Follow Me Through Darkness (6 page)

He claps his hands together. “Then let’s plan your death.”

DEADLINE: 31D, 14H, 20M

THE BURROWS

SOMETIMES THE BURROWS
smell like death. Or how I imagine death would smell. It’s only a moment, fleeting but powerful, and it comes along when I don’t expect the pungent scent of something rotten.

Bayard whistles while we walk. It’s a pretty tune, soft and melodic, repetitive. It echoes off the Burrow walls and reminds me of the ocean. The way the waves sound when they wash in and out of the shore on summer nights when the air is crisp. Will I ever see the ocean again? Will I ever feel the breeze or walk through the tide or see the sun rise over the endless blues?

Bayard whistles a high note that gets stuck somewhere in his throat and cracks. He coughs and stumbles. I reach out to steady him.

“You okay?”

“It’s a little warm,” he says quickly. “Chokes me up.”

“It’s not a race,” I say.

He looks at me, sweat building on his brow. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I mutter, because I only have thirty more days until the transfers start happening at the Compound. And less time than that to find the Mavericks, to accomplish my goal.

DEADLINE: 30D, 13H, 40M

THE BURROWS

LESS THAN AN HOUR
and I will feel the sun again. I will be free from this darkness. Leaving is scary, having to face what is beyond and above, but never getting out of the shadows is inconceivable. Like I was better off dead.

The air is different on this side of the Burrows, almost thinner so it’s harder to breathe. The tunnel seems narrower and darker. It definitely feels hotter. I’m uncertain if it’s real or if it’s all in my head. Much like the rest of my life. But the scent is different, too. Not as rancid and musty. There’s something odd that burns my nose and makes my throat itch.

“What’s that smell?” I ask. My head is pounding, my stomach is churning, and my nose is on fire. The air is thick. Surely, Bayard feels it, too.

“We’re almost there,” he says.

“Do you smell it?” I ask as the scent gets stronger. It’s almost as if we’re walking into a pit of rotten eggs. I hold my breath, air filling up my lungs, and try not to breathe in until I have to again.

Bayard never answers.

I can see the end. This round flow of light burns into the darkness and imprints on the ground. I want to race toward it, but a churning grips my stomach.

“Bayard…” I start. I stop walking and bend over. The tunnel is spinning. I crouch against a wall and use a hand to support me.

“Neely,” Bayard says. He gasps in sharp breaths next to my ear. The rancid smell around us fills my nostrils, and my fingers hurt from the pressure of leaning into the wall. Then, the air gets thicker, like smoke.

I start to ask Bayard a question when my stomach churns and vomit rushes out instead of words. It splashes off the ground, and I groan. The piece of cement under my fingernails chips off in a large chunk and falls onto the floor just as a scream echoes down the tunnel-someone else’s scream, dripping with pain. It rushes toward us with the sound of feet and more screams. It all happens in seconds, but it feels like my deadline has passed three times over.

“What is it?” I ask.

Bayard coughs again, and I see the worry in his eyes. “They’re all dead.”

A heavy weight sits in my chest. “How are they dead? What’s happening?”

He considers me, like he wants to say something else. His eyes get glassy with tears, and he blinks them away. “I have to get you out. Run, Neely.”

The smoke chokes me, drenching me like Thorne’s clothes after the fishermen burn off the unused bits from the day’s catches. But even those smells couldn’t prepare me for this one. The scent is nauseating and sweet, yet rancid, and I can almost taste it on my tongue. Cries of pain and panic, screams of names blend together around me, and Bayard yanks my hand and pulls me along, abandoning the torch. We run. I glance over my shoulder as we go, and that’s when I see a faint glowing light coming from behind us.

It’s on fire.

The crackling of flames engulfs the air. The screams grow fainter, and the people we just left flash in my head. The children, the pregnant woman, the old man. Are all those I swore to save dead?

We’re not far from the entrance to the Old World. Bayard runs next to me with strength I didn’t imagine him to possess. I don’t look back again, but sweat pours from my skin, soaking my shirt. I focus on the running and fight down the urge to vomit that plays at my throat, at my nose, at my stomach. My pack rubs over my sticky shoulders, but we go. We move forward in the thick smoke until I can’t see Bayard anymore. It’s complete darkness in the smoke and numbing silence in the decrease of screams. I wish for them to come back. Their silence means death.

“Neely, here!” Bayard yells.

Bayard stands ahead of me under a small shaft of sunlight, face bright red from the heat of the fire. The hole, the exit to the Old World, is above Bayard, smoke dancing in the beams around it.

Heat and flames barrel toward us as Bayard and I move toward the exit. On the wall across from us there’s a ladder with missing rungs that goes up, up, up toward the sunlight. Toward freedom.

“You go first!” he says.

I put a hand and a foot on the rungs and start to climb. The metal burns my hands, but I keep going. The smell of burnt flesh traces the air, and the echo of screams is gone. The Remnants in the Burrows are dying. They have died. What I don’t understand is how this happened.

The hole is sealed shut when I get to the top of the ladder. I push on the hatch, but it doesn’t budge. I can only use one hand or I’ll fall. It doesn’t work. I look down toward Bayard, and the fire is spread all below us.

“Bayard! It won’t open!” I yell. I can barely see him, but I hope he can hear me. I pound and push at the round metal opening. It’s not working. I can’t get it open.

Bayard tugs at my leg. He squeezes past me on the ladder, half-on and half-off of it, and pounds something metal against it. The noise is almost lost in the hiss of the fire that fills the space below. The only escape is through the hole, and it’s stuck.

This is how I die.

Tears sting my eyes. The acid scent of burnt hair sticks in my nose. It can’t be the end already. I won’t let it.

I move up next to Bayard, and together we pound at the metal covering. The small holes of light bounce off my skin, but in the heat of the fire below, I don’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I let the tears fall and mix with my sweat.

There’s a loud
pop
and when I look up and there’s light. So much light. Blue skies even. Bayard laughs, overjoyed and relieved.

“Go first, Neely!” he yells and helps me maneuver around him on the hot ladder.

I can smell the fresh, crisp air outside, and I pull myself up as Bayard pushes me. I’m short, so it’s harder than I thought. I land on black ground, and my body is shaking, burning with sweat and thirst as I reach back for Bayard.

“Take my hand,” I yell. He’s farther down than he should be, and I reach out for him. “Take another step up!” But he doesn’t. His eyes meet mine, and I expect to see fear in them, but I don’t. They’re peaceful. “Take my hand! Bayard, come on!”

“No,” he says, and my brain is scrambling, trying to process what this “no” means. This is life; that is death. This, unlike all other choices, is an easy one.

“You can’t!” His name is on my lips, and then he lets go of the ladder. I only see a flash of him before he’s lost in the orange tint of the fire.

“Bayard!” I yell his name. Over and over I yell, with no response from him. Only the hiss of flames answers back.

Bayard sacrificed himself for me. I gasp in a breath, even though I’m sobbing. He saved me. He made me go first, and then he-what? Gave up? How could he give up?

All of those people, the ones I swore to save, died while I live. I cry because I failed them all. Their faces, the ones I’ve met, flash in front of my eyes. Rover and Josef. Francine. The old man at dinner who kept staring at my branding. The boy who caught the rat for the stew. The ones who helped Rover pull me in from the Cleaners.

They are all dead. I’ve killed them all. If I failed them, then I can never save the others. I can never save anyone.

I know I need to calm down. Xenith warned me that he didn’t know how far I could push myself before the connection started working again. If an emotion is too strong, then Thorne could feel it, and he can’t know I’m alive. I take a breath.

I think of the children at home. Of Sara. Of Kai and Thorne. I think of Bayard’s determination to get me out of the Burrows. He succeeded in that. I take breath after breath until the emotions level out and I can breathe.

Too many have been sacrificed now, and I can’t stop. I can do this. I can make it and save the others. I can do it.

4 YEARS BEFORE ESCAPE

“WE CAN DO THIS.
There has to be a way to do this,” I say
.

Thorne shrugs and gives me that “I don’t really feel like doing this” look. I brush it off. I want my own space; surely he does, too. He can’t feel everything I feel because that’s going to get really awkward. Doesn’t he ever plan to kiss a girl? Because I don’t want to know what he feels like with her when that happens
.

I snap my fingers and motion for him to stand. He sighs overdramatically and pulls himself up off the floor. I swing my hair over my shoulder
.

“We should focus. I can send you emotions when I want, so maybe if we mean to block them, it will work, too.” That’s what I’ve been saying for a month, and we still haven’t had any luck
.

Thorne clenches his jaw, but he nods slowly and takes my hand. There’s a little spark now that we’re touching. His emotions are steady-a little doubtful, a little motivated, and a little irritated. That’s reassuring; at least I’m not the only one
.

“Ready,” I say. I let him push his emotions through first because he can put on joy and happiness quicker than I can
.

The joy washes over me, and I try to block it. I picture it in my head, a literal wall that keeps him out, but it doesn’t work. I fight hard to keep him out of my emotions. Just trying to keep his feelings at bay makes my head start to pound. I feel him breathing harder next to me, struggling. I gasp and pull my hand from his. It didn’t work
.

“You okay?” he asks, lowering himself to the ground
.

I nod. “You?”

“Maybe we’re doing this wrong. Maybe it needs to be more natural,” Thorne says, patting the space beside him. “Think about your favorite memory, about how you felt.”

I bite my lip. Favorite memory. Once when we were six, Sara, Kai, Thorne and I slept on the beach. We weren’t really allowed to do that-no one is-but Sara let us do it anyway. We had this little fire going, even though it was warm, and the waves were calm and Sara told us stories about when she was little. She had lots of stories about my mother, about Kai and Thorne’s dad, and about Asher, the brother that neither of the boys remembered much. My father came by and it was late, but he sat up with us instead of taking me home, and he shared his own memories. I was calm, safe, comfortable
.

“You’re cheerful and peaceful,” Thorne says. I nod back. “Now keep me out of it.”

“How do I do that?”

He shrugs. “What do you do to keep people out? Build a fence, lock the door, lie.”

“Lie? That seems weird. You can’t lie about your feelings.”

“Sure you can,” he says. “Try.”

I feel Thorne’s emotion, and whatever he’s thinking of is sad. I’m curious because that’s so unlike him, but I’m even more curious if I can keep him out. I focus on the feeling of that night, the cheerful, contentedness of it, and I slam a door on it. Lock it. It makes my head hurt, but it’s a dull pain. I inhale, keep my focus, and keep the door closed, even though it feels like something is pulling on it. I’m not sure how long it lasts before I have to gasp for breath and lose it all
.

Thorne’s hand rubs circles on my back. “I didn’t feel it,” he says
.

I look at him. “What?”

“I didn’t feel anything from you. Did you feel me?”

I shake my head. “Just for a second before I closed you off. Your head doesn’t hurt?”

“Barely,” he says. He smiles this huge smile. “Let’s try it again. This time, see if you can break into me.”

We try again. I don’t feel anything he’s feeling when he blocks me out. It feels a little like I’ve lost something, but I know this is how it’s supposed to be. Each time I try, my head hurts, but it works
.

“Maybe it will get easier,” Thorne says
.

“Maybe,” I say
.

The next time I try, I do the lie-about-what-I’m- feeling method. Instead of frustration, I show him that I’m happy and smile so big that my lips hurt
.

DEADLINE: 30D, 13H, 34M

OUTSIDE THE BURROWS-ODESSA, TEXAS

MY LIPS ARE PARCHED FROM THIRST
, and when I finally pull myself up my body cries out. Under my pack, my back is sweaty, and everything on my body seems to ache. Even my ears. I feel the grime on my cheeks, streaked clean where tears washed it away. How are all those people dead? They were innocent. They were alive. They were happy, even though they were struggling. They were free. They had their minds. That is how I will carry them with me. I will make it to the Mavericks and save my people, honor these who have died.

I wipe my hand across my cheek. How did that fire happen? It was out of control-a tunnel of flames that came barreling toward us and destroyed everything in its path. Everyone. I was almost out safely when it came. Somehow it feels like that was intentional, and if it was, then I need to get out of here.

I pull my pack off my shoulder and dig through it for some water. As I yank the bottle out and sip at the rest of the cool liquid, my hand grazes the brown map Xenith made for me. I’m almost out. I tilt my head up toward the sky so the sun beats down on my face. I count in my head and refocus.