Half Lives

by Sara Grant

Genres: YA Action & Adventure; YA Science Fiction

Synopsis

I've learned that surviving isn't all it's cracked up to be. NOW: Icie's parents gave her $10,000 in cash, a map of a top-secret bunker, and instructions to get there by any means necessary. They have news of an imminent viral attack and know that the bunker is Icie's only hope for survival. She and three other teens live locked away for months, not knowing what's happening in the outside world or who has survived. Then one day, Icie discovers a shocking secret deep in the bunker. Are they really safe there after all? THEN: Generations in the future, the world has changed, and a mysterious cult worships the very mountain where Icie's secret bunker was built. The people never leave the mountain, they're ruled by Beckett, a teenager...and they have surprising ties to Icie. Icie and Beckett must both fight to survive while protecting a secret that could destroy their civilizations. This high-stakes, original, and thought-provoking adventure follows two unlikely heroes, hundreds of years apart.

Release date: July 9, 2013

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 320

Sample

If you’d asked me that day whether I could lie, cheat, steal, and kill, I would have said ab-so-lutely not. I’ve told little white lies to my parents to stay out of trouble. And, sure, I borrowed a few answers off Lola on that one chemistry test. (Who cares that U stands for Uranium or that it’s number 92 on the periodic table of the elements?) I shoplifted a Kit Kat when I was seven on a dare. That’s not exactly grand larceny, but I’d never kill. Not possible. I’d relocate spiders rather than squash them. (And I hate those beasties!)

But now I’ve knowingly and willfully committed all those acts on the Richter scale of freaking horrible—from lying to killing. I’m not proud of it. I learned that surviving isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. If you survive, you’ve got to live with the guilt, and that’s more difficult than looking someone in the eye and pulling the trigger. Trust me. I’ve done both. Killing takes a twitch of the finger. Absolution takes several lifetimes.



When the final bell rang that last normal day of my life, I found Lola reclining next to our open locker, applying my Candy Corn Crush lip gloss with her pinky. Even in the Friday afternoon stampede, students and teachers steered clear of Lola as if she projected her own force field. With her combat boots and torn fishnets, the whole military-Goth thing she had going on could be kind of intimidating. But she was like a Tootsie Pop—hard on the outside but sweet and weirdly awesome on the inside.

“That bad, huh?” Lola asked the moment she spotted me.

“Bad would be an improvement,” I replied, and stuffed my books in our locker.

On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 equals “dumped by your boyfriend of three and a quarter months via text two weeks before senior prom” and 10 equals “winning a reality TV show and being insta-famous,” my day was a big, ginormous 1.

Literally. Yep. Tristan ended our romance with a text:

I wan 2 brk up.

That’s what he wrote. Didn’t even bother with real words.

In my seventeen years, I’d learned that, no matter how heinous your life is, stay tuned for a Psycho-style surprise before the credits roll. And whatever higher power you worship—God, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Zeus, or Lady Gaga—can’t save you from the dull, rusty knife.

“So…” Lola looked me up and down, admiring my standard uniform of smart-ass T-shirt (today’s: a smiley face with HAVE A MEDIOCRE DAY), cargo pants, and flip-flops. “You need a diversion. What should we do?”

I draped my messenger bag across my torso, tugging my dreadlocks free from the strap. “Starbucks?”

She shook her head. “Already shotgunned two Red Bulls to get through English.”

“Movie? That theater down by that one place is showing Hitchcock—”

She raised her hand to interrupt. “Um, that’s one of those black-and-white ones, right?”

I nodded.

She waved the idea away. “That’s like playing a board game when you’ve got a Wii.”

“But the man knows freepy.”

“Freepy. I like that—freaking creepy.” She fished the phone out of her faux military jacket and immediately started tweeting. “You have a gift,” she said. Lo and I liked to create what we called “the Ripple”—not as in raspberry or caramel fudge—but a ripple of words.

Someone had been the first to utter whatever or crupid. My dad still periodically, and completely cringeworthily, said dude. It was Lola’s and my mission to take our linguistic influence global. We’d come close with borriffic—terrifically boring. I’d proclaimed Mr. Kramer’s third lecture on WWII borriffic. A day later I heard some freshman using it in the cafeteria, and three weeks after that one of Lola’s friends’ friends used the word on Facebook.

“I give it two days before Teek and Jackson are using it as if it were one of Webster’s own.” Lola’s fingers feverishly tapped her phone.

“Monument?” I suggested after she’d tweeted our newest Ripple. I loved D.C.’s morbid décor. I could barely flip my dreads without swatting some monument to dead people. We sometimes picked a D.C. landmark and saw how many tourists’ snaps we could sneak into, or we would pretend to be tour guides and feed visitors false info: Many people don’t know this, but the Washington Monument is named for President George Washington’s father and shaped like his unnaturally pointy head.

“Nah. Too much effort.” Lola looped her arm through mine and practically dragged me off school premises. “Mall,” she decided. Our mecca. “You need a little retail therapy.”

Once we’d outpaced all the other Capital Academy refugees, I confessed, “Tristan dumped me.” Saying it was like reliving the dumpage all over again. He was my first serious boyfriend and what Lola and I called the trifecta of Gs—gorgeous, geek, and giggle. He was equal parts good looks, smarts, and sense of humor, and that was a next-to-impossible combo. I wasn’t going to marry him or anything, but I thought we might at least make it to graduation.

She wrapped me in a too-tight hug. “Icie, I’m soooooo sorry.”

I wiggled free. “What a…” I felt the pre-sob throat clench. I wasn’t going to lose it. “I mean he’s a total…”

Lola squinted and puckered her lips as if she was thinking, then a wicked smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Totass.”

It took me a second to dissect the word. “Jerzilla.”

“Dumboid.” She laughed and then glanced at me to make sure it was okay to laugh when my heart had been pulverized like a grande coffee frap hold the whip.

I smiled. “Fridiot.”

“Yep, Tristan is the biggest fridiot in D.C.”

“America.”

“The world.”

“Universe.”

“Galaxy.”

We exploded with laughter. We leaned on each other to steady ourselves. Tears streamed down my cheeks. My sides ached. Our laughter dwindled to sighs. My attitude shifted a smidge. With Lola as my life support, I no longer felt like I was going to die.

As we walked, Lola lit the cigarette she kept stashed in her bra. Even though she turned away to exhale, the cigarette smoke seemed to curl around me. I moved away to find fresh air and wished ditching Tristan’s toxicity would be as easy. But his rejection clung to me like smoke. Why did he dump me? Was I so… so… But I couldn’t find the right combo—ugly and disgusting? Stupid and revolting? I was never getting a date to prom now.

Lola paused and ground her cigarette into the sidewalk. She shifted all her weight onto the ball of her foot and shredded the stub.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” I nodded toward the cigarette confetti on the sidewalk.

She started walking. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

“What?” I grabbed her arm and forced her to stop. I felt a hiccup of panic.

She wouldn’t look at me. “Guess you’ll find out sooner or later.”

“What?” I asked again. The worst thing was not knowing, right?

“The fridiot already posted your breakup on Facebook with one of those winking smiley faces.” She patted herself down, searching for another emergency cig. “Teek saw it and told Will, who told Tawn, who told me.”

The gossip Ripple was way more powerful than the word Ripple.

Social death by Facebook. I take it back. Knowledge can suck.

I started walking, stomping really, in the general direction of the Metro. My life at Capital Academy was over. I fished out my phone from my cargo pants pocket. I tapped the FB app. My profile picture of Tristan and me stared back. It was taken on our seventh-and-a-half date. (Our first date only counted as half because he didn’t take me to the dance, but we left together.) The picture was snapped after we’d seen a double feature of American Psycho and the original Hitchcock Psycho. He’s pretending to stab me in the back with an imaginary knife and I’m mock-screaming in horror. A bit prophetic.

I changed my Facebook status to single and switched my picture to one of Lo and me last summer. We’re trying on three-hundred-dollar sunglasses in this snooty boutique, right before the saleslady with the awful orange fake tan kicked us out. I was trying to think of the perfect snarky thing to post about Tristan when Lola caught up to me.

“Listen,” she said. “Some things are just not meant to be.”

Yeah, but how did you know? What if Tristan and I were meant to be? Maybe there was no such thing as meant to be, only shit happens and you make the best of it.

We stopped at the Metro entrance to consult our phones before we went underground. I scrolled through Twitter. Lola had, like, a thousand followers. #Freepy was already multiplying.

I checked Facebook again. Molly “Ho” Andersen had just “liked” Tristan’s breakup post. She was such a… As my mind strained for the perfect combo-word, my phone buzzed and my dad’s photo flashed on the screen. I’d programmed his ringtone to be the screeching noise from the shower scene in Psycho. I ignored it. I needed a proper sulk. I wasn’t ready for Dad’s platitudes: “Everything happens for a reason” or “See it as an opportunity.” I didn’t want to “make the best of it” yet.

Before I could put my phone away, those ominous notes from the movie Jaws played over and over. A text from Mum. I didn’t need the “suck it up you’re a Murray” lecture. “Stiff upper lip.” “Brave face.” “Chin up.” “Keep calm and carry on.” All that stoic British shit. I’d been dumped and I was entitled to feel like moldy gum on the bottom of last season’s stilettos. I shoved the phone into my cargo pants pocket, double-checking that it wasn’t the one with the hole. I’d lost about twenty dollars that way.

The telephonic harassment didn’t relent. My pants sounded like a horror movie soundtrack. I dug the phone out and flicked to the text messages. They all said the same thing.

911 COME HOME ASAP.

Yeah, we’d come up with that oh-so-difficult-to-decipher code; 911 before any message meant an emergency for real. What family had a secret emergency code? Answer: a family whose mum worked for the federal government and whose dad was a nuclear physicist. We got one of those Barbie-posed, all-purpose holiday cards from the White House, and the president actually signed ours.

Mum and Dad were always getting threats from some activists who were a few crayons short of a sixty-four-pack—if you know what I mean. Mum assured me the threats were no big deal, but we’d still come up with our top secret code.

When I saw the 911 texts, my stomach dropped like it did when I rode Mega Coaster Rama at Flying Flags America. I’d only gotten one 911 from my parents ever, when Dad had his car accident. That message had said:

911 D.C. Mercy Hospital.

“I gotta go,” I said to Lola. Suddenly, being dumped by fridiot Tristan didn’t matter as much.

Lola paused her texting. “Seriously, Icie?”

“Sorry, Lo,” I said with a shrug. “My parents have evoked the code. I’ll call you later.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Lola said, hugging me good-bye. “We will either get you another date for prom or you can stay home with me and we’ll eat tubes of chocolate-chip cookie dough and watch classic horror movies until we vomit.”

“Can I wear my prom dress and killer purple shoes?” I tried to joke. If I could make a joke, then things couldn’t be that bad.

“Definitely.”

“Later!” I called as I waved down a yellow taxi and texted my parents that I was:

ON MY WAY!



By the time the taxi pulled up in front of our three-story brownstone, I’d talked myself down from the ledge of worry my parents’ texts had pushed me toward. Everything looked normal. Flames weren’t shooting from our bedroom windows. The street was ambulance-and police-free. I relaxed a little. It couldn’t be too terrible if the sun was still filtering through the trees that lined our street and flashing on the tinted windows of the BMWs, Jaguars, and Lexuses parked in a neat row. The nannies for the Smith-Wellses and the Pattersons chatted over strollers with sleeping toddlers. Mrs. Neusbaum in wedge heels that matched her helmet of snow-white hair clip-clopped after her pug, Sir Milo Winterbottom.

I stuffed twenty dollars through the taxi’s payment slot and told the driver to keep the change. I climbed the steps to my house two at a time. The door swung open before I reached the top, and Mum pushed past me.

“Wait! Stop!” she shouted at the taxi.

Dad was slumped against the banister in the entryway. “Dad, what’s going on?” I asked, and stepped inside. He didn’t answer.

The backpack my parents bought for my one and only camping trip was resting at his feet. My SAVE THE PLANET, ROCK THE WORLD button was fastened to the front pocket. The last I remembered, my backpack was stuffed under my bed, and my parents adhered to the progressive parents’ handbook and never, ever trespassed in my bedroom.

I scanned from my backpack past Dad’s wrinkled khakis and polo to his face. His eyes were red and puffy, and his normally carefully brushed hair looked like he’d had a mishap with hair wax and a pack of wildcats.

“Dad?” My pinprick of worry was now a full-on jugular vein gush.

He wouldn’t look at me.

“Dad, what is it? What’s the matter?” I asked. My legs turned to rubber. I had to steady myself on the hall table, which caused a vase of white roses to wobble and a pile of mail to avalanche to our recently refinished mahogany floor. Neither Dad nor I made a move to stop the cascade of papers. The slick, glossy cover of Mum’s Modern Politics mixed uneasily with the dull recycled pages of Dad’s Nuclear Energy Digest.

Mum burst in. “Okay, the cab’s sorted.” She shut the door behind her. “Have you told her, Jack?” She looked from Dad to me and back again, tennis-match style. “No, clearly not.”

This was the first time I’d seen my parents in the same room in about a month. Dad was a morning person, so he made me homemade granola with fresh blueberries every day for breakfast—because it was my favorite. Mum was the queen of the night, so she checked my homework after the ten o’clock news with a reward of Ben & Jerry’s and whatever film was on the Horror Channel. We used to cross paths at dinner, but for the last few months our daily family time had slipped.

“Icie.” Mum paused, and it was like watching the battery drain from a toy robot. Her voice and posture softened. “We need to leave D.C.”

Dad handed me my backpack. I pushed it away. “Now?” I asked.

“Yes.” She pressed an imaginary wrinkle from her skirt. I noticed the transfer of sweat from her palms to the black silk. “Please give me your phone.” She held out her hand.

I protectively covered my cargo pants pocket. “But I need it to—” Mum flashed “Talk to the hand” before I could prioritize why I so desperately needed my iPhone: (1) to update Facebook, (2) to text Lola, (3) to listen to the playlists Lola and I had created, with titles like “Wake Up ’n’ Smell the Urine,” “Songs to Slit Your Wrists By,” and “Make-Out Mix (Virginity Blues).”

The look on her face told me that none of that was important anymore. I handed her my phone. She switched it off and laid it on the hall table. She smoothed a lock of hair that had escaped from the blonde uni-curl she called a bob. “This is serious, Icie. We need to go someplace safe,” Mum continued, as if she hadn’t just unplugged me from my life.

“What’s going on, Mum?” I asked again. “You’re scaring me.”

“We need to get moving,” Mum sort of barked.

“Mum, just because you’re British doesn’t make you, like, Jasmine Bond.” I laughed nervously. My parents didn’t.

“Jack, give her the money belt,” Mum said, indicating the three-inch-wide beige cloth that lay coiled on the stairs. Dad didn’t move. He stood there hugging my backpack. “Bloody hell!” Mum grabbed the belt. “There’s ten thousand dollars in here.”

Was it ransom? A bribe? I couldn’t get my head around what was happening. She lifted my T-shirt and wrapped the money belt around me. I was having a total out-of-body experience. Had I hit my head? Traveled to a parallel universe? Eaten some bad Cheetos?

I stood, arms raised, like a two-year-old letting Mummy dress her. She fastened the belt at my spine. The cloth was cool and stiff. She pulled my shirt down and tugged the hem to straighten my smiley-face iron-on. The bricks of cash cinched my waist like a corset.

“Someone tell me what the hell is going on!” I demanded, and backed away, knocking the hall table again. The white roses toppled off. The vase shattered and water splashed on my cargo pants.

Mum took a deep breath. “You’ve got to trust us. We need to get out of here.”

“We’ll get through this, Isis,” Dad said, squeezing me and my backpack together.

Mum pulled him off. “God, Jack, we agreed. Get a grip.”

My brain didn’t know how to process this. There was no combo-word for what I was feeling.

Mum glanced out the window as if she heard someone coming up the sidewalk, which made me look, too. But the scene hadn’t changed from a few minutes ago.

“You and your dad get into the taxi and I’ll get our bags,” Mum said. That’s when I noticed a second backpack and Mum’s big Prada overnighter by the door.

“Come on, Dad,” I said, shouldering my backpack. “It’s going to be okay.” I don’t know why I said it. It clearly didn’t feel true, but it’s what you say, isn’t it? When your life is falling apart, we utter stupid platitudes to make us believe it’s not so bad. When I broke my arm when I was six, falling off the slide at the park, Dad had repeated the same phrase all the way to the hospital.

Now he looked at me with these incredibly sad eyes. “You are so brave.”

It was easy to be brave-ish when I didn’t exactly know what I should be afraid of.

Our home phone rang, making the three of us jump. We turned toward the phone on the hall table, but none of us made a move to answer it. Mum shuffled through the pile of papers on the floor and pulled out a slightly soggy piece of white paper, spraying drops of water and shattered glass from the vase. She fanned it for a few seconds, drying the wet patches. She studied the now-smudged lines and dots on the page. It looked like some sort of hand-drawn map. She crammed it into the front netting of my backpack.

Mum’s volume increased to be heard over the ringing phone. “Let’s go.” She slung Dad’s backpack over one shoulder and clutched her handbag and matching luggage in the other. She looked around as if she had forgotten something.

The phone thankfully stopped ringing. But Dad’s cell phone buzzed. He took it from the case clipped to his belt and checked the screen. He and Mum exchanged some coded look. They both switched off their phones and placed them next to mine. What was going on? Mum and Dad without cell phones was like Batman and Robin leaving their utility belts.

And then we all heard it. Sirens in the distance.

Mum opened the door and charged toward the taxi. Dad regained enough composure to snatch his navy blazer from the coatrack and follow me out the front door. We piled into the backseat of the taxi, luggage and all.

“Dulles Airport,” Mum told the taxi driver, and slammed the car door. The taxi did a U-turn in the middle of the street.

The sirens were getting closer. Mum and Dad slumped low in the seat.

I opened my mouth to ask a bazillion questions, but Mum shook her head. I understood by the pleading look in her eyes that she needed me to keep quiet and trust her. I pushed back into the seat, wedged awkwardly between my parents.

The sirens were deafening now. Two black SUVs with blue lights on the dashboard blasted past us. I checked the rearview mirror. The SUVs screeched to a stop in front of our house. The taxi driver didn’t seem to notice as he aggressively maneuvered around the growing afternoon traffic. What had my parents done? Were we felons fleeing the law?

Mum slipped her hand into mine, and I pried Dad’s from his backpack. The sweat from our palms sealed our hands together. They couldn’t have committed a crime. This was all some misunderstanding, or the best opening ever to a hidden-camera TV show.

The world looked the same. There was no alien spaceship hovering over the Washington Monument. No mushroom cloud emanating from the direction of the White House. The sky was bright blue, not even a wispy cloud in sight. But everything normal faded away. My life switched from Glee to Drag Me to Hell in one afternoon.



“Destiny is a choice, not an option.”

—Just Saying 103

“Terrorists destroyed life Out There,” Beckett begins as they began, with the end of everything. His heart aches every time he tells their creation story. He can’t imagine such devastation or living without the Great I AM to protect and guide him.

“But the Great I AM…” His voice catches. “The Great I AM rose from the darkness and built the community of Forreal to guard the Mountain and its sacred Heart.”

He stands near the fire at the center of the Mall, surrounded by his followers. He turns in a slow circle, admiring every face and every fault. They are a patchwork people, resurrected from the broken remains of the Time Before. The Mall is only pine poles and a roof tiled with ancient signs proclaiming fast food and cheap liquor an exit away.

“We are the descendants of Survivors.” He keeps his voice low as if he’s sharing a secret. “The blood of the Great I AM runs through our veins. We are lucky, but we must be ever vigilant. Evil does not die. It lingers, waiting for opportunity and weakness.” He finds no pleasure in the fear that sparks in their wide eyes, but he can never let them forget that their history is not a happy one. They were forged from fear and survived through faith.

“What do Terrorists look like?” The voice is no louder than the crackling of the fire.

“Terrorists have fangs with poisonous venom,” another voice booms from the darkness. It’s Finch, shattering the stillness of Storytime. He limps on uneven legs around the perimeter beyond the firelight. “Their eagle-like talons are razor sharp for tearing the flesh of innocent victims.” Finch curls his slim fingers and claws the air, creating long, grotesque shadows that flicker on the Mountainside.

Everyone shrinks into a tight circle, like the snap of a lasso around the neck of its target. They twist and turn, swatting one another with their dreadlocks, searching for Terrorists.

“Terrorists are black as night and sleek like a snake,” Finch booms. He guards the Mountain, and everything about him serves to intimidate his unseen enemy. He coats his body with the Mountain’s dull earth to camouflage himself on his patrols. His short dreadlocks stand like spikes. He wears a loincloth like Beckett, but his is stained with blood from hunting. A smile tugs at Finch’s lips. Does he think frightening everyone is funny?

“Enough, Finch,” Beckett says before Finch can continue with his scary story. “We have never seen a Terrorist, not in our eighteen years of life and not in the lifetimes of our dads and mums.” Finch is only sharing the stories that have been passed from generation to generation.

“Just because we haven’t seen them doesn’t mean they aren’t watching us even now.” Finch laughs and fades back into the night.

“ ‘Everything will be okay.’ So Says the Great I AM.” Beckett weaves among the Cheerleaders and rockstars seated on the rubber tires that surround the fire pit. Beckett lays a hand on one head and playfully tugs at another’s dreadlocks. “The Great I AM will protect us like we have protected the Mountain for hundreds of years. And one day Mumenda will come and we will be free.”

Beckett returns to the inner circle and stands with his back to the fire. “Let’s form the sacred symbol and join in our Evening Tune.”

Everyone takes his or her place in two connecting loops with Beckett at the center. He bows his head and closes his eyes. A calm like the moment before wake succumbs to sleep envelops him. He can feel the Great I AM’s presence as sure as he feels his best friends beside him now—Harper on one side and Finch on the other.

Beckett leads Forreal in their Evening Tune. “Tonight’s got promise,” he calls.

Everyone repeats, “Promise!”

“Tonight’s got faith,” he sings.

“Faith!”

“Tonight’s all we got.” He is overwhelmed with the joy of song and the Great I AM’s spirit. He wishes everyone could feel the Great I AM’s presence like he does.

“For sure! For sure!” all of Forreal choruses.

As they continue the Tune, Beckett opens his eyes. He no longer needs to think about the words; they are like breathing. He looks up at Finch, who is a full head taller than everyone else. Like a stick figure drawn in the burned dust of the Mountain, Finch’s bony body forms awkward, sharp angles.

One by one Beckett surveys each Cheerleader and rockstar lined up around him. The youngest only four. The oldest nearly forty. With bowed heads, their dreadlocks shade their bronze faces. Each person is unique, as if the Great I AM sculpted them from the Mountain’s clay. Finch with his limp. His little sister Atti’s wide-set eyes. Birdy born with only one arm. Tom with more toes than the others. May with her hunched back. Beckett believes the body has no true form.

Beckett’s gaze finally rests on Harper. Even though Tom is holding her other hand, he keeps her at a rigid arm’s length. She smiles when she catches Beckett’s eye.

Harper stands out with her blue eyes, blonde hair that refuses to coil into dreadlocks, and pale skin that tans in blotches, leaving her with polka dots of white. She and Beckett were only five when she wandered onto the Mountain. Beckett found her. He believed that she was a Survivor and the Great I AM had led her to the Mountain. He held on to Harper and wouldn’t let go, not even when the Cheerleaders tried to pull them apart. “If she goes, I go,” he’d shouted. She’s been at Beckett’s side ever since. The others are afraid of her because her body is imperfectly perfect and she survived Out There among the Terrorists.

When the Evening Tune finishes, Beckett waits until all eyes are upon him. “Join me in our Saying of Dedication. Great I AM, protector of sacred Mountain…” His voice rings a beat before the others as they recite the Saying:

“Whatever!

Whatever!

The bad, the good.

Whatever!

I put my faith in the Great I AM.

The Great I AM alone.”

Beckett raises his hand and twists his arm to expose the curved, red looping lines on his wrist. Beckett was born with the mark of the Great I AM. He is Cheer Captain, chosen to lead Forreal because the Great I AM etched this slim figure eight among the blue veins and the bump of his artery. The rest of Forreal similarly extend their arms. Everyone over twelve years old has a matching scar the size and shape of Beckett’s birthmark.

. . .