The Last Girl Read online

  Dellert’s skull crunches with the impact.

  It’s a wet sound that carries over the noisy equipment, and Zoey sees why as gray mush spurts from a crevice of bone on the side of the guard’s skull. Meeka raises the prod and swings it again. Dellert’s head cracks wide open in a spray of red that speckles Zoey’s bare arms. Meeka brings up the dripping weapon and steps past the twitching corpse at her feet as loud explosions tear the air apart around them.

  Zoey flinches, ducking involuntarily as several more blasts fill the aisle with flashing fire. She raises her eyes and sees Baron standing at the head of the corridor, his gun drawn, barrel smoking. Beside her, Meeka stumbles back, darkly wet blossoms appearing on the front of her shirt.

  Zoey blinks, trying to reconcile the image, but there is only the pungent smell of gunpowder, the ringing in her ears, and the stillness of the moment. The single second hangs for an eternity before Meeka looks down at her shirt, then slowly crumples to the ground.

  “Meeka!” Zoey screams, scuttling forward, all thoughts of the pipe gone as she drops it and crouches beside her friend. Meeka quivers on the floor, her slender neck trying to hold her head off the ground. Zoey reaches out to the front of her bloodied shirt that is becoming wetter by the second, but she stops her trembling hands inches from the gushing wounds, overwhelmed by the magnitude of blood. Instead she cups Meeka’s head and grasps her closest hand.

  “Got him,” Meeka rasps. A small bubble of blood inflates at the corner of her mouth and pops.

  “Don’t talk, you’re okay. I’m going to get you help.” Meeka closes her eyes and when she reopens them they are half as wide. Zoey shoots a glance at Baron who has inched forward, his arm still outstretched and holding the pistol. “Go get help!” Zoey yells, but the guard’s eyes are locked on Meeka and the spreading pool beneath her body.

  “It’s okay,” Meeka whispers, wetting her lips with crimson. “It’s okay now. I’m . . .” She inhales a rattling breath partway and her eyelids flutter like a butterfly’s wings before stilling.

  “Meeka? Meeka!” Zoey shakes her gently, but the other woman’s eyes are already glazed. Drying in the hot air. “No, no, no, no,” Zoey keens. There is something expanding inside her, an all-consuming pressure that forces out only sounds from her throat, no more words. She sobs, feeling the warmth of Meeka’s blood seep into the knees of her pants.

  “Is she dead?” Baron asks. He’s standing near Meeka’s feet, the gun at his side. Zoey bares her teeth at him. She gently lowers Meeka’s head to the floor and glances at the pipe beside Dellert’s corpse. As she prepares to leap for the weapon, Baron raises the pistol and places its barrel in his mouth.

  The report is muffled, much quieter than the prior shots, but Zoey still jerks with the sound. A dark shower erupts behind Baron’s head and he crumples to the floor limply. The handgun clatters once, landing only inches from her hand.

  All is still.

  Zoey stares down at the pistol, the tip of its barrel coated in red. The machines hum around her, and the scent of death permeates the air. She reaches out a hand and touches Meeka’s fingers. They are already cool.

  A scream wells up inside her, and it’s all she can do to hold it back. The urge to simply lie down next to Meeka and stay there until someone finds her is strong, but even as her muscles slacken to do just that, her eyes fall on Dellert’s outstretched hand and the bracelet above it.

  Zoey swallows a choking lump in her throat and stands. Her legs threaten to fail her, but she steadies them and moves to the nearest workbench. The wall behind it is lined with various small tools: screwdrivers, chisels, a rubber mallet. She reaches the end of the bench and stops, glancing toward the door to make sure she’s still alone. Something catches her attention on a shelf several yards away, its bulk partially hidden beneath a plastic drop cloth. She moves to it, pulling the shroud away before examining it for a moment. She grasps the tool and walks back to the aisle.

  Zoey positions herself beside Dellert’s body, her feet straddling his arm. She places the long blades of the bolt cutter to either side of his wrist, and raising her eyes away from the sight, brings the handles together.

  There is almost no resistance and only a faint crunch as the cutters do their work. When she looks down, Dellert’s hand lies palm down and a gush of blood escapes the stump of his wrist. Shoving aside the churning nausea, Zoey kneels and pulls the bracelet free of Dellert’s arm. She wipes it on his uniform before unsnapping his holster to retrieve the pistol that rests there. After examining the weapon and determining its safety mechanisms, she slides the gun into the pocket of her pants so that only its grip protrudes.

  Zoey moves back to Meeka’s side and bends down. She places one hand on the other woman’s cold brow and brushes back her hair before leaning forward to place a kiss on her forehead.

  “You never would have let me do that before,” Zoey chokes out. She tries to say something more, but her throat constricts to a pinhole and she has to wipe away a thick layer of tears that have formed on her eyes. She shudders once with a final sob and sniffles, standing. Zoey grasps the bolt cutters and carries them past the other two bodies, pausing as an afterthought to pull Baron’s prod from his belt. There is a small dial on its handle that she turns up to the highest number. She throws a final look back at Meeka’s unmoving form before rounding the corner.

  The door opens to the outside corridor with a swipe of Dellert’s bracelet. She peers into the hallway before hurrying down its length to the laundry door. A frenetic excitement laced with terror runs through her as she stops at the laundry room. There will be someone inside, a guard will come through the doorway at any second, an alarm will suddenly sound, something will stop her.

  But none of these things happen, and she slips inside the large room in silence. Without hesitation, she hurries to the laundry elevator and presses the load button. The second shelf extends out over the folding table, and she places the bolt cutters as far back on the telescoping extension arm as possible. The steel is harder to cut through than Dellert’s wrist and she tries to ignore the comparison her mind insists on making. Finally there is a snap and the shelf twists, still held up by the other arm. Zoey snips through the second support and the shelf falls to the folding table with a bang. She cringes for a moment before dropping the cutters to the floor. After setting the shelf aside, she crawls onto the table and climbs inside the space left by the absent shelf. The steel is cold, and she has to exhale to slide into the elevator. She tucks her feet close to her body and reaches out, knowing simply by touch which button to push.

  The amputated arms retreat past her, and the door to the elevator closes with a click. Then she is rising, her stomach struggling to keep up. Her breathing is loud and painful, since each inhalation presses her back against the shelf above her. Claustrophobia descends as she imagines the elevator as an enormous vise, slowly and inevitably clamping down on her body. She grits her teeth and twists a handful of her pant leg.

  The rising sensation stops, and the elevator doors open onto the inside of the women’s and Clerics’ clothing cabinet. Before the automatic arms go through their cycle of depositing the nonexistent apparel, Zoey slides out and wiggles past piles of pants and shirts until she is at the doors enclosing the cabinet’s front.

  Sweat runs freely down her back and neck. She blinks, finding the inside of the doors’ handles before turning them as quietly as she can. The doors ease open a crack and she inches forward, pausing to look through the gap. There is only darkness on the other side. She squints, frowning. The cabinet is set beside the laundry chute in an alcove near the head of the stairway. There should be ample illumination from the hallway lights, not this solid blackness.

  The darkness shifts, and her eyes bulge.

  She is looking at the back of a guard’s shirt.

  He stands only inches away from the cabinet and adjusts his duty belt with a soft clicking. He begins to hum a low song beneath his breath before striding away down the c
orridor. Zoey listens to the sound of his retreating footsteps over the base thumping of her heart, sure that he will hear it and return to yank her free of the cabinet. A tremor runs down the length of her body, and she takes several deep breaths before pushing the doors the rest of the way open.

  She slides out into the vacant alcove like a ghost, pale and cold as the floor she stands on. One hand grasps the prod and the other the pistol grip. Zoey moves to the corner of the nearest wall and shoots a look down the stairway, then toward the empty hallway. The guard who was standing before the cabinet strolls leisurely, stopping every so often to check a door or dig at the seat of his pants. Finally he rounds the next bend and disappears.

  Zoey steps into the corridor and looks up at the black, half-domed camera, the surveillance like a pressure on her skin. She has perhaps a few minutes before another guard comes through. If she’s lucky. She has to free Lily, Rita, Penny, Sherell, and Lee before going to the infirmary. How to explain to Lily she’s got to stay quiet? She knows Lee could help her but she isn’t sure she’s fortuitous enough to meet with him by chance in the hall. And what to do with Simon? For he will surely wake when she opens the door to the room he shares with Lee.

  She clears her mind, focusing solely on her senses, pausing every three steps to listen for the telltale sound of polished boots. Her eyes dart forward, then back over her shoulder, awaiting the moment when an alarm will sound, waking the entire facility. As she nears the first door on her left she slows and pushes past the void that tries to grow within her chest.

  Meeka’s room.

  She wishes beyond everything that Meeka was beside her now instead of lying on the hard floor of the mechanical room with the would-be rapists. It was a desecration to leave her there, but she had no choice.

  Zoey shakes her head, realizing she’s stopped moving completely. Meeka would chide her for being so sentimental at such a perilous time. She gives Meeka’s door one last look before creeping past it. At the next corner she stops, tilting her head just so one eye can see around the bend.

  Four snipers are moving toward her, long rifles slung casually over their shoulders. They talk in low voices and one in the rear of the procession laughs quietly.

  Zoey jerks back behind the corner, her shoulders digging into the hard wall. The snipers are relieving their four counterparts from the perches outside. There’s no way she can kill them all and there’s no place to hide here.

  Time slows to a crawl, each breath takes a full minute to complete. She is frozen except for her heart, which defies the shackles of suspension and double times.

  Move, Zoey. It is Meeka’s voice within her mind.

  I can’t.

  You move right now, you worthless princess. I didn’t die for you to get caught.

  I can’t.

  MOVE!

  The last thought is a shout, and Zoey breaks from her position against the wall. She pelts down the center of the hall, indifferent to the watching cameras. She comes to a stairway and flies up the treads. Behind her, the footsteps of the soldiers echo in the hall. She rounds the first landing and doesn’t stop. Up the next set of stairs, and then she’s at the junction of halls that lead to the assembly area or the infirmary.

  Which way? Which way? Whichwaywhichwaywhichway?

  Voices float up to her from the stairs and she bolts right, toward the infirmary, even as she sees a guard round the farthest corner of the corridor. If she had gone left, she would have run right into him. She waits for a yell to come, but there is only the approaching sound of the snipers. The door of the infirmary is ahead. She slides to a stop and flashes Dellert’s bracelet across the scanner. The door takes forever to unlock and she hears one of the snipers call out to the guard.

  They’re on the top steps.

  The door clicks open and she dives inside, ready to tase anyone in her way.

  The infirmary is quiet, the rows of beds empty, doorways darkened. The door shuts silently behind her and she moves forward, knees bent, heart raging.

  There is the swish of a white coat ahead and she flings herself into the closest room, crouching beside the exam table. A pyramid of light stains the floor from the hall, and she inches backward as far away from it as she can as it flutters and Doctor Calvin strides by. His head doesn’t turn to look in the room, and she holds her breath as he stops at the exit. After a long moment there is the click of the locks and a flow of conversation floods the infirmary.

  “Was there someone in the hallway outside?” Calvin’s voice says.

  “Greg was doing rounds,” one of the snipers answers. “Why?”

  “I could have sworn I heard the door open a minute ago.”

  “Wasn’t Greg, he went past us down to level three.”

  There is an extended silence. Search this floor will be the doctor’s next order, she’s sure of it. Slowly, Zoey withdraws the pistol and aims it at the empty doorway. She will not make it easy for them to take her. If she’s not going to be able to help the others escape, she’s going to take out as many of the bastards as she can. They’ll remember her at the very least for that.

  The thought brings a flicker of a smile to her face before the sound of footsteps wipes it away.

  “Must’ve been hearing things,” Calvin says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I’m going off shift, I’ll ride up with you all if you don’t mind?”

  “Fine with us, Doc. Hey, you hear about what the one rat did to Gwennie today?”

  “I’ve asked you not to call them that, Lieutenant.”

  “Yeah, okay. Anyway, she said something to her, and now Gwen’s locked up in her room. Won’t come out.”

  Five figures file past the open door and Zoey aims at each one of them in turn, ready to pull the trigger as soon as a set of eyes lands on her. None do. The last sniper disappears from her line of sight, and their voices fade as they move deeper into the infirmary.

  Zoey lets out a shaky breath, deflating with it. Her vision doubles for a brief, sickening beat before refocusing. She stands and sidles to the door. The aisle outside the room is empty. The voices of the men are gone, leaving only the faint hush of wind outside the walls and the buzz of lights in the ceiling.

  She glances to the left at the exit. Then to the right. What are the chances of her retracing her steps, unseen, to the women’s dormitories, releasing them, and guiding them back to this point? There aren’t enough zeroes in the world to place after a decimal point in that equation.

  How much is a life worth?

  She closes her eyes and begins to excise the traitorous feelings from her mind with a scalpel of cold reason. She is here, the other women are not. She was trying to release them but fate swayed against her. She knows she probably won’t escape with her life tonight, and that is the only redeeming quality she feels her actions may grant her. If she manages to kill the Director, then all of this will benefit them in turn.

  Zoey abolishes the last traces of guilt, knowing they’ll return tenfold if she somehow survives the night.

  There will be a guard, she knows, and he will be in front of the doors. The damnable, shining doors, and no other bracelet will allow her to pass besides the one on his wrist. She composes herself for nearly a minute, listening for any movement, but there is nothing. Zoey steps into the open air of the hall and scans the medical beds and their surrounds. She reaches the end of the rows of beds and stops. Across the wide room, which holds dozens of unused gurneys and rolling operating trays, are the elevator doors. They gleam their silver smile as if they have been waiting for her. In a way she supposes they have.

  Zoey surveys the entire space once, twice, three times. The guard is not here. She squints and bends low, thinking he may have heard her coming and is hiding beneath one of the empty beds, but there is only bare floor. She pivots, holding the prod in front of her, ready to depress its trigger at the creeping foe behind her, but the aisle is empty.

  Faintly she hears a toilet flush.

  Zoey
spins, eyes darting to the single, unmarked door left of the elevator. It must be a bathroom. She runs, feet barely touching the ground as she slides to a stop beside the door. She brings up the prod as the handle rattles and a man steps out into the light.

  Zoey shoves the prod into his neck just as he registers movement beside him and begins to turn, his hand dropping to his own weapon.

  She triggers the prod, and the blue electricity crawls across the stunned features of Crispin’s face.

  The guard’s eyes jitter and his body locks solid and begins to fall as Zoey releases the trigger, her hand coming to her mouth to stop the cry from escaping. Crispin hits the floor on his shoulder, his head snapping off the concrete with a horrifying crack.

  “Oh no,” Zoey says, her voice only a whisper. “Crispin?” The guard lies still, one arm pinned beneath him, the right side of his face pressed to the concrete. She kneels, beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Crispin?” She pushes him onto his side, then his back. The guard’s face is slack, lips slightly parted. A smell of singed flesh rises from him, making Zoey’s stomach heave. She reaches out and places her palm above his mouth and nose.

  No breath touches her skin.

  She sits back, turning her head to the side and biting off the scream of fury that rises in her throat. Why? Why did this have to happen? Where was her plan now that everything had been shattered?

  But you were going to take Crispin’s gun originally and condemn him to death anyway, weren’t you? she thinks. This is simply shortening the means to the end.

  She shudders with revulsion.

  There is no time for this. Meeka again.

  I can’t.

  You have to.

  Zoey struggles to her feet, hoping against hope that she will feel a pulse in Crispin’s wrist as she grasps it, but there is nothing. She muscles past the rage and self-hatred and uses it instead as fuel to drag the man across the floor to the waiting doors. She has to struggle to bring Crispin’s bracelet high enough to scan. When it registers, a deep humming issues from behind the doors and she hurries back to retrieve the prod from where she left it. She positions herself to the side of the doors, ready to leap forward if anyone occupies the inside of the elevator.