The Reaping (30 page)
Authors: Annie Oldham
Tags: #corrupt government, #dystopian, #teen romance, #loyalty, #female protagonist, #ocean colony
“Oh no.”
“Help me get her down. Carefully.”
Jessa reaches for me, trailing her hands along my arms as she tries to shift me into position to lower me down the hatch. Her hands are so warm, almost fiery. I don’t remember her ever feeling quite that way. Am I really so cold?
“Terra, can you hear me?”
I think I’m nodding to her but my head feels heavy, and the worry in her eyes haunts her face.
“Mom!” she shouts. I hear footsteps below. “Please hold on for another minute. The sub is equipped with a med kit. Just hang on and Jack will patch you up in no time.” She squeezes my hand so hard I flinch.
Of course. I can hang on for another minute. What’s a mere sixty seconds?
Jack grips me under my armpits and lowers me down while Jessa guides my legs. Shouts rain down on us. I guess that half-forgotten part of the barge was remembered after all. Then guns fire and the water bubbles around the sub.
I gurgle at them. Who cares about me? If anything happens to Jack or Jessa, I’ll never forgive myself. They should never have come on this errand.
“Hurry,” Jessa says, her voice desperate.
“As fast as I can. I can’t risk hurting her more.”
Then Jack has to let go of me and Jessa supports all my weight down the last two rungs of the ladder, and I scream as I fall into her and the knife twists in my side. I feel warm liquid splash onto me, and I think it’s just more blood until I open my eyes and see that Jessa is crying freely and she’s trying to stop, but she can’t.
“I’m sorry,” she says, covering her mouth with her hand.
Then Jack jumps down next to us and cradles my head in his hands. “Where’s the med kit?”
“Here.” Gaea kneels down and opens the kit, pulling bandages and sutures and antiseptic out into neat piles.
Jessa races away. “I need to put the sub down before those idiots blow a hole in the hull.”
“Hurry.”
The sub vibrates underneath me and I hear the splash as it slips beneath the water. A few taps echo in my ears, but we’re too far below the surface for the bullets to harm us now.
The tap of Jessa’s feet along the floor reaches me, and I feel like the sub—too far below the surface, and all the sounds around me are dull and waterlogged.
Jessa kneels beside Gaea.
“Hold her head,” Jack says.
Jessa moves my head onto her lap so carefully her hands feel like butterfly wings. Gaea hands Jack scissors, and his tired eyes follow the line of the soldier’s uniform. I try to keep my eyes focused on him, to think about anything else but the pain in my stomach that has the weird tendency to fade to almost nothing and then coming ripping back at me. Why would it do that? My eyelids are leaden, but I use all I have to keep them open.
Then Jack removes the jacket from my side and snips through my shirt to expose the wound. When he pulls away, the scissors shake in his hand.
“Oh, Terra.”
“What?” Jessa’s voice cracks on the word. “Why did you say it like that?”
Jack flings the scissors away and rakes a hand through his hair. “I just . . . . I don’t know if . . .”
Jessa grabs his arm. “Stop it,” she hisses. “Don’t say anything like that again. Help her. You understand me? Help her.”
Jack’s eyes are rimmed red and he wipes the back of his hand across his nose, but he nods. “Okay.” He touches his palm to the side of my face. “I need to take the knife out, Terra.”
He’s telling me with his hand, his eyes, and his face that this will hurt. But it couldn’t be worse than going in, right? I try to nod, but my chin just quivers.
“I’ll need your help, Gaea. Take that compress. As soon as the knife is out, you press down with that on her as hard as you can. Even if the blood soaks it through, you keep pressing.”
I hear her breath catch, but Gaea nods.
Jack leans over me and kisses my forehead. “I love you, Terra.”
I close my eyes. When Jack’s hand grips the knife, the flames come roaring back as the pain sears through me. Then it slides free. I want to gasp but my body won’t let me; at the same time I feel so much freer without that steel wedged into me. Then Gaea clamps down on me with the compress and it feels like my ribs are going to crack. I moan. Jessa is crying again.
“Are we going home?” Jack asks. His voice is hoarse and dry.
Jessa doesn’t look away from my face. “Yes, the sub is programmed to take us there. Two days.”
Jack leans over the med kit and threads a suture through the needle. “That’s too long.”
Gaea’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”
Jack’s voice lowers to a scarce whisper, but I can still hear him, and he can barely get the words out. “She’s lost too much blood.”
Jessa blanches. “I told you not to say that.”
“I wish I didn’t have to.” His soft fingertips roughly wipe a tear from his face.
I look up into Jack’s eyes, and the greens and browns there glow as I blink the tears from my eyes. He bows his head toward mine, and a salty drop splashes across my cheek. But it’s not my tear—it’s his. Gaea's hand that has been pressed so hard against my ribs now gentles against me, and I suck in a breath as the pain bounces around my chest.
“I love you, Terra. I always will.” His forehead touches mine, and his skin feels so warm.
“Jack . . .” Jessa turns away.
I smile. My lips form the words,
I know.
It’s so inadequate for this man I could spend the rest of my life loving.
I love you too.
His body shudders with a sob, and he pulls me against his chest. My wound throbs, but this time I don’t mind. I’m with him. My eyes want to drag closed, but I fight the heaviness, and I memorize him, satisfied that he’ll be the last thing I see when I close my eyes.
Chapter Twenty-three
“Wait, Jack!”
At the sound of my name, I turn back and peer through the trees, watching for the girl.
“Terra!” I hear Kai’s voice calling in the distance.
A small, dark-haired girl ambles between the slender trees. She waves when she sees me, her face lighting up at the sight of me, Jessa, and Jane standing here in the undergrowth next to the cabin.
“Where’s your mother?”
Terra points behind her. Terra's cheeks are flushed and her breath is short. We’re all winded from climbing through the forest to this spot. Terra reaches for me, and I swing her up in my arms and onto my shoulders.
“You’re going to be too big for this soon.”
Terra laughs and hangs on to my ears.
Kai appears from between the trees. Her radiant smile lights the entire clearing.
“This place is more beautiful than you described it, Jack.” She rests a hand on the hewn logs of the cabin.
Our cabin. Mine and Terra’s.
Jane nods. “This was a good idea. It feels right.”
“This was her favorite place. This was her safe place for a long time.” I glance around at the watchers lurking in the trees. It’s been two years since a scanner or a watcher has made any noise in New America. When Terra shut down the network, all of these shut down too. Most of the others have been destroyed, but no one has come through this way for a long time. It’s almost exactly the way she left it.
“Can you reach that one?” I point to one two feet above my head.
Terra stretches both arms up and yanks the small black lens out of the tree. She turns it over and over in her hands.
“What do I do?”
“Here, give it to me,” Jane says.
Terra gives the watcher to Jane, and she puts it in her pack. Already the clearing looks more peaceful. But one person doesn’t notice.
Jessa hasn’t said a word since we drew near to the cabin. She talked almost without taking a breath the moment she stepped from the sub to land for the very first time—she was so nervous I almost checked my back out of habit. She touched one foot to the sand like it might be red hot. Then she got her footing and she rambled on about the weather, about the trees, about life in the colony, about what that animal over there was. Anything to keep her mind off of Terra. Now her lips are trembling and her cheeks are tear-stained.
I can’t blame her. I do pretty well most days, but every once in a while, something will remind me of her, and I have to tell myself to hold it together.
I understand Dave better now than I ever did.
I hoist Terra off my shoulders and swing her over to Kai. Then I unzip my pack and ease out the small urn. I hate to part with it, but this is as she would like it. After all, she was mine, but she wasn’t
mine
. She was all of ours and she was the Burn’s, and she belongs in these woods. I never saw her more truly free, more magnificent, than when we were running through these woods together.
When I close my eyes, I can see our time spent in this cabin the day we found the old sleeping bags. That was before the labor camp and her hair was longer then. Her bright eyes drank in everything. I never realized it was because she was seeing so many things for the first time. Her eyes drank in everything, and I drank in her.
She would want to be here. I can feel it in the marrow of my bones.
Kai clears her throat. “Should we say a few words?”
Jessa laughs, and the sound is strangled in her throat. “She wouldn’t have wanted us to
say
anything.”
“What do you mean?” My hands clench too tightly around the beautiful jar Gaea gave me.
“Hold out your hand.”
Jessa turns my hand over with her delicate fingers. Then she tentatively touches my palm. Kai, Terra, and Jane all lean in to see what she’s doing.
She writes.
Terra was brave.
Kai smiles and finds my hand.
Kind.
Jane’s nimble fingers hesitate over my palm. Her eyes shine.
Loyal.
Their gazes settle on me. I find a stick and sweep my foot over the leaves to clear a spot of ground. I trace the words in the earth. It feels more permanent that way.
The best of us all.
Then I open the jar. A breeze threads through the trees and I slowly overturn the blue glass, and the last physical reminder I have of her whisks away, here and there, spreading across this small piece of land that will forever be hers now.
I’m sad she didn’t get to see what I have over the past two years—to see her father smile again, to see her mother return to the colony, to see a few dozen colonists venture to the surface, to see the scanners and watchers come down, to see the people she grew to love take back their liberty after the government was finally vulnerable.
But I think she knows.
I can almost feel her touch on my arm, on my hand, as the wind dances passed me and continues on through the woods toward the sea.
* * * *
Acknowledgements
I’m indebted to so many people who have helped me see this trilogy through from start to finish. The biggest thank you goes to my Heavenly Father for blessing me with my husband and my beautiful girls who gave me the time to write and all the love I could ask for. Then of course, thanks are due to Maggie and Dave, beta readers extraordinaire; to all my family who cheered me on; to Danica for intellectual debates over comma use; to Maurianne for reminding me about lay and lie; to Renée for creating covers that still wow me; to the book bloggers who helped spread the word; and to my readers, without you the last two volumes never would have been told—thank you for the adventure. Lastly, a debt of gratitude to Hans Christian Andersen, whose “A Little Mermaid” laid the groundwork for
The Burn
. You never know where inspiration may lurk.
* * * *
About the Author
Away from her writing, Annie is the mother of the three most adorable girls in the world, has the best husband in the world, and lives in the hottest place in the world (not really, but Phoenix sure feels like it). She loves to cook, sing, and play the piano.
She is also the author of
Infraction
,
The Burn
,
Bound
, and
Dragon Sister
.
Visit Annie online:
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