Once: An Eve Novel

by Anna Carey

  I remembered that time. The bleeds had gotten worse. She went through handkerchief after handkerchief, trying to keep her nose dry. She’d finally gone to sleep one afternoon, her bedroom dark as I wandered out. The house across the street was marked with a red X. The lawn beside it was dug up, the dirt turned over where they’d buried the first bodies. The quiet scared me. All the children were gone. A broken bicycle sat in the middle of the road. The neighbor’s cat was outside, lapping at the end of a hose, as I approached the door. I’d walked in, looking for the couple I’d seen coming and going so many times before, the man with the brown hat. I remembered the smell, thick and foul, and the dust that had accumulated in the corners. We need help, I’d said, as I took a few tentative steps into the living room. Then I saw his remains on the couch. His skin was gray, his face partially sunken in from decay.

  “You left us,” I said, unable to hide the anger in my voice. “She was alone, she died alone in that house, and you could have helped her. I was waiting for someone to save us.”

  He covered my hand with his own, but I pulled away. “I would’ve, Genevieve—”

  “That’s not my name,” I snapped. I clutched the picture to my chest. “You can’t just call me that.”

  He stood and walked to the window, his back to me. Outside, the land beyond the wall was black, not one light visible for miles. “I didn’t even know you existed until I read her letters.” He sighed. “How could you be angry with me for that? They had to put soldiers at my door to prevent people from attacking me. I was one of the few government officials in Sacramento who survived. The people were convinced I had some magical cure, that I could save their families. As soon as the outbreak ended, as soon as I had the resources, I sent soldiers. I was setting up a new, temporary capital, and trying to assemble the survivors. I sent them to her house to find you both. You were already gone.”

  “Was she there?” I asked, my hands folded over the photo. I remembered her standing in the doorway, blowing me a kiss. She had looked so fragile, her bones jutting out beneath her skin. Still, it didn’t stop me from imagining that things could’ve been different. That maybe—against all logic—she could’ve survived.

  “They found her remains,” he said. He turned and came toward me. “That’s when I started searching for you, in the orphanages at first, and then, when the Schools were assembled, I looked at the rosters there. But there was no girl named Genevieve at any of them—you must’ve started going by Eve already. It wasn’t until they sent back the graduation photos and I saw your picture that I knew you were alive. You look so much like her.”

  “I’m supposed to believe all of this based on this one picture?” I held it up.

  “There are tests,” he said calmly.

  “How am I supposed to trust anything you say? My friends are in those Schools still. They’re all there because of you.”

  He walked around the table, letting out a deep breath. “I don’t expect you to understand it yet. You couldn’t possibly.”

  I let out a tiny laugh. “What’s to understand? There doesn’t seem to be anything complicated about what you’re doing. They’re all there, against their will, because of you. You’re the one who started the labor camps and the Schools.” I shook my head, trying not to notice the way our noses both slanted to the left, or how we shared the same heavy-lidded eyes. I hated his thinning hair, the subtle cleft in his chin, the deep creases at the corners of his mouth. I couldn’t believe I was related to this man—that we shared history or blood.

  His skin glistened with sweat. He covered his face but I watched him, refusing to look away. Finally he turned and pressed a button on the wall. “Beatrice, please come now,” he said, his voice low. He brushed a piece of lint off the front of his suit jacket. “You’ve had a trying day, to say the least. You must be tired. Your maid will see you to your room.”

  The door opened. A short, middle-aged woman came in, clad in a red skirt and jacket, the New American crest on the lapel. Her face was lined with deep wrinkles. She smiled when she saw me and curtsied, a “Your Royal Highness” escaping her lips.

  The King put his hand lightly on my arm. “Get a good night’s rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I started walking to the door, but he grabbed my hand and brought me into a hug, squeezing me close. When he pulled back his expression was soft, his eyes fixed on mine. He wanted me to believe him, that much was clear, but I steeled myself against it. I thought only of Arden’s bound ankles, her body writhing as she tried to free herself.

  I was relieved when he finally dropped my hand. “Please show Princess Genevieve to her suite and help her out of those clothes.”

  The woman looked at my tattered pants, the blood on my arm, the bits of dried leaves tangled in my hair. She smiled sweetly as he disappeared down the hall, his shoes snapping against the shiny wood floor. I stood frozen, my heart loud in my chest, until the room was silent, all traces of him gone.

  twelve

  “AND THIS IS WHERE YOU’LL HAVE YOUR AFTERNOON TEA,” Beatrice said, gesturing at the massive atrium. Three walls were all windows, and the glass ceiling exposed the starless sky. We had passed the formal dining room, the sitting area, the locked guest suites, and the maid’s kitchen. It had all gone by in a blur. He is your father, I repeated to myself, as if I were a stranger delivering the news. The King is your father.

  No matter how many times I turned over the thought, it seemed impossible. I felt the hardwood floors beneath my feet. I smelled the sickeningly sweet cider boiling on the stove down the hall. I saw the sterile white walls, the polished wooden doors, heard the clack clack clack of Beatrice’s low heels. But I still couldn’t believe that I was here, in the King’s Palace, so far away from School, Califia, and the wild. So far from Arden, Pip, and Caleb.

  Beatrice walked two steps ahead of me, telling me about the indoor pool, rattling off the thread count of the sheets. She went on about the fresh meats and vegetables that were delivered to the Palace daily, the King’s personal chef, and something called air conditioning. I didn’t listen. Everywhere I looked I saw a locked door with a keypad beside it.

  “All the doors need a code to open?” I asked.

  Beatrice glanced at me over her shoulder. “Only some. Your safety is obviously very important, so the King has asked that I not share the code. You can call me on the intercom if you need anything, and I’ll take you wherever you need to go.”

  “Right,” I muttered. “My safety.”

  “You must be relieved to be here,” Beatrice went on. “I wanted to say how sorry I was about all you’ve been through.” I watched as she punched in the code to the suite, trying to catch as many numbers as I could. She pushed open the door, exposing a wide bed, chandelier, and a serving cart with a covered silver platter. The faint smell of roast chicken filled the room. “I’ve heard what happened in the wild—how that Stray took you, how he murdered those soldiers right in front of you.”

  “A Stray?” I asked. The photograph of my mother trembled in my hands.

  “The boy,” she said, lowering her voice as she led me into the bathroom. “The boy who kidnapped you. I guess it isn’t public yet, but the Palace workers have all heard. You must be so grateful to Sergeant Stark for bringing you back here, inside the walls. Everyone’s talking about his upcoming promotion.”

  My stomach felt hollow. Stark’s words in the elevator returned, his promise that he would never let me forget what happened that day. He must’ve known how I felt about Caleb. He had seen how concerned I was on that ride in the Jeep, could hear the panic in my voice as I begged him to stitch up Caleb’s leg. It all became sickeningly clear: As the King’s daughter, I could never be executed in the City. But Caleb could.

  “You have it wrong. Caleb didn’t kill anyone. I wouldn’t have survived if it wasn’t for him.” I tried to look her in the face, but she turned away. She stood in front of the sink and twisted on the faucet, waiting until the water was hot and steaming.
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br />   “But that’s what everyone’s saying,” she repeated. “They’re searching for the boy in the wild. There’s a warrant out for him.”

  “You don’t understand,” I managed. “They’re all lying. You don’t know what the King has done out there. He’s evil—”

  Beatrice’s eyes widened. When she finally spoke her voice was so low I could barely hear it over the running water. “You didn’t mean that,” she whispered. “You cannot say such things about the King.”

  I pointed to the window, the land stretched out for hundreds of miles. “My closest friends are imprisoned right now in those Schools. They are being used like farm animals, like they never imagined or hoped for anything different.”

  I let the photograph fall to the floor and put my head in my hands. I heard Beatrice shuffling around the bedroom, opening and closing drawers. The tap was still running. Then she was beside me, tugging the sour, sweat-soaked shirt from my body, helping me step out of the muddy pants. She set a hot, soapy cloth on the back of my neck and ran it over my shoulders, working the dirt off my skin.

  “Maybe you misunderstood or misheard,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s a choice the girls have at the Schools—it’s always a choice. The ones who are part of the birthing initiative volunteered.”

  “They didn’t,” I said, shaking my head. “They didn’t. We didn’t …” I bit my bottom lip. I wanted to hate her, this foolish woman, who was telling me about my School, my friends, my life. I wanted to take hold of her arm and squeeze, until she listened. She had to listen—why wouldn’t she just listen? But she worked the washcloth over my back, gently lifting up the thin straps of my tank top. She wiped the dirt from my legs and out from between my toes and rubbed at the mud behind my knees. She did it with such care. After so many months on the run, of sleeping in the cold basements of abandoned houses, her tenderness was almost too much to bear.

  “They hunted us,” I went on, letting my body relax just a little. “The troops hunted me and Caleb. They stabbed him. And my friend Arden was dragged back to that School. She was screaming.” I paused, waiting for her to argue, but she was kneeling beside me, the washcloth hovering over the gash on my arm.

  She turned over my hands, staring at the bluish-red line around my wrist where the restraints had been. The cloth slipped over the mark, working at the raw skin, the blood now a thin, purple crust. “We shouldn’t be talking about the troops this way,” she said slowly, less assured. “I can’t.” She looked up at me, her eyes pleading with me to stop. Finally, she turned away and picked up a nightgown she’d laid out on the bed.

  I took the ruffled dress from her hand and slung it over my head. I wanted to cry, to let my body heave with sobs, but I was too exhausted. There was nothing in me left. “He can’t be my father,” I mumbled, not caring if she was listening. “He just can’t be.” I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes.

  Beatrice sat down beside me, the mattress springs creaking underneath her. She pressed a clean washcloth to my face, wiping around my hairline, my cheeks, then folded it and placed it gently over my eyes. The whole world was black.

  The day had been too much. The hope of seeing Caleb, the soldiers’ attack, Arden and Ruby and the King with his declarations—the weight of it fell on me, pinning me down. Beatrice was right beside me still, her gentle fingers rubbing at my temples, but she seemed so far away.

  “You’re not feeling well,” she offered. “Yes,” she repeated to herself as I drifted off. “That must be it.”

  thirteen

  THE KING STEPPED OUT ONTO THE OBSERVATION DECK AND gestured for me to follow. My legs were unsteady as I stared at the tiny world a hundred stories below. The wall wrapped around the City in a giant loop, stretching for miles beyond the central cluster of buildings. Expansive crop fields sprouted up in the east. Old warehouses spread out to the west. The land at the edge of the wall was covered with fallen buildings, garbage heaps, and rusted, sun-bleached cars.

  “I suppose you’ve never been this high up before?” the King asked, glancing at my hands, which were curled tightly around the metal railing. “Before the plague, there were buildings like this in every major city, filled with offices, restaurants, apartments.”

  “Why did you bring me here?” I asked, staring at the short rails in front of me, the only thing preventing a fall. “What’s the point of this?” I’d spent the day in the top floors of the Palace. My arm was stitched and bandaged. I’d soaked in the bath, clogging the drain with dirt and bits of dead leaves. The King had insisted I accompany him to this immense tower, all the while rambling on about his City. My City now.

  He moved easily around the narrow deck. “I wanted you to see the progress for yourself. This is the best view in the entire City. The Stratosphere used to be the tallest observation deck in America, but now we use it as the army’s main lookout tower. From up here a soldier can see for miles. Sandstorms, gangs. In the event of a surprise attack from another country or one of the colonies, we’ll have plenty of warning.”

  Inside, the glass tower was swarming with soldiers. They peered through metal scopes, scanning the streets below. Some sat at desks, headphones on, listening to radio messages. I saw my reflection in the windows. The skin beneath my eyes was puffy. I’d woken in the middle of the night, trying to decide what to do about Caleb. I knew I could put him in even more danger just by mentioning his name. But I also knew Stark wouldn’t stop searching for him. I couldn’t let him be punished for what I’d done. “There’s something you should know,” I said after a long while. “Stark lied to you. The boy who was in the wild with me—he wasn’t the one who shot the soldiers.”

  The King froze by the metal railing. He turned to me, squinting against the sun. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know what Stark told you, but that boy helped me in the wild. He saved me. I was the one who shot the soldiers when they attacked him.” My throat was tight. All I could see was the soldier’s body hitting the pavement, the blood pooling beneath him.

  “You can’t punish him,” I continued. “You have to call off the search. It was self-defense. They were going to kill him.”

  The King turned, his head cocked slightly to one side. “And what if they did? Who is he to you? This Caleb person, the one you sent the message to that night.”

  I stepped back at the sound of his name, knowing that I had revealed too much. “I didn’t know him well.” My voice was unsteady. “He acted as my guide over the mountain.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “I don’t care what he told you, Genevieve. Strays can be incredibly manipulative. They’re known for taking advantage of people in the wild.” He pointed out over the horizon, to where the mountains touched the sky. “There’s a whole ring of them who trade women just like you. Any girl they can find.”

  I wiped the sweat from my forehead, remembering Fletcher, that truck, the metal bars that seared my skin. There was truth to what he said, but if it hadn’t been for the King none of us would’ve been on the run in the first place. There would’ve been nothing to escape from. “Is that any better than what you’ve done? What’s the alternative? Fill our heads with lies and send us off to some building to have children we’ll never see grow up, never get to hold or feed or love?”

  “I made choices,” he said, his face suddenly flushed. He glanced back at the building, looking at the soldiers stationed at the metal scopes. Then he resumed, his voice much lower than before. “You’ve seen only a fraction of this world, and yet you stand in judgment. I was the one who made the difficult decisions.” He pressed his finger to his chest. “You don’t understand, Genevieve. The Strays who live in the wild, even some people inside these walls, they speak about what I haven’t done. What I could’ve done, how dare I choose this or that for the people of The New America. But this world is not the same anymore. Riots broke out everywhere. The Northwest was threatened with floods. Hundreds of acres in the South went up in flames. Those who did survive the plague died when
the fires ripped through. They say they wanted choices—but there were no choices. I did what I had to do so people could survive.”

  He guided me to the edge of the platform, the wind whipping through our hair. “We discovered we could use the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead in the restoration. We had to protect ourselves from other recovering countries that might see us as vulnerable. We made the decision to rebuild here, using power from the dam.” He pointed beyond the main strip. “A hospital was restored within the first two years. A school, three office buildings, and enough housing for a hundred thousand people. The hotels were converted into apartments. The golf courses were turned into vegetable gardens, three factory farms went up the following year. People no longer have to worry about animal attacks or gang raids. If anyone wants to attack the City, they’ll have to trek through the desert for days, then get past the wall. And every day, improvements are being made. Charles Harris, our Head of Development, has been restoring restaurants and shops and museums, bringing all the life back to this country.”

  I stepped away from him. It didn’t matter how much good he’d done or how many buildings had risen from the dust. His men were the same men who’d hunted me.

  “We were able to restore an oil well and refinery.” He followed me, leaning down to look into my face. “Do you have any idea what that means?”

  “And who works at these refineries?” I shot back, thinking of Caleb and all the boys in the dugout. “Who did the construction on those hotels? You’ve been using slaves.”

  The King shook his head. “They’ve been given housing and food in exchange for their work. Do you think anyone would’ve taken those children into their homes? People could barely feed their own families. We’ve given them a purpose, a place in history. There’s no progress without sacrifice.”