Half Lives

by Sara Grant

  ‘Don’t you want to know what’s out there?’ Marissa said, and burst into tears. ‘If someone’s alive, don’t we have a duty to save them? You saved me. You brought us here because you couldn’t let us die. How can you just stand there when someone may need our help?’ She wiped her runny nose on her arm.

  I shook my head the non-stop way toddlers do before they can speak. I knew the death and disease we’d locked out. I’d seen those fighter jets. I was pretty sure nothing good could come from opening that door.

  ‘Icie!’ She blinked and blinked again, then opened her eyes extra wide as if she might pierce my soul with laser vision. ‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ she said, completely calm and in control again.

  ‘Give me a second!’ I screamed. I couldn’t let her hurt Chaske. I couldn’t open the door, but I had to do something, because the one thing I believed with all my heart was that she would do what she threatened.

  Tate appeared at the entrance of the tunnel. ‘I couldn’t find it, Cha—’ He stopped when he saw the knife.

  ‘Stay over there, Tate,’ Marissa said, pointing the knife at him. ‘Stay out of this.’

  I pushed my panic aside. My head cleared. I knew the only answer. ‘Marissa, I’ll open the door on one condition.’

  She manically nodded to encourage me to go on.

  ‘If I open this door, no one is coming in.’ My voice was shaking so badly I didn’t know if the words had actually come out of my mouth.

  ‘OK. OK,’ she responded quickly.

  ‘Marissa, think about it.’ Chaske spoke as if he’d been a hostage negotiator his whole life. ‘You don’t know what’s out there. Why should we risk opening the door?’

  She trained her brown eyes on him. ‘You don’t know what’s out there either. I will die if I don’t get out of here. Someone’s out there and I can’t take this any more.’

  ‘Are you willing to risk our lives?’ he continued. ‘We don’t know who they are or what they want or what this means.’

  ‘What have you become?’ Marissa thrust the knife at me and then back at Chaske.

  ‘I want to make it through this, Marissa,’ I said. ‘I’ll open the door, but no one comes in.’

  ‘You and Tate get out of here.’ She told Chaske, shoving him away. ‘Now! You’re making me nervous.’ She swung the knife. I dodged away from the blade.

  ‘Go!’ I shouted. ‘We shouldn’t all get contaminated. We’ll open the door a crack and check it out.’ I wanted him to survive. ‘It will be OK.’ The lie to end all lies. If someone felt the need to say it, odds were it wasn’t remotely true. Maybe what was meant, maybe what my dad meant and what I meant, was that we would adapt and move on.

  ‘Icie?’ Chaske said.

  ‘Please go,’ I begged. ‘Please.’

  Chaske and Tate turned.

  ‘Run!’ Marissa shouted. ‘I don’t want to see you. Get out of here. Go, or I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

  Chaske called to Midnight and they disappeared down the tunnel.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked her.

  She moved to the door and stared at the crack that would soon open.

  I turned the key in the lock.

  The door seemed to consider whether it would open or not before it unlocked with a thud. I moved behind the door and pulled with all my might. She didn’t take her eyes off the widening gap.

  The door opened with a whoosh of air. Marissa peered into the darkness and gasped.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  ‘Team equals together everyone achieves a lot.’

  – Just Saying 161

  FINCH

  ‘Shouldn’t we search for Beckett?’ Cal says, scanning the Mountainside.

  ‘I’ve told you, Beckett is gone,’ Finch replies. All the signs have aligned. This is his destiny. No one and nothing will stand in his way ever again. ‘Beckett has betrayed us. I saw him cross the Crown. I don’t want to hear another word about him. The Great I AM has called us to avenge Atti’s death. We must send a message to the Terrorists. They must leave our Mountain and our people alone.’

  They have built a fire on the Other Side of the Mountain. Tom and May will feed the fire and watch for any signs of Terrorists. If they extinguish the fire, everyone is to immediately return to the Mountain.

  Finch’s Cheerleaders have painted themselves black with the ash from Storytime. As the final glow of the sun fades, Finch’s followers blend into the night.

  ‘Everyone knows what they need to do?’ Finch cracks his knuckles, anxious to set his plan in motion. Everyone nods in response. ‘Then let’s go.’

  They have one lit torch that they shield with their bodies. Finch doesn’t want the light to announce their arrival. They need the element of surprise. They silently march in a disorganized blob down the Black River.

  When they arrive at the outskirts of the Man-Made Mountains, they dart from building to building. Finch has always followed but now he can feel something greater directing him. All this time, he was the real Cheer Captain.

  ‘For Atti,’ he reminds himself. He feels the slightest twinge of sadness. What’s wrong with him? Harper was distraught by Atti’s death. Why can’t he feel that? Harper’s gone now too. Finch knows that Harper helped Beckett escape, but he likes to imagine her back on the Mountain waiting for his triumphant return. She will look at him the way she always looked at Beckett.

  He sees shapes dance among the Man-Made Mountains. Terrorists, Finch thinks. He flattens himself against a building and signals for everyone to do the same. His breath quickens and his adrenaline spikes. This place no longer has a hold over him. Finch will end the reign of terror.

  He gathers the Cheerleaders together. He can see the fear in their eyes. ‘The Great I AM will protect us. Ours is a sacred mission.’ He lights his torch and lets it rest in the flame. One by one they all do the same and the fire grows into a crackling ball at the centre of their circle. ‘Today we make a new Walk of Enlightenment. Generations will speak of our bravery.’

  Finch and the Cheerleaders divide and attack from all sides. He can’t believe his luck. The Terrorists have scavenged everything useful from the buildings and organized their findings into huge piles. They offer the perfect kindling. Another sign that the Great I AM is leading him. He lights fires in the rubble. Figures are beginning to spill from every building. Cheerleaders scatter.

  Finch picks the highest tower. He has always wanted to climb the Man-Made Mountains. He watches the figures flee and determines how to scale the building. He climbs the stairs to the very top. Wind whips smoke through the broken windows. He looks down on the tiny creatures’ frenzy. Each Cheerleader is supposed to set a fire and then return to the Mountain. Strike like lightning was Finch’s plan. All around him points of light flicker, small and insignificant, but then they grow and spread and morph into fiery beasties. He is mesmerized by the havoc he has wrought.

  Heat washes over him in waves, cleansing him. Finch feels as if he is beckoning the fires forwards. He cracks his knuckles one by one. Each click of bone on bone releases the tension.

  In his mind’s eye, the smoky figures below transform into Terrorists and assume their ghastly, scaly form. He doesn’t recognize their shape as similar to his, or see their resemblance to Harper. He paints claws on their fingertips and fangs in their screaming mouths.

  He sees a Cheerleader toss a torch into a smaller building. The light vanishes into the dark space. The Cheerleader’s shoulders slump, but suddenly the fire takes hold in a burst of light. Terrorists descend on the Cheerleader like vultures. They pick him apart until there’s no life left. They have proven Finch right. These Terrorists are savages.

  The fires grow and spread – like hatred in the hearts of Forreal. To the east he sees what he believes are Cheerleaders returning to the Mountain. Below he watches and almost laughs at the Terrorists’ attempts to extinguish his fires.

  He plants his torch in a pile of cloth that appears to be someone’s bed. He wants
to stay longer, but the Man-Made Mountains are alive now. The fire roars. The Terrorists scream. His heart swells.

  He slithers like a snake among the buildings, hiding in the shadows, and disappears in the black smoke. As he sets a course for his Mountain, he tells himself a story. How he ignited the fire and slipped through the flames untouched. How he fought bravely. How he walked through their streets with his head held high. How the black beasties bowed as he passed.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  When I opened the door, Marissa lurched away from whatever she saw. She grabbed my shirt as she fell backwards, nearly pulling me to the ground with her. Her gaze was fixed on the gap between the open door and the darkness beyond.

  I saw it and screamed.

  It was the only way to describe the thing that appeared in that sliver where light met dark. It was as if an extra from Night of the Living Dead had leapt off the screen and come to life. Dried blood matted its hair. Its skin was wrinkled and peeling like the scales of a snake. It was a patchwork of scars that gaped to the bone below. Its blood-red eyes appeared to pulse from dark sockets. It reached a hand out towards me with blistered fingertips. The fingernails that remained were black ragged squares. Its pink, fleshy tongue quivered behind its parted, cracked lips.

  ‘Help me,’ it whimpered and took one laboured step closer. The beastie became a man. ‘Help me,’ he said again, a little more clearly. His whole body was trembling and he emitted this sound that was part growl and part moan.

  I dragged Marissa away from the door before I realized that low guttural sound wasn’t menacing. He was crying.

  Chaske seemed to magically appear at my side. He raised his arms. The gun that had saved me from the snake a lifetime ago was pointed at the man.

  ‘Move back! Back off!’ Chaske shouted. The man raised both of his arms in surrender. ‘Close the door, Icie.’ Chaske shoved me towards the door. ‘Close it now before he contaminates us.’

  The man looked as if something was devouring him from the inside. Open, seeping sores dotted his dirt-brown skin.

  ‘Wait,’ the man spoke in a hoarse whisper. ‘Please, you’ve got to help us.’ He sucked in a ragged breath. ‘Help us . . .’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘Shut the door, Icie,’ Chaske barked. I noticed that the gun was shaking in his hands.

  ‘Chaske, are you sure?’ I was being torn in two. This was an impossible decision. I understood just how thin the line between living and dying was. If I shut the door, was I sentencing him to death? If I let him in, would we all die?

  ‘Icie.’ Chaske grabbed my arm and pulled me to him.

  His ragged fingernails drilled into the soft flesh of my upper arm. ‘You’ve got to trust me. If we let this man in, we will die.’

  I didn’t want to die. I had to see this man as a murderer. He would kill me as surely as if he held a gun to my head, except by the looks of him, his death would be slow and agonizing. I couldn’t consider him human. I had to believe it was him or me.

  I leaned my shoulder against the door and felt it give little by little under my weight. A breeze blew through the opening and with it the sour stink of rotting flesh and Portaloos. This man was death walking, a zombie of sorts.

  ‘Stop,’ Marissa shouted. She scrambled to her feet and stood in front of the open door. She pointed her knife at me and then at Chaske. ‘There are other survivors. Did you hear what he said? He said “us”. We’ve got to help them.’

  ‘Get out of the way,’ Chaske yelled at her. ‘Icie, shut the damn door.’

  ‘Ice?’ Marissa looked at me as if I were the beastie. I threw my weight behind the door.

  Marissa wedged herself in the doorway. ‘These are human beings.’

  I shook my head. I couldn’t listen to her. I couldn’t think of that as human. I didn’t want to believe that what had happened to it was happening to everyone out there. It’s a monster, I told myself. A zombie. To think anything else was too confusing. Whatever it was, I couldn’t let it in here. I couldn’t let it infect us. I had to shut it out.

  The zombie’s hand clapped on Marissa’s shoulder. She jerked free. Her shirt ripped as the zombie clawed to keep hold of her. My focus zoomed in on the two red jagged lines it had drawn on her skin. Chaske flinched and I knew he’d seen it too.

  Chaske waved his gun at her. ‘Get out!’

  ‘What?’ Marissa’s face blanched.

  ‘You wanted to open the door, but I can’t let whatever is out there in here. That . . . that . . .’ He gestured at the zombie with the barrel of his gun. ‘It’s scratched you. I can’t let you stay here.’ He aimed the gun at Marissa.

  I took a step towards Marissa to get between her and the gun, but then I realized Chaske was right. Marissa was now a threat too. She had switched from us to them.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Tate screamed. He was heading for Marissa. I stopped him and held him in a bear hug. This gave Marissa the chance to shove the door open a foot more.

  ‘No!’ Tate shouted. A black flash distracted me. Midnight was scampering between Chaske and me.

  ‘You don’t understand . . . you didn’t see . . .’ I was trying to explain this to Tate but my mind wasn’t functioning in complete sentences. I knew this was it. If I didn’t do something, we could be in for slow and painful deaths. The look in that thing’s eyes told me everything I needed to know about the suffering we’d locked out.

  This princess saves herself.

  ‘If you don’t help me shut this door,’ I whispered to Tate, ‘we are going to die.’

  I forced our weight onto the door, but Marissa’s body propped it open.

  ‘We are going to help these people,’ Marissa said defiantly.

  The diseased man looped his arm around Marissa’s neck, pulling her through the door. She screamed and shoved him away, banging her arm into the doorframe and falling at the man’s feet. He climbed over her. He was coming after us.

  Chaske aimed the gun. ‘Stop,’ Chaske said, nearly choked out. I rushed to his side. The creature took another step towards us and stood in the doorway. The gun was vibrating in Chaske’s trembling hands.

  ‘I’ve got to shoot him,’ Chaske whispered to me. ‘Right?’

  ‘We can’t let him in,’ I said, mirroring his stance.

  The zombie shuffled forwards.

  ‘Chaske,’ I shouted. ‘Now. Do it now!’

  He nodded but everything else about him froze.

  The zombie slowly approached, reaching an arm towards us. I had sacrificed everything and survived. The difference between life and death was the twitch of a finger. I couldn’t stand here and allow this thing to infect me. I had to protect Chaske and Tate. I had come this far. I’d left others to die. I had to find the courage for one more act of survival.

  I supported the gun in Chaske’s hand. I looped my finger in the trigger, dislodging Chaske’s grasp. The weight of the gun settled in my palm. I pointed it at the thing that stood between me and the ever after.

  I choose me.

  I pulled the trigger.

  The blast jolted my body backwards. The explosion echoed through the tunnels and rang in my ears.

  Blood exploded from the zombie’s body and splattered on Marissa and the metal door. The force of the bullet propelled it back. It collapsed on the ground.

  This felt like a scene from a movie. A movie that I wanted to switch off. But this was real; he was never getting up again. It was over in the blink of an eye, but one image froze and drilled itself into my memory: his face as the bullet smashed into him. It was as if my brain zoomed in on his eyes and the zombie morphed back into something human. I’d killed a man. I could see that but I couldn’t believe it. That was someone’s son, maybe someone’s father or husband or friend. I had never done anything so final, so horrible.

  ‘Icie, what have you done?’ Marissa crawled to the bloody lump, which was coughing and spluttering.

  I couldn’t move. I was watching the scene around me but I was no longer in it.
Chaske dived for the door, shoving with all his might. Midnight bolted through the crack and into the darkness.

  ‘Chaske, wait!’ I yelled, reaching for Midnight, but it was too late.

  He shoved the door shut and twisted the key, which was still in the lock. The metal lock thudded into place. Marissa, Midnight and the zombie were edited out of my story.

  I had saved us, but it didn’t feel like that. It felt as though the bullet had killed me too.

  Chaske took the gun out of my hand and gathered me into his arms. ‘You did the right thing,’ he whispered into my ear. ‘I couldn’t do it.’

  I could. What had I become? Was I a murderer or a hero? Or both? But how could you be both?

  ‘What have you done?’ Tate asked, his face pale, his body slack. He was afraid of me now. I could see it in his eyes.

  ‘We had to do it, Tate,’ Chaske explained. ‘You didn’t see the man. He was sick. He scratched Marissa, infected her . . . It was her own fault. She opened the door. If we’d let them in, we would have died.’ He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as Tate.

  ‘You remember those people in the cars,’ I said to Tate. ‘We don’t want to end up like them, do we? I did it to protect you.’

  The pounding started again. Muffled screams. Marissa was right there on the other side of the door. She was only a few feet away and probably dying. We stared at the door as if it were a window. I could picture her clearly – but it wasn’t the girl who we’d just locked out. The twitchy nervous girl with the yellow-grey skin and the dull eyes. In my mind’s eye, she was the bald girl I’d met on the plane with the cheerleader smile.

  Everything stopped. The pounding. My brain. Any thoughts or feelings evaporated from my body.

  ‘There could be other survivors,’ Tate said, eyes glued to the door. ‘Marissa and Midnight could survive, you never know. They could.’

  ‘You never know,’ Chaske agreed.

  More pounding. Tate burst into tears. I covered my ears and shut my eyes. I started singing Tate’s favourite tune to drown out the noise: ‘“Wha Eva. Wha Eva. The bad, the good. Wha Eva. I put my faith in Wha Eva. Wha Eva alone”.’