Alive (3 page)

B
rewer is a dead little boy.

A thin line of dust runs up his tiny, shriveled body, dust that fell through the crack between the lids.

The coffin is the same size as mine and Spingate’s, but it looks huge surrounding such a small corpse. The skin of his face is dried so tightly to his skull that it’s cracked in some places, showing the bone beneath. His eyes are empty sockets. His lips have shrunken back, showing two rows of discolored teeth; it looks like he’s smiling.

I feel sick to my stomach.

Brewer is wearing a white shirt and an embroidered red tie. Black pants and a black belt instead of a plaid skirt. Even if he wasn’t all dried up, the outfit would have been too big for his little body. Pitted, crimson-spotted bars hold down his hips, ankles and wrists, even though his feet and hands are hidden inside his pants and sleeves.

Spingate points to his tiny forehead, to a symbol—just as black as ours—embedded in his dried skin. It is a circle with one line down the middle and one running from side to side.

“A cross,” she says.

“Or a
T
.”

She shrugs. “Maybe a plus sign?”

“Maybe.”

A tooth-girl, a circle-girl, a cross-boy…and we have no idea what any of it means.

I’m staring at a corpse. That could have been me. These are coffins after all, so why is he dead while I am alive? Looking at him makes me cold in a different way than the temperature and my scant excuse for clothing.

I’d be so much warmer with pants. Did he get to wear pants because he’s a boy? If so, that’s not fair.

Spingate slowly extends a finger toward Brewer. She pokes his cheek. Dried flesh crumbles and falls away. It’s awful, but it doesn’t seem to bother Spingate at all.

She grabs the sleeve of his shirt, starts to tug.

My hand locks on her forearm.

“Stop that,” I say. “What are you doing?”

“Making a bandage.”

“For what?”

She points to my wrists. “You’re still bleeding.”

I look at them and see she’s right. The bars rubbed my skin raw. Small spots of red well up from a dozen tiny tears. Dust packs the wounds, making the blood more sludge than liquid, but it’s still slowly oozing out.

“I’m fine,” I say. “We shouldn’t disturb the dead.”

Spingate huffs. “The dead don’t care.”

She tears two long strips from his shirt, jerking his tiny body in the process. A thick, dry piece of his face falls away, exposing the cheekbone below.

Spingate wraps the strips around my wrists and ties them off.

“That’s better,” she says. “Should we open the other coffins?”

Nine remain closed. Spingate and I wasted time sitting with each other. We wasted more staring at Brewer.

“Yes,” I say. “And quickly.”

She holds out her hand toward my weapon. “Can I try?”

That strikes me as funny. She wasn’t strong enough to get out of her own coffin, but she thinks she’s strong enough to break one open from the outside?

I hand her the jeweled rod.

Spingate takes it, and when she does, that soul-melting smile peeks out again. She’s excited, moving quickly, her fear suddenly forgotten.

She moves to the next coffin and brushes dust off the nameplate. The jewels sparkle bright yellow.

“K. O’Malley,”
she says.

Spingate’s fingers trace the yellow jewels. She puts a fingertip on one and pushes: it slides inward until it clicks. When she pulls her finger away, the jewel stays depressed. She pushes it again and it clicks again, then returns to its original height. She moves to the next one, pinches it between finger and thumb and twists: the jewel rotates in place.

Somewhere inside the coffin, we hear a series of small whirs and clinks.

Spingate doesn’t know what she’s doing, but she’s trying things—pressing, then listening, turning, then listening some more. Her lips move a little, making no sound. She points at the jewels, her finger bouncing in the air—she’s counting.

She lifts the weapon, touches a pattern of jewels on its shaft, then presses a similar pattern on the jewels surrounding the name
K. O’Malley
. A hidden panel on the side of the coffin slides up fast, revealing the negative space of two small circles.

Spingate laughs, delighted at her success. She stands, then slides the rod’s prongs into the circles—they fit perfectly. I hear a click. She lifts the end of the rod.

A deep
thrum
comes from inside the coffin. The lid halves shudder. Dust powders down from them as they slide neatly to the sides.

Inside, lying motionless, eyes closed, is…a boy. A sleeping boy, dressed like Brewer but as big as we are. Bigger, even—his shoulders press against the coffin’s white fabric, the toes of his black-socked feet touch the end. He has thick, brown hair. His skin is darker than Spingate’s, but not as dark as mine.

He is beautiful.

The symbol on his forehead is a circle, like mine, but the right half is solid black. His clean white shirt is far too small for his smooth chest. Some of the buttons are missing. There is no dust on him, none at all. No blood, either. The bars holding his waist, wrists and ankles seem far too tight.

I stare at him. I can’t help it. I feel strange. My insides shiver.

“He’s breathing,” Spingate says, her words a hushed breath.

I need this boy to wake up…I need him to see me.

“Give me the weapon—I mean the
tool
. I’ll break his bars.”

“Just a moment,” she says. “We might not have to break anything.”

The tool is still firmly locked in the coffin’s side, sticking up at an angle. She looks at it, then at O’Malley, then at the tool again. She presses a pair of jewels on the handle: nothing happens. She thinks, presses a different pair, then the bars across O’Malley’s wrists, ankles and waist split in the middle and snap down, vanishing inside the coffin’s padded lining.

Other than the gentle rise and fall of his chest, he doesn’t move. I feel a rush of panic that Spingate will wake him—I need to be the one who does it.

“Go open the other coffins,” I tell her.

She looks at me. She seems confused. She looks at O’Malley again.

“Spingate, hurry up about it,” I say. “We don’t know how much time we have.”

She sighs. She likes looking at him, too, and it’s hard for her to look away. She does, though. She pulls the tool free and walks to the next coffin.

I stare down at O’Malley. His hair looks so soft. His mouth is slightly open, his full lips moving with each breath. When Spingate smiled for the first time, I thought she was the most beautiful thing that could ever be.

I was wrong.

I hear Spingate brush dust away from a metal plate.

“This one is…oh, I’m not sure,” she says. “I think it’s…Air-ah-mov-sky?”

Something about that grabs my attention.

“What are the last few letters?”

“It ends with an
S,
a
K
and a
Y,
” she says.

My breath catches, because I
remember
something. A name. A name of a…oh, what is it, it’s right there, tickling my thoughts…of a
musician
. Yes! A musician, with a name that ended in an
S,
a
K
and a
Y
.

Tchaikovsky.

“It’s not
sky,
” I say. “It’s
skee.
”

I go back to staring at O’Malley.

“Aramov
skee,
” Spingate says. “Can I open it?”

Why does she keep asking for my permission?

“Sure, go ahead.”

I hear her working at something. I reach out a finger, gently touch O’Malley’s ribs. He’s warm. The contact sends a prickling sensation across my skin. I don’t feel cold anymore.

He doesn’t respond.

What should I do? What if he doesn’t wake up at all?

I hear that
thrum
again, hear Spingate laugh as Aramovsky’s coffin opens.

S
pingate opens the rest of the coffins. Five of them contain emaciated little corpses. Three hold living people, sleeping just like O’Malley.

I don’t remember my mother’s name or face, but somehow I remember going to the store with her. Before she put a carton of eggs in our cart, she would open it, check to see if any were cracked. This room is a carton with a dozen eggs—six broken and ruined forever, six still whole.

B. Aramovsky
is a boy with dark skin, a shade almost as deep as the black hair that clings to his head in tight curls. The symbol on his forehead is a circle, same as mine, but with a smaller circle inside. He is tall, even more so than O’Malley; Aramovsky’s feet are flat against the bottom of his coffin, while his head presses against the top. His white shirt is tight against his muscles, although he’s skinnier than O’Malley and the buttons haven’t ripped away.

K. Bello
’s skin is white. Are people supposed to be that pale? Maybe she’s sick. Bello has long blond hair, so thin that if you walk by her coffin a few strands slowly move as if hit by a breeze. The symbol on her forehead is a single circle, exactly like mine.

The last one,
J. Yong,
is another boy. His tan skin looks smooth and soft. He has thick black hair, as black as Aramovsky’s but straight rather than curly. It hangs down to his eyes, covering his symbol. I brush the hair back to see it: a black circle with a solid five-pointed star inside.

Savage, Spingate, O’Malley, Aramovsky, Bello, Yong
. Other than Brewer, I don’t know the names of the dead and I don’t care to.

Broken eggs don’t matter.

Everyone—corpses and the living alike—wears the same style of clothing: button-down white shirt, red tie, black pants or a red and black plaid skirt.

And there is something else: everyone is beautiful. Beyond beautiful…
perfect
.

O’Malley is the most attractive of the boys, but it’s a close thing. All three of them have strong features, square jaws, thick necks, muscular bodies. If they were awake, I bet they could run forever. I bet they could lift anything. They could probably lift me as easily as they can breathe.

Spingate and Bello have curvy shapes, beautiful hair, flat stomachs and firm legs. They are flawless. I can’t remember any details of my school, but I am haunted by echoes of feelings I had looking at older girls like them. I felt so awkward. I knew I would never have a body like theirs. Those girls always looked so confident.

Now I have firm legs and a flat stomach, just like Spingate and Bello, just like those girls I can’t quite remember. I have breasts, too, but I still don’t feel confident because this isn’t
me
. Having the body of a woman doesn’t change the fact that I’m still a kid.

Spingate is standing next to Bello’s coffin, gently stroking the unconscious girl’s hair.

“Em, I don’t understand,” she says. “Why are they still asleep?”

My past is a vague whisper, shades and hints of events that might have actually happened, or might have been a dream. The only reality I can count on is what happened after the needle struck home.

Pain woke me. Pain, fear and
blood
. There is no blood on Spingate.

“I don’t know why,” I say. “What woke
you
up?”

She thinks. “A tingling. All over my body.”

“Did it hurt?”

She shakes her head, pauses, then nods. “A little. Maybe. No, not really.”

I look into O’Malley’s coffin. There is no white tube. Maybe one is in there, somewhere, hidden behind the white fabric.

Or, maybe…the needle was for me alone.

Spingate suddenly claps her hands, hops up and down. Her red curls bounce.

“A mild
shock
,” she says. “That’s what woke me. Electricity.”

She walks around the room, studying the pictures carved into the stone walls, examining the coffins, even staring up at the ceiling. I don’t know what she hopes to find, so I turn my attention back to O’Malley.

I am suddenly afraid he will never wake up. Or what if he’s not real at all…what if I’m still in my coffin, dreaming? But if O’Malley isn’t real, why does looking at him make my throat feel so dry?

“I found something over here,” Spingate says. “I think these are controls of some kind.”

I nod, but don’t look. I wrap my hand around O’Malley’s firm shoulder. There is something comforting in the denseness of his body.

I squeeze his shoulder, ever so slightly.

He doesn’t move.

Wake up…please wake up.

I give him a little shove.

Still he doesn’t move.

I lean in, ready to shake him hard. As soon as I do, a thousand tiny needles drive through my skin. My arm moves on its own, yanking my hand away from O’Malley—the second I let go of him, the needle-pokes stop. I look at my hand, not sure what just happened.

“Found it!” Spingate calls out. “Did they wake up?”

O’Malley is twitching a little. His face is no longer peaceful. His brow wrinkles and his closed eyes squint, as if he’s beginning a nightmare.

“No,” I say. “He’s moving, but still asleep.”

“I’ll give them all a little more.”

I hear a buzz: O’Malley sits up like a shot. A button pops from his strained shirt and sails off to land soundlessly somewhere in the dust. He is terrified, confused. His wide-open eyes stare into nothing.

His eyes are blue.

I hear screams of fear and confusion. Aramovsky and Bello are awake. Aramovsky lurches out of his coffin, lands hard in a billowing puff of dust. Bello sits up, her eyes squeezed tight, her hands reaching out blindly to ward off a threat she can’t see and can’t stop.

Yong rolls out of his coffin, the move fast and graceful even though his eyes are still closed. He lands on his side, hands over his ears, elbows together and touching his tucked-up knees.

I look back to O’Malley.

He squints and blinks against the light, but he is looking right at me.

The survivors are awake.

The eggs have hatched.

T
hey don’t know their names. They don’t know why they’re here. They don’t know where we are.

The only thing they know for sure is that today is their birthday.

Aramovsky is the loudest, demanding information more than asking questions. I get the feeling that he thinks maybe Spingate and I were the ones who put him in the coffin in the first place.

Yong keeps glancing at his own arms, flexing them slightly, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth when his muscles strain the white fabric. Between those glances, he glares at all of us like we’re not to be trusted, like we know what’s going on and we’re playacting together to keep him in the dark.

Bello is very quiet—she seems afraid to talk. She’s the smallest of us. She looks fragile. I’m sure the boys could have broken out of their coffins if they had awoken to darkness and pain. Spingate, too, maybe, if she hadn’t convinced herself it was impossible. But Bello? She would have been trapped in there forever, until she died and shriveled up like Brewer.

O’Malley watches me and Spingate, but he doesn’t seem suspicious, or angry. When someone talks, he looks at them the way Spingate looks at the tool or the jewel-controls: he’s analyzing, he’s measuring.

I tell the others what happened between the time I got out of my coffin and when Spingate shocked them awake. Since she and I have been up for maybe thirty minutes more than they have, it doesn’t take long to cover everything.

When I stop talking, I wait for them to respond. They don’t. Spingate doesn’t make a sound. She pretends to study the jeweled rod so she doesn’t have to look at anyone.

“That’s it,” I say. “That’s all we know.”

The four newcomers stare at me. I woke up alone, had to figure things out for myself. In a way, they have it harder: they awoke as a blank slate, naturally assuming the people waiting for them would explain what was happening. Which, of course, Spingate and I can’t do.

O’Malley scratches at his temple. His deep-blue eyes drill into me.

“So that’s all you know,” he says. “That’s it?”

I nod.

“Then you don’t know much.”

He doesn’t say it accusingly. It’s a fact.

“We,”
I say.
“We
don’t know much.”

He nods slowly. “We. Yes,
we
.”

There is strength in that word.

Yong shakes his head and looks off, disgusted.

Bello stares at every person in turn, as if she’s waiting for someone to do something. To do anything. No one does. Her eyes are striking, green at the outer edges that blends to an orange-brown around the black dot of the iris. Finally, her eyes settle on me.

“So, Em…what now?”

I wait for someone else to speak, to know what we should do next. The other five are obviously waiting for the same thing.

“Spingate,” I say, “is there anything else on those controls you found? Can we…I don’t know…call for help or something?”

She shakes her head. “I think they were for adjusting the…oh, what’s the word…ah, yes, for adjusting the
environment
in the coffins. I don’t think the controls do anything else.”

I was afraid of that. “Then we have to leave this room.”

Bello wrings her hands together, left clutching right, right clutching left, over and over.

“We should stay put,” she says. “We don’t know what’s out there. We should wait for grownups to come and get us.”

Grownups
. Like the word
we,
the word
grownups
has power. Grownups would know what to do, would tell us where to go.

Yong spreads his hands, a gesture that takes in the whole room.

“What grownups?” he says. “Do you see any grownups here? I don’t. Someone put us in this place, probably those same grownups you’re crying for.”

“We don’t know that,” Bello says, her hands wringing faster.

Yong spits into the dust. “Don’t be an idiot. We’re in a dungeon, there isn’t time for your stupidity.”

“Stop it,” I say, my voice sharp like it was when I yelled at Spingate to be quiet. “There’s no reason to be mean.”

Yong turns his cold gaze on me. I see his eyes flick to my forehead, see those eyes narrow in thought, like he’s almost got something, then that something is gone.

“Sure,” he says with a smirk. “Let’s all play nice, because that will make things better, right?”

I feel something I haven’t felt yet: anger. I don’t like the way Yong looks at me, the way he seems to dismiss me.

We hear a grumble, a muffled sound that rolls fast, then slow, then faster and louder.

All heads turn to where that sound came from: Spingate’s stomach.

“Oh,” she says. Her hands cover her exposed belly. She blushes. “Sorry. I guess I’m hungry.”

The last word seems to unlock something in me, reveal a pinching emptiness in my middle. It was there all along, I think, but my brain didn’t process it. Maybe I was too busy thinking about all the other things that are wrong to realize that I’m starving.

I see other hands on other bellies. Everyone is hungry.

“Bello’s right,” I say. “We don’t know what’s out there. But we know what’s not in here—food.”

We look at each other in unspoken understanding. Waiting is not an option.

“There’s no water here, either,” Spingate says. “Water is even more important than food.” She looks up and to the left, her nose wrinkling. “I think that’s right.”

Aramovsky tugs at the sleeves of his white shirt. He fidgets with it constantly, as if on guard against a crease sneaking up on him.

“Why don’t
you
go, Em?” he says. “You can find food and water, bring it back for us. We can wait here in case the grownups come.”

Yong makes a
pfft
sound with his mouth.

“You’re a brave one, Aramovsky,” he says.

Aramovsky glares at Yong. “It’s not about bravery, it’s about practicality.”

Yong rolls his eyes. “Yeah, that’s what it is. Practicality. Then how about you go, Aramovsky? The rest of us can stay and be
practical
.”

Aramovsky draws himself up to his full height. He is much taller than the other boy.

“Don’t you tell me what to do,” he says.

Yong’s arms uncross. His hands drop to his sides, curl into fists.

“You volunteer others, but you won’t go yourself? Then how about I
make
you go?”

Yong smiles. It’s a beautiful smile, the kind that would make me want to follow him around all day from a distance, just to see what he does, see who he talks to. But his eyes…they radiate something else altogether. Aramovsky is taller and both boys are packed with muscle, but Yong
wants
to fight—Aramovsky does not. Maybe Aramovsky tried to use his size to intimidate, but it backfired on him and now he doesn’t know what to do.

“We stay together,” I say in a rush. “We aren’t making anyone do anything, okay?”

Aramovsky nods quickly. “Em’s right.”

Yong again stares at me. I get the impression I’m annoying him.

O’Malley tries for the tenth time to pull his top two shirt buttons together, even though he has to know by now his chest is too big for that. He gives up, instead keeps a hand pressed near his neck, as if he’s embarrassed so much skin is showing.

He looks at me.

“Em, why do
you
get to choose what we do? Are you in charge?”

There is no malice in his voice. He’s not accusing me of anything; he’s asking a question that needs to be asked.

“I don’t know,” I say.

Aramovsky points at me. No, he points at my forehead.

“Em can’t be in charge. She’s a circle.”

He says that like my symbol has significance. It does, I know it does—
all
our symbols have significance. We can feel it. But from the searching looks on everyone’s faces, none of us know what that significance is.

O’Malley shrugs. “If Em doesn’t make the decisions, then who does?”

No one speaks. We’re kids: someone is supposed to tell us what to do. That’s the way things are.

Finally, Yong breaks the silence.

“I’ll do it.”

His arms are crossed again, his head is tilted slightly to the right. He is a walking challenge, daring anyone to contradict him. Something about his presence promises pain.

“I’ll run things,” he says. “You all do what I say and we’ll be fine.”

I don’t think he should be in charge. Or Aramovsky, for that matter—something about the tall boy makes me nervous. But who am I to say Yong shouldn’t lead? Someone has to get us out of here, someone has to make decisions.

Yong stares at Bello, who looks down instantly. He stares at Spingate; she clears her throat, blushes again, then shrugs. Yong tries to stare at Aramovsky, but Aramovsky won’t even meet his eyes. I’m the next target for Yong’s burning glare. I try to match it, try to wordlessly stand up to him, but I can’t—I look away. Those fists of his…would he hit me?

I don’t even know if I’ve ever been in a fight.

Finally, Yong stares at O’Malley.

O’Malley stares right back; calm, not threatening, but not reacting to Yong’s intimidation, either.

“Em got out of her coffin on her own,” O’Malley says. “No one else did that. Then she freed Spingate. The two of them got the rest of us out. Without Em, we all might still be asleep. Or, worse, awake and trapped in the coffins.”

Yong frowns. He seems confused, as if he expected any disagreement to involve shouting and pushing, not simple reasoning. O’Malley isn’t even arguing with Yong, he’s simply presenting facts.

“So she got us out,” Yong says. “So what? She has no idea what’s going on. Getting us out of the coffins doesn’t mean she’s a good leader.”

O’Malley thinks on this for a moment, really considering it, then nods.

“That’s true, it doesn’t mean she’s a good leader,” he says. “But she didn’t panic. When Spingate called for help, Em helped her. Em told all of us what was happening and didn’t pretend that she knew more than she did. Don’t you think those are qualities we’d want in a leader?”

Yong says nothing.

I wouldn’t have thought those things made me a leader, but the way O’Malley pointed them out makes it sound so obvious.

Maybe Yong wants to argue, but there’s nothing to argue against.

“Whatever,” he says, and leans on a coffin. He looks away, taking in the aisle of dust as if it bores him only slightly less than we do.

Spingate walks to me, offers me the tool. She doesn’t need to say why—the leader should carry it.

“You can be in charge, Em,” she says. She looks at Bello and Aramovsky. “Don’t you think Em should be in charge?”

A tooth-girl wants me to lead? My blurry memories tell me that’s an impossibility, and yet I see it with my own eyes.

Bello and Aramovsky glance at each other. Her hand-over-hand fussing starts up again.

“Until we find the grownups,” she says quietly. “Em can be in charge until we find the grownups.”

Aramovsky clearly doesn’t agree, but he stays quiet.

I take the tool from Spingate. I smile at her. She smiles back.

O’Malley is staring at me. Those blue eyes lock me in, make me feel jittery. When he looks at me, does his stomach tingle the way mine does when I look at him? He defended me. Why? Does he really think I could be a good leader?

He gives me a small smile, then he shrugs.

“I guess it’s up to you, Em. What do we do now?”

What do we do? How should I know? I’m in charge, but I realize that in the whole exchange I never
asked
to be in charge. That doesn’t seem to matter—everyone is waiting for me to make a decision.

So I make one.

“First, we get out of this room.”

I walk to the archway. The others follow close behind. Yong waits until we stand before it, then he joins us.

The archway is made of rust-caked metal, covered in dusty symbols just like the walls and coffins. What I thought might be doors are two slabs of stone, pressed together so tightly the vertical line separating them could be mistaken for a thin scratch. I don’t see any handles, any way to open them.

“Promising,” Aramovsky says. “Your leadership is off to a wonderful start.”

I ignore him.

Spingate steps forward and wipes dust from the archway’s right side, revealing sparkling gemstones set into the flaking metal.

Her lips move. I wait while she thinks.

“It’s similar to the coffins,” she says finally. “I push these three red jewels—”

She presses them, one, two, three, each jewel moving down a tiny bit until it clicks.

Below the jewels, a small panel pops open. Inside are two holes, same as we saw in the coffins.

Spingate claps and jumps up and down, delighted with her discovery.

I look at her, amazed. “How do you know how to do that?”

She bites her lower lip. Her eyebrows go up, then she shakes her head and shrugs.

“I don’t know. It seems…kind of obvious, somehow.” She points to a row of three red jewels on the tool’s shaft. “Press those—one, two, three—then use it to open the door.”

I pause a moment before doing so. If this doesn’t work, if the doors won’t open, I have no idea what we do next. Some leader I am.

I press the red jewels: one, two, three. I slide the tool’s prongs into the holes, feel a small vibration as something locks tight. The tool has become a handle. I lift it, feel an initial, wiggling resistance. I gradually increase the pressure until something hidden and frozen seems to break free, then the tool rises smoothly and clanks to a stop.

The floor shudders, the walls groan. A light shower of dust rains down from the ceiling.

A loud clang echoes through the air. The door-halves slide open a grinding fraction of an inch, making the entire room vibrate.

Outside our coffin room, the light is brighter.

The vibrations stop. The doors slowly open.