by Summer Lane
“He’s bad news,” I say. “And his hair is disgusting.”
Shoot. Hair.
Something I don’t have a lot of anymore. I start to get teary-eyed again but I take a deep breath, look up at the orange trees, and try to zone out. Think of something else. Something other than the fact that I’ve been forced into slave labor.
Like why Omega needs us to pick oranges.
“What’s the point of this?” Sophia states as we walk towards a group of women placing a ladder against a tree. “How does picking oranges help Omega take over the world?”
“Well...” I lower my voice, conscious of the armed Omega men standing guard on the edges of the fields. “You said you thought something big was going down on the East Coast, right? Omega has a lot of troops over there.”
“Right.”
“You said it could have even been a nuclear war.”
“Yeah, so...?”
“So Omega has got to be some kind of cover name. An organization that nobody’s ever heard of doesn’t just pop up out of the blue, nuke New York, hit the East Coast with a full frontal assault and then start taking over the country.” I run a hand through my choppy hair. “Somebody big is behind this, and you and I just aren’t getting the full story because there’s no way to communicate with people who really do know what’s going on.”
“Okay, but that doesn’t answer the orange question,” Sophia deadpans, raising an eyebrow. “World domination and fruit packing...? Come on.”
“I’m guessing Omega needs food,” I reply. “Look at it this way. If you’re an invading army, you’re going to need some way to feed your troops. If New York is really nuked, then it’s possible that other places are too. Omega’s going to need food. That would explain why they’re bringing us here. They need us to harvest what’s already here and then start planting new food.”
I hug my arms around my chest, surprised that I put the pieces together without Chris’s help. He’s always the one who explains Omega’s evil intentions like a boss.
An Omega guard yells at us suddenly, telling us to quit standing around, working our jaws. It scares the crap out of us to get singled out of the entire group like that, so we climb up a ladder and start picking. I’ve never done this kind of work before, and at first it seems pretty easy. Pick an orange, put it in your sack, climb back down when it’s full, and then dump the oranges in the bins for the male workers to haul away.
It’s fine until you do it over and over again. Without food and water. Without breaks. And without a place to use the restroom. It goes from easy to torturous in a snap.
“There really aren’t very many troops in the Central Valley,” Sophia says to me as we’re hauling a huge sack of oranges to the end of the field. The sun is high in the sky, and we’ve been working for at least four hours. My arms are sore. My neck is sunburned, and despite the cold temperatures, I’m soaked in sweat. “How much food can it take to feed a few soldiers?”
I drop my eyes to the white bins at the end of the field, making sure nobody can hear me. “Maybe they’re getting ready.”
“For what?”
“For backup.”
Sophia’s mouth forms a little O as we reach the bins, dump our oranges in, and head back to the tree we’re working in. “If they’re on the East Coast...maybe they’re working their way closer?” Sophia suggests.
“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t think so. Something else is going on. But have you noticed how all of these troops are Russian? Soviet Union, anyone?”
“The Soviet Union did not invade the United States,” Sophia says, smirking. “They don’t exist anymore. Besides, it’d take a lot more than Russia, don’t you think?”
“Right. They couldn’t do it alone.”
Isn’t that the truth? Nobody could take over the world’s greatest superpower without some serious firepower, some serious planning...and some serious big wheels backing them up. There’s a lot more to Omega than meets the eye.
Not a concept I’m thrilled to realize.
Chapter Four
Omega is like an annoying relative that you can’t get rid of. They’re always there, waiting for you to make a mistake. Waiting for you to cross an invisible line. And when you do cross that line, you’re dead.
Game over.
My first day at the labor camp is nothing short of miserable. I lose my hair, my clothes, my dignity and my independence. Something I don’t lose is my appetite or my need to drink clean water. Hunger and thirst are the two things at the forefront of my mind as the hours pass.
Throughout the first day, Sophia and I work hard, picking oranges, putting them in our sacks, taking them to the bins. Rinse and repeat. It’s very boring. Very tiring. We don’t get any downtime. At around two in the afternoon a pickup truck drives up to the corner of the field.
Prisoners start flooding towards it. Sophia and I hang back, cautious. Until we see that there’s a huge plastic water tank on the back of the pickup bed. We approach slowly and I watch while prisoners fill old milk cartons, thermoses and plastic water bottles. Sophia licks her lips.
“Where do we get some of those?” she says.
“I don’t know.”
Prisoners push and shove to the front of the line, filling their containers and gorging themselves with water. My dry mouth is very jealous right now.
“Hey.” Grease is marching up from the side of the field. He tosses a plastic milk carton at my chest before giving an oversized orange juice can to Sophia. “You’re welcome.”
I open and close my mouth a few times before blurting out,
“Thank you.”
But he’s already gone.
“That’s not right,” Sophia observes. “He wants something from us.”
“I don’t care. I’m thirsty.”
I work my way to the pickup bed and pull the lever on the container. Cold water comes rushing out. Probably ditchwater. Not long ago I would have rolled over and died before I drank out of a ditch. Today I don’t care.
Funny how things have changed.
I fill the container to the brim and screw the lid tight just as I’m roughly shoved aside by a male prisoner. I hit the ground on my shoulder, wincing with pain. I get to my feet. My cheeks flush with anger and embarrassment. I feel like crying. Or kicking him. Maybe both. But nobody even notices I was knocked down. I’m invisible. Sophia rushes up behind me and places her hand on my shoulder.
“You okay?” she whispers.
I nod.
“I’m going to get some water, too.” She squeezes through the crowd, gets her own water, and the two of us head back out to our tree. Away from the crazy prisoners pushing and clawing their way to the water.
“Next time we’ll just go last,” I say.
Sophia agrees, then we pop the lids off our cartons and chug down half of the water inside. It’s cold and refreshing, even if there are flecks of dirt and god-knows-what floating around in it. It does what it’s supposed to do. I keeps me alive.
“How long do you think our workday is?” Sophia wonders.
She climbs to the top of the ladder. I work my way up behind her, swinging onto the trunk of the tree. After just a few hours of working out here, we’ve already got a system down. She picks at the top of the ladder, because she’s taller, and I bend down and get the oranges underneath the canopy of branches that she would have a hard time reaching. “Probably from sunrise to sunset,” I sigh. “And I’m doubting we get a dental plan.”
Sophia snorts.
“I’m doubting we get anything.”
“I wonder when we eat.” I drop a couple of oranges into my bag. “Kamaneva said we get ten minutes for dinner.”
“Ten minutes? That’s not enough. I need an hour. At least.”
“An hour? It doesn’t take that long to eat.”
“You’ve never met my family.”
I grin for the first time since arriving.
The rest of the day passes slowly, and the by the time evening
hits, I’m exhausted – mentally and physically. Every once in a while Sophia and I will hear the boom and rattle of distant gunfire, reminding us that we’re working in the middle of an active warzone. It’s chilling.
“Hey, listen.” Sophia pauses, cocking her head. “What’s that?”
I stop. The school intercom is emitting a piercing tone. It sounds like a heart rate monitor that’s flat-lined. All around us, seasoned prisoners stop what they’re doing, grab their ladders, and take off.
“I’m guessing we’re done,” I say.
Sophia takes one end of the ladder and I take the other. We haul it to the end of the field and heave it into the back of a pickup. We grab our water containers and watch as other prisoners drop their shoulder sacks into a bin. Sophia and I follow suit and blend into the crowd as armed Omega troopers close in around us. It’s not long before we’re moving back into the complex. We march down the long corridors before making a sharp turn into the cafeteria.
Sophia and I are clueless about how to proceed, so we let the other prisoners surge in front of us while we bring up the rear. They line up at a long, low table. Stacks of bowls are piled at one end. Everybody grabs one.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” I mumble.
I take a bowl and file down the side of the table. I hold my bowl out as a woman – a fellow prisoner, by the looks of it – spoons out something hot and steaming into the container. I stare at the contents. It looks like muddy water.
“What is this?” Sophia hisses.
“I don’t think I want to know.” We’re given a piece of hard bread at the end of the line and Sophia and I sit down at a plastic table in the corner. “This bread is like fifty years old.” I try to break it in half, but it’s too stale. It won’t even bend. “That’s it. My teeth are screwed.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Sophia says. “...I think.”
The Mystery Soup is nothing but water with a few spices, some chunks of unidentifiable meat and a little flour thrown in. I soak the bread in the bowl to get it soft enough to eat. Honestly, I’ve had better meals. Then again, I’ve had worse meals. I did live in Los Angeles, after all. There are some pretty nasty places to eat down there. I went through a lot of trial and error in high school to find the restaurants that were worth the time and money.
This is not worth time or money. Or caloric value.
I don’t see a rosy, healthy future for myself if this is the only food we get around here. It’s nothing more than thickened gruel and a piece of stale bread. It’s not enough to keep an anorexic canary alive, let alone a human being.
Maybe we’ll get more food tomorrow.
Keep dreaming, my little voice says.
In the end, Kamaneva is right. We only get ten minutes to eat, which is more than enough time considering the fact that our meal has less mass than bottled baby food. Afterwards we’re marched back to the LAB. The doors are shut behind us and locked tight. Armed Omega troopers are stationed in the hall and outside the windows.
Sophia and I press our backs against the far wall and drop to the ground, watching other prisoners crawl into their own spaces. Some squeeze underneath the lab counters and curl up inside the big storage cupboards. Others literally sprawl out wherever they are and close their eyes. Arms and legs are everywhere, and the women don’t seem to be embarrassed to prop their legs up on each other’s backs or stick their head in somebody’s face.
I, on the other hand, am embarrassed. I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes. I’m too stressed to analyze anything. I’m too exhausted to think about the fact that just last night, I was searching for Chris at the trailer park.
Just last night I was still a free person.
“Goodnight, Cassidy,” Sophia yawns.
“Night.”
I fall asleep.
I’m too tired to do anything else.
Whether or not it's normal, everybody falls into a routine. Even if you’re a prisoner at a slave labor camp, picking oranges and being bossed around by a Russian soldier with a long, confusing name. That’s what happens to me: I get familiar with the routine at camp. Our schedule is simple, so it’s not hard to do:
Get up at sunrise. Eat breakfast. Mystery Soup and Concrete Bread. Ten minutes.
Get to work. Harvest the orange trees as fast as we can. The fields are huge and there are oranges everywhere.
Sunset. More Mystery Soup and Concrete Bread.
Head to the LAB aka our cellblock. Group 13 shuts down and rests for the day.
It’s the same thing day after day. There’s never any change, and despite the high stress environment and the fact that, hey, we’re enslaved, I actually get used to the lifestyle here. Hard, grueling work. Borderline starvation. Bullying, taunting and humiliation from the soldiers. It’s not a pretty picture. But that’s the beauty of being human, right? We adapt to even the most difficult situations. Plus, I’m smaller than some of the other prisoners, so the paltry amount of nutrition we receive here goes a little farther with me. Big, muscular men quickly become weak and emaciated, but smaller people like me? We last a little longer.
Well, for the most part.
I can’t keep my overactive brain in check. I keep thinking about Chris. What is doing right now? Is he looking for me? Or did he just give up on ever finding me again? I wouldn’t blame him. How would he track a truck all the way to...wherever I am? Somewhere in the Central Valley.
And what about my dad? What’s happening to him? Was he captured and taken to an Omega facility just like this? Is this what happened to Chris’s family? How am I ever supposed to find them if I’m stuck in prison?
The frustration is a physical force.
It’s one thing to be separated from the people you love. It’s another thing to be separated by bars, barbed wire and armed guards. It’s a nightmare. But Sophia helps me keep it together. She’s a lot calmer than I am – and full of common sense. Something I don’t have a lot of.
“You know what’s ironic?” she asks me.
We’re in a new field of oranges, and we’re harvesting as fast as we can. The temperature has risen and the fruit is ripening quicker. Omega wants everything taken off the trees pronto, so they can feed their men. But oranges aren’t exactly the kind of food you give an army.
Unless the army is desperate for anything they can find...and they’re just taking what’s here before they start planting what they want. The question is, what do they want, and who are they feeding? Because there aren’t enough troops in the Central Valley of California alone to warrant a production like this.
Right?
“Hello?” Sophia waves a hand in front of my face.
“Hmm? Oh, sorry.” I shrug. “I was thinking.”
“Obviously.” She wipes the sweat off her forehead. Already I can see the effects of severe hunger on her face. Sharper cheekbones, a more angular jawline. I’m betting that if I could see myself in a mirror, I’d notice some not-so-attractive changes in my own face, too. “I said, isn’t it ironic that the only reason Omega needs us to do all this is because of the EMP?”
I blink.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean all of this. Omega needs labor because they destroyed the infrastructure of the country with an EMP.” She holds an orange in front of my face. “They created their own problem and they’re having us solve it for them. It’s not fair!”
“No, slave labor isn’t exactly the picture of fairness,” I roll my eyes. “Omega’s got this place pretty well organized, though. Everybody’s got a job. They’re using us to our full potential. It’s transporting and storing the food we’re harvesting that’s got to be hard for them, I guess.”
“What do you mean, I guess?” She smirks.
“Well...you’re assuming that Omega is behind the EMP.”
“Of course they are. Who else would be?”
I shrug, keeping an eye out for any overly curious listeners. Talking amongst ourselves while working is against the r
ules, so we try to keep chitchat on the DL.
“Think about it,” I whisper. “These troops are Russian. A few months ago I saw international troops in Bakersfield speaking German. There was an officer that captured Chris and me. His name was Keller. He was very not Russian, and he definitely wasn’t American.”
“So what are you saying? Omega is culturally diverse?”
“Yes.” I make a move to pull my hair over my shoulder, and then stop. There is no hair to pull. My hands swish through empty space. “Russia, Europe...Omega isn’t just one conglomerate that came out of nowhere. It’s something a bunch of people...maybe a bunch of countries are calling themselves to create chaos. Keep us in the dark. If we don’t know who’s attacking us, it’s kind of hard to know who to fight, don’t you think? We don’t have TV or radio to communicate with each other. Everybody’s confused, and in comes a bunch of people calling themselves Omega. It’s kind of genius.”
“So you think Omega is like an alliance of countries?”
I open my mouth to respond, but I’m interrupted by a harsh,
“Of course that’s what Omega is.”
I whip around, almost bumping into a tall young man with curly brown hair. The first thing I notice about him are his piercing blue eyes.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” I snap, startled that somebody overhead me speaking. “This is Group 13’s area.”
“I was sent here by my Group Leader,” he replies, and that’s when I realize that he’s got a British accent. “Apparently you’re not working fast enough.”
I peek over his shoulder. He’s right. Male workers are moving into the field with sacks. Some of the women look downright terrified to see male prisoners, and I don’t blame them. Sophia and I have had a couple of ugly run-ins with half-crazy men in the prison that have lost all sense of dignity and morality. Keeping the sexes separated is the only thing that keeps this labor camp moving.