Read Online The Last Girl by Joe Hart - Free Book Online

opens a slender packet and oozes a clear ointment onto one finger. “Here, this should ease the swelling and pain a bit.” He dabs the gel onto Zoey’s cheek and neck where Penny struck her. The effect is instantaneous. The throbbing pain recedes like dust before water. She can’t help but sigh with relief.
    “Can I put that on my stomach too?” she asks when the doctor steps back.
    “No. It won’t do a lot for a larger injury like that. I’ll give you a painkiller before you leave.” He looks coldly at her as if she is something inanimate before turning to Simon. “She’s free to go.”
    “Thank you,” Simon says. The doctor leaves and Simon rises, moving toward the door. “You can change. I’ll get the pill for you.”
    He is nearly out the door when she speaks. “Simon?” He pauses. “Thank you.”
    “There’s nothing to thank me for, Zoey.” He hesitates. “I failed you today.” She begins to tell him he’s wrong, that the Clerics haven’t accompanied the women around the track for many years now, but he’s already gone, the door closing solidly behind him.
    She stands and strips off the thin cotton gown she changed into for the examination and dons her clothes. The knees of her pants are dotted with crimson from the abrasions that still sting as she flexes her legs. She catches sight of herself in the long mirror beside the door. A skinny woman a year out of her teens with dark, unruly hair that’s come loose from its binding. Her image, the weakness she exudes, sparks the anger within her once again, and she wants to smash the mirror into a thousand pieces. But that would only make more reflections of me , she thinks. She sighs and leaves the room, not looking at the mirror again.
    After Zoey takes her pain pill under the scrutiny of the doctor, they leave the infirmary, but not before she sees the massive steel doors hiding the elevator at its far end. It’s hard to believe that Terra disappeared through them only today. Zoey tries to imagine what is happening to her, but her thoughts are lost in the tumult between what she’s been told and what she feels is true. The guard beside the doors studies her and Simon before returning his gaze straight ahead.
    They walk down the hallway side by side but when they reach the stairs, Simon turns right instead of left. Zoey stops.
    “Where are you going?” she asks.
    “Not me. We. We’re going to the boxes.”
    She shakes her head. “I don’t want to go. I don’t need to see.”
    “It’s not optional, Zoey. We have to.”
    “Please, I just want to go to my room.”
    “Zoey.” There’s steel in his voice that holds no compromise. She stands at the head of the stairs for a moment before following him in the opposite direction.
    They pass the assembly and turn down another, narrower corridor before stopping outside a windowless door. Simon scans his bracelet, and they pass through.
    The room they enter is low-ceilinged and wide. It holds a sense of constriction, an air of suffocation that may partially have to do with the two separate facades that intrude on its far side.
    The protrusions extend into the room several feet and line the entire length of the wall. It is like another room has been shoved into the current one but stopped short before its full bulk could be revealed. Two black doors are positioned on either end of the boxes.
    The other women are already there, waiting in a half-circle of chairs, their Clerics standing behind them. Assistant Carter waits before the two boxes, his hands held behind his back. He nods to them as they enter, and Zoey takes her seat beside Lily. There is a long silence that draws out painfully before Carter finally steps forward and speaks.
    “I’m disappointed in you,” he says, looking down at his shoes. “There is order and disorder. Order breeds compliance, compliance begets tolerance, and tolerance brings peace.” He flicks his ferret-like gaze across them all. “Disorder is unacceptable.