The Liberty Box

by C. A. Gray

  Two hours, I thought. I must’ve been off the boat for two hours before Agent Dunne found me.

  “So fugitives in the interior of the major cities are on their own,” Alec told me. “If they’re kids, they get injected with the virus and sent to one of the reform schools to see if they can be ‘rehabilitated.’ But once they’re over a certain age, the agents don’t bother with that—probably because it wouldn’t work.”

  So maybe they did inject me with a sedative, and not a virus. That must be why it knocked me out, and I didn’t feel fatigued now. “So what do they do with older people instead?” I asked.

  “What do you think?” Alec scoffed. “They just kill them. Like they did to her fiancé.” He pointed at Kate.

  “Her fiancé?” I looked at Kate’s left hand where she clutched the blankets to her chin. Sure enough, a diamond caught the sunlight from the mouth of the cave. I swallowed.

  “That’s what she said,” Alec emphasized the word scornfully. “She said that’s what made her realize it was all a lie. I don’t know whether to believe her, though. I knew her in reform school. She was one of those golden girls, you know? Could do no wrong. Hard to picture her as a rebel.”

  When I looked at her again, Kate was watching me. She averted her eyes quickly.

  So she was brainwashed until her fiancé was killed—which couldn’t have happened very long ago, by the looks of her. I felt the urge to protect her more than ever.

  If she wasn’t having an existential crisis yet, she was headed for one—and fast.

  Chapter 15: Kate

  The sky dawned on my third day in the caves. I felt stronger now; I was sleeping soundly, and I’d stopped hallucinating. The feverish, heightened awareness of anything touching my skin had left me in the night, and my brow finally felt dry.

  And yet, I had never felt so empty and bleak in my entire life.

  Two people shared this cave with me: Nick and Molly. I supposed this was their house, of sorts; Nick must have taken me here when he found me for Molly to look after while he went back out to gather food for the people.

  Both Nick and Molly arose with the sun. They were gone now, and I was alone. My stomach rumbled for the first time in days, but I noticed it with indifference.

  I supposed I should eat. I should get up and forage for food, now that I was strong enough to do so. But the truth was, I didn’t care whether I ate or not, and didn’t much feel like doing anything. What did it matter if I went hungry? What did anything matter anymore?

  “Knock knock,” came a voice at the mouth of the cave, accompanied by a shadow. I looked up and recognized the silhouette of the man from Iceland who had arrived the same day I had. Jackson. I squinted at him as he approached me, and realized that he’d visited me a lot in the last few days, when I was in and out of consciousness—or at least I thought he had. If he hadn’t, I’d been dreaming about him a lot. Which seemed weird. I frowned.

  “Brought you some breakfast,” said Jackson as he sat down next to me. I wasn’t sure where these cave dwellers got their pottery from, but their plates and utensils looked manufactured. I supposed they probably raided houses of the deceased for supplies. Hadn’t Alec said that’s what he and Maggie had done when they were on the run? I glanced at the food on the plate: root vegetables, berries, a side of dried game meat, and a mug of water. My mind remained indifferent as I looked at it, but my stomach growled audibly.

  “I’ll take that as interest,” Jackson smiled at me. Even though his face looked like he was about my age, when he smiled, the skin around his eyes crinkled like he was much older. He had a nice face, I decided. The sort of face that made him seem approachable. Even if he did make me feel like he could see clear through to my backbone.

  “Thanks,” I murmured, trying to decide whether I was hungry enough to bother with eating. But he watched me with those intent, reddish-brown eyes—does he ever blink? I wondered—until I realized he was planning to sit with me until I finished it.

  “The division of labor here is really quite remarkable,” Jackson began, his tone light and conversational as he watched me begin to eat. “There’s a team that gathers root vegetables and berries, a team of farmers that grows crops like corn and soy—they’ve cut down the trees in a little half mile area and somehow managed to get their hands on the seeds. Then there’s the hunters, of course. There’s the washers and the cooks, those are mostly the moms with small kids to tend to as well. They also are the ones who cure and store the extra meat the hunters bring back. There’s the teachers at the school, because there’s around a hundred children and teenagers. There’s the builders — they’ve built this system to filter the water from the stream that’s really quite remarkable, and outdoor bath systems where the men and women go together in teams. There’s the raiders—they’re like the hunters but they mostly go in to steal from abandoned houses on the outskirts of the Republic, and they also take turns keeping watch on our borders, to make sure nobody from the Republic comes snooping too close. Interesting bunch, the raiders. Fearless like the hunters seem to be, but a bit on the reckless side. Mostly they consist of eighteen year old boys who want a taste of a little danger.” He stopped and looked at me, as I stuffed the breakfast into my face, hoping that the faster I finished it, the faster he would leave me alone. As if to answer my unspoken question, he said, “I mentioned all this to explain how you ended up with such a diverse breakfast in such a remote place. Also to distract you, since you seem really sad. Sorry if I went on a bit.”

  I swallowed, and then I lied, “No, no, it’s interesting.”

  Jackson smiled at me, a knowing smile that told me he knew I was lying too. He didn’t say anything else, but he scooted back on my heather bed, making himself comfortable. He looked around the cave, glancing back at me only occasionally.

  The thing about silence is usually it makes me feel like the other person expects something from me, like they’re waiting for me to pick the next topic. But Jackson didn’t seem to be waiting for anything, or expecting anything. On the contrary, it seemed to give him pleasure to watch me enjoy my breakfast, so I didn’t feel the need to say anything else.

  Suddenly, mid-chew, a lump rose to my throat. I swallowed and looked away, terrified that tears would spill over in the presence of this virtual stranger. What is your problem? Why right now?

  “I heard about your fiancé,” said Jackson at last. “I’m sorry, Kate.”

  I didn’t say anything back to him because I didn’t trust my voice. I didn’t even move, my fork still poised in the air, my chin averted away from him.

  Suddenly I knew why his presence, his silence, made me want to cry. Molly was kind to me, too, but she bustled about me, attending to my needs and then going about her business. It wasn’t that I expected anything else—of course she had a lot to do. She probably fit into the ‘washers and cooks’ task list that Jackson had just rattled off. On top of that, as Nick’s wife, she seemed to hold a very prominent place in the community. It’s just that I felt like tending to me was another task for her.

  But Jackson was different. He sat here just to sit here. It was so companionable… and I was so lonely.

  I glanced at Jackson’s profile, and wondered why he reminded me so much of Will. They certainly looked nothing alike: Will had been blond and pale and blue-eyed, all sharp angles and brusqueness. He’d rarely ever smiled—he was just a very serious, driven person. Jackson, on the other hand, was ruddy and seemed laid back, judging by the fact that he was content to sit with me and do nothing. If the creases on his face was any evidence, he smiled often, too. It made me want to lean forward and press my face into his shoulder, and let him tell me everything was going to be all right…

  Two fat tears escaped and rolled down my cheeks. For a moment I thought he was going to reach forward and brush them away, and I froze—but he thought better of it and retracted his hand. I closed my eyes, grateful. If he made a move on me right now… I didn’t know what I would do, exactly. I just kn
ew how desperately I needed a friend, with no ulterior motives.

  Since I wouldn’t let him physically comfort me, any moment I thought he’d get up and leave, muttering some stupid masculine excuse under his breath. But crying didn’t seem to bother him any more than the silence had done; he just watched me, steady and patient. In spite of myself, I laughed.

  “You’re unusual, for a man,” I said finally.

  “Why’s that?”

  “My fiancé couldn’t stand it when I cried,” I told him, sniffling and wiping my tears with the back of my hand. “It was a problem he couldn’t solve. He always felt like he needed to ‘make it better’ somehow, and usually he couldn’t. I was the only thing he couldn’t just fix, so to him it felt like I was condemning him or something. That’s what he told me once.”

  Jackson smiled at me. There it was, that gentle smile that seemed so natural on his face. Then he said, “What was his name?”

  I looked away, and whispered, “Will.”

  He nodded. “Well,” he said, “the way I see it, emotions serve a purpose. That’s what my grandfather always taught me. Sometimes it’s a good purpose, and sometimes it’s a twisted one, but the purpose is always there, and it’s important to acknowledge them so you can figure out which it is. Suppressing emotions prevents a good purpose from letting you heal, and a twisted purpose from being exposed and renounced.”

  I frowned. “How can you tell if your emotions are serving a good or a twisted purpose, though?”

  “Simple,” said Jackson. “You just have to find the answer to one question. Are they bringing you closer to, or further away from, reality?”

  Intrigued, I forgot my reticence and leaned toward him. “Explain that.”

  “Emotions that are healthy are those that help you see something that’s real and react to it accordingly,” he told me. “In this case, your fiancé died. At the same time, you lost everything you thought you knew about the world. Presumably you don’t know who you can trust now.”

  I bit my lip hard. Sympathy was my undoing. Stop it, Kate, I commanded myself fiercely.

  Jackson went on, watching me intently with eyes that I decided reminded me of the color of rust. “The appropriate emotion to respond to all of that is grief. If you don’t grieve, you’re going to become pathological in some way.”

  I ground my teeth together, to give me something to focus on. “Pathological?”

  “Sure. It’s not like it all just goes away if you don’t deal with it.” His hand flicked toward mine again, and this time hovered just above it in the air, undecided. “But grief serves a purpose. It allows you to accept what happened, and move on.”

  Suddenly I knew what it was, the thing about Jackson that reminded me of Will: his firm opinions. There was something about Jackson that seemed solid, definite. Like an anchor, I thought. I was silent for a long time, watching his hand hover above mine. I didn’t pull mine away, though. “Your grandfather taught you all of that, huh?”

  “Among other things,” Jackson shrugged, leaning back again.

  I took a deep breath. “So what’s an example of an emotion that pulls you further away from reality, then?”

  He thought for a minute. “When I first got here, I got picked up by an agent,” he said.

  I shuddered, thinking of the two agents pounding on my apartment door.

  “He took me to a compound of some kind against my will, injected me with something, and stole my brain waves. When I woke up, I was angry.”

  “Seems reasonable to me.”

  “Sure, the emotion was, but not what it made me want to do,” I said. “Anger is an aggressive emotion. It makes me want to fight. I did fight at first, but I lost—that’s how I ended up in the chair in the first place. I could have fought them all off again when I woke up, but I had to stop and ask myself, was that course of action in line with my ultimate goal of escape? No. The odds were too stacked against me. So in that case, my emotions prompted me to take an action that was inconsistent with my reality. Once I recognized this, I had to master it instead.”

  I stared at him in amazement. He talked like he was much older than he looked.

  “So go ahead and cry,” Jackson concluded, touching my fingers with his own at last. “I’d be worried if you didn’t.”

  I curled my fingers just slightly around his, holding on. Hoping some of his certainty might rub off on me. “How can you be so calm?” I asked at last. “Clearly you’re a fugitive too.” I remembered the Crone’s interrogation of him on our first night, and gasped. “Your mother! You came here for her funeral, didn’t you?”

  He nodded. “That’s why I thought I was coming,” he said, and gave a short laugh. “But according to Nick, I’m here for something else entirely.”

  “He said you were the best hunter they’d ever seen,” I recalled.

  He nodded. “Grandfather taught me that too.”

  “Sounds like quite a man, your grandfather.”

  “He is. Really he taught me only one thing, but it translates to everything else: he showed me how to master my thoughts, my emotions, and my perceptions—” he stopped, like something had just occurred to him.

  “What?”

  “—which means I can accurately perceive truth!”

  Clearly this meant something to him, but I didn’t know what it was. “Okay…”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, I think I just had a revelation. A personal one, I mean.” His tone implied he was changing the subject, and he said, “I’m guessing even the agents are brainwashed. It’s funny how people who aren’t brainwashed stick out there like a sore thumb… for instance, everybody except you on that broadcast really seemed to think the Potentate was a swell guy. I could tell you didn’t, though. Right away.”

  I winced. “The broadcast you saw… which one was it? What were we talking about?” I assumed it had to be the last one, since I imagine any other time I would have been indistinguishable from Jillian or any of our interviewees in my enthusiasm for the Republic. But that last one, I was thoroughly distracted.

  And also, seconds away from finding out about Will.

  “You wore a pale blue dress, it sort of shimmered a little bit,” said Jackson automatically. This caught me off guard—I hadn’t expected him to pay so much attention to me personally.

  “That dress is now in shreds,” I told him. “And probably caked with mud.”

  He touched my hand again. “Too bad. It was a nice dress.”

  I closed my eyes and covered my face with my hands. “Okay, look, Jackson, I just need you to know that I can’t—”

  “It’s okay,” he cut me off, pulling my hands away from my face gently. “You’re a beautiful woman, Kate, it’s hard not to notice you. But believe me, I see the ring that’s still on your finger.”

  I looked away from him and focused on breathing steadily in and out. Did he have to say it like that?

  “All I want is to be your friend,” he said. “Truly.”

  I met his eyes, and bit my lip. “I could use one of those,” I whispered at last.

  Chapter 16: Kate

  “Oh, splendid!” crowed Molly when she saw me emerge from the cave, “Jackson told me you ate some breakfast. You look so much better! I hope those clothes fit you?”

  I looked down at what I was wearing: a threadbare cotton button-up shirt in a brown floral pattern, and a pair of bluejeans last in fashion about a decade ago. “Sure,” I said, “they’re fine.”

  “So you’re feeling better? Think you’d be up to doing a bit of work?”

  I shrugged. “Sure,” I said again.

  Molly missed my lack of enthusiasm, or else chose to ignore it. “Come on then, I’ll show you how to tend the gardens. We grow our own vegetables, whatever doesn’t grow in the forest, and there’s a lot that doesn’t. We pick those in season daily for each meal.”

  “Does everyone cook just enough for himself, or—”

  “Oh, heavens, no!” Molly smiled at me, wiping the sweat fr
om her brow. It was already mid-morning and the sun was high in the sky. “No, we cook by tribes. There are twenty tribes now, of about forty people per tribe. Makes division of labor a bit easier. Every time the community grows, we have to add more tribes to make up for it. Can you imagine, cooking for eighty every single night? But that’s what our team did not long ago!”

  I winced. The very idea exhausted me. I’d rarely even cooked for Will and me. “How many are on the cooking team for your tribe?”

  “Our tribe,” Molly corrected, winking at me. “You’re with us now, dear. And there are six of us. We cook just one meal per day, but since everything’s from scratch and over an open flame, it takes half the day. Everyone gathers and prepares breakfast for herself, or her family if she likes, and same with lunch. But dinner is a community event. Now come on, I’ll explain the rest as we go!” She wiped the sweat again, and I noticed for the first time when she grinned that she had a dimple.

  I followed her to the gardens, down a little path through the trees that had been cleared. Molly went on, “So I said half the day, didn’t I? Yes, the other half the day, we do the washing, drying, sorting, and mending for our tribe.”

  “Oh,” I said. I’d never done my own laundry before either—in the Republic, there’d been an entire class of workers who did that. But here, apparently, not only would I do my own washing—I’d do everyone else’s too.

  I tried not to think about this. It was what it was; I’d get used to it. Be grateful you’re alive, I told myself.

  “Then why aren’t we doing the washing and mending and what not now?” I asked Molly finally.

  “Already finished it,” Molly winked at me again.

  I knew she meant to be kind, but I felt a bit guilty. She might as well have said I’d slept the day away.