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

by P. S. Lurie

  Tears roll from my face.

  “This will all be over soon Theia,” President Callister says. “The new world beckons and there’s just a few things left to do before then. I still have high hopes for you but I see your friends are also strong candidates. Determined, just like you.”

  “Stop with your cryptic nonsense. Tell me what’s going on. You’ve messed with my mind for so long. You made me think I killed people.”

  “You did kill Adam Jefferson.”

  “Just tell me,” I plead with her. “What do you want with us?”

  “Just a little more patience. The time is almost upon us. I promise you Theia, it will all be over by tonight. I’ve been telling the truth. I am on your side.”

  Before we can ask more, guards restrain the three of us and I feel a needle pierce my skin at the base of my neck. Almost immediately everything around me starts to fade out until...

  5 P.M. – 6 P.M.

  Theia

  ...the sky.

  Swirls of blues and reds and pinks illuminating wispy clouds. I’m on my back, looking straight up and there’s nothing in my field of vision except the sky above me. That’s not quite right. In the corner of my right eye I see overhanging branches from a bare tree.

  I reach for my neck; there’s nothing where I was injected but my body feels sore with each movement. My arm brushes against grass, soft but not wet. The soil beneath it is dry, unlike the ground that was permeated by seawater through my childhood.

  The last thing I remember is President Callister ambushing my friends and me.

  Ronan.

  Where am I?

  My stomach flips as I tilt my head back to take in the surroundings – dread fills me as I start to work it out – but I stay on my back for a moment longer, wanting more than anything to pretend that I’m anywhere but here.

  I take a deep breath and sit up, confronted by what’s in front of me.

  Selene

  I’m in the sea, struggling to float as the waves knock into me and clog up my nose and mouth. I’m drowning so I jerk my head up above the surface and gasp for breath. I flail my arms to try and gain control and they smack onto solid ground. How can I be at the shore and in the depths of the ocean?

  There’s artificial lighting above.

  I’m inside a bathroom.

  Water flies over the side of the bath as I scramble to sit up, my legs too long to fit inside the tub so I have to strain my stomach to steady myself but the pain in my hip is intense and I slip once more. I drive the salty water out of my nostrils and spit it out of my mouth and then I lean over and turn off the flowing tap.

  My legs are too weak to stand and my head hurts from almost being drowned so I stay put, staring at my naked body in the bath and trying to figure out why I’m here.

  The last thing I remember is being injected with something on top of the fortress.

  I look around. It’s not Nathaniel’s apartment; this place isn’t as modern and has been left to be covered by a layer of dust over time. I don’t spot anything familiar.

  Then I see it, on top of a pile of dirty laundry.

  I recognise the vomit-stained top and am terrified by what this means.

  Ruskin

  I wake up on a bed and roll over, my arms stretched out towards him. “Jack.” There’s no answer, then I remember: he’s in the other bed in the prison cell.

  I look over but there’s only this one bed. The memory smacks into me like a speeding bullet: I watched Jack die.

  Where am I? I rub my eyes. I don’t know how long I’ve been out for but I don’t remember anything after being attacked in front of the fortress after Ronan revealed he was a traitor and had allowed us to become captured. He drew soldiers towards us and let Jack...

  I groan, mourning his death. I don’t want to get up but I know I have to work out what’s going on; if President Callister didn’t order my death then she must be planning something worse.

  I look over at the wall and for a split second I think I see etchings, counting down the days that two boys spent together in a prison cell, and I’d give anything to turn back the clock to that time, wishing I could do things differently. I wish I could have taken Jack and fled.

  I wish I could tell Jack I’m sorry but there’s no second chance.

  Hope kept me going and with Jack dead I’m all out of it.

  I scan the rest of the room. It seems familiar but I don’t place it. There’s a window, overlooking houses across the way but they don’t reveal any more as to where I am. The wardrobe in the corner is open and despite my grogginess I walk over to it.

  There’s a hum in the air, some type of static. Then another noise: a banging against metal and the faintest trace of someone calling my name. “Ruskin.”

  A deep voice that could be my brother.

  “Jason?”

  Theia

  Waking up in my garden in the Middlelands can’t be a coincidence because nothing President Callister has planned has been without calculated malice. Apart from my escape from the fortress, she has wanted me here. Ronan helped her organise this... whatever it is.

  Her end game for me.

  I stand on the spot exactly where my mother died in our garden. Eighteen months ago I hid behind the tree as she was gunned down by a helicopter hovering overhead. She died for me.

  My worst nightmare has come true. As if President Callister read my mind, I told myself earlier today – or was it longer ago? – that the one thing I couldn’t deal with was returning to my house. Now, like being dropped into the middle of the vast ocean, there’s nothing around me to cling onto and no end in sight.

  I stare at my house. Already the evening is setting in and all the lights are on inside, glowing against the cool dusk, beckoning me in. But I don’t want to. I look to each side, at Henry’s and then my elderly neighbours’ house in the opposite direction. The glass is still broken in Henry’s window where I shot through and killed his father.

  Could this be a hallucination? President Callister has made me endure so many that I’m still lost as to what is real and not.

  I look through the glass double doors into the living room. The house seems devoid of life, except an oddity in that the television screen is on but is filled with static. White noise plays out that my ears hadn’t attuned to until this moment.

  I brace myself for what’s to come and step inside the house.

  Selene

  “This can’t be happening.”

  I wander through Henry’s house, passing by all of the rooms that I dread to revisit but checking if anyone else is here. First, his parents’ room where I brace myself to see the spot where he died, thankful that Ruskin and Jack already removed his body.

  Oh no...

  Jack died in the Upperlands but Theia and Ruskin... if I’m alive then maybe they are too.

  I want to move over to the windows looking out to the street in front even though I’m afraid of what I’ll see but I can’t face stepping over the site where Henry died, which has left a nasty blood stain on the carpet and against the side of the bed; the body, or bodies, have been buried but I don’t want to cross over the remnants of the battle between family members so I turn back.

  Before going downstairs I make myself enter his bedroom. It used to be my sanctuary but then turned into a horror scene where all three of the Argents lost their lives.

  I hear a noise from downstairs, the same sound that accompanied the Surges shortly before announcements used to play through our television sets. In the Upperlands, channels ran freely all through the day and night but the bursts of electricity in the Middlelands were rare and there was no purpose in trying to turn on the boxes before the Surges hit.

  I remember the start of the great cull, how I hid myself in Henry’s wardrobe, preferring the clammy and constricting space to being in my mother’s house. I remember thinking that I expected Henry and me to stow ourselves in his bedroom as the sea hit, that it would break free and turn into our own Noah’s
Ark.

  Fast forward and I almost boarded a real ship but then it exploded around me. I take it as a lesson to be careful what I wish for and I can’t help but consider how young and naive I was before. I cringe at how I used to be annoyed at small things, like vying for Henry’s attention over Theia. It all seems so unimportant now.

  I step through the doorway with the broken door that has been smashed in with a hammer; the same one I guess that Henry’s father nearly swung into my face when I revealed my presence shortly before President Callister’s announcement. He should have killed me whilst he had the chance. This could have played out so differently.

  There’s no one inside, again just remnants of blood and an air of misery that this loving family died by turning on one another. The window looking out onto Theia’s room is shattered from the inside. I don’t know what involvement she had but I’m past bitter squabbles to deny that she loved Henry and would have done anything to protect him. I was childish back then. I should have helped her escape despite his death.

  I force myself to cross the room and look out onto the gardens below. The sun is setting behind the houses over the low fences. One of the houses opposite is Melissa’s but there’s no activity there or in any of the gardens. I wonder how far she and Maddie made it.

  Did they die too? I have so many questions and I’m certain that there’s one way I’m going to find out so I head downstairs, following the sound of the static.

  Ruskin

  “Jason?”

  I race down the stairs past where the elderly couple died. I have been back here so many times looking for clues for Jason that I know the house inside out. I ignore the television set in the room off to the side, only glancing briefly to see that it is on and showing only a fuzzy screen, and hurry into the kitchen.

  Someone continues to bang on the metal door. Electricity pulses through the walk in fridge and keeps it working. It must be freezing inside.

  I pull on the latch and manage to slide the heavy door open.

  “Ruskin.”

  The shivering boy collapses into my arms. He’s beautiful, and alive, no sign of a bullet wound on his body.

  “Jack.”

  I hold him tight, not disappointed at all that he’s not my brother, never wanting to let go, but any thoughts of hope that I can save him are beset by terror that President Callister decided he should be alive for whatever is coming.

  Theia

  I want to break out of my house and escape far away but I’m drawn to the television before I’ve even explored the rest of the house because the static gives way to a familiar scene: a field of golden flowers. The sun is setting in the distance, meaning that possibly for the first time in the history of our announcements, this one is live.

  “They waited for me to wake up,” I say to no one but myself.

  I tremble and have to clasp onto the couch to steady myself as I’m scared by what I’m about to hear because, whilst the previous Surges were broadcast to the whole of the Middlelands and I was just one unimportant girl caught up in the Upperlands’ evil, this announcement is directed at me. President Callister, or whoever is about to appear, is going to tell me why I’m back in my house. The only positive from this is that I may finally learn what she has been planning for me.

  My legs buckle and I sit down when President Callister comes into view.

  Selene

  I stop in the doorway as the television picks up a signal. Eighteen months ago I watched the announcement with Henry and his parents, and I can suddenly taste the strong tea that Mrs Argent brewed for me.

  The cups that Henry’s mother used are on the floor, all four of them smashed.

  For the first time, I imagine how my mother must have felt being alone during the speech, a mixture of relief that I was absent and marred by fear for my safety. Did she think of the life she could have had in the Upperlands? She stayed for me and I deserted her. It’s impossible to work out what must have gone through her mind and I flash to her asleep on the couch as I watched on from the street but this is cut off as my attention is drawn to the movement on the television as President Callister takes her place on the stool in the centre of the screen. She looks directly into the camera.

  “Good evening everyone.”

  Jack

  “I saw them shoot you,” Ruskin says to me, as he rubs my arms and warms me up. He finds a blanket and hangs it over my shoulders. I’ve been in the fridge for about an hour, at least from what I can remember and it was pitch black inside so, although I worked out where I was, I couldn’t find a way out. My teeth chatter as I remember thinking that I was going to freeze to death. Then I heard Ruskin shouting for his brother. I hope he’s not disappointed. At least he doesn’t show it if he is.

  “Tranquiliser dart.”

  “They knocked me out too.”

  I think of Francine who was killed and wonder if the Upperlands were planning to always keep some of us alive. “Selene and Theia?”

  “I don’t know. Ronan betrayed us. President Callister was waiting at the fortress.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have believed you.”

  “Don’t apologise. I love that you see the good in everyone. You see the good in me.”

  “What are we doing here?”

  A woman’s voice interrupts our conversation, filtering in from another room. Ruskin leads me into the living room where we see President Callister on the screen. “That’s the same field from the great cull.”

  “And the one they dropped me in after dragging me out of the prison.”

  I take Ruskin’s hand as we watch President Callister feed us her unscripted speech.

  Melissa

  I play back what happened after we retreated out of the tunnel and decided what we should do next...

  We take cover but no one follows, not even Maddie who is pushing her way up the stairs decked out in an impenetrable uniform. I take some of the supplies that I gathered from the hospital and bandage Claire’s arm. “The bullet is still inside. You’ll need...”

  “It’s fine. Bigger fish to fry right now.”

  “We need to get up there,” says Travis.

  “Impossible,” replies Claire. “We’ll be dead before we even make it onto the first step.”

  “If we had uniforms,” Tess suggests.

  “They won’t fit us,” Claire says.

  Cal has been quiet ever since retreating, intent on playing with the radio device on his sleeve. “She’s not answering.”

  “Who?”

  “Francine.”

  “She might have it turned off.”

  “Something’s wrong. I don’t know how I know but they’re in trouble. Maddie could be heading towards nothing but the enemy.”

  Tess looks up from under the archway but can’t see the landing pad. “So what now?”

  “I have to go help her,” Cal says. “Wish me luck.” He doesn’t wait for a reply before he runs back into the tunnel to support Maddie.

  I look at the three adults I’m with, not a single one with a plan that makes any sense except for recoiling and I realise that all eyes are on me as if they want me to decide for them. I think through our options: join Maddie, hide or try to find another way up. Climbing is out of the question and hiding won’t achieve anything.

  A fourth option opens up as I’m chewing it over when a helicopter takes off from the fortress and swoops overhead towards the Fence. We watch as it continues on into the Middlelands.

  “You think they’re going to the sea?” asks Claire.

  “I doubt it. If they’ve got the helicopter it means they’ve caught Theia and the others.”

  “Or Ronan realised they were in danger and flew away,” Tess says.

  “They wouldn’t have left us behind. Something’s happening in the Middlelands. We have to go back.” I’m torn between leaving Maddie and Cal and returning to our supposed safer homes but I’m convinced it’s the best chance we have to work out why the helicopter went that way rather tha
n waiting here, so we hurry the short distance to the building that leads us back under the Fence. Just before we leave the street the helicopter returns.

  “That was quick,” Travis says.

  Claire enters the building. “There’s no way they made it to the sea and back. They must have stopped at the Middlelands.”

  “What were they doing there?” Tess asks me.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  Theia

  I feel President Callister’s eyes burning into mine, directing her words at me but, as she starts to talk, I know that my friends – at least some of them – are alive and I take an educated guess where they are. We’re all back on this street where it began, in starting positions for her final cull but it’s not until the end of her announcement that I realise just how sadistic she is:

  “Theia Silverdale, Selene Gould, Ruskin Peters, Jack Benetton. The four of you have shown unprecedented determination. You have shown this quality time and time again, as I have mentioned to you all at various points through today. At first it was obvious who I favoured to be my successor but now I would be honoured for any one of you to lead us into the new world. Despite the dangers of Total Flood and other threats to civilisation, we have nearly achieved Utopia.

  “It is time to act on all of our best interests. Three households containing families that have survived two Great Culls will decide who amongst you will rise to the challenge to rule our great nation and create a perfect future. This will be the final test of your determination.

  “The arena is set. My soldiers have lined the streets around you so please do not consider leaving your houses, although entry into one another’s houses is granted from the gardens. Of course, no other garden is within bounds and you will be shot on sight if caught attempting to leave.