The Loop

by Ben Oliver

  Malachai tries to contain his laughter as he tells us that we’re all freaks.

  “Do you know what hurt most for me after I got locked in here?” Kina asks, her dark eyes looking down to the floor. “I hadn’t even worked out what I wanted to be yet. I had ambition, don’t get me wrong; I just didn’t know where to aim it. There weren’t exactly a lot of options growing up in the Verts. I always felt like I was waiting, though, waiting for a chance to be great at something. Now even that’s gone.”

  Malachai seems to sense that the conversation is wheeling its way back around to him. “Well,” he says, rolling onto his side, “might as well get some sleep. God knows how long old psycho boy is going to be.”

  This appears to be the final word, as silence falls over the room once again.

  * * *

  Blue sleeps with his head resting against Kina’s shoulder. Pod and Igby chat quietly, Akimi lies on her back staring at the ceiling, Pander has shoved Malachai against the wall so that she can share the tiny bed, and I stare at the window in the far wall, cursing the fact that Tyco forced us into this cell and not my cell—at least there are books in my cell.

  I have no idea how much time has passed. It feels to me as if we’ve been in this room for an eternity, but I guess that’s because I’m waiting for my killer to decide on the method of my execution. I slowly move the trigger from my left hand to my right, sliding one thumb off the switch and replacing it carefully with the other. I open my left hand and can’t help but moan against the stiffness and pain.

  We haven’t discussed any further what our plan is when Tyco comes back for me, but I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell him that I’ll come quietly, that I won’t fight against him as long as he lets the others go first. It sounds—even to me—horribly gallant, but the reality is it’s an easy decision. Why let my friends die when they don’t have to?

  The sky continues to lighten; the sun has risen on the other side of the Loop, and I hope to see it hanging bright in the sky before Tyco returns, but that hope is dashed as the door slowly opens.

  Everyone is suddenly awake and on their feet. Tyco’s massive frame fills the door as he smiles at me.

  Pander steps in front of me, followed by Kina and then Pod and Igby.

  “Are we standing in front of him?” Pod whispers, a steadying hand reaching out into the space around him.

  “Yeah,” Igby tells him.

  “Good.”

  Tyco looks at us all one by one. “Give me Luka, and the rest of you can go.”

  Now that he’s here, standing this close, ready to kill me, Tyco looks enormous. His shoulders seem to be as wide as the doorway, and he almost has to duck so as not to whack the top of his head off the frame as he steps into the cell. He stares right at me, and I wait for Malachai and the others to accept his offer.

  “It was his idea to let you go,” Malachai says from behind me.

  “This isn’t a debate,” Tyco replies. “It’s an offer. Take it or leave it.”

  “We’ll leave it,” Kina says.

  “No, you won’t,” I say. “Tyco, they accept your offer.”

  “Well, thank you very much for nominating yourself spokesperson, Luka, but I think I’ll see what your friends think.”

  I make a decision to take control. “They’re not my friends,” I say, raising my voice in an attempt to sound commanding.

  “Oh, fuck off, Luka,” Akimi says. “We know you love us.”

  I fall silent, slightly embarrassed. Tyco stares at the group, waiting for an answer, but no answer comes. “This is the last time I’ll ask. Leave me alone with Luka, and I won’t hurt you.”

  There’s a long silence, but I can see the looks of grim determination on the faces of my friends. And then Malachai steps forward, brushing past me as he walks toward the platform.

  “Malachai, no,” Akimi cries.

  “He dies, or we all die,” Malachai says, shrugging as he passes Tyco. “It’s a pretty simple equation.”

  Tyco smiles at the remaining group. “Anyone else?”

  I feel the rest of them take a step closer to me and a tremendous surge of gratitude swells up inside.

  “Go,” I say, resigning myself to Tyco’s will.

  “We’re not going fucking anywhere,” Igby says.

  “You have to; he’ll kill you.”

  “He’ll try,” Kina says.

  Tyco laughs. “Fine,” he says, and takes a step toward us.

  And then Malachai is on Tyco’s back, arms wrapped around his neck as he clings on and chokes the massive Alt with all his might. “The cell! Lock him in the cell!” he cries as Tyco thrashes around, trying to throw him off like a raging bull.

  For a second, we’re all stunned and frozen in place.

  “As slow as you like!” Malachai screams at us.

  Tyco manages to back himself into the corridor, reaching over his shoulders, trying to grab Malachai.

  I run forward as fast as I can out of the cell and grab Tyco by the arm with my free hand. I start pulling him back toward the cell, and he hits me hard with his swinging free hand.

  I’m sent skidding along the corridor on my back, my vision flashing white and then slowly coming back. I redouble my grip on the trigger as I sit up and see Kina and Igby shoving the Alt from behind as he yells in frustration.

  I get to my feet, stumble as I regain my balance, and then run toward Tyco. I lower my shoulder into the Alt’s chest, managing to knock him back a few feet. Akimi hits him next, followed by Pod and Blue. As Pander runs at him, he aims a kick at her, sending her sprawling to the floor. Kina throws a punch at his chin, connecting perfectly, and he backs up another few inches.

  He’s on the threshold of the cell. Malachai drops down off the Alt’s back, diving and sliding along the floor until he’s free of the chamber.

  Igby and Akimi both run at Tyco again as I grab his flailing leg. He tumbles backward into the cell and struggles on the floor, trying to get to his feet.

  I crawl toward the exit, the base of the trigger clunking against the concrete as I move, and I’m almost free when I feel his strong fingers wrap themselves up in the material of my jumpsuit.

  Pander runs into the cell, leaps up in the air, and brings all her weight down on the big man’s hand. I hear a sickening crunch. Tyco screams and releases his grip.

  “Now!” Pander calls out.

  I roll out of the way as the cell door is slammed shut by Pod and Akimi.

  We all look at one another, panting in exhaustion, and then Malachai begins to laugh. Akimi joins in, followed by Pander, and then we’re all laughing and cheering and hugging.

  It takes a minute for us to catch our breath.

  “All right.” Igby sighs. “What the fuck now?”

  “Can we eat?” Akimi asks. “I’m actually starving. All this waiting to die and fighting, you know?”

  “Seconded,” Pod says, raising his hand.

  * * *

  We make our way across the tracks through the door marked DELIVERIES and find the processing area of the Loop: a room that is the same size and shape as the entire circular building, where an enormous conveyor belt sits still beneath robotic arms.

  We grab bread from the conveyor belt and water from the gigantic vat and bring it up to the cells of Tyco, Juno, and the few remaining inmates who refused to leave. And then we eat as much as we can.

  Kina continues her mission to free the remaining inmates and joins us in the processing room with a newly freed prisoner, a young girl with freckled cheeks. Her brown hair is swept back in a ponytail, revealing shining burn scars from her left ear down her neck.

  “Hey, guys, this is Mable,” Kina says, introducing the new girl. And then, more quietly, “She’s the last.”

  “Great,” Malachai says. “Welcome to the worst team in history.”

  Mable’s scared eyes dart from one face to the next, her lips trembling as though she’s constantly on the verge of bursting into tears.

&nb
sp; “Hi,” Mable says, looking down at the floor.

  Blue walks up to the girl, puts a hand on her shoulder, and tells her she’s going to be okay.

  While we eat, we gather in the middle of the room and go over the facts. We discuss the Delay and come to the conclusion that we all went through the same experience: three injections into the neck and then placed in the room the gas was pumped into.

  Blue and Mable sit close together in the corner of the room.

  “The power?” Pod says. “How did they knock the entire power system out?”

  “EMP?” Igby suggests.

  “What’s EMP?” Akimi asks.

  “Electromagnetic pulse.”

  “No,” Pod says, shaking his head. “That would have taken out everything electonic, but some things are still on. Honestly, it makes no sense to me.”

  “Well, it killed these,” Pander says, taking her hearing aids out. “Stupid things haven’t worked since yesterday.”

  “How can you hear us?” Malachai asks.

  “I have a little bit of hearing, plus I can read your lips,” she replies. “And if anyone happens to know sign language, I speak that too.”

  “I do,” I tell her, remembering the lessons that my mom gave me before she died.

  “So,” Igby says, continuing the conversation, “we don’t know exactly how they selectively took out the electrics, but we can agree that some kind of fucking chemical weapon was dropped?”

  “And affected the mental state of those who came into contact with it,” Pod adds.

  Concern is etched on Akimi’s face. Malachai is nodding slowly as he turns the information over in his mind.

  “This is fucking unprecedented,” Igby whispers.

  “And irrelevant,” Pander adds. “We need to get into the city.”

  “What if we become infected?” Akimi asks. “What if we become like Juno and Wren?”

  “What about him?” Malachai asks, pointing at me. “He’s been through the tunnel, right to where the”—he pauses to find the right name—“the Smilers are, and he’s not infected.”

  “Not yet,” Pander adds.

  “Juno never left the building, and she went crazy,” Pod points out. “How long until we go crazy too?”

  “Wait,” Kina says, turning to Pander. “Didn’t you say something about Juno being due for Deletion?”

  “Yeah, she didn’t want to go to the Block; she’d heard rumors. She didn’t accept the Delay and … Oh, right,” Pander says, nodding.

  “Wait, what’s going on?” Malachai asks.

  “The Delay, it came early, and we all took it, all except Juno.”

  “Right, of course,” Igby says.

  “Hey, new girl,” Pod says, turning aimlessly toward the wall.

  “Me?” Mable replies from the opposite corner of the room.

  “Yeah,” Pod replies, turning in the direction of her voice. “What group were you in for the Delay?”

  “I—I was in Group B,” she says.

  “It all adds up,” Igby whispers.

  “Umm, can somebody break it down for me?” Akimi asks, looking between Pod and Igby.

  “We thought they were injecting us with the crazy chemical at the Facility. Turns out they were giving us the cure! They stopped us from becoming … Smilers,” Pod says, using Malachai’s word for the crazies.

  “And Harvey? Catherine? The Group As?” Akimi asks.

  Igby shrugs. “They must have tested a different formula on them … and it didn’t fucking work.”

  One of the jigsaw pieces falls into place in my mind. The reason they didn’t kill me at the Facility for trying to escape, or Tyco for stepping out of line. They were desperate; they knew the war was coming, and they needed all the test subjects they could get.

  “The Delay must’ve been a last-minute attempt by the government to find a way to save society,” I say. “Galen Rye was there that day—he was making sure the whole operation ran smoothly. Judging by the state of the people outside the Loop, the bomb dropped long before they could get the vaccination to people.”

  “But the Group As went crazy before we got the injections,” Malachai says, almost to himself. “If the chemical was dropped before we got the vaccine, why aren’t we crazy?”

  “Look,” Igby says, “I don’t know how it works. Maybe it takes a while for the Smiler chemical to take effect; maybe it was dropped a week ago, and we got the vaccine just in time. I don’t know; I don’t have the fucking answers. All I do know is we’re the only ones who are alive and not crazy, and we’re the only ones here who got the Group B injection.”

  “So, this is the safest place to be,” Blue says, his tiny voice coming from behind Kina.

  We all turn to look at the small boy as he holds Mable’s hand and stares up at us.

  “He’s right,” Akimi says. “Why risk leaving if there’s a war out there, and thousands of Smilers?”

  “We could stay here and wait it out as long as we can,” Mable suggests, a note of hope in her voice.

  “Wait for what?” Pander declares. “If ‘our’ side wins the war, the ‘good guys’ will come back here and lock us up again. If they lose the war, the bad guys will come back here and execute us or turn us crazy like everyone else.”

  The group falls silent, contemplating the irrefutable logic of Pander’s statement.

  “What do we do?” Igby asks, looking first to Malachai, then to me.

  “We should head to the Facility,” Kina says. “If we’re right about the Delay saving us from becoming Smilers, and if the scientists at the Facility found a vaccination, then maybe they have a cure. We might be the only people in this city, this Region, who are vaccinated against the chemical. For all we know, we’re the only hope of saving the infected, and the only chance Rye and his group have of winning this war—that must be worth our freedom.”

  “I want to leave,” Pander says. “Screw the war. My sisters are out there, and we don’t know anything about how this crazy chemical warfare works yet. They might need my help.”

  “Didn’t you hear what he told you about the rat tunnels?” Akimi asks, pointing at me again. “Can’t you see the blood all over him?”

  “Can’t you see that I don’t care?” Pander replies, glaring at Akimi, who backs away from the smaller girl.

  “Rat tunnels?” Mable says, her quiet voice almost inaudible. “There are rats in the tunnels?”

  “They’re afraid of light,” I tell her. “As long as we have fire, we’ll be fine.”

  Mable’s eyes widen at the mention of fire, and her hand goes up to her neck, where the scarring is a deep shade of purple.

  “You hope we’ll be fine,” Malachai mutters.

  “Listen,” I say, holding my hands up. “We all have family out there, we all want them to survive, which is why I’m leaving. I’m going to find my dad and my sister and make sure they’re safe.”

  Igby puts a hand on Pod’s shoulder, and they both nod. “We’re coming too.”

  Kina shrugs. “Me too.”

  “I’m not hanging around waiting to be killed or, worse, locked up again,” Malachai adds.

  Akimi sighs and nods her head. “All right.”

  “If we split up and find our families, we can try to meet back at the Facility in two days,” I say. “Kina’s right—if there’s any chance of a cure, we should try to find it. We can all find our way back to the Dark Train tracks and follow them to get there.”

  “I don’t … I don’t think so,” Mable says.

  “Come on, Mable, you can do it,” Blue says, seeming to gain bravery from her fear.

  “I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it. I’m not leaving.”

  She turns, letting go of Blue’s hand, and storms back toward the cells.

  Malachai watches her until the echoing of her footsteps fades away, then he turns back to us. “Do we know if the tunnel is the only way out?”

  “As far as I can tell, everything comes in and out via the train. We’
ll need fire to keep the rats at—”

  “Why don’t we just climb the walls?” Malachai asks, interrupting my speech.

  “We can’t even get into the yard,” I point out. The power is out, and we can’t get the back walls open. We can get to the top of the center pillar, but the walls are too thin to tightrope-walk across, and it’s a fifty-foot drop to the yards below.

  “There’s still some power,” Igby interjects, pointing at the emergency lights.

  “Okay,” I say, “but it’s no good if it’s not reaching the doors.”

  “Remember why I was locked up in here? Master fucking car thief; I’m good with electronics. Give me a few hours,” Igby says, and he leads Pod out of the room.

  “You think he’ll manage it?” Malachai asks.

  “I hope so,” I reply, watching the two boys leave. “I never want to go through those tunnels again.”

  * * *

  We watch Igby work for a while until he announces that it’ll take him and Pod another four or five hours, which, as far as we can tell, will take us close to midnight. We all decide to get some rest.

  We walk back to our rooms on tired legs. Blue whispers about how he’s afraid of ghosts as he looks back at the dead lying in the corridor: Fulton, Alistair, the dead Ebb dealers.

  Pander carefully closes the door to her cell until it’s open just a crack, making sure it doesn’t snap shut and lock her inside. Malachai rounds the corner, and Akimi sits in the corridor with her head in her hands.

  After Kina has reassured Blue that he’ll be safe, she says good night to me and wraps her arms around me in an embrace.

  “Thanks,” she says.

  “For what?”

  “We’d all be dead if you hadn’t gotten out.”

  “We might all be dead soon anyway,” I point out.

  “Yeah, but what would you have given yesterday for one day of freedom?”

  I think about it and nod in agreement.

  Kina smiles—a smile that, as usual, only takes over one side of her mouth. She goes to her cell.

  I wait in the corridor for a while, until the last cell door creaks shut, before I open the hatch of my old cell and look inside. Wren is lying perfectly still on the bed. Her eyes are closed, but her eyelids move rapidly as she looks around at the nightmare landscape in her mind. I feel a strong sense of guilt knowing that it was me who inflicted that horror upon her, and I can only hope that the effects of the chemical that turned her into a Smiler leave her with no memory of the hell she is going through right now.