by Jordan Rivet
She grabbed the next rung, and it came off in her hand, giving away so suddenly that she lost her balance. She lurched sideways, her feet swinging wide over the chasm. The rope pulled tight around her waist. The ladder groaned ominously.
“Shit.”
She lunged for a better grip, the harness squeezing tighter around her middle. The broken rung slipped out of her hand and fell into the black depths below. It was a long time before it hit the bottom.
“Oh shit. I’m going to die.”
She hung there in the darkness, clinging to the ladder, blind terror stealing her strength. The ladder creaked. If it collapsed, it would pull her down into the chasm, tethered by the very rope she’d used for her safety.
Panic tore at her chest. Her fingers were sweaty, slipping. They wouldn’t hold.
Panic was a bat in the darkness, a crack in the ceiling, a cyclone in—
“Get it together, Joanna!”
Forcing herself to calm down, she looped her excess rope around the ladder again. Very carefully, she climbed over the missing rung to a safer one above it. The rope tightened. The knot held.
She stopped to give her withered muscles a chance to recover, hugging the ladder and steadying her racing heart. One at a time, she wiped her hands clean on her jeans. Her blisters throbbed, tiny, vicious jellyfish beneath her skin.
She didn’t dare reach for the flashlight. She wished she could push back the darkness through sheer force of will. Only the faintest glow came up the shaft from the bunker below. The more time she spent here, the harder it was to tell whether light was actually reaching her or if she’d adjusted to the dark like some sort of mole person.
She tried to imagine the blackness above was full of stars. Soon she would see the sky again, the real, post-apocalyptic sky.
But instead of conjuring an image of the starry firmament, she ended up picturing the soft darkness of their dormitory back at the orientation school, full of the close, warm breath of her sleeping companions.
BEFORE
Sometimes people lay awake crying. Every last one of them was in mourning, and they’d been given precious little time to work through their grief. It was especially bad when BRP hadn’t fully wiped them out with endless tasks and training. One such night, Joanna tiptoed out of the dormitory so she wouldn’t have to listen to the soft, shuddering sounds.
She wrapped herself in a blanket and sat on the dorm’s back stoop, watching the rustling forest. The crisp air carried a strangely sweet scent along with the sharp smell of pine. She breathed it in, remembering hiking trips with her parents and cold, windy nights sitting by bonfires with her friends from high school. She wished BRP hadn’t banned all contact with the outside world. She didn’t even know if her mom and dad were still at home. It was getting harder to recall the sounds of their voices.
She tried not to think about them too much. It was easier to focus on her day-to-day activities than on the people she’d left behind—or on what was to come. But alone with the dark forest and the cold, piney air, it was impossible not to picture their faces, to replay funny conversations they’d had, to hold their memories as if they were hot coals from a fire.
A twig snapped nearby. A moment later, Theresa Simmons emerged from the darkness and paused in the patch of light from Joanna’s doorway. She was fully dressed in a maroon coat and hiking boots, her blond hair frizzy and unkempt. She looked at Joanna in silence for a minute then sat on the stoop beside her.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Theresa asked.
“Didn’t want to miss such a nice night.” Joanna didn’t think it was right to tell Theresa how many BRP denizens cried themselves to sleep each night. Theresa looked tired, stretched thin by the weight of her responsibilities. She had enough reasons of her own to weep without shouldering that burden.
“It’s good to stop every once in a while,” Theresa said. “We still have so much to do, but I worry you all won’t have enough time to appreciate the world before it changes forever.”
“You’re doing the best you can,” Joanna said. “Why are you out so late, anyway?”
“I heard a rumor someone was planning to leave the school tonight. I was hoping to head them off.” Theresa glanced at her. “It wasn’t you, was it?”
“Not me.” Joanna wiggled her bare toes. “I wouldn’t get far.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Theresa scanned the dark tree line. Nothing moved except the gently waving branches. “I’m probably too late, anyway. The men down at the fence will stop our runaway.” She gave a hollow laugh. “Waters will see to it.”
Joanna frowned. She had heard of people from other teams sneaking away to rejoin their families, but she hadn’t seen anyone being intercepted and brought back. How exactly would Waters see to it?
“Why do you think people leave?” she asked. “I mean, this is their only hope to survive, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Theresa said. “Yes, it’s their only hope. But knowing that and actually believing it are different things. People become skeptical about whether the experts are telling the truth. They get an idea in their head that we’re lying or completely wrong, and they let it eat away at them. It’s a hard thing to accept, especially with families waiting outside who can’t join them.”
“Why didn’t BRP select family groups for the program?” Joanna asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier to bring in people who already knew each other? That way we wouldn’t all have to leave everyone behind.”
“The possibility was discussed,” Theresa said, “but it would complicate things. Would we take the family members who fit into our narrow age parameters, but not their parents and children? And what about in-laws and mixed families? Where would we draw the line between who counted as family and who didn’t? And plenty of families come with their own baggage. The pressure could aggravate old tensions that we wouldn’t even know were simmering until it was too late. It’s much simpler to bring in individuals and encourage them to bond as a new unit.”
Joanna nodded, pulling her blanket tighter around her shoulders. “I guess sometimes a fresh start is good.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” Theresa said. “It’s a fresh start in so many ways. I wish it were easier for people to accept. Too many still think there’s a chance we could be wrong about the comet and that it’ll be better for them to just wait it out on the surface.”
“That would be quite a surprise when we woke up.”
Theresa smiled, wrinkles spidering around her eyes. “Yes, I suppose it would be.” She stood and brushed the dirt from the stoop off her trousers. “You’d better get some sleep, Joanna. We have another big day of training tomorrow.” She hesitated then gripped Joanna’s shoulder. “Promise me you won’t abandon the program. There are . . . consequences for trying to leave.”
Joanna blinked, surprised at her vehement tone. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good.” Theresa tightened her grip for a second then released her. “Good.” Then she disappeared into the dark to resume her patrol around the school.
AFTER
Joanna clung to the cold ladder in the mineshaft, trying to summon the willpower to move her aching muscles and continue toward the surface. What if BRP had been wrong all along? What if she emerged from the darkness and discovered there had been a terrible mistake? What if there was no comet, and the doubters had it right? She could find herself in a world where humans were so advanced they might as well be aliens. Would that mean her whole team had died for nothing, down in the center of the earth?
“You’re not doing yourself any good,” she said, her voice echoing eerily. “You have to keep moving forward. Isn’t that what you always say?” She had made it this far. There was nowhere to go but up.
She took a deep, dusty breath—and kept climbing.
Chapter Twelve
BEFORE
They left for the bunker facility in the last week of August, almost three months after arriving at the school. Secluded in the forest and forbidden from
contacting anyone, they’d enjoyed a sense of normalcy far removed from the rest of the country. All that changed as the comet tumbled nearer. They had no idea how bad it had gotten outside until they made their final drive.
The entire cohort would travel in a convoy of vans and repurposed school buses, guarded by whatever personnel Colonel Waters still had under his control. They were warned several days in advance that they’d be awoken at a moment’s notice to make the drive. They couldn’t plan the exact departure time lest someone outside the camp learn about the move. Colonel Waters had become increasingly paranoid about leaks in the final weeks at the school. Their caravan would attract enough attention without drawing additional hangers-on in their wake.
When the day came, Beth picked them up before dawn in the Blue Team Seven van. Garrett sat shotgun, his clipboard now holding a map to the bunker given to him that morning. Joanna dawdled outside the van until everyone piled on board so she could claim the seat directly behind his. As she buckled herself in, he looked back and winked at her. They weren’t exactly dating, she didn’t think, but since that day under the tree, he had taken to holding her hand under the table at meals and walking her home to the dormitory at night.
“Have you guys even done it yet?” Ruby had asked at dinner the previous evening, taking a seat beside Joanna that Garrett had just vacated.
“Done what?”
“Cute. Come on, I want the details.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Ruby snorted. “You may be the youngest, Jo, but you’re not that young.”
“What have we done?” Joanna said. “Figured out the water filter? We were working on that last week.”
“It, Joanna. Have you done it?”
Joanna looked back at her, eyes wide.
“What’s it, Ruby? Do you mean the fire—?”
“Sex. Geez, I know he’s Mr. Traditional, but if you haven’t even—”
Joanna burst out laughing.
Ruby narrowed her eyes. “You knew exactly what I was talking about.”
“Like you said, I’m not that young. And no, we haven’t.”
“Theresa will give you protection, if you’re worried about pregnancy.”
“That’s not it,” Joanna said. “He hasn’t even kissed me.”
Ruby raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? After all the handholding and googly eyes?”
“Googly eyes?”
“And all the times you gaze off into space then perk up like a bunny rabbit the moment he comes around.”
“You’ve noticed?”
“Everyone has noticed.”
Joanna didn’t answer. Garrett obviously liked her—maybe even as much as she liked him—but he hadn’t tried especially hard to get her alone. There were plenty of nooks and crannies around the school, private spaces that had gotten vigorous use by all these young, healthy people thrown together in fraught times. Theresa had needed to make extra forays to the outside world to replenish the condom supply. Joanna wasn’t in any rush to have sex. She just wished Garrett would kiss her already.
She suspected the reckless enthusiasm with which some people were hooking up around them had something to do with Garrett’s restraint. They all had to live together for the rest of their days, and it would be unwise to bring relationship baggage into the future. But their connection already felt more significant than that to Joanna. Garrett’s presence was profoundly comforting, and she had never expected to find such sanctuary in the form of a kindhearted young man. That was more precious than canned food in times like these.
Joanna didn’t want to explain all that to Ruby, who remained stubbornly cynical. She was saved from having to reply when Garrett returned to the table, bringing a dessert for him and one for Joanna.
“No need to get up, Ruby,” Garrett said. He set down a bowl of orange Jell-O for Joanna before strolling off to sit in Ruby’s seat beside Troy.
“I wasn’t going to give him his chair back, anyway,” Ruby muttered. “Damn Boy Scout.”
“What’s your problem with him, anyway?” Joanna asked. “You’re always ribbing him.”
“He’s such a Goody Two-shoes,” Ruby said.
“We’re not twelve.”
“I know. It’s just . . . he still believes everything is all noble and wonderful. He’s a good guy, but I kind of want to smack some reality into him.”
“I don’t think the world is such a terrible place, either,” Joanna said, taking a huge bite of Jell-O. “I mean, what’s about to happen is bad, but it’s just nature doing its thing. I might feel differently if humanity were about to destroy itself in a nuclear holocaust. This, I don’t take so personally.”
“Just because the comet is an act of God or Mother Nature or whoever doesn’t mean people aren’t terrible,” Ruby said. “You don’t still believe all BRP’s bullshit about starting a new world, do you?”
Joanna licked her spoon. “That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?”
Ruby sighed and actually patted her on the head.
“And that, Joanna, is why I get frustrated with you and Mr. Chivalry-is-not-dead. You don’t even see it.”
Ruby left the table before Joanna could ask what she was talking about. Did she know something about BRP? How bad could it actually be? Sure, Theresa and Dr. Huntington were a little secretive and disorganized—and Colonel Waters grew stricter by the day—but they were saving as many people as possible. Garrett thought everything would turn out all right in the end, and frankly, Joanna wanted to believe him.
But when they finally piled into the van and drove out of the gravel parking lot that late-August morning, Joanna had to question whether her optimism had been foolhardy after all.
A roadblock had been set up beyond the school, far out of sight of the main campus. Apart from stray crazies sneaking over the perimeter fence that first week, they hadn’t interacted with the world much, and no one had tried too hard to bother them. But as the roadblock opened up to admit their convoy of mismatched vans and school buses, they discovered that the peaceful nature of their training was an illusion.
People had tried to reach them. A lot of people. And BRP had gunned them down.
Bodies piled on either side of the road. Some leaned against the fence as if they’d only stopped to rest, stiff fingers still clutching the chain-link. Others had rushed the facility in groups, and they’d been left to lie where they fell. The stench seeped into the van through the vents, putrid, cloying, strangely sweet. The first bodies must have been here for weeks.
The team stared as they passed the heaps of bodies. It was like driving through the set of a zombie movie, except these people had been very human when they died. They had been desperate, traveling here on the off chance that they could sneak into a cryo bunker. And instead of simply turning them away, BRP had killed them, ripping away their chance to live out their final months on earth.
Beth swore steadily under her breath as she shifted gears, creeping after the school bus ahead of them in the convoy. Joanna wished they would drive faster. She didn’t want to see this. The comet would enact immediate and absolute destruction—a fact that had allowed her to think of the coming apocalypse as a sudden, clean end to humanity. But the scene outside the school was anything but clean.
Chloe was crying quietly in the seat beside Joanna. “Why did they do this? Why didn’t they just send them away?”
“It’s for us,” Joanna said, stunned by sudden clarity. “They’re doing all this for us, so that we can survive and start things over.” Here was the cost for those left behind. She’d known from the beginning that she had been chosen to live while others died, but it was different to see the debt paid in blood and flesh.
Though she wanted to hide her eyes, she forced herself to study the carnage, noting details about the people by the roadside who’d wanted her spot in the bunker. A spill of lustrous red hair, a pair of feet missing one green shoe, a couple holding hands, a woman spread-eagled as if hung on a cros
s, a man in camouflage fatigues with—
“That’s my father.”
The voice coming from the back seat was so empty, so alien, that Joanna had to turn around to see who had spoken. Blake was staring out the window, his face as pale as sand. He began moving robotically toward the front of the van. He clambered over Vincent—who hadn’t asked anyone to describe the scene outside—and reached for the door.
“What are you doing?”
“Hold on, man.”
“You can’t go out there.”
Blake pushed away the hands trying to hold him back, ignoring the voices speaking over each other. “I have to get to him.”
“He’s dead,” Ruby said.
“Ruby,” Garrett began, his voice low.
“Don’t you dare tell me to be nice,” Ruby snapped. “Blake, listen to me.” She grabbed his face, turning his vacant eyes toward her. “He’s dead. Sit back down.”
“Let the man pay his final respects,” Troy said.
“We can’t get out of the van,” Garrett said.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” Blake wrenched out of Ruby’s grasp and seized the door handle.
“I’m Team Leader,” Garrett said. “You have to—”
“I don’t have to do shit,” Blake said. “Team Leader doesn’t mean anything. I’m going out there.”
“Whatever you do, don’t stop driving,” Garrett said to Beth, who had a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. Then he unbuckled his seat belt and climbed into the back, almost landing on Joanna’s lap as he crawled over to the van door. Blake was still struggling with the handle.
“Stop, Blake,” Garrett said. “You can’t get out of the van.”
Blake swung his fist. Garrett ducked the punch and caught his arm. He forced Blake’s shoulder back against the window, kneeling awkwardly on the seat. He gained control of Blake’s other arm just before he opened the door.