The Wall (The Woodlands)

by Taylor, Lauren Nicolle

  The sun rose over the icy plains, painting the horizon with drips of color that hit the snow and splashed across it, seeping in like the ice could hold it. The stunning beauty of it was enough to stop me from feeling so tired, for a moment. In front of us were low hills shimmering under the sleepy sun’s rays. I hoped we weren’t going under them but then going over them would be nauseating. I imagined spinning over the edges, teetering, with no hold on the tracks and my stomach rolled.

  I pulled up the blind between the carriages. Everyone was awake and Deshi waved at me. He looked happier, more secure.

  The train glided smoothly to a stop and the carriage door opened soundlessly. The blast of cold air was like a smack in the face. Joseph woke up very suddenly, sitting bolt upright, like someone had given him an electric shock. Looking at him crumpled from sleep, he looked boyish, his hair sticking up at all angles, his eyes squinting and not wanting to open. It made me want to grab his hair and pull his face down to mine. He made me feel like I was sitting at the edge of a pool, that feeling of warmth touching my toes and begging me to dive in. He smiled down at me, leaned in, and pressed his lips to my forehead.

  Matthew poked his head in the door and smiled. His light brown hair showed strands of gold in the light. “Hungry?”

  We both nodded. He threw some sandwiches at us.

  He was wearing his stethoscope around his neck and was carrying a small bag. “I thought I would ride with you for a bit. I need to give Joseph a check-up,” he said in a too-cheery voice. His mood from last night was shoved somewhere. Maybe being closer to home helped him. I didn’t know what that was like. There was no place I felt a pull towards except maybe the woods and they were dangerous. We were like trees with nowhere to sink our roots, Joseph and I. Instead of finding the ground we wound them around each other.

  Matthew put Orry’s capsule on the floor and slid into the seat opposite us. Orry seemed so tired from the stress of yesterday, he didn’t even notice the movement. We opened our food and talked while eating.

  Matthew cleared his throat and tapped the end of his stethoscope. “How are you feeling?”

  Joseph breathed in and out slowly as Matthew listened to his lungs and tapped his chest lightly. “Stitches are itchy but apart from that I feel really good,” he answered, grinning at me. He did look really good. The hollows of his cheeks were already starting to fill out, his color was great, and if anything, he looked stronger and healthier than he did before he got sick. Which wasn’t right.

  I tightened my eyes at Matthew. He leaned back a bit and raised his eyebrows. I was so used to people reacting that way to me it didn’t give me pause anymore. “What exactly did you do to him?” I asked.

  “Rosa…” Joseph started to say.

  “It’s all right.” Matthew put his hands up. “She has a right to ask, so do you.”

  “Yeah, but she doesn’t have to glare at you like that.”

  I turned my eyes on Joseph. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” I snapped.

  He chuckled and ran his hand through his hair. He was so annoying and annoyingly adorable.

  Matthew explained that the operation they’d performed, the ‘broken heart’ procedure, was one of the borrowed technologies discovered when they started building the settlement. It involved removing the heart and placing it in a glass box. At this point, I snorted. It sounded stupid. I felt sure it was a lie. Matthew assured us it was true. They didn’t know how it worked but, coupled with a complicated machine, it could completely regenerate the damaged tissue. It could replicate any organ or body part. So if you were badly burned, it could generate new skin. It was like Joseph had been given a new heart. Joseph was fascinated. I was looking out the window. As long they hadn’t hurt him or changed him in some fundamental way, that was explanation enough.

  When they had finished their doctor talk, Matthew asked Joseph to unbutton his shirt so he could look at his stitches.

  “Would you turn around please?” Joseph said to me, making a circle with his finger, a wicked grin on his face.

  I poked my tongue out at him. “If you hadn’t just had surgery, I would punch you.”

  The train started moving. Matthew slammed into Joseph’s chest with his stethoscope and he winced. “Ha!” I laughed.

  I could tell Matthew didn’t quite understand our dynamic. But he ignored us, focusing on pressing around the edges of the scar as Joseph gritted his teeth.

  “All looks good,” he said. “How do you feel?”

  “Good. Really good. Thanks, Matt.”

  “How’s Apella?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.

  “She’s fine,” Matthew said looking at me with his kind, blue eyes.

  “What? What’s wrong with Apella?” Joseph asked.

  “Umm…” I was never good at coming up with a lie on the spot.

  Matthew took over. “Apella had a miscarriage while you were in the coma. She’s very sad, but physically she’s doing well.”

  Joseph shook his head sorrowfully, “Oh no. That’s awful.” He went quiet, taking on her grief. It made me love him more, that he would be so affected by her loss. He wouldn’t make the connection between his miraculous recovery and her miscarriage unless we pointed him that way. I made eye contact with Matthew and he seemed to understand nothing more should be said.

  The spinners were climbing now. A labored electrical noise hummed in the background as they pushed upwards. We were like a strand of beads being pulled along and now we were heading uphill, I could hear a slight strain.

  Matthew said we would be there soon. He tapped his fingers on the table and glanced out the window absentmindedly. Trees sprouted out of the snow and I felt more at home with the green pressing into the tracks. With the sun so strong, the snow was melting, pulling the white back from the leaves, revealing the life underneath. It was there, just waiting, ready to grow and change the scene. I wanted to run out there, to shake and whip the branches and tell winter to hurry up and finish.

  As we climbed further, an alien noise punctured the silence. Matthew uttered, “Gwen.” He rolled his eyes and stared out the window more intently, like that could block out the noise. Tiny speakers in the four corners of our carriage emitted static and I thought they were going to make an announcement. It threw me back to the announcements in Pau. They were never good. I found myself unwittingly gripping the sides of the chair and grimacing. Then the sound came.

  Joseph and I both jumped in our seats. Orry followed the noise around the room like he could see the sounds floating around on the air. I could almost see them too.

  It fit into the scene like it was made for that exact purpose, an accompaniment. It slipped in and around the trees, hopping up and down on the leaves, sending sprays of melting snow running from their shiny fronds. It leapt into the clouds and burst through like rays of light. I found myself tapping my feet and swaying my head.

  Then the singing started. A man’s voice ebbed in between the springing, echoing noises of strings being plucked and wood being hit. His voice was sweet and soft; the painful bemoaning edge to it brought tears to my eyes. I thought of Clara. She understood music. In Pau, the only tuneful sound came from absent humming or whistling and that was usually swallowed pretty quickly for fear of being reported. This was the first time Joseph and I had ever heard anything like this, an organized, yet almost organic, melding of voice and instrument. It filled my ears, my head, with pleasure and aching and I wondered if that was the intention behind it. I couldn’t even hear the words. The sound was overwhelming enough. When it stopped, I wanted to reach out and tug it back through the speakers. But another song started and brought us through another journey of the singers making.

  I was lost to it.

  Matthew watched our reactions in a gentle but clinical manner. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if he had pulled out a notepad and started jotting things down. I guess it would be fascinating to see a person’s first reaction to real, recorded music.


  When the collection of songs ended, I leaned into Matthew, my eyes wide. “Is there more?”

  He laughed. “More than you can possibly imagine.”

  I crossed my arms and collapsed back into my chair, hugging my ribs. More. Any place that had more of that couldn’t be half bad. I glanced at Joseph’s face, which was somewhere between a smirk and a laugh that didn’t quite get out. I could tell it affected him, but not as intensely as me, because he took new things on so much more easily than I did. It didn’t send him into a spiral of wonderment and sadness; he could accept it into his head like it had always been a part of him.

  “Do you have your own music, too? Like a favorite song?” I asked.

  Matthew’s eyes creased and a flash of pain crossed his face. I had upset him.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

  “No, it’s fine, Rosa. Like you’ve just experienced, music can evoke strong emotions. My favorite song is hard for me to hear; it brings up memories of the people I have lost.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wishing I could say something more meaningful but there was nothing.

  Matthew told us that he had a wife. At the very beginning of the building of the settlement, people emerged from China. They had been hiding in the hills around the edges of a bombsite. He told me, his eyes going soft and distant, that she was beautiful, smart, and fierce. She was very protective of her people and it took him a long time to convince her that he could be trusted.

  Joseph silently chuckled. “What?” I asked.

  “Oh, just sounds like someone I know,” he whispered.

  When Matthew finally won her over, it didn’t take long before they were married, or what Survivors’ called being married. It basically meant living together.

  His favorite was the song they played at their union party. It was their favorite song, and that’s why he couldn’t listen to it anymore. He didn’t need to continue—I understood. This is what life was like, not just here but everywhere. There were no happy endings, just endings. Things rarely seemed to work out the way they should.

  “I knew she was sick when we got together. Perhaps I should have kept my distance but then…” he smiled sadly, “I think it was better to have had those short months with her than nothing at all.”

  I tipped my head gently, agreeing. Even though it was more painful than I could possibly have imagined, I would never want to give up knowing Clara. Her loss stung me a thousand times a day in a thousand different ways. Even though I was barbed and ridden with holes from her, I couldn’t regret our friendship.

  Deep in thought, I didn’t notice we were slowing down until we started rolling backwards, clanging gently against the other carriages like marbles on a slide.

  “We’re here,” Matthew said, satisfied, full. He was happy to be home.

  It was about lunchtime when we stepped out of our carriages onto a concrete platform in timid shuffles, like we were stepping onto thin ice that might crack at any second. Our group of newcomers was quiet and anxious.

  The Survivors looked relaxed. They were home.

  All I could see as I scanned the vicinity was the curve of a metal shelter reaching up like a wave. It was similar to what we had seen when we’d approached the ruins of the city, but more sophisticated.

  The cold still bit into us with gnawing teeth. We were told to put our jackets on and follow them.

  Gwen was half-skipping, half-walking. “Why are you so excited?” I asked distrustfully, listening to her hum a repetitive tune.

  She turned to me and smirked. “It’s my bros birthday. I thought I’d miss it. I’m gonna sneak up on him and surprise him.” I tried to return her smile but it came off looking forced and confused. Siblings were allowed, of course. So much was new. It filled me up to the point where I felt like one more piece of new information would make me burst like a bubble or that I would float away like one.

  I saw Bataar unloading the dogs and wondered what he was going to do with them. At this point, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d miniaturized them and put them in his pocket with his pipe.

  Our little group looked like a herd of startled deer. Survivors pushed us this way and that, our legs skittering across the concrete, our eyes wide as we searched for clues, skimming over everything, looking for one shred of similarity we could hold onto. Where was this settlement?

  As we were steered past the shelter, something close to a convulsion went through me. We found that shred of similarity we were looking for… though I wish we hadn’t. It hit us like a sledgehammer, so much so that we all stopped still and the Survivors in the back bumped into us. Apella shot forward and her thin hand gripped my arm like a bird claw. I heard Alexei whimper. Joseph wrapped his spare arm around my shoulder protectively. I tried hard to breathe but the air felt thin, laced with fear. Not again.

  The wall was as high as the Woodland walls but made of a different material, crumbly-looking stone that seemed like it was before the time of the Woodlands. I wondered if this was where the Superiors got the idea. Theorizing didn’t help; it was a wall and it was terrifying, and if we couldn’t see the settlement on this side of it, it must have been within the ominous structure. My expression hardened and my stomach twisted awkwardly, like it couldn’t digest the sight.

  It stretched both ways as far as the eye could see. A dirty brown color, the wall was constructed of cut stone. Our standstill had created a traffic jam but the Survivors didn’t push us, they just parted their people sea and went around. It didn’t intimidate them. They didn’t break stride as they made their way towards it.

  As they passed, Gus grunted and pushed Cal towards Joseph and me forcefully. Cal stumbled, pulled himself up, but stared at his feet as he talked. “I… I wanted to apologize for my behavior. It was,” he looked to Gus meekly, who nodded, “inappropriate.” He annunciated every word carefully and I knew Gus had written Cal’s apology for him. I stared at Cal, embarrassed and angry that he had even told Gus, mortified to be having this conversation in front of Joseph. I nodded. “Ok, well as long as it never, ever happens again…”

  Cal looked only at me, ignoring Joseph looming possessively over me, whilst I felt like I was shrinking to the size of an ant. “It won’t. I promise. Friends?”

  “Um, friends,” I lied. I truly hoped this would be the last time I would ever see him.

  He walked away with the rest of them, looking over his shoulder like a wounded animal, like he expected me to follow him.

  We were left staring silently at the wall that encapsulated our worst fears. The fear that we had not come to a better place and this was exactly the same as where we had come from. The thought hurt a great deal, pushing old memories I had barely buried back up to the surface.

  Matthew stood with us for a while, and then broke the quietness. “It’s not what you think.”

  “You don’t know what we think,” I snapped without thinking. It felt like this was all a trick. The very small amount of trust I had afforded Matthew sprung back to me like it was attached to elastic. The need to protect my family, my new family, whose bonds were tenuous as it was, was overwhelming. I took a deep breath.

  “I’ll go with Matthew. I’ll check it out. Then I’ll come back for you. If I’m not back in thirty minutes, leave,” I said, trying to sound sure of myself, but I was shaking as I talked.

  “No,” Joseph said. His eyes were panicked, wide and pricked. I felt the same way at the idea of us being separated but this seemed like a decent compromise and I didn’t trust anyone to do it other than myself.

  “It’s not up to you,” I said. “We’ll vote. Out of everyone here, who is the most suspicious, the least trusting?” All eyes were on me. Not proud, but satisfied, I continued, “Then it should be me.”

  I kissed Joseph gently, his lips were still, set so hard it was like kissing his elbow. “Take care of Orry. I won’t be long,” I said. He didn’t respond.

  I turned away from the group and put my hand on Matthew’s should
er. “Let’s go.”

  As we peeled away from them and made our way up the incline to the great wall, I wasn’t afraid. Apprehensive maybe, but not afraid. I was half hoping I was going to hate it and we could leave. Return to the woods. Matthew’s mouth was turned up at the corners. Clearly he was amused by our behavior, which was infuriating. He didn’t understand where we came from. He didn’t understand the kind of dread that a walled-in town would fill us with. A little ball of hate that had been seething in the pit of my stomach grew a little. The Superiors had damaged us all.

  We were both quiet, just the crunch of our boots in the snow. I felt hot under the sun. Hot in anticipation. Slipping and falling as we struggled to find a foothold near the base, Matthew gripped the bricks of the wall and swung himself into a small hollow. Holding out his hand, I took it and he pulled me in. There was an iron gate, which was already propped open with a rock, and dark, unlit stairs wound upwards. Matthew flicked on a torch and I followed him up the narrow staircase. Everything was wonky, like there was little thought put into how the stones might fit together but somehow they just did. It was dusty and smelled stale.

  We came out of a hole and stood on top of the wall. I looked down at my hands and traced the letters carved into the rock, ‘LH was here 1983’. There were hundreds of similar carvings. Ancient scrawl, the only thing left of a civilization now gone. Another one caught my eye: EV loves RJ. These people were long dead but their little dedication of love survived. It was kind of sweet. I remember someone got caught scratching words into the wall of Ring Four. They had their fingers crushed with a stone while everyone watched.

  I expected to see other people up there but the survivors were nowhere.

  The wall was very different to the Rings, which was a relief. It was as wide as a road, a low barrier on either side. And when I stood and surveyed the greater area, the sight baffled my eyes.

  It looked like the spine of some gigantic creature that had laid itself gently across the hills and breathed its last breath. The world grew up around its remains. The tail of the monster was endless. Curving and following the hills until it disappeared to a line and then a point. Sandy grey stone perforated the forest but seemed a part of it.