You’re in danger, Tess. Even though I will not be able to stop the first of what appears to be a long line of chain reactions that lead you to the moment that torments me worse than any torture ever exacted on me, I write to you.
I see you here. You work in the headquarters in the service of the council you hate. I don’t know much about the women here, but I will make it my duty to find out. They are rarely seen in the main labs. They, like us chosen ones, are assigned to families. While I don’t hear much about them, what I saw concerning you—I can barely write it.
I keep thinking of the third mark on the back of your neck—the third branding that George gave you back in the woods. I can’t help but wonder if this is what he planned all along. I will search him out in the morning. I don’t know if I can trust him. I don’t know that I can trust anyone.
Three marks. That is the first image that came to me in my vision. The back of your neck. Your hair was tied up into a bun. I couldn’t see your face, but I knew it was you. You were trembling. You stood in a room fancier than anything I have seen yet.
There was a noise behind you and you crouched down. You crawled across the floor and hid behind a curtain. But the darkness did nothing to protect you. He found you. I couldn’t see his face, but he grabbed you and pulled you from your hiding space.
The last thing, the final moment of my vision, was you screaming.
So, I write to you now. I’ll have to find someone to trust. My only hope is that these letters can get to you. Because without a doubt, I know one thing is for sure. You’re coming here.
~James
Chapter 17
“You have to lock the door behind me!” Sharon commanded.
“What do you mean?” I asked. My heart was pounding like war drums. My mind once again thought of the people who first settled this land; the land we had done everything to destroy since then.
One long history of war and bloodshed.
Sharon took hold of my face. “Tess, I need you to breathe.”
I hadn’t realized I’d been hyperventilating. I nodded and closed my eyes. I counted to ten. I sucked the air in through my nose and pushed it out of my mouth. Inside my head, I hummed the song James and I had played together on the piano back at Templeton. I tried every trick I knew to calm the panic attack, and while it was easier to breathe, I still felt the fear claim me. It was like the feeling had attached to me like some parasite, waiting to show itself whenever I felt safe.
“Look at me,” Sharon urged. I forced my eyes to hers. They were steady. Calm. Ready for whatever was next. This was the life she had chosen, and she knew that this day would come.
We all knew.
“We don’t have much time. As soon as I leave, you lock this door, and you don’t open it for anyone. Not till morning. Not till there’s nothing but silence,” she said.
I shook my head. “No. You have to stay here with us,” I pleaded, reaching my hand forward and clutching onto her.
“I have others to protect,” Sharon said quietly. Her eyes welled with unshed tears. She kissed my cheek and walked past me deeper into the room.
The bell continued to ring like a banshee in the night. If I made it through this, I promised to destroy any bell I saw for as long as I lived.
I turned and watched as Sharon pulled a chair up to a wardrobe. It was half broken by years of misuse and carelessness. She stood on the chair and reached up, fumbling around the top of it till she found what she was looking for.
Dust fell to the ground like snow. I couldn’t help but wonder if any of us would see another winter. I remembered playing in the snow with James; it would be easy to lose myself in memories of him in this moment.
Sharon sighed with relief when she located what she was searching for. I looked up to find her holding the precious item in her hands—a rifle.
She got down from the chair and placed the gun in my hands. “I understand that you know how to use one of these things?” Gone were the tears. She was back to being the mother who would do anything to protect her children. Back to being the mother any child would be blessed to have.
I wrapped my fingers around the rifle. “I can handle it,” I said. I sniffled, attempting to force it all back in, trying to put on the brave front that Sharon had shown me.
“I know you can,” she answered. She took two steps toward the door before I halted her. I pulled her into my arms and hugged her as tightly as I possibly could. “What’s this for?” she asked, laughing slightly.
“Everything,” I mumbled into her shoulder.
Sharon gave me one final squeeze, and then she was gone.
As soon as she left us, I bolted the door. Louisa cried quietly, and I didn’t really blame her. Everything in my soul told me I should be running. But Sharon knew as well as I did that I couldn’t leave Louisa, and I certainly wasn’t strong enough to carry her.
I could fight. So many around me had taught me strength. Sharon. Eric. Robert. Henry. Even my father taught me how to use my wits when weapons weren’t enough. And they were all out there fighting. I could join them in battle, but I was needed here.
Sometimes staying safe was the bravest thing you could do.
I sat on the bed next to my sister and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She whimpered into my chest. After a while, the bell stopped ringing, and an eerie silence moved through the community like a slithering snake—all shhhh and foreboding. I knew it was only the calm before the storm.
Louisa lifted her tear-stained face. “What do we do now?”
I leaned down and kissed my little sister on the top of her head. In so many ways, she wasn’t a child anymore, but nothing could stop me from protecting her. I should have made it my mission to protect her years ago.
“We wait,” I said simply.
“For what?”
“For dawn. For the end. For whatever comes next.”
Chapter 18
The screams were the worst.
They filled the air. There was nowhere Louisa or I could go to hide from them. They started slowly at first. Random. Intermittently punching the air. It was as if the horror itself was a creature playing the most twisted game of hide ’n’ seek in all of history.
A piercing shriek would blast through the air and then the silence would follow. Cat and mouse. Louisa would stop trembling and crying long enough to look up at me with questioning eyes, begging me to tell her that it was over, but moments later, the screams would return.
Every muscle within me trembled with need—the need to go and defend the ones I loved. I reached for my sister’s hand, clutching onto it to help tether me.
This went on for nearly an hour, and then there was no space for silence at all. The world exploded into chaos. We listened as the sounds of men and women running, desperately trying to save themselves from whatever was out there, filled our ears. Gunshots echoed and vibrated painfully against our eardrums.
I couldn’t take standing still any longer. I began to pace around the room, searching out objects that I could possibly use as weapons. Within five minutes, I had a pile ready in the center of the room. Broken shards from a mirror. A splintered broom handle. A heavy porcelain water basin.
Louisa’s cries became short, rapid shrieks each time we heard someone yell for their loved ones below. A crazy, distorted Morse code between the terror outside and the anguish within our room. And somewhere between the duet of her cries and the sounds of war, I thought of all the people outside. There were people I loved in the community. Henry. Robert. Lockwood. Sharon. Eric. My father.
My father.
Where was he? Didn’t he command an army of vigilantes? No doubt, he, Stephanie, and the rest of them would fight, but who or what were they fighting against? My father’s words whispered to me as I clutched my little sister tighter: So, you’re ready to fight? What happens when they take that gun away from you?
A gun is a weapon; it’s not any sort of safety guarantee.
That weapon up there is just
as important as any gun.
If the community was up against an army of chosen ones, there didn’t seem to be any hope of winning. I had seen one or two chosen ones taken down with quick wit and guns, but a whole army of them? Even my father, a man who had dedicated his life to fighting, knew that was a battle he couldn’t win.
I let the tears fall freely then. I let them fall because I didn’t know how much longer my friends had, and I didn’t know how much longer we had, either. I let them fall because my friends deserved my tears. Their loss would be felt even if I wasn’t alive to feel it.
The world would be a lesser place without them.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against my sister’s. I cleared my throat. “Louisa? I know I haven’t been the best sister, and I am so sorry for that. I wasn’t particularly a joy to be around,” I admitted with a short, pained laugh.
“Neither was I,” she said, echoing my laugh. It was funny that now, so near the end, we were finally speaking the same language.
“I guess we were both pains in the asses,” I replied, laughing harder as the tears streamed quicker and quicker down my face. It didn’t feel odd laughing. It felt natural. It felt like the most natural thing in the whole damn world.
“But we loved the same people,” she whispered. Her words were interrupted with small, breathy sobs.
“Yes, we did. So we should have loved each other better,” I replied. It was a mistake that time had allowed me to at least start to remedy. I was thankful for that. As the end came closer, I realized I had spent way too much of my time hating and not enough time loving.
Louisa looked up at me. “I love you, Tess.”
“I love you, too,” I said. I suddenly didn’t feel like laughing anymore.
So, we sat like that in silence. Both of us jumped at the noises that continued to bounce against the walls of the building; the noises attempted to shatter our bond, but they wouldn’t succeed. I rocked my sister back and forth, humming my mother’s favorite song. Eventually, Louisa started to hum with me, and we filled the tiny infirmary with our own brand of warfare.
Minutes turned into hours.
The waiting became worse than the screaming. Somehow, Louisa and I had managed to make peace with the end. Louisa had even stopped crying. She took my hand and placed it over her swollen abdomen. Neither one of us spoke.
Then the banging started.
The war had come to our very door.
I jumped from the bed and snatched the rifle. I held it straight and steady toward whoever was attempting to break in. I knew it was likely they would overtake us, but I wasn’t going to go without a fight. There was a muffled gargle of words yelled at us from the other side of the wooden barrier, but neither of us could make out their meaning.
“We’re ready for you!” I screamed, using everything I had inside of me. I would not be drowned out. I would make sure they heard me.
The door buckled and whined as it was nearly torn from its hinges. I clicked the safety off my gun. I found my center. I remembered my stance. I aimed my gun. “Come on, you bastard,” I whispered as I narrowed my eyes.
With a deafening crack, the door split in half. Much to my astonishment, Lockwood stumbled into the room. His face was swollen nearly twice its size. Covered in a broken map of cuts and bruises, he spat blood onto the floor and fell to his knees.
Louisa yelped behind me and scrambled off the bed. With a grunt, she knelt onto the floor next to him. “Oh, God! Are you all right?”
I held my gun at the now opened door, only glancing down at Lockwood. “What’s going on out there?”
“It’s a bloodbath. There are chosen ones everywhere,” Lockwood coughed, more blood spilling from his mouth.
“Can you get up?” I asked.
“Get up? He’s barely breathing!” Louisa exclaimed.
“I can get up,” Lockwood said, slowing pulling himself to his feet.
“I need you two to try and move that wardrobe in front of the door. It might give us some time. I’d help, but I’ve got to keep this gun right where it is.” While I was happy to see Lockwood alive, I wasn’t thankful that he broke down the door that provided what little resistance we had.
“No, Tess! We need to leave,” Lockwood said. “He’s gonna blow it all up. The whole town. He wanted to lure enough of them in first, so at least some of us could make it out. Turns out he’s planted damn bombs all over.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Your father.”
A gun is a weapon; it’s not any sort of safety guarantee.
That weapon up there is just as important as any gun.
My father had a plan, all right.
I tore my eyes from the door and looked at Louisa, who managed to get up. “But we can’t leave,” I said quietly. She wrapped her arms around her torso and looked to the ground. Louisa couldn’t run. She knew she would slow us down.
Lockwood, nearly broken, stalked over to Louisa and lifted her in his arms. “Yes. We. Can,” he gritted.
My eyes welled with tears once again. I would never stop owing Lockwood. “So, what’s the plan?” I asked, pulling myself together and focusing on what was ahead.
“Can’t quite say we got one. Just run like hell for the woods.”
I started to speak when an explosion cut me off. My hands flew to my ears instantly. Louisa buried her face in Lockwood’s chest.
“We have to go now!” he screamed.
“Wait! There’s one thing I need to do first,” I pleaded.
“There’s no time!”
I ignored him, snatching the sheets from the bed. I threw open the trunk that lay at the foot of Louisa’s bed and laid the blanket on the floor. I grabbed anything that looked useful from the trunk, a variety of medical instruments and aids that I had no idea the purpose of. I wrapped the sheet around them, creating a makeshift satchel.
I forced the bag into Louisa’s arms. “I need you to help us. You need to hold onto this bag with all your might. Don’t let it go. Can you do that?” Louisa nodded furiously. “Good. Let’s go.”
I took a deep breath and spun toward the exit.
“Robert!” Louisa yelled. Her voice was the brightest I had heard in hours.
A wave of relief rushed through my body. Despite being covered in dirt and sweat, he appeared to be unharmed. “Let me carry her. I’m quicker,” he said, looking toward Louisa.
I watched as Lockwood hesitated for the slightest of moments. He didn’t want to let her go. “He’s her best chance,” I said.
Lockwood lifted Louisa into my brother-in-law’s waiting arms. He then walked over to me and grabbed onto my hand, clutching it in his. “On the count of three,” he ordered. “One. Two. Three.”
We ran. We ran faster and harder than I have ever run before. We sped through the crumbling community. Buildings built long before my arrival sizzled and burned as the sun faded into darkness. I tried to ignore the bodies that lay sprawled all around us. Grotesque shapes of human suffering and death that littered the ground. I didn’t want to see someone I knew. There was a time to mourn, and I had to live long enough to do so.
There was no rhyme or reason to the bombs that went off. Of course, that was probably my father’s plan all along. He knew he couldn’t beat the chosen ones in combat, so he created chaos in hopes that the strongest and fastest of the Isolationists would have a chance of surviving.
Always survival of the fittest.
As the bombs detonated, we zigged and zagged, praying that our random patterns would give us an edge. But we all knew deep down that nothing but luck would get us to the woods.
The entire time, Lockwood never let go of my hand. Almost seconds after reaching the outside, Robert sprinted past us. I knew that Lockwood shared my thankfulness. Neither one of us minded being left alone, not when it meant Louisa would be safe.
Besides, we weren’t alone. We had each other.
As each bomb went off, there was a distorted, horrific symphony of screams and gr
oans. I couldn’t tell the cries of the chosen ones from the naturals. The explosions caused a dust storm that made anything further than three feet ahead of us nearly impossible to see.
At one point, I thought I heard Lockwood yell that we were almost there, but my ears rang so loudly that all I could hear was my heartbeat thudding and thudding and thudding against my eardrums—begging desperately to be allowed to live to see another day.
As I continued to push my legs forward, I vaguely made out the tree line. A sense of hope surged through me. I wasn’t sure what awaited us in those woods, but it felt like escape.
How strange that the random collection of earth, trees, and rocks could be both heaven and hell. Of course, I knew it was just a place; it held no meaning except what man assigned to it.
Lockwood tugged against my arm. As the dust began to lessen the further we moved from the community, I could see the forest more clearly.
We were going to make it.
We were going to survive.
And then the world went black.
Chapter 19
My eyelids fluttered open.
As the light of a new day broke through the darkness that pursued me constantly, my eyelids shut again.
It was the light that pained me now.
I was afraid of what I would see. The minute they opened, the world would once again be changed. It was always evolving and becoming something new, altered in ways that if I was going to survive, I would have to learn to live with.
“I think she’s waking up.”
“Robert?” I whispered. I still refused to open my eyes. I had to make sure it was him first. I needed to know I still had someone. That was the trouble of letting yourself need people—it made you strong and weak all at once.
“Yes, Tess. It’s me.”
I slowly let my eyes open. Robert’s face looked down at me from above. “Welcome back.” He smiled.
“What happened?” My voice was scratchy and sore from a mixture of screams and dust.
“One of your father’s bombs went off next to the entrance. The force of it blew both you and Lockwood back. You hit your head pretty hard on the ground,” he explained.
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