“Asher!” Harold says firmly, as if he suddenly senses danger. “You need to grow up and remember who you really are! We’re on the same side here, I came all this way to fetch you! What do you think you’re going to achieve by—”
Letting out an angry cry, I throw myself at him. The helicopter lurches, flashing over the forest, but I manage to land directly on top of Harold and drive the broken metal shard into his belly. He gasps, and I see pure shock in his eyes as I twist the shard and then pull it out.
“She doesn’t have the killer instinct,” I hear a voice whispering in my ear, from my days at the training academy. “She always hesitates.”
“Asher,” Harold gasps, “it’s me! We’re friends, remember? We both hate the same—”
I drive the shard into Harold’s belly again, then again and again, stabbing him as hard as I can. With each thrust, I move a little further up his body until I drive the shard into his chest. He stares back at me, his eyes filled with shock, but when he puts his hands on my arms I immediately realize that he’s too weak to fight back.
“They took our memories,” he whispers. “Without those, we’re not ourselves. I can give you all your memories back, Asher. I can make you… I can… make you… remember who you really are…”
The pilots are shouting from up-front, but I don’t care if they manage to break through and shoot me. All that matters right now is that I make Harold pay, and I slowly start twisting the shard in his chest. No matter what I do, however, he doesn’t scream or beg for mercy, and he doesn’t even try to push me back. With blood running from one side of his mouth, he simply stares at me with an expression of confusion, as if he can’t believe I’m doing this even as I continue to drive the shard into his belly.
“They tossed us aside after the war,” he whispers finally, sounding weaker than before. “We can… Asher, we have to make them pay for…”
Suddenly the helicopter takes a sharp turn, sharp enough to send both of us clattering off the seat and down onto the floor. I lose my grip on the metal shard, which tumbles away, and then I turn to see Harold bleeding profusely and clutching his gut. His blood is sloshing around on the metal floor now as the helicopter tips one way and then the other, and I can tell the pilots are trying to knock me off my feet. Turning, I see that one of them is frantically trying to get the partition open, and then I glance back at Harold and find that he’s staring calmly at me, although blood-loss is making him look increasingly pale.
Struggling to the door, I try to pull the handle, only to find that it’s secured somehow. Filled with panic and determined to get off the helicopter before it’s too late, I pull back and lean against one of the seats, and then I start kicking the window. Just when I’m starting to think I might have to try something else, the glass cracks a little, and then it shatters when I give it one final kick. The helicopter tilts around, and I know I don’t have long left. Crawling through Harold’s blood, I reach the broken window and then start to haul myself out.
“Stop!” Harold calls out.
Looking over my shoulder, I see that he’s reaching out to me.
“Asher, we can fight them!” he stammers, with more and more blood pouring from his belly and chest. “It’s not just us, there are others too!”
I want to grab the metal shard into his gut again, to really finish him off, but he’s clearly going to die before he can get medical attention. Instead, I look out the window one last time and see the tops of the trees flashing past below the helicopter, and then I haul myself through the gap. I know this is probably suicide, but I’d rather die on the island than live on the mainland. I belong here now, away from the rest of the world and away from anyone who wants me to remember my past. As the tree-tops flash beneath us, I drag myself out through the broken window.
“Asher, I know who we were fighting!” Harold shouts. “Asher, they lied to us! Asher, listen to me!”
Without even hesitating, I throw myself clear of the helicopter.
For a moment, I tumble through clear air. If this is my last moment, if this is how I die, then at least—
Slamming into the tree-tops, I immediately feel branches snapping under my weight. After a couple of seconds, however, I hit part of a trunk, and this time my entire body shudders as the impact sends me deeper into the forest below. Hundreds of broken branches scratch my face and tear my clothes, and I feel bone after bone being shattered as I fall through the trees, until finally everything goes black.
I’m unconscious before I hit the ground. Ghosts are waiting for me in the dark. Ghosts and memories.
Chapter Forty-eight
Three months later
“Haul it in!” a voice shouts. “Haul it in now!”
Turning, I watch for a moment as several people lug a crop-filled canopy through the town’s main gate. I have no idea what, exactly, they’ve got in there, but I’m sure someone’ll manage to turn it into a meal. We still eat a lot of wild rabbit, but at least the diet around here is diversifying a little. Some wild pigs were recently found near the island’s eastern shore. I have no idea where they came from, but they’ve made for a welcome change to the menu.
“Iris!” George calls out excitedly. “Iris, over here!”
Glancing over my shoulder, I see him waving at me frantically. He’s been busy working on some kind of secret project for a while now, although he was never willing to show anyone what he was doing. Now, however, he suddenly seems keen to share, so I make my way over. When I get around the side of one of the rebuilt huts, I’m surprised to see a large section of wood that he has somehow managed to fashion into a meter-wide disc.
“It’s a wheel!” he says proudly.
I can’t help frowning.
“I know just one wheel isn’t very useful,” he continues, almost breathless with excitement as he holds the disc up for me to get a closer look, “but it’s a proof of concept.” He runs a hand along the edge. “See how smooth it is? That took real work, Iris, and craftsmanship! I’ll only get faster, too, so I think we might actually end up with wheeled transport! Sure, it’d be great if we had horses to pull them, but at least we can have wheelbarrows!” He waits for me to reply, and it’s clear that he’s extremely pleased with himself. “What do you think?” he asks finally. “Should I keep going?”
I pause, before nodding.
“I can have another one done within the next two weeks,” he explains.
I nod again, and then I watch as he gets back to work. It’s strange to think that a man could be so pleased with himself for making a wheel, but I guess he’s right when he says it could have some practical applications. I stick around for a few minutes as he starts cutting more wood, and then I make my way to the other side of the hut and stop for a moment, watching the town as its inhabitants go about their business. It’s hard to believe that Steadfall didn’t fade away after everything that happened a few months ago, but something about this place seems to keep attracting people. Now that the sickness has passed, we can look to the future. Whatever was in that foul soup that caused people to become ill, it died off, and I didn’t get sick even though I fell directly into a pit of the damn stuff. Walter mentioned that it required a few extra ingredients, so I guess I was lucky.
Meanwhile, we’re gaining two or three new arrivals every month. They come from other parts of the island, though, not from further afield. It’s been a while now since the helicopters came to drop anyone on the island. Sometimes I wonder whether the rest of the world has forgotten about us.
I still feel a shiver whenever I head out to the south-east and see the crude cemetery that contains the bodies of everyone we lost. Deckard, Elizabeth, Carly, and so many more… The list is too long, and sometimes I find myself staying awake when I should be asleep, going over and over the events of that awful night. There were even times when I felt we should shut the town down as a mark of respect, but eventually I realized Steadfall was somehow taking the decision out of my hands. For reasons that I still can’t quite fathom, people seem to believe in the town’s ability to survive. It’s almost as if Steadfall refuses to die.