Shymers (30 page)

“You know what will happen.”

“Yeah, but will they shoot us right away? Do you think it hurts to be shot? What if they decide to show mercy on me because I’m a Future? I won’t go anywhere without you, and I would rather die than be locked up in suspension.”

I bring my cousin close and hug her as I have seen Olive do so many times to Bree. “They won’t find us, Tayrn. I promise. I’m going to keep you safe. We’re going to find your girlfriend and make it out of here alive. Do you understand?”

She makes another small sobbing noise. “I’m so sorry about Olive!”

I close my eyes, grateful that Tayrn can’t see the pain cross my face. “There is nothing you could have done.”

“I should have tried to help her! If you never see her again—“

“Stop!” I choke. “Dwelling on it won’t do us any good. Let’s just focus on what we have to do next. We have to move before the helicopters come.”

As we continue on, there is still a terrible ache inside me that will never go away. I can’t stop thinking of Olive—the way her hand feels inside mine, the way her smile warms my insides, the way her eyes are alive when she watches me. Before I met her, I never wondered how it would feel to love someone so much that it hurt. I never looked at my parents and dreamed that I would one day know the feeling that had kept them together all of their adult lives. I never wanted to be with someone so badly that it kept me from thinking straight. I didn’t think it would ever be possible for me to know this kind of love.

Looking over at Tayrn quietly running at my side, I decide going back to join the Rebels would be totally unfair to her. I make myself a promise that I will keep her safe. Even though I probably will never see Olive again, my cousin still has a chance at being happy with the person she loves. At least one of us should get a chance at that kind of happiness.

* * *

When morning and then afternoon both disappear and we still aren’t able to find the blackberry bush, the twist in my gut grows. I know nothing about surviving in the wild. I know how to distance myself from others and how to keep to myself, but now I have this added obligation to keep my cousin safe. She risked everything in asking her girlfriend to help me and in trying to bring Olive here with her. I owe her everything.

We settle in for the night in a bed of fern branches, not far from a stunning waterfall. Tayrn curls into my side and falls asleep almost immediately. Despite the fear and hopelessness overwhelming me, I pass out soon after.

* * *

In the early morning after eating some of the very last portions of food Lani sent with us and taking a stop to bathe in the water, we come upon an unusual grouping of trees. There are colorful marks on their trunks in shades of green and pink, looking as if someone took a paint brush to them. Tayrn and I stand still together, taking the strange sight in.

My cousin rests her hands on her hips, staring up at the beautiful trees. “Those are the coolest things I’ve ever seen.”

A sudden sharp stab flares between my shoulders from the weight of the pack. I reach back to tug my grandfather’s book from it. The burden of its weight has become too much. My family’s treasure has remained safely hidden for this long, despite everything. I’m afraid what will happen to it if soldiers discover us out here in the Free Lands.

“There’s something I have to do,” I say, falling to my knees underneath one of the colorful trees, my fingers digging the soil away. Tayrn drops down to my side to help. The two of us dig together until the hole is deep enough to cover the book. I look down on the fresh dirt with the hope that I will return before anyone else stumbles upon it.

Once the book is completely hidden, Tayrn springs to her feet. “I’ll just be a minute. I have to…you know…” She blushes.

I balk for a moment before I realize she is saying she has to go to the bathroom. I nod in understanding. She disappears behind the group of trees and I sit down underneath the shade of the strange trees to rest.

As I look off into the unknown, my fears return. Where will we find food? What about shelter? What if we never find Tayrn’s girlfriend? These woods are vast—a person could travel for days and become lost easily. What if we can’t find a way to safely reach the other islands?

The plan was made with Olive in mind. She knows the layout of this forest. She knows how to survive out here. Without her, we may be doomed.

Suddenly, there is movement in the bushes off to my right. I carefully lower my body to the ground, holding my breath.

“Harrison?” a high voice calls out.

I stay frozen, waiting. When my name is repeated, the familiarity of the voice can’t be missed. “Bree?” I ask, rising to my feet. I chuckle with relief when seeing my little friend standing in front of me. When I spring forward to her, she breaks down sobbing. Her small arms wrap around me and she cries into my chest.

After a few moments, she draws away, smiling. “I was afraid I’d never find you!”
 

“What happened to you? Olive told my cousin you weren’t in lessons.”

Her smile weakens. “After I told my parents I wanted to leave with Olive, they told the government they were taking me out to work on my playlist. My father knew of a Rebel from work that helped me cross over. Turns out my parents loved me even more than I thought.”

I squeeze her arm. “I’m sorry. It must have been hard to tell them goodbye.”

A small, crooked smile tugs at her lips. “Olive is really starting to rub off on you, Harrison. Where is she?”

A massive ball of sorrow rises into my throat. I have to swallow it down before I can answer. “She didn’t make it, Bree. She’s not coming.”

Her face falls. “What do you mean? Why not? Where is she? What happened? How could you leave her behind?” Her lips tremble in a mix of sorrow and rage that I recognize well.

Sadness overwhelms me to the point that I feel like I’m choking. “The orphanage director caught me trying to sneak out, so I had to leave earlier than planned. My cousin led Olive to the edge of the Future territory for me, but…someone caught Olive trying to leave. They took her away, Bree. She’s not coming with us.”

She seems just as crushed as I had been with the first delivery of this news. I have to hold her up when she lets go and cries out, trembling uncontrollably in my arms. I push my eyes closed, hoping I won’t cry along with her. My father taught me men have to be strong. But it’s difficult to watch Olive’s friend falling apart right in front of my eyes.

We stand together as she sobs for countless moments when, quite suddenly, my cousin Tayrn yells loudly. It’s the sound of surprise and distress—the sound of someone in trouble.

I pull Bree down to the tall grasses with me.

Her brown eyes, still filled with tears, are wild. “What was that?”

“My cousin,” I whisper. “Something is wrong. Stay here.”

I crawl through the tall grasses on my hands and knees, feeling like some kind of jungle animal I once read about in my grandfather’s book. I don’t remember the name, only that it was a large cat with long, smooth muscles that became extinct in the old world, before the government decided the sun was too hot for larger animals and wrangled most of them inside locked shelters.

Tayrn’s voice pleads for something. I quicken my pace, ready to jump out and help her, stopping all at once when I hear a man’s voice yelling. “If you’re a Future then what are you doing out here in the Free Lands?”

I look through the thick of the forest separating me from my cousin and see enough to understand she is completely surrounded by soldiers. There must be six of them, or even more. Tayrn is on her knees with her hands held over her head. Her face is streaked with tears.

“I was brought out here by a Rebel!” she cries. “He held his gun on me and said I had to come along with him! He said they were all lonely out here without any women and that I was going to be their entertainment!”

My stomach drops. I lied to her—I promised that they wouldn’t find us, that we would be okay. And yet here she is, lying to protect me. If I were to step forward and help her now, they would only punish her more for lying to protect a Shymer. Maybe her pleading cries and anguished face are convincing enough for them to believe her.

Bree bumps into me. Her eyes are red and swollen from crying. “They’re going to take her back into Society,” she whispers between sobs. “You have to do something!”

I glance back to see a couple of the soldiers talking to each other, their voices low. “I can’t. It’s too late.”

Tayrn makes more choked sobs. I know I should go to her. I should help her. But Bree stands with me now, her hands gripping my arm. She has lost her friend as well as leaving her family behind. I can’t leave her all alone in the forest either. I now know how helpless Tayrn must have felt when she watched Olive being taken away.

“You’ll go into suspension until they can decide if you’re a Rebel supporter or not,” one of the soldiers tells Tayrn.

Bree and I duck down just as Tayrn and the soldiers pass us by. For a fleeting moment, I catch my cousin’s gaze. She winks at me, a small grin on her lips.

* * *

Bree and I nestle in the safety of another fern patch while she sleeps. I can’t stand the thought of shutting my own eyes for fear of all the nightmares that are sure to come rushing at me. I have failed the only girl I ever loved, and now my cousin. Will I be able to protect Bree, or will I lose her, too? This journey is beginning to feel completely hopeless. Now I know why my father told me I must leave Society on my own.

Once the morning light encompasses us, we carry on. Again, I am plagued by my thoughts. Where do we go now? What will we do? I wonder if I have been leading us in circles by the way everything is starting to look familiar. Bree either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Between the two of us, all hope seems to be lost. I begin to question why I’m even continuing on anymore. Maybe I should turn back and hope Bree will somehow find her own way to safety.

Our moods quickly change, however, when we stumble upon the shimmering of a narrow creek in the sunlight. Both of us run to it, eagerly drinking in the tepid water. Bree slips her feet in first, then her entire body. She breaks the surface with a big grin, her hair hanging in clumps and her wet clothing clinging to her skin.

“You should try it!” she calls out to me. “It is refreshing in a way you can’t imagine!”

I smile and run to her, my legs splashing the water up onto both of us. Laughing happily, we splash each other until we are soaked down to the bone. I completely submerge myself into the liquid as she had, savoring the relief from the afternoon heat.

When finished, we sit together on the edge of the creek to rest and share the very last scoop of cold potatoes given to me by the Rebels. My stomach rumbles for more. How much longer until we can find food? I don’t know anything about killing animals in the wild. I don’t know if any of the plants are poisonous. Without finding the Rebels, our chances of surviving out here may completely vanish.

“Do you think they found your cousin because they heard me yelling out to you?” Bree asks. Her voice is strained from all the crying she did the previous day.

I shake my head. “No.”

“But still…”

I touch her arm. She looks up at me, her lips shaking. “It’s time for me to be honest…to both of us. Nothing is going as planned. I thought I could keep Olive and Tayrn safe, but I was wrong. My father told me to run away to the Free Lands on my own. All of this is my fault—I should have listened to him. I want more than anything to keep you safe, Bree, but I don’t know if I can. I thought there would be more shelter here. I don’t know what we should do next or where we will go. Olive was supposed to be with me, she knew her way around the forest and—” I stop and shut my eyes when my breath hitches. I can’t talk about Olive. “Everything is different now. I’m thinking of going back.”

Bree’s dark eyes widen. “What? You can’t go back! They’ll kill you!”

“It doesn’t matter. I have to try to find her. I can’t walk around here pretending nothing is wrong when she is locked up somewhere, wondering why I left her. I can’t let it end this way.”

A slight smile tugs at Bree’s lips. “Olive wouldn’t want you to go back. She hated the way we were treated there. The only thing that’s probably keeping her going right now is hope that the rest of us are okay and made it safely over. You can’t go back now. You have to stay and be strong for her.”

I chuckle, only a little. She’s right. It does sound like Olive’s way of thinking.

“You can’t give up hope, Harrison,” she whispers. “Not now. We’ve made it this far.”

Not many words are passed between us as we find our way through the thick forest, keeping to the shadows and taking care not to make too much noise. Later in the afternoon when I am considering finding a spot for us to settle in for the night, a salty yet sour fragrance is carried to us with the breeze.

A giant smile crosses Bree’s face as she holds her arm out, stopping me from going any farther. “Do you smell that?”

I nod, inhaling deeply. From my grandfather’s stories, I think I know what it has to be. “It’s the ocean.”