by Laura Pohl
She sits down in front of me.
“How’s Sputnik?” I ask.
“She’s doing well,” she answers. “Ate the rations we gave her. She managed to kill one of our chickens, too, so we’ll be eating that for lunch tomorrow.”
I can’t help but laugh. Sputnik, though she looks like a very silly dog, has always been a good chicken chaser.
Brooklyn opens her mouth, then closes it again, as if she wants to ask me something but isn’t sure how to do it. I don’t know what she wants. I don’t know what any of them want. They are as much a mystery to me as the aliens.
“Is there any good news?” I ask.
She breaks into a smile. “Your tests are all clear. I think you’ll be able to get out tomorrow.”
“That’s good, right?”
She hesitates. “Yeah. I think so.” She bites her lower lip. “We haven’t had anyone new here in a while. Boss insisted on keeping you quarantined, just in case. After the plague…”
She falls silent.
“What plague?” I ask.
“It got half of humanity, after we started breathing the dust clouds,” she says. “A bunch of people here suffered from it. Kept coughing their lungs out of their body. There were traces of bacteria. Adults who had left the compound brought the bacteria back here, and then kids started coughing, too. It’s extremely contagious, so isolation is the least we can do to guard against it.”
I’d seen a few blackened bodies on the road, early on, but I’d never been able to surmise that there had been a plague. I had shut myself off from the world entirely for three weeks after Malmstrom, barely able to keep it together. So I hadn’t seen it happen.
I decide to change the subject.
“So, the radio,” I say. “How long has it been running?”
“Since I got here,” she says. “It’s kind of like a beacon. That’s what I’m hoping for, anyway.”
“Well, it worked,” I say. “It brought me here.”
“It was an accident, wasn’t it?”
I give the smallest of nods. “Yeah. I wanted to play a CD. But the port was jammed, so I pushed a radio button and there you were.”
Brooklyn’s smile gets wider at that, her green eyes sparkling. “Accident or not, you’re welcome here.”
I gesture to my cell. “Sure doesn’t feel like it.”
Brooklyn gets up, then shrugs. “I promise you, you’ll be out of there tomorrow. Then you’ll be able to enjoy the other side of Area 51.”
Chapter 12
Brooklyn was wrong.
They don’t let me out the next day, or the day after that.
Flint brings Sputnik to me, lets me see her and pet her through the cutout, and then he takes her away. My meals are regular, but I’m still not allowed to leave my cell. I haven’t seen the sun in four days, and time is ticking by.
I wonder if they’re ever going to let me out.
When Flint comes to get something from the lab on Day Five, he freezes when he sees me.
“You’re still here?” he asks, in an incredulous tone.
“Well, no one came to let me out,” I say.
I don’t bother banging my fists against the glass or anything like that. I just stand, looking at him and waiting.
When I first arrived, I wanted to ask so many questions. I was so hopeful, because to me, finding other survivors meant one thing. It meant fighting back. It meant having numbers and resources, and it meant that we could learn things from each other.
It meant that we had a chance, something that, for six months, I didn’t think we had.
But right now, sitting inside this enclosed glass cell, I can’t think of a single reason to believe that they’re interested in fighting back.
“I’m just…” Flint pauses for a moment. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t think it matters much,” I say. “Unless you plan on letting me out.”
He sighs. “We want to,” he confesses. He shakes his head, running his hands through his short black curls. “I mean, none of us wanted to put you in there. The others didn’t have to go through this when they arrived.”
I take a small step back. Flint sits on the table in front of the glass, swinging his legs back and forth.
“Violet has very strict rules,” he says. It’s the first time I hear Boss’s real name. “She was concerned about your arrival and wanted to do background checks.”
“And you don’t question her?”
He shrugs. “She’s always run this place. She’s the one who managed to keep us all alive.”
I can’t respond to this, because I don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t understand the dynamics of this group. I don’t know who they are or how they work.
“And when will she decide to let me out?”
Flint sighs again. “Only she can say, Clover. I’m sorry.”
I want to ask him to fight back. I want to ask him to release me. I want to ask so many things, but I keep my mouth shut.
He waves a small goodbye and leaves me alone in the dark.
* * *
It’s late when I hear footsteps again.
Brooklyn doesn’t care much about noise. She lights up the whole room and finds me sitting up, wide awake in my bed.
“I’m done with this,” she says.
She walks up to my cell door. For a second, I think that I’m hallucinating, that she’s just going to disappear in a puff of smoke, but she opens the door and steps inside.
She gestures behind her with a nod of her head.
“Come on,” she says. “You’re done here.”
I follow Brooklyn in silence.
Sputnik meets me just outside, jumping on me and licking my face. I hug her and tell her to be quiet, because I’m certain that whatever Brooklyn is doing, she’s not supposed to be doing it.
She guides me to the bunk beds where all the other girls are sleeping and points to an empty one in the far left corner.
“Here,” she whispers, giving me a clean pair of pants and a shirt and sliding me Abuelo’s gun. “We’ll talk it over tomorrow.”
Chapter 13
When I wake the next morning, Brooklyn is nowhere to be seen, but Andy is standing over me, staring at me with her bright blue eyes.
“You’re on guard duty today.”
“Guard duty?”
“Running the perimeter around Area 51,” she says. “Come on. We can grab breakfast before you go.”
I quickly change and pull on my boots, following Andy through the compound’s corridors. I sneak curious glances into the various rooms that we pass while Sputnik follows me silently, still unsure about this new territory.
Breakfast consists of unappetizing cereal with powdered milk. Andy grabs the stuff from a huge pantry, and for a moment I can’t believe that they have working fridges. I eat in a big, wide messroom, with Andy watching me intently. Finally, I gather the courage to ask her about my release.
“Brooklyn didn’t talk to Violet about letting me out, did she?”
Andy sighs. “No, and I assume that we’re all going to be in big trouble.”
“So Violet gives the orders around here?”
Andy laughs. “Yeah. Pretty much. Violet’s always been bossy, ever since she was a kid.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You’ve known her since then?”
She nods. “We grew up together. She’s my best friend. My parents worked for her mom. Melinda used to be the boss of Area 51 back in the day, oversaw all the main operations and research. Violet inherited the post after she was gone.” She shifts in her seat. “I mean, after the adults left for the last attack.”
“They seriously just left the kids here alone?”
“It happened little by little,” Andy answers, looking away. “It’s not like they had
a choice. The ones who went to fight and came back brought the plague with them.” Seeing the look on my face, she says, “Okay, here’s a crash course in the recent history of planet Earth. First, the aliens attacked, destroying all of Earth’s defenses. Then they started wiping out people, apparently. They were turning humans to dust, and when survivors breathed in the dust, it caused some kind of sickness. It turned everyone’s lungs black, and it was contagious, because a specific type of bacteria grew in the human dust. Some adults caught it when they were out fighting and brought it back here to Area 51. By the end of the month, everyone except me, Violet, and Flint was dead.”
One month. That’s all it took to wipe out everyone here.
I bite my tongue so I won’t say anything rash. “But how are we all still here? Why haven’t they found the base?”
Andy shrugs. “Wish I knew the answers. I guess we’re just very lucky.”
An uncomfortable silence fills the room, and Andy doesn’t look like she’s going to be the one to break it. I eat the rest of the meal without speaking. When I’m finished, Andy gets up, guiding me toward another mysterious corridor.
“This is the only door that you can unlock to go outside,” she says, pointing. It has a circular handle and looks like a vault door. Andy steps aside. “We barricaded all the others so nothing would get in. This one has a fingerprint scanner.”
She presses her finger to the scanner. After a second, it lights up green. “I’m not sure when I’ll put you in the system, but…” She digs around in one of her pockets and takes out a pair of gloves, handing them to me.
I take them, feeling stupid for not understanding what they’re for.
“Oh, right!” she exclaims. “Put them on.”
Even though her hands are smaller than mine, the gloves fit. She motions for me to put my finger on the scanner. The screen lights up green, and the name of the authorized person pops up: Andrea Walsh.
“I glued fingerprints to the gloves,” she explains, smiling. “That way, I can leave them on all the time when it gets cold in the winter. But you can keep them for now. They’ll grant you access to pretty much everything inside the compound. Rayen is waiting for you just beyond the door.”
She waves goodbye as the door closes behind me, and for the first time in days, I’m out in the sun. I blink in the bright sunlight, trying to cover my eyes. A figure approaches, and I flinch before I realize that it’s Rayen.
“Hey,” she says. She has the bazooka again, holding it firmly in her hands. A rifle is slung across her back and two pistols are strapped to her belt, along with ammunition. She looks like a brown version of Rambo. “Glad you could make it.”
“Feels a little weird seeing the sun again.”
Rayen grins, her hair moving in the slow breeze that offers the only relief from the desert heat. “Nobody else likes being outside. But I kind of enjoy it.”
“There’s no comparing natural light to indoor fluorescents.” I shrug.
“Your dog is going to regret this idea in about five minutes.”
She’s right. Soon after we start walking, Sputnik goes back to wait in the shade, panting heavily.
Rayen motions for me to follow her, and we walk the perimeter of the compound. Her steps are sure as she traces our route with almost military precision, and I follow her in silence, my shoulders tense. After half an hour, she turns to me.
“They never show up here, you know,” she says. “There’s no need to be so worried.”
“It’s only a matter of time,” I say. “No place is safe for long.”
“Some optimist you are.”
I can’t help but laugh. “I prefer to deal with reality.”
She gestures around the deserted grounds. “Because reality is so much better right now?”
I laugh again, and Rayen’s face breaks into a smile. “You get used to it,” she continues. “The shock is a bit much when you first get here.”
“You didn’t live here before?”
She shakes her head. “I’m from Fort Apache Reservation in Arizona, from the White Mountain Apache Tribe. Came here on foot.”
“Wow. You heard Brooklyn’s message?”
She shakes her head again. “I was the first to arrive, actually. Got lost in the desert and ended up here. Must’ve been luck. Six months and counting.”
I don’t reply. We all keep talking about luck. But is it lucky that we survived? Or are we the unlucky ones? Bitterness fills my mouth, and the cold metal of the gun on my back grounds me here.
Abuela used to say that God doesn’t keep you alive unless He has a plan.
Right now, it looks like God’s plan sucks.
“What about you?” Rayen asks. “How did you get here, besides crashing your car?”
She eyes me with interest, one eyebrow raised. For a second, I can see tension in her shoulders, and I don’t get why it’s there.
I shrug. “I wasn’t doing much. A lot of walking around and driving. Got a plane off the ground in the beginning, but it didn’t last.”
She turns to me, surprised. “A plane? You can fly?”
“My abuelo used to,” I reply. “Best pilot in the air force back in his day.”
“And you?”
“Didn’t have the chance. I wanted to go to college and try for NASA, but…” My voice trails off as I look up at the sky. It’s bright blue, not a cloud or a spaceship in sight. But I know that they’re still here—and as long as they’re on Earth, the sky will never belong to me like it once did. It’ll never be mine again.
Rayen looks up, too, as if she can sense what I’m thinking. For a couple of minutes, we just stand there, looking at the immense blue that covers our planet, that was supposed to protect us. But it didn’t, and here we are.
Unable to take our feet off the ground.
* * *
When I’m finally done with guard duty, I’m hot and sweaty from spending the whole day out in the sun. Brooklyn shows me the showers. Sputnik follows me in, and for the first time, I feel like I’m washing away a layer of loneliness as I shower. Sputnik doesn’t know what to think of the water, and I spray it on her while she tries to avoid it. I chase her around until I catch her, then shove her under the showerhead, using up all the shampoo without a second thought.
When I come out, it’s almost an hour later, but I feel like a new person. Sputnik smells like wet dog, but she’s a lot cleaner, her black fur shining and the blaze between her eyes flashing a snowy white. She wags her tail, forgetting my bath betrayal, when she sees Brooklyn at the door of the shower room holding something that looks like a giant bone.
“What is that?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she answers honestly. “But it does look like dog food.”
Sputnik doesn’t give Brooklyn a chance to back down; she jumps up and steals the bone from her hand, happily bouncing around and then darting into a corner with it in her mouth.
Brooklyn looks a little concerned, but I’ve stopped worrying too much about what Sputnik eats or doesn’t eat. Like me, she’s found her own way of surviving.
“Come on,” Brooklyn says. “We’ve all been waiting for you.”
I follow her through the compound, still trying to learn my way around the corridors. We reach the messroom, where the tables have been shoved aside and a big banner proclaiming Welcome Clover! in bright green letters has been hung up on a wall. Six sets of eyes stare anxiously at me, waiting.
For a second, I don’t know how to react.
“Is this a party for me?” I ask, still not sure that I’m grasping the concept.
“Hell yes,” Brooklyn replies, shoving me forward and handing me a can of Coke. “You made it here alive! It’s time to celebrate!”
They all clap me on the back, and songs from Brooklyn’s playlist start blasting over the speakers. Avani offers me food, whi
ch she assures me has been made by Flint, the only person in the compound who can actually cook. They all talk to me and ask me questions, which I respond to in the best way I can, and Sputnik makes her triumphant return by trying to steal the chicken cooking in the oven.
“Sorry about the whole mess from before,” Brooklyn says, gripping my shoulder. “Thought we’d make it up to you.”
I nod my head in thanks and try to blend in with the others.
The party feels strange and thin, and I can’t quite make out how I feel about this night. At one point, a very defiant Sputnik steals the Welcome Clover banner and runs around the messroom with it. It takes three people to catch her. Then the Last Teenagers on Earth make me sit, and Brooklyn brings out a worn game of Cards Against Humanity.
Brooklyn deals the cards, and everyone snickers. We play a few rounds, and Rayen ends up winning most of them with outrageous combinations that I’m not sure are even possible. I keep drinking soda, trying to ignore the strange feeling in the back of my mind that something about this feels wrong.
“This is unfair,” Andy complains.
“Unfair is not getting to see episode nine of Star Wars because the world ended,” Flint replies. “I wanted to see if Rey and Kylo Ren get together!”
“Rey and Kylo? No way!” Brooklyn says, punching him in the arm. “You were my brother, Flint. I loved you!” she teases.
They keep playing cards and get into another discussion while I sit quietly, not sure where I fit in this scenario, or even whether I can hold a normal conversation with them.
“Okay, next,” Brooklyn announces, drawing a new card. “Okay, this one is good: ‘I drink to forget…’”
We each put a card facedown in the pile to complete the sentence. Brooklyn shuffles them and starts reading them aloud.
“‘I drink to forget… My SATs,’” she reads. “Avani, that’s you for sure. You big nerd.”
Avani rolls her eyes.
“‘I drink to forget… Poor life choices,’” Brooklyn continues. “That’s all of us. ‘Nickelback.’ Me too. ‘Daddy issues.’ Really?” When she gets to my card, she purses her lips. “Hey, this one says, ‘Alien invasion.’”