The Watch (The Red Series Book 1)

by Amanda Witt

  “We aren’t supposed to have anything to do with people who break rules,” Lea said, looking at me uneasily.

  “Then go away,” I told her. “Remove yourself from my bad influence.”

  “But it’s after curfew. I’d be breaking that rule.”

  “Red puts us in an impossible position,” Wanda agreed, looking around at the other girls. “She was a lightning rod even before the city meetings, and now she’s downright unsafe to have around. That hair is like a target, painted right on her head.”

  “Now you’re just being mean,” Shawna said.

  “It’s mean to state the obvious? To say that Red stands out?” Wanda looked at me with a dark glint in her eye. “If you ask me, that’s the reason for the city meetings. The Watchers are tired of people who call attention to themselves. I mean, Rafe was everybody’s favorite instructor. And Lavinia was gorgeous. They stood out and they knew it. They thought they were better than everyone else.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Liza said.

  Wanda ignored her. “And neither one of them was anywhere near as bad as you, Red, with that hair—”

  “It’s not like she chose that color on purpose,” Shawna put in.

  “—And we all know they watch you more than anybody.”

  “They do not!” By this point it was more wishful thinking than anything else, but I protested anyway.

  Cynda shifted. “Well, actually, they do watch you more,” she said. “Warden Rick told me. They keep special records on you.”

  Baffled, I stared at her. Why hadn’t she told me that before? She was my best friend, next to Meritt, of course.

  “Of course they keep special records.” Wanda ran a smug hand over her own unremarkable dark brown hair. “They’re afraid she’s got some mutant disease from the time of the ashes. She has that hair, and something obviously stunted her growth. She’s a runt mutant.”

  I didn’t dignify that with a reply, but Liza did. “If Red is what you get from the time of the ashes, then ashes are medicine you could have used, Wanda.”

  Wanda looked baffled, then offended. “If you think a runt mutant—”

  Liza talked over her. “She’s prettier than I am, too, Wanda. I’m just saying Red may be small and redheaded, but she does have some things in her favor.”

  “Meritt certainly thinks so,” someone muttered.

  “Farrell Dean, too,” Wanda announced. “She’ll probably get both of them pulled into a city meeting. She’s probably the next Lavinia.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Liza said sharply.

  “She misbehaves and she’s a mutant.”

  “Anyway I wouldn’t say that Red is stunted,” Shawna said. “She’s on the low end of normal, that’s all.”

  Wanda shrugged that off. “Whatever you call it, they aren’t going to want her in the breeding pool,” she said.

  An uneasy silence filled the room as Cynda’s pretty face went blank. Several girls shook their heads reprovingly; even Lea pulled herself together long enough to throw a chiding look Wanda’s way.

  We didn’t know why Cynda had been sterilized—the genetic counselors wouldn’t tell her what the problem was, not even whether it was something that might have hurt her children but wouldn’t affect her, or whether it was a disease she’d develop as she aged. They told her it wasn’t productive for her to know things she couldn’t do anything about. Not many things bothered Cynda, but that did. She wanted to know.

  “The genetic counselors are very careful,” Wanda said, relentless, with the self-righteous air of a person who sees herself as brave enough to state an unpleasant truth. “They don’t want us to be weakened by compromised genes.”

  “Save it for the cameras, Wanda,” I said, going to Cynda and putting a hand on her shoulder. “There’s nobody but us watching you now.”

  Wanda turned on me. “I’m surprised they haven’t already put you in a city meeting,” she said. “You’re a freak and a public nuisance. If you cared at all about fitting in you’d at least cut your hair short. I mean, look at you, flaunting it like that. It’s almost down to your waist.”

  Cynda came to my defense. “Red does try to keep it tucked away in her cap when she’s out in public, but I don’t think she realized how sensitive you are about how dull your hair looks by comparison. Red, to spare Wanda’s delicate feelings, could you be sure to start wearing your cap round the clock?”

  Wanda looked livid, but Lea was the next to speak.

  “Cutting her hair wouldn’t help,” she said. She was still splotchy from her hysterical crying jag and had a terrible case of the hiccups, but she was determined to make her point. “It’d still be that color. Unless she shaved her head bald.” Fixing her gaze on me, she started crying again. “Please,” she said. “Please, Red, you have to do it.”

  I waved Lea off, trying to sound nonchalant despite the note of terror in her voice. “Don’t be silly—I’m not going to shave my head.”

  “But they’ll kill you!”

  “A bald girl. It’s not like she’d be less noticeable that way,” Liza said practically, and Lea began to wail.

  “Lea, hyperventilating will not help matters.” Cynda looked stern. “If you can’t control yourself, I’ll have to slap you again.” Lea gave a little jump, but she stopped crying and, after a moment, sagged back against Cynda’s comforting bulk.

  Wanda’s two best friends, Joy and Linni, had been oddly quiet through all this, but now one of them spoke up.

  “She could dye her hair,” Joy said.

  Linni nodded in agreement. “Good idea. She should dye it.”

  “With what?” Meri said, sitting up and looking interested.

  Joy made a thinking face. “Oh, I don’t know. Boiled tree bark? Or—listen, don’t orange and purple make brown? So she could use blackberries.”

  Linni tittered.

  “She’d attract flies,” Joy went on, “but it would be worth it, right?”

  “Oh yeah,” Wanda said, giving a satisfied smirk. “That would be worth it.”

  “It would be worth it,” Linni echoed.

  I decided to ignore them.

  “I vote that she sticks with the cap,” Shawna said, as usual trying to de-escalate. “That’s probably a safer bet than trying to dye her hair. If it ended up purple, she’d really be in trouble.”

  By now, every girl in the room was staring at me.

  “Forget my hair!” I said. “Who cares about my hair? Two people are dead, and there’s another city meeting tomorrow.”

  Lea let out a wail. Cynda glared at me.

  Wanda nodded smugly.

  There I went again, causing trouble.

  Chapter 11

  My lungs burned. I was desperately trying to keep up with Meritt, but he was too fast, hurtling toward the wasteland as if he didn’t know death waited there. I tried to call out, to warn him, but the habit of silence and secrecy was too strong. He was lost.

  When I stepped in something wet I knew it wasn’t rain. It was thick and dark and smelled metallic, and when I stopped, the puddle widened, darkened, held me fast. Then wardens came out of nowhere, pointing their guns at me, and in the split second before I felt the bullets I tried to shout that Meritt was lost so that maybe someone would find him, but no one who cared was around to hear.

  Then Rafe picked me up and I was limp and heavy and he carried my body to the sea. He wanted to wash away the blood, and only the sea could do it. And then I was alone, lying on cold sand, and Rafe was wading out deeper and deeper, trying to wash off the blood, and the waves crashed against, separated us. They carried him away, though he struggled to stay with me, and I was alone.

  * * * *

  With a start I sat up, heart pounding. The room was pitch black; someone was snoring gently. The cameras I couldn’t see seemed pointed straight at me.

  I lay back down, not expecting to sleep, but exhaustion claimed me almost instantly. And as soon as I slept I dreamed again. I was standing in the circle at a
city meeting but it was Meritt, not Farrell Dean, who was dragging me away from Rafe. In real life Farrell Dean had held my face against his chest, trying to calm me, trying to keep me from seeing Rafe die, but in my dream Meritt didn’t do that. Instead he put his hands over my ears to stop me from hearing Rafe’s dying words. It’s better you not know, he said. I like having you for a pet.

  This time when I sat up, I knew I wouldn’t sleep again.

  How much of the night was left? I wasn’t sure. I might have been able to guess if I could have seen the moon, but heavy blinds blocked out the night. Not that I would have had it any other way. If it weren’t for the blinds that darkened our room and blinded the cameras, I’d never be able to sneak out to meet Meritt.

  I pushed back against the wall and pulled my knees up to my chest, moving carefully so I wouldn’t jostle the bunk and disturb Kari.

  It felt like the middle of the night. It felt like it would be a long time until dawn. Well, I knew one thing I could do to pass some time. I would make myself remember what Rafe had said, whether Meritt wanted me to remember or not.

  No, Meritt wasn’t trying to keep me from remembering; that was only my dream.

  Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes. Carefully, knowing it was going to hurt, I put myself back in the city meeting circle. I saw Rafe come out of the watchtower door. I squinted against the spotlight. I heard the impossible death sentence. I felt the warden grab me—he was choking me, but Rafe stopped him with a strike to his throat. I was struggling against Farrell Dean as he wrapped me in a bear hug and turned me away from Rafe, from the gunshots. I strained my ears to catch Rafe’s words, but they echoed and doubled back on themselves and were nothing but the inarticulate sounds of my own grief.

  I opened my eyes. This was no good. The harder I thought, the more garbled Rafe’s words became.

  Suddenly restless, I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting there quietly tormenting myself and waiting for morning. How could everyone sleep so peacefully, when all around us the world was more full of weeping than we could understand?

  That was what old Louie sometimes said, and he was right, though I hadn’t truly understood it until now. He started saying it back when I was little, when no one would play with me, and he’d take me on his lap and tell me I was different because I was a fairy child—which even then I knew was silly, but it was better than thinking about the many ways I was a freak. I’d sit there with Louie and maybe a couple of the old women, and he’d make up some story about adventures I supposedly had had. The stories were all different, but Louie always started them to same way: Come away, oh fairy child, to the waters and the wild. Come and let me hold your hand, for the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

  Louie was a sweet old man.

  And I couldn’t stand to sit there, alone and awake in the dark crowded room, any longer.

  Gently I swung down from my bunk and felt around on the floor for my clothes. In the darkness I pulled them on, paying careful attention to my cap, making sure it covered every single hair. Then slowly, scarcely breathing, I eased across the room, telling myself I was silence. I was night.

  Lea sighed and turned over, but no one else moved. The cadence of a sleeper’s breathing went steadily on; the snorer never paused. Even Shawna, who was an irritatingly light sleeper, was still and quiet.

  The metal door was cold and heavy. I opened it just far enough to slip through, then held it so it would close slowly, without its usual telltale thud.

  At the bottom of the stairs I did the same thing with the outside door, flinching as the cold air hit me in the face. It smelled like frost and made all my senses feel fully alert, honed sharp.

  The moon was high in the sky and more than three-quarters full, bathing the city in light that was almost as bright as day and yet cooler, more remote. The bright moonlight made it a little harder for me to travel the streets unobserved, but I could manage. I’d done it before. There was a cinderblock pillar on either side of the door, braces that held up the narrow roof that protected the entry area. I stepped behind one of the pillars, the same way I always did, and scanned the streets.

  No one was in sight. The spotlight swept across the city, probing the shadows cast by the moon, but it revealed no movement anywhere.

  Still I hesitated, leaning against the rough pillar, studying the moon-washed buildings and empty streets. I’d never gone out alone with no one to meet. I’d always gone out to meet Meritt.

  But now Rafe was dead. I’d always pretended he was my father, and if my father was gone, then I had to grow up.

  So I slid from shadow to shadow, keeping track of the cameras Meritt had taught me to avoid, ignoring the ones he said were dummies or defective. I behaved exactly as I always did, telling myself with every step that this was no different from any other night. I knew the routine. I knew the safe path through the dark.

  By the time I passed the slaughterhouse with its metallic scent of blood, and crept out the western gap into the wasteland, I half-expected to see Meritt waiting for me right where he usually stood. He wasn’t, of course. The wasteland lay bare, its ugly tufts of grass twisted flat against the sand. Meritt had been here just a few hours ago, though. He’d been here with me. I could practically see us, quarreling, reconciling. I saw him touching my face, wiping away my tears, stroking my hair.

  The memory of us, of him, made me feel less alone. I leaned against the outside of the city wall, where Meritt and I always leaned, and felt the emptiness, the silence, gently opening places in my mind that had been tightly shut. I could smell the pine trees and taste a distant salty hint of the sea. I could hear the wind rustling high in the evergreens, stirring now and then the dying leaves that drifted, one by one, to the ground.

  It was because there were too many people, I decided. The city was fraught with thoughts and emotions, with fear and anger that were almost palpable, choking me when I breathed, squeezing out any space for thought or memory. In the dormitory someone was always crying, being comforted or ignored. Out here it was just me, alone. Out here I could think.

  But thinking too hard seemed to scare the memory of Rafe’s words away, so I let my mind drift, out into the woods, into the water beyond.

  Beyond Optica. What was out there? Were there other islands, other people? Once when I mentioned the idea to Cynda, she said, “And maybe there are talking animals, too. And maybe a giant duck will carry us to a happy place where the sun shines every day.” She’d put her arm around my shoulders. “This is where we are, Red. This is what is. Optica.”

  Still I couldn’t help thinking about it, and a breeze passed over and the shadows of the trees gesticulated, seemed to beckon me.

  I was afraid of the woods, but now that there were predators inside the city, the wild things of the forest seemed less terrifying. It wouldn’t be hard to let myself creep slowly toward the trees, to let their shadows cloak me as I moved across the open expanse of wasteland.

  Before I knew it, I was fifty feet beyond the wall; I had never been so far from Optica. What was a few feet more? Quietly, slowly, I edged closer and closer to the woods.

  And then I was in them, only a few steps beyond their border, but already it felt a world apart. The city smelled all of pavement, people, chemical cleansers. These trees smelled fresh and somehow hopeful. Despite everything I knew and had heard about the wilderland, that scent made me feel safer. Then, too, the trees were so tall; that meant they must be quite old, and it seemed to me that if they could endure that long, if the earth had kept feeding them all those years and the sky had kept bringing them sunshine and rain, then maybe there was something in the world that might help us endure as well.

  I knew I was too far from the beach to hear the sea, at least at ordinary times, but that night felt extraordinary, so I stood very still and listened for the distant sound of waves along the shore until the night insects among the trees grew accustomed to my presence and began to sing again. Then I emptied my mind and lis
tened still longer, focusing my gaze on the night sky above the city, clear for once and spangled with a million stars. And the longer I looked, the more stars there seemed to be, as if some were timid and were peeking out only after careful consideration, after they got used to me and saw I was no threat. I gazed upward for so long that I began to feel untethered from the earth, as if I were rising up toward the tiny lights far and away. If I moved my hand away from the rough bark of the tree, I could fly.

  That was when I heard the voice.

  With a start I came back to myself, my feet firmly on the ground. Wardens didn’t usually patrol behind the slaughterhouse, near the gap where I’d slipped out—it smelled bad, and it wasn’t in a heavily populated area—but once or twice Meritt and I had narrowly missed being spotted by an unusually thorough warden. One of those must be out tonight, checking each and every sector.

  At least I hoped it was a thorough warden, and not a lazy one. What if I got trapped out here indefinitely while some slacker lounged by the gap smoking and dozing?

  The voice muttered again, unintelligible, and my blood froze. It wasn’t inside the city; it was behind me, in the woods.

  Pressing my back against the rough bark of the tree I looked wildly around, peering into the dark woods, across the wasteland at the gray city wall. I saw no one, no unnatural movement, nothing but the swaying shadows of the trees in the night wind.

  I wanted to make a dash for the city but was afraid to move. If I stepped out into the wasteland he—it?—would see me. I remembered the stories of people returning from the woods without hands, or skinned alive, driven insane.

  A cloud rolled out from behind the tops of the trees, and I stood there, helpless, and watched it cover the moon, leaving me stranded and blind. I could still hear, of course. I could hear twigs snapping, leaves rustling. Some animals could see in the dark. Could Guardians, or whatever this thing was?

  The moon drifted back out and I frantically scanned my surroundings. I saw trees; I saw the pale wasteland; I saw the city wall; but I saw no one, no person, no animal. I peered into the darkness for so long that my shoulders began to ache with tension and my eyes stung dry and prickly from not blinking. But I hadn’t imagined the voice—I’d heard it. I was sure.