by P. S. Lurie
Selene is determined to train her body up to its maximum. I didn’t have much to do with the rehabilitation units in either of the hospitals I worked at but I’ve never seen anyone push themselves as much as she does. She’s close to damaging herself and I know she’ll vie for another session this afternoon. In the meantime she’ll be eager to catch up with Jack about when there will be an advance.
“How will you feel when you find out he’s dead?”
The road is steep and Selene looks towards the horizon over the Lowerlands – and beyond to land unnamed – that is trashed and needs heavy repair if there was the population for it, and is slowly drying out and less trepidacious by the day. If we look the other way we could pretend we’re in the Middlelands before the great cull, living out a life with an encroaching ocean but in this direction the world has forever changed. I follow her gaze below the closing stages of the sunrise to land neither of us had previously seen in our lifetimes. The sea is out there beyond view, still receding and giving our planet back to us once more. We should move farther south away from the Fence and the danger of an attack but our community is divided between wanting to fight and not having enough protection from the derelict houses that were only recently submerged.
“That was our biggest fear for most of our lives,” Selene says. “But we were wrong.” She turns to the direction of the Upperlands where the summit of the Fence is visible above the houses, and where we stood six months ago. “Melissa. All this time you’ve misunderstood what I wanted.”
I crease my eyebrows, waiting for her confession.
“I don’t want him to be dead.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I want him to be alive so that I can kill him.”
Ruskin
It’s a fair distance from the control centre to the street that I return to more than any other. I only came here once with someone else, for support the first time around. The house that I’m after in particular is two doors down from where Henry lived and next door to Theia’s.
Once we returned to the Middlelands Jack came with me to the house I grew up in and I went with him to his. There were no dead bodies but plenty of memories of unfulfilled hope lingering inside. We lamented our empty homes but it was easier in a sense for the two of us because there was no one inside to bury and no bloodstains to scrub clean. Still, we opted not to move into either.
As for our families, Jack didn’t want graves for his mother or brother, neither of which he could fill; Jack’s mother was killed in a meaningless attack as we were leaving the prison by a confused Melissa and, like Jason, his brother’s body was never found with no clue whatsoever of where to look for him. We buried my parents shortly after leaving the Upperlands beneath basic markings that named them as brave people pushed to their deaths in full view of a society that egged it on. I refused a third plot for my brother.
The important difference is that Jack doesn’t know where his brother died and too much time has passed to recognise him even if he did, whereas I know exactly where Jason died. The troubling part is that he’s not there.
I come here to be alone, to tell Henry that I miss him and to beg forgiveness that Theia is still playing for time for us to come back for her in the Upperlands or the fortress or wherever they’re holding her. She’s not dead, I’m certain of it. I have no idea why but President Callister would never have put herself at risk of being caught up in the Utopia’s explosion unless she wanted to take Theia with her. The rest of us were expendable. For some reason Ronan let us go although moments before that he sent us to our deaths across the bridge.
Mostly, I come here to look for clues as to what happened to Jason.
I approach the houses quicker than I used to, now that I know what to expect of them. We’ve built up a base in one part of the Middlelands but there is still plenty more that hasn’t been cleared out. Houses have been ransacked for any cooking utensils and clothes and other objects that could prove valuable but there’s still a lot of decay and death that goes untouched. These few houses are an exception, until the delegated team move through the rest of the neighbourhood putting everyone to rest.
Once we risked returning from the Upperlands, unsure what we’d find here, it became quickly apparent that some of the Middlelanders had survived the great cull but not through being Rehoused; mostly people with houses near the coast who escaped by sea. Although a good couple of hundred are assembled, we dwindled by such a large magnitude that night and we’re still pathetic in number. With our arrival, we gave them a better chance by explaining what the Upperlands looked like and what the loud explosion was that they heard a few days before we showed up.
It wasn’t long before my anger towards President Callister extended to Travis and the others who were pretending to be tough but hadn’t gone into battle. Where had they been that past year? Why hadn’t they fought for us? I can’t control my outbursts but Jack has ways of calming me. It’s not difficult to liken him to a punch-bag, not that I’d physically lay a finger on him but he never gives up on me despite my shouting at him. Why is it so difficult to tell him more often that I’m sorry?
I know the answer but I’ve never been able to share it with him. I want more than anything to protect him and yet I’ve made him engage in talks about war. In a twisted sense of logic, I’m angry for failing him and he’s the constant reminder of it.
I arrive at the house with the over-scaled fridge. I wish I had asked Theia more questions about that night rather than wasting energy on being angry at her when I held her responsible for Jason’s death. I wish I knew where Jason was killed. I have put as much of it together as I can and I step into the old couples’ house as I walk through the events for the hundredth time.
Theia came in here from over the fence and slipped in through the back door. I guess one or both of the couple were still alive because otherwise Jason wouldn’t have thought that she was in danger. Unless he just wanted to talk to her but then the door wouldn’t have been broken. Or maybe his killer was already here?
I look at the empty stairwell that’s tarnished in bloodshed but absent of the two rotten bodies that were next to one another when I first came with Jack. Jason also came in through this door and stood where I’m standing. Did he kill them? Or one of them? Neither? It doesn’t matter now.
And then what? This is where I’m lost. I know that Nathaniel, Selene’s capturer, killed him but where was Theia? My guess is that she was still here in hiding. The walk-in fridge is a good guess as is the garden. Nathaniel then left and Theia was with Jason, who died having told her to find me.
I walk into the kitchen and see the red stains that run along the grooves between the tiles. My brother’s outline is obvious. Then I retrace my steps into the hallway running alongside the staircase and where Jason must have laid down again after scrambling along the ground. Selene and I worked out that she wore his uniform after he died so Theia must have changed him into some of the old man’s clothes or left him naked. I reckon the former if she didn’t want the guards who entered the house first thing the next morning to be suspicious.
But this explains nothing about where Jason is now. Each time I think of his body being absent renews my hope that he didn’t die that night even though Theia assured me that he did.
“What am I missing?” I say out loud. Jack would never tell me to give up but I’m torturing myself by going through this pain. I need to let Jason go. But wasn’t that what they wanted us to believe about Jack’s mother? That she was dead when she actually wasn’t? Maybe this was one last trick by the Upperlanders against me. President Callister and those three men that commanded my parents’ deaths. I wouldn’t put it past them. I notice that my fists are clenched.
I leave the house, not needing to go upstairs because I know there is nothing for me there and I retrace my steps down the path. I turn to Theia’s house and stop with a jolt when I see a familiar face of a boy almost ten years younger than me sitting on her doorstep wearing a milit
ary uniform.
He stands on my arrival. “Hello Ruskin.”
Selene
Melissa and I head back to our house with no more conversation. It’s not a random place that we picked out, but is partly chosen because it is near where the Middlelanders had resettled and is also next to a house for Jack and Ruskin, neither of which saw any killings during the great cull. There’s also another reason but we don’t talk about it much. During the first few nights none of us slept for fear of attacks and when we finally did shut our eyes the things we saw made it not worth trying. The nightmares persisted, Nathaniel’s voice never stopped and there’s no news from behind the Fence. It’s as if no one survived the explosion but we know it’s not true; there’s a whole hub raging on in the fortress whether we can hear and see it or not.
Six months on and we don’t always talk about what happened but the four of us are a close unit and Melissa and me even more so. I’m indebted to her for befriending my mother in the Upperlands and now looking after me. We have all had to kill people to be alive and not a single one of us has a guilt-free conscience. Despite being forced to kill by the Upperlanders, we allowed so much misery to happen even before that with the plight of the homeless who migrated past our homes and set up at the bottom of the Fence, living the rest of their days out in inhumane, deplorable conditions. None of us took responsibility for their wellbeing at any point before the cull and I was present when their time came to be massacred so I witnessed firsthand what I was a part in creating. Even without anything that happened in the Upperlands we hang our heads in shame for that alone.
I picture it vividly. I was there at the base of the Fence standing right next to Nathaniel who plagued me through that night, then for the year that followed and every waking and sleeping moment of my life now. Melissa was partially correct in that I need to know he’s dead but it’s not just because I want to kill him, at least not at first. I need to know what he was going to say when the Utopia was destroyed.
By the time I came to, after Ruskin, Jack and Melissa saved my life and the truth of the flood sunk in, too much time had passed and we were already in the Middlelands.
“Home sweet home,” I say, as we arrive where my mother raised me although that word is stretching the truth somewhat. It’s the only family house that any of the four of us wanted to return to. Melissa refuses to go to hers and won’t tell me why but I don’t think I’d be any more enamoured were I in her position. The housing situation worked out well for us. I wanted to create new memories of my mother to override the past ones by feeling a calm sensation in the house with Melissa’s presence. In turn, Melissa wanted to keep watch on me so she was happy to bunk up, sleeping far from the place her parents died.
Much like through all of her life, Melissa has taken to working at the hospital when she’s not looking after me, but from the Middlelands to the Upperlands and then back here again, each move has meant an unspoken promotion for her in terms of not only her aptitude to take charge in medical situations but the need to treat more sinister ailments as there are next to no trained personnel apart from her.
Ruskin spends most of his time angry, scavenging for weapons for if and when we retaliate and, not so subtly, looking for his brother, while I’m the sympathised patient who needs to, as Melissa says, “Focus on myself before I can help others.” Which leaves Jack, who we agreed early into returning that he should be our spokesperson, not that he was thrilled about that decision and he’s received the brunt of Ruskin and my frustration that he keeps deterring any return trips.
“I have to check in on a few people. Will you be alright here?”
I roll my eyes at Melissa’s pandering. “I’d say fifty-fifty. With all the sitting around and resting it’s quite risky to leave me alone.”
“Good to see you’re as witty as ever. Rest up and we’ll go for a walk later. Stretch the hip out.”
“Thanks doc,” I say, and instantly regret it. Melissa told me why being called that upsets her. A previous patient who didn’t receive the greatest of treatment from her. “Sorry.”
“It’s alright. I have to live with what I did.”
Melissa may have killed Jack’s mother accidentally but she ended a man’s life in prison to give the rest of the group a better chance to escape. “Hey,” I say. “You’ve more than made up for it by looking after me.”
I look at my house. The last time I was here before the Upperlands was at night, standing in front of this bush in Jason Peters’ uniform and watching my mother sleep. She looked peaceful then, vastly different to the next time I saw her in the arena and then later that day outside of the prison. I survived two culls and she survived only one.
Melissa’s about to unlock the door and change out of the wet clothes when two people approach, probably looking for her about some accident one of them had but one of the boys is Ruskin. I don’t recognise him at first because he’s not with Jack. “Selene, Melissa,” he says, solemnly.
It takes me a moment to place the second boy, who the others described to me as grown up beyond his years when they met him on top of the Fence. His uniform gives him away, like a younger version of those patrolling during the night of the great cull albeit without a helmet but I know his face despite not having seen him for some time. “Ronan?”
“Oh my god,” Melissa says.
“Theia’s in danger,” he says, with a more assertive voice than I remember the juvenile six year old I knew to have. “You need to come with us now.”
Zeke
I decide that the best thing to do whilst the siren persists is to join the rest of my classmates but then I scan in and... nothing happens. My name and status aren’t spoken by the electronic voice reminding all around me that I’m passing through here, no message sent to the mainframe in the engineering hub that my father designed to record my logins. I try again but my attempt is overridden by a lockdown. I haven’t witnessed this before but it’s obvious what it means: no one is going anywhere. I press the manual buzzer and then knock on the door but no one hears me over the ongoing siren.
For our community to thrive it was deemed essential that everyone needs to be exactly where expected at all times. It’s an oxymoron that goes unsaid: we have to be controlled for a perfect and harmonious civilisation because otherwise, leaving us to run our own lives, things would go wrong fast. No one mentions the idiocy that by taking away our choices means a happy society is an impossibility. Then again, it’s not that anyone is arguing this point; we all watched on, cheering apoplectically at the handful of people being pushed off the Fence at the monthly announcements back in the Upperlands as a deterrence to speak out of line.
Maybe my father is right in his summation that as a temporary precaution we should graciously put up with it for now.
I decide that I can’t loiter here forever and there are no checkpoints between the school and my apartment so I should head back and ask him what’s going on. If he’s already moved onto the engineering hub then I’ll go there next. Hopefully, he can accompany me to school and grovel with some half-decent excuse for my lateness, which will sound less feeble than if I turn up alone now. As expected there’s no one on my route as with the walk to school because, unlike my dawdling, everyone is doing a top notch job in following orders. I’m starting to feel uncomfortable when a pit in my stomach starts to grow that I shouldn’t have chosen today to act out. At certain points the speakers are thunderous and I have to cover my ears with my hands and I take from the racket that this is serious, that this isn’t meant to be ignored.
A practice alarm? No, my father would have been aware.
The pit grows heavier.
When I turn into my hallway I see that my door is open. I hear angry voices under the alarm, the intruders not bothering to quieten themselves because their words are masked but also because no one else is around. I tread softly and peer around the frame. My father is in direct view, sitting in the same chair as when I left but two young guards tower over him with t
heir backs to me. Even though they are still boys he looks diminutive in their presence. As I make sense of their accusations I’m pleased for only one thing: the siren covers my presence and although it’s obvious I need to flee I can’t tear myself away. It dawns on me rapidly that this is my fault.
“You are not grateful for being here,” one of the boys says.
“I explained, I am.”
“And your son?”
“He was having a bad morning.” My father looks pained by his words; we’re not supposed to have any bad moments here. We shouldn’t just be grateful and loyal but happy too. I try to work out why they are here. Did my father tell them about our conversation? No way. His paranoia wasn’t overreaction; they have this whole place bugged. Why didn’t he tell me? Did he think as chief engineer he would be allowed more clemency than others?
What have I done?
“We will wait for him to return. Guards are on the way to the school in case he shows up there.”
My father catches my eye and panic fills his face, not for himself but for me. “What will you do to him?”
“He will be excluded from the new world.”
“And me?” he stutters.
“For the good of Utopia,” one of the boys says, as he lifts his gun and shoots my father in the chest without hesitation. I’ve seen death from afar but nothing as brutal or without build up as this.
I want to scream but I do everything in my power not to or I’ll be dead in an instant. Before the guards turn to detect me I force myself to back away quietly although I feel like I’m stampeding with all the grace of an elephant.
And then I run.
Theia
I come to, at the latter stages of being taken back to my room, dragged by two young guards – Ronan, or if not him then other children from the Middlelands turned into soldiers – under the din of the continued alarm that echoes down the corridor and only stops shortly before I reach the door; with everything else that my life has become I have no idea whether it’s real or a figment of my imagination, forced onto me like one of the other illusions the Upperlanders have effortlessly made me believe. The guards, two boys barely older than my brother at most, scan me in and drop me on my bed.