by Anne Tibbets
We were covered in soot and coughing, but we had enough lung capacity to break into a run. I plowed straight into the crowd and they crashed into me. A mass of men and women had swarmed the guards and were beating them with their own rifles, rocks, broken bottles or fists, and with generations of oppressed rage.
I turned to the right and was blocked by a group of men beating a guard to death. They were tearing his uniform to shreds as he cried for mercy.
Disgusted, I turned to go another way, but couldn’t.
We were trapped.
I tried to remember how Sonya had skirted through the streets of Central that night we’d gone to the club. People had bumped, jostled, fell into us, but she hadn’t faltered.
I did the same and pushed around the men. I gripped Peni’s hand and pulled her along. Behind Peni followed Sonya. I cut through the melee like a knife, zigging and zagging like Ric on his motorcycle through traffic. We were knocked and pulled in every direction.
Twice I lost Peni’s hand, and twice I went back and got her.
I would not let go.
I would not give up.
I sliced the crowd with my determination.
When we reached the edge of the crowd, I turned and noticed a billow of smoke pouring out the broken Line door, filling the already smoke-filled street. No flames were visible from the building.
Odd.
Finally free from the riot, I tried to remember where Sonya had parked the car, and that was when I saw her. A skinny woman with a long ponytail stood on top of a broken barricade and was shouting at the guards and ordering the crowd to attack.
“Stop them! Stop them!” she shouted. “Get the rifles! Close the Line!” I watched her bash a guard to the ground with her tiny fist and realized I knew her.
It was Shirel.
A swell of pride consumed me.
I raised my hand to her, but then I heard my name from the other side of the crowd.
“Over there.” Sonya pointed.
Dolore, the red-headed receptionist from the clinic, was waving, just ahead, on the other edge of the riot. I pulled Peni and Sonya toward her.
Dolore looked disheveled as we approached, but she beamed the moment we came within earshot. “Doc sent me. Come with me, quick!”
We followed her to a car she’d parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant, just around the corner.
The irony was not lost on me.
We piled inside. Dolore drove, with me in the passenger seat and Sonya and Peni piled into the back.
After the car started and pulled away from the curb, Peni blinked a few times. She squinted at me. “Naya?” She coughed a thick hack. “Naya? That really you?”
I reached around from the front seat and gripped her pudgy cheeks with my palms. My throat closed with feeling as I said, “Peni, you were right.”
“Right?”
The words almost stuck in my windpipe. “Someone did come for you.”
Peni’s eyes shot wide. Her lower lip quivered. Sonya, Peni, Dolore and I wept the rest of the ride back to the clinic.
Chapter Eighteen
Driving to the clinic, the gravity of what we’d done and seen weighed on us all.
Peni couldn’t stop crying, and after weeping a little herself, Sonya had gone silent, staring out the car window with streaks from her tears drawn down her dusty face.
Dolore pulled the car to a stop, handed Peni her sweater and opened our doors. I helped Peni to her feet.
Dolore explained that Anj and Ric had arrived at the clinic together. He had apparently gotten in touch with Anj, and she’d picked him up. Anj and Dolore had then brought Ric into the back office, where they’d cleaned up his bullet wound and begun IV antibiotics to ward off infection, along with and a pint of blood to replace what he’d lost. He had removed the bullet himself, without anesthetic or pain killers, with his own scalpel.
I couldn’t even imagine how badly that must have hurt.
The last Dolore knew, she said, was that Ric was resting in his office, looking peaked. He’d ordered Dolore to go to the Line to bring Naya and the others back to the clinic.
“But he was mostly concerned about you and Sonya running into the Line,” Dolore finished, yanking open the clinic door and holding it open for us. “You’re so brave.” She cried.
Sonya entered the clinic first, followed by a wobbly Peni, me and Dolore, who locked the door behind us.
The waiting room was empty, and all the lights had been turned off.
We walked through the green door leading down the hallway with the puppy and kitty posters and went straight for the back office with the flowery wallpaper and the air conditioner. We found Ric in his rocking chair, tubes coming out both his arms.
Without thinking, and practically knocking Anj out of the way, I ran to him. It was such a relief to see him sitting in his rocking chair I cried out, “Oh, Ric!”
I dropped to my knees beside him. Some color had returned to his face, and he smiled at me. His dimple appeared.
I reached out and touched it. Then burst into tears. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
He wiped the droplets from my face and his hand came back black with soot. He smiled. “You’re late.”
Anj stood in the corner, her arms crossed, looking spent and more than a little angry.
I nodded at her, but I could tell she wasn’t happy with what her little brother had gotten himself into on my account. I didn’t blame her. I wasn’t happy it had turned out this way either. “I’m sorry,” I said through my tears, and Anj’s face softened. But she looked away.
After that, Dolore saw to getting us cleaned up and gave Peni some scrubs to wear. We also each took turns inhaling oxygen from a tank to ease the coughing. I assumed full control of Peni, who was still iffy on her feet, because Sonya had mentally shut down.
We sat in the reception area with the oxygen tank and I tried to talk to Sonya, to thank her for all she had done and seen because of me. But she looked dazed, beyond exhaustion—as if she didn’t hear a word I said.
“Sonya, please talk to me,” I begged as I held out the oxygen mask to her.
She just shook her head, took the mask and breathed into it.
I thought maybe that was all she could handle, breathing. So I let it go.
When at last we were better, Dolore retreated to her office, leaving me, Peni, Sonya, Anj and Ric in the office staring at each other, or the floor in Sonya’s case.
I waited for Ric to speak first, but he seemed so exhausted, I realized it was up to me.
“We need to remove Peni’s tracking chip,” I said. “Or they’ll know where she is.”
“They know. They have to know,” Anj grumbled.
“Still. Better now than later,” I said.
Ric nodded, struggling to his feet.
Anj shot daggers with her eyes. “You sit! I’ll get Dolore to do it.”
Peni didn’t object. Anj took her by the arm and helped her out the door. “We’ll be right back.”
I examined Sonya for some sign of life, but she was still staring at the floor, hardly blinking. “Sonya,” I said. “You all right?”
For the first time since we’d arrived at the clinic, she appeared to notice other people were present. She looked older than before. A shade of sadness had settled into her eyes. “I keep thinking about the girls,” she said. “How many do you think got away?”
I had no response to that. There was no way of telling. There was also no way to keep track of what would happen to the survivors, now that they were out.
Maybe the ones who had lived through the massacre would find their way home. Maybe others would end up homeless or working as prostitutes. Some of them were still drug addicts. Letting them out was one thing, but they were far from r
escued.
“I don’t know. Maybe twenty,” I said. The number sounded ridiculously low, once voiced aloud. A thick-rising guilt permanently attached to my soul.
It was a guilt that would never ebb.
Sonya looked haunted by the thought. “We led them right into a slaughter.”
“I never would have thought they’d open fire.” Just when I thought I knew the depths of Auberge’s evil, a whole other level was formed.
Sonya shook her head.
“You did all you could,” Ric offered.
Her face reddened. “It wasn’t enough!”
“Some of them lived,” I said.
“Not enough of them,” she cried. “There should have been more.” Then her eyes darkened again and she didn’t say any more about it, although I saw the unsaid words in the wrinkles of her brow.
“What do you want to do about Peni?” Ric asked. “After her chip is removed?”
“She has family in West,” I said. “We should take her home.”
“Her family is who sold her in the first place,” Ric spat, not bothering to hide his contempt.
“Still,” I answered, understanding his anger but remembering Peni’s love and faith in her family. “That’s where she’ll want to go. For better or worse.” I only hoped they were glad to see her when she arrived. But I knew there was little that would dissuade her otherwise.
Ric scoffed.
“I’ll take her,” Sonya said. “Think I might stay a while too. Hide for a bit.”
“Good idea,” Ric said.
We sat in silence a moment.
Sonya stood up and went to the door. “I’ll go tell her.”
“Come say goodbye before you leave,” he said.
“I will.”
“What’ll you do out in West?” I asked her.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Don’t worry about me. I always find what I need.”
“Probably in someone else’s pocket,” Ric mused.
She smirked at this, then nodded at me and left.
Alone in the office, we stared at each other a moment, he in his chair, and I by the door. He rocked back and forth and we locked eyes. I took the next few moments to explain to him what had happened inside the Line and my concerns about the absence of flames in the building. But the entire time I spoke I only wanted to wrap my arms around his shoulders and bury my face in his neck.
I had nearly lost him twice in the same day, and the fear of that and the physical exhaustion I felt from our escape, and then the rescue at the Line, left me weak to the bone.
I wanted to say all this, but couldn’t bring my mouth to move in that direction.
Instead I said, “You know what bothers me most about all this?”
“What.”
“Auberge still got what it wanted.”
Ric blinked slowly. He leaned his head against the back of the rocking chair and fought to stay awake. “How do you figure that?”
“All those girls who escaped are inoculated, and they’re free. They’ll spread the immunization like wildfire. So either way, Auberge won.”
Ric thought about this and then shook his head. “But you got away too. And the survivors knew you.”
“But I’m still not sure how that helps us. One thing’s for sure, they’ll know it was me. My prints will be all over the inside of the Line.”
Ric sighed. “Little we can do about that now.” He flicked his head to the side, indicating his desk. “Top drawer.”
I walked over to his desk and inside the drawer was a box of latex gloves.
“Until we can get another pair of leather gloves,” he added.
I grabbed the box and stuffed it under my arm then stepped beside him. “Where will we go? They’ll be looking for me now, more than ever.”
“You mean looking for us,” Ric corrected.
I felt my face contort with raw emotion. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, fighting to hold in the tears. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”
He reached out with a single finger and touched a tear as it slid down my cheek. “I’m not sorry. Not at all.”
I smiled softly because I didn’t mind that we were in it together. In fact, I wasn’t sure I could continue without knowing he was with me, beside me always. “What do we do?”
Ric thought on this, then said, “Hide. There are some pockets of people who live off the grid. One right here in Central, in fact. We’ll find someplace to go until the babies are born. After that, we’ll figure something else out.”
“So much for moving to North and becoming a chef.” I was disappointed but resigned. It couldn’t be helped.
Ric frowned. “Yeah. That’ll have to wait. For now.”
I just shook my head, trying to clear away the emotion. There were still so many more questions I had, about my family, Auberge, the identity of the babies’ father...but I guess they would have to wait too.
“It’s not total freedom,” he said, reaching out to me. “But it’s something.”
I took his fingers in mine. They were hot to the touch. Then I pressed his hand against my cheek and it warmed me to the depths of my broken soul. I kissed his palm, burying my face in it.
He flushed to his ears and ran his fingers into my hair. Pulling my face to his with a look so intense I felt my heart skip a beat, his mouth melded into mine. Inside me, there was an explosion of soft and wet sensations I had never thought possible. It felt as if kissing him was the most natural thing I could do. I filled with love down to my core and that made me so happy, I smiled against his lips.
When we parted, he was smiling too.
Then I said, “I’ll take it.”
* * * * *
Author’s Note
I was greatly conflicted as to whether or not I should include the dream sequence where Naya relives her abduction and introduction into sexual slavery, and agonized quite a bit over it. There were many who advised me against it. I can see their point. The subject matter is greatly disturbing. Perhaps they were right. In the end, I came to the conclusion that nothing demonstrates the true horror of this real-life atrocity more than seeing it through the eyes of a survivor. Not one to shy away from the horrible truth, I concluded that if there is some good that can come out of it, the risk was worth taking. I therefore included the dream sequence in the hopes it will educate and horrify every reader, be them young or old. It horrified me to write it.
Despite the fact that Naya’s slavery on the Line takes place in the future, there are girls and women trapped in this very situation all across the globe today. This is happening. Right now.
If you find this as painful to know as I do, please do something about it and donate to the International Justice Mission, a worldwide organization working today to rescue girls, women and entire families from modern-day slavery.
I wish to thank the International Justice Mission for sharing with me some real-life tales, which I used as the basis for Naya’s journey.
To donate to International Justice Mission, visit http://www.ijm.org/give.
Thank you,
—Anne
About the Author
Anne Tibbets is an SCBWI-award-winning and Smashwords.com Best Selling author. After writing for children’s television, Anne found her way to New Adult fiction by following what she loves: books, strong female characters, twisted family dynamics, magic, sword fights, quick moving plots and ferocious and cuddly animals.
Anne is the author of the Young Adult fantasy novella The Beast Call, and the Young Adult contemporary Shut Up. She divides her time between writing, her family, and several furry creatures that she secretly believes are plotting her assassination.
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ISBN-13: 9781426898495
THE LINE BOOK ONE: CARRIER
Copyright © 2014 by Anne Tibbets
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