The Survivor

by BRIDGET TYLER

  “Really?”

  I feel the flush of happiness that colors his cheeks as if it were my own.

  “I almost didn’t check the manifest,” he says. “I didn’t think . . . but Dr. Howard looked when your grandfather uploaded it, and his sister and her family were there. So are Chief Penny’s cousins. That made a couple of the others check. When they all found family members, I decided . . . I had to look.” He shakes his head in amazement. “I don’t know how, but they’re on it. They’re alive. They’re here.” He sweeps me into his arms. “I can’t believe it. They’re really here. And they’re safe, thanks to you.”

  He presses a kiss to my lips.

  Self-loathing stiffens my spine, pulling me away from his sweet excitement. I try to force my clenched jaw to relax, but Jay feels it. His shoulders go up defensively as he turns away from me.

  “Jay,” I start, but he waves me off.

  “No,” he says. “I get it. Our home world is gone and billions of people are dead and I’m happy. I don’t blame you for being weirded out. But . . . I was pretty sure I was never going to see Mom and Seo again when I came here. And I felt like the worst, knowing that I chose this place over them. But now we’re going to be together again. I get to see them every day and they get to meet you and . . . that makes me happy. And feeling happy right now is so . . . confusing. I mean, here I am, babbling about seeing my mom again when almost everyone else is . . .”

  “Oh Jay,” I say, feeling like a self-centered jerk all over again for letting him think I was judging him when I was really judging myself. “That’s not it at all. It’s okay to be happy.” I duck my head under his arm, curling into him. “I’m glad you’re happy. You should be. There’s going to be a lot of surviving to do. Our whole lives. I think we’re going to have to get used to living at the same time. Does that make sense?”

  Instead of answering, he presses a kiss into the top of my head. I turn my face up to his, and our lips meet and mold to each other. It isn’t new anymore. We’ve kissed each other many times. But the shape of it is different every time. Surprising, even when it’s familiar.

  It feels good. His kisses always do. But this is more. Different.

  When I was little, Grandpa made us learn to swim across the lake at his cabin in Geneva. It’s almost a kilometer wide. I spent the whole summer trying and failing. The last time, it was nearly autumn and the water was cold. But I was determined to make it, so I kept swimming even though I knew I was too tired. By the time I got close to the other side, I could feel myself sinking a little with every stroke of my arms. I stopped to try to rest, but the waves were like fistfuls of broken glass, tossing themselves into my face. Before I knew it, I was sinking. Drowning. Then my toes brushed the bottom. I’ll never forget what that felt like. Kissing Jay right now feels like that. Like I’m drowning and he’s solid ground.

  I need that.

  I need him. Desperately. I feel like I might die if he doesn’t kiss me again. Longer. Deeper.

  I think Jay feels it, too.

  His urgent hands mold over my hips and run up my back, under my thermal. His callused fingers throw sparks as they trail over my bare skin. Our tongues tangle. My breath is coming faster.

  It feels good.

  I want more.

  I pull my thermal off.

  His hands stroke up my stomach, fingers grazing the plain gray cotton of my sports bra as I yank at his T-shirt. He drags it off and pulls me into his lap, wrapping himself around me.

  We’ve gotten this far before, but no further.

  Tonight it isn’t enough.

  Tonight, I want to feel all of him with all of me. I need to. Tonight, I want more than sparks. Tonight, I want to burn.

  Jay pulls back.

  “What are you doing?” I demand, trying to drag his lips back to mine.

  He puts a gentle hand on my chest, over my pounding heart. “Wait. Please, Hotshot.”

  “No. No.” To my surprise, the little word catches in my throat. “Please,” I whisper. “I want . . . I need . . .”

  “Me too,” he says, leaning his forehead against mine. “You know how much. But when we . . . I want it to be about us, Jo. Not tangled up in this.” He reaches out and brushes a tear from my cheek. “And I don’t want you to be crying.”

  I lean forward and press my face against his bare shoulder for a long time. Letting his heat evaporate the tears. After a while, the burning need fades, leaving my mind quiet.

  Jay stretches out on the cot, pulling me against him on the narrow foam mattress. He’s so warm. I let his heat seep into me, easing my muscles and my mind.

  His breathing gets deeper. Slower. He’s sleeping.

  I close my eyes and follow him into the dark.

  Four

  My flex hums softly on my wrist, waking me from dreams I can’t remember, except that they sucked.

  Something brushes my neck. I reach up to shoo whatever it is away and my fingers come back wet. That wasn’t a bug. It was a tear. I’ve been crying in my sleep.

  Great.

  I check the text that rescued me from my nightmares. It’s from Mom, informing the whole team that there will be a memorial service for the dead at 1100 hours.

  For the dead.

  How do you mourn a whole planet?

  Jay is still asleep beside me. His skin has gone cool in the morning chill, except where our bodies are pressed together.

  Neither of us bothered to put our shirts back on last night. The morning light dappling through the potted plants around us paints his bare shoulders, darkening the purple scars that zag down his lower back. You can see the violence that left them there, permanently written in his tawny skin. But you can also see the strength it took to survive in his coiled muscles and the graceful, straight line of his spine.

  I feel ridiculous. Lying here mooning over how beautiful my boyfriend is to avoid thinking about the end of the world. It’s both cliché and a total waste of time. If we’re really going to wake up ten thousand people in the next three months, there’s no time for my hormones. Or my grief.

  A faint rustle of movement slips through the orchid trees that shelter us. Murmured voices follow. Beth is up, and she isn’t alone. A crackling chuckle drifts through the greenhouse. That’s Chris. What is he doing here so early?

  Embarrassment flushes my cheeks as I fumble on the ground beside the cot for my shirt. I don’t want to wake Jay, but I can just imagine the lecture if Beth comes in here and finds us asleep together, half dressed. She’d never, ever let it go. None of them would. They enjoy teasing us way too much already.

  I slowly peel myself away and slip my thermal on, careful not to wake him. But when I stand up I almost step on Jay’s flex. It was charging, draped over one of his leg bands. I must have knocked it down when I grabbed my shirt.

  When I go to put it back, I realize it’s buzzing with an alert.

  “Hey,” I say, quietly placing a hand on Jay’s shoulder. His eyes open immediately.

  “What’s up?”

  “Did you set an alarm?” I say, holding up his flex.

  He tries to bolt out of bed and goes sprawling over his unresponsive legs.

  He swears. Loudly.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he grumbles, pushing at my hands as I try to help him back onto the bed. “Leave me. I just forgot for a second.”

  He looks pale under the olive brown that long days with the foraging team have brushed over his skin. He’s so good at handling . . . everything. It’s easy to forget he’s only been dealing with the braces for the last five months. He does okay most of the time, except for these moments when it sneaks up on him. If we were back on Earth, there’d be trauma counseling and weeks of physical therapy to help him through. I know he goes to see Dr. Kao sometimes, but not as often as I think he needs to. Ironic, considering how hard I avoided my own trauma counseling. I guess it takes one to know one.

  “Do I need to know?” Beth calls to us.

/>   “No,” Jay calls back. “I’m just an idiot.” He grabs his flex and slaps it on. “And I’m late for reveille.” He shoves one of his bands on, then swears again as it beeps in protest because it’s misaligned.

  He stops. Takes a deep breath. Then he offers me a bittersweet half smile. “Help?”

  I crouch to help him, our hands moving together in a quick harmony that makes my stomach flip. That’s been happening, lately. These little moments when it feels like Jay and I are two parts of a whole.

  “Joey and Ja-ay sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” Chris shout-sings from the other side of the greenhouse. His voice cracks across the “n” and he dissolves into laughter.

  Jay twists to glower through the orchid trees.

  “I’m a marine, you know,” he calls back. “They train us to kill people.”

  “Do you really have time to kill Chris?” I say, not trying that hard to swallow my amusement. “I thought you were late.”

  Jay sighs. “You’re right.” He starts for the door. Then he turns back and drags me close for a surprisingly thorough kiss. My laughter dissolves into lust, sliding hot and needy through my veins even as he lets me go and hustles for the door.

  “You’re lucky I don’t have time to demonstrate my skills, kid,” I hear him growl at Chris on his way out.

  “Timing is everything,” Chris fires back, unfazed.

  I duck between the rows of plant specimens to the lab table, where Chris is setting out bowls of oatmeal from a tray.

  I continue past him, into our makeshift bedroom.

  Beth follows me.

  “I assume your Academy personal health education was adequate?”

  “For what?” I say, shoving my boots on and reaching for a fresh thermal.

  “Half-naked marines,” she says in the same dry tone.

  “Beth!”

  “Joanna!”

  See. I knew she would never let me live this down.

  “Yes, it was adequate,” I mutter, tugging my utility harness over my shoulders and around my hips. “But unnecessary, for sleeping. Which is all we did.”

  “Be that as it may,” she says calmly as I stalk back out into the lab, “as your older sister, I have certain educational obligations toward you when you partake in mating rituals.”

  “Mating rituals?” I spin to glare at her. “Seriously? Not even you are that analytical.”

  “No.” She smirks. “But you’re that easy.”

  I stick my tongue out at her. Then I feel like a terrible human. How can I be joking around with my sister and my friends right now? Earth is gone. Billions of people are dead, and we’re about to go to their totally inadequate mass funeral.

  “Compartmentalization,” Beth says, reading my face like an open flex. “A necessary skill in an ongoing crisis.”

  Ongoing crisis. Only Beth could make the apocalypse sound boring.

  For some reason, that makes me feel better.

  “Is it wrong that I kind of don’t care?” Chris says abruptly. Then he shakes his head, like he’s arguing with himself. “No. That’s not . . . I care. It’s awful. So awful, it feels like I should . . . I don’t know . . . it should feel worse, shouldn’t it? Than . . . Mom.”

  Mommy! I can still hear him screaming for Chief Penny as she died in our arms. I’ll never forget the heartbreak in his voice. It hasn’t faded. I understand that. Mine hasn’t, either.

  “It doesn’t,” I say. Teddy’s funeral felt like I was being recycled alive. My body shredded and ground down to its individual components. I thought I might not survive it. But our species has almost been wiped out and our home world is gone and . . . “It isn’t the same.”

  “I’m glad it’s not just me,” he says.

  I nod.

  Chris eats. Beth sits across from him, but instead of eating, she pulls off her flex to start taking notes about something. From here, it looks like she’s making a list. Probably planning a new research project or something. Trying to lose herself in work.

  I pour myself some coffee and make a face. Beth must have brewed this. She always makes it jet fuel.

  “This’ll help,” Chris says, tossing me a sealed paper packet. I look at the label.

  “Coffee creamer?” I say, thunderstruck.

  “Dr. Kao said the admiral brought a stash from the Prairie,” Chris says, taking a sip from his own mug. He makes a face. “I think it’s vanilla.”

  I dump the white powder into my coffee and swirl the mug to mix it in. The vague chemical sweetness doesn’t taste like vanilla, or much of anything, really. But it’s familiar. And right now familiar tastes good.

  “What are you doing up at this hour, anyway?” I ask Chris, snagging one of the bowls of oatmeal on his tray.

  “I never went to sleep,” he says, shoving a huge bite of oatmeal into his mouth and chewing around his words. “Chief G started printing cabin parts before you guys even got back from the Prairie. I volunteered for a second shift, since I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. Not until Dad got home.”

  “You see him yet?” I ask.

  Chris nods. “He came and found me at like oh three hundred.” Chris takes another bite of his oatmeal and stares down at the bowl as he chews and swallows. Then, like he doesn’t really want to say it, he adds, “He cried.”

  The closed fist of my mother’s face flickers through my memory. I swallow hard. “I think that might be better. Than not crying, I mean.”

  Chris nods, still hunched over his breakfast. “Still.”

  “Yeah.” I agree with the unspoken horribleness of seeing our parents so broken.

  “I wish Mom were here,” he says.

  “Me too,” I whisper.

  But Chief Penny is dead.

  This planet killed her.

  Chris sucks in a snuffling gulp, forcing back tears. His voice is still gluey as he adds, “She’d for sure be itching to get her hands on all that raw they’re gonna bring down from the Prairie.”

  “They’re bringing raw down? Already?” I ask, willfully allowing the distraction to shelter me.

  “Sure,” Chris says. “Twelve weeks. Ten thousand people. There’s no time like the present.”

  That plunges us into silence again. It’s so quiet I can hear Beth’s stylus scratching against her flex as she writes.

  “They’re alive!” Leela’s voice shatters the silence as she crashes into the greenhouse, clutching a crumpled flex. “My family is alive. All of . . . almost all of them. My grandparents aren’t on the Prairie’s manifest, but all of my cousins and uncles and aunts and—” She throws her arms around me. I hug her back. Tight. She’s shaking like a leaf. Or is that me? I really can’t tell.

  “My aunts and cousins are up there, too,” Chris says. “And Chief G said her sister’s family is on the manifest.”

  “So are Jay’s mom and sister,” I say.

  “I can’t believe he did this,” Leela says, pulling back. She’s still wearing pajama pants and a tank top under her parka. She must have just woken up and checked the manifest. “In the middle of the freaking end of the world, your grandfather cared enough to get all our families on that ship. I just . . . I can’t believe it.”

  “He always says family is what makes people get up in the morning,” I say.

  “Ironic,” Beth says. The word is like a shard of glass, puncturing Leela’s infectious joy.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I demand. My sister just keeps writing.

  “Chill, Joey,” Leela says. “We’re too keyed up right now. Besides, I have to go. I just wanted . . . I needed to be excited for a minute. That’s all. And I knew you guys would get it. But I have to get back. Baba is a mess. He was already upset about the idea that his parents were probably going to die while we were here, and now . . . he isn’t taking it well.”

  The thought is startling. I’ve never even seen Doc anything less than calm. I guess it’s only natural that he’s upset about his parents dying alone, light years away, but Leela�
�s dad has been my doctor since I was born. He’s brick in the foundation of the Project. Of my world, I guess. And now it’s all crumbling.

  “How do you spell your grandparents’ given names?” Beth asks without looking up from her flex.

  “S-I-T-A and C-H-A-N-D,” Leela says, throwing a huh look at me. “Why?”

  Instead of answering, Beth writes something out on her flex and then double taps the stylus. The transparent touchscreen tiles that make up the walls and the ceiling are suddenly covered with neatly handprinted columns. Lists of names.

  I cross to the wall to look closer at the nearest one.

  Sami Farsakh.

  Noam Levy.

  Malik Jones.

  The names are all familiar, but it takes me a moment to figure out why.

  “Are these your lab mates at Stanford?” I ask finally.

  “And miscellaneous other students and faculty,” Beth replies. “Also the sanitation staff.”

  “Why are you writing a list of names of people you knew at Stanford?”

  “Because I’ve already written down all the names I remember from primary school, Galactic Frontier Project HQ, MIT—”

  “And everyone who worked at Jemison Memorial?” I say, my fingers tracing a long list of names I recognize from the medical center where I rehabbed after the accident.

  “No,” Beth says, going back to writing on her flex. “Only the names of your medical team. I was too distracted by your recovery to properly introduce myself to the rest of the staff. I don’t know their names. And I’ll forget these if I don’t write them down. Everyone will.”

  “You’re making a list of people who died on Earth,” I whisper, the realization welling up at the back of my throat like tears.

  “Only the ones I can remember,” Beth says.

  I look around the greenhouse walls again with fresh eyes. There are at least a thousand names written here. Maybe more. Beth’s memory isn’t photographic, but it’s the nearest thing to. Every name she’s ever heard, every hand she’s ever shaken, is burned into the folds of her brain forever.

  And all those people are lost now, except in Beth’s head.