Gray (Book 2)

by Cadle, Lou

  Coral took the opportunity to open the drawers of the desk. She was looking for anything of use—keys, a potential weapon, a map of Idaho, instructions for the radio.

  What she found was paper: one lonely pencil and a pad of paper, with the name of a feed store printed on the top of each page. She glanced behind herself—Ellie was still dumping the wash water outside—and tore off two pages. If she took the pencil, they might notice. She snapped the tip off it, leaving herself with a half-inch long piece of lead. That could be an accident, a broken tip.

  She folded the paper around the precious bit of pencil, folded it again, and tucked it in her front pocket. Glancing one last time at the radio setup, knowing she wouldn’t have the chance to be alone with it long enough to try to make it work, she backed into the kitchen and gathered up the empty water pitchers.

  She had a way to communicate with Benjamin now. It was step one in her escape plan.

  *

  By mid-afternoon, Ellie and she had a good fire going in the barbecue pit, and water was set on the iron grates above it to heat. Pitchers of water had been distributed around the compound, and to the kitchen, for the cleaning of vegetables. Pratt—who still hadn’t apologized to her—brought the leg of lamb to the kitchen.

  Coral excused herself to go to the outhouse.

  Ellie gave her an apologetic look. “I have to go with you, I’m afraid. One minute.”

  “That’s okay,” Coral said. She wondered when she’d be trusted enough to be alone, even for such a short time. If there was always someone with her every second, it would be damned hard to prepare to escape. A cooperative attitude was important, for she needed to make them believe she could be trusted—at least for long enough to let her steal supplies or reconnoiter.

  On the walk to the outhouse, Coral said, “Tell me about who you lost.”

  Ellie shook her head.

  “Did they get sick, or was it the fire?” They were at the outhouse.

  “I’ll wait for you out here.”

  At least she had that much privacy. Coral closed the door and dug the paper and pencil lead from her pocket. She took off her gloves and put them down on the ledge next to the closed toilet seat. Carefully, she opened the folds of the paper and plucked the pencil point out.

  She thought about what she needed to write. In the tiniest print she could manage, she wrote:

  Escape in 4 nites ~midnight, meet @ outhouse. I’ll have knife, candle, food. U—weapon, slpng bag, ??

  She didn’t sign it. If it were found, there’d be little doubt of who wrote it. She didn’t tell Benjamin to destroy it—he was smart enough to figure that out on his own. There weren’t clocks on the walls here, either, but it didn’t matter so much if they were each off by a half-hour. If she were first to the outhouse, fine. If he were first, he’d wait for her. If the first one of them to reach it were caught, they could swear they needed to pee, and maybe get away without punishment.

  Taking the pencil lead between her front teeth, she tore off the thin strip of the message and formed it into a tiny roll, no bigger than half a toothpick. She secured the pencil lead back inside the remaining paper, and tucked it all back into her pocket.

  Now she needed to find a way to slip the message to him. For a second, she thought about hiding it in his cot, but there was no guarantee that she’d be in the men’s cabin tomorrow, and he could easily miss it. She needed to put it right into his hot little hand.

  How to get next to him? This damned segregation by sex was a real problem for her.

  She used the outhouse for its intended purpose and came out, smiling at Ellie. “Okay, what next?”

  The rest of the afternoon was taken up with food prep. One of the men—Lorne, this time—brought sacks of vegetables from the cave. She’d like to see it. Had they let Benjamin in there? What she’d give for just five minutes alone with him, to exchange information.

  The vegetables needed to be sorted. Any with a rotten spot, but still mostly good, were piled on the counter for tonight’s meal. The ones without any blemish were piled into crates, stacked in the corner, for use the rest of the week.

  There were turnips and parsnips, but not nearly as many as there were potatoes and carrots. Carrots could be eaten raw, but they weren’t many calories for the weight. “Can you eat these raw?” she asked Ellie, holding up a parsnip that had grown in a sort of corkscrew.

  “Sure. The smallest ones taste best.”

  “Can I try one?”

  Ellie glanced behind her. “I won’t tell.”

  Coral scrubbed it off and broke it in half, offering the thicker end to Ellie, who shook her head. Coral bit into it. It was crunchy, more green-tasting somehow than a carrot even though it was nearly white. She swallowed.

  “How was it?”

  “Fine. Though I think a diet of nothing but would make me belch a lot.”

  “They’re sweeter roasted. Sometimes we roast them and potatoes in the coals of the morning fire. The men take them to work.”

  “Do you ever have potatoes for breakfast?”

  “No.”

  “I’d be happy to get up early and make them one morning. It might make a nice change for everyone from oatmeal.”

  “Does this mean you’re staying?”

  Coral nodded, hating the lie, but knowing she needed to play this role. “I like it here. People are nice. There’s plenty of food. The work isn’t hard.”

  “I’m glad,” said Ellie.

  “The sex segregation is odd, though.”

  “I suppose it might seem so. I don’t think about it much, since I go home to the couple cabin every night. I get plenty of male conversation in the evenings.”

  “The couples talk with each other at night?”

  “Some. Even if we didn’t, you can hear every word said.”

  “Must be hard to fight.”

  “We try not to,” Ellie said.

  “Any good gossip from listening in?”

  “We try not to do that, either.”

  “Hmm.” Coral finished sorting the bag of parsnips and Ellie helped her pile the good ones back in the storage crate. “What’s next?”

  “Help me with the potatoes. We eat more of them.”

  “Sure. So, any nice gossip you’ve heard?”

  “Mostly about you. I hear Alva has offered for you.”

  Coral schooled her expression. “He seems nice, but of course I can’t get to know him to know that for sure, not if we aren’t allowed to talk to the men.”

  “We are allowed after meeting. And Alva is nice. Shy. He stutters sometimes when he’s very nervous.”

  “He didn’t when he talked to me. That was on the way here, I mean, after Calex and him found us.”

  “Are you sweet on that Benjamin?”

  “He’s a friend,” said Coral. “We survived together. We’re partners. We have each other’s back. It means more now than it used to, having a friend like that. It means more to me than any boyfriend has ever meant.” That was nothing but true. Benjamin was family now.

  “Will he be upset about Alva?”

  “I don’t think so,” Coral said. Not in the way Ellie meant. She hoped he was upset about the idea of her being raped. “He seemed to accept it fine when Tithing told us.” She understood why he hadn’t protested, but a part of her felt irrationally betrayed by that.

  “That’s good. Jealousy is a weakness. And sometimes our test.”

  Coral didn’t want to talk about her impending “marriage” or about what would happen to her if she couldn’t get away from here. “Tell me about your childhood. You were raised in the—the Seed?” She’d almost said “cult.” That’d go over well.

  “From age ten on. We came down from the BC Farm.”

  “You’re Canadian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Living here for how long?”

  “In the States, oh, about twenty years. I could be a citizen, if I wanted. But we don’t care about such things.”

  They mu
st all live under the radar, or at least some of them must. It’d only take one person, using a legitimate name and social security number and bank account, to buy land and pay taxes. Of course, that was pre-Event. Everybody lived under the radar now—or the radar was no longer functioning, to be more accurate. Coral realized that a person could start a life over, now. If you had survived, you could reinvent yourself. New name, new background, erase a criminal record, debts all gone. Maybe even, for a short, time, pretend to be a different sort of person, until your core personality reasserted itself.

  Coral liked the old her. She hated having to pretend to be something else to these people. A month of it would break her, she feared, more completely than their attempts at brainwashing her.

  They fell silent, and Coral tried to think through the escape. Food, weapon, and protection against the cold: those were the basic needs. Transportation would be nice. And, most important of all, Benjamin. She’d see him across the room at dinner. She needed to find a way to get close enough to hand him the note.

  The smell of the cooking meat, when it was brought in, sent her salivary glands into overdrive. She hoped the men would leave enough for the women. She watched the men array themselves around the table. Benjamin was close to this end. Could she lurch over, pretend to fall into him, get the note to him that way?

  She thought not. Too many people had their eyes on her, and the women never approached the men directly at meal time.

  The women were dismissed and trooped into the kitchen. Coral racked her brain, trying to figure out a legitimate excuse to go in there. Maybe they’d need something? That never happened, and if it did, Brynn would probably take it out to them. Her mind was a blank, right up until she heard the chairs start to scrape on the floor. She looked down at her hands, still bare from doing the work of slicing vegetables. Then she had it.

  She flung open the door to the dining room and rushed through. If she’d been lucky, Benjamin might have been standing, and in her path. But he wasn’t, so she tore through the front door and outside. She palmed the note to Benjamin. With the other hand, she braced herself against the outer wall, leaned over at the waist, and began to cough, trying to make the sounds of a woman on the verge of puking.

  The door flew open after her. From the corner of her eye she could see Tithing emerge and pull up short. Maybe he thought she had bolted.

  Coral gagged. She could taste the parsnip again. Damn, I hope I don’t make myself vomit for real.

  Another man emerged, and a third—Jim and Benjamin.

  She gave a moan and made herself gag again. C’mon, Benjamin. Figure it out.

  He sidestepped Jim and in three long strides was by her side. “Are you okay?”

  She moaned and grasped for his hand. His gloves were on. She took the paper and shoved it hard up into his glove. “Sick,” she said.

  Tithing rushed over, as did Jim. The rest of the men were coming out now.

  She dropped Benjamin’s hand. Had he felt the paper slide in? She had a terrible image of it falling to the ground and exposing her.

  Jim tugged on Benjamin’s arm and he stepped back from her.

  Tithing said, “Do you need help?”

  Coral stood up and panted, as if she’d just run a race. “I think I’m going to be okay. It was a wave of nausea.”

  Tithing moved closer and took her upper arm. “You’re not pregnant?”

  She shook her head. “No. No chance at all.”

  He glanced at Benjamin, who Jim had herded back to the knot of men by the door.

  “No. We haven’t, not ever.” She wiped her hand across her lips. “I tried a bite of raw vegetable today. I think it didn’t agree with me.”

  He looked relieved and angry at the same time. “You’re not supposed to eat while you cook.”

  “Sorry. I’d never had parsnips, and I was curious.”

  “You’ve paid for it, I suppose.”

  She tried to look both contrite and nauseated. Inside, she was celebrating getting the note into Benjamin’s hands.

  Now she was committed to the escape. In four nights, she’d be more than ready to leave this place behind, let it fade into the bad memories of all the other post-Event encounters.

  She was sent to her cabin without supper, with a sour-faced Brynn as a guard. Not having thought through her plan or this possible consequence, she was frustrated that she missed a meal as a result. She almost regretted it when she had to watch Brynn eat her own dinner from a plate on her lap.

  But Benjamin had the note. It was worth skipping a meal for that.

  That night, after lights out, she was hungry and she was excited, so sleep did not come easily. The benefit to that was that she was awake when the others were asleep. Brynn was snoring softly. Coral crawled from her cot, padded to the blanket door, pushed through, pushed back in, and listened. Neither of them woke. On her way back to bed, in the dark, she stumbled against the cot, and it squeaked. She froze. But still, neither of her cabin mates moved. Not so much as a hitch interrupted Brynn’s snore.

  I can do this. This escape is going to happen. If they could keep ahead of pursuit, they might survive their captivity here. She was still buzzed from the thought of it, but she needed her rest, too. They’d likely have to stay up all that night of the escape, so she had to get rest now, so she would be thinking straight tomorrow.

  *

  The next morning, Coral hoped to catch sight of Benjamin, but the men were gone from the compound by the time the women had cleaned up after breakfast. Brynn let her go out alone with Polly to care for the animals.

  She hoped that meant they were letting down their guard, coming to trust her a bit.

  “Have you always liked animals?” she asked Polly as they walked along.

  “I guess. They seem to like me,” said the girl.

  “Then you must like them. Don’t animals know when people don’t?”

  “I guess.”

  What a strange child, Coral thought. Wouldn’t most girls that age dote on pets? Even if these were farm animals, it seemed strange that Polly sounded so distant about them.

  The girl said, “I’ll milk. You pour the donkey’s feed.”

  Coral had snatched a small carrot this morning in the kitchen and took it from her pocket, looking behind to make sure Polly wasn’t watching. She removed her glove, put the carrot on her palm and let Jubilee eat it. He seemed to enjoy it, and when he was done, he nudged her, no doubt wanting another. “Sorry, sweetie,” she whispered to it. “But I can get you some nice straw.”

  She pulled more out of the bale they’d used yesterday, set it into the blue plastic tub that was its donkey-bowl, or whatever they called it. Trough? Maybe those were only for water. Coral really didn’t know much about farms.

  “Check the water,” Polly said. She was untying the white goat after its milking. It danced away again and went to nuzzle its friend.

  Coral jumped when the donkey brayed at them. “Crap, he’s loud!”

  “That wasn’t even a loud one. You should hear him when he gets mad.”

  She wondered about taking him for transportation in the escape. Would the animal bray and give them away when they tried to sneak off? She should rethink this part of the plan.

  Damn, but that she didn’t miss Benjamin. They were so good together that way, talking through options, bouncing ideas back and forth. She missed him in a lot of other ways, too. He was her only real connection in this new world. Was he doing okay? Were they treating him well? She’d seen no bruises on him, and he moved okay, so at least they weren’t beating him. But what about abuses she couldn’t see? She hoped he was okay.

  There were only a couple inches of water in the trough. It had frozen solid. Yesterday, they had to crack the ice on top of the trough full of water. Polly had said she did it morning and night. Coral said, “Out of water.”

  “Okay, so we’ll have to haul more. It’ll be faster if we carry four buckets at a time. Can you handle two?”

  “
I think so.”

  When they had retrieved the buckets from the main cabin, they walked to the spring.

  “Do you miss your family?” asked Coral.

  “I have a family, here.”

  “I know what you mean. Benjamin and I are family, too.” She hoped the girl might really get that. If someone here could see them as real humans, with feelings and rights and goals of their own, maybe—

  “And I’ll have my own family soon,” said Polly. “Babies, and a husband. You can too, with Alva.”

  They had reached the spring. Polly grabbed the pipe they used to crack the ice. Coral’s steps slowed while she worked out what the girl had just said. “Wait. You mean, they’re going to make you marry one of the men?”

  “Next full moon. Probably same as you.”

  Coral felt lightheaded. “Polly, you’re twelve years old.”

  “Almost thirteen.”

  “They can’t do this to you!”

  “Nobody is doing anything to me.”

  “But….” She tried to think of how to say it right, say it in a way the girl could understand. She knew it wouldn’t be enough, but she tried to explain. “It’s wrong. It’s morally wrong.”

  “In the olden days, girls got married as soon as she started her menses,” Polly said, horrifyingly matter-of-fact. She banged on the ice crust over the spring.

  Coral moved closer and touched the girl’s arm. “It’s not the olden days. It’s illegal.”

  “There are no laws now. And there never were that we cared about.”

  “They can’t make you.” Her hand was reaching out, beseeching the girl. “We can stop them.”

  “They aren’t making me. Don’t you get it?”

  “I get that it’s wrong.”

  “It’s as it should be. The Reaping has come. I need to help gather the Seeds.”

  Coral wanted to scream in frustration. How could she make this poor brainwashed girl understand? “Aren’t you worried it will hurt?”

  “What?”

  “Sex. Childbirth. Your body isn’t even fully grown.”

  “It’s grown enough to bleed. It’s grown enough to Seed.”

  Was that one of their commandments or something? A happy child-abuse rhyme? “Which one of them?” she asked.