by Amanda Witt
I ducked under the spray, turning my face up to it, wishing I could wash away whatever the future held—because whatever it held for me, it wouldn’t be Meritt. Not if we couldn’t escape to the woods.
Meri might get him. Though there was no guarantee Meri would be put with a young man, because there were more girls than boys her age. She could get put with a reassigned older man. That happened a lot. And sometimes the genetic counselors reassigned one of the older men to a new breeder, even if there were younger men available. I didn’t know why.
But I did know that Meri at least had a chance at the boys her own age, and I didn’t. I was two years younger than they were. They’d all be assigned long before I turned nineteen. And I’d be turning nineteen all by myself, because after Meri’s age group came the big empty gap with nobody but me in it. So I’d get put with some reassigned middle-aged man. Someone I didn’t know well, or worse, someone I did. Felix, for instance. Or—the thought made me shudder—Garry. I could be forced to live in the same house with blustering red-faced Garry, just him and me, alone together, for years and years.
Or I could be assigned to the scarred warden.
That was when I remembered the camera—or, rather, remembered who could be watching me through it.
I’d have leapt for a towel, but I was covered with soap. Instead I turned further away, feeling my face flush red with embarrassment. The camera had always been there, and I’d always ignored it. What else could I do? I had to bathe. But now I’d seen that bank of monitors in the watchtower; I’d seen actually seen a man watching us through those little mechanical eyes. And, worse, I knew the scarred warden watched me especially.
I would ask Meritt to disable that camera as soon as possible. He’d taught me how to interfere with the sound, but visuals were harder to mess up, at least if you wanted to make it look accidental. Surely we could find a way to sneak him into the dorm, or find a legitimate electronic issue for him to deal with in here.
“Nice to have hot water for once,” Meri called, startling me. She never made small talk. “I sure needed a good shower today. I had blood all the way up to my elbows.”
It was true that her skin was pink from scrubbing—she worked in food preservation, which was a pretty messy job. But it dawned on me that she wasn’t really talking about cleanliness; terse, efficient Meri wouldn’t bother to make chit-chat about something like that. Maybe, in light of my ostracization this morning, she was talking to me just to let me know she was a friend.
“What did you do today?” I called, testing my theory.
Meri turned off her shower and reached for her towel. “Cut and cured beef strips.”
“So are we all set for winter?”
It was a clumsy question, and when Meri turned toward me she glanced up at the camera, even though she knew the sound of my shower running would mask our voices, as long as we kept them low.
“You know the saying, ‘waste not, want not?’ With the beef sausage, nothing went to waste. We had to use everything we possibly could, and we’re still only at about half our usual quota.”
“That cattle illness in the spring?” I’d heard about it all the time, but hadn’t paid much attention.
She nodded. “Coccidiosis. We lost a lot of calves. Too many.”
“What about our other meat supplies?”
She shrugged and began toweling her hair. “Fishing is a little thin; poultry . . . well, disappointing; and pork had a scour epidemic back in May. The wet spring.”
I thought of the rot problem we’d had with the early potatoes, and the sorry crop of cherries thanks to a late freeze. I didn’t have to tell Meri about that. Word had gotten around. And the entire first cutting of alfalfa was pretty much worthless.
For a long moment we were silent, pondering how much devastation a single unusually wet, cool spring could have.
“It seems like there should be some way to make up the difference,” I said finally.
Meri shrugged, twisting a dark strand of hair around her finger. Then, wrapping the towel around her, she walked under the camera as if leaving the room. When she was directly below it, she reached up and twisted the wire that Meritt had taught me controlled the sound.
She knew. Meri knew how to mess up the sound.
I stared at her, and she met my eyes levelly. “We didn’t have much margin to begin with,” she said. “So much of what we have goes to the Ws.”
To the wardens, the Watchers, and to the watcher assistants. I had no idea how much the Watchers and their assistants ate, but I knew how often the wardens went back through the serving line.
Meri wasn’t looking at me anymore; she was eyeing the sign beneath the camera—“We Watch Because We Care.” But she hadn’t left the room.
“Why do you think they do it?” I said, keeping my voice down, averting my face so the camera wouldn’t see my moving lips.
“Do what?”
“Watch us all the time.”
She shook her head; she didn’t know.
“I just keep thinking how much easier it would be if they weren’t watching us,” I said. “And really I can’t figure out why they are. So many cameras, so many wardens, all the time. It just all seems so unnecessary. Like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. Like we’re all dangerous criminals or something.”
The wire uncurled back into its usual shape. I shut off the shower, snatched a towel, and hurried to where Meri stood beneath the camera, putting a finger to my lips as soon as I was out of its sight.
Meri nodded and put one arm around my neck. She was damp and hot from the shower, so hot she felt feverish.
“You shouldn’t have tried to help Rafe,” she said. Her voice was a mere breath. “But I wish it had worked.”
Blinking back tears, I nodded and pulled away.
Meri studied me. I guess she saw something that made her decide to trust me, because she leaned in close again. At the same time she reached up and started scraping her fingernails against the wall just beneath the camera, creating sound cover. It was another trick of Meritt’s.
“A couple of weeks ago, one of the mechanics accidentally cut a couple of wires when he was patching a leak in the roof of the food preservation building,” she said, so quietly I could hardly hear her. “He tried to fix them but just made matters worse, and electronics hasn’t gotten around to replacing them yet. So in the meantime I’ve been hiding food.”
It took me a moment to understand what she was telling me, and then a startling image filled my mind: Farrell Dean, our best mechanic, playing the bumbling incompetent. Gathering information, he’d said, as if that were all he’d been doing.
“I can only skim off a little,” Meri murmured. “But if the Watchers don’t know we have it, maybe it’ll help. Maybe it’ll keep us alive.”
Then she turned and left the room, leaving me to get my mind around this conspiracy I’d been totally oblivious to.
Hurriedly I toweled off, staying in the small blind spot under the camera, and pulled on my pants and shirt. In the bedroom Meri was sitting cross-legged on her bunk, yanking a comb through her hair. I couldn’t ask what I wanted to know, not with the live camera above us, so instead I went back to the shortage problem.
“What’s wrong with poultry?” I asked. “Did they have disease issues?”
“Nope. Predators.”
“Raccoons?”
Meri frowned. “No,” she said. “Something’s coming in from the woods.”
“What, a wolf? A fox?”
“I don’t know.” Meri glanced up at the camera. “It isn’t a secret,” she said. “It’s just that nobody likes to talk about it. It’s creepy. Last week they started posting a round-the-clock watch, but whatever this thing is, it’s slipped past them twice already. And it doesn’t just steal a chicken or two—it rips the heads off dozens and dozens of them.”
“Sounds like a weasel,” I said, sitting down beside her, the thin mattress sagging beneath my weight.
“Except weas
els don’t paint pictures on the walls using chicken blood.”
I shivered. Meri was right—that was very creepy.
“What sort of pictures?”
Meri glanced around warily, and I found myself doing the same. “Stick figures fighting, chasing each other, cutting each other’s throats. And lots of sketches of eyes.”
I lowered my voice to a whisper. “It doesn’t sound like a Guardian.” If such things existed.
Meri nodded. “Too random. And too stupid—the Guardians are supposed to be smart. Smarter than we are.”
“So if it isn’t a Guardian, what is it?”
Meri shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“So the streets aren’t safe at night.” I was thinking about the night workers, about Cynda. About my own forays into the darkness.
Meri eyed me narrowly. “I don’t want to scare you,” she said, “but listen—whatever it is, it’s awfully good at getting into secured areas. Indoors might not be much safer than out.”
I thought about the gap in the western wall, only orchards and beehives between it and the dormitories where the girls and children slept. Lovely.
Now I could add insomnia to my growing list of problems.
Chapter 9
That evening after supper I was standing out in the eastern wasteland, just beyond the slaughterhouse, huddled against the city wall. We usually met later than this, but at eight we’d have to go to the city meeting, so I was hoping Meritt would come now. This was our preferred meeting spot because, although the slaughterhouse camera was active, it had been malfunctioning and Meritt, conveniently, hadn’t had time to fix it.
While I waited I pressed against the city wall, my eyes fixed on the woods fifty yards away, dark and ominous in the fading light. The path the fishermen took to the sea cut an insubstantial gap into the gloom of undergrowth and overhanging trees. Staying on it wasn’t enough to keep you safe, not in those dark woods. You had to go in the daylight, and travel in company.
“Hey,” a voice said softly, and Meritt was beside me.
He joined me against the wall, bracing one foot on it behind him as if at any moment he might push away and be gone. His dark hair fell over one eye and he shoved it back as if it irritated him. It was getting too long, but it wouldn’t occur to him to cut it until someone ordered him to, and fewer and fewer people were ordering Meritt to do anything. He was too valuable to the city, too crucial to electronics—indispensible, really, if the Watchers wanted to keep watching. Only the wardens and maybe the genetic counselors ranked higher than Meritt these days.
The collar of his coat was turned up—he had a coat, though it was patched in two places and pulling loose at the seams—and he was wearing his boots. He didn’t wear them when we ran, not usually, because they were heavy and noisier than bare feet. He was already tall and the boots made him taller still, so that when I leaned a little against him, using his body to block the wind, my head was below the top of his shoulder.
For a long moment we were silent, standing there side by side. I don’t know what Meritt was thinking, but I felt almost faint with relief. He was here; he was safe. I could feel the rough fabric of his coat against my cheek, sense the pent-up energy humming in him. He burned fast, old Louie once said, fast and bright and unpredictable. And he had made it through that entire terrible day without getting himself locked up or whipped or shot. He was here and we were alone, away from prying eyes, away from the Watchers and the wardens and all the people who stared at me because I was a freak, and at Meritt because he was not.
I was so glad to be there with him that all the things I’d thought to say, all the questions I wanted to ask, seemed suddenly unimportant. All that mattered was that he was safe and there with me, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, breathing the same air I was breathing, looking out into the woods where we couldn’t go, not if the Guardians were real.
Though—and this was a new thought for me—Meritt might be able to get what he wanted. It was true he was increasingly important to the city, and there were ways—everyone knew there were ways. Surely somehow we would always be together.
Thinking about that, I shifted away from his shoulder and looked up at him. He was gazing out at the trees, the angular lines of his face etched stark in the dying light. The bruise beneath his eye was a purplish blue. His expression was remote, intent; but he didn’t have the anxious air of thinly veiled panic that so many were wearing that day.
I couldn’t read the thoughts passing behind his gray eyes, of course, but as I watched him I realized I knew that expression. He was planning. He was strategizing three moves ahead, as he always did in any game we ever played. He wasn’t a victim. He wasn’t prey. He wasn’t afraid. And as I stood there studying him, some of the fear ebbed out of my own blood.
“Meritt?” I said, and waited until he glanced down at me. “Is it all going to be all right?”
It was the question I always asked him whenever anything big or small was troubling me. Meritt looked at me for a moment, first absently, then really seeing me, the taut lines of his face easing as if he’d just remembered I was there and was glad of me.
“Depends on your definition of all right,” he said. Then he smiled at me, not quite his usual jaunty grin but almost, and I smiled back at him. It was the answer he always gave, and he finished with the rest of the formula. “According to my definition, sure. One way or another, it’ll all be all right.”
And then he reached out to tug the end of my braid, and Farrell Dean’s words came rushing in on me.
Farrell Dean was wrong—I knew he was wrong—but I had to make sure. And anyway I wanted answers; I wasn’t going to be left in the dark, not at such a time as this.
“Meritt, I need to ask you something,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows, curious but unconcerned. “What?”
“Do you know why Rafe wanted you to meet him that night?”
Meritt held my gaze for a moment. “Not exactly,” he said, and then bent to pick up a small rock.
“Inexactly, then.”
Half smiling, he shook his head and flung the rock toward the woods. “If I can’t be exact, I won’t be anything at all. Speculation’s a dangerous game.”
“So is ignorance,” I said. “I got arrested for being out that night. Don’t you think I have a right to know why we were there?”
Meritt didn’t answer. He was watching the woods, where a handful of birds were fluttering up, twittering protests, disturbed by his stone.
“I know what’s been going on,” I said. “I know that Rafe was conspiring against the Watchers, and that you are, too.”
At that he turned, his face startled and amused. “Me?” he said. “Come on, Red. You know I always play to win, you’ve complained about it often enough. Mere mortals against the Watchers are not what I’d call winning odds.”
I stared at him. “This isn’t funny, Meritt. Rafe’s dead.”
A flash of pain crossed his face. “I know.”
“I can see why Meri needs to hide food,” I said, laying all my cards on the table. “I can even see why you and Farrell Dean need to spy on the Watchers, if the only alternative is starving. But I can’t figure out why Rafe wanted those painkillers.”
Meritt actually looked a little worried; I knew more than he’d expected.
“Did he tell you?” I said. “Do you know why he had them?”
“Maybe he didn’t have them. Maybe he was set up.”
“No, I think he had them,” I said. “I saw his face. But I can’t figure out what painkillers have to do with keeping us from starving this winter.”
Meritt picked up another rock and flung it into the woods. He didn’t say anything. Every time he threw a rock something clinked softly as he moved—the tiny screwdrivers he always carried in his pockets, the tools of his trade.
“I saw Rafe’s face,” I repeated. “I was right there, just a few feet away. And you know what was odd? He didn’t look w
orried until they suggested someone else might be involved.”
Meritt reached for yet another rock and I stepped between him and the trees, blocking his aim, the scruffy grass and sand shifting unevenly beneath my feet. “Do you hear what I’m saying? Rafe didn’t want to give anyone away. He didn’t want to give you away. You were the one he was meeting the night he got arrested.” I hesitated and then went on. “He died protecting you.”
A shadow passed behind Meritt’s eyes while he stood there looking at me, tossing that stupid rock from hand to hand. His expression was unreadable, but I knew I was right. Rafe had died protecting him.
My legs began to feel shaky and I sank down to the ground, turning so my back was toward Meritt and the wall, not the looming trees. I could smell them, the pines and the cedars—a smell I always associated with Meritt, with our secret forays outside the city walls.
After a moment Meritt dropped the rock and sat down beside me. He pulled up a few tufts of rough grass, tossed them up to see which way the wind was blowing. “Rafe knew he was going to get punished regardless,” he said, watching the dry blades go spinning away. “All he did was choose not to take anyone else down with him. He was practical.”
I shook my head. “He was brave. He didn’t try to sell you to buy mercy for himself.”
My voice trembled on the words.
Meritt propped his elbows on his knees, observing me as he did from time to time, as if I were a particularly curious alien from another world. The wind stirred his dark hair and he shook it out of his face, his eyes still on me. Then he reached out and tugged gently at my sleeve.
“Tell me about your interrogation,” he said.
I ran my fingers across the nubbly brown grass. “It wasn’t bad,” I said, pushing away the memory of the warden with the scarred lip. “They gave me warm milk and took me up in the watchtower. I pretended to be a silly girl.”
“Which you’re not.” Meritt’s expression darkened. “It could have been much worse, Red, and it was my fault. I led you right into trouble. I didn’t mean to, but I did, and you kept your head and got out of it, and got me out of it too. You did good.”