The Wall (The Woodlands)

by Taylor, Lauren Nicolle

  Matthew was grinning, hands on hips, so pleased with himself that I wanted to slap him.

  “Where’s the settlement?” I asked. Looking over the edge of the wall, all I could see were trees—the place was thick with them. I couldn’t for the life of me see any signs of people, no houses, no light, just woods. It was like Gwen and the others had stepped into the clouds.

  This was all a big joke to him but I didn’t get it. Then he walked over to the edge of the wall and pointed to a small, metal disc that was stuck to the parapet. When I observed the sides more closely, I could see they lined the whole side of the wall that faced away from the train station. I walked back over to the opposite side and waved at Joseph and the others but they didn’t respond. Then I yelled. Heads moved in my direction but they still couldn’t see me. Confused, I walked back to Matthew.

  He took my hand and placed it in front of one the metal discs. The sky flashed and a shaft of a view appeared before me. Roofs of houses nestled in amongst the trees. Little cabins with light-colored, wooden shingles covered in snow, narrow roads with people walking along them. I gasped and then I smiled, big and full, the grin splitting my face. I removed my hand and the view was replaced with the woods again. Then I covered another one, revealing a slightly different view that was connected to the one before like a sliding puzzle. Further out, past the wooden shacks, I could see a city in the distance. The most important thing I couldn’t see was another wall. The land was divided by the great structure but not surrounded by it.

  Matthew explained. “This was once called the Great Wall. It spans most of the border between Mongolia and China. We didn’t build it, but it was perfect for our needs. I think it’s at least a few thousand years old.”

  I wasn’t really listening. I was thinking of those little cabins surrounded by trees. Each looked different, each one was handmade, not handed over, with a character of its own.

  “How do we get down there?” I asked, jumping a little, curiosity sending shivers of excitement through my whole body.

  “There are some stairs a bit further along. We just walk down.”

  “Then what?” I felt confused, but only wanted to know more, the instinctual runner in me didn’t kick in this time.

  “You’ll have to go through quarantine and then you can choose a place to live.”

  “Ok,” I said excitedly. “Show me the stairs.”

  Matthew showed me the entry point, a neat set of metal stairs held up by scaffolding, which led to ground level on the other side of the wall, and then we went back to the others.

  They had taken some convincing, aside from Joseph, who still wanted to walk head first into danger without a second thought. Watching him dipping his shoulders and trying to squish his hulking form up the narrow stairs was amusement enough. Now we were all standing up there—they looked so confused. Apella stared this way and that, as I had, looking for evidence of people. Alexei blinked like a mole staring at the sun. Deshi distractedly squeezed Hessa’s chubby little arm too tight and he started crying.

  It was mean, but I couldn’t help myself. They followed me and we walked along the wall a way. I’d asked Matthew to be quiet and let me explain it to them but I hadn’t told him what I was planning to do.

  Without warning, I stood on a parapet, talking as I walked. “It’s pretty fascinating really, this wall was here way before the war, before the Woodlands, all of it.” Jumping from parapet to parapet and back again, I pretended to lose my balance, teetering and flailing my arms. I stepped off the wall, concealing myself behind the projection that kept the town camouflaged. Crouching on the first step, I snickered as I heard them scream and gasp. Then I popped my head back up, my body cut in half by the projection, like half of my body was missing and I was a floating torso in the sky.

  Joseph growled at me, his brow furrowed in a worried anger I had seen many times before, “That wasn’t funny Rosa.”

  I shrugged and walked back to them. I thought it was hilarious.

  “Ingenious,” Alexei muttered, flapping his hands back and forth over the discs.

  “Apparently, they were used for festivals and such, projecting giant images in to the sky for an audience to watch,” Matthew said. “This used to be a tourist destination.”

  I rolled that word around in my head, tourist. We had learned about them in class, about the wastefulness of our predecessors. We were told people used to fly around the world on ‘holidays’. Poisoning the earth and wasting time they could have otherwise spent working. The idea of a holiday didn’t sound that sinister to me but then I was never a true believer in the Superiors’ propaganda.

  They all took turns sticking their heads over the edge to see what we were getting ourselves into. We all agreed we would try it.

  “There is one stipulation,” Matthew said seriously. “You will all have to go through quarantine before you can become part of the community. It means two weeks in hospital. If you are ok with that, then I’ll take you now.”

  I wish I had thought about it longer. Not just said ‘yeah yeah’ and ignored half of what he was saying. I was too anxious to get down to the trees. They called to me and the rest was just dull humming.

  We agreed to the conditions, not thinking to ask why they needed us to do this and what exactly it would involve. We all stepped off the edge of the wall and hit the metal steps with a clang, like we were diving off a board into silky, black water. There was no turning back now.

  It was beautiful.

  No. More than that. If I had concocted an idea of the perfect home for my child and me, this would be it. I stomped down the steps, enjoying the metallic vibrations, and held out my hands, sweeping the frozen leaves as I went. I wanted to climb. I wanted to run.

  There were people watching us, people of different ages mixing together. Maybe I did invent this. I was the one in the coma and this was my dream. I shook it out with a light laugh.

  Joseph took my hand and I wound my fingers in his. Breathing in deeply, the smells of wet leaves, dirt, and wood smoke was unmistakable and wonderful. It brought me home. It swam around my heart like a warm drink and made me whole.

  Stones made up the road. There was a track cut down the middle and spinners moved soundlessly through the streets. It was a bizarre mix of old and new. Cottages were dotted against the backdrop of the ancient wall, each with a generous plot of land begging for vegetables to be grown when the sun actually warmed the earth, not just threw its light sparingly across it with distaste.

  The modest, wooden cottages stood on stacked-stone foundations, simply shingled, with thick, glass windows and smoke coming out of the stone chimneys. They must have been built individually, not by some Class team, as each one had its own personality. They were new too, maybe about five to ten years old. And the plants… My chest swelled at the possibility of it. They had the freedom to plant their own gardens. Any tree, any flower. It was too much to take in. Too much but not enough—I craved more.

  This was what my eyes, my heart, took in in the five minutes we had before we were ambushed by people in white coats. Before we were barreled into a spinner and rushed towards the grey, ramshackle town down the hill. I let out a strangled sigh as we got further away from the cottages, my hand pressed to the wall of the carriage, willing it to shatter. I put my head in my hands and swore I would get back there, somehow. Joseph’s hand made a fist in the small of my back.

  Matthew explained that it was necessary, that although it seemed like they had it all together, most of their technology was borrowed and pieced together. Survivors were scroungers; they had eked out an existence here after much trial and error and a new disease would devastate the community. He explained this as we were manhandled up the stairs of a dark, dingy building. He pleaded for our patience as we were stripped of our clothing and forced to stand before scrutinizing doctors, thrown white pajamas, and pushed down halls into a room where we would be separated by glass. Then they made him leave and I was glad. I was having trouble restraini
ng myself. He had not been clear and I knew why. Because he knew we would say no. And they wanted us here. I wasn’t sure why, but they wanted something from us.

  Now we sit.

  Each room has a bed, a bathroom with a privacy curtain, and a chair. In the corner, to keep us occupied, are stacks of books and a device for playing music with headphones. My first modification to our accommodation was to throw everything at the humming air-conditioning vent and let it land in a pile by the door, which was always locked. Books flew like shot-gunned birds, flapping their wings once before tumbling inelegantly to the ground, bent and splayed open, spines twisted. The next morning when I woke up, they were neatly stacked back where they were originally.

  I was so unhappy, contained.

  But they did one thing, a thing that made their behavior unforgivable in my mind. They took Orry.

  The books they gave us were all nonsense to me. Made-up stories. No history books, no how-to guides. They didn’t understand we knew nothing of this past world. Although it was interesting, coming from where we did, the ‘fiction’, as they called it, seemed frivolous and self-indulgent. Flicking through a book called ‘Alice in Wonderland’, I dragged my chair over to Orry’s cot. They had pressed it up against the wall so I could see him and he could see me. It was of little comfort. He turned his head at the sound of my muffled voice.

  I read a little bit of the story to him out loud, but when I got to the part where the Queen of Hearts started ordering beheadings for stealing pies, I slammed it shut. It sounded too much like Pau.

  My mood shifted between periods of shaking wordlessly, to screaming at no one, to trying to breathe and stay calm. I didn’t want to remember these things but being here in this sterile, scraped-down environment brought back memories I didn’t even know I had. Scenes that, up until now, had been pinned under a cloud of fog, started pushing their way up to the front of my already-crowded brain.

  “Rosa,” Joseph said, his voice throttling for attention. But I was gone; I stood in the center of the room, my body rigid. My face stinging from a memory that hit me like a broad board of plywood. “Rosa…?”

  I was lying on a metal table. My wrists and ankles tethered. My feet pushed up into stirrups. My head lolled around and someone dabbed at my mouth with a tissue.

  “Is she worth keeping?” someone asked.

  “For now she is—we’ll just have to wait on those eyes.” A pause and a sigh. “She’s ready for implantation. Transport her as soon as possible. Oh, and keep her heavily sedated; she keeps waking and fighting.”

  The memory pulled away like a blanket and I was standing back in the white room, shivering from imagined cold, with Joseph watching me. I ran my hands over my wrists, reliving the way the restraints rubbed away at my skin. They hurt still. I shook my head and made my way over to him, my eyes watery, my body feeling pinched and weak.

  “Get me out of here,” I said. “I don’t want a baby.”

  “What?”

  Where did the old world end and the current one begin? I felt half-in, half-out.

  “Oh, sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying.” I put my hand to my forehead, confused, like I’d been drugged.

  Joseph’s voice was calming, but had an edge of a grumble to it. “It’s ok. You’ll be ok. Just hang on.”

  They said two weeks. Joseph argued with them, especially on my behalf. Being trapped held a special sense of horror for me that it didn’t for the others. But I heard them all at different times, pleading and yelling. Deshi was beside himself too. They had placed Hessa on the other side of a glass wall as they had Orry.

  The doctors were kind. They were patient with my attitude. They assured us we were safe. They encouraged us to ask questions, but my trust was not so easily won. Joseph tried to be more forgiving but even he found it frustrating.

  Watching another woman feed my baby was agonizing. They gave me a pump so I could express milk for him, which I did. When I initially refused, thinking I could blackmail them into bringing him to me, they shrugged and said they would give him artificial baby milk. I was desperate to maintain any connection to him so I relented.

  They took blood and did physical tests. It all looked good, they said. We should be cleared in no time, they said. Now? I would ask. No, not yet. Soon.

  If Joseph wasn’t there, I think I may have hung myself from the shower rail. He talked me down from my panic. We pushed our beds together and talked through the glass, our breath fogging around our faces. Joseph found music he thought I would like and noted the tracks, telling me to find them on my music device. I stared into his green eyes and counted the gold flecks. I put my hand to the glass and imagined I was touching his hand—that I was lying next to him.

  He chewed through the books. I watched him read and wished I had the strength to sit still and try, but I didn’t. My skin was crawling; the bugs and itches of the past ran through my body and surfed alongside me. I felt and knew I was one meltdown away from completely snapping.

  When they took Orry’s blood, the snap echoed like a tree falling, a dry crack and splinters creaked and cried out. He screamed and screamed as they pricked his little heel and squeezed drops of blood onto a piece of paper. All I could think was, They took my baby. And no matter how many times they told me he was safe, no matter how many times they pressed his little body up against the glass, I didn’t care. He should have been with me. I couldn’t take it anymore. It had been a week. The glass was smudged with my desperate, pattering hands. Layers of tears and terror clouded my view.

  Before I knew what was happening, my body acted. I picked up a chair and banged it against the glass as hard as I could. It rebounded. The glass wobbled but it didn’t break. I smashed it again and again. The rubber stoppers on the legs squeaked down the pane. Joseph watched me, exasperated and helpless.

  I hit and hit until my arms were bowed and shaking from the exertion of holding the chair over my head.

  I walked to the center of the room, my hands in my hair, and screamed.

  “He should be with me! Bring Orry to me,” I yelled, and then I whispered to myself, to my body that felt fragile and broken, “I can’t do this anymore.”

  Joseph’s muffled voice called to me. “Rosa, come here.” He had his hand on the glass, bumping it gently with his fist. I didn’t want to look. I shook my head, listening to the rhythmic clunk of his hand on the glass. He wanted to calm me down and I didn’t want to be calm. I wanted to build angry flames around me, set the sprinklers off, and let the doors open. Let the whole place burn down for all I cared.

  “Rosa, come here!” His voice was more frustrated now, the word, “please,” choking on the way out.

  He was kneeling on the floor, banging on the glass, trying so hard to get me to turn around. Reluctantly, I shuffled over to him. This was unbearable. After six weeks apart, we only had a week together before they separated us again.

  He breathed in deeply. I watched his chest rise and fall. The scar from his operation moved as he talked. “Just breathe. It will be over soon.”

  “But, how can you trust them? How can you be sure...?”

  “It will be ok. You know this is killing me too.” He pulled his hair back with both hands, his muscles tensing, and whispered through gritted teeth, “Don’t you know how much I want to punch through the glass and touch you?” A shudder of agonizing pleasure ran through me. His eyes were so intensely focused on me, all of me. I couldn’t stand it. “But we have to wait,” he continued. “We agreed to this and now we have to wait.”

  I banged my head on the glass, a little too hard, the thud reverberating and rippling up to the ceiling. “I hate it,” I sobbed.

  “I know,” he said.

  We touched hands, and I swear I could feel the heat burning through, like if we concentrated hard enough on reaching each other, we could melt the glass. How was I ever going to survive another week of this hell?

  That night I slept in fits and bursts, my body knotting and unknotting around the
cool, white sheets. I continuously woke screaming but there was no one to hold and comfort me. Most of the dreams I couldn’t remember. But I knew my mind was taking me back to the facility, to the four months I lost. And I wished they’d stayed lost.

  I awoke with my hands around my throat. Not screaming but gurgling and gasping for air. Joseph was kneeling on his bed, trying to get my attention. His eyes panicked, his muscles tensing at the fact they couldn’t reach me. When I shook myself free from the dream, I slumped down on my pillow and shoved my face against the cold, cotton pillow, letting out one pathetic whimper.

  The dull thud on the glass continued until I turned to face him.

  “Tell me what you dream?” he asked, his eyes flicking back and forth, searching my own.

  “I don’t want to,” I said with a scowl. How could I?

  “Why?” He looked down at his knees, the bed bowing and squeaking under his weight.

  “It will hurt you.”

  He sighed, frustrated. “I can handle it. You need to stop protecting me.” He used his eyes against me, staring deep into mine, until I felt incapable of resistance.

  “Ok, but I warned you.” I kept it as brief as I could. “I’m in the underground facility. I wake up, suddenly aware of what they’re doing. I start to fight, to scream, and try to pull myself out of bed but they’re always there in a second. People in white coats hold me down, tie my ankles and wrists to the bed with leather straps, then they put a mask on my face. A man holds me by the neck and presses his hand down on my forehead because I’m thrashing my head around so much. Then I feel like I’m dying. Or I’m dead. Like I’ve floated away, out of my body. But it’s not peaceful; it’s terrifying and I’m always fighting, scratching, grappling to get back to myself.”