The Volunteer

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by J B Cantwell


  He sped down the hallway, and I tried to keep up. When he turned, I turned.

  A moment later he took a sharp left and led me into a small room. It reminded me of the interrogation room back at the base in Indiana. One door. No windows.

  He threw his respirator onto a wide, metal table that sat in the middle of the room. Overhead, the green glow of fluorescent bulbs flickered to life.

  “Sit,” he commanded.

  I sat in the one empty chair, but I didn’t dare speak. He leaned against the far wall. I held my respirator and goggles tightly in my lap, ignoring the stinging of sweat in my eyes, knowing that if I touched them, it would only be worse.

  “I don’t want you here,” he began. “But, seeing as you’re to be treated the same as any other prisoner, let me clue you in.”

  He pushed off the wall and approached the table. He was reaching for his belt, and I cringed, wanting desperately to stand up, to run.

  He drew out a gun, a handgun, and placed it on the table between us. Next came a taser, handcuffs, and, finally, the baton he had been brandishing when we’d both been out on the floor.

  He put both hands on the table and leaned over it, his face close to mine.

  “I am authorized to use any of these items against you,” he said quietly. “You’re mine. I can do whatever I want to you, and no one will object.” He glanced down. “Now, sometimes when a new prisoner comes in, I make it a point to let them feel the brunt of one or more of these items. If it’s someone I think is going to cause trouble. Are you planning to cause trouble, Taylor?”

  I shook my head, scared into silence.

  “What was that?”

  I tried to speak, but my voice came out hoarse.

  “No— no, Sir.”

  He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “I’m going to let you off with a warning, Taylor. I saw you chatting down there on the floor today. Chatting when you should have been working. I trust that I will find you nothing less than mute tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Sir.” My voice shook as I stared into his eyes, icy blue and, noticeably, rimmed red. I didn’t dare look away as he picked up one of the items off the table. I couldn’t see which one, and I prayed in that moment that, whatever it was, he wouldn’t use it.

  But I needn’t have worried. He looked away, and I watched his hands as he secured each item back onto his belt.

  “Now, get out,” he snarled.

  I immediately stood up, so quickly that I knocked backward the metal chair I had been sitting in. It clanked loudly on the cement floor.

  Wilson glanced up, but I didn’t pick it up. I didn’t do anything except precisely what he had told me to.

  I ran for it.

  I almost forgot my shovel as I raced back down the hallway toward the door, my boots squelching, still covered in muck from my time on the floor. I burst out of the airlock and found some reprieve. There, sitting in that room with that man standing over me, I had felt more claustrophobic than any mask could ever make me feel.

  Now, I was out.

  I stopped as soon as I was on the other side of the door. The workers had all gone, and a new shift was starting to trickle in.

  I hung my shovel carefully, put my head down, and tried not to run, tried not to cry. I wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, that had spooked me so badly. It was something about his eyes, gray and small and set deeply into his face. Something in those eyes made him seem like a man who would enjoy torture. And his disgust was obvious. He was disgusted with me.

  And it was only my first day.

  As I turned from the tool wall, I caught a glimpse of Eric, awake now in his cell. His eyes caught mine, and I paused mid-flight. I wanted to walk up to him, to talk to him, to find out exactly what he had done. Because, whatever the details were, I knew it would be helpful for me to hear them. He wanted to escape, badly enough that he had actually tried, something I intended to do as well.

  I glanced back toward the lookout post, where Wilson had returned to, awaiting the next crop of workers. I lowered my gaze and all thoughts of Eric flew from my mind. It would be nuts to try to talk to him, especially now that I’d gotten a dose of Wilson’s temper.

  So I ducked my head and walked away as quickly as I dared. As I neared the staircase, I broke into a trot, anxious to get off the floor. To find Julia. Or Blake. Someone to help ground me in this place where I felt so endangered.

  But when I poked my head into the bunk room, there were only sleeping bodies, none of whom I’d shoveled with.

  They’re all at mess.

  I stumbled my way down to my bunk, tears starting to fall to my cheeks. I ripped off my gloves, and goggles and respirator from around my neck, throwing all it onto the floor. Then, I kicked off my huge boots and flopped down onto the neatly made bed.

  I buried my face in my pillow, using it to wipe away both my tears and my sweat. But I was so hot, even in this air conditioned wing of the facility. I rolled over mid-sob and unzipped my suit, which was covered up to the knees in the disgusting slop I had been digging in all night. I stood up as my tears fell, trying to get the thing off. But the inside of the fabric had become stuck to my legs, and I had to sit back down on the bed to pull my feet out of each hole one by one. Finally, with the suit lying on the floor and in nothing but my underclothes, I lay back again, curling up on my side.

  How was I supposed to survive this? Julia said five years for murder. What would my sentence be? Ten? Twenty? No one had bothered to tell me. If it were longer … if it were life …

  I couldn’t do it. Why would I? What sort of life would I be able to build for myself here, in this place?

  The door slammed open, and I heard footsteps on the polished floor heading in my direction.

  Julia. It must be Julia.

  I rolled over in bed without looking up, unwilling to show my weakness now so early in the game.

  The footsteps gradually stopped as she came closer, and I could tell she was standing right over me. Then, there was the pressure of a gentle hand on my shoulder.

  “You should get up,” someone’s voice urged.

  I rolled over, surprised. It wasn’t Julia. It was Blake. I stuffed my face back into my pillow and sobbed, unable to stop myself.

  “Hey,” he said, sitting down on the bed opposite me. “It’s going to be okay. You’ll get used to things, and then you’ll find that it’s alright. It can be alright. You’ll see, it’s just like any battle you would have fought out in the field. It’s just that you need different tactics to get through this one.”

  I brought my face out from where I’d been hiding it and stared up at him.

  “You don’t understand. I don’t even—”

  “I do understand. But it’s just a few years, a little blip in our lives. These are the dark days that we’ll remember someday when we’re far away from here.”

  “But you. Your eyes. Your hands. How can you keep going?”

  He shrugged. “I just do. I won’t be here forever. And neither will you.”

  “You should wear your goggles” was all I could think to say.

  He chuckled. “Yeah, I know.”

  “You’ll go blind.”

  “Nah. I don’t think so. My sight is still good. If I start seeing fog, I’ll revisit the goggles idea, though.” He smiled down at me.

  I lay still for a moment, and then the tears started to fall again, silently this time.

  “I want out.”

  “I know you do. Everybody does.”

  “How do I get out?” I whispered.

  He looked away for a moment, his eyes scanning the ceiling, the walls. Then, he turned back to me.

  “You can’t get out,” he said, loudly, I thought. “You just need to come to terms with the fact that you have to serve your sentence. Keep your goggles on your face. Wear your respirator. Do all of those things right, and you’ll be out of here before you know it.”

  His eyes had an intensity that hadn’t been there
just moments before, and it got my attention. I sat up in bed, wiping my face with one of the sheets and staring him in the face. I frowned.

  “Don’t worry about it, kid,” he went on. “Just do what they tell you, and you’ll be fine. Now, come on. You’ve got to be starving.”

  He walked over to my closet and pulled out a clean pair of jersey pants, tossing them to me. I caught them, wanting to know more. But he was done talking.

  I stood up and pulled the pants on, immediately relieved at the feeling of the soft fabric against my skin. It was so much nicer than the stiff stuff on the inside of my suit. I slipped my feet into my regular boots, and he held out a sweatshirt, which I accepted gratefully and pulled over my head. I tried to catch his eye, to ask him the question I was burning to know the answer to.

  Was it possible to escape?

  But he didn’t look at me again. And as he turned back toward the door and led me down the line of bunks, I wondered what his words had actually meant. They had been a farce, a performance for the cameras that watched us every hour of every day. That was for sure.

  I felt a little glimmer of hope poke through my sadness and despair as I followed him out of the room.

  Images flashed through my mind.

  Walking up the Stilts stairs with Jonathan. Eagerly waiting to meet whoever was in charge of the Volunteers and their operation. Seeing the look on my mother’s face when she saw me, sober and relieved. Swimming beside Alex as we made our way across the border.

  These were all good things, things that made me cement the idea into my mind.

  I was going to get out.

  Chapter Five

  But everyone wanted out.

  “Julia,” I whispered into her ear at mess a few days into my service. “You have to tell me everything you know.”

  She paused, then sat back to look at me, giggling as if I’d just told her a funny joke meant just for her.

  “That’s a hoot,” she said.

  I frowned at her, then picked up my plastic spoon and dunked it into the mash. Extra butter today. I wondered what the occasion was.

  It was my fifth day at the Burn. Only a few thousand more to go.

  I’d asked Jones about my sentence. I was too scared to ask Wilson. Jones had scowled, and his eyes went blank as he checked his lens for the information. Finally, he spoke. His voice was harsh, but it betrayed a sort of hopelessness.

  “Ten,” he’d said.

  My stomach twisted, and I nearly bent over from the pain of it.

  Ten years.

  There was no way I could make it that long, even if I kept my goggles on in my sleep. It was a death sentence.

  I felt like throwing up.

  “Sorry, kid,” he’d said as he walked away, leaving me to process this horrifying news on my own.

  So, I needed to talk to Julia. I needed her to tell me how. Because the risk of a being caught during a breakout didn’t scare me half as much as the idea of staying.

  I knew I was taking a chance, trusting her. I remembered how Hannah had turned on me, become a spy for the Service. She’d followed me around the city, looking for a reason to turn me in. Looking for proof of my treason.

  I wasn’t sure who’d found it, that proof. Maybe nobody. It was possible that the Service had imprisoned me here for simply being hard to catch. Alex’s and my re-entry into the country must’ve been enough for them to arrest us, even though we were actually just following orders. It hadn’t been our fault, what had happened. With no boat and no propulsion tanks, we hadn’t had a choice but to flee from the freezing waters of Lake Eerie into Canada.

  Our meeting Paul just east of Detroit had been a mistake. A lovely, lucky mistake. He had helped us, given us hope, even though his words had been hard to stomach.

  “You will both probably die,” he’d said.

  Harsh words, but full of truth. Those words had propelled me along. I wanted nothing more than to prove him wrong.

  I wanted to live.

  “You should tell it to me again on the floor,” Julia said. “My friends would love to hear that one.”

  I raised my eyebrows, then turned back to my plate. Today I was scheduled to be on the assembly line, where it was possible to work in close proximity to one another without being overheard. There would be no Wilson there. It was only the hard jobs that he oversaw.

  I finished my breakfast quickly and stood up with my tray.

  “See you down there, then.”

  I dropped the tray in the bin and walked quickly to the bunk room. There was always a rush of people vying for the best spots at the conveyor belts. If you were late, you were destined to be in the “organic matter” section. Dead fish, bones, rotten food. There, almost everyone wore their protection, if only to keep from getting hit in the face from the spray of thousands of pounds of the stuff.

  I suited up and walked out of the bunk room just as she was coming in. I left my goggles and respirator behind, wanting to be able to speak at a whisper and still be heard.

  “Wait for me,” she said. She looked nervous. “I want to get a good spot. And put your gear on.” Her tone wasn’t concerned so much; it sounded more like an order.

  I sighed, walking back to my closet to collect my things. Then, back at her bunk, I stood, arms crossed over my chest, heart pounding. Above us, the cameras watched.

  She zipped up her suit, put on her clunky boots, and we were on our way well before anyone else. We weren’t due to be on the floor until 0800. But we were out the door at 0740 anyway.

  I snapped my goggles over my eyes and fastened my respirator as we made our way down the stairs.

  “It’ll be easier to talk with it,” she said. “Though that sounds counterintuitive. It’s noisy down there. We have to practically shout to be heard.”

  I looked around. Walking down to our shift at the belts seemed as good a place as any to start up the conversation, but when she shot me a glance, I took it as a signal to keep my mouth shut.

  Down at the plastics belt, we stepped up behind two of the other workers who were at the end of their shifts. They looked at us, confused.

  “What are you doing here so early?” one of them said.

  Julia shrugged. “They told us to come down now. Said if we were ready, we should go down sooner. That’s the last time I get dressed quick.”

  I noticed that she hadn’t mentioned who had told her to come down early, because nothing of the sort had happened at all. If she’d said Jones or Price, she ran the risk of giving the game away. It would be obvious that we’d want to be together so that we could talk if any of the other workers happened to mention it to a superior.

  Relief came over their faces though, and they both took off their goggles, leaving warped red rings on their skin from where the protection had pressed into the skin around their eyes. They pulled down their respirators.

  “Have fun, then,” one of them said, her voice no longer muffled.

  They both stepped away from their spots on the belt, and we took their places, planting our feet on top of the yellow footprints that had been painted on the floor.

  They really thought of everything here.

  Julia pretended for several long minutes that our only purpose there on the floor was to work. One thing was for sure; the great noise here made it a much better place to trade information than the quiet of the mess hall. But when the others started to show up to take over the shifts on the organic matter and glass belts, and Julia still hadn’t said a word, I started to wonder if she was going to talk to me at all. She just stood there, her hands expertly sorting different grades of plastic onto different belts. I followed her lead. It was only my second day on the belts, and my hands weren’t as fast as hers yet.

  “So,” she shouted over the din. “What do you want to know?”

  She didn’t look at me, and my eyes darted around, searching for someone who might overhear us. She was right, though, to bring our conversation out into the plant. Those sorting on the belts were s
tationed farther down, too far away from us to hear our shouts.

  “How do I get out?” I finally asked.

  She snorted. “In a body bag.” She didn’t look in my direction with this pronouncement. She wasn’t joking. “There is no way out. People have tried it before, loads of times, but it always ends up the same. The guards do them in before they even get to the fences that surround this place. Doesn’t stop them trying, though.”

  My stomach was a bundle of nerves as I asked these forbidden questions.

  “Have you ever tried?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve planned. But I’ve never given it a go, no. I guess I’m waiting until I just can’t stand it anymore. That, or until I get so sick that I’m forced out. Neither option is a good one.” Her hands flew over the plastic.

  I took her lead, not looking up from my work, trying to concentrate on both the task and the conversation at once.

  “There has to be a way,” I said, possibly too quietly for her to hear. “What about if we team up? I bet probably everybody in this place wants out. What if we overthrow them? The sergeants. The guards.”

  “People will die,” she said. “Yourself included.”

  I chewed on this statement for a time. We had hours to argue the point on this. Hell, we had years. There was time to plan. Loads of it.

  But then I thought about Alex. How much time did he have, wherever he was?

  “Has anyone ever taken out their chip and then run for it?” I asked.

  At this, she actually raised her head and looked at me, frowning. “Why would they do that?” she said, unsure, as if she’d never heard the idea before.

  “What do you mean? When people try to get out, they just stay connected to the lens system? It’s no wonder they’re caught.”

  She shook her head, then turned back to her work. “How are we supposed to get them out, then? With a plastic knife from up at mess?” She paused, looking at my face, and then her eyes fell upon my scar, right underneath where my hair was growing back in since my last shave. “You’ve been out before.”

 

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