Pulse (8 page)

“Hold that thought,” Wade said, pulling away and smiling as he quickly turned forward. There was a sharp movement to one side like they’d nearly crashed into a wall, and Faith laughed, reeling back in her seat and holding on to Wade with one hand as if he were a bull she was riding into a rodeo ring. Wade applied some brake, and the cart slowed, then stopped ten feet shy of the concrete wall at the end of the corridor.

“Let’s do it again!” Faith yelled. It was all she wanted in the world. She wanted to be shot down an empty hallway on bungee cords and kiss until the sun went down, but that dream was not to be. “Don’t move, Faith,” Wade said. “No matter what happens, stay right where you are. Understand?”

Wade was whispering to her, staring her in the face like all hell was about to break loose. It scared her, so she leaned in and kissed him again, searching for something to take away the terror that was welling up in her mind. The terror came from a sound they both heard. It was a known sound in the outside world, a sound designed to make people cut a path for the approaching menace.

Ping. Ping. Ping.

You could always hear the Drifters coming. They didn’t want to encounter anyone they didn’t need to and preferred to be left alone. It was part of their code, their cultish reasoning. They would never succumb to the States, no matter the cost, and this had turned them secretive about their business. They reminded Faith of the Hell’s Angels, an old motorcycle gang she’d read about that had long since vanished off the face of the earth. The State hadn’t exactly banned weapons on the outside, but the only weapons that remained were leftovers from an earlier, more violent age. And Faith had the feeling they dressed as they did not only to hide weapons, but also to send a message:
We are here to stay. We’re not going inside the State. Ever.
They traveled in packs of ten or twenty, lived off the land, were thought to be violent and dangerous.

Ping. Ping. Ping.

Faith heard the sound again. She understood what it was: someone in the group was tapping a Coin against an empty tin can. But in her current condition, the sound had a bottomless echo that lurched closer like a demon. The fun and games had passed; the Wire Code had turned dark and menacing.

She would later try to remember what had happened and conclude that she had entered into some kind of twisted nightmare. She saw them appear in the corridor from behind a door, where they must have been staying as they passed through the area. It was scary to think they’d settled in on school grounds, but it made some sense. No one would have thought to look for Drifters at a high school. Faith remembered the tattered eagle emblazoned on their long trench coats, their tangled hair, the sawed-off shotgun barrels pointing at the floor. Those were their trademarks.

There was a lot of screaming in the hallway, but if she had been in her right mind, she would have understood that the screams had been mostly her own. She screamed because the Drifters were being thrown down the hallway like rag dolls. They were bouncing off lockers and breaking through the square sections of glass in doorways. Her senses zeroed in on one Drifter who appeared to be a woman. She was slamming into one wall of lockers, then she was slamming into the lockers on the other side of the hallway with lightning speed; back and forth, faster and faster, her body destroyed before Faith’s eyes.

Three hours later she awoke from a deep sleep in her own bed. She was breathing heavily, a bead of sweat running down her exposed collarbone. Something moved in the room; but it was dark, and she couldn’t see what it was. Faith felt a deep sadness welling up inside her, but she couldn’t understand why. The last thing she could remember about the events of that night was the exposed forearm of a man, a Drifter fallen and silent on the cold floor in front of her. And on that arm, looking up at her, was the tattered eagle on the branch, the tattooed symbol of the Drifters. It was the image of a powerful bird lost in a broken world, ever defiant against a coming evil.

She felt the tears running down her cheeks and cried silently. After a time, so heavy and tired, she floated back into a deep sleep and didn’t wake again until the next morning.

If Faith had turned to her right and looked out her window, she would have seen that someone was watching her, wondering why she was so sad, hoping there was enough time to make things right.

Chapter 6
How Do You Say Good-bye?

Liz’s obsessive hand-holding started after Noah left for the Western State. She had always been an unusually tactile sort of person. She loved the way things felt in her hands more than the way things tasted or smelled or looked. Smelling a rose, for Liz, was nothing compared to the sheer bliss of removing one of its bloodred petals and rubbing its velvety surface between her thumb and finger. To taste an apple was fine; but to feel its cool, slick skin against the side of her face as it glided back and forth, that was the really sweet part of an apple for Liz Brinn.

Before meeting Noah she had long since made her dating decisions based on the way the other person felt in her hands. She would succumb to an invitation to go for a walk or watch a movie and find herself wondering from the very beginning what it would feel like to run her hand along the knuckles of the fresh, new hand that had arrived in her hemisphere.

“I read palms,” Liz would say within ten minutes of meeting a guy. “I’m really good at it. Wanna see?”

She had come to find this lie particularly useful given her curiosities, if not devastating for her reputation. By sophomore year she was jokingly referred to as a mystical witch creature from the Black Forest who could transform into a unicorn, a sphinx, or a boy-eating monster.

It was inevitable that her long search would finally lead to Noah Logan, who was in possession of a pair of hands that were softer than a baby’s bottom. Liz couldn’t stop touching Noah’s hands morning, noon, and night. It was his best feature; but he also had touchable, wispy brown hair and a striking smile. She’d wander the halls of school, searching for those hands so she could feel them soft against her skin. Sometimes when they kissed, he touched the exposed part of her lower back with his fingers, and she would shiver, delighted at the electric energy he produced. He had the dreamiest sleepy eyes, always asking her to his room, where she could feel his touch all over her body as much as she wanted.

Noah had a gentle personality that matched the hands, something Liz found unbelievably attractive. Everything about Noah was tender, from the way he touched her to all the words that he spoke. She was so completely head over heels for this boy that it nearly killed her when he was suddenly gone. It was like a violent storm had blown through and carried Noah up into the sky and far away. He simply vanished one day. That was the way it happened when people went to one of the States. It was like they’d never existed to begin with, and it usually happened without warning.

His departure, so sudden and final, broke something inside of Liz Brinn. She wasn’t the same after he left. She was fragile, the softness she loved having turned against her in the end. Faith was the only friend who remained, and Liz needed her to fill the emotional emptiness. And so they held hands a lot. Once or twice Liz’s feelings had gotten confused, and she wondered if what she’d really wanted all along was the softness of another girl; but it always passed like a soft breeze. She liked boys; this much she was sure of. She simply liked them best if they were soft, and there would never be another boy who could measure up to Noah Logan in that department. “Why do you think he didn’t say good-bye?” Liz had asked Faith many times, often while they walked aimlessly.

“Maybe he didn’t want to say anything that might hurt you. He was funny that way. It wasn’t in him to hurt people.”

This made sense to Liz; but it revealed a possible cowardice in the person she had chosen, and this bothered her.

“I think it was just sudden. He didn’t have time to tell me or he would have.”

“You’re right. It happens that way if the parents decide to go. First they shut down the Tablets, then the white van arrives.”

Unmarked white vans with no windows drove around the outside day and night. They were drones—no one drove them—powered by solar cells atop their roofs, ever waiting for someone to summon them. All a person had to do was contact one of the States, say they were ready to leave the outside world, and wait. A white van would arrive, sometimes within minutes, to whisk them away to a new life.

White vans were easy to spot but eerily quiet because they were all electric. Liz had nearly been killed once when she’d walked in front of one while staring at her Tablet. The van swerved and missed Liz, but it ran over the Tablet. Four hours later the Tablet had repaired itself, or been “reengineered.” That was one of the amazing things about Tablets. Not only could they stretch and snap into different sizes, they could regenerate. Like a cut finger, a broken Tablet could heal itself. Hawk had said it best: “It’s a simple matter of biomechanics and technology converging. What’s not to understand?”

Liz held on to Faith’s view of things, that the white van had found Noah’s family so fast there had been no time for good-byes, because any other version of events was too heartbreaking to bear. And it really did go down that way sometimes. Liz had seen it happen more than once. At first she thought it was terrible the way her friends would leave without a word, not even a final farewell in the form of a Tablet message. It wasn’t until this had happened twice that her mother told her not to worry.

“This is the way it works, Lizzy. There’s a lot of talk about leaving or staying, but when the decision is made and a family makes that call, the Tablets get shut off. A few minutes later they’re picked up. It’s exciting, sort of. And they’re not gone forever. They’ve only moved away. Remember that.”

Liz seized on this important piece of information as well. It was one of the most persuasive reasons to leave the old world behind: Noah was inside the Western State, waiting for her. And not just Noah;
everyone
was in there having the time of their lives, and they were
communicating
about it. They had Tablets, but they were tied into the G12, a network no one on the outside had access to. She had a fantasy that Noah was sending out distress signals, trying to find her, waiting for her impending arrival like his life depended on it.

Seeing Faith talk to someone like Wade Quinn made Liz wonder how long it would be before her best friend had her heart broken. How long did Faith think someone like Wade was going to last outside? What was he even doing out here so late in the game? Liz knew, better than anyone, that it wouldn’t be long. Once Wade went to the Field Games in the Western State, he’d never come back. It was a virtual guarantee. What was Faith thinking getting into a relationship with a guy like that? He was a short-timer with only one thing on his mind.

At least when Wade Quinn was gone and Faith’s heart was smashed into pieces, there would be an empty hand for Liz to hold on to. By then, Liz promised herself, she wouldn’t need Faith’s comfort nearly as much. She would get stronger, less needy. The tables would be turned. Maybe Liz would offer her hand, maybe she wouldn’t.

Liz wore a rubber band on her wrist; and taking it between the thumb and index finger of her other hand, she pulled it four or five inches away, feeling it dig into her skin on the palm side of her wrist. When she let go, it snapped, stinging almost enough to make her wince. She was happy to feel the pain against her skin, and she realized with some regret that she wasn’t feeling much of anything inside anymore. She sat on the curb at the mall, staring at the empty buildings and wondering what would become of her.

She didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

Her Tablet vibrated, and Liz took it out of her pack, touching the perfectly slick screen. A message had arrived from her mother.

Come home. We need to talk.

The screen on Liz’s Tablet went black. She swiped her finger across the surface four or five times, but there was nothing. She was confused but not alarmed, turning the Tablet over in her hands, trying to shake it awake.

“I really have to stop dropping this thing,” she mumbled. But then, turning it over and seeing her dim reflection in the glass, she understood. Her Tablet was dead. It wasn’t broken. It had been turned off.

She’d wondered for a long time what it would be like when this happened, a light going out in her life.

“Looks like I won’t be seeing you in class tomorrow.”

Liz wheeled around and stood up, backing away from a voice she wasn’t completely sure she recognized. Night was gathering around her, and the streetlights had long since stopped working, which made it hard to be completely sure of who it was walking slowly toward her.

“Dylan? Dylan Gilmore? Is that you?”

“None other,” he said, stopping five or so feet away and stuffing his hands into his jean pockets. “Tablet’s dead, huh?”

Liz unconsciously glanced at her Tablet, which felt unexpectedly useless in her hand. Why was she even holding on to it? Unlike Hawk and so many other people, she had actually hated her Tablet from the start. The fact that someone else controlled it, so much so that they could turn it off completely whenever they chose, deeply angered her. Even though its glass screen was the one thing in her life that was as smooth as Noah’s skin, she couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. Liz swung around and faced the empty Old Navy store, then threw the Tablet like it were a tomahawk. It hit the cement wall and fell to the pavement below, scratched but unbroken.

“You have to hit them really hard or they won’t break,” Dylan said.

“Believe me, I don’t need any help in that department.”

Liz, who had damaged her Tablet plenty of times over the years, was not about to let a virtual stranger tell her how to do this. She walked to the Tablet, picked it up, and began banging it against the wall. It didn’t take long to bloody her knuckles on the white, painted surface of the Old Navy store, a little longer to hear the screen of her Tablet crack. She dropped the Tablet on the sidewalk and started stomping on it.