I pulled open the door, the faint glow from our living room pulling Careen’s face into fuzzy focus. She looked dark, her usually perfect face shadowed.
I rubbed my eyes and yawned as she pushed past me.
She slid across the floor elegantly, flicking on light switches as she went. My eyes followed, but my brain was struggling to keep up.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said, mid-yawn.
The floor creaked and sighed under Joseph’s weight, and I turned to see him leaning against the doorframe to our bedroom, his hair raked up on one side. He looked adorable this time of the morning, messy with sleep. I tucked my hair behind my ears self-consciously and gazed at a knot in the floorboards. I knew I looked like a crow had made a nest on my head. Joseph folded his arms across his chest and said, “Careen, slow down. What’s going on?”
Her eyes danced in excited panic. “Pack up your things. We’re going to the Monkey City.”
Monkey city? I awoke like a shot of coffee, following Careen’s frantic movements as she picked up a pile of my clothes and searched for a backpack. “Why now?” I asked, my eyes hurting from following her around the room.
She swung her head to face me, her beautiful hair sliding over her cheeks like silk. “I don’t know. I just know it was voted in this morning. I think… I think they just don’t want to stay here any longer. Too many people have died. It’s not safe.”
I agreed with her there. “Uh, we didn’t get a vote.”
She shrugged. “It wouldn’t have mattered. It was a huge lot of hands, you know, a minority,” she said, the cogs twitching and stalling in that strange head of hers.
“You mean majority?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
Joseph chuckled in the background.
“Joseph, can you help me get Pietre down to the train station? We’ll leave from there.” Her face was flushed like the pink graze on a peach from the movement.
“Sure thing, Careen. Rosa, just throw some clothes in a bag for me, and I’ll meet you down there.” They strode out into the dawn, leaving me alone. My thoughts stripped like a birch at the end of winter.
I nodded, moving mechanically, still a little shocked we were leaving. The decision had been made so quickly and without us. I packed a small bag for each of us, changed into jeans, a shirt, and a hooded sweatshirt, and laced my sneakers haphazardly. Outside, I could hear the collective voices of thousands of people moving through the streets. I placed a sleeping Orry in his carrier, put him on my back, and slung the packs over my arms.
I thought of Addy and Hana and all the others we were leaving behind, and I worried we were running away from our ghosts. But I walked away from my cottage, my shell, and joined the padded footsteps of a wounded army, not charging, but retreating.
Scanning forward through the trees, it would be easy to believe it was just Joseph and me, arms swinging, hand in hand, taking a stroll. But when I looked behind me at the endless line, the caravan of people walking with packs heaped high on their backs, I remembered we were fleeing. Leaving home and never coming back.
There were so many missing, and the spine of the long line was disjointed by two stretchers, Apella and Pietre.
I still saw Addy, rattling along, smacking the back of people’s legs with her walking stick as she passed under the canopy of brittle poplars that spread in front of us like an ancient avenue. The grey bark looked like the peeling skin of sunburn, bitten by frost and hungry deer.
I felt her in the sharpness of the dried grass that grazed my claves. I saw her in the delicate coverings of the trees. And I missed her.
Her wish was to be wrapped and tumbled down into the Hole with the rest of the dead Survivors. I didn’t go. I couldn’t watch her roll into the silty arms of the crater. I couldn’t watch a body that was once bursting with animation, advice, and sarcasm, skid down the edge like a stone.
We walked with the men, Rash, Pelo, and Alexei, although one was missing. Just like Addy, I saw Deshi in the land around us; he shot up from the ground in every perfectly postured, linear tree. I knew he haunted Joseph even worse.
They took turns carrying Apella. Alexei cradled Hessa in one arm, or sometimes he sat on the stretcher with her flavorless body. I wasn’t sure how much she noticed either of them. Her eyes were planted in the sky, tracking clouds or wishing she were up there. It was hard to tell.
She slept a lot of the time, her wheezing breath almost as loud as the endless boots crushing leaves and sticks underfoot. Alexei talked to her even when she slept. His grip on the rope of reality was slipping, his hands burning as he slid even further away.
A flash of red hair streamed through the trees. I’d barely seen Careen since we left. Sick of the moaning Pietre, she had decided to take out her frustration on the poor wildlife that pecked or scampered around the edges of our caravan. She gracefully whipped through the background, occasionally throwing a spear or knife, and bringing armloads of small game in for dinner. I left her to it, as she seemed to need the solitude. I wondered if she felt it to. It didn’t feel like a good change. We were running away.
I slapped out at a passing branch in frustration and sighed.
“What’s the matter with you, Soar?” Rash said from behind me. Joseph humphed loudly, but we both ignored him
“What? Apart from everything?”
“Way to be positive,” Rash exclaimed sarcastically.
“You haven’t been to the Monkey City, Rash. It’s so creepy. I’m not sure it’s any safer than what we just left.”
Rash patted Orry’s head and smiled toothily. “You worry too much. It’ll be fine.”
I rolled my eyes. “You worry too little.” I punched his shoulder. He shoved me back lightly, careful to avoid Orry, but I stumbled into a tree.
A sharp hand grabbed me before I fell. I thought it was Joseph and was about to snap that I was fine, when the sharp fingers dug in a little. I spun around to see Pelo staring at me intensely, his odd eyes smashing me with their glare. I whipped my arm back out of his grasp, and his eyes softened to sadness.
Formally, weirdly, he said, “Rosa, may I speak with you in private?”
I cocked my head to the side, marveling at the many Pelos I had met since that night on the other side of the wall in Pau. This Pelo was stiff and starchy, his hands balled in fists at his sides, shaking just a tiny bit. Was he nervous?
I opened my mouth to say something more cordial, but all that came out was, “No thanks.”
Head forward, I continued stomping through the woods, very aware he was right behind me.
He caught up and grabbed my shoulder. I stopped still. “Please, Rosa. You owe me at least this. Hear me out.” His voice was laced with forced authority, and it reminded me of when he caught me very methodically and psychotically cutting big square windows into the butt of several of my mother’s skirts because she’d told me I couldn’t go outside to play in the snow. I was six, and he had punished me by making me shovel the snow from all the driveways on our street. I could still see the slight curl of his lip as he tried to look angry, but he came to help me after my first driveway. “If we do it together, it will take half the time,” he’d said. “Rosa, stop scowling and have some fun.” He’d dipped his hand into the snow and thrown it at me, making me laugh. Now the memory just stung me, like the snow was a handful of splintered glass.
Calmly, I handed Orry to Rash and stepped out of the line, taking a few steps away from the group, pulling myself through the white trunks. Joseph followed. Pelo looked from me to Joseph and sighed.
He started to talk, but I cut him off. The memory of the snow from all those years ago melted in my angry hands. I stared at my feet for a long while, and then lifted my eyes to meet his. Red, I could only see red.