“You’ll figure it out.” I back away from the bird, eyeing it critically. It’s half-plucked, and she’s doing a great job. “Do you think you can handle the rest of the plucking, while I put together a spit and start a fire?” I’ve never actually built a spit, but Tyson left several of them intact in the woods near Settlement A, and they seem simple enough to reverse engineer.
“Sure,” Rayla says.
We manage to get the plucked, cleaned bird on the spit about an hour before sundown, but it’s big enough that it’ll have to cook at least a couple of hours into the night. Which leaves us nothing to do but talk, since we don’t have any of the supplies necessary for setting up even a rudimentary camp.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m super-excited about this dinner. But it would have been nice to manage a turkey and a mattress both in one night, huh?” Rayla says as she helps me roll a fallen log toward the fire.
“If we had everything we wanted, what would be left to wish for?”
Rayla gives me a strange look. “I’m done wishing. I’m ready to make things happen for myself. That’s why I’m here.”
“That’s why I’m hunting turkeys.”
When we have the log in place, I carefully start rotating the turkey on my fragile-at-best spit, and Rayla…
I stand, watching in bewilderment while she pushes leaves into a pile with the side of one foot. “What are you doing?”
“Experimenting. I figure a bed of leaves will be softer than the ground. May I borrow your shovel?”
“Sure.” I pull the slab of sheet metal from my pack. “It’s still bent in the shape of the back of my bag, but if you’re careful, you should be able to straighten it a little without breaking it.”
“No need.” She takes the metal from me and uses it—more like a hand broom than a shovel—to scrape leaves across the ground into her growing pile. “I sure wish this thing had a handle.”
There are plenty of sturdy branches I could make into one, but I have no way of attaching them to the metal.
Even without a handle, in minutes, Rayla has sculpted her thick pile of leaves into the shape of a mattress. “I wish I’d thought of this days ago. When we get tired, we can just spread your sheet over this.”
“That’s awesome,” I tell her.
“Well, don’t get excited yet. We’ll probably still wake up with bugs in our hair.”
Though that had been less of a problem since she’d started sharing her bug spray, which she wasn’t able to show me until I found out she wasn’t actually a prisoner.
While we wait for the turkey to cook, we sit on the log and sip from our canteens, watching juice drip into the fire. “That’s really starting to smell good,” Rayla says, as another drop sizzles on one of the rocks around my fire pit.
“I wish I had something to season it with, but even plain, it should be pretty good compared to…” I pull a meal packet from my bag. “‘Vegetable crumbles with pasta in taco-style sauce.’”
Rayla laughs. “They should really hire someone to re-label these packets, so they sound more appealing.”
“They don’t care how appealing a convict’s food sounds. We’re just lucky they don’t want to spend the man-hours manually removing the desserts and coffee packets.”
“Oh, that’s right. Because these are military surplus.”
I nod. “And most of them are out of date.”
“Really?” Firelight jumps in her eyes as she pulls a packet from her own bag. “We get crates and crates of these, but I never even checked the dates.” When she sees me frowning, she shrugs. “I work in the supply warehouse. It’s mostly inventory, but I get to supervise some of the supply drops.”
“Wait, you’re in charge of the supply drops?”
“No. I just sometimes get to supervise the loading of them. When my boss is off-shift. Or off-station.” Another shrug. “I, of course, am never off-station. Until now. I took a week of vacation, but I wonder if they’ve even noticed I’m not hanging around the crew quarters or showing up for meals?”
“I’m sure they’ve noticed.” How could anyone not notice that someone as beautiful as Rayla was missing? “So, wait, do you have any say about what goes into the drops? Because I have a few suggestions.”
“I bet you do. I have some suggestions for the initial supply packs, having been dependent upon my own for the past four days. That’s been rough, even with all the extras I took. But no, the inventory isn’t up to me. It’s actually decided on the corporate level, and it varies depending upon the bulk pricing of various supplies at different times.”
“Would that be why there haven’t been any vitamins in more than a month?”
Rayla nods. “There was a strike at the plant that makes the discount vitamins UA uses. We still have some left, but a few weeks ago, the order came down to only issue them in the initial ration and supply packs. For the new inmates.”
“Well, that sucks.” I get up to rotate the turkey, and before I sit again, I tear a section off of one of the legs. The skin has crisped up nicely, and though the deeper parts of the bird are probably still pink, the leg looks done. And it smells amazing.
On the log, I tear the chunk of meat into two pieces and offer half to Rayla. She devours it in two bites, and her groan of pleasure makes me want to throw her down on that pile of leaves and strip her naked. But she hasn’t forgiven me yet. In fact, she’s just started talking to me again. I’m not going to push my luck.
An hour later, having rotated the turkey several times, I tear off another chunk and discover that both legs and the outer portion of the breasts are done. Without a knife, I have to tear the meat off by hand, and by the time I turn toward Rayla with my offering of burnt flesh, she’s laid an empty meal packet across her lap to serve as a plate.
We eat from our makeshift picnic, and though we set out a packet of macaroni and cheese and a piece of garlic bread from one of the meal packets to subsidize our meal, neither of us even opens the side dishes. Fresh meat is more than enough.
“This is so good!” Rayla says around a juicy bite of breast. “The skin is so crispy!”
“It could use some salt,” I say. “But it’s definitely better than anything else I’ve eaten since they dropped me off on this rock.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Um… It’s kind of hard to keep track around here. But I think it’s been around four years.”
“So, since I was sixteen.” She tears another chunk of meat from the slab on her lap. “You’re older than I am.”
“Yeah. I think I’m twenty-four Earth standard solar units. Give or take a few months.”
“How can you stand that? Being here for so long? Knowing you’ll never be anywhere else?”
I shrug while I chew. “Don’t get me wrong. Everything about this place sucks.” At least it did before I saw her climb out of a crashed shuttle. “But coping with life on Devil’s Eye is really about perspective. It’s about convincing yourself that the rest of the galaxy doesn’t exist. Even if that means playing a mental game of pretend.”
“Like, ‘I’m not really an inmate on a prison planet, I’m a colonist staking his claim on a whole new world!’” Her pitch dips into an obvious and funny imitation of my voice. “Something like that?”
“Kind of. I focus on the basics. Finding enough food, shelter, and clean water to make it through to the next day. But that still leaves me with a lot of spare time, so the other trick is filling all the hours. Things start to take on an exaggerated importance, after a while.”
“Like your quest for a turkey?”
“Exactly. And before that, my quest to find replacement parts for a broken com unit I found in the woods. That one was a bust. And before that, my quest to carve a chess set out of a branch the diameter of my thumb. Also a bust, without a real knife. Though I got close with the rook, when I altered my vision to allow for a square castle tower. Lots of straight lines.”
“You play chess?”
I roll m
y eyes at her. “I can read, too. Why do you look so surprised?”
“Because…” But her words fade into nothing, and I can see her reluctance to vocalize a thought that obviously started out as an insult.
“Didn’t expect to find a renaissance man on a prison planet, did you?”
She shrugs. “Well, no.”
“Smart people commit crimes too, you know.”
“Yes, but how smart can you be, if you got caught?”
“Touché.” I lay one hand over my heart. “And also, ouch.”
Rayla laughs, then she tosses another chunk of turkey into her mouth.
“In case you’re interested, other abilities from my very broad skillset include humming the baseline from just about any song you can name—”
“Just the baseline?”
“—and bringing a woman to orgasm with nothing but a heated look at her most sensitive parts.”
“I sense there’s some exaggeration at play there.”
“I prefer to call it hyperbole. Still…the offer stands.”
Rayla’s smile fades. She doesn’t look mad, exactly. She looks more…sad. “Jai, I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Because you haven’t forgiven me?”
“That’s part of it. You stole two days from the time I was supposed to have with my mother. And you tried to distract me with sex so you could steal my gun.”
“But in my defense, I owned up to all of that. And I apologized. And I’m now offering to make it up to you with limitless orgasms—all for you. None for me.” I just want to touch her. I want her to remember me as someone other than the asshole who robbed her of a chance to meet her birth mother.
“As generous as that offer is, even if none of that other stuff were true, this isn’t a good idea. You and me. I’m leaving. In three days, max.” Because by then her father would be back on-station, and if no one else has noticed her absence, he certainly will. “Getting more involved with you is the last thing I should be doing.”
And while I understand that I’m basically being rejected, her phrasing actually gives me hope. She doesn’t want to get more involved with me, because that will make it harder for her to leave.
Which can only mean she considers herself to be involved with me on at least some level right now.
9
RAYLA
We wasted so much meat last night. We both stuffed ourselves on turkey, yet still hardly touched the bulk of it, and with no way to preserve what remained, I can’t let myself eat any of the leftovers. I got food poisoning once, and that was one of the most miserable weekends of my life. Down here, with no toilet and no electrolyte drinks, I can’t imagine how sick I would be.
“I wish we’d had someone to share this with.” I toss another regretful look at the still-spitted bird as I shake the dead leaves from Jai’s sheet. “It feels so wasteful to just leave it there.”
“Yet another tribute to my poor planning. Seriously, my headstone—as if I’m going to get one of those—could accurately read ‘He almost got it right.’”
“I wish we’d caught it closer to the women’s settlement. They probably would have loved to share the bird with us.”
“Hindsight.” I shake my head, but I don’t really regret not sharing our meal. I don’t have much time left with Rayla, and much of what I do have won’t be private time. “You ready?” I ask as I fold the sheet. “If we leave now, we should get there well before dark, barring catastrophe. Or guards descending upon us from the heavens.”
“I think you’re mistaken about what’s up there. I can assure you Station Alpha isn’t heaven.”
Jai stares at me with a wistful look, and I can tell that he wants to reach for me. To touch me. “Maybe not,” he says. “But most days down here certainly are hell.”
We see the first shuttle a couple of hours into our hike. “Shit,” I mumble, and Jai follows my gaze to see the patrol streaking across the sky to the east. It’s far enough away that I can’t tell whether it’s a two-man, like the one Kenny and I borrowed, or the larger cargo version. But surely they can’t have seen us from that distance.
“We’ll be readily visible, walking across open land,” Jai says. “We’re going to have to stick close to the woods, so we can duck into them, if the shuttle comes closer.”
“How much of a delay will that cause?”
He shrugs and starts veering us toward one of the dozens of patches of woods that dot zone four. “Depends on our pace. We’re already having to veer around Settlement A to avoid the men. But we should still make it tonight. Probably.”
Over the next few hours, we see several more shuttles, but the guards don’t seem to have put boots on the ground yet. I can only imagine how tense they must be, knowing how pissed my father probably is at them.
I’ll be in trouble for leaving the station. But they’ll be in trouble for letting me.
That wasn’t part of my plan. I never meant for anyone else to pay for what I’m doing, except for Kenny, and he entered into this whole thing willingly. When I get back, I’ll have to make sure my father understands that I did this alone. That no one else on Station Alpha was involved.
We stop for lunch just past noon, but then I insist that we move on, even though Jai thinks I should rest for a bit. Our woodland detour has already cost us time I can’t afford.
“What are the chances that your father will be waiting for us when we get to Settlement B?” he asks as we pack up our trash and head off again. “I mean, if he knows you’re here, surely he’s figured out why. And if we know your mother’s most likely to be found in Settlement B, he probably also knows that.”
I duck beneath a branch, and Jai grabs my arm to steady me. “It’s hard for me to imagine my father actually coming down to the surface. Sometimes he meets with executives on this big ship that flies over the arena in zone one, but that ship never lands.”
“Well, if there’s anything that could get the warden to set down on the surface, I’m sure it’s his only daughter.” Jai frowns. “I assume you’re an only child?”
“Yes. It’s been just the two of us my whole life.”
Despite the grueling pace we stick to, we still aren’t in sight of Settlement B when the sun starts setting. “We’re going to have to stop for the night,” Jai says. “There’s a building not too far from here, and the last time I was there, it had running water. Including a toilet. But the good news is that—”
“Wait, the functioning toilet isn’t the good news?”
Jai laughs. “Okay, the second bit of good news is that if we leave at dawn, we should get to Settlement B by mid-morning.”
I’m quiet while I think about that, and Jai frowns at me.
“Princess? You okay?”
“Yeah. It’s just…that’s another half-day delay, and the guards are already looking for me. I feel like my window of opportunity is being whittled away by a fucking chainsaw, and even if I do find my mother, I’ll hardly have any time to spend with her. Because you’re right. Even if my father doesn’t come down here personally, I can’t imagine that he won’t send guards into both settlements looking for me.”
“I’m sorry, Rayla.” He stops and takes my hand, and when I try to pull free, he won’t let me. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t… When I decided to take you on that detour—”
“Wild goose chase,” I correct, unable to keep bitterness out of my voice.
“—I thought you were a convict suffering an escape delusion. I didn’t believe you would actually be leaving the planet. Ever. I thought you’d have the rest of your life here, to be with your mom. If she’s still here.”
“I know. I just…” I pull my hand from his grip and shove hair back from my head. “I have to find her, Jai. I have to know why she gave me up—if she did give me up—and how I wound up being raised by the warden. But beyond that, I want to know if I have any other family out there. Any siblings. I want to know who my real father is. I want to know my mother. Even if she’s a criminal.”
And this time, I believe him.
Half an hour later, Jai leads me out of the woods and points at a building in the distance. “That’s where we’ll be sleeping. Our first-class accommodations include such luxuries as an intact roof, a mattress on the floor, a functioning toilet, and two functioning bathroom sinks. It’s basically the best zone four has to offer, short of one of the settlements. Which each bring their own unique hazards.”
“I can’t wait. Lead the way.”
Unlike the last building we stayed in, which was originally an office complex of some kind, this one was obviously once a store. The front room—which boasts the promised mattress—still has impressions in the floor from display cases likely salvaged long ago for other purposes. At the back of the single-story building are a couple of former offices and two small, one-stall bathrooms. Where, as promised, one of the toilets still functions.
It’s filthy. But an experimental flush makes me so happy I catch myself giggling.
“Wow. You’re pretty easy to please,” Jai says from the doorway. “And I don’t even mean that as innuendo.”
“I just realized how much I’ve been taking for granted for my entire life. The fact that the toilets all flush. That meals will come pre-plucked and cooked. That I will be able to press a button and order a week’s clean uniforms.”
“That no one will try to stab you or rape in your sleep…” He gives me an odd smile. “Yeah, I’d take your cage over mine any day. And I’m glad you’ll be going back to it. Even if I’m going to miss you.”
“You are?” My heart beats oddly hard at his admission.
He shrugs. “I like having you around. Even when you’re giving me the silent treatment.”
“That’s sweet. Kind of. Now get out of here so I can use the bathroom.”
There’s no door, so he wanders back into the front room to give me privacy. By the time I’ve sterilized my hands using the sanitizer I snuck into my pack—not standard issue for prisoners—Jai has already spread his sheet out on the mattress and wiped down the entire countertop, where he’s laid out a picnic consisting of all my favorite menu items from several food packets.
Dirty Lies Page 11