Oasis

by Eilís Barrett

25

  I wake up and the first thing I see is Kole, asleep. The girl is on the table and I’m stiff because of the awkward way I’ve been sleeping. The sun is making its slow ascent into the sky, and I get to my feet slowly, trying to let Kole sleep. I press a hand to my forehead, a headache pushing against the inside of my skull as I try to steady myself.

  I check the girl’s pulse and it’s steady. Her breathing, though a little shallow, is continuous and steady, too.

  She’s alive.

  I almost collapse with relief.

  ‘Wh-what? Is she okay?’ Kole sits up abruptly and is on his feet before I can say anything. ‘Did she make it?’

  ‘She’s okay. She’s breathing. She’s okay.’ I sound breathless. I sound happy. I sound like I’m about to cry, or fall down, or fall off the edge of a cliff.

  He moves quickly to her side, checking her pulse, her breathing, her stitches.

  ‘I already checked. She’s okay.’

  ‘Of course, I just need to …’

  ‘Check for yourself? Don’t you trust me?’ I’m poking fun, but the joke falls flat.

  There is still blood on my hands from last night, and neither of us can say we believed she’d last the night.

  She lost so much blood.

  We look at each other across the room, blankly. Exhaustion feels like something sitting on my back, pulling at me from all angles. Kole looks like he could sleep for a week and still be tired.

  ‘I want to thank you,’ he says suddenly.

  ‘You don’t have to thank me.’

  ‘No, I really do. You were incredible.’

  ‘I didn’t sew up a dying girl,’ I say, a little robotically.

  ‘Can’t you just take a compliment?’ His laugh sounds hollow.

  ‘I can, but I prefer the ones I actually deserve.’ I turn away from him and pour myself a drink of water from the canister left against the wall.

  ‘Well you actually deserve this one,’ he says, looking at me pointedly as I hand him a drink. ‘You were amazing.’

  ‘Fine. I was amazing. Incredible. Brilliant, really. The best water boiler ever.’

  ‘Shut up.’ He throws a towel at my head, and I duck just as the door opens. The towel hits Mark in the face, and he looks around the room, extremely confused.

  ‘I came down to check on the girl …’ he says, looking over my head at Kole. ‘I didn’t realise you stayed up all night.’

  ‘I wanted to keep an eye on her,’ Kole says, gulping down the water I gave him in two huge swallows.

  ‘Do you want me to watch her for a bit? You look tired.’

  ‘I’m fine. I got better sleep than I have in a while.’

  ‘On the floor? For three hours? With a bleeding girl on the table in front of you?’ I ask, raising an eyebrow at him.

  Kole flashes me a smile, and I roll my eyes. This feels weird. This feels wrong. It shouldn’t happen like this.

  I imagined this, the trust slowly creeping in because I said all the right things at all the right times, not because a girl nearly died in front of us, or because I happened to be there when the cracks in Kole’s armour started showing.

  It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, but I think it just did.

  26

  It doesn’t hit me until I get upstairs. Everyone is up and gone, hunting and fixing and mending, and I stand in the middle of the room, and my knees buckle underneath me. I stare down at my hands, the blood dried into the base of my fingernails, and I need it off. Now.

  I scramble towards the basin that Lacey has laid out in the corner of the room for washing, a cracked shard of a mirror hung precariously above it, and I think this is something only Lacey would think of and I think she’s pretending we’re okay, like Kole does, and I think I’m going to die out here.

  The water is freezing cold, but I can barely feel it as I drag my nails across my skin, trying to scrape the blood off. My hands begin to shake, and my heart is loud and insistent in my chest, and my breath just stops.

  Just like that.

  Just like she died.

  I can’t hold the memories back anymore. I’ve been fighting them for weeks. I’ve been battling against the images because if I let them in, even for one second, I know I wouldn’t be able to get up again. But I’m tired.

  I can’t do this anymore.

  The memories pour in like ice water over my head, always colder, always harsher than expected. I feel the memory of that night forcing its way over every barrier I’ve placed within my head, and suddenly it’s all there. Every gruelling detail, playing before my eyes. I remember his face, the rage and the fear and desperation and a million other unspeakable things, and I remember her face, so terrified, and the way the dark seemed to shatter the light instead of the other way around.

  The way Aaron’s face twisted right before he pulled the trigger, as he transformed into something I couldn’t even recognise.

  Leaping off the ledge, and falling and falling until I thought I’d never stop, until I did.

  The endless forest stretching before me, inviting me into my own death.

  But the worst ones are of Bea. Of her body not falling, but folding. Head to chest, chest to legs, legs to knees, knees to gravel.

  I can feel the decision locking into place in my mind, less like a memory and more like living through it all over again, every logical move knocking into the next. I can feel myself slipping into self-preservation like a favourite shirt, comfortingly instinctual as I place my life above hers. I feel myself turn, because all that mattered was the escape, not Aaron, not her, just the escape.

  I feel hot tears burn trails down my face as my body slumps, unwinding into a pile of fragile, snapping bones, and I feel like I’ve been stabbed. I feel like I’m the one bleeding out, not Lauren. I feel like I’m the one who’s dying.

  That’s all that was left. Freedom. I sacrificed everything for it, and now I have it, and what good is it to me? I’ve had my old problems stripped from me and replaced with this. This endless spiral of dying in one place, and dying faster in another.

  All because of them. Because even when they had brought me to my knees, even when they had forced me to run for my life, they’re still hunting us.

  What I said to Kole last night was true. These people have let Oasis walk all over them and even now, as they scavenge for food like animals to keep themselves alive, Oasis hunts them.

  And Kole was wrong. Running isn’t our only option. It can’t be our only option. My hands turn to fists at my sides. I stare at my reflection in the broken mirror, and I see dark hair and pale skin and a gaunt face. But I see fire in my eyes. I see a determination there that I have never seen before. Because I’ve made a decision.

  I am going to fight for something better, or I am going to die trying.

  27

  I pick myself up off the ground and walk downstairs with my heart thudding in my chest. Kole is still in the kitchen, and so are several others – Mark and Walter by the front door; Lacey standing nervously by the table; Jonas, Meredith and several others talking in low voices in the corner; Clarke standing sentry by the door, her expression unreadable. It seems like they’re not really sure where they should be or what they should be doing. Kole seems so focused on Lauren that he doesn’t even notice the small group congregating around the edges of the room.

  I walk straight up to him, and my heart feels like it’s rising in my chest, about to float away and take me with it.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ I say, my voice strong and even. I am glad. I need him to take me seriously now, more than ever.

  ‘What is it?’ He turns to me, and though he looks distracted, there’s a tone to him, a less aggressive set to his shoulders that tells of a shift in his attitude towards me.

  I swallow, but I can’t lose my nerve now.

  ‘I want to fight back against the Officers.’

  I have his attention now.

  ‘Quincy.’ His voice is sharp, warning. His eyes skip arou
nd the room, checking to see if they’ve heard me. They have.

  ‘Kole. We need to do this.’

  His lips tighten into a hard line, and he steps away from the table to stand closer to me. ‘We’ve been over this. I’m not needlessly risking lives like that.’

  ‘It’s not needlessly risking lives. We need to do this. We have to make a move on them before they find us.’

  I can feel the anger coming off him in waves as more and more people start staring at me, as if I’m speaking gibberish.

  ‘Can we talk about this in private?’ he asks, catching my arm and tugging me towards the hall. More people have arrived in for their morning meal and the room is filling up quickly.

  ‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘They need to know that they have more options. We need to talk about this. All of us.’

  ‘What do we need to talk about?’ Clarke says.

  I glance back at Kole, but his eyes are fixed on the floor, his arms crossed tightly over his chest as his dark hair falls onto his forehead, masking his eyes.

  I turn back to Clarke.

  ‘Lauren,’ I say, pointing towards the girl asleep on the table, ‘was shot—’

  ‘You don’t say.’ Clarke raises her eyebrows at me sarcastically.

  ‘By Officers,’ I finish, trying to keep my voice level. ‘Outside Oasis. In the forest. Which means they’re out there, right now, hunting us.’

  ‘They are always hunting us,’ Meredith points out quietly.

  ‘Because you’re allowing them to,’ I say, and the minute the words are out of my mouth, people start shouting.

  The cacophony becomes so loud a previously frozen Kole drags me into the next room, ordering everyone to follow.

  Almost everyone is here now, and the room starts to feel small as thirty pairs of accusing eyes fall directly on me.

  ‘We need to fight back,’ I state. Everyone goes silent, and I’m forced to continue. ‘There isn’t anything more to say. You’ve been hiding and running for so long, I don’t think you even know what you’re doing anymore. You can’t keep running. If they find you, they will kill you.’

  I make eye contact with everyone, watching different emotions race across their faces.

  ‘Unless we fight back.’

  I let those words hang in the air for a moment. Let them consider the impact of what I’m suggesting.

  ‘I didn’t think there was anything outside of Oasis. I thought I had no option but to stay in the same place, doing the same things, every single day, until Oasis found the Cure. But now I’m here. And you’re here. We don’t have to believe what Oasis tells us, and what Oasis has been telling us is that we can’t win. We can’t fight back. That all we can do is run and run and delay the inevitable. But it’s not true. Genesis fights back. We can fight back.’

  My hands are shaking. I don’t know where that came from, and everyone is staring at me, blinking slowly, but no one is moving.

  Jonas steps forward. ‘We had a plan,’ he says. ‘We wait for the others, we regroup, and we find someplace safe. Someplace far from Oasis.’

  ‘And how long do you plan to wait for them in a war zone?’ I demand.

  ‘It’s not a war z—’

  I point at the door, gritting my teeth so hard I’m afraid I’m going to break them.

  ‘Why don’t you try telling that to the girl laid out on the table in there? But you can’t, because she’s been unconscious since we dug a bullet from her shoulder.’

  ‘What if we left now?’ a woman says from the background. ‘We could leave before they had a chance to attack again.’

  ‘That’s very easy for you to say, you don’t have anyone on the Inside,’ someone else snaps.

  ‘How do you know you do anymore?’ the woman retorts. ‘They could all be dead by now for all we know.’

  The shouts start again, the argument reaching a point where I’m tempted to run because this is too complicated and too messy and I wasn’t ready for this, and I’m not ready for this, but then—

  ‘I agree with Quincy,’ someone says, their voice projected, but not shouted. Firm, but not angry.

  The shouts die down, and we all turn to see Clarke at the door, eyes locked on me.

  ‘It doesn’t matter how far we run. How good we get at evading them. She’s right. They’re not gonna stop. Not until we’re all dead.’

  ‘You think we have a chance?’ Jonas asks, disgust in his voice. ‘Against them? They’d kill us before we even knew what was happening.’

  ‘That’s what they’re doing here,’ Clarke spits. ‘They’re killing us off one by one because they know we’re not willing to fight back.’

  ‘They’re killing us off one by one because they know they’re stronger than us,’ a girl shouts, pushing her way to the front of the group. ‘We need to run, now, while we still have the chance.’

  ‘Running hasn’t done us any good,’ someone else shouts.

  ‘What about our families?’ a young man cries from the back. ‘Are we supposed to just abandon them?’

  ‘We’re supposed to survive!’

  ‘HEY!’ Clarke yells, and again the shouts die down. ‘No one’s making you fight. If you want to run, run. If you want to sit here and wait for a miracle, you can do that. But I’m not ready to give up. I’ll fight.’ She moves to stand beside me.

  ‘I’ll fight,’ Mark says, raising his arm to be seen above the heads of the others, moving through the crowd until he can stand on my side of the room.

  ‘I will too,’ someone else calls.

  ‘And me,’ says Walter.

  ‘I’ll fight!’ another person calls, and another and another, until the room is split in half.

  My eyes fall on Kole, hands stiff at his sides, jaw clenched as he stares at the floor. He looks up at me, his eyes burning holes into me, but when he speaks, he just sounds broken.

  ‘I can’t stop you.’

  And with that, the lines are drawn.

  28

  Two days pass, more like heartbeats than days. The camp is suddenly split into three groups: those who think we need to stick to the old plan – wait, regroup and run; those who think we should run now, while we still have the chance; and those who are ready to fight back.

  There are twelve of us now, preparing for our first mission, packing up supplies and training. The second group are doing similar, except they’re not preparing for a fight – they’re preparing for a journey. I don’t know when they’re leaving, but I do know that no one’s willing to admit it’s actually happening.

  Mark brings me hunting, to teach me how to fire a gun at a moving target, but all I do is shoot a metre to the left of the bird I’m aiming at, scaring it and everything else in the forest into hiding.

  We have guns, pieces stolen here and there and some taken from Oasis, but it’s unlikely we’ll have anything like what the Officers will be carrying.

  We’re betting our lives on the element of surprise.

  ‘Quincy, can I talk to you?’ Kole asks, dragging me from my thoughts as I stand at the door of the house, watching people prepare for our trip.

  We’re leaving in an hour, and we have no idea where to start looking.

  ‘Sure,’ I say, letting him lead me into an abandoned room.

  He turns to face me, running his hands through his hair, trying to gather his thoughts. He looks pale and exhausted, and I know from the sound of him pacing at night that he hasn’t been sleeping.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I ask, and I don’t step closer or reach for him, even though something in me is telling me to, because there is too much weakness in those three words already.

  ‘I want you to call off the mission.’

  ‘Kole …’

  ‘I’m serious,’ he says, and his voice rises at the end. I look into his face, at the panic stained there, and I wonder what the hell is wrong with this boy. ‘You need to stop them from doing this.’

  ‘Kole, I can’t. They’re not doing it for me. They’re doing it for themselve
s.’

  ‘But they listen to you.’

  ‘You’re assigning power to me that I don’t actually have, Kole. They agreed to fight with me because they already wanted to. I can’t change their minds now.’

  ‘No,’ he spits. ‘No, this is not how this happens.’

  ‘Kole—’

  ‘STOP.’ His voice booms, and I take a step back. ‘You don’t know what it’s been like. We’ve been fighting for our lives for years.’

  ‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘No you haven’t. You’ve been running for your lives. There’s a big difference.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He’s shaking now, and he’s white, the blood drained from his face.

  ‘I know that this isn’t what I escaped for. I risked my life leaving Oasis because I wanted freedom. This isn’t freedom. It’s just a different kind of cage.’

  ‘You are risking those people’s lives, and all you can think about is yourself.’

  ‘They’re risking their own lives, Kole, that’s what you don’t seem to understand. I’m not forcing them into anything.’

  ‘But I’m responsible for them. If they die, it’s on my conscience.’ He falls back a step, raising a shaking hand to his face, covering his mouth like he’s horrified, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t understand why he’s acting like this, like it’s killing him to watch them go.

  He’s not coming. He refused to come, along with a handful of others who are staying behind.

  ‘They’re not your responsibility. They can look out for themselves.’ I grind my teeth in frustration at this problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place. ‘If everyone would just look out for themselves and stop getting caught up in each other’s business, I wouldn’t have to have this conversation with you.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that.’ He’s talking through gritted teeth, too, his hands fisted at his sides as he tries to keep his frustration in check.

  ‘Well maybe it should,’ I shoot back, just as Walter sticks his head around the door.

  ‘Time to go.’ He grins, as if we’re going on a picnic, not a manhunt.

  I look back at Kole, but his face hasn’t changed. He looks terrified, as if he’s in physical pain.