Worlds Collide: Sunset Rising, Book Two

by McEachern, S. M.

  Gaia lifted her glasses and rested them on top of her head. I did the same. “What do you want to learn how to make?”

  “I don’t know. How about eggs?”

  “What kind of eggs?”

  “There are different kinds?”

  Gaia rolled her eyes. “This is going to be a long day.” She went to a refrigerator, took out a few things, and set them on the counter beside the stove. She opened up a box, revealing eggs. “I’ll teach you how to make an omelet.”

  She cracked a few eggs into a bowl and whipped them, just as Jack had done. This part I knew how to do. It was the frying part that had done me in when I tried to make them. I noticed Gaia hadn’t heated her frying pan yet.

  She took out a wooden board and put a few vegetables on it, opened a drawer and withdrew a knife. Not a little knife—a big, sharp knife. She chopped the vegetables while I stared at the knife, my mouth hanging open.

  “We have access to knives?”

  Gaia stopped chopping and regarded me, a bland look on her face. “Let me guess. You’re going to start talking revolt again.” She went back to chopping.

  I looked around to see if anyone was listening, but the other workers were well out of hearing distance. “It’s an obvious weapon. Don’t tell me no one has thought of it.”

  Her efforts at chopping became a little more demanding, escalating to the point of leaving scars on the chopping board. Then she slammed the knife down on the counter.

  I instantly regretted bringing it up.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “I always seem to be saying the wrong thing around you. I’ll just stop talking.”

  My apology only seemed to inflame her more and she picked up the cutting board and roughly swiped the almost pulverized vegetables into the bowl. Picking up a fork, she began to beat the eggs. Violently. Tears flowed down her cheeks and into the bowl.

  I took a step back from the rage rolling off of her. She caught my movement out of the corner of her eye, and then picked up the entire bowl and threw it against the wall. A mangled half-scream escaped her. Everyone in the kitchen stopped to look at her.

  Gaia covered her eyes with her hands. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing.

  “Everything’s fine,” I announced, breaking the unnatural silence that followed her outburst. “She just cut her finger, that’s all. I’ve got it.”

  The kitchen staff looked unsure, but eventually went back to what they were doing. After all, they had to maintain their schedule or suffer the consequences.

  “Gaia, what the hell?” I asked. “I told you I wouldn’t talk about it anymore and I meant it.”

  She dropped her hands away from her eyes. They were wet with tears. “Why did you have to come here?”

  I was taken aback by her anger since I didn’t really feel I deserved it. “You think I had a choice?”

  “Of course you didn’t have a choice!” she snapped. “None of us did. The bourge decide for us. They decide who lives and who dies.” Her breath caught on a sob and she swallowed it down.

  “I know, but I don’t understand why you’re this upset if you don’t want to—” I stopped short of saying rebel since I promised her I wouldn’t speak of it again.

  She stepped toward the counter and leaned against it, staring down at the knife. “I’ve lived my life according to their rules. I always showed up for work on time, I always did what I was asked, even when I was sent upstairs to work at their parties. I knew that if I was a good urchin, I would live to see thirty-five.” Raising her eyes away from the counter, she looked directly at me. Bitterness and pain clouded her features. “And believe it or not, I had a life worth living—a husband I was madly in love with and a son who owned my heart. Saying goodbye to him when I left for the Cull was the hardest thing I ever had to do.” She squeezed her eyes shut and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “But at least I made it to thirty-five, right? Not everyone does. And my husband—Kal—made it too. So when it was time for the Cull, we walked up the stone stairs of the Pit together. I’m not sure I could’ve walked through those big steel doors into the Dome without his support. I was so scared I could barely walk. But he just kept talking me through every step, telling me we would still be together on the other side.”

  Her bottom lip trembled and she drew in a long sobbing breath. Hesitantly, I placed a hand on her shoulder, unsure if it was a welcome comfort, but she didn’t even seem to notice. She swiped at her wet cheeks.

  “Domers escorted all of us through a maze of halls to a big empty room. We were ushered inside and big steel doors closed, locking us in. We all thought we were going to be gassed and some people started screaming. I think I was one of them. But Kal just held me and said he had read about gassing and it wasn’t a painful way to go. So we held each other, waiting to die, and all of the sudden another set of doors opened and a blinding light struck us. It was the sun. The sun.” She looked at me. “It was scary at first. The thought ran through my head that they would just let the radiation take care of us. I mean, we all know that’s a horrible way to die. But then armed soldiers came in from outside and told us to line up, gave us glasses, and herded us through the doors out onto a platform. The stairs were steep, and on my shaky legs, I fell a few steps. That’s when I saw it—through the space between the steps.” She stopped talking to take a few deep breaths. “They built that platform over a huge pile of bones, Sunny. Human bones. Some of them still with rotting flesh on them.” She gasped in a breath.

  Bile rose in my throat and I gagged. Had the bourge turned one of the garbage chutes into a gas chamber? Was that how they Culled us? An image of my mother— alone, waiting to be gassed—tortured me. My stomach heaved and I hurried to the sink. Gaia must not have noticed the effect her story had on me. She just kept on talking. Maybe she had forgotten I was there.

  “Then we were tagged and stuck in the corral. Kal was the first to speak up and I stood by his side. What they were doing was in direct violation of the treaty. We had more than paid their price and we owed them nothing! It didn’t take much for Kal to get everyone riled up, because we all knew it was wrong. We weren’t just going to accept being forced to stay slaves.” Sniffing, she rubbed her nose against her arm. Her lips were drawn into a hard line. “That’s when they came up with the idea for the shooting range, and Kal was one of the first sent there. Another corral was constructed and the men and women were separated. And what was my punishment for all of this?” She picked up the knife and drove it into the wooden board. I jumped back, not sure what else she wanted to do with that knife. “The general claimed me for himself. Said I needed taming. And I let him.”

  Her hand remained wrapped around the hilt, her knuckles white with the effort.

  “You didn’t have a choice, Gaia,” I said, nervously looking down at the knife. “Like you said, none of us do.”

  “That’s right, Sunny, none of us do.” She finally removed her hand from the knife and made a sweeping gesture toward the door. “So don’t come in here, spouting words like rebellion and war, as if it were a choice. You’re nothing but a naïve little girl who’s going to end up getting a lot of people killed.”

  The silence stretched out between us as I searched for the right response, but I was still struggling to come to terms with what she had told me. Like everyone else in the Pit, I grew up with the knowledge that my life would end at thirty-five. Sometimes at night, when sleep was elusive, it was hard not to think about what the Cull would be like. Would I be shot? Would be I be given an injection? I always thought of the Cull as something that was done to someone. It never occurred to me that I would need to find the inner strength to allow it to happen.

  The warmth of a tear travelled down my already-stained cheeks and reminded me I was still crying. Using the heel
s of my hands, I rubbed away the wetness. “I don’t know what to say, Gaia, other than I am really sorry for what you went through.”

  “I want you to say you’ll stop. Stop your campaign to start a war.” She took out a clean bowl and started making an omelet all over again. “If General Powell even suspected that I was trying to cause trouble, he’d take it out on Kal. So I don’t want to be associated with you in any way. But since I have to,” she said, “please do me a favor and don’t get my husband killed.” She put a frying pan on the stove and turned on the element.

  I was surprised to hear she thought her husband was still alive. If the man I saw running in terror from the bourge was any indication of life on the range, I doubted anyone sent there lived very long. This wasn’t something I wanted to bring up, though. It was probably best if I didn’t talk at all. Nothing I could say would make her world right.

  And now that I knew how she felt, I would be wise to guard my tongue about my association with Jack. If she found out what we were trying to do, she might just tell the general in order to mitigate any blame.

  “Are you paying attention?” she asked, pulling me out of my thoughts. I stepped closer to the stove, so I could see into the frying pan. “The omelet should look like this before you turn it.” The eggs were still gooey in the center when she folded it. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  I doubted that very much. “You do?”

  “You think I’m a fool for thinking that Kal could still be alive.” She flipped the omelet. It was starting to look pretty brown. “It’s been almost two years since he was sent there. But he’s a smart man. The smartest man I know. And—” She paused, her eyes watering again. “And I’d know if he was gone from this world. My heart would feel it.” Her breath caught on a sob. The rage was gone from her face, replaced with a sad, hopeful look. It wasn’t an unfamiliar expression. Hope and disappointment were frequent partners in the Pit.

  “I’m sure he’s still alive.” I gave her an encouraging smile, relieved that her rage was spent. “And I promise, I won’t talk about it anymore.”

  Her curt nod was the only acknowledgement of my promise. Picking up the frying pan, she slid the omelet onto a plate. “And that’s all there is to it.”

  I looked at the omelet. It had a brown crust on it. She gave me a fork and I tasted it. Much better than the eggs I had made. Maybe tears were the secret ingredient.

  A few of the kitchen staff were making their presence known and Gaia and I cleared out. “On to drinks,” Gaia said, leading me to a quiet area. She set the omelet on the counter and I caught myself worrying if it was going to be eaten or not. Food should never be wasted. “There’s no alcohol here, so I’ll just show you how to make coffee.”

  “Ja—” I caught myself. “Mr. Kenner likes coffee. I tried it and don’t really like it,” I said conversationally.

  “So you know how to make it already.”

  “No,” I said, a little confused.

  She gave me a curious look. “Captain Kenner makes his own coffee? And you drink it?”

  I drew my eyebrows together and shook my head. “No. I mean, yes he makes it because I don’t know how. It’s one of the things he wants me to learn. I just tasted it when he was…in the shower.”

  Gaia nodded. “I’ve been known to sneak a few things when the general isn’t looking too.”

  Silently, I observed how she made coffee, trying to maintain a keen interest. I decided talking was no longer an option for me. It wasn’t a question of if I was going to get myself into more trouble with Gaia, it was a question of when.

  The coffee finished percolating through the machine. “That concludes our lesson for today. Did you get it all?

  I nodded. “Mr. Kenner will be so pleased when I make him an omelet and coffee tomorrow morning.”

  She studied me for a moment. “Make sure he is, because if he complains to the general again that you’re not trained in the kitchen, it’ll be my fault.” She walked away, heading toward the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To enjoy what’s left of my day in the sunshine.”

  She went into the cafeteria, grabbed a chair and went outside. I followed suit, even though she hadn’t invited me. I set my chair beside hers and we sat in awkward silence. Well, at least it was awkward for me. Gaia seemed to be off in her own world. There was no hint that she ever had an emotional breakdown. She was back to being silent and brooding, with an aura of bitterness.

  After a while, it felt like the sun was burning right through the sunscreen I had slathered on that morning. It would be a few hours before the end of the workday, so I got up and walked around. Gaia didn’t join me, which was a relief.

  There were about a dozen women outside, hanging laundry to dry. A few looked my way and I smiled at them. They didn’t return it. They just whispered, giggled and continued with their task. Although I was well aware of how mistresses were viewed, I had never been on the receiving end before. I went in search of a quiet spot to be alone.

  The urchin corral wasn’t a pretty place. Not at all like the city the bourge had built. There were no flowerbeds, green grass, or picket fences. Only worn dirt paths and long, narrow buildings the color of replicator-grey. Yet with the sun shining down, the clouds chasing each other across the sky and the breeze blowing through my hair, it was still infinitely better than the Pit.

  A sad ache plagued me in the aftermath of Gaia’s confession. The one thought I had been desperately trying to hold at bay wouldn’t go away. My mother walked to her death alone. No one had been there to comfort her.

  I sat down on the ground in the shade of a building, away from prying eyes, and let my tears spill.

  The sound of voices and the gates opening pulled me back into reality. The sun was lower in the sky and the shadows had grown long. I hadn’t heard a horn signaling the end of the workday, but maybe they didn’t use one here in the corral. The slaves were already home.

  Standing up, I brushed off the dirt and went in search of Gaia. She was in the same place where our driver had dropped us off. She barely acknowledged my presence when I stood next to her. I was relieved when the jeep pulled up, breaking our awkward silence.

  As we both walked toward the vehicle, the driver looked directly at me. “Not you.” I faltered, wondering if he was actually talking to me. Gaia looked from the driver to me. I decided there must be a mistake and reached for the jeep door. “Are you deaf? Not you.” His voice was loud, catching the attention of anyone close by.

  “Me?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “There must be a mistake.”

  Gaia gave me a concerned look but got into the back of the jeep and closed the door.

  “No mistake.” He pulled away and I watched them go.

  It didn’t make sense. Why not me?

  Maybe Jack was coming for me on the bike.

  I had a clear view of the gates, so I remained where I was, waiting for him. Trucks full of farmhands started to roll in, and the workers disembarked. One by one, the trucks came and left. Soon there were no more.

  The soldiers closed the gates.

  Chapter Eleven

  Fear paralyzed me as I stared at the locked gates. If Jack were running late, they would have to open them back up for him, wouldn’t they? He was the heir. They would have to do whatever he ordered.

  The thought crept into my mind that maybe he couldn’t come. Maybe the general had found out about him. Was he in custody right now? Being dragged back into the Dome to face President Holt? But if they knew about him, they would know about me. They wouldn’t just let me stay here. They would kill me…or drag me back to face Holt, too.

  “Looks like you’re stayi
ng here tonight, princess.” At the sound of her voice, I turned to find Hazel standing there with a blanket, pillow, and some toiletries.

  “Oh, I don’t think I’ll be staying the night. I’m sure Mr. Kenner is just running late.”

  Hazel snorted. “Yeah. Sure he is.” She held out the bed linens to me. “While you’re waiting you might as well make yourself comfortable. There are bunks available in C Block.” She motioned to a building, an exact replica of every building in the compound, except for the big C on the side.

  She walked away, leaving me standing there by myself, clutching my bedding.

  No one seemed to notice me. They walked by, some in pairs, some in groups. I was the only one on my own. I looked at the big gates one more time and then walked toward the big C.

  Where was Jack? Something was wrong.

  The interior of C Block consisted of row upon row of bunk beds with only a few small windows. Most of the beds already appeared to be taken. Women stood by their bunks, talking with each other while they gathered their towels and other toiletries. Their chatter faded as my presence became known. I put a smile on my face and walked down the narrow path between bunks looking for an empty bed. I found one a few rows in.

  Unfolding the blanket, I made my bed, smoothing every crease and wrinkle in an attempt to look busy. I didn’t want them to know I could hear their whispers.

  “C’mon be nice. We should show her where the shower is.”

  “Pampered little mistresses don’t need showers since they don’t sweat!”

  There was a fit of giggling.

  Ignoring it, I left C Block and returned to the cafeteria.

  There was already a long queue for dinner and I joined it. Not that I was hungry. But I didn’t know what else to do. Besides, if Jack came to the corral looking for me, he wouldn’t know to go to C Block. He would probably look for me here first.

  It took a long time to make it to where the food was laid out, and still Jack had not appeared. I filled a plate with food I had no desire to eat and went in search of somewhere to sit. The cafeteria was a big open room with tables joined together and running in rows. I scanned the diners looking for a familiar face—Abby, Opal or maybe even my mother—without any luck. I did see a few women with the blank, uninterested stare of having been chemically sterilized, and tried not to make the connection to Jack. My mind still went there.