Page 50 of Trade
A guard drives the butt of his rifle into the back of Dalton’s head, and he crumples lifeless to the ground.
ChapterNine
The walk back to the bunker is hell. Gary sets a grueling pace, and if I fall behind, a guard grabs me by the arm and drags me along.
The image of Dalton’s limp body, face down in the dirt, flashes over and over in my brain. Was he breathing? I focus on the picture in my mind until it blurs. Blood trickled from his ear. His left hand was curled in a loose fist. But his chest? Was it rising?
It must’ve been. He’s so strong. He has to be alive. My believing will make it so. There is no other choice.
I mutterhe’s aliveover and over in my mind like an incantation that’ll somehow save us both.
The guards are angry and they resent their mission. They bitch about blisters and sun glare and uneven terrain, and they’re furious about the ass-kicking Dalton gave them, so they entertain themselves by humiliating me. They watch me pee. They tie my wrists and ankles when we camp for the night. They ask me if the Outsider’s cock knocked the dust off my pussy.
During the long days of walking, there is time enough for me to place each of them, and match beet-red scowling faces to names.
Jerry Pagett. Like Eugene’s wife, his wife works in Food Service, but she hasn’t been ground down by her husband. For a few credits, Linda Pagett will slip you a bite-sized tart she makes with limes for bones that we grind for fertilizer.
Scott Janssen. His family lived down the hall from Dad and me. We went to school together, although he was a few years ahead of me.
Dick Norberg. He interned in Irrigation and Fertilization when I was supervisor of Heirloom Produce.
I know all of them, and they know me, but it doesn’t matter. They hate me.
In the past, they’ve never been anything but civil, even friendly to me, and now they shove me if I don’t move fast enough, and if I trip and fall, they sneer and watch as I pick myself up, as if I’m an embarrassment.
Three days ago, it would have boggled me. Even when these same men were pushing me out of the bunker with their poles, it just didn’t register. How can men I’ve known all my life suddenly turn on me?
But I see clearly now. They didn’tturn. The decency was a mask all along. If I did what I was supposed to do—if I followed the script—the men in charge were civil. Even warm. Why wouldn’t they be? But when they needed to manhandle me, they had no qualms, and now, when I’ve really inconvenienced them, they treat me exactly how they see me—a broken machine that can be fixed with a sharp kick, a stubborn, misshapen piece of hardware that needs to be forced into place.
It shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. For all the Assembly meetings and debate and votes, in the end, who doled out the rations? Who sat on the dais? Whoknewwhat was Outside, and who didn’t tell us?
Theyknew. It took a little while for it to register, but they’re not wearing the ancient gas masks they wore when they pushed me out, and they’ve each got their own little orange bottles with pills for the water.
Who did they trade for their pills?
I still have mine even though Eugene pulled everything else from my pockets, threw it on the ground like trash, and spat, “Dumb bitch.”
I feel seventeen years old again, on the verge of lottery age, terrified of drawing men’s negative attention but completely reliant on them, as well. As the hours and days pass, that feeling of powerlessness settles on me like a wool sweater on bare skin, itchy, hot, and heavy.
I can’t go back to the bunker, but if I run, they’ll catch me, and if I somehow get away and make it back to the lake—what if I can’t find Dalton?
What if I do? If he’s there exactly as we left him?
My train of thought stutters to a halt there, wheeling around, but not before I see his body in the dirt again. His chest moved, didn’t it? The slightest bit, but I saw it, didn’t I?
Hysteria chokes me, and I can’t catch my breath, so I fall behind, and Eugene or Jerry or Scott curses and drags me along harder while I prayplease be alive, be alive, be alive.
Early on the third day, we get to the paved drive that leads to the bunker. The men, who’d been letting me lag behind with a rotating guard, gather around me, boxing me in like they do with criminals. They have to march at a snail’s pace up the mountain because no matter how much they snarl at me, after nearly a week of walking, I have no energy reserves.
When we get to the bunker’s entrance, Eugene jogs ahead to wave at the camera, and as if we were expected, the massive metal doors immediately begin to creak open. The numbness that had fallen over me sometime during the past day dissolves into sheer panic.
I can’t go back inside.
I won’t.
I glance wildly around, but I’m surrounded. Sensing my rising hysteria, Jerry and Dick grab me under my arms and drag me forward into the huge bay with the plastic strips hanging at the back. The smell slaps me in the face. It’s seeping from the gaps in the curtain into the fresh air, a miasma of stale dust and decay.
“No,” I gasp and struggle, although it’s useless. I’m outnumbered. Overpowered. I can’t go back in there. I won’t. I’ll die. I want Dalton. I twist my neck, but there’s nothing behind me but green trees and blue sky. He’s not coming. He’s dead. I got him killed. I left him there. “Let me go!”
