Page 20 of Trade (After the End #7)

“Yeah, as good as he could, but life is hard if you’re not in a town.

I know you can’t tell by my size now, but we starved every winter until I got big enough to handle myself scrounging.

Once they give a man a child, the women won’t see him anymore—it hurts them too much to let their babies go again—so my dad didn’t see a reason to go to the Mill.

We mostly traded on the fly, if we ran into someone amenable.

Just as often we’d end up fighting, and to the winner went the spoils, you know?

” I don’t, but I’m getting the picture. “And then Dad died.”

He’s quiet for a minute. I wrap my arms around his neck. He burrows his nose into my hair. I do understand that.

“I don’t know how you live in the mountain, but you look fed, and I don’t imagine you’re ever alone.”

I shake my head.

“It can be lonely out here. Even when Dad was alive, we were on our own, right? It’s a good day if you eat, if you wake up in the morning, if the fight or the fall of the cold doesn’t kill you.”

I nod. This is the Outside that I always imagined.

“When you came out of the mountain, when I saw you, I felt for the first time in my life that there might actually be good shit in the world. Not just survival. Not just living to fight another day.”

I didn’t feel that way. I was terrified. But now? I understand exactly what he means.

I fold my arms, leaning on his pecs so I can look him in the face.

“When we were kids, we would sneak into the access ducts.” The crease on his nose appears.

“They’re like pipes with ladders that go all over the bunker, big enough for a person to navigate.

That’s how techs access the ventilation system and plumbing and that kind of thing.

We’d get in there and climb to the very top level.

There were these huge vents up there, like ten feet across, ten feet wide, with these massive black rubber louvers.

We’d get up as close as we could, stick our heads between the louvers, and breathe as deep as we could. The air was so fresh.”

Not anywhere near as fresh as it is out here, but if you could get a good lungful, it would still go straight to your head.

Dalton strokes my spine and listens.

“It was the best. And then at some point, around when I graduated school and began my internships, I gradually stopped going. I haven’t been since I was eighteen or nineteen.” I do the math. “Until three days ago, I hadn’t had a breath of fresh air for twenty years.”

He hums, content to let me get to my point in my own time.

“I could have gone at any time—Safety and Compliance know kids do it, and if they don’t break anything, they ignore it—but I hit a certain age, and I just stopped.”

I was safely married then, and I’d officially applied to AP, as if I’d ever seriously considered another department. I was determined to make it to supervisor within two years, and I had so many ideas, so many battles I thought were worth fighting.

“It was like at a certain point, I killed the part of myself that believed there could be more. You make compromises with yourself, right? You’ll never have what you really want, but what you have is good enough. You tell yourself that. This is good enough.”

“And it wasn’t?”

“It wasn’t this.” I lay my cheek on his chest, and he wraps his arms around me. I’m pretty sure he can only understand a fraction of what I’m saying—like my imagination can only paint the outline of what he says—but I know from how he listens that he wants to.

He sees me, and I see him, and magic is the only possible word for it.

“I don’t want to go back. I want to stay with you.”

“Okay,” he says, and a few seconds later, like it’s a forced confession, he says, “Good thing because I wasn’t going to let you go anyway.”

We fall asleep in a tangle of limbs, rolled up in our blanket, almost strangers, almost in love, alone in the world under the stars in a world that shouldn’t exist, but does anyway, despite it all.

* * *

I wake up with cold, hard metal prodding my shoulder. “Rise and shine, Mrs. Walker.”

Eugene Reedy sneers down at me with a rifle in his hand.

I gasp and sit straight up, dragging the blanket to cover myself. We slept naked.

Where is Dalton? I blink my blurry eyes, scanning the shore, but all I see are three guards from the bunker arrayed in a line, all with rifles.

“Looking for your boy toy?” Eugene’s lips twist. “He’ll be here any minute.” He bends over, grabs Dalton’s shirt from where he left it draped over his backpack, and tosses it at me. “Cover yourself up, for Chrissake.”

I tug the shirt on as a ruckus sounds from the nearby woods and several more guards emerge, shoving Dalton ahead of them.

Gary Krause has a rifle pressed to his back.

He’s got his hands clasped behind his head, and his pants are unzipped, his belt hanging open, like they caught him taking a piss.

His face is hard as stone, but when his gaze flickers to me, his eyes blaze.

“Aim that fucking thing away from her,” Dalton snarls at Eugene.

Gary slams the butt of his rifle into Dalton’s back, driving him to his knees. “You’re not giving orders here, Outsider.”

I scream, “Gary! What are you doing?”

Gary turns to me, contempt filling his eyes. “Figure you’d have yourself a little vacation, Gloria?”

I straighten my spine, painfully aware that I’m half-naked and my knife is in my coverall pocket over by the fire. Dalton’s machete is on the ground two feet away, but Eugene has his eyes on it, and the muzzle of his gun is inches from my face.

“I’m not going back,” I say to Gary. “You didn’t need to come for me.”

Gary snorts. “Every single married woman in that bunker is losing her mind. They held a vigil. There’s a petition. Elizabeth won’t let it rest for a second.” Elizabeth is his wife. She’s a supervisor in Food Services. I’ve made deals with her for excess potato or pasta water. “You’re coming back.”

“No.”

Gary laughs. “Bitch, you don’t have a choice.”

I glance at Dalton. He’s eyeing the guards, planning something. He’s going to get hurt. I rise on shaking legs with my hands up.

“Let’s discuss this, Gary.”

“Put your shoes on, Gloria. This isn’t up for discussion.”

I slowly move toward my boots. Dalton’s jaw has tightened, and his nostrils flare. He’s going to do something. We’re outnumbered eight to two, and that’s without the rifles. I try to catch his eye, but his gaze is flicking from man to man.

“I can write a letter. Let everyone know that I’m fine. That it’s my choice.”

Gary’s lip curls, his familiar face shifting into a nasty expression I’ve never seen before.

I’d call it contempt, but even contempt is an emotion you feel toward a person.

He looks at me like I don’t even rise to the definition.

Like I’m meat stuck in his teeth or a clump of dirt stuck to the bottom of his shoe. My blood runs cold.

“You’re going to tell everyone that in person. If you don’t want me to put a bullet in your boyfriend’s brain right in front of you, get dressed. Now!”

I whimper, my gaze flying to Dalton, but for once, he’s not looking at me.

He’s staring Gary down. Dalton’s back is ramrod-straight, and his shoulders are squared, his superhuman self-assurance not betrayed by the smallest twitch.

He’s at least ten years younger than the youngest guard from the bunker, but he’s more of a man than any of them.

I can’t let them hurt him. I quickly struggle into my coveralls and shove my icy feet in my boots, bending to tie the laces with fumbling fingers.

“Remember what I told you when you were up in the tree?” Dalton says to me, his gaze never wavering from Gary. “What parts to aim for?”

“Shut up!” Gary barks.

Aim? Aim for the soft parts, he said. Eyes and throat. Dalton is going to fight.

I shout, “No!”

But Dalton is already leaping up, tackling a guard, spinning as he takes the man down and using his body as a bludgeon, slamming it into Eugene.

It’s a melee. The bunker guards fight like they’re taught—the same as they do in their annual exhibitions—slinging their rifles over their shoulders to execute practiced punches and kicks like it’s a sparring match, and Dalton moves twice as fast.

He’s a whole other animal. Now that Eugene is flat on his back, Dalton goes for his machete, tearing through bodies to get to it.

He drives an elbow into someone’s face and headbutts another while he kicks in another guy’s kneecap.

He’s so much faster and stronger that even though he’s so outnumbered, he’s gaining ground.

One man drops to the ground, curling into a ball. Another reels away, blinded by his own blood, holding his face and wailing. The men who remain standing shrug their rifles off their shoulders, and my heart stops.

“Dalton, stop! I’ll go with them. Stop.”

I don’t think he hears me. The men swing their rifles at him like clubs, and he ducks and blocks, but there are too many of them.

He takes a blow to the shoulder and stumbles, and a guard takes advantage by aiming a strike at Dalton’s knee, but Dalton is still too quick for them.

He jumps over the rifle like it’s Double Dutch.

“Dalton, please! Stop!”

The men are forming a loose circle around him, and he doesn’t dodge the next few blows. He’s tiring. Staggering. Gasping for air and holding his side. They got his ribs.

A man swings his rifle, and Dalton’s too slow to even block it. He absorbs the entire impact with his forearm.

“Dalton! Please!” I can’t stand it. He can’t die. He’s the only good thing, the best thing in the world. He’s mine. Mine. “They’ll shoot you!”

“No ammunition,” Dalton gulps through ragged breaths. “That’s why . . . not shot already.”

Eugene hauled himself back to his feet at some point, and now he squares up with Dalton, fists raised and feet planted shoulder-width apart like this is a demonstration match. His beady eyes are gleaming.

Dalton is flagging fast, an eye swollen shut, lip split, barely able to stay upright, his right arm limp at his side.

“You should have listened to the bitch,” Eugene sneers. “Now you’re gonna get it.” He rotates his torso and draws back his arm.

Dalton drives his left fist into Eugene’s face, and he falls straight back, landing on the ground with a resounding thump. He’s out cold.

In the silence that follows, a soft, metallic click echoes through the clearing as loud as a clap of thunder.

I glance up from Eugene’s limp body. Gary is aiming his rifle at me.

“That’s enough now, young man,” Gary says.

Dalton immediately freezes, cradling his side. “You don’t have bullets,” he gasps. “We don’t trade you for bullets.”

“How sure of that are you? How sure are you that none of you will trade?” Gary steps forward, closing the distance between us, and levels the rifle’s muzzle at my forehead.

My hands rise into the air in front of my face as if my palms could block a bullet. Blood pounds in my ears.

“Glory,” Dalton says, his voice torn. His eyes find mine again. Everything I feel in my heart is burning in them. “I’ll find you again.”

A guard drives the butt of his rifle into the back of Dalton’s head, and he crumples lifeless to the ground.