Page 59 of Trade
The most dangerous threats in a bunker are fire, airborne disease, and panic, and panic is by far the worst.
In my imagination, I start a stampede, and we charge our way out of the bunker.
The plan begins to fall apart almost immediately. The screws in the vent are stripped, and it takes seven visits, spread over almost three weeks so as not to draw notice, to loosen them. Then, on the Friday I designated in my mind, I get lost in the access tubes, and by the time I find my way, dinnertime is almost over. Bennett takes note of my absence, and I have to wait another week for him to stop watching me like a hawk.
But then, a full four months after my return to the bunker, the stars align. I get the herbs in place. The screws are loosened. Cecily and I get a seat at a table right by the alcove and the exit to the cafeteria line. Amy and her sister Gina join us.
I haven’t told anyone my plan, but the way Cecily watches me, she knows I’m up to something.
I’m too nervous to eat, so Cecily and Amy split my plate among themselves. Gina still has a haunted look to her, all these years later, and her jaw never healed quite right. When she eats, the misalignment is most notable, which is maybe why she picks at her food and declines to share my rations.
I wait until the bulk of the line has gotten their meals and folks are digging in. The din is at its height.
“Excuse me. I forgot a fork,” I mumble to the table. They’re deep in loud conversation. No one notices me hop up.
My heart slams in my chest. I slip into the alcove and pry the vent the rest of the way from the wall. My hands shake like crazy as I pull the fire starter from my pocket and strike it.
Once.
Twice.
I twirl around, certain I heard a throat clear, but I’m alone with the vending machines and their display of things that used to be common—pipes men used to smoke tobacco, gold compacts with mirrors that used to contain powder that women would dust on their faces, little tins that held pills when medicine was so easy to come by people carried it around in their pockets.
I wish I could cause more than a little smoke.
I wish I could burn it all down.
The third time is a charm. The herbs catch right away, but for whatever reason, the smoke is sucked back into the vent.
“Damn.” I pull the smoking, braided bundles out and let them burn on the floor, waving the smoke furiously toward the open hall. They’re burning too quickly.
I rush out, draw in a deep breath, and pointing behind myself into the alcove, I scream at the top of my lungs, “Fire!”
Silence descends immediately. Everyone stares.
“Fire!” I scream again.
No one moves. They look at each other. They look over at the tables where the heads of departments tend to sit.
Pungent smoke drifts into the room in such delicate curls it probably can’t be seen by any but those at the closest tables.
Everything inside me shatters and falls. I’m failing. I was fooling myself. There is no escape. Only delusion.
There will be no Outside, no Dalton, no sweet air, no blue sky. Only this. Only ever this.
“Fire!” I scream with every ounce of despair and rage and desperation that I’ve ever felt, that I’ve ever ignored or shoved down or pretended didn’t exist.
The people begin to whisper to each other.She’s gone crazy. The lottery. It happens.
It’s hopeless.
And then my gaze happens to slide in the direction of the open door to the cafeteria line. Eugene Reedy’s wife is standing alone behind the buffet by the stove. Her face is flushed red from the heat, her dull brown hair straggling out of the bun she has tucked under her dingy chef’s hat that was white once upon a time.
Our eyes lock. Where she’s standing, no one can see her except me.
No one but me sees the lines at the corners of her eyes crease and a strange, wild smile break across her face as she twists the stove knobs, one after another, and then, as calmly as if she’s about to boil water, she lights a burner and screams, “Fire! Run!” as the air above the range explodes.
The hall erupts with screams.
