by Jordan Rivet
“I thought you would be alone, as it happens,” the Dentist said. “I can handle one woman.”
“That, and you didn’t want any of your men to come down here,” Esther said. Hurry up, Naomi. “You’ve got this place well stocked—your own private survival bunker—and you don’t want anyone else to know about it. It’s supposed to be your fail-safe if your people ever decide they’ve had enough of you.”
“You think you’re rather clever, don’t you?” the Dentist said, lip curling.
“No, not really,” Esther said. “Naomi is the clever one.”
The Dentist spun to look at Naomi, and she shot him at point-blank range with David’s gun.
Chapter 35—The Radio
“HE WAS LYING,” DAVID said.
They were still in the Bunker. He was wrapping a tourniquet tight around Esther’s arm with the cord the Dentist had used to tie up Naomi. The bullet had hit just above Esther’s elbow. It felt like every bone in her arm had shattered. She pressed her wadded-up jacket against the wound while David worked. She could barely move the fingers of her left hand, and she was shivering.
“Esther, listen to me!” David said. He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face up so she’d meet his eyes. “He was trying to distract you. He was lying about the Catalina.”
“He sounded serious to me,” Naomi said.
She sat in the armchair again, staring at the man she had just killed.
“You’re not helping,” David said dryly.
“Um, I just saved your life,” Naomi said.
Her face was ashen, and she looked like she might throw up.
“We have to find out for sure,” Esther said. She felt like she was speaking through a fog bank, but her senses were sharpening. The pain helped. “We need to get back to the Lucinda and call them on the satellite phone.”
“You can call from here,” Naomi said. “That computer is linked up to a satellite dish on the roof. He doesn’t let anyone else use it.”
“Do you know how to work it?” Esther asked.
“I’ve never used the phone part before,” Naomi said.
“I’ll do it,” David said. “I’ve probably had a bit more experience with computers than you two.”
“Let me finish that then,” Naomi said. “There’s a first aid kit.”
She stood on wobbly legs and retrieved the kit from the shelf closest to the door. Esther watched her. There was something strange about what Naomi was doing, something that didn’t add up, but she was too shaken to identify what.
“Hold still,” Naomi said, kneeling in front of Esther while David went to the computer. She opened a packet and pulled out a chemical-soaked cloth. “This’ll sting.”
Naomi used the cloth to clean the wound in Esther’s arm. There were spatters of the Dentist’s blood on her face and in her curly, matted hair. She definitely had Esther’s mother’s nose.
“You are my sister, aren’t you?” Esther said. “Why did you pretend you didn’t know me?”
Naomi bent lower over Esther’s arm, avoiding her eyes. She finished cleaning the wound and reached into the first aid kit for a bandage. The first aid kit she had known exactly how to find.
“Wait, you’ve been down here before, haven’t you?” Esther said. “More than once. You know about the computer and where to find things. I thought the Dentist didn’t let anyone down here.”
Esther pulled her arm out of Naomi’s hands, trying to ignore the raging, burning pain.
Naomi’s brown eyes swam with tears. Two of them rolled down the hook of Esther’s mother’s nose.
“He . . . he was like a father to me,” she said. “He saved me from the ash. And I just . . . I just . . .” Naomi trailed off, staring at the Dentist’s body.
“What do you mean he saved you?” Esther said.
David looked up from the computer, where he had been tapping at the keyboard.
“The Dentist,” Naomi said. She sniffled, wiping at the blood on her face. “Dr. Robert Dagan. He was treating me when the volcano blew. He saw the ash coming through the window and carried me down to the basement of the clinic without a word. Mom was in the waiting room, but he wouldn’t let me go to her.” Naomi’s voice faltered. She swallowed back a sob. “We took refuge in the basement storage room and survived on the oxygen stocked there for surgeries. We were underground for weeks, but he shared his air with me.” Naomi looked up at Esther. “I wanted Mom and Dad to come for me, but they never did.”
Esther let out a breath, pain throbbing in her arm. So Naomi hadn’t been with her mother when the ash fell after all.
“We waited until we were almost out of oxygen,” Naomi said, “and then the Dentist rigged up suits for us out of the medical gear in the basement, and we dug our way out. It had rained, and buildings were flattened all across the city. It was horrible.”
Naomi tentatively reached out to Esther and held up the bandage for her arm. “Let me finish that.”
Esther let her resume bandaging the wound, gritting her teeth against the pain.
Naomi focused on her hands and continued. “We dragged all the oxygen tanks and protective masks we could find in a shopping cart and used them until they ran out. Even then the air smelled like poison. I thought we would die after all, but we just kept going. We walked until we found a car that wasn’t completely clogged with ash, and then we drove from town to town, looking for somewhere to stay. We scavenged for canned food for years. We moved on whenever nomads or gangs of desperate people turned up. The Dentist promised we would find a safe place one day. He said God would look out for us. I felt safe with him. We eventually decided to band together with other survivors, and the Dentist made them feel safe too. He told us about a place where there was a lake full of fish. I think he’d been here before on a fishing trip. He might have even had a dream about it, but I don’t know for sure. We traveled across the border and through the desert to get here. We were attacked along the way. More than once. We lost people. But the Dentist kept us together.”
“Was he really going to execute you, though?” Esther asked. This image of the Dentist as a savior didn’t match up with the fact that Esther had discovered her sister in a cage. “Or was this an elaborate ploy with Boris to get us away from the Catalina?” Her voice caught on the name. It couldn’t be true. She couldn’t have lost her home, the people who had survived with her for years. Not on the same day she got her sister back.
“I really am—was—condemned.” Naomi sat back on her heels, looking around at the food and survival gear stacked all around them. “But it wasn’t because of Louis. Robert—the Dentist—changed over the years. I don’t know if he planned for the religion to take off like it did, but he embraced the prophet role. He got more authoritarian, and the rules got stricter. He became more and more afraid of the outside world. He went from helping every stranger we came across to fighting them off unless they’d swear to live exactly the way he wanted. He talked about remaking the world in his own image. I think he went a little crazy. Really, everyone in the world has gone a little crazy.”
Esther swallowed hard, remembering the skeletons in Ixcuintla, the ruthless leaders of the Calderon Group and the Harvesters, even the Galaxy captains, who refused to let their ships install her technology to keep the people under their rule.
“So what did you do?” she asked.
“The List, Esther. I sent our roster to your friend on the Catalina.”
“That was you?”
“I was the only one who was allowed into the Bunker. He planned to keep me with him if the worst happened—again—and he had to take refuge down here. I knew about the satellite network and that Robert was keeping news of the rest of the world away from the community. I tried to talk him into letting us contribute to the List. Your friend wouldn’t give us access to the other names without a roster, and I wanted to see if anyone I knew had survived.”
Naomi took Esther’s hand then, squeezing their bloody palms together.
“And he said no.”
“Yes.” Naomi looked down at the Dentist’s body, then turned away again quickly, her eyes welling up. “I snuck down here one night and transmitted our roster. But Robert found out before I could even get a look at the List.”
“And Louis?”
“We had been caught together once before,” Naomi said. “Robert had turned a blind eye for me then. But giving out our roster was a betrayal he couldn’t look past. Of course he couldn’t tell the community about the List because they’d all want to see it too. Instead he had Louis arrested that very day. We’d been really good about following the rules. Louis was doing what Robert wanted in the hopes of winning his approval.” Naomi gave a little sob, her shoulders quaking. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“How does Captain Boris fit into all this?” David asked. He had been listening intently from across the bunker.
“Captain Boris and the Dentist first made contact on the satellite network months ago,” Naomi said. “I don’t know what their arrangement was exactly, but I believe Boris asked the Dentist to keep you occupied when he found out you were here. He must have promised some sort of protection at the mouth of the river. The Dentist has considered that a vulnerable position ever since his attempt to get rid of the locals living near there failed.”
Esther closed her eyes, listening to the clack of keys as David resumed work on the computer. She should have known Boris would have allies. No wonder the Dentist had been so quick to let them stay. It had given Boris plenty of time to act against the Catalina. She should never have let so much time pass.
“As far as I know,” Naomi said, “Boris was never aware of our connection, but Robert put it together pretty quickly after you arrived. You and I both look like Mom, and I have Dad’s curly hair.”
Esther nodded. She stared at the woman her sister had become. Naomi looked older than her twenty-five years, her face lined and solemn. She had been through hell here on land. But there was still one more question.
“Why did you tell me you weren’t my sister?”
Naomi looked down at her hands. “The Dentist figured out what you were after. He knew your last name from the Elders, and he must have seen the resemblance between us. All he had to do was check the List. I was already in here by then, and he came to see me the day you and Dad arrived. I could hardly believe it was true. But I didn’t get a chance to hope I could be with you. The Dentist . . . he told me he would release Louis if I claimed I didn’t know you and told you to leave me alone.” Naomi looked up and met Esther’s eyes fiercely. “When you turned up outside my cell, I panicked. I’ve spent a long time telling myself I don’t have any other family but the Dentist. There was a chance to save Louis, and I didn’t want you to get hurt trying to help me. I lied.”
Esther remembered how the words had poured out of Naomi when she told Esther the fake story about being in Texas when the disaster happened. She had been trying desperately to protect the people she loved.
“But you shot the Dentist,” David said. “Dagan.”
“He broke his promise,” Naomi said, pain and fire in her expression. “I did what he asked, but he killed Louis, drowned him in the lake even though he didn’t do anything. And he was going to kill you too. I had to stop him.”
Tears coursed down Naomi’s cheeks. She looked down at the Dentist again, seemingly unable to pull her gaze away. Her shoulders quaked. Esther wondered if she should hug her. The woman was practically a stranger. She was almost glad her busted arm gave her an excuse not to. It was a lot to process, and the shock of being shot in the arm was making her brain foggy. She wished she could have saved Louis yesterday. But if she had tried, she’d never have made it here.
“Figured it out,” David said suddenly. He hit a button on the computer, and a beeping sound filled the room. “I’m calling the Catalina.”
Esther held her breath as they waited for someone to answer. Her wound throbbed. She prayed that David was right and the Dentist had been lying. The computer continued to beep—indicating the satellite phone ringing in Neal’s Tower, she hoped.
Then the beeping stopped.
“No,” Esther said.
“I’m sorry, Es— ”
“Call them again.”
David tapped the keyboard, and soon the beeping noise filled the room again. The signal traveled across the land, over the sea, bouncing up to the heavens and back. Time stretched like a tug line pulling toward the breaking point.
The beeping stopped. Esther’s heart skipped a beat. There was a crackle. Then—
“This is the Catalina.”
Esther gasped as Neal’s voice filled the Bunker.
“Catalina, this is Hawthorne. What’s your status?”
“A little busy here,” Neal said. “We’re on the run. I got a tip from the Amsterdam rig boss. Boris knows where we are, and the destroyer is after us. Your plan didn’t work, unfortunately.”
“Sweet salt and rust,” Esther said. She leapt up and darted over to the computer. The sudden movement nearly made her pass out, and she collapsed onto David’s lap in front of the computer. “Neal! It’s Esther! Is everyone still alive?!”
“Yeah, we’re fine, except for the whole part about Captain Boris chasing us. Without the Lucinda we’re sitting ducks.”
“What’s your present course?” David asked.
“We’re sailing for the coast as fast as we can,” Neal said. “But the destroyer is faster. They’ll be on us in a few days.”
“You’ve gotta head straight for the Santiago River,” Esther said. She felt rattled, ripped about like a flag in a storm. But it didn’t matter. The Catalina lived. “We’ll come for you.”
“Are you on the Lucinda now?” Neal said. “I haven’t been able to get ahold of Zoe today. The connections on the river have been hit and miss.”
“No, but we’re less than a day’s journey from where they’re supposed to be,” Esther said.
“Did you get Naomi?”
“Yes! She’s here with us now.”
“Awesome! Hey, Naomi! I’m Neal!”
Naomi looked up, surprised.
“We don’t have time to talk right now,” Esther said. “Can you get in touch with Marianna and see if there’s any way she can buy us time?”
“She’s trying,” Neal said. “She’s in danger herself.”
“If we sail through the night, we might be able to make the coast in three or four days. We’ll be with the current this time. Meet us at the mouth of the Santiago as fast as you can.”
“You got it.”
“Okay, we’ve gotta go now, Neal. I don’t know what’s wrong with Zoe’s link, but if the Lucinda is still afloat we’ll be there to meet you.”
“Sure thing. Come as fast as you can. Bye, Naomi!”
The line cut out.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Esther said to the others. “Let’s get going!”
Chapter 36—The Drive
ESTHER, DAVID, AND NAOMI found Yvonne still waiting for them in the jeep. She had curled up on the seat and fallen asleep.
“Wake up, Yve,” Naomi said, shaking her shoulder gently.
“Naomi, is that you? Are you alive?” Yvonne rubbed her eyes blearily.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” Naomi said.
She still seemed shaky. She must be exhausted after what she had been through tonight. Esther would need to rest soon too. She was a little worried about the giant hole in her arm.
“Can you drive us down to the river?” Naomi asked.
“The river?” Yvonne rubbed her eyes.
“You know the way, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but it’s a rough road,” Yvonne said. “If we dent the jeep, my brother—”
“It’s an emergency.”
“I know, I know. But only because you’re still alive.”
Yvonne climbed out to hug Naomi and usher her into the back of the jeep. David lifted Esther over the side to put her on the backseat and then climbed into
the front. He handed her one of the rifles they had taken from the Bunker, helping her balance it on the edge of the jeep so she could fire it with one hand if she had to. She grabbed him by the front of his shirt before he turned back around, planting a panicked, joyful kiss on his mouth. They had done it. David brushed her cheek with his fingers and turned back to the face the road.
They set off through the jungle. When they reached the first turnoff, Yvonne spun the wheel hard. They rumbled deeper into the trees, bouncing over a rougher, newer road. Pain chopped through Esther’s arm. She glimpsed a barbed wire fence through the thicket.
Naomi explained what had happened to the Dentist in clipped words. Yvonne kept turning to stare at her, and each time Esther was sure they were going to pitch off the road and into the scrub.
“So . . . so the Dentist is dead?” Yvonne said for the fourth time.
“Yes,” Naomi said miserably. She looked over at Esther, eyes wide and tearful. Esther wasn’t sure what to make of her yet. She had been through a lot, but at least she was no longer pretending not to know them. But the lake had been her home for a long time, and it must be hard on her to leave it. Speaking of the lake . . .
“Yvonne,” Esther said, “you probably don’t have to come to sea with us now that the Dentist is dead. I’m sure your brother would protect you if you want to go back after dropping us off.”
Yvonne burst into tears. David grabbed the wheel to keep the jeep from veering off the road.
“Thank you!” Yvonne squeaked. “I don’t think I’m cut out for this. I want to go home so bad!”
“A lot will change in town now,” Naomi said. “Maybe you can help them make it better than it was, for everyone.”
“Oh good. I was going to miss my little birds so much,” Yvonne said.
She took hold of the wheel again as they continued to bounce through the trees. David turned back to wink at Esther.
Esther looked over at her sister again. In the darkness she could have been sitting next to the spectral shape of her mother. This was so strange.
“Naomi,” she said, “after this is all over, do you want to find out if they’d let you stay too? You said before that you didn’t want to leave.”