by Logan Keys
I’m shoulder to shoulder with stiffies who latch onto me.
“Vero!”
Heat sears my face as I press forward through the hands that threaten to tear me apart. With twists and yanks and shots fired at the closest, I discover a second hole in the floor. She’s fallen through two stories!
It’ll be a miracle if she’s still alive.
“Veronica!” My voice cracks on the last part of her name, and I shove stiffies down the stairs toward the first floor.
A big one locks his arm around my throat and bites the side of my neck.
“Dammit!” Kicking free, hot blood running down my back, I jump from the middle of the stairs to crowd-dive over a group of zombies gathered like a poorly constructed concert of drunks.
When I land, we all topple into the fire, and my pants catch. Another stiffie bites a hole in my arm for good measure, while the heat melts my ACU’s to me.
“Vero!” My eyes stream with tears, and I shoot as many zombies as I can without a clear sight. “Vero!”
Another grabs onto me, hold firm and mouth bloody from eating recently.
I picture Vero’s grey eyes, and I shove my knife through his eye socket. As he falls, I glimpse the bomb strapped to his back … just in time to catch a load of shrapnel in the gut when he explodes in half.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Liza
My dinner’s cold when the servant brings it. In my guest room, lights flicker from the distant explosions, while dust particles float in the rays of the window’s sunlight, knocked loose from all of the shaking.
Not only has the battle continued, but today, it’s also redoubled.
A man I haven’t seen since my first night in captivity at the mansion brought my food tray this evening. Rolling up his sleeves after setting my meal down, he shoots me a glance, then turns to leave. The spider on his forearm is tiny, but clear.
So the Skulls have planted themselves here.
My spirits rekindle, but I keep my face impassive as the door closes behind him. I still don’t know if I’m being watched.
Sleep avoids me, though I’m extra warm when night falls. I wasn’t allowed to see Jeremy today, probably because of those close explosions. Nevertheless, I kick under my covers with a muffled “Yahoo!” I’m excited about their progress. What if they win? What if the Skulls take over Anthem?
Pride blossoms in abundance at my having played my small part.
Somewhere close to dawn, my eyes finally close. The softness of the mattress lulls me while I watch the window. No explosions light the night tonight, but soon.
A single whispered word wakes me from the blackness of my rest, “Liza … ” as the covers slowly glide down my legs.
“Whuh … ?”
A chilled hand covers my mouth, making me squeak.
“Shh.…” Jeremy’s pressed a finger to his lips and pinches mine shut. Through the dark, his purple eyes shine, and he motions with his head, mouthing: “The bathroom.”
By the hand, he leads me in and onto cold tile, then closes the door softly behind. My shirt isn’t long enough to cover my underwear, though shadows hide my bare legs. The downward jumping of Jeremy’s gaze tells me his night vision’s adjusted fine.
Too late for modesty. So, with a hand on my cocked hip, I grin, although my boldness keeps him from looking directly at my face.
“What are you doing here?” My skin leaps while I shout in a whisper, “I saw a Skull! Are there more? What are you doing!”
He nods and pulls his hoodie back to reveal thick brown hair that’s mussed. “They’re coming—soon. I’m sneaking out right now to give Crystal a message. We won’t have much time before they realize I’m gone. But … I had to see you, Liza. Make sure you were okay.”
My sucked-in breath is loud, and Jeremy claps his hand to my mouth again. I grab it, hold onto it. “Sorry,” I whisper. “But what will they do when they catch you! Jeremy, what if they hurt you?”
“I have to try. Now’s the only chance to let them know when it’s best to strike. But first, I … I needed to tell you something, just in case … ” He steps closer, forcing me to look up. “Liza, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me … to this place, really. I just—”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Listen—”
“Tell me you’ll be careful—”
“Would you just listen to me for one damned minute?”
“It’s a bad idea!”
“Shh.”
My growl this time is cut off by hard lips—frustrated, cold, unyielding—and they press until I give in, silenced. But then, I grip him like a lifeline. I’m scared—really scared.
And he is, too.
“St … ay.” A hiccup interrupts the word.
He shakes his head and kisses me harder.
More hiccups. “Don’t … do … this.”
Jeremy invades my mouth to keep me quiet with a desperation that claws into my core. He knows the risk. He won’t change his mind. Our hands tangle and weave together, and I back into the sink, where he props me up onto the edge so we’re more at a level with one another.
Even.
Equal.
Our feelings finally meet in a perfect apex—exact.
I break away to breathe. “I’m serious, Jeremy.” And tears threaten, fighting their way to the surface. “You’ve been acting so strange here. What’s going on?”
“I can’t tell you everything, okay? I promised things … for you, for everyone. My father has to think I’ll do what he wants, understand? Shh, Liza.… Hey, don’t cry.”
“I’m not!” I smack the teardrops away. “You shoosh!”
“We don’t have much time. Let’s not argue. I want … I was just going to say … be mine, Liza.”
A hiccup couples with a laugh. “I thought I was.”
“Good,” he says. “But I mean always.”
“Always” is perfect. “Always and forever” is wonderful. But “always” isn’t so long in Ash City. Anxiety and fear stiffen me, and when I don’t answer right away, doubt makes him frown while the purple glow dies a little.
“Yes. Of course.” My words coax the flame back into him. “Jeremy, how could you think otherwise?”
He grins—impossibly, incredibly, just like always. And then I kiss that grin … because it’s mine.
But what if—
Jeremy sighs, hugging me to him, and we sit like that for a moment before we finally pull away. Time is short.
Anthem doesn’t give any more seconds than she has to.
“Why can’t I go with you?”
His hands on my arms tighten to the point of pain. “No. It’s going to be dangerous enough if they catch me.… Promise me you won’t try to follow me, Liza.”
I won’t make this any harder for him. He’s going to be lucky to get to the Skulls and back in one piece. I nod.
That relaxes him some.
The walk to the window is cold—freezing—and my teeth chatter. But it’s not just the cool night; dread tightens my muscles, making me quake. This is like walking to the hangman’s noose. This is pain in my middle.
This is goodbye.
For now.…
Just for now.
Jeremy begins his climb down, then sucks his teeth like he’s forgotten something, and we play “Romeo and Juliet” in the window’s moonlight. I lean over to hear while he hangs onto the lattice, just as I’d dreamed as a girl a hundred times.
No more poetry, though. Instead, he asks for my hand.
With a frown, I reach out, and he writes on it.
“Don’t look at it until I’m gone.”
“Sure.”
I’m smitten. Scared. Terrified. And one hundred percent in love. My hiccups come barely a breath between; they’re silly, loud, embarrassing, and I’m completely out of control.
Apparently, the world’s ending didn’t merit this type of reaction, though most assuredly, the thought of the end of Jeremy does.
I love you
My heart melts, and so does my vision in tears of joy and pain.
He had to do it this way. Jeremy Writer, as he’s wont to do, he had to write it.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Attacks increased after the night he came to my window, so they’ve made me stay in my room. Asking about Jeremy does no good. Demanding to see him goes unanswered. Finally, jumping on a guard, hoping my super strength visits to aid me only resulted in their threatening to drug me.
Apparently, my strength is normal unless I’m on the verge of death or something, because I’d girl-slapped his helmet, then bounced onto my butt like the tiny nothing that I am.
Explosions and gunfire are ever-present now. Even yells in the distance. They’re not too far away.
But I’m sick with worry and pacing my room, because I can think about only one thing at this moment: the boy I love—even more importantly, the boy who loves me—had climbed out through my window and disappeared into the void of Anthem’s upheaval.
And I’ve not seen him since.
My window stays open, but none of my sleepless nights are interrupted by him.
I’ve had plenty of time to think on it. What we share. Our love isn’t the sick and sticky splendor of teenage ardor, I’ve realized. It’s sharp, slicing—a knife to the heart, followed by the quick stitching of its two halves back together again.
I want to live for this boy.
I want to kill for this boy.
Thus, the insanity perpetuates.
A painfully shocking redesign of my insides. Before: Jeremy and Liza. Now: Jeremy slash Liza.
Purple-eyed and blue-eyed, level and manic, balancing one another in ways we’d never known. My hand still bears Jeremy’s three words in scrawled, pretty writing—untouched, unwashed. And I’d have it tattooed, if it could be managed.
Reading it a million times does nothing but reinforce the craziness I’ve submitted myself to.
First, three days passed by.
Then a week.
Not knowing is the worst.
Not knowing is hell.
This is hell.
On the eighth day, my door unlocks, and there stands the Mouse King himself. “Come with me, my dear,” Reginald says.
“Where is Jeremy, you bastard!”
He ignores the hissing creature that greets him, and turns on his heel to leave.
Instructed to dress for company, I shove my shaky, angry limbs into the red gown and gather up the fabric in a tight, sweaty grip, wrinkling it instantly to run after the big rat.
A group of guards trail us past the empty dining hall to an office, where our leader motions to a chair and moves behind his desk to sit. “I’d offer you a drink,” he says while pouring himself a glass of something golden, “but I will not waste my maids on another night of scrubbing floors.”
His lavish furnishings glow, the polish of the cherry wood catching the firelight. It’s chilly again tonight. Anywhere else in the world, this setting would be warm and inviting, instead of masking the cold and calculating.
This man’s barely said anything directly to me before now, which shows his dark wisdom. His message is loud and clear: I’m only important when he deems me so, and my regard is measured out by his attention. My side has no leverage … or do they?
Except, for some reason he hasn’t killed me. Hasn’t even laid a finger on me. Could his only hope to quell the uprising lie with us? Me and Jeremy?
Reginald lifts a stack of papers with handwriting that’s flourished and precise. The same perfect letters that are scrawled across my palm. Clenching my fingers, I push the fear down, stuffing it away for later. He holds Jeremy’s demands before placing them on his desk.
He lights a cigar, lifts the stack again, and puffs, cheeks hollowing. Bringing the paper to the cherry glow at the end, he holds the corner to it until the pages catch fire.
Silence envelopes us as we watch them burn. Then, he tosses them into the fireplace. The cinders of our demands still smolder while we wait, unmoving, like in a staged performance: the Mouse King in his chair, pleased and plump; the guards at my back, frozen and waiting for commands; and me, not so still or pleasant, but rather vibrating with anger.
Weakness threads through my voice. “Where’s Jeremy?”
He ignores my question. “Those papers had the word ‘rights’ on just about every page. Once upon a time, we supported everyone’s rights, and we ruled ourselves into uselessness.”
“Where. Is. He.”
Reginald goes on, like I’m not even in the office. “Our history is littered with poverty; people dying from starvation and sickness. Do you want to see that happen again? Have you noticed any of that in Anthem?”
“Hiding it doesn’t truly make it gone.”
“It’s under control.”
“The mantra of a dictator.”
Vile lips smile, and it frustrates me to notice their commonality to Jeremy’s; his bottom lip is heavier than the top, same as his boy’s. “Liza, we would have forced ourselves into extinction. I’m about survival, above all else.”
“This was caused by desperation. You can’t heap more over-reaction to follow and expect abundance.”
“You’ve been fed lies, girl.”
“I’ve been given a front row seat to your truths, old man. No thanks. We fought our way from death and tyranny before, and we can do it again. Now I ask you one more time: where is Jeremy?”
Reginald snorts. “So the tiny tot from the Upper East Side of Manhattan knows what the world needs? She makes demands, shouts me down like a proper revolutionary, eh?”
That word: Manhattan. It’s like a memory, and nothing more.
But hearing it for the first time in so long jolts me from my sleeper state, and I’m suddenly dizzy with fury. “Dictatorship swooped in when we were too weak to fight, when we were too broken to remember who we were. But the people are awake now. They want to cut you up and use you for bait. When they get here, and they will … I’ll be first in line to watch them tear you apart.”
“Dictatorship? Such youthful ideals. Will you tell me that money’s the root of all evil, too? Greed can’t ever outwit the want for eternity, my dear; living forever far outweighs that. The people of Anthem don’t hate me. They hate the place they’ve put themselves in.”
“Eternity?” I say. “Is that what you call it? Becoming a zombie isn’t a way to live. And here, Anthem City, is no place to live. I wouldn’t want another two hundred years like this if you’d paid me. How’s that for lack of greed and want for immortality?”
He rubs his mustache, eyes black and beady, narrowing on me. “Not the zombies. We’re this close to making it a reality for everyone to live like they do. What? You haven’t heard? Jeremy didn’t tell you?” His rat mouth quirks, and I’m back to wondering if they are even related. “I can see why he likes you,” Reginald says, as if reading my mind. “But you don’t know what it’s like to age and wilt, and leave the world to a younger, dumber generation; to watch them waste precious youth and resources. People don’t really know what they need; they have to be told.”
“Says every communist before Hitler, till now.”
“Agreed. But not all of their ideas were bad.”
“And not every rabid animal was always so.”
“Touché.”
I stand. “But they must be put down all the same.”
“Sit. Now.”
A guard hammers a hand onto my shoulder, forcing me to sit. I fight the urge to spit on the Mouse King’s desk. “Every emperor who built his empire on the backs of slaves had something to show for it. The pyramids can be seen from space, but was it worth millions of lives?”
Reginald leans back in his chair. “A humanitarian, and worldly. I like it. But do you see a kingdom here?”
“One in ashes, but yes … I do.”
“Your father was Jiles Randusky, was h
e not? You know, I saw him play once. Ah … I do so love the surprise on your face to know that I, like you, am human and indeed have a history outside of … this.” He gestures around. “Your father was a miracle in front of the piano. I imagine that you and I had probably passed one another on the street once or twice. How small a world, eh? What say you join us in this part of the city and gift us with your music, Liza? I could give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of.”
My anger leaves in a breath, replaced by sadness. “I was sick,” I tell him. My voice is distant, hoarse, and I stare at nothing. “No one cared what I had to offer when I had cancer. You despise the sick, treat them like animals, fear death so damned much, you never looked around to see you had no life here. What it was … what we had … ” Black hatred and shock tinges my words in a whisper. “Mimi.”
There’s pure pleasure in seeing Reginald pale upon hearing her name, so I say it again.
“Mimi—Melissa. How can you even look at yourself? You’re the devil!”
His face pinches, and he stabs out his cigar, snuffing it like so many lives he’d shipped off, including his youngest daughter’s. Reginald leans forward, teeth bared, while the bones beneath the skin press tightly like they’re trying to leave. “When they’re full of disease, this is how they’ll be treated. They cost us so many resources out there on their private little vacation!”
I cackle, witch-like and dry, my own teeth bared. “It’s never too expensive to be a good human being. Nothing costs greater than being evil. Kindness is free, you bastard! Being a great father to your child is easily the cheapest thing on earth!” I bolt to my feet, and a guard grabs my arms to stop me from lunging across his desk. “You have a daughter! Had—maybe she’s gone already …” I shake the guard away and cover my mouth at the horror of that thought alone. Dead. Mimi’s face, tiny and significant, brings a fresh dread. “A beautiful little girl. She’s sick, not inhuman. She’s alone—scared! You could go get her at any time!”
The guard forces me back into my seat, but I’ve already wilted anyway, sniffling and wiping my eyes. I face the black, night-filled window, where a flash blossoms, and in it are small, barely visible people—a legion of them running up the grass, hunched and hiding.