by S. B. Caves
‘What is it?’ he growled
‘She’s coming to the end of her term,’ she replied, staring at the circles of light on the toes of his boots. ‘I can’t see inside her cell, but maybe someone should check on her.’
‘Are you trying to give me face, girl?’
She shook her head vehemently. ‘No, sir.’
‘Then shut your trap and get on out.’
As Autumn started to turn the trolley around, she looked at the black rectangle again. She stopped, and turned back to the guard. ‘She could be hurt.’
‘What did you say?’ he bellowed, marching towards her.
She knew it was a mistake; even as the words left her mouth, she wanted to quickly gobble them back up. She pointed at the meal on the tray – the only meal that hadn’t been collected along the row of cells. She had done trolley duty many, many times before over the years and knew the warning signs when something was wrong. Girls had died in those cells because their screams went unanswered. Some of them just bled out. Some would collapse while trying to do light exercise to alleviate the stress on their bodies, and then slip into a coma. Autumn had seen it all. And one of the most obvious indicators was a girl not collecting her tray.
‘I can’t see inside, but—’
Her sentence was disconnected as the guard grabbed her around the throat and slammed her against the barred window behind her. The pain as his palm pressed against her larynx was not completely foreign; some of the guests liked to choke the girls while they had sex, and then of course there was that awful ring in the basement. But of all the various pains she was intimately acquainted with, having her throat crushed was the hardest one to adjust to. Black spots popped in her eyes and her limbs went rigid.
‘You’re not to speak to me unless I speak to you first. You’re not to ask me any questions. You’re not to tell me anything, do you understand me?’
Autumn couldn’t nod, couldn’t mouth the word ‘yes’. She just remained pinned to the wall with her tongue lolling out of her mouth and her eyes scrunched closed. She could feel herself slipping … slipping …
The grip loosened enough to allow her air but no room to wiggle. She coughed.
‘You think I’m like that slob you used to have watching over you? No way, girlie, not a fuckin’ chance. Things have changed around here. When you’re in these halls, I’m the ruler of your existence, the god of your world. You’d better get wise. I own you.’ As he spat the words into her face, his breath sweetly sour from gum that’d been chewed to death, he began to feel under her dress. His hand cupped her privates and squeezed. ‘Down here, I own every part of you, you little cunt.’
‘Ca—’
‘What?’ A thick vein bulged in his head and his face turned red with outrage. ‘You trying to backchat me?’ The hand that groped between her legs lifted her onto her tiptoes.
‘Camera,’ she finally managed, and as soon as she said it, the clamp around her neck relented and the soles of her sandals were once again firmly on the ground.
‘Dumb fucking bitch. You think that applies to me?’ he said, but already his voice was lower, more controlled.
‘No, sir, I don’t,’ she replied, waiting patiently for his hand to drop away. ‘I just don’t want anyone to get into trouble, that’s all.’
Her eyes met his and there was an unspoken understanding between them. The guard didn’t own her or any of the other girls in the cells: Daddy did. The staff were not, in any circumstances whatsoever, to interfere with the girls. There were exceptions to the rule, of course. For example, it was expected that a staff member would discipline a girl who stepped out of line as long as he didn’t do anything that might sully her. This was what made the brutal attack on Mia in the basement so alarming, but then again, these were stressful times and Lena’s escape meant examples needed to be made.
The guard’s radio crackled on his hip, distracting him.
‘Davey? We need you out front, right now,’ a voice said breathlessly. Outside, the floodlights came on, illuminating the grounds.
The guard grabbed the radio, held it to his mouth, ‘What’s the situation?’
‘We got a runaway.’
Autumn didn’t hear any more. The guard replaced the radio and jogged down the corridor. She saw that he wore a pistol pressed against his lower back, in the band of his trousers. When he was out of sight, she turned and looped her fingers through the cage over the window and looked out on to the field. A couple of the guards were running across the wet grass with German shepherds. The dogs’ breath came out in puffs of steam, their tongues lolling. She heard a car engine rev somewhere around the front of the house, accompanied by frantic yelling. She listened harder, and thought that it might be Joseph barking commands.
‘What’s going on, Mel?’ Tulip asked, with her face pressed up against the wicket.
‘Someone’s made a run for it,’ Autumn replied, without diverting her attention from the field. She saw Joseph marching across the grass to brief two other guards before pointing at the trees in the distance. The guards ran off with big rifles that had torches atop the barrel.
‘Who is it?’ one of the other girls asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Autumn said. ‘I can’t see.’
‘Wendy,’ someone said. ‘Bet you anything.’
‘Please don’t let it be Wendy,’ Autumn said, so quietly that none of the others heard. ‘Oh please, Wendy, please, please, please.’
With their mouths right up against the wickets, the pregnant girls began to throw conversation back and forth.
‘They’d better catch her,’ someone said. ‘I can’t go through the basement again.’
‘Basement? You better wish it’s the basement! They won’t put us back down there, not if we didn’t learn our lesson the first time round. No, they’ll do something worse.’
‘Like what?’
Autumn turned around. ‘Hey, keep your voices down,’ she hissed. ‘You guys want to get in trouble too?’
‘We already are in trouble! Even if they catch Wendy, they’re gonna punish us.’ Tulip released a long groan that reverberated down the corridor and infected the other girls, who began wailing too.
‘Mel, you gotta do something!’ It was India, who had now taken her tray into her cell.
‘Oh, you want me to do something?’ Autumn snapped. ‘Why didn’t you appear when I had your tray ready? I thought something was wrong with you.’
‘What? I was asleep?’
‘Asleep, my ass. Didn’t you see me getting choked out here for trying to help you? Don’t act like you didn’t hear it. He nearly broke my fucking neck.’
‘You have to do something,’ India repeated, completely ignoring Autumn’s words. Not a single one of them cared that one of their sisters was out there running for her life. Not one of them could see past her own swollen belly. ‘Once they get her, they’re gonna put us in the cages.’
‘Or the boxes,’ Janet added. ‘The boxes are worse.’
‘Please, Mel, you’re the only one that can do something,’ India whined, her puffy face filling the rectangle through which the food was passed.
‘What do you want me to do, huh?’
‘Anything!’ Tulip screeched. ‘Go talk to Joseph, go talk to what’s-his-name … the new guy, Abraham. Straighten it out.’
‘Yeah, try and straighten it out,’ India added.
Would any of them do the same if the tables were turned? No, of course they wouldn’t, but just then they were wild with fear, a bunch of cows in their pens waiting to be slaughtered. Autumn had to remember that she was dealing with heavily pregnant girls here, the oldest of the bunch only sixteen. They were scared out of their wits, and half mad with boredom and sensory deprivation as a result of being locked up for so long. At least in the dorm the girls got to stretch their legs, do their chores, sometimes even stroll on the grass.
‘If it’s Wendy, they’ll catch her,’ Autumn pointed out. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do now.’
‘Maybe there’s nothing anyone can do for her dumb ass, but you might still be able to help us,’ India said. ‘I don’t just mean us here in the cells, I mean all of us.’
Autumn shook her head, disgusted. Her longevity was her curse here at the house and she bore that cross every time there was a crisis. Throughout the basement punishment the whispers had scuttled to her in the dark like blind mice looking for morsels. Can’t you get us out of this, Mel? What are they going to do with us, Mel? What should we say next time they come down here, Mel?
She stomped off down the corridor and entered the stairwell. Behind her, someone wished her good luck; sounded like Janet. She could hear the tramping of guards running through the various floors as they filed out of the house and into the grounds. Maybe it would be better if she just waited in the stairwell for things to calm down a bit. If she got in the middle of the traffic, she was more than likely going to get knocked on her ass, or maybe one of them would open fire on her thinking she was Wendy.
And then it occurred to her, an idea that struck her mind like a flash of lightning and illuminated tunnels of thought that had long since darkened. With the commotion that Lena’s exit had caused, she was willing to bet that Joseph would send every single one of the guards out after Wendy so as not to have a repeat of the embarrassment. Wendy was very attractive and had wide hips, which made her a valuable asset, but that wasn’t the only reason why they couldn’t afford to lose her. The primary concern was that Lena’s departure had made the others brazen, inspired them to act upon lunatic fantasies of escape. When they caught Wendy – and they would catch her – an example would need to be made; the preggos in the cells were right about that. Perhaps they would put her in a cage and set her alight in front of the rest of the girls to extinguish any ideas they had of getting itchy feet. Or maybe they would cut her tongue out or hack off her ears and make her live out the rest of her miserable life like that. They’d done it before.
Right now, though, none of that mattered. The one thing that did matter was that for the first time in perhaps ever, Autumn had the perfect distraction for her own escape.
She leaned over the banister and peered down the stairwell. She could see the guards rushing out, their radio correspondence echoing off the concrete walls. So far as she’d seen, they were all going north-east through the trees, but she would be stupid to trust that alone. There was a strong chance that they had a lead on Wendy and were organising a campaign to stalk her down, but they could just as easily be running blind.
If Autumn was going to do anything, she would have to slip out of the back through the window in the pantry – a concept she’d cultivated ever since she’d set eyes on the small square aperture as a ten-year-old girl. Nobody would be in the kitchen at this time, and none of the other girls would be out of their irons and wandering the halls. Autumn herself was the only girl on active duty, the only girl in the whole building not being supervised.
She ignored the elevator and instead ran down the stairs, her loose sandals slapping the concrete. When she reached the ground floor, she hesitated, expecting a guard or another member of staff to come crashing through the door. The deer-in-the-headlights routine only lasted a couple of seconds, though, and she went through the door as casually as she could. If she got sprung in the hallway, then she would proclaim that she’d been on dinner duty and was returning because she wasn’t sure what was going on. It was a weak excuse, one that she hoped she wouldn’t have to use.
She came to the brightly lit reception of the house, where she was visible from all angles through the wall-to-wall windows. She tiptoed to a pillar and put her back against it, her heart punching out of her chest. Just up ahead was the kitchen, but she would need to dart out and expose herself to the full view of the house to reach it. She looked through the window and saw a four-by-four heading into the woods beyond the grounds with a massive spotlight beaming from its roof. How far out is she? she wondered. When could she have possibly made her move? Was she on cooking duty? How much of a head start did she have? It didn’t matter, not now anyway. Either they would catch Wendy or they wouldn’t, and neither scenario had any significance for Autumn’s plan.
She dashed through to the kitchen, expecting one of the guards to still be there stuffing his face, but she was greeted only by her own distorted reflection in the hanging pots and pans. When she got to the pantry, she heard voices in the foyer where she had been just seconds before. She froze, rooted to the spot, her sanity threatening to unravel under the weight of her fear. She swallowed, listened as the voices grew fainter and fainter still, then looked up at the square pantry window.
She grabbed the largest knife from the block on the counter. The shelving unit in front of the window housed cans of beans, powdered milk, soup and sardines. She used the shelves like a ladder, hoping that the wood was fastened firmly to the wall so that she wouldn’t collapse in an avalanche of cans. When she was high enough, she reached out and began to use the knife to unscrew the clasp on the small window. It was rusty but not immovable. She pushed the window with her palm. It didn’t budge. God alone knew when it had last been opened. Years ago? Decades, possibly. She grunted and pressed all her weight on it, almost toppling from her perch on the shelves. There was a screech as the wooden frame scraped free of its fixture and a cold blast of air blew into her face.
She wasted no time revelling in her victory, but instead began the awkward process of wriggling out of the window. The space was just wide enough to accommodate her head and shoulders, but it was a tight, almost impossible squeeze. She angled her head and one arm out, then placed her hands on the damp brick wall either side of her and pushed against it. It was as though she was fighting her way out of the house’s birth canal, seizing her opportunity to be reborn.
There was no easy way to make the fall onto the grass below, so she simply extended her forearms and hoped that they would take most of the impact. They didn’t. She rolled forward and slammed down onto her back, winding herself. She lay there a moment unable to breathe, clutching the knife against her chest with both hands, gasping as though she’d just saved herself from drowning. There was no time to lose, though. Before she’d even got her breath back fully, she groped around in the darkness for her misplaced sandal, slipped it back on, and ran for the fence in front of her, sprinting across the grass, arms and legs pumping. Behind her she could hear an orchestra of chaos: guards yelling, the faint rumble of Jeep engines, baying from the German shepherds. It sounded far away, in the opposite direction, but she didn’t once slow down or peek around to check.
The stretch of land that led to the fence was perhaps two hundred metres wide, and she ran every step as though the dogs were at her heels, slavering for her flesh. There was one place along the barrier where the ground dipped down into a furrow. It was inconspicuous enough to go unnoticed by casual observers, but Autumn had lived in the house for years, had earned the trust of the guards and the staff and was allowed from time to time to roam the ground freely. She knew all the weaknesses of the place, the nooks and crannies that provided hiding places if you were small enough.
When she reached the spot, she dropped onto her stomach and snaked her way under, the mud working as a lubricant. Once she was on the other side, she stumbled in among the trees, holding her arms across her face to protect it from brambles and branches.
It wasn’t until she was deep in the forest, her lungs burning, that she relented and finally turned. She could see pinpricks of light in the distance, but she could no longer hear anything other than the sound of rain pattering against the trees, and the angry wind. Then, very abruptly, there was another sound. Laughter. It took her a second to realise that it was her own.
She was free.
19
The road before her was a black void, endless and unchanging, like a snippet of footage stuck on a loop. Francine was going to crash the car, she felt that quite strongly, and yet she would rather total the vehicle than stop.
The excitement of the break-in and kidnap and the bittersweet thrill of progress had long since ebbed, as had the effect of the Triple Xplosions, and now exhaustion was stalking her vehemently, coming to collect. In her haste to catch Glenn Schilling unawares, she’d depleted everything she had. Her bones were leaden and clicked at the joints. Her back was a tapestry of pain from the stress of sitting and sleeping in the cramped confines of the car for so long.
She clicked on the radio, hoping that the noise would keep her stimulated and stop her from falling asleep. Along with the monotonous squeal of the windscreen wipers it helped fill the silence but did little for her eyelids, which continued to slide closed. Her head dipped a couple of times and the car veered, but she managed to snap awake and right it before they left the road.
If Cindy realised how close they’d come to an accident, she did well not to show it. Or perhaps she was waiting for an accident, hoping for it. She didn’t blink, didn’t shift her weight in the seat to get comfortable; didn’t cough. The only thing she did do was wipe her mouth when she began to dribble. Now that the other woman was coming down, Francine thought she would likely see a very different side to her. But that was good. She wanted Cindy itchy and unbalanced; she would be easier to manipulate that way.
Francine opened the window to allow the cold breeze in. Rain flecked the side of her face. She was running low on fuel and was on the verge of total burnout. Little Peace was still over a hundred and fifty miles away according to the highway signs, so she got off at the next exit in a place called Green Grove, and drove until she found a string of motels.
‘This isn’t Little Peace,’ Cindy said, squinting through the rain-blurred windscreen.
‘We’re stopping for the night.’
‘Oh.’
Francine pulled up in the gravel courtyard and shut the engine off. ‘Cindy, look at me. Cindy?’
