by Hart, Stella
Jacob glanced across at me every so often as we chatted, and finally, his gaze fell on my left hand as I wiped it across my face again. “Not married yet?” he asked, taking the bait exactly as I hoped he would. “What are you, twenty-seven?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Still single,” I said. “I mean, I’d love to get married and have a ton of kids, but trying to find a woman in New York who shares my specific set of values is quite… difficult.”
“I can imagine. Loose morals abound in that city.”
I suppressed a snicker. He talked like some sort of religious fortune cookie.
“That’s right,” I said with a faux-sorrowful sigh. “What’s it like with the women here? I presume you’re quite strict with them, because I’ve heard on the grapevine that no one ever sees them.”
Jacob smiled thinly. “I know about all the rumors. Because I never let anyone in—well, almost never—people assume all sorts of wild things. Some actually think we’re all crazy Devil worshipers out here. But let me explain somethin’ to you. The terrorist attack we discussed earlier… can you imagine how it affected the young girls at the time?”
I shook my head slowly. “They lost their mothers and older siblings in such a horrible way. I honestly can’t imagine it at all.”
“Well, they grew up to be very frightened, scarred young women. It’s not surprising, of course. Women are the weaker sex, after all. Not just physically. Mentally and emotionally too.”
“Of course.” I nodded sagely, suppressing the urge to punch him in the face. I lowered my voice and adopted a conspiratorial tone. “To be honest, the only reason I hire women at my company is to fulfil diversity quotas and appease my sister. If I had it my way, they’d all stay at home where they belong.”
Jacob smiled again. “Yes. Very good,” he said. “Anyway, as I was saying, the girls and women here are terrified by the outside world. Absolutely stark petrified. It’s our duty as men to protect them, so that’s what we do.”
“That’s very admirable. But surely they contribute? I mean, it’s not exactly fair if they just lounge around the mansion all day while the men go out and work.”
I was seriously playing dumb now. I knew perfectly well that that wasn’t what went on here. From what I’d heard via people like Jack Lazic, the women here were essentially unpaid housemaids to the men. They weren’t allowed access to electricity or technology, either.
Jacob chuckled. “Of course they work. We keep them busy in their protected quarters. They do the cooking, cleaning and child-rearing for us. In return, the men keep them safe from the outside world and do the outdoor labor.”
“I see. Seems like a good deal. Do any of them ever leave? On vacation, for instance.”
“Oh, yes. The men are allowed to take vacations if they want, but they always return. Most of them don’t even want to leave for so much as a weekend away, because they know they are freer here than they could ever be out in the real world. No bills, no wars to fight. Just a couple of hours a day of honest work in exchange for everything they could possibly want or need.”
I noticed he only said men. Not women.
“And you sell the sugarcane to pay for the commune, don’t you?”
He waved his hand. “We do, but it doesn’t contribute as much as you’d think. I’d say around seventy percent of our annual expenses come out of my investment accounts. I was really hoping for those investments to serve as a well that never runs dry, but I lost some money in the recent financial crisis. While there’s still enough to last another hundred years or so for the future generations, I was really counting on more. That’s why I’m interested in selling off some land. I need to make more.”
Bingo. I fucking knew it.
He regarded me with another smile. “What fortuitous timing,” he went on. “You want land, and I want to sell it.”
“It is fortunate, yes.”
“Perhaps God sent you directly to me.” He switched the truck’s engine off. “All right. We’re here.”
I climbed out and followed him to the edge of a field. A mixture of woodland and swamps stretched out for miles beyond.
“Remarkable, isn’t it?” Jacob said in an admiring tone.
The view was truly spectacular. The setting sun cast an orange glow over the swamp waters as it sank to the horizon, making it look like something right out of a fantasy world. Several bald cypress trees stood sentinel in the middle of the water, black silhouettes against the sky.
“Yes, it is.”
“Obviously you’d want to check it out in the daytime to get a real feel for it, but what do you think so far?”
I pretended to consider the question. “It looks great. How far does it go?” I asked. “The part you’re willing to sell, that is.”
“It’s around two hundred acres. I’d be willing to let it go for three hundred thousand. It’s worth more, but you’re basically an old family friend, and I know from experience that the market hasn’t been strong lately.” He gave me a wry smile.
I nodded. “Seems reasonable. Can we arrange a time for me to come and look at it properly?”
“Of course. Will you still be in the area tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“You could come back at one o’clock tomorrow. Or…” He frowned and hesitated. “Where are my manners? Why don’t you stay the night? There’s plenty of spare rooms in the mansion.”
I smiled inwardly. This was going perfectly. “That would be great. Are you sure, though? I know you don’t like visitors very much. I mean, I practically had to extract teeth from a chicken just to get a meeting with you.”
“For an Ashwood, I’m sure,” he said, slapping me on the back. “Especially one who might be giving me three hundred grand for a chunk of land I don’t even use.”
I chuckled along with him. Then we got in his truck and headed back up to the mansion. For several minutes, Jacob opened and closed his mouth repeatedly, as if he wanted to ask me something but wasn’t sure. Finally, he spoke up again.
“I just realized I’ll need to provide meals for you. We can eat breakfast by ourselves in the mansion if we want, but dinner is always a communal event here at New Eden. It’ll seem strange to the others if I’m not there, and they might worry. At the same time, I’d feel terrible making you eat dinner alone in your room.” He cocked his head to the side. “You don’t mind eating with us, do you?”
“Of course not. Do the women come to the mansion to cook for us?” I asked.
He shook his head. “They only come to the main house on rare occasions, because it scares them. So we all eat dinner together in a dining room near the men’s quarters at seven o’clock. That’s not in the mansion.”
“That’s fine.”
He went quiet again for a moment. “The thing is, you might find our living arrangements in New Eden to be… odd,” he finally said. “We’ve never had a guest inside the living quarters before, aside from new member prospects who always end up staying permanently. I don’t want any word of how we operate out here to reach the outside world. We value our privacy here very strongly.”
“I wouldn’t breathe a word to anyone. Even if I did, you’d know exactly where it came from, so you could send a hit squad after me.” I forced a laugh to show I was kidding.
Jacob smiled thinly. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “I sincerely hope you don’t disappoint me.”
“I promise, Mr. Chastain. I won’t tell anyone.”
He nodded. “All right. We have to walk there from here.”
He parked the truck by the mansion, and then he led me around to the back and down a familiar path. In the distance was a decrepit white clapboard chapel. I remembered it from eleven years ago. It had been built on the land by settlers over two centuries ago, but when the structure was weakened due to flooding, they abandoned it.
“I remember that old church,” I said, nodding toward it. “Back in the day, your daughter told me you were digging there for pirate treasure.”
> Jacob’s eyes widened, and then he laughed. “My Jolie always had quite the active imagination,” he said. “Unfortunately, there’s no pirate treasure there.”
We drew closer to the church. “Where exactly are we going?” I asked, peering around in search of other buildings. There were none to be seen, however. Just the decaying church. “Surely you don’t pack everyone into that tiny old building.”
“No.” Jacob stopped and gave me a hard look. “This is the part we don’t want people talking about. Rumors can get ugly.”
My forehead wrinkled. I was beyond confused.
He went on. “We wanted the girls and women to feel extra safe after the attack. Because they were all so scared of the world, we built them a haven beneath the earth. We’re actually standing on it right now.”
I shook my head slowly. “Sorry, what?”
Jacob gestured to our feet. “Below this soil is an underground shelter big enough to fit over three hundred people. We’re thinking of extending it, too, seeing as we have so many babies on the way.”
I stared at him, thunderstruck. Was he serious? They actually kept the women in a fucking underground shelter for their whole lives?
“I can see you’re shocked, but you must remember, the women are terrified of the outside world now,” Jacob said. “Being outside for even an hour scares them.”
I swallowed hard. “Oh, no, I understand,” I lied. “It’s just so surprising to me that you were able to construct an underground shelter in this type of soil. How do you prevent flooding?”
“It wasn’t the easiest of tasks, but we had some fantastic engineers working for us,” Jacob said. “They set up extensive drainage systems to pump all the water out of the soil, and the rest is history.”
“That’s… impressive.”
What I really wanted to say was ‘that’s fucking crazy’.
He nodded toward the old chapel. “The shelter entrance is in there. Oh, and before we go in, I must ask you not to speak to any of the girls or women you might see while we’re down there, under any circumstances. As you can imagine, it frightens them to see outsiders, let alone talk to them.”
“Of course. I won’t say a word.”
My mind whirled as he led me into the old chapel. How in the hell did the cultists convince all these young women to live underground? I understood the point about them being scared after the terrorist attack where they lost their mothers, but still, going to ground—literally—for over a decade afterwards seemed like such a weird decision to make.
Not only that, the amount of money and effort it would’ve taken to build the underground shelter in such an inhospitable environment was enormous. It was crazy. Seriously crazy.
What the hell had I gotten myself into here?
Jacob directed me to what looked like an enormous metallic storm door on the floor at the front of the church, where the altar or pulpit might’ve once stood. He opened it and stood there with his hand out, that creepy bright smile on his face again.
“After you, Mason.”
3
Jolie
My stomach growled loudly as I swept the hallway tiles in the men’s section of the shelter. After briefly glancing at a nearby clock, I saw that it was around half past six. I let out a sigh. The boys and men ate together at seven after we served them, and the rest of us didn’t eat until whenever they were done. Usually around eight o’clock. Sometimes even later.
I would have to wait quite a while to satiate my hunger.
I kept sweeping. The men had brought in a lot of dirt from outside today, and it was my job to get the floors clean and polished in this particular area while the other women prepared dinner or worked in different areas. If I wasn’t careful enough to get it done properly, my laziness could affect the whole commune. For all I knew, the dirt the men brought back could contain some poisonous materials from the nuclear fallout, and that could make the currently-pregnant women miscarry.
“…and you don’t need to worry too much about avoiding our girls,” I heard my father saying from somewhere up the hall, his footsteps thudding on the tiles along with someone else’s. “A few of them serve the meals to us, but they don’t sit and eat with us.”
“I see,” came the reply in a strangely-familiar voice. “I have to say, I’m shocked at how big this place is. I was expecting something tiny and cramped.”
I stopped sweeping and cocked my head to the side. Where had I heard that voice before?
My father chuckled. “Well, we have a lot of space out here on the ranch. May as well use it. Besides, I can’t expect the men to sleep in dirty, cramped quarters.”
“Of course not. I presume the women’s section is less… lavish.”
“Oh, yes. Our women do not want or need anything fancy. They are simply grateful to be alive and safe down here,” my father replied.
I crept down the hall and peeked around the corner, still curious about the other man. His voice was so familiar, and yet, I could tell from the context of the conversation that he must be an outsider.
We had outsiders visit us on occasion, but they usually stayed above ground with some of the men. I’d only ever seen a few actually come into the shelter, and they always ended up staying permanently. All of those new arrivals were male (only men could survive the Wastelands beyond the ranch, as they were stronger than women) and all of them had been determined by my father and the Elders to be suited to life in our commune.
Perhaps this man would be the next to move in with us?
Just as I began to wonder how he had survived the bombs and where he might’ve come from, I caught a glimpse of his face. My heart immediately seemed to stop beating. The man was tall and muscular with thick dark hair and chiseled features… and he was undeniably familiar.
It was Mason Ashwood. He looked exactly as I imagined him last night when my sinful mind conjured up all those images of what he might look like if he was still alive.
With a gasp, I ducked behind the corner so he and my father wouldn’t see me. My heart was racing from the shock now, and I was finding it hard to breathe properly. I couldn’t believe it. Not only was Mason alive after all this time, he was here.
Perhaps the Devil had sent those images to me last night. That could be why my imagination had proved so accurate, and also why I’d even thought of Mason at all. Then again, it might’ve been our God instead. Perhaps He was letting me know in my moment of need that someone I once knew and cared for had survived the Great Reckoning and was on his way to us here at New Eden.
Yes, that had to be it. If Mason was bad, he would have been killed in the bombs and fires. But instead he had survived all these years. That meant he couldn’t be a sinner, sent to me by the Devil himself. He was good.
I risked another glance around the corner, just to make sure I hadn’t daydreamed the whole thing. After all, I’d always had an active imagination.
Mason was still there, nodding every so often as my father explained some sort of drainage logistics to him. “Sorry, is there a bathroom nearby?” he asked a moment later.
“Yes,” my father replied. “Just down the hall and on the left. First door. I’ll quickly go and check what we’re having for dinner, and we’ll meet right back here in five minutes.”
“Thank you, Mr. Chastain.”
“Remember the rules,” my father said in a warning tone.
“I will.”
I drew back and stared up at the ceiling, my heart still pounding. I had a choice to make. I could follow the will of my father and stay well away from this outsider, as we were not allowed to speak with any of them until they were official members of our commune, or I could purposefully loiter near the bathroom Mason had been directed to so I could catch a closer glimpse of him.
I scurried down the hall before hiding around yet another corner. I didn’t have to speak with Mason. I just wanted to see him for a few seconds. That wasn’t against the rules.
I heard him push the bathroom door open. A mom
ent later, I heard the sound of a tap turning on. I stepped into the hall right outside.
Mason emerged from the marble-tiled room a few seconds later. His eyes met mine, surprise flashing in their smoldering hazel depths.
“It’s you,” I blurted out as our gazes locked. “It’s really you.”
I felt as if I’d been struck by lightning. As if my lungs might collapse from the weight of his stare.
Suddenly I realized what an awful mistake I’d made. No wonder he looked so shocked.
I sank to my knees, throwing myself at his feet. “Forgive me, sir,” I begged, my hands clasped together and my eyes on his shoes. “Please do not tell my father that I spoke out of turn.”
Why was the Devil tempting me into sin so often? What was wrong with me? Was I naturally defective, or was I simply not trying hard enough to remain devout?
Mason slid a hand down to my jaw and brought my chin up so that I was forced to gaze upon his handsome face again. His expression was mired in confusion. “Get up, Jolie,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone you spoke to me.”
He yanked on my left arm, and I did as he commanded. “You remember my name?” I said softly.
He smiled. My legs instantly felt wobbly. Just like they had the first time I ever saw him, when I was nothing more than a child. “Of course I do. I remember everything about you,” he said.
I fixed him with a surprised look. “Really?”
“A girl like you is impossible for any man to forget.” Eyes twinkling, he began to check off a list with his fingers. “Smart. Beautiful. Funny. You’re the whole package.”
A heavy blush roared to life in my cheeks, leaving me hot and flustered. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I am very honored that you would say such kind things about me,” I murmured, suddenly filled with a great yearning to return to 1999, before all the terror started.
He shrugged. “It’s just the truth,” he said. “This is an amazing coincidence, though. I was hoping to run into you, and here you are.”