Out There (27 page)

“This is way out of line, you need to rest. Go to your room, Ava Richardson.”

“What did you just call me?”

We both stared at each other. Apparently Mother was out of explanations. “Just go to your room, Ava.”

I stormed over to the staircase and thudded up each step, spinning round when I reached the top. Mother was standing at the bottom with her arms folded, watching me.

“You know what?” I sneered. “I blame you for Katelyn.” Then I turned and ran into my room, slamming the door behind me on the conversation and my mother.

Chapter Thirteen

Ava, The Next Morning

My door stayed shut all day with me hidden inside. I heard Mother shuffling around outside, getting ready for work and leaving. Right then, I was so thankful that it was a weekend, otherwise I would have had to bear riding the tram to school in either utter silence or a non-stop lecture from my mother. I didn't know which would have been worse.

I stayed in my room all day, hidden under the covers, while Mother probably busied herself with the immense task of preparing my surgery. Every time I thought about it, the whole thing made me sick to my stomach. Once I thought about it so hard that I actually was sick, luckily I made it to the bathroom on time. No one ever got sick, so I knew that my gut was probably warning me.

I spent the day wrestling with all the feelings inside me about what I knew and what I didn't know and what I wanted to learn. Eventually, I became so fed up with the nagging in my gut that I decided to leave. As soon as Mother returned from work and her lights switched off, I waited another half hour then bolted out of bed, fully dressed, and climbed out of my window. Our house had a random ledge poking out of it that allowed me to rest my feet on it before climbing on to the lower window to jump to the ground. Katelyn and I mastered it years ago.

Then I ran, as discreetly as possible, until I found myself dodging trees and passing the Old Village. I followed the route Derron always took me on until I reached the Village. Owen was standing outside guarding, and practically falling asleep, while the others were away in their huts.

When he heard me coming, Owen sat up and yelled out, “Wake up boys! Ava's here!”

Some of them began to emerge from their huts, yawning. I was exhausted but I kept running once I saw Derron come out from the hut with Cain.

“Ava, why are you here so late?” he asked as I ran over to him panting.

“I-I-I…” then I burst into tears.

Water just poured from my eyes and I couldn't contain my sobs. All the boys stepped back like I was sprouting a second head and stood there uncomfortably.

“Uh, is she OK?”

“Yeah, I got her.” Derron put his arm around my shoulders and walked me to the hill. “You all go back to sleep,” he called from over his shoulder.

When we reached the hill and sat down, he turned to me and asked, “So what's wrong?”

By then the crying had stopped. “I had a fight with my mother.”

“I'm sorry, do you want to talk about it?”

“You know I had to sneak out to get here? She forbade me from leaving, what is that?” I was practically laughing.

“Sounds like it was bad.”

“Beyond bad.”

“Do you want to tell me what it was about?”

“That's the thing,” I said and picked at the grass, “I have to tell you the truth about my city.”

“Will I like this truth?” He didn't sound worried at all.

“Well, I don't know.” I knew there wasn't much point in debating it so I just jumped right in. “Basically my city was created a long time ago, actually right around when I was born so not that long ago, by a group of women. Except there were men before and now there aren't.”

“I already knew that though.”

“Here's the thing… the women kicked out the men because they felt that they were irresponsible.”

He laughed. “Irresponsible – how?”

“They felt that men were the reason the planet almost died, because they were poor decision makers with clouded judgment and that kind of stuff.”

“Well yes, pretty much all of us boys are a bit loopy in the head, except Cain, but I am talking to a girl who thought that rain came from a magical waterfall in the sky!”

I punched him on the shoulder playfully. “Not the point.” “OK, OK, continue.”

“So they hate men, like they teach us in school that they are ‘the root of all evil' and that's why I almost flipped out when I saw you.”

“'Cause you thought I would what?”

“Kill me or something.”

“I would never kill you,” he said and held my hands between his.

“Well, I know that now, silly. But my mother always told me that men never did anything good, but after meeting you and the others I know that was a lie. I just want to know the whole truth, and no one will tell me.”

“You think I might know?”

“Well, anyone at this point with some idea of how this all happened and why it was covered up would be helpful.”

He thought to himself momentarily, then said, “I think I know who might have answers for you. Come, let's go back to the Village.”

He pulled me to my feet. “Thanks,” I said.

“I think it's about time you got your answers.”

The two of us walked down to the Village to find Cain sitting at the lit fire poking it with a stick. He looked up as we approached, like he was expecting us.

“Cain, Ava has a few questions that we think you might have the answers to.”

He looked closely at me for a second and said, “Sit.”

I did as I was told.

“So you want to know how we got here, am I right?”

“How did you…”

“Ava, you have curiosity dripping out of your ears,” he interrupted. “I had a feeling you would want to know. I just want to make sure it's for the right reasons.”

“Right reasons?”

“You're not going to betray us by telling your people where we are so they can slaughter us?”

“What? No, of course not Cain. I'm just sick of not knowing anything.”

“If she was going to do that, she would have done it already,” Derron said and sat down beside me at the fire.

“You're right, but I'm sure Ava understands why I'm cautious.” I stared at his face from behind the flames and said, “So you know.”

“Actually, I remember. I was seven when we left your city.” “You came from my city?”

“No, it's more complicated than that. I sometimes hear you speak of The Great Wars – well, I remember them.”

“What are The Great Wars?” Derron asked.

“It was a time when everyone was fighting each other, before you were born. It was complete chaos, everything broke down and the only concern was one's own life.”

“That's how they founded my city,” I added. “Because everyone had such powerful weapons that they almost killed the entire human race, so my city was founded by women who wanted to preserve our species.”

“So, what Ava was taught was that all men were cruel destructive people – am I right?” Cain asked.

“Yeah.”

“They blamed the destruction on men, an entire gender, because they thought that they would be better off without them.”

“Isn't that a bit rash?” Derron asked and raised his eyebrows. Cain sighed, “That's what happened.”

“So, how did you get here then?” I asked Cain from across the fire.

“Well, I once lived in your city, except it was called something different back then.”

“What?”

“London.”

“That's a strange name,” Derron said.

Cain rolled his eyes. “Anyway, there was a group of women, like you said, and they gathered together more of them until they had enough to start a movement. One of them was extremely bright and she developed ways to keep them all safe from missiles and things like that.”

“Sylvia Carter.”

“What?”

“That's the woman you're talking about, she made the Bubble around our city so nothing can get in.”

“Yeah, that's it, something about a shield. So anyway, I was living with my mother then and we were neighbours to a couple that knew about what was happening. At first, we all thought that it was our ticket to survival, so we did everything we could to help them. I remember my mother letting the women have their meetings in our basement.

“And they were successful; they isolated a part of the city and were almost at their goal when one day they announced that all the men would have to leave, or they would be removed by force.

“Luckily, before this all happened, our neighbour's wife told us about that decision and said that we needed to leave to find refuge before they kicked us out. So our neighbour gathered together all his friends and their sons and planned for us to leave. He took some boys like me and Derron and Derron's brother, even though our fathers weren't coming. Mine was dead anyway, but our neighbour was like a father to me.

“So the four men and the eight boys all planned to find refuge in another city and then send for the mothers and daughters. I had to say goodbye to my mother and our neighbour had to say goodbye to the wife he loved so much and to his newborn daughter.

“Then we left. This was near the end of the Wars, so almost everyone was gone. We walked for miles, reaching town after town, but no one was there. We never found a town.

“The men decided to go back to our city to see if the women would let us back in, but it was surrounded by a huge shield and we couldn't penetrate it. So we created the Old Village nearby, in case they might reconsider. They never did, so we moved further and further into the forest.

“The hardest part was that all the boys were babies. Imagine four men and me, trying to build a village in all kinds of messed up weather, with seven crying babies.”

“Cain, I had no idea,” said Derron and he looked so sad. “I didn't really tell the others, because I knew they wouldn't understand at such a young age.”

“What happened after that?” I asked, feeling so many different emotions run through me.

“We were about to move further into the forest when all the men caught this disease from something they ate, I don't really remember. And they all died, just like that. Before they died, though, my neighbour told me about what happened so I could tell the others one day. He told me everything he knew about the Wars, the Movement, the city and life. So when he died, I was able to feed us and keep us alive until they became old enough to understand how to do all this.” He gestured around him.

“Thank you,” Derron said to Cain, “for everything.”

“Don't worry, it was all worth it,” said Cain and smiled from behind the dancing flames. “Just remember you owe me for every time I had to change your nappy!”

Derron laughed. “I don't even want to know what you had to use for nappies!”

“You're right, you don't.”

The two of them laughed and I felt a warmth rise in me like that of the fire. “Why did you never tell the others all this?”

“Because at that time I was angry, and once I cooled down I realised that they would be angry too when I told them. I knew that they would seek revenge, which would only end in chaos,” Cain stated as he got up and walked round to Derron. “Derron over here, though,” he said and locked his arm around his neck and ruffled his hair, “is actually smart. He wouldn't do anything stupid, well not anything that I know of.”

Derron shoved him off saying, “Glad to know you think so highly of me.”

“Don't flatter yourself,” said Cain and sat back down at the fire.

“None of this explains why they lied about men being terrible people though,” I said.

“Well, Ava, I think you prove why they lied,” Cain suggested. “And how's that?”

“Once you found out the truth, you wanted to change things, am I right? You're thinking
we should let the men back in!
”

“Well, of course!”

“And that's exactly what they don't want.”

“You know, no one dies in Ava's city,” Derron said. “How come they die out here?”

“I told you, we have a cure for everything,” I explained, “but people have died before.”

“Really?” Cain asked. “I guess I thought you all lived forever.”

“No, my best friend died.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Another woman died too, she was really old though. You see most people above forty fled because they were afraid of the changes the women in the Movement suggested. So my whole city is made up of fairly young women, none of them really die. Oh, but there was this one woman called Naomi Drake who was quite young and wrote music who died of a genetic illness.”

“Did you say Drake?” Cain said and looked at me with a shocked expression.

“Yeah, Naomi Drake.”

“There was a man who was one of the four called Damian Drake. He wanted to send for his wife to join us, but he never did, and one day the men were out hunting when they found her. She had escaped, but starved in the forest because she never found us.”

“Why didn't she just go back? It's not that far.”

“Could you show us where it is?”

“How?”

“Come,” said Cain and stood and walked over to a tall tree. “Derron says he taught you to climb, could you point it out?”

“Sure.” I looked up and the tree seemed so high that I felt queasy for a second.

Derron helped me position myself and instructed me on the climb, following closely behind me. I forbade myself from looking down, knowing that it would only scare me more. I just had to trust that Derron would catch me if I fell. So I kept going, almost falling several times, until I reached the top. I let out a cry of joy just as Derron reached me. Cain appeared at the top of the tree next to us and asked, “So where is it?”

I scanned the forest carefully, knowing it was easier to see at night, but it was almost invisible. Finally I saw a ring of no trees and knew the Bubble must have been in the middle. “There!” I pointed at it. “In the middle of that ring of clearing.”