by P. S. Lurie
“What’s wrong with you,” I say.
“Excellent,” Nathaniel replies, ignoring me. “A bit of medication to send her back and then we can marry. Maybe not straight away but a day or two later? It’s not what I wanted but I can live with it.”
“Sure. Just save a dance for me, son.”
Son? So that’s how Nathaniel was able to medicate me and get away with holding me hostage. Through his father. Now I can see some similarity between them. I still don’t understand why.
I need to buy a bit more time. “The watch?”
“One of my patients,” Doctor Graft explains. “Poor guy died. I managed to amputate his arm and take his watch before he was sent off to the crematorium. Reported it lost in the inventory.”
He approaches with the injection.
I wanted to run before they reappeared but I didn’t have enough time to cut myself loose. Now or never, I tell myself. With a final push, the grip I pulled from my hair rips through the binding and frees my hands. Doctor Graft is within reach and I swing my hand out, catching him by surprise, and grab his wrist that holds the needle. He guffaws from shock and doesn’t react in time before I push his hand into his neck and the needle pierces his skin.
He yells out but it’s too late. Within seconds he collapses.
Nathaniel runs at me and I can’t do much because I’m still strapped to the chair. He launches and sends me flying backwards with him on top. The chair shatters under the impact, and my spine slams against the ground.
Despite the pain, I use my hands to grapple with him, and make a slight rip in his cheek with the hair grip. A trickle of blood appears but it is only surface damage.
“New plan, princess. I’m going to kill you,” he says, as his expression changes from one of cool mania to hatred. He forces my arms to the ground above me.
“I thought you were going to marry me.” I struggle but he’s too strong. What he doesn’t realise is that with the chair legs broken, I have been able to slide my legs loose from their shackles and kick him in his crotch, which sends him sideways and gives me a chance.
Ruskin
“We have to go,” I say, as I help Erica out of the harness. We’re a weapon down and at any moment Darren’s gang or someone else will return. We’re not safe here, even if there’s danger outside. I’d be in a better position without Erica but I feel relieved in a way that her escape attempt failed because I think of how guilty I’d feel had she run into trouble without me.
“It’s dangerous out there.” She points to the door. She’s understandably shaken up from being grabbed by the people one cell beneath us.
“We’re going to find a new hiding place,” I sort of lie to her. “Somewhere Darren can’t find us. We’ll go upwards. Everyone else will be moving towards the exit.” I always planned to head up but it actually makes sense if we’re looking to hide. I wonder if Jack is on the move and whether aiming for his cell is a waste of time. I’m probably right that the building will empty out from the top down, until the prison doors are released in a few hours. What did President Callister say, three o’clock? That gives us just over two hours before then. I wonder how many people will be left alive. Fewer than ten who can rest assured they will be boarding the Utopia? Or will the fight continue outside?
I figure that most of the prisoners have been through this before, with their family members no less, so maybe they are prepared to kill without hesitation. Maybe they’re convinced that they owe it to their families to survive. With some calm, we could’ve all agreed to hold off as we discussed what to do but it only takes one or two people to fight for everyone else to have to play their game.
I bend down and look through the gap under the door. There’s no movement and I can’t hear anyone.
“We go now.” I don’t give her an option to protest, or at least I’ve decided to move and she’s welcome to stay here or come with. It’s a false choice.
I pull the bar from the door and, as gently as I can, step into the hallway. There’s no sign of life. It’s eerily quiet. I don’t know what we’ll find but I’m sure that my old cell isn’t on this floor so there’s no need to try any of the closed doors. A few of the rooms are open. We need to head up.
Erica came from the right. We creep along and turn a corner. At the end of this hallway are two doors, different to one another but also unlike the cells. One is metal and meets in the middle. There are some buttons next to it and the letter ‘B’ above it in digital lettering. The other door has a glass panel at head-height.
“How did you get here?” I should have asked this already as I begin to realise how unprepared I have been to move around.
“Stairs. From one floor down.”
I take her hand, holding the bar in the other, and we stealthily move along the corridor, keeping to the middle, away from any of the doors. I deliberate with myself whether to look to the sides and into any of the rooms in case someone is ready to pounce but I don’t want to see how much life has been taken, so instead I focus straight ahead.
Halfway to the end, catching us off guard, a man jumps out from a door and shouts as he grabs Erica. I don’t think twice and swing the bar at him before he has time to hurt her. It knocks him out and Erica is freed but we’ve drawn attention to ourselves. I look at the body. I can’t believe I’ve just hit someone but there’s no time to check how much damage I’ve done because I sprint, dragging Erica along and stop just before the stairs. I look through the panel and see a group of men hanging out on the stairwell landing half a floor down. We’re headed the other way but I can’t risk them detecting us. It’s lucky they didn’t hear Erica scream but maybe this door is soundproofed.
I look at the metal doors adjacent to the stairs. It’s an elevator, like the one I saw at the Fence earlier today. I’d never seen one in working order before but I know it can take us to the different floors. The danger is that I don’t know who might be inside or what the doors will open us onto. I have to think fast. Risk the group on the stairs or the unknown?
I peer through the glass. There are six people, maybe more out of view. I don’t know what Darren looks like but he could be one of them. It doesn’t matter; him or not, I don’t like our chances.
I hit the up arrow button and stand to the side, holding Erica behind me. If anyone steps out I can take them by surprise. I hear the machinery whir as the compartment travels towards us.
Suddenly, a group of people turn the corner at the end of the hallway and spot us. They shout and run towards us. The man on the floor that I hit groans and lifts his head up, distracting the group that comes for us.
The elevator stops and the doors slowly open.
I have no time to check if anyone is lurking before Erica and I sweep inside. We are on the fifth floor so I hit the button with the number six on it and the doors start to close as the people almost reach us. Just in time, the doors shut and we move up. Only then do I breathe a sigh of relief at the fortune that we’re alone inside of here.
I don’t have long before I have to worry about what we’ll find on the next floor up as the lift stops, nor do I have much time to resolve the mental conflict about what I did in the moment between seeing the people and us hurrying into the elevator, which is that I pushed the door to the stairwell open to draw attention to us, allowing the groups to be distracted by one another. I’m a catalyst to deaths and, including the man I hit who is outnumbered in the crossfire, what I did will be just one more thing to add to my guilty conscience.
The doors begin to open. I stand with Erica behind me and the bar in front of me, telling myself I’m armed for self-defence, that it’s only self-defence.
Theia
The corridor is empty, tens of closed doors, all the same with a keypad outside each one. The walkway bends on a right angle at each end of where we are and nothing suggests which route we should take. One way will lead us closer to Selma and Melissa. One way will take us to Ruskin. Maybe they are in the same direction. Maybe not.
“We need to be quiet,” I whisper to the others as I step out of the cell, bracing for an encounter.
“Sure,” Mad whispers back. Then at the top of her lungs. “Selma! Melissa!”
I turn to her and she shrugs. “You had a better idea?”
I stare at her for a moment with a mixture of horror and disbelief, and shake my head. With Mad having directed attention to our whereabouts, we do nothing but wait.
Selene
Nathaniel is too strong for me to overpower so I pick myself up and run, which is my best bet, not that I’m fast because of the damned dress. I slam into the front door and then open it and take off. I’ve only been out of here in the past year once to my knowledge and that was this morning but I retrace the route to the elevator. People moving their belongings watch me, confused by the girl in the wedding dress who looks like a frantic mess but there’s no time to worry about them.
“Selene,” I hear behind me, a roar from some way back. The elevator doesn’t work because no one else is using it and my watch won’t register, so I carry onto the stairwell and hotfoot down the steps.
I need to get away from Nathaniel and find a hiding place. My safest bet is far from the building because he’ll never locate me in the vast Upperlands but, unless someone is coming or going from the main entrance, the door won’t unlock for me. The watch feels tight over my wrist as I picture how Nathaniel’s father obtained it.
I rush out onto the next floor down as Nathaniel bolts down the stairs some distance behind and I’m back onto a corridor that looks like the one I just left. There’s no one around except for a family of three, who carry suitcases out of their doorway. I stop in front of them and check Nathaniel hasn’t reached this floor yet. I can’t push past the mother, father and their daughter and shut the door behind me because they’ll let Nathaniel know where I am and he will have me trapped. The Upperlanders aren’t used to crime except at the announcements so these people won’t understand my displays of disloyalty to our peaceful community. I scream at them to back up all the same and close the door behind all of us.
“Be quiet.” I put on a threatening tone and add, “Or I’ll kill all of you.”
The family look terrified but don’t react, other than for the mother to protect her daughter by standing in front of her. Nathaniel could be anywhere but for now he doesn’t know I’m in here.
I take in this family, the mother, father and young girl and my head does somersaults. They’re the spitting image of a family I encountered a year ago, in the market. The girl’s terror. The father’s plea. The guard’s menace. Six to one. The gunshots as I walked away. The lowest point of that night. Oh god, I hadn’t remembered them until now.
What have I done coming in here? It wasn’t my aim to implicate innocent people, now or then. That family in the Middlelands died because I led a policeman towards them, and now I’ve instigated the same threat. I slump onto the floor, exhausted from all that’s happened and don’t have the breath to explain that if the family opens the door or draw Nathaniel’s attention to me we’re all in danger.
Ruskin
This hallway is a horror movie that has come to life, filled with a gauntlet of lifeless, broken bodies. I just have time to cover Erica’s mouth with my hand to stop her screaming and draw attention to us. There has been so much death and my heart sinks at Jack’s chances. I can’t explain it but I’m sure he’s on this floor, somewhere. I don’t want to look at the corpses for fear that he’s one of them. I take Erica’s hand and we tiptoe our way along the corridor, winding around the bodies and the blood, only stopping when we hear a noise. It’s coming from around the corner, leading to the back side of the building. A man is begging for his life, until his yells stop, the life taken from him.
More footsteps before another man screams.
Someone is moving along, killing everyone they come into contact with systematically.
Erica and I should turn around but we make our way past the bodies until we near the corner. It takes everything in me to fight my better judgement that I should be running in the other direction. I peer around the corner and see two men, one older than the other come out of a cell and move to the next. They are unarmed.
“Wait here,” I mouth to Erica, then lift the tip of my index finger to my closed mouth and hush her from objecting.
I creep forward, out of my mind, unlike anything I ever thought I would be doing, and move to the door of the cell that they have forced their way into, as a boy’s screams begin. I can’t believe it. Above these men, who are punching their prey in the corner of the cell, are etchings on a wall. A tally, marking all of the days that two boys survived together.
I’m back here as Jack’s being killed.
“Hey,” I yell, without thinking through the danger.
They turn around as I slam the bar into the temple of the younger one of them, catching him by surprise, and knocking him to the ground. I recognise the other as the man who ran into my cell shortly after the doors were unlocked. He made a friend.
“Kid,” he says, also recognising me, lifting his hands up.
“Get away from him.” I take in Jack, unsure what state he is in.
“You’re too late,” the man says, but backs away anyway.
I hold the bar in his direction. “I’m warning you.”
“What do you care about him anyway?”
“I swear. I will kill you if you take one step closer.”
I move towards Jack, grab around his waist and hoist him up but it’s too difficult with one hand. Someone runs into the cell.
“They’re coming,” Erica says, eyes wide as she takes in the situation. She must have no idea what is going on and why I’m trying to help a stranger.
“Help me.” Erica makes her way to us and gets on the other side of Jack. The three of us somehow back up and, although the man doesn’t try to stop us, it’s too much so I decide that we have no choice but to hole up in here for now. I let Erica take the slack of Jack’s weight, push the door shut and wedge the bar underneath, locking the four of us inside. Five if the younger man is alive.
I turn to the man who tried to kill Jack, and who killed others. “Truce,” I demand of him.
He nods.
Then I turn my attention to Jack. I spread him out onto what was my bed for a year, where I woke up this morning to scratching sounds. He’s breathing but his face is swollen. It’s him. I can’t believe I found him. I sweep his hair off his forehead.
I lean down and rest my face on his. He can barely open his eyes and I don’t know if he can hear me but I speak to him all the same.
“It’s me. I found you.”
Theia
“Theia?” a voice answers from nearby. “Harriet?” It’s muffled but the speaker is unmistakeable.
“No way,” Mad says. “That was easy.”
A door about ten along from ours opens and Selma steps out. I can’t believe it. They were this close the whole time. I breathe a sigh of relief that she is alive. She takes another step and joins us in the corridor. My thought turns to finding Ruskin next and then discomfort overtakes as I see that she’s not relieved to see us and somehow it feels as if we’re in a standoff. Where’s Melissa?
“Theia,” Mad says, as she tugs at my shirt. “Why didn’t they come to the room if they knew where we were?”
The explanation comes immediately, as a woman follows them out of the cell, holding a knife around Melissa’s throat.
“Get over there,” she says to Selma.
Selma runs over and Harriet hugs her. “You ok?” Harriet asks. Selma nods.
“I’ll kill her if any of you comes closer.”
“Do it,” Mad shouts back. “There are more of us so we’ll just kill you after. You don’t stand a chance against me and my friends.”
Melissa looks petrified at first, then her eyes narrow at this girl with us, offering her up as collateral damage. “Please don’t tell her to kill me.”
Our weapons are
nothing compared to this woman’s, who holds Melissa captive, but I’m not going to let Melissa get hurt or give her up.
“There are six of us, including you,” I say to the stranger. It’s only a ploy to calm her down because our numbers are growing and we’re going to exceed ten easily if this carries on.
“Why should I trust you?”
I hold my hands up. “We don’t want to hurt anyone. This is the Upperlanders’ doing. None of us wants this. Let go of Melissa and you can leave or join us, up to you.”
Mad tugs my sleeve harder. “You said no more.”
“Not now.”
The woman considers her options. She knows she doesn’t have a chance with all of us. “You promise I can come with you?”
I could ask how many people she’s killed and decide on her level of guilt but where’s the fairness in that? We’ve all killed to get here, or at best watched on pathetically as others died, and we’re going to have to kill more if we’re going to survive. Who am I to judge what she’s done under these circumstances. “Yes. But you have to drop the knife.”
She does that without any delay. Melissa doesn’t compute this for a moment. As soon as she does she runs towards us and collapses into my arms. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Mad says.
“Yeah, thanks,” Melissa replies sarcastically.
“What’s your name?” I ask the woman.
Before she has a chance to speak, someone runs around the corner, and the woman gargles as something bursts through her stomach: a metal bed leg her attacker must have managed to snap off. The dying woman’s eyes meet mine with a look that suggests that I’ve betrayed her, as if I was meant to have saved her now that she was welcomed along. I remember my mother’s words. No, I try to protest, she wasn’t my responsibility, but my mother disagrees.
My mind jumps backwards in time to the twins in the house opposite mine. It was the first of the deaths I saw during the cull, solidifying the announcement as real. This time around, this woman’s death doesn’t shock me because it’s a repeat of what I’ve experienced before. Instead, the only thing it tells me is that there’s no biding of time or safety because there’s danger around every corner.