The Girl at the End of the World

by Richard Levesque

  Great, I thought. She’s human.

  After a few seconds, she seemed to remember herself and continued with her patrol. When she got to my cell, I expected a friendly greeting as well, but her eyes barely shifted from dead center as she walked. The little wave I wanted to give died on my fingertips. Muñoz walked past and didn’t come back, disappearing through the door that the doctor and the guards always passed through just out of my line of sight.

  *****

  Dr. Sharma took more blood after two days had passed. I tried engaging her, too, to see if there was any progress with her research. She was uncommunicative, though, barely answering my questions with nods or not at all.

  “You know,” I said when she’d finished and I was pressing the bandage against my flesh to stanch the bleeding, “I am cooperating voluntarily. You could at least be friendly in return.”

  It was a stupid thing to say, childish really, but I was angry and annoyed, and the confines of my cell were beginning to get to me. All I wanted was a little glimpse of what my future looked like—how long she thought we’d be here, what was going to happen next. It didn’t seem like so much to ask for.

  But Dr. Sharma didn’t see it the same way. Maybe she’d been having a bad day, or was frustrated by her research, or was going a little stir crazy herself even though she could move around in all the white spaces of the base. At any rate, she answered my insolence with a cold stare and said, “Your cooperation doesn’t have to be voluntary.”

  That stopped me cold. My mind took me to a dark place, and I imagined myself on a surgical table, my arms and legs restrained and an IV drip hanging above me, feeding drugs into my veins to keep me sedated and compliant. They’d get their cooperation any way they could, and a few soldiers coming into my chamber with their guns drawn would be enough to get the job done. I pictured Muñoz behind a hazard mask, a little grin on her face as the doctor popped a needle into my arm and made the world melt away.

  I said nothing. Sharma said nothing either. She just nailed me with her stare and then pulled her samples from the chamber once it was safe for her to open the little door.

  *****

  “WE NEED TO ESCAPE,” I wrote on the glass the first chance I got, my fingers making the letters as carefully as possible with Chad watching across the corridor.

  Directly across from me, the old man had his blinds open and was simply staring at me. He did that a lot. At first, it gave me the creeps and I tried to avoid his gaze, but after a while I got used to it; his eyes didn’t seem to register, didn’t seem to be focusing on me or anything at all. So I told myself he wasn’t really looking at me, just pointing his eyes in my direction without really seeing anything.

  “BRILLIANT,” Chad wrote back. “WHEN DO WE LEAVE?”

  It might have been meant as a joke, a way to take the edge off the tension I might have been revealing with my expression. But I didn’t think so. He didn’t look amused. In fact, he looked almost disgusted.

  “WHAT’S UR PROBLEM?” I wrote.

  “WON’T WORK. Y TRY?”

  “HAS 2 B A WAY.”

  “LIKE BEFORE?”

  He shook his head then and stepped away from the window. Conversation over.

  I was angry and crestfallen at the same time. I wanted to keep sending messages, was mad at myself for having started this line of talk and getting him mad in the first place. And I was also frustrated that it looked like I was the only one who wanted to get away or felt like it was worth looking for an opportunity to escape.

  I knew why he was upset. I had been all about escape at Donovan’s, too, even roping him into my plan to find a way out. I’d gotten him to feel some hope. And it hadn’t gotten us anywhere. The helicopter and soldiers had seen to that; Donovan’s plan had overshadowed mine, even if it didn’t work out for Donovan.

  It wasn’t my fault things had worked out this way, but maybe it was my fault that Chad had gotten back whatever sense of independence Donovan had scared out of him, only to have it squashed again when we got locked inside these cells. He didn’t want to hope anymore, and I suppose that made me sadder than anything else.

  I was as likely to get cooperation from the old man who still stared at me. Absurdly, I waved at him and he, predictably, waved back—the only sign I ever got from him that he was actually aware that there was a person across the corridor.

  Then I turned from the window and went to my normal spot—my cot, where I lay on my back and looked at the ceiling and replayed the night we’d arrived at the base, convincing myself that there must be some flaw in the compound’s security, some little thing they’d missed, something I could exploit to get myself out of here. They were the same questions I’d asked at Donovan’s, and escape had seemed just as impossible then; the outhouse plan would have worked, I was certain. Now I just needed to come up with something similar…and win Chad over to my way of thinking once more.

  Of course, I’d take the others with me; more than ever, escaping alone wasn’t an option now. The thought of going on alone out there in the gone world was too much to consider. Even if Chad was being kind of a jerk right now, one of the things that helped me get through the long days and nights in my cell was the thought not just of being out of here, but being out of here with him, of running through the desert sand and toward the city and the ocean beyond, his hand in mine the way it had been on the helicopter.

  *****

  A week must have passed before Dr. Sharma came back.

  Since I could shut off the lights in my cell whenever I wanted, I’d been sleeping a little more than normal. Sleeping and dreaming helped keep the boredom and despair at bay, but also caused me to lose track of the days. The lights in the corridor were always on, so the only way of really telling the passage of time was with the changing of the guards, but every now and then they switched the order of their shifts, so I could never really be sure when I woke up and waited for the next patrol whether I had been out for one hour or ten.

  When I could, I sent messages to Chad. The subject of escape hadn’t come up again, which was just as well since I didn’t have any new ideas. We tried playing 20 Questions on the glass and other things to pass the time. At times, I felt like we were actually having a conversation, but the feeling would never last; the glass and space between us was too complete, too unbreakable for the fantasy to really get a strong enough hold to make me forget my reality.

  Around three days into Sharma’s absence, I noticed someone else conversing with Chad. Apparently, Private Muñoz had decided not to limit her friendliness to Dolores. Though she kept refraining from making eye contact with me, she did stop every now and then to look in on Chad. The first time I saw her stop and hit the intercom on Cell 2’s control panel, I thought there might be something wrong with Chad.

  He wasn’t in my line of sight when Muñoz stopped in front of his windows, and I imagined him lying on his cot, maybe sick. But then he came to the window and pushed the button to respond to her. They talked for less than a minute before she moved on.

  “WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT?” I wrote once she was gone.

  “JUST BEING FRIENDLY,” he replied.

  “HOW NICE 4 U,” I wrote back, crossing my eyes to show him I wasn’t mad or anything. And I wasn’t. Chad couldn’t help it if the guard wanted to talk to him and not me.

  On her next shift, Muñoz stayed longer. I could see Chad smiling as they talked, and when Muñoz turned away from the control panel to finish her rounds, she looked amused as well.

  I just put up a big question mark on the glass once she had left.

  Chad shrugged. “SMALL TALK,” he wrote.

  “ABOUT?”

  “LIFE BEFORE F2.”

  I nodded. “TELL HER I DON’T HAVE COOTIES IF SHE WANTS SOMEONE ELSE 2 TALK 2.”

  He laughed. “K.”

  After that, it was every shift. She’d ignore the old man, linger at Chad’s cell for a few minutes, chat with Dolores, and then pass by my cell on her way out of the chamber.
I’ll admit to some feelings of jealousy. I mean, who wouldn’t feel kind of weird in that situation? Muñoz’s attentions also made me realize how much I’d come to think of Chad. Had we not been thrown together into this situation, had we met each other in the times before the F2, those feelings might never have developed, but we weren’t in those old times, and my mind kept turning to thoughts of Chad now, probably as often as it lingered on thoughts of escape and memories of my old life.

  Absurd as it was, I wished we were back at Donovan’s, able to talk to each other and sleep side by side. I remembered the feeling of his breath on my cheek when I’d lay awake next to him in the night and longed to be that close to him again. In truth, I longed to be that close to anyone again, but Chad became the focus of my longing during all those days in the gray cell. Strangely enough, I felt lonelier there than I had at the observatory when I’d been convinced I was the last person left in all of California.

  When Dr. Sharma did return, it was with a small plastic case and her omnipresent clipboard. This time, she started with the old man, who seemed to cooperate readily, as though he’d been conditioned like an animal in an experiment. With her back blocking much of my view, I couldn’t tell what the doctor did, but it looked like she put something inside the drawer before leaning forward to put her hands in the gloves. After a few seconds, she withdrew her hands, punched buttons, and then took something back out of the drawer. She made notes on her clipboard and then moved on to Chad.

  With him, she stayed a bit longer, but not much. I could see them talking. Then she repeated the same process. This time, from the different angle, I could definitely tell she took something out of her little case and dropped it inside the airlock chamber. She made a note on her clipboard, leaned forward to put her arms in the gloves, and then pulled her arms out to wait for the decontamination process to finish inside the drawer before she took the same thing out. A few more words exchanged with Chad, and she crossed the hall to Dolores.

  There, the angle was all wrong; I couldn’t see much of anything, but assumed the doctor was going through the same routine. All I could do was wait for my turn.

  It came soon enough.

  “Good morning, Scarlett,” Dr. Sharma said when she pulled her stool up to my window.

  That was odd. First, because she was never so friendly, and second because my internal clock had me convinced it was late afternoon. Morning, I thought, trying to reorient myself.

  “Good morning,” I replied automatically.

  “We’ve made some advancements and are ready for the next phase of our experiments.”

  “Okay. What’s that going to involve?”

  She didn’t answer directly, just opened her little case to reveal four syringes. Three looked empty; the fourth had about half an inch of yellow liquid in the tube. Taking the fourth syringe from her case, she looked at the label for a moment and then wrote something on her clipboard before setting it aside. Then she punched her code and placed the syringe in the decontamination drawer.

  “What’s in that?” I asked.

  “Just some neutral agents that we plan on suspending the vaccine in once it’s ready. We need to make sure the delivery system has no adverse effects.”

  “Wait,” I said, drawing back from the glass. “What kind of adverse effects?”

  She raised an eyebrow and said, “Nothing to worry about. If the vaccine is going to cause nausea or insomnia or euphoria, we’d like to know about it before we begin subjecting men with guns to it.”

  I thought about it for a second before scooting back to the glass. Her reference to men with guns hadn’t been random. She wanted me remembering who had the power here. If I refused to participate in this portion of her experiment, she had ways of changing my mind. Now I imagined Muñoz as the one forcing me onto a table while the doctor strapped me down. I still didn’t like the idea of her shooting something experimental into my body, but I also knew I didn’t have much choice. My desire to escape this place increased by about a thousand-fold, however, as I sat there and let her swab the spot on my upper arm where she’d chosen to inject me. I glanced in Chad’s direction, hoping to find him watching so I could give him a meaningful stare, but he wasn’t anywhere in sight.

  A few seconds later, the needle was in, and I felt a burning sensation spreading out from it as well as a quick feeling of intense pressure. Then the needle was out, and the gloved fingers were applying a little bandage, and that was it. The pain decreased but didn’t go away entirely.

  “Are you all right?” the doctor asked.

  I nodded. “Hurts, but it’s going away.”

  “Good.” She pulled her hands out of the gloves and readied herself to go. “Thank you for cooperating,” she added.

  “You’re welcome.” I felt like I had to say it, like I’d been bullied into it by her imitation of politeness.

  Then she was gone, and I was left to rub my arm and fantasize about breaking through the glass and running away.

  *****

  I must have slept. Or maybe I just lay on the cot and stared at the ceiling, but I doubt I could have done that for long without dozing off. At any rate, I definitely had the feeling that some time had passed when I sat up and looked around. I felt a bit dizzy, and the room seemed elongated, distorted.

  The shot, I thought. She lied.

  My adrenaline started flowing then, the idea that Dr. Sharma had given me something more potent than “neutral agents” made me angry and scared at the same time—but mostly angry. I wanted to shout and hit things. I wanted her sitting across from me with her neat little clipboard and her stupid glasses and her smug look so I could tell her what I really thought of her and how I wished she’d just get it over with and die.

  But then I realized that the dizziness was gone. Maybe my anger had counteracted it, made it go away. Even so, I still felt angry, but also a bit less scared.

  A bit tentatively, I got off the cot. Still feeling fine, I went to the window. And there I saw Chad at his window, waiting for me.

  I had never seen him look like this, and I was alarmed immediately, more adrenaline coursing into my system. He looked scared and agitated and was rocking back and forth behind the glass. When he saw me, his expression changed a bit, adding relief to the mix. How someone could look relieved and scared at the same time, I don’t know, but Chad pulled it off that day.

  “KAYLA,” he wrote on the window, his fingers flying so I could barely get the letters.

  “?”

  “THEY TOOK HER.”

  Now my heart started beating even more rapidly. At first, I’d guessed he was feeling side effects from the injection, too. Probably worse side effects than I was having. But now I knew otherwise.

  “Y?” I wrote.

  He shrugged and held his arms up in a sign of bewilderment.

  “DID SHE GET A SHOT 2?”

  “COULDN’T SEE. CAN’T ASK DOLORES.”

  Chad’s Spanish was far worse than mine, and I didn’t have the slightest idea of how to ask, “Did the baby get an injection?” in anything but English.

  “IS SHE UPSET?” I asked.

  Chad nodded vehemently. Dolores was probably freaking out in the cell next to mine, and there was nothing I could do to help her.

  “WHEN DID THEY TAKE HER?”

  “A WHILE. NOT LONG AFTER SHARMA CAME.”

  “U SAW?”

  He nodded.

  “WAS IT SHARMA?”

  “THINK SO.”

  “AND SOLDIERS?”

  He nodded again.

  I could picture it—the doctor and the soldiers all in hazard suits, the soldiers with their guns drawn in case Dolores put up a fight, and Dolores probably crying and begging them not to take the baby.

  If I’d hated Sharma before, it was nothing compared to what I felt now.

  “WHAT DO WE DO?” Chad wrote.

  I thought about it for a few seconds, wanting to write ESCAPE on the glass, but now wasn’t the time for I-told-you-so. Even i
f he had been willing to conspire with me, I didn’t think we’d have found an opportunity before this new kink in our situation.

  “TALK 2 MUÑOZ,” I finally wrote. Maybe there was something there. Maybe the young guard had a little crush on Chad or was just sympathetic to our plight. That she didn’t seem to care for me wouldn’t matter: it was Chad and Dolores she seemed to like, and if those two were upset over what had happened to Kayla, they might find a sympathetic listener in Private Muñoz. And maybe some information that we could work with to get ourselves out of this bind.

  Chad didn’t even need to think about it, just nodded right away. He must have seen the possibilities of talking to the guard even as I was thinking them.

  But Muñoz didn’t come. It was the middle of the mean-looking young guard’s shift when Chad and I messaged each other. Then the thin, older guard had his turn. Muñoz should have been next, but no. The third guard was one we’d never seen before, an African-American soldier in his thirties who made no eye contact with us as he patrolled, just got out of the corridor as quickly as he could.

  Chad and I gave each other quizzical looks and shrugged. “SHOULD GET SOME SLEEP,” Chad wrote.

  He was right. I’d been fighting sleep for a while now, waiting for Muñoz. Now that she hadn’t shown, the idea of staying awake until this guard’s shift was over seemed an impossibility.

  “WHAT ABOUT MUÑOZ?” I wrote.

  “WE’LL CATCH HER AS SOON AS WE CAN.”

  I nodded, not wanting him to be right but seeing no way around the situation. We needed sleep; Muñoz wasn’t here; if we slept through her shift, one of us was bound to be awake during another shift. I was determined that I’d get her to talk to me if Chad was asleep and I wasn’t.

  I closed my blinds, dimmed my lights, and lay down. Telling myself this was just a catnap, I didn’t take off my clothes and didn’t cover myself with the blanket. I didn’t want to get too comfortable, didn’t want to fall too deeply asleep. It wouldn’t do to crash out for six or seven hours, not when so many odd things were going on.