.