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Resist

Breathe 2

by

Sarah Crossan

PART I

THE JOURNEY

1

ALINA

We didn’t think sailing to Sequoia would be easy, but we hoped for better luck than freezing rain and winds. The slightest miscalculation and we’ll end up at the bottom of the river.

“Help me!” I shout, throwing my weight into my heels and tipping backward to keep the rigging from slipping out of control. The rain hits us horizontally, and makes ice of the deck. The boat creaks and lurches forward. The sails flap wildly as my cousin, Silas, stumbles toward me and grabs the cable. Almost effortlessly he pulls it taut, and I quickly tie a stopper knot to keep the sail from ballooning out and capsizing us. “That should do it,” I say, my voice thinned by the storm.

Silas pulls up the hood on his coat. He hasn’t said much since we set sail. No one has. What is there to say now that The Grove’s a ruin—now that everything the Resistance ever fought for has been destroyed?

At least the storm keeps us too busy to wallow in memories: the screams and blood; the tanks; soldiers rushing at us with guns; our friends lying dead. And the trees, our whole forest, shriveling while we watched.

I can still taste the toxic foam in my throat.

I follow Silas to the cabin where our tiny group of survivors is taking shelter from the squall. My hands burn from the cold. I rub them together, then tuck them inside my coat and under my armpits.

“We did everything you said,” I tell Bruce. I never thought I’d be so grateful to have a drifter on our side, but whatever harm the old man caused on behalf of the Ministry all those years ago, doesn’t matter now. Without him, we wouldn’t have known how to get the boat going, let alone save it from the storm.

“You young’uns did good,” he says, scratching his gray beard and keeping his eyes on the view out the filthy window, where the outline of city buildings on the shoreline is barely distinguishable through the haze of spray and rain.

The boat dips and the wheel rips out of Bruce’s gnarled hands. My stomach reels. I adjust the valve on the airtank buckled to my belt, and the tank hisses as more air is released into the tubing. I inhale deeply through my nose. As Silas steadies the wheel with Bruce, I squat next to Maude. The old woman has a blanket wrapped around her like a shroud; only her head and one scrawny arm are exposed. “Did you manage to collect all the airtanks from the deck?” I ask. Without air, we may as well jump into the river—finish ourselves off quickly.

“You think I’m some kinda nitwit? I put ’em over there. ” She points to the corner of the cabin where the tanks are untidily piled. We have ten, and there are seven of us. How many days of oxygen is that? How many hours?

A sob comes from the opposite corner. My fellow Resistance members, Dorian and Song, are bending over Holly, one of The Grove’s gardeners. I don’t know her well, but I’m glad for everyone who survived.

I grab an airtank and go to them, keeping my stride wide to stay balanced. Holly is shivering so fiercely her teeth are clacking together. Although she lived at The Grove with Song and Dorian, and learned to survive on low levels of oxygen, her breath is quick and shallow. “She’s hyperventilating. She needs this,” I say, holding out the airtank.