Those Who Lived: Fallen World Stories Read online

  It wasn’t as if the question would go away because I pretended not to see it. Jon had turned to me, and Lauren too, because they’d wanted to include me. Because what I told them could make a difference in whether all of us lived or died. I was already a part of it—part of the colony, part of the community—whether I liked it or not.

  Right then, with the gentle contact of Suzanne’s hand by my elbow, that knowledge didn’t feel like a demand. It felt like a welcome. These people weren’t gone. This time I had a chance.

  “I can do that,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  TRIAL BY FIRE

  “Hey, Drew, Michael wants to see you.”

  A statement like that made everyone in the workshop glance over. Quickly, a side-eye toward me and then back to their jobs. When Michael called for someone, it was either very good news or very bad. Everyone was curious which... and no one wanted to be implicated in the latter.

  I pushed my stool back from the table, set down the circuit board of the radio transceiver I’d been augmenting, and headed for the doorway where the guy who’d passed on the word was waiting. As soon as I stepped into the hall, he ambled off. It wasn’t as if I needed further directions. Michael always held audience in the same place.

  On my way to the former police training center’s gymnasium, I considered the possibilities. Most of the last few days I’d spent either in the tech workshop or the communications room. I didn’t remember noting down any especially exciting or disturbing information from my scans of the airwaves. I’d relayed a few reports from Wardens in other states about skirmishes won and supplies plundered, and passed on orders as instructed. It could be I’d fumbled a detail that had thrown a wrench in one of Michael’s plans, but that would be a first. I’d achieved the role of lead radio operator through a precision I wasn’t cocky enough to let slide.

  Well, I told myself as I pushed past the double doors into the long, high-ceilinged room that smelled faintly of old sweat, maybe he just wants to thank you personally for all your hard work. Sure. I’d feel more comfortable believing that if my bottom left molar didn’t still ache when I chewed, a memento of the punch Kaelyn’s friend Justin had given me a month ago—on my request, so I could cover my involvement in their escape from the jail cells downstairs.

  But that had been a whole month ago. The Native guy who was one of Michael’s primary “field officers” here, Chay, had questioned me about it, and then Michael himself, and they hadn’t appeared to have trouble believing that the skinny queer boy who seemed happiest dissecting the innards of whatever electronic device you set in front of him might have been overwhelmed with concern for a prisoner faking injury, unlocked a cell without thinking, and gotten himself clocked and the keys stolen. The watery gas in the cars in the lot had been blamed, as I’d intended, on the crack in the storage container’s lid and the previous day’s rain. I’d been chewed out, which I could tolerate, been taken off the security rotation, which I didn’t mind, and been assigned to help Martha, one of the mechanics, fix Nathan’s pet Mercedes, which had been less than fun but survivable. Otherwise, for the last few weeks I’d been left to my regular duties. No doubt it helped that, from the impressions I’d gotten, Michael was happier with the vaccine arrangement my little sister had concocted after her escape than he’d been while he had her imprisoned.

  But you never knew, with Michael. I found myself wondering, as the tapping of my sneakers against the varnished floor echoed down the length of the gym, whether I should have already risked trying to reach out to Kaelyn again. Whether I should have kissed Zack longer before he went back to his room last night. If this went badly, there were things I’d have liked to have known, things I’d have liked to have said.

  Well, it was too late for that now. I’d just have to contrive a way through this like I had with everything else life had thrown at me so far.

  Michael was poised in his usual spot behind the immense executive desk he’d had hauled down from one of the offices upstairs. Two guards with rifles stood by the far corners of the room behind him. He was typing on the laptop I’d gotten working for him—worth the electricity for the time it saved him in processing, he’d said, and I guessed it would be tricky keeping track of pods of allies, supply stockpiles, and vaccine deliveries and payments across an entire continent with just your head and a pen and paper.

  At the sound of my footsteps, he looked up. No hint of satisfaction or frustration in his expression. He shut the laptop and leaned his elbows onto the desk as he watched me approach.

  I always forgot just how penetrating his gaze was until it was fixed on me again.

  “Drew,” he said as I stopped at the red line on the floor, five feet from the desk. His tone was good-humored and dry, as if he knew a joke he wasn’t planning on sharing. “Prompt as always.”

  “I figured if you wanted to see me an hour from now, you’d have called for me an hour from now,” I said.

  His mouth stretched with a slow smile, but it didn’t have much warmth in it. “If only all the people I deal with had that much sense.”

  Anyone who delayed responding to a summons from Michael I suspected was suffering more from fear than a lack of sense, but it didn’t seem very sensible to bring that up.

  “Let’s get straight to the matter at hand.” Michael glanced at his guards with a dismissive gesture. “Take a break—swing back around in ten minutes.”

  My stomach sank as they bobbed their heads and ducked out the side door without comment. What was it he didn’t want them to witness?

  “This arrangement with the CDC,” Michael went on, and I jerked my attention back to him. “It’s been running smoothly long enough that we’re going to increase production. I’d like to see some of the vaccine make it up to Canada—I didn’t leave my home country to abandon it. Because the distance requires our communications be second-hand, I want someone up there who’s completely familiar with the arrangement to manage distribution and collection. So I’m sending Nathan.”

  “What?” I couldn’t help blurting out. Nathan, who shot off his mouth at every opportunity, who criticized every decision Michael made... Ah. Maybe there was a sort of logic to relocating him hundreds of miles away. Everyone had been watching to see how their clash would play out. Nate was mouthy, but he also ferreted out other survivors and their hoards of provisions—and dispatched any of the former who objected to the Wardens taking the latter—with a ruthless efficiency that you had to recognize got the job done even if you didn’t like how he did it. Kicked out, he’d be even more of a thorn in Michael’s side, and executing a useful tool simply to stop his back talk would look like weakness. Still, letting Nathan that far off the leash seemed like an enormous risk all on its own.

  “Good,” Michael said to my startled exclamation. “You obviously understand there are reasons for concern. And that’s why I’m sending you as his second in command.”

  “What?” I said again, stupidly, but it was either that or let my jaw hang slack.

  “I need someone with sense keeping an eye on him,” Michael said. “Keeping him in line, if need be. Are you going to tell me you’re not up to the job?”

  There was a warning in his voice now. I clenched my teeth. Michael might have forgiven my “mistake” with the prisoners, but Nathan had shoved me around a couple times in the week afterward, pissed off that he’d been, in his mind, so close to getting Kaelyn and the others to give up the vaccine and let him prove that his methods—torture and physical intimidation, mainly—trumped the psychological approach Michael had started with. He’d been just shy of adding to the bruises Justin had left on my face before a few of the other guys had stepped in, not so much because they liked me as because they hated him. And now Michael wanted me to work directly under the guy while also getting in his way if he went too far? Maybe Michael hadn’t forgiven me after all. This sounded like a suicide mission.

  “Are you asking me to do it or telling me?” I said carefully.

  “There
’s always a choice,” Michael said. “But I think you’ll want to do it for yourself, not just for me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He steepled his fingers. “There are people you know up there,” he said evenly. “You’re familiar with the crew in Toronto. And I’d imagine you’d like to be on hand in case Nathan happens to cross paths with your sister again.”

  His inflection hadn’t changed. He just held my gaze steadily. He knew? How long had he known? Or maybe this was a feint.

  “My sister?” I ventured.

  “The CDC finally delivered the copies of some records I asked to see,” he said, tapping a folder off to the side of the desk. Just shy of the revolver he always kept there. “They confirmed my speculations. I already knew Kaelyn had the vaccine because of her father. Conveniently there was also a note about Dr. Weber’s son, who’d gone missing from his hometown around November last year. A kid by the name of Drew.”

  “Look,” I said, but Michael waved me silent.

  “She always seemed more prepared for us than she should have been,” he said. “It’s helpful knowing why. And ultimately I’d say it’s worked out into a result we can all be happy with. But I’m counting on you remembering my generosity over this, Drew. I still need people I can trust.”

  “It’s the only thing I’ve ever done that went against your orders,” I said. What would he understand? I thought of the glimpses I’d gotten of him with his daughter, the traces of gentleness he tried to conceal from the rest of us. “She’s family. She’s the only family I still have. I couldn’t stand by and let her get hurt.” By Nathan. By Michael, who eventually would have ramped up the pressure.

  “I’m not angry,” Michael said. “I’m letting you know where you stand. The ground’s a little shaky, but you can deal with that. You’ve proven you can navigate conflicting loyalties without much fallout. That sort of ingenuity has its benefits to an organization like this. Of course, so does Nathan’s penchant for violence. What I’m most interested to see is how that contrast plays out. Whether your smarts can win over his brutality when you have an entire operation to manage. Unless, as I asked before, you don’t think you’re up to this particular assignment?”

  What could I say? It was true: Kaelyn could have decided to stay in Toronto. And if Nathan had a grudge toward me, he had one ten times bigger for her.

  Besides, I had the feeling that if I said no, brutality would win right now in the instant it’d take Michael to reach for his revolver.

  “I can handle Nathan,” I said. I’d better figure out how to, anyway.

  “Glad to hear it,” Michael said, shifting back in his chair.

  I paused, and risked asking, “The relocation to Toronto... That’d be permanent?”

  “You’re thinking about Zachary.”

  I dipped my head. Not much point in denying it.

  “Worry about that later,” Michael said. “I’m not disinclined to reward a job well done.”

  That was probably as good as I could have hoped for. “Thank you,” I said.

  “Just make sure it does go well,” he said. “I’m giving you full authority to use your judgment and implement whatever solution seems necessary if the situation goes sour. Are we understood?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course. I appreciate your confidence in me.”

  I had one night to say good-bye to Zack. He came by my room in the dormitory building when he finished his shift in the cafeteria. I was packing, folding my few spare T-shirts, an extra pair of jeans, and the sweater I’d held on to since leaving the island as tightly as I could so they’d fit into the moderately-sized rucksack the woman in the supply department had handed over. I needed to leave room for food and bottled water, since I didn’t trust Nathan to allow me a fair share of our communal provisions, some basic survival gear like matches and a compass, in case he decided to kick me out of the car somewhere between here and Toronto, and the pistol the supply department woman had set out alongside the sack, saying Michael had requested it for me.

  I didn’t like the cool weight of it in my hands, didn’t like even looking at it. Michael had insisted everyone here do a few lessons in the firing range, so I knew how to use it, but it was like an exclamation point on his last few words to me. Implement whatever solution seems necessary. He couldn’t be much clearer what sort of solution he imagined might be required.

  Of course, if all Michael wanted was Nathan dead and his own hands clean, he could have sent someone along he knew had killed before, who’d have no qualms about doing it again. Instead, he’d picked me.

  My smarts. Nathan’s brutality. What I’m most interested to see is how that contrast plays out. As if this was some bizarre sort of test. Testing me, testing Nathan. Testing what we stood for? Throw us into the fire and see which of us better withstood the heat.

  He wanted me to win. From the way he’d phrased his remarks, I was pretty sure of that. Michael had never shied away from brutality to enforce his demands before, but with the sort of people this organization attracted and the sort of people they’d clashed with, the urgency of pulling everything together in the midst of the pandemic, he might not have seen another option.

  He’d been a cop, in his former life. The things he’d done to get this far might not sit well with his conscience. Why else leave the brutality to guys like Nathan and Chay when he could? Maybe he’d like to rely more on ingenuity and less on violence to get things done. Maybe this, me and Nate in Toronto, was his trial run: removed enough from him that he could displace most of the responsibility if we—if I—blundered it.

  I had no idea if I had enough ingenuity to maneuver Nathan as well as I’d contrived Kaelyn’s safety. Given the gun, Michael didn’t either. The brutal option, if I needed it.

  There wasn’t any getting out of his test now. I tossed the pistol on the bed, figuring it should go in the rucksack last so it’d be within easy reach if I needed it before we’d even made it to Toronto. It was still lying there when Zack knocked and I called him in. He ambled over and slid his arms around my waist from behind. I felt him noticing the gun, tensing.

  I laid one of my arms over his, clay brown against freckled white. “Just in case,” I said.

  “Hmmm,” he replied, with a kiss to the base of my neck. He’d been there when Nathan went off on me for talking to the prisoners, before I’d come up with my plan for Kaelyn’s escape; had seen the purpling scrape along my ribs where Nate had introduced them to the edge of a table, after. “I guess that’s what we signed up for, being here.”

  Zack hadn’t really signed up for anything. I’d volunteered myself, with some idea what I was getting into, when I’d made it to Toronto looking for answers and seen the extent to which Michael had taken control. But Zack’s mom had been given the impossible choice of either supporting Michael’s efforts or wasting away in a locked room somewhere, and Zack had stayed with her—for her protection, I suspected he thought, though her expertise protected him more than the other way around. She worked long hours in the labs, helping manufacture the vaccine, but she’d arranged that Zack would never be assigned to leave the training center’s walls, where the infected and the hostile survivors who hadn’t joined the Wardens wandered.

  She’d offered to come here when Michael had asked some of the doctors to travel south and I’d already requested a transfer so I could follow Kaelyn. Because she knew Zack and I would want to stay together. And now, a couple months later, I was turning around and heading back.

  Maybe they’d follow me again. I’m not disinclined to reward a job well done. But that possibility hardly felt tangible right now.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, squeezing his hand.

  Zack made a scoffing sound. “For what? Not arguing with Michael over this? I’d rather take you alive and in Canada. We’ll make sure it’s not forever. I’ll survive somehow until then.”

  I nudged him with my elbow at his teasing tone. “Just keep on keeping your head down, all right?”

 
; “I should be the one saying that to you,” he said. “Look at you moving up in the ranks. One step from king of Toronto! You know what they say about power.”

  “Absolute power corrupts absolutely?”

  He smiled against my shoulder. “I was thinking, ‘With great power there must also come great responsibility.’ But the other’s true too.”

  His voice was still teasing, but I could hear the apprehension underneath. “It’ll be okay,” I said, for both of us. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Do,” he said simply. “Please.”

  I shoved the last few items in my sack and tugged the drawstring tight. Zack loosened his hold as I turned to face him. My roommate was on gate duty for another two hours. Two hours. The last time we’d really have together in who knew how long. Even tomorrow... We hadn’t been hiding our relationship, but with the company we kept, it seemed safer to avoid public displays of affection.

  A lump rose in my throat. “Let’s not talk anymore,” I said, close enough that our noses almost touched.

  “What do you recommend we do instead?” he asked, a glint in his hazel eyes, and I pulled him into a kiss.

  Something it was hard to miss if you spent a lot of time with people and electronics was that the two were a lot alike. People were more complicated, sure—I’d freely admit that while I could piece together a motherboard, brain surgery was beyond me—but nevertheless made up of a fairly predictable set of systems interacting with each other following fairly predictable patterns. You pushed certain buttons, you received certain reactions. Getting along with people, or getting what you needed from them, was mostly a matter of tracing the wires until you found the right connections.

  At least, with most. A few people, like Michael, were so good at keeping what was going on in their heads hidden that it was hard to identify the connections at all. And others, like Nathan, seemed to rearrange their wiring on an hourly basis.