Page 37 of The Compound

“You wouldn’t last a day without me, sweetheart. Don’t you know I’m the reason we have most of the things in this compound?” It was rare to see Tom so openly cruel, or so ruffled. He was frightened; he was very, very frightened.

Candice laughed, and Andrew frowned. “They’re Communal Tasks, Tom,” he said. “Everyone worked for them. You and I helped organize the process, that’s all.”

“Tell me the truth,” Tom said. “If we hadn’t come, how long do you think you girls would have lasted here? Well, Candy, what do you think?”

“Two punishments in three days,” she said. “Because you’re too much of an ape to follow basic instructions.”

“Don’t call me an ape.”

“Look at Lily. Does that make you feel good—seeing the blood on her face, you sick fuck ?”

He looked at me. “I shouldn’t have hit you, Lily.

I know that. But let me ask you all something.

What does everyone think that Lily brings to the compound?

Why is she still here? I’ve seen her do some of the girls’ makeup, sure.

Is that going to help us last the rest of the year here?

Any idiot could do it, anyway. We all know the reason that she’s still here is because there was a list of boys who wanted to fuck her.

Well, now it’s just Sam, and how long will that last? ”

Candice reached Tom before Sam could. She slapped him, hard enough that his head snapped back. “Don’t you dare talk about her like that,” she said.

Tom stood up and stepped forward. Andrew pushed him away, a violent shove, and Tom reacted worse to the push than to Candice’s slap.

“Everyone needs to calm down,” Andrew said. “We’re in enough trouble as it is.”

Becca spoke, sitting cross-legged on the bed farthest away from everyone.

I think it was Sarah’s bed, once. She had been sitting quietly for the whole altercation.

“Why should the rest of us be punished when it was only Sam and Tom who fought? I say they both sleep outside and be banished at sunrise.”

Andrew lost his temper for the second time in one night.

“Jesus Christ, everyone!” he yelled, and hit the wall behind his bed.

The sound wasn’t particularly loud, but it filled the room just the same.

“Can’t we just make an effort to get along?

If we play our cards right, we could be here for a long time.

But not if we’re at each other’s throats!

What’s happened to all of us? Can’t we just live in peace?

” His voice rose until it was booming around the room, his face red, the veins on his neck standing out. “We need to do better!”

Candice spoke calmly. “Tomorrow we’ll do as many tasks as it takes until there’s a banishment. There are too many of us here to live comfortably.”

When Tom spoke again, he was composed. “I agree,” he said.

Candice only turned away from him and went to bed.

I lay stiffly for a long time. Whenever I was near sleep, I imagined my loose tooth falling from the gum and down my throat, and would jolt awake. Every time I woke, Sam’s arms would tighten around me, and he would murmur something reassuring in my ear.

I don’t know if I next woke from the sound of someone else moving, or the distant shouting, or if some primitive part of me responded to the threat of danger.

My feet were moving before I realized I was awake.

Sam was gone; so was Tom. I knew what was happening before I was outside: I could see it, and I could smell it.

As I ran through the kitchen, there was a sea of red and orange out the window, and I felt the heat as soon as I stepped out the door.

I think they had only meant to set the shed ablaze, but the grass was so dry and caught fire quickly, spreading faster than I had thought possible.

I watched the scene unfolding before me with a horror so profound I scarcely knew myself.

The grass was ablaze, the gardens and the crops, even the hedge surrounding our compound.

Tom was standing by the shed, trying, I think, to find a way to get to it. Andrew ran out of the house, a streak of white, screaming, “Get away! Get away from the shed!”

The two of them were pulling at each other, Tom nearly insensible.

While they were shouting, Candice ran from the back of the house with the fire extinguisher.

I knew that there was another one, but it was Evan and Susie who had been in charge of Safety and Well-Being, and they had moved it around a couple of times.

I stood frozen, overwhelmed, as the blaze engulfed the orchard and swept toward the area where Jacintha and I used to lie in the afternoon shade.

I saw the controls for the irrigation system, and ran toward them, the heat terrible, lacerating, overwhelming.

Then I felt hands on my arms, gripping me tightly, and Sam was there, his brown eyes reflecting the red flames.

“It’s not safe,” he was saying, loudly, insistently.

“You need to get back.” I struggled free somehow, and reached, at last, the tap that turned the sprinklers on.

I hadn’t realized just how quickly the metal had heated, and as soon as I touched the tap I cried out, snatching my hand back to my chest. But by then, Sam had understood what I was doing.

He pushed me aside, his hands bunched in the sleeves of his shirt.

With one quick wrench, he turned the tap, and the sprinklers came on, water showering us.

In the lazy heat of an afternoon, the sprinklers had seemed perfect, luxurious, but now, with the fire crackling and roaring closer and closer, they provided a near-irrelevant drizzle.

“There’s a hose by the delivery area. Go back to the house,” Sam called, and then he was gone, racing back the way we had come.

I made my way toward the shed again, where the largest fire was still raging.

“There are sandbags,” Candice shouted. “Out the back, they just delivered them!” It was the only time that we had something delivered that we didn’t earn.

They knew they had done wrong: the fire had burned beyond what the producers had intended.

Or maybe it was their intention, but they still worried that we would die.

I ran, Becca alongside me. The sandbags were heavier than they looked, and we had to drag them together.

I’ll never forget Tom’s face as he stood before the shed, engulfed in great swathes of red flames and falling apart before his eyes.

More than once, I wondered if he would try to brave the fire and salvage what he could.

He didn’t, of course, but he didn’t help the rest of us for some time, only stood there, looking as though he was staring into the face of death.

In the gentle morning light, the sun shone on a ravaged, ruined compound.

The house was fine and the maze, the farthest western point, was entirely untouched, but nearly everything else outside had been destroyed.

Ash covered everything, a thousand times worse than what had been blown over from the bushfires: the place was black and gray, stripped entirely of color.

Beyond the house, it was no longer clear what land was our own, and what belonged to the desert.