The Volunteer

by J B Cantwell

  “Keep your eyes down,” I said, following her lead from earlier. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her drop her gaze back to the belt. But she stood motionless, hands at her sides.

  “Get moving.”

  Jeff was stationed farther down the belt from us, and when I looked up, I found his eyes on us. He waved.

  “Who can we trust here?” I asked, smiling a forced smile and raising my chin up slightly in greeting.

  She shook her head, finally raising her hands back up and over the plastic, sorting again. “No one.” She paused, then took a step back from the belt entirely.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed. “Get back here.”

  “Why are you talking to me about this?” She was looking nervously around now, her confident demeanor replaced with the look of a cornered animal. She looked like she was waiting to be scooped up by someone with authority. Someone who could hurt her.

  It took me a moment to realize what was going on. She was afraid … of me.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” she said. “I would never try to break out. Like I said, anyone trying to escape is killed, one way or another.”

  I sighed.

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” I said. “I’m the one trying to get out. And I’m not going to tell anyone about our conversation, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

  She glanced up, catching my gaze for just a second, then started in on her work again.

  “I’ve been out,” I went on. “And I want to be out again.” I paused as I thought about whether I should share information with her, how much information. “I’m going to take it down.”

  “Take what down?”

  Her voice was quiet beneath her mask. She was really trying not to be heard now.

  But I wasn’t quiet. I needed her to hear me.

  “The lens system. I’m going to blow the whole thing up. No more surveillance. No more designations. No more Burn.”

  She didn’t look up, but I saw her eyes grow wide, with fear or surprise, I couldn’t tell.

  “Now tell me, who else wants out? Who else is willing to risk it?”

  “You’re not going to find anybody,” she said. She seemed to be getting over the initial shock of my pronouncement. “No one will tell you about their plans. They work in small groups.”

  “Hmm.”

  Small groups.

  I had an idea forming, something that I hadn’t thought of before. I was thinking too small for success, about only my own escape. But if I could convince others to join me …

  “Why? Why only small groups?”

  She glanced quickly over at me. “No one trusts. You could be anyone. You could be a spy. You could be someone paid to come in and weed out those of us who are trying to get out.”

  “I could.”

  Her hands were moving more slowly now, and I tried to pick up my pace to make up for her lack of speed.

  Those of us, she had said.

  “Tell me your plan,” I said. “Let me help.”

  “I don’t have a plan,” she said, lying.

  “Well, I do.”

  She stopped sorting entirely, and I paused as well. In front of us the unsorted plastic sped by. I wondered who would take care of it farther down the line, wondered if anyone would notice. Maybe they would just chalk it up to a shift change. I hoped.

  I nodded at her in confirmation. A plan.

  “What?” she asked, almost too quietly for me to hear.

  I smiled beneath my mask.

  “Revolution.”

  Chapter Six

  September 21, 2096. 2300 hours. The dead of night, outside the now-defunct Central Park Zoo. He was going to meet me there. He’d promised.

  But our plan would no longer be possible. We wouldn’t have the explosives we’d counted on, I was trapped at the Burn, and Alex was lost to me. He could be anywhere.

  Then we would have to flee. It would be our only hope of survival. We could go back to Canada, rip out our chips and just take off on foot.

  We hadn’t made a plan for if one of us failed to get there. Would we go alone?

  I had asked a favor of Julia, that she tell at least the people she knew of my plan. No dates; not yet. But be prepared. It could be any time.

  As I lay in bed night after night, the plan began to solidify in my mind. We would all go at the same time, the same hour. Rise up. There were hundreds of us, and maybe only twenty men guarding us, not including the Wilsons of this place. I wondered if the guards were serving sentences as well. Or maybe they were just in it for the money. Maybe it was miserable for them, too. It occurred to me that everyone, guards included, might be inclined to fly.

  I couldn’t count on that, though. They walked around toting their shiny black rifles. No, we wouldn’t be able to trust them, not with any certainty. They had families to support, lives back home to return to from time to time. They wouldn’t jeopardize that, the financial security that came with such a dirty job.

  We had to be ready for loss of life. And, more than anything, understand that there was a real possibility of getting caught.

  And then what?

  One thing at a time.

  I needed to find one of those tools used to dig out lens chips. That would be crucial. The place on my head where my scars marked me started to throb every time I thought about this, remembering my old injuries there. But I could think of no other way. If everyone had functioning chips, we would be tracked until cornered, apprehended for sure, maybe even murdered.

  Especially me.

  Breathe.

  I sat up in bed. 0300. Mind buzzing. Snores erupted all around me. I knew there was a crew down on the floor right now, a night shift. Everyone else was dead to the world.

  Julia, once she had calmed down and considered whether or not she trusted me, had said that she would tell the few people she knew were planning escapes about my proposition. Obviously, we weren’t going to be able to contact every single person working at the Burn, but if we could just get to the few leaders of this place, we might have a chance.

  There were sure to be spies hidden within our ranks, men and women who worked alongside us, waiting to squash the hopes of those of us trapped inside. We would outnumber them, though. There might be enough of us to pull this off.

  The real issue was time. If the spies amongst us knew the whole plan, they would be able to thwart us for sure. Time I needed to keep to myself. We could plan and scheme, and come up with ways to get what we needed, but I wouldn’t share our time of departure. Not with anyone.

  One night I found myself sitting next to Jeff at mess. I had grown wary of him. He was too cheerful for treason, somehow. But who was I to judge? If we were really going to revolt, we needed everyone we could find.

  “So, how are you enjoying your time at the Burn?” he asked me through a thick mouthful of mash.

  I rolled my eyes at him.

  “It’s wonderful. Everything a girl could hope for.”

  He swallowed. “That’s what I thought. It’s the stuff of dreams for every little girl and boy.”

  I smiled.

  “How much longer do you have?” I asked.

  “Just a year and change. I’m here on a regular Service assignment. I should be out of here in no time, and at the end of all this waits that handsome sum of cash.”

  I looked at him, and for a moment I felt pity, real sadness for this boy who still seemed to think that he’d be able to catch that golden ring that joining the Service promised. I wondered how they decided who would live and who would die in a place like this. Not everyone could win.

  So I didn’t share my ideas with Jeff. I kept our conversations clean.

  “What will you do when you win?” I asked, taking a big bite of mash, myself.

  “When I win?” He smiled, broad and genuine. “I’ll fly.”

  “Fly?”

  “An airplane.”

  I snorted. “You’re delusional. Even with all that money, you’d neve
r be able to find, much less afford, jet fuel.”

  “Well, I didn’t say I’d be flying a jet. Just some nice little honey, something old fashioned that I could run on regular gasoline.”

  “Still,” I said between bites. “Expensive.”

  His smile returned. “Yup. No problem, though, right?”

  He really, truly believed that he was going to get out of this place unscathed, goggles and respirator set firmly into place until his last day. And who was I to judge? Maybe he would make it. Some people did. Didn’t they?

  “What will you do when you’re out?” he asked, opening one of his nutrition square packages, the plastic crinkling in his hands.

  When I’m out.

  In ten years? How could I even answer that question? I’d never been good at lying, but now I was presented with an immediate need to think up a story. I struggled to think straight, to imagine a life outside of this place. My opportunity to catch that golden ring had come and gone. There would be no prize money for me at the end of all this. I would be lucky to get out alive. Very lucky.

  “Oh, I don’t know if I’ll make it all the way out,” I said truthfully. I tried to sound upbeat, but the thought of becoming truly trapped here made my stomach boil.

  I wondered if I should take the risk and just tell Jeff what was going on right under his nose. Not here, not this minute. Maybe down on the floor one day soon, where we wouldn’t be overheard.

  But he wouldn’t want to go, surely. Just a little over a year before he could get out and claim his prize.

  He could hide in the back while the rest of us made a break for it.

  “Oh, you’ll make it out,” he said, shocking me out of my thoughts. “I know it seems like a long time, and it is. But you’re a fighter, yeah? If you’ve been to war, you can do anything.”

  Huh. Anything. I felt like my whole life had been one long war, and it had done little to prepare me for something like this. Had I been prepared for boot camp? For fighting the group of Canadian rebels in the trees? For killing people I had once called friends?

  I needed to stay focused now, though, to not get derailed by Jeff’s good natured conversation.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Ten years.”

  I put down my plastic spoon, suddenly no longer hungry. I pocketed my nutrition squares for later, just in case I ran low on energy once I was out on the floor. Today was a shoveling day.

  He turned to me, straddling the bench we were sitting on, all his attention on my face.

  “What did you do?” he asked quietly. “You never told me.”

  I pushed my plate away and stood up. This was a talk I wasn’t ready to have with him. With anyone.

  “No, wait,” he said, grabbing one of my hands. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise. I’ll tell you my secrets, too.”

  I scoffed, untangling my hand from his and picking up my tray. What kind of secrets could a Green have? Surely not so many as me. As Alex.

  I had been a Green once, though. And while my secrets weren’t so earth shattering, they had grown into dangerous ideas by the end of my first year. Jeff might have something; it was possible. He’d already been here for a year and a half, working in this miserable place, hauling garbage and muck every day of the year but for seven precious days off at the end of each trip around the sun.

  I turned and walked away. In moments, he was after me, leaving his tray forgotten on the table.

  “Please,” he said. “You can talk to me, you know. I’m no rat.”

  I didn’t look back at him as I dumped my tray and moved into the deserted hallway. But he didn’t give up. He grabbed for my hand again, and I turned back, snatching it away from him.

  “Please. Just listen.”

  “I need to get ready for my shift.”

  He moved in close, and for a moment I thought he was going to try to kiss me. But his mouth moved past mine, and he whispered the last thing I was expecting him to say in my ear.

  “Leave no stone.”

  No way.

  There was no way he was part of the Volunteers. If he was, why on Earth would he agree to come here?

  A spy, but not the kind I had worried about.

  “Come on,” he said, taking my hand again and leading me through the hallway and down to our barracks. “We should get suited up.”

  I slipped my hand from his, but I followed. There was only half an hour left before our shift began, but it was too soon for us to go down to the floor without arousing suspicion.

  “Why do you want to get suited up already? It’s not time.”

  “We can go down early,” he said, pushing open the door to the barracks. “I’ll show you some cool spots you might not have seen yet. There are actually some great views from this place.”

  I sighed, following him into the room. I did as he told me, though, and was zipping up my suit a few minutes later. Jeff snapped his respirator on and pulled down his goggles.

  “Let’s go.”

  I wasn’t quite ready, but I followed along anyway. As he opened the door to the plant, I pulled on my own mask.

  Instead of taking me down the steps to the floor, he turned and went the opposite direction, onto the gangway I had walked on my first day at the Burn.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  A tall staircase started off to our left, and we began to climb. I was soon winded from the effort of dragging my too-large boots up the stairs. As we ascended, several workers stopped to glance our way, curious. But he didn’t stop for anyone, and I noticed that not everyone was interested in our presence there. Many simply gave a quick glance and then turned back to their work.

  “Where is this place?” I asked.

  “Just a few more floors.”

  By the time we got to the top, I was completely out of breath.

  “You should exercise more,” he said cheerfully.

  I scowled.

  Now that we were at the top of the burning tower, I noticed that the smell had changed. It stung my nose to breathe in the air up here, and I knew instinctively that if I were to take off my goggles, my eyes would start to burn.

  He didn’t wait for me. Up ahead was a door leading to one last staircase. The door read “Roof Access,” and suddenly I understood.

  No cameras?

  I made the last step and walked out on the sunny rooftop. Up here the stench from the burning towers wasn’t as bad as down below, but I still felt exposed.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I come up here all the time. I’ve got a plan.” He took off his goggles and mask and nodded for me to do the same. As soon as mine were around my neck, he did something I didn’t expect.

  This time, he did kiss me.

  I wanted to recoil, to pull away, but suddenly I understood.

  He moved in closer, putting his lips close to my ear.

  “They’ll see us as two lovebirds. If they decide to punish us, it will be less. Lovers’ whispers are not necessarily punishable. We’re only human, after all.”

  So, we weren’t free from surveillance. If we were caught up here together, there might be consequences, though they wouldn’t be so bad if we had a good excuse. Like love.

  “Let’s go sit down,” he suggested, squeezing my hand hard.

  We walked over to the edge of the roof and sat. In the distance was the skyline of Manhattan. It looked tiny from where we sat, high up above the ground.

  “I told you it was great up here,” he said in a normal voice. The only protection from listening ears was the whipping of the wind at such a great height.

  He moved close to me so that our shoulders were touching, playing to the cameras, wherever they were.

  I felt off, sort of slimy having just shared a kiss with someone other than Alex. Jeff was about as clean as a kid could get. Friendly, supportive, without ego or malice.

  Still.

  He didn’t let go of my hand.

  “Tell me your plan,” he whispered as lou
dly as he dared.

  I paused, looking at him, but his eyes were trained on the skyline beyond. I dropped my gaze, stole back my hand, and wrapped my arms around my legs.

  “Tell me how you knew about me first. I’m guessing you don’t just go around saying code words to random people.”

  He chuckled.

  “Last break, I was at the diner when you came in. It was before everything … went down. Not too many people made it out, but Jonathan is still alive. And Chambers. And you and I.”

  I breathed a quiet sigh of relief, but I still wasn’t sure of him. If his words were true …

  “I didn’t see you at the diner.”

  “Maybe not. But I saw you.”

  I squirmed, uncomfortable with both our seats and his expectations. Somehow talking about taking down the government openly with someone I was wary of seemed like a very bad idea.

  “Why didn’t I see you on the bus?” I prodded.

  “My break wasn’t over yet. I climbed up the stairs of one of the buildings by the wall. From there I saw the whole thing. The planes. The bombs.” He shook his head. “Everything lost.”

  I felt a pain in my chest at his words. Then the worst really had come to pass. And now here we were. How could four people lead a revolution? Five if I counted Alex. It would never be enough. Unless Alex came to our meeting spot with explosives in hand, we would have no choice but to flee.

  “So, tell me. Are you still with us?”

  Yes.

  No.

  “I don’t know. We got caught before we could even get a concrete plan in place. And we weren’t even doing anything against the law. We only set a date, time, and place for our meeting. And now, with me here and him … I don’t know where he is … Now, I’m not sure if I’ll even be able to make it to our meeting place, not to mention carry out our mission.”

  “Which is to what?”

  I glanced up, suspicious.

  “Why don’t you know that already?”

  He leaned in, his lips on my ear again.