Famished (17 page)

Mr. Baker stuck his hand into the box for a second time, and removed the final piece of paper. “And the female who will be joining him is…”

Those last few seconds felt like hours. Open it! Open it! I urged him on mentally. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I wanted to see the look on his face when he saw his own daughter’s name in that box. My eyes zoomed in on the paper as he unfolded the first corner. His fingers were trembling. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead and drizzled down his chubby little cheeks.

He couldn’t lie with everyone here watching him and I could tell it was making him nervous. Then, he unfolded the paper a second time and that was when my father stepped up behind him and glanced at the paper over his shoulder.

He clutched the paper, gripping the paper so hard he crinkled the edges. Every colonist in the room glared at him as a wide range of expressions passed over his face. First, confusion. Then anger. Finally sadness. Me, I’d reached the point where I’d started laughing. The crowd was growing impatient. Colonists began whispering and moving around. Finally, someone shouted, “Just read it, already!”

“Um….Yeah….Uh.” Mr. Baker paused, trying to regain his composure and the crowd. Then, he blurted out, “It’s Georgina Carver!”

One by one, people started shouting.

What?

That can’t be right?

She went last time!

Is this thing rigged?

I didn’t even care that he called out my name. He was desperate. And desperate people went to extreme measures to try and get themselves out of a bind.

My father reached up and snatched the paper out of Mr. Baker’s grasp. He scanned the name on the paper, his eyes lingering on the written name for a minute. Then he smacked the paper against Mr. Baker’s chest. “This says Elise Baker,” he snarled. “These names are supposed to be selected at random and everyone between the ages of sixteen to eighteen is supposed to have a turn. And my kid is
not
going two times in a row!”

During that moment, the entire room broke out in chaos. People were screaming and chanting, “Liars!” Mr. Martin and Mr. Edwards kept glancing between Mr. Baker and my father with confused expressions on their faces. My eyes found Colin’s in the crowd. I gave him a wicked smirk and winked.

Colin Martin was now my sworn enemy, and if he couldn’t tell that by the expression I just gave him, then he was a bigger airhead than I thought he was.

The crowd started swarming the stage. The little children in the room were startled by all of the commotion, crying and throwing temper tantrums as their parents tried to calm them down. My father looked lost. The entire colony was out of control.

“Cast Baker out!” a women, bouncing her hysterical toddler shouted. Elise Baker was in the upper left corner of the crowd hyperventilating.

“We trusted you! And this is how you repay us?” shouted a man in the back.

As the crowd filed out of the room, my mother kept her hands on my shoulders and
 
guided me and Frankie toward the door. I jerked slightly when I felt someone yanking on my arm. Mr. Baker’s face was red and splotchy, his eyebrows scrunched together, enraged. “I know it was you!” he shrieked. “It was supposed to be you! It was supposed to be you!”

My mother threw herself in between us, scowling at Mr. Baker. “You leave my daughter alone. You hear me, Mark! Don’t you lay another finger on her!”

Mr. Baker threw my mother out of the way and lunged at me, his hands open, aiming for my neck. My father jumped off
 
the stage and picked Mr. Baker up by his collar. “You and your family, you’re done here! You’re officially cast out!”

“You can’t make that decision,” Mr. Baker growled. “It has to be decided according to a vote.”

My father glared over his shoulder as the council members appeared lined up along the stage. “All in favor of casting out the Bakers?”

One by one, each council member raised a hand. Except for Mr. Martin and Mr. Edwards, of course. Then, my father still holding onto Mr. Baker’s collar lifted his left hand in the air. “We voted,” my father said, sternly. “You’re out.” My father looked back at the council members. “Would anyone else like to join Mark?”

In unison, I watched all of the council members shake their heads. Including Mr. Martin and Mr. Edwards. Wherever the Bakers were going, nobody was too keen on following them.

Mr. Baker pried himself away from my father’s grasp. “You’re going to regret this! All of you! I can promise you that!”

It wasn’t until that moment that I stepped forward and tapped Mr. Baker lightly on the shoulder. He faced me, his breathing heavy, teeth grinding and his fists balled up. Reaching into my back pocket, I pulled out the piece of paper with my name, grabbed his palm, pried open his fingers and slapped the piece of paper down.

Mr. Baker, knowing what the piece of paper was, closed his fist around it, crumbled it up and dropped it on the ground. And then, I leaned in, my lips right next to his ear and whispered, “That was for the Vickers girl.”

Chapter 19: A Kept Promise Isn’t Always Best

Until the daybreak, and the shadows flee away, I will get thee to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of
 
frankincense.~ Song of Solomon 4 1:6

Owen told me to meet him in the middle of the mess hall at 11:00 pm. I was there five minutes early, pacing back and forth across the floor, in the darkness. I had faith in Owen. He made me a promise and according to him, he wasn’t the type to break a promise that he’d made.

There were so many questions I had that I felt needed answered. Owen, was my only hope if I ever wanted to hear those answers. He knew things—secretive things—about
 
the cannibals, the colonists, and Monica Vickers’s death. He’d told me that he wasn’t responsible for killing her. I didn’t think Owen was lying, because if he were, then I would have wound up dead too. In the end, I didn’t think anything would go back to normal until Owen filled me in on some of the things I needed to know.

One thing I knew for certain, was the we, the colonists and myself, were like lab rats in a cage, always being monitored, every one of our movements carefully documented. And the worst part of all of it, none of us knew that the monitoring was going on. We walked around blindly, assuming that we were lucky to be alive, while the rest of the human population rotted and withered away.

At least if I was starving to death, I’d still have my freedom. I’d probably die a horrible and no doubt painful death, but no one would be peeping in on me, tracking my every movement, and at the end, I’d finally be at peace.

I’d seen helpless starving people before, in the streets of the city, during the beginning stages of The Great Famine. Most of the inhabitants had only gone weeks without eating, yet they knew what the future held for them. They hit their knees, begging and pleading with hopelessness in their eyes for someone to come along and put them out of their misery. They’d rather have someone blow their brains out than live through the devastation of pestilence and famine.Sometimes, I thought that way too, but not now, not anymore.

Giving up was way too easy. I’d fought out the last two years, starving, overcoming obstacles, and watching people die. And even though it hurt to see the human population, especially the children, fade away, it made me stronger as a person and it made me want to keep fighting.

The minutes began to dwindle down. First, there were five, then four, now only three minutes remained until it was eleven o’clock. Mid-pace, I stopped and squinted up at the ceiling as my eyes adjusted to the blackness. I was anticipating the lift coming down through the center of the mess hall, even fabricating the illusion of the sound it made in my mind.

An eerie silence crept up on me like a venomous cobra with its back arched, preparing to strike it’s victim. I couldn’t even hear the sound of my own breathing because I was pretty sure that I hadn’t breathed for an entire minute. That led me to believe that even though I still had time left until eleven o’clock, that maybe Owen was going back on his word.

Now it was one minute to eleven o’clock and I was really beginning to worry. The last time I saw Mr. Baker, the rage inside of him was clawing at his insides, eating him alive. What if he showed up and did something terrible to Owen? The sound of his earlier slap echoed in my head. “Oh, no,” I gasped. What if he killed him?

After what Mr. Baker did to Monica, and what he tried to do to me, I wouldn’t have put it past him. I imagined that he was in an extremely bad mood after everything that went down at the council meeting. I, in particular, enjoyed the last few words I’d shared with him and the look on his face that accompanied those words.

I had no regrets in exposing myself to him in those final seconds. Even though he assumed I was the one that switched the ballots, he would have never known for sure until I mentioned it to him. I might have set myself up for some kind of act of revenge, but I doubted that. And even if I did, I felt like somebody owed it to Monica Vickers to bring her murderer to justice. Thankfully, justice was served out properly at my hand.

Wherever Monica was, I hoped that she was somewhere smiling and happy. I hoped that she could move on knowing that her death had been avenged.

It was officially eleven o’clock. Still no Owen. I resorted to sitting down, on the floor, Indian style. Silently, I told myself that I would wait until 11:05 and not a minute later. If Owen didn’t show up, I could kiss any answers to any questions that I may have had goodbye. “Please come, Owen. Please.”

To pass the time, I swirled my finger around on the concrete floor, thought about tomorrow, and thought about Owen and his stunning, violet eyes. In the two years that our colony had been established, we’d never cast anyone out before, The Baker family would be the first.And even though I despised Mr. Baker, it was still going to be difficult for me to watch him and his family being escorted from the colony.

Also, the fact that I would probably never see Owen again haunted me. He did trick me, let me believe he was a flesh-eating monster ready to devour me at a moment’s notice, but in my short time knowing him, I’d grown fond of the guy who I could now call my savior. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be walking around with a censor inside of my brain, my every movement being tracked.

And….

If it wasn’t for Owen, I’d most likely be dead.

Whenever I thought about death, I always wound up frightened. Death was final. There was no coming back from it. Even living in the kind of world where people dying every day was the norm, death was still a tough subject to think about.

At four minutes to eleven, I’d given up on Owen. The dutiful part of me wanted to wait another five minutes, but the logical part of me consumed the dutiful part and swallowed it whole. As much as I hated to admit it, Owen was a no-show. He wasn’t coming.

Getting to my feet, even though I knew what was best, walking out of the mess hall was difficult for me. I struggled taking those first few steps to the open doorway. I had no closure, and without closure I’d never be able to move I’d with my life. I’d constantly be asking myself ‘what if?’

I dragged my feet against the cement, shuffling and scuffing them, trying to detain myself a little bit longer. At the open doorway, I glanced over my shoulder into a pit full of darkness as the depressed feeling that began in my heart swept over my entire body. Then, I began walking back to my room.

It wasn’t until I was half-way down the hall that I heard a noise. A soft, vibrating noise that hummed, like a motor in a brand new car. I pivoted around. I didn’t see anyone following me. There were no footsteps, no shadows against the walls. The humming sound intensified. “Where is that coming from?” Perhaps it was a stupid idea for me to investigate, but with Mr. Baker and his family departing tomorrow, I felt like I had nothing to fear.

The humming sound started to putter as I moved toward the mess hall. I took small, slow steps easing myself forward. Then, when I reached the open doorway and peeked around the wall, Owen shined a flashlight in my eyes, a radiant smile on his face,
 
violet eyes gleaming in the afterglow of the dim lighting.

I rushed toward him, beaming and elated. Relief washed over me when I got closer and was able to gaze into his eyes. “You’re here!” I half-shouted, half-whispered. “I thought something happened to you.”

Letting out a controlled, hushed laugh, he extended his arms to me and pulled me up on to the lift. He wrapped his right arm around my waist and held it tightly to his body. Then, he hit a button on the lift and we started going up, up into the ceiling.

Hugging him tightly, I never wanted to let go. An overwhelming sense of warmth and safety flourished throughout me and I knew I could trust him. He hit another button on the lift and spun me around to face him. He brushed my hair off of my shoulders, leaned down into my ear, and whispered, “See, like I said before, I never break my promises.”

Chapter 20: Something Wicked
 
This Way Comes