“Okay, thank you.”
Half the stuff in here might have been swiped from a Half-Price Books or Spencer’s Gifts. Lava lamps, a rack of name key chains, movie-themed action figures, frilly soaps, and board games. Behind a shelf of different sizes and colors of stuffed animals, a worn, cream-colored acoustic guitar sits on a stand. I make a beeline to it, collecting it from its perch with a lump in my throat.
When I strum its chords, adrenaline and joy strum my insides, and I drop to the floor to savor every reverberation. I never knew how to play guitar in my old life, and though I’d always wanted to learn, it had to do with music, which I didn’t allow myself to love as much as I wish I would’ve. I never even told Eileen and Henry of my secret desire. If I had, there’s no doubt in my mind they would’ve jumped on it without a second thought.
I find the price tag, which reads 400 RPs in tiny blue digits, and almost cry. It’ll take many sad days of volunteering to get this jewel. I return it to its stand and leave the shop before I bawl right there. One thing about living on the surface—if you can find it, and acquire it, it’s yours. Not so, here. But, I can save, provided all goes well. And at least I don’t have to worry about getting robbed at gunpoint, like my last job. I’m getting better at this optimism thing.
The cafeteria is the busiest place around at this hour, with a line of about nine or ten, almost to the doorway. I take my place in it, stomach grumbling, watching the people scan for payment and gather their trays. Most of them sit alone, minus a group of guards who’re the main source of noise in the entire Cross. Not that I can hear their whispered words, but the howling laughter that’s intermittent in the conversation is disruptive as fuck. I hope they leave before I sit to enjoy my meal.
When I get to the counter, an Indian man wearing a hairnet holds up an eye scanner, while a team of cooks in white smocks man different food prep stations.
“Uh, I’m new,” I say to the man. “I was told I get two meals free?”
He motions me to the scanner, anyway. I lean forward and he scans me, and the green letters on the screen read Free meal 1 of 2 — claimed.
He hands me a tray without a word, and I retreat to the last empty table. To my relief, the guards finish up their meal and stroll out to the lobby, still cackling and carrying on. Odd, that they’re the liveliest of the folks here.
I dig into my mashed potatoes and spam chunks, surprised by the drizzled cheese and sprinkled chives on top. The processed cheese is my only complaint. Not even a complaint, as much as an observation, because this shit is delicious. Oh my gods, yum. I devour it faster than I want to, but I can’t help it. The food here keeps getting better and better, and I don’t even care if it’s seventy million different varieties of potatoes on the daily. Crossing my fingers that everything works out in this place, if not for the food factor alone.
When I’ve licked my glass bowl clean, I return my tray to the long, grooved metal counter where others put their dirty dishes, then I venture out into the lobby again. I stop to inspect the giant hanging screen with different things blinking on it, most of which I can’t understand. Looks like a trash schedule in one corner, and next to that, a council meeting at seven a.m. next Tuesday, July ninth. The giant square in the middle is some kind of calendar with a ticking military clock beneath it. Today’s July the second.
Wow. Just like that, I’m jerked back to the space-time continuum of “normal” societal living. It’s Tuesday, July the second, at nine thirty-seven a.m. Time marches on.
The “adult area” summons me from beyond the curtain to my right, and my conscience repels me from it. Adult area sounds like a place for Grace to get into trouble in more ways than one . . . but Ophelia whispers all the things I don’t want to hear, the things that promise it won’t be long now until I pass through that curtain to whatever lies on the other side.
After a glance around at the other establishments, half of which still have their doors shut, I decide to head back to the dorms and check on Missy. She isn’t the only one who’s safe there.
Nine
When I return to the dorms, the girls are in the playroom. Missy sits on the floor with Sara and Cholita playing with dolls, and relief comes when I catch a faint smile on her face. She doesn’t notice me standing there at first, so I just watch her play. When she catches sight of me in her peripheral, she jumps up and races to me, throwing her arms around my waist, then she yanks me through the mess of toys and little girls to where her friends sit.
“Play with us, Grace!” Cholita says.
And I do.
It’s awkward at first, because I haven’t done so since I was a little girl. So many times Corbin had tried, babbling away, bouncing his toys in my lap and forcing them into my hands. I may have humored him a few of those times by pretending to play along, eyes glued to my phone and thoughts spiraling from whatever narcotics I’d ingested that day. But I was never fully present, never there enough to even remember the tender nuances of those moments now, which is a tragic bit of karma I deserve. Those moments would’ve given me more to hold in his absence. I should’ve held him more when I had the chance.
So, I make a conscious effort to be present when Missy hands me a doll, though it just rests on my knee for a moment while I watch the three of them, and learn. That I have to learn how to play is a sad epiphany in itself, but that it beats running for my life and hiding from the daylight gives me more motivation to give it everything I’ve got.
“We’re going shopping,” Cholita says. “That’s the grocery store.” She points to the plastic kitchen set, where cardboard boxes made to look like cereal, milk, and other grocery items, lined in a row, wait to be purchased.
“Come on, sissy!” Sara walks her half-naked Barbie doll toward the shopping area, and Missy follows with a tinier version, a mini African-American Barbie with a pink swimsuit and blue sunglasses. Missy nudges me, and I follow suit with my Skipper doll with knotted hair, and a mustache drawn on with a ball-point pen, which resembles one I had as a young girl. Pen mustache and all.
“What do we need from the store today, girls?” I ask in my best Skipper voice.
Missy makes her doll pick up a box of cereal, and she puts it into a shopping cart twice her size. I make Skipper collect a plastic can of green beans, while Sara and Cholita load the cart with their own groceries.
For the next two hours, I play, losing track of time completely. We move from dolls to blocks, to cars, and back to dolls, then we combine the three for a smorgasbord of fun. My tension lessens and my thoughts quiet. My fear and worry diminish to almost non-existent, and for the first time in a very long time, I feel . . . happy.
When Sheryl-Dean comes to collect them for snack and naptime, I help, along with the rest of the girls, to clean up the mess, and we exit the room. A group of older girls lined up outside the door await their turn to play, though their frowns and general dysphoria says they aren’t too excited about it.
“Who’s ready for milk and cookies?” Sheryl-Dean asks when we turn right at the emergency exit.
The girls cheer, though my stomach tells me it’s time for lunch, and cookies and milk isn’t much of a lunch. Sheryl-Dean distributes hand sanitizer as we enter the cafeteria-style room, with three long tables that have attached, circular seats along them. Reminds me of lunchtime in grade school.
I take a seat, with Missy and Cholita on either side of me, and Sara sits across from us, while the other girls take the rest of the seats at our table and a few of the next one over. Sheryl-Dean passes out two Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies to each girl, and me, then paper Dixie cups, filling them with soymilk from a rectangular carton. Despite the rumbling in my belly, I eat half of a cookie, then sneak another half-cookie each to my new playmates, who scarf them in seconds.
After snack time, we head to the dorm for naptime. I tuck Missy into her cot, kiss her cheek, and she frowns at me, wanting an explana
tion of why I won’t be napping with her.
“I need to go find Logan,” I whisper. “But I’ll be back later, okay?”
She nods, and I sense she wants me to find Logan as much as I do. With one last hug to her, then a pat to Sara’s and Cholita’s heads, I tiptoe to our locker. All this playing today on the dirty floor has painted my clothes in grime, so changing before I head to the outside world is a must.
I decide on a simple, black mini, a black tank, and my leather jacket with zipper pockets to hide my healing wounds, then change in the bathroom, applying minimal makeup.
When I scan myself and leave the room, Sheryl-Dean is nowhere in sight, so I make my way to the desk around the corner. I find her there, reading, and take deliberate footsteps so she’ll hear me coming and I don’t scare her. She turns to greet me. “Oh, hey there, Grace. Headed out?”
“Yeah, I need to find Logan. How do I get to sector three? Is it one of the archways in the Cross?”
“Yeah, but . . .” She picks up her scanner, taps a few buttons, then nods. “He’s not there. Says here he’s in sector four. You seen the black curtain in the Cross?”
My heart thumps in my chest. “Yeah, I’ve seen it.”
“That’s where he is. At the bar, I believe.”
There’s a bar? Shit. And of course he’d be there.
“Okay, thanks. I’ll be back later sometime.”
“Okay, Grace.” She smiles, but it’s sad, and she hides it by diving back into her book. “Have fun.”
Ten
Have fun, Sheryl-Dean had said, though the words didn’t match her tone, or expression, and did the opposite of what they should’ve. But I can understand the contradiction, now that I’ve seen the sadness of the dorms they warned me of, so I don’t question it further. I’m more concerned with where I’m headed, and with what temptations await. There’s shame for the part of me that can’t get there fast enough.
The crowd in the Cross lobby has grown, and I push through them, trying not to bump into anyone. Overwhelmed by the amount of bodies, I fidget with a zipper on my jacket as I pass the doorway of the gift shop. The neck of “my” acoustic guitar peeks up from behind the neat pile of stuffed animals. I itch to strum its strings again, but I’m more in need of Logan’s validation that this is all real and good, and that everything’s okay on his end.
At the other side of the Cross, past what appears to be a seamstress and shoemaker’s shop, is a man with a scanner at the black-curtained entrance.
“Nice to see you again,” he says, and when I do a double-take, I realize it’s the guy who was with Kelly when we arrived at the silo.
“Oh, hey. Mando, right?”
“Yeah. And you’re Grace.”
“That’s me.”
“They got you scanned in yet, momma?”
“Yeah. Blue?”
“Ah, good. Means I can let you in.” He winks, leans to place the device on my face, and there’s the line that passes from my forehead to my nose, then up again. “All clear,” he says. “Welcome to the Lounge. Have fun, Grace.” And he pulls the black curtain aside. Blacklight shines through from long bulbs along the ceiling of the corridor.
“Thanks.” I pass him into the warm, purple glow, to the faint sounds of pumping bass. It mixes with those words I’ve heard twice now in less than an hour: have fun. And with each step, the bass growing louder, something awakens inside of me, something I lost with Evie that night on the roof of the log cabin.
My chest tightens against it, and panic sets in, remembering the bodies splattered in blood, the way it appeared black beneath the blacklight, the way the wrong things glowed amidst the devastation. I stop in my tracks, unable to breathe. This is all wrong.
Why is this place here? The world is dead, everyone in it turned to monsters—so who would be here but the shells of those still living, who were once human? Or . . . am I lost somewhere in my own mind, too far gone to ever regain my grip on reality? I wrap my arms around my middle and slide down the wall, struggling to grasp my sanity.
“You okay, honey?” someone says from the far end of the hall. With shiny red platform boots, and long, red pigtails to match, she carries an empty, round tray. When she gets closer, and I make out her face—the olive skin, cat-eye eyeliner and fake lashes, the thin, red lips and oval face I recognize from my past life, I’m positive I must be hallucinating.
“Oh, shit—Ophelia?” She races down the corridor. “Is that you?”
“J-Jade?”
“Holy shit, girl, oh my God!” She tackle-hugs me, and I remember the last time I saw her at school in her aqua tutu and matching pigtails. The day Evie and I went to Riverbend.
“Is this . . . real?” I ask her point-blank, because my sanity is hanging by a weak thread.
“Yeah, girl!” She laughs. “It’s real. But I seriously can’t fucking believe you’re here! How’d you get here?”
Speechless, I heave a sigh. “It’s a long story.”
“Well, whatever, girl, I’m just glad you’re alive!” She hugs me again. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink. There’s a fine new barkeep up there tonight.”
“Sounds awesome, thank you. I’m still in shock over this place. How long have you been here?”
“Two months now. It’s fabulous. You’ll love it.”
We continue down the hallway, Jade’s arm linked through mine, because I guess it’s obvious I’m having issues doing life at the moment. “Where you been, girl?” She glances at me, at least three inches higher on those platforms.
“Here and there.”
“Ah. Wanna talk about it?”
I shake my head.
“I get it.” She chuckles, then sighs. “I never do, either.”
“So, what’s with the tray?”
“Huh? Oh, I was waitressing tonight. I was about to head out; I been here all damn day. But now—fuck—my girl’s here! Time to par-tay!” She throws her hands up and does a little dance as we turn the corner. The bass thumps low and loud, churning the fear and sadness into a pulp that’s dissolved by a river of new emotion, because . . . music.
Tears slip around my grin as I take Jade’s hand, and she pulls me through another heavy black curtain. The volume surges again, to club-level quality sound, and old-school trip-hop beats like the ones that echoed through the pine trees that night, before the massacre. It’s a giant space with stellar acoustics, and a ceiling at least a hundred feet high packed with laser lights and strobes, and huge, black speakers. I’ve literally died and gone to Christmasland—on Mars.
Past the dozen or so waiters and waitresses buzzing about, and the sea of bobbing heads in the sunken dancefloor, I feast my gaze on the MC at the turntables, luscious blonde waves and tight body, one hand on her headphones and the other at the tables.
No way.
“Is that . . . Asyd Rayne?” I ask Jade, heart thumping along with the bass.
She moves closer. “Yeah! How awesome is that?”
“It’s really fucking awesome!” I yell. “I can’t believe it!”
Holy shit. I knew she escaped that night at the log cabin, but seeing her here, now, is a sweet improbability. I taste the lively cocktail of gratitude, adrenaline, and lust.
“Start believing!” Jade says. “And let’s go get a drink!”
“Where’s the bar?”
“Up the ramp!”
She leads me through the crowd to a seating area, where couples make out in booths, back-lit by soft, purple light, same as the glass tables.
“Loving your hair, by the way!” Jade says into my ear. “Almost didn’t recognize you!”
“Thanks.” I smile. “Yours is awesome, too, as always!”
“Thank you!”
Around the next corner, there’s a small ramp to an upper level, and the bass lessens as we climb. The second floor comes into v
iew, and once again, I’m caught off guard. This level, bathed in pink light, has “cages” scattered around it, full of naked, dancing young women. Around them are small, square tables, at which men and a few women sit and chat, drinking, smoking, and gawking. The smell of sweet marijuana lingers in the air.
My body flushes with heat when I catch sight of a sexy Asian chick with long, black hair and a cherry blossom tree backpiece, fingering herself for a small crowd.
“They’re hot, right?” Jade asks. “Girl, I’d do it, but I doubt they’d appreciate the bulge in the g-string.” She winks. “Know what I’m sayin’?”
“Yeah.” I force a laugh, because I’m so far removed from my element that I have no idea how to act or where to put my hands right now.
Beyond the crowd and cages, and all the way back, is an enormous bar with strings of LED lights draping from the racks of glasses above the bartop, which is surrounded by people. Behind the bar, two men, a Black guy and a White guy with black hair, hurry to get everyone served.
“That’s the one,” Jade points. “The White guy. Oh, Dios mio. He has ‘bad boy’ written all over his fine ass.”
Eleven
As we get closer to the bar, I make out the black faux hawk and facial features I’ve seen closer than I should’ve. The lips that roamed my body now hold a cigarette between them as he works, and I grow warm with a flood of thoughts and emotions.
“I know him,” I tell Jade. “I came here with him.”
“No shit? Are you two, like—?”
“No. I mean, we were, but . . . it’s complicated.”
“I hear ya on that one, momma. But, uh . . . feel free to hook a sista up, though. I’m available, just sayin’.”
The playful, surface-level small talk that once fueled my every human interaction makes me tired now, pretending things are okay enough to engage in it. But I humor her.
“I’ll keep you posted.”
We squeeze our way past people with drinks and those without, to the front of the crowd. When Logan sees me, he grins, then leans over the bar to hug me. The smell of his perspiration ignites something dark in me, and I hold him for what might be longer than acceptable. But it feels good . . . to at least know he’s real, and this place is real, and that things like blacklights, bars, and loud, soul-thumping bass still exist in this dead world. There’s even a jukebox in the corner, next to . . . is that a cigarette vending machine? No way.
Tunnels and Planes: An Urban Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (The Night Blind Saga Book 3) Page 5