Then came a cataclysmic, soul-shattering boom, and I was thrown back like a dry autumn leaf in the fiery wash of a jet engine.
And then the air was on fire.
And then I was on fire.
And then I was dead.
CHAPTER 26
For a long time, I heard angels singing. It might sound corny, but that’s what came next. A chorus of harmonious notes that rang clearly and steadily without pause. Angles. And from behind my closed eyes, I saw white light.
But it wasn’t angels. It was only a ringing in my ears. Or dreams. I was fading in and out of consciousness again, fading in and out of dreams. Dreams of Arie, dreams of Ruby and Chase and Woolly. There were dreams of fire, too.
Sometimes I thought I was alive and awake only to realize it was a dream, and at other times I wasn’t sure about anything.
After what felt like a lifetime, I opened my eyes and knew I was somewhere real, and that I was alive.
I was in a bed. It was softer and warmer than any bed I’d slept in for as long as I could remember. The room had yellow walls and there was a window with white curtains that waved in a breeze. I sat up. My head pulsed with pain. My ribs, too. And my arms and legs.
“Hey, kiddo.”
It was Chase. He sat in the corner, writing in a notebook. He smiled.
My ears rang continuously. I gaped open my mouth to pop my ears, and the ringing subsided some. It would be a long time before it went away completely.
“How you feeling today?” Chase said. “Recognize me? Know who I am?”
“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Let’s just say you have good days and bad days,” said Chase. He chuckled and set the notebook aside.
“I’m not dead?”
“No. Not anymore.”
“What?”
“Well, you were dead when we pulled you out of the rubble. No pulse, no vitals. It was touch and go. We worked on you for quite a while. That’s what happened to your ribs. CPR. Sorry. The rest is, apparently, self-inflicted.”
“What do you mean? Where are we?” I asked.
“Safehouse,” Chase said. “We’re safe.” He stood up and walked to a bedside table where there was a pitcher of water and a tin cup. He filled the cup and handed it to me.
“There’s tea, too, if you want that.”
“My head hurts,” I said, after drinking up the water. “And all the other parts of me.”
“Yeah. It’s a miracle you’re alive,” Chase said.
I touched my hand to my head and found it bandaged. My arms, too.
“What happened?”
“You don’t remember anything?”
I shook my head.
“From what we can gather, you somehow got a bunch of goons to the front door of the HQ at the park and then tripped the C4 charges we wired to the turnstiles and front entrance.”
That actually sounded like something I’d do.
I nodded a little.
But then a panicked feeling swept through me. “What about Ruby? And everyone else?”
“All safe,” Chase said.
“Of course.”
“You all right? This too much for ya?”
“How long have I been out?” I asked.
“Couple weeks,” Chase said. “Well, you’ve been in and out. Like I said—good days and bad. Bad knock on the head, and then there’s the matter of being, you know, somewhat dead. You’re bound to have some memory gaps. I’ve actually told you all of this about twenty-five times over the past nine or ten days. Every now and then you’re lucid. Other times you wake up and ask if you’re in heaven, and so in case you’re wondering about that, for the twenty-sixth time, no, this is not heaven.”
“The goons?”
“Dead, most of them. A few might have pulled through. We patched them up and dropped them off at the infirmary. Gosford didn’t make it.”
When Chase said his name, all at once I remembered something else.
“Chase.”
“Yeah?”
“Arie’s alive.”
“You found him?”
“No. Gary told me.”
“And you believed him?”
“Yeah.”
He came to the bed, wrapped his arms around me, and held me—though gingerly. “I’m so glad.”
“I have to go find him,” I said.
Chase nodded. “We’ll find him. But you’ve got to recover, and there’s something else to think about.”
“What?”
Ruby stepped into the room. “I thought I heard y’all in here. How you doin’ today, sweetie?”
“Ruby! Are you okay?” I said.
“Eh. I’m okay. Other than needin’ to find a new HQ on account of you blew up the old one.”
“You leveled half the park,” Chase said. “We’re beginning to notice a pattern here.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” said Ruby. “It’s at least half my doing. Guess I went a little crazy with the explosives. You doin’ alright?”
“I think so. I don’t know.”
Ruby limped in and sat in the chair that Chase had vacated. “Wish you’da woken up a bit earlier. So we coulda had a bit more time.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“That’s what we gotta talk about,” Chase said. “It’s the new year. Past it. We need to take the serum.”
“Okay. So? We have the clean serum, right? Don’t tell me I destroyed that, too.”
“No,” said Ruby. “It wasn’t at the park. We stashed it here. And we got enough for a hunerd people. But there’s a problem.”
“It’s the wrong serum,” Chase said. “Or maybe there is no clean serum. The serum we have has the same memory side effects.”
“Glen and Carlos took it. Memories gone. They don’t know any of us from a deep hole in the ground.”
“No,” I said. “I can’t forget now that I know what I know. I’ve got to find Arie.”
“You’ll have to write it all down,” Chase said. “That’s what we’ve been doing. We’re going to stagger the doses and try to explain everything to one another as we wake up.”
I’d already written down every thing about Arie I could think of. I didn’t know where those journals were now, but even if I could get my hands on them, would it be enough?
“No,” I said. “No. I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t do it.”
“We have to,” Chase said. “You have to. You saw the graves. We’re out of time.”
“No,” I repeated. “I was ready to die once. I’ll do it again.”
“What about Arie?” said Ruby.
Chase nodded.
“He’s alive. Gary told me he is. He meant it and I believed him. And he told me I could see Arie if I showed him where the team’s HQ was. I think Gary has recruited Arie into some program or group of his own. I know I could have seen him. So I know Arie is alive, and I’d give almost anything to see him, but I know he’s smart and that he can take care of himself—and there are just certain things I won’t do now, even if that means never seeing him again.”
They argued with me. Tried to reason with me, but I refused to listen, and after going round and round until it was evening, they left. Later, Ruby brought me potatoes with a little very dry ham. I ate a bit, and when it was dark I fell asleep.
Then came a new series of vivid, nerve-wracking dreams. I dreamed I was with Gary in a house. I dreamed I was with Arie, but he didn’t know who I was. I dreamed I was on the run from the Agency.
When I awoke it must have been after midnight. I sat in the bed, staring out at the night and the brilliantly black winter sky and its blazing star field.
Something tugged at the corners of my thoughts. Something I’d forgotten to do? Something I’d forgotten to say? Or was it something someone had said to me?
I stood up, and before I knew it, I was limping around the house to find Chase’s bedroom. I would have shaken him awake, but apparently
I’d already woken him up by shambling through the house. I stood in the open doorway of his room. In the starlight I saw him sitting up in his bed.
“Al? That you?” he said in the dark.
“What if there is no serum?” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Chase asked. “Are you okay? Come over here and sit down. Do you know where you are?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” I said, crossing the room. I sat on the bed with him. “I’m awake. I’m lucid. I know we’re not in heaven. Okay? Chase, what if there’s no serum at all? I mean what if the so-called serum does nothing else but erase our memories?”
“Sure,” he said, “I’ve thought of that, heard rumors.” He sounded perplexed. “But it’s pretty risky to stake your life on rumors generated by a bunch of half-starved people who can’t remember anything from longer ago than a year, don’t you think?” Then through a big yawn, he added, “Why are you awake? What’s this about?”
“It’s something Gary said,” I told him. “He threatened to have my memory wiped. Like it was a punishment. Like it was something they could do at any time—not a side effect of the serum, but something the Agency did to keep us in line.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Still risky, Al. Still really risky.”
He was right, of course. It’d be betting my life on a hunch and rumors. I considered everything that had happened in the past year, and before that, and all that I wanted to do next. I wanted to find Arie, and I wanted to be together with him again. But the Agency was obviously keeping secrets—the most deep and damaging sort of secrets—and I couldn’t give in to them for another year, or sell myself out in any other way, even if the reward was a reunion with Arie. I didn’t want that and neither would he.
And what world was I living in, if not a world of risks and high stakes? We almost died—the whole human race. I’d already overcome incredible odds just to sit there in the silvery darkness with Chase. Yes, I was afraid to die, but I’d tried it once, and it’d worked out all right. I would not keep living the Agency’s way—one life at a time, the ghost of a ghost.
“Chase, I remember now. I remember how we ended up at the haunted house. Gary had me cornered. It was checkmate. I knew I couldn’t betray you and Ruby, and I was out of moves. It was weird. As soon as I realized I’d have to trip those explosives, I saw everything with incredible clarity. And I knew if I could just take Gary out of the game, you guys and Arie would be okay. You’d carry on. Even if it meant taking myself out. It was like I saw the whole game board for the first time. Clearly. And I feel like I’m seeing things clearly now. I’m telling you: there is no serum. It’s all a game.”
In the dark I saw him raise a hand. “But you saw the—”
“—graves,” I said. “I know. We saw the bones. I believe there was a virus. Of course there was. But we survived. I think that’s what happened. We’re immune, or our immune systems adapted. I don’t know. All I know is I’m not playing by their rules anymore, Chase. Live or die. I’m done. I’m never going to take it.”
“Me neither,” said Ruby. “Me neither, goddamit.”
She’d been standing in the doorway. It made me jump.
“She’s real sneaky,” said Chase.
“When I need ta be,” said Ruby with a laugh.
“So—what?” said Chase. “We’re having a meeting about this? Now? In my room?”
“Should we wake up Woolly?” I said.
“You can try,” said Ruby.
“He sleeps like the dead,” said Chase. He fumbled at the side table by the bed and lit a candle.
“There’s no convincing either of you?” he said.
“No,” we said in unison.
“Well, I never intended to take it,” said Chase. “But I wasn’t going to tell you that.” He laughed and then sleepily rubbed his face.
“I got a bottle of Dewars,” said Ruby. “Let me run and get it. Get the cups and wake up ole Woolly. Might as well have a drink. We may not have much longer on this old earth.”
CHAPTER 27
Carlos and Glen were gone. They’d never been much more than hired hands to Ruby, and I guess she saw no further need to put them at risk—especially now that their memories had been erased. And they weren’t much of a threat to Ruby’s operation anymore, so Chase told them as much as they needed to know and led them blindfolded to the Taurus. He said he dropped them off just outside the Zone boundary, where they’d hopefully be recovered by a patrol and reunited with their families.
Woolly was different. He was an essential member of the team, and, frankly, we all loved him.
At first we were devastated when he told us that he’d decided to take the serum.
“I’ll even out the odds,” he explained after we’d toasted with our tin cups of Dewars. “If you three fall over and die, I’ll be around to carry on. I’m not giving up. If what Alison says is true—or rather if what Gary told Alison is true—I’ll read my notebooks and yours, and then fall into my old wicked ways and pick up somewhere close to where we all left off. We have to even out these odds. We have to guarantee that somebody lives through this. In fact, one of you three should do what I’m doing. Then we guarantee that two of us live. You guys aren’t thinking this through.”
But we were as steadfast as he was—I was convinced the serum was just a game, and even though Woolly’s arguments made perfect logical sense, I would never willingly take the serum again.
However, when I thought about it too much, it did feel like an extraordinary gamble. Sometimes the fear wrapped around me like a thick wet blanket. I had panic attacks, didn’t sleep well.
But we kept our agreement, our joint decision to die—maybe. Woolly would die for sure, but only his identity, and he’d have his notebooks and ours to back him up. The rest of us might also die but if we lived, we’d live intact, with a year of memories, and we’d re-train Woolly. It was like some kind of open-ended suicide pact.
Arie had told me once about an experiment he’d read about in a magazine. It began with laboratory monkeys kept in cages, and in every cage researchers placed a toy—a doll or rubber ball or something. Naturally, the monkeys wanted to touch the toys, but when they did, the researchers subjected them to a harsh and startling blast of air. And so the monkeys quickly learned that the toys were not to be touched under any circumstances. Next, the researchers placed a second group of monkeys into the cages. These new arrivals wanted to touch the toys, too, but the original group prevented them from doing so—saving the new monkeys from the unpleasant stimulus. Then, the original monkeys were replaced with a third group of monkeys. The only monkeys to have ever been subjected to the harsh air blasts were now gone, but again, the new monkeys were curious about the toys. The monkeys in the second group intervened, however, even though they’d never been subjected to the negative stimulus. The researchers wouldn’t and didn’t subject the monkeys to any more blasts of air, but even so, none of the monkeys would touch the toys, based solely on the passed-along knowledge of the monkeys from the first group, who’d known about the air blasts firsthand—monkeys which were now gone.
I was placing my bet that we were like that third group of monkeys, continuing to take the treatment, giving up our very identities, and doing so based on some long-ago threat that probably no longer existed and maybe was never really there in the first place.
How does one characterize luck? My life in the Zone had been rather miserable at times—scraping by without hope of a better life, going to bed hungry, living in fear. But I had been lucky, luckier than a person had a right to expect in an entire lifetime. I had survived the pandemic, for one thing, which, judging from that just that one mass grave site, was an astronomical stroke of fortune. And I had Arie. Surely other survivors could not have been so lucky. Arie and I had survived for who knew how many years without the benefit of our memories—how much luck had that required? And then, just over the last few months, I’d been shot at and driven off a cliff and blown up by C4
explosives.
So, why me? Why had I survived when others hadn’t? Why had I been adopted into a group that seemed poised to free a population of abject refugees from an unending annual cycle of misery? It certainly wasn’t because I had a survival instinct or was particularly smart or brave. There was nothing special about me that would make me more likely to survive than anyone else. It had all come down to luck.
Outside, the birds were chirping. Spring was coming. The days were warm but it turned bitterly cold at night, and in the morning hoarfrost sometimes covered the trees and winter-dead grass.
It had taken a while for me to get well enough to move around much. In addition to a periodic fogginess of mind and unsteadiness of my balance, the explosive blast at the haunted house had left me with lots of lacerations and burns. My ankle and knee were sore and stiff, and there were the cracked ribs Chase had given me in the process of bringing me back from the dead. But after a few weeks, I was able to walk to join the others for meals.
“Still alive, I see,” Chase would say to me when I appeared at breakfast.
“Have we met?” I’d reply. “I’m not sure I recall.”
But it was an odd time for all of us, even given the bizarre turns we’d already taken together.
After taking the serum, Woolly slept for almost three whole days. He’d wake up once or twice a day, long enough only to sip a bit of water or broth or tea, and he didn’t forget all at once. On the morning of the second day, he opened his eyes and said he was thirsty. I gave him a tin cup of water, and after he’d drank it, he handed it to me and said, “Thanks, Al.”
But the following day at sundown, Woolly came out of his room with a look on his face that told us he was utterly lost. We knew then that the serum had taken its course and that he’d no longer remember us.
Ruby greeted him by wrapping her arm around him.
“I know you probably feel really outta sorts right now,” she said lovingly, “but we’re gonna explain everything to ya. You can ask us any questions if you like. We’ll answer.”
He regarded her with more than token suspicion.
“My name’s Ruby. That there’s Alison, and he’s Chase. We’re your friends.”
Among These Bones Page 19