World Of Shell And Bone (12 page)

By the time I arrive at my apartment, I’m much surer of my decision. There’s no possibility of me sitting out the mission to free Ceres while hoping for a safe future for my baby. My mind can’t cope with the incongruence of the two actions.

I walk into the kitchen, where Shale is busy washing some pots. He sets them aside as I enter and turns to me, his eyes searching my face. “Are you alright?”

“Yes.” I smile. “I visited Naiad’s people. And my mother.” I take a deep breath. “I want to help with the mission, with all the things Tomas asked me to do. I’ve made up my mind.”

Shale puts his hands on my shoulders. “Are you sure? With the pregnancy, you have a free pass to freedom.”

“Maybe. Or maybe they’ll take our baby and make him or her join the army as a child soldier. I’ve come to realize there aren’t any guarantees. Perhaps the only thing to do is what you feel is right at any given moment. And in this moment, I want to stay with you.” Without quite meaning to, my eyes drop to Shale’s lips.

When we kiss, my mind goes blank, overloaded with sensation. Why does my body insist on reacting this way to him?

Shale pulls back and grabs my hand. “Come with me.”

My mind reels at the sudden change. I wasn’t fully finished with that kiss. “Where?”

“There’s something I’d like to show you.” He leads me out the front door and up the stairway, just a shadow ahead of me in the murky gray light.

“I don’t know anyone who lives up here,” I say as we pass the eighth floor. I don’t think I’ve been this high up in all the years I’ve lived in this building.

“I don’t either,” Shale says. “We’re not visiting.”

I keep quiet because it’s getting harder to talk the farther up we go. It’s no wonder I didn’t pass my physical fitness test; I’m not in the least athletically-inclined. If I’d known to expect the physical test so soon, and at my Match Clinic, I might’ve prepared. But I bury the thought. It doesn’t matter anymore.

After we pass the apartments on the twelfth, and last, floor, we get to the landing at the top of the building. Shale stops in front of the big metal door to the rooftop. There’s a padlock on it. He reaches into his pocket, comes out with something that looks like a woman’s hair pin, and slips it into the key hole.

There’s a click as the lock opens and he flashes me a victorious look. I smile in spite of myself as I follow him through the door. Closing it behind me, I turn around.

The view leaves me breathless.

All around us, the city of Ursa sprawls out like a giant grey tentacled creature. It births smoke from smoke stacks and streams of people out of buses and doorways. Our desperation to get somewhere, to escape this disgraceful fate, feeds it, keeps it going. It is beautiful and frightening all at once. Gray clouds above, gray concrete below. We’re suspended in an ashen sphere.

“This is spectacular.” I turn to Shale. “Do you come here often?”

He rests his elbows on the ledge and looks out. “Sometimes. It’s easier to think when I’m up here. I don’t feel so closed in.”

I close my eyes for a moment, letting my mind believe that I feel the sea breeze brushing my cheeks. “Thank you for bringing me.”

Still looking straight ahead, Shale takes my hand. I look at it ensconced in his, reveling in the feeling of warmth, of touch, of skin-to-skin contact.

“Love builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.”

I glance at him, startled. Heaven and Hell are mythical religious concepts we’re not supposed to mention. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a line from an old poem, I believe. My father loved poetry, as did his mother before him. I picked up a little bit from listening to him recite.”

The urge to cry is so strong, I have trouble breathing. I look away and blink, struggling to get my emotions under control. What might Shale have been in another life? Could he have spent his days writing poetry under shady trees? What about me? Ceres? My mother? Perhaps there are twin versions of us all somewhere in another universe, living out the destinies of which we’ve been robbed.

Two weeks later

I show my identification badge to the Guard, trying hard to be nonchalant. “Transporting Maintenance workers to the bus leaving at eight.”

Already. I can’t believe we’re already here. I’ve scarcely had time to breathe. To say my goodbyes to Mica. To pretend like my last day at work was like any other day; that when the whistle sounded, I wasn’t going to a meeting where I’d discuss my role in perpetrating treason.

The Guard nods briskly, not paying attention to our faces as much as our badges. Then she waves us through. The weight on my chest lifts a tiny bit. One hurdle down.

We travel through the gate and walk until we see signs for the bus terminal. A quick right down a dirt path and we emerge where so many families have been broken, where so many children found their worlds were not quite as safe as they’d imagined them to be. I stand there for a long moment, wondering what details Ceres took in here, eight years ago. Did she see that lone tree, struggling to survive amongst all the concrete? Did she see the buses parked in a row, looming like mechanical grim reapers? Did her tears blur everything so she couldn’t make out any details, adding to her panic? I close my eyes against the pain of my thoughts.

Shale touches me briefly on the shoulder. When I look at him, he raises his eyebrows just the tiniest bit—asking me if I’m okay. I nod imperceptibly, then look away in case anyone is watching.

We board the bus and my pulse begins to throb in my ears. I show my identification badge—does the driver spend an inordinate time examining it or am I simply nervous? The men show their badges, and then we’re asked to be seated to wait for the Défectueux. There is already another Guard and her team of Maintenance workers on the bus. When I catch her eye, she gives me a small, cold smile.

The children are brought by the Escorts. I notice that they’re all under the age of twelve, and that they are all crying. As they approach the bus, single file, I can see that one or two out of the thirty-two children are visibly disabled, with the sloped forehead of the developmentally disabled, or a missing limb from a genetic mutation. But most of the children appear to be physically normal, and I wonder who informed on them. Like Ceres, have they been deceived by the very person who gave them life? Are there mothers all over New Amana at this moment, ensconced in the quiet of their rooms, silencing their guilt by insisting they did what was best for the country?

When the children climb into the bus, they take turns looking at all of us. The men in their Maintenance worker uniforms are immediately taken for threats, but two or three of the youngest children try to smile at me and the other Guard, perhaps because we are women, like their mothers. It breaks my heart not to smile back, but I cannot put everybody at risk by doing so. Instead, I clench my fists on my lap and look out the window.

Did anyone show Ceres kindness the day she was taken by smiling at her? Asking her if she’d like a drink of water? I know it’s unlikely. She was probably scared the entire time. How has living in the brine of fear changed her, pickled her brain?

The bus belches as the driver releases the brakes. Once the last of the children has sat down, the bus moves forward with a lurch. Soon, we are leaving behind the only city I have ever known. I crane my neck so I can watch the dust trails the bus leaves, the intermittently-lit crooked buildings disappearing in a fine mist of it like a magic trick.

The hours that pass in the bus seem to ricochet inside my head like little glass balls, heavy and loud. The children continue to cry—some begin to keen horribly, while others, mercifully, pass out from exhaustion. As dawn’s fingers begin to scratch at the black sky, the bus driver pulls into the parking lot of a public washroom on the deserted highway.

The driver stands up. “The Défectueux will climb down in two groups to use the facilities with the Guards and one Maintenance worker,” she says.

When she motions for the children on the right of the bus to disembark, they stand up, their hands manacled together with iron chains. They are shaking, and the sharp sting of urine reaches my nose. Someone has already had an accident, and will likely pay for it at the Asylum.

But not if we can help it, I think. I must stay positive.

The other Guard and I stand up. I look toward Shale, but another Maintenance worker—not a Rad—is the one to accompany us. Fingering the electric prod I’ve been given to authenticate my role as a Guard, I silently beseech the children to behave.

I wait outside the restroom with a few of the children while the other Guard takes the rest of them inside. When I hear the
pop-pop-pop
sound of gunfire, my stomach turns to ice and I stand stock-still, my body refusing to respond to what I know is happening. Finally, I’m able to force myself to turn toward the bus. There is a flash of red and someone slumps against the window. He wears a bright orange Maintenance uniform, blood-soaked.

I begin to run.

When I get to the bus, there is shouting and screaming. I think perhaps some of the screaming comes from me. As I scramble up the steps, someone pushes me back down. I land on my hands and knees and twist around. Shale is on the steps, his gun in his hand.

“Run, Vika!” he screams. “The mission has been compromised—run, run!”

I reach for him but a bullet whizzes past his head and shatters the corner of the windshield of the bus. I put my hand against my stomach—the baby. Shale has a gun, but I am unarmed except for the electric prod.

I turn and run, making straight for the desert bordering the washroom and the highway. The children who were outside with me have run into the washroom with the other Guard. I cannot risk going back in for them, not when my own child’s life is in danger. But that doesn’t defuse any of the guilt and pain squeezing my chest as I race to safety.

When I stop running, I can feel that the insides of my boots are slick with blood. I have cut my foot on something. Our boots are not made of high quality material; whatever I stepped on has sliced the thin rubber. I slow down, and my stomach lurches into my throat. I lean into a thicket of spindly bushes—some of the only kind of vegetation that can endure the deserts of New Amana—and vomit. When my stomach is empty, I continue to dry heave. Just when I think I might die of suffocation, the heaves slow and stop. I take a deep, shuddering breath, tasting dust and bile in my throat and mouth.

Oh, I think. Oh, Shale.

I sit down on the dusty desert floor. I do not move. I cannot form a coherent thought.

Now what?

I move, keep moving until my feet are on fire. The back of my Guard uniform is soaked with sweat, my hair is plastered against my face. Delirium beckons from the edges of my vision, but I fight it. I expect the Escorts to come beating through the brush to find me. Will I see a flash from the muzzles of their guns as the bullets leave them?

Where is Shale?

The thought comes unbidden, and I push it back where I can’t reach it anymore. I don’t want to think about him or Ceres. I do not want to think about failure and pain and endless sorrow because if I do, I might sit here until I am a husk of a woman, just dehydrated skin and bones.

I ran from Shale and left those children to keep my baby safe, and I am determined to do that. I will find Shale. And I will find Ceres. I cannot give up on them.

Once I feel like I’ve put sufficient distance between me and the bus—wincing, I force the sounds of gunfire echoing through my mind—I take off my boots and examine the wound in my foot. It is not deep but it is long, and I worry about infection. If I hurt my feet and can’t manage the desert floor, I will be lost. I can’t afford to take a bus or other public transportation, not when the Escorts might be out looking for me.

I continue to walk through the desert, keeping close to the brush so I am not as much of a target. Once or twice, I glimpse animals peering at me, and I am taken back to that first night Shale took me to the outskirts of town to meet Tomas. I push that memory back with all the others. I was scared back then, but what did I know about fear?

This
is fear, I think. A baby inside you, the man you love in a gun fight, and endless desert. This is fear.

One minute I’m walking through the desert, and the other, I step into a small clearing and realize it is man-made. There is a tent about twenty yards away, with a black stripe down the middle of the canvas cloth. I backpedal into the brush and fall to my stomach so I am not visible, thankful for my drab sand-colored Guard uniform for the first time.

I am not sure how long I lie there in the shrub, sweat dripping down my forehead and stinging my eyes. Occasionally, a current of wind stirs up the dust and sand so it forms a light coating on me. I am thirsty and hungry, my foot throbs, and I have to use the washroom.

So, when a short, squat man comes out of the tent wearing a black shirt and black pants, I feel a tug of relief. They are Rads. Surely they’ll help me when they realize what has happened.

I wait till the man has turned to go back into his tent after a washroom break to stand up. I call out softly, but he still turns with a gun in his hand. My arms are in the air, and I am sweating even more, my shirt plastered to my back. Perspiration rushes down my arms and legs and face.

“Please, don’t shoot.” Embarrassed at my wavering, cowardly tone, I try again. “Please don’t shoot. I’m on your side.”

“Yeah?” The man keeps his rifle trained on me. “Why don’t ya walk forward real slow so I can be sure?”

Two other men come outside, their rifles trained on me. I don’t take note of their faces as much I do of their guns. Can’t they see I don’t have a weapon? My mind turns to the electric prod. It’s not much of a weapon, but if I could get to it, it’d be better than absolutely nothing.

“We were ambushed.” I begin to walk toward them, my legs trembling. “I was with the Rads from Ursa, but there was a shooting, and… I managed to get away. Please, you have to help me. I’m pregnant.”

I’m close enough now that they can see that my foot’s bleeding. My boots remain in the brush.

“She’s right. I know her.”

I jerk my gaze to the tall man who’s spoken, and memory rushes back to me. It’s Drew, the Rad who failed to tell us about Celeste being replaced. The man Tomas shot and threw out of the group. My stomach seizes; now that I’ve aligned myself with the group that threw him out, what will he do to me?

He smirks at me and lowers his rifle. The other men do the same. “Do you remember me, Vika?”

My lips feel gummy when I speak. “You’re Drew.” My eyes fall, unasked, to his leg.

He barks a laugh and lifts up his pants leg. “Just a nasty scar.” His knee is lopsided and the skin looks like it was pieced together in a hurry by someone with a large needle and no medical skill, but he seems to be able to bear weight on it. “I’ll bet Tomas would be disappointed.”

The short, squat man, the first to discover me, spits something fat and wet on the sand, where it glistens in the sun. “Why are you dressed in that uniform if you were with the Rads?”

“It was part of our plan to infiltrate the Asylum in Toronto.”

Drew nods. “Yes, the Great Plan. Come on in and tell us how it all went. Obviously not well from the sight of you. In any case, let’s not stand around outside. That’s an easy way to lose a head in these parts.” He glances at my uniform. “Let’s take this so we don’t have any accidents.” With a flick of his wrist, he takes the electric prod from where it hangs at my side.

The third man prods me in the back with the muzzle of the rifle, and I enter the tent. It smells like food and sweat in here and my tender stomach revolts. I manage not to gag by taking shallow breaths. I explain all that has happened to this point.

“We shouldn’t keep her around,” the third man says, tugging on his long, oily ponytail. “It’s not safe. They’re going to be looking for a broad in a Guard uniform on the run. We’re going to be even more of a target.”

“And what do you propose we do, then?” Drew asks. His lips are thick and pouty for a man, and his eyes are a curious silvery-gray. I try not to stare at them.

“Finish her off, boss. Quick and easy.” The third man is especially hairy, the kind of man who revels in his own stench and bodily functions. He winks at me, as if he’s made a flattering comment instead of suggested Drew kill me.

Drew approaches me, pokes my jaw with his rifle so I turn my head. He inspects me up and down. “She might be of use to us yet.” He prods my stomach with his rifle next. “Cross us and we kill both you and your baby. Hear?”

I nod.

“You sure you wanna trust the broad, chief?” the squat man asks.

“Carlos, will you relax?” Drew laughs. “Look at the size of her. And she said she’s pregnant. Do you see any weapons?”

“No,” the hairy man says, leering at me. “But I could do a strip search if you want.”

Drew turns with lightning speed and decks him on the jaw. “Show some respect, Nathan.” Then, turning to me, he says, “You’ll have to forgive my boys. They’re not used to being around ladies like yourself.”

I try to keep my head, think on my feet. But I’m so very hungry. And the front and back of my throat seem to be sticking together in the heat. “Do you think I could have some water?”

“Of course. How rude of me. Carlos, get Vika some water, would you?”

The squat man hands me a steel mug of water. I drink it in one long gulp and hand it back. “Thank you.” I smile weakly to show him I’m willing to cooperate.

Drew chews on his lip. “What happened with Tomas’s great mission?”

“As I said, we got ambushed halfway to Toronto. Someone must have tipped off the Escorts. I had to run, but the rest of them—” I swallow, a terrible pain in my throat clogging the words. Finally, I just shake my head.

Drew looks at the others. “Alright. Well, it’s clear we can’t let her run off into the desert. Might as well just shoot her here if we do that. Nathan, set up the other tent about ten feet back behind the cluster of trees we looked at before, will ya?”

Nathan stares at me, as if pondering arguing with Drew. To him, I’m as much a waste of space and resources as a danger to them. Finally, apparently deciding the argument wouldn’t be worth it, he picks up a bag and walks outside.

“He wants you to follow him,” Drew says, smiling apologetically. “Why don’t you go get comfortable, take a nap or something, and we’ll see you back here in a few? Carlos will come get you when it’s time to eat.”

My stomach growls, but I bite my tongue and resist asking for food. I can’t afford to antagonize these men, my only potential allies. If I am to survive, I will need to ingratiate myself to them and their mission, whatever it might be. And maybe after I help them accomplish whatever they want, they will help me free my sister and Shale.

I follow Nathan.

Nathan sets up my tent without speaking once. I am in a shaded spot behind a copse of spiny, sharp-leaved trees. When the canvas structure is up, he tosses a few supplies into a bag and turns to me.

“There’s some water and nuts to eat. Try to hang on to ’em. They’re all you’ll get for the next few days besides what scraps we save at the big tent.” And he leaves.

I sink down onto the mat he’s laid out for me and curl into a ball. I try to drift off to sleep, but between the stifling heat and the sound of gunfire permeating my dreams, I can’t accomplish it. After about fifteen minutes, I decide to get out of the sweltering hotbox and take a walk. Maybe I can formulate a concrete plan or at least a deal to negotiate with Drew.

I crawl into a thicket of bushes to relieve myself. My bladder releases painfully, and I wince. I must remember to listen to my body more now that I am pregnant, especially since I won’t be getting any prenatal care for a while. I zip my skirt back up and am about to reemerge into the clearing when I hear footsteps approaching. I still.

“Can’t believe this bullshit.” It’s Nathan.

“Ah, she’s just one woman. It’ll be okay. We won’t be keeping her around for long.”

“You kiddin’ me? You see the look on Drew’s face when he saw her? He practically fuckin’ came in his pants, man.” He spits.

“Chill. Maybe he’ll realize we don’t have a whole lotta food to go ’round and kick her out. Maybe we can drive her out to Toronto with us, let her find her own way after that.” A sound of skittering rocks as they walk.

A grunt. “Don’t know about that. She’s just going to fuck up the plan. We travel with her, we’re a walking bull’s-eye.”

“Yo, boys! You comin’ back sometime this year or what?” It’s Drew.

Nathan curses, and Carlos yells out, “Yeah, boss! Comin’.”

Their footsteps recede as they walk back to the big tent.

When I haven’t heard them for a few moments, I come out and look around. I’m alone. I go back to my tent for a drink of water, and to think. What did Carlos mean about giving me a ride to Toronto? Why are they going to Toronto? Whatever it is, I need to find out quickly, before they decide to leave me behind. They could be my passage to Toronto. One thing is clear: I need to ingratiate myself to Drew. The other men seem to consider him the leader.

I decide not to ponder too deeply about the other things the men mentioned. I can’t afford fear.