by Claire Vale
“She’s…?” Dead?
His gaze focused on me, spearheaded beneath a blackening scowl. “She’s gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shook his head, scrubbed his jaw, seemed to scrub away the scowl but the coolness that had leaked all over our heartfelt moment wasn’t going anywhere.
We fell into silence. A pendulum falling back into its natural resting state, but not quite. The raw truths had shifted us. To a better place or just another place, I guess I’d just have to wait and see.
25
I woke up with my alarm the next morning, stayed warm and cozy beneath the covers for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of the house. I wasn’t entirely convinced that Sector Five was worth crawling out of bed at the crack of dawn for. In the end, it was the shared truths from last night that got me moving.
I couldn’t protect her.
I couldn’t keep her safe.
She’s gone.
I hadn’t asked. It hadn’t seemed like the time to pry deeper. But it seemed like every truth I learnt, I had a hundred new questions without answers. When had Roman met his mystery woman? Where? Not in town, I didn’t think.
A long time ago, he’d said, which had to mean while he was still living outside the walls. The Smoke? Rose had confirmed there were women living in The Smoke. Women who’d been removed from society? Women smuggled out by the Sisterhood? How many could there possibly be? But I supposed it only took one, the right one, to fall in love.
What had Roman failed to protect her from?
Why would he have needed to keep her safe?
What did gone mean?
Well, Sector Five was one answer I’d get today. And if all I achieved was an uncomfortable ride to Warden HQ, I’d treat it as a practice run. Because I wouldn’t stop, I realized, until I’d hitched my ride outside the wall. I knew Roman moved fluidly in and out of town. All I needed was a little patience.
With my enthusiasm restored, I dressed appropriately. Jeans and sneakers. A body vest, a long sleeved tee pulled over that, and then a hoodie so I’d be warm enough. I left my coat behind, my scarf, all the other trappings that would bulk me up behind.
From the kitchen drawer, I grabbed a pair of scissors, plus the duct tape I’d purchased a few days earlier, and made my way outside to the truck. The air was frigid, whipped about by a brisk wind that made me reconsider my coat. I left that option on the table as I climbed up onto the truck bed.
The lockbox ran the full width of the truck, bolted against the cab to form a bench of sorts. The lock mechanism didn’t require a key, just a twist and pull on the knob, but couldn’t be opened from the inside and that’s where it became tricky. Hence the duct tape.
But first, I raised the top until the hinges clicked to keep it up, then set about clearing out the clutter. A five gallon bottle of water. A hard shell case that seemed to be a medical/survival combo kit. A toolbox that weighed a ton, but would free up about a third of the space on its own.
My nerves grew edgier and edgier by the minute. I was totally exposed here, no walls to hide behind. And no matter how many times I glanced around to check—no, no one there, just a bird rustling the branch, just the wind—I still felt eyes on me as I worked.
The toolbox stayed where it was, after I nearly strained a neck muscle trying to heave it out. The rest went into the bottom of my wardrobe.
My genius idea to tape over the bolt so it couldn’t engage and lock me in wasn’t so genius after all. The bolt finally stayed up after I added a fifth layer of duct tape, but I didn’t trust it to not cut or press through. I needed a metal plate or something…a wooden spatula from the kitchen; I placed it flat over the hole and taped it down. The lid no longer sealed properly, but not noticeably so unless you examined it closely.
When it came to fitting myself into the cramped space, I had to fold my arms on the toolbox as a pillow for my head, tuck my knees in almost to my chin, and the lid brushed firmly against my protruding shoulder. The sliver of light and air leaking in through the gap made it just, just bearable.
Getting out, I almost went into a hyperventilating fit. There was no room to adjust myself into a better position and I had to nudge the full weight of the metal lid with my shoulder—what was it freaking made of, solid iron? Which was probably a good thing, the weight would keep the lid heavily settled so it didn’t bounce and rattle, but I didn’t appreciate that until I was up and out and gulping down a lungful of fresh air.
I returned inside to wait for Roman in the comfort of my bedroom. He always took a quick shower after his run, that’s when I’d go for a pretend morning jog and stow away.
*
We’d been driving for…ten minutes? Fifteen? Lord knows, it felt like an hour. There were a couple things I hadn’t factored in when I’d incarcerated myself into this human trap box.
The truck bed vibrated like a ten ton humming bird, and it didn’t take long until my bones were ringing. The suspension back here was also crap, non-existent. I felt every rut, hump and stone in the road. Without space to move, I couldn’t get any leverage to brace myself. Every stop and start registered with the growing bruise to my hip. I sorely (pun intended) wished I’d brought my coat along after all, not for the cold but to help cushion the blows.
Oh, and I suspected I might be claustrophobic. Either that, or the air was seriously thin in here. My chest was tight, every breath earned with concerted effort and repeatedly telling myself the lockbox was not getting smaller with each mile, that would be impossible.
The truck slowed to a stop again, the vibrations intensified by the idling engine. This one seemed longer. I heard voices, couldn’t make out what was said through the thick steel and humming engine. Had Roman rolled down the window to talk to someone?
Then we were moving once more. My body bore the brunt of it as Roman shifted through the gears to top speed. No more turns or stops, endless minutes of smooth, humming bliss. I don’t know if we were literally flying over the bumps at this speed, if the road had improved or if I’d just become immune, but my muscles relaxed into something approaching cramped comfort.
Cheek resting on my arms, I stared at the sliver of light that fractured the blackness, counted seconds until I got to one thousand and sixty and a flash of realization. We’d been travelling for at full minutes, plus a couple more before I’d started counting, without a break in speed. Either Roman was tearing through town without a care for the crossroads and other traffic, or…or we were no longer in town.
Had that previous stop been a checkpoint?
At the wall?
Now that outside was a reality, or at least a real possibility, I didn’t know what to do with it. I was excited, anxious, thrilled and nauseous. I tried to temper my expectations. If Sector Five was a warden station, I probably wouldn’t get to see much, maybe a small peek over the lip of the box through a slighter wide crack. A woman dressed in jeans and a hoodie would stand out like a sore thumb amidst the black uniforms and men.
We slowed again.
Stopped.
I both felt and heard the driver’s door slam. Had Roman climbed out? He’d left the engine running.
Seconds dragged into long minutes. I didn’t hear or feel Roman get behind the wheel again, but suddenly we were moving, picking up speed.
How far could we actually drive before we hit the Outerlands, and then the dead lands? My stomach twisted and knotted. Fear for the unknown. Not the territory, there was nothing out there in the Outerlands or the dead lands, nothing to fear. The unknown quantity was time—how long would I be trapped in this box?
On…and on…and on. The metal top and sides were pressing in again, squeezing tight breaths from my lungs. I’d just about decided to hell with it, I’d prop the lid open with my back, hang my arms out, risk the chance of Roman spotting me in his rearview mirror, when the truck reduced speed. It felt like we were crawling along a bending road, my body slowly sliding up, down, left, right, like a blob of jello in a tin can
.
Thankfully that didn’t go on too long, and then there was a short stop and start and, finally, the engine cut out. The quality of light through the thin gap changed, brighter, harder. There was a metallic, grating sound. The truck door slammed.
No voices.
I waited and listened.
No more sounds.
That wasn’t to say there wasn’t anything or anyone there, but I was blind and would remain blind until I took the plunge. So I went through the awkward motions of raising the top, stayed crouched on all fours for a breathless moment. No one raised the imposter alert, and I stood my creaking bones and cramped muscles all the way up.
I was in a parking garage, long and shallow with the vehicles lined up one next to the other, noses to a blank wall and back-ends to a wall of garage doors with individual rollup mechanisms. Seven vehicles including Roman’s truck, and five empty bays. The harsh light came from the neon overheads. No windows. A door over on my far left with a pale blue lightbox above it. That’s where I headed, after closing the lockbox and stretching my hamstrung limbs.
The handle depressed to my touch, but the door didn’t budge. I saw an alphanumerical touchpad on the wall, requiring a passcode rather than a scan. I tried my citizen number, which was the same as Roman’s.
Beep.
Followed by a whole lot of nothing.
Great.
Now what?
Seriously, I would have been satisfied with just a window to peek out of. My nerves were steel and glass, determined to see everything since I’d come this far, brittle with worry for the trouble I might find.
Beep.
My brain jumped like an electric shock.
The door started to open inward.
I moved with it, total reflex, backing up against the wall as the door came for me. Footfalls and body odor and a dissonance of far-off crowd noise came with it. I didn’t dare breathe. Didn’t dare move. Which meant, of course, I was standing there against the wall, exposed in the neon light without a shadow to creep into as the door swung closed.
The man, shaven head and dressed in warden black, was in a hurry. Thank God. If my presence had triggered any spidery senses, he ignored them, was already marching around the front of the line of vehicles.
I ducked low, beneath the height of the sedan closest to me, and tiptoed on bended knees until I was flush with its silver body. That metallic grinding sound again. About three bays down, one of the garage doors was rolling up. An engine started.
Feeling somewhat braver, I crept to the back of the sedan to peer around, saw a truck similar to Roman’s reversing out from its spot before the garage door was even fully up. Legs slightly shaken, fueled on adrenaline and spit, I ran along the wall of garage doors, slammed to a halt just before the opening, craned my neck to look out.
The truck had just completed a reverse turn and took off down a road that curved and disappeared into a bank of trees. The rolling garage door had wound itself all the way up and changed direction.
I had about five seconds to decide. In or out, or get my head chopped off.
Cautious, I sank low, steadied myself with a hand to the frame so I could stick my neck farther out. The parking garage appeared to be adjoined to a long, two-story building that stretched and stretched to my left. The double row of windows started where the parking ended.
Bustling activity carried on the wind, just out of sight, just out of discernible hearing. I didn’t see anyone here, though, we seemed to be around the back of the building. The bank of trees ran the full length, velvety evergreens and rust-colored canopies thinned by the approaching winter.
I went, sliding out beneath the closing gap, darted across the tarmac and into the cover of the woodland. From there, I made my way around the parking garage to the other side of the building.
That’s where my cover petered out and everything I’d ever known about my world turned on its head. My knees dipped and I hugged the tree trunk for support, the last in my line of defense, a scraggly little thing that didn’t do much to shield me, I wasn’t sure it mattered anyway. Everything hit me at once, assaulted my senses, short-circuited my brain. I looked without order, without processing, without understanding.
A lethargic, muddy-colored river ran parallel along this side of the building, all the way down to where the L-Shaped brickwork cradled an open-air plaza. The occasional ancient, gnarled tree dotted my side of the river. A high chain link fence, maybe fifteen feet high, bordered the bank on the other side.
Beyond that, a field of long grass that formed another border of sorts, maybe two hundred yards in width, and then tents. A sea of tents, dirty white canvas, small and medium, some flat topped with drooping tarps and some sharply pitched like inverted Vs. The ground was level, but the tents weren’t uniformly spaced and between the gaps I saw more and more.
One stood out amongst them all, and not only because of the wide berth it was given. Striped in bold reds and blacks and golds with multiple peaks and slopes, with a corded rope strung all the way around to further partition it from the riff-raff. A flag flew from the center peak, but I couldn’t see the emblem, just flashes of black and red. Men were stationed around the perimeter at intervals, long-haired men with scruffy beards, five that I could see on this side. Guards, but not like any I knew, dressed in beige cotton tunics broken by a leather strap that came over one shoulder and across the chest.
Some tents had their flaps open, other down. Many had some sort of fire, a ringed patch in the ground with burning logs.
Plenty of people around, sitting on the ground or on stools before their fires and tents, milling about between the tents. Plenty of men, dressed in all sorts, jeans and short-sleeved tees despite the weather, leather pants and leather vests, loose cotton trousers and tunic tops.
Women and children, not many, but they drew my eye most of all and kicked my heart against my ribs until I felt bruised from the inside out. My gaze drifted from the one to the next, a young woman with braided blond hair and a full length, satin blue robe tied at her throat, another robed young woman or maybe old girl, a child of about five running circles around a man, a woman with a black cauldron dangling from one hand and what looked to be a baby strapped to her breast over her emerald colored robe.
Not many.
But life.
I knew, with every bone in my body, I knew I was no longer inside Capra’s walls and yet here was the life that should not have been.
I pulled my gaze away from the field of tents and down the length of the building, to the plaza at the far end. A couple of tall, thin trees planted amongst the stone tiles. People crossing in a hurry to be somewhere, others loitering and chatting. I didn’t see any children on this side of the fence, just a few women and black uniformed wardens sprinkled in amongst a much greater number of male civilians...not citizens of Capra, not wardens, not dressed in any fashion I was familiar with. I knew what they were not. I knew where did not come from.
My mind didn’t go beyond that.
Couldn’t.
I stood there for an eternity, leaning against the sapling tree, watching these people, these anomalies…until if finally dawned on me, I was the anomaly. I was the woman not wearing a brightly colored robe over Lord knew whatever they wore beneath. I was the woman standing alone and not accompanied by a bearded man dressed in leather or cotton.
I did not belong here.
That thought came with a flash of anger that laced steel into my backbone, got me moving, propelled me into a stiff march down the paved walkway toward the plaza. Let people point and stare. Let the wrath of the wardens rain down on me. I’d come here to unearth secrets, but I felt like the dirty secret, kept hidden out of sight behind a wall while the world outside flourished...okay, maybe not flourished, but lived.
Outerlanders.
The word popped into my head and stuck.
The Outerlands was supposed to be a barren land that stretched into the dead lands, but apparently the world wasn’t qui
te as dead as I’d been taught to believe.
No one pointed.
No wrath rained down on me.
There were stares. Coy stares from the women, sideways glances through lowered lids. Brazen stares from some of the men that felt like greed and hunger on my prickling skin. Two men broke away from their group, one kitted out in black leather from top to bottom, both with more hair on their faces than their heads. They didn’t exactly intersect me, but seemed to be circling around my approach. Another watched me like a hawk as I passed him.
My bravado drained as I became aware of the hawk guy falling in step behind me. There was something desperate, savage, about these men. I veered closer to the river and saw the narrow, wooden bridge that had been obscured by part of the building’s L, the crossing between us and the tent city. Guard House and barrier on this side. Gate in the fence on the other side that stood open.
I refused to look around, behind me, refused to show fear, but my blood and my steps faltered.
Where was I going anyway? The bridge? The building?
What had I planned to do? Confront these people? These Outerlanders? Demand an explanation for their presence, their existence?
I had no idea. I hadn’t planned. Maybe I’d just wanted to be seen, to force the issue into the open so someone, somewhere, had to take notice. Roman. Even if I never got my truths, even if I had to take them in a rehab cell, I would no longer be deaf and blind.
This was what I was doing.
I was being the proof of the lies that bound us.
What Roman did with it, well, that was up to him. But we’d both know that I knew.
All I’d ever wanted was answers, and I had gotten at least one sort of answer.
I couldn’t protect her.
I couldn’t keep her safe.
She’s gone.
I did not feel protected here.
I did not feel safe.
Wherever Roman’s artist had gone, I was pretty sure it had something to do with these Outerlanders.
A hand landed on my shoulder and I bit down a scream. Shook the hand off wildly. Leapt forward. Tasted blood on my tongue. Spun about with clenched fists, ready to fight the hawk guy off, kick him where it hurt.