“Okay, Savage, you won,” he says. “Fair is fair. You’re the leader. So, what now?”
I heft the spear in one hand, feeling the weight. Maybe I should make the scepter the symbol of leadership again: a tool rather than a weapon. But no, Spingate knows how to use the scepter better than I do, and a part of me realizes that there has to be something to signify who is in charge.
I was the leader of four other people. Now I am the leader of twenty-three. Everyone seems to want to follow me, and I don’t know why. Whatever the reason, I will not let them down.
Not sure of what I’m supposed to do, I mimic what Bishop did; I raise the spear.
“We go straight,” I say.
I walk.
They follow.
FIFTEEN
We walk uphill.
And we walk, and we walk, and we walk.
It doesn’t make sense—even if our coffin room was far below ground, shouldn’t we have made it to the surface by now? And we still haven’t seen any windows, any hint of the outside.
My feet hurt. They were numb from the constant walking, but when we met Bishop’s group we stopped for a bit: it was like blood flowed into them again. My feet thought they were getting a rest. Now that I’ve put them back into action, they are not happy. It feels like my bones will soon wear right through muscle and skin.
I hear the others talking behind me, my group and Bishop’s marchers alike, saying out loud the same things that run through my head. They know they have families, but can’t remember any faces. They know they went to school, but can’t recall what classes they took, their teachers, their classmates…no specifics of any kind.
They want to know what their symbols mean.
They want to know their first names.
As we walk, I try to meet some of the new people. There is K. Smith, the only circle-cross, a girl so thin she looks like she’s on the edge of starvation. She has stunning gray eyes, olive skin and short brown hair. She’s the tallest girl among us, almost as tall as O’Malley.
G. Beckett has tan skin and strawberry-blond hair. His symbol is a jagged circle, like Spingate’s and Gaston’s. Beckett doesn’t say much. He seems younger than me—not in size, but rather in the way he carries himself.
There are six empty circles besides Bello and me: E. Okereke, a boy with the blackest skin of any of us; Y. Johnson, a girl with dirty-blond hair who won’t look anyone in the eye and mumbles to herself; R. Cabral, a girl who looks anyone and everyone in the eye but says nothing; and O. Ingolfsson, a squat blond boy who looks as strong as Bishop, although he isn’t as tall and clearly isn’t as coordinated. The last two circles are J. Harris and M. D’souza, a boy/girl pair who go out of their way to avoid talking with me.
The circle-stars hate that I won the vote. Most ignore me. The bald, brown-skinned girl, Y. Bawden, will answer my questions, but she doesn’t trust me. At least she isn’t openly hostile: U. Coyotl—whose tan skin has a reddish hue that looks like his mother gave him a bath and scrubbed him way too hard—and W. Visca—a big boy with light pink skin and blazing white hair—all but snarl at me every time I look at them.
The person who surprises me the most, though, is Bishop. I expected him to carry a grudge, maybe plot a way to take back the spear or fight me for leadership the way Yong did. Bishop does none of that. He’s happy. He’s talkative. In fact, he won’t stop talking. His constant chatter is the only thing that raises everyone’s spirits.
Time drags, as do our feet. I honestly don’t know how much longer we can go on.
It is maybe five or six hours after I got the spear that the first of us falls: a half-circle girl named Q. Opkick.
Before I can reach her, Bishop already has her over his shoulder. He’s smiling, nodding, like someone passing out from lack of food or water—or both—is the most normal thing that could happen.
More will fall, and soon. All we can do for Opkick is press on, so we press on.
My feet…they hurt so bad.
Perhaps an hour later, I almost fall myself. I stumble, but O’Malley catches me, rights me. He does that strange thing again, where he can kind of speak to me with his eyes. Those eyes say: Don’t fall—if you do, we’re lost.
I nod. I can keep going.
And then, finally, far up ahead, our hallway…it ends.
I move faster. So do the others, headaches and thirst and dry mouths forgotten. When Bishop had his group marching in step, it made a sound like the steady beat of a big drum. I don’t make anyone march: as we quicken our pace and break into a run, it sounds like rolling thunder.
The hallway ends in a dusty, rusted archway blocked by two stone slabs, a thin line down the middle separating them.
A door.
We stop. We stare. It could be nothing. It could be everything.
Is this it? Did we make it? Does the door lead us out of this horrible place? Does it lead to food and water and people, maybe our parents?