EVELYN
A windowless, grey room with nothing but a toilet, sink, bed, and slot in the wall for food and water. This was how they broke people.
This was probably how they'd broken him.
Adam.
Her last image of the world before they locked the door was Adam standing across from her, all the fear and terror on her face reflected in that ridiculous mask he wore.
Adam, who had looked after her in the bunker. Adam, who betrayed her.
His words were still ringing in her ears, "We are here to help, you'll see."
She spent the first hour screaming. Caution be damned. She'd yelled and cursed until her voice came only in rough whispers. She beat her fists against the door until her knuckles were raw and blood stained the fabric that blanketed the walls.
The next few hours were spent scouring every inch of the room, from the food slot to the ceiling tiles. She even tried to rip the padding off the walls seeking any means of escape. When her efforts proved futile, she'd curled up on the bed in frustration and tried to save her strength.
The room must have been soundproofed because apart from the noises she made it was worse than anything she'd ever faced in the bunker. Silence had always unnerved her but here it was deafening. The silence engulfed her like an ocean, and she didn't know how to swim. She'd tried to sleep, but even that proved difficult. She woke every so often, haunted by the stillness. She realized she'd lost count of the minutes she'd been there.
Time disappeared with the loss of the light.
There was a quote etched on the wall, the same words Adam had spoken when he brought her to this forsaken place.
"When thoughts arise, then do all things arise. When thoughts vanish, then do all things vanish."
They must have been written there first in marker, but someone's fingernails had traced it over and over until it was carved into the wall. She wondered how it could be that people could twist the meaning of someone's words into something so far from its intended meaning.
16 words.
95 characters.
2 sentences.
1 paragraph.
15 spaces.
Uses the letter "t" 8 times.
4 in the first sentence. 4 in the last.
Evelyn had counted.
How long did it take that person to inscribe those words on the wall? How long did they leave people here? She'd read about people who were kept in solitary confinement in her psychology textbooks. How long was it before people lost themselves? She didn't know. It took weeks, right? Not days. Surely not hours... Had it only been hours? It hadn't been days yet... Had it? It felt that way but she wasn't sure.
She realized that time didn't matter if no one knew where she was, and no one was coming for her.
Food and water seemed to come whenever someone remembered to drop it off, sometimes the next piece of food came immediately after she'd taken out the first, sometimes it came after long periods of time. The meals were always cold, stale slop from what looked like the colony's compost bin. Apocalypse cuisine was never glamourous, but this seemed especially cruel.
Her thoughts wandered.
What would her parents tell her to do?
If they knew where she was, they would have saved her.
What would Beth have done in this situation?
Beth always seemed to know exactly what to do. Beth would have had a plan.
She paced the floor, from side to side to pass the time and played games with herself to keep her mind from floundering; the kinds of boredom busters she would engage Elliot in on long family road trips.
A is for apples, anthology and Antarctica. B is for basketball, baby, and butterfly. C is for cat, car, and cartwheel.
I spy a grey wall.
I spy... a grey ceiling.
They'd taken her backpack and she refused to think of what had happened to it.
She wasn't materialistic, but her backpack had become as close to her as a friend, providing a sense of safety, protection and preparedness that she felt naked without.
She feared what they'd done with her father's journal, the only clue she had to the whereabouts of her family. She was back to nothing.
"Evelyn, for someone who won the NeuroGen Scholarship... I thought you were smarter than this. Your father's research- you know they wouldn't have let him live after what he'd done..." Adam had said.
Every time the words drifted back into her mind she pushed them away. She imagined placing them in a box and burying them in the recesses of her brain where they couldn't be heard. She couldn't bare what they could mean.
So, what if Adam somehow knew that her father couldn't get a job in medicine like he'd wanted and settled for some boring job in research? That didn't mean Adam knew what happened to him. The same went for his work being a part of the organization that had helped her get the scholarship she needed to get into university... That didn't mean much you could see as much on her transcript. Still, her mind took her back to those nights when her parents huddled in her father's office... "Just talking shop."
A is for anxiety, apocalypse and alone. B is for bleak, betrayal, bitter and broken. C is for claustrophobic.
Cruel.
Cry.
Cold.
"You know they wouldn't have let him live after what he'd done..."
Evelyn covered her ears. The room was silent but the quieter it was the louder the words seemed to scream in her mind over and over again like a broken record...
Record.
Radio.
Music.
Jonathan.
Evelyn missed her radio, and perhaps Jonathan's company too.
No, it was more than that, wasn't it? She missed him; his cynicism and knack for dry humour, his worldview that came with a side of sarcasm and a sprinkle of skepticism, that look in his silver-grey eyes when he knew he had her caught in one of his quick-witted remarks and how hard he tried to keep his lips from spreading into a smile when she made him laugh, the passion and fire in his eyes that lit up when he talked about music.
She missed him. Surely, he would have had a song for this situation or made some stupid pessimistic remark. Maybe 'The Sound of Silence', he'd played that one for her before... He'd probably mock her and use her "look at the bright side attitude" to joke that if she was going to die alone and in silence anyway at least there was food and shelter here. Not much more you could ask for in an apocalypse. It was basically a hotel. Maybe she was already losing her mind because she laughed at that thought. Maybe he was right... did her idealism always sound so... so... idiotic? What was that Beatles song that he'd showed her about the lonely woman and the priest... Eleanor Rigby? She was surrounded by people yet completely alone and there was no one to mourn her when she died. Jonathan would say that all people become lonely, overlooked and forgotten eventually. The Evelyn from a few days ago would have tried to thaw the cold slab of muscle in his chest by telling him that that doesn't happen when there were people who loved you and whom you loved... but she was starting to wonder about that now... if there was no one left to love you... to remember you... to care? What then?
She'd become so lost in the tangle of hopeless thoughts that at first, she didn't trust her ears when the sound began to seep through the walls. It wasn't until she felt the strong, rhythmic bassline thumping through the floorboards like an earthquake, that she realized that the beat wasn't just in her head. She pressed her ears against the walls, the floor and even into the food slot. The familiar vibrant piano chords and synthesizer accents drummed against the soundproofing pushing the insulation to its limits. She knew who was coming even before he threw open the door.
"This is the part where you say, 'aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?'" Jonathan shouted over Elton John's powerful performance of 'I'm Still Standing', "and then I'll say, 'I'm Luke Skywalker. I'm here to rescue you."
Evelyn was too caught up in the relief of seeing Jonathan again to break it to him that she'd never watched Star Trek or Star Wars or whatever he was quoting. When she thought back to this moment (and she would many times) she wished she'd thought of something better to say than, "Hi." And she really wished she didn't wave.
He was covered in blood. She hoped not much of it was his own, but it was hard to tell. His expression was hidden by a camo bandana, also stained with blood. He hadn't drawn his gun which was still holstered at his side, but he was wielding a hockey stick that looked like it had taken more than a beating. A Serenity Society member in beige robes came careening down the hallway towards them. Jonathan turned, taking aim like a major leaguer, and knocked them to the side with a powerful swing.
"WELL! MOVE IT, LOVEBIRDS WE HAVEN'T GOT ALL DAY!" a bearded man dressed head to toe in camouflage called. He was equally, if not more, blood-covered. He jogged towards them from the opposite end of the hallway shouting, "THESE FREAKIN' THINGS ARE EVERYWHERE! I KNEW THAT MOST OF THESE SERENITY DUDES WERE GONNA BE SOULLESS! I TOLD YOU, MAN! DON'T TRUST THE SYSTEM! BUNCH OF SHEEP! THE MUSIC'S REALLY MAKING 'EM GO BATSHIT THOUGH! IT'S FREAKING CHAOS AND I LOVE IT! VERY ROCK 'N' ROLL!"
There was no time for formal introductions, as more Serenity society members... or were they soulless? Maybe both?... rounded the corner sending Evelyn, Jonathan and the man in camo running in the opposite direction. They ran down so many stairwells and past so many matching rows of lockers that she knew for a fact that she never would have been able to find her classes there if she was a student. Of course, during school hours, the chaos would probably have looked a lot less bloody. The hallways were in a state of complete pandemonium, with Serenity Society members running this way and that fighting the army of triggered Soulless. Some still had their masks on, others did not. Some looked like they'd been woken up in the middle of the night, a man wearing beige pants and a fuzzy pink bathrobe went past screaming hysterically, his hair nearly as wild as his eyes. The man in camo was wielding the electric guitar he'd strapped to his back like a sword, bringing the body of it down on any Serenity Society member or Soulless that had the misfortune of getting in their way, and then whooping like an arena champion. Evelyn made a mental note to ask Jonathan about him later. All the while the music blared over the school's PA system so loudly it was hard to hear much else.
Finally, the maze of hallways opened to a familiar foyer and they ran towards the double doored entrance which had once been guarded.
"This way!" Jonathan called as he dodged a flying mirror mask that someone had hurled at an oncoming Soulless hostile and grabbed Evelyn's arm, pulling her towards the small window leading into the school's office.
"Wait where's-?" She glanced back at their other companion. The man in camo wasn't far behind but was having a bit too much fun knocking some Soulless into the glass trophy case.
"STOP FOLLOWING ME!" He was screaming at them as he swung his guitar, "YOU'RE SO OBSESSED WITH ME!"
"We'll meet him outside!" Jonathan shouted, "Come on!"
Where on Earth did Jonathan find this guy? Evelyn wondered sprinting after Jonathan as he vaulted over the railing like a parkourist and clambered through the small window into the office.
Surprisingly the office was empty, but Evelyn suspected that Jonathan and the man in camo had cleared it out because the signs of struggle were still written all over the room. Jonathan leaned over the desk and then abruptly the music on the PA cut out as Jonathan disconnected the plug from his Walkman. He turned to her holding it up. His eyes sparkled and she knew he was smiling.
They weren't out of danger yet, but they were close. She could still feel the thumping beat in her body like a second heartbeat, even though the music was gone and replaced by a gentle ringing that continued to drown out the chaos outside the door. Maybe it was the fear, the relief, the adrenalin that made her throw her arms around him. She couldn't explain it but somehow, she was overcome with the feeling that he needed to know, right now before anything else happened, how glad she was that it was him and that he had come for her.
At first his body was stiff, as if he'd never been embraced before in his life but slowly it softened into hers and they stood there holding each other.
She pulled back to look at him and his grey eyes suddenly went wide. That's when she felt the barrel of the gun on the back of her head.
The attacker must have spoken but the sounds around her were still muffled as the ghost of the music was still ringing in her ears. Without stepping away from her, Jonathan let his makeshift weapon fall to the ground and raised his arms. His eyes met hers and, in an instant, she knew why he hadn't stepped away from her. Her arms were still wrapped around his waist... around the gun still strapped to his side. She could feel the cold barrel of the pistol pressing against her skull. Though she still couldn't make out their words, the attacker sounded loud and angry. Her hands were ice around Jonathan's waist, the paralysis of fear she'd come to recognize was starting to creep over her. But she'd come so far, she'd just escaped, her family was waiting for her. The gun was against her head, but Jonathan hadn't moved, it would kill them both if she couldn't act. The panic was building inside her like a steaming kettle. The ringing in her ears was getting louder and louder and louder and louder. She was taken back to that moment when the lights had gone out... when she'd frozen. No, she wouldn't do that this time. Not when both their lives were on the line.
In one fluid motion, she leaned back against her attacker, pushing them away and whipped the gun out from Jonathan's belt, turned and fired.
Adam's body hitting the floor was the first clear sound she registered.
There was blood pooling at his midsection, where the bullet had pierced the skin. Evelyn fell to her knees desperately trying to put pressure on the wound. The cascade of tears blurred her vision.
"No, no, no, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." she repeated, knowing there was nothing to be done.
The mask had fallen off when he'd hit the floor, and his green eyes were gazing up at her struggling to focus on her face.
"I took the easy way out..." He told her, a smile breaking across his blood-stained lips, "It's... much harder to do the difficult thing but... I did what I had to do... to survive... You did too...Safiya and Iris are waiting..."
He did not move again.
"We have to go." Jonathan said, he reached down and squeezed her shoulder, his voice was tight but she knew he was trying to be comforting. The sounds of the chaos outside the room had returned and she knew they didn't have long there. There was no time for this now. She sucked a breath through her teeth, steeled herself for what was to come and then followed Jonathan out the broken back window and into the darkness of the night.