Astray (Gated Sequel)

A good shepherd doesn’t lie down when one of his sheep is still astray.
--Pioneer, leader of the Community
One
It’s been a month since the world was supposed to end. By now you’d think I wouldn’t wake up every morning in a panic with the Community’s alarm echoing in my ears and my breath coming so fast that I’m not actually taking in any oxygen.
But I do.
Maybe it’s because somewhere deep inside I can’t believe that the apocalypse isn’t still looming over every horizon. My family and our leader, Pioneer, warned me about it every waking moment of my life from the time I turned five. How can I suddenly just switch gears and believe that it was all a lie?
I wipe the condensation from the bathroom mirror and stare at the swipe of my reflection that’s visible. I ran the shower long enough to slow my breathing back down, to stop my body from trembling visibly, but inside I’m still thrumming with a nervousness I can’t soothe--not with a hundred showers. It doesn’t help that this bathroom still feels foreign to me, that the place I live in now is not my home and that the people who live here with me are barely more than strangers.
“Lyla, we don’t have much time. My dad’s already left,” Cody says from outside the door in a low voice.
I begin to quickly dry off. Cody’s dad is the sheriff, the person who raided the Community’s development, Mandrodage Meadows, just before Pioneer sealed us underground to wait for the apocalypse. Today he’s going to transfer Pioneer from the hospital to the county jail, and Cody and I are going to watch him.
“Be right there.” I put my mouth close to the door so I won’t have to talk too loud. Cody’s mom and sister are still sleeping. If they wake up before we can manage to get out of the house, we won’t be allowed to go. I can’t say that I’d blame them for stopping us. None of us knows how I’ll react to seeing Pioneer for the first time since I shot him, not even me.
“Lyla, for real, hurry,” Cody says. He taps the door for emphasis.
“Okay!”
I tug on a pair of Cody’s jeans and his baggiest sweatshirt. Pulling my hair into a tight bun and covering it with one of his baseball caps, I check the mirror one last time and try to find some speck of courage in my expression, but my face is all pale terror.
Can I really do this?
I try a few guy-like slouches. With any luck, once Cody finishes giving me a fake beard and I cover my too-shapely body, I’ll be believable enough as a guy to fool Pioneer, the sheriff, and anyone else we run into. I don’t want anyone other than Cody to know that I’m there. I’m not sure I can face Pioneer otherwise.
I hurry out of the bathroom. Cody looks at me and smiles. I have to look away, because I’m unnerved enough right now. I can’t deal with the circus that happens in my stomach whenever he looks at me like that.
“Not bad. You’re not dude-like just yet, but we’ll fix that.” He grabs my hand and leads me downstairs and then into the basement. We tiptoe to the far corner where Cody keeps all of his monster projects and makeup tools. He pulls over a metal stool and I perch on it. My hands land in my lap and I rub my thumbs across my jeans. I breathe in and out.
“Ready?” Cody’s all shiny-eyed and eager. I’ve just given him a way to practice what he loves. I’m his personal special-effects project this morning. Oh, who am I kidding? I’m his personal project in a lot of ways. He doesn’t seem to mind, but it’s bothering me more and more. Who wants to be the most broken person in the room all the time? That’s why I’m going to the hospital today, to start repairing the damage that Pioneer did to me. Seeing him again is the first step.
“Yeah,” I say. I watch as he picks up what looks like a tube made out of dark brown hair and unrolls it. He holds it up to my face and compares it to my real hair color.
“Close enough.” He’s not really talking to me as much as himself. He cuts off a few inches of the hair and fans it out between his fingers before laying it across the table beside me. I glance down at the Wolfman head he’s been working on and the severed limbs beyond it. It’s realistic enough that most people would probably get grossed out just looking at it, but I don’t. Once you’ve seen real blood and gore, the fake stuff isn’t all that believable, no matter how good it is.
Cody leans over and grabs the TV remote off the table. “This’ll go faster if you watch something,” he says as he turns on the TV and hands me the remote. I’m pretty sure that he’s not worried about me being bored. He’s trying to get me to stop thinking about Pioneer. The only problem is that ever since I left Mandrodage Meadows, I haven’t been able to do that. When I close my eyes, Pioneer’s there. I’m back in the stable reliving the moment right after I shot him. I see the blood blooming across his dingy white shirt all over again. Sometimes I think I can even catch the coppery scent of his blood in the air. And the blood of my best friend, Marie. Pioneer slit her throat so he could “send her to be with the Brethren in a better place.” There isn’t a TV show that can compete with those memories. Still, I scan through the channels.
Suddenly, like my thoughts conjured him up, Pioneer’s face fills up the screen. It feels like my heart freezes up. He’s staring right at me. I turn up the volume.
“Alan Cross, who now calls himself Pioneer, along with his followers spent the last ten years isolated in an apocalyptic compound.”
Cody grabs the remote out of my lap--I must have dropped it, but I don’t remember it falling. “That’s enough of--”
“No, wait! I . . . I need to see this,” I say, even though part of me wants to cover my ears and squeeze my eyes shut. If I can’t deal with seeing Pioneer on a television screen, how can I expect to do it in person?
Pioneer’s face fades and a new image of the hospital flashes across the screen. Gathered on the sidewalk just outside the entrance are my friends. They’re huddled together on their knees, their hands upturned toward the sky--every one of them in the exact same position. They smile at the camera. The look on their faces . . . it’s eerie how happy they seem. My stomach roils and I have to swallow to keep from gagging.
“. . . his followers say that they will continue to show up at the hospital until Pioneer is released.”
Julie’s face fills up the screen. She grins widely at the camera. “He’s alive! Pioneer should’ve died, but he didn’t.” She looks over at Mr. Brown, who is standing nearby, and he beams at her.
The man holding the microphone gestures to the way she’s sitting. “You’re all kneeling. Why?”
Julie laughs, a high-pitched, tinkly one that sounds nothing like the sound she makes whenever she finds something truly funny. I hate it. “We kneel because we want to show Pioneer our obedience and renewed faith.”
The interviewer tries to look serious, but he’s having a hard time.
Julie looks at him and her mouth twists. Her grin turns into a smirk. “You’ll remember this moment--when you refused to see the miracle of his survival. On earth’s last day you won’t be mocking us anymore. You’ll know he was right--that you’re gonna die.”
“Totally deluded, the idiot.” Cody shakes his head angrily and taps hair onto my chin. I don’t look at him, because I don’t know what to say. I believed in Pioneer once . . . does that make me an idiot too? I bite my lip and try to focus on the screen so I won’t cry.
“. . . they have begun to share their message publicly on YouTube through taped sermons Pioneer gave in the last ten years.”
Footage of Pioneer standing in front of our old clubhouse pops up. I suck in a breath. I can see myself in the background. This past me smiles as Pioneer walks toward her and holds out his hand. I watch as she leans her cheek into his palm. My heart starts to hurt. Even though I don’t want to, part of me misses that girl and her belief. I haven’t felt sure about anything at all since I left the Community. My mouth tastes sour and I look away, up at Cody. Has he spotted the old me?
“The end is coming, isn’t it?” I watch as my parents, my friends, and Past Me nod and clap.
Cody lets out a disgusted sigh and I stand up and lunge over the table to hit the TV’s power button, getting beard hair stuck to my shirt in the process. I slam back into my seat and hold my head in my hands. I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that Past Me was nodding right along with everyone else . . . or the fact that Present Me still has an inexplicable urge to. My brain feels like it’s split in half and Past Me and Present Me haven’t decided who’s in charge yet. Maybe seeing Pioneer today is a mistake. Maybe it’ll tip the balance in Past Me’s favor. I start to shake; I can’t help it. I am suddenly overcome by nerves.
“We don’t have to do this, you know. I could go by myself and tell you all about it afterward.” Cody studies my face. He touches my cheek with his fingertips. They’re warm. I move away almost by reflex. It isn’t because I don’t want him to touch me. Pioneer always told us to steer clear of Outsiders, and my body still hasn’t figured out how to make disobeying him a regular habit. I guess this means that Past Me still has the upper hand. It makes me want to punch something.
If my recoiling from his touch bothers Cody, he doesn’t show it. Instead he picks up more hair and starts filling in my beard.
I don’t know if I should apologize or just ignore what’s just happened. After a moment of silence, I choose ignoring. “I need to see him. Make sure.” I don’t finish this sentence. I’ll just sound weird. After I shot him twice in the chest, almost exactly in the heart, I was sure he would die, but he didn’t--even after lots of complications. I can’t seem to stop myself from wondering if maybe he really is what he says he is. How else could he have survived it all? If I can’t see Pioneer as just a man instead of some kind of messiah, I’ll never get rid of the part of me who still wants to believe in him.
Cody pats the last bit of beard hair in place. He steps back and studies my face. “Not bad.”
He spins me around in the stool by my shoulders and hands me a mirror. I don’t look like me at all. In a strange sort of way, I look like a younger version of my dad. I’ve never seen bits of him in my face before.
Dad.
I wince at my reflection. I don’t miss my parents most of the time, because I try not to think about them. I need this time away to figure things out, but then something like this happens and I feel my chest hollow out, my stomach constrict. I turn away from the mirror. No more staring at myself this morning.
Cody starts tapping spirit gum onto his own jawline. He’s working faster. We gave ourselves two hours before we needed to leave, but we’re quickly running out of time. Pioneer’s transfer is scheduled for less than an hour from now. I watch as Cody presses a lighter set of hairs onto his chin. His beard is longer--wilder than the one he gave me. In a matter of ten more minutes, he’s done.
Cody walks over to his bed and pulls on a thick sweatshirt before he adjusts the Mel’s Trucking Company cap on top of his head--the one that he picked up at the thrift store. He grabs two camouflage coats and we pull them on as we head out the side door that leads to the backyard.
Here we go.
Cody leads me to his car, parked out on the curb by the mailbox. We slip inside, both of us cringing as the rusty driver’s-side door groans open loudly enough to startle some birds out of the trees beside the house. It feels like the houses, trees, even the birds are watching us, waiting to see if I’ll go through with this. I settle into the passenger seat before I can change my mind, and Cody pulls the car out of park, lets it roll down the tiny hill toward the end of the street before parking it again and starting it up.
It’s not quite six in the morning. The streets are mostly empty, making the town seem deserted. I’m shaking hard now, enough that it’s obvious to Cody. He keeps shifting his eyes from the road to me and back again. Every minute that passes, it gets harder and harder to fight the urge to ask Cody to turn the car around.
Finally, Cody slows and pulls the car onto the road that leads to the hospital. I can see the parking lot now and most of the hospital itself, looming large in front of us. Everywhere I look there are news vans and people. The sheriff’s plan to keep Pioneer’s transfer low-key has failed. It looks like a large chunk of the town is heading toward the wide stretch of sidewalk and lawn leading up to the hospital’s side entrance. The Community is still there. I can see Mr. Brown from where I sit.
“They won’t know it’s you. Lyla, it’s almost better that all these people are here.” Cody parks the car and gathers me into his arms.
I’m rigid. Frozen.
Cody’s mouth is beside my ear. “You don’t have to do this.”
I want him to stop saying that. I do have to do this. I pull myself out of his arms and open the car door. The wind whips inside and makes my eyes sting.
“C’mon,” I say. We get out of the car and walk toward the hospital. The crowd buzzes with chatter and excitement. I can feel the air humming with it.
In a few minutes most of these people will have their first glimpse of what they’re certain is a monster disguised as a man. They’re one hundred percent convinced of it.
Now I want to be too.