Creators (12 page)

My eyelids fluttered open.

As the light of a new day broke through the darkness that pursued me constantly, my eyelids shut again.

It was the light that pained me now.

I was afraid of what I would see. The minute they opened, the world would once again be changed. It was always evolving and becoming something new, altered in ways that if I was going to survive, I would have to learn to live with.

“I think she’s waking up.”

“Robert?” I whispered. I still refused to open my eyes. I had to make sure it was him first. I needed to know I still had someone. That was the trouble of letting yourself need people—it made you strong and weak all at once.

“Yes, Tess. It’s me.”

I slowly let my eyes open. Robert’s face looked down at me from above. “Welcome back.” He smiled.

“What happened?” My voice was scratchy and sore from a mixture of screams and dust.

“One of your father’s bombs went off next to the entrance. The force of it blew both you and Lockwood back. You hit your head pretty hard on the ground,” he explained.

My stomach dropped. “Lockwood?” I tried to sit up. My head felt like it had been stuffed with bricks.

Robert gently held my shoulder down. “Easy there. You’ve been out almost twelve hours. Slowly,” he urged, helping me to sit.

I reached up to find my head covered in a bandage still damp with blood. “Lockwood?” I asked again.

“He’s fine. A bit bruised but living.”

I exhaled. “Who?” Robert raised an eyebrow at my question, but I swallowed back my fear. “Who?” I repeated. I wasn’t going to back down. He knew what question I was asking:
who did we lose?

Robert searched my eyes. Whatever he found in them, he could no longer look at me. “What matters right now is that you take it easy. Your father is re-grouping, and then we’ll decide what to do from there. Till then, you need to rest.”

I blinked back tears, surprised they even came to me at all. The smallest mention of my father and I was ready to fall to pieces. Fall to pieces over a man who chose war over family. Had it all been a lie? Every last moment he played the role of father since he had been back? “So, my father is all right then?”

Robert gave a small smile. “Yes, he’s just fine.”

I took a shaky breath and tried to still my nerves. Fear and relief danced inside me wildly, bumping and jostling against each other. “Will you help me up?” I asked, a slight tremble to my voice. Robert opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. “I’m awake now. There’s no point pretending I can just sit here and not know,” I challenged, forcing strength into my voice.

Strength I didn’t quite feel.

Robert reluctantly helped me to my feet and linked his arm around my shoulders. I leaned against him as we walked through a makeshift medical station that seemed to go on for a good hundred feet. A road of blankets and moaning victims. Men and women. Children. As we moved down the line, I saw all sorts of ailments—injuries that ranged from minor cuts and bruises to amputations much like the one Al had to get.

Al.

The first body I came across. Littered among the suffering naturals were the bodies of those who had died during the hours of my unconsciousness. I didn’t feel much as I stared down at the body of the man who had tried to have James killed. If anything, I felt sorry for him. But I didn’t feel loss.

I thought back to one of the last conversations I had with McNair. He had called the community a new country. He said he hoped it would be a place where they could all start over and avoid the mistakes of the past. But as I looked at one of its former leaders, broken and dead, I wondered if there was any place to start over again.

It seemed like the naturals would always be running from their past.

As we moved down the line, Robert squeezed my shoulder. “What is it?” I asked, looking up at him. I felt the blood drain from my face. He had been trying to warn me. Whatever I was about to see would be terrible.

Except that it wasn’t. It was Henry. He sat on the ground huddled with an injured Stephanie. Her arm was in a sling and several shallow cuts marked her forehead. Seeing me, Henry jumped up and pulled me into his arms. “You’re awake. I tried to get to the infirmary, but everything was so damn crazy.”

“You should have seen him. He was so brave.” Stephanie beamed. “Practically took out one of the chosen ones on his own.”

Henry actually blushed, and for a moment, I felt the need to look away. He reached down and helped Stephanie off the ground. “She’s exaggerating. When I woke up yesterday morning, I went to apologize to Stephanie for…you know.”

I nodded. I did know, but that seemed like another lifetime ago.

“I got to her room and Eric was there. That’s when the attack happened. We didn’t make it down the stairs before we were ambushed,” he said.

“Eric?” I asked, wondering what he had been doing in Stephanie’s room.

“He came to apologize,” she said quietly. I raised an eyebrow. Eric was a lot of things but apologetic was never one of them. “He saved my life.”

“When he saw what was happening, he pulled that damn bottle of shine from his pocket and lit the blasted thing on fire. Threw it right at the bastards. Then everything just went nuts. Fighting and running,” Henry said.

“Somehow, I lost the two of them,” Stephanie continued. “I fell behind. One of the chosen ones cornered me. I had no gun, no way out. Then there was Eric. He threw himself in front of me. Took on one of those things by himself. It didn’t take… He…gave me enough time to get away,” she added.

Stephanie took a shaky breath and reached for my hand. “I’m sorry. I know he was your friend.”

I pulled my hand from hers and took a step back. My throat felt painfully dry. I shook my head. “I…” My voice trailed off. I wanted to discredit everything they had told me. To demand that what they were saying was impossible, but the truth was, in this world, it was entirely possible. Even probable.

“Is his body here?” I asked, my voice cracking. He would have wanted to be buried. I remembered how important it was to him to bury McNair.

“I buried him this morning,” Henry said. “I tried to wait for you, Tess. I swear it. But I didn’t know how long it would be before we would have to move out, and I knew—”

I threw my arms around Henry’s neck. “No, you did well. It’s what he would have wanted. Thank you,” I whispered into his ear. I detangled myself from Henry and looked at Stephanie. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

She nodded. “Glad you’re safe too. I really am sorry about your friend.”

“He died doing what he wanted to do—protecting naturals. You two probably had more in common than either of you thought,” I offered with a pained smile. I took a deep breath. “Who else?”

I watched as Henry and Robert exchanged a look. “Who else?” I demanded.

“Sharon,” said a voice from behind me.

I turned around to see Lockwood. His face was caked in dirt. Long dried tear streaks marked his face. I slowly shook my head. “Impossible.” Because losing Sharon just couldn’t happen. People like Eric, soldiers, could die in wars.

But not people like Sharon.

Lockwood’s face crumpled. “We lost her.”

I continued to shake my head as an odd sort of lightness overtook my body. It was like I was outside of myself watching some horrific story unfold. I didn’t want to see the ending to this narrative. Robert reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder, and I flinched. I didn’t want anyone to touch me. I didn’t want anyone to bring me back to my body. I didn’t want to feel the things it was feeling.

“You’re lying,” I said.

Lockwood began to sob into his hands, falling to his knees on the ground. I tore myself from Robert’s grasp. I crouched down next to Lockwood and grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him as hard as I could. “Show me her body!”

“There is no body,” Henry said softly from behind me.

I froze. I couldn’t breathe. I closed my eyes and counted to ten. “Tell me how,” I commanded.

“She was taking her children to shelter. One of the bombs got her. Killed one of the boys and her. There was nothing left,” he answered.

A wild sob broke free from my lips. I pressed my fist over my mouth to keep another one from getting free. Robert offered his hand to help me up, but I smacked it away. I closed my eyes again, willing my body to return to its unconscious state.

I had lost another mother.

Through the darkness, I heard Lockwood’s pained, desperate cries. I realized he had lost a mother, too. I forced my eyes opened and stared at my nearly destroyed friend, then reached forward and pulled him into my arms. Lockwood hugged me back, crying into my shoulder. I held him tighter. I forced back my tears because my friend needed me.

Once Lockwood settled down, I asked the question I was most afraid of. “And Louisa?” His face fell. He covered his eyes with his hand and began to cry again.

“She’s not dead,” Henry quickly clarified. “It’s just that—”

“She lost the baby,” Robert explained. “She’s in a bit of pain, and we have to watch for infection, but she should be fine.”

“But…I don’t understand. How could she still live?”

“She lost so much blood. They had to make a decision. Your father chose to save Louisa,” Lockwood said quietly.

“How? I don’t understand,” I said again.

Lockwood swallowed, turning his eyes from mine. “He had it cut out.”

The baby. She lost the baby. The thing we had been so worried about. I shuddered at the mixture of relief and horror that rushed through me. Was that what war really was? An endless battle between these two contradictory emotions?

My sister would live. I would get to keep her. There was no way of knowing if she would have been able to deliver the baby, but it was devastating all the same.

“At least there’s that,” I said dully.

…

After one of my father’s men denied me access to my sister, claiming she was sleeping, I found a bit of secluded woods. I needed to be away from the road of anguish. I sat and leaned against a tree, attempting to find some sort of sense in the events that had taken place.

I remembered a story my father had told me when I was younger. It was a story connected to the Native Americans. A government that once ruled this land had made these people leave their homes and travel thousands and thousands of miles to some new place. They were called inferior. The government tried to take everything from them. My father had explained that thousands had died on these death marches. They had called it the Trail of Tears.

I wondered if that was what awaited the survivors of the attack on the camp. Where would we go now?

I reached up and touched my forehead. Somehow, I had reopened a cut. I brought my hand down to see my fingers covered in blood, and a fiery anger flared up in me. I was sick of us naturals being bossed around, hunted, and murdered for being who we were.

It didn’t need to be this way. There had to be some place where this didn’t exist. McNair’s words came back to me then:
I figure there has to be a place all this is a bad memory. Eastern and Western. Chosen Ones and naturals. We’ve got to put a name to everything. I want a place with no name.

And it was in that moment I made a promise to myself and McNair—I would find that place. It had to exist. I would do whatever it took to locate it. I would take the people I loved there, and we would be free from this madness.

But not before I did something else. I took my bloodied finger and began to make slash marks against the backside of my hand. The council had burned their slash marks into the back of my neck, marked me their property. I would mark them, too.

Sharon.

Eric.

Louisa’s child.

Emma.

James.

James still existed, but they had tortured him. Altered him. And I would make them pay for it.

I would get revenge for what had been done to them.

“You need to add another one.” Henry sat down next to me, and I furrowed my brow. “Sharon, Eric, Louisa, Emma, and James. But you forgot a name on that list.”

“List?” I asked. I hadn’t realized I had been saying the names aloud.

“Don’t think I don’t know what those mean. You forget who you’re talking to,” he replied. He took my hand gently in his, then wiped a bit of blood off my finger and added another slash mark.

“Who’s that for?” I asked.

“You.”

As Henry and I sat together against the tree, watching another day give in to darkness, I swallowed. “Is this because of me? Did they come here because of what I can do?” I asked. “Did I bring this on my people?”

If I had, I would never be able to forgive myself. Eric. Sharon. My sister. All touched by tragedy because of me. It didn’t seem right that so many should have to suffer so I could live.

“No. This isn’t about you,” Henry said. He leaned his head against mine. “It’s about your father.”

I turned slightly in order to look at Henry. My forehead pressed against his. As I watched the sun dance in his eyes, I knew, in that moment, what I had given up. He hadn’t been the destiny I had chosen, but that didn’t mean the path with him would have been a terrible one. It just wasn’t the path for me. I took his hand into mine.

“You said this was about my father. Is it about what he’s hiding?” I asked. I held my breath while I waited for Henry’s answer. If he told me yes, then everything Eric had feared would have came true. The people of the community had suffered because of my father’s actions. He had never cared about them. The fact that he had planted the bombs proved he knew an attack was likely.