The Wanted (The Woodlands Series Book 4)

by Lauren Nicolle Taylor

  The small receiving room was lined with red-cushioned chairs. A small cubicle sat in the corner with a window perforated with small holes like gunshots. Denis went to the window and spoke through the holes.

  A person’s face appeared. “Yes?”

  “We need two passes to go downstairs, level four,” Denis demanded loudly, like she wouldn’t be able to hear him from her fish tank.

  The woman nodded and typed something into the computer, looking up and appraising me once, narrowing her eyes around my dirty, frozen blue ankles.

  “New inmate? I’ll need processing papers,” she said, taking her thick headband off, plucking hairs from it and dropping them on the floor, then sliding it back over her dark blonde hair.

  “No. Visitors’ passes.” Denis held up his wrist and pressed it against the glass. “Do you need anything else?” he asked, irritated.

  She flustered like a cat being brushed backwards. “Oh no, no, that won’t be necessary, Master Grant.” She hastily printed out two barcoded tickets and passed them through a slot under the glass.

  I smiled at her, trying to assure her she wasn’t in trouble, but when Denis turned his back to her, the woman scowled at me.

  So she should, I guess.

  I wonder if sunlight is the fundamental thing that keeps you sane. When it’s snatched away, you start to feel less human. You can’t remember. You’re a starved plant that can’t grow.

  We entered the lift and Denis scanned the passes. When the buttons lit up, he pushed four.

  “What’s on level four?” I asked, my hands seeping nervousness and dripping from my fingers.

  Denis kept his eyes forward and said, “It’s who. And I don’t know.” But his hand flicked and flattened like he was telling me not to ask any more questions. He knew something, but the cameras froze his tongue.

  I rocked back and forth on my heels as my stomach bottomed out and my heart refused to calm. The lift so fast, I thought maybe my organs were sitting in a disgusting pile at ground level.

  Within seconds, the lift stopped abruptly and the doors slid open with a chirpy ding.

  I stepped out, expecting moldy, rock corridors and single bulbs swinging in cages. Instead, clean, white halls glowed before my eyes. Long, fluorescent lights shone overhead. To our right, in front of locked glass doors, a plush, green lounge the shape of plump lips faced a bunch of screens. The small, carved-out area was painted in soft colors like beige or cream. The only way to describe the color was ‘blah’, as if they had mixed every dull color together to create one super-dull one.

  A guard sat on the couch, his legs spread wide. His attention was on a book rather than the screens. When he saw Denis, he shot up and saluted him.

  “Master Grant,” he said, flustered. He looked from me to Denis in confusion, and then he chose to ignore me. “Haven’t seen you in a long time. Are you taller?”

  Denis gave an easy laugh. “Probably, it’s been two years, Solomon.”

  Solomon laughed with him, his dark, bald head catching the light as he dipped down, grabbed a remote, and blacked the screens.

  “Yes. Not since Superior Grant brought you down here to scare you straight.” Solomon winked as he spoke. The wink too long, too familiar.

  Denis swallowed uncomfortably and fiddled with his earphones. “Ah, yes… anyway. Similarly, Miss Rosa is in need of a wake-up call.”

  I scowled at the guard; his jolly exterior was as unnerving as his thin face and nonexistent eyebrows. In their place were two bulges of skin like he’d stuck brown dough above his eyes.

  “Doesn’t look so bad,” I lied, trying to appear blasé. “It’s nicer than my actual home!” It was nothing compared to my home. The home I would never return to.

  Solomon snorted and I wondered whether you could fit a Ping-Pong ball up his nose, his nostrils were so large.

  “Tickets, please.” Denis held them out, and Solomon scanned them with a reader. There was a shake to his hands. “Do you want the tour?” Solomon said, waggling his soggy brow.

  Please no!

  “No thanks, Solomon, just open the doors, please,” Denis said, tipping his chin.

  Solomon pulled a chain from around his neck and lifted a small, numbered pad that was dangling from it. He punched in a code, and the doors opened.

  “Have fun!” he said, waving dorkily.

  We stepped over the red line painted in front of the doors, and they closed quickly after us. As soon as they did, I felt squeezed, like someone’s hand was around my throat. We were sealed inside a corridor smelling strongly of chemicals that barely masked other horrid odors like sweat, urine, and things I didn’t want to think about. Denis put his sleeve to his nose and started placing his earphones in, then he glanced down at me, remembering I was there, and muttered, “Sorry.”

  I breathed in deeply and repressed the urge to gag. This might be my home soon, if they let me live. I guessed I’d better try to get used to it.

  The thick, metal doors, spaced every few meters, were plastered with giant barcode stickers. You could see the tears and leftover paper from previous inmates underneath the current barcode. When you were a prisoner, they took your name as well as your freedom.

  We walked hesitantly down the aisle, and my eyes caught glimpses of the inmates through the wire-infused glass. Huddled in dark corners. Lying with their backs to the door, their knees pulled to their chests. They were shadows, thin and barely human.

  My skin shuddered over my frame loosely, like it was trying to escape my body. This could be my life.

  “There are no mics in here,” Denis said as he ran his hand along one of the doors and rubbed the microscopic dust between his fingertips. “I think they got sick of listening to all the screaming.”

  I imagined the desperate pleading of shadow people scratching at their last shreds of humanity.

  My dry mouth spat out a curse, making him flinch.

  How many people did they keep down here? It went on for at least twenty doors on both sides but not all were filled.

  A sharp bang made me jump.

  “Git, git, git, me out of here!” A muffled voice came from my left. I walked closer and saw a raring face pressed up against the glass, his eyes bulging with need.

  “Please, please, please…” he whispered softly like a song, like a prayer no one would answer. When I put my hand to the window, he suddenly head-butted it. “Devil bitch!” he screamed. I pulled back my hand like he might bite me through the glass or infect me with his insanity and shook my head in shame. Denis placed his hand at my waist and pushed me past the door. We increased our pace, the sad thump of his head hitting the glass continuing as we moved away.

  Before I could ask, Denis answered. “Level Four is for those who have lost the ability to mentally cope with imprisonment.”

  “You mean it’s for the ones who’ve gone crazy,” I snapped. I knew I would end up here after a few days of imprisonment.

  He nodded. “Look, they’re still watching us, even if they can’t hear us. Dad instructed me to put you in cell seventeen.” We stopped in front of the door. It had no barcode on it and must have been empty. “Just for one hour he said, to give you a scare. I have to do it, Rosa, or he’ll suspect something is up.” His eyes looked less sympathetic and more uncomfortable.

  I shrugged. What choice did I have?

  Denis leaned in to punch the code Solomon had handed him.

  “Does our attitude offend you?

  As do our glorious, defiant eyes?

  Coz we laugh like we’ve got the world’s riches

  Piled under the place we lie.

  You can test us with your swords,

  You can hurt us with their cries.

  But we’ll surprise,

  Surprise you when we stand up,

  When we stand up,

  Up together in our misery and our triumph

  You’ll hear it in our voices,

  You’ll see it in our eyes, eyes, eyes,

  In our eyes.
..” sung the prisoner.

  A voice from another time. A place I tried not to revisit because it hurt too much. My body shook with the fear that it might not be her. It shuddered at the thought that it could be her, because when my eyes slid to the small slide tag under the window, it read, Test Subject, in large, lazy marker.

  I rattled the handle, my sweaty hands slipping. I pushed against the door with my shoulder like I believed I was strong enough to push it open by sheer will.

  Denis snapped his hand back and stared down at me in shock.

  “What are you doing? I didn’t think you wanted to go in?”

  “Open the door,” I screeched, blowing my hair from my eyes, my limbs heated with anger and anticipation. “Open the damn door!”

  He moved around me and quickly punched in the code. The door clicked, and I barged inside, breathing hard, breathing clouds of pins and metal triangles.

  In the corner, sitting on a suspended bed with her legs out in front of her, a long plait hanging over one shoulder, was a thinner, sallower girl than I remembered, but her voice was as strong as ever. Out of key, but filled with a love for the music and the words.

  My lips quivered, two tears spoiled my cheeks as I whispered, “Oh Gwen,” in a voice, split open and chopped into pieces.

  Two concave eyes nested in purple and suffering glanced up, and my hatred for Grant scored my bones a little deeper. I was serrated, sharp, boiling with anger and disgust. Because he wanted me to come to this room and witness this scene… and he knew what it would do to me.

  JOSEPH

  I know what the end of war sounds like.

  It sounds like broken glass crashing against metal. Shrieking and cheering. It sounds like clapping and sighing at the same time.

  I know what the end of war feels like.

  It feels like relief trapped inside death. Wanting freedom. Knowing the cost of freedom. Celebration and agony wrapped together in bloody bandages.

  I should know by now what it is to lose someone, but it’s always fresh. Like a retractor, it opens old wounds again and again.

  I let my hands fall from my face and my ears began to ring dully. The lights slammed on, showing the devastation and the success. Torn apart by the blast, one gate hung pathetically from a twisted hinge, the other lay flat on the ground. People stopped for about five seconds before they flooded the opening in elation, knocking my shoulders in their haste to get through.

  The people of Palma were ready for this. They stepped between the bars on the ground like they were playing hopscotch. Most of the soldiers were already lined up against the concrete wall, disarmed with their hands on the back of their heads. The gunman who’d shot Nafari had been taken down too.

  I rushed to where I’d last seen him.

  The ground and wall were scorched black. There was no body. I started tipping up debris and calling out his name. “Nafari! Nafari!” I screamed, my voice disappearing, my ears thrumming.

  A hand gripped my shoulder. “What are you doing, my man?”

  I flinched and swung around, my fists up, ready to fight.

  “Whoa, let us help you,” the man said, his voice deep and tinny, his face scored with age. He had kind eyes, and I latched onto that.

  I tried not to cry as he waited for me to speak. The whole situation was pounding down on me like an enormous fist from the sky. “The man who freed you, who blew the gates is here somewhere…” I managed breathlessly, sweeping my arms over the piles of concrete and segments of iron, pointing to the vague area where I’d seen his smiling face before a blanket of white.

  “Nafari!” I yelled again.

  The man nodded and started yelling Nafari’s name. Somehow, word traveled, and soon there were twenty people upturning bits of gate and rubble and shouting his name. All the while, others were leaving the compound.

  I looked up at the where the gate used to be and saw Desh standing there, beaming. The others were picking their way over the debris too.

  “Here!” someone shouted.

  I ran to them, my legs grating against sharp rubble. A twisted arm protruded out from under a collapsed shed. The guard’s shed. I kneeled down and grabbed his wrist. A thin pulse blipped under my fingers.

  “He’s alive,” I said, relief pouring out of every pore in my body. He was alive.

  The others ran towards me, and we pulled the sheets of tin from his body. I gave him a quick physical assessment. He was bleeding badly, but he would live. Some men lifted him up and laid him on one of the sheets of tin. “We’ll take him to our hospital, friend,” one of them said.

  I lifted his dangling, broken arm up and placed it over his chest. He opened his eyes and managed a smile. “You did it, Nafari,” I whispered.

  “I said call me Naf,” he managed before his eyes fluttered closed.

  It had turned around in a matter of hours. Now we were sitting inside one of the cottages in Ring Eight with some residents of Palma. Laughing, drinking, and celebrating freedom.

  Pelo slapped me on the back. “This is what we wanted,” he said, sweeping his arm around the scene we could see from the window. Soldiers were being marched to a holding building. People were cleaning up the debris. The thing that made my heart swell was watching the children running between the legs of their elders. I memorized that sight and stored it away for later. I captured it in my store, the one I kept for Rosa.

  I sighed. I hadn’t been thinking of her. It had been good to have a break from the torture, but as soon as I let my mind wander, it always went straight back to her.

  “Does it hurt?” Elise asked as she dabbed my cut with antiseptic.

  Yes.

  “No.”

  Cups were offered and we cheered to Naf and to the huge success of the mission as we sat on borrowed dining chairs.

  Desh shook his head in disbelief. “I never thought we’d be celebrating inside the walls.” He clinked his cup with mine, and we drank. The cider flew down my throat and relaxed my mind. I locked the store for Rosa and filled my cup again.

  A Palma local knocked my shoulder and laughed. “Now that you have helped us, are you going to return to your home?”

  Home. To me, home was two people, one who might be lost to me forever. I was homeless. The bubbles swirled around my brain. They begged me to let it go. Forget her. Forget it all. I turned to the man and laughed too loud, too hard.

  “I don’t have a home, man, I’m homeless.” I hit my leg and chuckled more. “I’m homeless!” Desh’s shaking head caught my attention. “What? It’s true. Isn’t it? We’re all homeless.”

  Some of the men laughed, others ignored me. But I didn’t care. I had no grasp on what I actually did care about.

  Clink, drink, clink, drink.

  Someone patted my back gently, whispering, “I think you better slow down, Joe.”

  I shrugged them off.

  Everything seemed funnier.

  Everything seemed stupid.

  I was weightless, in muddy water, sinking lower and not caring. Laughing too loud and not caring. Allowing Elise to put her arm around my waist and lean her head on my shoulder and not caring.

  I let the alcohol carry me off into a dreamless sleep.

  ROSA

  Gwen lifted her head slowly from where she stared at her knees. A nightdress lay over them but every bone, every angle, of her jutted out like the dress was her skin and underneath was just a skeleton. She didn’t jump up to greet me, but I was already running towards her anyway. I rushed her and skidded into the bed, falling to the ground as I tripped over my dress.

  Denis shut the door on us as I whispered hoarsely, “Gwen, Gwen, what… how can… are you?” Each question was cut short with the axe of redundancy. It didn’t matter. She was here. She shouldn’t be here.

  She put her hands in my dyed hair and lifted it to the light.

  “What have they done to you?” She smiled and those familiar dimples formed high in her cheeks. But there was falseness to her humor.

  I
blew my relief through my lips like a whistle. “Oh, thank God! You know who I am.”

  She laughed sadly. “I’m not crazy, despite my accommodation. Apparently, singing is for loonies,” she said, winding her finger in circles at her ear.

  Was she crazy? I cocked my head to the side and examined her like crazy was something I’d be able to see on her face. But then I remembered—I knew exactly what crazy looked like. I knew what crazy sounded like. Crazy squealed and stomped its red, leather-clad foot. Crazy made you jump and turn in circles before you passed through the door.

  I doubled over, clutching my stomach, as Este’s squealing echoed through my head and I felt the knife going in and out, looping, never-ending.

  No, Gwen wasn’t crazy. But I started to wonder whether I was.

  Gwen touched my hand, and I snapped up.

  “You ok, Rosa. Where’d you go?”

  I laughed unconvincingly. “Sorry, I just can’t believe you’re here.” Why was she here?

  I wrapped my arms around her neck and pulled her forward into a hug. She returned it, but she was weak and didn’t move very well. I sat on the edge of the bed, my eyes roaming over her diminished frame. Her sunken eyes, her dirty face. She had a bag hanging of the edge of the bed, and I noticed a tube poking out from under her thin, cotton dress.

  “Are you sick?” I asked shakily.

  Her bare feet were a purplish blue. I pulled the blanket up over her legs and tucked them under her feet. Watching my hands closely, she shook her head. She couldn’t meet my eyes. I put my hand over hers, which was resting on her leg.

  “Gwen, what is it?” I asked, even though I didn’t want to know the answer. I wanted to grab her hand and run—push Denis aside, kick the guard in the groin or the face or whatever I could reach, and run. I could feel the bad answer; it was already carving a deep pit in my stomach. They hurt her. They hurt her like they’d hurt me, and then they’d hurt her more.

  Still staring at our hands touching, she said dully, “I can’t feel your hand on my leg.” A sob caught in her throat, and she coughed. “I can’t feel anything from my waist down. The bastards paralyzed me.”