The second murder has left The Inferno sick with horror. I can feel it all the time, throbbing in the air. A week since Lace’s death, and I’ve finally managed to convince Luke that we must keep going with the case. If we stop searching for the murderer, people might start looking at us instead.
It is sickening, of course. Beyond sickening. Luke is barely keeping his head above water. So I push him and prod him and sometimes I guilt him – I do anything and everything to make sure he lives a little longer, one day at a time.
We don’t meet in secret. We can’t. Raven is watching us too closely.
This evening after dinner Luke and I go to Eric’s house. He looks like a walking ghost. I’ve brought him a plate of food because he wasn’t at the Den. He takes it and puts it untouched on the table, then motions for us to sit on the couch.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Sorry for everything. It’s unbearable.”
He nods.
“We’re still trying to work out what happened. And I need to tell you that I know you and Hal were involved with each other. I knew before he died.”
Eric blinks. “He told you?”
“I saw the two of you one night. I didn’t say anything.”
He sighs. “Yes. We were involved.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say again, and it sounds pathetic. Luke is silent beside me, going through his own personal torture of guilt. “Look, I have an awkward question to ask you. You were Batch’s best friend.”
Eric nods.
“Do you know if he was seeing anyone? Besides his wife?”
Eric frowns. “What?”
“We have some forensic results that lead us to believe he was.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he sighs, resting his head in his hands. “Yes. It was me.”
I’m confused.
Eric takes a breath. “Hal and I have been together for a few years. Had been. He … broke up with me recently because he wanted to try to make it work with Pace.” He stops, shaking his head in disbelief. “The kid was seriously messed up. So I let him. I fucking knew he’d come back. But sometimes people have to try stuff. They need to know. So whatever, he went and had his little fling with his best friend, and I waited around feeling like a bit of an idiot. Batch and I … We’d been best friends since we were kids. He came over and we slept together. It was a bit stupid and it surprised us both. He left my place late and he was murdered that same night. Hal and I got back together, briefly, and then he was murdered too.”
I breathe out in a rush. I don’t know how to take it in, the amount of grief he must be enduring. I don’t know if he even knows how to take it in. He seems numb and lost and utterly dazed.
“Eric, I … Fuck.”
“Yeah, fuck,” he agrees.
“Do you …” I take a breath and try to gather my thoughts. “Do you remember what time Batch left here that night?”
Eric shrugs vacantly. “Maybe like four or five?”
So he left this house and was killed on his way home. It makes sense, suddenly, all that time we couldn’t account for after Batch’s shift on the wall had ended.
“Why are you doing this?” Luke asks suddenly, looking at me.
“What?”
He stands thunderously and heads out the door.
I look at Eric awkwardly. “Sorry. He’s … a bit unwell.”
“Hal told me about the two of you.”
My mouth opens but nothing comes out.
“He was really fascinated by the story. I was too. By the man who was so … loyal to this woman he’d left behind. We knew about you long before you got here, Josephine.”
I meet Eric’s eyes. Smile a little helplessly. “I could never live up to the story.”
“You have,” he says. “You have surpassed any story.”
Something catches in my chest and I don’t understand. “Why?”
He thinks about it, considering me with that face I really like, and really liked even the first time I saw him. “You’re resilient,” he says eventually.
And I am so close to tears that I have to stand and make my way to the door. He follows me. “I know it probably doesn’t mean anything, but I’m here for you, any time you need anything,” I tell him.
Eric nods. “You’re the only one who knows the truth,” he admits. “I mean they probably guessed after my toast, but I feel … I might need to keep seeing you.”
“Please do.”
He kisses me on the cheek and I hug him tight for a few seconds.
Outside Luke is standing with his back to me, looking out over the veggie garden. “Luke.”
He turns to look at me with such disappointment that for a second I can’t believe he is the same person. He has never looked at me like that. “Why were you doing that?” he asks. “Putting him through that?”
I don’t know how to answer, filled abruptly with shame.
“Why are you forcing us through this fucking charade, Josi?”
I swallow. “Because we have to chase the leads. If Quinn and Raven find out what we know about Batch and Eric, and then see that we haven’t been following it up, then they’re sure as shit going to know we’re hiding something.”
It’s beyond belief that someone like Quinn, who seems so nice, could be capable of punishing his people with death. Luke is his friend, for god’s sake, but there is no doubt in my mind that it doesn’t exclude him from the rules. Quinn is obsessed with the rules.
I take Luke’s hands. “We have to build some sort of case. Something to show him. He has to know that we’ve at least been trying or he’ll start snooping around.”
“It just feels so awful, making Eric drudge up all that shit about Batch and Hal while the whole time I just sit there in front of him …”
“I know. But I think it helped him to know that we know. That someone knows.”
“It’s awful being the only person to hold a secret.”
I touch his cheek. The first touch we’ve allowed ourselves in a week. “Will you come with me to check on Lace and Batch’s daughter?” he asks me.
I nod, and we walk to their house.
May answers the door again. But this time she smiles in relief to see us, and the expression builds knots of confusion in my chest. “Come in,” she implores. “Do you have questions?”
“We …” Luke falters. “No. We just wanted to see how you and Eve are.”
“Thank you, sweetheart. I wanted to say sorry for how obstinate we all were about Batch’s body.” May has a steady stream of tears sliding down her face. “Maybe if we’d let you take him there wouldn’t have been such a terrible mistake and sweet Hal would still be with us. Maybe you could have even saved my Lace.”
“No,” Luke says emphatically. “That’s not on you, May. It’s not. There was no … No way to stop the mistake. It was …”
“There’s no explaining violence,” I say. Her daughter. She had to bury her daughter four days ago. And now she’s raising her grandchild. “We can just try to make the world a little less violent for Eve.”
*
After we’ve left, Luke and I look at each other in the evening light.
“I never know what to say,” he mutters. “Why don’t I ever know what to say?”
“No one ever knows what to say. Or what to feel.”
“You’re always so sure of your feelings.” This surprises me, because it doesn’t seem true at all. “I’m just reaching around in the dark for something to grab hold of,” he adds with a wry smile.
“Is this the right place for that child?” I ask abruptly, thoughts still with Eve. Because I’m listening to the sound we here at The Inferno have forced ourselves to become accustomed to – I’m listening to the scratch and scrape and growl and moan of the Furies beyond the wall.
I walk to this wall, tracing it around to the gate. The guards are up there, firing what few arrows we can make into the fray below. It doesn’t seem to be slowing the creatures. The gate trembles a little; they are even now trying to open it.
“One gate.”
“With reinforced locks and hinges.”
“How long can we keep them out?” I press. “It’s not safe here, Luke.”
“There’s nowhere else, Josi.”
I can’t help my jaw clenching as I listen to the chilling sounds. One gate, and one wall, and who knows how many ravenous monsters. “Well we’d better start thinking of a real way to solve this problem,” I mutter, “’cause I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
It’s simple. Locks can be unlocked from the inside. And there’s a man beside me who is not in total control of his actions.
*
We train, night and day. Luke plays classical music during our sessions, and it helps me to concentrate. He tells me it’ll help even more to meditate and I try, but I don’t know how and it’s now too dangerous for him to come over and teach me. Raven watches us with alarming attentiveness.
“Maybe we could find somewhere else to practice the meditation stuff?” I suggest breathlessly, finishing my round of squats.
“Like where?” Luke’s in training gear and has been working out alongside me, giving me orders in between lifting his own weights.
I’ve spent the last two hours doing lunges and squats and push-ups. My muscles feel like jelly. According to Luke I’m still very ‘out of touch’ with my body.
“I dunno,” I sigh. “Raven can’t watch us constantly, can she?”
“She has just about everyone on the alert to notify her if we’re spotted alone.”
“Gross! This is so messed up.”
“Uh-huh.”
I am distracted by his push-ups. I’m pretty sure he’s moved beyond the hundred mark now, and doesn’t seem to be slowing. “Do you know that the record for most non-stop push-ups is 10,507?”
He pauses, looking at me. “Bullshit.”
I shake my head, smiling. “Sorry, pal. That’s fact.”
He immediately starts doing as many push-ups as he can, as fast as he can, and I laugh as I watch him. After he reaches two hundred I get bored. “Okay. I get it – you’re strong. Can we do something else now?”
He jumps up, full of energy and dripping with sweat. He grins and shakes himself off like a dog – all over me. “Ew, Luke.”
“Don’t you like sweat being sprayed all over you?”
“Can we make me a good fighter now?” I ask. “Seriously. All these exercises aren’t helping me punch anyone.”
“Haven’t you ever seen Karate Kid? We have to build your strength, flexibility and agility with seemingly unrelated tasks, and then when we start the combat training you’ll have all these miraculous new skills.”
“It’s a lot of work.”
“Yes, baby, it is.”
“If only we could montage it. Did you do this much work?”
He grins. “I’ve been training every day for the last nineteen years.”
“Ew.”
“I have an idea where we can go. Come on.”
*
We wind up outside Shadow’s place. “No,” I hiss as Luke knocks on the door. “I don’t want to meditate in Shadow’s house!”
“Why not?”
“It’s weird.”
The door opens and Shadow frowns. “Hey, man,” Luke greets him. “We have a favor to ask as part of your ex-student’s training regimen.”
Shadow stares at us.
“Can we use your house to meditate?”
He looks at us like we’re both freaks.
“It’s his idea,” I say quickly, pointing to Luke.
We wait as Shadow peers at us, then finally gestures us inside. His house is the same as Luke’s, a tiny one-bedroom studio. It’s awkward – I don’t want Shadow watching me meditate. He seems to intuit as much, for he makes some excuse about being on watch duty and leaves the house.
“Sit down and cross your legs,” Luke orders me, so I sit in the middle of the room. “Close your eyes.”
I do so. Luke starts telling me, in his soft, calming voice, to let my mind move through all the parts of my body. I do as he says as well as I can but I can’t really feel anything and mostly I just sit here and think about how we’re alone in a private residence for the first time in ages. I also think about the case, and I think about the cures, and Raven and Quinn and Hal –
“Look,” Luke says, abruptly bringing me back to the room. “You need to be present. Focus, Josephine.”
I focus, knowing I’m in trouble if he calls me Josephine. He talks me through feeling all the nerve endings in every part of my body but I’m just listening to his voice and how lovely it is –
Until he starts to touch me.
My heart jackhammers in my chest. “Woah, what are you doing?”
His fingers touch my toes very lightly. “Can you feel that?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“Concentrate.”
I concentrate. He’s touching my feet, and now my calves. His fingers are moving up and under my knees. Over my thighs and inside them. I’m breathing very quickly and suspect he might be trying to kill me. The nerve endings in my skin are on fire.
But I am existing, abruptly, within my body. Within each part of it. As I never have before. The sensation is electricity through every one of my muscles.
Luke moves his touch to my hands, tracing my fingers. Up my wrists, my inner arms, to my shoulders and my collarbones and my neck and jaw and cheek and lips …
“Luke, stop,” I breathe.
I feel him pull away.
“You’re torturing me. We can’t do this in Shadow’s house.”
“I think I’m dying,” he agrees, and I open my eyes with a breathless laugh.
“You’re a very good teacher. I can feel every inch of my body.”
“Not every inch. Not like I could make you feel it.”
We stare at each other. My skin is scalding, almost painful in its need to be touched. Why did I stop him? “It’s not fair,” I mutter.
“It’s criminal.”
And that’s when the door opens to admit Shadow. Luke and I jerk away from each other even though we haven’t been doing anything.
“Good session,” he tells me loudly. “Thanks, Shadow.”
Shadow stares at us as we rush past him.
We circle around behind my place, on the lookout for spies. It’s so absurd that I can’t stop laughing. Luke opens my window for me. “Uh-oh. You’re hysterical.”
“Who could possibly know if you stay the night?” I ask.
“I don’t know, but I won’t risk it.”
I reach for his face, running my fingers over his lips and –
– and then he’s kissing me. Hard and fast. His mouth is open and I can feel his tongue against mine and he’s pushing me up against the wall of the house. His hands slide beneath my t-shirt and along my spine, circling around to my breasts. His fingers trace my nipples and pinch them gently and I can feel it everywhere.
“I thought it wasn’t worth the risk,” I breathe against his mouth.
“I never said it wasn’t worth the risk,” he replies fervently, kissing me again, pushing me harder against the wall. “I just said I wouldn’t. But we’re not technically procreating.”
I laugh, shoving him away. “Killed the mood.”
His shoulders slump and he looks at me. I feel the gaze as if it’s a touch and it burns.
“Go home,” I tell him. “We’re not animal enough to die for it.”
He smiles. “I think I am.”
“Go home,” I smile.
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
*
Ben looks like a wraith. He is fading fast. His skin is so thin it looks translucent – I can see the spider-veins running like black tar beneath his surface. He no longer paces, despite the restlessness in his body. I don’t think he has the strength for it. He’s starving to death.
“We have to feed him,” I say.
“And how are we meant to do that?” Raven asks.
Quinn, Luke, Raven and I stand on the other side of the glass and watch Ben. Meredith works nearby, ignoring us. Dodge isn’t here today, and it’s funny to think of him having any life outside this lab.
“People die here.”
They all look at me.
I spread my hands. “They’re dead. They won’t know they’re being eaten.”
“You want to feed our dead family members to a cannibal?” Raven asks incredulously. She bursts into laughter. “Oh my god, they’re going to hate you even more than they already do.”
“You really are incredibly unsentimental, aren’t you?” Quinn muses. “It’ll never happen. They wouldn’t even let us postpone a burial, let alone dig someone up and feed them to a Fury.”
I sigh. “Well when I die, I want it known that my body goes to science. Cut it into a million pieces for all I care. Let monsters feast upon it.”
“Morbid chick,” Luke mutters.
“You,” Quinn says bluntly to the scientist.
“Her name’s Meredith,” I point out.
Meredith looks up.
“Is there any work being done on this creature?”
“I believe Dodge has been working on him.”
“Doing what?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
“So you have no idea if the creature is even worth keeping around.”
“We can’t just let him starve to death!” I protest.
“And we can’t feed our people to him!” Raven snaps.
“If it’s possible,” Meredith interjects, “I’d like to start testing him. If this one cannot be kept alive, I’d like another, please.”
“For what?” Quinn asks.
“You’ve got me synthesizing the chemicals in Miss Luquet’s blood,” she says. “I need test subjects if you ever want to inject healthy humans.”
And if we ever want to use it on Luke. I look over at him but he’s not listening. His eyes are locked on Ben and he’s lost in a dark world I know all too well.
*
I wake from a dream of Luke with an idea. But before I can throw off the covers and dash to the shower, Quinn draws me to him and I remember the role I am here to play instead.
His kisses burn me in a way I like. Sometimes I am a doll in his arms, sometimes I am more alive than I have ever been. This morning as he kisses me, pretending he will be able to get an erection, I think of the dream I just had. Luke and I were walking through a building made of glass windows, which caused the two of us to seem fractured and multiplied. Everywhere I turned, there had been a piece of him, the back of his shoulder or the side of his ear. I’d been running through the twisting halls of glass, trying to find the real Luke, but instead I’d been faced with the real me. And she was very ugly.
As the dream reveals itself to me I feel sick and shove Quinn away from me.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I have work to do.”
“It’s barely six.”
“It’s not like there’s any point in me staying in bed with you anyway.” It wounds him, I see, but I don’t really care.
*
On the wall I fire my gun into the Furies, one after the other. The explosions of sound hit my ears and numb my head in a throbbing, whining way. Bang bang bang bang bang. The Furies surge toward the fallen and as I continue to fire I watch them lunge at their own dead, tearing into the flesh hungrily.
I kill more. I fire all the rounds in my clip and then I load a second and a third, watching the feeding frenzy I have started below.
“Raven!” a voice shouts and I turn to see Luke on the wall, raising his hands to me in a way that suggests I am a deranged lunatic.
“What?”
“Stop!”
I blink, looking around to realize that half the compound has come out to see what the gunshots are about, and now stare up at me with unease. I start firing again, angrily this time. Screw them all. More Furies fall under my hail.
Luke is upon me, wrestling the gun from my hand.
“Don’t!” I snarl, shoving at him, but he unloads the weapon and slips it into the back of his track pants.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demands.
“Killing Furies.”
“With a gun? At 6 am?”
I shrug.
“You know better. It’s a huge waste of ammunition and it freaked everybody out. Fire arrows if you want to go on a killing spree. Shitload quieter.”
I meet his green eyes. “You are not above me, Luke Townsend.”
“I didn’t say I was!”
“You say it every day, with every look and every action.”
He shakes his head, walking away along the wall. “This is getting really dull, Raven. Grow up.”
My heart hammers. “There’s a reason, you know.”
“For what?”
“For why I’m up here killing Furies.”
Luke turns around. “Okay.”
I fold my arms. “Take a look.”
He peers over at the bloodbath below. Thinks about it for a while, then looks back at me. There’s a light in his eyes, something new. “They eat their own dead.”
Smugly I nod.
“How haven’t we noticed this earlier?”
“We don’t kill enough at once for it to be obvious,” I shrug. “But kill a dozen and it’s a feast.”
*
Before I head off to training this morning I check on Pace. She hates that I do this every morning and every night. But instead of the stream of insults I usually receive for my nosiness, this morning she is in the bathroom before me, and won’t come out.
“What’s going on?” I call through the door.
“Piss off, Dual.”
“Are you sick? It’s been forty-five minutes.”
“Why are you monitoring my bathroom time, you freak?”
“I’m opening the door.”
“Good luck. It’s locked.”
I sigh. “Fine, if you swear you’re not in there dying of some revolting illness then I’ll go.”
“I swear.”
At the training room Luke has left me a message to meet him on the wall.
Sweat immediately starts creeping down my spine as I take the steps two at a time.
One of the guys on duty points me east so I make my way around the wall until I spot Raven, Luke and Shadow bent over something.
“What’s up?”
Luke glances at me, then nods down at the ground. “Specimen collection.”
I peer over to where the Furies have swarmed. Raven is dangling a noose toward what looks to be a dead Fury, trying to hook its neck. “Is it dead?”
“Tranquilized.”
“You’re kidding. You’re bringing a live Fury inside the walls?” I stare at the three of them. “You’re out of your minds.”
“We’ve been trying to bring dead ones in, but they were all eaten before we could hook them,” Raven replies impatiently.
“What do you want with it?”
“Really, sweetheart,” she murmurs. “I thought you were supposed to be smart.”
“Whoever promised you that?”
Raven looks at me briefly, and I actually see a hint of amusement in her eyes. She must be in a good mood. “Why do scientists study anything? To learn what they are, and figure out how to destroy them.”
“Oh, lovely. I’m sure species destruction is at the forefront of every good scientist’s motives.”
“They’re human,” Shadow says abruptly. “Not a different species.”
We look down at the creatures. Their snarls and barks sound through the quiet, still morning air. But he isn’t wrong.
Something catches my eye and I realize it is a female Fury who stands a few paces back from the wall, more still than the others. She’s watching me. The whites of her eyes are blood red, and when my gaze accidentally catches hers, she gives a very slow, very cold smile. It chills my core because in that expression there is calculation and worse – there is cunning.
That’s when she scares the shit out of us all by taking a long breath of air through her nose and saying in a rasping growl, “Pure flesh.”
“Christ!” Luke exclaims.
“Did you know they could talk?” Raven demands.
“We heard them once in the city,” he admits. “I’m not sure they all can.”
I lean out over the wall, keeping my eyes on her. “What do you want?” I ask.
“Einstein’s really proving her worth this morning,” Raven mutters. “She wants to eat you, dumbass.”
I’m not convinced. Not about this one.
Human indeed.
*
Luke has set up a pulley system so that when Raven finally manages to hook the Fury’s head with the noose, they can pull him up without any trouble. It is a shocking sight, for it looks like a hanged corpse dangling in the air like that. I am hoping fervently that it doesn’t decide to wake up before we can get it in a cage. Raven’s idea is to kill it here where it won’t be gobbled up, and then feed it to Ben. It’s all very disturbing.
Once it’s on this side of the wall, Luke slings the creature over his shoulder and walks through the street with it. I follow closely, thinking him a reckless idiot to leave himself so vulnerable, but he is a man who doesn’t seem to know fear anymore. I’ve heard people talk in the Den of how he’s more than a man, and I pity them – and him – because he is more fallible at the moment than the lot of them put together.
We watch as he puts the Fury on the floor of the lab. We stare at it. Raven draws her gun and squats beside its head.
“Wait,” I say quickly.
“What?”
“’S’alright,” Luke murmurs, placing a hand on the back of my neck. Raven eyes it coldly, then turns and shoots the Fury in the head.
“God, Raven,” I exclaim. “We could have given it an injection or something a bit more humane.”
She glances at me as though I am a child and doesn’t bother responding.
Inside the cage Ben begins to scream. It’s awful because it doesn’t seem like he cares if he shreds his voice completely. I wonder if they feel pain anymore. It occurs to me that we are about to feed a person to another human being. We’ve become barbarous, out here in the west. It’s full on Lord of the Flies. Maybe there is a beast … maybe it’s only us.
Raven and Luke roll the body to the door. I open it carefully and they try to shove the Fury in, but Ben is hurling himself at the opening and it’s all very chaotic for a moment as they try to push the corpse inside against the blunt force of a savage beast. They manage to get it in and re-lock the door.
It’s only after Ben has determined that he can’t get out that he sets upon the other Fury, tearing at it with teeth and hands.
I look away, nauseous.
“Did you see that?” Luke asks.
“Uh – yeah,” I reply.
“No, Ben didn’t want the dead body as much as he wanted what’s outside the cage.”
“Why is that surprising?” Raven asks.
“Because animals go for the kill that’s closest and easiest. He was having food delivered to him on a platter and he didn’t want it.”
I think of the female Fury and the look in her eyes. “I don’t think he is an animal,” I say. “At least, I think he’s a lot smarter than one. I think they all are.”
*
I go to the training room and punch the bag. The meditation has been helping, so Luke’s finally started teaching me combat. The lessons are all about how to use my size and weight and speed against an opponent, most of whom will inevitably be bigger and stronger than me.
Luke appears silently to watch. He’s all hopped up on testosterone – I can feel it in the air, in the way he’s watching me. The virus is making him mindless, someone who wants to fight and hunt and break stuff all the time. The speed at which he’s changing is really scaring me and I’ve taken to hassling Meredith night and day about her progress on the antidote for him. She is tight-lipped, and it’s driving me up the wall.
“What?” I ask.
“Lazy,” he accuses my punches.
So I turn and punch him. He’s too quick, so my fist sails straight by his head. Luke grins and launches himself into the fight, jabbing at me swiftly. I manage to block him but I’m on the back foot now, and he has the advantage. Who am I kidding? He would have the advantage against me even if he had no arms and legs.
I track back, blocking his heavy blows. I step into the punch like he taught me and go for his sternum. I’m blocked so I go for his face with two quick right crosses. Blocked again, and again. But at least I’m managing to refrain from being hit.
He catches my arm and pulls me in close so he can send a blow into my kidneys. It’s embarrassingly light. I sweep out with my legs to try to knock him off his feet but I just kick hard shinbone and it hurts my foot.
Dropping suddenly, I manage to wriggle out of his grip and scramble out of the way of his next attack.
We have an audience now. Several trainees and a few of the soldiers are watching us delightedly.
I’m not strong, and I don’t think I ever will be, but I’ve learned over the last couple of months that I’m fast. I force my mind to stay in my body and I dodge out of the way of a massive head kick Luke sends at me. I try my luck at ducking in close to him and hitting him in the guts. The punch doesn’t land – he blocks it, but I hear him breathe, “Nice one.”
Mostly what I’ve discovered from boxing is that you get really sore forearms. Luke gives mine a hammering today, but he doesn’t land too many body blows, and by the time he finishes with a flourish and slams me onto my back, I feel positively proud. Despite the complete lack of air in my lungs.
Until someone shouts, “Ever landed a punch, Dual?”
My good mood evaporates and I shove Luke off me.
“Take a knee,” he orders. Every time we have a sparring session he finishes it with a rule or two. I crouch on the mats, and he crouches before me. “Stop hesitating,” he tells me. “You hesitate and you lose.”
“It doesn’t feel real,” I admit. “When we spar. I can’t believe it enough.”
“Then find a way to make it real. It is real. Don’t worry about me – respect me enough to come at me as hard as you can. It’ll mean the difference between life and death for you one day.” He leans forward. There’s a trickle of sweat moving down the side of his temple. “You’re still protecting yourself more than anything. You can’t be concerned about protecting yourself.”
“Isn’t that half the fight? Blocking and stuff?”
“The fight isn’t about your pain,” he says firmly. “It’s about his pain. You’re going to get hurt. It doesn’t matter, because the only purpose of your existence in those minutes is to hurt him more than he hurts you.” He holds my eyes. “Are you hearing me?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes you have to take a terrible wound to inflict an even worse one. That’s an important thing to remember. You can’t be afraid of it.”
“I’m not,” I tell him softly. I’ve been hurt. I’ve taken wounds. I’ve known a lot of pain. It shouldn’t scare me anymore – I should be free of it by now. I don’t think Luke believes me, though.
“I want to go back to the city,” I tell him, my voice low. His eyes narrow and he leans in. “I don’t give a shit about Raven’s rule anymore – come to my place tonight so we can make a plan.”
Luke cracks his knuckles and then nods.
*
I don’t know how I get through the afternoon of work. I am so distracted that I move at half my usual speed along the planting rows. My mind is eighty percent focused on a mission to the city, twenty percent focused on my complete sexual frustration. I never imagined that if Luke and I got back together we would basically have to not be together. He and I haven’t had sex since last year before the last blood moon, and that’s feeling like a very, very long time ago.
“You’re really grossing me out,” Pace observes at one stage, and I realize I have been daydreaming and washing my hands under the tap with slow, sensual movements. Maybe it’s not quite eighty/twenty.
Cheeks flaming, I jerk away from the tap and let her wash.
“Why don’t you just apply for breeding permission?”
“Breeding permission? Because I’m not a cow.”
“Cows don’t apply for permission,” she points out mildly.
“You’re right,” I agree. “Applying for permission to have sex is so disgusting that not a single species on the planet does it, except for, of course, the poor freaks who live in The Inferno.”
“At least you’re not out there, struggling to survive,” she says. “Or in the city.”
“You know what? The city was better than here.”
She stares at me, her mouth falling open. “That is such bullshit, Dual,” she snarls, and I realize I’ve really offended her. “The city steals pieces of you!”
The people in the garden behind us all look over to see what the shouting is about.
“Okay,” I murmur carefully. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
Pace shakes her head.
“But it’s not perfect here either.”
“Of course it’s not perfect! We don’t get to have everything!”
“Why not?” I ask and she stops. Frowns. Doesn’t understand me. “Why shouldn’t we get to feel everything and have everything? Like, basic human rights.”
“It’s a basic human right to have sex?”
“Hell yes!”
Our eyes hold and then she drops hers to the ground. It can’t be a good feeling to have had your one and only sexual experience be with a man you love who didn’t feel the same and is now dead. In fact, it must be complete anguish.
“You and Hal – ” I start.
“Had sex once, when he was drunk and I wasn’t, and I have no way to tell if it was horrible or not.”
I pick at the dirt under my nails. “Well. Did you enjoy it?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not a trick question, Pace.”
“Yes,” she says slowly. “Sort of.”
“Did he enjoy it?”
“How should I know? He was gay so probably not.”
I fall silent. A taut moment stretches out.
“Did you know?” she asks me, the one question I’ve been dreading.
“Yes,” I answer.
“For how long?”
“Not long.”
“Did he tell you?”
“No. I saw him.”
“After … he and I … ?”
“Yes, after. And only a day before he was killed. I … It wasn’t my truth to tell.”
Pace looks ready to vomit, she is so pale. “I feel so humiliated,” she whispers. “To not know something like that – ”
“Nobody knew.”
She shakes her head. “I was his best friend. I should have. So that I could support him.”
“We don’t …” I clear my throat. “We can’t know people absolutely. There will always be pieces of us that we keep from each other. But do you know what my last conversation with him was about?”
Pace watches me mutely.
“He said we needed to take care of each other. He said you were the only person who he felt truly took care of him, and that it was a lifeline for him. He said he loved you. And that was the last conversation I had with him.”
Pace moves a hand to her chest and sinks to the ground. She is trying so hard not to cry. It’s agonizing to watch. When she looks up at me she says, “Dual, I’m pregnant.”
*
I forego the lab and the training and I stay home with Pace. She has been completely uncommunicative ever since telling me. But I can’t help feeling awash with excitement. While she does push-ups in the living room, I take inventory of both our bedrooms, and all the space in the house. It is more than big enough to house a baby.
“What are you doing?” she finally asks when she sees me peering at her cupboard space.
“Just working out what will go where.”
“Huh?”
“With the baby.”
Pace squints at me suspiciously.
“I’m just daydreaming,” I admit. “I wanted to imagine where it would go, and what we’d do with the house …”
Luke arrives at the door. “Hey …” He stops when he sees Pace and I watching each other like hawks.
“Was that wrong?” I ask my roommate.
Luke stalls awkwardly near the door.
“Josi,” Pace says, and it strikes me that it’s the first time she’s used my real name, and it worries me. “I’m not keeping it.”
I take a slow breath. “Why?” I ask.
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Are you one of those pro-lifers?” she snaps.
“No. Really, not at all.” I shake my head. “I’m just asking you why.”
“Because Hal’s dead,” she says. “And I’m alone.”
“You’re not alone.”
“Don’t. It’s not the same and you know it. I don’t want a child. I’ve never wanted a child. I’m too young.”
“But it’s so rare to be able to bring a baby into the world without fearing it will be cured,” I say. My heart is beating in panic. She doesn’t understand the magnitude of this. “This is precious,” I utter. “This baby is a treasure.”
“I don’t know if I’d be able to love it,” she exclaims. “That’s not a treasure. Bringing a child into a home that doesn’t want it. That’s a tragedy.”
I swallow. My chest feels enormous. “I’ll raise it,” I whisper. “I’ll do it.” Because the truth is that when she told me she was pregnant, the reality of how much I want a child of my own hit with painful clarity.
Pace stares at me.
I feel shattered on the inside, destroyed with hope. A moment takes me, a big moment, and in it I turn to look at Luke. Even though I would want the baby alone, there is also a part of me that knows the decision is not only mine, but his as well.
Luke Townsend looks at me across the room. He holds my eyes, and I know he understands, and then he nods.
I have no space in my heart for the gratitude I feel for him, for the love.
I turn back to Pace. “We’ll take the baby, if you want. We’ll love it.”
Pace shakes her head desperately. “You’re not thinking straight,” she says. “We didn’t have clearance for procreation. Hal was killed for it. I’ll be killed for it. They’ll let me have the baby and then they’ll punish me with exile.”
Oh fuck. I didn’t even think. The air leaves my chest in a rush.
“You have no idea what you’re actually asking me,” Pace says and goes to bed with a slam of her door.
I close my eyes. Try to get a hold of the ridiculous floundering hope inside me. It isn’t fair, and it isn’t realistic. I know this.
Hands brush my cheeks, my jaw, my neck. Hands I know very well. I tilt into his touch and open my eyes.
“I love you, Josephine Luquet,” Luke says, “And whether it is this baby or not, you and I will have children.”
I kiss him.
*
I lie on Josi’s bed with her. We face each other, hands touching.
“We’re not permitted to breed,” she says with a smile.
“I’m a rebel.”
“That’s why I like you.”
“Oh yeah? How much do you like me?”
“Medium.”
I laugh, tracing my hand over the curve of her hip.
“Luke,” she says. “Can you tell me about your parents?”
“You’ve met my parents. You have dinner with them every night.”
“I want you to tell me secret things about them. Things from your childhood. Real things. Things from before the cure.”
I lie still for a while, thinking about the question and the answer. About how uncomfortable it makes me, about how thoroughly I would have avoided it had this been during our first relationship. But that was the relationship full of lies, and I need to build something else. My hand moves up to gently thread through her thick, dark hair.
“Mom has pink cheeks. They’re pink no matter what. She made eighteen cups of tea a day. Every problem in the world was solved by cups of tea. But she was smart, too. She knew how to talk stuff through, and I always had this sense that everything she said was inherently true. She could deal with anything – usually injuries. Her laugh was very high-pitched. And unexpected. She loved listening to Motown music and blues. She had great stories from her childhood, which she relished telling us. Dave and I always got sick of them, but they were good. I drove her nuts ’cause I was always pulling things apart so I could figure out how they worked and then never putting them back together.” I smile, thinking about all the times she threatened to punish me and then never did.
“She was an excellent woman,” I say simply. “She’s only a few hundred yards away but I miss her terribly.”
Josi’s hand moves to my cheek, her thumb stroking gently. “And your dad?”
“He was a philosopher in worker’s clothes. Had all the best sayings for every occasion. I have absolutely no idea how he came up with them because I never once saw him crack a book. But he was a perfectionist. Good at everything with his hands. God, the stuff he used to build was so beautiful I didn’t understand how it was possible. His hands were dry and perpetually covered in dirt. It gets under his fingernails and you can’t get it out – I’m not kidding. That dirt is there forever. I tried to scrape it out once when I was a kid but there was no moving it. He said he wished his hands were as soft as mine. He also paid me a dime to scratch his feet.” I start to laugh. “Man, he loved it. My fingernails weren’t sharp enough so he made me use bottle caps. I really used to dig in.”
Josi is laughing too, imagining the gross picture I paint.
But then she says, “Tell me about Dave.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. I’m right here.”
The ache of it. I have never imagined such an ache could exist. I close my eyes.
“He was good at everything,” I say softly. I’m not sure if Josi can even hear me, but she doesn’t ask me to repeat it. “He was surly about being good at everything. He didn’t want to be good at things, but unfortunately he was. He was brave, but it annoyed him. A stray cat used to bring dead rats to our doorstep every day and we told Dave he was the man-of-the-house-in-training so he had to get rid of the entrails every morning with a shovel. He hated it, which I thought was hilarious. But he did it, and none of us doubted for a second that he would do it. He could just do stuff. He fixed stuff. He was the person you knew would come through for you. Always.” I stop, drawing a breath. “He was so funny,” I whisper finally. I think it’s the worst bit of all, that he used to make everyone laugh so much.
Josi’s hands move over the lines and shapes of my face; I can feel her fingers tremble, but her voice when she speaks is strong. “The only wisdom I have comes from books,” she admits, and I give a breathless laugh until she says, “but Thornton Wilder said ‘There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love’.”
It’s just like what Dad said, and I feel it suddenly and intensely; I feel it as a great, gaping ocean, and me slipping into it. Her melancholy has found me, for the first time. Her yearning.
She holds me as I weep for my brother, for the loss of him.
An ancient, tight thing within starts to loosen. I do not feel any better; you can’t cry away grief. And you can’t cry away the knowledge that your brother was a far better man than you. He would have killed himself, rather than leave the people in this compound in danger. He would have ended this madness because he was selfless. But the girl in my arms makes me selfish; secretly I know that I’d let the whole world burn down if it meant she and I would live in the remains alone, just as we did the first time we fell in love.
*
It’s very late when I whisper to her, not knowing if she’s still awake or not.
“What did it feel like for you?”
She doesn’t move, or open her eyes. I think she must be asleep until she says, “A shadow. One I could see only when I didn’t look directly at her.”
Josephine’s eyes move to mine, and for just a moment I have the most vivid memory I have ever experienced, like a vision or a hallucination or something far too real. Her eyes, in the space between blinks, are bleeding red like they were on the night of the blood moon.
My heart lurches and I have to slam my eyelids shut; her soullessness on that night is a foretelling of my own and I can’t shake the dread of it.
“How does it feel for you?” she asks.
I’m unable to speak, at first. Josi traces her fingers over my lips; she touches me now as though she will never have enough touch, as though she has wasted so much time not pressing her skin to mine. I clear my throat. “I’ve spent most of my life learning to inflict harm. Control means everything to me. It has to, when you know how to kill someone.” I swallow; there is so much fear uncurling in my heart. “This is like … long, crooked fingers reaching through the dark to tug at the edges of me, gentle and sinister. And they’ll keep slowly tugging until control unravels, and me with it.”