The Line Between

  PRAISE FOR

  THE

  LINE

  BETWEEN

  “VERDICT: Lee’s perfectly crafted dystopian thriller will keep readers up all night and have them begging for a sequel.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “A tight, fast-paced thriller, with a winding, twisty plot and an intrepid protagonist.

  —Booklist

  “A fast-paced and deeply human story. Tosca Lee has put together a terrifying apocalyptic scenario, made all the more real through the eyes of a protagonist who comes to life on the page.”

  —Patrick Lee, New York Times bestselling author of Runner

  “The Line Between blurs the line between science fiction and terrifying real science. Tosca Lee gives us a cautionary tale that is beautifully written and deeply unnerving!”

  —Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of V-Wars

  “The perfect blend of spellbinding and heart stopping, The Line Between is an absolute must-read. Tosca whips up a thriller that is emotionally wrenching yet utterly believable, the kind of story that is sure to leave readers breathless and begging for more. This well-written, carefully plotted tale is apocalyptic fiction at its finest!”

  —Nicole Baart, New York Times bestselling author of You Were Always Mine

  “Everything you want in a thriller: suspense, intrigue, and, best of all, a truly captivating protagonist to cheer on. Throw in a white-knuckled race from Chicago to Colorado over back roads that this author obviously and respectfully knows well. This one’s a slam-dunk that’ll keep you reading, non-stop until the very last sentence.”

  —Alex Kava, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Breaking Creed

  “[A] moving dystopian thriller . . . Lee gets readers to invest in the characters, particularly her well-defined and sympathetic lead.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Relevant and frighteningly real, The Line Between is an infectiously good read. Be prepared to lose sleep.”

  —Brenda Novak, New York Times bestselling author of Face Off

  “Tosca Lee nailed the twists and turns in this masterfully crafted thriller.”

  —Steena Holmes, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Forgotten Ones

  “Tosca Lee’s The Line Between is terrifyingly close to a future reality. An utterly immersive tale of apocalyptic cult manipulation and all-too-possible infectious epidemics, this story will have readers holding their breath on every page and dearly wishing for their own basement survivalist shelter. Perfect, chilling entertainment.”

  —Lydia Kang, bestselling author of A Beautiful Poison

  “An edge-of-your-seat, nonstop, apocalyptic rollercoaster of a thriller! As only she can, Tosca Lee pulls the reader in and refuses to let go until the final heart-pounding page!”

  —J.D. Barker, international bestselling author of The Fourth Monkey

  “Wynter’s daring escape draws the reader into a maze of intrigue and false realities, as a bona fide apocalypse grips humanity. This frighteningly topical page-turner from Tosca Lee is a wild ride that will leave you breathless.”

  —Maria Frisk, producer, Radar Pictures

  “A tremendous thrill-ride that is sure to linger long after you turn the last page. With compelling and memorable characters, this is a true run-for-your-life, end-of-the-world, amazingly realistic tale full of twists and turns that will have your heart pounding.”

  —E. C. Diskin, bestselling author of Broken Grace

  “Shades of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Walking Dead blend together in an epic novel of depth and power. Tosca Lee’s The Line Between is a breathtaking story of a woman who rises above her own dark past to stop civilization from descending into madness. Brilliant.”

  —K.J. Howe, international bestselling author of Skyjack

  “Smartly written, tautly paced, with an utterly irresistible protagonist, The Line Between is pure exhilaration on a page.”

  —Emily Carpenter, bestselling author of Burying the Honeysuckle Girls

  “The Line Between is a nail-biter . . . one horrific thriller fans will want to read. The conflicting urges rampant in the story resonate with our world today, making this both a great read as well as a cautionary tale.”

  —Nancy Kilpatrick, award-winning author of the Thrones of Blood series

  “The Line Between by Tosca Lee had me captivated from page one! I give this book five stars and plan to keep it in my bug-out bag, along with my MREs, first aid kit and Swiss Army knife.”

  —Merrie Destefano, author of Valiant

  “A true wordsmith, Tosca has crafted another page-turner, a nonstop thrill ride that will leave you breathless.”

  —Steven James, bestselling author of Every Wicked Man

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  For Jimmy and Julie.

  I waited half a lifetime for the chance to say I love you.

  I’ve got a lot of tattling, breaking your stuff, and embarrassing you in front of your friends to catch up on.

  prion

  noun pri·on ' prī -' än

  An infectious agent that causes proteins to misfold, causing progressive deterioration of the brain and nervous system in mammals, including humans. It is always fatal.

  ALASKAN INTERIOR, JUNE

  The farmer moved into the woods looking for his pigs.

  “Jilly! Jilly!” he called. He’d named the sow after his first wife, who’d grown about as fat as the woolly Hungarian blonde, if not quite as hairy. But unlike his ex-wife, Jilly usually came when called, which meant it must be time. The sow was expecting her third litter, and for some reason beyond his understanding, every pig in the sounder had to traipse off into the forest with her to make the farrowing a community event.

  He stepped over fallen tree trunks and bent to duck several others. There wasn’t a single tree in this patch that was plumb. “Drunken forest,” the climate change people called it—a more subtle sign of melting permafrost than the sinkholes in town. Aside from the new buckles in his road, he didn’t mind much; warm weather meant more growing days for his new garden. Soon as the pigs got done rooting up this patch, he planned to clear the fallen trees and plant some vegetables. Just enough to beat back the high cost of fresh produce a little, maybe even sell some at the Tanana Valley farmers’ market. Who knew—maybe in a year or two he’d look into growing some midnight sun cannabis.

  “Jilly girl!” he called, nearly tripping over what he thought was a root until he recognized it for what it was: a bone. He squatted down, tugged, and came away with half a shoulder blade. Caribou, by the size of it. Thing still had gristle on it, leathery and black except where a hunk had been freshly torn away. God only knew how long that thing had been buried in the mud.

  He stood up and kicked around, unearthing what was left of the carcass, which wasn’t much. One thing he’d learned, the Mafia legend held true: a dead body wouldn’t stand a chance against pigs. Nor did living chickens that wandered too close to the pen. He’d learned that the hard way.

  He wandered deeper, hacking at the fallen trees with the shoulder blade until he finally found Jilly—and Romeo and Petunia and Walter—nestled in the pine needles with a fresh litter of blond-haired piglets. Ten in all. Well above the European average and two more
than her last litter.

  He patted Walter when he pushed his snout into the farmer’s hand and let him have the shoulder blade, already doing the math in his head.

  It was going to be a good year.

  • • •

  TWO DAYS LATER, the farmer found Petunia milling around the yard with a bloody stump for a tail. She ran when he tried to inspect the wound, and only Romeo came when called. The farmer’s first thought was that someone—or something—had terrorized the animals. A wolf, maybe, or even a bear.

  After retrieving his shotgun from inside the house, he struck out for the wood.

  He found Walter sprawled near the base of a leaning tree, snout bloody, corpse bloated. Just beyond him lay his prized sow Jilly, belly torn open, her piglets savaged around her.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  * * *

  IOWA, SEPTEMBER

  Conventional wisdom dictates that there’s an insurmountable divide—an entire dimension of eternity and space—between Heaven and Hell. Lucifer managed to make the trip in nine days, at least according to Paradise Lost. That equates to a distance of about 25,920 miles, assuming standard rules of velocity.

  But I can tell you it’s closer to a foot and a half. The distance of a step.

  Give or take an inch.

  Magnus stands near the gatehouse, shirtsleeves rolled up, collar unbuttoned beneath his brown vest. He nods to the Guardian in the booth and the industrial gate begins its mechanical slide. There’s a small door to the side of it just large enough to admit a single person, but I won’t be leaving by the Narrow Gate. My departure must be a spectacle, a warning to those assembled behind me.

  I can feel their eyes against my back like hot iron. The glares mottled by anger and fear. Sadness, maybe, but above all gratitude that they are not me.

  Two Guardians stand at my sides ready to forcibly walk me out in case I balk or my twenty-two-year-old legs give out beneath me. I glance at the one to my right and swear he looks impatient. Hungry, maybe; it’s just before lunchtime. I’m crossing into eternal damnation, and all he’s thinking about is an egg salad sandwich—and not even a good one. It’s Wednesday, Sabbath by the solar calendar. Rosella is managing the kitchen, and that pious sandwich is full of chickpeas without a single real egg in it.

  The gate comes to a stop with an ominous clang. The road be-yond is paved with gravel, a gray part in a sea of native grass strewn with gold and purple flowers in stark contrast to the carefully and beautifully manicured grounds behind me. A meadowlark sings somewhere nearby as a combine rumbles in the distance.

  I grip the plastic bag of my sparse belongings: a change of underwear, my baby book stripped of its photos, a stone the color of sea glass. Sweat drips down the inside of my blouse as I stare out at that feral scape. At that barren drive through untouched prairie that leads to the road half a mile away.

  A car idles at the corner, waiting for me.

  Don’t look. Don’t glance back. That’s Pride talking, a voice so faint this last decade I wasn’t aware it was still in there. Still, I turn. Not because I need a parting glance at the compound I called home for the last fifteen years or even Jaclyn, my sister. But because I need to see her.

  My niece, Truly.

  I scan the nearly five hundred Select assembled across the broad drive until I find her small form near the front, her hand in Jaclyn’s, curls wafting around her head in the breeze.

  I’d planned to mouth the words I love you. To tug my right earlobe in our secret sign so she’ll remember me long after she’s told she can never speak my name again. To fight back tears at the sight of hers, to combat her confusion with love.

  Instead, my heart stops.

  She’s glaring at me, her face pink, growing redder by the instant. I open my mouth—to say what, I don’t know—but before I can, she tears her hand from my sister’s and runs away, disappearing into the assembly.

  “Truly!” I gasp, and stagger a step after her. The Guardians grab my arms.

  “No. Wait—Truly!” I twist against them, plastic bag swinging against my thigh. I can’t leave her like this. Not like this. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

  None of it was.

  I shift my gaze to my sister, where she stands beside the six Elders. Her cheeks are hollow, features chiseled far beyond her twenty-seven years.

  “What did you say to her?” I shout as I’m jerked back around and hauled toward Magnus, who stands before the open gate, this side of that invisible line.

  “Wynter Roth,” Magnus says, loudly enough for those behind us to hear. Which means he’s basically shouting right at me. Gone, the brown-and-gray scruff that was on his chin yesterday. I can smell his aftershave from here.

  “Please,” I whisper in the space between us, trying to snag his gaze. But he stares past me as though I were a stranger.

  “Because of your deliberate, prolonged disobedience . . .” His words carry to those behind me even as the breeze whisks mine away.

  “Just let me say good-bye!”

  “. . . including the sins of idolatry, thievery, and the willful desire to harm the eternal future of those most vulnerable among us . . . because you will not hear the pleas of the brethren and refuse repentance, you are hereby delivered to Satan for the destruction of your flesh.”

  I hear the words as though from a distance. I’ve seen and heard them spoken before—I just never thought they’d be aimed at me. So this is it. There will be no good-byes. And I realize I hate him.

  Magnus lifts up his hands. “And so we renounce your fellowship and cast you out of our holy number even as we pray for the restoration of your salvation, which you forfeit this day. Now, as it is bound on Earth, so let it be bound in Heaven.” He lowers his arms as the assembly echoes his words and says, more quietly as he meets my eyes at last, “You have broken our hearts, Wynter.”

  He moves away before I can respond and the Guardians walk me to the line as I glance back one last time.

  But Truly is gone.

  I face the gravel drive before me.

  One step. That’s all it takes to span the distance of eternity.

  Welcome to Hell.

  CHAPTER TWO

  * * *

  An eye in the corner blinked from above Jaclyn’s bed.

  “Are people spying on us? Are they gonna watch us in our underwear?” Jaclyn asked, squinting at it skeptically. She was twelve—five years older than me—and worried about these things.

  Now that she mentioned it, so was I.

  “No, of course not,” Mom said as she got down in front of us to take both our hands. “That cam
era is here for our protection, just like the big walls all around this place. Which is why you never need to be afraid of monsters ever again. Got it?”

  Jaclyn looked unconvinced but kept her mouth shut as she reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind Mom’s ear.

  “Now, isn’t this place cute?” Mom said, getting up. We followed her out of the bedroom and down the stairs past a picture of Jesus and some other guy as she admired the carved wooden railing, the doily on an end table in the living room below. “See? There’s another camera.” She pointed at the blinking light in the corner and waved at it. I did, too.

  “This feels like a grandma house,” Jaclyn said, hugging herself.

  “It’s part of the charm,” Mom said. “Look at these braided rugs. I bet someone here made these just for us. Did you know this is a working seed farm?”

  Jaclyn plopped down in a wooden chair. “There’s no TV. And the toilets are weird.”

  “I like it,” I said. Because it was bigger than our apartment. And I had my own bed.

  “I do, too,” Mom said as I followed her into the tiny kitchen where she opened the only cupboard. “And look—homemade jelly!” She took out the jar and showed me the handwritten label. “Wild plum!”

  I’d never seen her like this, so excited about jelly or the cloth bundle that turned out to be a loaf of bread. I didn’t like the look of it; it wasn’t sliced or even in a bag. But as she searched through the drawers for a knife, she was smiling. I couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t looked sad.

  That afternoon two girls Jaclyn’s age came over to hang out with her. They brought a girl my age named Ara, who was nicer that day than my best friend in Chicago had been my entire life.

  That night when Mom made us kneel by our beds, I prayed we could stay forever.

  • • •

  NEXT MORNING, MOM put on her going-out clothes.