by Anne Tibbets
“You’re in no condition—” I started to protest.
“Neither are you,” he snapped back.
“Nobody else is going to die for me!” I bellowed.
The words hung in the air. This stopped him for a second. He clenched his jaw.
Sonya bit her lip and cast a nervous glance down the alley.
“Auberge doesn’t want word of you or those babies to leak,” he said. “It’s important enough for them to burn down any trace of their mother. Don’t you see? They’re killing anybody who’s ever known you and starting all over again. It’s a trap!”
“I’m not going to stand here while they kill every girl on the Line.” Unable to bear the pleading look in his eyes a moment longer, I turned to leave. He grabbed my hand. “One hour,” I said, ignoring his fearful gaze. I took my hand back and rested it on his cheek. “Meet me at the clinic in one hour. And if you don’t, I’ll hunt you down and murder you myself. Got that?”
He suppressed a smile.
I pulled my hand away from his burning face and jogged down the alley toward the street.
“Same here!” he yelled after me.
“One hour!” I yelled back.
“Go with her, Sonya,” I heard Ric say.
“B-But...” she sputtered.
“I’ll be fine. Just go.”
I ran to the street, not bothering to wait for Sonya to catch up.
I heard Ric yell after me. “One hour!”
* * *
By the time Sonya caught up to me, I realized our problem.
We were all the way by headquarters, at 20th and Q, and the Line was quite a distance away, at 10th and X.
There was no way we could run ten blocks and make it in time enough to save anybody. Plus the streets were packed full of people who were evacuating the area surrounding the HQ fire.
Finally, Sonya got frustrated on 17th Street and detoured us into a parking lot. We ran up and down the aisles of cars until she found what she was looking for. Then she smashed open the window of a parked car with her elbow, hopped inside, jammed a piece of metal into the key hole, reworked a few wires under the dash and started the car.
It was an old gas-guzzler that roared to life noisily, but it worked enough to suit our purpose.
She drove, zigzagging through the streets of Central, which was not easy since all hell had broken loose and the congestion was worse than ever.
After what seemed like forever, I started to recognize where we were—the stoops of the apartment buildings just outside the Line and the people dangling outside the windows. They were all watching the same thing, looking toward a large black smoke cloud to the west.
The pit of my stomach lurched.
Sonya parked the car at the curb, and we ran the rest of the way.
That was when we realized where all the guards had gone.
They were in front of the Line, about twenty of them, blocking the door with rifles over their shoulders. Smoke poured out from the building, and a crowd of people had gathered around, as if there were fireworks.
I wanted to take each person and shake them until their teeth came loose.
Don’t just stand there!
“What do we do?” I asked Sonya.
She frowned.
It was a good thing she’d come with me. With the front door blocked, I had no idea how to get inside.
“I know a way,” she said. I followed her away from the Line.
We walked one block west, then a block north, then back around, so we arrived on the back side of the Line. On this side, the building was a rundown apartment complex. It had already been evacuated and was empty, which was a good thing.
Sonya picked the lock on the front door, then led me into the central hall of the apartment building. Down the dimly lit hallway, she went to the back, where there was a stairwell leading up.
But instead of climbing the stairs, Sonya pulled open a big red door marked “maintenance” and flicked a few switches. “They’ve disabled the fire alarm to the Line.” She flicked a few more switches.
A piercing, loud shrill pierced the air and echoed off the walls of the empty stairwell.
Sonya slammed the electrical box closed, then yanked a few trash bins away from the wall. Behind the trash bins was a large airshaft vent with a wad of thin electrical wires running through it. She whipped out her electric screwdriver and made quick work of removing the vent from the wall.
Once it was off, we crawled inside.
It was a huge vent, but most of it was full of electrical wires, though the vent was quite sizably bigger than the ones inside headquarters and gave us room to crawl on our hands and knees, versus just on our bellies.
We followed it for quite some time, straight back. The smoke in the air grew thicker and thicker, and I could already feel the back of my throat burning in protest.
Finally, we reached the end of the airshaft. It plummeted straight down into blackness.
“This is where it gets rough,” Sonya said. She jammed the edge of her bare feet onto the walls on either side of the downward slide and braced her body with wide palms. “Don’t grab the wires,” she warned. “They’re live with electricity and if we pull them out of the socket and touch these metal walls, we’ll get fried. If you start to slide, try and slow yourself using your hands and feet against the wall. It’s a long way down.”
“How did you know this was here?”
“This was how I got out of the Line.”
“How on earth did you climb up this shaft?”
Sonya smiled sadly. “An inch at a time.”
She started the slow climb down, and I followed her.
My hands and feet were sweaty from the increased temperature in the shaft, and I immediately slid several inches down the sides the moment I let go of the ledge. My stomach dropped as I slid.
Sonya heard me coming and tried to get out of the way, but I ended up colliding with her and she struggled to keep her grip.
Sonya grunted in pain, and I felt the sharpness of her shoulder in my hip.
“Ow. Sorry!”
“Use your back,” she suggested.
In addition to having her hands and feet pressed against the sides of the shaft, Sonya had leaned into it with her upper back. It was an awkward and uncomfortable position. But it did lend a certain amount of stability.
“This is crazy,” I said. “There has to be another way.”
“Probably,” she said, grimacing as she inched her way down the shaft. “But we don’t have time to find one.”
We made our way down the shaft a millimeter at a time. It was hard to concentrate, and I had started to sweat quite a bit, which made the slippery shaft worse.
After sliding one or two times, I seemed to get the hang of it, but my legs had grown tired and my arms were starting to shake.
“How much farther?”
“Just a little bit more, then we can slide the rest of the way.”
I grunted in response.
After a while, we reached a point when she said it would be safe to let go. “Get as close to the bottom as you can. We don’t want to hurt the babies. Curl up into a ball while you fall. When you see the light, start rolling, but try not to land on your head.”
“Oh, jeez.” My heartbeat throbbed in my temple.
“Just don’t forget to roll.”
Sonya let go, and I watched her fall. A few feet from the light at the bottom she rolled, tucking her feet in with her arms, falling back first. When she disappeared into the light, I heard a thump and a grunt.
“Sonya!”
“I’m all right,” came her response, though I couldn’t see her. “Come on.”
“Okay.”
Closing my eyes and holding my b
reath, I released my feet and hands from the sides of the shaft and let myself fall. A scream stuck in my throat as I fought the urge to flail my limbs.
Remembering Sonya’s actions, I tucked in my arms and legs and fell back first.
When I saw the light approaching, I rolled onto my shoulder and landed smack on my side on a cement floor.
A sharp pain shot through my shoulder and down my spine.
“You okay?” Sonya was rubbing her shoulder, but came over to help me up.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“This way.”
We were in a room full of electrical cords and large storage containers. The smoke was pretty thick, so Sonya and I pulled our shirts up over our mouths.
She opened the door and we were suddenly on the cement walkway just outside the sleeping compartments inside the Line.
My stomach hit the floor.
The smell was the first to hit me—wet cement and sweaty, sticky bodies. A faint waft of semen. I’d forgotten how humid and disgustingly thick the air was down here.
The next thing that sent me into a tailspin was the feel of the metal grates on my bare feet.
I felt my toes touch the cold steel and never in my life had I wanted shoes more than I did at that very moment. I shut my eyes and tried not to see, but I knew what was there.
The large metal rolling doors of the sleep compartments stared me down. The yellow spray painted squares burned into my eyes like red-hot pokers.
“Sonya,” I whimpered. It felt like my heart had stopped working and my lungs had collapsed. I could hardly catch my breath.
“I know.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me into a run.
I opened my eyes enough to follow her and saw her dirty face was teaming with tears as well.
At the end of each Line was the red release button for the sleep compartment doors. Sonya slapped it with an open palm, and the bell sounded. The compartments squealed open and chugged to a halt.
A number of women slid out of their chambers.
Sonya and I went down the row, shaking those who appeared to be sleeping, but some of the others were too drugged to walk or, upon further inspection, we realized had already died from smoke inhalation.
Sonya shot me a look of horror but said nothing. I wanted to scream too. But I knew
it would only scare the survivors, and that if we didn’t hurry, we would be next.
We had no choice but to leave them behind.
With only four upright girls from the first Line, Sonya led the pack as we went through the metal doors, connecting one Line to the next. Our numbers grew, but not by many.
The smoke filled the air and the alarm sounded loudly, but no actual flames appeared. This struck me as suspicious.
When we reached Line 12 and slapped the release button, we had a little under fifty naked girls trailing behind us, choking, coughing and hacking in the smoke-filled halls. They looked sickly and frail and walked meekly behind us, huddled together in fear.
More compartment doors chugged and groaned open.
I ran to Peni’s compartment but nearly cried out when I saw her lying there, as still as death. “Peni!”
I shook her violently, but she didn’t answer. Her chest was moving, so I knew she was still alive.
“Come on, Peni,” I shouted, pulling her from the compartment. “Come on!”
Several of the other girls who weren’t already helping their friends walk gathered to help me pull her out.
The smoke in the air was blacker than ever and I hacked dust into my hands. It hurt to breathe and it was getting harder to inhale.
“Naya!” Sonya shouted, then coughed.
Two other girls and I carried Peni to the cement walkway toward the door leading to the infirmary. Sonya tried to pry the last set of double doors open, but they wouldn’t budge.
Some of the women congregated together and pulled and yanked from both sides of the doors, screaming at the others to help, but nothing happened.
Panic set in. Two girls took off running in the opposite direction.
Sonya and I shouted to stop them, but either they couldn’t hear us over the shrill tones of the sirens, or they ignored us. Most of them crowded around the double doors like a swarm of insects, scratching and pulling. Their sticklike arms shook and flailed at the opening, to no avail. I heard one of them cry out in frustration. Another woman looked to me with tears streaming down her dust-covered face. The smoke had turned her lips blue.
When the two girls who were helping me hold Peni dropped her and went to claw at the door as well, I knew we were in trouble.
A couple more from the swarm scattered back into the Line to find something heavy.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t take my eyes off the scanner, flashing red beside the door on the wall.
Maybe...
On a whim, I dragged Peni with me as I walked over and smashed the scanner with my elbow. A searing pain shot up my arm, but the panel sparked, short circuiting, and the doors opened, spilling the girls like a tidal wave into the infirmary hallway.
They crawled over one another, helped each other up and ran down the hallway, trying each door as they ran.
The doors were all locked, and nobody knew which one led outside.
But I did.
I was the only one among them who had seen the way out. I was the only one who had ever come back.
“Sonya, help me! I know the way!”
Sonya grabbed Peni’s other arm and flung it over her shoulder.
Being dragged along, she was slowly gaining consciousness, mumbling to herself words I couldn’t understand. The screams of the women and the fire sirens drowned her out. Peni’s body shook with violent coughs.
“Out of the way—she knows the way out!” Sonya shouted at the swarm clogging the hallway.
The girls who had heard Sonya parted like a magical sea, while those who hadn’t got shoved by those who had.
Sonya kicked a few to move them aside. “Move! She knows which door.”
Soon the girls were coming up behind us, Sonya, Peni and me leading the way.
They followed, a herd of naked, coughing women and girls.
I thought back to that day when I’d left the infirmary and willed myself to remember.
Down this hall, it curved to the left. Then it went straight.
I knew it exactly—even though my release day felt like two years ago, rather than a few weeks. So much had changed since then.
I had changed since then.
Three doors down, it came to me. The nurse had touched this scanner.
I went straight for it and smashed it with my bloody elbow.
After the sparks subsided, I yanked the door open and we spilled into the reception area, which was deserted. Even though the front door was locked, it was made of glass. It didn’t last long.
A couple of girls chucked metal folding chairs from the waiting area through it, and the rest burst through the opening like a stampede.
Sonya, Peni and I watched from the back of the crowd, anxious for our turn.
Through the broken glass and smoke, I could just make out the guards standing out front, looking shocked at the wave of women pouring outside.
Then one guard raised his rifle to his shoulder.
Sonya’s hands went to her mouth.
I cried out.
Shots.
More shots.
The sharp pops of the bullets sounded off the inside walls of the reception area.
Girls just outside dropped. Blood sprayed out from their wounds, splattering up the girls’ shocked faces.
There was a roar of shock and anger from the crowd. The guards were shooting the girls as they escaped. The very people we’d just rescued were being slau
ghtered before our eyes.
Sonya, Peni and I stood inside the waiting area. There was a group of five girls who were too frightened to run into the barrage of bullets. One ran back through the door into the infirmary.
“Stop!” I called after her, but she didn’t listen.
While that girl ran into the smoke, ensuring her certain death, the remaining four grouped together and made a mad dash out the front.
More shots.
More screams.
Two made it past the guards.
Two didn’t.
One of them had been from my own cell block. She collapsed under a barrage of bullets and fell dead to the asphalt.
“No!” I shrieked, my insides burning. “Stop it!”
Sonya gasped and swayed. I reached out with my other arm to steady her.
I heard shouts from behind the guards, cries from the crowd, begging them to stop.
As the three of us stood there, debating our next move, a rock flew past the guards’ heads and landed inside the reception area, rolling to my feet.
From behind the guards, the crowd had grown riotous, pushing against the barricades holding them back, throwing more rocks, bottles and garbage, shouting angrily.
More chunks flew. The shouts took on a thunderous cry.
Some of the guards put down their rifles to subdue the crowd. Others kept firing, turning their fire into the crowd.
People gasped and screamed, dropping like flies.
Inside the reception area my feet were frozen to the floor. Uncertainty held me in position as the chaos erupted right in front of me.
Finally, I heard a woman with a familiar voice cry, “Get them! Get the rifles!” and with a great heave, the barricades collapsed under the pressure from the crowd, and a wave of people descended upon the shooting guards.
Naked girls from the Line, some wounded and lying on the ground, some not and limping away, scattered and bolted, pushing through the approaching horde, trying to escape the mayhem.
I saw our chance. “Come on!”
I pulled Sonya and Peni outside. We were the last ones to hit daylight.
A bullet whizzed by my ear and I flinched. Ducking to the left, I dragged Sonya and Peni behind me.