by Cadle, Lou
Nothing.
So, okay, try and talk. The radio light was beginning to dim, so she got back on the bike, pedaled again until she was beginning to sweat and the lights were bright, and then she got off and sat at the radio. She went through the preselects one by one again, avoiding the setting she had found it on, this time saying, “Hello? Anybody out there?” Then she turned off the mike and listened. She said it a second time, and when she didn’t get an answer, went on to the next. She’d save setting 2 for a last resort. The last thing she wanted to do was alert the buddies of this group that she was on this radio.
They might not be able to tell where she was calling from, but why take the chance? Try and find someone sane, instead.
She tried different “modes.” She had to pedal again to charge up the radio—or the battery inside or whatever.
She tried her greeting again and again. No one was there. At least, no one was on a radio this late at night. She figured it must be ten o’clock or so, give or take. She’d better get someone soon, because the more time passed, the less likely someone would be awake and listening.
One by one, she tried the other knobs. The unmarked one changed the tone of the static, gave her a sharp whistle that faded when she turned the knob further. Okay, so set everything back the way it was, and twist that one.
The static was quite a bit louder.
And then, out of the static, she heard a voice. A human male voice, talking. She turned up the volume, but she couldn’t make it out. It spoke, it faded to quiet, and it spoke again. Was it looking for people? Talking with someone else who was too far away for her to hear?
She grabbed the microphone again and said, “Hello. Can you hear me? Can you hear me?” She let go of the switch and listened. There was no change in the voice. It went on with its announcement or conversation. She fiddled with the unmarked dial, but the voice grew softer. When she turned it back again, trying to find the right spot, the voice was gone.
Damn it! So close. She spent long minutes trying to get the person back, but he was gone. Time to bike again. She pedaled furiously, wanting to get back to the radio before more time slipped away.
Turning the unmarked knob again—tuning the radio, she supposed—she turned all the way to its upper limit. Then she turned it back, a fraction at a time, listening, leaning forward. Nothing.
Well, hell. What now? Okay, listening wasn’t working, so try talking again. She started at the far limit of the knob and spoke into the mike. Listened, spoke again, twisted the knob a fraction, tried again.
Time was wasting. But she forced herself to go slowly and methodically. Again, she had to stop and pedal the bike to recharge the radio. At least the pedaling warmed her up.
Then a voice spoke to her. Crackly and faint, but a human voice. “Come again,” it said. “Is this Winnipeg?”
She touched the dial. The static receded. “Is that you, Giles?” it said. Much clearer this time. She turned up the volume, and with a trembling hand, tried the microphone again, saying, “Can you hear me?”
“Say over, if you’re done. Over,” said the voice.
“Thank you. I don’t know a thing about radios, over,” she said.
“You’re not Giles.”
“I’m—” she realized that she couldn’t use her name, not if this had any chance of being another Farm. “I’m a captive of some mad men. I broke into their radio room.”
“Damn,” said the voice. “Sorry to hear it. You okay?”
“Been better, but I’m alive for now. I guess you don’t know any way to get some police to help me?”
“No police or anything like it left. Where are you?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Somewhere east of Boise and north of the Interstate highway.”
“I’m in Alberta,” he said. “Canada.”
He wasn’t going to be running down to rescue them any time soon. So put aside that hope. There was something else important to talk about.
“Do you know what happened?” she said. “Back in June? Over.”
“Best info I have, an asteroid hit. Or two, nearly the same time. One in Venezuela, one about Dallas, Texas.”
Dallas. Wow. If true…that was farther away than she would ever have guessed. “Do you know anything about Ohio, in the States? I have family there.”
“Only part of the States—the mainland, I mean—not in trouble at the start was New England, like Boston and north of there. But now I hear the weather has gotten so bad, they had food riots and some say cannibalism…so now it’s bad there, too.”
“How are you making it?” she asked.
“We could survive maybe six more months. Hoping summer comes back next year.”
His voice faded at the end. The radio was dying.
“Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back in five or ten minutes,” she told him. She jumped back on the bike and pedaled hard, until the light on the radio shone brightly again.
She grabbed the mike again. “Do you have contact with anyone in Ohio? Or Michigan?”
“Can’t reach that far, but sometimes I get a lady in Ontario. She might get to Michigan.”
“Can you write this down to tell her?” She gave him her hometown, brothers’ and grandmother’s names. “I know it’s a long shot, but if she hears of anyone in that town, pass along to them that—” she hesitated giving her name, still worried a fellow cultist could hear this. Well, screw it — “that Coral is okay.”
“I will,” he said.
“I don’t know what else to ask you,” she said. “But I hate to let you go. How many are alive up there?”
“Maybe one of twenty. I lost my son.” His voice broke.
“I’m sorry. Numbers were even worse down here. If one in five hundred are alive, one in a thousand, I’d be surprised. I’ve only seen maybe thirty survivors in total. And four recent suicides.”
“We have some of that.”
She really didn’t know what else to say, what else to ask him. He was too far away to help, too far away to walk to, and in the wrong direction to get warmer, in any case. He was a lonely voice in the cold. “I guess I’ll let you go.”
“I was just about headed for bed.” His voice was fading again as her radio’s power ran down again.
“Okay. Thanks, and Good luck.”
“Signing off. And if…” his voice cut out. Then it faded back in. “…in Boise, I hear.” Then it was gone.
“What?” she said into the mike. “What about Boise? Over.”
But the radio was dead. She climbed back on the bike, pedaled until the light was half bright, and jumped back over to the radio. “Alberta, you still there? Over.”
No answer.
“Alberta? Alberta?”
No answer.
What? What in Boise, he heard? Riots? Military law? Lots of food? A restoration of normalcy? She balled her fists in frustration. If only she could have heard that sentence—even one more word would have given her a hint if they should head for it or avoid it.
When she and Benjamin escaped, their hope of survival was slim. But if there was a place to head, if Boise was functioning, that would give them a goal, a reason to push on, a reason to hope.
There was no hope to be had here—not for her, at least.
And not for Benjamin either. He knew that, right? The warmth of her spark of hope fled.
What if Tithing hadn’t been lying about him simply to upset her?
Though she tried for much of the night, she raised no more voices from the dark.
As she tried and failed, her mood darkened. She worried more and more about Benjamin.
What if he had been converted? Maybe he didn’t want to leave this place. Maybe having four walls, three meals, and an armed group to protect against invasion by even worse people…maybe that was enough for him. She wished he would have written something else in his note, something that reassured her that he wasn’t being brainwashed, that they will still in this together.
She could
almost understand him wanting to stay for the food and safety. The cost to Benjamin wasn’t so terrible as it was to her.
But she could not shake the thought that he’d been converted to the crazy cult. As she tried and failed, again and again, to raise anyone else on the radio, the thought took root and grew, and grew, until it filled her mind.
She tried to be logical in examining every brief interaction they’d had. There was the moment in the cabin, when Coral learned of the cult’s plan for her. Benjamin hadn’t spoken up in her defense, had he? He’d touched her, and she’d taken it as comfort then. He’d done something—shook his head?—that made her think to stop yelling back at Tithing. Then, she thought he was cluing her in that they were both in danger. But what if it had indicated something else?
He had helped stop her from hurting Pratt any worse. What if she had read that wrong too?
And his note. She thought he was giving her information, or making fun of the cult by saying they were building some space ship thing…but what if he had succumbed to their brainwashing and was excited about the idea?
No. Impossible. Not him. He was too solid. Moreover, he was her friend.
Right, a friend of a whole three or four months. Friendship forced by circumstance and need.
The more she thought about it, the more she despaired. She did not want to think it of him, but she had to. What if she had lost Benjamin?
If Benjamin had turned, she would leave anyway. She’d rather die out there alone, freezing to death, starving to death, than stay here and be forced into sex, marriage, and motherhood by the cult.
But how she would miss him.
Chapter 12
When she believed it must be nearing sunrise, she set the radio dials back the way they had been, made sure she had disturbed nothing else, and went back into the kitchen. She untied her dish towel shawl, smoothing each rumpled piece of material out on the edge of the counter, folding each as it had been before, and returning the towels to their place. When the shawl was gone, she felt the bitter cold seep into her head and neck.
Turning off the lamp was hard for her. It was harder still because of her emotional state. But she couldn’t risk their knowing she had been awake or using the radio. She was so damned hungry, she risked taking two carrots from the carrot bin. Then she turned off the light and, by feel, made her way back into the dining room.
She shut the door and sat down to work at the lock. A clicking sound told her something in there had moved. She tried the knob, and it didn’t turn. Maybe it wasn’t normally locked, but it should fool them. And if she had broken something in there, they might not suspect her of having unlocked it.
Standing on legs beginning to ache from all the biking, she shuffled over to the table, and sat on the first seat she bumped into. Every night outside had been dark, with no moon or stars visible to light the landscape. But because the wildfire had burned everything away, there wasn’t much to bump into. It seemed darker in here than out there.
And then, she had had Benjamin beside her, too.
She ate her carrots, the crunching noise loud in the empty room. Her hands and ears and face were getting stiff from the cold. She pulled the turtleneck half over her shaved head so it covered her ears, too. Then she pulled her arms in through the sleeves and put her hands under the opposite armpits, hugging herself against the cold.
Thoughts of Benjamin haunted her. She remembered being up on the roof with him. She remembered rescuing him, the look of his battered face. Arguing with him. Eating across from a smoldering fire with him. The sound of his breathing at night.
She couldn’t help but think how awful life would be without him.
If he had turned, become a cultist, she didn’t know how she could go on. If he told them of her escape plans, they’d stop her. She wouldn’t be able to stand that. She’d make herself go crazy, one of those sorts of crazy where she dissociated entirely, became numb to the world. Catatonia, that was the word.
Maybe she could will it to happen.
*
The dawn came, gray light appearing at the edges of the shutters. She had been trying for many minutes to let herself give up, let herself drift into catatonia, retreat from the physical Coral, hide her mind and soul. Then they could use her body how they wanted, but she would not be there. She’d be off in a dark corner of her brain, cut off, safe, unaware of being raped, never having to look directly at the loss of Benjamin to this cult, if that’s what had in fact happened.
But in those last minutes before dawn, she had discovered something about herself. It was impossible for her to hide like that, impossible for her to break.
She possessed a terrible strength.
It was a strength that would keep her alive, and aware, and fighting, and sane, beyond a point where surrender or craziness would be a smarter choice. She could not retreat into catatonia, no more than she could retreat into complacency.
She would escape this place, or die trying, and in two days, on the night she had planned. If Benjamin met her at midnight, she’d be thrilled to have been wrong in her fears about him. If he did not come along but kept her secret out of a sense of loyalty, she’d be grateful. If he told them of her plans, she’d be devastated, heartbroken. But her mind, her will: those would not be broken, not ever.
It felt not like a relief to understand this about herself but like learning of a horrible curse. She was cursed to fight to stay alive right up to the instant of her death.
So be it.
The cold had stiffened her muscles. She stood and began pacing around the room, shaking out the stiffness, and then she started to jog, around and around the dining table. After a few minutes, she was panting. She sped up, going as fast as she could without banging into the table. When she escaped, she might need to run. A single practice session wouldn’t help much in making her fit enough to run for miles…but it wouldn’t hurt either.
When the door opened, and Brynn stood there in the morning light, holding her jacket, Coral drew to a stop, panting like a horse, steam billowing out from her face. “Morning!” she said with a cheery smile.
Brynn stared, gaping. She had probably expected to find Coral in much worse shape—maybe even dead from the cold.
“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” Coral said. She bared her teeth in a facsimile of a smile. “Cheer up, Brynn. It’s a new day.”
Brynn accompanied her outside, where Mondra was lighting a fire. “I’m going to get you into a dress. And no argument this time.”
Her knife. And the paper. Both were in her jeans pocket. She couldn’t lose those. “I really have to pee first.”
Brynn gave a weary sigh. “No nonsense.”
“I need a quick trip to the outhouse. I haven’t been since yesterday afternoon.”
“I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”
“Oh, I have,” said Coral. She was already thinking about the layout of the outhouse. The writing paper, she could tuck inside the stack of toilet paper, toward the bottom of the pile. But where to stash the knife so that no one could see it?
When they reached the little building, Coral went inside and closed the door. She only needed time enough to find a space, four or five inches long, not visible from the seat. As she used the toilet, she looked all around. The building was well made. She had been hoping for a crack between boards, maybe at the side of the seat. But everything fit perfectly. She tucked the writing paper away.
Brynn knocked on the door. “Don’t dawdle.”
“Half a second,” Coral called, looking around desperately. Over the door, there was a tiny ledge, only an inch wide. There was every possibility that a hard slam of the door would knock her knife off, but she could see nowhere else to put it. No way was she throwing it into the toilet, and putting it under the stack of toilet paper didn’t seem like a safe hiding place. She stood on the lip of wood in front of the toilet seat and leaned forward, catching the top of the door with her fingertips. She tucked the knife onto the ledge and, taking
care to make no suspicious noise, pushed back and sat down. She could see the edge of the knife, but then she knew it was there.
If she was lucky, no one else would notice it. The light was dim in here, even at high noon. And it was only a day and a half until she escaped. Leaving the knife here was the best she could do for now.
She opened the door and joined Brynn, following her back to the women’s cabin, wondering how she’d be able to escape in a stupid dress, and how she’d be able to hike without freezing to death in one. Hmm—maybe that’s why they kept the women in skirts, to keep them from considering escaping, should one would-be bride think better of her servitude.
Expecting to be forced to stay in her burlap shift, she was surprised when Brynn handed her a new garment. “I made this for you. Put it on. Take your jeans off.”
Coral stripped naked, surprised to feel not a moment of self-consciousness. She couldn’t feel embarrassed in front of Brynn, for sometime during the night, she had stopped seeing any of them as people. They were obstacles, is all, and she’d go around them or through them the night of her escape, whichever was easiest.
Brynn folded the jeans and laid them on the bed. Coral was relieved that she’d hidden the pocket knife.
The cabin was cold, but she’d made it through the night in hardly any clothes and could bear a minute of this. Naked, she shook out the dress, which was a patchwork thing, made from discarded shirts of many colors and patterns. Brynn, knowing it was for Coral, had no doubt taken pleasure in putting the most clashing colors next to each other. It had a simple rounded neck, barely big enough to push her head through, elastic on half-length sleeves, and was far too thin for the weather. Coral slipped it on. It fell nearly to her ankles, with a wide enough skirt that she could walk and work in it.
Brynn followed it up with a pair of white men’s jockey shorts. “And these.”
Coral slipped them on under the skirt and pulled them up. She hoped they’d been washed before whoever had donated them to her.
“Tithing says to let you keep your jeans, to sleep in until I have time to make you a nightgown. But put them under your covers, where I don’t have to look at them all the time.”