The Slave Series

by Laura Frances

  “Come on!” he insists. “Get your coat.” He doesn’t wait for me to move. He grabs my coat from the nail by the door and takes the blanket from me, tossing it aside. Freezing air hits my body through the thin fabric of my sleeping clothes, and I shiver violently. In seconds the coat is on, and he’s grabbing my hand, pulling me outside.

  “Wait!” I gasp when we pass Norma’s door. I reach for the handle, but he stops me.

  “They’re gone,” he says impatiently, trying to drag me forward. I yank my hand free and push through the door. The unit is empty and dark. No wheezing or sighing or snoring. No Come sit by me or Everyone has feelings. Just silence.

  “Where?” I whisper. “Are they…?”

  “I don’t know,” he says behind me. “But I came here first. It was empty.”

  But I was just here. I was just sitting on that cot, holding her hand, feeling his breathing…

  Rapid gunfire echoes close to this building. He is grabbing my arm again, and we’re running. I can’t see because I’m crying, so I let him drag me. At the spiral stairs, I realize we aren’t alone. There are dozens, no, hundreds of Workers running silently along the high walkways, too fast beside rickety metal railing that will give if they fall into it. We join the mass exodus heading somewhere I don’t know. Maybe we’re finding a safe place to wait out whatever this is. Or maybe this is it—the thing we don’t allow ourselves to hope for.

  At the instruction of the men in Outcast clothes, we descend as quietly as possible. Shoulders bump. Women whimper. Children ask questions in loud whispers, and all the while I’m thinking of the guns. Where are the guns? Where are the Watchers who guard each level of the living unit towers?

  The wind eases the lower we descend, until finally we’re on the streets. My heart pounds, and every nerve ending in my body is waiting for the bullet that will kill me.

  Do not go outside at night. Not ever.

  We are herded into a back alleyway where we are told to run hard. Run as hard and fast as you can and don’t stop. Run toward the southern corner of the valley, the corner where coats and clothes and shoes are made. No matter what, we’re told, keep running.

  The crowd takes off at varying speeds. Hundreds of panicked faces. Mothers and fathers clenching children to their chests. My feet move to join them, but at the last second I look back in time to see the young man who found me in my unit pull a handgun from behind his back.

  A Watcher gun. One that requires a fingerprint to use. I look on in horror, frozen in place, as his index finger finds the small scanner, and the tiny light shines green.

  Liar.

  Only he never told a lie. He never told us anything. He only herded us into narrow alleys, and now they will kill us while we run. My father was wrong—they don’t need us. Not ever and not now. Now we are dead, and I am gullible.

  He looks up and sees me staring at the gun and the green light. My eyes shift, and now I see how bulked his arms are; how alert his eyes are; how confidently he stands.

  I see a trained soldier. A practiced killer.

  He takes a step toward me, and my body reacts, falling backward, my hands in the rain-soaked filth of the alley.

  “Hey!” he says, reaching for me. “Hey, it’s okay—”

  I shake my head, crawling backward, scrambling to my feet. The gun is hidden beneath his shirt, tucked into the back of his waistband again, and he’s crouching near the wall where I’ve slipped and huddled. The wall won’t open and receive me, no matter how much I beg it to. I can’t shrink into the brick, but I try. I shake my head again and again.

  “Listen to me,” he says, his face close to mine. His breath is stale mint, and his hand is warm through the knee of my pants. Shoes splash over puddles and bodies slip and stumble on one another. No one screams. No one knows that the men who are leading us are Watchers, and that we’re all as good as dead.

  “Look at me!”

  I look up. Through a blur of tears, I can see his frustrated face. He looks over his shoulder, looks over mine, then centers his eyes on me. Even in the dark, where we’re huddled in a shadow, I can see the bright blue of his eyes. Even in my panic, I wonder if that’s the color my dad was talking about.

  “My name is Edan,” he says, speaking slowly, carefully. “I was a Watcher, yes. But I’m your friend, and I’m trying to save you.”

  5

  Watchers are bad.

  They are the loyal henchmen of a heartless panel of leaders.

  They do not save people.

  They do not have feelings or hearts or feel pain or look at scared Workers the way Edan is looking at me now.

  And they do not have names.

  “You have to get up!” he insists, but it’s pointless. All I can see is my mother’s cot being folded; my father’s clothes shoved in a bag. One person doesn’t need three cots. One person doesn’t need three blankets. Little slave children don’t need parents or hugs or I love you’s. Those are the things the Watchers decide. And they are all guilty. Even the earnest-faced, dark-haired, young ones. I cover my face and try not to think of the children being herded into dead-end alleys. The rain has started again.

  Edan’s hands are on my shoulders, and he’s shaking me. “I don’t want to leave you!” he shouts over the thunder. “But I have to keep this moving!” Rain drips from his hair and flies from his lips. His look is urgent, nervous.

  Movement draws my gaze over his shoulder. Three Watchers in black are running toward us, only yards behind the last of the Workers from my building. They shoulder their rifles, plant their feet, and I don’t have time to exhale before the shots are ringing out. Workers are screaming, and the sound courses through my body. They run faster, but bodies are dropping, slamming into the asphalt.

  Edan pulls the gun from his waistband and turns, pushing his back into me. He shoots, again and again. I watch wide-eyed as the Watchers fall, one by one, gripping legs and shoulders and arms. He didn’t kill them. Because they’re his comrades? This time he doesn’t wait for me to agree. He yanks my trembling bones from the ground and shoves me forward.

  “Run!”

  I take off, forcing my unsteady legs to join the others. I slip over a patch of mud, and hands are lifting me. I stumble a few steps before regaining my balance. We run and we run, and we can’t ever stop because nothing is safe. Where do you run to in a valley surrounded by mountains and beasts? How do you escape in a maze of factories filled with Watchers? I don’t even know why I’m running. I don’t know what this is. Before long, I can’t breathe, and my throat is raw. But fear that a bullet will find me thrusts me forward. I catch the eyes of a toddler boy ahead of me, face twisted in terror. His fingers squeeze his father’s neck as he hangs on for dear life. Tears sit in his eyes. We stare at each other while I’m running and he’s bouncing on his father’s shoulder, both rain-soaked, both afraid. Then he’s falling and I’m gasping and the man’s body is skidding along the ground. Shots are ringing out again, and everyone is scattering, turning wrong ways and dropping like flies. I drop to my knees and press my fingers to the man’s throat, but there is no pulse. He’s dead.

  Dead. The word echoes in my skull. I can’t tear my eyes from him. He was just running—just a second ago.

  Screams bring me back. I snatch the bleeding child from the ground and turn a sharp corner, heading south.

  The farther I run, the heavier the sorrow grows, until I’m swallowing back sobs. I feel the invisible tethering of this boy to his father, and I know that soon it will grow too far. Soon it will snap and he will unravel. I hold him tight to me and I can feel his heart beating against my own. That’s good, because I wasn’t sure if he was alive. His face is bloodied, and he hasn’t cried. He must not be conscious.

  Sleep, I think. Sleeping is better right now. My parents would soothe me to sleep in order to spare me the stories they would share with one another after work.

  Go to sleep, Hannah, they would say. Dream about blue skies.

  But I wouldn’t
really sleep. I would lie on my cot and breathe slow and even, listening as they recounted the events of the day. Sometimes tears would slip from my closed eyelids, and a wet spot would form on my pillow. I would beg my body to fall asleep, but the images were too vivid in my mind. I was too curious, and curiosity stole my childhood.

  The Workers around me are slowing. Our breaths are gasping inhales. Once in a while, someone drops to their knees, only to be yanked back up and shoved forward.

  Don’t stop. They’ll kill us.

  I haven’t seen Edan in a long time. I wonder if he’s dead. I hope not, and that surprises me. I think of the Watchers and how they fell, clutching their limbs. I think of the way he shielded me from their weapons.

  Watchers are bad, I think. But Edan protected me; risked his life for me. It doesn’t make sense.

  I’ve been running too long, and my lungs are burning. I collapse against a wall and slide into a shadow beneath a fire escape, holding the bleeding child close to me. I lean the back of my head to the rough brick and close my eyes, wheezing. I never thought I’d miss my living unit, but I do. I never thought the solitude of those four walls would make longing burn in my chest and throat. My face falls into my free hand, and I sob beneath the cover of the stairs. I shiver in the freezing wind until my spine aches, the muscles in my back clenching and knotting. I can’t stay here. I’m not safe yet, and even if that doesn’t matter, the child isn’t safe.

  I watch the crowd of Workers scrambling past. A woman on the other side of the street falls into a wall and leans over, vomiting. A man falls four feet away from me, collapsing into a puddle, and rain water splashes on my face. Another Worker lifts the man beneath his arms and helps him to his feet. No words are exchanged. The two stumble forward together, borrowing each other’s strength. I press my lips to the child’s head, my eyes squeezed shut. The longer I sit, the less I want to move. My legs are numb beneath my thin sleeping pants. I have no energy left to use.

  Getting off the ground is harder than all the running. Pulling my spent limbs from the support of the wall takes all the willpower I have left. I fall into rhythm with the others again, my ears tuned to the darkness. My breath fogs in the air in rapid puffs. A boy ahead of me trips, and his body falls limp, his knees and hands slamming to the ground. He sits back on his legs and runs shaking hands over his face. He can’t be older than ten. I crouch beside him, gently touching his shoulder with my free hand.

  “We have to keep moving,” I say, but even as I say it, I think, why? He looks at me and my heart cracks. I feel it like a blow to my chest. His expression is all devastation and hopelessness and grief. My legs tremble in this bent position, and I grit my teeth to keep from moving.

  “Come on,” I say. “We’re almost there.”

  Almost where, I think. Almost to the southern edge? Then what? I smile a little when he looks at me, but I can see he isn’t convinced. Tears fall from his red eyes.

  “I lost them,” he cries. His face contorts, and his shoulders shake beneath my hand. “I think they’re dead.”

  “Who?”

  “My brother and sister. It was my job to keep them safe. I lost them.”

  I don’t know what to say. My mouth opens and closes, and I’m glad he isn’t looking and doesn’t see. I close my eyes for a second. When I open them again, he’s watching me.

  “What’s your name?” I say.

  “Sam.”

  “Come on, Sam.” There aren’t words that will make him feel better. I can’t promise him that everything will be fine, because it probably won’t. I can’t tell him that his siblings might have survived, because they probably didn’t. All I can do is get him to safety. I stand and pull him up with me. His frame is slight and wiry. Lifting him is easy. I place a hand on his back to reassure him that he isn’t alone—or for my own sake. I’m not sure which. We hurry forward, our feet cinder blocks, our steps sloppy.

  I haven’t heard gunfire in a while. I look around and I don’t know where we are. But when the streets open, I can tell which direction is south by the position of some of the larger chimneys that loom over factories. The longer we run, the fewer Watchers we encounter, and that confuses me. It’s as though they’ve evaporated, and the road has opened before us. The idea should bring relief, but I feel anxious instead. I don’t know what they’re planning. If they want us, they will take us. They will shoot us or capture us, whichever they prefer. Their absence only increases the terror.

  My corner of the valley is only eight miles from the southern edge. When I was thirteen, I was assigned to work one of the clothing factories after a wave of illness wiped out a large number of Workers. It took me three hours to get there each morning. By lunchtime I was so hungry I almost fell over waiting in line. A middle-aged man with dark skin and kind eyes would stand behind me, holding my elbow on the side by the wall. He took that risk for me every day, and now I wonder if I will see him when I get there—if I get there.

  The child in my arms weighs nothing, but after carrying his limp body for so long, my neck and shoulders hurt. The rain has let up, now only a light mist. The boy beside me cries endlessly as we rush. We’re running/limping/stumbling down a wide-open street, and I can’t understand where all the Watchers have gone. A digital clock mounted on the wall of a building reads 2:04am. When my gaze returns to the street ahead, my feet skid to a stop. All around me, Workers are freezing in place; some gasping or crying out or falling—defeated.

  We didn’t want this. We didn’t ask to be thrown into the streets and cut down like weeds.

  Fifty yards ahead, under yellow street lamp lighting, stands a row of twenty Watchers.

  Guns drawn.

  6

  I can’t stop my legs from collapsing and my knees from slamming into the street. I didn’t ask for this. I kneel in a puddle, and my eyes sting with tears. I hold the sleeping child to my chest and gather the boy to my side.

  Was this a game? I think. Some training exercise?

  And it’s over now. We’ve reached the end, and there was never win or lose for us. Only lose. The Watchers approach, pointing their guns at our heads and our hearts. Red lasers cutting through the air.

  They’re saying something, gesturing to one another, and the line fans out, surrounding us. I glance over my shoulder and feel the sudden punch of reality when I see how few of us have made it. And those who have are a mess of blood and mud and soaked to the bone—shivering.

  “Hurry,” I hear a Watcher say. “Inside. Come on. You’re safe now.” Someone takes Sam’s arm and he’s being pulled away from me, his eyes wide, begging for my help. I reach for him, but the Watcher has wrapped an arm around him, protecting his body, and I’m confused. My hand drops.

  I look around, and all the Watchers have lowered their weapons. They’re helping people off the ground, carrying women and children. I shake my head.

  A hand lands on my shoulder, and I whip around to see a pair of blue eyes and long, wet bangs. Edan crouches beside me, panting for breath, touching a hand to the toddler’s back.

  “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  It doesn’t make sense to feel relief at the sight of him, but I do. My body trembles as the full brunt of the last hours hits me. It all catches up, and it’s too much. Norma and Albert—gone. The toddler’s father smacking the pavement. Bodies dropping and children screaming. Guns aimed to kill us. All I can do is stare wide eyed at Edan, clutching the child to my chest, unable to catch my breath.

  “Hey,” Edan says softly, his palm pressing gently to the back of my head. He leans close, talking just to me. My father used to talk to me this way, so I would know I had his full attention.

  Little darling, my father used to call me.

  “Let me help you inside,” Edan says. I nod, because that’s all I can do. I nod when he asks if I’m okay again. I nod when he asks if I’m ready to stand up. I nod, because all the words are gone. I have none left that would do justice to all of this.

  I let him lift
me to my feet. I let him guide me toward the heavy metal doors of a large brick building. We enter into a dim hallway, with long tubes of light mounted along the ceiling. They flicker, making me dizzy. The warm air inside wraps around me, almost suffocating. A tremor runs the length of me, releasing the cold.

  The hall is crowded with drenched, bleeding bodies. The floor is slick with mud and rain water. We shuffle slowly toward an open doorway several yards ahead. Edan stays by my side, an arm wrapped around my shoulders. I peek up at him. He lifts the corner of his lips in a small, encouraging smile. I face forward again. I shrink into myself, drawing in my shoulders, clutching the toddler closer to me, but Edan doesn’t let go. Instead, he misreads my apprehension and draws me closer to his side.

  “You’re safe now,” he says.

  I nod.

  The crowd pushes through the open double doorway, pouring into a wide-open room that’s been cleared of equipment. Makeshift beds sit in rows, and Workers are being examined and treated by kind-faced men and women wearing white bands around their arms. I pause in the doorway, letting others push past me. Edan’s arm drops, and he puts a foot of space between us, watching me. I’m staring at the sight like I’ve lost my mind, and at the same time I’m searching the crowd for Norma and Albert. I hear a child cry out, and my eyes find Sam, huddled on the floor with a small boy and a smaller girl. I exhale, relieved.

  “What is this?” I breathe. Edan steps close to me again to let people through. He leans down and quietly says,

  “This is the beginning.”

  He faces the room, sweeping a hand in its general direction. “This is the revolution.”

  I shake my head, because that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

  They took the child from me.

  A woman in her middle years, with soft auburn hair and gentle green eyes, examined me for injuries in the large room they call the Infirmary. I had none, besides the broken toenails and dirty lungs, the burst blisters and hunger. She listened to my heart for several seconds longer than seemed necessary. When she straightened, her eyes were distant, thoughtful. I thought of my mother and the sick heart that ordered her death. Even though Edan said I’m safe, I couldn’t help wondering if she would tell the Council that I’m broken. I have my mother’s eyes. Maybe I have her heart too. I was given two white pills for pain and dismissed.