I twist the bottle between my fingers and study the inside of the truck as if it is an assignment from one of my art classes. It’s challenging to decide what colors make up the slivers of white and gold and slightly burnished lines of light that edge the doors, and sneak through pinprick holes in the wood-lined floor. I consider what the best angle would be to capture the woman who has braved opening one of the boxes of supplies or the brown, tan, white, dirt-streaked, bloody, or clean hands of all the people who reach out for the bottles and small packages of food she passes to them.
“I grabbed a couple of granola bars if you want one,” Wallace says as I set the small bottle on the ground between my feet. A gray-haired man with stubble on his chin and cheeks takes an angry bite of the bar he has unwrapped. The hood of his jacket frames his face. Eyes edged with thick black brows dart around the deep gray shadows inside the truck. When he spots me watching him, he quickly looks away.
“Would you like me to leave you alone?” Wallace asks.
“What?” I pull my thoughts from the image I am sketching into my memory.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk.” He starts to shove his hands into his pants pockets, realizes the baggy government-issued garments don’t have them and throws up his arms in annoyance. “No pockets? That’s it. I quit.”
“I don’t think that’s allowed, “I say. The truck hits another bump. “But feel free to try and let us know how it goes.”
His slightly bruised lips curve. “Maybe we can form a union and demand better clothing.”
“I can think of a few other things I’d complain about first,” I say. “Like those bathrooms. Those would be high on my list of demands.”
“I’ll make a list,” he quips. His smile fades as he steps closer and lowers his voice. “Hey. You didn’t ask what it meant.”
I freeze. “What?”
“Union. You know the word—not the version everyone uses. You know the other meaning.”
Oh God.
My heart skips in my chest. I know about unions because I read about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Unions are an idea the government stamped out generations ago. It’s a concept I’m not supposed to know.
“I don’t know what meaning you’re talking about. A union is people coming together—like when they get married.” I stare unflinchingly at him, hoping he believes me.
He doesn’t. His eyebrows arch. Doubt colors his face. But he doesn’t call me a liar. Instead, he unfolds his jacket and pulls out a granola bar he has stashed inside.
“You should eat. The food will help counteract whatever side effects you’re experiencing from the drugs they gave you.”
Between the bumpy ride, the smell of bodies, and the unknown path in front of me, I have zero interest in food. But I take the package because he’s right about needing to eat. Besides, if I am eating, Wallace won’t expect me to talk. Until I understand more about what I am facing, I have to watch what I say. To everyone.
I slide down the wall and sit on the floor with my back resting in the corner. I take my time unwrapping the packaging. Wallace sits beside me, watching as I eat the granola bar in small, careful bites. When I’m done, I fold the wrapper into a small square and set it next to the water. Wallace passes me another, which is good because now that I’ve started eating, I realize I’m famished. The next bar does little to fill the hole in my stomach. I consider filling it with more water, but I decide against it—just in case.
Wallace says nothing as he sits beside me. The truck sways and jumps. Eventually it slows and comes to a stop. When the engine goes silent, everyone scrambles to their feet and moves toward the door.
“Don’t bother.” Wallace puts a hand on my arm when I start to get up. “They aren’t opening the doors. We’re just refueling.”
The doors don’t open. We hear voices. Car doors slamming. And then Wallace is right. The engine starts and the truck begins moving again.
“How did you know?” I ask when people shuffle back to their seats.
“The gasoline.” Wallace shrugs and leans his head back against the door. “I could smell it.”
This time I’m the one who’s being lied to. The question is—why?
I find myself mentally sketching Wallace’s face. The mop of curls that drape over his slightly tanned forehead. His lanky build. Studying the way he cocks his head to the side and how his eyes narrow when he watches those inside the truck eats up the miles to—wherever we are traveling.
The temperature in the cab increases with every uncomfortably passing minute. The air becomes thick—sticky—tangible. Sweat dribbles down my neck and soaks into my clothing. I peel my jacket off first. Then roll up my pant legs and my shirtsleeves and take small sips of the water, which has turned the same temperature as the stew-like air.
Someone—a woman with a voice sharp and efficient as a carving knife—takes charge of moving the boxes of supplies to create a small space where people can relieve themselves in the empty bottles. Soon, the warm smell of urine makes my stomach lurch and my head swim. I vow not to relieve myself in one of the tiny containers. Maybe it’s stupid, but I can’t bring myself to do that. Especially not surrounded by all these people.
Wallace leans close to me and whispers, “Don’t worry. We’re almost there.”
I blink. “Where?”
“I’m guessing they’re taking us to the farm. If I’m right, we have to be getting close.” Wallace peers out the crack in between the doors. He shifts several times, then slams his fist against the metal and sits back down. “I can’t see a damn thing.”
“The farm?” I whisper.
“There are two places the government takes subjects for instruction—the farm is the closest to Chicago. If they were taking us to Nevada they would have used larger trucks and made sure there was a portable toilet on board.”
The truck slows. Everyone inside the cab quiets. The rattling of the walls grows louder as the truck hits bump after bump. I’m glad I’m sitting against the wall, especially when the truck takes a sharp turn. An older man standing near the middle of the truck loses his footing while stacked boxes slide into people seated nearby. Then, after what seems like an eternity, the truck slows and finally stops.
We hold our breath.
There are footsteps.
Shouts.
Wallace stands, and I scramble to my feet to stand behind him.
Locks click.
Metal grates against metal and the doors swing open.
I squint against the sudden burst of light and gratefully breathe the hot, fresh, clean-smelling air.
The first things I see when my eyes adjust are charcoal clouds in a hazy blue-gray sky. On the ground, officials dressed in the same uniforms as the ones from the Unity Center in Chicago drag a ramp up to the truck and fasten it to the edge. But I barely glance at those things as I look at what lies beyond the trucks.
First are the buildings. Large warehouse-looking facilities at the edge of a gravel road and more, smaller buildings beyond those.
Everywhere else are fields.
Row after row. Acre after acre. Lines of green.
Wallace was right. This is a farm.
“Out of the trucks! Women to the right. Men to the left. Move!”
I grab Wallace and pull him to the side of the truck cab while the others swarm forward.
“How did you know this is where they were taking us?” I ask. “Have you been here before?”
“No,” Wallace says as the numbers inside the truck winnow. “I’ve only heard stories.”
“From who?” I ask. “How could you know this place existed?”
“I thought you’d already guessed.” He gives me a curious smile. “I know because I’m a Marshal.”
Ten
“You’re a Marshal?” That can’t be. After all—he’s here. In this truck. With all of us. How could I have been talking to someone who has ripped people from their lives, thrown them in cages, and shipped them off—simply
for refusing to believe whatever the government tells them?
“I should probably use the past tense, all things considered.” He touches the barcode at his ear, grimaces, and sighs.
“I don’t understand.”
Thunder rumbles.
“How I got here?” he asks.
“You two,” an official yells. “Move!”
“We have to go.” Wallace pulls my hand from his arm. “Do what the officials ask. Don’t attract attention. As long as you blend in and do what they say, you’ll be fine. Come on.”
He heads out and I have no choice but to shrug on my coat and follow.
The wind catches my hair and tugs at my sweaty clothes as I walk down the shaky metal ramp. Thunder rumbles again as an official shouts for me to head after the others who are being led through an open gate. Red lights blink from atop the two gateposts. Stretching between posts, a large wrought-iron sign over the gate reads: The Great American Farm. And suddenly, I have a good sense of where I am.
We’ve been taken to somewhere in Iowa, Missouri, or Nebraska. It could be any of the three. The national agricultural site is expansive—encompassing thousands of acres from all three states. But now that I realize where we are, I’m even more confused.
Everyone in the country knows something about the Great American Farm. It would be hard not to, considering the news specials that run at least three or four times a year and grocery store displays that proudly announce what vegetables, meats, and fruits came fresh from its fields and barns. I even had to write a paper on this place when I was in fourth or fifth grade—it was a Thanksgiving assignment, I think. Something the teacher made us write so we would appreciate the food our families served over the holiday. Every article I found online mentioned that the farm was the largest of its kind in the world—created after companies from other countries tried bullying farmers into selling their harvests to them for prices far lower than was possible. When our farmers refused, the foreign companies pressured them by refusing to buy their products at all. Suddenly, farmers were left without the money they needed to support their families and farms.
There were foreclosures. Bankruptcies. Dozens of suicides. The collapse of the industry and the panic that followed was compared to the stock market crash of the early twentieth century. All because of companies from other countries who were upset they weren’t allowed to cheat us.
That’s why the Great American Farm was founded. First the government helped farmers by giving them grants. When it was clear the money was not a permanent solution, the country purchased struggling farms and created a new agricultural model designed to streamline the country’s food supply so that everything we needed came solely from within the boundaries of the fifty-one states. Many of the farmers who sold their land were happy to be hired by the government to help lay the foundation for the Great American Farm and assist with the everyday work. The best agricultural experts collaborated with architects and engineers. Hothouse environments for popular imported vegetables and fruits were created. Barns, food processing centers, cottages, and dormitories for paid and volunteer workers were built. I’ve seen dozens of those workers interviewed on the news specials.
Now I wonder if any of that is real. If there were other reasons foreign countries didn’t pay our prices or whether the farmers truly wanted to sell. Maybe their lands were simply taken—like what happened to the Native Americans.
I spot Wallace at the back of the line, his hair being tossed by the gusting wind. Despite the confident way he spoke in the truck, out here in the gray light, he looks defensive. Scared. An official holding some kind of long black rod suddenly changes direction and heads toward Wallace. Without warning, the official cracks the rod against the back of Wallace’s legs. Wallace stumbles and the official pulls his arm back to strike again.
A broad-shouldered female official riding a Segway rolls in front of my view and shouts for us to start moving. I hope there will be bathrooms where we’re going, I think, because now that I’m no longer in the truck, I really have to pee.
Lightning slashes white across the sky.
Under the grumble of thunder there is a yelp of pain.
I don’t look. I clench my fists, put one foot in front of the other, and keep my eyes on the back of the person in front of me. I don’t care if Wallace is being beaten, I tell myself with each step. He’s a Marshal. He deserves it.
Gravel crunches beneath our feet. The thin booties provide little protection, making each step more challenging than the last. A drop of rain spatters on the ground. Another. Then just like that, the skies open.
Growing up, I hated when I got caught in the rain. My wet clothing and hair made me feel heavy and awkward and I looked a lot like a drowned rat. Today, I fasten my jacket tight around me to keep the small tracking recorder safe, and then revel in the deluge from the sky. Of having the sweat and blood, and the smells of the cages and the truck that seeped into my clothes and hair, washed away.
I look up at the clouds, run my hands over my face, and then turn to glance behind me. The trucks that brought us are turning around and driving back down the road—leaving us in their dust.
“Ow!” I grab at my stinging arm as the official pulls back the black rod she is holding and prepares to strike again.
“I told you to run.”
Rain pounding, arm stinging, bladder ready to burst, I hurry behind the others toward a narrow, white-and-blue warehouse-style building at the end of the gravel road. The roof is lined with shiny, black rectangular solar panels. The same roof is on an identical structure on the other side of the road that the men are being herded into. News reports say most of the farm—from the barns and dorms to the electronic cars used on the property—runs on sustainable energy. While the government must be at least partly lying to the public about this place, the energy part clearly is true. We are led inside and instructed to sit.
Inside the building, everything is colored in a shade of gray. The floors. The overhead rafters. The windowless walls. Even the chairs that run in two back-to-back rows down the center of the long space. Long industrial lights break up the color palette. The starkness of their white illumination gives everything a washed-out appearance.
I take my place in the last seat. Directly behind me is a much older woman with gray hair, narrow black glasses, and a wheezing cough.
Rain drums on the roof.
Thunder echoes.
A compact official with jet-black hair pulled tight off her face and a pronounced chin pounds a black rod on the ground to get our attention. But the room doesn’t go completely silent as all around us the plunk, plunk, plunk of water drips off our clothes and onto the concrete.
“Welcome to the Great American Farm. I am Lead Instructor Burnett and you are currently in the orientation and processing center.” The woman uses long, purposeful strides to move to the other end of the line of chairs. “Our Instructors are tasked with preparing you to work at the farm. Everyone who comes here contributes to the safety and prosperity of the country, which is why we are happy to welcome you—our newest volunteers.”
“I didn’t volunteer to work at the Great American Farm,” a brown-skinned woman with blond-streaked hair says quietly.
“Neither did I,” another halting voice says.
I shift uncomfortably in my chair. Some of my friends talked about maybe volunteering at the farm since volunteering could help them pay off their student loans. Hundreds of doctors and teachers and even carpenters and mechanics have worked off the money they owed for their education beyond high school by working here. My father’s coworkers had done it. Even one of my mother’s friends made the choice. After a year or two, or sometimes three if the debt was really high, the government forgave the debt and the volunteer could leave the Great American Farm as a true patriot freed of their financial hardship.
Enlisting in the military gave the same benefits, but most of the students at my high school considered working in fields or tending to horses and
cows far better options than push-ups and marksmanship drills. There were even a few, whose families would have no problem paying for college, who talked about spending time as a volunteer just to give back.
Volunteering for the farm was never something I’d considered. My parents told me they would pay for whatever education I chose after I was done with high school, which meant I was lucky enough not to have to think about how to pay off any debt—and dirt and manual labor weren’t my thing.
“Your disruptive actions volunteered you,” Instructor Burnett’s words crack like a whip.
I clamp my legs tight together as Instructor Burnett walks down my side of the line—tapping her long black metal rod against the side of her thigh. “The Great American Farm celebrates the country’s unity. You have been identified and brought here because you have exhibited behaviors that put our country’s unity at risk. Some of you have deliberately tried to circumvent or corrupt computer systems put in place for your protection. Others defaced public property or have chosen to cause unease by sleeping on the streets. One of you even aided criminals by impeding the officers sent to detain them.”
“I haven’t done any of those things,” a light-haired woman two seats down says earnestly. Her wide blue eyes are red rimmed, but lit with a desperate hope.
Instructor Burnett reaches into her pocket. She pulls out a hand scanner and approaches the woman who spoke out. The scanner beeps. As Instructor Burnett holds the machine up to read the screen, I glance at her feet.
The other officials wear plain brown work boots. Instructor Burnett has the black military running ones.
“Rachael Corn.” Instructor Burnett glances at the light-haired woman. “You hoarded paper books instead of taking them to a recycling center and encouraged others to selfishly do the same.”
The light-haired woman in front of Instructor Burnett shakes her head. “That’s my name,” she says quietly. “But that’s not me. I’m not selfish. I organize recycling drives. I told the man at the other place that there was a mistake. Someone made a terrible mistake, and he wouldn’t listen. But what you said proves I’m not supposed to be here. Just ask my husband, David. He works for the City Pride Department. We know important people. They can all tell you this is a misunderstanding. They’ll tell you I should be allowed to go home. I want to go home!”
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