Page 15 of Trade
He can’t be much older than twenty-one or twenty-two. His skin is a deep tan, and he wears his shaggy brown hair long enough that it shows under his baseball hat. His eyes are dark brown, too. He’s clean-shaven. In my head, all Outsiders have long beards, none of them are young, and none of them look like a movie star from the Before.
He’s probably about the same age as Alan, the intern who I saw break a rake, but who got so teary-eyed when Reginald accused him of losing it that I pretended I knew nothing. I couldn’t bear to see a kid, so new to the work world, cry in front of the other men.
The man in front of me doesn’t look like a crier, though. His face is more beautiful than any I’ve seen in real life or the archives—sculpted jaw, regal nose, sharp cheekbones, proud chin—but it’s harder, too. Not blank, not cold, but like the granite millstone in the Before exhibit, that kind of hard strength.
If he’s deformed or diseased, it’s hidden, or maybe eating away at his insides. In school, we don’t learn much about the particulars of life Outside. There’s too much to cover about the Before, too much we need to commit to memory so it’s never lost.
The air is probably poisoning me right now, but I can’t stop sucking it down, partly out of panic, but also because it hits like a glass of wine. The more I breathe it in, the sharper my brain gets, and the floatier I feel.
By the time the man begins to walk toward me, everything is hyperreal, not only the colors, but the starkness of the light and the crunch of his boots on the asphalt. His stride is unhurried. Assured. Nothing like an intern’s awkward, self-conscious schlump.
With each step he takes toward me, my breath quickens. He knocks a chunk of broken asphalt with the toe of his boot, and I gasp at the sound. I’ve never been more awake. I could run. My muscles are primed.If you fight, if you flee, if you communicate with the Outsiders in any way—verbal, written, or hand signal—you will not be permitted reentry.
All I can do is stand stock-still while the man approaches, his dark gaze boring into me. Too soon, he’s right there, towering over me. I stare at his boots. The mud is black. Black mud means it’s rich in organic material. Maybe a bog or marsh.
“What’s your name?” he asks. His voice is deep, but young. So young.
If you communicate with the Outsiders in any way—verbal, written, or hand signal—you will not be permitted reentry.
But there is a machete strapped to his right thigh, and now that he’s close enough to touch, I see the other knives in sheaths hanging from his belt and the folded blade in his pocket.
If he knows my name, it should be harder for him to hurt me, right? To kill me.
I need to keep my priorities in order. Live through this first. Then get back inside.
“Gloria,” I whisper with my head tilted down.Please don’t let the camera see.
He makes a gruff sound, acknowledging that he heard. “Come with me,” he says, but he doesn’t turn to go. He waits, staring down at me, until the silence gets to me and I finally glance up and meet his eye. Then he grabs my hand and leads me back down the sloping drive that curves and disappears into the thick woods.
His hand envelops mine. His grip is firm, but he doesn’t squeeze. He walks with a purpose, but so quickly that I can’t easily keep up. A few yards downhill and the drive curves enough that the bunker entry disappears behind tall trees and undergrowth. I identify oak, maple, and beech, as well as bracken ferns and liverwort.
Was the bunker built under a mountain, or was a mountain built on top of the bunker? The forest is temperate, not montane. I see very few coniferous trees.
I’m distracting myself with plants, but what’s my other choice? Think about what’s going to happen next?
At a bend in the drive, the man pulls me off onto a dirt path leading into the trees. My heart thuds faster, dread crawling up my spine. We travel a few yards to a small clearing. At the far side, there’s a steep, rocky drop-off that opens the view onto a lush valley that spreads for miles and miles. In the middle of the clearing, there is a stained mattress laying in the dirt.
The man lets go of my hand. “Go lay down,” he says.
A gasp catches in my throat. I see the mattress. Why am I surprised? I know what’s happening.
This is happening.
I curl my shaking fingers into fists. “Not on that,” I whisper even though there’s no way they can hear me this far from the bunker.
Whatever color the mattress used to be, it’s gray now except for the reddish-brown splotches. None of them are dark or big enough that a person must’ve died, but there are somanyof them, faded to so many different shades, overlapping, intersecting, creeping along the seams where something pooled.
My stomach heaves. I pant through it, trying to make as little noise as possible.
“Not on that?” the man repeats.
I shake my head hard.
He clears his throat and glances around the clearing. The mattress is surrounded by compacted dirt, but at the edges closer to the trees, there are patches of sparse, flattened grass.
“Come over here,” he says, walking to the base of an elm. He frowns at the ground for a few seconds and then unties the jacket from his waist and lays it out under the tree. “Lay down.”
I can’t just do what he says. He’s Alan the intern’s age. If I’d let Bennett do what he wanted when we first snuck off into the access ducts, I could be old enough to be the man’s mother.
