Page 25 of Savagely Yours
“Hostage.”
“How about you answer my questions instead of being a smart ass?”
“I graduated at the top of my law school class from Howard University, ma’am. I don’t know how to be any other type of ass.”
She scribbled “lawyer-NE” on one of the lines on her clipboard.
“I’m told you came with a man,” she continued.
“I did.”
“You were already together before all this?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How long you two been married?”
“Oh…Dez and I aren’t…we’re not…”
“Sudden speech impediment,MizzLaw School?”
“He’s a friend,” I explained. “We worked together.”
“Your husband know you work so closely with another man?”
“I’m not married, but,” I leaned closer, “if this is in reference to any sort of housing or residency arrangement, I’d like to stay with Dez.”
She “hmphed.”
I leaned back.
“Any known medical conditions, Ms. Tapley?”
I shrugged. “I used to be chubbier, and my lipid panel wasn’t the best back then. High-normal cholesterol. But I’m sure it’s probably fine now.”
“Current medications?”
“An occasional allergy pill, but that’s about it. Oh, and fish oil because, you know, that lipid panel.”
My mind drifted, and I thought about my family. I thought about Wren ending up in a similar situation and having to explain something that most laypeople wouldn’t understand. In a world like this, there would be no treatment for her condition.The world was barely set up for her to thrive when it “worked,” never mind now.
The woman asked me several more questions—whether I was traveling with anyone else, if I had kids, if I’d been in contact with anyone who might have been infected, and whether I had experience with firearms. Then she asked if I intended to comply with the rules of the camp. When I answered, “It depends,” she stood, aggressively swabbed my throat, and flicked her wrist to send me to a metal bench to wait.
The swab came back negative.
A different woman shoved a bag into my chest.
Yet another soldier escorted me through the tent, out the back and inside the tall walls via a massive metal door. We walked side by side down a covered gravel walkway that, minus the rock pellets on the ground, reminded me of my cousin’s middle school in Louisiana.
I looked down at my bag, the fabric dark green with a blue Caduceus symbol printed on the front. “What does the blue mean?” I asked.
The soldier barely offered me a glance. “What does what mean?”
“The meaning behind the symbol colors on the front. So far, I’ve seen blue, red, black, and white.”
“You’re…observant.”
“What do they mean?”
