Page 26 of Trade (After the End #7)

I twirl around, certain I heard a throat clear, but I’m alone with the vending machines and their display of things that used to be common—pipes men used to smoke tobacco, gold compacts with mirrors that used to contain powder that women would dust on their faces, little tins that held pills when medicine was so easy to come by people carried it around in their pockets.

I wish I could cause more than a little smoke.

I wish I could burn it all down.

The third time is a charm. The herbs catch right away, but for whatever reason, the smoke is sucked back into the vent.

“Damn.” I pull the smoking, braided bundles out and let them burn on the floor, waving the smoke furiously toward the open hall. They’re burning too quickly.

I rush out, draw in a deep breath, and pointing behind myself into the alcove, I scream at the top of my lungs, “Fire!”

Silence descends immediately. Everyone stares.

“Fire!” I scream again.

No one moves. They look at each other. They look over at the tables where the heads of departments tend to sit.

Pungent smoke drifts into the room in such delicate curls it probably can’t be seen by any but those at the closest tables.

Everything inside me shatters and falls. I’m failing. I was fooling myself. There is no escape. Only delusion.

There will be no Outside, no Dalton, no sweet air, no blue sky. Only this. Only ever this.

“Fire!” I scream with every ounce of despair and rage and desperation that I’ve ever felt, that I’ve ever ignored or shoved down or pretended didn’t exist.

The people begin to whisper to each other. She’s gone crazy. The lottery. It happens.

It’s hopeless.

And then my gaze happens to slide in the direction of the open door to the cafeteria line.

Eugene Reedy’s wife is standing alone behind the buffet by the stove.

Her face is flushed red from the heat, her dull brown hair straggling out of the bun she has tucked under her dingy chef’s hat that was white once upon a time.

Our eyes lock. Where she’s standing, no one can see her except me.

No one but me sees the lines at the corners of her eyes crease and a strange, wild smile break across her face as she twists the stove knobs, one after another, and then, as calmly as if she’s about to boil water, she lights a burner and screams, “Fire! Run!” as the air above the range explodes.

The hall erupts with screams.

The fire alarm blares.

The first administrator’s voice booms from the intercom. “Attention. This is Command. A fire has been reported. Evacuate the area immediately. Proceed to staging stations.”

Mrs. Reedy races out the opposite door from the kitchen into the hall, tossing away her burning hat, shouting, “Save yourselves! The gas is on! The tanks are full. We’re all going die!”

Panic ignites. Explodes. Detonates like an A-bomb.

People run, knocking tables this way and that, shoving each other over, screaming, crying, fighting each other to get through the doors, even though there are plenty of exits and people are streaming through.

Cecily grabs one of my hands. Amy grabs the other. She has her sister Gina. We hold tight to each other and pick our way through the chaos in a chain. When we’re almost out, the old sprinklers finally turn on and rusty water begins to spray down from the ceiling.

A few people are lining up at the staging area, but the vast majority are running.

Some fight the crowds to get to family on the lower levels, but most push their way to the stairs that lead up and out.

Our daisy chain drops behind a line of young men from Sanitation and follows them as they bowl their way up the steps and down corridors.

Everyone seems to somehow know the way, and at some point, when we reach the halls lined with toppling boxes, the crowd isn’t screaming or crying anymore.

Or maybe the ones who were screaming have fallen back.

Maybe Safety and Compliance has redirected them, or the alarm was cut off and the voice of the bunker’s first administrator is blaring through the loudspeakers, declaring, “The situation has been resolved. Return to normal duty stations and await further direction from your department head.”

There are no speakers on the walls up here, though, and we’re not slowing down.

We jog forward with grim determination, and when someone stumbles, those closest steady him.

I begin to notice faces. There are a lot of grunts from the lower levels.

A lot of unmarried women. And then there are older people like Mrs. Reedy, slower than the rest of us, shuffling along the best they can, knees so bad they haul themselves up the stairs by the railing, but still making their way doggedly toward the exit.

We don’t meet resistance until we pass through the plastic curtains into the huge bay with its mechanized doors, and then the absence of guards becomes clear.

They’ve retreated here to make a stand, lined up in rows with gas masks covering their faces as they aim rifles at us as we spill out into the bay.

We slow to a halt. The grunts square up, shoulder to shoulder.

“Move!” they bellow at the guards. “Get out of our way!”

None of the guards budge except a few in the center of the line who shuffle aside to allow Neil Jackson through.

He has a bullhorn, and he’s wearing his usual oily smile.

He lifts his megaphone, and for once, it doesn’t squawk before he speaks.

“Your attention please, fellow citizens. We know you’re concerned, but rest assured, there is no need for this.

The situation has been addressed. There was no fire, merely a kitchen mishap.

We sincerely regret the confusion and alarm. You may now return to your quarters.”

He lowers the bullhorn, his smile firmly intact, fully expecting the crowd to comply.

I haven’t caught my breath from rushing up the stairs yet, and now, my chest tightens. I pull Cecily closer to my side. We are so close. So damn close.

“Fuck you!” a grunt at the front of the crowd shouts. “We’re not going back! Open the doors.”

We all take up the cry, our voices echoing against the tall metal walls. “Open them! Get out of the way! Open the doors!”

Neil lifts his bullhorn again. “Fellow citizens. Stop and think. Remember our duty. You are in no danger. My wife herself is in the cafeteria even now, as we speak, supervising the cleanup of a small kitchen fire, easily contained. Take a breath, remember the commitment you made to the continuity of government. Return to your quarters.”

The bastard is still smiling, convinced he’s said the right words this time, but almost immediately the shouts rise again. “Open the fucking door! Open it now!”

Neil miscalculated. The men and women around me aren’t scared at all.

They’re angry—furious—alive with an energy I never knew existed in the bunker.

A veil is lifted from my eyes yet again.

I’m not alone. They want out, at least as much as I do, maybe more.

We’re a mob, vibrating with combustible rage.

Neil’s smile falls, his mouth twisting into something snide and ugly.

He raises his bullhorn a third time and shouts, “Look in front of your eyes, people. Do you think these guns are toys? Do you think we loyal citizens would hesitate for a second to do our duty? This is the preservation of life on Earth we’re talking about! This is the future of civilization!”

At just that moment, the guard to his left takes the hand that was on the trigger of his rifle and sticks his fingers up under his gas mask to scratch his cheek. The move is quick. Two seconds at the max.

In my mind, I hear Dalton’s words. You don’t have bullets.

I see the guard drive the butt of his rifle into the back of Dalton’s head.

He didn’t shoot.

I scan the line of guards, searching for the thin ones, the short ones, the ones that might be young. It’s nearly impossible to tell with their faces covered, but there—that one—with his hair a smidge longer than regulation, how the interns tend to wear it. His hands are shaking, aren’t they?

You don’t have bullets. We don’t trade you for bullets.

What did Gary Krause say?

How sure are you?

I’m sure that I’m not going back. None of us are. Not the grunts in front of me or the throng behind. Even now they rumble, restlessly pressing closer.

How sure are you? Not at all.

I drop Cecily and Amy’s hands and shoulder my way through the men blocking us, protecting us.

“Gloria,” Cecily gasps, but I’m already through, sprinting across the neutral zone between the guards and the people, expecting every second for a shot to ring out, but it doesn’t.

I get to the crates stacked along the wall and leap onto them, racing along the top, while below, the grunts swarm the guards who have peeled off to chase me.

The men swirl together, clashing. Not a single shot is fired; the rifles all become billy clubs.

There were no bullets.

There’s no time to marvel. My goal is in sight—the chain that opens the doors.

I leap for it, grab it like the rope in gym class, swinging my body to exert as much force as possible. Gears grind. Metal links creak, barely audible above the shouts and screams.

The door opens, just a crack, an inch, maybe a fraction of an inch, but enough to allow a ray of sunshine to fall over the fray. For a split second, there is silence, and then the shouting resumes, louder, wilder, a terrible roar that shakes the metal girders.

A grunt lifts me off the chain as three men take my place, heaving and hauling with all their might, and the doors open wide like you’d imagine the gates of heaven.

The roar becomes a shout of exultation. People burst out of the bunker.

“Gloria!” Amy grabs my arm, and our reunited daisy chain runs together into the sweet, fresh air.

And immediately skids to a halt.

A yard away, the drive that leads away from the bunker is blocked with an assortment of rusty, beat-up large vehicles, parked axle-to-axle to form a barricade.