“Lock’s broken! Go on ahead, gonna take a looky here.”
I pushed back as far as I could, wishing the cold stones would give way, that I could sink into them, disappear behind their pitted surface. There had been so many lessons on what was beyond the wall. Teacher Helene had held up the photographs of the woman who had had half her face mauled off by a rabid dog. But they’d only ever suggested one thing if we found ourselves outside, in the wild. They hadn’t taught us survival skills. I couldn’t make a fire, I couldn’t hunt, and I wouldn’t be able to fight this man off. Get back in, Teacher had said simply. Do whatever it takes to get back to School.
The door swung open. I was ready for him to plow forward, to drag me, screaming, outside. But as light flooded the long shack, I no longer cared about the gang on the road or the images from class or the intentions of the man standing around the corner, just twenty feet away. For the sunlight revealed walls made not of rough stones, but of hundreds of skulls, the black, hollow eye cavities peering back at me. I covered my mouth to keep from screaming.
“Just a morgue,” the man yelled. And then the door closed behind him, leaving me in the dark with the skeletons. I stayed there, shaking, for hours, until I was certain the men were gone.
Chapter Five
BY THE EIGHTH DAY MY LEGS ACHED AND MY THROAT burned. I moved slowly through thick brush on the side of the road, knocking back the branches with a broken tree limb I’d been using as a walking stick. I kept telling myself I would get to Califia. I kept telling myself that I would be safe soon, that as long as I stayed in the overgrowth, out of sight, the gangs wouldn’t find me. But my water bottle had been sucked dry days ago. Fatigue was chasing me. One moment I was sweating and the next I was shivering from the cold.
I’d moved west like Teacher Florence had instructed, toward the setting sun. At night, when the temperature dropped, I slept in the closets of abandoned houses or in garages, beside the shells of old cars. When I found a place I thought was safe I’d sit for a while, eating the apples Teacher had packed for me and thinking about School. I kept turning over that night in my head, wondering if it could have been different—if I could’ve saved Pip too. Maybe I should’ve taken the chance. Maybe I should’ve woken her up. Maybe I should’ve at least tried. My chest heaved with sobs when I imagined her strapped to one of those beds, alone and afraid, wondering why I’d left her.
It wasn’t long before I ran out of food. The cabinets of the homes were bare, scavenged by survivors in the aftermath of the plague. I tried to pick berries, but a few handfuls were not enough to appease the burning in my stomach. I grew weaker, my steps slower, until it was hard to walk more than a mile without having to stop for rest. I would sit at the base of trees, their gnarled roots holding me, and watch the deer bound through the tall grass.
Sometimes, right before the sun went down, I’d take my things out of my knapsack to look at them. I kept returning to that bracelet, so small it could barely fit around three of my fingers.
Like all the girls at School, I’d been an orphan. I’d come when I was five years old, after my mother was taken by the plague. I had never known my father. These items were the only things left from my past, with the exception of a few memories—feelings, really—of a mother combing the knots out of my wet hair, or the smell of her perfume as she rocked me to bed. I’d read once about amputees, and how they had pains where their arms or legs used to be. Phantom limbs, they were called. I’d always thought that was the best way to describe my feelings about my mother. She was now just an ache for something I’d had and lost.
I continued on, putting more and more of my weight on my walking stick. In the distance I spotted a tiny plastic pool where rainwater had collected, a bright turquoise oasis surrounded by weeds. I blinked twice, wondering if I was hallucinating from the day’s heat. I ran to it and fell, my lips touching the cool water. I wondered how long it had been there, if it was clean enough to consume, but it felt so good in my dry mouth that I didn’t stop until my stomach was painfully full. When I sat back I noticed a reflection on the surface of the water. There, a few yards off, was a house, lit from within.
I started toward the glowing light as the sun kissed the treetops. I didn’t know who was there or if they could help me, but I needed to at least find out.