by Tarah Benner
There was a long, heavy silence. The other daughters kept glancing from Mercy to Lark, waiting to hear what Lark’s punishment would be.
Finally, Mercy spoke. “You’re right,” she said. “Portia is the only witness.”
Lark felt a flutter of hope, but she didn’t let it show on her face.
“And while I do believe her . . . I’d like to hear it straight from your lips.”
Lark swallowed.
“That . . . That would bring me peace.”
It took a moment for Mercy’s words to sink in, and when they did, a stricken look flashed across Portia’s face. “What?”
“I’m sorry, daughter,” said Mercy. “But I want to hear her say it. I want her to admit that she killed my son.”
“But —”
Mercy’s eyes flashed with anticipation. “Maybe a few days in the pit will make her more forthcoming.”
An icy chill whipped through the trees. The daughters broke into a frenzy of whispers, and Lark had to swallow to keep her heart from beating out of her throat.
The pit was one of the harshest punishments Mercy ever doled out. It was a cruel alternative to whipping when pain and humiliation weren’t enough. Lark had only known a handful of women who’d spent more than a day in the pit, and they always emerged weak, pale, and rattled.
Lark shook her head, too numb to speak. Daya and another of the daughters grabbed her by the arms. She dug in her heels, but they just made tracks in the mud.
Lark screamed, but it didn’t matter. They dragged her away from the river — back through the underbrush and up the hill. Stray tree branches whipped across Lark’s face, and her skin burned where the daughters gripped her arms.
Her feet slipped and skidded over wet branches and leaves, and she felt as though her body was rejecting the air she was sucking into her overtaxed lungs.
Fighting her sentence wasn’t rational. She had nowhere to run — no means of escape — but still her body resisted. She was about to be locked away and discarded — trapped in the pit until she confessed or died.
After several minutes, they broke through the trees, and the women gathered around Mercy’s compound came into view. Lark continued to fight against her captors, but she knew deep down it was useless.
At one point, Lark saw Bernie’s stricken face staring out their window, but she was too panicked and desperate to call out to her.
When the colony began to shrink in the distance, Lark went limp in the daughters’ grip. Rain was still pelting her face and neck, and her clothes were soaking wet. They hung heavily on her frame like a second skin, chilling her to the bone.
There was no stopping what was about to happen. Her best strategy was to stay calm and avoid expending any energy.
Lark knew where they were taking her. The pit was located on the edge of San Judas — beyond the fields, behind the outbuildings, in the desolate stretch of dirt where nothing but sage would grow.
When the buildings and trees disappeared, the daughters came to a halt. Daya held Lark while the other woman rolled a heavy rock away from the entrance. It was sitting on top of a sheet of metal, which was positioned over the opening of the pit to keep animals from falling inside.
Lark’s heart tripped wildly in her chest as Daya heaved her around and pushed her toward the hole. She gave Lark a strong shove, and Lark felt the ground disappear beneath her.
The bottom dropped out of her stomach as she plummeted toward the ground, but she didn’t have any time to panic.
A second later, she hit the bottom, but it wasn’t as painful as she’d imagined. A musty old mattress had broken her fall, but a broken spring had stabbed her in the spine.
She was lying in a hole fifteen feet deep and seven feet across. Balled up on one side was a moldy blanket, and on the other, someone had dug a hole for human waste. There was no food and no water — just a hole and a bed to die on.
The rounded walls were too far apart to shimmy and much too smooth to climb. The soil was almost solid rock, which made digging any handholds impossible.
There was no escape.
The daughters took one last look at Lark and walked away, leaving the cover off the entrance.
Rain continued to fall, and Lark forced herself to move. She propped the mattress against the wall to form a lean-to and grabbed the threadbare blanket off the ground. It was already damp and paper thin, but it was better than nothing at all.
Lark crouched under the mattress to escape the rain, hugging her knees to stay warm. She swayed on the spot and closed her eyes, trying not to cry as she took stock of her predicament.
Apart from the coyotes, she was alone. No one was coming to save her. No one could.
She had no food. She had no water. She could survive a few days at most.
But no matter how desperate the situation became, Lark refused to curl up and die. She would not surrender. She would not confess. She wouldn’t give Mercy the satisfaction.
As Lark sat there in the pit, shivering violently, she occupied her mind with a single thought. It filled her head and rang in her ears like a delirious Spartan chant: I will not die. I will not die. I will not die in a hole.
twelve
Soren
“Three days . . . Nobody’s seen that girl in three days.”
“How do you know?”
“’Cause I got connections — that’s how.”
“What kind of connections?”
“Hudson tells me things, okay?”
“Like what?”
“Like that Mercy throws girls in a pit and leaves ’em there to starve.”
“Damn. That’s cold.”
“That’s nothing compared to what she used to do back when she was slingin’ smack. I heard Clarence telling Marcus that Mercy used to take a blowtorch to guys when they came up light.”
“No way.”
“Will you two shut up?” snapped Soren.
Wolfe and Simjay went quiet. Soren had run into them on his way back from the woods, and they were walking toward the square together.
Like the rest of the men in the colony, Wolfe and Simjay were engrossed in rumors about Zachariah’s secret lover and the girl Mercy had singled out to punish for his death. But after several minutes of gruesome speculation about what might have happened to Lark, he couldn’t take it anymore.
“What’s your problem?” asked Simjay.
“Nothing. I just think it’s a bunch of bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit,” said Simjay. “Hudson told me.”
“Well, you don’t know that girl was the one Zachariah was seeing,” Soren snapped.
His tone was harsh enough to make the other two shut up. Soren had been sick with worry for three days straight.
The night Zachariah was found, he’d walked down to the river after the others had gone to bed. He’d been hoping to see Lark, but she wasn’t there.
Instead, he saw Mercy and three of her daughters hunched beside the river, weeping and moaning. Lying in the mud on the other side of the fence was Zachariah’s body.
The next day, he’d heard that Mercy had caught a girl with long dark hair and a tattoo of a bird down by the river.
He felt sick with guilt. If it weren’t for him, Lark never would have been down there in the first place. Now Mercy thought she’d been fraternizing with Zachariah and that Lark was the reason her son was dead.
Soren didn’t know much about the pit, but he’d heard the Peters brothers talk about it once or twice. Every time he thought about Lark there, he felt as though someone was sitting on his chest.
Two or three times a day, he went down to the river to check on the bottle he’d left for Lark. It had been stuck in the chain links for two whole days, but whether Lark was still languishing in the pit or just too scared to return to the river, he didn’t know.
By the time Soren and the others reached the square, the inmates who’d been first in line were already finished eating. Most of them were loafing around small campfires
, talking in anxious voices and trying to trade weed and cigarettes for extra food.
In less than an hour, the Peterses’ heavies would be out, hustling people back to their shanties before sundown. Normally they were allowed out until nine, but since Zachariah’s death, the brothers had implemented an early curfew.
Everyone was on edge, and random fights were breaking out even more than usual. Between the food shortage, a lack of field work, extra time cooped up inside, and Hudson’s threats, tempers were running high.
After Soren received his meager helping of beans and potatoes, he scanned the crowd for Shep. Since there wasn’t any planting to do, Shep had been sent to muck the latrines and snake out the shower drains. Soren doubted that Shep would want to talk about Zachariah and his supposed lover.
Soren finally spotted him sitting by himself on the edge of the square. He looked tired and supremely ticked off.
Soren caught a strong whiff of shit the moment he got within three feet of Shep. Shep jumped when he sat down, upending his empty bowl.
“Sorry,” said Soren.
Shep shook his head, still looking agitated.
“Jeez. Were you mucking the latrines or swimming in them?” asked Soren, trying to lighten the mood.
“Fuck off.”
“What’s the matter? I mean, aside from the obvious.”
“Nothing,” said Shep.
“You can tell me,” said Soren, leaning forward so he could see Shep’s face.
Shep let out a heavy sigh but still didn’t look at him. “I just keep expecting one of Hudson’s guys to . . .”
“What?”
“You heard what he said,” mumbled Shep. “He’s coming after one of us. And we’ve got every reason to think it’s gonna be me.”
Soren shook his head. “I don’t know . . . Hudson was probably bluffing. And with Zachariah gone, the brothers are weak right now.”
“Exactly,” said Shep, his eyes darting around the square. “Perfect time to scare us all straight by killing off people at random.”
“Come on,” said Soren. “Two deaths in one week? If another guy suddenly croaks, the prison administrators are bound to investigate.”
But Shep didn’t appear convinced. “I’m coming with you,” he said suddenly.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Soren shook his head. “You’re getting out in a few months. You’ll be a free man.”
“Not if I’m a dead man first.”
Soren frowned. “You realize what you’re saying, right?” He lowered his voice. “If you come with us, there’s no going back. You’ll be on the run for the rest of your life.”
Shep shook his head. “It’s not like I’m a serial killer. They’ll quit looking eventually.”
“You don’t want to do this.”
“You gonna stop me?” Shep asked, turning to Soren with a look of challenge in his eyes.
Soren stared at him. Shep was genuinely afraid for his life, and it was clouding his judgment. If he came with Soren, he’d be a fugitive forever. But if he could make it another six months at San Judas, he’d have the rest of his life ahead of him.
“No,” he said finally. “I can’t stop you. Just . . . think about it, okay?”
“I already have,” said Shep. “And anyway, you’re gonna need all the help you can get leading the idiot brigade.”
Soren laughed, but it felt hollow. His stomach was still in knots. Shep was his best friend. He couldn’t leave him behind if Shep wanted to go, but he didn’t think it was the right move.
And then there was Lark. He hadn’t said anything to the guys about her, but he’d already made up his mind: He was getting out of there, and he was taking Lark with him.
He’d seen the way she stared at the birds soaring above the trees. She needed freedom more than anyone, and he needed her. Soren didn’t know why exactly, but he could feel it in his gut. It was instinctual — the way the body knew when it was hungry or tired.
“So when do we leave?” asked Shep.
“As soon as there’s a power outage.”
“How do you know there’ll be one?”
“I don’t,” said Soren. “But we just need two or three days of cloud cover. After that, there won’t be enough juice left to power the fence. That’s our shot.”
Shep didn’t say anything right away, but Soren felt the bench move as he shifted in his seat.
“What about the guards?”
“They’re dropping like flies. Another one went missing this morning.”
“And the outer wall?”
Soren let out a long breath. “Up and over.”
Shep’s eyes crinkled in concern. “That seems, uh . . . pretty vague.”
“I’ve got it covered, all right?”
Shep swallowed, and in the flickering firelight, Soren caught a waver of doubt.
“Where are we gonna go?”
“Mexico. We just have to make a quick stop on the way to get my brother.”
Shep nodded, and Soren’s stomach twisted with guilt. It was his fault that Hudson was targeting his friends. It was his fault that Shep was preparing to give up everything to flee and that Lark was doing time in the pit.
“You sure about this?” Soren asked again. “Once we climb over that fence, that’s it.”
“I know.”
“If we get caught, we’re going to max. You could be looking at more time on your sentence.”
“I know,” Shep growled, more forcefully this time.
They fell silent, Soren running through their plan in his mind. They didn’t know it, but Shep and Lark had both stumbled into a problem for which Soren had only a hazy solution.
He felt confident that he could foil all the other security measures, but his plan for getting over the twenty-foot adobe wall was sketchy at best.
Tunneling under it was out of the question; he’d worked dozens of odd jobs before he went away, and building retaining walls had been one of them. He knew there had to be a footer set deep in the ground, and under that was solid bedrock. They didn’t have the time or the equipment to dig their way through, so climbing over the wall was the only feasible option.
A few weeks before, he’d lifted a broken pitchfork and some bedsheets from Salvage. He intended to make a grappling hook that could get them over the wall, but climbing up and down with five people was extremely risky, and he still didn’t know if his grappling hook would work.
“How are we gonna get out of here once we’re over the wall?” Shep asked, drawing Soren back to the present.
“We need to steal a car.”
Shep’s eyebrows shot up toward his buzz cut. “You want to steal a car . . . from the prison?”
“I’ve been talking to Hugo,” Soren added in an undertone. “Getting the keys would be best, but —”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Got a better idea?”
Soren glared at Shep, but Shep didn’t fold.
Hugo was a greasy thug serving twelve years in San Judas for multiple counts of larceny. He field dressed wild game and disposed of the animal carcasses, so he and Soren crossed paths on a daily basis. Hugo never missed a chance to brag about all the cars he’d stolen and how he’d done it.
Soren knew there were a lot of things that could go wrong. But staying in San Judas for another six years wasn’t an option, and this was his best and only chance to escape.
As the last rays of sunshine disappeared behind the trees, the men got up and started walking back to their shanties.
“Well?” Soren asked, trying to gauge how likely Shep was to bail on the plan last minute.
Shep swallowed several times, as if his throat had gone dry. “I’m still in.”
“Hey!” yelled a voice from a few yards away. “Are you two deaf or just stupid?”
They looked over and saw the bulky outline of one of Hudson’s men, who was herding people back to their shanties.
“Get you
r asses inside!”
“We’re going!” Soren yelled, slowly getting to his feet.
He and Shep headed toward their shanty, Soren’s stomach still doing nervous cartwheels.
Despite what Shep had said, Soren had the feeling he was going to chicken out at the last minute. Shep was brave and blustering in the lead-up to any confrontation, but he had no follow-through. If Shep took the time to weigh the risks of leaving, there was a good chance he’d talk himself out of it.
Simjay caught up with them halfway across the square. Finn was shuffling a few paces behind him, with Wolfe and Axel bringing up the rear. They were all talking in low voices, and Soren knew they were still discussing Zachariah’s secret affair.
Soren was too keyed up to listen to them speculate anymore, so he ducked around to the back of their shanty and found the stolen trash he’d hidden in the weeds.
They all fell silent when he came back inside holding the broken pitchfork like a trophy. Somebody must have broken the wooden handle in two, but the steel tines were too valuable to discard. The blacksmith in Salvage could separate the tines from the remaining handle and melt down the metal to be used for something else.
“What’s that?” asked Simjay, staring at Soren as if he’d lost his mind.
“Our grappling hook.”
The others gaped at him blankly.
He tossed the broken pitchfork into the corner and approached Shep on his bunk. “Give me a hand, will you?”
Shep looked puzzled but stood up and waited for instructions. Soren had been working out how to shape the tines for days, but the answer had been right in front of him.
All of their bunk beds were simple metal frames with buckwheat mattresses. They were put together with fitted pieces of metal tubing secured with short little pins. Soren heaved his musty mattress off and threw it under the bottom bunk, and a spark of curiosity ignited in Shep’s eyes.
Soren popped the pins out of the middle sections of the bunk, and Shep helped him lift the top frame away from the bottom. With a creak and a bang, half the frame lifted free, and after a little coaxing, the other half came loose, too.