by Logan Keys
And I get up, and I leave him to it.
Chapter Ten
Crystal
“Why don’t you return to the city and fight, Crystal?”
I give the doctor a half smile.
“They remain in the dark,” he says. “You can show them the way.”
“How?” I shrug with a sigh. I’m weary because Jeremy is weary. “I’m in the dark myself. We are all lost at this point. And lost people don’t argue together in the darkness, you find the switch first.”
I can tell he’s amused even if that stone-cold face doesn’t show it. How close we’ve grown over this time of working together against the Authority. He’s saved so many of our lives. Have I ever thanked him?
“And how are you going to do that?” he asks.
I’ve learned about him. How he thinks. He does not give answers, he lets you reveal the answers to yourself.
“I’m not.” I jab a thumb toward Jeremy’s cell. “He is.”
“You put a lot of faith in Jeremy.”
I sigh and nod. “A blessing and a curse, I suppose. You’ve never felt he was the one to turn it around, did you?”
“I didn’t have to. You did. I saved him for you. For what you seem to need to get by.”
I hold my breath. Is it true? Has Jeremy been writing to inspire me alone? No. I’ve seen it. The words make the people rise up. I can’t forget the way it happened last time. It started in the prisons, with prisoners passing his pamphlets back and forth with the words from his speech.
They’d struck first.
It was mayhem.
It was chaos.
It was wonderful.
The doctor gives me a pointed look. His most expressive I’ve seen. “It wasn’t so long ago that I put that same amount of faith in you and you rose to the challenge. It was incredible to see such a young girl fight the way she did for a world she never really remembered but, you were told there was freedom, it was out there, that you could grab it.”
“And I’ve been bullshitting ever since.”
He doesn’t smile. It’s not the doctor’s style to smile
“Tell me, when they purged you, what did you think about, Crystal?”
I shift one foot to the other and back again. “What do you mean?”
“Everyone hanging there, no doubt facing their last moments as themselves, what did you think about?”
I can’t keep looking at his eyes. The images flash and I physically flinch feeling it all over again.
“Anthem,” I say, but I’m not here, not really. He’s triggered the feeling of my flesh ripping from my own weight on the hooks. “The people. The ones I’d soon turn on, turn in, and lock up or kill myself.”
This time he smiles with his eyes. “That’s my girl.”
The doctor leaves but he doesn’t see the lingering tremble that runs over my body. He doesn’t see how I use the wall to steady myself as the pain and anguish and fear, return anew. The will I’d had to use to live, to keep my sanity, to not become a guard dog for the authority, it had taken every bit of me to remain… me.
I’d been about to give up many times. But the first time is always hardest. I’d been thrown into a cell, Jeremy and my plans foiled. The early days were sloppy.
I’d laid curled around my injured arm groaning. Wondering what the others saw when they looked at me. My cheeks had puffed in and out, and my bowels had cramped in threat. Everything was misery.
The sounds. The smells. Pure and unadulterated misery…
Another round at first light with the guards has me dry heaving over the stone floor. Other purgers next to me scoot away, afraid my stomach will find something to toss up. I wipe a hand over my face and fight from breaking down.
I’m not afraid to look like a sissy, not in front of these, they’ve all emptied their guts, cried their tears, buckets-full, and they’ve all prayed to---cursed God, and lastly, now they’re silent. I’m moving toward the silent part myself. But not before I’ve let out a string of vile curses against the Authority for beating me so bloody that I can’t feel the left side of my face. I’m certain there’s permanent damage.
I know there will be scars.
I’m not even close to vain, but a person, woman or man, doesn’t want their enemy to mar them beyond recognition no matter how tough they are. It’s a reminder that they lost every time they look at themselves.
No matter. I’m dead anyway. The living kind of dead.
The beatings aren’t even the worst of it. Soon, they’ll string me up with hooks from the ceiling in the big room, and drain my blood out, poison it, and put it back. Spider venom is what they say, just enough to dull your senses and make you one of theirs - forever.
Then, when we’ve given up our souls, they dress us up in their black outfits, their helmets to hide our vacant eyes and evil grimace, and we march to the tune of the Authority for all of eternity.
They say you live forever.
They say you can’t come back.
They say you have no soul.
I say I’d rather die.
“Too bad they don’t let us kill ourselves, huh?”
I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud. I look across the dank cell to find a man leaned against the other side. Must be twenty while the rest of us still hold onto our teens. He’s got gray eyes and dark, sweaty hair; Native American. Without being pale and sick, he’d no doubt have skin darker than mine.
His eyes slide over me like cold steel, he’s not given up, and it rallies my spine.
“I’m Phillip,” he says.
“Crystal.”
He gives a soft laugh. “I know who you are.”
My gaze snaps to his.
“You and that other one,” he says. “The one with the technicolor eyes who got in here over some pamphlets, right?”
He mentions eyes while his glitter in the darkness.
“Jeremy?” I ask. “Have you seen him?”
Phillip spits to the side. “Would it matter? He’s one of them.”
I jump forward, my chains catching and yanking me back to land on my bum arm, making me grunt. “He’s not,” I pant. “He’s never been. He risked his life for the cause.”
“Shut it.” Phillip turns panicked. “They’ll hear you!”
“Let them,” I say staring straight into his gaze. “Maybe they’ll kill me. And I can be free of this. Dead before this monstrous experiment!” I scream toward the door and the prisoners shrink away from the crazy one.
The door swings open and the guards rush in, batons up, and that’s the last thing I see before shiny metal lands cold on my jaw.
Chapter Eleven
Crystal
I wake feeling no worse and no better, but I won’t be yelling anymore tonight. Phillip is the first thing I see, his shadow moving, checking, first the door then me, then the door again, and then lastly the window where the moon pours in unconvinced of the power of men.
But I am no man.
I sit up and spit the blood out. I want to ask how he got out of his chains but my jaw is only partially working. Some loose teeth are payment for my shit idea of yelling at the guards. The contents of this room to them are nothing but bags of flesh to add to their league of slaves. Being a slave while conscious is bad enough, but blindly bound, willing even, to do the Cromwell’s bidding, is what keeps me fighting.
I sit up and stare at the only awake cell-mate. Phillip’s eyes glow in the darkness and I remember the one known description of such a convict with the description of that type: “The wolf,” I whisper.
The gray turns to slits confirming my suspicion.
“It’s true,” I mutter through a locked jaw. “I can’t believe it. The wolf is right here in a cell with me.” I try to hide the awe in my voice, but I can’t.
My arms pop up with chills. It’s a shock to me that he could be brought down, just like me. If we two are in here, who’s out there keeping up the rebellion?
I fight back the feeling of dread. If the
wolf is here, then the uprising has gone soft or… is gone altogether.
“But how?” I ask.
His shackles shift as he toys with them. At first, I think he won’t answer, but then his deep voice says, “I did like you, Crystal. Skull leader. I did just like you and fell for one of those augmented monsters with the perfect everything. A loser from section, just like you, trying to reach for the stars, and now burned here same as you.”
He’s wrong about me. They always are. “Jeremy is in here with me. It’s not the same.”
“Is he? How do you know?”
I swallow the doubt. Jeremy couldn’t have betrayed me. He has as much reason to fight against the Authority as I do no matter how rich his family is… or who they might be.
“I know.”
I sense his shrug. “Fine.”
I have so many questions bubbling to the surface, but the room is still swaying from my knock to the head.
It could be worse, I suppose. If I go down, I do so in good company. The wolf has caused more trouble for the Authority single-handedly than any of the Skulls put together. For every nick we gave the leaders, he gave them a black eye. They feared him more than they feared the burning hell where they’d all go. They fear him because he seems inhuman. The eyes are the most telling and now I get it because he’s no ordinary person. And here he is, brought down to the mortalness, being purged, just like me.
I look at the floor for answers and he sighs seeing my thoughts in the shape of my shoulders.
“It’s not so bad,” he says with a listlessness. “We’ll be martyrs, you and I.”
I sniff. “Martyrs die. They go away. They don’t march willingly to kill the people who followed them, trusted them. They pass on. Ignorant of the things after. They don’t even know if they made a difference. But at least if you die, you don’t do what we’ll do.”
He shifts again, and I’m thinking he shrugs a lot. “I don’t have any followers,” he says.
I glance up sharply. “Yes, you do. The lore of the wolf spreads like wildfire, the Skulls follow your every move, you are a hero to them, and if they think you can go down, it will be bad for morale. Your bravery is well known.”
“Ah, a leader even in chains. I knew I’d like you. So, what got you into this, anyway? Being a rebel is a hard life.”
He doesn’t say, “For a girl.” And he doesn’t have to. Heard that plenty. But it still burns.
“Nothing got me into it.”
“Of course not. You just risk your life and sanity for the pure joy. Maybe it’s the thrill. You an adrenaline junky?”
I hiss in pain from tensing up. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Touchy touchy. So, it’s the fight itself, huh? You just like beating up against anything trying to take you to your knees, is that it?”
Is that innuendo? Is the wolf flirting with me? Here?
I start laughing. It’s a morbid sound.
“Don’t look so surprised,” he says. “I haven’t seen the light of day for two months, and a girl for six.”
“Is that why you got into it then, for the girls?” I smirk as best my face will let me.
The wolf eyes narrow. “Oh yes. Especially one's drowning in sweat and vomit.”
I motion at him with my good arm. “Ditto.”
“But I will say this. The Crystal in my mind, and the leader I’ve heard so much about… it all painted a picture of someone more ambitious than good-looking.”
“Well, I’m happy to disappoint. On both accounts.”
“Fifty-fifty, actually.”
“And you? I never picture the wolf chained to a wall telling me to be quiet because he’s afraid of the guards.”
“It’s not fear.”
“Then what is it?”
“Call it… chivalry. Seeing your pretty head busted open before I lose my senses is not something I’d enjoy.”
Jaw pain or no, my mouth drops open at his use of “pretty”. The girls inside of the parties on the north side, they were pretty. I haven’t been pretty in a long long time.
I can’t stop the question pouring out, now. “How did your eyes get like that?”
He goes silent as the grave. We both have our secrets then.
“So, what’s next?” I ask with a sigh, head leaning back onto the wall.
“The blood exchange,” he answers with a hollow sound.
I thought so…
“Crystal?” The doctor breaks me from my memories. “Jeremy’s awake.”
“Yeah, I’ll uh…. be right there.” I straighten, shake my head loose from the hard past, and turn to face the hard future. With long strides, more confident than I feel, I walk to Jeremy’s room. I find him sweaty, but lucid.
“No more writing,” he whispers, pleading.
His eyes are blazing red, and I touch his head: Fever.
Glad no one can see us, I lean over him, put a hand to his cheek and whisper, “No more.”
I take his hand, and instantly, I’m the other Crystal. I even put down my weapons, and slide onto the bed, letting the voice of the uprising cradle his head in my lap, while I toy with his hair.
We hadn’t always been rebel leaders, we’d been kids once, just a couple of jerks who hated everything the world was turning into.
But I fell… hard. And Jeremy became a lot more of my motivation than I ever let on… at first.
Later though, later, it was Anthem that I bled for. I’m proud to know when it came time, I stood for one thing and one alone: Freedom.
Jeremy was the one that taught me what I was made of.
For that, I have him to thank.
In our warm pocket, we stay and pretend we don’t have to save the world for a minute or two longer. It’s like I set down my gun and take up my feelings every time we talk about something other than the uprising. Every time we share space and that’s it, just sharing it to share it. Somewhere in the back of my brain I wonder if I should question this part of me that so easily sheds like scales. I compartmentalize as if I’m a robot, I have to. But it’s possible issues will arise over the dam that my emotions are swelling behind.
“You’ve been out there this whole time, waiting?” Jeremy asks.
“You know I have.”
I think he’ll pull away, but instead, he grips me hard, and sit-ups further, his body weak, his brain as sharp as always. “I want to see her.”
My stomach falls.
“My sister,” he says. “I know she’s here.”
I sigh. I want to lie to him. I want everyone he loves dead and gone already, so he doesn’t have to see what they’ve become, and then watch them die, anyway.
I nod. And we rise, but he keeps my hand.
I steady him. He’s more powerful than before but also less so for it. His body is two sided, a biological weapon from purging, but a shell of a person who’s fading away from us every day too.
I take him to the hospice area of the prison once I establish we won’t be seen. The nurses don’t care what we do. They listen to the doctor and him alone. They are not evil, but they are not not evil either.
We’ve been staying in an empty wing near the ocean, one not guarded, but this is dangerous coming over here.
Jeremy’s having a bad day, and it’s a liability. He’s barely able to move above a shuffle.
When he sees Mimi through the glass, he makes a sound, stifles it, then rushes to her side, limping and dragging one leg.
I flinch at the sight of her even though I’d been prepared. She’s asleep hooked up to machines, a mask over her delicate face.
He takes her small hand, grips it tightly.
I stand outside to give them privacy. The doctor moves to my side.
“You shouldn’t have told him,” I say.
“Is it better for him to think they are all dead?”
“Soon, they might all be. And now he’ll watch her die. How is that better?”
We turn to face one another. He motions for us to move further
down the corridor. I follow.
“He might make peace,” the doctor says.
“Peace? There is no peace to be had. No rest for those that want change. We will have peace when we are dead.”
“Crystal.” The doctor sounds disappointed.
Why does that bother me so? Him seeming disappointed. Probably because I owe him my life.
We all do.
He asks, “Have you truly grown so cold?”
I grit my teeth. “Cold? Cold is the purge. Cold is the citizens one by one becoming zombies. What do you want me to do? Be soft when it’s hard as hell right now? The Underground makes monsters, you, Karma, everybody is making fucking monsters! I’m trying to stop the world from being one empty shell of shuffling monsters. Don’t you understand?”
I break down. I fight and lose. I slump against the wall, and put my head into my knees hard enough to leave a mark, no doubt.
“Who was the monster in your life, Crystal?”
I slam my head back into the wall. I do it again. “You want a sob story, is that it? Some meager beginnings song and dance? We’ll you won’t find it here.” I laugh a sad sound. “What if I told you there wasn’t one? That’s right. I’m like Jeremy. Silver spoon firmly planted between my teeth. Family had money, they live in the rich part of Anthem. What if I told you, but instead of being jerks like the Cromwells, my mother gives every cent they get their hands on to help people in section and my father tries to help hide children when they have cancer?” The doctor doesn’t answer. “And they don’t even know that I’m alive.”
I moan a sob, then bite my lip until I regain control. “I didn’t even tell them I was okay for fear that the Cromwells would hurt them to get to me.” I glance up finally, and the doctor’s unfathomable gaze stays rooted to my face but is unchanged. “So there. I’m a monster, too. Monsters didn’t come for me as a kid. They went to this house and that house but skipped mine. When my friends did drugs or when my friends got raped or abused, or had problems, and later when the zombies ate them, and their family, it was like I was untouchable. Life never did that to me. Not to mine.”
I sigh and lean my head back, the emotions leaked out of me enough to find myself only weary. “So, I did it to myself. I started to demand that the world come after me. Because I had beef with it. Sure as hell did.”