Alive (6 page)

I
don’t know how long we sit there.

Spingate is crying. So is Bello, and this time I don’t think she’s being weak. I wonder if I should be crying, too, but no tears come.

Yong’s blood is all over my shirt, my plaid skirt. Spingate is blood-smeared as well, with two prominent streaks on her ribs where she tried to wipe her hands clean after he died. I know it’s not her own blood, and I know it’s not the right way to think about it, but I’m almost glad she’s finally dirty.

Aramovsky’s shirt is spotless. Not a speck on it, not even a wrinkle.

“It’s not your fault, Em,” he says. “It was an accident.”

“Of course it was,” I snap.

But…was it?

I was so mad. Those feelings of hate, roiling through me. I wanted to hurt Yong. But if he hadn’t rushed at me, if he hadn’t tried to hit me, I wouldn’t have done anything. So Aramovsky is right—it’s not my fault.

Aramovsky stands, walks over to O’Malley, gently tries to wake the fallen boy.

I stare at Yong. I’m waiting for him to move, like this is a game and I’ve been tricked. He’s going to sit up and smile, and everyone will laugh because they are all in on it.

But no one is laughing.

And Yong doesn’t move.

Aramovsky helps O’Malley to his feet. Blood runs from O’Malley’s nose, and more trickles from a cut over his right eye.

He stares down at Yong.

O’Malley looks at all of us in turn, as if he, too, is waiting for someone to tell him this is a game. I see his eyes flick from Yong to the bloody knife, back to Yong, and then to me.

“Em, what happened?”

I glare at him. He would know what happened if he hadn’t got knocked out. Come to think of it, if he hadn’t got knocked out, none of it would have happened at all. He can defend me with words, it seems, but not with his fists.

O’Malley doesn’t look so beautiful anymore.

Aramovsky puts his hand on O’Malley’s shoulder.

“Yong attacked Em,” Aramovsky says. “She protected herself and stabbed him.”

I’m on my feet so fast I don’t recall trying to stand.

“I did
not
stab him! He ran into the knife. It was an accident, Aramovsky. An accident!”

My shouts bounce off the walls. Both Aramovsky and O’Malley lean back a little bit, away from me.

“An accident,” Aramovsky says to O’Malley, and nods. “It was obviously an accident, like Em said. I suppose if Yong hadn’t put you down, he wouldn’t have attacked Em—he’d still be alive.”

O’Malley winces. Did it hurt him to hear that? Good, it
should
hurt him.

“Spingate tried to save him,” Aramovsky says. “The cut, it was very deep. There was nothing anyone could do.”

O’Malley’s expression remains blank. He stands there, bleeding. He steps to Yong, kneels in the crimson slush. He stares at the body, but talks to us.

“Why did he attack us like that? He went crazy.”

No, he wasn’t crazy—he wanted to lead. He wanted it bad enough that he had no problem hitting to get his way. Yong was a bully.

O’Malley stands. He brushes slush from his pants. He sniffs…he’s crying. Not the noisy sobs of Bello and Spingate, but he doesn’t try to hide the tears that line his cheeks.

“This is horrible,” he says.

Then he looks at me. “So, Em…what now?”

Is he joking? I’m the leader who took us nowhere, who didn’t find food, who put a knife in Yong’s belly, and O’Malley still thinks I should decide?

Spingate is also looking at me. So is Bello, and Aramovsky.

They are all waiting.

Yes, I am the leader, and I should be. I’m the one making the decisions. I’m sorry Yong is dead, but that wasn’t my fault—it was his.

“We go straight,” I say.

I reach down and pick up the knife.

“
No
,” Bello says, the word almost a scream. “I told you the knife was a bad thing. Leave it, Em, just
leave it
.”

I ignore her. My skirt is ruined anyway, so I wipe the blade clean against it, first one side, then the other.

Spingate’s stomach rumbles. She hangs her head, her face hidden by thick red curls.

I take a few steps down the hall, until my feet are once again on untouched gray.

The others hesitate.

“Let’s go,” I say. “We have to get moving.”

O’Malley tilts his head down at Yong. “What about him? Do we carry him? Or maybe take him back to the coffin room, so he’s not on the floor?”

The question makes our situation hit home: Yong is dead, and I’m going to leave him here. We don’t know how far we have yet to walk. We have no food and no water. Our mouths are so dry our lips are starting to crack. We’re already exhausted—we can’t afford the energy needed to carry a dead body.

He’ll be lonely here.

I try to chase away that thought, because it is the thought of a silly little girl. Yong is gone. I didn’t like him, but he was one of us. Abandoning his body is wrong, I know it in my heart, but what choice do we have?

“No,” I say. “I’m sorry, but we can’t take him with us, and we’re not going back. He’s dead. He stays here.”

O’Malley looks down at Yong, as if he wants to argue with me and his reasons for doing so are right there, somewhere on the body. He stares for a long while, thinking, then nods slowly.

“I guess you’re right,” he says. “But…I don’t know, shouldn’t we bury him or something?”

Spingate stands, flicks red slush from her clothes. “That would be a neat trick, O’Malley. Want to dig right through the floor?”

O’Malley wipes his face with the back of his hand, clearing off both blood and tears.

He looks down the dark hall.

“I can see an archway door,” he says. “It looks open. There might be empty coffins inside.”

I’d forgotten about that archway, just at the edge of the hall’s dim light. O’Malley wants to put Yong in a coffin. I suppose that’s better than leaving him here.

“All right,” I say. “Do it quick and come right back.”

He glances at me, questioning at first, then understanding. I can’t touch Yong. I don’t even want to be near him.

“Sure, Em,” O’Malley says. “Aramovsky, will you help me?”

The taller boy nods.

“We should say a few words first,” Aramovsky says. “While everyone is here with him.”

Spingate huffs in disgust. “The dead don’t care what you say.”

She walks to me, stands by my side and waits.

Aramovsky presses his hands together, holds them near his chest. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back. There is something familiar about the gesture, another thing from our past that our memories won’t reveal.

Spingate crosses her arms. “We’re wasting time.”

Bello points at her. “You shut up, Spingate. You think you’re so smart, but you couldn’t save Yong, could you?”

Spingate turns away as if Bello had slapped her.

“I tried,” she says. “I tried.”

O’Malley, Aramovsky and Bello are looking at me, waiting for permission.

“Make it quick,” I say.

Aramovsky’s hands drop to his waist.

“We’re all afraid,” he says. “Yong didn’t choose to be here any more than the rest of us did. We will never know why he attacked us. No one meant for him to die. Today…today was his birthday.”

The words themselves are meaningless. The way Aramovsky says them, though, the smooth, calm tone of his voice…his words are comforting.

We still have no idea what’s going on, and this nightmare keeps getting worse, but like the rest of us, Yong was a twelve-year-old kid. It isn’t my fault he’s dead. Now that I think about it, it isn’t his, either—the fault lies with whoever put us in those coffins and abandoned us in this dungeon.

“Thank you, Aramovsky,” I say.

Bello can’t stop crying. Her eyes are puffy and red. She kneels next to Yong. Her body trembling, she touches her forehead to his. She stays there for a moment. It’s heartbreaking to watch. It almost brings me to tears.

But still, no tears come.

She stands. Head hung low, Bello moves past me.

Yong lays alone in a trampled, smeared ring of crimson slush. Now he’s just like the Grownups we left behind: a victim of violence, dead because a knife punched a hole in his body.

I wonder how long it will be before he crumbles to dust.

There is nothing else we can do here. I look at O’Malley, tilt my head toward the dark hall.

O’Malley grabs Yong’s wrists. Aramovsky takes his ankles. Together, they walk down the dim hall, the dead boy a shallow curve between them, his head hanging limply and jostling with every step.

They carry him away.

Bello, Spingate and I wait. It doesn’t take long. O’Malley and Aramovsky come back—without Yong. I don’t know if they left him in a coffin, but they left him, and I feel relieved.

The two boys join us. Aramovsky still doesn’t have any blood on him, but his expression is different. He’s seen something that frightened him, disturbed him.

I look to O’Malley. He won’t meet my eyes. I know what he and Aramovsky saw—more murdered children.

“All the coffins had been torn open,” Aramovsky says. His voice sounds different, like the last bit of breeze before a gust of wind fades away completely. “We found one where the lid still moved. We put Yong inside and pushed the lid closed. It clicked shut. He is at rest.”

I wonder if they put him on top of a skeleton, or moved the skeleton to the floor so Yong could lie alone. I decide I don’t want to know.

“Time to leave,” I say.

I turn and move down the hall. The others follow. This time, O’Malley stays with them.

I walk out in front, alone.

W
e walk uphill.

We are covered in blood.

Bello’s lower lip is swollen and split.

O’Malley’s nose has stopped bleeding, but a few drops still ooze from the cut over his eye.

The hallway goes on and on. The dust is endless.

There has to be a way out of this place. There has to be.

My mouth is dry and pasty. I’m so thirsty. I’m not hungry anymore, but I think that’s not a good thing. My head hurts.

The others are in the same shape. They shuffle more than walk. They look beyond tired, with dry lips and sunken eyes. Maybe we were all perfect when we woke up, but not anymore.

If we don’t find water soon, will we be able to keep walking?

And we need to sleep. If we find any coffin rooms farther up, maybe we’ll rest for a while.

Every few steps, I see Yong’s wide eyes, the look of disbelief on his face.

It was an accident. Everyone thinks so. There was nothing I could have done. He ran into the knife. He did. He was going to hit me. Was I supposed to let him?

I look at my hand, the right one, the one that holds the knife. His blood—dry now—is in the folds of my knuckles, mixed in with the dust and tacky sweat that covers me head to toe.

I’ve never been this dirty. I’ve never been this sweaty and disgusting. I’ve never been this afraid, this thirsty, this alone.

I haven’t been a good leader, but four people are counting on me to take them to safety. I don’t know if I’m twelve or if I’m twenty and I don’t think age matters anymore. We are the only ones here.

There is a way out. I
will
find a way out.

Behind me, I hear sniffling. I turn, expecting to see Bello crying yet again, but it’s not her—it’s Spingate.

I stop. So do the others.

“You did everything you could for him,” I tell her. “At least you did something. The rest of us were useless.”

She shakes her head.

“It’s not that. It’s just…maybe they’re all dead.”

Aramovsky puts his arm around her shoulders. “All who is dead?”

“All the Grownups,” Spingate says. “I’m so tired. I don’t want to do this anymore. But if they’re gone, then there’s no one left to rescue us.”

“We’ll be all right,” Aramovsky says, then glares at me like I’m the one who made Spingate cry. “Em is our leader. She says she knows what she’s doing.”

I’ve said no such thing. Is he trying to make a point? I’m starting to think that Aramovsky says one thing but means another.

Bello’s hands come together again, clutching and turning in constant motion.

“What if Spingate is right?” she says. “If there are no Grownups, what are we going to do?”

Aramovsky nods. “Yes, Savage, what then? Who is going to take care of us?”

We all saw each other’s coffins; everyone knows my last name, but Aramovsky is the first to speak it. Even I haven’t said it out loud. I don’t like that name and I don’t know why. Hearing it makes me uncomfortable. I think he knew that it would…so why did he do it?

Because he wants to make me look bad in front of the others.

Anger flames in my chest.

He’s challenging my leadership, that’s what he’s doing. He thinks
he
should be in charge.

My fingers flex on the knife handle.

Cold fury sweeps over me, an urge to teach Aramovsky a lesson—then I recognize that feeling, and when I do it vanishes, replaced by a shudder of realization.

It was exactly how I felt when Yong came at me.

In the shameful calmness that follows, I understand that Aramovsky wasn’t challenging me. He was just talking. There is no harm in that. And even if he
was
challenging my leadership, that’s okay as long as he’s not hitting anyone. If I’m not the right leader, then someone else is. I don’t care who is in charge. I want to get out of this place.

“Maybe there aren’t any Grownups,” I say. “If that’s true, then we will survive without them.”

They stare at me like my words are as unknown as their first names. Even Aramovsky’s glare dissolves into astonishment. Is it really so impossible to think that we can make it on our own?

I point behind them, back the way we came.

“You want someone to take care of us? Were the people who died back there supposed to do that? You saw what they did to each other. They murdered little kids in their coffins. If the Grownups are all gone…”

I hesitate, knowing I am about to say something none of them want to hear. Saying it might make this
real
. Maybe I can’t remember anything, but I know that reality is what it is whether we like it or not.

“If the Grownups are really gone, well, then
good
,” I say. “We don’t need them. We don’t need someone else to rescue us…we can rescue ourselves.”

I feel my face flush, so I turn and start walking again.
Rescue ourselves?
I suddenly feel like an idiot. We don’t know where we are, don’t know
who
we are. We’re kids—we’re not supposed to be on our own.

After what I just said, will the others still follow?

Four sets of feet shuffling along behind me answer my question.

Aramovsky falls in on my left.

“Maybe the Grownups didn’t do it to themselves,” he says quietly. Then, louder: “Maybe…maybe it was a
monster
.”

The word hits us hard. A word made of shapeless forms, woven from fear.
Monster
is all the things we don’t understand, and right now, we don’t understand anything.

“Spare us,” Spingate says. “There’s no such thing as monsters.”

Aramovsky looks over his shoulder at her. “Really? And how do you know there aren’t monsters?”

“There just aren’t,” Spingate says. “Monsters are something only babies believe in.”

Aramovsky and Spingate start to argue, but I don’t hear their words: far up ahead, I see something, a break in the floor-meets-ceiling illusion.

This time, I know what it is.

“There’s another corridor up ahead,” I say.

Their argument stops instantly.

Suddenly I’m not quite as tired. I pick up the pace, walking so fast I’m almost jogging. I don’t care if this new hallway is like the last one—dim, maybe even dark—but we’re going that way because I am desperate to see something different.

For the first time since Yong died, I find O’Malley at my right side.

“Em, maybe we should take it this time.”

“We’ll see,” I say.

I don’t know why I said that, because I’ve already made up my mind to do exactly what he wants.

The sound of our footsteps fills the hall with a soft thudding. We close in, kicking up a trail of dust that hangs behind us.

Then, over the sound of our running, I hear something else.

I slow quickly, plant my feet and slide to a stop, my arms out to the sides to keep anyone from running past me.

“Em,
watch out
,” O’Malley says as he stutter-steps to avoid the knife blade that almost touches his belly.

I start to apologize, but Aramovsky runs into me from behind. He grabs my shoulders, keeps me from falling forward.

“Sorry,” he says. “You stopped so fast.”

Bello is on my left, hands wringing. “Em, what’s going on?”

I glare at them all, hold a finger to my lips.

They fall quiet.

We stand still. No steps, no words, not even breathing.

In the silence, I hear the noise again. Faint at first, but quickly growing louder. It’s coming from the intersection of the new hallway.

It is the heavy sound of footsteps marching in time.