by Joe Hart
She hasn’t looked back yet and knows if she were to, she might be transfixed by the sight—unable to do anything but absorb the promise of death.
A ditch appears before her and she clutches the wailing baby tight before plunging into it and up the other side.
Her feet hit cracked pavement, one of them bare, the thin slipper lost sometime since leaving the house where the tunnel ended. The sound of battle is still near enough for her to flinch each time a gun goes off, the reports coming slower now, in small bursts with punctuations of silence between them.
She catches sight of movement ahead as the shape of a man moves toward her. Even as she changes course to avoid him he’s falling to the ground, his head partially disintegrating.
Ian.
No, the shot came from the wrong direction. It came from the ARC.
She has no time to reckon it as another explosion rips through the morning air, followed by the screeching of metal.
Everything is chaos. Everything fury and horror.
Except for the weight she carries in her arms.
With a burst of speed, she rounds a corner in the small street and sees her path ends near a dilapidated house, the bank of the river narrow below the sheer cliffs to the left. Without pause she plunges onward, feet leaving the roadway and sliding through dirt and detritus. Several large rocks present themselves, and she scrambles onto and over them, leaping to a sloping grade that runs parallel beneath the bluffs.
As she sprints across a patch of loose sediment, the ground does a strange jerk, the sheer face of rock beside her seeming to lunge out to nudge her shoulder.
Zoey’s feet slip, mind crying out that she’s going to fall.
The river looms, wide and strong, waiting to swallow her and the baby whole if she topples that way.
Her shin and knees connect with the ground, skin peeling away as she tries to shield her daughter.
They land in a skid of dust, small rocks burying themselves in her left arm. A roaring fills her ears and for a moment she thinks she’s fallen so hard her hearing has been disrupted. There is only static around her, the baby’s cries forlorn and distant.
A dozen areas on her body throbbing in time with her heart, Zoey sits up and looks back the way she came, and for a split second she doesn’t understand what she’s seeing.
The center of the dam is gone.
In its place is a raging torrent of water the color of the clouds above.
The water pours past the concrete, ripping gigantic chunks of the dam with it, discarding them like a child throwing toys, into the river hundreds of feet below.
There is an immense cracking that she can feel in her teeth, and the entire left section of the structure folds over, disappearing with a rending blast of liquid that rushes into the riverbed and slams into the side of the ARC.
A wall of water shoots straight up into the sky. It rises higher and higher until she’s sure it’s going to brush some of the clouds, expanding outward all the time. For a brief moment its shape becomes that of a massive hand, fingers extending, palm flat against the ARC, then it blasts over the walls, covering the facility completely.
Zoey shoves herself up, a cold terror filling her like the water will do if it catches them. She spins away but not before seeing the ARC—her home, her prison—crumble inward and begin to roll beneath the pressure of the deluge.
Higher ground. It’s their only chance.
How many seconds until it reaches them? How much time does she have left with the tiny bundle of warmth against her chest? Five seconds? Ten?
Her legs burn along with her lungs, fear an acidic fuel in her veins.
The static rush of water builds behind them until it is something alive, a frenzied scream of all the voices she’s ever silenced. They are in the wall of water blazing toward her, frantic to clutch her and the baby and wash them away as if they never were.
An outcropping of rock extends into their path, nearly blocking the way completely, and she can’t see what’s beyond it. There might be nothing but empty air and the chilling shock of falling, but she doesn’t hesitate.
Zoey slows enough to grasp a handhold in the stone and swing their combined weight out and over a drop she doesn’t look at, before leaping forward.
The ground is there.
The solidity of it is like a lover’s embrace. And what’s beyond makes her heart surge.
A cut in the land extends up through the towering hills in a wide swath.
She runs upward, several steps giving way in soft runoff from the last rain before she gains traction. A blast of air rips past her and she knows the water is there. If she were to look back it would be reaching for her, perhaps with another hand like the one that destroyed the ARC.
Up.
Up.
Up.
Step after step she gains altitude, climbing until her legs give out and she crawls, one arm holding her daughter, the other grasping for purchase and pulling.
Something cold and wet touches her feet.
Zoey cries out. She can’t help it. The sudden caress of the water electrifies her nerves, snapping her muscles tight. A wave cascades to her right, up the steeper wall of the cut, and rolls back on itself, coming toward them.
Zoey lunges left, shoving off a larger rock. She’s gaining ground, but the wave is ahead of her. There’s no outrunning it.
She has half a breath to grab the boulder ahead of her before the water slams into them.
It hits them like a cold punch, rocking her back and away from the stone.
Her fingers hold, allowing the briefest hope to fill her before they give way.
She and the baby tumble sideways, tossed toward the opposite wall of the cut.
The ground takes hungry bites from her and she can feel her clothes tearing along with her skin. Her daughter’s screams are cut off as the cold liquid closes over them.
Zoey’s ears fill with the water’s language. It is a hollow clunking that sounds like hideous low laughter. It is in her nose, her mouth, embracing her completely.
Something solid strikes her in the lower back, sending a lightning bolt of pain through her spine and legs, but her arm automatically lashes out, hand searching, scrabbling.
Her fingers close on an object too large to grasp and they slip. A sharp edge tears her fingers, and now her lungs are bellowing for air. She will have to breathe soon, and then it will all be over. Forever darkness for both of them.
Her torn fingers latch onto a handhold.
The water tries to jerk her away but she grips harder, opening her mouth and drawing in a breath because the urge is overwhelming. Her mind screams to stop but her body plows forward, the need for oxygen too great.
Water courses into her open mouth, down into her lungs.
Immediately she gags, vomiting while trying to inhale again.
She sucks in air.
It is polluted with water and her own bile, but she breathes it in. Glorious oxygen. Black motes swim around her and it takes another five seconds for everything to come into focus.
They lie against the angle of a long, flat stone, the tip of it still clutched tightly in her hand. Blood flows outward from where she holds it and it takes a long second of concentration to get herself to let go. She coughs, heaving up another watery mouthful. Spluttering she rolls to her back, looking down the way they came.
The river is there.
A dozen feet away it swirls and rolls against the cut’s boundaries but rises no higher. The entire river valley is full up to the point at which they lie. Her mind struggles with the sight, the amount of water mind-numbing and mesmerizing at the same time. Many things float in the current as it washes by: trees, pieces of house, and bodies. Many bodies. Some people are still alive; they bob and thrash as they coast past, unable to fight the pull of water, their screams nightmarishly distorted against the rock and water. She looks away, a creeping sensation flowing outward from her middle.
They are safe, but something is wrong. And that’s whe
n the realization hits her.
Her daughter isn’t crying anymore.
Zoey pulls the baby away from her chest.
The girl’s eyes are closed, her lips a soft blue. Water leaks from the corner of her mouth and she is pale as starlight.
“No!” Zoey yells, her voice jagged, not her own. She cradles the baby, giving her a gentle shake. Nothing. An animalistic sound comes from inside her, driven upward by panic the likes of which she’s never felt before.
Pivoting on the rock, she lays her daughter down, peeling away the sodden blankets to expose her small body. She is dressed in a tiny one-piece, her legs and arms bare and limp. Zoey picks her back up, unable to concentrate on what to do.
Get the water out.
It is like someone has spoken directly into her mind. She shifts the little girl facedown on the inside of her arm and pats her back.
Nothing.
She pats harder, the tiny body shivering slightly each time.
A stream of water runs out over her arm.
“There, there, there,” Zoey says, the words a mantra. “Please, please, breathe. You have to breathe.” She’s crying now, eyes clouded with tears even as she goes into another coughing fit. She turns the baby over again.
The girl’s mouth is open, water draining from both nostrils, but still no movement. Still no breath.
“Oh please, please, please, please.” Zoey reverses her daughter again, resuming the patting on her back.
Time elongates, bloating around them.
It is seconds or minutes or hours before she finally turns her over again. The girl’s skin is colorless, almost translucent. She can see the delicate veins beneath her skin, their blue lines like minuscule script, but it tells a story of only sorrow.
Her daughter is gone.
Zoey leans back, holding her to her chest, sobbing silently.
She thought she had known grief and anguish, but she was wrong. There is nothing like the void left by a life unlived, all the vacant years compounding at once into an unbearable weight.
Zoey sags beneath it. She must break; there can’t be anything after this. She shudders, holding her daughter tighter. The rock digs into her back, unyielding, unkind. But that is the world now; it’s what it’s always been. If the smallest, most innocent life isn’t allowed to live then the truth of the world is only the hardness of stone, the cold clutch of indifferent water, and gunmetal sky presiding over it all.
She feels her heart struggling free of her chest. There is no surprise, only acceptance. If this is the place and the time, so be it.
Fresh wetness soaks into her shirt, coating her skin.
Her heart struggles harder.
She freezes.
The movement she’s feeling isn’t on the inside of her chest. It’s on the outside.
With a strangled cry her daughter coughs, spewing even more water as Zoey sits straight up, rigid with hope and disbelief. A long wheezing breath in then another explosive shriek, her arms and legs jerking about.
Zoey lets out a choking noise that is half sob, half laugh as she cradles the crying girl in her arms. “You’re okay! You’re okay. I’ve got you, I’ve got you.” She rocks back and forth, distilled joy coursing through her. “You’re all right.” She laughs again, gazing down at her daughter’s reddening features, the color coming back like the sun after a long storm.
Below, the water continues to gurgle and eddy, flotsam rising and colliding with the valley’s walls before slipping beneath the surface again. What could’ve been part of a boat floats past and is gone as something white and glistening is whirled closer up into the cut, refracting the gray morning light.
Zoey watches the white induction gown float by like a ghost, its sequins shining wetly. The dress swirls once in a circle, as if the water is dancing within it, before it is towed away around the corner of rock.
She’s so entranced by the dress’s appearance she doesn’t notice the clack of rock above her daughter’s cries until a hand falls on her shoulder.
Zoey lets out a short scream, twisting in place.
Merrill gazes down at her, eyes shining, open wonder on his face. “Zoey,” is all he manages before she is on her feet and in his arms. He holds her, the baby squirming between them. She leans into his warmth, more tears leaking from her eyes before he lets her go.
“How did you find us?” she says, noticing Tia and Newton approaching down the cut behind him.
“We were in the town beside the dam and circled up into the lowest hill before it broke. We heard the baby right before the water came through, and we spotted you as you went around the bend. We ran in the same direction and lost track of you until I heard the baby crying again.”
Tia steps up to her, dragging her into a rough embrace. The older woman kisses the side of her head. “Damn you, girl. This is the very last time I let you out of my sight. I mean it.”
Zoey laughs as Newton approaches, putting a hand on her shoulder. “O-o-okay?” he asks.
“We’re okay.”
And all at once it is like they realize what she’s holding. “Whose? I mean, where?” Merrill says, gazing at the baby.
“I’ll explain,” Zoey says, exhaustion a physical force trying to drag her down. “But can we please get away from the water first?”
60
The baby is asleep by the time they climb to the plateau where the house sits.
They fashioned a sling from Merrill’s shirt to hang around Zoey’s neck and shoulder, and after only a few minutes of hiking, the girl was nestled in and quiet. At first her silence frightened Zoey, and she continued to check her breathing every few steps, but after a time she relaxed, content with the child’s weight and warmth against her as she and the others climbed free of the cut and began to traverse the road leading toward the outcropping of hills and the lone structure atop the closest one.
Zoey moves past the ASV and slows as the front door opens revealing Lee, who looks like a statue for a split second before he’s rushing down the steps and racing to her.
Then his arms are wrapped around her, his breath warm on her face and ear.
“How? How did you—?”
The baby shifts between them and Lee takes a small step back, eyes wide as he peers into the sling. When he raises his gaze to hers, she can’t help the smile that forms on her face.
“This is your daughter. Your other daughter.” And there is no question now, no doubt as before. She knows in her heart that it’s the truth.
“I don’t understand.”
“They fertilized two eggs, not one.” Now the others are gathering around her, their embraces continuous. Tears, joy, laughter—it all coalesces until her throat closes with happiness. The questions are a barrage, their voices mingling until she can’t separate a single word, but she doesn’t need to. There will be time to answer all of them, time to come to terms with what happened in the ARC, with what she learned.
“How about a proper introduction,” Chelsea says, holding out a bundle of blankets. Zoey grins and removes the sling from her shoulder, gently handing the sleeping girl to Lee while she accepts her other daughter. “I think you both lucked out, she’s a really good baby.”
Unlike her sister, the girl is awake, eyes shining and searching as if they are sponges and she’s soaking up the world through them. “Hello,” Zoey whispers, bringing her face down closer to the child’s. “Hello there.” The baby focuses on her, blinking quickly before making a soft gurgle in her throat that almost sounds like a laugh. When she glances up at Lee, he is crying. He shrugs as if to say, well, here we are, and it is like a vise has been unclamped from inside her.
“What could you see from up here?” Merrill asks Ian, who cradles his rifle on one arm.
“Everything. It was catastrophic. The ARC is gone along with the town. Most of the army was washed away and those higher up on shore scattered.”
Zoey watches as Chelsea holds out her arms, waving emphatically for Lee to let her hold the other
baby. He pretends to deny her before transferring the girl over as Sherell and Nell huddle around her with Rita taking furtive peeks over their shoulders. A cool wind coasts through the flooded valley, raking the dead bramble and grass with its touch. Zoey shivers, hugging the baby tighter to her. Who would have thought it would end in the same place it began? But the symmetry feels right somehow, as if she’s been not on a straight path, but a circle. And now with one of her children in her arms, watching the man she loves beside the family she’s found, the circle has finally closed.
She’s about to suggest that they move inside the house out of the weather when movement catches her attention over Lee’s shoulder.
Hiraku stalks toward them with unhurried steps, gun outstretched in one hand, his other clutching what looks like a tattered piece of paper.
Zoey opens her mouth to cry out a warning, but Tia has spotted him as well and is trying to raise her rifle.
“Don’t,” Hiraku says, and the entire group spins to face him. He stops several yards away, the drop of the gorge at his back. His dark hair flutters in the wind and his eyes are dead calm. “I would suggest none of you make any sudden movements.”
Behind her Zoey hears the distinct click of Ian’s rifle’s safety.
Hiraku studies each of them. They’ve formed a half circle with Zoey at the back. Lee stands before her, arms away from his sides as if preparing to lunge forward.
“Do you understand what you’ve done?” he asks, his voice low, and it is his composure that scares Zoey the most. “Years and years of planning. Lives lost, traded for the promise of something better. And now it’s all gone.” He aims the pistol toward Merrill who has edged around to the far end of the group. “Would you like to be the first to die?”
Merrill stares at him, hand resting lightly on his slung rifle. “It’s over. Your men are gone. There’s no need to do this. We just want to leave.”
Hiraku blinks. “Leave? My life has been full of leaving. She left me. So did Shirou, and there was nothing I could do about it.”
Zoey notices Ian moving closer to her right, his sniper rifle pointed low.
Merrill takes a step forward, hands held out before Hiraku. “I’m sorry for what you lost. We’ve all lost someone. Please. Put the gun down.”