Escaping Eleven (Eleven Trilogy)

by Jerri Chisholm

  No. The supply closets are hardly ever locked; the gun would not be secure. They are small, with few hiding places. They are frequented by the cleaners and by those up to no good.

  I tap my finger and thumb together again, faster and faster now…

  Suddenly, I am still.

  The storeroom.

  Essentially sealed under two passcodes, it is the most secure place in the entire compound. A massive room with an infinite number of hiding spots. And only a few visitors.

  Now I am running, and I don’t stop until I reach the kitchen. I punch in the passcode and slip inside, expecting to meet resistance. Already I have a story—that I dropped something in the storeroom while on a job tour—but it proves unnecessary. With dinner nearly over, the kitchen is quiet, lights are off, and I pull out my flashlight to see. Then come the stomping of thousands of boots overhead, rattling pots and pans and making blankets of dust fall from the ceiling.

  The cafeteria runs above. The Means are making a show of solidarity. That is good. They won’t turn on one another—they won’t finger Sully, if he’s even still alive.

  Inside the storeroom, I aim the flashlight at the nets. The first three are frequented by the kitchen staff, which means I must go higher. But just as I locate the ladder, I hear something from the other side of the storeroom door.

  Voices.

  I jump onto the bottom net and crawl to its middle, where I lie facedown on what looks like giant bags of salt.

  Staff, most likely, returned to the kitchen.

  There’s no time to climb higher, and so I begin shifting one bag of salt after another—no easy task, given the close proximity of the net above. Finally, with sweat curling my hair, I wedge the gun nose down between the bottom two bags and restack around it.

  There.

  Completely out of sight, completely unfindable…at least for now.

  The guards can frisk me; they can sweep my cell, turn each of the drawers inside out—they won’t find a scrap of evidence of my misdoing. And, more importantly, in four weeks, when it’s time for me to bid it all goodbye, when I cannot go another second longer as a citizen of Compound Eleven, all I must do is return here and fetch my key to the stifling, beautiful, deadly world waiting aboveground.

  Not deadly, Eve. Not necessarily.

  When I slip through the storeroom door, I see two men in aprons standing on the far side of the kitchen, sorting through papers.

  “Yeah, and?” the shorter one is saying, staring with interest at the man beside him.

  “He’s in the nurse’s station as we speak. That’s the modified chickpea recipe, right there.”

  “Takes a lot of cumin. Gotta cut that in half or we’ll run dry.”

  “That’ll work.” The tall man scribbles something on the paper. “I’ve upped the salt.”

  “Yep. So, Sully has a new war story, I suppose. He won’t mind that. Never shuts up about losin’ that finger.”

  “Took it in the leg, from what I could see. Can’t imagine they’ll let him off without punishment, though. Not with his background. I’d bet my next liquor allotment he loses his other index.”

  “At this point he’d be lucky if that’s all it was. Take it the guard got hurt, then?”

  “What do you think? Gun evaporated and surrounded by a riot of angry Lower Means. Do the math.”

  My footsteps slow.

  “Dead?”

  I have to strain to hear his response over the thudding in my ears.

  “Just a good lesson, and a well-deserved one at that. When was the last time we had surveillance in the cafeteria? He was looking for trouble, that boy.”

  A weight lifts off my shoulders, and I exhale.

  The short one jumps. “What are you doin’ here?” he shouts at me, perturbed.

  “Sal let me in. I forgot my flashlight during the kitchen tour.” I hold it up to them as I pass. My face is so disinterested, it coaxes the same from them, and a second later I push into the Lower Mean hallway with lightness in my belly.

  For a while I walk without a destination. Dazed. But then I grow still. I push my palms to my mouth to hide my smile, fingers bending around tears, barely minding the bodies jockeying for space around me.

  I did it. I secured my ticket to freedom, and I didn’t even have to lay a finger on Melissa in the process.

  Drift to gentle paradise, it’s there that we shall talk / Children dearest side by side, tick tock.

  I let my hands fall and walk the corridors as I cry openly, happiness unhinged.

  Compound Eleven will confine me no longer.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Once again, as I sit in the Mean cafeteria, my skin begins to prickle. Once again something unusual happens. Guards. One after the other, masks on, combat ready. They file through the door, they line up shoulder to shoulder, guns in hand and pointed at us.

  Immediately, a hush falls. The glutinous mound of mashed potato in my mouth almost makes me gag, but instinctively I know not to draw attention to myself. My body must know it, too, because the potato slides silently down the back of my throat.

  And then the last guard files through the door, and instead of carrying a gun, he carries a man.

  Sully.

  Right now, the leader of Lower Mean dissent is pale, sallow. His leg is bandaged, but the bandage is stained red; bits of debris cling to it as if he was dragged along one of the corridors. Some people call to him; others ask questions of the guards—ones that go unanswered—and then the cafeteria door swings open once more.

  This time, the hush that falls feels heavy and oppressive. This time, the fresh round of guards streaming through the door doesn’t drag in a gravely injured Lower Mean. This time, it is someone important who walks into our lowly space.

  I don’t need to glimpse his unblemished hands to see plainly that he hails from the fifth floor, and the others don’t, either.

  And then from around me, mainly from the oldest members of our Mean society, come knowing whispers. Katz…!

  I sit straighter, my fingers tighten around the fork that I hold, and I stare at the man rumored to be our ruler. Tall, with a shock of straight black hair. His creased skin is milky white, and his cheekbones protrude; they stretch far wider than the rest of his face. His clothes are well-pressed—no surprise—yet the style is foreign. The fabric is thick and dark, well-tailored. Gold buttons reach from belt to neck—two lines of them, side by side. I don’t know what these clothes are meant to signify, but I’d bet a month’s allotment they’re intended to intimidate.

  He shakes hands with the Means sitting closest to him, ones who have no choice but to oblige under the watchful gaze of fifty guards. When he is finished with that, he lifts his arm to the rest of us, something between a wave and a salute. He smiles wide enough to display dazzlingly white teeth, and he acts…he acts like he is well-received. Like he doesn’t realize that the reason his head hasn’t been ripped from his shoulders is because of those fifty guns.

  Much more likely, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t take our distaste to heart. Whoever he is, he’s as apathetic toward our level of adoration as he is toward our plight. Still, that false smile is unnerving. It makes my prickling skin crawl. It makes the fork that I hold start twisting between my fingers.

  “Citizens of Eleven,” the man begins in a low-pitched voice. “For those of you who’ve never met me, greetings. My name…is Zachary Katz.” Some people gasp at the revelation, some murmur or hiss, some even sound excited. Likely Upper Means. Just as quickly, the sounds are drowned out by the thumping of boots. I sit motionless. Except for my fingers, which twist my fork round and round like they’re mechanized.

  “I hope I find you well this evening. I hope I find each of you in satisfactory spirit,” he continues, and there is more edge to his voice than before. “I hope I find each of you enjoying the plate
of food placed before you.”

  There is a slight murmur of assent, and he nods like he is encouraged. “Now, I want you to do something for me. I want each of you to place your fingers alongside your neck”—he demonstrates the motion himself—“and find the ticking of life that doesn’t belong. Because your ancestors and mine, they cheated death all those years ago, didn’t they? When Mother Earth decided she’d had enough of us, we found a new way to survive. Now, Mother Earth may be easily fooled…but death, not so. Death will come calling whenever I command.”

  He pulls something small and white from his pocket. He pushes the top of it, and my muscles brace, my fingers clenching the fork tightly. But all that happens is a solitary clicking noise, short and small and easy to miss.

  And then, completely on cue, the guard holding Sully drives a fist into his leg, where the bandages are most stained with blood. The scream that erupts from him makes my stomach turn.

  When only the sound of Sully’s labored breathing can be heard, Katz speaks once again. He smiles broadly. “There is nothing in this world more valuable than peace. Let us cherish it and nurture it.” He pulls from his pocket a piece of crumpled paper. As he adjusts it slightly, I see that it is a paper crane, and he places it in the outstretched hand of a little girl. Still smiling, he twitches his thumb, another click sounds across the cafeteria, and Sully is struck with the heel of a baton. When the guards drag him to his feet, his nose or mouth is bleeding—hard to say which—and he looks disoriented. The fork starts twisting all over again.

  “I was saddened by what transpired down here yesterday. Saddened, sickened. But I know now, I see it in your faces, that peace will prevail.” Katz’s arms sweep open. “A show of hands, everyone,” he instructs. “Who will let peace prevail so that Eleven can thrive?”

  Slowly, hands rise, here and there, just a few. Katz turns side to side, watching and waiting for more. Under his false smile, he looks dissatisfied. His thumb twitches once again.

  Click.

  Two guards lift Sully’s arm straight into the air. For a second, I think that’s it, that’s all, but then another guard draws a serrated knife, and he uses it to slowly, methodically cut off Sully’s remaining index finger. The room inhales and gasps; it almost drowns out the wretched sobbing and small shrieks. Almost.

  Now arms rise by the dozens.

  Commander Katz has accomplished what he came here for. Fear. Obedience. Submission. Except my hand doesn’t lift. It twists the fork in an endless cycle; it twitches with the desire to do what is impossible yet just. Kill Katz. Then warmth spreads through the joints, and I see that it is Hunter, that he grips my hand. With his guidance, I drop the fork. Then he squeezes my bones hard enough to make them ache, to remind me where I’m at and what I’m playing. I allow him to lead my hand into the air.

  Only then, with each of us conforming to his will, do Katz and his fifty guards sweep from the room. But even in their absence, life doesn’t return to its usual rhythm. Katz didn’t just break Sully’s body—he broke our spirit.

  Every damn one of us.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I saw my father this morning. My mother was there, too—technically, at least. I asked her about that song, wondering where she herself had learned it, but she didn’t reply. She just murmured about the time, not lifting her gaze from her embroidery, not even once. It was an image of a simple table lamp casting a yellow glow, and it was more important than her daughter.

  Dad cleaned my knuckles and slapped my face, told me he was looking forward to watching me fight. But he was more anxious, he said, to see me fight under a professional title. I lied to him once again and said that I was, too.

  In less than a month, my peers must decide on jobs. In less than a month—less than four weeks—I will be free. That was always the plan, and now that I have the gun, I have my plan cemented in stone. No more will I wake from a deep sleep in a cold sweat, thinking that the compound is closing in on me and the beautiful world aboveground is forever beyond my reach. That beautiful world with its field of hollyhock and northern oasis is now firmly within my grasp.

  Of course I can’t know for certain whether the so-called oasis actually exists. Nobody in the entire compound could know such a thing. But I know from my research in the Preme library that temperatures are more tolerable at night and the farther north you go. I know that, given the specifics rhymed off in the song’s lyrics, it has some bearing on reality. I know that, above all else, it gives me hope that I am desperately in need of.

  And even though I know how unlikely it is, the possibility that Jack stumbled north when he was pushed out of the Oracle door makes that speck of hope balloon large enough that it could fill all of Eleven.

  Sometimes it feels like a shame that I can’t just get past what happened to Jack, or that I can’t will myself to look forward to a lifetime in Compound Eleven. Look forward to adulthood here, starting a family, holding a job of servitude, whether it be in the kitchen or the Bowl or a factory. Maggie and Emerald and Hunter, they don’t dread their futures here like I always have. How they don’t, I do not know.

  Maybe because their childhood wasn’t tainted by tragedy like mine was. Or maybe they are hardwired to be more positive than my brain will allow. Maybe they expect less from life or have taught themselves to extract more joy from its lighter moments.

  Maybe they are the ones who are practiced at the art of survival.

  But there are others who are unhappy. The protests that rise up every few weeks is one indication, although Katz’s visit to the Mean cafeteria may have put an end to that, at least for now. And even Wren isn’t content, and his life is far more comfortable than mine. But I remember his words in the Oracle: It is himself he doesn’t like. He is the source of his unhappiness. Perhaps, then, perhaps if he could see himself in a different light, he could be happy with Compound Eleven life.

  It is this last thought that makes me loneliest. It is this thought that beats loudest through my head as I warm up on Blue Circuit’s lone treadmill before my scheduled fight. The joy I felt two days ago when I secured a gun still flickers in my stomach, but it is subdued, swallowed up by a crush of emotion I can’t begin to understand.

  Bruno works at a desk in the corner—he is responsible for our team’s administrative needs, and his presence offers the small comfort of companionship, even though he concentrates on a pad of paper in his hands and not on me.

  The next time my eyes land on the desk, it is empty, and his voice calls my name from over my shoulder. “Eve!” he shouts again, and I turn my head to look at him. “Your friend’s here. She wants to talk to you.”

  I climb off and wipe the ring of sweat forming around my hairline as I go. “Is it Emerald?” I ask as I near the door.

  He shakes his head as he walks past, his eyes not bothering to meet mine. He is still cool toward me, even after my apology, and I resist the urge to scream.

  Maggie stands outside the door with Kyle by her side, and my surprise at seeing her is displaced by my dislike for him. Him with his red hair and arrogant eyes. Him with his blue button-up that marks him an Upper Mean just as much as the four printed on his hands. “That’s why you shouldn’t wear your hair like that, Maggie,” he says as soon as I step into the hallway. “You look like you’re getting ready for a fight.”

  “What’s wrong with wearing a ponytail?” I snap, and my voice is immediately hot.

  “I just said what’s wrong with it. It’s fine for the gym”—he nods behind me—“but not for day-to-day wear.” He turns to Maggie. “If you want to go dumpster diving with a Floor Two boy, be my guest. I’m sure a ponytail would suit him just fine. But if you want to date a higher-born like me, keep it sophisticated.”

  “I like it up,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “Okay, guys,” Maggie says, and she raises her palms into the air. “You can stop arguing about my hair
now, thank you.” But she lifts her arm and pulls her ponytail free. “It’s just the two of us at the fight today, Eve. Emerald and Hunter—”

  “You’re siding with him?” My voice is growing louder, though I mean for it to stay steady.

  She looks affronted. “I’m not siding with anyone. It was starting to pinch, okay? And besides, what concern is it to you how I wear my hair?”

  “I told you about her,” Kyle says quickly.

  “Told her what?” I snarl.

  Maggie shakes her head. “Here, Eve.” She shoves my blue armband into my hands. “You forgot this at your parents’ place. I saw your dad on our way here, and he gave it to me to give to you.”

  I take it from her and wrap it around my arm as I stare at Kyle. He thinks he can control her; I know he does. I have heard the sly insults and seen the dark glances. And most importantly, I have seen the bruises. He thinks he is strong, treating her like that.

  I am going to teach him a lesson in strength.

  “Can I help you with something, Eve?”

  “Just wondering if you’ve ever been in a fight before,” I say evenly.

  He laughs. “We don’t tend to do that where I come from. No offense.” But he means offense, and it makes my blood boil.

  “Tell that to your friend Zaar. Oh, wait—judging by how quickly I beat him, I guess you’re right.”

  “They aren’t friends,” Maggie says quickly. “Right, Kyle? Daniel and Landry and Zaar, they’re poison, right?”

  He looks sideways at her. “I’ve told you before, they aren’t that bad. You ought to give them a chance.”

  She is quiet. Her gaze moves to the floor.

  “Don’t tell her what to do.”

  “That’s hardly what I’m doing. And if by asking me whether I’ve been in a fight before, you’re somehow trying to physically intimidate me, do remember that I am much bigger than Zaar.” He pauses and fixes me with a stare. “And you.”