“Does staying here make me a Lister?”
He laughs. “How’d you hear about that?”
“Charlie told me.”
“Yes, you’ll be a Lister.” He toys with my fingers as if they’re alien objects, bending and stretching them. Our right hands press together. Mine is small and slender compared to his callused palm.
Levi lies next to us and places his head in my lap. The three of us huddle together at the cliff’s edge, inches from the end of the world.
Chapter Nine
“I was a battleground of fear and curiosity.”
H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds
“Lunar phases,” Nash says between bites of food. “We already know the dome is an electrically charged plasma membrane and uses gravity and some sort of magnetic grid. If its power comes from Earth’s gravitation, there should be lapses when the dome isn’t as impenetrable. I’ve already done the research. During a neap tide, we can construct an object to act as a door, insert it into the dome…”
“Yeah, and be fried.” Charlie smirks.
“Magnetic fields cannot be terminated but they can be rerouted around objects that conduct magnetic flux. We can create a door.”
“Why would we want to leave?” Jack dumps a spoonful of Spam and tomato sauce onto his tongue. Red specks soar across the table as he talks. “We don’t know what’s happened to the world. Radiation, disease, war—the dome could be protecting us.”
“I’m almost done building the drone. It’ll be ready to fly in a few days.” Nash reaches across me to grab the mustard bottle—does anyone here have manners?
“Not long from now, we’ll know if we can leave Severance.”
Welcome to the apocalypse. Where make-do is a motto and life seems wrong, out-of-place. Where the weak become strong because they have no other choice.
The mess hall is louder than a high school cafeteria and reeks of body odor. Soldiers and Listers sit shoulder-to-shoulder at mismatched tables, eating their mass-produced meals.
Deodorant and air-conditioning must be the unavailable luxuries Charlie mentioned.
I smear perspiration from my upper lip and stab a fork into the mound of undercooked spaghetti. Stupid hands—they can’t get the wad of noodles into my mouth.
Jack grabs my arm to steady it. “The flyovers won’t begin for another hour. We can go outside, get away from the noise. If you’re not feeling well…”
“I’m fine. I know how to take care of myself.” Not really. But it’s what girls say to make themselves feel stronger, more capable, even when their souls and bodies have gone numb.
“I know that,” he whispers. “I just don’t want you to have to.”
“You care too much. Let me be strong.” I uncap my bottle and drink—the fermented liquid is warm like carbonated urine. Strong girls drink beer, right?
After Sybil died and Dad became a temporary alcoholic, I promised myself I’d never drink, not after the pain of losing him, watching his life slowly fade. I made a promise I couldn’t keep because now, I need a way to drown out my own voice, to kill my memories without having to kill myself.
“Who are the Scavs?” I swallow another mouthful of beer and gag.
“They’re a special ops division of the military. Supposed to be covert,” Jack says. “Scav is a nickname we use to warn each other of flyovers. It’s only a matter of time before we’re found. If they spot a trail of smoke or the tarps of the Overhang, we’ll be dead within the hour.”
No place is safe. We are the hunted. Time bombs are strapped to our chests, counting down to an imminent zero. Tick. Tick. A day will come when we are discovered, and our strength will be tested. Tick. Tick. Change will rattle the universe once more.
“Hey, everyone. This is Julie, Lieutenant Stryker’s sister,” Jack shouts before stuffing his mouth with green beans. “Say hello. That’s an order.”
An explosion of voices greets me like a slap to the face, and I flip my hood as if the invisibility cloak I had throughout middle and high school somehow ended up in my jacket. Has Jack made it his life mission to embarrass me? He’s like one of those parents who go from awesome to catastrophically embarrassing in three seconds.
“She is Jon’s sister?” A girl rises from a nearby table. She resembles a celebrity, not someone who spends each day toting a gun. “Such a disappointment.”
“Keep your mouth shut, Lieutenant McConaughey,” Jack snaps.
“You’re not my superior anymore. Ranks, respect—those formalities ended when we got canned. You call me Sutton like everyone else. Got it?” She bites her bottom lip and slides her hand up his back. He spins to face her, but she clutches a handful of his hair and yanks him to her sculpted waist. “Keep a leash on the new girl, Jack. You know what I do to high-maintenance Listers.”
“Don’t threaten me. You’re here because I allow you to be here.”
“Oh, did I insult your god-complex, Sarge?”
Jack slings his elbow into Sutton’s belly and knocks her to the plywood floor. “Get out,” he says. “I don’t want your bad attitude infecting the other soldiers.”
She laughs—wow, I hate her. “Aren’t you a gentleman?”
“Yeah. You insulted a woman, so I kicked your ass.” He dabs his mouth with a napkin and combs his hair into place. “Doesn’t get more gentlemanly than that, Lieutenant.”
They probably had a fling years ago. Maybe. She looks like his type, the model-turned-soldier who saves the world with a bazooka and lacy pair of lingerie. But he wouldn’t hit a girl unless she’d betrayed his respect, forced him to treat her as a soldier gone wild.
In the South, people mask malice with sugary smiles and fake compliments. It’s what I’ve been taught. If you hate someone, hide your feelings in public and gossip behind closed doors. No confrontation, no harm done. At least, in theory.
“Sutton’s all bark, no bite,” Charlie tells me. “Unlike you.”
Jack drapes his arm over my shoulders and pulls down the collar of his t-shirt to showcase the healing teeth marks. “She bites hard.”
“It’s my only defense.” I smile when they laugh. “Jack, were you and Sutton together?” Normal question. Not an obvious I-want-you-to-myself giveaway.
“Heck, no. The planet would’ve exploded.”
A sigh breezes past my lips. I suck it back in before anyone notices. If mean, sexy girls aren’t his type, maybe I stand a chance. One day. Not now, of course.
“Tally, get over here.”
The girl from the van is sprawled on a chaise chair in the corner. She glances at me, eyebrows raised, and fingers the ID tags pinned to the neckline of her tank top. “No. I don’t want to meet your stupid new girlfriend,” she yells. “Jon wouldn’t be happy that you’re trying to hook up with his baby sister. Besides, she looked better when she was covered in blood. Was that a sexy experience for you, Jack, sticking your hands into her intestines?”
“You’re being rude and creepy. Come introduce yourself like a normal person.”
“Fine.” Tally rises from her chair, stomps to our table, and shakes my hand. “Tallulah Badass Mason. My friends call me Tally.” She digs her fingernails into my palm.
“Ouch.” I wince.
“Priss.”
Jack glares at her. “Tally, what’s wrong with you? Can’t you be—I don’t know—civil?”
“Nope. I make an effort to be glamorously uncivil to all people. Welcome to the Underground, Priss. We already hate you.” She flashes a satisfied smile and walks away.
“Your friends are so nice.” I rub the fingernail indentions from my skin and fake the worst, teary smile. “I’m sure I’ll like it here … once people don’t hate or cut me.” The humid air is acid inside my lungs. I cough on a sob, guillotine tears with blinks.
“Some of them are nice,” Jack says, “like Nash and Charlie. They’re cool.”
“We’re super cool.”
He yanks my arm into his lap and uses a cracked pen to write The Living on
my wrist. A luminescent smile swallows his face. “There is a difference between accepting a dirty world and allowing it to transform you. You’re better than us, Julie, so stay better.”
Butterflies twist my stomach into knots. “You want me to be a lonely purist?”
“Duh, of course. I really should be a motivational speaker.”
“No, you’d suck.”
“Like you at sports and bodily coordination?” He laughs—really laughs.
“Oh, you want to go there? Who said he didn’t need to read the directions before putting together my nightstand? Yeah, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t meant to look like a wheelbarrow.”
“Wheelbarrows are more functional.” His dimples and glistening eyes project a foreign language—could someone translate for me? He sighs. “You’re going to fit in around here just fine.”
He’s the lifeguard dragging me from the bottom of a pool, the latte reviving my sleepy brain. In an instant, I emerge from the water and fog. What happened to sadness? Where did Jack hide my fear?
“I believe you.” Because I fit with him. And he’s here.
A high-ranking soldier built like a mountain enters the mess hall and waves at us.
“That’s my cue. I have a meeting with General Ford. See you later tonight.” Jack stands, stashes his unopened beer into the pocket of his jacket. “Stay with these guys. They’ll show you back to the barrack.” He follows the large man into the connecting tunnel and vanishes.
Missing someone is the worst form of torture because it never goes away no matter where you are or what you do with your life. When a person is gone and all you have of them is a fuzzy recollection of what it was like to hear your phone buzz with texts from them, the joy you experienced while in their company, that instance when the bond you shared shattered, you long for all that was lost and could’ve been gained. You have memories and nothing more. And no matter how much times passes, you still feel the ache of their absence whenever they rise into your thoughts. Torture.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“Ezra Cross, Gunnery Sergeant of the second battalion, sixth Marines, now the Lieutenant General of the Vestige,” Charlie says with his nose upturned. “General Ford offered Jack the rank of Lieutenant General when we first got here. He denied the offer, said he’d rather work and live with his squad. Ezra got the position instead.”
“There is one major perk of having Jack as our squad leader. We have the best barrack—no bunk beds.” Nash ties his blonde hair into a ponytail. “You’re lucky you get to stay with us.”
“Jack showed you the dome?”
I nod.
“Good. Knowing the truth is the first step toward healing.” Nash’s response sounds like a slogan from Alcoholic Anonymous but instead of alcohol, I’ve been drunk on ignorance for the past eighteen years. Now I’m sobering up.
“Sometimes life really sucks,” Charlie says, “but you just have to keep holding out for the moments that don’t suck. They’ll come around eventually.”
We finish eating, navigate the tunnels to the Overhang, and follow the camouflaged thoroughfare to our barrack. Abram sits on his cot, sharpening a pocketknife. Tally throws darts at a magazine cutout of some tummy-tucked actress. Sutton cleans her boots. They stare when I enter the trailer, passing along an unspoken warning—if I’m not careful, they will slit my throat.
Levi tilts his head when I collapse next to him. How am I supposed to change clothes? The medical screens around my cot have been removed.
“Lights out.” Sutton flips off the overhead bulbs. Her bedsprings squeak as she slithers into her evil lair of smelly quilts. “Keep your mouth shut, Lister. You never know what might crawl inside it.”
Bless her heart.
Darkness cloaks the room, a convenient screen. I peel off my grungy clothes and slide beneath familiar sheets, into a safe dream world where home is a realistic noun and civilization isn’t hanging on by a thread, where things are as they seem.
A gust of crisp, mountain air drifts from an open window. I bind myself in blankets. Why is there fur on my legs, in my armpits? Great. Now I’ll obsessively think about my gorilla limbs until I scrounge a razor from the supply closet.
End-of-the-world rules apply.
Mom would have a fit if she knew I was sharing a room with men, sleeping in my underwear because I can’t afford to soil my only set of clothes. Jon would tell me to get out of his bed, and then flop onto my belly when I refused to budge. They’d take me back to our pretty house on Rainbow Row, and I’d taste coffee and lipstick while lavishing in a false sense of security.
I have to move forward now and pry my face from the pavement. I have to get up. Memories tell me who I was, not who I’ll become. They don’t fix the present any more than they fix the past.
The door creaks open. Jack enters and skulks through the barracks. His scintillating lantern floats in front of him, glowing gold. He removes clothes from a plastic trunk, pulls off his boots and wriggles out of his muddy jeans. I was right. He wears boxer-briefs. Black.
His muscles flex as he steps into a pair of cargo pants. Scars streak his spine, arms, and legs. Real courage—living and suffering for what you believe in most.
Fire swells inside me when he leans over to peel off his socks. The ridges of his shoulder blades rise beneath his skin like waves. His biceps bulge. I should look away to respect his privacy. He’d respect mine. Yes, I’ll look away. Eventually.
Jack slides a navy t-shirt over his head and wipes the sweat from his stubble-covered cheeks. His eyes latch hold of mine, holding them captive. He smiles as if he’s caught me watching a racy movie, playing with matches, or wearing a strappy bodycon dress. “Goodnight, Julie.”
“Goodnight.” I hide my face with Levi’s tail and scoot deeper into the fabric avalanche. He was stripping in the middle of the trailer. What was I supposed to do? Offer to build him a dressing room?
****
Schedules and protocol keep us safe, protected, invisible. No one is allowed to be outside during the Scavs’ flyover hours. All lights must be off by ten o’clock. Vehicles are to be parked in the woods and covered with brush. The use of computers is restricted to all personnel unless given clearance by superiors. Patrolling scouts are required to radio the Command Center on the hour.
I can’t even go to the supply room to gather rations without asking General Ford for permission.
Listers divide into work crews when the siren sounds each morning and disperse throughout camp. I wash laundry until my hands are so blistered and shriveled, they turn the suds red. Blood. Staining clothes. Abram assigns me to the kitchen where I wash dishes from dawn to dusk, that is, until Sutton notices my crimson sink and threatens to drag me by the hair into the woods. If my body isn’t drenched in soap and sweat, I’m plastered with sludge from the tunnels. The more I wash, the less I’m clean. And when I don’t think I can last another second, I somehow bear another minute, then an hour. I survive exhaustion, severe muscle spasms, an infection of a thumb sore and dehydration. I live through panic attacks and flashbacks. Jon. Dead. Mom and Dad. Gone. End of the world. Everywhere.
Work harder. Faster. Sweat. Bleed. Survive the pain.
Jack and I hike to the Overlook before dawn. We huddle at the cliff’s edge, sip cider from a metal thermos, and watch the hot-pink sunrise cascade over the dome. He whispers a funeral for Jon, tells me beautiful things I wish were real. Life almost seems normal with him, like I’m lying in the green space between Porter’s Lodge and Randolph Hall with a sky full of small infinities and a hand to hold.
“Everything is messed up,” I mumble when the dome shimmers.
He smiles. “Not everything.”
There comes a moment when we must choose how we’re going to love someone. Some forms of love leave a sweet memory once they’re gone, others leave scars. But there are forms that when stolen, destroy part of who we are—love that transforms us. What if the feelings I have for Jack kill another piece of me once they’re
gone?
A piercing scream wakes me up one night.
Tally and Abram stand guard in front of the blue tarp separating Jack’s living space from the barrack. He screeches—why won’t they move? What’s going on?
“Wake him up. Move.” I lurch from my cot and lift the canvas. Jack’s body writhes beneath the sheets of his bed. He wails in a tone that makes me shiver.
“Step one foot in there, Priss, and I’ll give you a black eye.” Tally grips my shoulder to prevent me from entering the room. Darkness masks her face. “He doesn’t want us to wake him.”
“Why?”
“The sergeant has a reoccurring nightmare,” Abram says. “By experiencing the dream over and over, he thinks he’ll be able to conquer whatever is tormenting him. Don’t ask me what he’s freaked about. I don’t know. If the noise bothers you, you can have a pair of my earplugs.”
Jack arches his back, tossing and turning like a piece of debris caught in the ocean’s surf. He can’t be scared. He’s someone who fixes broken people, not someone in need of fixing.
Nightmares reveal his weakness as grief revealed mine.
Chapter Ten
“Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words, wait and hope.”
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Rain drips from my nose, treats me as a stone caught in a rushing river. I crouch in the mud with limbs like chiseled rock and bandaged, blistered hands. The wind saturates my clothes—if I don’t stop shivering, I might crack teeth, have a seizure, or lose all feeling in my feet. Do I still have toes?
“Your lips are blue.” Jack drapes his jacket over my shoulders to protect me from the cold. Water spews from his mouth and nostrils, streams down his skin. “Ready for takeoff?”
“Yeah, it’s ready.” Nash and Charlie rise from the ground, plastered from head to toe with grass shards and dirt. “We have a functioning drone.”
The Vestige Page 11