The Bleeding Crowd

by Jessica Dall

  At last she turned, looking at his frozen form for a moment before stepping forwards a little. She slid her hands under his shirt, peeling it off him. He let her, remaining otherwise stationary. She tossed the shirt aside.

  “You aren’t going to do anything?”

  “What?” He watched her as best he could.

  “This is what you wanted, I take it? Sex?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Me?”

  He laughed slightly. “Do you always have to be matter-of-fact about everything?”

  “How else should I be?”

  He didn’t respond, stepping so he was pressed against her. “You are beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” she said, tilting her head to let him kiss her neck. “Though you can’t really see me. I can barely make you out.”

  “I saw you a couple hours ago,” he said. “I doubt you’ve suddenly deteriorated.”

  “Not if you’ve still thought I was beautiful after days of sleeping on the ground and not washing.”

  “You’re always beautiful,” he said.

  “To you maybe.”

  “To me.” He kissed her. “Lay down?”

  “Is that a question or an order?”

  “Have you ever listened to one of my orders, Lia?”

  She felt her way onto the blanket. “There’s a first time for everything.”

  * * * *

  Sometime later, Ben released a breath. “So...”

  Dahlia turned her head. “So?”

  “Are we...good?”

  “Good?” She frowned at him.

  “Are you good?”

  “Very.” She nodded.

  “Good,” Ben said.

  “Pleasantest time we’ve spent together in weeks,” she said. “A month.”

  Ben nodded.

  “Maybe we just need to have sex.”

  Ben looked at her. “What?”

  “We’re just, I don’t know, fiery enough, I suppose, that we need an outlet. Maybe the only way we can coexist is if we have sex.”

  Ben laughed. “Figures we couldn’t have come to that conclusion sooner.”

  “Well, we’re us.” Dahlia shrugged.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure I know. I suppose it’s a good note to go out on at least, us not fighting.”

  He didn’t respond, running a hand over her stomach lightly, tracing no distinct pattern.

  “Why are you not terrified?” she asked.

  “What?” He didn’t look away from her stomach.

  “We’re probably going to die.”

  “I think that’s been pretty well stated.” He nodded.

  “So how are you not terrified?”

  “Who says I’m not?”

  “You don’t seem scared.”

  “Neither do you,” he said.

  “Really?”

  He shook his head.

  “Probably the sedative I took,” she said, “because I’m terrified. Beyond terrified. I’m petrified.”

  He pulled her closer to him, wrapping the blanket around them. “You know you don’t have to do this. If it’s...if it’s too much for you, it’s not too late to change the plan.”

  “That’s what Heather said,” Dahlia rearranged herself so she could look at the sky while resting on his chest.

  “Well it’s true,” he said, gazing at her profile. “We aren’t going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. Anything you don’t think you can do.”

  “I can do it,” Dahlia said, “I’m just terrified.”

  “Anything I can do to make you be less terrified?”

  “Nothing that won’t be empty platitudes.” She sighed. “You are scared though?”

  “I’m human, aren’t I?”

  “You try to hide that fact quite a bit.”

  “I get scared, Lia,” he said. “Quite a lot in fact.”

  Silence started to stretch on between them.

  “I was scared when you were sick,” he admitted.

  She nodded. “Thank you for that, by the way.”

  “For what?”

  “For risking your life for me.”

  “You risked yours for me.” He shrugged with the shoulder she wasn’t lying on. “You’ve risked yours for me many times.”

  “Why don’t we just call it equal then?”

  “I suppose,” Ben said. “Rest of the guys still owe you big time though.”

  She smiled. “Good to know.”

  “Yeah, so you can call them in on that whenever you feel the need.”

  She nodded. “You don’t miss home I take it.”

  “Home?”

  “You know...”

  “I do, I suppose,” he said. “I just don’t have much to miss. Do you miss it?”

  “I’ve been homesick for weeks.” Dahlia nodded. “I miss my friends. I miss getting up and just being able to go to work. I miss my room.”

  “Heather hit the nail on the head,” Ben mumbled.

  “Hmm?”

  “You gave up more than anyone else here,” he said. “We were already in a crappy situation. You weren’t. You were in charge. Privileged. A woman. A heterosexual woman. A smart heterosexual woman at that. You were the cream of the crop.”

  “And now?”

  “Now you’re down here with the rest of the dregs of society.”

  “I don’t think it’s been a completely worthless experience though.” Dahlia turned her head to look at him.

  “No?”

  She took a breath. “I might regret a lot of things, Ben, but I don’t regret I met you. I might be cold and miserable, but at this point, it’s better than living a lie. As much as I may want to go back to what I used to think, I know far too many smart, interesting men now.”

  “Smart and interesting?” He smiled.

  “Well, I didn’t mean you, but...” She laughed as he nudged her. “You are infuriating and I really want to hurt you many days, but I think I’ve grown as a person from having known you. I can’t regret that. If we don’t grow, what’s life for?”

  “Sex,” Ben said. “Lots and lots of sex.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “You just rolled your eyes, didn’t you?” He studied her through the darkness.

  “No,” she lied.

  “Liar.”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  “Maybe.”

  They didn’t speak for a long moment.

  “We should be getting back,” she said. “It has to be nearing morning.”

  “Just a little longer,” Ben said. “Just a couple more minutes.

  * * * *

  Jude watched the party going to town disappear behind the hill before looking at Ben.

  Ben waited a moment and then sighed. “What?”

  “Any reason you were in the forest this morning?” Jude said.

  Ben turned back to camp. “Stretch your imagination.”

  “You actually made up?”

  Ben didn’t answer.

  “And you’re just going to let her wander away like that?”

  “Like what?” Ben asked. “We all know what we’re here to do.”

  “Did you at least tell her you loved her?”

  Ben glared at him.

  “Ben, seriously?” Jude stared at him.

  “If she manages to get out of this alive, Jude, it’ll be a miracle. There’s no chance in hell that I’m going to. There was no need to say that.”

  “You should have let her know.”

  “We left it on a good note,” Ben said. “We were smiling...I’d rather she remember me like that then to be crying after all this.”

  “What did you tell her then?”

  “That we had a good chance of getting through this.”

  “So you left on a lie.” Jude sighed.

  “She knew it was a lie,” he said. “There was no pretense. If it makes you happier to focus on a lie...if you’re facing death anyway, why make yourself miserable?” />
  “If she dies, you’ll never have any closure.”

  Ben shook his head. “I’ve lived my life without closure.”

  “What if it’s the opposite?”

  Ben released a breath. “We reached a peace treaty. Hopefully that’s enough closure for her.”

  “You’ve never been an ‘enough’ kind of guy.”

  “Well, in this case it will have to do,” he said. “I need to figure out a plan. If you’ll excuse me...”

  “Yeah, I’d like to know what we’re going to be doing.”

  Ben just looked at him. “We?”

  “You can’t do everything alone,” Jude said.

  “So you want to go on the suicide trek with me?”

  “If you’ve got to go down, might as well make it a blaze of glory.”

  “Or as shadows sneaking around at night trying to get something done under the radar.”

  “You need help,” Jude said. “Might as well come from me.”

  Ben actual managed a smile and clapped Jude on the back.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dahlia looked around Mia’s room. It didn’t look much different than hers, making the whole charade just a little harder. It had the same bed, the same dresser, they were even placed along the same walls as hers had been with the control pads near the window, bed, desk, and door. If the window across the room had doubled as a door, it could have been her room. Though a door would have been a little dangerous since Mia lived on the third story. It appeared they didn’t have enough space for one-story villas.

  She sat on the bed, just like at home. A few days had passed and she’d slept through most of that. Being a spy puzzled her, but at least she had the chance to sedate herself. Being slightly spacey would be less suspicious than being nervous all the time. She didn’t know how Ben had done it.

  More than likely she wasn’t going to see him ever again. That thought hit her more deeply than the thought of dying. Maybe because it was so much harder to imagine being dead. Obviously she would be dead at some point, if not this week then the next, or, if not then, the next month, or next year, or the next ten years. It was all the future, all vaguely abstract. She couldn’t imagine being dead. She could imagine being alone.

  It had been surprisingly easy to get in and around with Mia’s keycard. No one seemed to know who she was or even really care. Mia probably knew what it felt like to be alone. They should have tried to ask her to join them. They probably didn’t even think of asking a straight woman. No, they were going to rely on men and lesbians.

  She sat for a long moment. They were counting on her. If nothing else, she had to try. Try what, she wasn’t exactly sure.

  She moved to the desk, trying to figure out a password that an extremely introverted legislator would use. Actually, how someone so opposed to talking to other people was placed as a legislator was a bit of a mystery to begin with.

  Someone knocked on the door, making Dahlia jump. She took a deep breath and then moved over to the door, pulling it open slowly.

  A forty-something-year-old woman stood there. “I thought you were supposed to get back yesterday.”

  “Um, sorry, I got lost,” Dahlia said.

  “Well, you’re needed in room 555.”

  Dahlia nodded, waiting for the woman to move away before grabbing the keycard off her desk. Either she was a remarkable look-alike or Mia had been invisible.

  She swiped the card into the elevator and it took her straight to the fifth floor. Two rather large women barely glanced at her as she passed them, and then opened the door to room 555 for her. It was large inside, and had to occupy what would otherwise have been three or four regular rooms in the building. A desk sat directly across from the door, forming the only obstacle between the door and the windows which made up the entire far wall from floor to ceiling with only a couple inches on each side to make it possible to hang curtains. Dark curtains. Nothing like the sets she was used to in the rooms.

  The walls on either side of the desk were made up almost entirely of books, paper books. More books than she had ever seen in one place in paper form. She waited a beat. It didn’t appear anyone was there or coming. The knot in her stomach didn’t loosen any, but she moved to one of the shelves, picking up one of the older looking books.

  “Charles Dickens.”

  A voice made Dahlia jump and almost drop the book.

  “Would have just made it Charlotte Dickens, but most his stories are about boys anyway. If you want the classics, I’d personally go with the Brontë sisters, but that’s just my personal taste.”

  Dahlia blinked and looked at the woman. She was instantly recognizable, but hardly as impressive in person. If she hadn’t been Patience, she wouldn’t have been any different than any other woman on the street. She was shorter, maybe 160cm, with dark blonde hair framing her face. Two hazel eyes studied Dahlia with what almost looked like humor, the color becoming almost orange around the pupil.

  “I’ll assume you know who I am.”

  Dahlia only hesitated a moment. “Patience.”

  “One of her.” The woman nodded.

  “One?” Dahlia frowned. “There are more of...you?”

  “Well, I’m the thirty-year-old Patience,” the woman answered. “Every thirty years they start a new one. So far the DNA’s held up remarkably well.”

  Dahlia paused. “You’re a clone?”

  “Smart.” Patience smiled. “One every thirty years. It’s how we stay young.”

  She nodded, unsurprised. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “It’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

  Dahlia didn’t answer right away. “I work here.”

  Patience moved to the desk, bringing up a picture. “I admit you look remarkably like Mia, but we aren’t blind.”

  Looking at the picture and then the one of her that a security camera had taken, the computer started up a program, and Dahlia saw dots forming on her face and the picture of the other woman.

  “Anyway, if we missed it, the computer obviously knows there’s a difference. Your nose is thinner, your eyes set wider...” Patience watched the computer work for a moment. “I suppose it’s good to know security is pulling its weight around here. Now, would you like to tell me who you are or would you prefer me to guess?”

  “Where’s the fun in being given all the answer right up front?” Dahlia asked in a tight voice.

  “True,” Patience said. “Should I ask your friends then?”

  “My friends are quite far away,” Dahlia insisted.

  “You didn’t come with the men then?”

  She frowned, determined to give away nothing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come with me.” Patience motioned to the doorway.

  Dahlia hesitated, but had no other choice than to follow.

  Guards flanked the doorway, guns resting against their shoulders. Patience motioned to another room. Dahlia paused, but walked to it, feeling a hand push her inside followed by a click of a lock behind her.

  “Dahlia!” Jude stood.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck as he hugged her, looking at the door. Nobody seemed to be there. She looked back at him, almost whispering. “How’d you get yourself caught already?”

  “Bad, bad luck.” Jude pulled back.

  Ben moved toward them.

  Dahlia looked at him and frowned. “Jude was with you.”

  Ben nodded.

  They stood still for a long moment before she crossed the room. He wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her against him in silence.

  Jude waited a respectful moment. “You made it what? Three? Four days?”

  “I used most of that time to sleep.” Dahlia turned, but Ben didn’t release her. “Having a bed again was beautiful.”

  “So you didn’t accomplish anything?”

  Dahlia didn’t answer, sliding away from Ben to skirt the edges of the room.

  “What are you doing?” He finally spoke. />
  “They probably have the place bugged,” she said. “They caught me on a security camera. They have cameras around to use at their disposal. Though, it’s not like we could do anything about it if we found a bug. At least we’d know if it’s just audio or if they can see us too.”

  “Does it matter?” Jude asked.

  “I supposed not in the long run.” Dahlia pushed the curtains to look at the folds. “To me it does a bit.”

  Ben caught her by the hips, pulling her back gently. “If they’re listening, they’re hoping that we tell them where the others are. We don’t actually know where they are, so it doesn’t especially matter. Personally, I’m happy that this is their version of a holding cell.”

  Dahlia nodded, looking around. It looked no different than Mia’s room. Or her room. Or Cassandra’s room. It contained a bed, a desk and chair, and a bed. “So we’re locked in just another room. I take it the control pads are locked down.”

  “What?” Ben frowned.

  “That we can’t actually control anything.” She moved to the one by the window. “It would be sort of stupid to give us a way to contact everyone...”

  The men just watched her.

  “Yeah.” Dahlia sighed, tapping the pad. “We can’t even turn the lights on and off.”

  “Will you hold still for a second?” Ben took her hand.

  “Too much nervous energy.” She sat on the bed, tapping her knee.

  He followed, bending down to kiss her.

  She froze for a second before returning his kiss.

  “Can we hold off on the romance?” Jude shook his head.

  The door opened again. The men studied the woman in the door way. “Who...?”

  “I told you Patience was the real Patience.” Dahlia stood, standing slightly in front of Ben.

  “She can’t—” Ben started.

  “She’s a clone,” Dahlia explained.

  “What?” Ben frowned.

  “They cloned the original one,” Dahlia said.

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.” Patience nodded. “You know, without a huge military budget there was a lot of time to develop plausible cloning before it was too late. So you three are friends.”

  “Not necessarily,” Dahlia said. “We could have met three seconds before we went off on our own ways.”