Famished (18 page)

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part;but then shall I know even as also I am known ~Corinthians 1:13

The lift jolted to a stop in between floors. I stumbled forward and Owen caught me, steadying my stance. “Easy there,” he said, softly.

Once I got a firm hold on my balance, I looked at him puzzled. “Why did you stop the lift? Aren’t we going up to the control room?”

He shook his head. “I don’t have much time and we can’t go up there. Mark is there. He’stearing all of the stuff down because he’s leaving tomorrow.”

I frowned. “What do you mean, you don’t have much time?”

“I’m leaving in thirty minutes.”

“What?” I screeched. The sound of my voice filled the narrow, confined space.

Owen lifted his finger to his lips. “SHHH! Do you want Mark to hear you?”

At that moment, Mr. Baker was the least of my concerns. My first and major concern was the fact that I might never see Owen again. “Do you know where you’re going?” Perhaps it wouldn’t be too far. If it wasn’t that far, then that would make us being able to see each other doable.

His violet eyes pierced my chocolate ones, full of uncertainty. “I don’t know. I just know that Mark made it clear to me that wherever he goes I have to follow.”

The last sentence he spoke made me furious. Where was his free will? Did he always intend on being Mr. Baker’s little puppet? And did he honestly think that he wouldn’t be doing the same kind of things somewhere else as he did here? “Do you always do what he tells you?” I asked, crossing my arms and tapping my foot.

He smiled, seductively. “Not always. I kept you alive didn’t I?”

I blushed. “Yes.” The sight of his smile always made my heart flutter—like the exciting feeling a kid would get when they got a present they had been longing for. “But, he treats you so badly. And on top of that, he’s an evil, evil man.”

Owen looked down and took both of my hands in his. He gently brushed his thumb against my skin and spoke sweetly, “I’m not going to disagree with you on that.” He lifted his head and looked into my eyes. “But, I’ve known Mark Baker for years and

he does have some redeeming qualities.”

“Ha!” I spat out. “Like what?”

He smirked. “Do you know that I’m a child prodigy? I graduated high school when I was twelve years old. College at seventeen with my Masters in technology and PhD
 
at eighteen in Nuclear medicine.”

He traced my jaw line with the tip of his finger. “I’m sure you’d believe it if I told you Mark Baker didn’t raise chickens for a living.” Oh, I definitely believed that. There was no way Mr. Baker’s obsession with control and tyrannical ways came from raising chickens. “He and I worked together for the government on a string of top secret projects. And everyone in our division had an alias lifestyle. Me, I was a pizza boy.”

I laughed. “You can’t be serious.”

He nodded. “Would you expect your neighborhood pizza boy as a secret government official?”

“No. Not at all.” I tried to picture my neighborhood pizza boy. His name was Barry, he always smelled like stale cigarettes, and he always had this dumfounded look on his face.

Owen went on. “After the asteroid hit, and the earth and human population slowly began to die, I was left without a home, without food, and without hope—just like a lot of others who, unfortunately, are now bones lining the sides of the road.

“Then, one day Mark Baker found me, sick and dying of starvation, lying on the side of the road. And he took me in. He promised to keep me fed and alive, as long as I helped him with some of the things he wanted me to do.”

In that moment, I felt for him, I did, but there are some things a person shouldn’t agree to, whether they are rotting from starvation or not. “Owen, do you know what you’re doing? If you’re as smart as you say you are, you’d see that whether he saved you or not, what you’re doing for him is wrong. It’s criminal!” Placing both of my hands on his shoulder blades, I looked him dead in the eye. “How many more people have to die for loyalty?”

He rolled his shoulders, pulling away from me. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

I furrowed my brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you’re one of the lucky ones. You live trapped in this little bubble of a society, eating every day, two or three times a day. I’ve seen people bite off their own fingers to feed themselves. I’ve felt my organs shriveling up inside of me because of my lack of nourishment. I’ve felt my bones through my skin while my exterior wasted away.”

I glared at him incredulously. “Do you mean to tell me, that you think I haven’t witnessed or felt the devastation of The Great Famine?”

“You haven’t.”

“You don’t know anything,” I growled. My mind instantly reverted back to those two little boys, the ones who cried day and night for their mother. I gulped hard, trying to erase
 
the thought. “I’ve seen a lot more than you think I have Owen Sanders, and I can tell you this, I’d rather starve to death with my dignity than live with a belly full of food doing someone else’s dirty work.”

Owen narrowed his eyes. “You say that now, but have you ever starved?”

“I’ve gone days without eating,” I shot back.

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Well, then,” I said sarcastically. “Enlighten me, genius.”He bit his upper lip and shook his head. “Starving to death is a slow, torturous, and agonizing process. First, every ounce of fat and muscle on your body melts away. You become someone different, someone you didn’t think you could be, snapping at people, resorting to violence, and losing your sanity. Then, your skin cracks from dehydration and you develop multiple diseases because your body is so weak that your immune system fails to fight them off.

“Finally, your organs begin to shut down. One. By. One. If you’re lucky you’ll die after the first one goes. If not, you’ll be forced to endure weeks of pain—like the intestines being ripped from your body whole.” My mouth dropped open and I gawked at him. Nobody had ever fully explained it to me that way. “I’ve been there,” he went on. “I’ve been on death’s doorstep. And I can name at least a hundred other people who have done exactly what I did. Hell, they would have done exactly what I did to lick the crumbs off someone’s plate. So forgive me for choosing life instead of an agonizing death.”

I shook my head. Even though I thought that maybe,
 
he made the right decision time. There was no excuse for him still doing everything Mr. Baker commanded him to. “How long do you think Mr. Baker is going to keep you around, knowing that you’re letting the people he wants killed, go? Owen, that is something you really have to think about. Are you willing to murder another human being—an innocent human so that you can eat? And if you say yes that would be the most sad, pitiful, and selfish thing that I’ve ever heard.”

He looked down at his hands. “Well, technically, I’m not the one who’ll be doing the killing.”

“Owen,” I snapped.

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t. Mark controls all of the cannibals in this area.”

I couldn’t believe that he was still trying to….

Wait…. “What?”

“Mark controls all of the cannibals in this area,” he repeated.

“What do you mean ‘controls’ them?”

“He operates them. He put computer chips in their brains that allows him to control them.”

This was startling news. And I couldn’t stomach it. I was starting to feel queasy. I didn’t want him to tell me anymore. Every time he revealed something new felt like a bomb
 
going off inside of me. “Are you trying to say that the cannibals aren’t real?”

“Oh, no, don’t get me wrong, they are definitely real. I’ve seen the real ones up close. But the ones around here, yeah, they are like cyborgs. Mark used to operate them from the control panel upstairs.”

“He controls who they eat?”

“Well, most of the time. The chip in their brain can be turned on and off from the control panel, but Mark is the only one who knows the code. He would never tell me what it was.”

“The ones you were with?”

“Yes.”

The next question was stuck in my throat. I almost didn’t want to ask it at all, then, suddenly, I blurted out, “Did they kill Monica? Did Mr. Baker make them kill Monica?” I flinched, expecting him to say yes quickly.

“No. They didn’t.”

“But she is dead, right? And she was killed.”

Owen nodded. “Yes to both. She is dead and she was killed, but not by the cannibals.”

“Then by who?”

“One of the decayed ones.”

“No…..” I cupped my hands over my mouth when I thought of Monica enduring hours of torture, her limbs being hacked away, before she was finally eaten alive. “That can’t be.” I almost wanted him to say that a cannibal consumed her. At least then I knew she would have been given a merciful death. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“How can you be sure?”

Owen looked away from me and didn’t meet my gaze. “You don’t want to know.”

“I do, though.”

“No you don’t.”

Part of me wanted to know and part of me didn’t. What if it was too gruesome for me to handle? What would I say to her family? I already had to tell them that their daughter didn’t just disappear, I had to tell them that she had been murdered. “Just tell me, Owen.” Better that I found out sooner rather than later.

Owen opened his mouth to answer me and a light started flickering behind us. I looked at him, puzzled. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“I have to go.”

“No,” I pleaded. “Please don’t go.”

“I’m sorry.” He started the lift and it began going down.

“Owen, please,” I begged. “You don’t have to go with him. You can stay here with me.”

“No,” he said. “I can’t.”

The lift came to a halt, looming right above the floor in the mess hall. “Can you at least tell me what happened to Monica? How do you know that she was killed by a decayed one?” Owen set me down on the floor and the lift started going back in to the ceiling. “Owen, tell me!” I shouted, not caring if I woke up the entire colony.

Just before the lift went up and cut off Owen’s head from my view he said, “I know that Monica was killed by a decayed one. And I know it for sure because I found her head.”

Chapter 21: All Good Things Eventually Come To An End

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. ~ Revelation 21:1

Hours after Owen dropped me off, I lied awake, disturbing images passing in and out of my subconscious mind. First, images of Monica, her brown hair spread out along the loose ashes of the earth’s surface, her face contorted in agony as she begged and pleaded for her life. Then Mr. Baker came into focus as he pounded away the keys on the control panel keyboard, typing things like “Attack!” or “Eat Them!”

Finally, I saw myself, strapped down to a hospital gurney. A surgeon with a scalpel hovered above me, lowering it slowly, inch by inch. I tried to scream but I had no voice and the closer the scalpel came to the top of my head, the more real the thought felt. It was like I was seconds away from receiving a lobotomy without an anesthetic.

Someone was tugging on my arm and I started to panic. I thrashed violently, feeling my palm connect with a person’s cheek. “Ouch,” Frankie whimpered, and then she started wailing. “Mommy! Mommy!”

I bolted upright in my bed and realized I was having a nightmare. Frankie recoiled, sulking over to her bed, and she curled up into a little ball. She sobbed softly and I exhaled slowly.

“Frankie, come here,” I said convincingly.

She whipped her head and snapped, “No!” before tucking it back into her lap.

“Frankie, I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I was having a bad dream.”

“You slapped me!” she cried as she rocked back and forth.

“I promise I didn’t mean to.” I twitched my head to the side. “Now, come over here and lie down with me.” I scooted closer to the dirt wall and patted the empty side of my cot.

Frankie hesitated, unfolding herself from her ball as my mother rushed through the door. “What’s going on?” she gasped, winded.

“I was having a nightmare and I accidentally slapped Frankie across the face,” I admitted.

She looked at Frankie solemnly and rushed to her bed side. “Oh, baby, are you okay?” she asked, whispering in a comforting tone.

Frankie dug her balled up fist in her eye and dried her tears. “Yeah,” she murmured.

“I’m sure Georgie didn’t mean to slap you.” My mother glared at me. “Right, Georgie?”

I rolled my eyes. “I already apologized, Mom.”

Her eyes shifted to the end of the bed and zoomed in on something. “What’s that?” she asked as I followed her gaze.

At the end of my bed was a white envelope and my name had been scrawled across the front of it. “I honestly don’t know.” I crawled toward the edge of my bed and picked up the envelope.