Page 64 of Trade
“Take it off for me.”
He does.
I level the gun at Neil. My hand shakes, but not enough that I can’t line up my shot.
“You wouldn’t dare,” he sneers.
“Now, Gloria—” Bennett starts.
“All right,” one of the women at my back urges. “Do it.”
Bennett grabs for the gun in his holster, taking me seriously for maybe the first time in his life, but then his hand freezes. I watch his face fall in real time as he must remember that his weapon has no bullets.
“Gloria, you don’t want to do this,” he begs.
“You don’t know what I want,” I say and squeeze the trigger, shooting Neil in the throat. I was aiming for his chest. I missed. His jugular spurts into Bennett’s gaping mouth, and Bennett pisses himself. A dark stain seeps across the crotch of Bennett’s coveralls while Neil’s body collapses in a heap on the broken asphalt.
“Gloria,” Bennett gasps.
“Go back inside, Bennett,” I say. “You don’t belong out here.”
Gary Krause, Ron Maxwell, and Eugene Reedy take a menacing step forward, still in their tough-guy stances, perhaps unaware the rest of the guards are shrinking back in the direction of the bunker.
“That was a mistake,” Gary snarls.
A chunk of asphalt hits him in the face. His nose snaps like a twig.
“You’rea fucking mistake, you rapist piece of shit,” Cecily says, slapping her hands to knock the dust off.
I whip my head around in time to see a half-dozen women stalking forward, stooping to grab their own hunks of asphalt and hurling them at the guards still in place. Some miss, some land glancing blows, some nail their targets’ faces, stomachs, balls. They’re aiming for the soft parts.
An Outsider whistles.
“Holy shit,” another says.
Then they’re jogging forward, the grunts joining them to block off the guards’ retreat, grabbing them as they try to flee, pinning their arms behind their backs and forcing them to their knees. The women continue to whip jagged shards of asphalt at them, landing more and better blows now that they’re closer and their targets are held in place.
A few of the women weep. Some scream curses, and others hurl their projectiles in steely silence. One woman kneels next to a guard and smashes his dick with a slab of asphalt, over and over, while two grimacing Outsiders hold the man in place with their boots on his wrists and chest.
It feels like it goes on forever, but in reality, it’s only a few minutes before the violence wears itself out, and I’m left awed. Humbled.
When I was in the bunker, I could only see a sliver of reality. Then I stepped Outside, and all of a sudden, I could see in 360 degrees, and I realized that I’d been blind. Now, it’s happened again. I only knew my own anger and grief and betrayal, but standing here, I see it reflected in every woman’s face, and I understand, to my bones, in a way I never have before—I’m not alone. None of us are. We’re soldiers-in-arms—if that’s what we choose.
One by one, the women’s rage seems to burn off like dew in the sunshine, and they drop their arms to their sides or stumble away to collapse in the grass. We’re all breathing hard. The sweet air is tinged with copper.
The grunts swarm forward to drag the guards back to the bunker doors, delivering a few final gratuitous kicks as a message to stay put.
Cecily stumbles over and throws her arm around my shoulder. “We got them in the end,” she says. The nails on the hand slung around my neck are torn, but she’s grinning.
“We did.” I grin back, but it quickly fades. “What about the others inside?”
“We left the door open,” she says. “You took out Neil, and we put a good dent in Safety and Compliance. If the people want out, they’ll find a way.”
We contemplate the bodies lying in the bunker’s bay doors. Some are moving. Some are stiff.
“So what’s good out here?” Cecily asks, breaking the moment of silence.
I turn away and survey the green trees spreading as far as the eye can see. “There’s a pretty great lake a few days’ walk away.”
