Micah had never taken YUM; he had only and always pretended to. Because of this, he was tic-free. That was why he made under-the-table deals for favors or spent cash in the underground food market of Nutri-Corp City.
Taking the tiniest of bites, Micah chewed slowly, letting the flavors fill his mouth and trickle down his throat. The sugar hitting his brain made his happy feet tap on the carpet. He had made a deal to get a cheeseburger tomorrow night from one of YUM factory’s custodians. Micah didn’t know or care where or what the meat came from. All he cared about was living to survive another Nutri-Corp day.
Chapter Nine
Camp
As a child, Chandler had never gone camping. She had lived a suburban life, rarely venturing outdoors and certainly no farther than the nearest playground. Now, she was naked in an outdoor shower, washing her hair. Between the shampoo bubbles Chandler could see leaves gliding down from the trees directly above her.
Chandler wanted to cry, but she was outdoors. Sound carried, and she didn’t want anyone coming over to ask her if she was okay while she stood naked, shivering, and angry.
In another situation, in another place, in another time, when the world was how it used to be and things mostly made sense, shivering naked in an outdoor shower would have been comical, something she would have laughed about and posted pictures of on social media.
But here and now, no matter how kind Lola had been to her, Chandler felt raped of dignity.
Wrapping a rough towel around herself she stepped out of the makeshift shower shed and slipped her feet into the soggy slippers Suzy had acquired for her. Lola waited right outside the shed. Waiting to help her, or was Lola, like, her prison guard?
“That’s kinda better, right?” Lola asked, giving a small shrug.
Chandler nodded, ashamed she had felt so hateful. She knew that Lola wasn’t the villain here. Lola and her sisters were a victim of Nutri-Corp as much as she was. She couldn’t help but feel they were also the victims of the Gardener leaders, but she wasn’t sure how or why she felt this way.
Lola cleared her throat, motioning for Chandler to follow her, and said, “I’m taking you back to the trailer. You haven’t been cleared to wander camp yet.”
So prison guard it was. Chandler nodded doing her best to look around without acting as if she was trying to take everything in at once. She felt like a tourist.
“Don’t bother,” said Lola, looking right into Chandler’s eyes. “It takes a while to make sense of camp. Let me explain.” She pointed to the left and went on, “Over there are two trailers and a tent, but you can’t really see them.”
Chandler looked in the direction Lola had pointed to she saw something that looked like something, but it was all trees, shrubs, dead branches.
“Camouflage,” said a small squeak of a voice that Chandler recognized as Suzy. “So only those who need to know can see.” She smiled then, a big toothy grin, and Chandler couldn’t help to notice that someone had scrubbed her down.
“Looks like you took a shower, too,” said Chandler, smiling at the girl. Suzy made a face, rolling her eyes. She noticed Jacob in the background putting his hands to his nose then pointing at Suzy with a snorty laugh.
Suzy gave a small growl in Jacob’s direction, which made him laugh loudly.
“Lola made me take one,” Suzy confided. “It actually felt good.”
Lola looked over at Chandler as she took small sips of soup. In the dark of Old Town, Lola had thought she was a child. Chandler was petite, small, fragile in stature. Here, Lola could see she was “chiquita pero picosa.” There was a fight in Chandler that Lola admired, but it also worried her. Gardeners were against violence. How would that fire that Lola could see burning in Chandler do with a group of people who believed in nothing more than walking away to live for another day?
“When they get here,” Lola said, not looking directly at Chandler but focusing on a dirt smudge on the wall. “Tell them all that happened.” She refocused on Chandler. “Don’t ask them anything, but tell them what they want to know.”
Chandler swallowed the soup in her mouth and responded, “Why? Why can’t I ask questions?”
Lola didn’t know why, but she felt that Chandler shouldn’t.
The trailer door opened, and Jen entered, eyes swollen from lack of sleep or tears. Lola didn’t know which.
Jen gave Chandler a nod and sat. “Where’s Suzy?” she asked Lola.
Lola felt relieved Jen was on her usual agenda--monitoring her little sister.
“She’s in the back,” Lola responded. Both she and Jen said together, “Reading.” The sisters softly laughed. A tired laugh. A laugh of many miles.
All the scant joy left Jen’s face so abruptly, Lola thought it was a trick of her own eyes.
“Lola,” Jen said in a whisper, though one Chandler could hear, “they know about The Hills.”
“Who?” asked Lola. She knew, she knew precisely who Jen meant, but still she asked. She played dumb, like she had with Danny yesterday morning.
“Robert, Manuel, and Daisy.” Jen let her head fall into her hands as trying to rub away the exhaustion that was her life. “I overheard them. They knew all this time that there are others out there. Others that are fighting...”
Chandler rose, walked to Jen, and sat by her, eyes darting between both sisters. “Why didn’t they tell anyone?” Chandler asked.
Lola saw the mixture of rage and sadness contort both women’s faces.
A knock sounded on the trailer door. “I think we know who that is,” Lola said and went to answer it. Jen took Chandler by the arm and whispered, “Play dumb,” as Daisy entered the trailer followed by Manuel and Robert.
Daisy looked at Chandler with an icy gaze, but Chandler picked up on Daisy’s trembling. Mentally noting the shake in Daisy’s limbs and voice. It was the kind of quaking a person did when someone held a knife to their throat.
“Tell us what happened to you at Nutri-Corp City?” Daisy asked.
“Like I said before, I was going a block or two away from home. As if from nowhere, a person jumped out in front of me, startled me. But that was a distraction because someone grabbed me from behind. They drugged me right away. I felt a pinch at my throat, everything instantly faded. Then nothing.”
Chandler paused and looked into Daisy’s eyes. Wanting to burrow down into them with a glare. Chandler felt a hate for Daisy stir inside her.
“Go on,” said Robert finally joining the conversation. He had stretched an arm on the back of the booth seat, slouching down, as if in his own living room watching a baseball game.
“When I woke up, it was dark, like black dark. There was only sound. Sounds of breathing. Sounds of crying. There were smells. The smell of chemicals. The smell of…clean.” Chandler wrinkled her nose, remembering how the air had burned her nose and throat like acid, as if the air had been industrially scrubbed of anything organic.
“I was terrified because I knew where I was!” Chandler’s voice rose then, not bothering to suppress her fear. “People had gone missing in The Hills. We have been at war with Nutri-Corp for years now, not giving in, not buying YUM. When our city council made YUM illegal in our area, people started to go missing.”
Daisy took both Robert’s and Manuel’s hands, gripping them so tightly Chandler could see the veins in her hand buckle and throb with the effort.
Chandler continued, “After a while my eyes got used to darkness, and I could see large cages, like dog kennels, lined up. Some had people in them. There weren’t many. Maybe three people besides me there. And… And… I realized, I was in a cage, too.” Chandler paused again, remembering the fear that had enveloped her when she realized she was caged.
“GO ON!” Daisy snapped.
Chandler watched Manuel squeeze Daisy’s hand then slide his and hers off the table.
“I whispered, ‘Where are we?’ to the woman in the cage next to me. ‘Doesn’t matter where we are,’ she said. Really loud. She said, ‘It only matte
rs where we are going.’ I didn’t ask her where we were going right away,” Chandler said, clenching her hands together on her lap and closing her eyes for a second. “I knew who had taken me. I guessed where I was. The next step was finding out where I was going, but I was too scared of what her answer would be.”
Chandler sat back, again looking Daisy in the eyes. “Eventually, I worked up the courage and asked, ‘And where is that?’ The woman huffed at me and said, ‘To Madam’s dinner party. Where the hell else?’”
Daisy sucked in a breath then, and she trembled with more intensity. Chandler caught Jen’s expression. Did Jen enjoy watching Daisy’s eyes bob in their sockets? Was Daisy that terrified of what happened outside the Gardener camp? Daisy the frail thing. Daisy the liar.
Chandler’s voice broke the silence that seemed to shake the whole trailer. “I was there for days. How many I do not know. It was dark. I had no way to measure the time.”
“How did you escape?” asked Robert. Chandler watched Jen glare at him when he asked this. If he knew of The Hunt, he knew what became of those who were hunted, why ask? To amuse himself? To try and catch Chandler in a lie? What was behind the intensity of the look in Jen’s eyes?
Chandler’s dead-eyed look at Robert dulled the brilliance of her blue eyes. She answered his question as if he wasn’t worthy of such beauty.
“Two men came,” Chandler replied. “They pulled me from my cage, put a bag over my head, tied my hands and feet. They dragged me outside. I could tell I was outside. Even through the bag I could smell the outdoors. The men put me in a car. We drove...”
Chandler swallowed and kept speaking, “I don’t know how long we drove. When we reached our destination, they pulled the bag off my head, cut the ties off my hands and feet. We were somewhere in the middle of some woods. They screamed at me to run. I heard whirring sounds above me, and I looked up. Drones. Drones flying right above my head. The men yelled, ‘RUN! RUN! RUN!’ But my feet wouldn’t move. Someone shoved me, and I stumbled forward. They kept yelling for me to run.”
Chandler left out the part where the man who pulled the bag from her head had laughed at her, kissed her forehead, and said, “That’s for luck.”
She also left out the part where for the seconds between when she stumbled and when she began to run she had wanted her father so badly that she had expected to see him coming to her rescue. When she realized that wasn’t going to happen, that he wasn’t there, her feet finally broke into a run.
Daisy let out a small scream then, thin but cutting, like razor blades on flesh. Everyone except Robert jumped. Manuel jumped up and pulled Daisy toward the trailer’s door. Daisy looked back at Chandler, tears falling from her eyes. Another scream opened her mouth, but she was outside. Everyone exhaled the breath they’d held anticipating that blood-curdling scream.
Chandler noticed Robert looking at her with bored eyes. The look of indifference cemented into place.
“What else?” Robert asked.
“That’s it. I ran. I ran as fast as I could. I hid in Old Town, and Lola found me.” Chandler looked at Lola, who had gone pale, eyes pointed to the ceiling as if in silent prayer. “Lola...she saved me.”
Robert did not respond. He sat motionless, apathetic to the shrieks filtering in from outside. They all knew the sounds came from Daisy, but no one would acknowledge them.
“Very well,” Robert said, slapping the table with his hand, almost like a judge adjourning a court. “Rest up, my queens.” He left, saying nothing more.
After Robert left, Jen didn’t move or speak for a long time. She couldn’t. Her brain was busy thinking; it couldn’t afford to waste time on movement. Chandler hadn’t mentioned Danny. Robert had to know there was more to Chandler’s story, but she hadn’t told them about Danny. Did this mean they could trust Chandler? Did this mean that maybe they had an ally? She hoped so. Jen was sure she would need one.
Chapter Ten
They Will Come
Some thing had clung to Lola since she arrived at camp with Chandler. Lola felt as if something coated her, covered her in an invisible layer of trash that no amount of washing or showering would remove.
Lola watched Jen remove her boots and her black hoodie before she settled onto the seat at the table across from Lola. Her little sister, no longer little. Lola wanted to boss her around, tell her what to do, and how to do it, but only for the sake of protecting her, guarding her from the life they now led. How could she explain that to Jen? There was no way.
Jen picked up a mug of steaming tea that Lola handed her and took a long drink of it. The leaves that covered their trailer's windows rustled in the wind, and for once Lola did not bother to double check that it was in fact the wind moving those leaves and not something more ominous like a Popper.
“Robert knew about The Hills,” Jen whispered. “Not telling the rest of us is a dirty deed. I don’t even want to say anything out loud about it. If I do, it turns me into a liar, too.
Lola reached across the table and took her sister's hands. “Maybe he’s doing that to protect us. To protect everyone.”
Even as Lola spoke the words, she ached inside. She knew her words were false. She wasn’t sure Robert lied to protect them, but she would say she was sure if that would keep her sister from rebelling, from running off. To keep both sisters in the camp, Lola could pretend that Robert knew what was best. The camp so far had been safe for them, and she needed to keep her sisters safe.
Jen didn’t let go of Lola’s hand even though Lola knew she wanted to. As Jen had grown from little girl to woman, she didn’t like Lola being an encimosa. She hated Lola relentlessly hovering over her. Squeezing Lola’s fingers, Jen closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep, steadying breath, and spoke.
“Remember how mom would yell at us on Sunday morning?” Jen asked Lola, with a sullen smile on her face.
Lola blinked at her sister and replied, “She was always so mad.”
Both sisters smiled at that.
“Right!” Jen answered, startling herself with her own volume. She raised her eyebrows and looked toward the end of the trailer where Chandler and Suzy slept. “She wanted us to get ready for church, but we would never get ready on time. It made her late for Mass.”
Lola snickered and added, “We didn’t want to go to Mass. Dad didn’t go to Mass.”
“We were such jerks,” said Jen. She let go of Lola’s hands, picked up her mug of tea, and drank the last of it. She put the mug down on the table and looked at her sister with an expression of such exhaustion that it took Lola’s breath away.
“Robert steals Poppers and tries to cure them. I’ve never told you that, and that’s the same as lying. I’m a liar. Maybe everyone is,” Jen said and shook her head. Jen peered at Lola and asked, “Aren’t you shocked, disturbed, or what?”
“I know,” answered Lola. “I think everyone knows. The Poppers aren’t quiet. I’m not a teller, also. So, that means, I guess, I’m a liar as well.”
Jen licked her lips, and Lola knew that meant Jen was buying time or finding the courage to say what she wanted to say.
“Maybe… Maybe he can help mom and dad,” Jen said, and the expression she gave Lola challenged Lola to say no. Lola suspected Jen would not take no for an answer.
Lola smirked at her sister. “Really? ‘Help’ mom and dad by killing them? He kills all of them. Anyway, how is he going to get them out? They are in Nutri-Corp City.”
“Maybe this time he wouldn’t kill them. Maybe this time it would work,” Jen said, a bit too loudly, anger starting to show its face in her pitch. “Besides, I’d rather them be dead than Poppers, than YUM slaves.”
Silence sat between the sisters. Lola was shocked that Jen would rather their parents be dead than Poppers, and she suspected, again, Jen knew Lola would not change her mind. Neither spoke, both knew whatever came out of their mouths now would be hurtful and ugly words meant to stab at each other.
Jen looked at her older sister and issued another
challenge. “I will get them,” said Jen.
“And I’ll help her.”
The two sisters turned to see Chandler, not asleep after all. She slid into the booth next to Lola. Lola felt the knot that had formed in her throat at Jen’s declaration fall to her heart, where it sat, weighing her heart down, choking it.
Jen looked at Chandler as if really seeing her for the first time--her bright blue eyes and sparse brown hair. Chandler was a petite woman, but there was more to her. Jen could sense it. There was a “chingona” in there, a woman who would have Jen’s back in a fight. Jen also knew Chandler would be smart about it, too. She wouldn’t simply toss her fists around; she’d have a plan.
“You two are crazy stupid,” Lola blurted. “There’s no way you can get them out. There’s no way it would be safe. Besides, we can’t leave the camp for something like this. We only leave to glean. It’s not safe and...”
Lola gulped for air. Her hands had closed on the table’s edge, her fingers dead white from the effort.
Jen kicked her, not hard but enough to leave throbbing behind, and murmured, “You’ll wake up Suzy.” Jen turned and looked down the trailer’s short hallway. A small ball lay curled up under a big blanket, hair askew on the pillow.
When Jen turned back, Chandler spoke, her voice low but forceful, “Listen, I’ll help you get your parents. Then, you’ll help me. We’ll go to The Hills. We’ll tell them. We’ll do....” She balled her hands into fists. “I don’t know what, but we’ll do something.”
She stuck her hand out to Jen then, both of them ignoring Lola.
Lola wanted out of the trailer. Now. She slid across the booth, but Chandler didn’t budge. How could Chandler do this? Why would she do this? Didn’t she understand the only thing Lola wanted was to protect what was left of her family? And here was Chandler, offering so nonchalantly to put them in danger, not only from Nutri-Corp thugs but from Daisy, Manuel, and Robert.
Garden : A Dystopian Horror Novel Page 7