Rise (12 page)

I pushed off the bottom and was up, taking in air, the rest of the girls huddled in a small storage room. I threw my boots onto the floor and gripped the rough edge of the opening. Clara tucked her hands under my arms and pulled me up onto the concrete. A metal grate was half closed over the entrance, shutting out the rain. The single backpack in the corner was fat with supplies. A few cardboard sheets floated in two feet of water.

“What are we supposed to do now?” the girl with black braids asked. She crossed her arms over her chest, trying to warm herself. Her lips were a strange purple color.

I peered outside the grate, watching the area along the wall. The City looked about a half mile off, maybe more. I could just make out the buildings rising above the wall, their silhouettes dotted with colored light. “We can't stay here,” I said. “They'll be searching outside the wall soon.”

“I want to go back,” the girl with freckles said. “Why did we have to leave?”

“You're not safe in the City anymore,” Beatrice answered. She squeezed the water out of Sarah's sweater, twisting it into a tight blue coil. “We can tell you more when we're away from here.”

I stepped into my soggy boots and zipped them up. “We need to go now,” I said. I started onto the road, away from the City wall, the rain hard on my skin. From the outside I could see where the bombs had gone off during the siege, the stone black and charred. Clara ushered the others out behind me, and they followed into the cold.

We started past row upon row of storage containers, most with their metal grates shut, locking out the rain. A few plastic toys were scattered in one, a doll floating facedown in the inch of water that came over the curb. I wondered how bad the flooding was inside the City. It hardly ever rained, and with the tunnels mostly obstructed it would surely be days, at least, before the waters receded.

We crossed through a parking lot and started up a low hill, the pavement rising toward a cluster of abandoned stores. When we were halfway down the street I turned, watching the spot on the horizon where the south gate stood. Far below, two Jeeps pulled outside the City wall. They rounded the corner, the mud splashing up around their tires.

As we kept on, rain cascaded down the hill, the pavement covered with a thin, rippling layer of water. I turned back, watching as one Jeep dipped down into the soft mud. The soldiers got out and started through a neighborhood on foot, but they were going in the wrong direction. I kept going, each step easier, a lightness filling my whole body. We were out of the City. They couldn't reach us now.

“HOW LONG DO WE HAVE TO WAIT HERE?” SARAH ASKED. SHE
stood by the window, her silhouette just visible against the sky. The moon was covered by clouds, the rain still coming down, pummeling the ledge outside.

“Just for the night,” I said. “We'll leave tomorrow.” After walking for more than two hours, we'd stopped in a neighborhood at the edge of the mountains, hiding in the upper floors of an abandoned house. I stepped around the broken floorboards and reached Clara just as she came up the stairs. She was trailed by two of the other girls, Bette and Helene, a few towels in their hands. “You haven't found any more?” I asked, pointing to the small pile of blankets on the floor. There were barely enough to keep three people warm for the night, let alone twelve.

“Most of the supplies have been picked over already,” Clara said. She looked at the ripped, stained fabric in her hands. “These aren't ideal either . . .”

Bette, a tall girl with wide, deep-set gray eyes and dense freckles, threw one of the towels down. “They're disgusting,” she mumbled. “And we only found one can—just one. That's not enough for all of us.”

“We can look for more tomorrow,” I said. “And we'll hunt if we have to. We're lucky, though—we have water. That's the most important thing.”

Sarah watched the plastic containers sitting on the roof's edge, waiting for them to fill. Her hair was still soaked from the rain, empty plastic containers piled by her bare feet. “Don't,” Beatrice said, as Sarah reached through the broken windowpane, maneuvering her thin wrist to avoid getting cut on the glass. “Let me.”

“I'm fine,” Sarah replied, holding up her hand. “See?” She picked up a white container with faded writing on it, careful not to let too much water spill over the sides. She brought it in off the window ledge, slowly replacing it with an empty carton.

Beatrice leaned back against the wall, her eyes meeting mine for just a moment. I could see glimpses of her features in Sarah's. They both had round, heart-shaped faces and a dimple in the center of the chin. Sarah was shorter and more athletic looking than most of the girls, and the only one who hadn't complained yet—about the rain, about leaving the City, about the abandoned house.

We'd gone seven miles, maybe less. The girls had tired quickly, and the rain was coming down sideways, the wind pushing against us. I knew we wouldn't get far, but these first few miles outside the City were the most dangerous. As soon as the flooding subsided, the soldiers would be back on the roads, canvassing, looking for us. We'd have to rest now and take one of the back routes out of the development the following morning, before the sun came up.

The second story of the house was mostly dark, with dim light coming in from the broken windows. One corner of the floor was warped, the wooden boards rotted. A few of the girls sat on a bare mattress, covered by the one sheet we'd found. “I don't understand,” Helene, the girl with tiny black braids, said to no one in particular. She'd found a pack of T-shirts in a basement closet, and some of the girls had put them on, looking strangely uniform now, with the exception of three girls who'd discovered sweaters in a bottom drawer. Nearly every surface was covered with wet clothes—jumpers and socks laid over the back of the armchair, mud-caked shoes strewn by the bedroom door.

“It's impossible to understand,” Beatrice said. She squeezed the ends of her hair, trying to get out the last bit of water. “Lord knows, I have tried.”

I picked one of the blankets off the floor, opening it up toward the window. Then I passed it to Bette and Lena, the two girls sitting closest to me. “I've seen what happens in that compound—I was at my School for twelve years,” I said. “And after I left, whenever I felt scared, or confused, or worried, I just came back to one fact—the Teachers there lied. It was never our life; we were always under their control.”

Lena took off her black plastic glasses, wiping the scratched lenses on her shirt. “But Teacher Henrietta said—”

“I know what they said.” I ran my hands over my hair, pushing a few wet strands away from my face. The girls were no older than fourteen, but they'd already undergone some of the initial processes for graduation. “Do you remember the vitamins they gave you? The way they charted your height and weight every month? How the older girls went to the doctors more frequently? Did you know any girls who'd started the injections?”

Helene's face changed, revealing some sort of recognition. I remembered what I felt that day when Arden had told me the truth. Every part of me had wanted not to believe, that resistance lingering even after I'd seen the Graduates myself. If everything that happened inside the School was a lie, then who was I now, after having based my identity around it? How could I possibly go on?

“I did,” Helene said, not looking at the others as she said it.

“You're probably convinced you're going to die out here, that you couldn't possibly survive in the wild,” I continued. “But that's not true either.”

I looked to a few of the girls who were huddled together on the bed. Some had softened toward me, now that we'd made it out of the rain. I knew my position as Princess meant something to them—they had heard my voice before on the broadcasts from the City. They'd sat in a dining hall similar to the one at my School, listening to the parade when I first arrived, listening to the stories about the girl who'd come from the Schools to the Palace, as if that were a possibility for them, too. How many of them must've imagined who their parents were, if they had somehow survived and were living somewhere inside the City?

“We shouldn't have come here,” Bette said. “We should've stayed with the rest of the girls. Now we'll never see them again.”

Sarah turned from the window, where she was bringing in another plastic bottle of rainwater. “But we can't go back now,” she said. Beatrice stepped forward to help her, but she turned away, setting the bottle down against the wall.

Bette pulled her sweater tighter around her sides. “Why would they do that, though? Maybe it wasn't at all the Schools—maybe it was just at yours. How do you know?”

Clara settled into the armchair in the corner. “She knows better than anyone. We were living in the Palace. The King said it himself.”

Bette shook her head. She whispered something to the girl next to her that I couldn't quite hear. “I hope you'll learn to trust me,” I said. “If you went back to those Schools you'd be trapped there indefinitely.”

“Then what are we going to do?” Bette asked. “We can't just stay here forever.”

“We're going to Califia,” I said as I sat on the edge of the mattress, looking at the girls. I rubbed my hands together, trying to warm them. “It's a settlement up north. And there's food, water, supplies. You can stay there as long as you need—other escapees from the Schools have.”

Lena hugged her knees to her chest. “Are there men there?” she asked.

“It's all women,” I said.

Bette kept shaking her head. “So what if it's all women?” She looked at the other girls. “How are we even going to get there?”

“We're going to walk,” I said. “And if we can find some other, faster way to get there we will. But it may take us as long as a month. And we'll hunt, and rest, and get supplies however we can, but we'll get there. I've done it before.”

I could feel Clara's eyes on me. I didn't turn to face her. I knew what she was thinking—that I'd driven part of the way to Califia, up the Sierra Nevada and then through to the ocean in the soldiers' Jeep. Maybe it was stupid, foolish even, to think we could get that far on foot, but now that we were beyond the walls we couldn't hide out indefinitely. The girls, Clara and Beatrice at least, needed somewhere they could settle. My father might remain in power for years still, his reach extending to parts of the wild.

“How are we supposed to survive for a month?” Helene asked. “There are gangs out here who've murdered girls much younger than us. There was a twelve-year-old orphan kidnapped just a mile outside School, almost as soon as she tried to go beyond the wall.”

Sarah set another bottle down, trying to seal it as best she could with one of the warped plastic caps. “But maybe that was a lie, too. Teacher Rose said that, and she said lots of other things.”

“It's not too late,” Bette said. “We can still go back. We'll just find one of the soldiers and tell—”

“You will not,” I interrupted. “You'll come with us, and we'll get to Califia. And maybe you don't understand it now, but you will eventually. There is no going back at this point.”

Bette kept shaking her head. “We don't even know you.” She looked at a few of the other girls. “What do you think is going to happen to us out there? We're not going to make it. I don't care what they say—we were safe at School.”

“You were never safe there,” Clara said. She picked up a few of the blankets and passed them to the girls, hoping to end the conversation, but I could see Bette wasn't ready to let it go. She whispered something else to the petite girl curled up beside her, and I had a sudden glimpse of the weeks spread out before me, how difficult it would be to keep them safe.

Beyond the front window, the sky was a mottled gray mass, the moon covered by clouds. The rain kept on, coming sideways at the front of the house. Water pooled on the floor below the window ledge. As Beatrice settled on the floor beside Sarah, my eyes focused on a single point on the horizon, the lights so small at first they were hardly noticeable. A Jeep was coming toward us, on the broken highway above—the first one we'd seen in the hours since we'd left.

“What?” Clara asked, looking out at the road. “What is it?”

Bette turned, noticing it at the same time. The Jeep barreled forward, speeding over the uneven pavement. A searchlight on the back went on, and someone turned it sideways, directing it at the houses, the Jeep slowing as it passed.

I took a step toward Bette, trying to put myself between her and the front window, but she moved too quickly. She was already up, within a few feet of it, waving her hands frantically. “We're here,” she called, her voice scratchy and shrill. “Over here!”

I pressed my palm against her mouth, pulling her back into the room. “Just stay quiet,” I said to the rest of the girls. “Move to the sides of the window—now.” Bette struggled against me for a moment but I pulled her closer, her back to me as I kept my hand over her mouth.

Clara ushered the girls against the front wall. She peeked out the window as the Jeep neared. “It's slowing,” she said. She lowered her head, closing her eyes for a moment, her back pressed against the wall.

The sky outside the window was brighter as the light passed over the houses beside ours. I could hear the girls' quiet breathing, and Bette tried to say something to me, her words muffled under my hand. Then, in an instant, the room's shadowy insides were lit up. For the first time I could see every tear in the wallpaper, the way the ceiling buckled in places, how filthy the floor was, covered with dust and sand. Worn, beaten shoes were scattered beneath the bed. We sat there, silent, squinting against the unbearable light, watching as it passed.