He grips my body tight, then slaps my ass. “I know you do, you dirty little whore.” And he pulses inside of me with a warm gush that makes me come.
THIRTY-TWO
A new one comes in and I ache for him. But instead of climbing on top of me, he cuts my ropes with a pocket knife, slips pants and a shirt on me, then throws me over his shoulder.
“Wake up, girl.” He removes my blindfold.
“Who are you?” I whisper, my voice crackly and weak like old cellophane. I’m disoriented as I glance around the empty office room which consists of just a bed, two fold-out chairs, and an IV rack.
“Shh . . . Don’t talk, just climb.” He sets me down onto a desk below an industrial air vent where the cover has been removed. “Climb. Now.”
The authority in his voice is a splash of cold water. I reach above my head and he pushes me by my backside until I’m up inside of the vent shaft. He climbs up after me, then replaces the cover, and when he turns around I get a look at his face. An older man, sixties maybe, husky, with a dark blue snowcap and a full gray beard.
“Go,” he says. “Crawl forward, but try to be as quiet as possible.”
I do as he says and turn, placing one slow hand in front of the other, followed by bruised knees. With each yard we go, winding around and down, I regain more and more of my awareness. Those men . . . they hurt me for days. Why did I like it? There was so much pain. Did they drug me like they drugged Eve?
But this one, he’s . . . rescuing me. He doesn’t want to hurt me.
I’m in a tall building. This is a ventilation shaft of some sort.
Evie’s dead. Henry, Eileen . . . Corbin. They’re all gone. And in their places are the night-blind monsters—both living and non—who’ll make sure we never see the light of day again. The reason we’ll forever hide in the darkness. Those men did this. The men with the needles. The men with the needles who shot me and tied me up to be their toy.
I can’t crawl anymore. I’m drenched in sweat and I might vomit any second. “I have to stop,” I say.
“Not for long,” says my rescuer.
I rest against the cool metal, and he sits on the opposite side. “What’s your name?” I ask.
“Murray. You?”
“I’m . . .”
After a few seconds of silence, he pinches his beard, furrows his brow. “Did you forget?”
“No. I . . . don’t have one.”
“Don’t have one?” He studies me for a moment, then sighs. “We gotta keep movin’.” And he motions for me to continue on.
“How much further?”
“Not too much. I’ll say when.”
After one more ramp down, and another curve to the left, the metal changes to concrete.
“When,” Murray says, and the air changes, too. It’s damp, and dark, and when the space opens up at the mouth of the hole, I realize we’re underground.
“What do I do?”
“Turn around ’n face me, then climb out slowly. I’ll help hoist you down.”
I do as he says, and turn to face him, then back up slowly until my feet are in open air. “What’s below me?”
“An army grade Humvee. Right under your feet.”
“How do we get it out of here?”
“Tunnels. They go all throughout the city. The government had them built two decades ago for emergencies like atomic blasts, or chemical warfare, to get the elite to safety. Only a select few knew about them. Very top secret.”
“How do you know about them?”
“I’ll tell you more about that when we get where we’re going.”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe.” He takes me by the raw wrists and I cry out. “Sorry.” He repositions his hands to higher up on my forearms, guiding me down until my bare feet hit the cold metal of the hood of a vehicle.
“Okay, I’m—I’m here.”
“Feel your way to the cab, climb over the window, and get inside.”
My hands slide along the matte finish until they reach smooth glass with a metal ridge around it. I climb over the thick pane and onto a hard, leather seat, and he climbs into the driver’s seat. The Humvee starts up and the headlights come on, lighting up the concrete wall in front of us. To our left, a dark passageway; another to the right. Murray takes off to the left, and the engine rumbles so loud I’m afraid someone might hear us. But he seems confident, sure of our departure, so I strap myself into the harness and pull my legs to my chest, securing myself for what’s to come.
THIRTY-THREE
After miles in the tunnel, it opens up to an underpass across a culvert. “Where are we?” I ask Murray.
“About five clicks southeast of Selam County.”
“What does that mean?”
“Far enough.”
“From what?”
“From them.”
“The runners?”
“And the Suits. Their headquarters is close to where we were, where they had you.”
“How did you find me? And why did you risk your life to rescue me?”
“You’re a human being, ain’tcha?” He raises an eyebrow at me in a sidelong glance. “They asked me if I wanted a turn, and I said ‘sure.’ And I took my turn.”
I stare at his profile. He’s unusual, familiar, as if I’ve met him before. In another life, perhaps.
“There are others.” He slows over a pothole inhabited by a puddle and a patch of weeds.
“Others?”
“Yes. It’s why they did this. It’s the reason they altered the injections.”
“Altered . . . how? Why?”
“To take care of the adults. There were some very dark dealings behind all of this.”
“How do you know all of this? Were you one of them?”
He stares off into the distance ahead of us and doesn’t answer.
I don’t pry. Instead, I close my eyes as we pull from beneath the overpass into the sunlight. The air is warm, sweet, and otherworldly. “Where are we going?” I ask. “Are there any sick out here?”
“Not yet. This is protected land. About a five-mile radius, fenced-in. They’ll be moving here with the children soon, once they’ve rounded up more, I’m sure, so we won’t be able to stay long. But for now, we’re safe.”
After another few minutes of winding roads, Murray pulls up to a campsite with a green-and-gray tent.
“You set this up already?”
He nods.
“You planned to rescue me for a while?”
“Two weeks.”
“Two weeks? How long was I up there?”
“At least three. Not sure of the exact day when you got there.”
How could I have lost so much time? I glance down at my body—scraped, cut, bruised, and thin—and realize how famished I am.
“I’m so hungry.”
“You should be. You’ve barely eaten since you got there. They kept you on an IV for a while, but you were probably too drugged up to realize it.”
“I remember . . . the prick on my arm. And then I . . . wanted it. Was that because of the drug?”
He nods. “Come on. Let’s get you fed.”
While Murray cooks over an open fire, I sit on a rock and piece together the last few weeks of my life. With every new bit of information that comes to me, the effects of whatever drug they’d had me hooked on soon wear off, and I begin to shake violently.
“You’ll go through some withdrawals, but they won’t kill you. Here.” He offers me a tin cup with a steaming liquid in it. “Drink this. It’ll help.”
I don’t even ask what it is. I just take it and sip. Anything to ease this intense hunger in my bones. As I drink, I inspect the track marks on my arms, bruised and red, scarred . . . looking at them makes me want to fill them up again, to fill all of my orifices again. Almost makes me want to be back in that place. Especially when I remember I’m all alone now.
But the warm fluid soothes my twisting innards instantly. “What is it?” I hold up
the cup in a hand that no longer shakes.
“Medicated tea. We’ll ease you off a little at a time with that so it’s not too hard on your system. I don’t need you flopping and foaming on me. I’ve got enough shit to deal with.”
“Like what? Other than me . . .”
He removes his hat, shakes his balding head, and leans to jab the fire with a stick. “Like what to do next, for starters. I didn’t have enough time to think it through past this. We’ve got supplies, but not enough. Eventually, we’ll need to scavenge in the city if we want to stay alive. Not much to hunt with. What ammo we have needs to be saved in case we gots to defend ourselves.”
“We’ll have to go back to Selam County?”
“No. Gideon County is North. We can go there instead.”
At the name, I look up at him. “Gideon County?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never heard of Gideon County. Where is that?”
“Well . . . Springdale, I think is what they call it now. I’m old.”
“Oh, I know Springdale. My . . .” I gaze at my hands, the blisters that have almost healed. “My parents used to take me shopping there when I was younger. The Shops at Springdale?”
Murray nods. “Been there once or twice, years ago, yeah.” He flips the sausage over on its skewer, then gives the pot of beans a shake. With a metal spoon, he scoops some beans into the cup and hands it to me. At the sight and smell of it, my stomach dances and groans. I tip the cup and take a small bite, which slightly burns my lips, but I’m too hungry to care.
“I had a friend named Gideon,” I say, once I’ve eaten every last bean and scooped the remnants from the cup with my fingers.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Well, kind of. I didn’t know him for too long.” I stare into the grass, and there’s a slow, heavy sweep of grief. It engulfs me without warning and grips my lungs, making it hard to catch my breath. My family, my best friend, the runners . . . the men in suits . . . the men without.
I slide from my perch on the log and fold up onto the ground, the magnitude of it all slamming into me like a bullet train.
“Breathe, girl.” Murray comes to my side, lays a hand on my shoulder. “You’ve been through a lot.”
“Why didn’t you just let me die? You should’ve let me die!”
Sharp pains from my right shoulder shoot through me. In my despair, I struggle to remember what had happened. I lift it to peek underneath the bandage at a sutured wound that may be infected.
“You were shot. Do you recall that?”
I shake my head.
“You busted through their fence in an SUV and brought a whole mess of those things in after you. They said you took out twenty of ’em, at least, before they took you out, drug you inside, bragging about the fine artillery you brought ’em.” He sighs at me. “What were you thinkin’?”
I lie motionless on the ground, watching an ant crawl through the grass. “Riverbend?” I mumble.
“Yeah. They commandeered it after the outbreak.”
“Evie . . .” I pause. Her name is too sad and sacred to mutter without reflection. “Before the injections, two of them caught us shoplifting. They took us in separate rooms, and they . . .” A bird flies by overhead, and I welcome the distraction. Those memories are too heavy and hallowed to pass by without dying a little more each time.
“I see.” Murray sips from his cup. “So you went back after . . . you lost her.”
“Yeah.” The word is no more than a last breath from lungs crushed by the wreckage.
“You had a death wish, then.” He nods into another sip from his cup, and I return it with silence.
Still do.
THIRTY-FOUR
“Why were you at Riverbend?” I take a sip from another dose of “medicated” tea.
Murray clears his throat, spits off to the side. “They came for us at the prison, drafted us once the outbreak started. I’m a vet, so they elevated my ranks.”
“You fought in a war?”
“Two wars.”
“When?”
“Thirty, forty years ago. Before you were born.”
“Why’d they throw you in prison? What’d you do?”
He chuckles in disgust, tossing his head back. And just when I think he’s not going to tell me, he begins to speak. “You’d think people would have more sympathy for men who’ve fought for this country once they’ve gone crazy.” He slaps his knee. “People love you while you’re away risking your life in guerrilla warfare, but once you come back, alls you get is a sea of cold shoulders. It’s enough to make a man hate, especially the Chinks that were the reason for the whole thing.”
At the racial slur, there’s a jab in my gut.
“It didn’t take me long to lose Mary once I got back from my second tour,” he continues. “After you’ve murdered thousands of people—women, children—you’re a changed man. I wasn’t the same long-haired boy they drafted, that’s for sure. I was angry, drunk, and abusive, and eventually, after a year of that, my wife finally put me out.” He drops his chin for a beat, then pokes at the fire.
“I was on the street for a year,” he goes on, “before I got so hungry and desperate for booze that I robbed an ice cream shop.” He laughs, but it shifts to anger. “I’ll never understand why I chose that place. Whoever heard of an ice cream shop owner with a sawed-off under the counter? But I guess I should’ve expected it. Things had changed over the years. Everyone had a gun then. So. He pinned me to the ground with the barrel digging into my neck and his knee pressed into my upper back, waiting for the Suits.
“In that moment, I experienced a sort of death. My life passed before my eyes in faded snapshots, and then, I wasn’t there anymore; I was under attack. I flipped around and took the Chink’s M16 and fired, blowing his head against the ice cream display behind him. I came to in a cell later that day. Realized what I’d done. He was a red-haired Irishman with two youngins at home. Four-year-old twin girls. I shot him with his own shotgun, not an M16.”
At the sound of an approaching jet, he’s tense, glued to its smoky beeline across the blue sky. His lower lip trembles as he curls in on himself, and droplets pool in the corners of his eyes.
“Murray? Are you okay?”
I place my hand on his knee, and he flinches, tossing me a panicked glance, a frightened child afraid of being struck. And with one last look to the sky at the jet that has almost disappeared from the horizon, he seems to come back to me with a hint of humiliation, slumping his shoulders slightly. “I’m sorry.”
“Is that PTSD?” I ask him.
“That’s what they said in prison, yep.”
“I have that, too.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I was raped four times in my foster home when I was nine. Right before that, my foster sister died and . . . a lot of other things. I’ve . . . been through a war, too. A few of them.”
Another poke to the fire. “And then you ended up with those sickos. I’m so sorry.”
“You saved me, though. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“So what happened next?” I ask. “In your story . . .”
“They gave me life with no parole.” He shakes his head. “And to pour salt in the wound, they stuck me in a cell with a goddamn Chinaman. I told them they were no good fucking cherries, and if they didn’t get that Chink son-of-a-bitch outta my cell, I’d kill him, just like I killed his relatives back in the war. I threatened the slanty-eyed bastard, and beat him within a splinter of his life for touching my toothbrush—which he never did again—and ended up in solitary for a week. Then, they threw me right back in there, with him reading his gook bible. And I knew I was stuck with him. For good.
“But weeks turned into months, and then years, and Charlie and I learned to work around each other. He never touched my stuff and I never touched his; a mutual respect for our shared hatred. And after he’d been gone for a few weeks, looking at his bed—the cold blankets pulled ba
ck, bible still lying open, its pages fanned and crumpled beneath it—I couldn’t bring myself to touch his things, even then. When I seen Charlie’s toothbrush on the sink as I brushed my teeth, I left it alone. After twenty-seven years of sharing the same six-by-eight-foot space, leaving each other’s stuff alone, I suppose it was out of habit more than anything.”
He stares into the fire and his demeanor changes. The remorse is as plain as the gray beard on his face. With a sigh, and another sip from his cup, he continues.
“When they came to clean his stuff out of our cell, I don’t know what came over me. I told those bastards it was my hootch and I’d be the one to decide what to do with Charlie’s stuff, now that he was gone. They could see blood in my eyes, so they let me be. And for the first time in twenty-seven years, I was alone in my cell, with plenty of time to reminisce . . .” He drifts off, revisiting that reminiscence.
“My mother was Chinese,” I interject. “My birth mother. She gave me away when I was a baby.”
He gives me a once-over, then sucks his teeth and spits. “Really.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you were a N—I mean, uh . . .” He glances away. “An African-American.”
“Half. At least I think so. I’m not sure. The staff assumed my mother was raped by a mixed-race man.”
He folds his arms over his chest, drifts away to some place beyond the clouds in his thoughts, and there’s a glisten of penance, of serendipity there. “Well I’ll be damned.”
“What?”
“So, one night, Charlie came to me in a dream. He told me he always considered me a friend, even though we never once spoke. Even after what I did to him. Even though I never once called him by his real name. He told me he forgave me, and that I should forgive myself, too. He said . . . he’d be waiting for me on the bright side.
“I gasped awake, stumbled to the stainless steel mirror, and splashed cold water on my face. I struggled to breathe, gripping the edge of the sink and knocking Hao’s toothbrush onto the concrete floor. For a second, I stared at it in disbelief. I’d just thought of him as ‘Hao’ for the first time.
“I bent down to pick up his toothbrush, but instead I folded up under the sink, cradling it, sobbing like a schoolgirl. Hao was never the enemy I made him out to be. He left me alone because it was my wish. He never hated me or my sins. He forgave me, respected me when there was no one else left that did. Hao was no enemy . . . and he was never coming back.”
Dysphoria and Grace Page 14
