He slowly pulls his eyes away from me and my stomach churns.
Without another word, Warden Black turns his back to us, and his six guards surround him as he walks away.
Before the other guards command us to move, before we are all separated for who knows how long, I brave one last look at Papa. His eyes meet mine, and I’ve never seen him look so pale.
I want to reach out to him. To hug him. I don’t know when I will be able to again. I don’t know if I will ever be able to. His promises of getting out of here suddenly feel empty. Warden Black doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would care about the cure for the greyskin virus. Papa might try to tell them about it to keep one of us from execution, but Black may just wave him off. That would be the end. We would be vulture food.
Before I look away, Papa nods at me and winks again. I know it’s an effort to make me feel better. I know he doesn’t have control. I know he can’t save me right now. But the wink works. It always works. It’s that little bit of assurance, false or not, that will keep me going.
The lines are separated. The men are led by guards to the right, the women to the left.
Maybe I’m young and that makes me stand out, but that just means it’s time for me to grow up. I’m not going to the vultures without a fight.
CHAPTER TWO
Liam
EACH STEP IS a measurement. 432. 433. 434. It’s 1,261 paces before we reach the entrance of the prison quarters. The building is six stories high and there are thirty-six barred windows on this side of the building. From my vantage point, it’s impossible to know how deep the structure is. There could be hundreds of prisoners here. There could be thousands.
When Warden Black left, he took his six guards with him, leaving only five armed guards in charge of forty-two relatively healthy prisoners. Forty-one adults and one child.
The twelve-year-old is my daughter.
I have never wanted to kill a man before, but when Warden Black picked Skylar out of the crowd, questioned her, made her feel small, I wanted to break his neck. Lucky for Warden Black and lucky for me, he didn’t linger with her, otherwise Black and I both would have ended up dead. The guards would have killed me but not before I got to Black.
Three guards escort us, and two guards meet us at the entrance of the prison quarters. One of them sits at a table, jotting down everyone’s name and then assigning them a number as they pass through. I ignore those ahead of me and instead try to focus on the details that matter.
Each guard carries a rifle slung over his shoulder and a pistol at his belt…
“You’re now three-three-two-eight,” the guard says to a prisoner.
They also carry a knife on their belts, but they are allowed to choose which side the pistol rests in its holster and on which side the knife is sheathed.
“You’re now three-three-two-nine.”
Their boots look worn…their uniforms dirty. The guns seem older than some of the Screven soldiers we’ve run into in the past…
“You’re now three-three-three-zero…three-three-three-one…three-three-three-two…”
The fences are tall. Three rows of them, each with razor wire at the top. Each with about four feet of space in between…
“Name.”
How many paces is it to the north side of the camp? I hope Skylar is okay. I hope she isn’t afraid…
“Name!” the guard shouts.
I feel a stiff hand grab the back of my arm and one of the soldiers gets close to my right ear.
“Give him your name or we’ll make an example of you,” he says.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “Liam. My name is Liam.”
The guard sitting at the table squints up at me with a curled lip, annoyed at having to ask me twice. “You’re now prisoner number three-three-three-three.”
I hope Skylar gets an easy number to remember.
There are more guards when I enter into a large bare room. The walls, floor, and ceiling are made up of dark stone. There is another door on the other side of the room, maybe twenty paces.
The guards command us to take off all our clothes for cleaning and inspection. We were all searched when we were first captured, but these guards don’t want any contraband getting into the prison.
A loud buzzing noise cuts through the air along with more shouts from the guards ordering the men at the front to sit. I don't have to crane my neck to see what's happening. The electric razors make sharp grating noises as they chop through stalks of hair.
It means little for me to lose my hair and beard. When it’s my turn to sit on the stool, I keep my eyes straight ahead. The guard yanks on my scalp and predictably foregoes gentleness. It’s a minor pain, but it’s sharp. I take it without flinching. The electric razor cuts the hair until there is none left and droplets of blood ooze slowly down my neck and cheeks
The guard slaps me on the back and points to the line of naked men waiting at the next door. Some of them rub the sides of their heads. Others try to cover themselves with their hands.
The air feels cool without any clothes. A hiss echoes off the walls as the guards turn on a large, powerful hose. The torrent of water blasting the prisoners in front of me will make it even colder. When it’s my turn, the guards yell for me to put my hands in the air.
The water feels like a winter blizzard cold enough to enclose me in a box of ice. They spray my face. My body. All the way down to my feet. The blast feels like they are beating me with a stick which lands a blow on every square inch of my body. They bark for me to turn and then do it again to my backside.
When I’m free to fall back in line behind the others, I’m shivering uncontrollably. I can’t believe Skylar has to endure this torture. Worse is my powerlessness to stop it from happening.
If I concentrate hard enough, I don’t have to feel the pain of the cold or the pressure of the hose, but knowing Skylar faces the same punishment, I can’t bring myself to use my gift now.
It happened 336 days ago. Skylar’s life was in danger and I had to help her. I had wounds that should have left me incapacitated. I had been bitten by a greyskin. But something came over me. With enough concentration, I was able to stand on my feet and turn off the pain, giving me the chance to save my daughter and carry her home.
When we were finally safe, I knew healing would be a process, but at the worst of times, I found that I could make the pain stop by merely concentrating.
The initial rescue I could have chalked up to adrenaline, but there was no adrenaline in the healing process. I should have felt the need to scream when I cleaned my wounds and sewed myself up.
Over the next few days, pain often took me by surprise, but I could focus on blocking the pain and it would go away instantly. If I let my thoughts stray or if I got tired and relaxed my concentration, the pain would return full-force.
I still can’t explain what happened or why it continues. I’m not a particularly tough person. I’m just a man who wants to survive long enough to get my daughter out of the Containment Zone.
The Circle of Hell.
The Containment Zone has a radius of about 500 miles. Any exit is heavily guarded by soldiers from Screven or gates with computer-controlled guns ready to cut down anyone without the right credentials to pass. If I am correct, Vulture Hill is about 120 miles north of a town called Franklin, which is home to the nearest exit. Problem is, Franklin is known for being a greyskin trap. If any non-greyskin people are in Franklin, they are few.
It may take longer, but it's better to head north back toward home. It’s familiar territory for me and safer than going places that are potentially more dangerous. There is an exit from the Containment Zone about an hour from my house. It isn’t typically guarded by soldiers, yet I still don’t have a way to get out. The guns would destroy me.
I’ve seen the mayhem they create. I’ve been to the northern gate twice now. I’ve seen the results of those who tried to cross, their bodies strewn about by the birds that have picked the skin from their b
ones. Shooting at the gate does no good because it’s made to resist bullets. Even if someone were able to make it past the gate, they would never make it beyond the canyon where there are more guns mounted for backup in case the gate fails. I’m not sure if anyone has found a secret way out yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Screven soldiers were completely thorough in sealing us in.
I had met someone who claimed there was a way out through a system of caves. Stupidly, I trusted them. I was caught. Skylar got away, but not for long. Now here we are.
No one leaves the Containment Zone without the proper credentials. In the same way, I fear, no one leaves Vulture Hill alive.
It would take an army to break through the gate and get past the canyon. It would take an army to overtake the guards here. There are more prisoners here than guards, sure, but from what I saw of the inmates watching us when we arrived, they wouldn’t have a chance against a healthy collection of trained guards.
The large group of us waits in line, shivering and defeated. My bones ache. My stomach groans for food. I don’t know what we’re waiting for and I can’t hear anything at the front of the line because of the continuous string of gasps from the prisoners behind me when the icy water blasts them against the cold wall.
I know that everything happening to me is also happening to Skylar, and it makes me want to vomit. To know that her long locks of red hair are about to fall in piles on the floor is too difficult to bear.
With every step forward, I try to imagine what she’s thinking and feeling. Her heart pounds as she stands naked and bald. She may not know that she’s about to be sprayed with a powerful hose. It will come as a shock when she realizes what’s happening.
As her father, I want to weep. As her protector, I want to tear the heads from every guard in the camp. As her father, I want to hold her. As her protector, I want to burn the prison to the ground. As her father, I have to trust she has good instincts. As her protector, I must be cautious and do nothing at the moment.
I stand straight and keep my eyes fixed ahead. I wish there was something I could do to relieve Skylar’s pain from a distance. I wish I could communicate with her. I wish I could comfort her. The most I risked was a wink, and I felt it was too much at the time, but she had seemed so scared.
When at last, everyone’s hair rests in pillows of black, brown, blonde, and red, and our bodies are all dripping with frigid water, the door in front of us opens.
I live in a world where the dead walk, the government destroys, and raiders kill without a thought, yet the most frightening thing to me is the unknown.
After getting our heads shaved and being hosed we were led through another corridor and into an enormous open space with barred cells on both sides, all the way up to the tall ceiling six stories high. It was impossible for me to calculate how far the cells went on, but I could guess there was a capacity for thousands of people in the camp if the women’s building was just as sizable.
We were given clothes, and each of us assigned a cell number. Mine was 225. The cell doors opened from an undisclosed control room, and we were told to get in. We haven’t been told anything about what we are to do next or when we will leave our cells.
My cell is approximately six feet by seven feet. There is a bunk bed so I would assume I will have a cellmate, though he isn’t here at the moment. If I don’t currently have one, I will soon enough.
Most of the cells I can see across the corridor are empty. Considering it’s morning, I assume they are out at their assigned jobs. Maybe breakfast. I’m not sure what time it is. I’m not sure we get breakfast. Or maybe most of the prisoners have already been killed and were laid to rest at the top of Vulture Hill.
There is no way to know, no way to confirm anything. That thought terrifies me.
These guards have more power over us than just the guns they hold—they own information. Some kind of schedule, an idea of what is to come would offer some small measure of comfort. Why would they want to give us that?
I don’t know if Skylar and I will die in here. I can’t predict the future, but the leverage I have is more than anything the other prisoners will have.
When you make something the world needs, there is always a buyer. There isn’t a person in the world who wouldn’t benefit from having an available cure for the greyskin virus.
The discovery was years in the making, but after thousands of experiments and two horrible tragedies, I found something that worked.
To be clear, the cure won’t turn something that’s already a greyskin back into a healthy person, but it will save someone from becoming a greyskin, and it will protect them from future greyskin bites.
A person can get the virus so quickly. A bite or a deep scratch will allow the virus to enter the bloodstream within seconds. Then it is twenty-four agonizing hours until they die. Not long after death, the body reanimates as a greyskin. The virus takes over the body and does what it needs to survive. It bites, claws, or feeds.
What I have created will stop the virus so long as the person hasn’t died. The only cure for the greyskin virus after death, however, is a bullet to the brain. Not the heart. Not anywhere else. The brain.
The virus takes enough control of the brain that some parts of the body are reactivated. You could cut a greyskin to pieces, but if you haven’t destroyed the brain then it will keep trying to bite, scratch, or feed until it rots away into nothingness.
The only other person who knows about the cure is Skylar, and she has been sworn to secrecy. My biggest fear is that she will become too trusting with the wrong person here, or that she will tell a guard about the cure to try and save my life. If we are to use this information to our benefit, I will have to present it in the right way and at the right time. And I don’t have a clue when that will be or if it will even work.
More than likely, I won’t be believed. Prisoners have undoubtedly made ridiculous claims to try and save themselves. If it comes to the point where I need to use that information, my executioners might laugh at me and put a bullet in my brain.
If they believe me, I would then have to explain there is only a small batch, and it's located some 350 miles north of here.
The cure, while incredible and life-changing, can’t simply be mass produced. Our current government would use it for profit. They created the Containment Zone after all. Some say they even created the greyskin virus forty years ago. That wouldn’t surprise me, but I can’t know for sure. Of course, all we know of the government is that there are soldiers who are all trained in the city of Screven, our capital city. They all answer to someone, I’m sure. I’ve heard the name Jeremiah bounced around here and there, and it’s a name I’ve heard for years and years.
The virus appeared about forty years ago, just in time to welcome me into childhood, it seemed. I barely remember the first five years of my life. I remember not running from scary monsters, then all of a sudden after I turned five, we were constantly running from scary monsters. Once my parents discovered a way to settle down, they focused more of their attention on educating me.
Eventually, that education turned into a cure for the greyskin virus, and now the world is one trigger-happy guard away from never seeing it.
One thing that has baffled my mind for the last twenty years is how the virus keeps growing. It would seem that after so much expansion, eventually all the people would be completely wiped out, or the remaining greyskins would have rotted away. Yet, for forty years, humanity hasn’t found a way to eradicate the virus by cure or by force. It would seem that with the firepower of the Screven military, anything that shuffled like a greyskin would have already met its end.
Some would say it’s not in the best interest of the government to eradicate the greyskin virus. This seems apparent in the creation of the Containment Zone, thus my reason to keep the cure quiet. But just because the government doesn’t want the cure to be mass produced, doesn’t mean they don’t want it for themselves.
Calling the Screven government a gove
rnment, however, is giving it too much credit. It’s plainly a military, a dictatorship in which none of us are entirely sure who the dictator is.
The wall feels cold when I lean my back against it and slide my rear to the floor between the toilet and the bed. My eyes are fixed on the bars in front of me. I’m tempted to look for the weak points, to find some flaw in the engineering of the cell, a loose screw, a chipped stone in the floor, but instead, I close my eyes and draw a long, deep breath.
I can’t believe Skylar was caught. When we had separated, I knew I would be captured, but I honestly thought she would have gotten away. To see her among a batch of new prisoners and join us on the bus made me want to weep.
I still want to weep.
I open my eyes, wonder if any of the prisoners will be back soon, then close them again. As silently as I can, I let the tears fall.
CHAPTER THREE
Skylar
I FEEL COLD. I wish my room had windows. A light under the doorway. Something to prove I’m not dead. I’m no longer wet under my new prison clothes. My buzzed scalp feels like sandpaper. If I could see, I imagine my breath would blow out in puffy white clouds. I still feel aches. Hunger. Exhaustion.
The dead aren’t in pain. The dead aren’t hungry. The dead aren’t tired.
I am alive.
This dark room feels like a punishment. It’s more than prison. It’s worse than where the others had to go. We were pushed through a line, stripped, shaved, sprayed. Then I was removed from the group by two guards. I tried to ask them why, but they wouldn’t answer me. I saw the long hallway of barred cells where everyone was headed, but that wasn’t where I was going. When the guards decided I was moving too slowly, they grabbed me under the armpits and carried me, then they threw me into this dark room and slammed the door shut.
When you can’t see, and you’re hungry and tired, time slips by quickly. Or maybe not at all. I have no idea how long I’ve been in this room or how long they will leave me here. Perhaps this is where the guards take prisoners to die before transporting them to the top of the hill to be eaten by vultures.
Beyond the Gates Page 2