Foreverland Is Dead

by Tony Bertauski

  “You deserve this.” He thrusts.

  She tears.

  Screams into the hand cupped over her mouth.

  The gray moves in and she’s back in the woods.

  She scuffles across the soft needles, back into the world without color. Her eyes wide with panic, afraid to look down, afraid to see a red stain spreading between her legs.

  A memory.

  Her stepfather had done that to her in a trailer outside Cleveland. He raped her for years…until she left. She wasn’t old enough to go out on her own, but she was smart enough to leave.

  Why do I remember that now? Where the hell am I?

  It’s coming back.

  She feels it rumbling like electricity, a storm stampeding from out there, a battering ram plunging forward. She starts to get up, begins to run deeper into the trees, away from the cliff—

  Asphalt scuffs her cheek. Something drips and echoes.

  Her face is fat and numb. Her body like wood. There’s pressure in her arm.

  “You did it,” someone whispers. His voice echoes. “You killed her.”

  Somebody weeps.

  Footsteps splash away.

  Cyn bats open her eyes, heavy like coins. She wants to run, too. She can’t feel anything. Her chest rises and falls, involuntarily. She wants it to stop. There’s something bad, something rotten inside her. She wants to flush it out, to get away.

  For it all to end.

  She moves her arm, the pressure spikes at her elbow.

  A syringe. A needle filled with red. Stuck in a bulging vein.

  She just can’t get away—

  Cyn sobs into the ground. The memory is a dead weight on her chest. She starts crawling away from the memories. Away from her life. I don’t want to remember, I don’t want to know! Stop this…please, stop.

  The needles begin to thin. She feels a clump of grass.

  She’s beneath an underpass—

  Running from the police—

  Swings her fist, her knuckles meeting the soft flesh of collapsing nose—

  It’s so hard to crawl.

  The memories pile into her, filling her like liquid metal, sluggish in her veins. Heavy on her heart.

  Cyn closes her eyes.

  She crawls deeper into the trees, further away.

  Clutching more grass, fewer needles. Hand over hand, like pulling out of hole. She feels a breeze. The wet tickle of grass on her cheeks.

  Her legs are dead.

  She rolls onto her back. The gray turns to black. And stars sparkle. The moon brightly smiling in a clear night sky.

  Cyn lies on the slope. The trees below her.

  She made it out of the clearing. It’s not an escape, just another fence. Another nightmare.

  But the entire day has passed. Night has arrived.

  She doesn’t attempt to get up. Sleep, as it always does, arrives like a hammer. She hears herself whimpering, fearing not the wolf’s howl, but her return to the gray.

  23

  Miranda sits back, binoculars up. Her eyes ache, but she continues to scan the horizon, a landscape void of life beyond trees and grass. The snowy mountains pale in the setting sun’s dying light, appearing after so many days behind gray skies.

  Cyn has been gone all day.

  The girls have been outside. Jen cleaned out the garden, harvesting the last of the vegetables. Kat’s in the barn, Mad is in the kitchen. And Roc came to eat.

  But no Cyn.

  It’s getting late.

  Candlelight flickers inside the dinner house. Miranda turns the binoculars to one of the windows, adjusts the focus. She sees Jen with a plate in front of her. She bows her head for a moment before scooping up food with her spoon.

  Dinner is over in less than a minute.

  Jen licks the plate. Miranda imagines the others are doing the same. The girls move past the windows, wiping the table and gathering the plates. Except Roc.

  She goes back to bed.

  Miranda slices off a piece of cheese she found in the back of the pantry. She was eating it with crackers earlier, but she needs to save those. There are only four boxes left. She figures if she eats ten a day, they’ll last four months. It’s been hard holding back. Sometimes she wonders if it’s easier to have nothing.

  Miranda lifts the binoculars, again.

  Kat and Jen are on the front porch, looking at the horizon. A candle warmly lights their faces. Miranda adjusts her focus across the meadow to the sparse trees on the hillside. Cyn has been plundering the kitchen, but if she doesn’t return, things will get worse.

  Our Father, Who Art in Heaven…

  Roc returns to the dinner house.

  Kat and Jen step aside. She nudges them, not bothering to say a word. Not bothering to look to the horizon.

  Miranda tastes something bitter in the back of her throat. She grinds her teeth, wishing the binoculars were attached to a weapon.

  Roc walks through the dinner house, passing both windows on her way to the kitchen. Kat and Jen are watching her through the windows in the front. Several minutes pass.

  The kitchen door bursts open.

  Roc stomps through the garden, dragging one of the empty travel bags behind her. Mad watches from the kitchen. Kat and Jen come around the front. Roc points at them, obscenities streaming out in all directions, no one spared.

  Bile rises in Miranda’s throat.

  The big bad wolf is coming.

  Miranda crawls off the couch, stays close to the floor so that Roc won’t see her. She leans against the front door, pulls her legs against her chest. There’s a box in the hallway half-full of food. She keeps filling it, plans every day to put it in the front yard, but every day she pulls items back out and swaps them with others.

  Sometimes she eats them.

  She just can’t decide. Once her food is gone, she’ll have to leave. They just don’t understand.

  The front window rattles. Miranda jerks toward the sound.

  “The hoarding ends now, Shiny!” Roc shouts. “Time to share or time to burn.”

  Miranda squeezes her legs, tighter. She swears she heard her say “blow your house down”.

  “I know what you’re doing in there. I know you’re sitting around eating all the food. I’m not letting that happen. Get out here.”

  The window rattles with debris, again.

  “Now!”

  Miranda lowers her head. Roc is throwing something at the window. She’ll keep throwing it unless she goes out there. Miranda squeezes her legs until her arms hurt. The back of her head thumps on the door.

  She messes up her hair, pulling her shirt out. She stands, her legs cold and weak.

  Pebbles pepper the front of the house.

  Miranda puts her hand on the doorknob, turns and pulls.

  The door cracks open.

  Roc stands on the fence line. Staring.

  “Fill it up.” She tosses the bag onto the steps. “I’m not playing.”

  “It’s almost ready. There’s not as much food in here as I thought.”

  “Liar.”

  “I’ll bring it out tomorrow. I promise.”

  “You’ll bring it out now.”

  Miranda looks back. “It’s not ready.”

  Roc bends over, picks gravel from the dirt. “You’re a greedy pig.”

  “Stop it. It’s not my fault.”

  “Shower all you want, but you can’t wash the pig off. A pig smells like a pig.” Roc sniffs. “I can smell you from here.”

  “That’s not true.”

  She tosses a pebble. It plinks off the door. “Like a pig in slop.”

  Miranda almost closes the door. She doesn’t stink. If she does, it’s because the house smells. If she does, it’s because there’s something dead, but it’ll wash off. If she could come outside, it would wear off. But she’s stuck.

  The Dagger Queen.

  Another pebble hits the door, bounces across the porch.

  “You should behave yourself.” Miranda yanks the
door open. “You need to learn manners; you are acting like a spoiled brat. You! You’re the brat! I come inside the house and I give you all the clothes and you stand out there calling me names, throwing rocks at me… Have you no appreciation? No scruples?”

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” Roc pokes at the rocks in her hand.

  “You’re the bully, Roc. You are. I know more about you than you do. I read something about you. I read that you’re trouble. That you’re dangerous.”

  Miranda glances at Kat and Jen, who are standing not far away.

  “You’re stealing from them. You’re going to hurt them. And when they’re starving and you’re not, I’ll be safe in here. I’ll keep my food; otherwise you’ll take it all from me like you’ll take it all from them. I’m not the pig. You are.”

  Miranda steps onto the porch. The fence protects her—she knows this. But the step is an act of bravery, of defiance. And Roc knows it.

  She’s not hiding anymore.

  “I’ll tear you apart,” Roc says.

  “You’re scum.”

  Miranda goes back inside, closes the door. She’s not shaking. Roc is a thief and now they all know it. And until they do something about it, she’s not giving them her food. And if Cyn doesn’t return, they never will.

  Miranda’s not selfish. She’s smart.

  “You’re dead!” Roc shouts. “When I get to you, you’re dead!”

  Gravel scatters against the house.

  Miranda smiles. She hit her good, where it counts. Right on the pride. Her anger is fully lit. It hurts and this gives her pleasure.

  Miranda looks out the west window. Kat, Jen, and Mad are watching from a distance. Roc might take it out on them.

  What have I done?

  Boom.

  Miranda jumps, a squeal popping out of her. Something thumps the door, rolls on the porch.

  “The party’s over, Shiny!”

  Roc pushes the tall grass around, searching for something larger. The pleasurable confidence leaches away from Miranda, leaving twisted, toxic fear in the pit of her stomach.

  She can’t get in here. She can’t get to me.

  And she has to sleep. The sun has dipped below the mountains. Darkness is near. They’ll fall asleep like they do every night. No one will wake up until morning, no matter what.. She just had to survive this and then Miranda could do something. She can end this.

  Permanently.

  It’s Roc or us. If it wasn’t for Roc, Miranda would be out there with the girls. It’s Roc’s fault. All her fault. If Miranda gets through this, she can sneak out at night, smother her with a pillow. Put a knife in her throat, a stick through her eye— “You’re dead, bitch!”

  Roc heaves a stone, this one purple and angular. The size of a softball. Miranda instinctually leaps away from the window—

  The window spiderwebs into a thousand lines. But it doesn’t break.

  SHHHHHT-THOOM.

  SHHHHHT-THOOM.

  SHHHHHT-THOOM.

  Metal shutters slide in front of the windows. The room dims as light is cut off from the outside one window at a time. Dust trickles from the ceiling as shutters bang closed over the upstairs windows.

  Miranda falls against the door, hides her eyes.

  Roc’s voice is muffled. Distant.

  Another stone bangs harmlessly off the shutter to the right of the door. A distant curse punctuates it. Miranda crawls away from the door and curls up in the middle of the floor, listening to shot after shot land harmlessly against the house.

  Classical music plays softly.

  Something is beeping in the back of the house. An alarm is going off, a steady, even droning. A mechanical warning.

  The metal door is cracked open.

  A red light is flashing.

  24

  The brick house is a tomb.

  And each time the back room beeps, a nail driven deeper into its lid, shutting it tighter. Darker.

  Miranda feels the weight of the shutters, sealing in the sound, shutting out the light. She tries to open the front door. She raps on the windows. She’s safely entombed, away from danger. Roc will never hurt her.

  But she’s haunted by thoughts.

  The beeps bounce around the wall, driving deep inside her head. She presses pillows to her ears, buries her head beneath couch cushions and blankets. Still, it’s out there.

  The incessant warning.

  She heaves a candle at the metal door. “Shut up!”

  The door eases back. The crack widens. And the alarm seeps out louder. Fiercer.

  Miranda weeps with her ears covered. Hours go by, trapped with her worst fear. There’s no avoiding it.

  The back room is calling.

  Exhausted, she turns off the music. She stands in the hallway, red light pulsing. Each beep perfectly spaced, exactly pitched.

  “You win,” she whispers.

  Miranda wipes her face. A wave of serenity passes through her. No more avoiding it. Hate it, but embrace it.

  She takes a step. Then another.

  Her fingers against the door, she pushes it open.

  Unbelievable.

  A chuckle rattles her throat. She shakes her head. Ten feet, straight ahead, there is another metal door.

  But in between, there’s a room. The flashing and beeping are coming from her right. Miranda takes a half step forward, peers slowly inside. A countertop runs along the right wall with several monitors mounted above it, computers below. All the screens are blank except for the largest one in the corner. A red square blinks in time with the beeping.

  The smell is not any worse. Whatever is dead, she tells herself, is behind the next door. Relief rises again with a trace of dread.

  Another door.

  There are chairs along the clean countertops. The computers have flashing green lights, indicating hibernation.

  She looks to her left before entering.

  The furnace and hot water heater are in the corners. Generators and battery banks, all stacked and wired: power storage for the solar panels and wind harvesters. With all the computers, the power consumption must be considerable. Three wind harvesters still seem like a lot, but some could be backups in case of failure.

  Or whatever’s behind the next door.

  Miranda flips the light switch, goes to the large monitor.

  BREACH. The word flashes over and over.

  Roc had shattered the window and activated the security system. And if she can’t turn it off, she’ll go insane and may never escape.

  She touches the spacebar on the keyboard—

  It stops.

  The screen sputters to life. A program opens. An interface scrolls with numbers and words, nothing that makes any sense. She’s afraid to click anything that might start the alarm again. Besides, Roc is probably still stalking the brick house; it’s better to keep the windows covered up for now. Despite the claustrophobia.

  The computer below the counter whirs. The other computers answer the call, spinning awake, green lights flickering.

  The generators kick on. All the monitors light up.

  Miranda backs up.

  Images appear on a dozen screens. The far left monitor displays a view from the front porch. Evidently floodlights have been activated, illuminating far out into the meadow.

  The monitor flickers to another view, this one overlooking the garden. Several seconds later, it goes to the back of the house, eventually cycling around to the front.

  The other monitors are glowing with eerie green light.

  Night vision.

  The inside of the dinner house and the kitchen are displayed in infrared. There’s another monitor showing the inside of the bunkhouse, the views focusing on each of the beds. Four beds are filled. The fifth bed—the one tucked in the corner—is Miranda’s.

  The sixth is also empty. Cyn.

  Miranda watches it cycle through again. She’ll never survive out there. Not in this weather.

  Not in the wild.

&nb
sp; The next monitor illuminates views from another building. At first, she thinks it’s the barn. But there’s no pasture, no fence. And none of the other buildings are around. Just trees.

  It’s in the woods!

  No one really goes back there. Three of the views are just trees, but the fourth shines brightly on a path leading up to it. Miranda leans closer, something is at the end where the path turns sharply.

  A ghostly chill passes through her. That’s a leg.

  The dead body. It’s there. That’s the body down the path. None of the girls have ever gone past it to discover the cabin in the woods. The four views—presumably from four different cameras—are frightening. But the fifth one is shocking.

  Miranda jumps back, covers her mouth to hold back panic. Tension holds her eyes wide and her jaw clamp shut.

  An old woman.

  She’s inside a tiny room, lying on some sort of hospital bed. She stares at the image, a ghostly green visage of a comatose old woman. And then it’s back to the trees.

  Miranda watches the cycle. The path. The body. The woman again.

  Suddenly, the brick house feels much less like a tomb and more like a fortress. The last place she wants to be is outside. Something’s in the trees.

  The generators kick off.

  All the monitors go green. The floodlights must have turned off to conserve power. The cameras switch to infrared.

  She glances at the unopened door. The last frontier. Her last hurdle of fear. She’s had enough, though. The adrenaline is wearing off. Exhaustion takes its place.

  Miranda goes to the couch, curls up beneath the blankets, still hearing the beeping in her head. She falls asleep.

  Much later, the generators start up.

  Miranda lifts her head, staring at the clock. It’s almost one o’clock in the morning.

  The candles have burned out. The hallway appears brightly lit. Maybe the floodlights have turned on, but she doesn’t care. Miranda closes her eyes and goes back to dreaming.

  Dreaming that final door leads to oceans and beaches and yachts.

  25

  Cyn hangs in that place between sleep and wakefulness, disconnected from her thoughts and body. She’s rudely yanked into the world by fiery spikes deep in her feet.