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

by P. S. Lurie

  “I’ll take it off.” I step off the pedestal and turn to the dressing room.

  Nathaniel takes my arms and swivels me towards him. He kisses me and I feel his stubble on my face. His tongue brushes my lips but they remain closed and he doesn’t seem to notice. “You look great in the dress. Besides, your hair will be ruined if you start messing around with slipping it on and off. Why don’t you just wear it until we wed?”

  It’s not a question but an order, and he hands me my coat, which I put over the dress, thinking that this day couldn’t possibly get any more horrendous but then I glance at the light, untainted hue of the wedding dress and remember Charlie’s blood-stained fur.

  I imagine how this dress will look spattered with Nathaniel’s blood.

  Ruskin

  I want to scream Jack’s name over the static in case he can hear me but then what? Even if he answers it’s not like I can do anything to be with him. I am trapped in here with no chance to leave. I have no idea what to do and, although I have been through plenty of abhorrent experiences today, this is the first time I have hit a dead end. I push on the watch that has been clasped over my arm and the time lights up. It is almost eleven, not even close to midday and yet so much has happened.

  I woke up with Jack, celebrated the two of us surviving for a year, watched him be attacked and possibly killed, then taken in a helicopter and reunited with my parents, saw how the Upperlanders lived, learnt Jason died protecting someone, accepted that my parents had to die for me to live, had a panic attack in a field, watched as my parents were killed in front of crowds of cheering onlookers, found out that Theia is alive but I am unsure about Henry, and finally I was taken back to prison. It’s all too much to comprehend and now I find myself in an even worse position than before, which I didn’t think was possible.

  To top it all off, I am trapped in a cell with a dead body.

  Then a thought enters my head, which is something I entertain for the first time without Jack to inspire me to keep going: my own suicide.

  I consider ending my life just as this other boy has because now I am out of hope and I don’t want to be alone anymore.

  I stand up, my legs shaking and almost giving out from underneath me. “One step,” I say, and slowly walk over to the corpse with the fatal gash in his skull. It must have taken force and determination to push himself through the pain barrier to a point of no return. Could I manage the same? Am I ready to give up?

  I stand with my back against the farthest wall from the door, away from where there are patches of blood, and knock my head against the concrete. It does nothing so I jerk my head back harder and a dull thud shoots up and down my spine. Tears stream down my face as I try again but I stop myself because despite having nothing left to live for I can’t go through with the pain.

  Is it because I’m a coward or because Jack wouldn’t want this? Is it because my parents would have died for nothing? Is it because there’s always a chance, no matter how slim that something may be around the corner for me? What if I just need to give it time? Maybe rather than ending my life I just need a moment to stop the world from spinning for a moment to gather myself.

  I lower my head and sob before I slide down the wall and sit on the floor, with my head tucked into my knees. I’m embarrassed because of all the reasons that go through my head for not committing suicide I can’t deny that being a coward is at the forefront. Would anyone care if I’m dead?

  If I don’t kill myself then what I am left with? I stay seated and sniff. I wipe my eyes as I try to figure out what I’m supposed to do next, but there is a void in my mind where a solution should be.

  Then the static cuts off. Silence reigns for a moment before a voice kicks in overhead. The same voice from the announcement that ended the Middlelanders’ waiting, and the same voice that commanded my parents’ death from the top of the Fence. It is a pre-recorded message from President Callister. I know it’s not live because it skips in parts as if edited and spliced together. It’s sloppier than the speeches in Surges from years before, as if we don’t matter enough for professionalism.

  I also know it’s pre-recorded because the message explains why my dead cellmate ended his life; he has already heard this. As I start to listen I wonder what could be threatening enough to cause someone to end their life without hesitation. But, as I listen, I realise exactly what my cellmate has heard. I slowly process the content of this announcement that is more blunt and brutal than the one that decreed that most of the Middlelanders had to die a year ago:

  ‘Prisoners of the Upperlands. You have proven your disloyalty and a lack of gratitude to the security of our society. Most of you will have come from the Middlelands and given up the privilege to embrace life here whilst a handful of others will have had the privilege of being born in the Upperlands and have been ungrateful for what was offered to you.

  ‘The oceans have continued to rise and threaten our community. The Fence no longer offers safety from the water. There is no salvation of our land so to continue on we have decided to board the Utopia, detonate the walls that surround our city, and set sail. In just over six hours’ time, the Upperlands will cease to exist as we know it.

  ‘As when many of you arrived a year ago, there remain limited resources and our population has grown at an unprecedented rate. Therefore, we will generously Rehouse the many innocent Middlelanders who have not been promoted but we will be unable to Rehouse the rest of you into the onboard prison; there just isn’t enough space to lock you up and you cannot be trusted to roam free and maintain peace in our new civilisation. We are not savages and I hope that you acknowledge our despair at the idea of you drowning. You should be grateful that we are compassionate and do not want to leave you all behind. To this end, we have worked out a solution.

  ‘Instead of leaving all of you to drown, we will allow ten of you to be Rehoused onto the Utopia, your previous crimes forgotten, and you will be free to live amongst us. We do not want to start the new civilisation with anyone in prison. But deciding on whom to take is now out of our hands and instead it will be for you to decide.

  ‘At the start of the next hour your doors will automatically unlock and you will be free to move around the prison. As I explained, ten of you will be allowed to be Rehoused. Ten out of two hundred. The final ten to survive.

  ‘As with the Great Cull, there will be no holds barred to survive. You are allowed to end your own, or others’, lives. For those who experienced the Great Cull in the Middlelands, you have an advantage as you have already triumphed once. At three p.m. the doors to the prison will unlock, and you will be welcome to move towards the Utopia. The first ten people to arrive will be allowed to board through the last remaining entrance at the arena where our monthly announcements have been held. There will be little purpose in hiding if you are not part of this first ten as the Upperlands will be drowned out come this evening.

  ‘We will monitor the proceedings, but from afar, and wish you all luck. For those who do not survive, your lack of both gratitude and loyalty has caught up with you. For those that will join us, you will be rewarded with a new hope of living onboard the Utopia. We hope you will be grateful at this chance to survive.’

  I was already in the Upperlands when I heard the first announcement that gave the signal for people in the Middlelands to kill their families. However, many others had to experience surviving over their loved ones without any time to process it. I had to experience that hideous decision this morning but at least it wasn’t me that killed my parents directly.

  That announcement one year ago was horrific and, if anything, is still impossible to fully comprehend. But it was true and came to fruition so I don’t doubt this new message. If I want to survive I will have to kill. Hiding out isn’t an option when only a set number of places exist. Ten out of two hundred. I look at my dead cellmate. One hundred and ninety-nine.

  But wasn’t I going to kill myself? Could I change my plan and kill others?

  I don�
�t know if I can.

  I stare at the body in my cell and realise this boy heard the message through the speakers shortly before I arrived. He had no desire to experience anyone else’s death so took his own life. Maybe he came from the Middlelands and already had to watch people die and couldn’t go through it again. Maybe he decided he didn’t deserve to live over others. Or maybe he decided that living with more death on his hands wasn’t an option.

  Even if the competition for my survival comes in the form of strangers, they remain people nonetheless.

  Which leaves me with the same question: Am I willing to kill to survive? With the doors about to be unlocked, I could find Jack but am I willing to kill to protect him?

  I touch the screen on my watch. It reads 10:59.

  In less than sixty seconds the doors will open, leaving me with no time to decide if I have it in me to kill.

  11 A.M. – 12 P.M.

  Theia

  I am inside my living room, in the house with the creaking gate, wedged between the Argents and the Ethers, on a street with rusted cars and dying flowerbeds, north of the drowned Lowerlands, south of the Fence and whatever lies beyond it. I’m standing next to my mother, in her scrubs. She holds Leda, less than a year old. Too young, I think to myself. Ronan is on the floor between my grandparents. Also too young. My father is present but only in body and not in mind. Everyone focuses on the television screen that remains fuzzy because the Surge hasn’t cut out despite the announcement being over; courteously we have been given a night’s worth of electricity so that we can see each other as if in the clear light of day. We have just learnt that we are to kill one another, and only ten of us can survive. That’s fine by me because I look around my extended family and count: there are seven of us.

  We’re safe.

  We can sit tight until it’s time to be Rehoused to higher ground.

  But then I add more to the list of those I want to take with me. There’s Henry and his parents. And Selene is at his house. Her mother should come along too, I suppose. Two more women enter my mind along with Selma, but I can’t think where I have met them. Maybe one of them a while ago, something to do with Henry. And my mother will want to take Doctor Jefferson with her, of course. Henry will convince me that Ruskin Peters should take one of the spots. I could ask his brother as well. “They’re all your responsibility now,” my mother says as she passes my baby sister to me.

  Now there’s a problem because my list has shot up and, with only ten guaranteed spots to divide up, there are far too many of us.

  “That’s not fair,” I say back to her, but my mother’s appearance has changed and she now resembles the blonde woman from the announcement. I count sixteen, seventeen people and the list keeps rising as words flood my brain, names of people alive and dead, lost and found and lost again, people from the past, the present and the future. My head hurts. Vertigo kicks in and I have to tense my legs to steady myself.

  “That’s not good enough,” my mother/the announcer snaps back at me. My mind is caving under this insanity because part of what is happening feels like déjà vu and part of it hasn’t yet happened. I focus on my family, aware that this might not be reality – why can’t I shake myself out of it? – but for this brief moment I am able to be with my whole family once more before all the terrible things are bound to happen.

  Ronan runs up to my legs and hides himself behind me. I look down at his puzzled expression and notice that he’s a year older, sterner features, and then I lift my head back up and see that my grandparents have vanished but people have taken their places. Sitting on the sofa are now my mother and father. And a third person too: on the other side of my mother is Doctor Jefferson. He holds Leda. She is not in my hands.

  I turn around but Ronan has gone astray and I can only hear the sound of him running around somewhere upstairs, out of my sight. But it is not just his footsteps I hear; there are hundreds of other children with him, talking in a hushed secrecy that I can’t make out. I cover my ears to block out the noise and wait for it to stop. I look behind me at the staircase and the children’s voices die down.

  “Mum,” I say as I turn back, but I am alone.

  I take my time as I walk to the end of the room, where the glass sliding doors lead to the outside. I should go next door to Henry’s house. Henry. I feel the touch of his lips on mine and hear his voice, words he hasn’t yet said but echo in my mind: “I have a plan.”

  I look up at the moon but it is blurry through the glass, as if something is distorting its outline. I reach for the key in the lock and it is only then that I notice a trickle of water seeping in through the crack. I can’t stop myself in time as my wrist turns and unlocks the door, and the click breaks the silence and brings to an end the safety of being locked inside.

  It’s too late to undo my action, learning only then that I am in the thick of the flood. The sea has reached over my house and forces the glass doors to shatter inwards on me. Much graver than Total Flood itself, all the water in the world rushes in and knocks me backwards, overpowering me and filling my lungs. I saved no one, not even myself.

  “Time’s up,” I hear. A voice I don’t recognise.

  I’m back in the cell and gasp for air but my throat isn’t clogged of water. The girl’s voice shakes me out of myself. Harriet has backed up against the door, wrestling her fingers over the handle, deliberating whether or not to open it.

  Of course, I realise as I take in the announcement, the door is now unlocked; although I missed it, it was the sound I heard in my flashback. Only it’s not right to purely call it a flashback because it wasn’t the past. Daydream is too gentle a word. Even nightmare is too gentle for what that was. I don’t have a word for what just happened because nothing that could describe how real it felt would begin to suffice. I can even feel the sensation of drowning, having learnt how water can burn, during one of my birthday years before at the coast when I tried to escape with Henry.

  I look around me, ignoring the girl. The room is bare, except for an exposed sink, a toilet in the corner of the cell and a barred window above it.

  There’s one obvious way out of the room but then I play back what President Callister said in the taped announcement: just like one year ago, we’re allowed to kill one another. What else did she say? There are two hundred of us. Escape from this room equals running into danger, and there’s not even the deterrent of family to stop the violence hurtling ahead.

  “Tut tut. I said you had five minutes to convince me.”

  “Convince us of what?” Harriet asks, her voice shaking, but she already knows the answer. The girl has previously heard the announcement and knows what she’s allowed to do to us.

  “No,” I say, defiantly, and watch the girl’s eyebrows raise, surprised that anyone would have the gall to disobey her. As if no one has ever contested her before.

  “I didn’t expect that.” She bares her teeth and then runs her tongue along the top set, as if she’s going to have fun tormenting me. “You do realise why I don’t have a cellmate? I mean, why I no longer have a cellmate.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not in the mood for games. If you want me dead do it already. I need you to be quiet or get out.” I don’t raise my voice and it sounds all the more convincing for it. I surprise myself with the bluff but I can feel something rise up inside me that I’ve numbed for the past year. In my house, on that night during the cull, no one helped me with a plan. I had to work out how to save my siblings on my own. One year later I’m back to fighting an impossible battle but I can’t surrender now despite being more exhausted this time around. This is going to be much harder than last year because there are so many more people to defend myself against, more people to protect, and the impossible task of finding my siblings. Did I succeed last year? It’s dubious.

  But Ronan and Leda were in my reach then so maybe I am setting myself up to fail. I have to focus on them. If I stop, if I get distracted, and if I allow myself to be scared by anyone, I will fail be
fore I even give myself a chance.

  “I like you.” The girl bounces in place on the bed. “Maybe I will keep you around a while longer. No death for now.”

  Unexpectedly, and countering what she has just said, I feel a fist hit my face from the side. I was focused on the new girl, forgetting that I was vulnerable elsewhere, a tough lesson that I have already let my guard down. The pain shoots through my cheek and sends me doubling over.

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Harriet says.

  Selene

  It’s a much longer journey back to the apartment than it was to the arena and I take in the size of this city and estimate how many citizens will be moving onto the Utopia. The streets are quiet but soon they will be full of life, cars going backwards and forwards with people moving their belongings onboard. Whole families, excitedly, setting sail together.

  My watch still doesn’t work in any of the doorways or gates that we pass but everyone is too busy to notice and Nathaniel tells me not to worry about it. He is concerned that we’ll have some questions as we board the Utopia but decides the malfunction can wait until then to be declared because he doesn’t want to waste any more time after our detour to the boutique and, apparently, the electricians’ district is located elsewhere. I don’t believe Nathaniel because this watch can’t have been given to me honourably so I wonder where he acquired it. I also don’t care; if all goes to plan then I won’t be boarding the Utopia with him any time soon and I’ll figure it out myself.

  But that’s as far as my plan goes, which consists of killing Nathaniel, rescuing my mother and Theia from the prison and then getting onto the ship before the city is flooded and ceases to exist. I’m forgetting the finer details, like what happened to Ronan and where Leda is now, and that the last time I was with my mother she attacked me. That will all come later. First, I need to decide on how to kill Nathaniel by surprise because if he works out what I’m caught up with then he could easily overpower me. So, just a bit to contend with.