Chapter 11 — Say My Name While I’m Still Here

Nobody drove away.

I could hear the engines idling beyond the wall.

Eli kept saying my name.

Not loudly.

Not as a command.

Just to make sure I would answer.

“Rowan.”

“Here.”

“Rowan.”

“I hear you.”

Tess came onto the channel.

“We’ve stopped beyond the culvert. Shaw’s keeping watch.”

“How far?”

“Far enough.”

I looked toward the stairs.

A person could reach the gate-control building from inside the city.

An infected person could, too.

I pulled the door shut and turned the lock.

Then I slid the desk against it.

The effort left me shaking.

“What are you doing?” Eli asked.

“Making sure nobody comes in.”

“Ro.”

“I don’t want anyone hurt.”

My injured arm had gone strangely cold.

I tucked it against my stomach.

On the desk, beside Shaw’s pistol, stood a small emergency transmitter. Its status light blinked above a row of prerecorded perimeter messages.

The system had switched it on when the lockdown began.

Outside the window, a speaker called for assistance.

A calm male voice.

Then the same message again.

I reached up and turned the transmitter off.

The speaker fell silent.

No more voices asking people to come closer.

“Are the children with you?” I asked.

“Yes,” Tess said.

“Don’t put them on.”

“They want to say goodbye.”

I pressed my forehead against my knee.

For a moment, I couldn’t speak.

Then I said, “Tell them I heard.”

Tess breathed in sharply.

“All right.”

A long silence followed.

I remembered June drinking from the bottle Eli held.

Ben showing me the truck number.

Tess beneath the hood of a van she had repaired without asking permission.

Things I had seen.

Things that belonged to them.

“Eli?”

“Here.”

“The memory cards. In my jacket.”

“You still have them?”

I looked down.

The pocket was against my chest.

“The range recordings are here. The rest is with you.”

“We have enough.”

“I know. If someone comes back—”

“We’re coming back for you.”

I closed my eyes.

“Not yet.”

His breath caught.

Then he said, “Tell me when.”

I couldn’t.

We both understood that.

I had always assumed that if I died, I would think about our parents.

Their faces.

The sound of our mother calling us in for dinner.

Some perfect afternoon before the highways filled with abandoned cars.

Instead, I thought about Eli stealing my socks.

About Tess leaving every wrench she owned in the wrong drawer and insisting there was a system.

About the bread June had dropped.

Small things.

Enough of them to fill a life.

“I’m angry,” I said.

Eli let out a broken laugh.

“Yeah. Me too.”

“I wanted longer.”

“You should have had longer.”

I rubbed my thumb across the red cloth on the radio.

“I know.”

Tess’s voice came through.

“I don’t know how to do this without you.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Don’t say something brave.”

“All right.”

I swallowed.

“The fuel filters in our van need changing. That’s why it keeps losing power uphill.”

She laughed once, and then she was crying.

“I know, idiot.”

“Then start with that.”

Beyond the window, the sky was growing pale.

I had seen so many mornings through bunker vents.

A narrow strip of light.

Dust turning gold.

This one spread across the whole sky.

Eli said my name again.

I tried to answer.

For a second, I couldn’t remember how to shape it.

Fear moved through me.

Clearer than everything else.

I looked at the door, the desk, the locked window.

Then at Shaw’s pistol.

I knew what I was going to do.

I had known since the gate closed.

But I wasn’t ready to stop hearing them.

“Say my name,” I whispered.

“Rowan.”

“Again.”

“Rowan Hale.”

Tess joined him.

They kept saying it.

I listened until the words began to blur.

Then I told them I loved them.

I set the radio on the floor with the speaker facing me.

I did not turn it off.

Tess heard the shot.

She stopped saying Rowan’s name.

For a while, Eli didn’t.

Shaw stood beside the culvert with his head lowered.

Nobody tried to tell them what to feel.

When the sun cleared the trees, Lena asked the drivers to continue toward the treatment plant.

Tess shook her head.

“We’re bringing her.”

“We will,” Shaw said.

“Now.”

He looked back at Mercy Ridge.

Smoke hung above the northern buildings.

“Let us make the road safe first.”

Tess hated him for being right.

Then she got behind the wheel.

Eli sat beside her, holding the radio against his chest.

They returned before noon.

Shaw brought two guards and the motor-pool mechanic. Lena came with them.

The east gate remained closed, but the pedestrian access could be opened from outside with the keys taken from Bell.

They reached the control building without entering the center of Mercy Ridge.

The desk blocked the door.

Shaw and the mechanic pushed it back.

Rowan lay beside the cabinet.

Lena examined her and confirmed her death.

There was no uncertainty to preserve, no hope Tess could bargain with.

They wrapped her in a clean sheet.

Eli carried her jacket.

Tess carried the wrench.

Before they left, Shaw collected the memory cards and the radio from the floor.

Its battery had finally died.

The treatment plant had fences, water tanks, and three service buildings.

It did not have enough beds.

The first night, people slept on bus seats and folded coats. The second, they cleared storage rooms and carried in mattresses from nearby maintenance housing.

There were two hundred and nineteen of them.

Every person was counted by name.

Tess insisted.

Ben helped write the list.

June checked the spelling of the names she knew.

Nora sat beside her son while Lena examined the former donors one by one. Some needed rest. Some needed treatment. None were asked for blood.

Owen died four days after the evacuation.

The remaining suppressant had become less effective. Lena told him that while he could still understand her.

He was cared for separately, with guards who knew his condition and agreed to stay.

No child was asked to pretend he was safe.

His name went onto the same memorial list as the others.

Bell and Graham were held in separate secured rooms.

They were given food, water, medical care, and people who would listen to their accounts.

They were also prevented from leaving.

A council elected by the residents heard testimony over several weeks.

Nora described the collections.

Tess described the restraints.

Lena read the records and answered questions about her own involvement.

Shaw explained the orders he had followed.

Graham’s dispatch folder was laid beside the intake list Rowan had taken from the bunker.

Bell argued that necessity had justified his decisions.

The council asked why the people bearing the cost had never been allowed to refuse.

He had no answer that changed the records.

Both men were found responsible for unlawful confinement and coercion. They remained under guard, barred from handling medical supplies, directing work crews, or controlling communications.

Their cases would be reviewed at public meetings.

The evidence was copied and stored in three separate buildings.

Nobody held the only key.

Lena asked to continue researching the infection.

The residents agreed under written conditions.

Independent oversight.

Open records.

Consent that could be withdrawn.

No loss of food, housing, or treatment for saying no.

Tess did not volunteer immediately.

When she eventually did, she chose the date herself.

Six weeks after Mercy Ridge fell, Eli finished repairing the transmitter.

His leg still hurt in cold weather.

He had stopped apologizing when he needed to sit down.

Tess built a workbench beneath the service-building windows and put Rowan’s wrench in the top drawer.

Ben began learning how to maintain the batteries.

June planted beans in a cracked plastic basin.

Nobody called the place a city.

Not yet.

On the morning of the first broadcast, Eli sat before the microphone with a page of notes.

Tess stood beside him.

He looked at the opening sentence for a long time.

Then he crossed it out.

The original had promised safety.

Instead, he pressed the transmit button and gave their location.

He explained the approach road, the observation area outside the fence, and the screening process.

He told listeners how much food they had.

How many people they could currently shelter.

What they knew about infection.

What they still did not know.

Then he paused.

“If you come here,” he said, “you will be told what we’re asking before you’re asked to agree.”

Tess rested her hand on his shoulder.

“You can ask questions. You can refuse medical research. You can leave.”

Outside, a delivery engine started.

Someone called for Ben to bring a socket wrench.

June laughed at something Nora’s son had said.

Eli listened to those ordinary sounds through the open window.

Then he leaned toward the microphone again.

“My name is Eli Hale. I’m here with Tess Navarro.”

His voice trembled.

He let it.

“We’ll answer again tomorrow.”

He released the button.

For the first time in eight years, nobody had used his voice without asking.