Ceiling. Wall.
Daylight shines through a window, late morning.
She’s wearing her coat, boots, and stocking cap in her bed beneath the covers. Sweat soaks through her thermals and cotton shirts.
Her memories are fragmented and cluttered, like a junk drawer dumped onto the floor, each piece unrelated to the next. Each piece broken.
Something inside her had died.
She throws the blanket off, her joints stiff. There’s a full-blown fire in her boots. Slowly, she slides her legs off of the mattress, places them gently on the floor. Her pulse slams in her heels, her feet swollen and snug inside the rubber.
She doesn’t think, just reaches down and pries off the right one, ignoring the slivers of pain that bore through her heel and into her thigh.
She stifles a scream. Her breathing is shallow, rapid. Awareness hangs tenuously on each breath. She opens her eyes.
The sock is red. The back of it completely worn away, revealing scorched tissue, red and angry, as if a belt sander had been laid on her heel.
She wedges her finger under the sock, hand quivering, and peels it away. It sticks on the floor. The cool planks bring little relief.
Ten more breaths and off comes the left one, not as bad as the right. The sock not as red.
She waits until her pulse stops hammering in her heels. Now that her feet are out, the pain recedes and they swell without constriction.
I walked through the night.
That’s how she got back to the bunkhouse; she trekked through the midnight hours until she crawled back in bed. There’s no memory of it. Like every night, there’s only falling asleep and waking in the morning.
She didn’t expect this.
She didn’t expect to sleepwalk to the bunkhouse. It would’ve been better to sleep on the hillside than mangle her feet. Infection could be the end.
Her backpack isn’t in the bunkhouse. It must be out there, on the hilltop next to the split boulder and dead tree, where the slope leads to the trees where there’s an opening, and tracks, and…
And memories.
That’s why she feels dead inside. She remembered her past in that place, the memories forced inside her. A past she wants to forget.
She stands, welcomes the pain to blot out thoughts, erase the guilt and rot and ugliness. She has to stay present, be in the here and now, not there.
First, she must tend her wounds.
She knows where to find medicine.
“You’re up… Oh my God!” Mad shouts, stepping out of the kitchen.
Cyn hobbles past the dinner table. Mad gets out of the way, staring at bloody streaks, the shiny wounds on her heels. Cyn falls onto the stepstool next to the sink, lets out a troubled breath. Pain crawls through her legs and into her stomach.
“We thought you were a goner.” Mad reaches into the pantry. “When you didn’t come back last night, I didn’t think we’d ever see you again. You must’ve walked all night.”
She’s holding a white metal box, staring at Cyn’s feet.
“How’d you do it?”
“I don’t remember.” Cyn takes the box from Mad.
“That came with Miranda’s last batch of clothes. There’s ointment and gauze and enough wrap that you can get those covered.” Mad bends over, grimacing. “Those get infected, you’ll be in a world of hurt.”
The box is filled with small amounts of iodine and triple antibiotic and other low-dose pain meds. She’ll go through all of those before it’s over. Cyn opens the medicine cabinet beneath the sink, looks at the brown bottles with pills. She’s not sure what they’re for or how much to take. Last resort, she decides. If I start a fever.
She begins to close it. “What the hell happened?” she blurts.
Mad steps back. Cyn’s tone is direct. Harsh.
“This thing was full, but now there’s a bunch missing.” Cyn pulls out a clear plastic bag. “Where are they going?”
“I don’t know. I don’t use them. I don’t even know what they are.”
Cyn doesn’t know, either. But they’re missing. And the shelves of food are half-empty. They shouldn’t be, not by her estimates. She looks at Mad.
Mad shrugs, looks away.
“Where is she?”
“Up at the brick house, I think.” Mad takes the keycard off of her neck. “Here’s your key.”
“Keep it.”
Cyn slides an empty pail from under the sink. “Fill this.”
Mad brings her fresh water. She helps clean the blood from her feet. Cyn winces when she comes near the wound. Mad doesn’t stop. She cleans it, scrubs away the dirt and dead skin. She applies the iodine and triple antibiotic. Cyn does the wrapping, though. She weaves the ACE bandage over and under each foot until they’re fully wrapped.
She tests her weight. It’s manageable.
She opens the kitchen door. There’s a small fire on the other side of the garden, near the brick house. The windows are all covered with metal shutters, like a fortress under siege.
Cyn doesn’t ask. Barefoot, she walks outside. Her gait is slow and methodical.
“Glad you’re back.” Jen stands in the garden. “I didn’t want to wake you…”
Cyn doesn’t answer. Eyes ahead.
Roc stacks wood on the growing fire at the fence line. There are smoldering branches on the porch. She squats down, rubbing her hands.
Cyn stops several feet behind her. Adrenaline numbs the pain, lubricates her joints, pumps into her arms and back.
Roc feels someone watching, turns around. “Believe this? Bitch is hiding in a bomb shelter. I’m going to smoke her ass out.”
She returns to rubbing her hands.
“Nice shoes,” she adds.
“Give me your key.”
Roc pretends not to hear. She looks over her shoulder, eyeing Cyn’s stance. The calm expression.
“You find a bunch of bravo berries on your vision quest?”
“The key.” Cyn holds out her hand.
“Not happening.” Roc laughs, shaking her head. Her hand moves to a branch.
“Last chance.” Cyn removes her sweater, wraps it around her forearm. “The key, Roc. And it goes easy.”
Roc stands, thick branch in hand, the opposite end glowing embers. “You’re about to make the mistake of a very short life.”
“Come on,” Jen says. “Don’t do this. It’s hard enough out here.”
“Back up.” Cyn points to where Kat and Mad are watching near the edge of the garden. “This is going to happen quickly.”
“I’m going to set you on fire.” Roc circles around, getting her back away from the fence. “Throw you on the porch and burn the little piggy’s house down. You won’t go to waste, Cyn. You’ll smoke out the little princess, then I’ll have fun with her. Take my time.”
She grips the branch like a smoking club.
“I’m tired of playing nice,” she says. “We’re in the bush where the alpha dog eats.”
Cyn watches her eyes, keeping her peripheral vision on the branch, and adjusts her stance as Roc circles. She stays loose, hands open.
Fingers twitching.
“You ready?” Roc fakes a swing.
Cyn remains relaxed.
Roc smiles, laughs. Her grip strengthens, forearms tense. She stops walking sideways, pauses for a moment.
Reaches back for the big swing—
Cyn shoots.
She doesn’t feel the bite in her heels when she launches her shoulder into Roc’s midsection. The branch comes down on the back of her thigh, but the collision with the ground knocks it out of Roc’s hand.
Cyn throws her leg over Roc, mounting her, keeping her head buried against her collarbone. Roc curses, throwing weak punches into the side of her head. Cyn reaches up without exposing her face, interfering with the strikes while she hooks her heels around Roc’s legs.
Pain is irrelevant.
She’s patient, tightening her grip each time Roc bucks. Every twist allows Cyn to gain
more control, immobilizing Roc with a full-body clench. She doesn’t know how she’s doing it. Maybe it’s the memories. Maybe, out there in the gray, something downloaded into her psyche.
This is who I am.
Roc growls. Tries to pull her hair. Her strength drains quickly. She throws glancing blows off Cyn’s shoulders with no leverage, no power. Cyn remains clenched.
Waiting.
Roc goes limp, struggling to catch her breath. Resignation sinks in. She’s helpless, back to the ground.
Now she strikes.
It’s quick and surgical. She pops up just enough to bring her elbow into the side of Roc’s head before hunching over again to ride out Roc’s short burst of fury. Once exhausted, Cyn lands another elbow, this one slicing from the left, gashing open her scalp.
Blood drains into her ear.
Confusion glazes her eyes. Concussion symptoms already in effect. Two more elbows and Cyn sits up, heels hooked.
Blood is smeared across Roc’s forehead, pooling around her eye. Cyn’s knuckles crack against her jaw. Another hook from the left. Roc’s head limply rotates, blood streaming from a hole in her lower lip.
“Stop!” Jen shouts. “That’s enough!”
Cyn sits upright, all of her weight bearing down. She’s hardly winded. Roc gasps for air, head rolling back and forth, a distant gaze, no focus.
Jen pulls at her, cheeks glistening with tears. “You’re going to kill her.”
“Get back.”
Roc shakes her head, spittle building at the corners of her mouth, struggling to breathe.
Cyn gets up. The burn on the backs of her legs throbs worse than her heels. She paces around the gurgling mess, yanks the keycard from around her neck.
She turns around, facing the meadow, looping the keycard over her head. She grinds her teeth, hardening against the soft emotions rising in her throat.
Roc spits blood.
“I don’t know where we are,” Cyn says. “But two miles out there is another fence.”
She rests her hands on her hips, turns to the others.
“Do you know what that means? Do you?”
She waits.
“It means we’re never escaping.”
“Why?” Jen asks.
Cyn doesn’t answer because it’s obvious. They all know; they just don’t want to say it. There’s a fence surrounding the hills, an enormous dome over this world like some science experiment. Only they can’t see the gods’ microscopes, or what they’re looking at. Or what they’re doing to them.
She knows one thing they don’t, though: bad things are beyond the fence.
“I don’t why we’re here, but I know this.” Cyn points at Roc. “You’re poison.”
Roc attempts to sit up. The tip of her tongue pokes around her lower lip, accessing the damage.
“You have two choices.” Cyn holds up two fingers. “One, we tie you to your bed and feed you like a cripple. You don’t ever leave it. You understand?”
She looks at the girls. They’re still speechless.
“If you don’t like that, you’re banished from this camp. You go out there on your own. We give you enough gear and food to last a couple days, but you never show your face here again. If you do, I’ll throw you through the fence and you’ll sleep forever. You understand this?”
“Cyn, don’t say that,” Jen says.
“She would’ve killed you, Jen! She was trying to kill Miranda, and she’s eating all the food and contributing nothing. You know it—all of you know it. She was going to end us. I’ll do the same to her.” Her eyes are so relaxed, so convincing. “I won’t hesitate.”
Jen covers her mouth, her voice muffled by her fingers. Mad puts her arm around her. Kat watches, impassively.
“We’ll vote.” Cyn hold up two fingers. “I vote number two.”
Roc pushes up on her elbows. Head down.
“Kat?” Cyn says.
There’s a long pause. Kat stares at Roc. “Two.”
Cyn points at Jen. She shakes her head, refuses to answer.
“Mad?”
Roc turns a hard stare, focus finally returning with vengeance. The cook looks at the ground, then back at her.
“I can’t do it, Cyn.”
Cyn nods. Roc spits at her feet, flecking the bandages with blood. The backs of her feet are already soaked with her own.
“Get up.” Cyn waves her to stand. “You try anything and I knock you. Now get up.”
Roc takes her time moving to her knees, slowly standing. Her shoulders slump. Cyn puts her finger on her chest and begins pushing. Roc backs up a step, slapping her hand away.
Cyn points. “Keep stepping.”
Roc steps backwards, glaring beneath furrowed brows. Cyn shadows her steps until she feels the fence in her neck. Roc stops.
Jen is sobbing.
“You’ve stolen food. You do nothing to help us survive—”
“I helped pull you out of the fence on day one.”
“You tried to burn down the brick house. You’re nothing but a threat, and you don’t deserve to stay. But you can thank those two you won’t freeze tonight in the wild.”
“Kiss my ass.”
“Step backwards.”
Cyn is within striking distance, dangerously close, daring her to do something. Roc doesn’t take the bait, the last of her dignity falling away.
“Step back or get knocked back.”
They stare.
The battle is over.
Roc steps across the fence line. Her eyes roll back as the fence lights up the knot in her neck. She collapses, unconscious. Cyn stands at her feet, close enough that her vertebrae shiver.
“Get something to bind her,” she says.
Jen’s sobs fade.
The leather-bound book spoke of a dangerous girl.
It wasn’t Roc.
OCTOBER
I dreamed a dream,
And it was you.
26
Cyn chops wood until her feet are numb. She keeps them heavily wrapped, but it’ll be weeks before she can wear boots. She doesn’t mind the cold. It soothes the wounds. She changes the bandages frequently, keeps them clean.
Her knuckles ache. Gripping the ax for hours at a time doesn’t help, but they need wood. And she needs something to do. She refuses to sit still.
If she does nothing, she thinks. She remembers.
The brick house is still locked tight, with no word from Miranda. Roc occupies the bunkhouse, and she’d rather not be near her. Cyn walks her to the outhouse. She doesn’t trust the others.
Be easier if Roc was dead.
No other way to put it. She’s a threat, a waste of food. If she loosens her bindings, if she catches Cyn by surprise, the others will pay dearly. Cyn is comfortable with the idea of killing her. She could do it. She could cut her throat, this she knows.
And she hates that. She hates that she could do it. Hates that she wants to.
Hates that she remembers.
She doesn’t like the memories. They feel foreign and wrong. She’d gotten used to a fresh start, even if it was a miserable one. Now she’s dragging the past with her, each step heavier than the last.
Even when she doesn’t think, the gray dream returns at night to find her. She walks to the edge, the trees rustling behind her. She trembles, fearing what will come out of the fog, what heinous memory will force itself upon her. She stands frozen, toes over the ledge.
Trembling.
She wakes as if someone has their hands around her throat, as if she’s drowning. It takes all her effort to force down the sobs. The backpack is still on the hill with her knife. She reaches under the mattress for a spoon, puts a light scratch on the wall.
Marks another day.
Another day she hasn’t died.
Do we die?
Mad is the last one to sit down for breakfast.
They bow their heads, allowing a moment of silence before plowing through eggs and pinto beans. Breakfast doesn’t last long
. Hunger doesn’t go far away. They scrape their plates, listening to the wind.
Cyn grips the edge of the table, staring at her plate while the others wipe their mouths, lick their fingers. The scabs are thick on her knuckles, the tendons popping up as she squeezes harder.
It’s been days. No one asks about the trek, don’t want to know what happened to her, why she returned… different.
They hardly talk to her.
But she can’t hold it in. Closing her eyes, her tongue won’t work. Her lips clamp shut.
Mad scoots her chair out from the table.
“I remember who I am.”
Silence.
Mad sits back down. Cyn doesn’t look up. She can’t, not yet. But she started. Something she hasn’t been able to do yet.
“How you know that?” Kat asks.
Nervous energy constricts around her chest. She stands too quickly, knocking her chair over. The girls are staring.
Waiting.
Cyn paces back and forth, searching for the courage she had only moments ago, courage that has drained into a pool of quivering fear. Strange how easy it was to destroy Roc, how helpless she feels faced with emotions.
Memories.
She stops at the window, the glass cold. The brick house is shuttered and quiet.
“The fence that’s out there—it’s different than the one around the brick house. When I fell into it, I just started remembering…things.”
Long pause. “How did you get out?” Kat asks.
“I crawled out.” Cyn shakes her head. “At least I think I did; it’s all a little cloudy.”
There’s nervous shuffling. But she’s stuck again. She wishes she’d never started talking about this, just wishes they would eat and clean up and chop wood and go to sleep. Keep it simple. No need to dredge up these— “I want to remember,” Jen says.
“No,” Cyn says. “No, you don’t. You don’t want to remember. I wish I could put the memories back in the gray. Wish I could forget them.”
“Memories don’t make you who you are,” Kat says.
Cyn steadies her hands on the windowsill so the girls don’t see them shaking.
“But memories tell you what you’ve done.”
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