Foreverland Is Dead

dressed, grab some breakfast.”
    Linda doesn’t want to leave. If she didn’t have a meeting, she wouldn’t let her out of her sight. She’ll probably call someone as soon as she leaves, have Thomas or someone keep an eye on the tent. Watch where Cyn goes.
    That’s why Cyn dresses quickly.

    The nurse is sitting in the back of the bunkhouse, poking at the tablet in his lap. He looks up, smiles.
    “You’re a little late to help, darling.” He goes back to his tablet, says, “Stick around, the girls need to be turned in half an hour.”
    Cyn stands quite still, looking at the walls, the rafters and beds, taking a mental snapshot of what it looks like, how it smells and feels. Memorizing this layer of reality.
    She walks around, stopping at each bed. The bodies still uninhabited. Kat, Jen, Roc, and Mad. All of them still somewhere else. Miranda’s bed still empty.
    Sandy, she reminds herself .
    Cyn’s bed is still empty. The sheets tucked under the mattress, the wire coiled on the small table. She slows her breathing, swallows, and walks to the bed.
    Walk. Don’t run.
    She sits on the edge, sinking into the gel-infused mattress. It molds to her bottom. There’s an indention in the pillow, waiting to cradle her head. She reaches slowly, picks up the glass vial.
    The surgical steel needle, suspended in the clear gel, gleams.
    “Honey, don’t touch that,” he says. “That needs to stay sterile.”
    Her fingers shake. She pinches the wire at the base of the needle. Her pulse flutters in her fingertips.
    “Sweetheart.” The nurse stands. “You need to put that down.”
    It slides from the rubber stopper. The tip is blunt. She brackets the stent with two fingers—
    “Don’t.” Linda’s at the door, hand raised. “Please.”
    Cyn opens her eyes. The needle lowers.
    No one moves.
    “I can get them,” she whispers.
    “I can’t let you.”
    “You know what they’re going through? If they’re alive, they’re cold and hungry. And I can get them out.”
    “There’s time, Cynthia. We’ll figure out how to communicate. They’ll learn how to escape, just like you.”
    “You’ve been real good to me.”
    “Don’t do this.”
    Cyn grimly nods. Their eyes engage. Linda only makes it half a step, hand reaching—
    An icicle slides between Cyn’s eyes.
    Her head goes numb.

DECEMBER
    Meet me at the edge.
    Where we all fall down.

56

    Cyn stumbles out of the trees, the white ground rushing towards her. She doesn’t get her hands out, landing face first in the white pluff. Doesn’t bother clawing out of the drift, hunkering inside, protected from the wind.
    Can’t feel her legs.
    Her hands.
    Face.
    The shivers are electric. She’ll die out here, in the meadow, winter’s hand wrapped around her throat. No.
    She emerges from the snow dune, inhaling an icy breath dusted with crystals, chilling her from the inside. But there’s something over there, across the meadow, over the barren white stretch. She wipes her eyes but the world still sways like a storm-tossed ship.
    She starts, again.
    Crawling. Eventually stumbling. Foot in front of foot.
    Fall.
    Up again.
    The crossing is lost in time, but she emerges from a snowdrift. The cabins are there.
    Her jaw chatters, her teeth chattering like frozen cubes. She wipes her eyes, tries to focus. There are only two wind harvesters , she thinks.
    The bunkhouse…it’s… gone . The blackened walls are sagging, spattered with icy white patches. The rafters poke through scorched holes. A white blade sticks out of the ground like a giant plastic knife.
    The dinner house is on fire, too. Smoke blossoms from the roof. She’s too late. It’s all burning to the ground; the girls have nowhere to go.
    I’m too late. This is my fault.
    Her feet hit the ground like dead pegs. Four steps, maybe five, and she crashes into another puff of snow. Up again.
    Little by little she crosses, she finds the other side. Discovers the dinner house isn’t on fire; the chimney is belching a long white cloud. The bunkhouse, though, is still gutted, black and dead.
    Cyn crawls onto the porch, fighting to breathe. She reaches up, hand shaking against the slick doorknob. Unable to feel the cold steel, unable to grasp and turn it. She collapses against the door, her head hitting the thick wood. She doesn’t have the strength to raise her arm, afraid her hand will shatter if she knocks.
    Thump, thump, thump. She bangs her head.
    What if they’re dead? What if everyone is gone? She