by Melissa Grey
The silence wasn’t as complete as it had been. Yuna hummed a little ditty under her breath. Even measures. Three-quarter time. A waltz.
Tchaikovsky, Gabe thought. It was one of the records Mrs. Eremenko liked to play the most.
“Do you ever think about it?” Yuna asked. Her voice seemed softened by the scarlet glow, as if the half-light swallowed up sound.
“About what?”
“Before.”
The word landed between them with a dull thud.
Gabe breathed, in and out, through the nostrils and out of the mouth. Four seconds each way. His chest expanded on the inhale and collapsed on the exhale.
They didn’t speak of Before.
Not because it was one of Moran’s rules (it wasn’t, which Gabe had always found a little surprising) but because it was an unspoken rule. A silent guideline no one had ever officially established but everyone knew to exist all the same.
It was simply too painful. It was the one wound time couldn’t heal. It remained open, oozing pus across every facet of their existence. Talking about Before was like poking the edge of that wound, tugging it open to bleed again. Pouring ethyl alcohol directly on it. It stung.
“Sometimes,” Gabe said. It felt wrong, even admitting it. But wrong in a good way.
“Me too,” Yuna whispered. “What do you think about?”
Gabe shrugged. “Lots of things. Libraries. My bike. I could only sort of ride it, but I almost had it. Rice and beans. Tostones. Maduros. My grandma’s cooking.”
Yuna made a sound Gabe couldn’t quite decipher deep in her throat.
He was normally not one to seek to fill a silence, but talking felt better than waiting. “What was your favorite food?”
A ghost of a smile flirted with Yuna’s mouth. “Sundubu jjigae.”
Gabe repeated the phrase after her. The syllables felt strange as he rolled them around on his tongue. Soon. Doo. Boo. Jee. Gay. Nothing was ever new in the bunker. But those five syllables? They were new. And he loved them for it. Even if he had no idea what they meant.
“What’s that?”
“A stew. A spicy one. With tofu and … honestly, I don’t even remember. A bunch of stuff. It’s good though. My mom used to make it for me every Sunday.”
“That must have been nice.”
Yuna hummed in agreement.
They fell silent again. Yuna’s fingers drummed out the counts of the waltz against her knee.
“I try not to though,” Gabe said softly. “Think about it, I mean.”
Her fingers went still, lying flat against the curve of her knee. Her face was lit in profile, a shadow against the crimson light.
“Probably for the best,” Yuna said.
“Yeah.” He didn’t quite mean it. “Probably.”
They waited in silence for the red light to fade, for the illusion of safety to return once more. For the chance to pretend they were anything more than rats huddled in a cave, hiding from the Big Bad Thing(s) up above.
The drill passed with little fanfare.
Sash was in the kitchen, elbows deep in sudsy water, when the lights came on. Calling it a kitchen was generous. It was the corner of the central room that happened to have a sink and enough counter space to sort of cook. The alarms followed, not too long after. She and Misha huddled down until it passed, not a single word exchanged between them.
Questions she did not ask:
Where were you when it happened?
How come Dad came to get me?
What happened to him after he handed me to you?
Do you ever think about him?
She knew the answers to some of these questions. Misha had been at basketball practice. He’d always been tall for his age, and at twelve, he was the star of the local middle school’s basketball team, for whatever that was worth. Sash knew for a fact that there was a basketball—orange faded brown with age—floating somewhere around the basement, but she had never seen him lay so much as a finger on it. It was as if that part of him—the part that liked to play, not just basketball but anything—had been killed off the same day everything else was. Like he’d just left it by the side of the road as he ran off, away from the stream, with Sash in his arms and their father somewhere behind them, never to return.
The one question she didn’t ask, the one she could never seem to shake, bounced around inside her skull most persistently of them all:
What is it like up there now?
Seconds ticked by. Then minutes. Then the red light faded. The alarms fell silent. Back to normal, as if nothing had happened. And nothing had. Just a drill. That’s all it ever was.
A tiny, rebellious part of Sash wished for the day it wasn’t. She wanted to know what they were hiding from. She wanted to see it with her own two eyes. It might be ugly. It might be dangerous. But it would be something new. Something different. Something besides fake sunlight and tasteless gruel and a never-ending parade of tasks designed to keep them alive. But alive wasn’t really living. That much she knew.
After the dishes were cleaned, she set about moving the tables into their “school” arrangement. All aligned toward the chalkboard before which Moran would stand and proselytize. (How did they have a decade’s worth of chalk down here? Who planned for that?) Moran called it teaching, but Sash was never one for labeling things as anything but what they were. And this was most assuredly proselytizing.
Misha left with a jovial grunt in Sash’s direction before the others filed in. And then the lesson began.
“Can anyone tell me why the world ended as it did?” Dr. Moran’s inquisitive gaze swept over her assembled students.
Nastia raised her hand, nearly coming off her chair in her enthusiasm.
Sash rolled her eyes. Honestly.
She had little patience for teacher’s pets. Especially when that teacher was Dr. Imogen Moran. And that pet was her younger sister.
The doctor tipped her head in Nastia’s direction, signaling for the girl to go on.
A satisfied smile spread across Nastia’s face. “They did it to themselves.”
Moran nodded sagely. “They did. Let us never forget what their greed, corruption, and selfish pride cost. Like the snake that eats its own tail, society destroyed itself.”
She reached to roll down a map of the earth. It was outdated, like everything in the bunker. There was a tiny copyright mark—whatever that meant—in the corner that said © 1987. A year so far away, it might as well be fictional. And yet, they were surrounded by all manner of accoutrements from that mythical year and the handful of years before then. The rivets on the bunker’s metal plates had been produced sometime in the seventies. Sash had found a spare box of them in the storage closet once. They’d gone old and rusty, like so much else down here. The map divided Germany into two segments—East and West—and from what little geopolitical knowledge Sash possessed of Before, she knew that hadn’t been the case for a while. For a really, intensely long time.
Moran jabbed her long wooden pointer at the map as if it offended her.
“The nations of the world created the circumstances that led to their demise. Their failure to take care of the earth”—she paused, perhaps for dramatic effect, as if they all hadn’t heard this bit a thousand times over—“and their neglect for one another are what led to their downfall.”
Her gaze raked over each and every one of them, as if the collapse of civilization and the melting of the polar ice caps and the disappearance of the bees had been their fault entirely.
“The planet still bears the scars of their many conflicts.” Moran’s shrewd eyes slid over to Sash. “Some of us bear scars of our own.”
Tugging her sleeve over her hand, Sash shifted in her seat. Even through the material of her sweater, she could feel the ridges of raised skin on her forearm. The scars weren’t a secret. There were no secrets in the bunker. Everyone knew they were there. She just hated when anyone talked about it.
She couldn’t think about the scars without think
ing of how they got there. And she really, really didn’t want to think about how they got there.
“Climate change. Poverty. War. Disease. Deforestation. Acid rain. Poisoned air. An ozone layer filled with holes. Ice caps melting, sea levels rising. A planet fighting a human infection. All of this came to pass.” Moran bowed her head, as if taking a private moment of silence. When she looked up, her eyes were alight with the fervor of a true believer. “Just as the earth must heal itself, so we must heal ourselves. Only when we’ve achieved purity of both mind and body will we be strong enough to survive on the outside.”
She glanced toward the rules pinned to the corkboard on the wall. As if any of them needed a reminder. They lived with those rules every day. They ate them. They breathed them. They slept them. They governed every aspect of their miserable, subterranean lives.
You must always tell the truth.
You must avoid the light of the sun.
You must never touch skin to skin.
But the most important rule, the one that was drilled into their heads from the moment the hatch had slammed shut all those years ago, was at the very end of the list. It fell from their lips in moments of uncertainty. It was repeated to wayward children, like a mantra, lest they forget. It rattled around in their skulls when all was silent, echoing in the quiet, lonely dark.
You must never go outside.
“The ones who did this to our home, who scarred our planet so,” Moran intoned. The height of solemnity. “They paid for their sins. But we must always remember them. We must do better. We must be better.”
She sighed heavily, as if weighted down by the great and terrible burden only a prophet could possibly know.
“They were wicked.” Her lips curled into a beatific smile. “But we are blessed.”
At the front of the class, Moran blurred, her body morphing into a vaguely human-shaped crimson smudge in Yuna’s vision. Yuna blinked, rubbing at her eyes. A yawn tried to claw its way up her throat, but she clamped her teeth down, forcing it to retreat.
Yawning was a hard no in Moran’s class. So was sleeping, talking, or doing anything other than listening with rapt attention.
Yuna nibbled at the inside of her cheek. That helped her stay awake sometimes. If that failed, she’d change tactics—snapping her hair tie against her wrist or digging her nails into the palms of her hand so hard she left little crescent-moon indents in her skin. Neither strategy was pleasant, but they were vastly preferable to the alternative.
Gaining Moran’s complete and undivided attention.
That was a hard pass for Yuna.
Their desk tables were now arranged in a semicircle around Moran. A chalkboard stood behind the desk, onto which she’d written her three points of discussion. (Though it was less of a discussion and more of a lecture, but Dr. Moran hadn’t asked for Yuna’s opinion on her choice of terminology, and so Yuna would simply keep that to herself.)
The points were as followed:
1. The body as microcosm of the planet.
2. The planet as microcosm of the universe.
3. The universe as microcosm of the divine.
Yuna had no idea what any of that meant. And to be honest, she didn’t quite care. All she cared about was staying awake.
Sleep had always been hard for her to come by. It was like her body (microcosm of the planet) had never quite adjusted to existing underground, deprived of natural light and fresh air. The bunker had light, of course, carefully regulated by timers to dim and brighten in an effort to simulate the rising and setting of the actual sun, but it wasn’t the same. It never had been. Everyone else seemed to grow accustomed to it, but Yuna’s brain had never come to accept the farce of their false sun.
Something dug into her thigh—not painfully, but not gently either—and her eyes flew open. Had they closed? All on their own? She couldn’t remember.
Beside her, Sash shifted in her seat, knocking her knee against Yuna’s. Moran was still facing the blackboard, writing something in chalk the color of a dusty rose. Yuna glanced at Sash. The other girl was staring straight ahead, a shallow, inoffensive smile on her lips. But her hand moved, dropping something onto Yuna’s lap.
A small piece of paper, folded into halves. It had been folded so many times, the creases had gone so soft it felt like it might disintegrate in Yuna’s hands. Paper. Another hot commodity down in the bunker. There was only so much of it to go around. They’d taken to recycling their own, but the homemade stuff was never as good. Yuna’s was especially bumpy.
With her eyes locked on Moran, she carefully (and quietly) unfolded the note. When Moran turned back toward the board to write something, Yuna glanced down at the paper.
Two checkboxes. One labeled yes, the other no.
It took everything Yuna had not to audibly snort.
With one eye on Moran, she scribbled her own reply.
A third checkbox, this one labeled, “Yes, not like that.”
Quickly, she folded the paper along the same well-worn creases and slid it in Sash’s direction.
Except it didn’t make it to Sash. The note continued its smooth slide over the metal surface of the table, coming to a halt right in front of Gabe himself.
Moran began to turn around. Without missing a beat, Gabe snatched the note off the table. It was gone before anyone but the three of them could see it.
With an owlish—and entirely too perceptive—blink, Moran asked, “Something wrong?”
Sash leaned her cheek on her fist and cracked a truly obnoxious yawn. “Nope.”
Quirking her eyebrows up, Moran’s gaze slid from Sash to Gabe (who blinked a bit too fast but otherwise gave nothing away) and to Yuna. Yuna met that gaze with her own, unflinching. Serene.
After a few beats, Moran sighed and turned back to the board. “Very well, then.”
As soon as she started writing addendums to her list, Gabe, very slowly and very silently, retrieved the note. Keeping it on his lap, he unfolded it, quiet as a mouse. His eyes moved from side to side as he scanned its contents. Then, his lips pursed. He flattened the note against the table and scribbled something of his own underneath Yuna’s contribution. Before Moran had reached the end of her sentence—“The divine is human and human is divine” (whatever that meant)—Gabe had slid the note over to Sash.
She cracked it open just enough to glimpse whatever Gabe had written and then had to bite her knuckle to keep a laugh in.
What is it? Yuna mouthed at Sash.
Sash shook her head, folding the note closed and shoving it toward Yuna.
Moran glanced at them over her shoulder for a brief moment.
“Something you’d like to share with the rest of the class, Alexandra?”
“It’s Sash, and no.”
Moran’s brief glance turned into a cold, if somewhat bemused, glare. “Have I done something to earn your disrespect, Alex—Sash?”
Yuna pressed her thigh into Sash’s, hoping the other girl got the message.
Moran put down the chalk and turned around fully.
Oh. This was the opposite of what any of them had wanted. Yuna had desired only to make it through this lesson, as she’d made it through every other lesson, every single day since they’d settled into this bunker all those years ago.
Even Sash, with her flagrant disregard for authority, seemed to realize she’d gone a step too far. One never knew where that line was drawn with Moran. Sometimes, you could get away with bloody murder. Some days, you could barely get away with anything at all. It was a fine tightrope they all walked.
Clearing her throat, Sash sat upright in her chair. “No, ma’am.”
Yuna hoped she was the only one who heard the faint thread of disdain woven through Sash’s voice.
From the look on Moran’s face, Yuna, in fact, was not.
Moran loosely clasped her hands together in front of her stomach. “Then, tell me, Sash, why do I deserve it?”
She spread her hands wide, gesturing toward the walls. But als
o, Yuna knew, toward everything beyond their specific limits. To the hydroponic systems in the garden and the generators pulling electricity from … wherever it was they pulled electricity. To the powdered gruel that filled their bellies and the darkness that kept them safe.
“Have I not done enough to earn at least the smallest shred of respect?” She rounded the desk, approaching them. Yuna went still. There was something about Moran’s gait that reminded her vaguely of a snake slithering through tall grass. “Have I not provided you—provided your families, all of them—with a safe haven when there was no other?”
Yuna watched as Sash swallowed thickly. The corner of Sash’s mouth twitched, as if she were considering saying something wildly ill-advised. (Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise Yuna, not now, not after years of minor rebellions.) But when Sash spoke, all she said was, “Of course, Dr. Moran.”
Moran paused in front of Sash, forcing the girl to crane her neck to look up at her if she wanted to meet that gaze. And Yuna knew she did. Sash may have been verbally quelled for the moment, but not for one second did Yuna believe that went any deeper than the most surface of levels.
They both went still, gazes locked. Gabe caught Yuna’s eye, his brows quirking upward. Yuna offered him the tiniest, most inconspicuous shrug she possibly could. This seemed like a battle of wills, but for what, Yuna was unsure. There were no victory conditions here. Win or lose, they were all locked in this bunker together with no escape in sight. It didn’t make much sense to rock the boat the way Sash did, but neither did it make much sense to lord one’s position over the rest the way Moran sometimes did. A very large part of Yuna wished that everyone would just take a step back, breathe a little, and calm down.
“And you?”
Yuna didn’t realize Moran was talking to her until the woman’s crimson gown floated into her direct line of sight. Yuna looked up. And up. And up. Dr. Moran appeared very tall when one was sitting down. Which Yuna was. What a fun dynamic this was.
“Me?” Yuna asked.
“You.”
“What about me?”