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CHAPTER THREE
Anxiety replaced her blood as she sat in the jet, leg bouncing restlessly.
Leaving early was smart, but now Isabel was left to wait until the jet took off. With waiting came guilt. Was it too late to get off this thing and go back home; spend the last few minutes of life with the people she loved? She desperately wanted to, but Isabel knew that if she showed up back at the Murder House, Constance would kill her.
She shuddered to think what would happen to all of the souls trapped there. Would they be obliterated as well? Or would they forever roam the land that would be devastated by nuclear attacks?
Unable to bear the silence any longer, Isabel pulled out her phone and looked up SallyThatGurl on YouTube. She played Sally's most popular song: "Track Marks on My Heart," but was interrupted by the door of the jet opening and a group of people bursting in.
"Who the fuck is this?" Coco St. Pierre Vanderbilt asked, her tone a mixture of hostility and confusion. Isabel recognized her from Instagram. "I thought this was a private jet!"
"It is," Isabel said, pausing her music. "Private for people going to the outpost. That is where you're all going, right?" There were so many of them: Coco, a young woman with glasses, a man with bleached hair, and an elderly woman who wore her age with denial. Coco, Mallory, Gallant, and Evie stared back at Isabel.
"This sucks!" Coco whined. "It's bad enough I have to bring these losers along, but I don't even get my own jet? I want a transfer!"
As soon as Coco's demand leapt from her lips, gun shots rang out followed by shouts of pain and protest, employees of the hangar storming the jet.
"Looks like you'll have to suck it up!" The young woman with glasses yanked the door shut.
The jet rumbled and shook as the engine started up. There was arguing over who was going to sit where. Isabel tuned it all out with help from her headphones. She listened to "Track Marks on My Heart" and then the entire discography of Elsa Mars, feeling comforted by an old favorite though it was difficult to hear over the pounding of her heart.
A bang, and the jet rocked violently. Isabel yanked her headphones out of her ears and looked out the window in time to see nothing but a burning glow that spread for miles. Her stomach twisted in such a way that she thought she would vomit. Color fled from her face as tears slid down her cheeks uncontrollably.
"You had family down there," Mallory said, knowing this to be true by Isabel's reaction to the blast that just struck.
Isabel wiped away her tears, as if ashamed that she had been caught in such an emotional state. "They've been dead for a while." That was the truth. Isabel kept telling herself that, as if it would reassure her. Everyone she loved was already dead, so they wouldn't be killed by the blast or affected by radiation. They were safe in death.
Were they, though?
"'''"""""""''""
Isabel didn't know where they were. The jet was much faster than a normal plane, which she was used to, so she wasn't able to properly guesstimate the location of Outpost 3, and it wasn't as if the outpost itself could give anything anyway, not when it was located completely underground.
She waited with the others near the large fire pit in the middle of the foyer. It was uncomfortably warm, but no one, not even Coco, complained. Everyone was aware that the warmth would be more than welcomed once nuclear winter hit.
The fear was palpable, but no one was able to voice their concerns. Hearts thudded against ribs. Isabel was as nervous as everyone else, but her nervousness was also competing with the intense sadness that made her shoulders sag, the nuclear explosion playing over and over again in her mind.
So lost in her thoughts, Isabel didn't hear the motley crew being approached until a woman suddenly cleared her throat, making Isabel jump in surprise.
Before them stood a formidable looking woman. For a moment, Isabel thought there was a glitch in the matrix or something, because the woman was wearing a Victorian influenced black dress with a high collar. But no, no glitch in the matrix. The woman really was wearing a high collared black dress as if she were a recent widow pretending to mourn the husband she poisoned.
"I am Wilhelmina Venable," the woman said, the words so sharp that they cut into Isabel like a blade. "Welcome to Outpost Three."
There were more words, but Isabel barely heard them. She was focused on the high collar of the dress: the way it seemed to hug this woman's neck perfectly, nearly tight enough to choke but not quite.
"You will follow me," Wilhelmina Venable said, and for a brief moment, Isabel felt like she was speaking only to her. Then she realized that Wilhelmina Venable indeed was speaking only to her, as everyone else was being escorted away by other outpost officials.
Wordlessly, Isabel followed the severe woman, her sadness abandoning her temporarily and thus allowing her to feel how nervous she truly was.
"What should I call you?" Isabel asked, having an inkling that being on a first name basis with this woman was not going to happen.
"Ms. Venable." The name was as piercing as her gaze, and Isabel clearly received the message that this woman was to be referred to as Ms. Venable and nothing else. She didn't ask for Isabel's name.
The halls seemed endless, and blindly Isabel followed her host, paying more attention to what she was passing than where she was going. Candles gave the place an eerie glow, casting ominous shadows on the walls.
This place wasn't built to be an outpost, Isabel realized. It was too aged; there was history in the floors and secrets in the walls.
"So what did this place used to be?" Isabel asked.
"An all-boys school that was abandoned before the Cooperative took it over," Ms. Venable replied, sounding bored by the information. She stopped suddenly in front of a door and Isabel, about to ask what the Cooperative was, nearly ran into her. "This is your room." Ms. Venable opened the door, allowing Isabel in first.
The room was grand despite the lack of decent lighting. A fireplace sat empty, awaiting the day it would once again be useful.
As Isabel studied every nook, cranny, and imperfection, Ms. Venable walked over to the closet and opened the doors with a dramatic flair that caught Isabel's attention. It seemed everything Wilhelmina Venable did had a touch of drama.
"You will be required to wear the appropriate attire at all times."
"Well, I guess it's a good thing I look good in purple," Isabel remarked as she walked over the closet and examined the extravagant clothing, the color theme very obvious.
Ms. Venable was not amused by the comment, whether it was meant to be humorous or not. "Being a Purple is a great honor. It's the color of the elite."
The elite? Why should class status matter when the world was ending beyond these walls? That wasn't the question Isabel found herself asking though. Instead, she said, "And people who aren't the elite?"
"Gray."
Ms. Venable didn't fail to notice Isabel's gaze trail from her face down to her black outfit, lingering in a way that she might have considered inappropriate if she didn't know exactly what Isabel was doing: observing and assessing. "You are to change, and then come to the dining hall. You will be expected to show up to mealtimes promptly. With nothing else to do, there are no excuses."
She left, and Isabel was alone to carry the gravity of her situation. The weight of it was so heavy, she was forced to sit down on the bed.
She wanted to cry, but tears wouldn't come. They would be useless anyway. With the world as she knew it gone, everything seemed useless.