by Morgan Rice
We all settle down, sitting on the ground and benches. It reminds me of kids at kindergarten sitting on a storytime rug, only we’re soldiers, and we’re discussing something far graver than a five-year-old could ever imagine.
“Say the message is recent,” the Commander begins, “we can take it as fact that there are indeed survivors out there. Who feels that we should be searching for survivors?”
There’s a show of hands, and I look around to see that far more people than just our group have raised their hands in support. I feel a swirl of happiness in my stomach to know that so many people share my belief about looking for survivors.
“And what do you people propose we do with them?” the Commander asks calmly.
Nicolas, a man in our group, begins to speak. “We want to go on short missions to rescue them and bring them back to the fort.”
General Reece shakes her head. “That would be out of the question. It would alert slaverunners to our presence.”
“Then what about creating a safe place for them nearby?” Molly asks. “We can train them to guard and patrol like we do.”
People murmur in agreement, as though this is indeed a good idea. It would make Fort Noix a town of separatists rather than isolationists.
“How many people would be willing to set up this new fort?” the Commander asks.
Many of the people I’ve been speaking with over the last six months volunteer themselves, including Trixie and her family, and a large number of the Forest Dwellers. The Commander nods, though he looks a little stung to see so many wishing to leave.
“Then, please,” he says, “know you have my blessing to do what you think is right. But let me make it clear right now. If you leave, you cannot come back. It’s too risky.”
General Reece nods. “I agree. If you’re going to be going out on multiple rescue missions, you’re bound to be noticed by someone sooner or later. You cannot lead those people here.”
“I understand,” Nicolas replies. “We’re all aware of the dangers.”
Molly nudges me and gives me a thumbs-up. What we’ve wanted for months is finally coming to fruition. People will be saved, given a chance at life like me, Bree, Ben, and Charlie were. But something is still niggling in the back of my mind. The message. The American military base.
“What about the radio message?” I say. “Can we send a team to Texas to make contact with the survivors there?”
Silence falls across the crowd.
The Commander looks at me. “We don’t know for certain if the survivors there are still alive,” he says. “And Texas is a very long way to travel on the off chance that they are.”
“It’s a chance that many of us are willing to take,” I say, confidently.
But when I look around, to my dismay I find that no one is agreeing with me. I realize in that moment that they’ve changed their minds. Making limited local runs to rescue people is enough for them. Heading across the length of America is too much. Traveling all the way to Texas was never the plan. I feel deflated.
“Like I said,” the Commander replies, noting the complete lack of support anyone is giving me, “you’re free to leave. But you cannot come back.”
I know I should just be happy that, at last, there will be a group of people searching for survivors.
But it’s not enough. Because I can’t help thinking that the person trying to contact us could be my dad, that he could have survived the war just like the Commander did, and started his own group. Even if there’s only a million to one chance that it is him, I have to find out.
And that means leaving Fort Noix.
And if need be, alone.
I breathe in deeply.
“In that case,” I say, “I want to leave.”
The silence would be deafening if it weren’t for the shrill cry of a young girl coming from somewhere at the back of the crowd. It takes me a second to realize that the cry is coming from Bree.
I look over my shoulder and see her pelting through the crowd, making a beeline for me. Guilt swirls inside of me. I once made a promise to her that I would never leave her, and here I am, breaking it to her in the least sensitive way ever, that I’m going to do just that.
She reaches me and flings herself into my lap.
“I don’t understand what’s happening!” she sobs into my chest. “You want to leave? But you’d never be able to come back!” She pulls away, her tear-stained face bright red with emotion. “What about me? Charlie? Ben? What about us?”
I’m about to soothe her and explain my theory about Dad, when Neena pushes her way through the crowd and puts a maternal arm around Bree, as if trying to shield her from the pain I’m causing.
“Come on,” Neena says in hushed tones as she heaves her to her feet. “Let the grown-ups talk. This is no place for a child.”
Bree looks at me through red-rimmed eyes, her bottom lip trembling, then lets Neena lead her away. Ben and Charlie follow them through the crowd, both glaring at me darkly.
My heart breaks as Bree disappears. I feel awful to have caused her pain. I need to explain to her about Dad, about my gut feeling that the message is from him. Once she understands that, she’ll see why I have no choice but to leave.
“Brooke,” General Reece says, “I think you should reconsider leaving. You’d be going to Texas on nothing more than a hunch. I don’t want to lose my best shooter.”
“It’s more than a hunch,” I reply. “Zeke’s right when he said we would have picked the message up sooner if it had been recorded years ago. I’m absolutely certain that message has only just been sent, that they’re all alive. I want to find them.”
“I’m with Brooke,” a voice says and my heart skips a beat
I turn and look over at Ryan. All these months that we’ve been debating isolationism and rescuing survivors, he’s been the person most opposed to my views. He’s always wanted to stop me from leaving, to convince me that it’s better just to stay. Yet now, he’s the first to volunteer to come with me.
“Why?” I ask, astonished.
He smirks. “Because the chances of you changing your mind are nil,” he says. “And I’m not about to let you walk out alone into your death. So that leaves me no other option.”
My stomach flips. That Ryan would do that for me, it’s more than my heart can handle.
“I’m coming too.”
I turn and am floored to see Molly smiling back.
“Unless I’d be a third wheel,” she adds wryly.
“You won’t,” Zeke adds. “Because I’ll be with you all.”
I look from one to the other, relief swelling inside of me that I’m not doing this alone. And gratitude. I am touched that they care about me so much that they’d all risk their lives for me.
“Brooke,” the Commander says, “come to my office tomorrow morning. All of you,” he adds, addressing Zeke, Ryan, and Molly. “We’ll formulate a plan for your departure.”
My stomach flips again at the thought that this is really happening, and that the Commander is going to help me. My whole body is a mixture of excitement and anticipation. After six months of dreaming about leaving this place, it’s finally about to happen.
But there’s something else there too, a deep, hollow sensation inside of me. I realize it’s the thought of leaving Charlie, Ben, and Bree behind. I know they won’t come with me. Bree loves Fort Noix too much, Charlie is her hopelessly devoted shadow who will do anything she asks, and Ben’s too unwell to come even if he wanted to.
But I cannot change my mind now—and I don’t want to. Other survivors might be out there. And among them, I even dare to hope, my father.
I have sealed my fate.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When I enter my room, Bree, sitting on the bottom bunk bed, puts her book down and stares at me. That look kills me. She’s annoyed at me for rocking the boat, for bringing disorder and chaos into her previously stable life, but I decide not to sugar coat it. Bree’s matured a lot over the last
few months. She deserves the truth. I sit beside her on the bed. She looks so serious, so grown up. I feel a pang of loss for the little girl she used to be.
“Bree, I’m sorry,” I begin, but she cuts me off.
“I think the Commander’s right,” she says, seriously. “Fort Noix is the first place we’ve been safe. We don’t have to worry about slaverunners or going hungry. Have you already forgotten what it was like out there? Don’t you remember how it felt to be starving? I never want to feel that again.” There’s accusation in her tone.
“But there are other people out there,” I argue gently. “Other survivors. Don’t you think we should find them?”
Bree just shakes her head. “No. I don’t. The Commander would let them in if they made it here just like he did with us. But I don’t think we should go looking for them. It’s way too dangerous.”
“What if one of them was Dad?” I contest.
Bree frowns. She looks even madder than before.
“We don’t even know if Dad’s alive,” she says.
“We don’t know for certain,” I admit. “But I have this feeling deep inside of me that he is. Like if the Commander can survive this long, then why not Dad? He was one of the best in the platoon, you heard the Commander say that.”
“But what does your thinking Dad’s alive have to do with going to Texas?”
I know she’s going to think I’m crazy, but she has to understand why I’m so adamant about leaving. “The radio message. I think it was from Dad.”
Bree looks at me sadly. “I see Mom all the time, too. It’s just part of grief.”
“It’s not like that,” I snap. “I’m not seeing ghosts.” She goes to roll her eyes but I grab her roughly by the shoulder. “Listen,” I demand. “The message is from a military base. Dad was in the military. It’s in Texas. Dad trained in Texas. He said ‘Moore,’ right at the end!”
Bree wrenches her shoulders from my grasp. “And that’s enough for you to just up and leave?”
“That and a feeling right in here,” I say, touching my heart, “that Dad is alive out there somewhere and now that we’re strong enough to find him we should.”
Bree sighs heavily. “Nothing I say will change your mind, will it?”
I look down into my lap, ashamed. “You know I don’t want to leave you.”
“Do I?” she snaps.
“Of course I don’t!” I cry. “You’re my sister. I love you.”
She flashes me a haughty look. “You left Mom.”
The words sting more than a slap to the face. My little Bree, whom I did everything in the world for, is challenging me over one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make, one that I made to make sure she stayed alive.
I’m not prepared to argue with her. It feels as though being at Fort Noix has turned her from a helpless kid into an independent one. She’s acting like she doesn’t need me anymore. Maybe she doesn’t.
I stand from the bed and climb into the top bunk. With an angry sigh I stare at the ceiling.
“I love you, Bree,” I say. “Whatever happens, remember that.”
She doesn’t say anything back.
*
I pace down the darkened corridor, tiptoeing so no one can hear my footsteps. I’m deep in the bowels of Fort Noix, though I can’t quite recall how I got here.
At the far end of the corridor, light seeps out from beneath a door. It’s one of those big steel doors like in a submarine. I realize then that I’m far, far underground.
I creep up to the door and press my ear against it. Inside, I can just about make out a deep rumbling voice with a strong South Carolina accent. It’s the Commander.
I can only hear some of the words he’s saying but it’s enough to gather that he’s speaking to someone about the radio message, about the group of survivors in America. Then I pick out something that makes my heart stop.
“Laurence Moore.”
That’s my dad’s name. What’s the Commander doing talking about my dad?
I shove the door open. The Commander’s back is to me. He’s bent over a large machine which I assume to be some kind of radio device. It takes up the whole other half of the room. A single light bulb hangs from the ceiling, casting a dirty dark yellow light over the room, making the shadows stark.
When I barge into the room, he spins around to face me. But it’s not the Commander I come face to face with. It’s my dad.
He’s in full military gear, looking exactly like he did the last time I saw him. Behind him the radio bleeps and crackles.
Confused, I start to stagger back, but all at once, the ground beneath my dad gives way. The entire floor to the secret bunker room is collapsing. He screams as he plunges down, with bits of the huge radio machine falling after him.
“Dad!” I cry, reaching for him.
It’s no use. He’s fallen a good thirty feet to the bottom of a long pit. The wires of the device have snapped and dangle against the wall. Every time they touch, electricity zaps across them, sending sparks down on my dad. He peers up at me, terrified.
That’s when I realize I’m not alone. All around the perimeter of the room, looking down at my dad in the pit, are hundreds upon hundreds of biovictims. They shout and jeer, waving their fists in the air.
My dad is in an arena.
From the far end, a door opens and a huge spider, at least ten feet tall, crawls into the arena. Its legs are as thick as tree trunks. It scuttles toward my dad as fast as a tiger. The spectators go wild.
He looks up at me. “Brooke!” he cries. “Brooke! Help me! You have to come to me!”
I start to scream.
I wake, screaming, and look all around.
I realize I’m back in my room, in my bunk bed. Daylight is streaming through the curtains and Bree snores softly in the bed beneath me. My heart is beating fast. I take deep breaths to try and calm myself down. It was just a dream, I tell myself. Just a dream.
But it felt like a dream that was telling me something. Urging me to find my dad. To help him.
Telling me that he’s alive.
Quietly, I climb down the ladder of my bunk bed and land softly on the ground. I take the fresh uniform Neena cleaned and ironed for me and slip it on, feeling the rough fabric against my skin. It’s a sensation I’ve become familiar with over the last six months at Fort Noix. As I sling the backpack over my shoulder, I hear Bree’s voice coming from behind me.
“You’re an idiot, Brooke,” she says.
I tense. I hate hearing my sister so angry, and I can’t help but draw painful comparisons to the way I left Mom, the last bitter words I said to her.
Without looking back, I say, “I’m sorry, but I have to do this.”
I take one more step, stop, and add: “I love you. Don’t ever forget that.”
There comes silence in return.
Then, without another word, I step out of this room, out of this new life, for what may be the very last time.
CHAPTER NINE
Molly, Zeke, Ryan, and I watch quietly as the Commander spreads a map out on the table in front of us. We’re in his office in the busy main building, the one where he’d first decided to let us stay all those months ago. Now, here he is, helping me to leave.
The map looks incredibly old. People stopped making physical maps because technology surpassed the need for them, and most of the ones still in existence would have been poached from museums around the early twenty-first century. There’s no doubt in my mind that this map is an old, historical relic, stolen in a raid years ago. There’s no way of knowing for sure if the roads depicted on it will still be there, or that there won’t be extra settlements on the way not shown, places where unsavory people might dwell.
General Reece leans over and taps a spot on the map. “This is us,” she says. Then she runs her finger down the length of the map all the way to Houston, Texas. “And here is where the signal came from.”
I frown and lean forward, looking more closely at the map in the
dingy yellow light. It looks like such an enormous distance to cover. The thought is daunting.
“I would recommend you stick to the waterways wherever possible,” she continues. “It will be safer. Faster. And will require less fuel. Stay far from the shores. Take the Lawrence River and head west as far as you can.”
I’d been planning on leaving by the same route I arrived, traveling alongside the Hudson toward New York. It seemed logical to me to retrace my steps, to tread familiar ground, at least for the initial part of the journey. But looking at the map makes me realize that my plan is too risky. New York is crawling with slaverunners, and is the site of Arena 1. She’s right: passing through it via land would be incredibly dangerous. By sticking to the waterways and following the river for as long as possible, we’ll be able to bypass many of the main highways and cities.
“There’s just one snag,” I say. “I don’t have a boat.”
It’s the Commander who answers.
“We’ll give you a boat, Brooke,” he says, almost matter-of-factly.
My mouth drops open at the news. I can hardly believe it. Molly and Zeke are both wide-eyed in disbelief, too. My first instinct is to ask him why, why he would choose to help me by offering up a precious vehicle like a boat, but I decide against it.
General Reece taps the map again, pointing to a place in Ohio on the banks of the river.
“If you survive that far,” she adds, “the water can take you all the way to Toledo. There’s an old train station there, built during the war as a way to transport coal down south. There are tracks running all the way to Texas.”
“Really?” I gasp, my voice rising several pitches at the stroke of luck.
She nods in her typically emotionless way. It takes all my willpower to contain my excitement. General Reece and the Commander have no idea how grateful I am to them for the information.
The tracks aren’t on the ancient map, so General Reece leans forward and draws a straight red line from Toledo to Chicago, then all the way down to Houston, Texas.