Page 21 of Trade (After the End #7)

Chapter Nine

The walk back to the bunker is hell. Gary sets a grueling pace, and if I fall behind, a guard grabs me by the arm and drags me along.

The image of Dalton’s limp body, face down in the dirt, flashes over and over in my brain. Was he breathing? I focus on the picture in my mind until it blurs. Blood trickled from his ear. His left hand was curled in a loose fist. But his chest? Was it rising?

It must’ve been. He’s so strong. He has to be alive. My believing will make it so. There is no other choice.

I mutter he’s alive over and over in my mind like an incantation that’ll somehow save us both.

The guards are angry and they resent their mission.

They bitch about blisters and sun glare and uneven terrain, and they’re furious about the ass-kicking Dalton gave them, so they entertain themselves by humiliating me.

They watch me pee. They tie my wrists and ankles when we camp for the night.

They ask me if the Outsider’s cock knocked the dust off my pussy.

During the long days of walking, there is time enough for me to place each of them, and match beet-red scowling faces to names.

Jerry Pagett. Like Eugene’s wife, his wife works in Food Service, but she hasn’t been ground down by her husband. For a few credits, Linda Pagett will slip you a bite-sized tart she makes with limes for bones that we grind for fertilizer.

Scott Janssen. His family lived down the hall from Dad and me. We went to school together, although he was a few years ahead of me.

Dick Norberg. He interned in Irrigation and Fertilization when I was supervisor of Heirloom Produce.

I know all of them, and they know me, but it doesn’t matter. They hate me.

In the past, they’ve never been anything but civil, even friendly to me, and now they shove me if I don’t move fast enough, and if I trip and fall, they sneer and watch as I pick myself up, as if I’m an embarrassment.

Three days ago, it would have boggled me. Even when these same men were pushing me out of the bunker with their poles, it just didn’t register. How can men I’ve known all my life suddenly turn on me?

But I see clearly now. They didn’t turn.

The decency was a mask all along. If I did what I was supposed to do—if I followed the script—the men in charge were civil.

Even warm. Why wouldn’t they be? But when they needed to manhandle me, they had no qualms, and now, when I’ve really inconvenienced them, they treat me exactly how they see me—a broken machine that can be fixed with a sharp kick, a stubborn, misshapen piece of hardware that needs to be forced into place.

It shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. For all the Assembly meetings and debate and votes, in the end, who doled out the rations? Who sat on the dais? Who knew what was Outside, and who didn’t tell us?

They knew. It took a little while for it to register, but they’re not wearing the ancient gas masks they wore when they pushed me out, and they’ve each got their own little orange bottles with pills for the water.

Who did they trade for their pills?

I still have mine even though Eugene pulled everything else from my pockets, threw it on the ground like trash, and spat, “Dumb bitch.”

I feel seventeen years old again, on the verge of lottery age, terrified of drawing men’s negative attention but completely reliant on them, as well. As the hours and days pass, that feeling of powerlessness settles on me like a wool sweater on bare skin, itchy, hot, and heavy.

I can’t go back to the bunker, but if I run, they’ll catch me, and if I somehow get away and make it back to the lake—what if I can’t find Dalton?

What if I do? If he’s there exactly as we left him?

My train of thought stutters to a halt there, wheeling around, but not before I see his body in the dirt again. His chest moved, didn’t it? The slightest bit, but I saw it, didn’t I?

Hysteria chokes me, and I can’t catch my breath, so I fall behind, and Eugene or Jerry or Scott curses and drags me along harder while I pray please be alive, be alive, be alive.

Early on the third day, we get to the paved drive that leads to the bunker.

The men, who’d been letting me lag behind with a rotating guard, gather around me, boxing me in like they do with criminals.

They have to march at a snail’s pace up the mountain because no matter how much they snarl at me, after nearly a week of walking, I have no energy reserves.

When we get to the bunker’s entrance, Eugene jogs ahead to wave at the camera, and as if we were expected, the massive metal doors immediately begin to creak open. The numbness that had fallen over me sometime during the past day dissolves into sheer panic.

I can’t go back inside.

I won’t.

I glance wildly around, but I’m surrounded.

Sensing my rising hysteria, Jerry and Dick grab me under my arms and drag me forward into the huge bay with the plastic strips hanging at the back.

The smell slaps me in the face. It’s seeping from the gaps in the curtain into the fresh air, a miasma of stale dust and decay.

“No,” I gasp and struggle, although it’s useless. I’m outnumbered. Overpowered. I can’t go back in there. I won’t. I’ll die. I want Dalton. I twist my neck, but there’s nothing behind me but green trees and blue sky. He’s not coming. He’s dead. I got him killed. I left him there. “Let me go!”

A man emerges from behind the curtain, parting the strips and strolling into the bay like a star taking center stage.

Everyone except Jerry and Dick back away from me.

Neil Jackson strides right up to me and backhands me.

I taste copper. Jerry and Dick let me go, and I fall, my knees cracking on the concrete floor.

Oh God, it hurts. I cradle my jaw. Tears flood my eyes.

“Get her back up,” Neil says, perfectly calm.

Jerry and Dick haul me back to my feet.

“Hold her still.” Neil backhands me again. My head snaps back. I smell copper now, too.

“Stop!” I scream, wrenching my arms in the sockets to get free, but their grip is solid, and they’re stronger than me.

“Look at me, Gloria,” Neil orders. He steps closer, grabs my hair, and yanks my head back so I have no choice but to stare him in the face. Blood and snot trickle from my nose.

Neil’s mouth twists into his bland, business smile. “Oh my, Gloria. You look like hell.”

“What do you want?”

The fake smile falls away. “You know what I want. What every citizen should want—the continuity of government and the preservation of civilization as intended by the first generation and set forth in the Articles of Incorporation. I want discipline upheld, Gloria. I want each of us to do our part. Did you do your part, Gloria?”

It’s nonsense. He’s talking nonsense.

It’s always been nonsense.

“Let me go.”

“Now, I can’t very well do that. I suppose you don’t know this, but you’ve started something of a movement among the women. When you didn’t come back like you were instructed, there were rumors. There was talk.”

An old, instinctive shame rises in me. One of the first lessons you learn from your parents is that good citizens don’t indulge in idle talk.

Gossip causes misinformation which can lead to confusion and panic.

The most dangerous threats in a bunker are fire, airborne disease, and panic, and panic is by far the worst.

“There have been petitions. Whispers about a demonstration. Even a general strike. We can’t have that, now can we, Gloria?”

I spit the blood pooling in my mouth. He doesn’t need me to answer. I get it. Cecily mentioned unrest among married women when I was put into the lottery. When I was sent Outside and didn’t come back, they would’ve assumed I was killed. It would’ve added fuel to the fire.

“Nothing to say, Gloria? Good. That’s exactly how you’re going to proceed.

You are going to keep your mouth shut except to say how grateful you are to be home.

” He takes a step closer. “You aren’t going to tell anyone about how the Outsider blackened your eye.

” His fist slams into my cheek. I scream, my hands flying to cover my face.

He drives another fist into my side. “Or how he broke your ribs.”

I fall into a crouch and try to protect my face and sides, but it’s useless. He kicks me again and again, until I curl into a sobbing, broken mess, and then he grabs me by the hair again and hoists me up enough so he can sneer in my face.

“You can have a few days to recover, but then you’re going to report to work, and when the others ask what happened to you, the only thing you’re going to say is that you are so very, very grateful to be home again.

And if you don’t, if I even suspect that you demonstrated anything less than wholehearted joy and relief to be back where you belong, I promise you that little protégé of yours, Amy, will win the lottery next, and she’ll get the exact same as you, but she won’t make it back inside. Understand?”

I nod, but he’s holding me by the hair so tightly that all I do is yank my roots. The pain is nothing compared to the rest of it, though. Every bone in my face throbs. The piercing ache in my side prevents me from taking any but shallow, gasping breaths.

“I want to hear you say it, Gloria. You’re going to do your part as a citizen of this bunker.”

I want to spit in his eye. I want to fight—to have heart like a hero in a movie who, through sheer tenacity, comes back after the bad guys believe he’s down for the count—but every illusion I had left has disappeared in an instant.

I’m a bloody pulp on a concrete floor. With my swelling eyes and nose, it feels like I’m wearing blinders, and all I can see is Neil massaging his knuckles.

I’m afraid and in pain, and I’ll do anything to make it stop.

I mumble, “I’ll do my part,” while tears stream down my cheeks, burning my cut lip.

“Good girl,” he says and jerks his head at the guards.