“Why him?” Jen asked, hoping that Robert had a rational reason. She wanted to believe that Robert, her mentor, was capable of some logical thought when it came to the Poppers, that he had some reason not led by his heart.
Robert had taught her to hunt, to blend into her environment, to move without a sound. Robert was the father she had after hers had sold his soul working in the YUM factory.
Yet, Jen had acknowledged to herself long ago that Robert was not only flawed but also shattered. All that once had been Robert had fallen to the ground, and he’d never picked it back up. Instead, Robert had pieced together his own salvation, but Jen knew it was actually a damnation of his own making.
“Dude, answer me,” Jen said, lightly nudging Robert’s arm. “Why him?” She gestured to the cage. Eager for the answer and not knowing why, she added, “Hurry. I have something to tell you, but first I want an answer.”
“Nothing but opportunity,” Robert answered. “Right time, right place.” He smiled. “Well, for him, maybe wrong time, wrong place.”
There was so much more to it than that, but Jen would let it go. It was best to let it go.
“We saved a girl in Old Town,” Jen blurted. She smiled at Robert when his eyes lit up. She added, “She wasn’t on YUM.”
Robert cocked a skeptical eyebrow at her, and Jen noticed how dirty his shirt was. She wished his husband Manuel would make Robert shower more.
“Sit down. Let me tell you the whole thing,” Jen said but quickly went on before he could decide to go check for himself. “She comes from this place called The Hills…”
Walking the outskirts of camp, Jen wiped her tears away. She had left Robert’s side in anger, not for the first time or the last. He knew about The Hills. He knew about the fight the people of The Hills carried on against Nutri-Corp; yet, he’d never told her. To Jen, not telling was the same as lying.
The man who had taught her so much had withheld this information on purpose. Robert hadn’t understood the betrayal Jen felt as Robert passively displayed his knowledge of The Hills. She’d left in a huff, ignoring his calls to her.
Sniffing, Jen walked, trying to shrug off her pain. She should be used to it by now. No one understood her. No, one person did, or she thought he did.
“We could run away,” Danny said and kissed her forehead.
In their snug hiding place in the library, Jen rolled her eyes at Danny. She enjoyed the feel of his chest snugly pressed against hers.
“Where?” she asked. “There is nowhere your mother doesn’t control.”
“She doesn’t control the Gardener camp.” Danny tilted his head down to look at her, raising his eyebrows and smirking.
She hadn’t answered him that day. Love had taken her voice. She wanted to tell him, “YES! YES! YES!” and run away with him, forget everything, but Jen loved her sisters. Jen loved her parents. To leave, to run away from the horror of Nutri-Corp was also to run away from them. She shook her head and ignored the disappointment in his eyes.
How many times now had she wished she’d gone with him? She’d longed for him to ask again.
Until she’d heard him with The Hunters.
Her tears started again, and she walked some more.
Robert rubbed his dirty hands on his shirt, sat next to his husband Manuel, and smiled at him and Daisy. Together, they ran the Gardeners: him, his husband, and his sister. He was proud of how many they had saved. He was proud of them.
Daisy scratched her neck and looked away from him and Manuel. Seeing that, Robert lost his smile. She only did that when she was nervous or angry. He wondered which it was.
“We shouldn’t have drugged her so quickly. We got no information,” Manuel said with a tired tone to his words.
“Well, I didn’t know... I didn’t.” Daisy’s arms pressed tight against her sides, hugging herself. She was never good with conflict, especially inner conflict.
Robert patted Manuel on the back and led his hand to rest on Manuel’s thigh. Robert cleared his throat and said, “It’s fine. We’ll go see her tomorrow and get the rest of the information. She’ll sing. No worries.”
“She was demanding, telling us what we should do,” Daisy sputtered, “telling us to build an alliance with The Hills, fight Nutri-Corp together.”
Manuel’s voice was calm. “If she spreads that propaganda others will follow her. Others will question us.”
Manuel might have sounded calm, but Robert knew his husband well. There was an anxious feel to his words.
“They...” Daisy waved her hands around to indicate the camp, her eyes as wild as her flailing arms. “...don’t know about our deal with Madam.”
Robert stood and walked to his sister “They...” He mocked her by waving his arms about as she had. “…never will.”
Manuel stood as well, stretching his arms above his head. “Let’s sleep on it,” he announced. “Tomorrow will be a new day. Tomorrow we will talk to her. It’ll all work itself out.”
Jen hadn’t intended to walk this way, to end up outside the supply trailer, to overhear what the Gardeners’ leaders had said.
All the trailers in the Gardeners’ camp were heavily camouflaged with shrubs, brush, and kudzu, anything natural to disguise the structures from drones or even an airplane. It was a clever ruse, Jen thought. It reminded her of a book Suzy had once read aloud, something about creatures called Hobbits. The camouflage worked both ways; Jen could stand right under the cracked open window to listen without being seen herself.
This trailer was a common area of sorts, storing supplies everyone had gleaned: soap, first aid kits, everyday items. Long ago, Jen had left one window open a half-inch and covered that fact with the shade. She’d done that to as many trailers in camp as she could, believing that gave her access to intel—and she’d know if anyone was inside before she let herself in.
She’d never expected to hear something like what she’d heard.
When Manuel mentioned “sleeping on it,” Jen stepped away from the trailer quietly, like Robert had taught her, putting space between her and them before she headed to the trailer she shared with her sisters. What she wanted to do was confront the three of them, demand answers. What “deal” were they talking about? What did they mean by “deal?”
If they feared Chandler’s information that another city existed and those citizens fought back against Nutri-Corp, then everything those three had ever said to their followers wass a lie.
Why were they keeping the Gardeners ignorant of the rest of the world?
Jen looked up at the night sky, murmuring, “Not telling is the same as lying.”
Chapter Seven
In Death Do We Part
Then
Megan smiled as she looked down at her husband’s body. His breathing was weak, his chest unable to rise for a full breath. She took in his weakened state, appreciating that it was brought on by not only her hands but her brains.
There was foam and spittle in the corner of his mouth. Megan considered wiping it, but then took a long drink from her wine bottle instead. She took that drink directly and purposely from the bottle. Drinking straight from the bottle was an immature way to rebel for an audience of no one but that made it a lot more fun.
Sitting on her kitchen floor, Megan glanced at her soon to be ex-husband. Finding the view almost offensive, she ran her fingertips over the gleaming floor, noting the fine polish it had. The floor was sparkling clean even though she had a three-year-old son, a son who at this moment was sound asleep in his bedroom thanks to the sprinkle of sleep aid she had put in the milk he’d drunk at dinner.
Sleep aid for her son. Poison for her husband. Megan was having a busy night.
“Ex-husband,” Megan murmured, adjusting her thoughts. In about five minutes she’d no longer have a husband; she’d have an ex-husband.
Watching his body tremble, Megan decided he wouldn’t be her ex if he was dead. He would be her deceased husband.
“You are stubborn,” she said to
him, watching his eyelids flutter, then blink and flutter again. “This poison should have killed you about one minute give or take forty seconds ago.”
His mouth moved and the foam that was gathered on his lips dripped to her clean kitchen floor. She didn’t know how she felt about that. Could she blame him for the mess if in fact she was the root cause of his distress?
Megan flicked off any possibility of a feeling she had about it and instead spoke to her soon to be deceased hubby.
“I told you I’m a Bio-Chemical Engineer. Not a cook. Not a housewife. Not your wifey.” She nudged him with the tip of her toe, watching his weight slightly shift then plop back into place.
He was a big man. A handsome man who had the misfortune of disregarding how wickedly smart his wife was. He thought her a dove without once believing she was a hawk.
Megan would never consider herself a vulture, even if the tendency was there.
Tapping the kitchen floor with her long polished nails, Megan thought of how naïve she had been when she married fresh out of college.
She had stupidly believed he’d support her ideas. Megan had so many ideas. So many innovations that could be achieved.
She could change lives with her ideas. There were so many ways to make mundane life a little better.
Megan thought of how he’d told her to not bother going to work right away or at all after they married. Instead, he thought she should learn to cook. Or take up a hobby.
Megan hated cooking, and “hobby” was an unkind and untidy word.
Often, her soon to be deceased hubby proposed having children to Megan. He believed that she could someday become a proper homemaker—she who stirs a pot with a baby on her hip and one crawling on that clean kitchen floor underneath her feet.
After all, he’d come from a wealthy family, and they didn’t need his wife’s income.
When she once again explained her ideas to him, told him how she could change lives, he only shrugged and told her he’d let her get a job if she was that bored.
It wasn’t boredom that drove Megan to her first position at a lab but drive. If she was given the time, the opportunity, she could finally show not only her husband but her colleagues her brilliance.
Sitting on her kitchen floor Megan bristled, remembering her first day at the labs. She had ironed her slacks twice. Trimmed and unpolished her usual lavishly long nails. Megan had done everything she could to un-glam herself, to secure her identity as a serious biochemical engineer.
After years of being ignored by colleagues who called her ideas “out there” and “dangerous,” Megan had given in. She used her pregnancy with Danny to justify her husband’s ideals of a homemaker at home, she who smiles, cooks, bakes, all while keeping the home fires burning.
She quickly realized she rather burn the home down.
Mostly, it was the cooking. Breakfast always had to be different, interesting. There was the planning and shopping, but mostly it was the preparation and the clean up. That done, it was time for lunch. On the days when her soon to be deceased husband worked from home, it was a repeat of the breakfast process. And by the time she’d put away the last clean pot, pan, or utensil, it was time yet again to start all over with dinner.
Once, the soon to be deceased husband had joked, “You hate cooking so much, why not put that precious biochemistry degree to work? You know, invent a pill or something so people don’t have to cook. Ha, ha!”
Megan supposed she should have thanked him for the idea because after that not-so-funny joke, every time she cooked, formulae swirled in her head, and she planned.
Something in Megan had scratched at her insides. She knew she was more than what her husband thought she should be. She was harder, smarter, and better than her colleagues.
There was only one thing in her way.
Megan yawned and took another gulp of wine. His body now convulsed. It wouldn’t be long now.
After he died, she’d happily go to bed. She’d wake extra early the next day to “find” his body, to “cry” in front of the police, to weepily call her neighbor and ask her to please take Danny who was still sleeping so soundly. “Poor baby, the park tired him out yesterday, and I don’t want him to see...” More weeping
Megan knew this neighbor, a kindly mark Megan had been working for some time, would quickly agree to babysit, not wanting the boy to see his daddy’s body taken away.
At the autopsy, the coroner wouldn't find a trace of the poison she had given her deceased husband. Megan had paid him off long ago.
Megan liked the idea of being a widow, so much so, she broke into a dazzling smile. She and Danny—now her son, not their son—could now do as they pleased. She’d have no watchful eyes on her as she played the woeful widow and dutiful mother while she took his life insurance money and his inheritance to build herself a lab.
His body went still. Megan put the wine bottle on the kitchen counter, grinning as she pictured the house she would soon build and the secret lab within it. Her lab, where no one would call her ideas “out there,” and everyone would call her not Megan but Madam.
NOW
“Why are you drinking from the bottle?” asked Sir, Madam’s current husband.
His voice shattered the reminiscences of her past. Madam smacked her lips, tapping the bottle with a long red fingernail. “It tastes better that way.”
Chapter Eight
Mystery Meat
Micah cracked his knuckles and grinned at his secretary, Julia. She was a pretty blonde, with deep green eyes that reminded Micah of oak leaves in the spring. If he focused on her eyes, he could ignore the constant puckering and un-puckering of her lips.
He had to give Julia props, though. She deserved them. She had gotten good at hiding her tic. If Julia was in a room of people who didn’t know her well, they might believe she had no tics at all, merely a bad case of resting bitch face. Having no tics was a gem in Nutri-Corp City. Those without noticeable tics or any tics at all would be in Madam’s favor and given positions of power.
Micah squirmed a bit in his chair. Micah didn’t have a tic like almost everyone else on YUM did, but he wasn’t considered a gem. Madam didn’t much care for the personality that was Micah. She gave him side-eye glances filled with suspicion as if she were examining him for a hidden tic, some small pop of movement, a breath, a word, anything to prove him the liar he was.
Micah was a liar, but he was innocent of the lies Madam felt him guilty of.
“Whisk those kitchen blues away with one YUM a day,” Micah dictated to Julia, who typed, one eyebrow pointed at the ceiling.
“Smile, chum! You’ve got Yum,” Micah spouted. Julia dutifully typed it down. “One YUM a day makes you a Nutri-Corp slave.”
He looked at Julia, his own smile challenging her not to do the same at his little joke. Instead, she lifted her hands from her keyboard, annoyance cascading down her face. Julia rose, walked to the chair opposite of Micah, and sat, resting her feet on the coffee table in front of them both. She looked over at Micah with tired eyes.
“Why do we advertise?” she asked. “Everybody is on YUM and...” She snapped her fingers at him. “...you write the same stuff over and over.”
Micah put his feet up as well, averting his eyes from Julia’s long legs. He replied, “Because, my dear, the queen wishes it so, and why do you care?” He looked directly into her eyes, unable to miss her puckering lips. “We have posh jobs. We are on easy street, living large, gliding along on angel wings. Why do you care?”
Julia huffed at him and put her feet down. She knew he was right. Julia was here as his secretary because Madam believed Julia’s tic controllable enough she could be in the Nutri-Corp elite’s offices. She should be happy she wasn’t in the trenches or, worse, the factories. Or worst. Old Town.
“Why don’t you go home, put those feet up again, and make yourself a cocktail?” Micah said, loudly, with a thimbleful of demand in his tone. Without question, Julia nodded, rose, and went back to her desk. S
he retrieved her purse and turned to look at Micah.
Julia smiled at him, with a twinkle in her eyes, but he could see her visibly fighting the need to pucker and un-pucker her lips. She looked like a duck having an anxiety attack.
“Turn that kitchen duties frown upside down with one YUM a day!” she said.
Micah raised his hands and air-applauded. “Perfect! We’ll put that on a billboard first thing Monday morning.”
Julia started to walk to the door but turned back. “A billboard on the main drag right by elite housing?” she said.
What? Did she want to brag to her neighbors that billboard was her line.
“Yes, of course, Julia. Now go home.” Micah made a shooing motion with his hands.
Julia paused only a second. She wanted to say something more but decided getting home from work early was worth her silence.
Locking the office door behind Julia, Micah loosened the noose of a tie around his neck, flung his shoes off his feet, and shimmied all the way to his desk. He was glad to be alone. At work, Julia kept her eyes on him; at home his wife Clarissa kept her eyes on him, both women wordlessly keeping him in line to maintain the comfortable lifestyle they had both become accustomed to.
They believed him nothing but their clown to manipulate, and as long as they both kept up appearances, Madam’s eyes washed over him, never bothering to dig into the questions she had about him.
Micah laughed at that. They could keep their eyes on him; he’d toe the line. Opening his desk drawer, he reached deeply under a mess of loose papers. His haphazard disorganization was intentional. Finding his prize, Micah grinned yet again.
Carefully opening the granola bar’s wrapper, Micah smelled it, taking in the faint apple essence. Instead of taking a bite, he licked it. Micah had paid a large sum of money for this granola bar in the underground market. He would not scarf it down like he wanted to, like his body begged him to.
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