Half Lives (39 page)

‘I love you,’ she whispers into the tangled thicket. ‘I love you,’ she says again. Finch hears but Beckett is already rushing down the Mountain. Finch wishes
she would say that to him.

He doesn’t understand what they have planned. He is torn between chasing after Beckett and confronting Harper. He can almost feel the Terrorists as they draw closer and closer
to his Mountain. He’s come this far, sacrificed so much. If there must be more blood on his hands, so be it.

I
begged Chaske to kill me. Everything felt like a dead end.

He said the only thing that could save me. ‘I love you, Icie.’

What did it matter?

Maybe it shouldn’t.

But it did. He loved me.

It was something to hold on to.

Something to live for.

But was it enough?

‘All this, as awful as it is, brought me to you.’ He brushed my dreadlocks aside. ‘Endings are beginnings. Every ending a beginning and every beginning an end. God, I know that
sounds horrible. The world ends so we can be together. But it’s like you rose out of the ashes to save me.’

I wondered who saved whom. We slipped into each other’s arms. I rested my head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat.

‘Icie, that day . . . the day you found me . . . on the mountain. Well, I’d . . . I’d come to the mountain to . . .’ He paused. He covered his mouth with one hand, and he
shook his head. His fingernails still had jagged edges, but they were longer and the skin around his nails was smooth. He lowered his hand. ‘Icie, I need to tell you . . . I mean . .
.’

Chaske had become a mythical creature to me. He had no past. Part of me wanted to stop him. I
so
didn’t want him to be human. I needed him to be something more. Something that I
could continue to believe in and someone who could save me. As he struggled for words, I knew he needed to climb down from the pedestal I’d put him on and be human with me.

‘I’d come to the mountain to . . .’ he paused again, ‘kill myself.’

What?
That didn’t make any sense. Chaske was strong and confident. He’d saved me. He’d kept us grounded in this bizarre place. I tried to look at him, but he held me
so close and wouldn’t release me.

‘But there you were,’ he continued, ‘and you needed saving more than I needed to die.’

I didn’t believe him, but then I thought about all those scars. Chaske was always at peace with our situation, but maybe that was only because he was already prepared to die. ‘But
you had survival gear and food.’

‘I stole it from my foster dad’s army supply store. I wrecked the shop and stole what I needed to get away from him.’ Something wet hit my cheek. I smoothed it away. I glanced
up at Chaske’s face. His cheeks were wet with tears. His pain seeped into me. Seeing this strong, proud man’s agony was worse than any hurt I’d ever experienced.

‘It’s OK,’ I said – that stupid, untrue, unhelpful phrase. Nothing was OK. Nothing was ever OK. ‘You don’t need to tell me.’

‘I think I do,’ he said, and kissed me on the top of the head. ‘I don’t know who you think I am but out there, if I kept doing what I’d been doing, I would have
ended up in prison or dead. I wasn’t going to graduate high school. I was on probation for stupid shit.’ He sniffed and wiped his eyes.

‘I just wanted to run away.’ He couldn’t stop now. ‘I thought I would live on the mountain for a while. My grandpa – my mom’s dad – used to take me
camping out in these mountains when I was younger. But once I got here, I didn’t see the point. I wasn’t living. I was just surviving. I couldn’t go back and I didn’t know
how to go forwards. The moment I found you, I had the gun and I was finally ready to pull the trigger and then it was as if you’d been dropped from the sky.’

What was so awful about his life that suicide was his only answer? Before I’d got that 911 text from my parents, I couldn’t imagine anyone’s life being so hopeless that death
was the only answer. I understood it now.

He released me and shifted so he was cuddling my back. He rested his chin on my shoulder. ‘I thought you were a sign.’

I closed my eyes and listened to his steady breath in my ear. I didn’t ask the question that felt almost solid in the air between us: why? Why had he given up on everything out there? If
he wanted to tell me, he would. I waited, and eventually Chaske spoke.

‘It all seems so trivial now. All the reasons – big and small. How do I explain it to you? You had two parents who loved you. All I had was my mom and she died a few years ago. She
was this wonderful, kind woman who taught me all about the philosophers and asked me what I thought and listened to me. I was shuffled from family member to family member and then eventually put in
foster care. The last family was the worst. They didn’t treat me like a human and I guess I stopped feeling like one. You had this golden, sparkly future that lay ahead of you like the yellow
brick road to a glittery Emerald City. My future was heading towards a brick wall.’

‘I’m sorry, Chaske.’ It was all I could say and it wasn’t enough. It felt like my fault. I’d had a great life that I didn’t appreciate. How come he had got
such a tough life and, up until recently, I had got such an easy one?

No matter what happened before, we’d both ended up here.

I leaned back into him. ‘What now?’ I asked, because I didn’t really know. ‘Should we go outside?’

‘Is that what you want?’ he asked.

‘No.’ I was surprised by my answer. ‘I’m not ready yet.’ The longer we stayed here, the more terrified I’d become about what we would find when we opened that
big metal door and resurfaced. We were running out of food. We couldn’t stay here much longer. I should have been more worried that what had killed Tate was slowly killing us, but I
wasn’t. I just wanted to stay here, locked away with Chaske, for as long as I could.

‘Let’s just live in the moment,’ he said.

I tilted my head and he kissed my cheek. I could try to live his way, but I wondered if his strategy was because he knew our days were numbered.

We moved to the front of the tunnel as far away from the radioactive material and Tate’s dead body as we could. We spent every minute together. We had meals at regularly
spaced intervals. We slept. We played cards or told each other stories. The only difference now was we didn’t have the constant tug-of-war to escape. I wasn’t on pins and needles,
expecting, hoping, praying that my mum and dad would come knocking on the door. We just lived in the moment.

He finally told me details about his life before, but in small dots of information that I had to connect. An incomplete image was evolving, but I didn’t care. I let my life have spaces
too. I left out parts that I’d sooner have forgotten. We developed the one-inch rule. We weren’t allowed to be more than one inch apart – except for trips to the necessary.

But the poison at the heart of the mountain seemed to pulse its presence. I never forgot for one minute it was there. Every cough, every scratch, every pain, I wondered if it was the poison
taking hold.

One night I woke up shivering. I didn’t have to move to know that Chaske wasn’t there.

‘Chaske?’ I called quietly, as if I might disturb someone else’s sleep.

Then I heard the sound that was like a rusty dull knife to my heart. I realized it must have been what woke me. Chaske was coughing. The sound echoed in the tunnels. It grew and folded in on
itself. I wanted it to stop.

‘Chaske?’ I screamed. I wanted to hold him. Rub his back. Give him the air that settled so comfortably in my lungs. I could calm him. I would breathe for him.

The coughing stopped. He was trying to call to me, but he couldn’t catch his breath.

‘Where are you?’ I yelled, and felt around for the flashlight that was always within reach every night. He must have taken it with him.

More coughing. I thought I heard him moving, shuffling towards me.

Then came the most awful silence.

‘Chaske!’ I screamed. ‘Don’t leave me!’ It was a selfish thought, but in those moments I had a glimpse of life without him and I was terrified in a way I’d
never been before – not when I said goodbye to my parents, not during the panic at the airport, not on that long ride with Marissa or when the taxi left us behind. Not on our hike up the
mountain or even when we shut that heavy metal door behind us.

‘Chaske!’

‘I’m OK, Isis.’ His voice was hoarse. ‘Go back to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘But Chaske . . .’

‘Please leave me alone.’ His words weren’t harsh but they knocked the wind out of me.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ I asked him. I wanted to hear his voice. I desperately wanted him to talk to me, say anything, just talk. He felt so far away.

‘No, I’ll be fine tomorrow.’

A lie, but I loved him for saying it. I only wished it were true.

I scooted myself to the nearest wall and sat up. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I thought if I stayed awake, then he wouldn’t die. He could never die. In my head I delivered a
monologue. I recounted every single thing I missed from the outside – sunshine, junk food, fresh air, TV. I missed my iPhone, Facebook, Twitter and anything else that could take my mind off
what was happening. I missed those inane text sessions with Lola: WHAT R U DOIN? NUTTIN. U? NUTTIN. WASSUP? SAME STUFF. MEET U @ BUCKS?

I thought of all the things I wanted to show him from my old life: from the Washington Monument lit up at night to my favourite purple shoes that I’d bought for the prom I’d never
attend. I wanted to slow-dance with him while a disco ball cast white polka dots on the gym wall.

I must have fallen asleep because I woke to the most God-awful roar. He was half screaming, half retching. I could hear the splash as the contents of his stomach splattered on to the floor. The
acidic stink filled the space and my stomach convulsed. He vomited again. Bile rose in my throat. He continued to retch until all that was expelled were dry, choking gags.

‘I’m sorry, Icie,’ he whispered.

‘Oh, Chaske,’ I said. I tried to keep the sound of sadness out of my voice. ‘Turn on the light and let me help you.’

‘No.’ Even the one word sounded weak.

There was no need to talk. The sounds. The smell. We’d lived through them before with Tate, but we wouldn’t both live through them again.

It must have been a day later when he crawled in next to me. I hadn’t moved. He had switched on the light and cleaned himself up. He was hot and sweaty. I held him as his
body shook so violently that I was bruised from his elbows and head thrashing about. I forced water down him.

‘Should we leave?’ I’d asked him. ‘Maybe we could get you some help.’ Maybe all he needed was fresh air and sunshine. I hoped there was at least still fresh air and
sunshine.

He shook his head. ‘Just talk to me, Isis,’ he said. ‘Tell me a story. Anything.’

It was impossible to think of something to say when the only thoughts circling in my mind were of how terrified I was of losing him. But I needed to find something to take his mind off the
pain.