by Karen Healey
“We do not often see strangers,” Rachel told me. “Were you ill?”
I blinked at her, then rubbed my head. “Oh, my hair? No, the doctors took it off when they began the revival—well, I guess I was ill, sort of. You know about me, right?”
She nodded. “The Father told us. You are the one brought back to life against God’s will.”
“The Father’s pretty confident about speaking for God,” I said grimly.
“Of course,” she said, looking faintly shocked.
“Where is he, anyway? I thought he’d have come to tell me to shoot myself by now.”
“He is out among the unbelievers, doing God’s work,” she said, and pointed to one of the middle beds. “You may sleep there. I will be on the bottom, and Sharron sleeps on the top.”
“I’m not really sleepy,” I said. “I slept all day, after the drugs you people gave me.”
“This is when we sleep,” she said. I just couldn’t get a rise out of her.
The other girls were climbing into bed, still whispering to one another. The dark-haired girl who had hidden her face from me in the big hall climbed up to the top bunk, still averting her eyes. Sharron, I presumed.
“But I’m not tired,” I said.
“Then you will probably stay awake,” Rachel said. “Perhaps you should pray.”
The weird thing is, she wasn’t being mean. She said that as if I was being given a really great opportunity. She smiled at me and slid into the bottom bunk, closing the curtains.
I stood there, holding the nightie, wondering if it was some sort of subtle trap. Putting a girl above and below me was their version of security protocols? I could be out of there whenever I wanted.
But where would I go? I was a city girl. I had no idea how to go about surviving in the bush. There were tiger snakes in Tasmania, and I didn’t fancy death by neurotoxin. There were bushfires, and treacherous terrain. I had nothing to eat, and only a limited notion of how to find safe food in the bush. I doubted if I could get to the boats, and even if I could, I wasn’t going to try my luck at sea.
They didn’t need to chain me to the wall. The whole island was a prison.
Also, I had to take Abdi with me, and I had no idea where he was.
Well, that would be my first mission the next day, then. Find Abdi. Gather supplies. Make a plan.
The lights went out. Apparently, they were really serious about the sleeping-time business. I groped my way up the ladder and got changed by feel.
I lay awake in the dark for a long time.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Ballad of John and Yoko
Morning was a shock.
“You have to get up,” Rachel said in my ear, and I swam back to the surface of sleep. I had the fuzzy feeling that this wasn’t the first time she’d tried to wake me.
“Too early,” I said, and curled into the sheets. The next time her hand came to shake my shoulder, I snarled at her—lips pulled back to display my teeth, narrowed eyes, hissing, the whole shebang. I got a brief glimpse of her shocked face, and Sharron behind her, looking more impressed than scared. Then I was back in the black depths.
What eventually woke me was water, cold and poured on the back of my neck. My eyes popped open as I jerked upright, hit my head on the bunk above, and swore.
There was a collection of gasps from the girls gathered around me.
I glared at them all. “What time is it?” From the pale light, I had an awful feeling.
“Dawn,” Rachel said, confirming my suspicions. “We must prepare breakfast.”
My immediate response was to tell her to go screw herself. I didn’t fancy my captors getting free work out of me—passive resistance was much more my style. Even the army hadn’t made me do chores.
But the army had wanted me alive. These people would probably be thrilled if I starved myself to death.
Kitchens meant access to food. Food meant enabling our escape. And I might see Abdi at breakfast.
“Are you coming, or do I have to fetch Mrs. McClung?” Rachel asked. Her voice was even, but I recognized a threat when I heard it.
“I’m coming,” I said, and climbed out of bed. I followed Rachel to the bathroom section at the back of the dormitory. There was a proper shower, thank goodness. I washed fast and rubbed vigorously at my hair with a well-worn towel. My clothes had been replaced with jeans and a long, baggy T-shirt, as well as a cotton hat with a wide brim. And sturdy, rubber-soled sandals to replace the too-big sneakers I’d borrowed from Joph.
My feet were grateful, even if the rest of me was dubious.
Rachel waited for me. “Before we go to the kitchen, I will guide you around our home,” she said. “You will see our way of life is righteous, and it may encourage you to embrace God’s truth.”
I was pretty sure that it was going to take more than cow patties and communal living to make me kill myself, but she was offering me a perfect opportunity to scope things out. And indeed, Rachel showed me nearly everything: the school, the boys’ dormitory, the houses where married couples and small children lived, the place for the elderly, the chicken run, and the Father’s office. I wasn’t allowed to go in, of course, and when I suggested a stroll by the dock, she shook her head. “That is not permitted.”
“Where’s the church?” I asked. We were making our way down from the school, which was high on a slope.
“The whole world is our church,” Rachel said. “God is with us always.”
“Huh. Seriously, no computers?”
“They are filled with the wickedness of the outside.”
“Or, it’s hard to keep your brainwashed, isolated kids both brainwashed and isolated if they have access to entertainment in the real world.”
Rachel laughed. “This world is very real, and we don’t lack entertainment. We play soccer. We play music. And there are handcrafts and games.” She smiled, shy and secret and beautiful. “I like chess,” she confessed. “Do you play?”
“Music, not chess,” I said. “Why do you care? You want me dead.”
Her eyes widened as if she’d forgotten that for a moment, and then she continued the tour without any more personal talk. Me and my big mouth. I might have made the first steps toward making her an ally if I’d been able to keep silent. After that, it was all, “This is where we wash clothes” and “This is where we grow vegetables.” The last stop was the milking sheds, or rather, the bunker underneath the concrete slab floor. “This is where we shelter during bad storms,” she said.
I eyed the cramped quarters, with camp beds stacked up on one side and cans of food on the other. “Cozy.”
“The children do not enjoy their time here,” she said. “But it keeps us safe.”
“Safety is important,” I agreed. I sympathized with the kids. Spending a day in there waiting for the weather to clear would not be fun times.
We went back into the fresh air—well, as fresh as you get near milking sheds. The boys were just sending the cows out again.
Abdi was with them, right in front of me.
We stared at each other for a split second, and then my arms went around him without me even willing it. He was squeezing me just as tight. I might have been shaking a little bit—it was only when I saw him that I’d let myself think about all the things I’d been worried about.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” he said in my ear.
“Me too,” I told him. “Can you sail?”
“Yes. Can you get us food and water?”
“Maybe. Tonight?”
“Tonight.”
That was all we had time for before Rachel tapped my back. “That is not appropriate,” she said firmly. I squeezed again and let him go. He was more muscular than I’d thought. The flowing fashions of the future really obscure a lot of body detail. He looked different in jeans.
I helped the girls serve breakfast—toast and bacon and scrambled eggs. Real bacon, too. The soy stuff just doesn’t taste the same—sorry if that shocks you.
>
“You have pigs?” I asked Rachel. I hadn’t smelled them.
“We trade with others.”
Mrs. McClung handed me an overflowing plate when service was done. “Eat.”
“Can I help cook lunch?” I asked.
Her eyebrow popped. “Yes.”
Great, I could try to grab some food for our escape. I went with Rachel into the big mess hall just as the boys came in from the milking. She sat beside me and ate with a neat efficiency I tried to copy. Something about the bacon started to disagree with my stomach about halfway through breakfast, and I remembered that going from a vegetarian diet to one with meat could mess with your digestion. I found out later that Abdi had passed an uncomfortable night after that beef stew. He stuck to toast and butter that morning, but I wasn’t that smart. I moved to the eggs instead, but since they’d been cooked in the bacon grease, it wasn’t much better.
After breakfast, everyone stood up, and a man in a linen robe led them in prayer. Abdi and I stayed sitting, which either was the right thing to do or no one cared. Then Rachel beckoned to me.
“We have school now,” she said. “But you’re to study scripture and consider God’s will for you.”
“That sounds very exciting,” I said.
“It probably won’t be,” she said, looking puzzled. I wasn’t sure she had much of a sense of sarcasm.
Abdi and I followed Rachel up the hill to the school. Conrad was waiting in a small room. There were a couple of desks there, with a Bible and a notebook and a real ink pen on each one. That they were putting us together was the first good surprise. The second was that the school also had a real bathroom, with a toilet that flushed. That was such a pleasure that it almost made up for my upset stomach.
We spent the rest of the morning in that classroom—except for the periods I spent in the bathroom, really regretting the bacon. We couldn’t talk much, because one of the adults was always with us, but they didn’t seem to care if we were really studying scripture. We scribbled notes to each other and managed to work out a time and a place to meet that night, and Abdi confirmed that the boys’ dormitory had the same security precautions as the girls’ (as in, none at all).
After that, Abdi put his head down on the desk and went to sleep. He looked much, much younger with his face relaxed from that blank expression he wore in public. I actually did read some of the Bible, flicking through for bits I remembered, in case I needed to support an argument later. They probably wanted me to realize that I was an abomination, since raising the dead was strictly up to God, but instead I was reassured that I was loved and treasured.
Then I napped a bit, too. I woke up quite suddenly at one point, drool pasting my cheek to the desk, and caught Abdi looking at me with an odd expression, as if he was making some complex calculation that involved me. It annoyed me because I thought he’d already worked out we had to get along if we could, and I couldn’t think what other calculations he had to make.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing,” he told me. “Go back to sleep.”
Well, I wasn’t responsible for whatever weird things he was thinking. I turned ostentatiously onto the other side of my face.
When it was time to prepare lunch, Rachel came for me. I spent a long time peeling vegetables and stirring stock and incidentally listening to a lot of gossip. When the soup was simmering, Mrs. McClung put her big fists on her hips and looked me over.
“It’s good to see you embracing God’s role for you,” she said, but her tone said I’m watching you, missy. She hadn’t let me anywhere near the knives, even when I’d offered to chop the onions, but I’d managed to stuff two ends of bread and a couple of unpeeled carrots into my pockets, covered by the long T-shirt.
“God’s role for me is treating others as I would like to be treated and not judging others lest I be judged,” I said, looking as humble as I could, which wasn’t very.
She looked suspicious, but she couldn’t exactly argue with scripture. I waited until her attention was diverted. Then I told Rachel I needed to use the bathroom and went back to the girls’ dormitory to do it, hiding the food in my pillowcase.
That mattress was so soft. I lay down for a few minutes and woke up when I heard shouting outside.
It was late afternoon, the sun about three-quarters of the way through the sky, and I had very obviously missed lunch.
The older boys were playing soccer, shirts versus skins, using their sun hats weighed down with rocks to mark the goals. A few of the girls were clustered on the sidelines. At first I thought they were watching in admiration, and then I saw Sharron bouncing a ball from knee to knee and realized that they were waiting for their turn.
“I looked for you,” she said. “Mrs. McClung said to let you sleep.”
“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.” She nodded, and turned her attention back to the ball.
Abdi was playing on the skins team.
He really was much more muscular than I’d thought. His biceps were nothing to scoff at, and the hard, lean planes of his stomach made something bounce around a little in mine.
His team wasn’t doing very well. The goalie let two through in short succession, and he was replaced by an older boy with better hands. He was a better strategist, too; he called the players into a huddle around the goal and then sent them on their way. There was some complicated passing, and then a knot of boys opened to reveal one in its midst, one foot poised on the ball. The shirts team pounded toward him, but he took his time, gauged the distance, and kicked.
The ball flew true between the other team’s sun hats. Abdi joined in the cheering of his teammates.
I cheered, too, and at the sound of my voice, he turned to me.
He was smiling, bright and triumphant. Not that little curled-up wary smile, but a full grin that made his eyes crinkle and dimples crease in his cheeks.
At the sight of that smile, I felt something click in my head.
Do that again, I thought.
And okay, you’ve been watching me talk about this all along and you’ve been going, When exactly is Tegan going to realize she really likes Abdi Taalib? Honestly, I’m not even sure it was then. I might have worked it out on some level when I shot Zaneisha to save him, or when he sang to me in the boat. But when he smiled at me and his whole face lit up with joy, that was the point I couldn’t ignore that I was head over heels for him.
I wanted him to smile again. I wanted him to smile always.
And then I thought, Oh no.
Because even if, by some extraordinary chance, he liked me back, it was pretty much the worst timing in the world.
So I went back to the kitchen to help Mrs. McClung with dinner. She told me off for missing lunch and made me eat a sandwich, then, apparently appeased by my apologies, put me to work slicing vegetables. I stole more carrots and a small, sharp knife, and thought about Abdi the whole evening.
Before dinner, everyone watched a DVD in the mess hall.
The movie was Lilo & Stitch, which is a movie about an alien who finds a family in Hawaii. Apparently, part of the Disney revival a few years ago was that some people really got into vintage methods of consumption, like DVDs, and the Inheritors of the Earth grabbed as many of them as they could during this period. Without computers, their choices for entertainment were kind of limited.
Abdi’s face during the whole thing was amazing, by the way. He says that when the French soldiers were pushed out of Djibouti, they left a lot of stuff behind. So some people in Djibouti still have DVD players and he’d seen DVDs for sale in the central market, but he’d never actually watched one.
I slipped out of the hall before the ending, where the alien talks about how he’s found his little, broken, good family, and stood in the evening air, watching the moon rise over the sea. Abdi came out after a few minutes. I felt his presence prickle along my skin, and I tried to look normal as I turned around.
“Hi,” he said. He was shivering. “Aren’t you cold?”
“No
.”
“It’s freezing.” He started rubbing his arms. He wasn’t faking it; he had goose bumps.
“It’s got to be seventy, seventy-two degrees.”
He smiled, looking a little wistful. “In Djibouti City, it’s over ninety every day. Melbourne summer is like Djibouti winter.”
“Wow. That’s really hot,” I said. Were we honestly talking about the weather? “Listen. If you get a chance to escape without me, you should take it.”
He nodded. “You too.”
“I can’t sail,” I said. “If it comes right down to it, it has to be you.”
He gazed down at me, and I thought he was going to say something else. I couldn’t stop watching his mouth.
“It is a nice evening, God be praised,” Rachel said behind us.
Abdi let out a noise that might have been a groan.
“It’s okay,” I said, and seized the opportunity to test something I’d been curious about. “Hey, Rachel, you believe in the sanctity of life, right?”
“Of course.”
“So what would you think, hypothetically, if someone were killing lots of children?”
Rachel looked shocked. “I would think they were a very wicked person, far from God’s grace.”
“You’d want to stop them from killing more children?” I pressed.
Abdi didn’t say anything, but his face was very expressive on the subject of me shutting the hell up right away. I ignored him and focused on the Inheritor girl.
“Well, if I could,” Rachel said cautiously. “Aiding the weak is an act of charity, but ultimate judgment lies in God’s hands.”
“And if you couldn’t stop them yourself, you’d want to make sure other people who could were in a position to know about the murders?” Abdi made an abrupt motion, which I evaded by stepping away.
“I suppose so. I don’t understand, Tegan. Why are you asking these questions?” She obviously didn’t have a clue about the Ark Project. It was probably only the higher-ups who knew. The man who had died, and maybe Joseph and Conrad. Definitely the Father would know. I was itching to have a serious talk with that guy.