Ending Eleven
by Jerri Chisholm

Copyright © 2023 by Jerri Chisholm. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Chapter One

With bruises on knees and blood on my feet

Yo! Ho! Blow the man down

You name the place for us to all meet

Give me some time to blow the man down

Pain pushes against the inside of my temple; it pulls at my smashed-in ear. I try to bring up the image of Justice Andrews, of his fists colliding with me, or Sitwell driving the butt of his gun into my skull—events that happened just a couple hours prior—but the dark and unknown world spins too quickly. Too disorienting, too much swirling ink. I can’t think of anything, and through the blankness, that tune, hollered by an unknown chorus, swells again.

Give me some time to blow the man down

I know the song like the back of my hand. I just can’t place it. Where is it from? And how will I get to Michael if I’m not thinking straight? If I’m losing my mind? I try to focus on the feeling of the weight propped over my shoulder, the ragged breaths that come out in quick, shallow bursts. Breaths from my lungs. And Long’s. Nothing from his.

His. Him. Wren.

Through patches of moonlight that turn the world silver, Long and I push harder, faster, following the boy who had been watching Eleven’s lid when we emerged. I had wanted to study him, to assure myself it’s the boy called Tuck, the silent one from Michael’s camp I’d been searching for before the series of events that led us here. I had wanted to examine his face for a sign his birth name was Jack, that he is my brother, the one expelled from the compound at the age of three. But the bloodstain on Wren’s shirt had been expanding too quickly, the boy’s eyes were too wide as he stared at it, and there wasn’t time to do anything but rush through the night.

Long groans as the boy’s shoulder stumps into the trunk of a tree. A second later, its branches catch the skin along my cheek, slicing it like tissue paper. Right now, it feels like my entire body is constructed of it. Vulnerable to damage.

As blood dribbles down my face, I hear that tune again:

You bring the masses and I’ll bring the booze

Yo! Ho! Blow the man down

You find the salt and I’ll find the noose

Give me some time to blow the man down

On and on we go, a seemingly endless journey of cracking twigs and shuffling boots, but finally corpse-like buildings strangled by vines flicker into view. A noise escapes my lips, a whisper of relief. Because when we fled Compound Eleven, Wren was clinging to life, the hole in his side wrenched apart from the climb to the top of the storeroom, and now…

Now things are more dire. Now I don’t know if he’s sleeping, or unconscious, or dead dead dead. But I can’t stop to consider that last possibility; I can’t bear to even think it. All I can focus on is shifting my weight forward. Again and again and again.

…

The metal cylindrical building catches the moonlight so it looks like bars. Rings of light and dark, like a cage. The air quivers, and residents of this strange new world holler at us to stop—they think we’re intruders, full of ill-intent. But the boy runs ahead, and above all that comes Michael’s name, a hoarse and strangled scream, and even though I know it comes from me, it sounds so foreign, so distant—I barely recognize it. But I must, because nobody else could sound so desperate. Nobody else could be so close to the edge.

And then, as the cage disappears and the towering corpse-like buildings begin to tilt, there’s a rush of heat close enough that it singes my clothes. Fire, I realize slowly, orange and electric, and just as I feel my flesh melt, a hand lands on my shoulder and pulls me upright. The pain behind my eyes erupts with the movement, like a hot, pulsating knife.

“Eve. Eve!” The sound of Michael’s voice echoes through my head. Just like always, it ebbs and flows in a peculiar way, an accent I am not familiar with. An accent that’s soft and yielding. Usually, there’s a touch of humor to it, but not right now. Right now he mutters under his breath, and I know it’s Wren’s condition that does it. The dangling head. The bright patch of red soiling his shirt. The clammy skin the color of plaster that Compound Eleven would smear on the upper floor ceilings.

“Find Lizbeth!” Michael shouts to one of the members—a middle-aged woman. As she disappears inside the building, he drops the lantern he’d been holding and positions his fingers alongside Wren’s neck.

It should be relief I feel, because my burden has become theirs, because my goal was to get Wren here, where they have a medic, where they have more to offer than Long and I can manage. Instead, I shut my eyes. Can’t look. Can’t breathe. I feel weaker than I ever have before. Not in body—never in body. No matter how battered and bruised I may be, no matter how much pain I’m in, I am a fighter, and my strength is unending. But right now, my mind crumbles. I am that scared little girl from years ago when Jack was taken, the girl I vowed to outgrow, to out-muscle. Yet here I am, powerless and vulnerable, and I can’t think of a worse sensation.

I blink my eyes open and stare at the lantern that lies on its side, casting concentric circles of light into the dirt. I pretend not to notice how my entire body shakes. After an eternity, Michael murmurs, “Faint,” and the burning, prickling sensation at the back of my skull crackles brightly for a second before fading away.

He’s alive.

Michael takes my place supporting Wren, and I stagger sideways, knocked off balance without the weight across my shoulders. Under the upside-down glare of the lantern, I see the outline of others emerging from the shadows, and they all stare at the limp, near-lifeless body brought into their midst. I shiver deeply as I look at him myself. He looks like the doll I was allotted as a child by the compound, and all at once I remember the crushing sensation when I had to throw her out, her hair too twisted with tears and vomit to keep. Next, I think about my mother losing Jack, and I can’t even comprehend how devastating that sensation must have been. Vaguely, I wonder if life just keeps getting worse as we get older. More time, more problems, until finally our bodies can’t bear it anymore, and we crush into sand.

Michael is staring at me. He grips my hand. “We’ll take care of him,” he is saying. “Get him mended up proper, I promise. A fair deal?”

I wipe my nose on my sleeve and nod. His kindness is calming, and yet I’m not looking for blind assurances—I’m looking for action.

“You need medical treatment yourself,” he continues.

“W-what? No—I’m fine.”

“You’re—”

“I hear there’s an emergency,” interrupts a cool voice. A girl who looks about Michael’s age, maybe a bit older, appears suddenly out of the darkness. She has a striking face and long brown hair shaved off on one side just above the ear, the skin there adorned with tattoos. She considers Wren. “Well, god damn,” she says at once, her voice low and no-nonsense.

“This is Lizbeth,” Michael explains. “Our medic.”

She nods at me, then beckons Long and Michael forward, toward the building. Uneasily, I follow after them inside and past a row of what looks like occupied cots under the swaying light of the lantern. A couple people blink awake, muttering about the commotion. We step behind a sheet suspended from the ceiling. Another lantern erupts, this one with a long orange flame, and I shield my eyes as a fresh stab of pain pierces my brain.

“Put him here,” the girl Lizbeth commands in that low voice.

They place Wren on the cot, cradling his head so his neck doesn’t snap in two, and I think to myself, No.

No, this isn’t real. This is Wren, and he is strong and fierce. He is alert and intense and alive. This dangling specimen isn’t him—it can’t be.

Even the circumstances don’t ring true. Tormented by his father’s death at his mother’s hand. Put in this state by the very same woman. The woman who gave him life, and now…

There’s a tremor in my bones.

And then, I start to think about the woman who gave me life, the woman I made a pledge to, a pledge I broke when I sprang free from Compound Eleven captivity without her.

The tremor grows worse.

Just as I think I might buckle from the weight of all those swirling thoughts, Lizbeth pushes up Wren’s shirt and my brain goes still. So do the other people standing in the makeshift room.

It’s because his entire torso is coated in red—far too much, far too horrific. Blood-soaked strands of thread lift here and there, remnants of the stitches made by Addison—Wren’s ex-girlfriend—before we fled the compound, but in some places her act of kindness has actually held together. Probably it’s the reason he’s made it this far, and I feel a sudden rush of affection for her that I didn’t know was possible.

“You guys should go,” says Lizbeth dismissively to our group that huddles behind her. “Get some sleep. It’ll be a long old night here.” She exhales, then begins pulling an assortment of bottles from a shelf. Next, she goes to a set of drawers and removes a container full of metal tools that remind me of the ones Addison used. She begins to whistle under her breath, sounding casual, but I can tell by the way her brow is furrowed she’s anything but.

None of us move, and finally, she looks at us over her shoulder. “Guys. Beat it.”

I glance at Long—one of Wren’s closest friends—but he doesn’t meet my gaze. He just chews his thumbnail and stares down at his friend through a curtain of black hair that obscures his face. Still, I spot the frown that bends down his mouth—foreboding is impossible to mask.

I look back at Lizbeth, at the strange pattern the tattoos make on her scalp. Like curved teeth. “No,” I say.

“You’re the one I was talking about, actually,” she replies darkly. “Looks like you’ve lost a shit-ton of blood yourself. Probably a concussion, too, judging by your eyes. You take a hit across the nose or does it always look like that?”

There’s another crash of pain through my head, and I feel like collapsing. Like melting. The same unearthly tune that accompanied me here explodes through my brain:

Boots slowly marching up to the red sky

Yo! Ho! Blow the man down

A tit for a tat and a heart for an eye

Give me some time to blow the man down

“Hello?” Lizbeth calls. “Can you hear me?”

Once I steady myself under the flickering light, I tell her, “I’ll leave when I know.”

“When you know?” she echoes, but she doesn’t expect an answer. Doesn’t need one. I’ll leave when I know whether Wren will be okay. Or whether Wren will die.

“It’s the middle of the night, Eve,” Michael says. He speaks gently, as though I might crack, then lays a hand gingerly over my shoulder. The pain in my head grows so intense I feel like I could pass out. “Sleep would do you wonders. And he’s in good hands, I promise.”

“But—”

“Look,” interrupts Lizbeth, and there’s more edge in her voice than before. “I need to get moving if there’s any chance of saving him. Standing around here arguing means he’ll die, legit. I also don’t want somebody hovering over my shoulder all night gasping like an annoying little Nancy.” Probably she catches the look in my eye—that mean, merciless glint that shows itself before each of my matches in the Fighter Bowl—because she adds more amiably, “By the look of things, you need to take it seriously easy. Want a mirror? Hurry up or I’ll get one of Michael’s lackeys to drag you out by the hair. What’s left of it,” she adds with a wink.

“She’s right,” says Long suddenly, turning to me. “We’ve done all we can. And we’re just holding things up arguing about it.”

That hand on my shoulder squeezes, and as the room starts to spin, Michael gestures to another curtain, one to the right. “I’m going to put her here—that’s our second infirmary room, Eve. All good with that, Lizbeth?”

“I’ll be in with some nectar in a second,” she mutters as she cuts apart Wren’s shirt.

“How’s that?” Michael asks as he draws me forward. “You’ll be close to him while you both heal is my thinking.”

I try to answer, but I’m too lightheaded. The sensation of moving makes me feel like I’ve been swallowed by blackness, and my legs give out. Arms find me, they lift me, then cool fabric rubs against scales of blood that cover my face. It takes a while to realize I’m horizontal, on something marginally more comfortable than the floor, and I know with a sinking feeling I’ve been relegated to the cot in the infirmary next door.

That’s okay, I try to tell myself. Because if I’m going to be falling and blacking out, I’ll be a distraction to Lizbeth, and Wren won’t survive if that happens. This is good, Eve.

“There’s a few empty cots along the far wall,” I hear Michael saying, somewhere above me. There comes a murmuring of agreement, probably Long. He says something else, but I can’t hear it through the fresh explosion of pain inside my head. It hurts so badly it feels like it’s splitting me in two. Every time I think of Wren, I hurt even more.

More scuffling around me, then something inside my mouth tastes oily against my tongue.

“All right, Eve?”

I don’t answer. All I want to do, suddenly, is sleep.

A hand lands carefully on my head. “Your unfinished business in Compound Eleven?” Michael asks.

“Still unfinished,” I manage to whisper. The image of the Oracle glistening under the moonlight cuts through my brain.

“We can’t go back there,” says Long, and I can hear the emotion in his voice. “They’ll kill us if we do.”

“Which means you’ll be staying here,” finishes Michael.

Though dulled significantly by pain and worry and fatigue, I feel a rush of gratitude at the finality in his voice. We are safe here. There is food and water. And a medic for Wren.

Fingers shift my hair, probably Michael trying to get a better look at my wound. Soon, he and Long are leaving, talking quietly to each other, not that I can make sense of it. My brain is too far gone. Shutting down, pulling me through a hole where I can’t be reached, even when all I want to do is stay here, with Wren. That familiar tune once again emerges from the darkness; it lulls me toward a deep, dreamless sleep…

You push his head and I’ll pull the rope

Yo! Ho! Blow the man down

A goblet of blood for a future of hope

Give me some time to blow the man down.

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Release Date: November 22, 2024

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Release Date: November 22, 2024

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