Spring arrives at the base like a funeral cortege. The first point of order is the digging of graves for those who did not survive the winter. Now that the ground has thawed out, our dead friends can be laid to rest more gracefully than simply being stacked in the snow outside the north exit. A man with diabetes died, as he predicted, and the kid with leukemia. There were two suicides. A heart attack. And an old woman who died in her sleep, her great-grandson asleep beside her. Someone overdosed on homemade liquor. Maybe an accident, maybe not. And people died on two ill-fated raiding missions to nearby towns.
Those not darted by the Nahx are buried first, because their remains will decay. I volunteer to dig since I have a strong back and a cold heart. I view these deaths not with resignation, but determination. Staying here is slow suicide; eventually the food will run out, and we’ll all succumb like sharks in a too-small tank. There is only one hope now. Over the months since my return I have daily negotiated with Liam about an exodus to the coast. Now that spring is here, it becomes a real idea, not just something to argue about in dim hallways. He prefers to wait, to arm ourselves, to scheme and plot against the Nahx who are as absent now as myths. Only the gray veins in Britney’s dead face stand to remind us. Her encounter with them was the last any of us have seen of them. We may wait forever for a chance at revenge.
I had my chance, of course, and let it go, like snowflakes on the wind. Now I don’t want to waste everything he gave to me, everything he gave up for me, only to let myself starve in a cave. I owe him that. I owe it to everyone who never lost hope in me. Tucker, my parents, Topher even. Topher who saw me carried off by a Nahx and still never gave up.
And August. He brought me back from certain death. My life is his life.
Liam now commands the base, since Kim died two months ago on a raid for food and medicine. Liam, whose mental state is questionable at best; many of his friends died on the same mission. Kim we bury first because, for whatever reason, the Nahx who caught her chose to break her neck over darting her. Britney’s corpse is as pretty and delicate as she was in life. We bury her beside Kim, and leave Liam there sitting in the mud, his face a mask.
Topher pulls me behind one of the trucks and we hold each other, breathing the sweat of digging all morning, the damp, rotting smell of spring, and pine needles, the trees stirring back to life around us. We do this sometimes. Fall into each other’s arms not quite like lovers, but more than like friends. The first time was the night I arrived back at the base, when Topher ran out into the snow in bare feet and carried me back inside, where we collapsed together on the floor, sobbing. Him with relief, me with something else entirely.
Many times since then we have fallen together this way, when we can no longer stand the ruined world around us. We close ourselves in a private circle of comfort and regret. It never lasts very long. Sometimes we kiss, but mostly not.
“I love you, Raven,” he lies, whispering into my ear. I press my lips onto his mouth because I don’t want him to say more, like he sometimes does. Keeps saying sweet things, increasingly desperate things, waiting for something to change between us. But it doesn’t. He can’t know why. My heart is elsewhere, left out in the snow at the top of the hidden path, now thawing and melting into the soft earth with everything else. Or maybe marching on other hiding humans, trying not to remember me. Or dead. Maybe dead.
Probably. Hopefully dead.
I have told no one about August. Everyone in the base considers my return a miracle. The story I told was that the Nahx who Topher saw grab me collapsed from the arrow wound a few minutes later. I crawled inside a small grocery store, treated my injuries, and recuperated alone until I was strong enough to walk back to the tunnel. I found the truck. I drove until the fuel ran out. I hiked from there. It’s implausible in the extreme, but no one questions it. Topher suspects, I’m sure, but maybe he doesn’t want to know.
Four months have passed since my miraculous return. Four months since I’ve seen August, apart from nightly in my dreams.
“I say it, and it’s like you don’t even hear me,” Topher says. But I’ve told him I love him back, many times. It’s Topher who can’t hear how complete that is. How that is all there will ever be.
None of this is real. His idea of loving me is no more real than a memory. I know that. I know the difference. Sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn’t.
“Tucker is not coming back. We can belong to each other,” he says, tucking a ringlet of my hair back under my sweaty bandanna.
Sometimes I feel I’m having these conversations with a corpse. Because all that Topher says he feels for me is imaginary. He is as dead inside as his twin is in every way. Possibly, that doesn’t matter either. His body pressed against mine makes my skin tingle, my heart thump against my ribs. I need this right now. And so does he. What’s the harm? I kiss him again.
“Why don’t you have some respect, you assholes,” Liam says, appearing around the truck. “We just buried nine people.” Topher is actually chastened. In theory he’s Liam’s second-in-command, and I’m the last person Liam wants in his inner circle, so our relationship, such as it is, is a point of contention between them.
“You’re right, sorry,” Topher says, stepping away from me. “Raven was upset and we . . .” I don’t contradict this plausible lie. “It won’t happen again.”
Liam raises an eyebrow a bit too salaciously for my tastes. I consider, briefly, spitting in his face but think better of it.
“I need to see you in command, Raven,” Liam says, turning. “You have five minutes.”
“Me too?” Topher says.
“No. Dig another grave. There was a suicide last night.”
I take my time climbing up to the command center, much more than five minutes, more like twenty. I like to make Liam wait. And it gives me time to reassure myself about the suicide; I saw everyone here that I care about at breakfast.