CHAPTER TWELVE
DAY 14. JUST AFTER SUNRISE
Okay, so maybe baby wasn’t an accurate description considering it was walking, but it wasn’t a kid either. Emily’s a kid and this … little person … was less than half her size.
I quietly rose to my feet and Courtney did the same beside me. We walked in its direction, abandoning our post. The baby continued to wobble toward us, still about two hundred feet away. It wore a T-shirt and sand-colored cloth over its backside as a diaper. Blond hair stuck out from the sides of its head and its skinny little legs and feet were bare despite the chilly morning air.
“Where’d it come from?” I whispered to Courtney.
She pointed off in the distance, toward one of those tents I’d seen earlier.
“You watched it walk all the way from there and you’re just now getting my attention?” I hissed at her.
She pressed a finger to her lips and glared at me to be quiet.
I glanced over my shoulder, toward the hill, hoping to see Blake and Dad emerging soon. Why didn’t we have coms units? I scanned the area everyone else had walked toward, squinting into the sun, trying to spot Stewart or Mason. When I turned my attention back to the baby, a little blond girl had emerged from the bushes. A giant T-shirt covered her all the way to her knees, but her feet were also bare. Courtney and I both stood there stunned as she swiped the baby up in one swift motion and took off for the tents in the distance.
What the hell just happened?
“Did you see that girl earlier, too?” I asked
“No, she must have been hiding in the bushes the whole time we’ve been here,” Courtney said. “Maybe she’s the one that set off the flare. Maybe the baby came looking for her. They could be sisters? Or brother and sister?”
“Courtney. Jackson.” Dad’s voice came from the distance. Seconds later, he appeared at our sides with Blake, Holly, Stewart, and Mason.
All of us were now shielding our eyes from the sun, which had quickly turned very bright, heating up the air around us. I still hadn’t gotten used to this weird day-and-night weather.
“We need to head back,” Blake said. “It’s getting hot really quick and we didn’t bring much water.”
Dad peeled his eyes from the tent area and nodded his agreement. “Come on. Let’s move out!”
“But Dad, we just saw—” Courtney protested.
I shook my head slightly, hoping she’d get the hint. We could discuss this when we got back to camp, where we had access to plenty of water and wouldn’t shrivel up like raisins.
We entered the woods quickly and began our journey, drifting between the trees. “Okay, so what’s the report? Is the control box there like Stewart said?”
“Yes,” Dad answered. “And we tested it out. Holly’s fingerprints scanned perfectly and she stepped through the force field without setting off the alarm.”
“And you came back?” I asked, only joking.
“What was I supposed to do?” Holly snapped. “Walk into Eyewall headquarters and put on a uniform?”
“So what’s the plan for escape day?” I wiped sweat from my forehead with the bottom of my T-shirt. I caught Holly staring at my stomach. Feeling self-conscious, I quickly dropped my shirt, covering the big ugly scar I was pretty sure she’d been looking at.
Her cheeks flushed and she turned her head, facing forward again.
Dad opened his mouth to respond to my question but Mason interrupted him. “Are we not going to talk about the big elephant in the room?”
“What elephant?” Courtney and I said at the same time.
Mason kept his eyes on Dad as we walked. “The fact that Jackson left his post and dragged Courtney with him. What the hell was that about? You can’t do that shit when we’re walking into some strange place. You didn’t see me and Stewart moving from our guard spots. We weren’t even watching the area between the woods and the hill. You left us wide open for an attack from behind.”
Wow, that’s a very anticlimactic elephant. Obviously Mason is digging for things to pin on me. Or maybe he has some irrational paranoia about being attacked from behind.
Dad shot a glance at me, lifting his eyebrows. “Mason’s right, Jackson. Everyone has to be able to trust you in these situations. You cannot, under any circumstances, leave your post.”
Okay, guess Dad’s going to patronize this irrational concern of Mason’s. I rolled my eyes. “We walked like thirty feet away. I wouldn’t exactly call that abandoning our post.”
“A baby wandered right up to us,” Courtney said. “What were we supposed to do? And there was a little girl hiding in the bushes. She’s probably the one who set off the flare.”
Mason had clamped his mouth shut the second Courtney had started talking. I guess if it’s Courtney’s fault, he isn’t going to whine about it. Our walking pace had increased significantly as if the urgency of the oncoming heat wave pushed us forward faster.
“And I’m pretty sure I saw more people out there where those tents are. How come those people can’t come into the woods or our area?” she asked Blake. “You said they couldn’t pass through here but we can?”
He scratched the back of his head, diverting his eyes from Courtney’s. “They have trackers embedded in their skin. They’ll get shocked if they pass through the invisible boundaries.”
“What? Like a dog collar?” Courtney stared at Blake incredulously as if to say, you’ve got to be kidding me. And I couldn’t help agreeing with my sister. It seemed very inhumane.
Blake opened his mouth and then shut it again quickly, not sure how to respond.
“Well, we’re going back, right?” Courtney asked.
“To escape?” Dad said. “Yes, but probably not for a couple days. We have to wait for—”
“No, I mean to help them.” Courtney looked from one of us to the other as if her point couldn’t be more clear. “They probably need food and clothes. That baby had almost nothing on.”
“Courtney,” Dad said. “We don’t know what they have. Just because your brief assessment provided one scenario—”
Courtney jumped in front of us, stopped walking, and turned to face the entire group. “You didn’t see it either!” She turned to me, looking totally desperate for help. “Tell them, Jackson!”
There wasn’t much to tell other than what she’d already stated, but I was pretty sure my silence would further her frustration. “Um … yeah, there was a baby and…”
Courtney folded her arms across her chest and I could see she was seconds from stamping her foot and throwing a tantrum right here in the woods. Because despite my sister’s heart of gold, there was no way to shake the privileged, spoiled kid out of her. And Courtney was far more spoiled than me. She had almost always gotten her way with Dad.
“Then we can all go back and get a more accurate assessment right now,” she demanded.
Holly shrugged and turned to Dad. “I’ll go back with her if that’s what she really wants.”
“Me, too,” Mason chimed in. “We can get some pictures.”
“No one is going back there, understood?” Dad said sharply. “We’re returning to Grayson, Lonnie, and Sasha and we’re going to finalize our plan to get out of this year.”
Courtney didn’t budge from her spot. “We have tons of food, clothes, water, medical supplies. If we’re leaving and we’re going out that way, then we should bring them the supplies. We’re not going to need any of it, right? We don’t even have to go all the way over to the tents. We can just leave some stuff in the field for them to get, can’t we?”
“I don’t know, honey,” Dad said. “We don’t know anything about what you saw. Let’s see what Grayson and Lonnie think, all right?”
“You’re just saying that so I’ll shut up about it. I can tell you’re not going to do anything and neither is anyone else. There are babies, Dad. Babies!” She was so determined, I could see the tears about to show themselves. “I don’t care what you say, I’m getting some stuff and I’m going back there. Jackson will come with me. This is just like … just like…” Courtney closed her eyes, her tongue resting on the roof of her mouth. “The green … the green hair…”
“Green hair?” I said.
It was Holly who leaped toward Courtney first as her eyes rolled up in the back of her head. I felt my heart stop, the only sound in my ears was the rush of blood and a dull ringing as my limbs went numb.
All I could do was watch as Holly and Dad caught my sister in what seemed like slow motion, lowering her to the ground. I hadn’t seen this happen the first time and neither had Dad. Courtney had been in gym class and I’d been clear on the other side of the school building, in Geometry. I heard the buzz in the hallway, the slightly abnormal sounds of something going on during class. A girl who had sat behind me got a text about Courtney’s seizure and told me what had happened even before the principal came in to say that they had already taken her to the hospital and that my dad was there and I was supposed to go meet him right away. But I never had to watch this. By the time I saw her, she was almost normal again, despite the horrible news Dr. Melvin had delivered.
Through the roar of blood in my ears, I watched her body shaking in that horrifyingly scary way and fought the urge to cover my face and pretend it wasn’t happening. I heard Holly’s voice break through the numbness as she spoke to Dad, “What do we do?”
Dad closed his eyes for a second, his face filled with so much pain, it was as if he’d just been stabbed with a knife. “Nothing … wait for it to stop.”
Mason shrank back away from me and Dad, obviously not wanting to get in our way.
Blake knelt next to Holly and leaned over to loosen the top buttons on Courtney’s shirt. I felt someone’s hand on my arm and then saw Stewart from the corner of my eye.
After the longest sixty seconds of my entire life, Courtney finally stopped shaking. Her breathing was erratic, her eyes wide open, totally frightened as she stared up at the trees. Dad touched her cheek and then lifted her head, pulling her into his arms.
“What happened? I don’t feel good … my head hurts … really bad.” She buried her face in the front of Dad’s shirt and started crying.
“I know … I know … it’s okay.” Dad stood quickly, as if he weren’t holding a hundred-pound girl, and walked briskly and with purpose back to camp.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to get my legs to work and Stewart had to tug my arm to start the moving process. Even if I could have offered to carry Courtney, I knew Dad wouldn’t let me.
All any of us could do was follow him.
DAY 14. MIDDAY
I leaned against the outside of the makeshift hospital. I’d been standing in nearly the same spot for hours. Finally, Grayson came out the front door and headed right toward me. He took his time speaking, first leaning against the wall next to me and then offering me one of the horrible meal bars, which I took but didn’t open. The idea of eating right now was almost unfathomable.
“I don’t have access to MRI or X-ray machines,” he said, staring straight ahead at the fire pit. “All I have is the timeline your dad gave me based on when her symptoms began and when she … when she…”
“Yeah,” I said. “I get it.”
“I don’t have chemo. I don’t have radiation machines,” he said.
I kicked the dirt with my toe. “Not like it would help, anyway.”
“True.”
This was already so painful, I didn’t know how I would make the next move, but I had to. “Can I go in now?”
Grayson nodded and then patted my arm before walking toward the technology building, where I’m sure everyone else had been waiting for his arrival so they could recommence the planning phase. They had even grabbed Emily to ask her some questions after she had stood next to me for nearly an hour, doing nothing but holding my hand.
I took a deep breath before opening the front door and walking inside. Dad’s voice came from the same room I’d nearly bled to death in yesterday … happy family memories. The door was open and I stopped to listen before letting either of them see me.
“Dr. Melvin found the tumors the first time. He did everything he could but nothing worked,” Dad said.
“Maybe something else will work?” Courtney said. “Maybe there’s something Dr. Melvin didn’t know about? Something brand-new?”
I rested my forehead against the wall beside the door, taking in deep, shaking breaths, but finally succumbed to letting a few tears fall from my eyes. And Dad. This was killing him and he just sat there beside her and told her everything all over again.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. I wish I could tell you we can fix it, but I can’t.”
“What about Jackson?” Courtney sniffed. “Is he okay? Does he have tumors, too?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, my gut twisting into a million knots, and I thought I might get sick right then. Sick from pain, from grief.
“No, he doesn’t have any.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m just … I just … I don’t want to die … I really don’t. Not like this.”
That was it for me. I couldn’t take another second of it. I couldn’t believe we were about to go through this all over again, and this time I’d get a front-row seat to my sister’s death. The image of Courtney lying in a casket popped into my mind and I had to stop and hold my breath until it dissolved.
I flew out of the building and headed straight toward the lake, not caring if the sun was insanely hot. I didn’t know how much time had passed before anyone found me. All I knew was I’d tossed about thirty handfuls of rocks into the lake, failing at each attempt to skip them more than two times.
“Well … the good news is that it looks like we’re gonna get out of here.”
Never had I imagined it would be Holly who came to find me first. That was the only reason I halted in my rock throwing, at least for a few seconds.
“That’s great,” I said. “Now you’ll be able to go back to your Eyewall buddies in 2009.”
She grabbed the rocks from my hand and tossed them on the ground. “Don’t be an a*shole.”
I swallowed back the lump in my throat. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.”
“I know.” She took a step closer to me. “Grayson said your dad told her everything. How did she take it?”
I had to work hard to keep my voice steady. “Not well.”
“I can imagine.” Holly let out a breath. “How did she take it the first time?”
“The first time…” I picked the stones back up and tossed another at the water, watching it hop twice before vanishing. “She was told things were bad, but they would fight it and fighting it would probably make her very sick. She wasn’t told she was going to die. Today, my dad said those exact words to her and I don’t know how he did it. How can he sit next to her and watch? I must be a self-centered bastard to be out here and not in there.”
“You probably are,” Holly said. “But if you think it’s more noble to head back in there and talk about dying, then that’s what you should do.”
The word “noble” struck a chord in me and I turned quickly to Holly. “That’s it!”
I dropped the rocks back into the grass and walked toward the technology building. Holly had to jog to catch up with me. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m getting some food and water and stuff,” I said, feeling as confident as Courtney had sounded in the woods. “You know, to leave in the field for Dr. Ludwig’s rejects or whatever Blake called them.”
“Right now?”
I shrugged and kept walking, increasing the length of my stride. It felt good to have something important to do. “Yeah, right now.”
“Can I come with you?”
I stopped for a second, turning to Holly to see if she was joking. She wasn’t. I could tell by her expression. “Um … okay. We’ll be able to bring more stuff if there are two of us, right?”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “But just so you know, I still hate your guts.”
“You aren’t the first girl to tell me that.”