The Last Tree Read online

  “Has something happened?” I ask.

  “After I left for Bio-4, there was a viral outbreak.”

  “Viral outbreaks happen all the time in the biospheres,” J.D. says. “You must have experienced them yourself at one time or another.”

  “Of course,” she agrees. “Some years were milder than others. But what was unique about this outbreak is that it killed only infants.”

  Everyone is silent, processing the information and trying to determine what it means.

  “Was it because they were too young to have received their vaccinations?” I ask.

  “That was one theory,” she answers. “Then a new idea started circulating. An AgTech professor theorized that the plague was caused by something in the biosphere’s food supply, something that got into the mothers’ breast milk and made the children sick—not all of them, not the ones who had a natural resistance—but most children under the age of one year died. By the time they figured out that breast milk was the channel for contamination, the virus had exhausted itself. The residents never received a vaccine, and they never knew what it was in their diets that may have caused the virus.”

  When Tamara finishes her tale, I glance at the others. They look as grim as I feel.

  “Do you think this is connected to Eric’s research?” J.D. asks.

  Tamara is unfazed by the question. “I think Eric might have been onto to some specific chemical interactions that were threatening the food supply. He didn’t tell me much. He didn’t like me to worry, especially once he knew I was expecting Shay. But in his last year, he was clearly troubled about something. After I became pregnant, he monitored everything I ate. At first, I thought it was simply his response to being an expectant father. But one day, I bought fruit from a street vendor and ate it on the way home. When he found out, he was furious. He insisted I wasn’t to eat anything he hadn’t tested first. On another occasion, I walked in on him at the lab and he was staring at rows of numbers and muttering to himself—something about ‘plants being the transmitters.’” Her voice drops to a whisper. “I didn’t connect the dots right away. But now, I wonder if there was something in the soil and maybe the toxin made its way into some crops but not others—or it only interacted with a certain type of plant—I don’t know. If new mothers consumed something that was toxic and it passed into their breast milk ….”

  “The babies would be vulnerable.”

  “Yes.”

  “Instead of nourishment ….” My voice trails off, but everyone can fill in the blank. Those poor babies, the poor mothers, feeding their children death and not knowing it until it was too late. I watch as Tamara slowly comes to another realization. That if she and Shay had stayed in Bio-19, then her child might have been one of the ones struck down also. I think this might be a good realization for her to accept. Maybe she won’t torture herself by thinking that if only she hadn’t left Bio-19, Shay would still be alive. It was a harsh reminder that life doesn’t offer simple guarantees.

  I can see the emotions flickering across her face as she absorbs the information. She turns to Tuck. “When you go into the dome tomorrow, can you check what’s on the Nets about the outbreak? Maybe you can find a back door into clinical information about this virus. Check the UTC Health Services database. Eric used it as a reference all the time. Even if they never developed a successful vaccine, there could be research notes, testing protocols.”

  “My hackin’ skills ain’t what they used to be,” he says. “I’ve gotten rusty since we been on the road, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  With that, everyone falls silent, and we begin organizing the new supplies. As we work, Tuck tosses us algae bars—a quick dinner. Our eyes avoid contact with each other, all of us wanting quiet time with our thoughts. Some days are harder than others, and this is one of them. The realities of the world we inhabit don’t allow much room for positive thinking. When I first committed myself to helping the planet to heal, I thought filling dry lake beds would be enough. I was naïve. I finally realized it was going to take more than making water to turn back the inevitable tide of human extinction. We needed to find others who could help us with this work. And we needed answers. We needed to understand why the air, the soil, and the few remaining water sources continued to evolve newer, deadlier toxins. How could we slow the process of decay so that providing fresh water or cleaning the air or restoring soil health would actually make a difference?

  4

  At the last minute, Tamara insists on going with Tuck into Bio-19.

  “I want to confirm Eric’s data drive is gone.”

  “It’s gone,” I tell her firmly.

  “What if you snuck into the wrong lab by mistake?”

  “I was in Dr. Gallagher’s lab. It was her name on the door. It was Claire Gallagher I overhead speaking with Lukas Thorne. I checked exactly where you told me. I checked under tiles next to tiles. I don’t know if someone found the drive by mistake or if someone saw you hide it or … who knows? Maybe Territory officials turned the place upside down when you went missing. All I know is the drive is gone, and it’s not safe for you to be in the dome. The chance that someone will recognize you is too great.”

  “They won’t. Look at me.” Tamara’s voice tugs at me. I don’t want to give in, but I look. And she’s right. She’s not the same young woman I met last year. She has been changed. Her face, her body—most strikingly her eyes—everything about her has been changed by relentless travel and hunger and loss.

  “Even my best friend didn’t recognize me at first.” She reaches out to grip my hand. “I can’t stop thinking that if I had turned over Eric’s drive to the Territory last year, maybe they would have had the data they needed to prevent the outbreak, to prevent the deaths of all those children. I want to see for myself, Kira. I won’t be at peace until I do.”

  Extracting my hand and avoiding her gaze, I walk over to my pack and pull out the black wig. I understand her need to return to the lab and check for the drive that contains Eric’s data. But it doesn’t mean I’m not going to do everything I can to improve her chances of getting in and getting out without being noticed. As she pulls the wig over her hair and adjusts the loose-fitting outfit, I have to admit she looks nothing like herself. Even though I’ve walked across the wasteland with her for the past year, I could pass this person on a street and have no idea it was Tamara.

  Minutes later, Tuck and Tamara wave goodbye and slip outside. I stand, watching them leave, suddenly daunted by the prospect of being stuck in this cave. More than ever, I understand why Tamara snuck out to the water yesterday.

  J.D. leaves to monitor their departure but is back in minutes. He shoots me a look. “When was the last time it was just the two of us?”

  He’s got a point. Increasingly, the four of us move as a unit. We’ve been inseparable since Tuck and Tamara found us in the mountains last year, hiding from Thorne’s searchers. As we trek from place to place, each of us finds a way to get solitary time when we need it—usually after we’ve stopped to make camp during the hottest part of the day. As a safety precaution, we hunt in pairs when collecting insects for a meal. And occasionally, Tuck and J.D. travel independently to gather supplies from the underground network of caches stashed in hidden locations throughout the territories. But J.D. and I—after a period of months when we trekked together, only the two of us—we are now almost never alone.

  “What do you want to do?” I ask.

  He watches me but says nothing.

  I wait, familiar with his long pauses. As worried as I am about Tamara returning to the biosphere, I cannot hold back a small smile. Nerve endings flit with energy. I don’t think I realized until this moment how much I miss my private interactions with J.D. Perhaps he misses them also.

  “Have you been practicing your self-defense?” he asks finally.

  I’m surprised. I’ve been defending myself for as long as I can remember. No one survives the Garner Home for Girls without learning how to throw a punch
—and to take one. But after our narrow escape from Thorne last year, J.D. insisted I improve my fighting skills. He and Tuck take turns teaching me. Sometimes, Tamara joins in a lesson. She’s an indifferent fighter, but I enjoy the instruction. Tuck teaches with a reckless abandon that helps me be a more innovative opponent, while J.D.’s methodical techniques have slowly but steadily increased my strength and speed.

  I roll my shoulders to loosen up, then relax into a fighting stance and begin to work through my forms. J.D. watches, occasionally reaching out to shift the angle of a strike or block. As my muscles warm, I accelerate through each technique more quickly and J.D. steps in to block and counter my moves for added intensity.

  I can feel my muscles protesting as I push past my comfort zone. Breaths come in short pants as I thrust and parry, moving in, to the left, back, to the right in a constant dance to either evade or invade J.D.’s target area.

  Relentless, he increases the pressure, almost taking me down in a swift forward foot sweep. I’m knocked off balance, but I recover quickly and shove him off, angling my body into a defensive position. Before I can catch my breath, he’s back, shifting, thrusting, and blocking, catching my knee, forcing it to give so I’m off-balance again. I counter, but he knocks my arm away, stepping forward to ensure I don’t slam into the ground and easily pinning me down with his body.

  I’m panting furiously now, and I push against his shoulders, but my muscles are like noodles, his like immovable rocks.

  “Uncle,” I wheeze reluctantly.

  His own breathing heavy, he relaxes just enough to ensure I can breathe. For a moment, all I can do is take great, gulping breaths, but finally I feel my heart rate returning to normal. I’m startled when J.D.’s head dips, touching his forehead to mine. “Kira.”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you listening to me?” His breath is soft against my damp skin.

  “Yes.”

  “I … miss you.”

  I exhale slowly and remind myself to take deep, even breaths. I sense we are entering uncharted territory. I tip my head to look up at him. “How do you mean?” I whisper.

  He shifts to my side, his eyes never leaving my face. He is silent. I never mind his silences. I know he struggles to express himself, to share the deepest parts of himself, because for so long he had not had anyone there to listen. But I don’t mind waiting until he’s figured out what he wants to say.

  “Something has been building inside me, Kira … over the past year and … I thought I had it under control, for a while I did, but then it was clear that I didn’t and … I can’t figure out anything but to bring you into it, to just say it.”

  He looks at me as if to gauge my response. I meet his gaze but stay silent. I cannot tell where this is heading.

  “It’s good having Tuck and Tamara with us. But since we left our place in the mountain ….” He halts, breathes for a moment, then starts again slowly. “I miss having time when it’s just the two of us. I find ….” He clears his throat, his voice now so quiet I have to strain to hear him. “My thoughts are full of you. Sometimes they’re full of … of my need to protect you and ….”

  “I’m getting stronger and faster all the time,” I interject. “You don’t have to worry about me. And we’ve been so careful lately.”

  His lips twitch, but then he turns serious again. “Yes. I think you’re a good fighter.” He trails off. I watch him quietly. I will not try to put words in his mouth. I promise myself I will wait patiently until he spits it out or gives up. The look in his eyes tells me he is not going to give up. I watch his throat move as he swallows. “Lately, my thoughts are full of … how I would like … how I would like to touch you.”

  I’m confused. I am also … interested. Sometimes I think about touching J.D. also, not just holding hands in friendship, but other things. Except that I don’t know exactly what those other things are. I grew up in an orphanage full of women and girls. I never knew a boy until I met J.D., literally stumbled over him in the road. He is without question the central character of my life now. And so I breathe quietly, waiting for what comes next.

  “I’m not talking about holding hands or training,” he says. “I’m talking about a different kind of touching.”

  “Like what?”

  His eyes never leave mine. They are searching, but I’m unsure for what. Carefully, he slips his hand beneath the hem of my shirt, laying his palm flat against my belly. I can feel his long fingers splayed from below my navel to the curve of my waist. I forget to breathe. His hand does not move. It rests there, and I can feel the warmth of him passing to me. So much warmth and something else …. Awareness. Intent.

  “I want to touch you like this … here …,” he says softly, his fingers flexing against my skin.

  Every pore and hair on my body is on alert, straining toward—what? I’m not sure. But my body seems to know. What strange force is this, I wonder, that can make me quiver? His hand resting on my belly has set off a vibration deep inside me.

  “And I want to touch you here,” he whispers. His hand slides upward, just brushing the side of my breast before slipping around my back to trail slowly down my skin. “… and ….” His eyes drop to my mouth, and before he has even moved, I can imagine his lips on mine. I know that mouth. I have studied it from a distance, learned how firm it can become when set in stubbornness and how it can tremble when he is tired or anguished and thinks no one is looking. But sometimes those lips can be coaxed into a smile when something amuses him, and that’s when I admire his mouth the most. For his smiles are glimpses into the J.D. he would have been without the Devastation, without abandonment and persistent days of loneliness and thirst and hunger. His rare smiles connect to the core of something deep inside me that I don’t understand. And now, a small smile playing around those beautiful lips, he gazes at me, moves closer, watches, and waits.

  I nod.

  His head bends and our lips touch … separate … touch again.

  I am startled. I am startled by the sensations cascading over each other so quickly I cannot process them all. I close my eyes, then realize this sharpens my other senses, sharpens the taste of him. Every nerve in my body is sparking. And a pressure is building low in my body. I can picture it there, growing in power and threatening to overwhelm me with an abandon that is frightening. Brightly colored lights shimmer behind my eyelids, and I can actually feel my walls, the fortified structures in my mind which I have spent a lifetime constructing in order to survive—I can feel those walls shuddering on their foundations. And I know, suddenly and absolutely, that if J.D. and I continue on this path, it will be all or nothing. And this thought chills me.

  J.D. is my best friend. He is the person I trust most in the world. What if … what if the physical and emotional intimacy his kisses demand is something I cannot give him? What if I am not strong enough to be vulnerable to another person, even to him? What if I do not know how to love? These are valid questions. I’ve never seen love—certainly never experienced it for myself. So how could I ever expect to give it to someone else? I believe, in that instant, that it might destroy me, destroy the fragile hold I keep over myself, if I discover I’m not mature enough or generous enough or … something enough to give J.D. what he needs. I might lose his friendship. I might lose him completely from my life. It is an intolerable idea.

  J.D. must feel my confusion, feel the subtle pulling back in my kisses. After all, he is the astute one. With a shaky breath, his hands still on my body, his kisses slow, then stop. I open my eyes to find him looking at me, not demanding anything. There is no judgment. Just acceptance of whatever is coming next.

  “Too soon?” he asks.

  “Too much,” I whisper.

  He nods, pulling me close in his arms and finding a hollow in the ground where he can cradle me comfortably. I can feel a lingering tension in him, but gradually, with a small sigh, his body relaxes against mine, and he drifts to sleep.

  I do not sleep. I contemplate J.D. an
d compare him to the boy I stumbled across on the road to Slag. He’s not so much a boy any longer. Have I changed as much, I wonder? I’ve been studying J.D. since the first day we started walking together, the way his clever fingers appear to dance along the cord when he’s knotting hemp or how capable he is at building a fire to roast a meal of roots and insects. We’ve been traveling side by side for over a year now, and all I have to do is close my eyes to picture in detail how his dark lashes shadow his cheeks when he sleeps and how his piercing blue eyes notice everything but give nothing away. A part of me is delighted J.D. wants to deepen our connection, but I’m troubled as well. This could be a complication. Already, I’m wondering if Tuck and Tamara will notice a new dimension in my relationship with J.D. and what they might think about it.

  It turns out to be a moot point—because Tuck and Tamara do not return. Not that afternoon. Not that evening. And not even the following morning. By then, J.D. and I have become grim and silent. It is clear to us that something has gone terribly wrong.

  5

  I pace the small cave like a caged animal. I can’t stand it any longer. “We’ve waited long enough,” I say finally. “We have to go find them.”

  Tamara and Tuck have been gone for twenty-four hours. Anxiety is wearing away at my peace of mind, always a fragile thing even at my best.

  “I’ll go,” J.D. says. “Tamara’s wearing your wig. We don’t have another. You have no disguise.”

  “I’ll wear a hat and sunshades. It’s enough to be unrecognizable.”

  “You cannot leave this cave.”

  I shake my head, my mouth set. There’s no way I’m staying here while J.D. goes off to find our friends.

  He walks over until he’s standing directly in front of me. He tips my chin up with one finger, and I quickly blink away the dampness in my eyes. I won’t let him see me being weak.

  “I’m not suggesting you should stay hidden here because it would relieve my mind,” he says calmly. “I’m suggesting you should stay here because every single living creature on this planet needs the water only you can bring. You cannot put yourself at risk, Kira, even for your closest friends.”