Dreams Ltd (48 page)

But in a split second Greg’s arm and shoulder were twisted with such a sharp pain that he gasped and sank on the floor. Somehow, Hulk swayed his flying fist off to the side with the speed of light and twisted Greg’s elbow behind his back; he then pressed the point, located between his shoulder blades with his steel fingers, which made the guard see black and red dots in front of his eyes.

He wheezed, arched from the sharp pain - the shoulder ached as if thorns and spikes went through it, and one hand quickly began to go numb.

“Three hundred points.” Hulk said, “If you jerk just one more time again, it will be four hundred. And one more time after that - five hundred. Do I make myself clear?”

Greg nodded, grimacing and spitting.

“You will leave this place in the morning, and you will not have any right to come back here again. If your bracelet is detected within five miles of this ranch, you will be losing another hundred points every time it happens.”

Greg was pining from the pain as Hulk was still clenching his shoulder with his fingers.

“Did you hear what I just said? Or would you like to try and use your limbs again?” Hulk’s ice-cold voice filtered through the painful throbbing in Greg’s head.

“Let go of me!” He croaked with the hatred, “I got it!”

“You are dismissed.” Hulk said shortly and angrily, “Get out of here!”

Greg ran out of the office as soon as he was able to stand up and distinguish the location of the door

Jenny was crying. She was sitting in the darkness behind the women's barracks, smearing tears all over her face. For the first time she was in despair.

The night air, as if reminding her of the recent failure, smelled of fire.

Everything had gone wrong and not at all in accordance with the immaculate plan she had in mind. Greg betrayed her, Hulk appeared to be absolutely not what he was supposed to be like, the whole sham was exposed before it got a chance to materialise, and the future now looked not just grim, but terrifying. Instead of a little room in the house, increased wages and general life improvement which Jenny was expecting to achieve from this, the next morning was promising the looming walls of the Tally Supreme Court - a prison inside of a prison.

Just a mention of the name of this institution was making her blood curdle blood. Jenny’s knowledge about this place was quite veracious - she’s spent almost two years in Tally, collecting any relevant information from anyone who was willing to share it, and everyone was saying the same about the Supreme Court - if you don’t want to know the real meaning of the word “grief” - never ever come close to that building.

Only those prisoners who failed to show satisfactory behaviour in the normal conditions of Tally were sent there for additional measures of "personality correction”. In five out of ten cases such measure was a public execution. In the case of the other three, it was penal servitude. Nobody knew for certain what happened in the last two cases.

The judges considering the cases didn’t pay much attention to what the papers said - for them it was enough to know that a certain prisoner was declared unfit to live in Tally by their “owner”, and so life in Tally would look like living in paradise after what would happen next. Who’d care about the dregs of society who couldn’t even be useful in a prison - wastes of space like that would be just “erased” in order to give way to new and more useful individuals.

Jenny was shivering, despite the heat that was rising from the warm ground. The dry grass stems were scratching her feet and digging into her inner thighs. She twisted on the lumpy ground, squirmed and hugged herself, trying to get warm. Where should she go now and what should she do?

Women from the barracks somehow discovered the truth about the arson and now were greeting Jenny with reproachful silence and gloomy looks. Sometimes they were whispering behind her back, but even when they were quiet, the silence felt so hostile that Jenny just wanted to run away aimlessly.

Why am I so unlucky? Why?

Jenny sobbed and bowed her head. Why doesn’t life want to provide me with at least one winning lottery ticket? Why do I always have to fight, struggle, snatch something and keep hold of it as tightly as possible so she doesn’t lose it? Why doesn’t anybody want to help me? Is there any place in the world, where I would feel good, loved, understood and accepted?

Jenny raised her tired, tear-stained face up to the sky, but saw nothing except the lonely moon, gazing back down at her - a fat and ugly girl - with disapproving silence.

If before she had some energy to fight, it was gone now. There was no longer a desire to argue, fight, and strive to get or put anymore efforts into getting anything. This night laid bare the essence that Jenny was carefully guarding her insecurity from prying eyes her, her low self-esteem, her helplessness and vulnerability in front of anyone who’d point a finger and say something harsh to her. Only bitterness and brutality were helping Jenny to survive. Jenny - a girl who actually was neither strong nor particularly talented nor as life has shown recently fortunate.

Jenny knew she wasn’t pretty. And ugly people never got easy gifts from life. Pretty girls get everything they want with their hands down while she’d always had to wrestle her way through, relying on her brain, lucky circumstances or intuition. But at times even these qualities would let her down, as they have now.

The immaculately conceived plan had failed so rapidly that there was no time to question even her mental abilities, and that was the last stronghold Jenny based her self-respect on. Now that was destroyed as well.

So she kept on sitting with her back pressed against the wooden barrack’s wall - quiet and depressed, little and lost, tucked away somewhere in the depths of the ranch, ringed by the mountains, far from home, away from the normal world, away from the knowledge of what to do next. Gradually her tears dried out and Jenny began nodding off; her head lowered and her body crooked as she fell asleep.

After a while she woke up from hearing someone’s irritated voice - somebody was muttering and swearing.

Jenny shivered from the cold and woke up completely - her body stiffed and numb hands covered with goose bumps. She was scared. Something was wrong. Whose voice forced her to wake up?

She quickly looked around and realised that she fell asleep on the ground behind the barracks. The moon was still hanging in the black sky, but it had now surfaced to the right and almost rolled over the wooden roof.

Jenny twisted again, and suddenly heard a voice - familiar, low and creaky.

“Where is she? Where can she be at night, damn it!”

Greg! Jenny gasped convulsively. Greg came after her because he wanted to punish her for betraying him at Hulk’s. Why else would he come to the barracks?

She froze in fear, listening. One of the women said irritably,” How can we know where she is? She came back after dark, we were sleeping.”

“Turn on the light and show me her bed!” The guard growled, “If I find out that you’re hiding her...”

“See for yourself if you want to!” Someone snapped in reply, and then floorboards creaked.

Run! She must run!

At first, Jenny couldn’t think, speak or move - why did he come after her in the middle of the night angry as a mad dog? To kill her? And if not to kill her, then to cripple her anyway. She must run away as soon as possible - who cares where...

She jumped up, cringing from the pain in her shivering knees and frozen groin, and rushed to the nearest bush. As soon as she reached it, she darted through the branches and halted with her heart pumping. She scratched one of her knees and it was now hurting, but Jenny just gritted her teeth.

What next? How to get away from Greg? This vindictive devil is not about to leave her alone that easily, he doesn’t give a damn that tomorrow she’ll disappear from the ranch; he wants to give her a good beating before that happens. What a maniac!

Feeling like a hounded fox, Jenny looked around, trying to figure out which direction she should move in. Soon Greg will realise that she’s not hiding in the barracks and will start searching for her all over the ranch. If he didn’t want to get any help from the others in catching her, then he didn’t want them to know his intentions; rather bad intentions, obviously.

The tree branches blocked the view completely and she had to rely on her memory. The first thing to do was to get away from the barracks as far as possible. If, God forbid, Greg notices her t-shirt in the bush, no neighbours would help her then. After choosing a direction, Jenny quickly and quietly made her way through the scratching thorns to the opposite side of the bush and got out of the thicket. To the field! It’ll hide her for a while. She ran across the deserted footpath, which separated berries from the corn plantation, and darted into the tall thick grass, which rustled and closed up above her head.

This shelter was good, but not for long, because the leaves crushed on the ground would provide a hide-out better than any rocket flare and anyone with a flashlight would immediately locate the “prey”, and Greg had definitely got a torch.

Ignoring her panicky pounding heart, Jenny frantically tried to gather her scattering thoughts in a more or less acceptable plan.

Where can she hide?

It can’t be the fields - any movement will be detected by the shaking leaves and tree tops, it can’t be a stone-pit either - as soon as she appears on the uphill road the other guards will raise the alarm.

Think... think... think...

Again and again she was glancing towards the women's barracks, horrified of spotting Greg coming out of there.

Where to go? Where?

She couldn’t get too close to Hulk’s mansion since it was constantly patrolled; moreover - once in the house, where would she go in there? The infirmary was shut at night. In order to get to the berry plantation, she had to pass the damn barracks once again and Greg was still hanging around there.

Jenny felt that she was starting to freak out. Time was running out - it was the moment to finally decide where to go, and she just couldn’t pull herself together. Any place within the ranch territory was now potentially dangerous, and Greg wouldn’t go beyond the fence...

She froze intensely, thinking. Is there any way to get out of the ranch? Can she find her way out of here?

Jenny was startled and suddenly recalled something and this “something” gave her a weak hope.

In order not to waste time, she moved to the far edge of the corn field, thinking as she went - if she crosses the road, she’ll dive straight into another field, closest to the woodland belt. If she can reach that point, it will give her a chance to get to the old cargo gates, which have not been used for the past few years. And from there...

The hard corn stems were reluctantly opening up to the sides, giving way to the charging human body. That body was particularly persistent; there was boiling blood mixed with fear running through its veins. Jenny was surging forward scratching her hands, hissing and cursing. After a while she stopped and listened to the surrounding sounds - was she being chased?

But the night around, as if mocking her fears, was silent. Not a single sound other than cicada’s chirring. Only a slight gust of wind was occasionally touching the leaves which would rub on the cob and then freeze.

No, she wasn’t being chased as yet, but this will change soon. She knew Greg too well to think that he’d give up on his wish of revenge.

As soon as Jenny decided to move forward an unpleasant thought pierced her mind - she forgot to dig out the gems! The one she stole from Shereen’s room! If she’s really going to escape from the ranch, she must find them because these could help her to get rid of the bracelet; if that was ever possible....

Her thoughts were flying around, trying to form a flimsy solution to the salvation - if only she could find someone who would help her to get rid of the bracelet then neither Hulk nor anyone else could track her. But was there anyone who could do that? And how much would they charge? In any case, the gems could be exchanged for some additional points.

But was it really a smart idea to return to the barracks?

That forsaken bush was growing not far from the spot where she sat. Right there under its roots Jenny buried the whole fortune. Damn it!

Before Jenny had time to make a decision she heard a strange sound behind her. Was it just a rustle or was it a muffled cough? She went numb from fear and listened again. Was there a sound or wasn’t there? What if Greg is already near?