Melancholy: Episode 1

  About Melancholy: Episode 1

  Here in the west they know a lot about hope. They know how to ration it just as they do with food and water.

  Josephine is at last free of the blood moon. But in a desperate rush to find help for a comatose Luke, she discovers the strange and dangerous world of the resistance, and it is unlike any world Josi has known.

  In the west they believe in fury – they cultivate and encourage it. The unruly people of the resistance know that to survive means to fight. But can they fight the inevitable cure for sadness that rushes steadily closer?

  In the action-packed sequel to Fury, everything Josi believes about herself will be challenged. Haunted by atrocities and betrayals, she must find the strength to trust again, and decide how far she is willing to go to fight the inevitable.

  At times both brutal and sweet, Melancholy is the story of second chances and finding love in a ruined world.

  Contents

  About Melancholy: Episode 1

  Epigraph

  Episode 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  About Melancholy: Episode 2

  About Charlotte McConaghy

  Also by Charlotte McConaghy

  Copyright

  “The soulless have no need of melancholia.”

  – Vladimir Odoevsky

  Episode 1

  Chapter 1

  Josephine

  Sometimes when I sit here I feel like all the heat in the whole world has come to keep me company, cocooning the two of us in an inferno. It’s so hot out here it makes it hard to breathe.

  I imagine words, thousands of them, forming conversations and sentences we never said when you were awake. I imagine the things I will tell you when you open your eyes, if you ever do. I imagine a world of truth that never existed for us in the beginning.

  They tell me that it’s unlikely. That I shouldn’t hope. Here in the west they know a lot about hope. They know how to ration it just as they do with food and water. They dole out hope in tiny pieces, clutching it in their hard, calloused hands, spreading it thin so that it lasts and lasts until its very edges, until they have wrung it dry. They recognize when it is real and when it is false. They know that to hope can mean to survive, but so too can it destroy you.

  They tell me, every morning, that today will be your last. That today I should say my goodbyes, harden my heart, let you go. They have dispensed with any remnants of hope –there is none left for this, for us. You have been asleep for too long, they tell me. I must let you go.

  They know a lot out here. They understand a lot.

  But they do not understand you, Luke Townsend.

  And they do not understand me.

  *

  September 18th, 2065

  Josephine

  Every fiber in my body has reached a state beyond exhaustion, but I can’t let myself fall asleep. Instead I sit slouched in this sticky leather seat, watching the blackness rush past the window, rocked into a dull state of trance by the noisy hum of the train.

  Luke’s head lies in my lap, the rest of his big body draped over the seat next to me. There’s no blood – he looks to be in perfect shape, and he’s breathing normally. I don’t really understand how a body could just shut down into this kind of sleep. With my finger I trace his lips carefully, wanting to memorize their shape.

  “That’s creepy.”

  I jerk my finger away and look up at the big blue eyes, so blue they’re almost violet, somehow. The bolt through her nose glints, as does the sheen of her skull under the razor-short hair. Her name is Pace and she stalks this train night and day. She likes to swear and laugh in a hysterical, crazy way.

  I think I like her.

  “Why?”

  Her eyebrows arch. “All you do is stare at him. Or touch him. Real slow like that. Does he know who you are? Or are you, like, his stalker?”

  This makes me smile. “He’s mine.”

  She blinks once, then pushes off the seat in front of me and strides away.

  Next to jog down the aisle is Hal, the big, brutish-looking one with the white mohawk and tattoos on his arms. As he passes he winks at me and keeps going. It’s their exercise, apparently. And it makes me tired just watching them. I don’t want to think about why they need to be so fit or strong.

  My eyes shift to the black of the tunnel outside. It’s disorienting being underground so long, moving so fast but unable to judge how far we’ve come. I have no idea where we’re headed because Pace won’t tell me. I don’t trust them, but I believe that all three know Luke well.

  “He’s real calm and contained,” Pace told me last night when they carried him through the bush. “But, like, all trembly under the surface.”

  “That’s his wild,” Hal had chipped in. “His animal.”

  And then the little one, whose name is Will, added definitively, “He’s sweet like honey to catch the flies.”

  Yep. They had Luke pegged.

  Now, startling me, Will’s head pops down from above – outside the train. He grins, swinging down to pry open the window and clambering inside like a little monkey.

  “What are you doing?” I exclaim as he shuts it again, blocking out the loud rush of sound. “That’s dangerous.”

  Will laughs, his smile wide and full of white teeth. We look surreptitiously at each other, trying to figure each other out. He can’t be more than fourteen or fifteen; I think Pace is a little older.

  “You’re tired,” he observes eventually.

  “How far are we going?” Having had no luck with Pace, I quiz him instead.

  “Pretty far.”

  “What’s that in miles?”

  “Dunno. Pretty far though.”

  “And what’s at the end of pretty far?”

  “The west.”

  I already know this. It does nothing to help the nerves under my skin. “Do you have doctors there?”

  “One.”

  “How does this train run?” Now that I have someone sitting still long enough to answer questions, I’m going to take advantage of it.

  “Ask Hal. He’s the engineer.”

  “Hal’s an engineer? He’s a child.”

  “He’s nineteen.”

  “And where did he get an engineering degree before nineteen?”

  Will stares at me, his amusement patent. “You really are from the city, aren’t ya? Jeez.”

  I don’t know what he means, so I shrug.

  Will’s eyes drop to Luke and he shakes his head. “Can’t think of much that’d knock that one out. What happened to him?”

  I look at Luke’s face. “I happened to him.”

  Eventually I sleep. I’m too sore and woozy not to. My dreams are haunted. Blood and teeth and poles in spines. I wake with tears on my cheeks and, seeing Hal sitting opposite, I brush them quickly away.

  “You’ll be okay in the west,” he says with complete confidence.

  “What’s in the west?”

  “We will be in about twenty minutes. I came to help you get your boy up.”

  In the end it takes Hal, Pace and Will to lift Luke, big as he is. I’m useless, trembling with pain and fatigue, so I follow at a stumble. The train slows as if of its own accord, but doesn’t stop, so we have to sort of hop out onto a weird, crumbling set of stone steps as it speeds off. The steps take us up at an angle, through rock and earth, until we reach a wooden trapdoor and emerge into boiling sunlight.

  My breath leaves me. It’s unbearably hot, and I start to sweat with a dizzying sensation. A hand takes my arm
– I think it belongs to Pace – and steers me into what seems to be a large town square. Squinting against the brightness, my first awareness is of the yellow-orange dust under my feet. Next comes the brilliant, endless sky above. Not a speck of green anywhere, but I never expected green. Not in the west.

  There’s an odd wash of salt in my nose, the kind of pungent scent you can’t ignore. I can’t for the life of me work out where it could be coming from.

  Around us are low mud brick buildings full of open windows and doors, presumably to let the airflow help against the heat. Taller concrete and steel buildings, much older in appearance, are dotted throughout. And beyond the buildings, in every direction, is a mighty stone wall slicing right up into the sky, rimmed in rusting barbed wire. It makes the hairs on my arms stand on end, because my first thought is, of course, prison. I have been brought to a prison, and I’ll never be able to get Luke out. My next thought is not another one. In the city we were too used to walls. Too used to cages. I didn’t escape one just to wind up in a second.

  “Where are we?” I rasp, but I don’t think anyone hears me.

  Pace yanks me into a small brick building, then down a different set of steps. It is blessedly cool down here, and the relief, unfortunately, distracts me from what is actually happening. I just trot along, dazed and sore, until Pace shoves me into a square concrete room and then locks the door behind me.

  I blink, staring at her face through the small glass window. “Get comfortable, Dual,” she tells me, her voice faint. Then her footsteps disappear back up the steps.

  “Hey!” I shout. “What – ?”

  She’s trapped me here. What a bitch.

  The room has a steel table that’s been screwed to the floor, and a single steel-framed chair. It’s clearly an interrogation room, or a prison cell.

  Okay. Okay okay okay.

  I mentally get my bearings. Possibly two days ago – it was very hard to keep track of time on the train – I escaped from the asylum on the hill with a recently drugged and unconscious Luke. I was picked up by three wild kids in the bush, who brought me on a train trip and then promptly locked me in this room. I don’t know where I am, or who lives in this place, or who the kids really are. They said they were resistance, but I have no way to trust that. And I have no idea where they’ve taken Luke.

  That’s it. That’s all I have to work with.

  My feet are still bleeding and my broken elbow is aching. Instead of slumping into the chair like I’d really love to, I squat to the ground and study the bolts securing the table. They look strong, but the legs were welded to the bases a long time ago, so I might be able to pressurize them at the right angle and get them to break. This seems unlikely, though – I don’t think I have ever been as undernourished or sickly as I am right now.

  None of it turns out to be necessary as the door swings open and I stumble back. A man enters and shuts the door behind him. He is shorter than me, but very muscular through the chest and arms. He looks a bit like a bull terrier. Though his face is quite pretty, actually, beneath the boyish sandy hair.

  “Hi,” he says.

  My eyebrows arch. “Hey.”

  “Sorry about this. Protocol.” He gestures to the seat. “We’d just like to ask you some questions, if that’s alright.”

  “And if I say no?”

  He smiles and I am met abruptly with the reality of this friendly-looking man: he’s dangerous. “Let’s start with your name.”

  “How about we start with yours?”

  Another smile. It’s a kind smile, but there’s an edge of something beneath it. “Sure. I’m Quinn.”

  “And you’re the boss of the resistance?”

  “Boss makes me sound like I’m a thousand years old.” A wide grin and a shrug. It’s the perfect gesture of self-deprecation – he’s good at this. At seeming non-threatening. He’s trying to make me comfortable.

  “Sit down,” Quinn insists. “You look unwell.”

  I sit.

  “What’s your name?”

  I didn’t tell the three kids my name; they never asked. Instead, Pace started calling me Dual because of my two-colored eyes. Now it hits me like an electric shock – I don’t know why but I really, really don’t want this man to know who I am. I can feel the danger in the room.

  “Dual,” I tell him.

  “Dual. Unusual. Do you have a last name?”

  “Not one I can remember.”

  He frowns a little, confused. “Really? Why’s that?”

  “I’ve been in a mental health facility most of my life. Electroshock therapy and a nice cocktail of medication is a great way to strip you of anything and everything, including your name.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” he tells me. “That’s where Luke found you?”

  My mind starts working quickly. “The guy who saved me? Yep.”

  Quinn watches me, studying my face. “You don’t know him, then?”

  “Nope.”

  “You aren’t cured.”

  “How perceptive you are.”

  “Why is that?”

  I’m sure he can guess why, but I tell him anyway. “They never bother curing some of the looniest in the loony bins. It’s funny, really, ’cause we might have been the ones most in need of fewer emotions.”

  This was what happened to my roommate Maria. She’d been in a catatonic state for most of her life so the government didn’t waste their cure on her – they just locked her up and waited for her to die.

  “You don’t seem very loony right now,” Quinn points out.

  “Thanks, that’s sweet.”

  There’s a slight twitch in his jaw. I’m annoying him, I can tell. He smiles again, as if pulling the mask over his face. “How did you know to go to the tree?”

  From my pocket I pull the instructions scrawled on the small piece of crumpled paper. “Found it on Luke.”

  Quinn takes it and gives a wry sigh. “Not too careful of him, was it?”

  “You’ll understand if I don’t mind too much about carelessness that saved my life.”

  He nods. “’Course. What do you know of Luke’s girlfriend? The one he went back to save.”

  I meet his eyes. “Josephine Luquet.”

  “That’s her.”

  “She was my roommate.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She died,” I tell him simply. And just like that, I am reborn. Josephine Luquet, orphan and murderess, is dead.

  With those words I see all the plotting and strategy go out of Quinn’s eyes and he looks tired. “I’m sorry,” he says, and this time I believe him.

  Perhaps I overestimated the danger. Maybe I’m paranoid. Then he asks, “And are you a Blood spy, Dual?”

  I blink. He’s watching me very closely. “Do you really think I’d tell you if I was?”

  He smiles a little, but I can see him looking at my pupils and my fingers, at the rise and fall of my chest. I wonder if he can spot a lie.

  I lean forward, holding his eyes. “I’m not a Blood.”

  Quinn nods.

  “Can I go now?”

  “Soon,” he assures me. “There are just a few things we have to check before we can welcome you to our community.”

  “Like what?”

  “Nothing bad. Hair and blood samples.”

  “What? No fucking way.”

  He is surprised. “Why?”

  “I’ve just spent my entire life getting pricked and prodded by asshole doctors and I came here to get away from that.”

  “It’s just to make sure you aren’t carrying anything that could infect my people,” he says. “We have to maintain our health out here, Dual. Health means strength and strength means survival.”

  Then I must look the picture of weakness right now. But I like the words. I like the idea of strength, even if I don’t have any of my own.

  “One prick, that’s it. Promise. Otherwise I can pop you on the train and you can be back within the city in a couple of days.”
<
br />   I shake my head. There’s no way in hell he’s letting me go back to the city knowing what I know. Stubbornness rears its head and I battle with it. “Fine,” I grind out. I can see in his face that this isn’t a fight I’ll win.

  “You should know, Dual,” Quinn says. “The fact that you’re uncured is the only reason I’m letting you into my home. It’s one of our laws here. But if you do anything to harm my people, I’ll kill you myself.”

  For some reason, the dire warning makes me feel a little better. It makes me feel less like I’m walking into some kind of trap. I nod.

  “Hang tight,” he says and disappears.

  I wait at least an hour before the next visitor arrives. I’m growing more nervous by the minute. It’s a shaggy blond guy, about thirty or so. He smiles awkwardly, reaching to shake my hand. “Dodge.”

  “Dual.” I almost laugh at the ridiculousness of the names. Why did I lie? It now seems silly – I’m not Dual, in any way, shape or form.

  Dodge clears his throat and fusses about for a few minutes before nervously taking my blood and hair.

  “Have you done this before?”

  “Sure, plenty.”

  So he’s just awkward and nervous by nature then.

  “You … came with Luke?”

  “Yep.”

  “He really missed you. Talked about you all the time.”

  “I’m not her,” I tell him.

  “Oh – oh. Sorry. I just assumed – ”

  “No worries.” My tone forbids any further discussion and he shuts up. When he’s done he tells me he’ll let me know when the results are in.

  “After you let Quinn know, right?”

  Dodge blushes and shrugs. “He’s in charge. I’m to take you to the infirmary now.”

  “Is there a bed there?”

  “Loads.”

  “Sweet hallelujah, that’s the best news I’ve heard in my whole life.”

  Dodge has to support my arm as we climb the steps back up into the hot sunlight. It’s embarrassing to be such an invalid, but I can’t do much about it. Each step on my cut feet is a victory, and my head starts to spin as the heat hits me. He helps me to a room that has been painted with a fresh coat of white. Light linen drapes hang still against the open windows; there’s not even a hint of movement in the oppressive air. Beds line one wall and there, in one of them, lies Luke.