Resistant a world divide.., p.23
Resistant: A World Divided, page 23
Despite the situation, I can’t help but laugh. After all, Bill is the only father figure I’ve had growing up in camp. He might be a pain in the ass at times, but he’s still family. “Oh, you’re greasy enough at this point, you’ll just slide right through,” I tell him, but I’m not sure I believe a word of it. “How ‘bout you go first. If I have to, I’ll push, and Abel can pull. We’ll get you through one way or the other.”
Bill doesn’t look convinced, but, mumbling something unintelligible, gets level with the hole to investigate it for himself before taking in a large breath and blowing it all out loudly. Then, before he can change his mind, he sticks first both his arms and then his head through the hole in the wall.
After some grunting, cursing, and sweating, we manage to get Bill’s large frame through to the other side, torn clothes and all, and when it’s my turn, I find the close space of the hole a bit unnerving but easy enough to slide through on my own.
Once we’re all standing in the cemetery, a moment of reverie passes, Bill and I taking in the vast cemetery covered—and I mean covered—with crumbling gravestones and markers of various sizes. It’s unlike anything I have ever seen before, and I am awed to my core. I can tell Bill is too.
Abel, on the other hand, seems to be recounting a memory or dream of some sort, his face blanketed in what I think is sadness. Using his foot, he haphazardly kicks the stone back into place with some effort and heads down the winding, paved path that snakes its way down into the center of the cemetery. “Come on,” he says, his back to us. “The sun is almost up. The Community members will be waking soon, and we need to keep you two hidden from view as long as we can.”
I glance down at my clothing. “You know, Abel, you don’t look much better.”
“You’re right,” he says. “But these people know me, remember? It’s a small world here in The great Community,” he says, holding out his arms, not hiding his note of contempt. “Everybody knows everybody. And that means they won’t know you.”
The three of us continue walking in silence until we reach a towering wall of ivy that does its best to shroud the imposing fence that rises from the ground.
When he notices Bill and me staring at the chain links in disbelief, Abel says, “Don’t worry. There’s a loose piece of fence just over there.” He points a little farther up ahead. “We can walk right through. Easily. Bill, too.”
“Well, that’s good to know,” Bill mumbles.
“Look, guys,” Abel continues seriously, “Getting across the square isn’t going to be a walk in the park. We need to keep close to buildings, which means it’s going to take us nearly twice as long to get up the hill to Cat’s. I’d say it’s a good three or four miles, so by the time we get close, the sun will be up and people will be out and about.”
I reach around to feel for the cool gun that rests against my hip, and it ignites my courage. “I’m not worried about being seen,” I say.
Abel’s face goes rigid. “The people here aren’t violent, Ryder,” he tells me seriously. “They’re just as innocent and in the dark as I am. As the two of you claim to be. Dr. Grayson and his men are your targets. Not them. I won’t take you to safety unless you can guarantee you’ll leave the people of The Community alone. Just stay out of sight, ok? If you’re seen, these people, they’ll want to run from you. They won’t want to attack. They will, however, make enough of a scene that we’ll be caught. And if we’re caught, then you, me, Bill, the girls...we’re all as good as dead.”
“Ok,” I tell him simply, and I mean it. All I want is to find Wren and Claire and get the hell out of this mess of a world. If staying out of sight is what I need to do, then I’ll do it. Heck, between avoiding raiders like Wes and drinking rust-flavored water, this should be a cake walk.
“Ok,” Abel repeats.
“Ok,” Bill adds for good measure, and with no more time wasted, Abel leads us through the fence and into his so-called community.
At first, I’m not impressed. There doesn’t seem to be anything fancy or new about this place. In fact, the roads are worn cobblestones and the houses dark and empty. It feels sad...deserted...and not at all how I envisioned it.
Once we get closer to the square, however, the setting starts to transform entirely. The pathetic excuses for houses are replaced by taller, sleeker, and swankier buildings. The landscapes are colorful and well-manicured, meticulous even. Too perfect.
I’ve never seen anything like it, not even in the deepest and happiest corners of my memories.
“It’s still early,” Abel whispers, inching down the road that has become smooth pavement lined with equally spaced and identical shrubs, “just after six. The early birds will be out and about soon—”
Abel stops short, holding out his arms, indicating Bill and I do the same.
“What is it?” Bill, just about to bump into me, whispers a little too close to my ears.
I nudge him away. “I don’t know,” I say.
“Shhh!” Abel is now crouched near the base of the building nearest us on our left, looking around the corner at something. I move up behind him, but he frantically waves me back. I groan in protest. It’s more than frustrating for me to be kept out of the loop, and I fidget from one foot to the other with anticipation.
“What’s going on?” Bill asks again, which exacerbates my irritation. I don’t answer him. “Does he see something?”
Abel mumbles something I don’t quite catch and then turns to face Bill and me. The look on his face is one of pure perplexion. “I can’t believe it,” he says. “I don’t know what I expected, but it’s so uncharacteristic. I didn’t think—” Here he pauses, his look of confusion morphing into fear.
“What is it?” I whisper.
“Dr. Grayson,” Abel responds quietly, deep in thought. “He’s on the move.”
“So what do we do?” I ask.
“Head to Cat’s. If Dr. Grayson is using precious time to abandon his lab, then there’s definitely something shady going on.”
“We should follow him!” I say.
Abel shakes his head. “Are you crazy?”
“He could lead us straight to Wren. And to Claire. You said so yourself, this behavior is uncharacteristic for Dr. Grayson. Have you considered that maybe he’s traveling so early in the day because he doesn’t want to be seen? And that he doesn’t want to be seen because he’s holding two people hostage?” My breaths come out ragged. I feel like a wrongly convicted prisinor who’s cell has been left slightly ajar. This is our chance, I just know it, but Abel’s on a different mission.
“Look,” Abel says, and this time around he sounds truly sympathetic, “you’re probably right. And I know how much you want to find Wren. To know she’s safe.”
“I feel a but coming on,” Bill grumbles.
“You don’t know Dr. Grayson like I do,” Abel reminds us. “He’s got a plan for everything. If you follow him now? My guess is you’d be walking right into the lion’s den.”
“I think I can handle a lion,” I say, reaching once again for the gun tucked into the waist of my pants.
“So what? You plan to just shoot him dead, then?”
“Why not? He shot Wes in the back of the head. Execution style. Who’s to say he won’t do the same to us? To Claire and Wren?”
At the mention of the raider’s name, Abel’s brow furrows with confusion for a fleeting moment, but then he shrugs. “Look, if the two of you want to save Wren and Claire, then you need to listen to me. Not your impulses. You don’t know Dr. Grayson like I do. You don’t know this community. We should find Cat, get something to eat, and make a plan.”
At the mention of food, my stomach rumbles, and as much as I hate to admit it, I know Abel is right. In our current condition, we wouldn’t stand a chance against a cockroach, let alone a roach the size of a human. So I swallow every desire that I have to follow Dr. Grayson, stretch out my arm, and say, “Lead the way.”
Abel nods and leads us in a roundabout way around the square. By the time we finally reach the hill Abel mentioned earlier, the sun is inching higher across the ceiling of The Dome, bathing the perfect row houses along the street in a bright, warm light, the temperature all the while remaining comfortable. As the three of us keep to the shadows, people of all ages begin to emerge from their front doors and head down the street toward the square, some walking, others riding on machines that resemble stand-up motorcycles.
“Crazy,” I mumble to myself. Everyone here seems oddly content, as though they have nothing in the world to fear.
“They don’t know,” Abel whispers as though reading my thoughts. “They fight every day for a cure that more than likely isn’t even possible.”
“But they seem so happy,” I say.
“Forge ahead,” Abel says mockingly.
I shrug. “What other choice do they have?”
“Fight,” Abel suggests.
“How can they fight something they don’t know exists?”
Abel shakes his head and points, apparently done with the conversation. “Cat’s house is at the top of this street on the left-side corner. Come on. We’re almost there.”
Bill, who hasn’t uttered a word since leaving the square, grumbles a quiet, “Thank God.”
The block of houses lining the street appears to grow taller as we walk up the steep hill, and it spans a little over a quarter of a mile with ten houses all piled on top of one another in a strangely precise way. Cat’s house, which sits on the corner, is equally as quaint as all the others, the outside tidy and well manicured like the rest of the yards on her block. But the air around the structure seems colder somehow. I glance to the sky. The sun doesn’t quite reach the house, which I notice is oddly tucked back a few feet farther from the road than its surrounding neighbors, basking it in shadows. A shiver travels the course of my spine.
The sound of a front door opening on the quiet street sends us all diving behind a nearby shrub, and I watch as a young girl, who looks to be around eleven or twelve years old, hops down the steps of her row house, bag slung over her shoulder, and heads down the hill by herself.
“That’s Sarah. She’s probably heading to clinical,” Abel whispers. “She’s late, but her father started showing symptoms of the Virus a few weeks ago, so she won’t be reprimanded. Cat has been walking with her when she can. I’m guessing this means she’s not home.” I can tell he’s trying to convince himself that there’s nothing at all amiss with this fact, but there’s a note of uneasiness to his tone.
“Come on,” Abel says, pushing past me. A branch slaps me in the face, and I flinch.
“Easy!” I complain, but Abel ignores me.
“Let’s go around back. Cat keeps the back gate unlocked, and the fence will keep us shielded from view while we wait for her.”
Sure enough, when we round the corner and try the gate, it opens with ease, creaking slightly on its hinges. The discordant sound in such a seemingly perfect neighborhood takes me by surprise.
Abel doesn’t even wait for the gate to close before he’s rounding the back stoop and mounting the stairs. He knocks softly once. Then harder. And harder still until my nerves are shot, and I call out, “Um, I don’t think she’s home, Abel.”
The disappointment on Abel’s face when he turns around is palpable. “No,” he says with concern, “I don’t think she is.” He stares off into the small backyard. “I can’t believe she’d go to clinical,” Abel mutters to himself. “But then again, why wouldn’t she?” He descends the steps slowly, deep in thought.
Now that we’ve reached our destination, I am suddenly acutely aware of my parched throat. “Hey, Abel? There’s no chance another one of Cat’s doors is unlocked, is there?”
Abel doesn’t bother to look at me when he answers. He looks instead to his wrist. “Not without one of these,” he says.
I am momentarily confused. “But...you have one.”
“It only works where it’s been programmed to work,” Abel tells me.
“Of course it does,” comes Bill’s feeble reply from the ground where he collapsed seconds after clearing the gate. I nudge him with the toe of my boot.
“So are we just planning to wait until Cat comes home then?” I ask. “Because we’re not even sure she’ll be coming home at all—”
The words have hardly left my mouth when the unlocked gate flies open.
“Abel!” a girl’s voice cries, and a blur of color jolts past me and throws itself into Abel’s arms, almost knocking him over with the force of the embrace. I’m not sure who’s more shocked: Abel, Bill, or me.
Bill sits up at the same time that I do a double take. The voice, it’s not just some girl’s. It’s Wren’s.
“Wren?” Bill’s shocked voice breaks apart the embrace. I’m stunned into silence. Even from the back, the hair, the build, the way she stands holding Abel at arm’s length as though she’s afraid he’s not real. It’s just like Wren.
The girl, after softly, lovingly brushing her hand through Abel’s hair, slowly turns to face Bill and me.
Simultaneously, Bill and I shout, “Wren!” and I’m crossing the small distance of the yard so quickly I don’t have time to recognize the of confusion that crosses over her face. Before she can stop me, I’m all over her, hugging her, kissing her.
The slap comes so abruptly, and with such power, for a moment I see stars. I back up three paces, staring at Wren in horror. “What the hell, Wren? What d’ya do that for?” My hand is on my cheek where I can already feel the swelling heat from the impact.
Wren’s wiping her face, clearly disgusted. Bill and Abel stare at the scene in front of them, mouths agape. “I don’t know who you think you are,” she says fiercely, fire in her blue eyes. “And I don’t know who you think I am. But my name’s not Wren.” She looks to Abel for help, but he just shakes his head in disbelief. She turns back to me, and I swear—I swear—she must be brainwashed because it is Wren. I blink hard once. But nothing changes.
“Wren—”
“I told you. My name is not Wren. Abel? A little help here,” she says.
Abel puts a hand on my arm. “Ryder, are you ok?”
I shrug off his gesture. “Of course I’m ok. She’s the one who’s not ok. What’s wrong with her? What did Dr. Grayson do to her?”
“To who? To Cat?”
And then it hits me. They’re sisters. Oh, my god. They’re sisters. It finally sinks in that Cat and Wren really do share the same creep of a father. So naturally, they’re going to look alike. But exactly alike?
Bill has joined the party and is standing next to me staring at Cat as I try to work this out. “Ryder,” he says softly like he’s telling me a secret, “she looks exactly like Wren.” Like I hadn’t noticed.
“Yeah, I know,” I say, shaking my head slowly.
“But that means—”
“I know what it means,” I say, but it’s Abel’s voice that puts it out in the open for all of us to hear.
“They’re twins.”
19: Cat
I’m nursing my second cup of tea, my hands loosely fingering the mug that has long grown cold, when the truth of the situation finally comes crashing down on me like a giant wave. Even though I’m sitting at the same counter in the same kitchen that has been a part of my home since I was very little, in this moment I feel like a stranger. Lost. That about sums it up, I think. I’m lost. Utterly lost.
In just a matter of days, in fact, I had lost so much of what I once held dear. My mother. My best friend. And not just once. I lost her twice. Twice. First, to the clutches of the Virus. Then to the web of lies my father began to spin the moment I was conceived.
“Cat, who’d you get your lion’s mane from?”
“Cat, were you adopted?”
“Cat, you’re nowhere near as pretty as your mom.”
The taunting voices from my childhood come back like a swarm of incessant bees, the words stinging over and over and over again. It all makes sense now, I think. I don’t look like my beautiful, charming, lovely mother...because she isn’t biologically my mother after all. The realization, finally sinking in, carries me out to sea and rocks me, and as I plummet deeper into my ocean of despair, I lose the ability to breathe.
Abel, recognizing my struggle, hurries over to me, placing his strong arms around me tightly. “Cat, it’s ok,” he says, his voice comforting. “It’s going to be ok. Just breathe for me. Please. Just breathe.”
I gasp and, finding my voice, cry out, “Abel, my mother. She’s not my mother. She—” My voice trails off.
Abel doesn’t loosen his grip around my shoulders. “I know,” he whispers, his mouth in my hair. “I know, Cat.”
“Why?” I cry. “Why would he do this? Why would he lie about this? What was in it for him?” Because there’s always something in it for Dr. Grayson. My chest heaves again as I choke on the tears that now flow freely down my face, a river of suppressed grief that spills onto the counter where I rest my head. “Why would she lie to me, Abel?”
Abel strokes my face, attempting to wipe away the tears, but they are relentless. “Your mother loved you, Cat. Hold onto that, ok? So she wasn’t your mother by blood. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t your mother. She loved you like a daughter. She raised you like her daughter. She protected you—”
I raise my head abruptly, my wet hair matted to my cheek, “And he killed her, Able! Dr. Grayson killed her, and I let him. I let him!” At the thought of my father, my grief morphs into something much stronger, heat bubbling up from my gut and filling my veins. Rage. “We’ve got to stop him, Abel,” I say, my voice resolute. “We’ve got to stop him for good.”
