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000.174.05.48.04

The shoulder of my coat still holds the stain of Father’s tears. His sobbing cracked my already fragile heart and I don’t think I’ll ever recover. I kissed him on the cheek—a small token that will never repay what I owe for his endless love and care.

I now face Wall Opening Three out of the four circling the globe. This one is placed in the top west corner of my own state of Missouri—one of the remaining thirty-one states. The wide Missouri River lies behind me, flowing with a hushed whisper. I want to jump off the arched bridge we just crossed—jump into the river’s brownish-red waters and let it carry me back toward Unity Village.

My Enforcer holds each of my arms at the wrist with a grip like human handcuffs. My heartbeat has long since abandoned the word steady and pumps blood like a frantic firehose trying to douse the crackle in my nerves.

Some people on the train blew me kisses and squeezed my arm as I exited—clearly not residents of Unity. Some people fear death, but everyone fears the Wall. The unknown. The passengers had a special grace I needed. This is the only stop in a stretch of two hundred miles North and it feels abandoned—like my future.

Father demanded I bring a thin coil of rope. A loop slips off my shoulder as I walk, so I readjust. The black Enforcer and I follow a marked path toward the towering stone structure. I’ve seen the top edge of the Wall all my life. The sun sets behind it every night, leaving a menacing orange-red glow. I now stand at its base for the first time.

It’s colossal—stretching to each side like an endless guard with a chilled grey heart. How could anyone build this and call it an improvement to society? God certainly didn’t. I can’t imagine Him speaking the Wall into existence and saying, “It is good.”

Tiny early-morning snowdots dance through the air, windless, but swirling of their own accord—unusual for April, but appropriate for the chill in my soul. None seem to land, but they brush my face as though in cool reassurance.

The guardhouse leans to one side, rickety and breezy. It loses my gaze to the frosty Opening beside it. Even when the guard and Skelley Chase emerge from the guardhouse I can’t stop staring at the carved arch enveloping a smooth, steel door. There’s no handle. I imagine the tunnel stretching for miles through cold rock, infested with bugs and animals anxious to escape the abandoned West.

“You’re late,” the guard barks. “It’s already seven-thirty!”

I can’t breathe. I can’t look away. I’m already trapped in that Wall, clawing against the door, trying to come back to this side. My fingers ache, my ears fill with distraction, my eyes sting. I sway.

My Enforcer gives me a rough shake. I gasp and my clenched hands relax. A tear slides down my cheek.

“Don’t panic yet.” The guard is in his mid-forties, with a cropped haircut, stained brown uniform, and squinty eyes. “It’s even freakier inside.”

I want to flee—the most I’ve wanted to do since leaving Unity Village. The entire ride on the train passed in blurry shadow. I don’t even remember blinking.

Skelley Chase strides forward. “Ready?”

I don’t move, but the Enforcer shoves me forward. Skelley Chase lowers his voice as we walk to the Wall. “I’ll have one week in October for you to return, so don’t miss it. Keep a sharp eye on the dates. And watch for news or updates from me.”

Panic swells again. Skelley Chase holds out his sentra. “Take this. Use it on the other side and send them to me through your nanobook.”

“I have one,” I whisper.

He raises an eyebrow. “You do?”

“Reid gave it to me.”

Skelley Chase shrugs. “Then press this.”

I do and don’t even register the prick. “Is this emotion going in the autobiography?”

“It’s just a biography now. And yes, this is the final emotigraph. Readers will have to follow the rest of your story through updates to their X-books. And trust me, they’ll follow. People love to feel what you’re feeling.”

I doubt any reader wants to feel the terror coating my spine. God, are You with me? I shudder at the idea of meeting Him face to face. What will He say? Not, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” This little phrase is inscribed on the inner Bible flaps of the few steadfast souls. I’ll probably get, “You did okay, wasteful and fickle Parvin.”

I squeeze my fingers together and release a long breath. My terror settles into a petrified calm, filling my body like it’s an empty lemonade pitcher. I allow the silence to dominate.

“Two minutes, girly.” The guard’s compassion must have died with his first Wall victim.

I can’t do this. I breathe deep and think what I wish I could scream: I don’t want to die. I don’t want to leave this shadow of a footprint behind for my life.

The guard holds a blank wooden Clock next to a large square hole in the Wall. He sets it inside, places a heavy metal lid over the hole, and pushes a stone button with his thumb. A strong suction sound precedes a loud clunk! The Clock is gone when he takes away the lid.

Skelley Chase stands beside the guard with a slick camera floating at eye height. A round, black disc sits on the grass beneath it. I can’t tell if it’s stone or metal. A red light blinks on the levitating camera. I don’t ask. I don’t care. I can’t bring myself to say anything.

This is Skelley Chase’s doing.

He tips his fedora. I look away and take my first willing step toward the Wall.

“Why do you have on all that traveling stuff, eh?” The guard gestures to my shoulder pack, rope, and garb. “Think you’re gonna survive or something?”

“It makes me feel more at home.” It’s the truth—I’m carrying a bit of each family member with me. Maybe it’s false comfort.

The guard shrugs. “Whatever makes the Good-bye less painful, I guess.” He scratches the stubble on his chin, takes a deep breath, and spews his next words with the speed of an auctioneer. “May you find peace in the afterlife in which you choose to believe and may all hopes and dreams come to fulfillment in your heart and soul as you lie down to rest. I wish you luck, joy, and all spiritual wellness in the course of whatever form death may take in these last minutes. Good-bye.” He takes a breath. “That’s a message from the government of the United States of the East.”

He holds up a wristwatch shaped like a mini-Clock. “The East Door—this one—will open for fifteen seconds. The West Door’s already opened, but it’ll close after ten minutes. It’s a long tunnel. Better walk fast so you don’t get trapped inside. Ain’t no getting back.”

I look at Skelley Chase, but he gives a slight shake of his head. I guess he has his ways. He can do anything, right? Not that I’ll live to see it.

I stare at the cold door with scrape marks where it’s opened before. The door glides sideways into the Wall, revealing a black tunnel with no lanterns and no sound except my breathing rebounding off the shadow. I step backward.

“Fifteen seconds, girly.”

Does the guard really have to count down?

The black tunnel is endless, cold, and hollow. I’m looking into the darkness of hell.

“I can’t—” I choke, taking another step back. “I can’t go in there.” I meet the pressure of the Enforcer’s body behind me.

“Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .” The guard holds his watch up to his face.

I want to die in the light. I can’t see ahead. What if it’s an endless tunnel with no exit to the West? The guard’s voice rings out behind me like an echoing pendulum, “Three . . . two . . . One!” With a shout, the Enforcer shoves me over the rutted threshold.

I twist around, reach out my hand, and release a strangled cry. “Wait!”

The steel door slides shut, slicing away my last beam of familiar light. I barely maintain my footing. The last bit of light fades from my pupils, taking with it the outline of my outstretched hand. My heart pounds so hard it’s bound to leave bruises.

I turn back around, gasping. Everything ahead is new—pitch black and unexplored. I swallow hard and a lump of ice hits my stomach. Packed dirt scrapes under my boots as I force my feet to carry me forward. Hands outstretched like Christ on the cross, my fingers run along the crude parallel rock walls. A pink glow appears ahead—symbolic of old sayings portraying death as the light at the end of the tunnel. With foot over leaden foot, I walk to my death—deep breath, chin high, and a perfected look of defiance.

Sound does not exist. Breath does not exist. I start to wonder if I even exist. My mind shuts out memories with the closing of the East Door. Reid, Skelley Chase, Unity Village, Mother, Father . . . they all fade like dying electric light bulbs. My former acute awareness to the senses dulls into a numbness that not even fear can penetrate. Encompassed in light at the end of all the darkness, death looks less daunting.

I lose the sense of time, but process the fact that the bright arch is growing, growing. I reach out a hand toward the West this time and see my fingers splayed in front of me. Now I run. I sprint toward the light.

Sounds explode from my movement—pebbles skirting across the worn path, my panting grating the walls, the bouncing of my rope as loops slide off my shoulder and trail behind me like a dead snake. The loudest sound is the scrape of boots on dirt as I skid to a halt on the threshold of the West.

A similar steel door waits inside the Wall to cut me off from the half of the world I’ve come to know. I squint into the light of the West and see what no one in the East has seen.

Across the threshold, two feet from the tips of my toes, is air.

Just . . .

Air.

Red dirt crumbles away into an abyss. Misty clouds with a shadowy cover form a base blanket, as if I’m standing on the tip of a mountain peak. The sun hasn’t made it to this side yet. I stabilize myself against the inner Wall and lean out, glancing to my left and right. The Wall stretches on, like the East side, but the ground extends a foot or less for a hundred feet each direction at the Wall’s base before curving out into a more supportive plateau.

Stretching straight ahead is a lake of sky. There’s no ground—apparently demolished by an earthquake or some other natural disaster caused by the meteor that smashed the West so long ago. The only way out is down—and the guard said this door would close after ten minutes. That could be any moment.

Now I know how I’ll die. I’ve always wanted to fly.

For one silent, peaceful moment, I inhale and survey the scene before me. I’m on the other side of the Wall—a mystery none but the dead have seen. The Newtons, Mr. Foster, and all the other Radicals are waiting for me.

The sun sends light rays above, breaking over the Wall edge, brushing the clouds, and twinkling in each wispy snowdot. A bird flies in the distance, but no people or cities are present—none of the government-free Independents. I suppose we did end up needing the government to survive.

The air smells cold and a rush of wind along the Wall blows my free hair across my face. I don’t care if it tangles, these are my last minutes. I don’t need to fear if I’ll survive. The answer lies before me in cloud form: Death.

I spread my arms high, embracing the chill, and scoot my boots to the edge of the cliff. My toes raise me up in a short second of final balance. A smile graces my lips. I lean forward at the same moment the door zips shut. The last feelings I register are the lurch of my stomach as I entrust my bodyweight to gravity, the rush of air around my tense face, and a fierce thrill over my searing heart.