Page 28 of Trade (After the End #7)

The words about Dad hit, and for a second, I’m thrown.

I lose the words that were waiting to burst out of me a second ago.

Then I hear steps behind me and glance over my shoulder.

It’s Cecily and Amy, stalking forward to stand with me.

Cecily rests her palm on my shoulder. Amy’s gaze locks with mine.

She’s terrified—shaking—but she’s here. With me.

And then Gina joins her, and Sturge follows to stand so he blocks her body. Then Mrs. Reedy and another woman and another. There is something about these women. They’re not as distracted by the sounds, not as visibly thrown by the sunlight. They’ve been Outside before.

They’re not trembling and afraid like Amy. Their hands are fisted at their sides, and their jaws are clenched. Something in their energy unties my tongue.

“You all know me. Gloria Walker. And you can see what’s right in front of your fucking eyes!

I don’t need to lecture you about duty and purpose and threaten you with invisible dangers.

Breathe! The air is clean!” I fill my lungs and then point to the trees.

“Look! Green leaves!” I point to the Outsiders. “Look! Strong, healthy men. Old men.”

“Forty-seven ain’t old,” an Outsider mutters.

“You don’t have to believe me. Believe your own eyes.” For some reason, I shout the words at Meghan and her terrified boyfriend.

Finally, Neil lowers his bullhorn. “Count the guards, Gloria,” he hisses at me under his breath.

“There is less than a single contingent of Safety and Compliance out here. Right now, as we speak, the other squads are gathering, and when I give the sign, they will flood out of that bunker with a vengeance you’ve never seen before and orders to spare no one.

They are going to stomp your little friends into pulp, and those strong, healthy men are going down in bunker history as the murderers who did it.

Count the men, Gloria. You know I’m telling the truth. ”

I don’t have to count. I know from the glee in his voice he’s not lying.

He thinks I’m trapped. That I have no choice.

Because he sees me as powerless, he thinks I am, so he doesn’t see the weapon right at my fingertips.

“Dalton, give me your gun,” I say.

Without saying a word or asking a question, Dalton hands me the pistol from his side holster, butt first. “Do you know how to shoot it?” he asks.

“Does it have a safety?”

“Yeah.”

“Take it off for me.”

He does.

I level the gun at Neil. My hand shakes, but not enough that I can’t line up my shot.

“You wouldn’t dare,” he sneers.

“Now, Gloria—” Bennett starts.

“All right,” one of the women at my back urges. “Do it.”

Bennett grabs for the gun in his holster, taking me seriously for maybe the first time in his life, but then his hand freezes. I watch his face fall in real time as he must remember that his weapon has no bullets.

“Gloria, you don’t want to do this,” he begs.

“You don’t know what I want,” I say and squeeze the trigger, shooting Neil in the throat.

I was aiming for his chest. I missed. His jugular spurts into Bennett’s gaping mouth, and Bennett pisses himself.

A dark stain seeps across the crotch of Bennett’s coveralls while Neil’s body collapses in a heap on the broken asphalt.

“Gloria,” Bennett gasps.

“Go back inside, Bennett,” I say. “You don’t belong out here.”

Gary Krause, Ron Maxwell, and Eugene Reedy take a menacing step forward, still in their tough-guy stances, perhaps unaware the rest of the guards are shrinking back in the direction of the bunker.

“That was a mistake,” Gary snarls.

A chunk of asphalt hits him in the face. His nose snaps like a twig.

“You’re a fucking mistake, you rapist piece of shit,” Cecily says, slapping her hands to knock the dust off.

I whip my head around in time to see a half-dozen women stalking forward, stooping to grab their own hunks of asphalt and hurling them at the guards still in place. Some miss, some land glancing blows, some nail their targets’ faces, stomachs, balls. They’re aiming for the soft parts.

An Outsider whistles.

“Holy shit,” another says.

Then they’re jogging forward, the grunts joining them to block off the guards’ retreat, grabbing them as they try to flee, pinning their arms behind their backs and forcing them to their knees.

The women continue to whip jagged shards of asphalt at them, landing more and better blows now that they’re closer and their targets are held in place.

A few of the women weep. Some scream curses, and others hurl their projectiles in steely silence. One woman kneels next to a guard and smashes his dick with a slab of asphalt, over and over, while two grimacing Outsiders hold the man in place with their boots on his wrists and chest.

It feels like it goes on forever, but in reality, it’s only a few minutes before the violence wears itself out, and I’m left awed. Humbled.

When I was in the bunker, I could only see a sliver of reality.

Then I stepped Outside, and all of a sudden, I could see in 360 degrees, and I realized that I’d been blind.

Now, it’s happened again. I only knew my own anger and grief and betrayal, but standing here, I see it reflected in every woman’s face, and I understand, to my bones, in a way I never have before—I’m not alone.

None of us are. We’re soldiers-in-arms—if that’s what we choose.

One by one, the women’s rage seems to burn off like dew in the sunshine, and they drop their arms to their sides or stumble away to collapse in the grass. We’re all breathing hard. The sweet air is tinged with copper.

The grunts swarm forward to drag the guards back to the bunker doors, delivering a few final gratuitous kicks as a message to stay put.

Cecily stumbles over and throws her arm around my shoulder. “We got them in the end,” she says. The nails on the hand slung around my neck are torn, but she’s grinning.

“We did.” I grin back, but it quickly fades. “What about the others inside?”

“We left the door open,” she says. “You took out Neil, and we put a good dent in Safety and Compliance. If the people want out, they’ll find a way.”

We contemplate the bodies lying in the bunker’s bay doors. Some are moving. Some are stiff.

“So what’s good out here?” Cecily asks, breaking the moment of silence.

I turn away and survey the green trees spreading as far as the eye can see. “There’s a pretty great lake a few days’ walk away.”

“Who wants to see a lake?” she shouts, giddy and still catching her breath.

The question is met with shouts of excitement.

“Take us to the lake?” I ask Dalton, who is still standing right by my side.

“Sure. Since you asked.”

“I don’t need to trade?” I tease.

“You’ve got nothing to trade. You’re already all mine.” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “I fucking love you,” he says. “Want to get out of here?”

“Yeah. Lead the way.”

He takes the gun from my hand, returns it to its holster, then squats with his back to me. “Hop on.”

I laugh. “Thirty-nine, remember? I haven’t ridden piggyback in decades.”

“Chicken?”

I snort. No. No, I’m not.

It takes a few false starts, but I get my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck. I can feel the stretch in my hips, but it doesn’t hurt. Dalton supports me with an arm under the back of each thigh.

As we walk away from the bunker, the people fall in behind us—the grunts, Mrs. Reedy, my friends, Gina and Sturge, Meghan and Paul. The Outsiders bring up the rear.

I don’t think any of us know what we’re going to do when we get where we’re heading, but that’s all right. We have the rest of our lives to figure it out.

Every so often, Dalton glances over his shoulder at me, and there’s hope and happiness in his eyes because that’s what he sees in mine.

* * *

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