The Way of the Cicadas

Chapter 4

Everyone who was leaving gathered in Artemis’s room. It happened to be mutually inclusive with Class Three. Hayden, Selah, Maisy, and Artemis had each staked out a corner to cry in. They weren’t sobbing or anything, but their eyes misted, and they sniffled now and then.

“What’s wrong?” Brita asked Artemis.

“I’m scared! Aren’t you?”

Brita paused. She didn’t know the answer. Outside, there were stars no one could turn off. Air that couldn’t be siphoned away. Food that no one rationed. No one to blame Brita for the rationing.

She took another sweep of the room. Everyone else had similarly grim faces. Even Selah, who’d come bursting in demanding their early departure, was now on the floor with her knees tucked under her chin.

Brita didn’t know what had happened out there. She didn’t feel brave enough to ask, and clearly no one wanted to talk about it. For the others, this bunker had been their home for the last ten years. They’d lived through the terrible war or whatever. Their memories were either stained with remembering those they’d lost or the darkening horizon of the conflicts leading up to it. They were going to leave the precious people they still had.

“I’m scared,” Brita said. “But probably not as scared as you.”

They were going to wait until a half hour after midnight. Artemis’s father would be fast asleep, and Selah, who was pretty familiar with the colony at night, said it was the quietest time—usually in between shift changes. They would leave one at a time, a few minutes apart, because if only one person were seen carrying a pack, it could be explained away. Six people out with packs at once would land them all in Detention Ward, right next to Richard the pyromaniac. Hayden would head out first, since he knew the passcodes to Observation. Brita was chosen to go second, mainly because she didn’t protest. The others would follow, one by one. If anyone wasn’t in Observation by 1:00 a.m., the others would leave without them.

Hayden shrugged on his pack and made his way to the door.

“Wait,” Brita said. She took Hayden’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “Be careful.”

He gave a quick nod, and then he was gone, into the darkness.

That made Brita wonder. “I can use a flashlight, right?” Brita asked, turning toward Maisy.

“No, you can’t use a flashlight!” Selah hissed.

In a moment, Brita’s heart went from a rippling pond to a tsunami. “f**k,” she said. It was the first time she could remember swearing, but this was a good time for it.

Everyone stood in suffocating silence until Selah’s voice cut through. “It’s been two minutes. It’s time to go.”

“I could go with her,” Maisy offered.

“No! You’re not putting yourself in danger for her!” Selah said.

“Selah—”

“No, it’s fine,” Brita managed to choke out. “I’ll go on my own.”

Before Maisy could protest again, Brita had shouldered her pack and was out of Artemis’s unit, feeling for bumps along the walls. She closed her eyes because it was easy to pretend that if she opened them again, there would be light. Not seeing anything was different from seeing darkness, somehow.

The trick worked. She made her way through the halls swiftly but silently. She made a wrong turn toward Ward V (Men’s Hygiene). To get back on track, she had to cross a hallway—a cavern of empty space. When she had stretched as far as she could while still touching the wall, she was forced to let go. Letting go of that safety net felt like falling, and she shook with fear. But a few more steps forward, and she found the other side of the hallway. She groped the wall until she felt the braille: W. One ward closer to her goal. She breathed out in relief.

And just as quickly, she stopped breathing again as she heard the heavy thud of footsteps down the hallway.

“It wasn’t fair at all.” Voice One was a boy whose voice cracked with every word. Probably from Class Two.

“That’s how it goes sometimes,” said Voice Two. Unfortunately, this voice was deeper. It was an adult—maybe even an administrator.

“So, anyway, I told her, ‘You can’t just take my tofu jerky and expect me to be okay with it. I think it’s a break-up-able offense,” continued Voice One.

“Totally,” said Voice Two, sounding a bit bored with the story.

Brita opened her eyes for a moment before slamming them shut again. The fact that she still couldn’t see anything scared her even more. She could hear the blood thumping through her ears.

As the voices drew nearer, Brita’s muddled mind cleared. Since she still couldn’t see anything, they must not be using flashlights, and thus they needed the braille to guide them like she did. Brita crouched on the ground. Less than a minute later, she heard a hand scrape the wall. She made herself as small as possible, but still, a leg brushed against her side.

The footsteps stopped. “What’s this?” asked Voice Two.

One of the men kicked Brita’s side. It knocked the wind out of her, but she didn’t dare breathe in.

“I hate when people leave their crap in the hallways,” said Voice One.

“Me too.”

One of them poked around Brita’s body with a sneakered toe. “Could be something good.”

“Let’s go,” said Voice Two.

And they did. After a few minutes, Brita could no longer hear their footsteps. Brita stood, closed her eyes, and took a few deep, grateful breaths. She felt again for the braille and got back on her way.

As she made it to the entrance to the cafeteria, she again heard voices. She froze until she recognized who was speaking.

“I’m here because your mother told me you might try to stake a leave.” Millie’s gravelly ex-smoker voice. “She made me promise to stay here and watch for you.”

“I wish she’d come here herself.” Hayden’s perennially calm voice brimmed with anger. “At least I could have said goodbye.”

“I can tell her for you.”

“Millie . . .” Hayden’s voice trailed off.

Brita was scared, being out in the open of the cafeteria. As much as she didn’t want to interrupt, pure terror proved to be more motivating than the fear of awkwardness. She kept a hand against the wall to guide her and rushed toward the voices.

“Hey, citizens,” she said, just to announce her presence. She’d heard administrators say it sometimes to eye-rolling passersby.

“Hey, you made it!” said Hayden. In an instant, he was back to his collected self.

“Is it only you two going?” asked Millie.

Brita flushed at the suggestion. Her and Hayden, alone in the wilderness?

But Hayden said, “No, we’re waiting for a few others.”

“I’ll watch the door and wave in the others,” Millie said. “You two wait inside.”

Hayden took Brita’s hand. “I know my way I around here pretty well.”

Brita said nothing.

Hayden squeezed her hand. “You’re shaking.”

“Well—can you turn a goddamn flashlight on?!”

“It’s in my backpack. Hold on—we’re almost at the deck. Watch your step.”

But she didn’t need it anymore; a sheen from the periscope at the end of the hallway brightened the room. Brita’s eyes were so used to the dark by now that she almost had to squint as they got closer.

Hayden rifled through his backpack and pulled out a flashlight. He flicked it on and leaned it on the counter, next to a ham radio. He illuminated the wall like Maisy would. The tension in Brita’s body melted.

“Hayden?”

He turned to her and popped a stevia leaf from Millie’s stash into his mouth. “Hmm?”

“Do you think I’ll find her out there?”

He chewed. “Who?”

“Me?”

Hayden stepped closer, smiling. His breath was sweet and minty. “You’re already right here, Brita.”

Brita’s breath hitched. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. That she remembered, anyway.

A sudden noise turned Brita’s and Hayden’s heads. It was Artemis, who tripped as she entered the sunken floor of Observation. She righted herself before falling, but Hayden still walked over and let her borrow an elbow to make sure she made it down okay.

Within minutes, everyone in Class Three had arrived without incident.

Millie came in a minute later. “That’s everyone, isn’t it?”

Hayden nodded. “We should head out.”

“If I weren’t so old,” Millie said, “I would join you. I’d really like it if you didn’t die out there.”

Hayden nodded. “We’ll do our best.”

“I’m guessing they’ll reopen Observation with much greater interest once they find out you kids left. I’ll be here, waiting and watching for you.”

“Thank you, Millie.” Hayden stood and shook her hand. Everyone else offered their thanks as well. Brita ran over to give her a hug.

Then Millie went over to a cabinet filled with hazmat suits. She slipped one on over her clothes to be safe while she let them out—which sort of freaked Brita out. Was it too late to get a suit?

They all squeezed into the cramped antechamber.

Then Millie closed the antechamber door, which meant that the door to the outside could now be opened. She climbed up, and they followed after her.

Apparently, the door was so heavy that it required a team lift. Hayden had climbed up first after her to help open the door. Both grunted, straining. This must have been what it looked like right before they’d saved her.

Finally, the door budged. Hayden and Millie made it out, and the rest of them followed up the long, spindly ladder. They stepped outside, and no one came running to stop them.

Millie offered a quick wave, then slipped back into darkness. The vault door came back down to the ground with a thud.

Even though they could see now, Hayden took Brita’s hand again. Both of them looked at the ground, where the pitcher Brita had held when she’d first gotten there still lay in the dust.

“I brought you in,” Hayden said. “Now you’ll bring me out.”