Page 63 of Trade
Everyone forces their attention away from the hawk and back on our leader. I do, too. We’re so used to listening to him that it’s muscle memory.
“You mean they lived and died in a tomb,” a grunt says with a snort. The people standing around him shift uncomfortably. No one talks while the Head Administrator is talking.
“I know what you think you see, but I am here to tell you it’s a lie. This—all of this—is a mirage, a deadly mirage. Do you think our forebears would have made the sacrifices they made if it wasn’t necessary? Do you think your leaders would ask such sacrifice of you if it wasn’t a matter of the very survival of the human race?”
People are murmuring now. Paul Andrews’ eyes flick back toward the bunker, and he tugs Meghan in the direction of the doors, but she won’t budge. The grunts fold their arms and mutinously clench their jaws.
Neil smells an opening. “I assure you, those of us who trade with the Outsiders have all been seduced by the false promise of this mirage, too, but soon enough, we were all confronted with the truth—what we knew in our hearts—that the Outside is poison. Turn back, friends, before it’s too late. Turn back before this false utopia is the last thing you see before you die.”
I watch Meghan look from Neil’s face to the trees to Neil’s face again. Paul draws her back toward the bunker again. This time, she lets him.
She’s afraid. She’s eighteen years old, and all she knows is what she’s been told by men who say they care about her, say they love her. And some of them do love her.
What choice does she have but to believe them?
What weapon does she have to fight with?
I walk forward, very slowly, as if pulled forward by a string, until I’m standing a few feet from Neil and Bennett. Dalton grumbles under his breath—he doesn’t like it—but he stays by my side and doesn’t make a move to stop me.
Bennett’s eyes bead, hard and mean, as he sizes Dalton up. Bennett sneers, but Dalton doesn’t know him, so he takes no notice. I watch as Bennett gauges Dalton’s height and the breadth of his shoulders and diameter of his biceps. I watch Bennett subtract. I see the exact moment he calculates the difference and comes up short. I stand a little taller.
“Do not be led astray,” Neil continues into the bullhorn. “Do not waver. Now is the time to honor the sacrifice of the generations who came before and the sacred trust they put in us. They knew the mortal peril you face now, at this very moment, the silent poison that destroys from the inside out, the corruption that will decay your very souls!”
I turn my head—slowly, deliberately—and scan the rows of Outsiders. I rake my eyes over their bodies, tilting my head to note their height, letting my gaze linger on broad chests and thick thighs.
I leer. “Poisoned, you say? For people decaying from the inside out, they look good to me.” I project my voice so it can be heard as far into the bay of the bunker as possible.
The Outsiders snicker. A few outright guffaw. I don’t have to look over. I know Dalton’s smirking.
Neil narrows his eyes at me. “You see the contamination before you,” he bellows into the bullhorn. “Gloria Walker. We all knew her father, Don, God rest his soul. Don was a good man—agreatman—dedicated to our purpose, to our people. He knew that this sacred project could not be entrusted to her, and he was right! In her depravity, she drove her husband away, and now she wants you to follow her into destruction.”
The words about Dad hit, and for a second, I’m thrown. I lose the words that were waiting to burst out of me a second ago. Then I hear steps behind me and glance over my shoulder. It’s Cecily and Amy, stalking forward to stand with me. Cecily rests her palm on my shoulder. Amy’s gaze locks with mine. She’s terrified—shaking—but she’s here. With me.
And then Gina joins her, and Sturge follows to stand so he blocks her body. Then Mrs. Reedy and another woman and another. There is something about these women. They’re not as distracted by the sounds, not as visibly thrown by the sunlight. They’ve been Outside before.
They’re not trembling and afraid like Amy. Their hands are fisted at their sides, and their jaws are clenched. Something in their energy unties my tongue.
“You all knowme. Gloria Walker. And you can see what’s right in front of your fucking eyes! I don’t need to lecture you about duty and purpose and threaten you with invisible dangers. Breathe! The air is clean!” I fill my lungs and then point to the trees. “Look! Green leaves!” I point to the Outsiders. “Look! Strong, healthy men.Oldmen.”
“Forty-seven ain’t old,” an Outsider mutters.
“You don’t have to believe me. Believeyour own eyes.” For some reason, I shout the words at Meghan and her terrified boyfriend.
Finally, Neil lowers his bullhorn. “Count the guards, Gloria,” he hisses at me under his breath. “There is less than a single contingent of Safety and Compliance out here. Right now, as we speak, the other squads are gathering, and when I give the sign, they will flood out of that bunker with a vengeance you’ve never seen before and orders to spare no one. They are going to stomp your little friends into pulp, and those strong, healthy men are going down in bunker history as the murderers who did it. Count the men, Gloria. You know I’m telling the truth.”
I don’t have to count. I know from the glee in his voice he’s not lying.
He thinks I’m trapped. That I have no choice.
Because he sees me as powerless, he thinks I am, so he doesn’t see the weapon right at my fingertips.
“Dalton, give me your gun,” I say.
Without saying a word or asking a question, Dalton hands me the pistol from his side holster, butt first. “Do you know how to shoot it?” he asks.
“Does it have a safety?”
“Yeah.”
