The Surge Trilogy (Book 2): We, The Grateful Few

by P. S. Lurie

  “You’re right.” I love how Nathaniel worries about me. Then he asks another question, which confirms his care for me even further.

  “Have you taken your pill?”

  “Not yet.” I kiss him goodbye and watch as he leaves the apartment.

  “Don’t forget to take it,” he says on the way out. “I love you Selene.”

  “I love you too.”

  I pace the spacious kitchen and living room, before sitting at the end of the bed. My mind wants to think about the announcement but it keeps going back to the nightmare. I can’t shake it and I feel dizzy when I stand up so I go to the bathroom and grip the sink to steady myself, then stare at my reflection in the mirror. I guess I’m pretty because Nathaniel makes me feel that way but my eyes are heavy with bags and my cheeks are sunken. I’ve been housebound for months because I don’t trust myself not to collapse under a panic attack like before, and it has been so long since I have been outside that I hardly know who I am anymore.

  I pick up the bottle of pills with an unsteady hand, swallow one with some water and wait for it to take effect.

  Almost immediately my head turns numb and I feel settled. But the visual of the nightmare remains and, even though I no longer feel distressed by it, I picture the part that I’ve never told Nathaniel for fear of upsetting him. While I’m floating naked in the water, objects brush against me and then, as if I’m looking at myself from above, I realise there are dead bodies all around me.

  Ruskin

  We have mere morsels of food left from the last drop off but that is not an unusual circumstance; Jack and I learnt quickly that being supplied with meals, or clothes and bed sheets, wasn’t a given but a luxury that came every other few days, and just because there is now someone outside of our cell it doesn’t mean that our stomachs will be satiated today; even if it is a delivery, we’ll still go hungry. We learnt that spreading out our meals was more sensible than devouring everything at once. It’s not like the food is delicious either. Unidentifiable mush. No obvious taste of fish though. I don’t miss fish.

  The odd part of the food deliveries is that, although they are few and far between, and we are always hungry, our bodies haven’t suffered in the way they should have. We’re thinner but still have muscle and strength despite being in here twenty-four hours a day. We figured the food must be laced with something but that only leads to a more sinister question: what are they keeping us alive for?

  We weren’t initially in this cell since leaving the Middlelands. The first day Jason moved my parents and me to the Upperlands we were given a brand new apartment, furnished far beyond my wildest dreams. Jason had to leave a few hours later and my parents and I made ourselves comfortable, with hot showers, plump mattresses and a stocked refrigerator that kept packaged ingredients cool. There were electrical appliances all around us that would switch on at the flick of a button, no need to wait for a Surge to charge them. For a couple of hours none of us mentioned the injustice of what our lives had been because we were enjoying it too much.

  Had we remained in that apartment I wonder whether we would have thought about it at all. Jack’s story isn’t much different. A mother and an older brother, the three of them together until his brother headed out in the early afternoon, leaving the two of them together. Like me with my parents and Jason, Jack hasn’t seen his family since that night.

  I look at Jack who throws me a reassuring smile. We’ve never seen another face or heard another voice since we’ve been here but something about this time feels different. Possibly it’s because despite no cause for believing it, today being a year since being imprisoned makes me wonder if something different will happen.

  I hold my breath as the footsteps draw near, waiting to see if a tray slides under the door.

  Once, we tried to watch on through the open grate but all we saw were thick heavy boots, with no indication of who our delivery person was.

  Jack looks concerned, which makes me feel unsettled. He mouths something but I don’t work out what he’s saying and shake my head. It bothers me when Jack is distressed because he’s the calmer of the two of us and the more optimistic on the down days when I start to feel like giving up.

  He repeats himself but I don’t need to read his lips to know what he’s saying because I figure out in that moment what has caused him to be troubled: something we haven’t heard, not even once this year.

  Two sets of footsteps.

  Theia

  I hold my watch against the panel at the main doors to the barracks and it reads aloud my identification, the automatic voice decreeing my place in society to those around me. I mouth along, knowing the words off by heart, having changed only once in the past year. “Theia Silverdale. Status: Loyalty granted, Gratitude pending.”

  The door clicks and I am allowed to leave the barracks and hurry to my job, with no permission to stop anywhere else in between. Or rather, anywhere I stop will be logged and audited to determine what I was doing there. Being in the wrong place would suggest I was disloyal to society in the eyes of the Upperlanders. It’s a fairly simple process to them. Show my loyalty and show my gratitude and I could be promoted, which would mean being moved from the barracks and given an apartment of my own, just like Harriet achieved two months ago. It’s a smart move on the Upperlanders’ behalf to keep every Middlelander on the straight and narrow with the hope of being upgraded as well as the threat of being punished if they step out of line. Correction: it keeps mostly everyone in line, with the exception being me.

  There’s one very obvious reason why I don’t want to be promoted.

  Leda.

  The problem I face on a daily basis is that I am meant to show my loyalty and gratitude because I should want to get out of here and into a more comfortable lifestyle. But by not wishing to go I am suggesting ingratitude. It’s a fine line between showing my gratitude and keeping my head down. My pending status is what I rely on to keep me with Leda because I’m not sure how I could allow myself to be uprooted without her.

  I think of Melissa and Selma. Harriet was our fourth roommate from an area of the Middlelands I wasn’t familiar with but she was found to be worthy of promotion at an announcement two months ago and we haven’t seen or heard from her since. Considering Leda is still with me and I haven’t been found out to be disloyal I assume Harriet has kept our secret. I figure this is as much for her benefit as it is for ours.

  I shiver in my one layer as I brace the outside. From here, it’s a short walk through uninspiring tower blocks of barracks where we Middlelanders are then herded into the farthest station on the train line, which will take me into the heart of the city. The difference between living conditions is vast but what is similar is that the land is flat the whole way through. Where the Middlelands took form on sloping mountainside, the Upperlanders have levelled off the entire city so it is no higher in any one spot; even from the penthouse apartments, the Fence dominates the skyline. It’s all Fence and ship and sky.

  Although that’s not entirely true. I think about the panes of glass built into the Fence and wonder how high the water level is against it now. Ninety per cent? More? Fence, ship, sky and sea.

  The train swings a corner and travels alongside the Utopia. At this time of day, only Middlelanders with their statuses pending make their way to their jobs, along with police who monitor us. The officers wear uniforms akin to those on the night of the cull, complete with guns. We have our own basic outfits, distinguishing us from everyone else. Plain white clothes. A long-sleeved shirt and cotton trousers, washed through every other day.

  We are all quiet during the journey because no one has cause to chat, except for complaining, and that wouldn’t be gracious of us. Besides, trust is an issue when people are competing to prove their loyalty above one another.

  Through the silence, the onset of a dreaded noise overhead drags me against my will to one year back, spinning me uncontrollably headfirst into a blackout.

  Ruskin

  The f
ootsteps stop outside our door but the grate doesn’t lift up. Instead I hear a beep as the bolt in the door clicks open. It’s been so long since we were put in here and, because the conditions are basic in the cell, I’d forgotten we were locked inside electronically. An image enters my head from the morning we left the Middlelands: my father didn’t lock our own front door. Back then we used keys, but not on that morning.

  The door opens and I am left paralysed with fear on my bed as two men sporting uniforms I once saw walk in. They don’t wear helmets and, unsurprisingly, I don’t recognise them. I’d place them in their late twenties although their stern expressions age them.

  “Ruskin Peters,” one says.

  “That’s me,” says Jack. He stands up.

  “No,” I correct him.

  The guards look at one another. “Ruskin Peters.”

  Jack and I both answer, but I am louder. I glance at the corridor behind them but there is nothing of interest except for a few more doors in my sight. I wonder how many others of us have been incarcerated for unknown reasons and for this duration.

  “I’m Ruskin. What’s going on?”

  “Come with us. We can do this the hard way, or...” The man laughs and pulls out some handcuffs, which he places around my wrists.

  “Stop,” Jack says and dives for one of the guards but the man is taller, trained to fight and has no problem knocking Jack away. Jack stumbles and lands on his bed. He hasn’t been winded or he at least doesn’t show it. “Where are you taking him?”

  The guard pulls out a baton and hits Jack around the head so that he collapses on the floor unconscious.

  I watch on horrified, held back by the other guard, and then I can’t see anything as the world switches to pitch black. I feel the fabric wrap around my head and tightened with a knot at the back. And then I feel myself being marched out of the room.

  Selene

  I’m still picking out clothes for this morning’s trip to the arena, unsatisfied with any of them, unable to become excited by anything let alone fashion, when the doorbell buzzes.

  My nerves have been calmed by the medicine but I jolt at the noise and I’m a wreck once more. Nathaniel is usually here when the post is delivered and we try to arrange any other home deliveries for when he is not at work; his shifts as a policeman mean that we plan any activities around his being on and off duty. I stare towards the door and will myself to hold my breath in case the slightest sound reveals my presence.

  I should let the person leave. I think Nathaniel would probably not want me to answer it. Then I wonder if it is Nathaniel and he’s forgotten something.

  The buzzer goes off again.

  I tell myself I’m not the pathetic girl I’ve become recently and that I need to get my life back on track. I want to leave the apartment today and go to the announcement. If I can’t do this...

  I remember what Nathaniel says about deep breathing and, in conjunction with the pill working its way through my system, I am able to walk to the door and open it.

  A young woman stands behind the doorway. Reddish-brown cropped hair, freckles and gentle features. She’s a lot shorter than me and speaks before I’ve opened the door fully.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, I was wondering if...” she starts, but when she takes in my face she trails off.

  “Can I help you?” My gruff voice comes out shaky and I realise that I am not ready for an encounter with one person let alone the whole population at the arena.

  “I was looking for someone.”

  “It’s just me and my boyfriend. He’s in the shower,” I lie, as I don’t want her to think I’m alone.

  “I’m sorry to bother you.” She studies my face. “It’s just that you look familiar. I think I know your mother.”

  “My whole family died when I was younger. Sorry but I can’t help you.” I close the door, without waiting for anything more from her. This is the oddest thing to happen to me, but in truth the only thing that’s happened because I have been housebound for literally as long as I can remember. I decide answering the door was a mistake and that I should forget about it.

  I make my way to the kitchen and pour myself some camomile tea, which scalds my tongue instead of calming my nerves. I try to focus on the announcement and tell myself that the woman was just confused, but the way she looked at me makes my spine shiver.

  Nathaniel was right: there are strange people out there and I’m safer in here where he can help me get back on my feet. It’s not just the medication that I need but Nathaniel too. I pray for him to hurry back.

  Theia

  The helicopter whirrs overhead and day turns to night. Against my best wishes, the people, the train, the sun all disappear and my garden fills the void in my head.

  Only this time I watch on from a different vantage point, by the back door, as the fifteen year old version of me rubs her sprained ankle behind the tree and stays put. She looks scared and understandably so. But she’s weak and doesn’t move. A bullet pierces the grass. I turn to the house before she does because I know what happens next.

  I meet my mother in the doorway, the gunshots spraying all around us, as younger Theia continues to watch on passively.

  “Don’t go out there,” I say to my mother.

  “It’s too late Theia.”

  I look down and see the bullet holes that already line her body. I shake my head in confusion. “No. You don’t have to. It’s my fault.”

  “I’m proving my love to you.” It’s unfair because when do I get to prove my love to her if she dies for me? Then I realise there’s something more than that: she chose to die, proving her love for me only after I accused her of betraying us.

  In this version, my mother holds the walkie-talkie, which I know is still locked in the bathroom cabinet. Over the helicopter I hear his voice. “Penny?”

  Doctor Adam Jefferson, the man she is having an affair with, is still alive. My mother chose me over him.

  “Please,” I say to her.

  “Your father and I told you to be Rehoused. Ronan isn’t strong enough.”

  “I took Ronan with me,” I admit.

  She looks around, then back at me, disappointment an understatement. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. I lost him.”

  Then she says the words I dread but always hear. “That’s not good enough. He’s your responsibility now.” Without any warning she pushes past me and into the garden, where she locks eyes with the other, younger Theia and assumes her death position.

  My temporary lapse fades away but I am neither in the past or present. The image of my mother about to die remains fixed in place, with her words swimming in my head. “That’s not good enough. He’s your responsibility now.” All I can think is that she’s right and everything that has gone wrong is my entire fault. I should have worked out a different way to save Ronan and Leda.

  The garden disappears but I have lost sense of space and time until I find myself in an apartment block, twelve floors up, having checked into the building and ridden an elevator, and I am now standing in front of my boss’s door. I figure that about fifteen minutes have passed. Fifteen absent-minded minutes, in which I lost myself. I feel relieved that I’ve never done anything disloyal or ungrateful during these periods. I’ve kept a mental diary for these blackouts that are occurring roughly every three days, although the nightmares have increased as it’s built up to today’s anniversary.

  The monthly announcement was a bad enough reminder of the past but the Upperlanders have promised today’s news will be life-changing. I remember what that meant for us one year ago and my body shudders at the thought of what they have in store for us this time around.

  Ruskin

  I’m marched blind through echoing corridors and then I hear a series of buzzers as mechanical doors unlock and finally a blast of cold air hits my face. The cell I’ve lived in for exactly a year has no protection from the freezing conditions outside but I acclimatised and at least sheets were provided
for the beds. Jack and I considered this often; the minimal, sustenance-laden food and warmth were enough to keep us alive. For what end, that was the question but we asked this less as time went on and any hope of being released diminished. Now I’m not sure leaving the prison is a good thing. Especially not without Jack.

  I’m pushed along and stumble forwards, unaware of where I’m going or of any obstacles in my way, when one of the officers grabs me and forces me to stand still. A heavy buzz nears from overhead until it is deafening and I can no longer hear anything but the noise of an engine. A blast of air perpetually hits my face. The guard pushes my head down and nudges me forward then directs my legs up two rungs and into a deafening compartment.

  I slide along a seat and after a moment I feel my world become less stable. My stomach leaves my body as we rise into the air. I must be in a helicopter; I’ve seen glimpses of them from time to time through Jack’s and my barred window. My instinct is to steady myself but my hands are tied so I tense my body and hope I’m safe for the time being.

  The helicopter rises then dips at the nose and I assume we are moving forward as well as just up.

  After some time I feel it steady and then begin its descent. I let myself become still as the blades die down, then I’m navigated with my head lowered back out of the helicopter and I’m once more marched ahead. I have no idea where I am except for a single clue that, until I am inside a building, the air is thinner so I assume I am at a higher altitude.

  I walk for what feels like hours, turning all different ways so that even without a blindfold I would be disoriented and wouldn’t know my way out of wherever I am. This route tells me that the amount of space the Upperlanders had all along was vast; whilst the Lowerlands vanished and the Middlelands were flooding there was plenty of space to Rehouse us all. I wonder after this past year if the Middlelands exists at all or if the sea has consumed it. If the water did reach the Fence, how high up has it reached?