by J B Cantwell
“Well,” I said, turning around to Alex, Melanie, and Jay. “At least we know what we’re dealing with. If he’s really financially driven, then this will be easy enough. He clearly knows where we’re staying, though, and that’s a problem.”
“Oh, I don’t want to move again. Do we have to?” Jeff’s eyes were fluttering, and he seemed on the verge of passing out again.
I rested his hand on his chest and gave it a small pat.
“No. We’re not moving tonight.”
He nodded, but uttered no more words.
I stood up from him and beckoned for Melanie, Alex, and Jay to come with me into the other apartment. Once the door clicked quietly shut behind us, I turned to face them.
“What do you think we should do?” I asked.
“Move,” Melanie instantly said. “Sounds like this Chambers guy isn’t so trustworthy, himself.”
I nodded.
“But we need his help. Or at least, someone’s help. We’re getting starved out here.”
“I say we do the thing now. Today. Tomorrow,” Alex said. “We go to the server buildings and just do it. I told you where the EMP is hidden, and nobody else knows it’s there. We could be on our way tonight if we rally.”
Given the fact that I’d barely made it past my own near-hypothermia, I wasn’t super keen on getting back into that water.
He was right, though.
“What about me?” Jay asked.
“And me,” Melanie said.
I looked back and forth between the three of them, then said to Melanie, “We’re going to need you here to pick up the pieces.”
“The pieces? Seems to me we’re going to be up to our necks in revolution no matter where we go or what we do. Have you thought about the chaos that’ll come?”
Jay nodded his head.
“Yeah, she’s thought about it.”
I turned to him, frowning.
“I know you have,” he said as I caught his eye, “because I’ve thought about it, too. You’re right, Mel.” He turned to her. “There will be a lot of pieces to be picked up and put back together. We might even be forced to accept a new system not too dissimilar than the one we’re in now. But better. Hopefully better.”
“Definitely better,” I said. “And I’m not going to be satisfied with any new system they put onto us by force. We’re going to be the ones in charge from here on out.”
Jay laughed, a short barking sound.
“You think you’re going to be in charge? You’ll be lucky to survive the EMP plan. No one will be in charge anymore. But I think that could be a good thing. People might go hungry for a time, but they’ll remember the way things used to be. The surveillance, the near-starvation, the humiliation of being part of this disaster of a system.”
“So, what do we do in the meantime?” Melanie asked. “If you two end up dead, where do we even begin?”
I looked at Alex, knowing we’d both spent a lot of hungry years between us. We knew what it was to have empty bellies. I could feel mine right then, actually, cold and hollow.
“Start with the grocers,” I said.
“But how are we even going to get out of this building?” Mel asked. “Without him, we’re sunk. Literally.”
“Good point,” I said. I turned to Alex. “Can you think of anywhere we can leave them? Somewhere that the water isn’t so high?”
He shook his head. “No. I mean, the school isn’t in session right now, but that’ll only be for another week or two before classes start back up again.”
“Maybe that’s all we’ll need. If things go our way, nobody will be broadcasting their designations at all in a few days’ time; everyone will be invisible. You can simply walk out of there and take up residence wherever you please at that point. But get to the grocers. They’re going to need help, and it’s your best chance of getting fed, yourselves. I’m sure they’ll buy from you then. We’re not turning off the electricity in the city, just frying the computers in the server buildings. Your cards should still work.”
“This is nuts,” Melanie said. “You know it is.”
“It is,” Alex agreed. “But you’ve known this the whole time, haven’t you? It was always going to come down to this. It’s just nuts because it’ll be happening so soon, but it would be even crazier for us to hole up here and wait.”
We all fell silent.
“Maybe I should’ve left when I had the chance,” Melanie said quietly.
“You still can,” I said, and there was no judgement in my voice or heart. “I don’t want you to go, but you can if you need to. Just make sure you take some ration cards with you and stock up before you head out, and before the system falls.”
“No, I—” she began. “I didn’t mean it like that. And anyway, it’s too late, isn’t it? No, I’m in.”
I blew out a tense breath I hadn’t realize I’d been holding.
“And Jay?” I asked. “Can we count on your help, too?”
He shrugged. “Would be pretty stupid of me to bail out now. Especially with that sick kid over there and his magic box of pills. No one else is going to know how to administer that stuff.”
“Okay,” I said. “Sounds like we need to get planning. We’ve got today and maybe tomorrow, too, depending on how far we get. We’ll need to map the whole thing out. The attack on the servers. Detonating the EMP. Alex’s and my escape plan. Not to mention ferrying everyone in the next room across to the school before this even happens.”
“You can’t move the kid,” Jay said. “He’s on death’s door already.”
“We have to,” I insisted. “It’s not like we have a boat, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know how to swim.”
“I can keep him up above the water line,” Alex said. “I’ll take him first. It’ll take the most effort, and then I can get everyone else across one by one.”
“Sounds like our best shot,” I said. I looked toward Melanie. “Are you sure? You’re really in? Because we need to know now.”
She hesitated, but a few moments later, I saw her face harden once again. Maybe she got scared from time to time, but underneath there was a woman as hard as nails. She nodded.
“Good,” I said. “Let’s get back over there and let everyone know what’s up. They’ll want to help.”
“And what do we do, when you and he are out blowing things up, if this Jonathan appears again?”
I looked down at my feet, trying to decide.
“Take him in,” I said. “We’ll just have to trust him, or, rather, his greed, for now.”
Chapter Seven
As daylight slowly began filtering in through the windows, the four of us sat in a circle in the spare apartment. Jay would occasionally go check on Jeff, but he seemed dead to the world, sleeping off his fever. Halfway through the day, Jay woke him and gave him more medication, but aside from that, Jeff’s eyes stayed closed as he fought the infection in both his chest and scalp.
Paper was an unfamiliar medium for all of us; everything had been digital for as long as I could remember, though Jay had memories of archaic instruments like pens and pencils. He began the process of searching the apartments one by one for planning supplies. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if we didn’t know where we were going.
Finally, after an hour of searching, he came back, triumph on his face. He held out a thick, black marker for our inspection, then popped open the cap and handed it to Alex.
“Me?” he asked.
“You’re the one who knows the way,” Jay said. “We’re going to need a map. Or, rather, you are.”
Jay gestured toward the wall where an old framed image of a field of flowers was hung. He took it down and placed it on the floor.
Alex fumbled with the pen in his huge hand. The blank wall was his canvas.
Within a few minutes, we had a rough idea of where and how we could access the EMP. He and I would be going in without designation, so we would miss out on the advantages that our lenses might have given us, like the pr
esence of the Guard before they were physically visible. Still, we would be hard to spot. The biggest risk was the possibility of infrared technology on the part of the guards, but we all agreed that it was unlikely to be used.
“All you need to remember is that we have an EMP in place,” Alex said. “We just need to get to it. Outside of a means of travel to the site, there isn’t much any of you can do. We’re just going to have to go on foot.”
“What about Chambers?” I asked. “Maybe he can help.”
“Maybe,” Jay said. “But how do we even get in touch with him? Sounds like this Jonathan guy isn’t very available to us, and I don’t see how we could get to the city without our designations no matter how much money we have.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And Jeff probably doesn’t know where the apartment is, anyway. We can’t just hang around and wait for him to show up.”
“Well, that is how Jeff started out,” Alex said.
“But it was Jonathan that got him to Chambers in the end. He was wasting away, probably nursing his infections, waiting to die. Or for a miracle.”
Jay ran his hand through his long beard, absently tugging on it as he thought.
“What do you think the chances are that Jonathan is watching us right now?” he asked. “Do you think that he really left? Maybe there will be some way to make contact with him.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Though I don’t see how.”
“Well, we’d better just plan on doing the thing without his help,” Alex said. He picked up the pen again and drew a smaller, different map, this one showing the trip he and I would have to make to get to the server buildings, which were both housed in New Jersey, the direction the Volunteers and I had come when we’d fled the Burn.
“How long do you think it’ll take us to walk?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But it won’t be a quick trip. It’s in New Jersey, which isn’t too far, but it’ll be a trick to get there. We’ll have to go over the Narrows bridge to get away from New York. That’ll take some time.”
“We’ve done that before,” I said. “We lost a couple people on the bridge, but most of us made it across. If we go really late, like three in the morning, it’ll probably be deserted. The last time we did it, we went around midnight. There were still a few cars on the road, and that’s where were ran into trouble.”
“I’m going to be very visible,” he said. “More so than anyone else who might go with you.”
“Well, there isn’t really anything we can do about that except wait it out. Unless we’re stopped by guards, we should be okay. No one in a regular car is going to even think about messing with you. They might call it in, though.”
“Yeah, they might.”
“How many days do you think it’ll take you guys to get there?” Melanie asked. “I’m worried about how long we can hold out at the school.”
“Should be two or three,” Alex said. “We can travel all night.”
“We’ll have no way to contact you without lenses,” Melanie said. “We really will be on our own.”
“You’ll have the ration cards, and Jay can help with Jeff and anyone else who needs it.”
“What about if the Guard catches up with us before you guys pull this off? We can’t stay in that school forever.”
“No, we can’t,” Jay said. “But there are other places we can go. I’ve been around this place a long time. Once everyone is healthy again, we can move somewhere more permanent.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “If you know of somewhere else, why not just go there right now?”
“Because right now we’re on the run from just about everyone. We need to go somewhere they won’t expect to find us. But when the whole thing goes down, we can find somewhere nicer to stay, somewhere underwater, but still walkable. Like the building where I met you. No one wants to live there because of the water on the first floor, but it’s really only trouble for part of the day. We’ll be able to hole up there, or someplace like it, and no rent.”
“Okay,” I said. “And don’t forget to get to the grocers before you do anything else. scope out where they are and make friends before the system falls. You’ll have three days if we’re lucky.”
“I don’t see how us getting in with them will help anything,” Melanie said.
“It’ll help,” Jay said, “because it will give them fair warning about what’s going to happen. You can help them shore up, start rationing food to give away. Things are going to get dicey.”
“Things already are,” I said.
I turned back to look at the wall again. Someday, maybe someday soon, someone would discover this place, these two little apartments that had housed us for a minute in time. They would either worship it or curse us.
But it wouldn’t make a difference to our tasks now. We knew the risk. And we were going to take it.
Chapter Eight
Getting Jeff across the water wasn’t as easy as we’d all hoped. The tide had risen several inches higher than what we were used to, and I guessed that a storm must be coming in. In the end, Alex was forced to have him hang onto his back and swim him across. Then, leaving him shivering on the bank, he turned back to pick up Jay.
We’d decided Jay should be the second across, especially after we’d seen the water that evening. It was dangerous to move Jeff, but we didn’t have a choice. It seemed that every moment was a moment wasted, and I found myself desperately wishing that the others didn’t need Alex to help them across, that we could just be off already.
By the time everyone was out, half of them had gone toward the school. We sent them in twos, hoping that the small numbers wouldn’t attract any attention. It had worked when we’d come up from the Burn, though we’d had losses then, too.
Finally, it was my turn, the last to go. I climbed up onto Alex’s back and waited for the freezing water to engulf me. He turned and launched us into the water. My breath caught in my chest, and despite the cold, I had to hold back a laugh. There was something careless about this small action; even carefree. And for that moment, I felt a tiny spark of joy in my heart.
So I wasn’t dead and cold inside my soul after all.
“So,” Alex said. “Tell me about this kiss.”
Back to reality.
I sighed between my chattering teeth.
“He didn’t mean any harm by it,” I said. “He took me up to the rooftop of the burning towers so that we could talk without being recorded. Still, it made sense to pretend that we were just two lovers up there, that we’d made a quick trip before our shifts.”
“Hmm. What did you two talk about that was so important?”
“I told him about my idea to break out. And he told me about his own plans, mainly to finish playing the Service’s game and win the stipend.”
“So, I guess he didn’t want to leave at all.”
“No, that’s definitely not true. He still had over a year to serve, and I never met anyone in my time there that was so dedicated as to want to stay, not even Jeff. Everyone had a need, some debt they were paying off to individuals or society. Even the guards. A lot of them took the opportunity to try to escape as well. Most of them definitely weren’t there by choice.”
“But some of them came after you, anyway.”
“Yeah, they did. I don’t know why. Maybe they feared repercussions if they were caught. There was this one kid kept in the cell next to mine; once the fire was lit, he couldn’t move a muscle. I had to leave him there. I left the cell door open, though, in case he came to.”
“Wait a minute, you were in a cell? Why?”
I hesitated, not wanting him to feel guilty.
“Riley, why?”
“Because you’d escaped the Service,” I finally said. “Because you got out and took the EMP with you.”
He turned slightly, trying to look at me, though unable to in the darkness of the water.
“What did they do to you?” he demanded. “I’ll kill them. Did you get whipped lik
e Jeff did?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. It was just standard stuff. Taser. Baton. Then they locked me up and left me alone. Anyway, you can’t kill Wilson cause he’s already dead.”
“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. I never should’ve taken the EMP without you safe. If I’d have known, I—”
“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “There was no way for you to know what was going on at the Burn. Besides, we did have a plan all along. Wilson was right about that, about his line of questioning. But when I lied, he knew it. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it now.”
He huffed loudly, a sound of frustration, not effort.
“There is something we can do,” he finally said. “We can succeed.”
By the time Alex and I finally arrived on the other side, Jeff was in a state. It was obvious that he wouldn’t be able to make it very far on his own, and Jay had forced him to hang back and wait for Alex to carry him the rest of the way.
He shivered. We all shivered.
Alex walked to him and opened his arms. Clearly embarrassed, Jeff let Alex pick him up, cradling him as if he were a small child. His body might’ve done better with the heat a walk might bring, but he was way too far gone for that.
“So,” Alex said as we walked. “Riley tells me you two had a little fling while you were at the Burn. Tell me about it.”
Jeff shivered and shook. I wasn’t sure he’d be able to even answer him.
The line of questioning wasn’t fair, and Alex knew it.
In the end, Jeff got out a stilted sentence, but only one.
“They were watching.”
Everyone fell quiet after that.
It didn’t take long to make it to the school, but even being extra careful about it, I was anxious. Not so much about being caught as just getting the thing done. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt doubts about my own abilities, and the journey I was about to embark upon wasn’t going to be easy. Maybe it would even be impossible.
And, just like Paul had warned us back in Canada, maybe we would die in the process. Maybe others would, too. When I tried to square the thing with reality, I had a hard time. I liked to think of us as liberators, but were we, really?