by Megan Lynch
He longed to do what Stephen, Bristol, and Samara did: protect the compound from intruders and infiltrators. But everyone had the same choral retort when he asked to leave laundry behind and join the patrol: he was too young.
His stomach growled and he firmly glued his eyes to the next word on the page until it stopped. Tommy, one of the monastery leaders, stopped in front of Jude’s bed and let a barely audible whistle out from his teeth. Jude lowered the book.
“Jade, is it?”
“Jude, sir.”
“I’m Tommy.”
“I know, sir.”
The man sat down on the bunk at Jude’s feet and rifled through his satchel. “Got something in here for you…I know we’re all going a little stir-crazy in here all day, but this should at least keep those sound effects away.” He pulled out a protein bar and handed it to Jude. “We’re just going around telling everyone that it’s all going to be fine. Eat up, and we’ll make an announcement in about an hour.”
Jude had never been this close to one of the leaders before. From this distance, he could smell the cigarette smoke on his beard and hoped it wouldn’t seep into his quilt. He nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Tommy walked to the next bunk, and the sound of crinkling wrappers being opened was suddenly audible.
Tommy walked over to the next bunk. Now that Jude was no longer in the world of Dickens, he was aware of the crinkles of ten or so wrappers being opened and tossed aside. He opened his own and ate slowly. Jude heard Bristol’s voice in his head, something he’d said when they’d first arrived and the leaders had put him in a separate dormitory from the others: We don’t have to like it here. We just have to survive until the next phase.
Just survive. So what if the leaders wouldn’t let them out for dinner either? And what about tomorrow? How would he survive? Just wait until their announcement, then figure something out. He firmly raised his book back to his face, but after the same sentence passed before his eyes three, four, five times with no meaning, he put it down and turned his head to observe the others. Almost everyone was on some version or another of an ancient electronic device. Things way before Data Watches, like VideoBoys and GamePads. They were all offline, of course, but Jude still didn’t know why anyone would use them. He’d tried a GamePad before, and it made him sluggish and dream about things like catching trolls in a gem cave or shooting lasers at monsters. He liked his dreams better when he was reading and talking to people he liked.
Scanning the room, his eyes caught those of another boy for a second too long, and he looked away with burning cheeks. pleasedon’ttalktome, pleasedon’ttalktome, don’tdon’tdon’tnononono. Jude snapped his book back up to his face, and after several long moments, glared over the top at the boy again. He was back to his game. Heavier-set and pouty-faced, he stared into his screen with the earliest shadow of a wrinkle between his eyebrows. He must have just wanted to stretch his eyes.
“Boys?”
Jude flinched, but no more than usual. They’d used that same address at the Fox County Detention Center.
“Boys, can everyone hear me?” Tommy stood near the door with his fingers interlaced and his palms flat against his chest, undeniably uncomfortable to be speaking to all thirty of them at once. After a few seconds passed without anyone giving any indication whether or not they could, in fact, hear him, he went on. “So there’s still snow on the ground, and our sources on the outside say we’ll get more as the day goes on. So we’ve decided to make the switch, just until spring, to switch day and night. Okay?”
Jude could tell he wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand. The boys turned their heads toward each other with narrowed eyes amid mumbles.
“Okay, what that means is”—Tommy stopped to giggle—“and I can see where that’s confusing, um—we’re going to turn days and nights around. From now on, we’ll sleep during the day. When the sun sets, we’ll get up and get on with our work. We’ll eat our meals at night. We’ll socialize at night. And if we need to have any meetings, we’ll do those at night, too. Before daybreak, a few of us will brush away footprints so they aren’t seen if any drones fly over. So we’ll start right now. So it’s noon now, we’ll get ready for bed, then in fifteen minutes, it’ll be lights out. I’ll wake you back up at eight.”
Jude slept horribly. Hours later, when he finally did manage to drift off, he dreamed that he caught the eyes again of the boy in the opposite bed, but this time, the boy was Kopecky. His only friend from the prison—indeed, the only friend in his life—Koepcky had been murdered by Metrics months ago, and Jude had witnessed his death. Jude was surprised to see him, then, in the bunk holding a GamePad, but he could not look away. Kopecky’s face was sunken enough to see the clear outline of his skull under his gray flesh. He opened his mouth and raised his hand, and Jude, knowing this was a dream but an important one, leaned in to hear what message he’d come to deliver. Out of his mouth came the agitated voice of Tommy.
Boys, calm down, calm down!
Kopecky disappeared and Jude opened his eyes to the underside of the pillow he’d lodged over his head. He could still see daylight—it couldn’t be eight o’clock yet.
“Mister, those guys are out and they’re goin’ to the mess hall!” one of the boys was saying to Tommy.
“I see that, thanks. I don’t know why…could mess up the whole plan…” Tommy dragged on his boots and swung his arms into a coat. “Stay here. I’ll find out what’s going on.”
Jude stood to look out the front window. Indeed, though the sun was just setting, there was a trickle of men going in the direction of the mess hall, though no lights appeared to be on there.
A boy next to Jude snorted. “Plan.”
Though Jude wasn’t wearing his glasses, he recognized him as the boy who’d turned into Kopecky in his dream. The boy crossed his arms and turned his head toward Jude. “The only plan they got is to hold us here until we all die.”
“Hacks! Dumbasses!” shouted another boy.
“We’re going to die in here?” the smallest boy, about four, barely got the last word of his question out before he began openly weeping.
“See what you did?” his older brother said to the boy beside Jude.
“He might as well know. We might as well accept it!”
“If we were good at accepting defeat, we wouldn’t be here! If you’re going to preach that shit, then you don’t belong with us!” The older brother punched the heavy boy in the face with a sound that made Jude positive his nose was broken. The boy tried to fight back, but there were arms around both of them now, pulling both boys in opposite corners of the room. Amid the voices shouting and the arms swinging and the feet stamping, Jude stayed in the middle of the room, rooted to the spot where the fight had started, dismayed. He could see Tommy outside, ignored by the men passing him, still in search of someone he could question.
Chapter Three
Life had taken on some very different colors for Bristol. Looking out over the tree stand where he kept watch over the monastery, he saw nothing but a mess of brown shades where the brush latticed over the gray sky. At least the snow had been pretty when it was here. All that remained of it now were translucent clumps. The mud and the dead grass were visible underneath.
Bristol hadn’t drawn or painted in months. Images still came to him, once in a while, but not with the vividness and vigor they once appeared. It was like they sensed something was up, that he had neither the time nor the materials to bring them into fruition, and went off in search of another artist. Probably one living far away, in a country where people were free to do things like make art for pleasure.
Probably one who’d do it better than me anyway.
Bristol shook that thought away. Why did those kinds of thoughts plague him here? It wasn’t like he’d never experienced inadequate feelings about his abilities before, when he was on the outside of this place, but it was different here. He’d never been really free when living in his mother’s apartment, of course, but it w
as just the air he breathed; he was used to that kind of confinement. This kind was different: the people looking after him to make sure he didn’t step out of line were real people, not robots or cameras or systems. They had faces that showed disappointment, like when he dipped into the office’s dwindling supply of pencils to draw on the smooth underside of a piece of bark. For three months, he sought out the right trees, stripped them, wore out the pencil, and sharpened it with his knife. When his supervisor found what he’d been doing, he pointed out that Bristol had endangered the lives of hundreds of people. What if someone found all those stripped trees? There was nothing in this forest to cause that kind of damage. What if someone found his work? Anyone from the city would immediately know who he was and approximately where he was hiding. It wouldn’t take Metrics long to find all of them. Ashamed and, for the first time, afraid, Bristol had stopped.
There was another reason Bristol hadn’t created anything in three months. Samara was also part of the watch. Her tree stand was only about fifty yards away from Bristol’s. Although he was serious about keeping the monastery safe, it was undeniably boring to let all those shades of brown take over his vision and make it fuzzy. He looked at her tree whenever he could.
Bristol heard a bobwhite calling behind him. He’d only seen a real one once, so he quickly turned his stiff neck around to see if it was a live bird. It was not. The next watchman was here, walking almost silently to Bristol’s tree. Bristol smiled, nodded at him, and began to climb down.
“They need y’all at the meetin’ house,” the young man said.
Bristol wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly. He blinked and leaned in. “Is there a meeting?”
“We just had it. They’re wanting to tell y’all next.”
“Thanks. Good luck tonight.”
The young man nodded and moved past Bristol, climbing up the same way he’d come down.
Bristol stood at the tree a moment, waiting for Samara’s relief watchman to arrive, but no one came. She caught his eye and waved him on, possibly smiling, but it was hard to tell under that scarf she wore over the bottom half of her face.
He walked toward the main cluster of buildings, marveling how his body could be in such pain at such a young age. His hips creaked; his knees ached. He tried not to think of that while he walked through the forest as he’d been taught: mindfully, gazing at each place his foot would hit so his journey would be silent. It was a two-mile walk to the meeting house, and this style of walking was excruciatingly slow, but whenever he wanted to speed it up, he visualized the faces of the ones he was protecting. Samara. Denver. Jude. Stephen.
After about fifteen minutes, he heard a rustling behind him and turned. Samara was walking forward at a much faster pace; the world’s fastest tortoise. Bristol frowned and waited with his feet planted.
“Slow down,” he whispered when she was close enough to hear.
Samara pulled the scarf down from her mouth. “I wanted to catch up with you.”
“I can see that. But I heard you.”
“Yes, yes.” Samara’s eyes rolled playfully.
“Here’s the part where you say I’m grumpy.”
“You are. I’m being careful. I just don’t think you’re used to sitting so much. You have to do what you can to keep yourself active. You’re too used to standing and working. You never had to sit in a classroom for every waking hour in a day.”
“True,” Bristol said and sucked the part of his lip that had broken in the cold.
Samara made a little tutting noise and squeezed his hand to make him stop. She pecked him on the cheek and made him smile. Her eyes found his lips. “Is that painful?”
“What?”
“You need some Vaseline. There’s some in our dorm. I’ll bring it to you if you want to stop there first.”
“They need us at the meeting house.”
“I heard that, too. After the meeting, then. I wonder what it’s about?”
They wondered the rest of the way, until they were on the blessed dirt road that led them past the buildings: first, the field on the right; then, the girls’ and boys’ dorms on either side; then, the dining hall beside the girls’ dorm. The meeting hall was at the end of the road, and the doors opened straight out into it. Bristol held the door for Samara and relished the little sigh of pleasure she made.
Besides the mess hall, it was the only building with a fireplace that was only sometimes lit. It wasn’t just now, but they could tell it had been. The warmth from that fire and from the many living, breathing, heat-creating bodies that had obviously been in and out of the room was still present, and Bristol took his hands out of his pockets to soak it up.
The three leaders of the monastery—Tommy, Karale, and Danovan—sat on folding chairs at the front. Tommy stood when he saw them. “Come in! Come in!”
They were already in, but they walked closer to the front. Tommy sat down again, but there were no more chairs near, so Bristol and Samara took a chair each and brought it with them to the front.
They got all the way to the front of the room when Karale eyed their chairs and said, “You won’t need those. This can be short.”
Bristol turned to put his back, but Samara unfolded her chair and sat on it. “I’ll sit anyway. We’ve had a long walk here,” she said.
Bristol smiled and unfolded his, too. Karale chuckled and glanced from Tommy to Danovan. “I forgot. Well if you’d rather sit for just a few minutes, by all means…”
The five of them were there for no less than an hour. In the first ten minutes, while the three in front argued about an exact date to begin the day-to-night switch, Bristol looked over at Samara’s face and saw the fine lines in her young forehead deepen with concern. Samara held up both hands and said, “Tommy, you are saying exactly what Karale and Danovan are saying. The night of the sixteenth is the morning of the seventeenth, if the switch happens after midnight.”
“Thank you,” breathed Danovan, and the three of them began arguing over precisely what hour after midnight.
Bristol’s lower back ached. Just tell us, he begged in his head. Just tell us what to do and we’ll do it. He was aware that this thinking was in line with Metrics—the very system they were trying to free themselves from—but he was tired and hungry for more affection from Samara, who was obviously agitated from this meeting. The voices in the room didn’t make sense anymore. He let his eyes close for a second.
Suddenly the room was silent. Bristol opened his eyes and saw Samara standing at her full height, arms at her side, staring at Danovan.
“Thank you,” she said to break the silence. “Listen to me. The switchover will happen on midnight on the night of the sixteenth and the morning of the seventeenth. You do not have to worry about anyone understanding that. They will understand. Sound good?”
They nodded.
“Thank you.” She looked at Bristol, who took that as his cue. He stood and folded his chair as she said, “I assume this means our shifts won’t change, since Bristol and I work nights. Thanks for letting us know, though.”
“Sure!” said Tommy. “Take care!”
“No, wait!” Karale interjected. “We wanted to let you know that we have a new role for you, Samara. And Bristol, you too.”
Danovan rolled his shoulders back and reached his hands back to give himself a little massage. “You’d better sit back down.”
They did. Karale said, “Samara, we’ve been thinking of the children in the group. We know you have experience with education, and we feel that it’s essential that the children be confident in some basic skills before we make the move to Canada. Starting tomorrow at nine, you’ll teach for a few hours every day in this room. Just in the mornings. And then you’ll follow the kids while they do their work to do some one-on-one sessions with the ones who need extra help.”
Bristol’s lower back no longer bothered him. He sat stiff in his seat. Samara asked, “What kind of skills?”
“Reading. Writing. Basic math.”
<
br /> “Who will be with Bristol?”
“We discussed it this morning.” For the first time since he walked into the room, Karale’s eyes found Bristol’s. “Your friend Jude will join you. He’s excused from laundry. We’re cutting down on that, since the clothes take longer to dry now anyway.”
It took you one morning to decide that? Heat swelled in Bristol’s belly. He looked at Samara, who, on the surface at least, seemed perfectly composed.
“Fine. Nine a.m.? That’s only a few hours away. I’d better get to sleep. Has Jude been told?”
They shook their heads. Samara sighed. “Bristol can tell him. He’ll need to get to bed sometime today too, to get ready for the night. Now may we go?”
After another friendly, parting “Take care!” from Tommy, Bristol and Samara walked out. When the large sheet metal doors were safely closed behind them, he enclosed Samara in his arms. Through his coat, he could feel her broken breath. She said something, but his coat muffled it.