by Scott Sigler
The twins glance at each other, afraid, doubtful.
“We’re staying here—”
“—and you’re leaving us?”
“That’s right. Bishop and I are going to get the others. You guard the door—don’t let any pigs get near Latu’s body.”
Bishop comes out of the room. He hands me the spear. I take it, then offer it to the twins.
“If the pigs come near you, kill them,” I say. “The spear is long, so you can stay inside the door and stab them from a distance. The doors are narrow enough that they can only enter one at a time. Even if there are a hundred pigs, you should be able to hold them off until Bishop and I return with the others. Then we’re all going to the garden.”
The Garden. That name is as good as any, and it fits.
Girl El-Saffani starts working on Latu’s torch, leaving Boy El-Saffani to take the spear with a trembling hand. He looks at it as if he can’t believe he’s holding it.
“Shouldn’t we all stay together?” he asks.
We should. I know we should. There is strength in numbers. But if we leave Latu, the pigs will eat her up. I won’t let that happen.
“Stay here,” I say, more firmly this time. “When we come back, we will take Latu’s body with us. We’re going to bury her.”
My friend Latu will not wind up as a pile of dusty bones.
Any of these three circle-stars could ignore my commands, but they don’t. They look at me like I’m different. Well, I am different—I am the one who kills.
Girl El-Saffani finishes with Latu’s torch. It flares to life. Torches are always brightest when the fire first starts.
I flip the knife in my hand, offer the hilt to Bishop. He’s stronger and faster, it makes sense for him to have the weapon.
He shakes his head, like he’s not worthy of holding the knife. He is ashamed.
“Then I’ll carry it,” I say. “You take the torch.”
He does.
Bishop and I head down the hall at a fast jog.
We’re going to get our people.
TWENTY-THREE
We rest.
Everything is different.
Bishop and I reached the others with no further problems. We didn’t see any pigs.
O’Malley had kept everyone calm. The second I told them about food and water, they were ready to do whatever I asked.
Then I told them about Latu. I think some of Bishop’s marchers didn’t believe me, didn’t believe that she was dead. That, or maybe they didn’t understand what death really meant.
When we got back to El-Saffani, I wanted to make it clear how dangerous this place is. I made everyone go into the dome room and look at Latu’s body—then they understood death just fine.
While Bishop and I were gone, El-Saffani heard grunting and snuffling out in the darkness, but the pigs didn’t try to enter the dome room. That disappointed me a little; I’d hoped that more of them might be dead.
Bishop took the last flag—the one Bello and Okereke used to hold the greased rags—and rolled Latu’s body in it. He carried her over his shoulder like she weighed nothing.
It seemed to take no time at all to reach the Garden. One by one my people crawled carefully through the scratching tunnel. I told everyone to stay close to the thicket. Bishop must have said something to the circle-stars along the way, or El-Saffani did, because Visca, Farrar, Bawden and Coyotl made sure no one ignored my orders.
As people wandered, ate, stuck their faces in the bubbling spray of water or just gawked at the size of the Garden, I stumbled to the tree where Bishop picked me the blue fruit. I sat down. I haven’t been able to get up since. I don’t want to get up.
Bishop and El-Saffani carried Latu to another tree. They buried her beneath it. They dug the hole with their hands, wouldn’t let anyone else help them.
Aramovsky said a few words, but Latu’s grave is far enough away from the blue fruit tree that I couldn’t quite hear him. I don’t know if his words had meaning, or were just random thoughts, like when Yong died. It doesn’t really matter, though. As Spingate said, the dead don’t care—and neither do I.
I wanted to bury the pig, too, but Spingate and Gaston quickly talked me out of it. They said we need meat as well as fruit. Gaston built a fire. People are cooking the pig. It smells amazing.
Hard to believe I cried when I sliced that stupid animal’s throat. When it’s done cooking, I’m going to eat it, and I’m going to enjoy it.
I want to kill all the pigs. Their squeals and their human-looking eyes won’t ever bother me again. They killed my friend. They will kill more of us if they get the chance. That means to be safe, we have to wipe them out.
If it’s us or them, I choose them.
Spingate brought me water. We don’t have any bowls or glasses, so she soaked a shirt and wrung it out over my mouth. It was cool on my tongue. My throat rejoiced. The more I swallowed, the more my body relaxed.
I hope it was a shirt that didn’t have blood on it.
My eyes are so heavy. I’m not quite asleep, not quite awake. I have never been this tired.
I’m vaguely aware of someone sitting down next to me.
“Em, are you okay?”
It’s O’Malley. I like his voice.
“Fine,” I say. “I’m fine.”
I don’t sound fine. I sound like my imaginary conversation with Yong will soon be real, because I’ll be as dead as he is.
My eyes flutter partway open. Off to the right, I see a little tree with orange fruits. I can’t turn away from it, not even to see O’Malley’s face. He’s very pretty to look at, but those orange fruits are pretty, too.
“Farrar said we should set up a perimeter,” O’Malley says. “For the pigs. Just in case. I did that while Bishop buried Latu. I have Farrar, Bawden and Coyotl watching. They’ll do that while the others rest, then I’ll have them switch off. We’re safe, Em.”
“All right,” I say.
I feel a warm hand on my forehead, stroking my hair. It’s very nice.
“You can sleep now,” O’Malley says. “You need it. We’ll figure everything out later.”
His voice sounds rough, weary, like he’s not doing that much better than I am.
O’Malley walks off. If I sleep, is he in charge? I think so. I hope he doesn’t mess things up. But hey, if no one dies? Then he’s better at the job than I am.
My eyes close. I force them open one more time. I can’t really see that much, though. Everything is a blur.
I hear a sound that I thought I might never hear again: people laughing.
No one is being disrespectful to Latu, it’s just that we have food, we have water. We are safe.
Laughter. It’s a good sound.
My eyes close.
TWENTY-FOUR
A piercing scream snaps me awake.
So bright, hard to see. My hands search the ground around me, seeking out the spear, but all I feel is cool dirt and soft plants. The spear isn’t here, where is it where is it? The pigs, coming for me, coming to tear out my insides and eat my bones, coming for all of us, and—
The scream again…followed by a laugh.
My vision adjusts. I look around. My friends are sitting under trees or lying near the reeds. They are eating, talking, sleeping. Everyone is calm.
There is no danger.
The scream, it came from Spingate. She’s in the tall grass, wrestling with Gaston. They are laughing.
Under a tree to my right, Aramovsky is standing, talking to a group of people who sit around him in a semicircle. Opkick, Johnson and Cabral, if I remember their names right. By the bubbling spring, Bello and Ingolfsson are making neat piles of fruit. I see O’Malley talking to Borjigin, a half-circle who carries himself more like a girl than the boy he is.
And farthest off, past the long rectangle of reeds that stretches away from me, I see three muscular backs. None of them are wearing shirts. I don’t even need to see their faces to know who they are: the dark skin and thick
neck of Farrar, the white hair and pink skin of Visca, the wide shoulders and crisscross scratches that can only belong to Bishop. They stand there, in the tall grass, staring out into woods that stretch far away down this long room.
They are guarding against pigs, against the next danger we might find.
I notice that a few others have also abandoned their shirts. Coyotl, Bawden, El-Saffani…all the circle-stars. Girl El-Saffani and Bawden don’t seem to care that their breasts are exposed, but it makes me very uncomfortable. They should be covered up, like all the other girls are. Do they think being circle-stars makes them different? I guess the answer is that they are different. Without their shirts, the circle-stars look like a group—a group separate from the rest of us.
That worries me.
Bello sees me. Her face lights up. She hops to her feet and rushes over. The way the arched ceiling’s light catches her blond hair makes her look like she glows from within.
“Em! You’re awake. I was worried about you, you slept a long time.”
“I did? How long?”
She frowns, shrugs. “Who knows?” She points to my shirt. “You were so out of it you didn’t even wake up when we took that off you.”
My shirt…most of the blood is gone. The dirt, too. Faded stains remain, though, pink where the blood was, light brown from the dirt, faded green from grass stains. The shirt feels a little stiff, as does my skirt.
My clothes feel clean…and so does my skin.
I look at Bello, confused.
“We washed you,” she says. “Me and D’souza. She’s a circle, like us.”
My hands automatically cover my breasts, even though my shirt is buttoned all the way up.
“You took my clothes off?”
Bello pats my shoulder. “It’s okay, the other girls sat in front of you so the boys couldn’t see. We washed your clothes and wiped all that gunk from your body. You had lots of scratches. Smith cleaned those. She wouldn’t let anyone else touch your wounds. She cleaned up Bishop’s, too.”
Smith. The tall, skinny girl. The circle-cross.
My hair feels different. I pull the braid around in front of me: it’s been redone. Someone tied off the end with a strip of white fabric, torn from a boy’s shirt, no doubt.
“We fixed your hair,” Bello says. “Even that didn’t wake you up. You must have been really tired.”
I slept through them undressing me, cleaning me and braiding my hair.
“Maybe tired isn’t the word for it,” I say.
Bello nods. She looks so relieved, like she thought maybe I was going to die. She leans in and hugs me.
I hug her back. It feels so good to hold her.
People saw me naked. I don’t like that. Maybe it’s silly to feel that way considering all we’ve been through, but no one should take off someone’s clothes without their permission. That’s creepy. I know Bello and the others were trying to be nice, though, and it’s good to feel clean again, so maybe now isn’t the time to say anything about it.
Bello leans back.
Ah, I should have known…she’s starting to cry.
“Oh, Em, you look so much better now,” she says. These tears are from happiness, apparently. “Are you hungry?”
Since I fought my way out of the coffin, what have I eaten? Just the one piece of blue fruit, I think.
“I’m starving,” I say.
“Let me get you something.” She hurries away.
I stand on weak legs. I lean against a tree trunk for balance. Every muscle in my body aches.
O’Malley glances my way, as if to check on me. He sees I’m up and his face breaks into a wide smile. I don’t think I’ve seen him smile like that before—he is so handsome. Even from a distance, his blue eyes shine like gemstones.
I realize he’s holding the spear.
He jogs toward me. Spingate and Gaston see me, too. They stop their wrestling game and scramble to their feet.
Aramovsky notices the commotion, then notices me. He gives me a funny look, then goes back to talking to the people seated around him. I wonder what he’s saying.
O’Malley is still smiling when he reaches me.
“Em, I’m so happy you’re awake,” he says. “We were beginning to worry.”
Spingate runs in. The scepter bounces against her right hip, held there by a loop of white fabric that hangs down from the left side of her neck—made from another circle-star shirt, probably.
She wraps her arms around me, squeezes me tight.
I wince, cry out from unexpected pain.
She lets go quickly. “Oh, I’m sorry! Did I bump your scratches?”
I laugh, a little embarrassed. “No, I hurt all over.”
Gaston grins. He points a single finger, reaches toward me slowly, and gives me a firm poke in the right shoulder. The sore muscle there barks with dull pain. I twist my shoulder away from him.
“That hurt,” I say. “What did you do that for?”
He laughs. “To see if it would hurt, I guess.”
Spingate scowls at him. “It’s not funny to hurt people, Gaston.”
“I know, I know,” he says. “Sorry, Em.”
Gaston is strange. Likable, but strange.
I notice that his clothes are still dirty. So are Spingate’s. No, that’s not right—all the blood is gone from her shirt. So she cleaned it, then got dirty again? It’s dust, mostly, but also grease streaks and a few flakes of rust. That isn’t just from playing in the grass. While everyone was either sleeping or cleaning, Spingate and Gaston were doing something else.
I reach out and brush a bit of rust from her sleeve.
“Where did you two go?”
Her eyes widen. Her face reddens.
“Uh…” is all she can say.
Gaston grins. “We took a torch and explored more of the straight hallway.”
This news catches O’Malley by surprise.
“You did what?”
“We ex-plooooored,” Gaston says, drawing the word out like he’s talking to a stupid person. “We followed the hallway to see where it goes. Does that answer your question, O’Malley, or do you need me to find another way to explain what explored means?”
“I know what it means,” O’Malley snaps. “In this case, it means We snuck away and went off on our own without permission.”
Gaston rolls his eyes. “Oh, I see, without permission. Hey, everyone, I found my dad! Turns out his name is O’Malley. You know, come to think of it, all that fruit I ate is giving me gas. When I need to take a crap, can I just go, or do I have to get your permission first?”
O’Malley is getting angrier, which obviously makes Gaston happy. Why does he have to poke at people?
“This isn’t about permission,” I say. “It’s about staying safe. We can’t get separated. Didn’t you see Latu’s body?”
Gaston looks at me for a moment, then down. Yes, he saw Latu’s body, and yes, that image stuck with him.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have gone off by ourselves,” he says. “But we can’t stay here forever. I wanted to see how far the hallway went, in case there was trouble, so we’d know how long we’d have to be in the dark. I thought I’d get some work done while you slept, so you don’t have to do everything.”
There is no sass in his words, none of the condescending tone he uses to talk to the bigger boys. He respects me. That thought fills my heart with warmth. For reasons I can’t explain, Gaston’s opinion of me is important.
O’Malley is fuming. “You weren’t supposed to leave, Gaston. You either, Spingate.”
“Yet leave we did,” Gaston says. He glances at Spingate, grins. “And we discovered all sorts of neat things.”
She turns even redder, something I wouldn’t have thought possible. She’s glaring at Gaston like she wants to choke him. Does she think I’m going to yell at her or something?
“Spingate, relax,” I say. “So you guys explored, it’s not the end of the world. Just promise you won’t go off alone again
, okay?”
She nods quickly. “I promise. So does Gaston.”
Gaston sneers. “I didn’t promise anything, so—”
“Gaston,” she barks, turning on him. “You promise Em and you promise right now!”
He rolls his eyes again, but not with the same defiance he showed O’Malley.
“Fine, whatever,” he says. “I promise.”
Why is Spingate so flustered by this? I feel like I’m missing something, but they both made it back okay.
“You said you found things,” I say. “Like?”
“Light,” Gaston says. “Maybe ten minutes away from the Garden, the hallway ends at another archway door. Spingate opened it with the scepter. Past it is the same kind of hallway where we all met—white walls, glowing ceiling, the same thing.”
I have mixed emotions about that. The fact that if we keep going straight there will be light is good, because we don’t have many torches left. But I was hoping he’d found something else.
“More hallway,” I say. “No way out of the dungeon? You’re sure?”
He shakes his head. “Not that we could see, but we didn’t go past the archway. We sealed it up again and came back here.” He grins. It’s a very self-satisfied expression. “Yep, came right back. We didn’t stop to do anything else. Anything at all.”
If Spingate gets any redder, people might mistake her for Coyotl. What is wrong with that girl? Maybe she’s tired. She looks like she hasn’t slept at all.
“Anyway,” Gaston says, “the hall goes straight and it goes uphill, which we all know Em loves so darn much. Once we’ve all had a nice rest, we can get going again. Because we can’t stay here.”
O’Malley huffs. “You already said that, Gaston.”
The smaller boy nods. “And watch me say it a third time.” He points to his mouth. “We can’t stay here. Don’t just hear it, O’Malley, understand it.”
Why is Gaston being so annoying about this?
“Of course we can’t stay,” I say. “Everyone knows that.”
Gaston smiles and crosses his arms. Spingate shakes her head.
I look at O’Malley. “Do people actually want to stay here?”
He shrugs. “Some of them.”