Page 62 of Trade
“I was afraid you were dead. That I left you for dead.” I burst into a fresh bout of tears.
He scrubs them away with the heel of his hand. “I was afraid I was going to have to scoop you out of that mountain like a snail.”
“A snail?” I sniff.
“Hey, I like snails. They’re delicious.”
“You eat snails?”
He’s too busy kissing me to answer, and when we come up for air, I wind my arms around his neck, holding onto him with all my might while I watch my people venture farther out of the bunker into the sunshine, mumbling in awe.
“Oh, boy. Oh, wow.”
“My goodness gracious.”
“Holy shit.”
“Do you see the trees?”
“It’s all green.”
“Look at the sky.”
“Was it here this whole time?”
“Was it like this all along?”
With her head tilted toward the sky, squinting, Mrs. Reedy is the first to wander off the asphalt. She carefully lowers herself to her knees, digs her fingers into the grass, and bursts into tears. Others follow her—kneeling or sitting or lying down, cheeks pressed to the ground or flat on their backs, arms wide, bathing in the sun.
By and large, the Outsiders have stayed in their line with their weapons lowered. The grunts have lowered the rifles they confiscated from the guards, but they’re holding onto them tightly.
Cecily has gotten herself a rifle, too. She stands behind Amy and Gina, her neck craned, her lips curved as the sunshine glows gold on her brown cheeks.
An Outsider, a man about my age, breaks from the ranks. With his palms raised to show he means no harm, he approaches us. I tense. Despite the gesture, he’s a big, rough-looking man. Dalton turns to see what’s worried me.
“That’s Sturge,” he says reassuringly. “He was one of the first to say he’d help. Didn’t need to trade him nothin’ for it. He’s all right.”
Sturge stops a few feet away from my friends and murmurs something to Gina. Gina flushes and glances down, but then she sneaks a peek at him from under her lowered lashes. It seems they know each other, and there’s only one way that’s possible.
He offers her a drink from his canteen. After a moment’s hesitation, she takes it. When she finishes, he gestures for her to pass it on to Amy. When Gina came back with her broken jaw, it was so painful for her to get down the tea I brought her. She whimpered after each sip. This man, Sturge, obviously didn’t do that to her. Our own people did.
Others are venturing Outside now, their steps more tentative. This second wave keeps close to the outer bunker walls. I see several people I know. I’m most surprised when Meghan leads a hesitant Paul Andrews out of the bay doors.
That shock immediately pales when Neil Jackson limps out, held up by Gary Krause on one side, and Bennett on the other. Susan Jordan and a few other heads file out behind them, shading their eyes. They’re flanked by guards looking more than a little worse for wear.
Neil holds out his hand. Someone passes him his bullhorn. He raises it to his mouth. “Fellow citizens—” he begins in that voice, that arrogant, condescending, patronizing voice that knows it all and makes all the calls and understands everything better and sees everything more clearly than the rest of us while he lords above us from a creaky, cracked plastic chair in his stale office buried under the ground like a grave.
Something inside me snaps.
“Dalton, let me down.”
He does, reluctantly. For a few moments, I stand by his side, listening as Neil ramps up into a new version of the speech he gives at every Assembly.
“It isnow,nowmore than ever before, that we must remember what we were called to do. We were chosen, spared from annihilation, and tasked with a solemn, sacred duty to the future of human civilization. We must not fail now, at the eleventh hour.”
A bird flying high overhead lets out a high-pitched, raspy scream and dozens of heads whip upward. A red-tailed hawk soars across the blue sky. The crowd gasps in unison.
Neil booms louder into his bullhorn. “What would the generations before us say to see us falter at this point when they paid the ultimate price to ensure the continuity of government?”
