“Go!” I say. “I’m right behind you!”
He nods, rushing forward.
Sophia’s words repeat in my head. “There’s only room for three.”
“Gwen!” Folsom calls over his shoulder.
From the far end of the field, I see half a dozen figures in black moving toward the helicopter, guns raised. I back up a step.
Folsom reaches the door and hands Laticus to them, then turns back for me. When he doesn’t see me, his face crumples in confusion. I take another step back and suddenly realization dawns on his face. He’s about to move toward me when hands grab at him, pulling him backward through the open door. He fights them, pulling away, his eyes trained on my face. But it’s too late. It begins to lift from the ground.
I see him mouth my name as they hold him, his eyes crazed.
“I love you,” I scream at the wind. But they’re too far away for him to hear me.
THIRTY-SIX
FOLSOM
Fall interrupts summer early, the leaves moody, eager to drop. I stand in their midst, the air sweet with rot. We’ve been here for a month. Sophia hates it: the cabin, the woods, the food. Her complaining never stops, but I’m grateful for it. The silence would be too much to bear. I laugh at her and then she laughs too. Immediately after laughing she cries. And then she laughs again.
“It’s pregnancy hormones,” she says.
Her arm is healing nicely. I change the bandage for her. There will be a scar where the bullet entered and some nerve damage they say, but she’s alive. A wind picks up and leaves rattle through the clearing, sending a fresh shower of reds and yellows down on my head.
I think of Laticus, the same as I do every day. Of his lifeless body in the helicopter, the medic unable to revive him. We’d barely been in the air for five minutes when he died in my arms. I’d wanted to die right then. Die instead of him, die so that Gwen could be flying to safety, instead of me. I’d done this to him, brought him into the world only to die right before his sixteenth birthday. And the woman I loved was in danger, her belly swollen with another of my sons. Sophia, who saw the look on my face as I cradled my son on the floor, started to cry. I could tell she was scared out of her mind, but she lowered herself next to me and put an arm around my shoulders as I sobbed. I lost everything in one day.
I hear my name yelled from the cabin and I run, jumping over a fallen tree and skidding down an incline. When I reach the doorway, Sophia is standing in the kitchen holding a pot, a puddle around her feet.
“It’s time,” she whimpers. She’s panicked. I can see it in her eyes.
“Hey,” I say.
She looks up at me wide-eyed. Her toes lift off the ground to avoid the mess.
“We know what to do. We’re ready.”
She nods, but she doesn’t look convinced.
“Sophia,” I say firmly.
“What?”
“We’ve got this.”
What starts out as a smile ends in a scream. She goes down on one knee, her face contorted. I scoop her up and carry her to the bed. Then I get the towels, the scissors, the water. We’re prepared. The doctor told us what to do.
“What if something goes wrong?” She leans up on her elbows, sweat already dampening her hair despite the chill in the air. Sophia is not blond. She has two inches of dark hair on the crown of her head. The same color as Gwen’s. I look away quickly.
“The house is a mile away. I’ll take the quad and get help if we need it.”
She nods and falls back down into the pillows. She opens her legs and I check to see if she’s crowning.
“I was making dinner,” she says, breathless. “In the oven…”
I nod. Once a week the doctor brings us supplies, boxes of food. Sophia, who is restless and bored, has taken over the task of cooking, though what she makes is barely edible.
I jump up and run to the oven, turning it off. Before I leave, I peek inside. Looks like bread. Black bread.
“Did you save it?” she asks when I come back.
“Yes. It looks delicious. You need to push.”
Twenty minutes later and I’m holding my daughter. She screams louder than Sophia, and she has a full head of dark hair.
“Is she okay?” She lifts her head, worry along the edges of her voice.
“Yes.” I try to hold back the things I’m feeling, the awe at what I just witnessed. No wonder they outlasted us, their contribution to human race eclipsing ours in its magnitude. A body able to grow another body. I am in awe of the process. And something else…a connection to the child. I didn’t just deliver a baby, I delivered my flesh and blood: a nose, and eyes, and coloring handed down from generation to generation. I hand her to Sophia.
“Her name?” I ask.
“What would you like to name her? She’s your daughter,” Sophia says.
An offering.
If I name this child, she is mine in body and mind. I excuse myself. Stumbling outside, I walk away from the cabin, the wet grass hitting my knees. The sky is luminous as the sun sinks behind the trees, a bright blue with streaks of pink. I think of Gwen, and like always when I pull her to mind, something begins to ache behind my ribcage. I rub absently at my chest as I stare at the sky. I’ve lived numb for so long that every time I feel something I want to identify it, give it a name. For Gwen it’s love. I don’t know if she’s had the baby, or if she’s safe. Once we left the Regions, we were cut off from any news, secluded out here in the woods. Dr. Hein, who lives in the main house, reached out to her contacts, promising me she’d find out what she could. But so far there has been no news of Gwen. The Red Region was unusually quiet after we escaped, Governor Petite only emerging once to make a statement about the rebels and how they’d be reprimanded in due course. Before we crossed over to Canada, Laticus’ body was sent back to the Black Region, to his mother. I wrote her a letter to tell her how her son had died, though I doubted it would ever reach her. The Black Region blamed the Red for his death, the Red blamed the rebels, and the Society blamed me. I don’t really know who is to blame, perhaps all of us.
I pull a piece of Laticus’ shirt from my pocket and hold it in my fist. This has to end. I was unsure before, but now I know. Gwen is alive. She’ll find a way, and she’ll protect our boy with her life. I will protect the people I love. I will fight for them like they fought for me.
I say their names out loud: Gwen, Jackal, Sophia, Kasper, my daughter, and my son.
THIRTY-SEVEN
GWEN
The pain is gripping. It holds my body tense as it works its way through my lower abdomen and back, a dull knife sawing through tendons and muscle. I roll onto my side and scream, holding onto the bedpost as people rush around me. I’ve been tucked away in dome six at Genome Y with doctors I don’t recognize. They hover, never giving me a moment’s peace as I progress through labor.
“Get her legs up,” I hear someone say.
And then—“Gwen, we’re going to need you to push, darling. Can you do that for me?”
I open my eyes and stare into my mother’s face. She nods at me encouragingly. I let them lift my legs, a nurse on each side, and push them back up toward my body.
“Push, Gwen, push,” Mother instructs.
I push with all my might, the pain so intense I think I’m going to pass out. I scream as I push and the nurses coo their encouragement. When I think I can’t go on for a second longer, I feel a rush of something warm between my legs, and then a piercing wail. The doctor snips his cord, the cord that has connected my body to his for thirty-nine weeks. We are no longer two souls inhabiting one body. I weep for both the separation and the miracle that she lays on my chest. I hold his slimy, purple body to my own, barely able to keep my head up I’m so tired. Everyone’s eyes are on my son; they all stare in wonder.
“The Red Boy,” I hear someone say. And I hold him tighter because he’s not the red boy, he’s my boy—mine and Folsom’s.
“What’s his name, Gwen?” my mother asks. When I open
my eyes, I see that hers are glossy with tears. I don’t know. I haven’t thought about a name. I say the first thing that comes to mind.
“Rebel.”
Mother flushes with anger, but one of the nurse’s eyes widen.
“I’ll let the Regions know that their Rebel is born,” she says.
I nod, and they take him from me to be cleaned and weighed and swaddled.
Rebel Donahue’s birth is celebrated throughout all twelve Regions, but mostly in the Red Region. The media has run his name and are calling him The Red Rebel, remarking on the fact that his father is still missing. They spend equal time speculating about whether I’m sending Folsom messages through the name of his new son, and where Folsom is.
I am.
I’m sending them all a message.
I spend three days holding my son, touching his velvety skin and staring into his tiny face. It’s his feet that get me the most: perfect, and wrinkled, and miniature. Who knew feet could be so beautiful? I feed him and rock him in my arms, barely able to stand being apart from him even if it’s a few minutes.
My mother comes to visit us, her eyes drawn and downcast. We are not the same. Something changed between us when I stopped being the “good daughter.” When you question the world your parents set up for you, it changes the relationship, it makes them question themselves, and then no one knows where they stand anymore. She holds Rebel for a few minutes, staring down at him like she’s trying to figure out all six pounds of him. How could a baby cause so many problems? She’s thinking about my sister, we all are. News of her helping the rebellion and smuggling Folsom and Laticus out of the Region has shaken the entire country. No one knows if they’re even alive. It’s taken the focus off of me, but I know that won’t last.
I can’t get them off of my mind. I don’t know where they are or if Sophia’s given birth to my niece. It tears me up inside knowing that she is without her family. She sacrificed herself for both me and Folsom and all that time I was questioning whether or not she even loved me. Folsom is with her, I tell myself. He will take care of all of them.
My heart hurts when I think of Laticus. In the hours of staring at my baby and being so grateful he is healthy, I pray for Laticus to be okay. He’s young. He will survive this, I console myself.
When I close my eyes, I can still feel Folsom’s lips on mine. The scruff on his face grazing my cheeks as he kissed me over and over, the way “I’m in love with you” sounded when he said it. And now he’s just gone, and I’m aching inside. I don’t know when or if I’ll ever see him again; his absence feels like the drag of a match that will never ignite.
One of the nurses I know tells me that they can’t arrest me for kidnapping or arson since there was no evidence. Her aunt works in the governor’s office.
“They’re saying you’re a traitor to the Regions. That you’re disturbing the peace and inciting riots.”
“They can’t arrest me for that,” I say.
“Freedom of speech isn’t what it used to be, Gwen. There are limits to what is tolerated. The governor is trying to get something to stick. She wants you punished.”
I’ve not told them anything about who took us, just that we were kept in a basement and fed three times a day. The story is that the rebels in the Black Region retaliated against the Red by trying to take both of us.
After three days I’m told we’re to be released. My mother arrives to pick us up. An emotionless statue, she stands near the door holding Rebel while I pack up the last of our things. She is unusually quiet. When I turn around, the bag slung over my shoulder to tell her I’m ready, she’s not there. I blink around the room in shock, and then I run for the door. I fling it open and it hits the wall with a heavy thud as I run down the corridor barefoot. My feet slap at the floor. I can hear the roar of my heart in my ears. She took him to the car to get him strapped into his seat, I tell myself. That’s all. I’d laugh about this later, think about what an overprotective mother I am. I turn a corner, heading for the front of the building. It’s a Saturday. Genome Y is mostly empty. I can see them, oh God, I can see them. Just up ahead on the other side of dome three. I hit the button to open the door. It doesn’t move. I hit it again. My mother hasn’t seen me yet. Rebel is asleep in her arms. He’s okay, he’s okay, I tell myself over and over. I wave my arms and she catches sight of me, but instead of walking over to open the door, she turns her back. I pound on the door with my fists and then I stop. Three people are walking down the corridor toward her, too far for me to make out who they are at first. When they move closer, I’m frozen. I don’t move a limb. The governor, a woman in uniform—police—and Langley. The three of them have an exchange that lasts no more than a few seconds, then they all look over their shoulders at me, and the uniform nods. My mother very gently hands the baby to Langley. I begin to sob, my knees threatening to buckle. I hold myself up. I will not fall. I have to get to my son. He’s right there, I just need to get to him. Langley looks at my baby, a smile pressed to her lips. Then her gaze lifts and she looks right at me, right into my eyes before turning on her heel and walking toward the door. My mother follows her out, and they disappear into a sharp burst of light as the front entrance opens for them. I’m screaming, I can’t feel my fists as they pound on the glass, I can’t feel anything but an all-encompassing panic. And then the governor and the officer are on my side of the glass. I try to push past them, but the officer grabs my arms and pulls them behind my back. I don’t feel the pain. I struggle against her, kicking and heaving. The governor presses a button on the wall and an alarm sounds. People run into the room, people I used to work with. I look for Corinne, but she’s nowhere to be found. They grab my arms. I feel a sharp prick in my neck and suddenly I don’t have the energy to fight anymore. My limbs go limp, my head swims, the governor blurs in and out of my vision.
“You’re the problem, Gwen,” I hear her say. She’s right in my face, an inch away. I can smell her breath and see the pores on her nose. “This is exactly why you can’t be trusted to take care of that baby. He’s our future, Gwen…”
My eyes close, I can’t keep them open, but I can still hear her voice.
“Don’t worry, Langley will take good care of him. She’s his mother now.”
And then everything goes black.
Thank you for reading our words. Without you, we’re just two best friends making up stories together. For every blog, every reader, every review, every kind word, and even the not so kind…we’re grateful you’re reading our work and giving it wings. ~ Tarryn Fisher & Willow Aster
The End of Men series continues with Jackal, coming soon! We can’t wait for you to find out what happens with Folsom and Gwen and the new characters we hope you’ll love just as much. Preorder Jackal by clicking on the title.
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Tarryn Fisher is the New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author of nine novels. Born a sun hater, she currently makes her home in Seattle, Washington with her children, husband, and psychotic husky. Tarryn writes about villains.
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The Opportunist
Dirty Red
Thief
Mud Vein
Marrow
F*ck Love
Bad Mommy
Atheists Who Kneel and Pray
Never Never series
Willow Aster is the USA Today bestselling author of five novels. Willow loves nothing more than writing the day away—anywhere will do. Her husband and two children graciously put up with her endless daydreaming and make fun of her for reading while cooking.
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True Love Story
Fade to Red
In the Fields
Maybe Maby
Lilith
Tarryn Fisher, Folsom
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