by Layla Wolfe
Knoxie’s calls had started the day after I’d busted him humping that sweetbutt on the ink bed. He acted like nothing had happened—which, I guess, it hadn’t. I mean, I’d told him I wanted our relationship to be casual, strictly physical. I had pledged fidelity but hadn’t demanded it of him. So the only thing that had gone “wrong” was my heart had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and I loved Knoxie more than I’d let on, even to myself.
All his calls were the same. “Bellamy, give me a buzz. I can’t make it back to The Citadel for a few days. I’m on another Boner job. But I want to talk to you.” Next message. “Bella, where the hell are you? Maddy said you tore out of there with some clothes. Call me.” Next message. “Bella. Where the fuck are you. I’m not taking calls but I’ll take yours the second I hear you. Don’t go running out there on your own. Don’t try to deal with these guys on your own. They’re dangerous, I tell you. You don’t know how dangerous.”
I was definitely in another dimension, my consciousness flying high above my bike along the canyon wall, up by the hieroglyphs. I’d been disassociating ever since the shock of seeing Knoxie getting up on someone other than me. It hurt too much to be inside my body, to feel and own these emotions completely, the jealousy, the fear, the rage. Shakti had been right about one thing. I had to transform this fear and jealousy into creative energy.
I wasn’t exactly sure how that worked, though. I remembered him saying our entire education system was geared toward competition, jealousy, and judgment. From kindergarten, we are trained this way. I knew I was feeling the feelings that any ordinary outsider would feel, witnessing the man they loved humping someone else. I was ordinary, an outsider! So maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing, after all. Did I really need to “break out of my unhealthy response to strong emotions”?
I was pondering this—and trying to picture not the sway and hump of Knoxie’s ass as he ground into that slut, but him facing me, smiling that adorable smile. He was a badass. I knew that “Filthy Few” patch hadn’t been for selling lots of cookies. Madison had told me what it meant. I couldn’t help the feeling that it all had something to do with me. Knoxie had killed a man because of me. I had the feeling he wouldn’t have even patched in to The Bare Bones if we hadn’t been dumped on that mesa, if Lytton hadn’t asked him along to help that day. He wouldn’t have gone out looking for a granola shipment, he wouldn’t have killed a man—at least one man, more from the snippets I’d been overhearing around The Citadel—and his life wouldn’t be in this precarious, dangerous spot.
Another rainstorm had passed and I could smell the composting facility before I came around the bend in the canyon. It was a horrible place to stick a pregnant woman. Talk about dirt. Ginny ran a slow speed shredder inside a giant warehouse where loaders dumped a mix of household waste. She basically just pushed buttons while equipment dumped rancid vegetable peelings. I thanked God that her shift was nearly over, because I hadn’t been around this much noise in a while and immediately a headache began to creep up on me.
We embraced and went to a locker room so she could change out of her rank coveralls. Ginny wasn’t sure how many people knew I was shunned. She said on average two people a day might approach her asking where I was. Some seemed to have an idea I had left under a cloud of suspicion. Now there were a few other sanitary workers lingering around, so we kept our conversation clean.
“Knoxie is a dream,” said Ginny, stepping out of the uniform. It was so crusted with filth it practically stood up on its own. “I couldn’t believe how manly he was, riding up to the gate like that, all just for you. It was like out of some romantic movie.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not being romantic. He’s on a crusade we can discuss later. Aren’t you going to shower?”
Ginny shook her head. “Pipes are broken.”
“Oh, gross!”
“What can you do? The guy who was acting as a plumber was really a lawyer, so they sent him to work in the grocery store instead.”
“Why? Did he have some childhood trauma regarding mangoes?”
Ginny looked mystified. I’d forgotten that she wasn’t entirely convinced of the sheer level of evilness she was wallowing in. “Didn’t you prefer serving food at the cafeteria?”
“Well, I suppose so. Didn’t smell half as bad, anyway.” Ginny laughed for the first time as she pulled her purple sweater over her head.
A giant desire to safeguard and protect my little sister washed over me when I saw her slightly rounded belly. Shakti had implanted another spawn that he would just ignore at the childcare center, but Ginny would be scarred for life with the loss, like other Bihari girls I had known. That was, if Bodhi didn’t get to her first and shove her into the bath house. I asked cautiously, “Has anyone said anything to you about going to a bath house? Bodhi, maybe?”
“Yes!” Ginny said instantly. “How’d you know? At dinner, I told him the composting shower was broken, and he said don’t worry, I can take you to the bath house later.”
My heart stilled as if flash frozen into ice. I barely listened when another ashramite who was stepping into her overalls said, “I’ve heard about that bath house. It’s only for women. Tell me if you find it, ‘cause I’d sure like to know!”
Jesus Roosevelt Christ. Time was of the fucking essence. Once we left the locker room, I drew Ginny close to me. “Ginny, you know I’ve got a shit ton of showers where I live now—with Knoxie,” I added, to enhance the allure for Ginny.
“So aren’t you coming back?”
“No, I’m not, Ginny. Shakti loaded me onto a bus that drove out onto a mesa along with a bunch of those guys they bussed in here. He doesn’t want me here, Ginny. At first I was hurt and offended, but now I realize it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” We were standing near my Sporty, so I put my hands on her shoulders and faced her. “Ginny. Listen. I’ve been to the bath house before. It’s not a place where they clean you. Well, not per se, anyway. It’s a fucking medical building, if you want to call it that. You know Bodhi was a doctor in his past life? Well, now he thinks he’s qualified to act as abortionist for the compound.”
I could feel Ginny stiffen under my fingers. Her eyes went round. “Abortionist?”
“Yes. I was in there once, years ago, right after we first came here. I was in your exact same shoes. Shakti had impregnated me and wanted nothing to do with it. So one morning some women came to get me, saying they were taking me to the bath house. Next thing I knew I was doped up, not knocked out, oh God how I wish, I guess they couldn’t afford real anesthesia, I was just extremely groggy and only halfway awake, with Bodhi inserting some kind of tube into an incision below my belly button. Ginny, I’ve been looking around on Madison’s computer the past week. What he did was a tubal ligation.”
Ginny’s eyes grew wider. “No. Shit.”
“No shit. Listen, Ginny, that is the bath house. It’s not a fun place. They sucked the fetus out of me with some kind of vacuum, then I guess he cauterized my tubes so I can never conceive again. This is what they’re going to do to you. And what say will you have in it? Do you want to keep this baby?”
Ginny finally broke my gaze to look into the distance. “I…I haven’t given it much thought. I didn’t know I had a choice. I just assumed I’d have the baby here and it would be taken from me.”
“Well, think again. You don’t have any say in the matter. I wasn’t kicking and screaming because like you, I thought the bath house was a nice place. I wasn’t even suspicious when they drugged me. That goes on all the time, you know that. But I’m telling you, Ginny, if you want to have this baby, and I think you should question even that seeing as how Shakti’s the father, well, you need to run from here. Will you think about it? Will you even consider running? Because I won’t be able to help you when Bodhi and his little friends come to get you one morning.”
Ginny squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m scared, Bella,” she whispered.
I hugged her, petting her hair. “I know, Ginny. It’s fucking
scary, it really is. We grew up here in a scary place after being in a scary place with Mom. We don’t know what it feels like to be protected, to be safe. But I’m telling you. Where I’m at now, the clubhouse for Knoxie’s biker gang? I feel safe. Nothing can hurt me when I’m there. I only came up here to convince you to go home with me.”
I realized I’d just said “home.” The Citadel was my home now. All my meager belongings were there, my Sporty was there, my cut-out photos of Ryan Reynolds were on the grimy walls, it was home more than anywhere else had been home to me. I felt stronger. I had the conviction of my words now. I knew myself.
“I want you to come home with me, Ginny. The longer we wait here, the more chance for them to plot your next surgery. Think about it. All the women he’s impregnated? Leela, Yoshi, Gia—did any of them ever give birth to a live child? Answer me, Ginny.”
“No,” she whispered. “No they did not.”
“So come on, then. Come on, Ginny. Let’s get the fuck out of here. There’s a whole new life waiting for you outside these walls. I know it’s scary. I was terrified at first. But I’ll be there with you every step of the way.”
“I can’t just up and leave, Bella. That’s your new life now, but this is my life.”
In the end she just hopped on behind me after buckling on my brain bucket, and we took off to her bunk house. She wasn’t ready to make such an enormous, life-altering move.
I like to think that over the next few days, I made a dent in her will. I like to think that my relentless talk and rhetoric was seeping into her brain, just as Shakti’s soothing sermons had originally reeled us in. She asked me more and more questions about The Citadel. She asked what Duji looked like, what Tuzigoot did for a living normally. I was glad I could answer that he was a construction foreman. She asked what Knoxie’s kids were like. I had to say I didn’t know.
But she was interested, you know? I slept for two nights at the bunkhouse, taking my chances that one of the women would turn me in to Shakti. I didn’t dare show my face down at the cafeteria or any of the stores, of course, so I hid in the bunkhouse when it rained and out in a side canyon when it didn’t, reading the Kindle Madison had given me in order to broaden my horizons. In the past seven years the entire world had changed, and I was devouring all sorts of erotic romance novels and even some more serious things, like the New York Times. It was a rich world I’d been denied, and I didn’t want Ginny to suffer the same fate.
So it wasn’t until Thursday morning as Ginny prepared to go to work that they came to take Ginny to the bath house. Bodhi himself didn’t do the dirty work these days—it was Poona and a few of her henchwomen who came to strong-arm Ginny. The moral of this story, I have to conclude, is that time goes by much faster than we would like. Time flies, and if you don’t get off your ass and take action, before you know it life has passed you by. Quite literally in this case, as my poor sweet suffering Ginny was about to discover.
Although it wasn’t my fault—far from it, I’d done everything in my power to convince Ginny of what was good for her—I rolled under a bunk bed and hid. I had no weapon, and even if I did, could I shoot my way out of this mess? Not likely. I didn’t even know how to load a gun.
Ginny protested as they led her away. My heart was breaking for her. I kept telling myself that I’d done the best I could to convince her how important it was to get away from Bihari. I’d told her my own story about the bath house. I knew from painful personal experience how hard it was to deprogram someone who had been steeped in this particular tradition for so many years. Shakti radiated energy, and was able to make everyone think they could realize some god-like potential inside themselves. His mishmash of countercultural love and freedom had sucked in many a brainy lawyer, doctor, and street poet. We weren’t the only ones who had fallen for Shakti’s charisma and power.
I had to bite my lip as they hauled Ginny outside and into the waiting vehicle—a Hummer, no doubt. Two people still moved around the bunk house looking for me.
I quickly realized one of the women was Poona, and I recognized another as a nurse I’d seen on many occasions, Jambo. She worked with Bodhi. At first they talked about mundane stuff. They were so unconcerned about Ginny or me, they seemed to be discussing a television show. It burned me up that they watched TV when it was forbidden to the rest of us.
“Nikki’s in love with Juan, but he didn’t say the same thing back to her. Look in that backpack for her phone. Someone said she had a phone,” Poona instructed the nurse.
“Oh, Juan’s in love with Nikki, all right,” protested Jambo. “She’s a pediatric nurse. What’s not to love?”
“Only if you love silly, shallow cunts,” snapped Poona. She might not have been overly into these television people—her normal personality was just snappish and nasty. They talked some more about Nikki and Juan then Poona said, “Listen, do you think Operation Eggplant will be a go the day before the elections? Did you finish with all the vials of chicken pox?”
What the fuck? What would they be doing with vials of chicken pox virus?
“It’s smallpox,” Jambo corrected her boss. “My people just have a few small tweaks and we’ll be ready to roll the day before elections. The eggplant will be placed on faucets at the courthouse, in salad bars around town. Rhetta is going to the nursing home, another to Safeway. Beware anyone who actually purchases eggplants at Safeway! How are you coming with your part of the operation?”
“None of your business.” But Poona couldn’t resist a chance to brag, and she told Jambo, “You should’ve been there. It was the swiftest undercover work ever. I built him up, stroked his ego, told him about the masses who worship him. You know, the usual stuff that works on egocentric narcissists like him.”
“Did you get anything on tape?”
“Oh, did I. You’ll be there when I play it for the others tonight. Get this. I managed to get him to say in plain English that ten thousand people would need to die to justify the life of one savior.”
“No! You didn’t!”
I could feel the pride in Poona’s voice, see her chest all puffed up. Was I hearing correctly? Poona was plotting against Shakti? But he wasn’t the only egocentric narcissist around there. She could have been talking about anyone. And the “eggplant”? The poisoning of Rizzoli and Harmon had obviously just been a trial run for a much more widespread poisoning operation. “I did! Wait until the others hear that their lives are no more important than a bug’s to him.”
“Ten thousand? That’s about how many people are in Bihari.”
“Exactly. Shakti thinks his life is more important than all of us rolled together. Well, he’ll soon find out otherwise, won’t he? Look under those beds. We’ve got to find stupid cunt. Someone swore she was here with her sister.”
My eyes were frozen wide open. Jambo got on her hands and knees and looked down the other row of bunks. In a fraction of a second she would turn and look down my row and I’d be caught.
My only chance was to run for it. I could fucking outrun a feeble, sickly fanatic and a clueless nurse. I’d have to race past Poona, who was standing near the only door. My brain must have calculated the odds, because before I knew it, I’d shot out from under the bunk and was through the door. The look of shock on Poona’s face would later be priceless, I remember thinking.
Only, I hadn’t counted on the daimyo standing guard outside the door.
Quick as a whip, one of them stuck his foot out and tripped me. It was as simple as that. I was suddenly flat on my face with what felt like a broken tooth. The warm, metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth as I was viciously yanked to my feet.
At first I saw only the sky. I remember a giant black thunderhead shaped like a happy dog running. Then, as they rattled me around and yelled, the daimyo’s faces, a couple I recalled as working directly for Shakti.
Then Poona, glaring like one of those Hindu monobrow statues with a dozen arms. Rearing one of her arms back, she slapped my face. The daimyo groaned as som
e of my blood hit his face, his shirt. “You! You despicable cunt! Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused for us just by staying alive? And now you’re causing even more.”
Then she spit into my face. She spit! I had seen that a couple of times on the TV I watched at Madison’s house, but I didn’t think anyone actually did it. She hocked a big old loogie into my face and seethed, “At least your sister will be finished after today. I should’ve told the daimyo to finish you on that mesa along with those fucking juicers.”
“Let’s finish her now,” said Jambo, her eyes little slits.
“No. We can’t. We have to keep up the pretense to Shakti, so we need to take her to him first. He’ll want to see her. We can’t mess her up any more.”
So that was how I was hustled into another waiting Hummer and given an audience with Shakti one last time.
One last time. Yes, now that I say it that way, that’s true. It was Shakti’s last audience ever.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
KNOXIE
“I’m laying this on the table for you all to consider. The invasion and occupation of this part of Arizona has to stop. The test results from Mrs. Illuminati’s lab tell the whole story, all we need to know. They’ve got smallpox, salmonella, staph—fuck, did you see the results that showed they’ve got ricin?”
“I saw that,” said Ford, accompanied by a round of emotional murmurs from the other men.
It took all Knoxie’s will to keep himself from leaping to his feet to make his point. It was his first appearance in chapel, and the adrenaline rush to his ego pumped him up even more. For the first time, he had a conference table of cold sober, business-minded brothers taking him seriously, and he was going to make the most of it. He had the table, and he didn’t care if he was pounding the fucking pulpit. This needed to be said. “This is how I’m rocking, brothers. This takedown needs to happen now. This form of fucking bioterrorism can’t be tolerated. Now we’ve got your old buddy Riker driving another load of A-1 Sinaloan White up to those whack jobs so they can profit off ruining our kids’ minds with their cheese heroin.”