by Laura Pohl
She tries to make it sound funny, but the atmosphere gets heavier.
She looks up at me. “This one’s yours, isn’t it?” she asks, and I realize that everyone’s eyes are on me.
I nod, slowly, not sure how to respond.
Brooklyn puts the cards down, biting her lower lip. “Will you tell us?” she asks.
I frown slightly. “Tell you what?”
“About the outside,” Avani says, almost in a whisper. “What happened after.”
I frown deeper, my eyebrows knitting together. Surely, with all the resources they have out here, they know. They’ve seen what happened.
“Just tell us,” Brooklyn says.
And finally, I understand.
They don’t know.
They only call themselves the Last Teenagers on Earth because it’s a cool name that Brooklyn came up with. Because, before me, nobody ever showed up at their doorstep, and they’re living their days as if nothing has changed. Andy told me about the plague, but that’s all she knows. They think some of the planet got wiped out, but they don’t know how much.
“There’s nothing,” I say carefully, my words measured. “There’s nothing left.”
They blink, expecting more.
“There’s no one else out there,” I say. “I went from Montana to Connecticut, Florida to Texas. It’s been six months since I saw another living soul.”
I can’t read their expressions. Rayen turns away, as if she’s suddenly thinking about something else, but I can see the anger in her deep eyes and her tightening jaw. Brooklyn looks stunned, Avani like she’s about to cry.
“No one?” Brooklyn asks tentatively, as if she’s hoping that I’m lying.
I shake my head. “That’s why I was so shocked when I heard your voice on the radio.” I try to explain things as gently as I can, but there’s no good way to break this kind of news. “I thought you all knew.”
“We haven’t had any contact with the outside,” Rayen says, keeping her voice even. But she’s not as good an actress as she thinks she is. “We know nothing.”
“Well…” I say. “There’s good reason for the name you go by. For all I know, the aliens have taken over everything. And we may indeed be the last surviving teenagers. We’re probably the last human beings on Earth.”
Brooklyn slams her fist against the table so hard that it makes me jump. Just as she opens her mouth to say something, she turns and freezes.
I quickly glance over to where she’s looking, and I see someone in the doorway.
This girl is taller than the rest of them, and her blond hair falls in waves over her white shoulders. Her eyes are an icy blue, a color that I’ve only seen in the frozen lakes of Montana. Her jaw is set and her whole look gives off a dangerous, menacing attitude.
“Boss,” Brooklyn perks up, her face betraying the emotion that she’s trying to hide. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
The girl doesn’t answer for a few seconds. She doesn’t cross her arms or approach us. But I can see her alpha position from here—they all deeply respect her.
“I thought we had rules, Brooklyn.”
“Sorry,” Brooklyn mutters.
“She was supposed to stay in isolation,” the girl says, emphasizing her words carefully.
Brooklyn doesn’t respond this time. But I don’t have to sit here while she talks about me like I’m not in the room. Whoever she is, I’m not afraid of her. I’ve seen far worse things than a blond girl with a bossy attitude.
“We need to talk,” she says to Brooklyn. “And someone put this girl back in isolation, where she belongs.”
“You can’t just hide the truth from them,” I say, turning to her and speaking before I can stop myself. I don’t care who she thinks she is. “They deserve to know.”
“I’m the one who gets to decide that,” Violet replies.
I get up from the table and walk toward her.
“I don’t know what kind of hellhole you’re running here,” I say, stopping right in front of her. Logically, my best shot would be to keep my head down, but in this case, I’m willing to part with logic. Because logic is also telling me that we need all the information we can get. And that means sharing. “You don’t hide this kind of information. You just don’t.”
I glance at Brooklyn and the others, who are looking at me like they don’t know whether to be afraid of me or to cheer me on.
I’m tired of being feared, and I’m sick of being alone.
And I know that I’ve already made my decision, even if I didn’t mean to. Rayen’s words had hit me—they really don’t know anything.
“Let’s talk,” I say to Violet. “Alone.”
Chapter 14
Violet’s footsteps are sure and calm, echoing down the sterile halls of Area 51. Her boots are made of pure leather, and they’re the finest I’ve seen in ages. I didn’t raid any houses that had boots as nice as hers, and I’m willing to bet my own crappy pair that Violet wasn’t a girl who was raiding houses in her spare time.
She turns and enters a room, and I follow her. I don’t like acting like a meek dog, but whether I’m in trouble or not, these people have given me good food and a hot shower. That’s better than what I had before.
I stand in the middle of what appears to be an office, waiting for her to say something. Her demeanor is very different from the others’, so it throws me off. She sits in a comfortable chair behind a desk and trains her blue eyes on me. I don’t intend to speak first, because I’m sure that’s what she’s trying to make me do—back down.
“So,” she starts after we’ve been in an uncomfortable silence for more than a minute. “It’s Clover, right? Brooklyn tells me that you made quite an entrance here.”
I resist the urge to respond to her tone with a “Yes, ma’am.” This girl isn’t older or better than I am, and she has no right to order me around.
“Okay. You’re not going to talk, so I will.” She leans forward, her blond hair falling in waves of golden light. “You might not understand this yet, but we have rules here. Just like any other place on earth.” She doesn’t correct herself. “So if you want to stay here, you’re going to have to obey the rules. First things first, you do not want to question my authority on any matter.”
I know better than to interrupt her. This room gives no clues as to who she really is, or was, before the attack, which makes it harder to guess what she’s like. But unlike the others, I feel like she’s right where she belongs.
“I hope we’re clear on that.”
“Yes,” I answer her calmly. “We’re clear.”
“Okay.” She nods her head. “So no talking about the outside. Or what is happening beyond the compound.”
“You can’t mean to keep them in the dark.”
Violet glares at me. “It’s hard enough to keep hope alive without the outside interfering. I have a lot to deal with here.”
“I hate to break it to you, but aliens invaded Earth, and the entire human population is dead,” I reply.
For a second, she looks taken aback, but she quickly controls her face.
“The outside interferes,” I continue. “You can’t pretend that you’re all on a fucking vacation.”
“What’s happening here is none of your business.”
I set my jaw. I get what she means. Down here, the atmosphere is almost happy, like some kind of big summer camp. The thing is, it’s not summer, there are no schools or camps or vacations anymore, and everyone else in the world is dead.
“Sit down,” she says, and this time, I obey. I sit down and face this girl who doesn’t take any bullshit. “So you want to leave?”
I don’t know how to respond to that. After a moment, I ask, “How did you know?”
She shrugs. “I see you, Clover. You’ve been on the outside for too long. Being around peo
ple again? It isn’t easy. It also means that you can’t take an all-on-your-own approach to life anymore.”
She looks hard at me, like she wants me to crack. But I know this strategy—it’s the same one I’d use. There’s a crucial difference between Violet and me, though. Nothing she has to say can bother me.
“You done?” I ask her with a straight face. “My turn. You, Violet, like to be in charge. I’m a wild card among your perfectly stacked little deck. I’m pretty sure you’ve already decided that you don’t like me, but whatever. So here goes: you act tough, and you probably are tough, but my guess is that you haven’t left Area 51 since the world ended. That’s none of my business, but you don’t get to tell me about the outside. I’ve been there. For the last six months. I don’t know whose choice it was to hide the truth, but it wasn’t a brilliant one. Pretending that nothing is happening is not a strategy. The world fucking ended. And we have to deal with that, and not stay sheltered in this happy little bubble.”
Violet looks at me with her harsh blues. She doesn’t flinch. “Are you done?”
“No,” I answer, because I’m not and because I’m pissed off. “I’m willing to bet that you’re an only child, probably raised by distant parents. So when they died, you thought you should follow their example—be distant and commanding, like you’ve got to protect these poor losers who look up to you. You’re not wrong to want to protect them, but hiding the truth from them isn’t a good policy. So I guess you have two choices: kick me out and risk being seen as an actual dictator, or let me stay. And deal with the consequences.”
She doesn’t seem offended, which doesn’t really surprise me. I think I’ve figured out exactly who Violet is—someone too much like myself. And then she does surprise me. She smiles.
“You’re good,” she says. “But as much as I’d really like to kick you out right now, I won’t. Do you know why, Clover? Because you need us. And I’m not so terrible as to deny you that.”
I don’t respond. The worst part is—she’s right.
Because I’ve learned that there’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. I had never been lonely before. I’d always had my grandparents. For a while, I had Noah. I had people who cared about me, and I never realized how much I would miss that until they were gone. Until the world turned to dust and I was the only one left standing.
“You can’t keep hiding things from them,” I say at last. “Even if you want to. I’ve already told them about the outside.”
“Look, we’ve been on lockdown ever since the last adults came back and died here,” she says. “We haven’t had any news since then. The last they told us, people were still fighting back. Humans were still trying to win.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Five months. All the others were already here.”
That’s why they were so hopeful. They’d watched the last of the adults die, and the other kids, too. But they still hoped that there’d be something left, if they just kept themselves really quiet and waited.
“So what’s the plan?”
Violet raises a single eyebrow at me. “The plan?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say, impatiently. It’s been six months since the invasion started. They haven’t been on the run—they’ve all been here together, safe. Surely they’ve been working on something to fight back. “The plan.”
Violet blinks. “Clover, there is no plan.”
For a second, I think I’ve misheard her. But Violet doesn’t mispronounce words. She doesn’t hesitate. Everything about her is calculated.
She’s been on lockdown since the last adults returned. She’s locked herself and the others away, for good.
I don’t know what I expected.
“That can’t be,” I say. My tongue suddenly feels like sandpaper. “You have everything here. Resources, people. We can fight this.”
“No, we can’t,” she replies. “We’re just trying to survive.”
“Of course we can. Surviving means nothing if we just stay locked up here forever.”
“Then convince me how.”
I see kindness and pity in Violet’s eyes as she watches me process the situation. And I hate it.
I had hoped that someone here would have the answers. But they don’t. Of course they don’t.
No one does.
They’d all rather stay here and throw welcome parties and take showers and eat good food and not talk about aliens—screw the rest of the world.
Anger bubbles in my blood and tears form in the back of my eyes. We were supposed to fight back together. We were supposed to have something.
But once again, I’m left with nothing.
Chapter 15
Adam, the boy who reminds me of Noah, is waiting for me outside the door, Sputnik by his side. I quickly wipe the tears from my face, trying to pretend that they’re not there. Sputnik circles around me three times, her tail brushing against my legs.
I crouch down to look at her, and she licks my tears, as if she knows that I want to wipe them from existence.
“You all right?” Adam asks. He stands there in his shy, nice-guy pose, which is cute but doesn’t cut through my armor. “Was she tough on you?”
“I’m fine,” I say, which doesn’t really answer his question, but it’ll do for now.
“Are you sure?”
I don’t know why he cares. We barely know each other.
“Yeah. It was nothing.”
“Brooklyn is really sorry she asked about the outside,” he says. He seems hesitant, with his hands in his pockets, unsure of how to move.
“She shouldn’t be.” My voice has an edge of anger. “She has a right to ask. You all do.”
He looks at me straight on, and it’s unnerving how much he reminds me of Noah. Especially that shade of gray-blue in his eyes. I look at my feet.
“So is it true?”
“Yeah,” I reply. “It’s true.”
“What was it like?”
I can tell that a part of him doesn’t want to know. A part of me doesn’t want to answer. But I owe it to all of them to share my knowledge.
“It’s empty,” I tell him. Because I walked for miles and miles and all I saw was blackened bodies in the streets and, where there were no bodies, dust in the air. Because I know that, unless there was some kind of miracle, we are indeed the last ones left on the planet. The ones who were forgotten. “Just like everyone went on a vacation.”
There’s a deep sadness in his eyes when I say this, and it’s something that I’ve come to know.
He wipes some tears away, taking it in. He’s probably wondering about the things that I’ve seen and he hasn’t.
“I saw some of it,” he says. “When I was making my way down with Brooklyn and Avani. I never thought I’d miss seeing houses.” He pauses, taking a deep breath, then looks right into my eyes. “But I do, you know? I miss seeing the blue sky and the landscape.”
We fall silent.
“Want to see something?” he asks lamely.
Without knowing why, I nod. I follow him into a corridor, and he leads the way toward a distant staircase. Then we climb through the dark up a ladder, and when he finally opens a trapdoor, twilight greets me. Sputnik stays behind, whining.
We’re at the top of one of the watchtowers. Here, I can see Area 51 in its entirety, its fences and barbed wires, and then miles of desert.
“I come up here a lot,” Adam says.
I look around. I can understand why he likes it—maybe if he tries hard enough, he can pretend not to see the emptiness.
“I like it.”
Adam sits on the wall, his legs dangling. I follow suit, letting the breeze rustle my hair.
For a moment, looking at the sky and feeling the wind on my face reminds me of airplanes, of how it used to feel when I could go up high and not be a
fraid.
“I couldn’t salvage the car, you know.”
I give him the smallest hint of a grin. “It wasn’t the first one I’ve wrecked. I actually can’t drive that well.”
“How many?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“I won’t.”
“Thirteen.”
Adam opens his mouth in a wide O, a caricature of disbelief. “Is there anything that you actually can drive?”
Looking at the sky right now hurts, like my heart is breaking at the sight of it. “Yeah. Planes.”
“Really?”
I nod. “My abuelo was an air force pilot. He taught me.”
He looks at me quickly, as if he’s afraid to ask. “With the invasion?”
I nod. Sympathetic words are empty now, and he doesn’t bother saying them. Silence is more comforting, because it’s true. “Yeah. End of the world blows.”
Adam nods, and for a moment, I let myself miss them.
“I wish I could remember them without the sadness,” I finally find myself saying. “And only remember the good stuff.” It feels good to let the words out, to let go of just a little control.
“That does happen, eventually,” he says, and I wait for him to go on. “I lost my dad when I was eight.”
I nod.
“He was in the army,” he continues. “One day, he just didn’t come home. They sent a medal in his place. They told us to be proud, that Dad had died a hero. But I couldn’t understand how a scrap of metal could substitute for a person.”
“Because it can’t.”
He nods. “That person will never come back. It doesn’t matter how they died. They died. End of story.” He sighs, and I understand perfectly how he feels. “After a while, you get used to it, I guess. Now I remember the good stuff. He used to make waffles when he was home, and he would always burn them. Mom and I would eat them and pretend that they didn’t taste terrible.” He pauses. “But sometimes, it hits again. The pain is kind of like the tide.”
His voice fades a little at the end of the sentence. And in that moment, I realize what it’s like to really relate to another human being. For a second, I understand Adam.