by J B Cantwell
“The system? You mean the wars?” I wrote.
“The wars, yes. But also the Lens system.”
“The Lens system? Why?”
“Doesn’t it bother you that you can’t go anywhere or do anything without the government watching your every move? It’s illegal now to not have a lens. But imagine what things could be like if we didn’t have designations.”
I thought about this for several long moments. I had had a lens for nearly all of my life. It was how I saw and translated the world around me. The thought of going without it was frightening.
“But what if I want to keep my lens?”
“Then Chambers has chosen the wrong girl. And so have I.”
Chapter Three
There was no graduation. No throwing of hats into the air. No gun salutes. We were simply finished with our training and loaded onto buses, presumably headed for the front lines. Alex and the other men were nowhere to be found. We were assigned a bus based on our final numbers on the viewscreen. The few Special Infantry traveled by themselves in a car with a sergeant I didn’t recognize. The rest of us, the Burns included, piled into a small bus. Hannah seemed to soften slightly now that the night had passed and her ankle wasn’t giving her as much trouble. But I had that last line from Lydia playing again and again in my mind.
Then he’s picked the wrong girl.
Who could I trust? I ran down the list.
The only friends I had made while in training were Josh, Anna, and Hannah. And, I supposed, Lydia, if I was really including everyone. Josh and Anna each wore the same face now, one that seemed to alternate between consciousness and unconsciousness, like a mask. I was sure that if they were given many more of the injections that they might be lost to us completely. That left just Hannah and Lydia. Hannah had been friendly from the start. A stickler for how this game was played, yes, but not in an evil sort of way.
But of all of those I had become involved with, Lydia was the one who stuck out the most. She had been miserable to be around at every turn. Even now that she was supposedly on my side, she was still prickly.
I thought of Alex walking by me in the hall, stone faced and impossibly tall, the note falling from his hand.
I looked out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, to learn somehow that he was still alright. But all I saw was the base sliding away from view as the bus bumped along the untended road.
Hannah turned around in her seat.
“Where do you think we’re going?” she asked.
I kept my gaze out the window, not willing to forgive her yet.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess to war. Where did you go last time?”
“To war,” she said in a sing-song voice.
I suddenly realized that she, of course, had done all of this before, back when she had been a Red. Her joking that she was a Red that first day at chow had been just that, a joke, intended, possibly, to throw us off. But she clearly had had these experiences many times before.
“What was it like? Before?” I asked.
Her face fell. She stayed quiet for a moment, then slunk back into her seat, turning away.
I didn’t have anyone sitting next to me, and Lydia was all the way at the front of the bus. Suddenly my mind was full of questions. Where were we going? What would it be like? Was it really as dangerous as everyone seemed to think? I had grown so accustomed to the relative comfort of the base. The three meals. The warm bunk. Even the occasional glimpse of Alex, twisted as he was, lent me some comfort.
But now there was no one to answer my questions.
I scooted toward the aisle and quickly slid into the seat beside Hannah.
“Tell me,” I said.
She folded her arms and stared out the window. Barren, dry earth lined this side of the bus.
“They’ll probably just dump us out there,” she said. “On teams, like the day where we picked.”
“Did you kill anyone?”
She looked up, glaring at first. Then, her face softened. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s kind of a blur. Some days we walked quietly, not arousing any suspicion. Some days we found ourselves in full blown battle.”
“What was the mission?”
“Water,” she said. “Up north they have water. Real water that you can drink. Not this sludge that comes down from the sky.”
She looked at her hands, tattoos covered nearly every inch of them.
“But we never were able to make much ground. They had fighters of their own. That’s how I got the idea for the trees. During one battle, me and seven others started out, and they just started picking us off, easy as could be. One man, Kenney, fell on top of me, and I just lay there as if I’d been hit, too. Eventually, when they saw that we were all dead, they went away. I snuck out from under his bloody body and made my way back to where our forces were camping out.”
I tried to imagine Hannah, little Hannah, walking covered in blood into a base full of trigger happy soldiers.
She shook her head, seemingly trying to shake off the memory.
“So I don’t really know,” she said. “I shot a lot of rounds into the forest. Did I hit anyone? I’m not sure. But I do know that most of the soldiers on that first team didn’t make it. Those who could walk made it out. But if you were really down, unable to move, command would insist that we leave them there.”
“You’d leave the dying?” I asked, horrified.
“It wasn’t about them dying,” she said. “It was about whether or not they needed assistance to get out. If they were injured badly enough that they couldn’t walk or crawl out alone, we were ordered to leave them. Even if their injuries weren’t life threatening.”
“You abandoned them,” I said.
She looked out her window again.
“Yes.”
“On orders.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you didn’t pick me that day, to be on your team,” I said. “It was a survival instinct.”
“For all I knew, you would have been just as good as the one I chose before you. It’s just that, over the months in battle … ”
She had gotten used to it. To following the books. To listening to orders. It was how she had survived.
She moved her body, the pain in her ankle causing a grimace.
“Listen,” I said. “I’m sorry about that. It was just that I thought that if I left you …”
“That you’d go to the Burn,” she finished. “And you were right to leave me.”
She leaned forward, massaging her foot.
“You’ll be good in battle,” she said. “You’ve already learned to follow the rules, to leave the helpless behind. That’s a survival instinct that’s hard to teach.”
My stomach dropped with these words. I wanted to argue, but she was right. It had only taken simple math for me to calculate my own chance of survival if I had stopped to help Hannah that day. If I had, we might be having a very different conversation right now, about the Burn instead of battle.
I didn’t like this new side of myself I was discovering. The selfish side. The side that didn’t trust. The part of me that had started to look out only for myself.
It wasn’t selfish to try to save my own life, I reasoned. The question was whether others would die so that I could live. I felt guilt squirm around uncomfortably in my chest. But as far as myself and my own actions, I was pushed by the oldest drive that humans, and all living things, had gained long ago.
The will to survive.
Chapter Four
The wrong girl.
The words echoed through my mind, with no answers to the questions I had. In this war how could I make it through alive without the support of a team of soldiers? I wasn’t sure it was possible to be part of that team while only really looking out for myself.
Hannah did it. Or she seemed to. Yet she had been angry that I hadn’t stopped to help her.
Now, I wasn’t sure if I could do such a thing again. I definitely faced being i
n the field taking fire, but whether I could retreat while a fellow soldier lay injured, I wasn’t sure.
The bus bumped along the decaying road for what felt like hours and hours. It seemed like the ride to the base from New York had been less jarring. Maybe we were going somewhere else.
I had moved back to my seat behind Hannah. Our conversation wasn’t enough to sweep away the rift that had come between us. Whether I liked it or not, I had proven that, if we were in battle, I would have been forced to leave her for dead. And Lydia. And anyone else on this bus.
The weather turned hot as we neared our destination, and most of us opened the windows that lined the top walls of the bus. Hannah placed her left cheek right onto the glass, cooling it. Sweat poured down my back, staining my fatigues.
I looked around us, wondering who of us might be the first to fall. Only five out of twenty remaining recruits were men. Both soldiers in the Special Infantry positions had been taken somewhere else. Maybe they would join us later on, I thought.
Or maybe they would be joining another team altogether. My heart pounded as I imagined their faces, stoic and focused. Their bodies, massive and bloated. I wondered how strong they would become after a few weeks in the other program.
“Maybe it’s better,” I whispered through the gap between seats. “Better that you’re not in Special Infantry. You saw how those guys looked as they marched down the hall. Is that really what you want?”
My question was left unanswered, hanging in the air between us.
After another hour of driving we came to the water of the Atlantic. It had come so far inland that I could barely guess what part of the country we were in. North Carolina? Virginia? Small settlements of people lined the hilly areas, but those properties at sea level were under water, just like so many other places in the world now. Only here, they hadn’t bothered to construct a wall. Instead, people moved up into the mountains, higher and higher as the water relentlessly followed. Their small homesteads with their large gardens dotted the hillsides.
When my mother was young, a lot of people had died all across the United States within a span of just a few years. The unusual weather, the dry heat, the tornadoes and hurricanes and fires. Everything had come as such a surprise that huge swaths of people starved. They had been unprepared for what a drought would do to the enormous amounts of food being grown in California. And the rest hadn’t realized their dependence on the grains grown in the part of the country once called the “bread basket.” It had been estimated that three quarters of our population had slowly been culled by the lack of resources, stuck praying for mercy from the weather. It was the same for anyone who lived closer to the equator. Down there the rains had stopped. The ground hardened.
And now, the shoreline that had once been so precious to so many, patriots and civilians alike, was destroyed.
The bus drove along the water line for another half hour. During storm season this path would be unreachable, drenched beneath the relentless push of the ocean. But today it was clear.
As we unloaded the bus, our packs strapped firmly to our backs, we found a large boat tied to a long, low pier. The pier was made out of floating platforms, designed to be removed and stored during times when the storms hit these areas.
Now the tide was out. Sergeant Holt stood before us, commanding we stand at attention. Another officer jumped from the boat onto a shaky section of pier, but as he strode across it I saw that he kept his footing easily.
When he reached Holt’s side, the two men saluted in unison.
“This is Sergeant Caraway,” Holt shouted to the group. “You will be joining him on a trawling journey, and in this way you will earn your fare up to your final destination.”
Caraway took over from there.
“You are no longer recruits,” he said. “You are now all designated Private Second Class. You will be referred to now by your superiors as soldier. You will see the change that has just been uploaded to your lenses.”
I looked around and realized I was surrounded by a sea of Private Second Classmen.
“We will board this vessel and trawl for garbage along the coastal lines until the boat is either full or we reach Boston, whichever happens first.”
I looked at the small ship. It wasn’t foreboding like some of the military vessels I had seen floating past on the Hudson, but it seemed strong and sturdy, which unclenched the fear in my chest somewhat. I had never learned to swim. Few had.
Caraway’s tone lowered to a growl.
“I suggest you take your job on this ship very seriously. There is no room for failure here. This begins with your ability to balance as you attempt to board the vessel. If you are unable to keep your heads and are tossed into the water, the Burn will be your next stop.”
Around me the sounds of intaking breath made my own breathing harder. We had thought that the danger of going to the Burn was well out of our way. The platforms bucked and swayed from the undulating water beneath them.
“We will begin in board order. At the top of this list, Jeremy Simpson. Soldier, come forward.”
It was the first time I had really paid any attention to Jeremy. He was the one of the men focused on making it into the special infantry. But his efforts all happened in the background of my consciousness, and slowly he had made his way up the board without me noticing. I suppose I had been so distracted by the absence of Alex and the conspiracy theories from Lydia that my attention had been kept elsewhere.
Jeremy moved out from the rest of the group, pack strapped firmly to his back. Before him was the first of the ten platforms. He saluted Caraway, and then jumped down to the first one.
He nearly fell from that very first platform. It wobbled around above the water, and anyone could tell that he was having trouble finding his footing.
Then on the second one, he fell. But only to his knees. The smug look he had worn when his name had been called first was gone now, and his face was white in the afternoon sun.
The platforms were about three feet square, just large enough to cling onto. He gave up walking, then, and crawled from platform to platform, his confidence completely gone now.
But he did make it to the other side. He gratefully grasped the handle of the small platform leading up to the body of the ship, then stood looking out at the rest of us. Something about his face seemed lonely to me. And embarrassed. I wondered how many of us would make it across as he had.
Down the line Caraway went. The eighth, a heavyset girl with a scowl on her face, was the first to go into the water. Her pack weighed her down in the surf, but she didn’t quit.
“Come on, Allie!” a girl from the infantry called.
Somehow she removed her pack without losing it to the depths and flung it onto the platform. Then, she did the same with herself. It was surprising to watch how nimble she was despite her size. But she made it onto the platform just ahead of where her pack lay.
She didn’t stop. Didn’t look back to the two sergeants watching her efforts. She was clearly unwilling to quit as she hoisted her bag from one platform to the next. Then, scooting herself backward, she hauled the pack with her until she reached the gangplank. She might have rested then, but she didn’t. She stood on the more stable footing and hauled her pack up and strapped it again to her back. Then she walked up the gangplank, her face set with such determination that it made me jealous despite her error.
The crowd gave a whoop at her success as she turned to face the rest of us. Caraway and Holt met eyes briefly, and then Caraway called the next name.
So on it went. One other fell into the water, and while she had greater trouble getting herself back onto the platform, she did eventually make it. The other soldiers were following the lead of the first across, unstrapping their packs before they even made the first platform, then scooting their way across. Cheers rang out as the team rooted for each soldier struggling across.
When it was Lydia’s turn, though, she took a different approach. Instead of carefully navigat
ing each platform, she dropped to the first and ran, full out, across them. It wasn’t until she reached the ninth platform that she went down, but not into the water. She fell, slamming her chin against the tenth platform. She cried out, unable to stop herself, holding up her hand to stem the flow of blood now coming from her chin. She needed that hand, though, and left a bloody trail on the last platform and then on the handrail of the gangplank.
The small crowd was louder now, seemingly driven wild by the blood that spilled between Lydia’s fingers.
Then it was me. I stared out across the eyes watching me from the other side. I thought that Lydia might have even cheered me on if she had been able to take her hand from her face.
My first step onto the platform sent me to my hands and knees. It bucked and swayed beneath me, but I held fast to the edges. I moved toward the second platform and made sort of a hopping motion to get my front half across it. Then I edged my legs forward, desperately clinging to both the forward and rear plank.
“Do it, Pink!” Hannah’s voice was unmistakable, and others soon followed, supporting me as I fought to make my way across, one small movement at a time. All the time the water threatened below. I knew I would be lost if I fell in. So instead I took every tiny inch carefully, begging God or the universe or whoever, anybody, not to let me fall.
And I didn’t. The voices at the top of the gangplank were triumphant, but I could tell some of them had been surprised by my success. After all, Lydia had made sure that I had been the butt of every joke she told. Even during training I had started to look weak to the rest of the recruits once they had started listening to her nastiness.
I wobbled up the gangplank and took my place beside her.
“You need to get that fixed,” I said, my mouth barely moving.
“Later,” she said.
It was Hannah’s turn. Her ankle had been nagging at her all day, but she must have known what was at stake because when she hit the first platform on her good foot, she didn’t stop to crawl. Like a grasshopper, she hopped effortlessly from platform to platform. Changes in tilt or location of the platforms seemed not to bother her at all, and before we knew it, she was walking up the plank. Her limp was visible again, but she smiled greedily as she made it to the top. She hobbled over and took her place beside me.