“I got a shot like a week ago,” Christian said. “I told you about that. Just a little one.”
“Okay,” Sadie said.
“I had some trouble sleeping last night,” Christian said. He lowered his voice. “I kept hearing these weird sounds.”
“Like what?” Sadie whispered back.
“Kind of like screaming, but like a gargling sound,” Christian said. Sadie felt her hands go cold. She knew something that made such a noise. “Some of the other patients said they’re doing experiments on zombies.”
Sadie didn’t want to think that the council would allow actual zombies to be brought into their community. Wasn’t that the point of the fucking walls? But then, the lab had its own set of walls…
“I wouldn’t worry,” Sadie murmured. “They seem to know what they’re doing here.” Sadie had to have faith in them, if they’d actually found a way to cure the zombie virus. If they’d saved her brother’s life.
Christian furrowed his brow, but he nodded. He wasn’t up for much more than a quick walk around the garden. The flowers were as vibrant as ever, even though it was much cooler out now and they were coming into late autumn. Leaving Christian on the bench, Sadie went and examined a rose bush nearby. None of the flowers seemed to even be wilting, there were no petals lying on the ground…
Sadie reached out and touched one of the pink roses. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d touched a flower, but it didn’t feel right to her. She turned to her brother. “Are these fake?” she asked. Christian shrugged.
Chapter Eighteen
It wasn’t quite curfew yet, but Johnny still wasn’t home. He hadn’t yet taken a chance on missing curfew since the strict new rule came down, but Sadie had a feeling that he was going to take the chance. They’d heard of random checks performed by the new guards, but they didn’t seem to be happening very often. Johnny thought the odds were actually in his favor.
So as Sadie sat out in the living room, failing to get into the book she was reading, she was relieved to hear the door open. But it wasn’t Johnny who came hurrying in. It was Manny.
As soon as Sadie saw her friend’s distressed face, she panicked. Something had happened to Johnny. He’d broken the rules, overstepped, and…
“What happened?” Sadie asked.
Manny’s face was beat red. Sadie couldn’t tell if she was about to rage or burst into tears. “They’re having an expulsion hearing,” she declared, her voice choked up.
Sadie shook her head. “This is crazy,” she said. “For having friends over and having a few drinks? Lots of people have been…”
“I’m not talking about that fucking traitor bitch Vanessa,” Manny plowed on. “They’re going to expel me.”
Manny was accused of conspiring to recruit young women to rebel against the council and the church. “These two guys from the council, that big fat tub and the ugly fuck, came in to the bike shop and took me back to the council building. They sat down and read all this stuff that was reported about me, that I’d said.”
“Like what?”
“They read off something that I said once about how, like, all the young people in the community should get together and gang up on the old timers. I mean, people say shit like that all the time. It was taken out of context.”
It was the kind of conversation they’d have at one of their little parties, after a couple of drinks, just complaining about the church and what they felt were the more tyrannical aspects of life in SC. That was before they knew what tyranny really was. Sadie found herself wondering, who would have reported that kind of thing to the council?
“They were getting ready to give Vanessa an expulsion notice,” Manny went on, her face getting darker. “Everyone knows that. Everyone knows that she’s always hung around some of the newbies, we’ve all been doing it. But she deflected onto me. And now…”
Sadie was quiet for a moment as she took in what Manny was saying. “They can’t expel you,” she whispered.
Manny’s rage gave way to her fear. “What am I gonna do?” Manny asked, sitting down next to Sadie on the couch. She put her head in her hands. “I can’t take Dina with me.”
Sadie felt sick as she thought of what this all meant. If Manny were expelled, she’d be all alone. Any adult could walk out of the gates of SC, if they wanted, and never come back. But they wouldn’t allow a child to leave. Sadie hadn’t thought of that before; she thought of Christian again, of her brief hope that they and Amelia might go away together, find a new place to be a family again.
“They can’t keep your kid,” Sadie blurted.
Manny laughed humorlessly. “Sade, we gave them all the power when we came here. We don’t have our weapons, we don’t have our cars, we don’t have shit except for what they give us.”
We can’t do anything for ourselves, Sadie thought. The same helplessness she felt when she lived under Glenn’s rule, when she had nothing that was her own.
Sadie felt a sudden burst of irrational anger at her friend. “You were the one who…”
Manny’s tears killed Sadie’s fury. “I’m sorry,” Manny sobbed. “It’s all my fault. Remy and everything…”
“No, hey, no,” Sadie insisted. She held her friend. The only other time she’d seen Manny vulnerable like this was after her brother’s violent death. “Listen, Christian would be dead if it weren’t for you. Okay? I would’ve had to…”
She would’ve had to shoot her brother in the head. If Manny hadn’t come back from SC to recruit them, if Sadie hadn’t learned that there was the possibility of a cure for the virus, she would have killed her own brother.
Manny sniffled loudly. “I know.”
“We don’t know yet if they’ll expel you,” Sadie pointed out. She rubbed Manny’s back, trying to soothe her.
Manny shook her head. She sat up and wiped her tears. “I don’t even care what happens to me now,” she said. “What’s the point?”
“Come on…”
“Dina’s the only one I care about,” Manny said. “They’re gonna assign her to another couple. I heard about it happening with this family that came in. The mom was infected, and when she died in the hospital, they sent their little kid to this childless couple. The dad wouldn’t get remarried. And with Hank…” Fresh tears streamed down Manny’s smooth cheeks.
Sadie wanted to feel like she could do something. “I’ll go in there,” she offered. “I’ll tell them that Sophie and Vanessa are lying, that they’re…”
Manny shook her head. “Come on,” she said. “They were just verifying what everyone knew. You wanna be on their radar, too?”
Sadie was already on their radar, and she knew it. She glanced over at the clock hanging above the table. “Shit,” she cried, jumping to her feet. “It’s almost nine. You gotta get home.”
Manny shrugged. “What does it matter now?”
“Come on,” Sadie insisted. “I’ll go with you. Did you ride?” Manny shook her head. Sadie might have chuckled if it weren’t 8:50. “You work in the bike shop, Manny, why do you not…?”
“If I never see another fucking bicycle again, I’ll die happy.” Manny frowned at her joke.
“Okay, well, I’ll walk you home, then,” Sadie said, leading Manny to the door.
“But then you’ll get into trouble,” Manny pointed out dully.
“I’ll be a little late,” Sadie admitted. “But I’ll just say I didn’t know the exact time.” Some young guard wasn’t gonna be a dick if Sadie was a few minutes late getting home, right?
They walked down the dark street together, sticking to the wooden walkway, though there weren’t many people out this close to curfew. It was about a mile to Manny’s house, further west near the beach. She’d be on time…Sadie would be out on the streets past 9.
“Sadie?” Manny asked suddenly when they were a few blocks from her house. “If they make me go, would you come with me?”
Sadie didn’t know what to say, and before she could even think of a respons
e, Manny added, “No, never mind. I didn’t mean that. Of course you couldn’t.”
“I…”
“You’ve got Christian,” Manny said. “He was the whole point of your coming here, right?”
Sadie nodded, but she wasn’t sure if Manny could see that gesture in the dark. “Yeah,” she said softly.
“And there’s Amelia…”
“We’ll never really be together,” Sadie sighed. “Not while we’re here.”
They said nothing more until they got to Manny’s cute little house. Sadie propped her bike on the fence for a moment and hugged her friend. She wanted to say something reassuring. She wanted to tell her that everything was gonna be okay. But she didn’t know that.
Sadie hurried home on her bike. The streets were cleared at this point. Fortunately, she didn’t run into any guards, and she thought she was home free. Until she walked into the entrance of her apartment building and found a young woman in uniform sitting just inside the door.
Sadie froze, and the young woman looked startled. “Uh…good evening,” Sadie offered.
“You’re out past curfew,” the young guard pointed out.
“I am?” Sadie decided to go with her plan of playing dumb. “What time is it?”
The guard wore a watch. They weren’t uncommon in SC, as there was a watch shop in town. It was run by a young man who survived post-war under his grandfather’s care. The old man was the one who taught him about the inner workings of old-fashioned timepieces when they hid out in their basement in rural Kansas. It was a way to stave off boredom, and the kid didn’t think it would ever have any useful application for him.
“Uh…a few minutes past nine,” the guard said with a frown. She looked at Sadie for a moment, and Sadie knew that the hardly-trained young woman wasn’t sure what to do.
Sadie bit back a smile. “Am I in trouble?” she asked. “I was just making sure a friend got home okay. She was a little upset at some news, so…” She smiled then, a sheepish one.
The guard looked around for a moment. “Um…I’ll walk you up,” she said. Sadie nodded. “Try to be in by nine next time,” the guard said, her attempts at sternness forcing Sadie to cough back a laugh.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I’m sorry, I really thought I was on time.”
“Don’t you have a watch?” the guard asked. “It might be the time to get one.”
“I do, I don’t know what I was thinking,” Sadie said.
As they approached Sadie’s apartment, she suddenly panicked. Johnny wasn’t home! And her fears were confirmed when the guard started examining the clipboard in her hand. She glanced at her notes and looked at the number on Sadie’s door. “Mrs. Charles?” she asked.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Sadie said, with another sheepish smile.
“Could I come in? Just to check Mr. Charles off my list,” she said.
“Oh…of course,” Sadie said. She knew that the guards weren’t to be resisted. Bob told them to just let the inspections happen…and there was an implied threat if they didn’t cooperate.
Sadie led the guard inside. She was holding her breath until she saw Johnny come out of the kitchen. “Hey!” he cried. “Where’d you go?”
“Uh, I was walking Manny home,” Sadie said. She glanced at the guard, standing slightly behind her, and forced another sheepish smile. “I guess I was a little late.”
The guard nodded to them. “Got you checked,” she said. “Have a good night.”
“Thanks,” Johnny called with a wave. When the door closed, he mumbled, “Fascist bitch.”
“You were cutting it pretty close there,” Sadie said.
Johnny laughed as he went back into the kitchen. “You’re the one who comes in late with one of the guards.”
“I’m sorry,” Sadie said. “Manny came over, and she…”
Johnny popped his head out of the kitchen. “Yeah, she told me,” he said. “Hey, sit down, I’m gonna have this whipped together in like two seconds.”
Sadie sat down at the small table and watched her husband at the stove. “What do you think?” she asked. “Are they really gonna do it?”
“Expel her?” Johnny asked. “Oh, yeah. They’re not fucking around anymore. They’re done playing nice to draw people in. Now that they’ve got us, it’s their game.”
“Maybe Manny was right,” Sadie said. “Maybe we should round up our generation and overthrow the council.”
“Yeah, right,” Johnny said. “They’ve got everybody in their pocket. It’s that fucking church,” he said.
“The new one’s coming up fast.” It was being built a bit north of town, where some of the newer houses were going up as well. Where they were getting the building materials, Sadie couldn’t fathom.
“They’re using that place to control everybody,” Johnny said, and Sadie certainly couldn’t disagree. She thought of something her mother once said, about the people who attended her father’s church. Sheep, she’d called them. Brainless sheep.
“We used to go to church with everybody from our band,” Johnny said as he brought steaming plates of chicken and vegetable stir-fry to the table. He chuckled and shook his head. “Me and Remy and Hank and our whole crew would get together, and we were all like a family. Mom loved going to church on the nights they sang Cree hymns.”
Sadie remembered hearing her late mother-in-law speaking their language with her husband when she used to go into the store. She’d once asked Manny if she’d learned the language, but Manny didn’t remember much of it. Johnny had gone to Cree classes sometimes when he was a kid, and picked up some from his parents, but it wasn’t like many people were speaking it in SC.
“Man, it wasn’t about controlling us,” Johnny said. “We were just getting together, you know? And when Manny was first telling us about this place, it made me think of that. Being a community. Not…”
“Brainless sheep?” Sadie offered. Johnny gave his wife a wry smile.
Johnny wasn’t touching his dinner. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“About what you’ve been doing?” Sadie asked. Though Johnny stayed home during curfew-enforced hours, he still gave her no indication of what kind of trouble he was getting himself into.
“I’m leaving,” Johnny said. Sadie put down her fork and stared at him. “I’m gonna leave with Hank and Manny and Dina. I’m taking them and getting out of here tomorrow.”
“How…?”
“Listen,” Johnny said, “I can’t tell you anything unless you agree to come with us.”
“Go…”
Johnny chuckled. “I love you, Sade. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else for my fake wife. And Manny, she loves you.”
“Does she know about this?” Sadie asked.
Johnny shook his head. “Hank would be telling her right now, I guess.”
“She asked me to go with her,” Sadie said. “I mean, when…if she’s expelled. I guess she…” It was a lot to take in. “God, I really wish we had something to drink.”
Johnny grinned and went to the kitchen. He had one last bottle of moonshine, hidden away under the sink. He poured out drinks for both of them. They sat and sipped for a couple of minutes.
“I can’t go with you,” Sadie finally managed.
“I know,” Johnny said. And like Manny, he didn’t try to argue with her about it. Maybe Johnny (and Manny, at last) could see what was obvious to Sadie all along. That she was meant to be with Amelia, no matter what.
“I have something for you,” Johnny said, getting out of his chair again. The little bottle of moonshine wasn’t the only thing he’d squirreled away. There was also a big bag of pot. He handed it to Sadie, and she gaped at it. It was easily a pound.
“Where’d you get this?” she demanded.
Johnny grinned again. He looked like his old self, the way he’d been before Remy died. Now that he knew he’d be leaving (yet how he’d manage it, Sadie couldn’t fathom), he was in better spirits than he’d been in for too long. “Com
e on,” he said. “You know I can’t tell you anything about that.”
“For my own good,” Sadie said, remembering their frustratingly cryptic conversations. “You’ve been planning this for a while, haven’t you?”
“It was always meant to be the four of us,” Johnny admitted. “And Dina, too.”
“You’re not gonna do anything dangerous, are you?” Sadie asked.
Johnny shot back the rest of his drink and shuddered a little as he set his glass on the table. “I’m not gonna do anything I haven’t done before,” he said.
*
The next day, Sadie didn’t tell her lover about everything she’d learned the previous night. She’d stayed up all night with Johnny, just talking. Talking about their life in SC, about La Ronge and the farm, about their lives before the war.
“It’ll never be like it was,” Johnny said. “We just gotta take the world and make it what we need it to be.”
“I guess that’s what people are trying to do here,” Sadie said.
Johnny snorted. “You think Bob and his son give a shit about God or anybody here? They’ve got it in their heads that they’re gonna build, like, a dynasty. They wanna mine for gold or whatever further south, and they want us making kids that they can train up into mining slaves.”
Sadie gaped at him. “Come on,” she said. “That’s just…”
“Hey,” Johnny said, throwing his hands up, “Not that long ago we would’ve said a curfew and total crackdown was crazy. Way too much. But now…”
That was only one of many things Sadie had on her mind that night, and all through the day at the auto shop. When she got off work, she rode home, and Amelia was waiting by the bike racks, as usual. “Hi,” she greeted her cheerfully. She looked around for a moment before giving Sadie a brief kiss.
They went up to see Christian, who had enough energy that day to get out and ride his bike. “It’s a bit chilly out,” Amelia observed. “Put on a jacket.”
In Another Life Page 22