Chapter 1 — My Brother Was Beside Me

My brother was knocking on the bunker door.

My brother was also sitting beside me.

“Rowan,” the voice outside whispered. “Please. I can’t feel my leg.”

Eli’s fingers tightened around my wrist.

In the dim emergency light, his face looked almost colorless. Sweat darkened the collar of his shirt. His injured leg lay across my lap, wrapped in a bandage that smelled wrong no matter how often I changed it.

The voice came again.

“Please. I can’t feel my leg.”

Those were the exact words Eli had said that afternoon.

Not similar words.

The same breath between please and I. The same small break on leg.

Across the common room, Tess slowly set down the wrench she had been using to repair our water pump.

Nobody moved.

Then the speaker above the entrance crackled.

Graham’s voice filled the room.

“Open the outer door.”

I looked toward the camera mounted above us.

“Eli’s in here.”

“I know where your brother is.”

“Then you heard that.”

“A survivor. Voices can sound alike.”

Tess stood.

“Not that much alike.”

The inner security door opened, and Graham stepped through with his pistol in his hand. He wore his boots, coat, and the leather gloves he used for supply runs.

It was two in the morning.

“What are you dressed for?” I asked.

He ignored me and crossed to the control panel.

I eased Eli’s leg off my lap.

“Don’t open it.”

Graham entered the first two digits of the release code.

“There are people dying outside, Rowan.”

“There’s a person dying inside. You didn’t seem concerned about him.”

His hand stopped above the keypad.

Behind me, Eli said, “Ro.”

A warning. We both knew Graham liked to make other people pay when I embarrassed him.

For eight years, he had controlled our food, our medicine, and the locks between us and the world. He had been the adult who knew where to hide when everything fell apart.

Somewhere along the way, hiding had become the only thing he allowed us to do.

The voice outside began crying.

I heard my brother crying through two feet of reinforced concrete.

Eli pressed his palm against his mouth.

I went to the observation slit.

“Stay away from that,” Graham said.

I lifted the steel cover.

Our floodlight had burned out three months ago. Through the narrow opening, I could make out the stairwell, the wet concrete landing, and a figure hunched against the outer door.

It wore a green coat.

Eli’s green coat.

The one he had lost on his last supply run.

“Look at me,” I called.

The figure raised its head.

Hair hung over its face. One shoulder sat higher than the other, as if the arm beneath it had been broken and never set.

“Rowan,” it whispered.

“Where did you get the coat?”

“Please. I can’t feel my leg.”

It said it without lifting its face.

Graham grabbed my shoulder.

I knocked his hand away.

“Make it answer a question.”

“You’re frightened.”

“Yes. Ask it something.”

He looked through the slit.

Then he lowered the cover.

“There’s no reason to leave someone out there.”

Tess stepped between him and the controls.

“Show us its eyes first.”

His pistol shifted in his hand.

Not toward the door.

Toward Tess.

I saw her notice.

The figure outside scraped something along the steel. A fingernail, maybe. The sound traveled through the hinges.

Then the knocking stopped.

I lifted the cover again.

The landing was empty.

“Where did it go?” Eli asked.

Above us, something struck the ventilation grille.

Dust scattered over the table.

Tess looked up.

Another impact bowed the metal inward.

“Get Eli into the pump room,” I said.

Graham seized my arm.

“Everybody stays here.”

I stared at his fingers until he let go.

Then I pulled the emergency wheel beside the air duct.

It resisted. I had lubricated the mechanism the previous winter, but the shaft still caught halfway through its turn.

Another blow.

One screw dropped from the grille and bounced across the floor.

“Tess. The red lever.”

She reached above the water pump and yanked.

The intake fan stopped.

I shoved both hands onto the wheel. Steel shutters slid together inside the duct.

Something caught between them.

The noise that followed had nothing human in it.

Eli pushed himself upright against the couch.

“Rowan, move!”

A gray hand burst through the grille.

Its fingers opened and closed above my head.

Tess swung her wrench into the wrist. Bone snapped. I forced the wheel through its final turn, and the shutters slammed shut.

The hand dropped.

For several seconds, all we heard was the dying vibration of the duct.

Then my brother’s voice came from somewhere above the ceiling.

“Please. I can’t feel my leg.”

Tess stared at the severed hand on the floor.

Graham was already moving toward his office.

I followed him.

He turned in the doorway.

“Clean that up.”

“What was it?”

“An infected person.”

“You tried to let it in.”

“I didn’t know.”

I glanced past him.

His radio was on. A green light flashed beneath the receiver, and a strip of paper fed from the small thermal printer attached to it.

Graham saw where I was looking.

He tore the paper free.

“Go help your brother.”

He shut the door in my face.

The lock clicked.

Behind it, I heard a drawer open, then the sharp rasp of his lighter.

I stood there until Tess called my name.

Eli had collapsed trying to reach the pump room.

We carried him back to the couch. His skin burned beneath my hands. When I unwound the bandage, Tess looked away for a moment before kneeling beside me.

“He needs more than clean gauze,” she said.

“I know.”

Graham had given us two tablets that morning. He claimed they were the last antibiotics in the bunker.

I had watched him swallow something with breakfast.

Now I went to the kitchen and took the narrow screwdriver from beneath the sink.

“Where are you going?” Tess asked.

“To find out what he has.”

She looked toward Graham’s office.

Then she took the screwdriver from me and replaced it with a heavier one.

“The little one will bend.”

The medicine cabinet stood in the storage alcove outside his private washroom. A steel box, bolted to the wall, with a lock he had installed himself.

I knew the bolts.

I had installed those.

I loosened the bottom bracket, pulled the cabinet forward, and wedged the screwdriver behind the back panel.

Metal creaked.

I stopped.

From Graham’s office came the murmur of his voice.

“Yes,” he said. “Before sunrise.”

I worked the panel loose.

Inside were sealed dressings, bottles of painkillers, and enough antibiotics to cover the entire bottom shelf.

For a moment I could only stare.

Eli had been begging me not to touch his leg because it hurt too much.

Graham had listened through the wall.

I shoved the medicine into my pockets.

Behind the boxes lay a folded sheet of paper.

It listed ages, blood types, previous injuries.

Tess’s name appeared first.

Then Eli’s.

Then mine.

A handwritten note beside Eli’s entry read:

LEG INFECTION. SISTER WILL COMPLY IF TREATMENT OFFERED.

I unfolded the bottom edge.

Three names.

Three empty boxes waiting for signatures.

Across the final line, someone had stamped:

TRANSFER: 0600.