After (58 page)

“I told Ella I could get her and Jordan to a safe place. Not a damp basement or a drafty attic in some abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. A place with people.

Where Jordan could have a life. But it meant travel. Discipline. She thought Jordan could do it. That she could do it, keep an eye on her, keep her in line.

“Jordan was so curious, though, so eager, finally out of that small, hidden world where her mother had kept her for as long as she could remember. Ella and I were asleep one night. Jordan went out on her own. They spotted her. Followed her back. We managed to get out in time, get away. But they had our scent. Trailed us for days. Ella was going crazy. Sure we'd be caught. She had her own gun, but she'd never had to use it. I gave her some training, but she wouldn't let me teach Jordan anything. Didn't want to kill off that innocence. Turn that gentle girl hard, I guess. Even though it meant leaving her defenseless.

“But Jordan wasn't stupid. Reckless, sure, but not dumb. When her mother left her alone with me, she told me how much she understood. Most of it, really, even if she hadn't seen anything first-hand. And she wanted to know how to take care of herself.

Take care of her mother. So I showed her how to use a gun, how to use a knife. How to use her fists and feet.

“And for days, the men tracked us, Ella falling apart more every hour. When she thought Jordan was asleep or out of earshot, she'd tell me, she knew they'd get us. She was sure. I thought our chances were all right. Told her that even if they really got to us, cornered us, half the time, a situation like that, I got away. Tried my best to convince her not to give up hoping. Me, dispensing morale.”

Nix laughed, a dark, hollow laugh.

“Finally, they did really corner us. Got us into a ravine, hounded us until we were trapped, cliffs above us on three sides, the men closing in from the fourth. There was a cave, though. It was all we could do, hope it let out somewhere else. So we went in. It went deep, twisted and turned, and we crawled along, hoping every time we found a bend in the tunnel that we'd see daylight. But all we found was a dead end.

“I left them there at the end of the cave, told Ella I'd do my best to kill the men off as they came. I had a pretty good idea there were seven of them after us. Figured if I set up well, I'd have chance. I took cover behind a big outcropping of rock with a long, straight approach from the direction of the cave mouth, and sat there in the perfect dark, and waited. They were easy to spot with their flashlights. It took watching my bullets knock the first three down before the others got smart and turned their lights off. But I still had the cover, and they had nowhere to go. And even then, they didn't fire a shot.

So determined not to kill what could be caught and fucked and sold. In the end, I got all seven. Finished off the wounded when I thought it was safe to come out from behind the rock. Slit their throats to save bullets. Took their guns. All like usual. Then I went back to them, to Ella and Jordan.

“They were crouched in a little nook, huddled into the rock like maybe they hoped they were invisible, camouflaged there, like the men would look at Ella's back, hunched over where she was wrapped around Jordan, and be tricked into thinking they were just another lump of rock.

“I didn't want to say anything. If we were silent, we'd hear if any more were coming. I touched Ella's shoulder. She just flinched, didn't even turn her head to see who it was. So I whispered her name.

“She started sobbing. I made myself stroke her back, her hair. Trying to calm her.

Then she straightened up a little and looked at me.

“There was blood everywhere. Everywhere. It took me a minute. Thought maybe her gun had gone off by accident. But that wasn't it.

“Jordan was still crumpled on the ground under Ella. Still. Dead still. I asked Ella what she'd done. She said now she knew for sure, they'd never hurt her little girl.

“I thought maybe there was a chance. I got Ella out of the way. Laid Jordon on her back. Her mother had cut her throat. A deep, determined, final cut. Jordan was dead.

“Then Ella said, 'Kill me.' She said, 'Please.' Said, 'I killed my little girl. Please.

Please. I don't want to live.'”

Nix made sure she had Gareth's eyes.

“I did it. I cut her throat. Held her while she died, the way she'd held Jordan. Then laid her down by her daughter.

“I didn't even hear the guards coming. I didn't even get a shot off. After all that, two guys took me down and had me cuffed before I knew what was happening. And they and their buddies spent the next night and day punishing me for depriving them of two breeders.”

”You feel guilty.”

Nix laughed. “Guilty? For killing Ella? No. Giving her death when she asked for it, letting her decide that one thing about her life was the very least she was owed. I'm glad I did it. Relieved I wasn't too weak to do it when she asked.”

“It's hard to imagine you weak,” Gareth said.

“No. It isn't.” She told him, “A long time ago, maybe a year after I'd first gotten involved in the resistance, I knew a woman. Had a friend. Anne.

“She was like me. Young. Angry. Dying to kill as many men as she could. But she made me promise her, made all of us promise her, if things ever went bad, not to let them capture her. She wanted to die rather than let even one man rape her again.

“That was how we were different from each other, me and Anne. My body belongs to me, it's mine, but it isn't me. They fuck my body. They don't fuck me. But Anne, for her, she told me once that when the men were on top of her, raping her, they were chewing up her soul.

“When we were caught, it was just the two of us. And I had the chance. Could have done it for her. She begged me. Sobbing, hysterical as the men closed in. We were out of bullets and she begged me to use my knife. But I couldn't. Too weak. Too scared to end the life of this woman who was my friend.

“So they got her. I watched five men rape her at the branding. Watched them drag her off to the sex hotel after. The whole time, from the minute they cuffed her to the platform, before the first man had even gotten between her legs, she never stopped screaming. I've never heard anything like it, the way Anne screamed as they raped her.

Like they were tearing the flesh off her body.”

Nix looked at Gareth, his gray eyes like fractured ice, shattered and melting.

“You understand what I'm saying.”

“I think so.”

“Love makes people vulnerable. It makes us weak. I couldn't do that to Anna.

Couldn't do it for her. It was selfish of me. For her, death would have been better.

“And for a while I thought Jordan's mother had made the hardest sacrifice. Killed what she loved most, more than her self, what she'd spent half her life nurturing, risking everything to keep safe. But Ella was weak, in killing. Just like I was weak, not killing.

For Ella, it was easier to end Jordan's life than to live with the fear she'd be hurt the way Ella had been hurt. She didn't even give Jordan a chance to understand, to decide for herself.

“I need you strong. Selfless. I'm asking you to make a sacrifice. For me.

“This one sacrifice buys a lot,” she said after a while. “If you let them see you raping me, if you tie me down and offer them a turn, you live. That's not selfishness, or cowardice. If you live, you might get the chance to kill them, to get me out.

“With me, it's easy. I won't even be there. I know, by now, how to leave my body.

The only thing I can't bear, now, is to lose my freedom. Not to be able to fight.”

Artel was silent.

“It's just like with Dorset. Just like on that field, when you put the gun in my mouth. You play a part. When it's over, you've helped me. Us. The movement.”

He nodded stiffly.

“If we're with the others, it's harder. You, the other men, you have to convince the guards that you infiltrated. Give your details from your old unit. Hopefully there won't be anyone who knows you or your squad.

“If we're with the others, the hardest thing, there, is the girls. They're valuable, so the guards shouldn't do anything to them. Probably won't make you do anything to them. But their discipline isn't that good. They don't always follow their own rules. If that happens, you just have to remember, in the long run, you're helping them. Even in the short term. Seeing men in the movement, feeling betrayed, it brings out the worst in the guards. The bounty hunters. They'll take it easier on everyone if they believe you're on their side.

Looking pale and sick, Artel nodded again.

“Alright. That's enough for now. We can go over everything else in the next few days.”

* * * *

At sunrise they set out, as always, to the east. By late morning they'd descended into a valley, into a thick, pale mist that flooded between the yellow leaves overhead and touched their fallen, frost-glazed sisters underfoot. As far as she could see, there was only the white fog, the white snow, the yellow leaves above and below, and narrowing, receding, sleek black trunks stretching between the twins, carpet and canopy, the same sunny yellow.

They stopped to eat and rest, retrieving their food before sitting down on their packs. Before he lifted a bite to his mouth, Nix touched Gareth's hand.

“Are you cold? Now that we're sitting still?” she asked.

“No.”

“Are you very hungry?”

He set down his hunk of dried meat. “Food can wait.”

It was easier, out in the open, the mist settling in her hair, the chill caressing her cheeks and neck, feeling the heat of his skin under her fingertips, the brush of his lips against hers, the wet warmth of his mouth. The thing coiling through her gut never wound as tight. This time she gave in to it, his kiss, her want, that sweet heavy feeling pooling in her belly.

“You never ask me for anything,” she said after their kiss.

“That's not true. I asked you for this.”

“If you weren't afraid of hurting me, of scaring me, what would you want right now?”

He looked at her for a while before he answered, “I'd ask to hold you.”

When she stood, he rose to face her. The frosted leaves crunched under her foot as she stepped toward him. She looked up, and he smiled, then stood still as she moved in a little closer, pressed herself to him, put her arms around him. After a few seconds she felt a light pressure, his hands on her back. Then his arms circled behind her, just barely holding her. He only shrank that circle, pulled her a little closer when she hugged him tight and nestled against his broad, hard chest.

There was a little thrill of fear, but that anxious coiling in her gut was drowned under a wave, warm and filling. Not that sweet heaviness, that longing that always settled, eventually, in her sex. This was a sort of euphoria, a swelling happiness. It reminded her of being a child, held by her mother.

His embrace dissolved.

“What's wrong?”

He said, “You're shaking.”

“Hold me tighter.”

His arms went around her again, a tight embrace, pulling her against him, holding her there. There was an ache in her chest, as if she were on her back and there was too much weight on her, but it was a happy weight, grounding her. He felt warm and solid.

Safe. And she thought maybe that feeling, being in his arms, that warm swelling grounded feeling was love. Not love between them. Not her loving him. Just love, itself, finding its way into her for the first time since her mother had died.

At the end of the day's hike, when they'd found a place and made their nest, Gareth said, “I want to show you something.”

From his pack he extracted a clear plastic pouch, and from the pouch he drew a rectangle of yellowed paper. He handled it carefully, as if he were afraid it would tear or crumble, unfolding it from itself until it became two separate pieces of paper. He laid them on the floor next to the candle, side by side.

One had a drawing of a scene, a woman with a baby and a man with a guitar.

The man with the guitar and the woman with the baby were both laughing. A happy family.

The other was covered in heavy scrawl. It was hard to make out the words.

“He was drunk when he wrote it. I found him passed out with a bottle and this letter one night, not long after that night at the sex hotel. Read it.”

The first two words were easy.

Dear Eva.

After that, she had to pick through, word by word, or letter by letter, to decipher what had been written.

What did I do? I was so scared, when I found out you were dead. They were
going to take him away from me. I was sure. And it wasn't fair. I loved him as much as
them. I didn't even know I could love anything that much. I loved you, too. But you were
dead. I never would have taken him from you. I swear I wouldn't. But you were dead
and I was so scared. I would have died if they'd taken him away. And I meant to be a
good daddy. But now I think I made a bad mistake. All that love, he could have had. And
I took him from it. And even though the Major and John would have been so mad, I
would have taken him back right away if I'd figured it out sooner, how bad things were
outside. I was so scared of John coming after me, though, I never stopped to really look
around. We kept so much to ourselves; by the time I understood, it was too late.

Oh, god, Eva. I'm so sorry. What have I done to our son? From your heaven,
Eva, I hope you weren't looking down, I hope you didn't see. The thing I made him do.

But teaching a boy to be kind, to be good, it'll only get him hurt. So I've taught him to be
bad. To keep him safe. The girls, I feel bad for them. But it wouldn't change anything, us
not doing it. But it feels so bad, Eva. I don't care, for myself. But what it does to Gareth. I
know if you saw, you'd cry. But you'd cry, too, if they branded him and did those things
to him. God, Eva, it's so awful, here. I took him away from that place where he was
loved, and brought him here. All I do now is wish it undone. Wish we'd stayed, where
he'd have been safe.