The Survivors: Point of Origin (book 2)

Cave, pt. 1

I HAD BEGUN TO STIR. I COULD HEAR YOUNG SURVIVORS IN THE DIStance, laughing, running. The sound of chopping wood from a few houses down reverberated in my ears. I knew that, like every morning for the last 320 years, since their forgotten exile from Salem, Massachusetts, the 14 original Survivors were gathered in their chapel, holding a service. Andrew, our patriarch, would be standing in front of them, murmuring their Puritan prayers. And they’d all be following him, by habit if not by faith. They attended these services more often than they would have done in Salem — as if the accusation of witchcraft had stalked them for all these centuries and remained a cause for repentance. The morning ran routinely as it always did. I heard the youngest Survivors scurry past our door, a mixture of bare feet and boots crunching hard snow, reciting passages from their ancient Bible. It was as if I’d never left at all.

I rolled to my side, not wanting to wake up just yet. Eyes still closed tight, I sent one hand out to feel the other side of the bed. It was empty.

It was empty most mornings. In recent months, Everett had lain with me until I’d fallen asleep, but then he’d slip from bed. The Winters and I had spent the last three monthsliving with the Survivors in their city, and though it wasn’t my favorite arrangement, they loved being here. For one, Everett and his younger siblings, Mark and Ginny, had strong-armed their mother into allowing them to forgo their usual human routine now that they lived in a community full of immortals — none of whom needed sleep, many of whom couldn’t — and so the nighttime had become their playground. They sometimes used it for making practical preparations for our dismal future, but based on the number of mornings one or more of them came back with eyes brighter and redder than when they had left, I was sure they indulged, during their darker waking hours, in activities they were still keeping secret from the Survivors.

I hadn’t pushed to determine if this was the case exactly. I was still learning how to carefully balance loving someone and hating a part of him — a defining, integral part — at the same time. Asking Everett and his siblings fewer questions about midnight murders helped me walk this tightrope more effectively.

I finally opened my eyes. From the light, I could tell it was still very early. In the six months I had gone without sleep, I had forgotten the significance of mornings. I hadn’t remembered what it felt like to exist in human-length days. There was peace at night, then welcome morning sun filtering through the bedroom windows and a bit of newness each day. I had fallen in love with these things in Moscow, just before I had come here, to the Survivors’ city, and I had been sleeping ever since. I could only fall asleep, of course, if Everett Winter’s arms hugged me close to his cool core. Honestly, I did not like that I depended on him like this. I didn’t like to depend on anyone for anything.

The Winters had realized they would need a place of their own in the Survivors’ City if we were to spend a long time here. So one day not long after we had come back to tell the Survivors of their grim fate, they had brought supplies for a house, and, in days, they had one built. It was modest by their standards, but it was still out of place here. It sat at the end of a row dilapidated houses off the main square of my family’s city, taller than the others and certainly newer, its fresh layer of commercial paint taunting the old cabins that made up the place I once called home. I was embarrassed that we were living in a home nicer than the other Survivors’. It made it apparent to them that there were classes — that some people in this world were more privileged or had more resources than others. This had never been made known to Survivors before because no one from the outside had ever invaded, as the Winters were doing now. And I had brought them.

It was just one more thing to feel guilty about.

And, so, I didn’t spend much of my free time among my Survivor peers. This morning, like every morning, when I climbed out of bed and sensed that no one else was in our house, I sank into an antique armchair I bought in Bigfork that stood in the corner of the room Everett and I shared. I put my feet up on the rickety ottoman and reached for a book from the stacks of them scattered on the floor. I was hopeful when Andrew had promised me that they — that the Survivors — would make peace with the Winters if it meant I would help them. I ignorantly assumed this meant that my family as a whole would accept the Winters and, more importantly, would accept my return.