Time Next

by Carolyn Cohagan

  “Go!” he says.

  “How will you—?”

  “Just go!” he says, and I can see that the pressure of the doors is causing him pain, so I hurry through as quickly as I can. As I grip the metal door, my feet dangle for a horrifying moment, but the StickFoot holds, and I’m able to hoist myself onto the roof, where Silas and Mary wait to lift me.

  I look down at Juda, still wedged between the doors.

  “How do we get him out?” I ask Mary, frantic. “If he releases those panels, he’ll be crushed.”

  Mary lifts her shirt and whips off the belt she’s been wearing for six months She holds one end down to Juda. “Grab on!” she says.

  Silas gets behind Mary and wraps his hands around her for support. Mary doesn’t like to be touched, but she seems to be making an exception.

  Bracing one panel with his shoulders, Juda grabs the end of the belt. I pray the StickFoot on his hands will bind him to the thin strap.

  Mary gives the belt one hard yank, and Juda comes surging upward. As he grabs onto the roof, the panel doors slam shut underneath him. Mary and Silas fall backward as Juda worms his way onto the flat surface.

  Mary rolls off of Silas and begins to laugh.

  What’s wrong with her? Doesn’t she realize how close Juda just came to losing a leg?

  She turns her head to look at Juda. “You should be seriously grateful right now that my waist is not smaller.”

  He grins, breathless and exhausted. “I am seriously grateful for everything about you right now.”

  I lie down next to them, worn out by the stress. I’ve never been so happy to see the night sky. Juda squeezes my hand. I squeeze back.

  “Are you hurt?” I ask him, picturing his fall.

  “I was too scared to feel a thing,” he says.

  I breathe in the fresh air. I want to lie here and celebrate a while, but of course we’ve only accomplished a small part of our plan.

  Slowly standing and stretching, Juda examines the stars.

  “Which way?” Silas asks, antsy.

  “That’s north,” Juda says, pointing toward the trees. “If you squint, you can see the island, there.” He points west.

  The rest of us stand to see tiny fuzzy lights in the distance. During Time Zero, Manhattan would have blazed like a million Promise Proms.

  “Okay, then,” Mary says, “Let’s quit this freakin’ nuthouse already.”

  Thirty-One

  The roof seems massive—wide, flat, and covered in hundreds of solar panels.

  We follow Juda to the edge and look down. It’s much higher than I’d anticipated.

  “This looks like three stories, not two,” I say, trying to sound casual.

  “It’s fine,” says Silas. “Totally safe.”

  “Maybe we need more StickFoot,” I suggest. “A fresh spritz?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s good for six hours.” He looks over the ledge again. “Just make sure you have a nice solid connection with your hands before you lower your body. And don’t swing too much or you’ll cause an upward motion that could unstick your hands.”

  This is not comforting, but we watch him go first, and, even with his injured wrist, he makes it look easy.

  Mary goes second this time.

  “You next,” I tell Juda.

  “No way. You,” he says.

  “I can’t watch you fall again,” I say.

  “You’ll have to watch if you’re up here or down there,” he says, chuckling.

  “It’s not funny,” I say.

  “We’ll go together,” he says.

  “Deal,” I say, relieved.

  We place our hands on the edge of the flat roof, making sure they’re good and stuck, and then drop our legs over the side. I hang there for a moment, the roof’s edge cutting into my arms, as I wait for the StickFoot to fail and for me to fall to my death. But I continue to hang, so I lift my feet to attach them to the wall.

  When I look over, Juda has done the same. We scamper down as quickly as we dare.

  Reaching the bottom, I push my feet and hands up to release the StickFoot. I’m learning to hold my balance and not fall backward, but it’s tough.

  We land in grass. Silas and Mary are already searching the area. We face a small forest of oak and birch trees.

  Juda walks straight for the trees, and I understand the instinct. I want cover as quickly as possible, Bees or no Bees.

  The sounds of the forest keep making me jump: Twigs and branches snap nowhere near where we’re walking; I’m sure I hear a girl moaning—Mary explains it’s an owl; And all four of nearly start running when we hear a desolate howl.

  “Coyote,” says Silas.

  At times I hate being outside of Manhattan.

  I’m dying to speed up, but we can only move so fast with the tree roots and decayed street pavement at our feet. I’m ready to give my left arm for a flashlight.

  None of us speak, even Mary. Silas guessed we have about thirty minutes until our Bees start tracking us. That means thirty minutes to sort out everything that’s happened before our minds have to become “empty vessels.”

  I don’t know about the others, but my mind has never seemed so full.

  Besides the coyote and the idea of Solomon hot on our trail, I can’t stop thinking about Juda’s proclamation that he’ll be returning to Manhattan. Now that I’m over the initial shock of it, I can’t say I’m surprised. After he fled the Asher’s house, he was tortured by the fact that he’d left me behind. He couldn’t forgive himself. Now he feels he’s left behind all of his people.

  So much could go wrong. He could be killed in the war. He could be arrested by Twitchers and charged with murder. He could be unable to escape the island for a second time.

  After obsessing on these thoughts, I have to admit that I’m thinking about his plans because I have no idea about my own.

  Do I go with him? Go west to some unknown paradise with Silas? Go upstate with Mary? And if I’m completely honest, there’s a small part of me that wonders if there’s still time to repent and stay with the Unbound. At least I know what to expect now, and the Dixons aren’t that bad, right?

  The Unbound will feed and shelter me. The other options could leave me dead in the wilderness or shot in the streets of Manhattan.

  Goose pimples running up my arm, I tug Juda’s shirt. “Hey,” I whisper.

  “Hey.” I hear the tension in his voice.

  “Can you talk to me a bit? I’m going crazy back here.”

  He slows down and strokes my arm. “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “We still have a few minutes left,” I say, hoping I’m right.

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Ummm.” I reach for a topic that doesn’t involve the future. “Why were you in the Forgiveness Home?”

  “I had some, uh, disagreements with my host-family,” he whispers.

  “Like what?” I ask, knowing I had many moments of wanting to be impolite with Tabby.

  “They were just . . .” He pauses to find the right words. “ . . . very condescending.”

  “What did you do?” I ask, thinking that there are a lot worse things than condescending.

  “There was an eldest son, Beauregard, who thought it was his duty to teach me how the world really was. He treated me like an animal who didn’t even know how to use a fork.”

  “Sounds familiar,” I say, thinking of Phoebe’s question about Propheteer fathers being able to sew our mouths shut.

  “And then he started talking about the Prophet, calling Her a fraud and a sham.”

  “Did you hit him?” I ask.

  “No. I, uh, put a snake in his toilet.”

  I laugh. “You didn’t! Dead or alive?”

  He grins wickedly. “Alive. He probably won’t go into his bathroom ever again.”

  “Wow. No wonder they locked you up.”

  “At first I was relieved. Anything seemed better than being with that family, until I met Solomon,
of course.”

  “How bad was it?” I ask, picturing him with a backpack.

  “Bad. I didn’t tell him anything for a very long time. He wouldn’t let me eat, drink, or even sleep. He kept me standing at that wall for days. I thought I was going to die. He made me keep talking and talking, until it was just gibberish.” His voice is bitter. “He made me apologize for things that I have no regret for, things that weren’t mistakes.”

  “Juda, what did you tell him?”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “It might, if we get caught,” I say, panicking. “I need to know everything Solomon knows.”

  He’s quiet for so long, I think he’s dropped the subject, but then he says abruptly, “I told him about the day in the bunker, on the stairs, when we almost . . .”

  “When we almost what?”

  “I told him about my desire for you, okay?” he says with hostility.

  “Are you mad at me for what happened?” I ask, taken aback.

  He stops walking. “Of course not. I wish we were still there.”

  “Then why do you sound so angry?”

  “Because he made me talk about it as if it were a sin, as if I were wrong to want you, and I hate him for that.”

  We start walking again.

  I don’t know how to feel. “Didn’t we stop because it was a sin?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong, which God is the ‘right’ God. I just know that everywhere I turn someone wants to punish me for something I’m doing or thinking. I don’t know about you, but that’s not the God I was raised to believe in.”

  Mother threatened me with God’s judgment almost daily, but she also talked about the beauty and deliciousness of Paradise. She lives her life similarly to the Unbound waiting for their Ascension—suffering in this life, assuming that the next one will reward her tenfold. She once told me that as much as a husband doesn’t appreciate his wife in this life, he will adore her and dote on her in the next.

  “Mary and Silas were both in the Forgiveness Home for being sinners,” I say, “but I think they’re good people, don’t you?”

  After a pause, Juda says, “Is Silas homosexual?”

  I stumble, I’m so thrown. “How did you know?”

  “My friend Shad was a molley, and Silas kind of reminds me of him.” He sees my shocked face. “In a good way.”

  “You had a homosexual friend? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s never been relevant,” he says.

  I’m almost angry. “But I . . . I . . .” I didn’t even know what a molley was, and here Juda has known about them his whole life? “You left me out.”

  “Out of what?” he says.

  “Parts of your life.”

  “My life? What does my life have to do with why Silas was in the Forgiveness Home?”

  “I don’t know. It just does.” I sense I’m being ridiculous, but I can’t stop myself. Juda has made me feel ignorant, and I’m mad at him for it. Then a conversation we had long ago enters my mind. “Is Shad your friend who died in the plague?”

  He nods.

  “I’m sorry, Juda. I’m being a dook-wad.” Am I using Mary’s word correctly?

  He laughs. “I don’t know what that means, but your apology is accepted. And I’m sorry I thought something was going on between you and Silas. I realize how ridiculous that was.”

  “Yeah . . . ridiculous.” I’m embarrassed to think how convinced and flattered I was that Silas was attracted to me. Even when I was mad at him, it felt good to know he had feelings for me. Is that pathetic? Or weird? Maybe I can ask Mary.

  Ahead of us, Silas announces, “Time to go blank, friends. Loop-it-up.”

  I have to empty my head.

  The Bees are coming.

  Thirty-Two

  1000. 999. 998. 997.

  When will we see the first Bee? Stop it, Mina!

  996. 995.

  If we all do this correctly, we shouldn’t see any Bees at all. Count, dammit!

  994. 993. 992.

  I focus on my steps and the numbers.

  991. 990. 989. 988. 987.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. Feel the breeze on your skin. Listen to the sounds in the air.

  986. 985. 984.

  I trip on a large rock, and Juda grabs my arm to stop me from falling. His touch brings my mind back to reality, back to him, and where we are.

  A buzz appears in my ear. Is it a Bee? Are they coming? I don’t look around.

  983. 982. 981. 980.

  By the time I’ve reached 960, the sound has disappeared. I either imagined it, or the Bee got confused and flew away. I keep counting.

  959. 958. 957. On and on. I don’t look at anyone else because I’ll think about how they’re doing with their own loops. I have to stay within my own brain.

  I stray many times but only for less than a second, which, according to Silas, isn’t long enough for a Bee to synch.

  Mary’s in the lead now, leading us to her brother’s house. Silas’ theory is that since she’s never walked this way before, her Bee won’t recognize these particular thoughts. So Mary has the difficult job of thinking about the direction she’s walking without thinking about her brother or her family.

  Each of us has a backup loop. If I stray from counting, I have to think about something I’ve never thought about before. I can’t look at Juda and think about his face or his thoughts, because I do this all the time. But I can contemplate Silas’ hands or Mary’s feet, because these are new impressions.

  We walk about fifteen minutes without sighting any Bees, but as soon as I feel a smidge of relief, I force myself to start counting again. I can’t get careless.

  I’ve counted down to 86 by the time we emerge from the trees into a clearing. When Mary takes a sharp left, we follow, and I spot crumbling buildings from Time Zero in the distance.

  That’s where her brother is building a house? I want to ask Mary about it but can’t risk it.

  I sink back into my counting loop, watching my own feet tread through tall grass.

  We enter the old city, which looks even worse close up. I’m staring at the leaning buildings and the bombed-out apartment buildings, when Mary stops in front of an old shop.

  Looking less confident than usual, she opens a black door. Like most other stores on the street, the window of this shop is covered in a huge wooden board, but I now realize that this wood looks new.

  After she passes through the entrance, we follow her with trepidation. We’re greeted, not by rubble, but by a brand-new living space. As the door shuts behind us, we exhale with relief.

  “I can’t believe it worked!” Silas says, eyes wide.

  “It was your plan,” Juda says with gratitude.

  “Yeah,” Silas says, “but it was mostly based on theory.”

  We smile at one another, totally exhausted by the concentration of the last hour. I never knew I could be so happy to let my brain fill with whatever it wanted.

  “What’s that smell?” I ask, noticing a scent that’s earthy, bitter, and satisfying in a way I can’t explain.

  “Coffee,” Mary says. “My brother is obsessed with the old-school stuff.”

  Silas closes his eyes, inhaling. “Does he have some?”

  “No, but this used to be a coffee shop, so it must always smell like this.”

  “Niiiice,” Silas says.

  Beautiful dark wood floors extend in front of us into a generous living room. One wall is brick while the others are a deep hunter green. A kitchen area on my right shows exposed pipes and an uninstalled sink.

  Despite the lack of furniture and the unfinished fixtures, the place feels cozy and welcoming, exactly like a place I would like to live. Its one-room design contrasts sharply with the huge formal homes that all of the Unbound seem to inhabit.

  “This is great, Mary,” Juda says.

  Mary beams. “It is, isn’t it? Just like he described it.”
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  “Your brother did all of this himself?” I ask.

  “Yeps. He’s quiet but talented.” Acknowledging the empty space, she says, “Sorry there aren’t any beds yet.”

  “I’m so tired, I could sleep in a pit of screaming babies,” Silas says, yawning.

  Chuckling, Juda says, “Me too.”

  “Okay, then,” Mary says. “Choose your spot on the floor, and I’ll see if I can scare up some pillows.’”

  While she searches the room and various bins, Silas studies a mural on the far wall. “What is that?” he asks.

  Juda and I join him.

  “It looks like a queen,” I say, looking at a faded painting of a woman wearing a crown.

  “Why is she holding fish?” Juda asks.

  “I think they’re tulips,” Silas says.

  “I found some rags,” Mary says, coming up behind us. “They seem unused.” She sniffs them.

  We each take a few, but mine are completely unnecessary. I curl up against Juda and am asleep within seconds.

  Thirty-Three

  When Juda wakes me, his eyes are bloodshot and his hair sticks up as if he’s been running his hands through it all night. Did he sleep at all? The sun hasn’t risen yet, but I get up, knowing how anxious he is to see his mother.

  “I need to find that doctor,” he says.

  “We need Mary or Silas to find her house,” I say, so tired my head won’t rise completely.

  “I’d rather go alone,” he says.

  “Why?” I say with a yawn.

  “You’ve already put yourself in too much danger. Any new risk should be mine alone.”

  “I understand, but I have no idea where Dr. Rachel lives. I’m sorry.”

  Rubbing his head, he looks at the sleeping figures of Mary and Silas.

  He nudges each of them awake as gently as possible. Mary groans and swats him away with her hand. Silas flinches like Solomon has entered the room. “Sorry!” Juda says. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Go back to sleep,” Mary mutters.

  “What is it?” Silas asks, yawning and sitting up a little.