Alone

by Abigail Wallace

  “And he…attacked you? Kidnapped you? What did he do?”

  “He jumped me.” I lie. “Broke my watch, messed me up pretty bad. I was late because I was recovering.” I hold my breath. Does he buy it?

  “Oh my.” he says unsympathetically. “But you’re alright now?”

  I nod, “Yes sir. Much better.”

  “Good, good.” He stands up, coming over to my side of the desk. My heart beats harder now. What is he doing? “None of that explains why you thought it a good idea to lead them into my bunker.” he hisses. “That doesn’t explain why you thought you could bring those three back here!” He raises his voice. I shudder.

  “I’m sorry sir.” I do my best to keep my voice steady. “They just followed me. I couldn’t get them to go back.”

  “And Evan?”

  “Executed.”

  “And the girl? Scarlet? Evan’s little friend. She didn’t follow you. She showed up here earlier today, alone.”

  “I don’t know sir.” I say, “She disappeared in the night. I didn’t know this is where she went.”

  “You didn’t know.” he repeats. “Finn, are you being honest with me?”

  “Of course sir. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  “Yeah cause that would be extremely stupid of you.” He walks to the door and opens it. I stand and walk towards it. “Next time somebody wants to follow you here. Next time you can’t convince them to turn around and go home.” I stop walking. He leans into my ear. “Kill them.”

  I knew that’s what he would say. That’s always his answer.

  “Yes sir.” My eyes meet the floor. “I’m sorry.” I mumble.

  “You’ll have breakfast with me tomorrow, we’ll go over your next assignment then. Don’t be late.” I nod. He slams the door behind me. I close my eyes and catch my breath now that I’m alone. Or I thought I was alone. I open my eyes to see Christopher standing before me.

  “Finn!” he squeals, leaping on me. I embrace him joyfully. “You’re back! I was so worried.”

  “Yeah kid, I’m back.” I smile, lowering him gently to the ground. “But listen, you can’t call me Finn. Okay? I’m on an undercover mission for your uncle.”

  “Oh, okay. What can I call ya then?” He giggles excitedly.

  “Shark.” I reply dryly, my cheeks growing hot.

  “Shark.” he repeats, making a judgemental face. He scans me up and down. “Weird, but ‘kay.”

  “You’ll get used to it.” I chuckle. He grabs my forearm and begins dragging me down the hall.

  “Well Shark. Mom says that you gotta stay in the newbie rooms while you’re on your mission. She sent me to show you which one.” He puffs his chest out in pride.

  “Hey.” I lower my voice. “The girl, Scarlet who got here yesterday. Can you take me to her room?”

  He narrows his eyes, “Scarlet?” He pauses to think. “Girl from yesterday.”

  “Come on kid. Your mom said she was here.”

  “She is.” He shrugs. “But I can’t take ya to her.”

  “Why not.” I raise my voice unexpectedly.

  “Mom told me not to. She’s the boss ya know.” He stops walking and turns to look at me. “Is she your girlfriend?”

  I cough uncomfortably. I wasn’t expecting that. Although with Chris, I probably should have been.

  “No.” I lie, I think it’s a lie. I don’t really know for sure. “She’s just…important.”

  “Yup, she’s your girlfriend.” He nods. I sigh in frustration. I know he won’t take me to her tonight, no matter how much I beg.

  “Come on, I’ll take ya to your room and tomorrow I’ll bring her to you. Mom never said anything about that.” He smirks slightly. I can’t help but be proud of him for coming up with a loophole.

  “Sounds like a plan kid.” I laugh gently. We walk a bit further down the hallway.

  “Here.” he says, opening a door to one of the rooms. “They already put all your clothes and stuff in there. You need anything else?”

  “No Chris. Thank you.”

  He smiles at me before turning and skipping down the hall, the way that he always has. I walk into my room and close the door. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a bed. I sit on it as I sink back into my memories. Back to when things were somehow easier. I don’t sleep, but I still find myself dreaming about her and how things were before I came back home.

  12

  Scarlet

  It was weird waking up and not being able to see the sun this morning. I had fallen asleep with my light on, but it wasn’t the same as waking up with the warmth of the sun on my face. For a moment I had forgotten where I was. I had forgotten that I wasn’t going to be waking up on the hardwood floor of a bedroom in an old rickety house anymore.

  That same sadness from the night before attempts to creep in yet again, but I manage to swallow it as I climb out of bed. My feet hit the warm, carpeted floor.

  I walk into the bathroom connected to my room. It’s already fully stocked with soap and towels. A vase of fake flowers rests on the extra counter space connected to the sink.

  “This is a real fancy bunker.” I say to myself, as I turn on the faucet, amazed by the running water. It’s been so long since I’ve seen a working faucet. Funny how the things that were normal before, seem so abnormal now.

  I return to the bedroom walking around, touching everything. It almost doesn’t seem real, seems too good to be true.

  An oak dresser is up against the wall across from the bed. I find myself staring at the photograph above it. It’s a picture of a young girl playing jump rope with her friends at school. I can’t tell if the image makes me feel happy or sad, but it’s making me feel something.

  As I’m pulling my hair back into a ponytail, I hear a light knock on the door. I freeze for a moment, not sure if that’s even what I heard, but it comes again, slightly louder than before.

  I cross the floor and open it a crack, not sure what kinds of people live here. My gaze falls on a young boy, probably around age ten or so.

  “Hello.” I greet him, my voice higher pitched than I meant for it to be.

  “Hello.” He smiles. “My mom told me to come tell you they’re serving breakfast now.” He informs me. His smile is infectious or maybe I’m just relieved to know that some children survived, either way I feel a smile spreading across my face.

  “Your mom?” I ask.

  “Laura.” he clarifies. “Come on, we can walk down there together.” I join him out in the hallway and quietly close the door behind me. The digital clock in the hall reads 8:00 a.m.

  “My name’s Christopher.” He introduces himself as we walk swiftly towards the cafeteria. “If we hurry, they’ll still have a few chocolate chip muffins left, those go fast ‘round here.” He chuckles lightly.

  “That sounds good.” I reply. My mouth waters at the idea of having a real breakfast. I just wish I could be sharing this with the others. They deserve to have a nice warm breakfast for once, probably more than I do.

  “I’m Scarlet.” I tell him after realizing I’d forgotten to introduce myself.

  “I know.” he says, still smiling. “My mom told me.”

  “Ah, of course.” I reply quietly.

  “Here we are.” Christopher says as he struggles to open the door to the large dining area. I lift my hand to help him, but he just shakes his head. “My dad says I always gotta hold the door for ladies.” he states, still struggling to keep the door open.

  “Well, he’s right, that is the polite thing to do.” I reply as I quickly walk through the door so he can finally let go. I watch as he lets the door fall closed and shakes his arms out, laughing shyly.

  “Come on Scarlet, the line starts here.” The two of us join the line of people at the counter. He passes me a ceramic plate. “Today’s pancake day.” He beams. “So you’ll go up, serve your pancake, get your syrup, get your muffin if ya want it. There’s some strawberries and stuff at the end if ya want ‘em.” He cringes as he sa
ys “strawberries”. “Get whatever you want and if you’re still hungry, after they ring the bell you can go get more.”

  “Sounds good. Thanks kid.” I reply, serving myself two pancakes and moving up in the line.

  “My parents always sit back there.” He nods to the back right corner of the room.

  “Come on, they’ll be here any minute.” I follow the small boy through the tables and to the back right corner. The two of us sit quietly and eat until his parents join us.

  “Good morning Scarlet.” Laura greets me. “How’d you sleep?”

  “Better than I have in a long time.” I reply.

  “We’re so glad to hear that!” She smiles warmly. Christopher and her have the same infectious smile.

  “So, after breakfast, I was thinking that Christopher could give you a tour and then maybe you could meet my brother. How does that sound?” she suggests.

  “That sounds great.” I reply as I cut my pancakes into smaller, bite sized pieces.

  “Here.” Christopher leans in to whisper to me. “I gotcha one.” He passes me a chocolate chip muffin. I take it gratefully, although I’m not sure I could eat a muffin after finishing off these pancakes.

  “Thanks kid.” I whisper back. His parents both raise their eyebrows simultaneously, but quickly return their attention to their pancakes.

  “You have to try it.” he tells me, his eyes focused solely on the muffin in my hand. I break off a piece of the muffin and shove it in my mouth. The kid’s right, it is pretty good.

  “That stuffs the best, I’m tellin’ ya.”

  “It is good.” I laugh a little. “Where does all this food come from?”

  “Well, a lot of it was already here and a lot of it came from the remaining stores around here.” Richard explains.

  “What happens when it runs out?” I ask “There’s a lot of people to feed, I don’t imagine it’ll last forever.”

  “Lucky for us Dr. Fowler is working on a high-tech solution for that. A solution that I wouldn’t know how to explain correctly unfortunately. But you can ask him when you meet him later today.” Richard tells me. I guess that’s the best I’ll get for now.

  “Uncle Nathan’s the best! You’re gonna love him.” Christopher chimes in eagerly. His childlike joy is refreshing.

  “I can’t wait to meet him.” I reply, smiling. We eat the rest of our meal in a comfortable silence.

  I feel like I did when I woke up at Alec’s, confused, lost. Not quite as bold though. No, that’s been drained out of my veins. I am not brave anymore. I’m not even sure who that girl who went up against Alec’s authority was. She cost us everything, though, that’s for sure. I’m not her anymore.

  In just one night that girl has disappeared and in her place is a girl who’s scared out of her mind. A girl with a bomb lying on the floor of her bedroom, a bomb that she doesn’t have the courage to detonate. A bomb that she now has no idea what to do with.

  I wonder when the others will find their way here, or if they already did.

  I find myself scanning the crowd for them.

  “Your friends got here late last night if that’s who you’re looking for.” Laura says as if responding to my thoughts. I look at her in shock. “I don’t think they’ll be up for quite a while. That, big, dark guy, Shark? He was pretty riled up. He seemed exhausted.”

  “Oh.” Guilt sits in my stomach and what was left of my appetite is now gone.

  “We can take you to his room if you want.” She offers.

  “No, I’m sure he could use his sleep.” I shake my head, my eyes finding the floor. I swallow hard, wishing this guilt I’m feeling would go away. I’m tired of feeling guilty all the time.

  “I’ll clear your plate this time.” Christopher butts in, “But you’ll have to do it yourself after this.” He puts on a fake serious tone, obviously trying to lighten the mood. It may have worked too, if it wasn’t muffled by the thoughts running laps around my brain right now.

  “I’m sure he won’t mind.” Laura tries to insist. “He was hell-bent on seeing you last night. We thought we were gonna have to sedate him.”

  “Oh lord.” I mumble “No, let him sleep.” I won’t say it out loud, but I’m afraid of how both Shark and Alec are going to react when they see me. I know for sure they won’t be happy. I wish I had done what I came here to do before they got here.

  I’d rather be dead than have to explain this one to them.

  “Come on Scarlet! Let me show you around.” Christopher says, grabbing my hand and pulling me out of my seat. Laura flashes me an apologetic yet amused smile as he pulls me off towards the door.

  “So this is the gym.” Christopher says, leading me into the first room. It’s a huge room filled with exercise equipment, just like what you would’ve seen before all of this happened. It was a clean, mostly white room, just like the rest of the bunker was.

  “The adults spend a lot of time in here, not sure why, seems kinda boring to me, but ‘kay.” He shrugs his shoulders in genuine confusion. I find myself holding back a laugh.

  “Let me show you the school.” he says. He uses his back to push open the door, anchoring his feet on the floor so the weight doesn’t crush his small frame. I reach out to help, but am yet again discouraged from doing so.

  “This is where me and the other thirty kids do school.” he says as we walk into yet another absurdly clean, white room. It looks like a classroom, white board and everything.

  “Thirty kids?”

  “Yeah, but that’s not counting the nine babies and thirteen teenagers. The babies don’t go to school and the teens have their own room.” he explains.

  “How many people are there total? Do you know?” I ask him, knowing he probably has no clue.

  “You’d have to ask Uncle Nathan.” He shrugs, leading me out of the classroom and down the hall. The bunker is gigantic, full of rooms. I wonder how long it took to build and engineer this whole thing. It took the two of us about three hours to finish the whole tour and the kid talked the whole time. I didn’t mind though, he’s funny and I enjoyed the company.

  “I bet your friends are up.” He tells me as we’re walking back towards the bedrooms. “We can knock on your boyfriend’s door if ya want.” I pause for a second, choking on my breath.

  “My who?” I swallow uncomfortably.

  “Your boyfriend.” he replies.

  “How do you?” I’m holding back yet another laugh.

  “My dad told me that nobody gets as worked up over a woman than a man who’s in love with her.” He states matter-of-factly.

  “Your dad told you that?” I raise an eyebrow.

  “Yup, last night when your boyfriend was going nuts.”

  “Ah, gotcha. Your dad tell you anything else?” I ask, amused by our conversation.

  “He has all kinds of sayings about girl stuff.” he replies. “This is his room.”

  We stop walking. I stare at the door, still scared of the greeting I’m about to get.

  “You need me to knock for you?” Christopher offers in his chipper tone. I smile down at him.

  “No kid, I got it.” I laugh lightly as I ball my hand into a fist and knock on the wooden door.

  “Ya gotta knock louder. Like this.” he tells me. Before I can stop him, he’s pounding on the door. “That’ll wake him up if he’s asleep.”

  I roll my eyes at him and shake my head slightly.

  “Yeah, that’ll do it. Why don’t you go find your parents? I’ll see you later.”

  “Awe alright.” He sighs. “They’re gonna start serving lunch any minute if you’re hungry. See you there?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Cool.” he says and begins skipping down the hallway.

  Once Christopher is gone, I knock on the door a third time.

  “Shark?” I say through the door, “It’s me, Scarlet.”

  I wait a few seconds before I see the door knob begin to turn. The door opens slowly and there he is.

  He’
s dressed in a black T-shirt and a pair of jeans. He looks good in clean clothes. It doesn’t look like he slept well, though. The circles around his eyes are dark, his face pale. He stares at me for a moment, probably deciding between sweeping me up in a hug and chopping my head off.

  “Scarlet.” His voice is a defeated whisper, “We were so worried.” His eyes fill with tears.

  Slowly I step forward, scared that he wouldn’t want to hug me. He steps closer.

  “I’m so sorry Shark. I don’t know what I was thinking. I just was worried I was leading you into danger.” I sob, wrapping my arms around his neck. I can feel his tears on my skin. “I’m sorry.” I repeat. We stay that way for a long time, holding onto each other as if we were going to float away if we didn’t.

  I’m not afraid of him anymore, he’s not mad. He was never going to be mad. He was scared. Of course he was scared.

  Our already long moment was soon interrupted by the person I actually needed to be afraid of at the moment; Alec.

  “Just when I thought we’d seen all your crazy. Was punching walls not enough for you? Picking fights with men twice your size? Now you just run off, in the middle of the night?!” I pull away from Shark and turn to face Alec, my eyes unable to meet his.

  “Did you not think we’d follow you?” I look up to see the others coming up behind

  “I thought you might.” I reply sheepishly. If there was ever a time for the old Scarlet to pick a fight with Alec, now was it. But no, she was cowering in the back of my mind.

  “If you ever pull something like that again.” he growls.

  “I just…” I want to explain. I want to tell them why I didn’t want them to follow me.

  “You just what?” Alec raises his voice. “You just wanted to scare us? You just wanted us to worry if you were dead? Is that what you wanted? Cause congrats! You pulled it off.”

  “No, I didn’t want that.” Here come the tears again. Don’t cry, not now.