by G. C. Julien
To my right, women are moving closer looking as confused as I am.
Someone yanks me up and I find myself face-to-face with a dark-haired, red-faced man. His beard reaches his massive neck, where squiggly veins pop out like he’s about to start convulsing.
He stares at me dead in the eyes, so close to my face that I can hear his teeth grinding.
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Vrin Lykson, you fucking piece of shit.”
CHAPTER 33 – LUCY
My mom used to say it a lot. Car crash syndrome, I think it was.
She’d told me it was when something terrible would happen and people couldn’t stop staring even though the sight was disturbing.
That’s what’s happening right now, for everyone, I think.
Eve doesn’t even look like Eve anymore. Her white overcoat is splattered in so much blood it looks like buckets of red paint were spilled on her. She sits on the solid white floor in the middle of the Hub with blood smudged all around her. With trembling hands, she pulls at her clothing and at her hair, probably having a nervous breakdown.
“I tried… I tried…” she keeps repeating.
Women gather closer, but not too close.
“Is it true?” someone whispers.
Weeping and shouting spreads across the Hub.
What happened? Why is everyone so upset?
“I tried to save her…” Eve says. “There… There was so much blood.”
Tears stream down her face, slipping through the blood smears and forming little beige lines on her cheeks. Every time she opens her mouth to talk, slimy saliva sticks to the corners of her mouth like she hasn’t had a drink in days.
“Out of the way!” comes a man’s gruff voice.
He rushes through the crowd and kneels by Eve’s side. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”
“I tried…” she keeps repeating.
He tries to help her by scooping her underneath the arms but she pulls away violently. “Get your fucking man hands off of me!”
Everyone takes a step back.
With hands still trembling, she wipes her face, though all it does is smudge more blood on it.
“Don’t you all see?” she says, eyeing the crowd that’s formed around her. “History is repeating itself.” She rolls her hateful eyes toward the man who tried to help her up. He looks pretty shaken, too, with both hands by his face. Obviously, he wasn’t trying to upset her. He only wanted to help. “Vrin’s allowed men to carry weapons… She’s allowed men as much freedom as us inside these walls, and look at what’s happened. A man killed her. A man!”
She sounds broken.
Then, she lets out a maniacal laugh.
“This man wasn’t even armed!” Her voice carries across the Hub and all the way up the walls. “Is that how you want to live? In fear?”
Slowly, more guards approach, both men and women. The women seem to be keeping their distance from the male guards now, almost as if they’re carrying some infectious disease.
“Oh my God,” comes a familiar voice. Two solid hands grip me by the shoulders and I know it’s Nola before I even see her face. I turn around and hug her tight.
“Are you all right, sweetheart? I saw Vrin come into the Medical Unit. It was… It was awful—” She doesn’t go into any more detail. She must be afraid to scare me. “She was pronounced dead the moment she got there. Is it true? Was it this Gabriel man?”
Women around her start chiming in.
“It was the man.”
“Yeah, that guy who jumped on Stacey and the others when he first got here.”
“He was unstable.”
Someone scoffs.
“Unstable is putting it lightly. The guy’s a fucking lunatic.”
I’m so confused, so I don’t join in. How could Gabriel do something like this? I don’t know the guy, but I’ve seen the way he acts around people. He seems too nice and gentle. I’ve also seen the way he cares for his dog. How can a guy who kisses his dog murder someone so violently?
Nola doesn’t have to give me the details about how violent it was; I already know. Everyone around me has been talking about what happened. They’ve been arguing about the murder weapon, and most people seem to think it was a letter opener. And as for the stab wounds, well, no one seems to know, but I’ve heard the number twelve thrown around a lot. It’s an estimate, but it’s enough to make me sick to my stomach.
If it was Gabriel, he’s a complete psychopath.
Then, someone with a calm voice enters the room and everyone goes quiet.
“Enough,” the voice says, and Nayma surfaces from the crowd wearing her famous blue-rimmed glasses and beige khaki pants. A tight bun sits atop her head and her shoulders are drawn back.
She isn’t smiling, which makes her look like an entirely different person.
“Come with me, Eve,” she says. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
She pulls Eve up onto her feet and Eve doesn’t put up a fight.
“Who’s taking over?” someone yells.
“We’ll deal with that later,” Nayma says.
A man wearing black pants and a black padded shirt steps forward. His boots, which are as black as his clothing and his skin, are shinier than the floor. He isn’t overly large—maybe Eve’s height—but he’s stocky with a thick neck. The sides of his head are shaved and the top covered with a short layer of fuzz that matches his beard—something so dark that it masks half of his face.
With a calm, gravelly voice, he says, “I’m second in command to Vrin.”
“Zander’s right,” says the guard standing next to him. “By default, he becomes the new leader.”
At first, no one responds. Maybe they aren’t sure how to. There’s always a second in command in the event something happens to the original leader, right? How can anyone argue that?
Eve, however, isn’t afraid to speak up.
She lets out a forced laugh and rolls her eyes. It looks like she isn’t trembling at all anymore. Maybe she’s calmed down. Though that’s a big change out of nowhere.
“You think that after what’s happened, the women of Elysium will allow a man to take charge?”
The women around her start shouting overtop one another and pointing fingers at Zander.
“I understand your concern,” Zander says calmly. “This, however, isn’t up for a vote. Vrin made it clear that should anything happen to her—”
“Do you hear that, ladies?” Eve says. She’s so angry it looks like she’s about to laugh again, which freaks me out. I’ve known Eve long enough to know what her angry smile looks like. “A man is telling us what to do. Doesn’t this sound familiar to you? Don’t you see what’s going on? This was certainly orchestrated. Kill off the female leader so that men can rule over Elysium.”
She starts pacing in the Hub, leaving bloody prints on the floor.
Some of the male guards are gripping their guns and eyeing the raging crowd.
“This isn’t America anymore!” Eve shouts and everyone goes quiet. “There’s no president, and your opinions matter. So why don’t we do this the way it’s been done for hundreds of years?” She smirks, brushes a few strands of hair out of her face, and plants a hand on her waist. “Let’s put it up to a vote.”
CHAPTER 34 – EVE
The male guards appear on edge.
Some of them tighten their grips around their massive guns while others scan the crowd with large fearful eyes like helpless zoo animals.
Zander, the second in command who only moments ago believed he should be in power, crosses both arms over his muscular chest and glowers at me.
What’s wrong? I want to say. Feeling outnumbered?
“I nominate Eve to be leader!” someone shouts from the crowd.
Similar words spread throughout the Hub and hundreds of women nod in agreement. Most men remain silent, which is precisely what they should be doing. If they’ve heard of me—which, surely, they have—they know not to piss me off. T
hey know that I prefer to run things without the presence of males at all.
The truth is that Zander is the best choice for the men—slowly, he will turn things around and allow men to have all the power as it’s always been.
What confuses me is that the unarmed men—the ones in basic cotton clothing standing among the women—aren’t joining in. In fact, they aren’t participating in the chaos at all. Instead, they turn to their wives, mothers, or daughters, and wait for them to make a decision.
Only a handful of men with guns step forward, chests heaved and shoulders drawn back.
“Zander is the rightful leader!” one of them growls.
A few other men throw balled fists into the air and cheer, but for the most part, the men in the Hub remain quiet.
Why is that? I tilt my head and stare at them, trying to understand. Why not support their own sex? That’s what men do, isn’t it? Team up against women? Why stand there like a bunch of silent fools and allow women to take charge? These men must care more for their loved ones than they do power. I don’t understand it, but I don’t bother wasting any more energy trying to figure it out.
All I care about is regaining my rightful place as leader.
“Eve!”
“Eve!”
“Eve!”
The voices become so loud that I feel the vibrations underneath my feet and through the tips of my fingers. Elated, I draw my shoulders back and stare at the growing crowd before me—at my people.
Zander’s dark brows come together and his lips are pursed in anger. Within seconds, I managed to take away all of his power, or at least, the power he deluded himself into believing he had.
I stare back at him, fighting the urge to smile.
“The people have spoken!” Nayma shouts over everyone. She removes her blue-rimmed glasses, tucks them into her shirt pocket, and reaches for my wrist. When she pulls it up over my head, I see the bloodstains on my sleeve. “Eve Malum, ruler of Elysium!”
The room fills with so many voices that I can’t determine who is saying what. If the walls weren’t so thick, I’d believe them to be shaking. I stare up toward the ceiling, which looks to be a mile high, and on each floor, a few people stare down through the glass.
Everyone’s eyes are on me.
This is yours, Eve. This place is yours.
The moment I raise an open palm into the air, the crowd becomes silent and all that can be heard is everyone’s rapid breathing.
“Given recent events,” I say, my voice carrying over their heads, “men are no longer to be armed.” I gaze toward the crowd of armed men. “Lay down your weapons.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Zander shouts.
Now, I see his true colors. He appeared calm and levelheaded seconds ago, but now he stands before me with his angry, twisted face inches away from mine. He breathes loudly through his nostrils and tries to tower over me even though we’re the same height.
He’s behaving like any other man, trying to make himself look big to intimidate me.
It doesn’t work. I’m not afraid of him, nor any man here in Elysium.
The sound of guns powering on fills the space behind me and a group of armed women circle in front of me with their energy rifles pointed at Zander’s face.
Smirking at him, I elevate my chin.
A few armed men retaliate by pointing their guns at me, creating a standoff. That’s when every single woman carrying a gun steps forward, eyes gazing down the sights of their guns.
“Lower your weapons,” I repeat to the men.
Then, to everyone’s surprise, something spectacular happens.
The men and women of Elysium—the civilians in blue cotton clothes—step forward with fists clenched, prepared to fight. I stare at Zander again, this time, from head to toe, and wait for him to command his dogs to lower their guns.
“You heard Eve!” shouts one of the female guards. “Put down the fucking weapons or this gets ugly!”
Several armed men farther back of the Hub have already set their guns down.
With an elevated chin and a hateful smirk on his face, Zander slowly sets his gun to the ground. It makes a soft ticking noise the moment it hits the floor, and he straightens his posture, his hands outstretched.
It doesn’t truly look like he’s submitting to me. He’s staring at me as if visualizing how he’s going to make his way back on top—how he’s going to take me out.
“Arrest Zander,” I say, and several gasps fill the space around me.
“You have no fucking right!” he snaps, but he doesn’t have the time to come after me.
Two female guards grab him and pull his arms behind his back.
“You disobeyed a direct order,” I say. “In fact, you endangered the lives of my people by continuing to hold a dangerous weapon when advised to do otherwise.”
He breathes hard, his flared nostrils doubling in size.
“You won’t get away with this,” he growls.
* * * * * *
“You won’t get away with this!” the old man shouts.
He trembles with his long, crooked finger pointed at me as if he possesses the ability to judge me in the afterlife.
I don’t have time to argue with a man.
Stepping over a dead carcass, I gaze back toward the crowd of women following me.
“Ignore the hatred,” I shout. “Where we’re going, there’s no room for men like him.”
“There’s no room for men at all, right?” a woman shouts, her voice quivering.
Right now, most women look like her. They’re petrified of what’s to come, but it’s apparent they’re all in agreement over one thing: men are not welcome.
I smile at her. She, along with every other woman following me, understands what they’re getting themselves into. “That’s right,” I say.
Then, to my surprise, comes a woman’s shrill voice.
“You can’t do this!”
Next to her are two young boys, most likely around the ages of five and eight. She pulls them close to her with her hands on their foreheads as if protecting them from an evil force. Her lips, dry and cracked, are slanted on one side as if she’s suffered from a stroke. I should feel sorry for her, but I don’t—all I feel is hatred for men, and all I see when I look at those boys are future weapons.
Her eyes dart from side to side as if hoping someone will come to her aid, but no one comes.
“You can’t make me choose between life and my boys,” she cries, pulling them even closer. “I’ll always choose my boys!”
“I’m not making you do anything,” I say. “You have free will. Your best option is to join Vrin.”
The frightened look on her face quickly transforms into loathing. She clenches her teeth, grabs her two sons by the wrists, and turns around, heading back into the devastation of a once-astounding Washington, D.C.
Ash covers the streets and carcasses lie everywhere. Most people have returned to their homes for safety, while others fight over supplies.
The old man who shouted at me a short time ago shakes his head and goes on to help an injured woman on the ground.
“Get your hands off me!” she shouts.
Two other women come rushing to her aid, pushing the old man back. He trips over a car’s bumper and smashes his skull against the sidewalk. A loud cracking sound pierces the air, and although I should feel bad, I don’t.
Why is he trying to help us? Where was he when President Price took away women’s rights? Men like him are nothing but cowards. Blood spills from his head, forming a dark pool around his cheeks and neck, and I turn away.
Lucy grabs my hand—a cool, fragile touch that reminds me that her mother’s blood is stained on my skin. But I don’t pull away. Instead, I squeeze it and smile down at her.
“Everything’s going to be fine.”
* * * * * *
As the guards pull Zander out of my sight, I get the feeling I’m being watched, and not in an admiring way, either.
I follow my sense to a woman mixed in the crowd. She has curly brown hair that looks as though it hasn’t been washed in months. On either side of her, two teenage boys tower over her, having obviously gone through a growth spurt with their awkwardly lanky limbs.
But what catches my eye isn’t the hateful glare she’s throwing my way—rather, it’s her disfigurement; her lips droop as if she’s recently suffered from a stroke. The two boys must be her sons—the ones I refused to allow her to bring along to Eden.
Behind her, a few other women whose faces I recognize from Eden are staring at me with arms crossed over their chests.
Wonderful. I already have enemies.
I offer them a smile, but no one smiles back.
You don’t need them, Eve. Look around.
One by one, the men and women of Elysium begin lowering themselves onto one knee. I catch a glimpse of Lucy and Nola at the far back, their eyes darting from side to side. Their bodies, however, mimic the movements of everyone else as they lower themselves into bowing positions.
I draw my shoulders back, feeling Vrin’s dry blood crack apart on the skin of my face.
You did it, Eve.
I smile at everyone before me.
The road ahead won’t be easy—I have a lot of trust to earn back—but very soon they will see that I, Eve Malum, have always been the one true leader capable of rebuilding America.
CHAPTER 35 – GABRIEL
She’s looking at me like I’m a stranger, so I look away.
I didn’t do anything wrong, but I feel ashamed. Ashamed of what she’s probably thinking of me.
“I didn’t do it,” I mutter, staring at the metal floor.
I’m sitting behind a glass wall like a caged zoo animal. Inside my cell is a shitty bed, a toilet, and plain white walls. Why didn’t they banish me? Eve wanted this, didn’t she? She wants me to suffer.
Freyda’s helped the guards place me in confinement. That’s the only reason she’s here. But it killed me. She looked at me like I was the biggest piece of shit she’d ever seen.