Page 51 of Trade
A man emerges from behind the curtain, parting the strips and strolling into the bay like a star taking center stage. Everyone except Jerry and Dick back away from me. Neil Jackson strides right up to me and backhands me. I taste copper. Jerry and Dick let me go, and I fall, my knees cracking on the concrete floor.
Oh God, it hurts. I cradle my jaw. Tears flood my eyes.
“Get her back up,” Neil says, perfectly calm.
Jerry and Dick haul me back to my feet.
“Hold her still.” Neil backhands me again. My head snaps back. I smell copper now, too.
“Stop!” I scream, wrenching my arms in the sockets to get free, but their grip is solid, and they’re stronger than me.
“Look at me, Gloria,” Neil orders. He steps closer, grabs my hair, and yanks my head back so I have no choice but to stare him in the face. Blood and snot trickle from my nose.
Neil’s mouth twists into his bland, business smile. “Oh my, Gloria. You look like hell.”
“What do you want?”
The fake smile falls away. “You know what I want. What every citizen should want—the continuity of government and the preservation of civilization as intended by the first generation and set forth in the Articles of Incorporation. I want discipline upheld, Gloria. I want each of us to do our part. Did you do your part, Gloria?”
It’s nonsense. He’s talking nonsense.
It’salwaysbeen nonsense.
“Let me go.”
“Now, I can’t very well do that. I suppose you don’t know this, but you’ve started something of a movement among the women. When you didn’t come back like you were instructed, there were rumors. There wastalk.”
An old, instinctive shame rises in me. One of the first lessons you learn from your parents is that good citizens don’t indulge in idle talk. Gossip causes misinformation which can lead to confusion and panic.The most dangerous threats in a bunker are fire, airborne disease, and panic, and panic is by far the worst.
“There have been petitions. Whispers about a demonstration. Even a general strike. We can’t have that, now can we, Gloria?”
I spit the blood pooling in my mouth. He doesn’t need me to answer. I get it. Cecily mentioned unrest among married women when I was put into the lottery. When I was sent Outside and didn’t come back, they would’ve assumed I was killed. It would’ve added fuel to the fire.
“Nothing to say, Gloria? Good. That’s exactly how you’re going to proceed. You are going to keep your mouth shut except to say how grateful you are to be home.” He takes a step closer. “You aren’t going to tell anyone about how the Outsider blackened your eye.” His fist slams into my cheek. I scream, my hands flying to cover my face. He drives another fist into my side. “Or how he broke your ribs.”
I fall into a crouch and try to protect my face and sides, but it’s useless. He kicks me again and again, until I curl into a sobbing, broken mess, and then he grabs me by the hair again and hoists me up enough so he can sneer in my face.
“You can have a few days to recover, but then you’re going to report to work, and when the others ask what happened to you, the only thing you’re going to say is that you are so very, very grateful to be home again. And if you don’t, if I even suspect that you demonstrated anything less than wholehearted joy and relief to be back where you belong, I promise you that little protégé of yours, Amy, will win the lottery next, and she’ll get the exact same as you, but she won’t make it back inside. Understand?”
I nod, but he’s holding me by the hair so tightly that all I do is yank my roots. The pain is nothing compared to the rest of it, though. Every bone in my face throbs. The piercing ache in my side prevents me from taking any but shallow, gasping breaths.
“I want to hear you say it, Gloria. You’re going to do your part as a citizen of this bunker.”
I want to spit in his eye. I want to fight—to have heart like a hero in a movie who, through sheer tenacity, comes back after the bad guys believe he’s down for the count—but every illusion I had left has disappeared in an instant. I’m a bloody pulp on a concrete floor. With my swelling eyes and nose, it feels like I’m wearing blinders, and all I can see is Neil massaging his knuckles. I’m afraid and in pain, and I’ll do anything to make it stop.
I mumble, “I’ll do my part,” while tears stream down my cheeks, burning my cut lip.
“Good girl,” he says and jerks his head at the guards.
I don’t know who drags me back into the bunker. When the metal door slams shut, and the stale, musty air fills my lungs again, a hysterical cry is wrenched from my throat. They don’t even spare me a glance. They haul me down the corridors lined with litter and boxes, past storerooms, hiking me up to carry me down the short flights of stairs, ignoring my pitiful moans. The lounging guards along the way leer or stare blank-faced.
We reach an elevator bank, and when we emerge on Level B, the expressions change. There are sharp intakes of breath from people we pass. Shocked murmurs. Someone gasps, “Gloria!”
The guards loosen their holds on my upper arms and let me limp along under my own steam. The pain competes with panic, each buffeting me in turn as the ceiling presses down and the walls close in around me. Has the air always been this choked with dust? Is the light this dim, or is it my swollen eyes?
Instinct screams at me to run, to fight my way out before I’m buried forever, but every step is agony, so I have to stumble along in the wrong direction while my brain shouts and shouts to no effect.
The guards bring me to the infirmary, and as soon as we cross the threshold, I’m swarmed by health techs. They ease me onto a gurney and roll me into a curtained exam bay with stern expressions and eyes warm with compassion.
