Alive (5 page)

W
e are walking uphill.

The angle is so slight I didn’t notice it at first, but the hallway slopes gently upward.

We’ve been walking for hours. At least we think it’s hours; we have no way of tracking time. The endless incline is subtle, but it exhausts us, leeches away what little strength we have.

I hold the knife. O’Malley carries the scepter. I tried carrying both for a little while, but the scepter was too heavy.

If we had walked in the other direction, we’d have been going down. Spingate said there’s no limit on how far down we could go, how deep into the ground, but
up
can’t go on forever.

Can it?

Our coffin room must be far below the surface. This hallway doesn’t seem to have an end. The softly glowing ceiling gently curves upward in parallel with the floor. Far ahead of us, the floor and ceiling seem to meet, but no matter how much we walk, that connection always appears to be exactly the same distance away.

No one speaks. The memory of the bone pile and the dead kids stays with us¸ silences us. We’ve left that behind, though, for which we’re grateful.

Bones aren’t the only thing we’ve left behind: we haven’t seen a door in maybe an hour, near as we can tell. We walk through an empty, blank, untouched corridor of dust.

My stomach
hurts
. It pinches. It grumbles, loudly. I hear similar noises coming from the others. We need to eat.

Hungry, tired, confused, afraid—it’s wearing on us. Our feet drag across the hard floor, leaving long footprints in the dust.

O’Malley finally breaks the silence.

“There have to be people who are still alive,” he says. “We can contact someone, get rescued.”

Rescue
. Another word of power. Someone to save us. I hope my parents are alive, hope their bones weren’t among those hidden beneath the gray powder. I don’t remember my mother’s face, or her name, but I know I love her. And my father…if he loves me, why hasn’t he come for me? I feel like he was brave, like he was strong, but I don’t know if that’s true or if I’m being a little girl, hoping her daddy was the best daddy there could be.

Bello scoots out in front of us, turns to face us and walks backward. For the first time, she seems excited.

“Maybe the people who rescue us will have food,” she says.

I remember smelling something…my dad cooking dinner. Some kind of meat, maybe? My mouth waters and my stomach rumbles louder.

“Bread,” Bello says, her eyes all dreamy. “Hot bread, with butter and cinnamon. All crunchy on the outside and soft inside.”

“A sandwich,” O’Malley says. “With mustard and pickles and big, fat, salty slices of cold chicken.”

Pork chops…that’s what my dad was roasting. How can I know that and not know his face?

“Cupcakes,” Aramovsky says. “Chocolate, with chocolate icing as high as the cupcake itself. And lots of sprinkles.”

My mouth waters so badly I almost drool.

“Pasta,” Yong says. “With tomato sauce, and so much cheese on top you have to take like three bites before you can even
find
the pasta beneath.”

“I don’t care what they bring,” Spingate says. “As long as it’s hot. And more of it than I can even eat. But for dessert, I’m definitely going for one of Aramovsky’s cupcakes.”

“Me too,” O’Malley says.

Bello shakes her head. She’s still walking backward. Her eyes sparkle, she stands straight and tall—as tall as she can be, anyway. She’s happy: she looks like a completely different person from the sniffling girl I met back in the coffin room.

“You’re all wrong,” she says. She taps her temple. “You’re obviously not a thinker like me. Aramovsky’s right about chocolate with chocolate icing, but it needs to be a
birthday
cake. With twelve candles!”

Aramovsky laughs. “You’re right, Bello, but are there still sprinkles? There better be sprinkles.”

Bello rolls her eyes in mock annoyance. “Of
course
there are. It’s your birthday, so you get sprinkles. We all get sprinkles.”

Everyone agrees that this is a splendid way to finish our rescue meal.

Smiles, nods, yummy noises…it’s an almost perfect moment. For a brief instant, we’re not in our grownup bodies with too-small clothes and no shoes, we’re not surrounded by dust that used to be people, and we’re not lost and alone—we’re six friends walking together, on our way to a birthday party. There will be cake, there will be games, there will be presents. There will be parents who love us and protect us.

Still moving down the hall, Bello spins in slow circles, letting momentum swing her arms wide.

“I bet our parents are coming to get us,” she says. “They have to be looking for us, right?”

“Mine are,” Yong says instantly.

Bello nods. “So are mine. But…I can’t remember them. Yong, do you remember your parents? What they look like?”

He makes that
pfft
noise again. “Of course I remember them.”

We all know he’s lying. He knows it, too, but no one challenges him, because it’s a nice lie, one we’d all like to believe.

Bello’s spin slows. The excitement drains from her face—fear owns her.

She stops. So do the rest of us.

There are tears in her eyes. Crying again? Bello is really starting to bother me.

“Our parents,” she says. “What if our parents are the ones who put us in the coffins?”

I wondered the same thing. I’m ashamed I considered it, even for a second. I see the others looking down, looking away—we’ve all had that thought, but Bello is the first to voice it out loud.

No one answers her. She seems to shrink, hunching over a bit, elbows pulling tight to her ribs, hands wringing left over right, right over left. Bello stands still, lets the group pass her by, then she falls in at the rear.

We return to walking in silence. We hear only the sounds of our breathing and our shuffling feet.

And our growling stomachs.

Maybe another hour passes. Maybe two. We keep going because we don’t have a choice.

Then, far up ahead, that ever-present meeting of ceiling and floor changes: another hallway, crossing ours. It’s something different, which is enough to make us pick up the pace despite our exhaustion.

We reach the intersection. The new hallway leads off to our right for a long ways, but the light from the ceiling is dim. Farther in, it looks like there is no light at all. Maybe a hundred steps away, I see a single archway door in the dimness. It’s wide open. Maybe there are more beyond it, but it’s too dark to tell.

To our left, the hallway goes a few feet before it stops at a wall, a wall that looks like black liquid frozen in mid-splash—as if it melted, then cooled. Maybe it used to be a door, very different from the other doors we’ve seen so far.

Spingate steps a few feet into the hallway on the right. She stares down it, tilting her head slightly as if that might let her see a bit farther.

“We’ve been in the same hall for a long time,” she says. “We haven’t found anything. So far, I mean. Should we try this new one?”

No one else speaks. Are they waiting for me to decide?

Yong walks to stand next to Spingate. He stares down the new hall just as she did, even tilts his head the same. Then he looks back at me.

“We’ll go this way,” he says. “That makes sense.”

I’m not sure that it does. The hallway to the right is different: it looks
flat
. I don’t see the floor-meeting-ceiling illusion I’ve been looking at for the last few hours, but then again, that could be because there isn’t enough light to see that far.

The hallway we’re in now seems endless, but it has to lead somewhere; I can’t say that for sure about the new direction.

“We’re not going to walk down a dark hall,” I say. “Besides, we need to keep going straight.”

Aramovsky points down the hall to the right. “But that way is flat. Maybe you didn’t notice. We’ve been walking uphill for…well, for a long time. My legs are tired.”

So are mine. I’d like to give my legs a break as much as he would, but I know I’m making the right decision.

“We go straight,” I say again. “If we start making turns, we might not know what direction is what. If we keep going straight, at least we know how to get back to where we came from if we get into trouble. I know it’s tiring, but walking uphill is a good thing—every step we take is a step closer to getting out.”

I see shoulders droop, I hear heavy sighs. They don’t want to agree with me; they want to go the easier way.

“Em’s in charge,” O’Malley says. He sounds tired. “We follow her lead.”

Spingate sighs and shrugs. Bello nods reluctantly. Aramovsky keeps looking down the new hallway as if it’s paved with the cupcake of his dreams. None of them want to go my way, but they seem resigned to my decision.

All save for Yong.

“I don’t want to follow Em’s lead anymore,” he says. He crosses his arms. “I think it’s my turn to be in charge.”

“We don’t take
turns,
” O’Malley says. “This isn’t a game.”

Yong points at me. There’s something petulant in the gesture, something mean, and for a moment I see a twelve-year-old bully wearing an adult’s body.

“She doesn’t know what she’s doing,” Yong says. He looks at me, holds out his palm. “You tried, Em, but you failed. It’s my turn now, so give me the knife.”

And just like that, the twelve-year-old is gone. I’m looking at a grown man, a lean, strong man who isn’t going to take no for an answer.

He wiggles his fingers inward.

“Give it to me,” Yong says. “If you don’t, I’ll take it from you. You won’t like that.”

Spingate puts her hands on her hips.

“Quit being a jerk, Yong. Em’s in charge, you—”

Yong’s hands are so fast I barely see him move: he shoves Spingate, hard. She crashes against the wall and falls to her butt. She looks at him in wide-eyed surprise.

She doesn’t try to get up.

Bello and Aramovsky press lightly against each other and back away, watching the sudden conflict.

I should say something, I know it, but my mouth doesn’t move.

O’Malley’s does.

“That’s enough,” he says.

Yong isn’t the only grown man here. O’Malley holds the scepter in his right hand. He seems uncomfortable with the jeweled metal, like he doesn’t really know what he’s supposed to do with it in this situation.

He takes a step toward Yong.

“Hitting people is bad,” O’Malley says. “Tell Spingate you’re sorry.”

Yong makes his
pfft
sound. “Or what? You going to make me apologize?”

O’Malley’s fingers flex on the scepter. His shirt hangs open: the last button must have popped free.

“I’m not going to make you do anything,” he says. “I just…we don’t hit each other. Em’s in charge, okay?”

Yong rushes at O’Malley, cocking his right fist as he does and slamming it into the bigger boy’s nose. O’Malley’s head rocks back. He drops awkwardly, sitting on his left foot, his right leg sticking out. Yong twists his shoulders, throws a left fist that hammers O’Malley’s right eye.

O’Malley drops to his side. The scepter slides from his grip. He doesn’t move.

Yong looks at me.

“I’m in charge now, Em.” He again holds out his palm. “Give me the knife.”

I see him, see the star on his forehead, the sneer on his lips. He thinks he can do anything he wants. He thinks he can push people around.

He thinks he
owns
people.

In that instant, I hate him. I want him to hurt.

He raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. “No? Don’t think your turn is over? You led us
nowhere,
Em. I’m hungry and we’re going to do it my way. Give me the knife, you stupid circle girl, or else.”

Hate him. Hate him
hate him
.

I go cold inside. Cold and calm.

Yong shrugs. “Have it your way.”

He strides toward me, confident and dangerous. Spingate is still sitting, staring. Aramovsky and Bello do nothing. Yong cocks back his fist, he sneers in fury and arrogance, he leans forward to punch at me…

He stops, fist still hovering in the air.

His eyes are wide, his mouth hangs open.

He looks down.

So do I.

The knife…the handle is in my hand, but the blade…

The blade is buried in his belly.

B
lazing red spreads across his white shirt, flowing down, mostly, but also rising up, wetness winding through the fabric.

I didn’t even feel the blade go in. I didn’t. It was just
there,
already inside him, like it had always been there.

The circle-in-a-circle disc on the knife hilt gleams under the ceiling’s light, gems flickering the same color as Yong’s blood.

The hallway is still. There is no noise at all. I can’t move.

Yong looks up, looks at me. There are tears in his eyes. A grown man’s face wearing a little boy’s expression of fear and confusion.

“But…my turn,” he says, then his legs stop working. He falls away from me. The knife, still in my hand, slides out of him. He lands on his shoulder, tucks up into a ball like he did when he fell out of his coffin.

I see a spot of blood spreading across his lower back, staining the white shirt wet-red.

The blade went all the way through.

That impossible stillness, that time turned to unforgiving stone, it lasts forever. Then it is gone.

Bello screams, hands covering her face.

Aramovsky takes a half-step behind Bello.

Spingate rushes to Yong, kneels next to him, her knees almost touching his. She leans over him, looks at his back.

“Oh, no,” she says. “Yong! Lie flat, let me see the cut!”

Yong’s hands clutch at his belly. The hands are mostly hidden by his thighs, but not enough that I can’t see the blood covering his fingers.

He lets out a long, low moan. His eyes stay squeezed shut.

Spingate’s hair hangs down, gets in the way. She rubs madly at her thighs like she doesn’t know what to do with her hands, then slaps a palm hard on Yong’s shoulder.

“I said,
lie flat!
”

Bello leans in, her cheeks glistening with tears. “Stop hitting him!
Do something!
”

Spingate shakes her head, again rubs hard at her thighs. She looks up at me.

“Em, don’t just stand there, come help!”

The knife falls from my hand and clatters on the floor. Dust instantly clings to the blood that streaks the blade.

I kneel behind Yong’s back.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Help me make him lie flat,” Spingate says, her voice still rushed but now calmer that someone is doing this with her. “We have to put pressure on the wound.”

She reaches under Yong’s shoulder and his leg and lifts, while I grab a shoulder and a knee and pull. We roll him to his back. He’s still curled up tight, the curve of his spine like the curve of an egg, and I have to hold him in place to keep him from flopping over again.

Yong starts to sob, the vibrations shaking his whole body. His mouth is wide open; a string of spit gleams between his lips.

“It hurts,” he says. “It
hurts
.”

Spingate puts a hand on his cheek, rapidly pets his black hair away from his forehead.

“Yong, listen to me,” she says. “You’ve been stabbed. I have to look at the wound.”

He shakes his head, as if to force her hand away.

“No, no it hurts! Make it stop!”

Spingate reaches up and backhand-flips her red hair behind her. She glares at Bello and Aramovsky.

“Come here and help us!”

Aramovsky rushes over, puts his hands on Yong’s knees and gently pulls, trying to open the boy up.

“No,” Yong says. “It
hurts
. Go get my mom…please go get my mom!”

He’s pleading for something we can’t give him. His voice sounds wrong: words like his belong to a voice that is higher and thinner than what we hear.

I feel wetness on my knees—his blood, spreading across the floor.

Spingate’s upper lip curls in fury. She shakes Yong’s shoulders, leans in and screams in his face.

“Relax your legs! Relax them!”

Bello reaches in, yanks at Spingate’s arm.

“Stop it, Spingate! You don’t even know what you’re doing!”

Spingate whips her left arm back without looking, trying to brush Bello off, but her elbow cracks into the smaller girl’s mouth. Bello’s hands fly to her face. She turns, half bent over, and stumbles away.

I don’t think Spingate even knows she hit her.

Aramovsky is patting Yong’s knees as he pulls. “Open up,” the tall boy says in a voice that’s both deep and patient. “Open up.”

Yong lets out a long moan, one that’s chopped up into short bits by his chest-rattling sobs. His eyes are squeezed so tight. Snot drips from his nose, runs down his left lip and cheek.

He finally relaxes his legs, lets Aramovsky and me gently move them out of the way. He is flat on his back, body twitching slightly. His blood-drenched hands remain pressed hard against his stomach. From the chest down, his entire shirt is red.

Spingate grabs at Yong’s neck, pulls off his tie and hands it to me.

“Press this against the wound when I get his hands out of the way,” she says. “We need to stop the bleeding.”

I take the tie.

Spingate again leans close to Yong’s face.

“You have to move your hands,” she says. “Okay? Move your hands.”

Not knowing what else to do, I start petting his head like Spingate did, sliding my palm from his eyebrows back. Blood on my hand smears across his circle-star, gets into his hair.

His skin…it’s cool, clammy, and not just from the blood. He’s sweating.

I look at Spingate. “Do something!”

She tugs at his hands, trying to pull them away from his stomach. “I’m trying,” she says. “Can’t you see that I’m trying?”

Yong’s hands won’t budge. Spingate leans over them, pulls harder, but his hands stay in place, clutching so tight I wonder if his fingertips are punching through the skin, causing even more damage.

“Aramovsky,” she says, “help me here.”

He does as he’s told, his black-skinned fingers wrapping around Yong’s blood-covered wrists, pulling them gently but insistently, overpowering Yong’s resistance. Yong’s fingers clutch at open air.

“Mom…it hurts.”

Not as much energy in his words now. The
mom
comes out as a long, broken word:
maa-aaa-aahm.

Spingate rips Yong’s shirt open, sending buttons flying. His tan skin is a sheet of smeared red. She wipes her hands down his muscled belly, shoving away the blood, making him almost clean for a moment.

But only a moment, because red wells up out of a stab wound slightly above and to the left of his belly button. Gush, flow…gush, flow…

Spingate slaps my shoulder.

“
Em! The tie!”

I shove it against the wound, so fast he cries out like I punched him there. I press the tie firmly, hoping it will do what Spingate said it would do.

Yong looks at me with unfocused eyes.

“Mom? Please…make it stop.”

The words are weak. His hands relax, shift from clutching talons to limp fingers.

His eyes close. Did he pass out?

Spingate shakes him again.

“Yong!
Wake up!
”

The tie is already soaked, a wet washcloth that needs to be wrung out, but I keep it pressed in place.

“If he’s asleep, he won’t fight us,” I say. “Why don’t you want him to sleep?”

She looks at me, confused. “Why? I…I don’t know. Just because.”

Aramovsky glances at me, his eyes full of doubt. He doesn’t think Spingate knows what she’s doing. She doesn’t, clearly, but none of us do.

Yong’s entire body relaxes. His head tilts to the left. Aramovsky lowers Yong’s hands, puts them on the floor next to his hips.

Spingate is breathing too fast. She shakes her head. “I’m twelve,” she whispers. “I’m
twelve
.”

She rubs at her thighs. I see tears dripping down her cheeks.

“Stop it,” I hiss. “Crying doesn’t fix anything. Help him!”

Spingate looks at me, a fast glance where she catches my eyes, then her hands go back to work. She places them flat on Yong’s belly, one on either side of the tie.

“Em, lift it away, slowly,” she says, and I do.

The blood burbles out suddenly, like we’d filled a balloon and then opened the end. The brief gush flows down his side….

The gush that follows is much smaller.

I wait for the next one, but it doesn’t come.

The bleeding has stopped.

I look at the tie in my hands: red fabric soaked with red, red that drips down onto Yong, onto my legs, onto the floor. Yong’s blood has turned the dust beneath my knees from powder gray into a crimson slush.

Spingate blinks, like she just remembered something. She presses two fingers firmly to Yong’s neck.

He doesn’t react.

Aramovsky and I stare. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Bello coming closer, hand over her mouth, eyes wide, head shaking slightly.

Spingate moves her fingers, tries another spot. A
pulse
—that’s what she’s looking for, a pulse.

She moves her fingers again, to below his jaw, pressing them in so deep the skin and muscle of Yong’s neck billow up on either side.

He doesn’t move.

My eyes drift to the stab wound, the wound that I made.

A thin line of blood lies in it, pooled there, unmoving.

Spingate pulls her shaking hand away.

“He’s…he’s gone.”

The word turns Yong from a person into a
thing
. I fall to my butt, scoot away, leaving a wide, smeared path through the red slush until my back hits the wall and I can go no farther.

I stare at the frightened little boy who wanted his mother.

Yong is dead.

I killed him.