The Wanted (The Woodlands Series Book 4)

by Lauren Nicolle Taylor

  He pulled back and made eye contact, shaking his head in disappointment. “Of course not, Joe. It’s not my information to share. But I really think we should talk about it.”

  I laughed bitterly, “There’s nothing to talk about, Desh. It’s over. Done.” I sliced the air with my hand.

  “But…” he started to say, but I stopped him.

  “Please man. Not now,” I begged.

  He let it go, but I could tell this wasn’t the end of it. I pulled him down to sit next to me and turned the screen on. It remained black. I shook it, panic dropping a curtain on my restraint. I was about to throw it against a tree when a man came to me, someone I recognized from the Monkey City.

  “It’s on standby,” he said, his breath sour and hot on my face. He snatched it from my tense grip and flipped it over, opening up the back and flicking a switch under the battery. “See.” He held the screen in front of our faces until it lit up.

  Icons gleamed in front of me. But when I went to the map, nothing came up. My frustration was boiling up inside me. I wanted to smash the thing against a rock until it was nothing but splinters of black glass. The man rolled his eyes and said, “Turn on the GPS signal.”

  Desh took it from me and manipulated the screen until he had what I wanted. A blinking, red light far away from here.

  I pointed to it and nudged Desh’s shoulder. “That’s where the boys are.”

  We stared at it for a few seconds before it was snatched from Desh’s hands.

  “Now turn it off before they all get a lock on where we are!” Gus snapped. He switched it off.

  Both of us sighed. Desh smiled. He’d been waiting a long time for this and now, Hessa was closer for him. Whereas I felt like a doll being pulled by the arms in two different directions. Soon the stitches would pop, and I’d be torn in two.

  ROSA

  I remember this feeling, my insides electrified, my head buzzing with healing. But I was safer.

  With the blue comes the memories. People I hold onto, people I need. Safer than me, I pray.

  I tried to dredge up a memory, a picture of when Joseph left me. The visions were muddy and blurred. Being dead must do that to you. Reviving your brain confused it.

  In my dripping-with-mud memory, Joseph said, “What did you do?” with fear and disappointment. His face dissolved in front of me, his hair swirling into a golden haze, and then he was gone. I couldn’t fill in those missing moments because I didn’t exist in them. And if I was somewhere while I was dead, the door to those recollections had been slammed and locked.

  I flushed the toilet again for good measure. The stall door banging into my forearm woke me up a little.

  These guards were rougher. Much more annoyed at the inconvenience of me than the ones I’d dealt with so far.

  One of them leaned his knee against the door and pummeled me with it repeatedly. “Hurry up!” he snapped. “Grant wants you escorted to his compound immediately.” He shoved the door anxiously, until another guard pointed out that I couldn’t get out until he stopped.

  “Well, what’s she doing in there anyway? Powdering her pointy nose?” he retorted, to cover his embarrassment.

  The other guard just sighed. I touched my finger to my nose, the movement fresh and fast. My senses were heightened, the smell of bleach stronger than before.

  Boots retreated and I un-wedged myself from between the toilet bowl and the wall, pulling the velvet curtain, heavy with dried blood, around my shoulders. Reality hit me hard, my naked body shaking like charged bones in a bag. I was alone.

  Snake-like, yellow-green eyes searched me up and down as I stood in front of them.

  “Let’s go,” the guard said, bringing his arm behind my back and nudging me as if I were a cow heading for the slaughter.

  “Can I have some clothes first?” I asked uncertainly, pulling the velvet a little tighter around my slim body. I was drowning in scungy fabric, all its grandeur replaced with leftovers of violence and pain, flaking blood and tears.

  They exchanged glances, and then one shook his head almost apologetically.

  “We don’t have time.” His bluish eyes were cast down like he really was sorry. I took it as kindness and let myself relax a tiny bit, only to have the other one grab me by the back of my neck and shove me forward.

  I pitched into the hall.

  “Walk,” he ordered. I wanted to salute him, but I couldn’t give up my grip on my curtain dress.

  The hall was now lit up end to end, a corridor of warm light swarming with people scrubbing, vacuuming, and carrying clumps of bloodied fabric. Stretchers were burdened with the bodies of men, their boots sticking out past the loose sheets covering them. I shook my head from side to side like the sad elephant in the zoo. Everyone was alive when I’d died. There was a big part of the puzzle missing. I dragged the twelve-foot-long curtain behind me like a nightmarish train, stepping aside to make way for the dead. My eyes trained on the shoes. No sneakers, no leather shoes, just soldiers boots. It reinforced my feeling that Joseph and Deshi were alive, and they were far away from here.

  Someone stepped on the cloth behind me and I snagged, the curtain dropping down my back. I clung to it, trying to gather the fabric up and sweep it around me. I turned to see who was standing on it. Two men were carrying a stretcher behind me and appeared very anxious at being held up. Two pointy, patent red heels stuck up right in my face like sharpened poppies. I expected them to twitch, the body to squeal. My face drained of color. Este was dead.

  I stood frozen, the atmosphere of absolute stress curling around me and poking me with sharp fingernails. I knew I should move and was surprised when instead of smacking me with their gun or shoving me again, one of the guards sighed loudly and began removing his jacket. He threw it at my gaping mouth.

  “Here!” he said impatiently.

  Thick, canvas cotton scratched my face. I grabbed the jacket and put it on as quickly as possible. It went down to my knees.

  The guard bundled up the curtain with a look of disgust and plonked it on one of the passing stretchers without even checking to see if he’d put it on a body.

  I blinked up at him. “Thank you,” I muttered.

  He rolled his eyes. “Just walk.”

  I cast my gaze down to the rich and colorful rug, mashed and scuffed from boot prints, and moved forward. My bare legs and feet jutted out like matchsticks.

  As we left the chaos of the hall behind, I wondered, What happened while I was dead? Everything was unraveling like a ball of string tied to a bird-in-flight’s leg. A Superior had been murdered! It was unsurprising these people seemed exasperated rather than mournful.

  For no reason I could understand, the guards would sporadically shove my shoulder, sending me sprawling forward. It was like violence was just part of their job description, and they had to pepper it in every now and then to earn their titles. I shivered in my loaned jacket and scowled at them. It only seemed to amuse them further. The guard in shirtsleeves seemed to be regretting his choice and, in between shoving me, he kept his arms hugged tightly around his chest.

  “Are w-we w-walking the whole way?” I asked through chattering teeth. My voice was so loud, it sounded like I had a megaphone pressed to my lips, another side effect of the healer. Cool air battered my legs, swirling under the loose jacket, and my feet pricked with the sharpness of the gravel.

  The snake-like guard’s eyes lowered to me as I jerked and shuddered in the cold. “We’re on lockdown, thanks to you and your friends, so yes, we have to walk,” he sneered.

  We marched down Este’s driveway towards two immense, ornate gates. The guards stopped and jumped in unison. Then, one of them laughed.

  “She’s not watching us anymore,” he said, knocking the other one’s shoulder lightly. “We don’t have to do all that crap now.” They laughed heartily at the demise of their loopy Superior and undid the padlock to the gate, pushing it open. I expected it to creak, but it opened gracefully.

  “Zoo?” th
e jacket-less guard asked the other.

  “Nah. Let’s go around. I can’t handle the stink tonight,” the snake-like guard hissed, his eyes perching over me like I was a bad enough smell.

  My eyes followed the disturbed path, the footprints, smudged lightly into the stones. One of those could have been Joseph’s, Deshi’s… I bent down to touch it without thinking and got a boot in the back.

  The one in shirtsleeves, his voice calmer, humor hiding somewhere in there, pulled the other guard back. I turned to look in his eyes, the garden lights leaving them steel colored, almost grey.

  “Leave her alone,” he said quietly but forcefully. I started to hope maybe they weren’t all bad, that they hadn’t had all the humanity sucked out of them through their Guardian training. But then he laughed and said, “She’s going to suffer plenty once Grant has her!” My heart tumbled into the sharpened ground and was punctured by the small rocks’ tiny teeth.

  Snake eyes chuckled. “That’s for sure!”

  At least they stopped kicking and shoving me as we made our way towards Grant’s compound.

  We arrived at the outer fence of the zoo, ten feet high and grazed with barbed and electrified wire. We followed the fence’s perfect curve, the guards’ boots crunching down on pure white stones the color and feel of giant rock salt, edged in by neatly cut, one-foot-high stone walls. My bare, aching feet made little sound.

  The Indian elephant’s sad, lamenting trumpet sailed over the walls. I clasped my hands together and tried to face forward. The hours between Joseph and me lay in front of me like giant planks of wood. A barrier. What had I got myself into?

  As we left Este’s quarter, things changed dramatically. A neat line and gate defined the transition from one segment of the pie to the next. A single-bulb lamp hung overhead. The white gravel changed to a brick path, with round halos of light built into the bricks. The gardens changed to spiky grasses and architectural plants, pointless trees with no purpose other than to look imposing. They leaned over the path, their branchy fingers almost touching, forming a low, lit tunnel.

  I knew without being told that this was Grant’s section of the compound. It was far more orderly than Este’s was. Each field fenced neatly, each section of garden aesthetically perfect, but there was no feel of life. While Este’s seemed like it was a home for madness and nonsense, Grant’s was stiflingly regimented.

  As we rounded the curve, Superior Grant’s house came into view, all angles and sloping roofs, sitting atop a grassy, man-made hill and lording over the ground below. It was nothing like Este’s and nothing like home. The whole front was glass. My eyes scanned the floor-to-ceiling windows, and I jumped when I saw that Grant’s shadow graced one of them. He sat in his wheelchair, staring down at me, his apathetic expression coming into focus as we neared the house. Warm, golden rectangles of light shone down on us from inside, and I found myself stepping over the shadows like they were solid. There was no gate to pass through, no extensive security measures. We walked down a short driveway and straight into an underground garage. The doors were already rolled up, waiting for us to enter.

  Snake eyes pressed a button on an intercom on the inside wall and hissed, “Where do you want the, err, her?”

  Grant’s voice sailed through the speaker and itched at my ears with its twangy sound. “First floor, second guest bedroom.”

  Guest? I trembled at the thought.

  “Lucky girl,” the guard snarled.

  I turned around slowly and spoke, my voice still wire-brushed and new to me. “Why am I not going to a prison? What does he want from me?”

  They both laughed and didn’t answer. I hoped it was because they didn’t know.

  One guard pressed the up button on the lift. The doors opened, and I caught a flash of hot, red, and shining chrome through the double doors of the lift before they closed. I leaned towards them in curiosity. The guard grabbed my shoulder and pulled me away from the view.

  “Stand back,” he said warily, his eyes searching out the corners of the lift. They both behaved as if they were being watched all the time. They probably were.

  The lift glided upwards, strange moaning music playing, the singer caught in a trap he couldn’t get out of by the sound of it. One guard clicked his fingers in time. The doors chimed and opened. A female guard stood to attention in front of the lift, jumping to life when she saw me, her red roots poking through her light brown dye job shone hopelessly under the round lights punched into the ceiling. She leaned in, grabbed my arm, and squeezed, yanking me out of the lift and away from the men.

  “Thank you for delivering Miss Rosa.” She eyed my clothing or lack thereof. “I’ll have your jacket cleaned and returned to you.” They nodded, and I caught one of them anxiously pressing the down button. He wanted to get out of there.

  “Keep it,” he shouted nervously as the doors closed on his narrow face.

  I found myself missing them as soon the door closed. This woman’s tight hold, the sleek décor, the fact that she called me Miss Rosa, were all more unnerving than the outward hostility and punches in the back. That, I understood.

  She marched me down a hallway, lights glowing along the floor, and carpet the color of bruised lips and blood sinking between my toes. I looked up to see a large painting of a can of tomato soup and laughed. The squeeze got tighter, and her expression pulled her face in like purse strings. We came to a polished, wooden door with copper wall lights on either side. The woman, Red, as I had already nicknamed her in my head, punched in numbers on the keypad and scanned her wrist. The door unlatched, and I was dragged towards the bed.

  My bony butt sank warily into the most comfortable mattress I had ever touched. A satin bedspread swirled around my dirty legs, which were striped with dried blood, the patterns almost wanting to eject me so I didn’t sully their beauty. I gazed down at my hands, clasped over the heavy canvas jacket. The tarnished buttons and frayed pockets were almost a comfort. I put my hand into one of the pockets and fished out a folded piece of paper. Hope flowed through me too quickly, warm and golden. I had to clamp down on these feelings before they destroyed me because as I opened the paper, while Red was busy locking the door behind her, the short list of items caused my heart to shrivel inside me along with my faith. I remembered the last time I’d read a list like this. Black words scrawled on lined paper encompassed death, love, hope. This was just a grocery list: Tinned tomatoes x 2, rice, beef, tampons. I quirked my eyebrow at the last item. The soldier had a wife and maybe a daughter. It was something I needed to remind myself of—everyone had a family. Something, someone to lose.

  Red huffed, standing over me with her hands on her hips. She held out her hand for the note, and I gave it to her. She scrunched it in one hand without reading it and shoved it in her pocket, her skirt so tight on her hips that I could see the little ball of paper bulging under the fabric.

  Eyes wide and critical, she drew a breath and lunged at me.

  I leaned back on the bed, frightened of this enormous woman pressing her breasts into my face. She dragged her fingers through my hair, and I struggled not to suffocate.

  “Sit up!” she barked impatiently. “I’m not going to hurt you, child.”

  Still naked under the jacket, I felt vulnerable to say the least, but I sat there like a good girl, like someone else, and let her run her hands through my hair, inspect my eyes, and pinch at my skin like I was an animal on show. Because I promised. Even though every part of my dark, scrawny body wanted to smack her so hard I’d leave a bony handprint on her cheek, I knew I wouldn’t get far.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, my voice muffled through a curtain of my own hair.

  She looked over the top of my head as she replied, “Getting your colors right.”

  “My colors?”

  “Yes. What you need to change, what you can keep.” What I could keep?

  I gripped the quilt on either side of me like it was cement that could hold me in my place. Maybe I could hit her a little?<
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  She seemed indifferent to my reaction and continued inspecting me, but when she made a move for my jacket, I put my arm up to block her, pushing back at her assault. I wasn’t doing this again.

  Her large head gave a tiny shake. I didn’t have time to react before she whipped her hand into her breast pocket and tapped a black device to my arm. My body jolted, feeling and sounding like it had cracked in half like a dry branch.

  My eyes rolled, my speech thick in my mouth. “Wha… why…?”

  Her fuzzy image became larger in my eyes until she filled the whole room. Her thunderclap voice slammed against the walls.

  “You didn’t do as you were told.” The words ‘do as you were told’ echoed and ran down the walls like dripping paint.

  My arm stung with the familiar prick of a needle. My body slumped and gave in to a familiar feeling. I was right back where I started.

  GRANT

  I watched her treading or rather storming towards my garage. The look on her face was not what I had expected, and it irritated me. She should be afraid, trembling. Uncertain. Instead, her large, uneven, young eyes took in my home, my world, seeming more curious than afraid. That would soon change.

  I cursed my inability to escort her myself. I imagined my hand clamped around her thin arm, my legs strong and quick. I would have dragged her here and heard her whimper. My ghost foot stamped and of course, there was no impact, no sound. But soon, I would walk again. I could almost feel my height growing. I would look down on everyone. Never again would people stoop to meet my eyes. It had not been so long that I couldn’t remember what it felt like to stride through my own garden, to stand above most. Now, I looked up and despised my view.

  She dragged her bare feet through my perfectly raked stones, her head up, proud. Stupid. She didn’t know. She would soon understand. I was not Este, crazed, obsessive, and I certainly wasn’t Sekimbo, a drunk, or Poltinov, stupidly agreeable, old, and clueless. My turn was coming. My way was the only way.