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

by P. S. Lurie

  “That wasn’t your decision,” Maddie says.

  “There was no way he could make it. We agreed to run. How could we have made it with him in tow?”

  The gunman walks farther into the centre of the courtyard and takes a few steps in our direction, standing directly in front of us. He looks at the prison above us but quickly returns his gaze to where we are.

  “We’re stuck,” Theia says. “Others could be coming from within the prison. Even if they’re not we’ll run out of time.”

  I don’t have time to register what is happening as something hurtles towards us from the horizon, through the gates and into the courtyard. I’ve seen machines like it before, but never actually working. The blur speeds on, straight towards the gunman, not stopping until they collide.

  Selene

  As I race towards the prison, the style of the building returns to me from the morning I arrived here, and suddenly my mind starts unfurling with lost information. At first, the reddish hue of the bricks against the dawn, and how dissimilar it looked from the rest of the architecture. Not entirely, and in no coherent order, I start to remember voices and faces and scents: cheering from the Upperlanders through the faintest of sunrises, the lighter weight of the gun in my hands empty of all of its bullets from dodging the homeless who were being massacred with or without my involvement, the deep-voiced officer commanding me to take off my helmet, the sweaty dampness of my hair against my face, the cool breeze of the dawn around my neck, the unsteadiness of the train under my feet, and finally Nathaniel telling me that the block we passed at a distance from the railway track was the prison.

  The bike races towards the building, and I sweep around a corner where a low wall blocks my way until I see a narrow entrance leading onto a courtyard. I don’t have much time to scan the scene but manage to take in some of what’s happening. A body is on the gravelled floor and a man with a gun stands nearby, facing away from me, towards the prison, goading others out. I’m halfway to him, and look to the prison entrance.

  Other memories return, as if my brain is shunting back into gear although the cogs are crunching against one another from being in disarray for so long: Nathaniel pushing me through the corridors into his apartment before the others return from the welcome ceremony, telling me he’ll sort out an identification in good time but not understanding anything he is talking about, how my body bounces against the mattress, the uniform’s zip sticking and then the sound of it being unfastened down my back. More: picturing my mother’s sleeping demeanour on the sofa in our house in the Middlelands, Nathaniel’s breath on my shoulder as he leans in, and me focusing on nothing but my own defiant smile that my mother would be in one of the vans that were Rehousing people and that we had both made it past the Fence despite what this man is doing to me. And then, through the pain, my mother’s face, unaware that the next time I would see it would be a year later, the first time I would step out of the apartment, this morning at the announcement, and then...

  Seeing her for the second time today, right now, behind the glass doors, along with several others trapped by the gunmen in the building. I’m almost at impact and, mistaken or not, I don’t stop as I swerve towards the man with the gun and allow the bike to slam into him. He turns towards me, at the sound of the engine, but he is unable to defend himself any more than that, which gives him no time to dive out of the way to safety.

  The bike rams him down, which is going to also hurt me, but I reckon that he will take the majority of the damage even though I’m thrown sideways and fly off onto the gravel as the motorbike skids on its side, grinding off its wheels some distance away. I have nothing to stop myself rolling or protect my arms, legs and face. Without a helmet I hold my hands over my head to coat myself as best I can.

  I feel the ground tear into my skin until I come to a halt on my front. I’m in too much shock to feel any pain but I wiggle my fingers and toes and they all seem to be in order. Now’s not the time to slowly gather myself.

  I look up and the gunman is still on the floor, dazed, but the gun is by his side and any second now he could shoot me. I pick myself up, relieved that nothing feels broken, not that I have any time to check, and run at him.

  The man opens his eyes and looks at me groggily as I reach him. “I got sixty,” he says, reminding me of a similar conversation I had a year ago, only with a much higher number this time around.

  “Here,” a woman shouts towards me. The voice doesn’t compute for a moment but then I realise who it is. I look up and see my mother sprinting forward, leading a pack of people. She throws something towards me and I grab it: a handmade spear. It’s just in time because the man reaches for the gun but, before he can fire it at me or anyone else, I plunge the blade into his shoulder and his grip slackens.

  “Thanks mum,” I say, in between breaths, as she catches up to me. Unlike any other time in my whole life that we have met after I disappeared on her, she hugs me. Tighter than I’ve ever felt from anyone, Henry included. She cradles the back of my head in her open palm. Only then do I feel the pain from my crash and, for the first time in my life, I allow my mother to support my weight as I become limp. I take in the others that approach after her and to my relief, the first person is who I had hoped it would be: Theia, again more pleased to see her than any other time in our fraught past, except for the night of the cull when she brought the uniform to me. There’s also Ruskin and three other people I don’t recognise. The crash has winded me and I can’t help but sit. I close my eyes for a second, to let my chest catch up to me, feeling relief that I have found them, and overcoming any fear that had played through my head leading up to this moment.

  The past catches up to my present and, as I pick myself back up, more memories return: my mother’s scent that hasn’t changed despite our circumstances, the colour of her hair, the fragility of her wrinkles, the tension in her knuckles that used to be from hitting me but is now spurred from clutching me, and the recollection that I called for her in those first few nights in the Upperlands before the pills took hold and she faded from my mind’s eye. I know it is uncharacteristic for my mother to embrace me warmly but it is also uncharacteristic for me to return the gesture. Still, as if all of our problems have been washed clean, I clasp onto my mother tighter than I’ve ever done before.

  Theia

  “Hey Selene,” I say, panting from the sprint towards her, unequivocally grateful for the timing of her arrival that would seem uncharacteristically fortuitous had we not had so much misery leading up to it that I decide we deserved one piece of luck today. I’m not going to question it any further.

  “Theia.” Selma releases her and we embrace. “Thought it’d been too long.”

  Selene checks the man on the floor as the others look around the courtyard. The gunman is either passed out or dead but the spear sticks out of his body and he’s no danger to us for now.

  “No one,” Maddie says, darting her eyes around, aware that some of the barred windows look out onto the courtyard from various heights and we are exposed. Then a yell.

  “Let me out.” I spot him, the man I locked in the room, staring down at us through the gaps in the barred window. He throws something but it lands nowhere close. There are enough spots on the Utopia for him to come with, and I debate it. “I’m going to kill you, you bitches,” he shouts, and throws something else. I can’t risk going back into the prison. As I told myself, I’ll process it when I’m done feeling guilty for everything else.

  “Don’t bother,” Maddie says, and turns me away from him.

  “Made a friend?” Selene asks. She hasn’t lost her abruptness, although I sense something has changed inside her. Of course it has, considering what little I know of her past year. And the fact she is in a torn-up wedding dress.

  “Getting married?” I shoot back.

  Selma inspects her too, but Selene ignores our curiosity and picks up the gun. “Why is it each time I see you I feel like I owe you?” she asks me.

  I gi
ve a short, quiet laugh. “You mean the uniform and then your mother?”

  “Thank you, Theia.”

  “Actually, she did more for me than I did for her.” I look back at the prison but there’s no movement, and even the man in the cell has disappeared. I don’t know whether people have gotten a head start but we’re running out of time before the Fence is detonated regardless.

  “Selene,” Selma says, but before she can say anything, a lifetime of apologies or explanations or whatever, Selene hushes her. “Later, mum. Let’s keep focused.”

  “Hey Selene,” Ruskin says.

  “Hey.”

  They know each other through Henry, about as close to one another as I was to him, but they hug because in this circumstance they might as well be family, then Ruskin introduces Selene to Jack, Maddie and Melissa.

  “I think I’ve seen you around the Middlelands,” Selene says to Melissa.

  “Yeah, you too. I lived behind Henry and Theia.”

  “That’s probably it.”

  I break a little at Henry’s name being spoken, and Selene gives me a glance, somehow knowing as well that he didn’t survive the cull, but neither of us says any more. All in good time, I guess.

  “This is sweet and all but we’ve got to go,” Maddie says.

  “Yeah, I’ve got someone after me too,” Selene says.

  “The policeman from the cull?”

  She exhales through her nostrils, impressed that I’ve connected the dots. “Long story. There was a woman this morning. She told me you were still alive.”

  “Harriet.”

  “That’s it,” Selene says. “Harriet. That’s what President Callister said.”

  “She didn’t make it,” Melissa says. “Lots of people didn’t.” I can hear the guilt in her voice but there’s no time to rationalise what’s happening.

  “The man after you,” Ruskin says, “He also killed my brother.”

  Selene’s eyes widen with amazement at the coincidence, then a moment of fear flashes over, telling us all we need to know about how dangerous he is. “He’s still alive, heading this way. We need to get to the Utopia.” She turns and we follow her, hurrying away from the prison.

  “It’s too late to just board,” I say. “It’s locked. But there’s the entrance President Callister told us about in the arena.”

  “Right, I heard that ten of you were allowed to survive.”

  “Did you see anyone pass by?”

  “No, but I came from the other direction to the Fence.”

  “Fingers crossed then,” Maddie says.

  We enter the main city and I start to place where I am: only a few blocks from Kate’s building, with the Utopia and the Fence a short run away. I must have blanked out for longer than I realised. Even though the streets and train were quiet on the early morning commutes to my job, there were other non-promoted Middlelanders and officers around, whereas now the city is abandoned and makes me shudder at its scale, and that it will shortly cease to exist. The barracks aren’t too far but there’s nothing there that I want, apart from the gun, and I decide there’s no justification time-wise. Besides, it’s likely that if we’re going to be let onto the Utopia by the Upperlanders at this point then it won’t be through a fight. Would they let Selene on? I notice the two watches on her wrist, one looser than the other as well as those fixed into place on our arms; I don’t understand but decide she must have been as much a prisoner as the rest of us and deserves one of the ten places. She has the gun so, despite what I said, and from what I know about Selene, she won’t go down without a fight.

  Soon the city will be underwater, just like the Lowerlands and Middlelands but, unlike our streets behind the Fence, there will be few dead bodies for the sea to swallow up. Not just that but we were overpowered by the sea, losing our communities house by house, whereas the Upperlanders are actively ending their fight.

  I feel my chest palpitate at the idea of Henry and my family being pushed around by the water to this day and not knowing where they’ve been dragged to. I’ve seen Henry underwater concussed once before so I know how easily bodies can be swept up. I dreaded staring at the glass panels in the Fence, imagining the day I’d recognise one of the bodies that floated past, and did my best to avoid them.

  None of the buildings reaches anywhere close to the heights of the Fence, so that parts of it are visible at any point on our route, as well as the Utopia closer by, but behind us, far in the distance is the mansion that Ruskin has been describing as a fortress high up on the mountain where he was taken to this morning. I don’t suppose it matters what we call it, but it might be the only bit of land on the entire planet not submerged soon. The oceans might take out the surface of the Upperlands but it won’t destroy the city immediately. I wonder if we’re being foolish by heading to the Utopia when really we should be gathering supplies and hoping the water won’t drown out the highest floors of any of these towers for some time. Maybe we’d even have weeks or months to build rafts and find a way to travel to the summit of the mountain. I can’t imagine anyone is still up there.

  Do we really want to be under the governing rule of the Upperlanders once more? Last year we didn’t have a choice, but this time we do, except that I don’t have the luxury of turning back because I have to find Ronan and Leda. They’re my responsibility. But instead of my mother’s voice, reminding me of that, I hear Maddie’s words resonate: “When this is all over.”

  Despite what I need to do, I could suggest that the others hold back and find higher ground, but they all have a look of determination on their faces that we’ll make it onboard. I tell myself that hiding is a fall back option, which I can always suggest if need be, and I don’t want to deter them yet. Selfishly, I don’t want to venture on alone.

  We’re moving quickly through the streets and, for the first time, no one seems to be monitoring our whereabouts. Even the officers that patrolled the Upperlands must be on the Utopia. I look at everyone here, encouraged by how many of us have survived up to now. Although we lost some of the people in our group I am relieved that no one else is seriously injured and we have a chance. All we have to hope for are two things: one, that no one beats us to the finish point and, second, that President Callister holds true to her word.

  Ruskin

  We’re moving quickly but the city disorients me each way I turn, blurring into a cohesive assembly of glass and steel buildings built in a grid formation, and I can’t help but be impressed that this all functioned care-free as we suffered lower down in the Middlelands, grasping for electricity stored through the Surges and bathing in irritant-inducing seawater. The apartment my family was first moved into could be anywhere around here. The same for Jack. Maybe we were in adjacent rooms on the same hallway of one building or maybe we were whole districts apart. I don’t even know where I was this morning before the announcement as I don’t see any fields, and the street I meandered along before crossing under a tunnel into the arena could convincingly be this one or any other.

  Jack is staring in awe at everything, never having been outside the prison except for the first night but even then he was locked inside his apartment with his mother, as well as his brother until he had to return to the Middlelands. Taking in the Upperlands and their quality of life is a cruel distraction but better than focusing on his mother or his current hatred towards me so I don’t disturb him as we pace on.

  I’ll apologise again to Jack later. We spent today struggling to survive but finding his mother was not on our list. I should have disregarded those men and searched for her anyway. Would she be with us now? The mind game of ‘what if’ is unhelpful but I can’t do anything to shake myself clear of it. I deserve to feel wretched for now.

  Jack speaks up, not as distracted as I thought. “What did it solve?” he asks no one in particular. “All this fighting and violence.”

  “Nothing. I’m so sorry, Jack.”

  “Do you know what the worst part is?”

  I wait for him to a
nswer.

  “I gave in. They broke who I was proud of being. They made me believe that fighting was the solution. Not just fighting, but killing innocent people.”

  There’s no easy explanation for him and nothing that will comfort him. I can only hope that he remembers how much I love him and that we can support one another through this if he lets me. I don’t think either of us can deal with one more piece of injustice but it might be too late for Jack to forgive me.

  “We should break into a car or a van,” Selene says. “See if we can get to the arena quicker.”

  “We’re almost there,” Theia reassures her, although I’m not sure if she knows this for certain. We’re slowing down to a fast walk but no one has caught up to us from the prison, so unless we’re too late... I stop that thought process because I don’t want to build my hopes up too much. Hope has gotten me through so much of this past day but I’m reluctant to rely on it now.

  We turn a corner and see the Utopia in all its glory, not just from behind buildings but now within its proximity, with nothing standing between us and the stern. It is so large, seemingly built to house tens of thousands at least. A self-sustaining, floating civilisation. I can’t see much of it from here and can barely fathom its size as we continue ahead and find ourselves in miniature under the hull. I can only imagine the festivities taking part in certain areas out of our reach. I wonder whether a single Upperlander or, according to the announcements, a not-yet promoted Middlelander has spared a thought for us. I tip my head as far back as it will go but the top of the Utopia has disappeared out of sight.

  “We need to find a way in,” Selma says.

  “We could shoot our way through,” Maddie says.

  “Interesting choice,” Selene replies. “Considering we want this thing to float.”

  “We have to keep moving towards the arena. That’s where President Callister said to go, even though it’s way past the Utopia.”