by Annie Oldham
“You're not soldiers. Soldiers never knock.”
I laugh grimly.
“Who are you?”
I don't say anything, just knock twice more on her door. Two eyes, wide and shining in the dim light, appear at the small slot. I press my face closer so she can see me, see I'm not an agent setting some cruel trap for her.
“You were down here before, weren't you?”
I nod.
“The silent one.”
“As touching as this reunion is, we need to go.” Madge hisses her words through her teeth. Her hand is clamped tightly around the t-shirt, but a spot of blood has already appeared through the layer of fabric.
I motion for the keycard, and Madge hands it to me. I slide it through the reader. Nothing happens. No. I had hoped—I think we all did—that Dr. Benedict's card was some kind of skeleton key. I didn't even think he might not have clearance everywhere in the camp. I drop my head.
“It didn't work?” my neighbor asks.
I shake my head and hear her retreat to the other end of the cell.
“You tried. Thank you.”
Jane puts a hand on my arm. “One more time.”
I shake my head. It's pointless, but I slide it through the reader anyway, watching the red light blink at me. Nothing. But after a moment, a faint beep, and then the light turns to green.
“Always try again,” Jane says, as the door swings open.
I would never forget the way to solitary, but I repressed just how bad it smells. I cover my mouth and force myself not to gag as my neighbor stands up. She's an older woman, hunched a little bit, and the faint gleam of silver hair bounces back to me. I wasn't expecting this; she sounds so young.
“Nell?” Mary whispers, thinking the same thing I did. I know it's not Nell. I would have recognized her voice anywhere, but still my thoughts drift to her.
“No, dear. My name's Lily.”
“Lily?” Madge whispers, recognizing her.
As she steps into the light from the corridor, I realize I do know her: the woman from the cannery who spilled sugar. She's been down here this whole time because of some wasted sweetener. I think of that day on the Juice Deck with Brant and Jessa and how I told them about smoothies on the Burn sweetened with sugar. I almost bragged about it. I look at Lily, and I'll never look at sugar the same way again.
I offer a hand to Lily, and she squints and covers her eyes as she steps out from her cell. She wears the same yellow shirt and gray pants that we do, but hers are so dirty they can hardly be called clothes. The smell from them permeates over the half-freshness of the damp hallway. Her hair hangs in matted clumps.
“How long were you in there?” Kai asks.
“I don't know. Too long. Not long enough for them.” She runs her gnarled fingers over each other, and her eyes flit across each of our faces. “Where are we going?”
Madge barks a laugh and starts back down the hall. “About time someone remembered we have somewhere to be.”
Lily steps in beside me. We made some kind of connection for the twenty-four hours I was down here—even though I couldn't say a thing to her—and she doesn't stray far from my side. She hobbles, not used to being able to walk more than a few feet in any one direction. Speed isn't something we can sacrifice, but I slow down anyway. It annoys Madge, but I don't care. We're all coming. Lily's legs loosen up after a few minutes, though, and she moves in a quick shuffle.
We follow the hall to a door marked “Laundry,” and Madge swipes the keycard and we all slip in. Enormous laundry baskets on casters take over the room. They're filled with sheets, shirts, pants, socks, and soldiers' uniforms. Not agents' suits though. I wonder if they have a special laundry facility for those expensive clothes. Two giant washers and three dryers stand along the far wall. The smell of detergent and bleach stings my nose. The room is humid and warm.
“So where's the chute?” Mary asks. She closes the door behind us and blocks it with a few of the laundry baskets, locking the casters.
Madge walks over to the wall to the left of the washers. “Over here. It's for getting some fresh air in here, getting rid of some of the humidity.”
There's a metal grate in the wall, maybe three feet square. The chute goes back maybe three feet, then goes straight up.
Climb? I write to Madge.
Madge nods. “It's narrow, so I figure we can brace ourselves against the sides.” She sees the look on my face. “Don't forget it was your idea to come this way.”
I know. Oh, I know. But I didn't think about pregnant Kai having to shimmy up a chute or poor Lily having to do it either.
Kai puts a hand on my arm. “Don't worry, Terra. I'll do it.”
I run a hand over my head. She must see how hopeless this looks.
“If it means I can have my baby somewhere other than here, where they might snatch her away from me before I can even see her face, I'll do it. A hundred times over.”
The fierce determination carved into her sweet features startles me. She will do it. I turn to Lily, and she looks offended.
“Don't you worry about me, young lady. I just need to shake the rust off these old joints. I'll be fine.”
“Now that's settled.” Madge squats down and pries at the grate with her fingers. She only works at it for a moment before she sags back and squeezes her arm over her wound. The spot of blood on the t-shirt has spread to the size of a lemon. Jane rushes forward and works on the grate with her nimble fingers. I kneel by Madge.
You okay?
Her face is paler than usual, but there's color in her cheeks. “I'll be fine.” She smiles, her lips tight over her teeth. “Just can't stand the sight of blood. You mind the others.”
She wouldn't tell me even if she were dying. Madge grasps Mary's outstretched hand, and Mary hauls her to her feet just as the grate falls to the floor with a crash.
“We better hurry,” Madge says. “Don't know how much time we have.”
She goes first, folding into the chute and shimmying along it until she comes to the bend and she disappears. The thuds of bending metal echo down to us.
“We shouldn't go too close together in case one of us falls,” Mary says.
I point to Kai. She'll take the longest, and she's the one I care most about getting out of here.
She scoots along on her side, and I push her feet with both hands, trying to give her some help in her awkward position. She flips on her back to navigate the bend, then her feet disappear. The sounds of her progress are painstakingly slow, and I grow more worried with every second that someone will come and batter down the laundry room door. Finally the sounds fade into silence, and I motion Jane up the chute. She jumps in and slithers up like a lizard. I send Mary next. Then Lily will go and I'll be last.
Just as Lily nears the bend, the beep of a keycard swipe pierces my ears, and the laundry room door rams into the laundry baskets. My heart leaps up my throat, and I grab the grate. I growl as one of the sharp metal corners cuts my finger, and a drop of blood splashes on the floor. The laundry basket screeches against the floor as the door opens a few more inches. The tip of a gun and a gloved hand creep through the opening.
“They must've come this way.”
“How can you even tell? There's blood in front of every door!”
“Don't trust your eyes.”
“Then how do you know they're here?”
“Because none of the other doors were blocked, idiot.”
I swipe at the blood on the floor with one of the sheets in the laundry basket. There's a smear, but not as obvious as the dark spot. It'll have to do. I back into the chute, pulling the grate behind me. I try to pull it back into place. I can't get it wedged in the way it was before, but at least it doesn't fall back out. Then I slide back as quietly as I can.
The soldiers ram against the door a few more times, and the laundry baskets give way. I'm to the bend and have just climbed high enough so my feet aren't dangling down when the soldiers fall silent. I freeze.
&n
bsp; “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Metal bending somewhere. It sounds like it came from the walls.”
“I think you're hearing things, man.”
“I'm fine.”
“Yeah right. Like the way you were fine when you saw the dancing cows back down at the end of the hall?”
“No, I heard something.”
“They're not here. I looked in the washers and dryers. There's nowhere else to hide.”
“What about there?”
“That chute?”
I stop breathing when I hear their boots step toward me. My muscles ache with keeping myself so still. One wrong move and the metal of the chute will tell the whole world I'm here. There's nothing but pale moonlight shining down from the hole about twenty feet above me. At least there's no one else still in here. A face appears at the edge of the hole above me. Please don't say anything, I think. I'm pressed against the sides of the chute for dear life.
Then the soldiers pull off the grate.
“Is it supposed to come off so easy?”
“Don't ask me. I've never been in here before.”
“Think they could go through there?”
The beam of a flashlight flickers below me.
“Like that pregnant girl could fit. I doubt we could even squeeze through there with all our gear. I don't see anything in there anyway.”
“Where does it lead?”
“Dunno. Like those suits would give us a blueprint of the place.”
“What do you want to do? Hey, are you listening?”
“Do those look like rats?”
“Where?”
“Over there, by that laundry basket. There's hundreds of 'em. Give me my gun back!”
The soldiers struggle and grunt. The gun goes off four times before the other soldier stops it.
“No rats, alright? Pull it together. Told you that you weren't okay. I don't care if we're supposed to be looking for those idiot girls. You need to see Benedict. Let's go.”
The boots fade away; the door swings closed.
I resume climbing, my muscles screaming with relief that I can finally move them again. Each rumble of the metal makes me cringe, but there's nothing else to do. The face above finally hisses at me.
“What's going on?”
I wave Madge away. If some of the soldiers are already recovering, either they didn't get very much of the serum, or it's already wearing off. We don't have much time. I climb faster. After a few more feet, I pull myself over the edge into the cold night air and flop on my back, my breaths coming fast and heavy. We're in a narrow space between the women's wing and the fence.
“What happened?” Mary asks. I can only see the planes and shadows of her face in the dark.
Soldiers. They know we're gone.
Chapter Eighteen
“Hurry.” Madge leads us along the fence to where we're going to cut the chain link. It's in the far corner and hopefully the last stop on a perimeter check.
Madge pulls the cutters from her pants and grunts as she uses both hands to cut through the metal. I watch our backs. The night is silent and cold, only the forest noises crackling across the fence at us. It's only a matter of time before the agents find out about the soldiers in the basement and start to suspect that we've gone through the chute. Maybe everyone's questionable mental state will give us enough of a head start.
I help Mary and Madge peel back a section of fence just large enough for a person to slip through. The metal twists against me. My arms shake as I struggle to hold it back long enough for all of us to worm through. Lily squirms on her belly through the hole, and she gives a quiet laugh.
“Never thought I'd be doing this at my age,” she whispers.
I love that she can find the humor in these frightening moments. It makes me miss Nell terribly.
Lily stands up on the other side. “I definitely prefer crawling through the dirt than the stench of solitary.”
Everyone's out, and I'm trying to wriggle through without slapping the sharp ends of the metal down on me when the alarms start blaring. It stuns me, and I let go of the fence. It hurtles down on me, the cut ends digging into my legs. I want to scream, but I only let out a moan.
The alarms have to be for us; they know we've gone.
Mary kneels by me and carefully pulls the fencing off me, and I pull my legs out. Blood wells up through the rips in my pants. I don't think the punctures are bad, though. It wouldn't matter if they were. We have to move.
The forest comes right up against the fence, and we retreat several feet into the trees and skirt around the edges of the camp. We are just nearing the southeast corner when suddenly the abandoned guard towers buzz to life. Soldiers scurry up the ladders and into the nests. The searchlights hum and then shine their stark beams down on the yard. I cower into the shadows of trees. Mary's eyes gleam, and the pin-pricks of her eyes are much too bright. The searchlights don't rove beyond the fencing, though. We creep onward, keeping a covering of brush between us and those lights.
Soldiers line up in the yard next to two trucks. Several agents consult tablets. One shakes her head and wipes her eyes like she's convincing herself of what she sees—or she's trying to erase it. She must still be hallucinating. A man yells at her and looks like he's going to tear her to pieces before two soldiers subdue him. They're still under the effects of the serum, then. That will be in our favor, but for how long? They'll still be able to hunt us down, and if they're delirious and they catch us, they might kill us thinking we're some kind of monsters before they realize what's going on.
We scurry along the south fence, and the searchlights sweep by, closer and closer to the fence line. If they finally reach the perimeter and start shining in the woods, there's no way our yellow shirts will hide us. They gave us neon clothes for a reason.
About two dozen soldiers load into the trucks. I wish it meant that would be all that are following us, but there's still what seems like an army in the yard. They heft their guns in the crooks of their arms and stand at attention. Some of them waver in their ranks; a few of them whisper to each other. It's definitely not as precise as usual, but they're still just waiting for the order to hunt us down.
Madge hisses at us. “Hurry. If we're this close they'll find us in no time.”
Lily can't move as fast, and I hold her arm and help her along. Every step on every twig makes me cringe, but with the way the agents are barking orders and the soldiers' boots stomp the ground, I know they can't hear us.
We've just reached the southwest corner when the huge gates slide open and the trucks hurtle out and down the road to the west. If they get in front of us, we'll have soldiers and agents coming at us from two directions.
My heart pounds against my ribs so hard it feels like it could bruise, and we plunge deeper into the forest. We've gone about a hundred yards when two shapes detach themselves from the trees and step toward us and I gasp.
It's just Jack and Dave.
I knew it would be them, but I'm too keyed up. Jack puts a hand on my arm and I shiver. If only I had a moment to tell him how I feel, but there are no moments to spare.
Dave eyes me warily. Jack had to have told him the truth about me to explain where we would escape to. But I'm still not used to the skepticism and mistrust people feel for me. After a minute, though, the creases between his eyebrows ease up and he nods at me. His eyes aren't clear, but he isn't openly hostile. I haven't seen him in months, and I wasn't sure what I would feel when I saw him next. I laugh at myself for thinking I was in love with him. Now that I know what it really feels like, I look back at how pathetic I was with him. All I feel for him now is warm affection. Mary rushes for him and kisses him. I don't think they ever saw each other in the yard. I wonder why.
As we jog away, I study him. He looks much too thin and his skin is sallow. His whiskers have grown into a scraggy beard, and the hollows under his eyes turn his face ragged. He was in solitary; he had to be. And why not?
When the agents captured the settlement, what else would they do with the leader? And that would explain why he never made it to yard time and Jack hardly ever saw him.
“Who's this?” Dave asks as I pull Lily along with me.
“I'm Lily. Terra found me in solitary.”
Dave raises his eyebrows, and Jack runs closer to me. “You were in solitary?” they both say at the same time.
I nod and stare straight ahead, not wanting to talk about the miserable hours I spent crouched on the floor trying to sleep without getting who knows what all over me. And then there's poor Lily who just gives me a slight nod as we keep jogging. She was there for so long. She was there more times before that as well. I can't begin to imagine how she's stayed so human. Dave looks like he wants to ask more questions, but Jack shakes his head and simply touches my arm.
I pick a path through the trees. I never thought I had a good sense of direction because in the colony I never needed one. From the months of wandering with Jack, I discovered it came innately. I know without even thinking about it that we're heading straight west.
Jane wraps her arm around Lily's waist and she helps her along. Her eyes turn to Dave. “She didn't know how to sew.”
Dave laughs between breaths. “I could have told 'em that. She barely knew how to weed.”
Jack looks long at me, and I warm all over under his gaze. Then he turns to watch the path. Now, more than ever, I wish I could speak. Spelling the words would take too long, and I don't know if he can see it in my eyes as we're covered with tree shadow.
“How far?” Dave says.
“Terra thought two miles to the ocean. She could see it from her window.” Mary lopes along beside him. “It'll be tricky when we get there, though, to know where exactly the sub will be.”
“If there is a sub.” There's a note of bitterness in Dave's voice.
My eyes flash at him. I hope that's aimed at colonists in general and not just at me, but his eyes are shaded, and I can't read them.
“There will be a sub,” Jack says. I smile gratefully.