I have watched and I have done nothing because it wasn’t in my power to do anything about it. I am one woman; I can’t save everyone. I can’t do anything to protect people. I can barely keep myself alive. I am weak.
Or at least that’s what I thought.
I sit down, dragging my dirty blanket back around my shoulders, and I chew on my lower lip, the skin flaking away easily under the sharp scrape of my teeth. I glance at the children huddled on the hard floor next to me. The little girl is holding onto her brother, though he sleeps on oblivious, her little fingers gripping him tightly to her.
She is trying to protect him, this child of barely seven.
While a room full of adults stare on in ignorance.
What has the world turned into?
Hell. That is what it has turned into. Hell.
Chapter Twenty-Three.
I stay away from the two children but I am on guard, my defenses on high alert until their mother comes back in. She limps across the room, wincing when she sits down. The two children fell asleep a little while ago—not that I’m watching, of course. She kneels over them, her hand brushing the hair back from her little girl’s face with such sweet tenderness that my stomach aches at the sight.
The mother has a new blanket—not new, but new to her—and she pulls it around herself and settles back against the wall. She has a small brown paper bag. She reaches in and pulls out something and begins to eat it quietly. The smell reaches me, making my mouth water, and I find I’m actually grateful for her eating; for the scent of whatever it is making my mouth produce saliva.
“Do you want some?”
I look across at her, see her hand reaching out and in her palm, food. I shake my head no, but a strange noise leaves my throat, a sort of whine that my body makes as if it is arguing with me.
“Thank you for watching them,” she whispers across the darkness.
I wait a beat, not sure how to respond. Because I know that she’s asking uncertainly, unsure if I actually did watch over them for her. If I admit I did then she’ll expect me to do it again, and I’m not sure if I can handle that. The expectations, the hopes, the reliance of another person…only to lose them again.
Because it is the loss that I can’t deal with. The starvation, the mistreatment, all of that, I can handle. But the loss of people I care about is too much. It crushes me, sending me into a spiral of despair that I can’t recover from. After Ben and Tesrin, I know I have nothing more to give, and to defend myself I need to blot everyone and everything out.
But then again, I don’t want her to think that I am as horrible as these other people here—willing to let a child be molested just so they can keep a low profile.
My decision is snap, impromptu after so much thought.
“No problem,” I admit. And I own my admittance like a badge of honor, instantly feeling better as the words slip free of my lips. Because it wasn’t a problem, and even if it were, I know that I would do it again.
I see her cheeks rise and know that she is smiling, and I feel the warmth of something glow inside of me.
“Here, just take it.” She throws something to me and I reach down and take it, seeing that it is a jerky of some kind.
My hand is halfway to my mouth before I’ve even thought about it, and between chewing I thank her profusely. It’s not nearly enough to satisfy me, and yet my body feels all the more alive for it.
“Did she wake up? Lucy, my daughter.”
I look across at her, my tongue darting out and licking the salt from my lips.
Her shoulders lift and then drop. “Adam, he’s a deep sleeper, but recently he seems to be sleeping more and more.”
I don’t know what that means for him, but by this woman’s tone it can’t be good. And I’m not stupid; if I really think about it, I know it’s a bad sign.
“She woke briefly,” I say.
“Any trouble?”
I glance across the room in the direction of the older man. I can’t make him out from this distance, in this lighting, but I know he’s there, and probably waiting for the next opportune time.
“Thought so,” she replies. “I’ve seen him looking. The guards won’t do anything, no matter what I do—” She stops her sentence mid-flow and looks down at her children again. “They won’t do anything.”
“Why?” I ask, startling myself because of my own concern. “Why won’t they do anything?”
“Because they say he hasn’t done anything yet. That Lee won’t do anything until a crime is actually committed.” She sounds tired, worn down from the same old argument.
“That’s bullshit,” I snap angrily.
“I know,” she replies. “He’s helping them with something, that’s the real reason why. They need him for something.”
We fall back into silence, and after a little while she falls asleep and I am left alone with my thoughts again. It’s a place I don’t want to be—with my thoughts. My thoughts are dark and bleak, they wish for this all to be over. They wish for death—my own, but more worrisome, they wish for everyone else’s also.
Yet tonight, amid the bleakness and desperation, amid the longing for death, or for another life in another time, there is something else. A spark. A glimmer of something I haven’t felt in months. It is hope. It is life.
*
“All right, one hour of outside time,” Tash yells across the room from his place by the doorway.
One by one we slowly begin to stand up. It’s cold outside, the snow thick on the ground, but my Doc Martens protect my feet well. It’s bright, so bright that it makes me squint. Whether from being inside for most of the day and all night, I’m not sure, but I have to rub them to make my eyes focus properly.
The snow stopped falling at some point in the last week, though it hasn’t begun to melt yet, it will soon, though. Spring is on its way, and though I don’t believe that it brings new life—something that I used to believe—I do think that it will bring change. I will change.
The air is good and clean, and for the first time in a long time the stench of the dead doesn’t infiltrate the walls. The sound of laughter has me looking up and watching Adam and Lucy playing in the snow. There are other children too, all of them so blissfully ignorant to the horrors of this new world. Lucy looks up at her mommy, giving her a soft smile, and I can’t help but smile as I look on.
Lucy and Adam are so much like their mother, and I wonder for a brief moment if their mother is sad because of that. Sad that she can’t see her husband in either of them anymore than she can see a possible future for them. Everything is so bleak, but for her, with those two children, the world is an even darker place.
“How are you?”
I look up at the sound of his voice, and my anger flares but then dies out before it grows any real substance. Because what’s the fucking point in being angry with him or any of this anymore? It’s just wasted energy.
“Fantastic. Thanks for asking,” I bite out, my anger catching both of us off guard.
“You know that none of this is my fault, don’t you? I’m just trying to keep everyone alive.” Carter’s voice is soft and pleading.
“Well, looks like you’re doing a great job.” I open my arms wide and look around us mockingly. “We’re all still alive.”
He huffs out an irritated breath. “Things will get better.”
“Sure they will.” I’m still watching the children playing, and my eyes are filling with tears and I’m feeling things again, and I hate it. But I hate him more.
“They will. I wouldn’t be doing any of this if I didn’t think it was for the best, Nina. I wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt you, I promise.”
I look away from the children and up into his face. “Carter, I’m starving—we’re all starving because of the rations we get in this prison camp.”
He shakes his head. “It’s not a prison camp. People can leave whenever they want. And everyone is on rations, it’s the only way we can survive. I thought you had mo
re sense than to believe in the misguided whisperings of people. ”
My anger spikes, my bony hands curling into small fists. “Everyone? Really? You sure about that, Carter?” My eyes graze up and down him, noting the fullness to his body. “Because it sure doesn’t look like you’re wasting away. Or maybe you’re having to sell your body to get extra rations too, huh? Is that it?” I snarl out my final words and start to walk away.
His large hand grasps the top of my arm and he pulls me back to face him, and I have a sudden sense of déjà vu from one of our last encounters.
“What did you just say?” His voice isn’t soft and full of shame anymore. It’s low and threatening and his eyes bore into mine, his frown deepening on his forehead.
“Which part are you unsure on? The prison camp or the booty-selling part?” I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from yelling in his face. His grip is tight on my arm, too tight, and the heat from his gloved hand finds its way into my skin, my body craving that heat, that warmth.
I stare up at him defiantly, my chin raised, refusing to give in, putting us at a deadlock of stares, neither one of us wanting to back down.
Carter looks away first, checking around us and then pulling me roughly behind the bunker and out of sight. I hate to think what people must be thinking if they see us go around here.
When we’re safely tucked away, Carter pushes me crudely against the bunker wall, his arms slamming down on either side of my head to create a cocoon of sorts.
“Talk,” he snaps out, and I have the sudden urge to knee him in the balls and tell him to fuck off, but I don’t. That would be signing my own death warrant, and since I just decided to help keep those two kids alive, I can’t do that.
“What do you want to know?” I ask, my words shaky, giving away my unease and my anger.
He forces his features to soften and I watch the tight muscles of his jaw loosen. “Tell me what you know. Because I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
It’s my turn to look away now. “Women—they’re selling themselves for rations.”
He rolls his eyes. “That’s their choice if they want extra rations. Everyone is given enough to get them by. Once spring hits and the snow thaws, we can plant crops, grow our own food. We just need to make it through the winter and then we can be self-sufficient.” He steps closer to me, his words a whisper, and I look back up into his face. “Stop fighting everyone else’s battles for them, Nina. We’re not all against you.”
His eyes are warm, warmer than they’ve been in too long, his vulnerability finally shining through and his hard mask of indifference thawing. But it’s all wrong—a lie. Either he’s unaware of what’s going on, or he knows. Either way, ignorance to a situation doesn’t make it okay.
“Carter, it’s not their choice. They’re not being given rations to begin with. They’re selling their bodies to feed their families and themselves because they’re being denied food.” I implore him with my eyes and my voice to understand what I’m saying, to believe me.
We haven’t always seen eye to eye, and clearly his feelings for me have clouded his judgments at times, but I need him to see past all of that and help me. Help these people. His story, in theory is great—believable, even—and I can see how much he wants to believe what he’s saying. So do I. He’s doing what he thinks is for the best to get us through the winter, but he doesn’t have all the facts. Only Lee truly has all the facts.
He shakes his head in confusion. “No, that’s not right—” he begins, but I cut him off.
“It is! That’s exactly what’s happening!” My voice is louder than I mean it to be and he hushes me almost angrily, the warmth completely gone now. “You have to do something, you have to help us,” I plead with him as I finally see a speck of the man I had once known before all the bullshit got in the way.
He’s silent for a long moment, his eyes searching my face for something. His hand comes up to the side of my head but he doesn’t reach out and touch me; he holds himself back as he speaks.
“And you?” His jaw is grinding again but I’m unsure of what he’s asking me.
“Me?”
“Have you—have you had to sell yourself?” His nostrils flare in obvious distaste for the statement and I shake my head no.
He looks relieved and he backs away, his hands moving from either side of my head, though his eyes haven’t left mine yet. I can tell he’s not sure what to do now; he’s conflicted between doing the right thing and keeping himself alive. But it’s a good thing, in my opinion. If he doesn’t know everything that’s going on, then that means not everyone is in on it. That means there’s still hope for change.
Hope. It’s like a drug to me. My own personal heroin.
“I’d heard things, but I didn’t believe it.” He lets out a frustrated sigh and shakes his head. “I didn’t want to believe it.” His eyes skim over my face, as if finally seeing how starved I have become. The sharp angular jut of my cheekbones and the pasty pallor to my skin make me look more dead than alive. I know this because I see the same look on every starved civilian here.
“You need to get back.” He steps further away from me, his arms falling to his sides.
“What now?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“Carter?” I take a step forward but he takes one step back.
“Just go.”
“Can you help? Will you help?” I step away from the wall of the bunker and wait for a response.
He looks up at me, his eyebrows almost knitted together in deep frustration. “I told you that I would always protect you, and I’m still keeping my end of that deal.”
He looks embarrassed as he admits that fact, and I nod. “For what it’s worth, I’m grateful.” And I mean it.
I walk away from him, hoping and praying that he will do the right thing. I walk around to the front of the bunker and stand back in my original place, hoping that no one noticed my departure. As I look around at the emaciated faces of the other civilians, I see the looks of disgust they give me—that I am just as big a whore as they are. They believe that I just sold myself to Carter for an extra portion of food. The thought makes me feel sick to my stomach. But what I hate more is the look on Tash’s face, the way he watches me unabashedly from across the courtyard. And even from here I can see the look of hungry greed on his face, the sneer of excitement which confirms to me that Carter pulling me behind the bunker just made me a target.
Chapter Twenty-Four.
“So, he had no idea?” Amanda, the mother of Lucy and Adam, whispers in amazement.
With reluctance, I had finally let her tell me her name. The act seems so personal and intimate now; giving someone your name, it was like giving them a piece of you. But it was silly not to know it if I was going to help protect her children. I wasn’t her friend—I didn’t intend to ever be her friend—but I would help her.
“He said he didn’t.” I shrug, my mind still mulling over the discussion I’d had with him earlier.
I didn’t like Carter, not one bit. He had thrown one hell of a toddler tantrum when I’d rejected him, and I had been shocked by how easily he had turned his back on me and everyone else here. He hadn’t seemed the sort of man that would do that sort of thing, and now I knew that he wasn’t. He was a jealous and possessive man, no doubt, but he wouldn’t let innocent people suffer like this. At least that’s what I keep on telling myself. It’s what I have to keep telling myself.
I wonder how many of the other guards…soldiers, whatever you want to call them, were involved in this. Could this place really be being strong-armed by a handful of opportunistic bastards and an overreaching dictator? It seemed far-fetched, even to me, and yet he had everyone here cowering in fear.
Fear made people do crazy things. It made people turn a blind eye to unimaginable horrors, and it turned people into the monsters they feared most. Fear ruled and controlled, and anyone who could use that fear—bend it to their will—could control p
eople. That was Lee: he controlled people because he controlled their fear.
What was worse? Being kept hidden from the dangerous world beyond filled with monsters from your worst nightmare, or selling your body and soul for some food? Both were equally bleak existences, and both were unsustainable.
“Do you think he’ll help? He has to, right? Maybe, like he said, when spring comes—” Amanda is still rambling on next to me, asking questions that I can’t even begin to know the answer to.
I choose not to respond to any of them, choosing to direct my thoughts to a more important track—survival. I’m not about to sell myself for food, but if Carter decides to do nothing, then by the look on Tash’s face earlier, I have a feeling my rations are about to drop to nothing. I will have no choice but to sell myself.
The door swings open, the noise of it squeaking on rusted hinges bringing me out of my musings. A couple of guards that I don’t instantly recognize come inside, stomping snow off their boots. They are carrying trays of food in their hands and they hand bowls of food out to eager, reaching hands. I watch as old and young dive into their food with gusto. They reach Amanda and her children first, and I hold my breath while I wait to see what will happen. My fears abate when all three of them are handed small bowls and Amanda shoots me a hopeful look.
My bowl is handed to me and I take it without hesitancy. The guards move on without a word and I instantly begin to eat, the stew of some sort burning my throat as it goes down. The room is silent as we eat, the sound of slurping and scraping spoons the only thing to be heard.
Everyone is given food today: man, woman, child—no one is left out. Hope once again blooms in my chest, because it seems that Carter has done the right thing after all, and I look forward to seeing him and thanking him for doing something.
I glance over at Amanda as I eat, seeing her divvying some of her food up between her children, and then I look down at my bowl, feeling greedy for keeping it all to myself.
The Dead Saga: Odium 0.5 (Nina's Story) Page 16