by Keys, Logan
Will I only have ghosts to keep me company?
She walks forward, and once she’s near enough, Joelle, as pale as crystal, reaches out to touch my shoulder. Her black eyes find mine, staring at me with so much sadness. When her freezing cold skin brushes against me, I try to edge away.
She snags my wrist and, lifting it to her face, Joelle rubs it like a kitten. Momentarily, I relax … until I feel stinging needles in my arm.
I crawl backwards on the beach. “What are you doing!” I’m so torn between excitement that she’s alive and fear that this is a trick, plus confusion over her wanting to bite me.
“Tommy, I’m sorry!” Joelle holds out her hands, trying to calm me. “I’m just so hungry—I didn’t mean it. I was happy to see you, but then … I keep thinking about … food—”
“You’re real?”
She nods, and the spell’s broken. I drunkenly leap to my feet to rush over and pull her into my arms. “How?” I ask, but I don’t really care.
I crush her to me.
“I was on the ship when it got gunned down,” Joelle says, muffled against my ripped shirt. “The water was cold, black, and terrifying. I sunk to the bottom, but even the crushing depths didn’t faze me, so I simply began to walk.”
I shudder at the image, hugging her again.
“Tommy …” Her voice is as reedy as ribbons. “I need to eat.”
Right then I realize just how close she is to my throat. I inch back. “I know, Jo, I know. We’ll figure it out. Let’s get out of here first. The Authority’s probably already scouring the area for survivors.”
And like magic, a spotlight appears on the water nearby. We jerk our gazes skyward to the helicopter. Authority insignias glow on each side.
“What do we do, Tommy!”
“Run.”
We make it to the boardwalk before zombies head us off, forcing Joelle and me to slide between buildings and down alleyways, trying to dodge the chopper. Joelle’s faster than I am, but having gone this long without food, she’s not half as quick as usual. We aren’t long for this race, and we dive into an empty building to decide what’s next. The searchlight shines around the windows, but at least this place has no undead inside.
“Wait—shhh.” I lay a hand on Jo’s arm. “Do you hear that?”
“What?—oh, yes I do!”
“It’s a radio. The team’s around here.”
The chopper follows us as we check each window in a weird game of pop goes the weasel. My gaze darts to Joelle, then to the chopper and back, weighing my options. “I’m gonna count to three,” I tell her. “You start running and don’t look back.”
“Why? What’re you going to do, Tommy?”
“Just listen to me, will ya?”
She nods, and I count. When I get to three, she jumps out the window and is gone like the ghost I’d thought she was, slipping between the buildings.
But I don’t follow.
I turn the other way to ensure the chopper has me in its sights first … then I head toward the beach.
Once I’m out on the sand, I cringe, knowing they’ll start firing on me at any moment.
But they don’t.
I run inside the searchlight’s circle, but nothing happens.
When the first bullet strikes my back, I grunt in surprise, tumbling to the ground.
Something shiny flies off and lands next to me. A dart?
Authority guards rappel from the sky, but I’m too paralyzed to do anything except watch.
“Is that him?” one asks.
“Where’s the girl?”
“Gone.”
I smile, knowing Jo-Jo’s gotten away as their sedative knocks me unconscious.
A breaking inside of me folds each of my heart valves together like paper-mâché. The origami of my soul shrivels. Doesn’t matter that the Skulls have arrived. Doesn’t matter that our liberators are but a breath away. My sweaty palm runs the ink that I’ve protected until I could see him again.
It’s erasing the proof of his love. Just like he’s been erased.
Reginald Cromwell is speaking, but his voice is drowned out by the sound of ice breaking and my falling through it into an empty abyss. Here, Jeremy stands in front of me, that much is clear, only … it isn’t him at all.
The thing that stares back … no light shines in the purple. Nothing but inky dots float in the violet—a dimmed, dull lifelessness.
He loved me.
Past tense.
Now, he focuses on nothing. The passivity of his gaze is like the desert—vast and barren.
The hand … my hand with the writing on it, I’ve pressed it to where my heart is, smearing what’s left of the ink on my pretty red dress. Breath sucks in like I’ve been kicked in the gut.
The Mouse King’s voice snaps me out of my trance. “The America you know has been laid to rest along with them. Jeremy, as you can see, has returned to the fold.”
“No …” I whisper, broken and lovesick.
“Show her, son,” says Reginald. “Show her what’s left of you. Why don’t you give her some of your poetry? Or maybe you’d like to comment on my burning of your demands.”
More ugly crying. “No …”
Jeremy stares blankly ahead.
My words trip over one another. “Jeremy, you remember me, don’t you? You … have … to.” I hiccup on choked and painful gulps.
But Jeremy focuses his attention on his father, waiting for his next command.
“Jeremy!” Hysteria rings, and the smeared hand reaches impotently for him.
“Well, go on,” Reginald says in a voice laced with boredom. “Like we’d planned.”
In one smooth move, Jeremy pulls his gun from its holster while at the same time I grab onto his shoulders.
There’s a glimmer in the purple, but it’s soon gone, swallowed up by the poison. By the zombie side.
“Jeremy—”
Pop.
Fire flares through my stomach.
Jeremy watches without remorse as I’m forced back, hand at my middle now, holding the hole, trying to plug it uselessly. The ink of what had been “I love you” is now splattered with the blood of the loved one.
And the red is gushing onto the carpet in earnest.
Agony. Pure agony.
Jeremy’s expression … it’s like he’s already a zombie.
Please … is what I want to say, but my tongue is bound in a groan of pain.
Seeing the unnatural shine against the white of my skin … it’s like my blood is tainted.
Reginald carries on. “And the end game is, that all of you … you rebellious ones …”
What Reginald had said before about those who had been purged: Incredible strength.
Buckets of my blood, like the wine, have spilled onto his carpet. My mind is spinning.
Jeremy isn’t looking at me though, just his master.
Reginald continues, “We pride ourselves in squashing any uprising. None of these tactics or partnerships will work….”
It’s as if the blood has filled the room and I’m now drowning in a luminous red tint that’s like oil on seawater.
Pretend Man, he’d done the same to me, a sort of purge. Incredible strength.
Reginald laughs at something he’s said. “I’d see every patriot die a slow and painful death, Liza, than let them infect our civilization again.”
A gagging noise is the only answer I can force out, and blood follows it, pouring out of my mouth.
His glee at my struggle is a gurgle not unlike my own. “No, my dear. I feel that death is the only purge that’ll truly work for you.”
Incredible strength. Almost impossible to kill.
That’s what he’d said.
Edging my pain is anger, white and hot.
Fight, my father had said. Fight, Liza.
Jeremy stands close, unwavering, towering. Using him to steady myself, I lean heavily against his body before sliding down in a loss of control, leaving a shiny, invisibl
e smear of blood on the black of his outfit.
But something catches me: the gun, back in its holster.
I pull it out, slippery in my slimy grip, and Jeremy’s latched onto my arm, realizing what I’ve done. But I pluck it from him, incredibly strong, as well.
He’s too late.
He can’t stop me.
The gun goes off.
Bam!
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
Click.
Click.
And when the sound stops, Reginald’s heart is full of holes. Broken now, too.
He sits behind his desk as surprised as a startled peacock.
I collapse onto my side with the loss of my remaining strength.
And Jeremy stands over me, motionless, his eyes still the same, but maybe …
“Please,” I whisper. “Please remember.”
The ground won’t stay still beneath me. Yet I simultaneously float on a hardness. My last moments will be full of the uprising’s explosions. There’s a small amount of satisfaction in this.
Jeremy….
Yelling and pandemonium surround me, breaking glass, people running. “Bar the doors!”
Through the chaos, someone draws near. “Get Crystal. She’ll want to see this. And someone secure … him.”
A voice drops near my ear. “Oh no, Liza … can you hear me?”
Crystal … I want to say, but my body won’t respond.
“Is she dead?”
“I don’t know … Oh, Liza, hang on. Don’t you give up on me.”
“So much blood,” says someone else.
“She’s so pale,” says another.
“What do we do about him?”
Crystal answers last. “Just get the doctor!”
“I’m here.”
There’s something familiar about that voice.
“Can you help her?” Crystal asks, sounding relieved.
Metallic and clear, Pretend Man answers, “I’m not sure. Let’s move.”
I’ve had nothing to do but dream in this place. The Authority flew me to an island, put me in a bubble, only to feed me stuff through a straw every week so I can’t transition. This doctor with a rubber face comes in, and even though he tries to be … normal … he’s one creepy guy.
To this day, I’ve never heard anyone call him by name.
He checks me over, but there’s something off about him. When he smiles, it’s empty. When he speaks, it’s with weird foreknowledge.
I’d put my money on his being a Special, if I didn’t know that only the Underground has them.
This place is the Authority’s island for sick people, or so it seems.
No clue what they plan to do with me. So far, they’ve kept me caged like an animal inside four clear walls of glass too thick to break. I’ve tried.
And the days pass….
Only one interesting thing’s happened in months: the bubble next to mine has recently acquired a tenant. She doesn’t talk much. Could be the coma she’s in, or the numerous tests they perform to seemingly help or kill her. Either of which, I’m not sure. Now, I pace the edge of my space, glancing over at the monitors and tubes they use to keep her alive. Her stomach’s patched up where the wound was ripped back open from her seizure last week.
She has short hair—fine, blonde, and curly—and eyes that never open, so out of boredom, I try to guess their color. She looks so small and pale, and I have to keep myself from pounding on the inside of my own bubble to tell them to put their paddles away whenever they insist on making her heart beat on.
“How’s Marilyn today?”
My new medicine keeps the monster at bay, but Daisy still shows up at times. I’m thankful for her presence, even if it is evidence of my fracturing psyche.
Right now, she’s sitting on my bed, blue-tinged arms wrapped around herself like she’s cold. Her auburn hair is the only color inside of the bubble.
“She looks … peaceful,” I say.
I’ve named my neighbor Marilyn. She’s no Monroe, but I like it. A blonde bombshell in life, though this one’s a different kind of bombshell. I know she’s a Special. I’m not great with deducing these things, and it wasn’t until the machines started to levitate while they were changing her clothes that I realized what had happened.
Super-Special.
When the machines had risen up, everyone froze, myself included, and the hair on my arms prickled. Then, the staff ran around like a bunch of nutcases until Rubber Man attempted to explain it away. He seems to be the only one who understood it. He’s also trying to keep our Special status a secret.
“That’s good that she’s peaceful,” says Daisy. “It stresses you out whenever she has nightmares.”
“It does. Sometimes she almost hurts herself before they come to help her. Is that normal?” I ask. “Nightmares in a coma?”
“I only know what you know, Tommy. But probably not. Is there anything normal about Marilyn?”
I wonder about that, too. But then again, when you live in a bubble, you start to wonder about everything, your sanity included.
It’s hard not to feel sorry for Marilyn. I try not to, but I do. I don’t like that this dying girl has to do it right in front of me, each and every time.
I even dream about it.
Although I turn away and try not to watch, I find myself glued to the glass, hoping for her. I catch myself muttering a prayer each time. But inevitably, I’m praying for her to go, to leave, for the Authority to stop reviving her tiny body.
She must be in hell. Not literal Hell, but to have a body keep trying to give up, only to be brought back to exist in an aquarium the rest of your life?
The hiss of her machines is really my only company at the moment. That, and Daisy.
Which isn’t saying much.
“Hey,” Daisy says.
“Sorry.”
Today, a young woman comes in to speak with the doctor, Rubber Man, who looks surprised to see her. I’m lying on my side, and when they glance in my direction, I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep.
“The guards didn’t see you, did they, Crystal?”
“No.”
She walks over to Marilyn and leans down. Her dark hair makes Marilyn’s almost-white tresses even brighter. “Is she going to make it?” asks the one he’d called Crystal.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
Rubber Man seems to find that humorous. “Remember when I pulled you out from that third round of purging? You were almost dead, nearly a zombie, red eyes and all. If I can bring you back from that type of hell, trust me to do it again.”
The young woman looks sad. “When she fought in the arena, it was impossible what she did.”
“You are stronger now, too.”
“Not like that.”
“Not like that, no. But she’s different.”
“How so?”
“She’s been here a long time. Or had been.”
“How long?”
“We’d begun when she was a child, and at first, nothing.”
He’s said that final word with a great bitterness. “Then,” he continues, “she’d been near death, like you, but rather than it almost killing her with it already in her system, I waited until she was—”
“Dead,” Crystal supplies.
“Yes. We’d administered what we’d had, then revived her. It’s different from all the others.”
“What’s different?”
“Wasn’t sure … at first.”
“And now?”
“I’m quite sure.”
The woman seems frustrated with his lack of information, as am I.
“You said ‘others’?”
He nods.
“You select them?”
Another nod. He thinks for a moment, then seems to reveal a large secret to the woman. “I believe you know one: Melissa Cromwell.”
Crystal gasps. “No. Not Mimi.”
“Should I let her die?”
Rubber Man does
not ask this like a normal person would: with attachment. He asks as though expecting the woman to comment on the weather, and if they should bring an umbrella, just in case.
Crystal seems unsure of how to answer, which gives me more information than I’ve had since I’ve arrived. Worse than death, perhaps? I regard my dark side and agree.
“What will you do?” she asks.
A far door slams with a loud boom.
“The guards.” She flicks her braid over one shoulder, saying something too quiet for me to catch.
“I’m aware,” he replies.
“We’re alone in this—again.”
“I know. You ready to give up?
“Never.”
“That’s my girl.”
One month goes by where Marilyn stops dying on the table.
Then two.
Soon, I lose count … almost. And Rubber Man starts more testing. I’d be willing to bet, out of any Special, she’s already received the most treatment.
I don’t know whether her coma allows them to work more of their “miracles,” or whether it’s because they don’t expect her to live anyway.
Daisy’s visits increase, and I sense that means trouble.
One night, I wake to find him there.
He stands near the edge of my bubble, watching me. Waiting.
My monster has a sort of physical form to him now from lack of transitions. The lights are dimmed at night, but I can still see him in the glow of Marilyn’s machines, and it’s such a surprise that I don’t even feel fear.
Then, Daisy stops coming.
Even when I try to force it … nothing.
Only him on bad days. Days where I feel the need for … something. A driving, relentless passion to do anything. Run, eat, yell, be free.
I spend each day with the books they finally gave me so I’d stop threatening the staff. A Bible, The Military History of America, and a training manual for flying helicopters. I’ve flown my father’s small duster, but that’s about it.
It’s a weird mix, but I’ll take it.
I’d refused to so much as even crack a Bible since my father passed. But I’ve gotten so bored, I eventually read the thing—twenty times.
I pound on the doors, asking for another round of books, but no one ever comes.
Then, I go to the vent and begin to read to my new friend, Marilyn.