The Surge Trilogy (Book 3): We, The Final Few

by P. S. Lurie

  I looked over the sheer drop once more and considered jumping.

  My legs turned weak. Ending my life would have been the easier option than having to go through whatever President Callister had in store for me. And Leda. I turned around to see Ronan. “He’s your responsibility now,” I hear in my head.

  I handed over my sister without being asked again. My head pounded like it was pulp, too shattered in that moment to argue anymore and, after however much time has since passed, I haven’t seen Leda since.

  President Callister’s argument has made more sense in my mind as I’ve mulled it over but I still don’t understand why she is focused on me. I have never regretted my decision to not plummet to my death that day but I have been so holed up and brainwashed in her attempts to make me subservient that I don’t know what I’m fighting for anymore.

  I step through the entranceway, which opens up to an oversized room resembling some sort of fairytale ballroom, larger than anything in the Middlelands and about the size of the courtyard outside of the prison that was afforded to traitors, which only reinforces the scale of the fortress. Three chandeliers hang from the centre of the ornate ceiling and heavy purple fabric drapes the walls except for over the doors that are located on each of the four sides. I tread from plush carpet to a square of wooden polished flooring in the centre that seems untouched even though I can envisage sophisticated dancers in merriment whilst the world below was being destroyed. Even someone like Kate, aspiring for sophistication, would never have achieved anything as grandiose as this, unaware that she was cannon fodder all along.

  Except for the decor there is little here to furnish the room with the notable exception of three detailed chairs at one end. As with everything else, they appear to be in pristine condition and, whilst I am alone, I am convinced that no other doors will be unlocked and I am here for a reason; even if I had found an alternative route I guarantee that my cell door was unlocked on purpose and this was my predetermined endpoint.

  I don’t need to look for any clues or figure out what to do next because three portly men in expensive robes enter from one side and take their places. President Callister mentioned that there were others who were also in authority. Are these the men I have to prove my worth to?

  The man on the middle chair begins to speak. During the Surge that instigated the first cull, I was told through a televised broadcast that I would have to kill my family to survive. In the prison, our fates were dictated through a radio announcement. This time, the explanation is live and directed only at me.

  I hear a shuffling and realise I’m wrong because another girl has entered the room just as the speech begins.

  Selene

  I don’t realise how much my legs hurt from speed-walking until we reach the command centre where Jack is in a stalemate with some of the Middlelanders that escaped during the night of the first cull. I’m out of breath, the soles of my feet feel like glass and my hip stabs at breaking point. I swallow the pain, not allowing anyone to notice because I need to convince them I’m strong if anything is about to kick off; with Ronan’s arrival that’s more likely than any day leading up to now.

  Melissa gives me a cursive glance but I shrug it off, putting her check down to supposition rather than me wincing or giving it away somehow else.

  I look around at what is a laughable setup compared to anything the Upperlanders have at their disposal, never having been inside here before. There is minimal technology and the pathetic stockpile wouldn’t do much to dent their army. Travis Brent, the self-imposed leader raises his gun, one of the few our community has, at Ronan which is understandable given the threatening costume and the fact the boy has his own gun sitting in full view in its holster. Despite Ronan not even being nine years old, he’s grown much taller since I last saw him briefly at the arena on the morning after the great cull and there’s a seriousness to his expression that suggests he hasn’t experienced the most pleasant of childhoods, which is saying something compared to what it was supposed to be.

  “Whoah,” Ruskin says, throwing his hands up in protest.

  “Let’s all calm down,” Jack adds, trying to control the situation.

  “It’s ok. I only needed it to escape. Here.” Ronan goes to hand over the gun but as soon as he reaches by his side pandemonium breaks out.

  “Don’t touch the gun or I’ll shoot,” Travis says. A brutish man skulking in a corner moves forward, braced for drama. Claire goes to Travis’ side, ready to talk him down.

  “Allow me,” I say, ending the stand-off. Ronan is subservient as I take the gun, knowing full well the trick to the latch on the belt that allows the gun to slip out, having worn the uniform in this very neighbourhood eighteen months ago. I wonder if the outfit has been improved, like Nathaniel’s bullet-proof version and if so what other impressive secrets it holds. I shudder at the thought of Nathaniel and for a second I picture ending his life.

  “This is Ronan Silverdale, Theia’s brother,” Jack says.

  “Jack,” Ronan greets him coldly.

  “Are you ok?”

  Ronan nods.

  “He can’t be trusted,” Travis says.

  “Let me take it,” Ruskin says to me, and I mindlessly hand over the gun. To my surprise it’s Jack that lets out a gasp.

  “No.”

  Ruskin glares at Jack as he lifts the gun towards Ronan. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Then he directs his attention at Ronan and I guess that he was only pretending to be onside with the boy’s arrival until he had back up. “What are you doing here? You tried to kill us. Talk.”

  “Maybe we should let him talk without a gun in his face,” Claire says. I know she has her own children and can’t imagine accusing an eight year old of being a cold-hearted killer but we know that the situation is more complex than that.

  Ruskin deliberates but lowers the gun. “I’ll keep this, thanks.”

  I notice Jack squirm. “He let us go. He could have killed us on top of the Fence.”

  “I was supposed to,” Ronan says. “I was punished for it.”

  “What are you doing here?” Jack asks, looking at Ruskin and wondering how it came to be that we all arrived together.

  “He was at their house,” Ruskin says. “I was there, looking for...” but he trails off, those of us in the know aware of why he was there. Melissa, Jack and I know Ruskin is convinced Jason is still alive. If he had survived that night then it’s likely I wouldn’t be here today as I wouldn’t have had the uniform, and maybe instead I’d be dead and Henry would be in my place. Maybe my mother would still be alive.

  “I had to see it for myself. After what the Upperlanders told me about my family and the night of the Great Cull.”

  “We don’t say it with as much emphasis,” Travis scoffs.

  “How did you escape from the fortress?” a young woman asks. I figure her to be Tess, who Melissa has mentioned a few times.

  Ronan doesn’t reply at first and takes in all of the people in the room. We passed others on the way here too. Maybe he expected only a handful of us to be alive, not a whole community, knowing nothing about the escape that night. Unbeknownst to me, I came closest to working it out during the cull. What I later discovered was that people fled their homes after the announcement. They took what they could and hoped that being swept along by the sea would offer them salvation rather than waiting for death to come to their houses. They took fishing boats and whatever food and blankets they had to hand and pushed out to sea far from shore. Families crowded into the vessels and drifted off under nothing but veiled moonlight. Others weren’t as lucky, reaching the coast too late to flee without being detected. I had a close encounter with them in the sea and I shiver as I relive the lifeless bodies bumping into mine.

  Escape was the best chance that night to keep families together. Claire is an example, as are Tess and Samuel. I reached the shore too late; by the time I made it back to Henry’s house he was dead.

  “They know about you,” Ro
nan says. He rubs his arm.

  “Are you alright?” Melissa asks.

  “I’m fine. They have plans for Utopia, which don’t figure any of you into the mix. They’re coming to kill you.”

  “They?” I blurt out. I have a burst of anticipation that Nathaniel could be alive.

  “Utopia exploded,” Melissa says, more animatedly, looking directly at me. “They killed all of their people.” I don’t know whether she’s implying I’m wasting my time but it doesn’t matter; I know that I’m returning to the Upperlands and I also note that my body feels renewed.

  “That was a decoy,” Ronan continues. “The real Utopia is recapturing the world. The final cull is still to happen. Their army is going to exterminate you.”

  “When?”

  Ronan pauses, before he announces what we all know is coming but dread all the same, because his answer gives us no time to prepare. “Today.”

  Zeke

  What the hell is going on?

  The alarm stops and silence reigns, except for my panting.

  I crunch up against a wall, a combination of being out of breath and feeling sick from watching my father’s execution. I’ve seen deaths before but at a distance at the announcements in the arena when I was living in the Upperlands but those people were traitors. Ungrateful and disloyal. They didn’t deserve to be afforded any of the resources we shared with them. They didn’t warrant a place in the fortress and neither did the rest of our society who weren’t invited to join us up here. My father must have done something wrong.

  My head buzzes with the truth. It was me. I was the one spouting vitriol this morning. My father was right: they must have heard us through bugging the apartment. I can’t believe he let me vent so maybe he wasn’t exposed to every method of control President Callister has.

  “Think, Zeke.”

  I can’t focus even though every second that I’m out in the open is more cause for danger. There are definitely guards waiting for me in the school and at my house so both are out of bounds. The alarm was for me.

  I think about a route out. I know how to get to the stairs and elevators in the shaft to the Upperlands that I arrived through but there’s no chance I’ll escape that way. Where else? The fortress is big but not endless and there isn’t much set outside above the ragged drop down the mountainside except for some playgrounds for the children, training zones for the military and allotments for agriculture, although at this altitude I’ve heard rumours that stocks are running low. My father couldn’t answer why we haven’t moved to lower ground. The official line from President Callister’s promise of a new world order can be reduced to a single word: soon.

  If I could make it to the Upperlands? Some of it was destroyed when the bombs went off but there are entire districts left. That’s where I need to get to. My old apartment may be unsafe but there are thousands of homes in which I can hide. If I can get there then they’ll never find me. I need to work out what to do.

  I listen out for any noises and hear the faint march of the guards, which is present around the clock but it’s not close. Maybe there are only a few people after me but if anyone else spots me they’ll hand me over. I need to move fast before any announcements sound out through the speaker system.

  Shit. My watch, tracking my every location. I inspect the silver strap around my wrist and tap on the blank screen. It lights up a digital time code: just after ten in the morning. It occurs to me that maybe they haven’t bugged the apartment but rather the watches. It’s how they know what’s being said wherever we are. Maybe harmless jokes between school-friends can go unmissed but was what I said really enough to...

  I push the image from my mind.

  I drag myself along the corridor and hurry because I know exactly where I have to go if I have any chance of surviving through the next few moments of my life.

  Theia

  “Theia,” Maddie says, weary and barely able to stay on her feet. I recognise her through her injuries, suggesting she’s been treated far worse than me, if not emotionally then definitely physically.

  I run over and grab her to stop her from falling. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Not quite.” There’s a hint of the spark she had but it’s nearly extinguished.

  I take in her face. The strong, dogged features she wore, whether through acting crazed to protect herself, retaliating when Erica was killed or giving up her space onboard the Utopia to save the rest of us, have drained away.

  “How about you? Having fun?” she asks me, and I murmur a sort of acknowledgement “Where are your brother and sister?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Maddie turns to the three onlookers. “Bastards.” She spits at them but we’re too far to have any effect and they don’t flinch.

  “I shall begin again,” says the man in the middle throne. “Theia Silverdale. You have proven your determination. But you are...”

  “Yeah,” I cut him off. “I lack loyalty to you guys. Believe me, I get it...” I stop, remembering how I keep failing every time President Callister appears in some delusion and I find a way of killing her. I’m actually proud of my restraint: if I’m going to see Leda and Ronan I need to convince these men of my gratitude and badmouthing them isn’t going to get me anywhere. “I’m sorry. I owe you all so much. I’m grateful to be here.”

  “You believe this shit?” Maddie whispers to me.

  “Yes,” I declare loud. It doesn’t matter that I don’t and I’m more than aware that it will take a lot to persuade these men of it but my lies need to sound convincing. I remember how I handled Kate when she would ask me about the past as I cleaned her kitchen. The Upperlander would take glee in asking me about what happened to my family and I would pretend that they died for a good cause. It irritates me that I mourn Kate and her daughter’s deaths.

  I carry on. “What do I need to do to show you I’m grateful?”

  “Isn’t it obvious,” Maddie says to me. At first I have no idea what she means and the man must revel in this as he doesn’t proceed and instead allows me to work it out.

  It hits me.

  The best way to prove my loyalty.

  They want me to turn against Maddie.

  One of us has to die.

  Ruskin

  Six months has been long enough for traction instead of stagnation. We could look at moving farther away from the Fence, making a fresh start of our small community and working on our needs for survive: shelter, food, warmth and emotional resilience. With enough distance we could let go of what happened and turn to the possibilities of living without fear of flood or an enemy.

  From snippets Jack has told me, we have enough skilled workers that already food is not just being divided out but there is some commerce. The market is back in action, albeit with kinder dealings and trade is more flexible than before; if anything, with the flood resetting itself, it’s only a matter of time before we have an abundance of resources for the size of the population so no one needs to fight. There isn’t a lack of houses for space and no one goes homeless. Children are in education, crops are growing and scouts are tracking the flow of the sea and bringing back plentiful buckets of fish. The tide continues to recede but the land isn’t sturdy enough to build on and we don’t know how far the water will fall so it’s impossible to determine a final settlement. Despite this, people are restless. Some want to forget about the Upperlanders entirely, travel south and work out a way to set up a movable camp close to the shore. Others worry that the oceans will rise once more.

  An exodus is what I would have wanted in the past, my old friend hope guiding me towards a better future. Now I have a devil on my shoulder whispering words of cynicism, mistrust and revenge. And then there’s anger, driving my every move.

  But there’s no moving on or forwards or away or in any direction except for towards the war. Jack has tried to delay this for so long but it was only a matter of time before someone made the first move. I’m suspicious of Ronan but if he’s telling the
truth that the Upperlanders are coming then there’s only one way I feel about it: not fear but relief.

  The thinly veiled pretence of what our lives have begun to be has slipped away by Ronan’s arrival. The Upperlanders have an armed militia and at best we have a small crowd of untrained soldiers still debating how to tackle the problem of going into war with children.

  I wouldn’t let on but the gun feels alien in my hand and I stare longingly at Jack, wanting him to hug me and tell me everything will be alright. Some nights I wake panicked from a dream in which we take flight together in the dead of night to find that he’s not in our bed and is instead sitting downstairs, lost in his own thoughts about how he came to be turning his back on pacifism and planning for a war. In the silent witching hour it’s easy to mistake the bedroom for our prison cell, too dark to see that there is no tally scratched into the walls but in my mind the numbers continue, spanning all four walls; we may be free to walk around but we’re still incarcerated, prisoners of languishing away. In that confused half-dream state I yell for Jack.

  And in the morning we pretend that I didn’t cry.

  It’s been unfair of me to allow Jack to speak on our behalf in these meetings. Only Melissa wanted Jack to take lead immediately; Selene and I wanted the task but Jack was adamant it was neither of us so we were bound in a stalemate, two-two, until Melissa took the advantage by holding back her knowledge of the Upperlands, then opting out of negotiations to focus on medical attention of the community.

  “They want to eradicate you and build a new world down by the coast,” Ronan says, breaking my thought.