Olive closed the interview with a pert nod of her head. "I'll apprise you of my decision tomorrow. Right now, I have a party to prepare for."
She rose swiftly from her seat and flicked her hand at him, motioning him to the door, then followed him through.
"Joel," she called. "Show him to his quarters for the evening."
Joel led Eli down a flagstone path, away from Olive's and across the street to the other mansion. He shoved Eli inside.
Two men met him next to a set of stairs. A vast room opened up behind them, where a group of people lounged and talked. Eli smelled roasting meat and his stomach contracted.
"Her Royal Highness wants him in the guest room," Joel said.
"And who's this stray dog?" asked a man with red hair.
"Found him on the road."
The man looked Eli up and down. "So this is what's left out there?" He laughed and the others joined in. "That's not very promising."
"You should've seen him when we found him," Joel said, shoving Eli's pack into his arms. "Behave yourself, savage."
The man with red hair took Eli by the arm and led him up a set of carpeted stairs, down a hallway, and to a closed door. The guard popped it open, and Eli took a step forward, but the man stopped him with a hand to the chest.
"I don't care what Olive wants with you. I'll slit your throat if you piss me off. Understand?"
Eli studied the freckled face. A man made cruel by circumstances. Eli had been that man before. Would he be that man again?
"I do," Eli said.
The red-haired man left and Eli backed into the room. In the dim light, he found the outline of a bed and sunk down onto it. For the first time in hours, tension shuddered off his body in a wave.
He'd done what he could. If he failed, it would all be over in the morning. But Eli was sure he hadn't failed — Olive had peeked into the darkest part of his soul and smiled at what she discovered. She'd ask horrible things of him and he knew he could do them. It didn't matter that he didn't want to, because a house full of captive girls was counting on him. There was nothing left to do but wait for the day to pass and the night to come.
Eli strolled to a tall window that overlooked the town. Across the street was Olive's sprawling mansion and clean lawn. The guest house. Farther down the road, the square cabins and dirt tracks between them. And farther still, the gardens and barns, the imposing wall. Eli watched the sun set on it all as the girls in white disappeared into their prison, their fates unknown to those who loved them. The weary masses toiled until twilight, then trudged bare-footed to their shacks. They wouldn't fight a move to another settlement, a different leader, a new life. But Olive would never give up her kingdom.
Darkness fell, and the yellow lights in her mansion burned through the black. Eli peeked at the soft bed but lay on the hard floor with his arm for a pillow. He stared at the shadowed ceiling and tried to plan, to imagine how he'd use Olive's trust — if he gained it at all — to betray her. But the girls puzzled him. They seemed peaceful, calm, happy, not desperate or afraid. At least not the ones allowed outside.
His thoughts morphed into dreams. Suddenly the girls were running through the woods toward a towering square building. Men stood outside, waiting. One by one, they pulled the girls inside, slamming doors and windows shut behind them. There was no way in or out. Eli stood outside, helpless, listening to their screams for help. He hollered up at the closed windows and told them he was coming and they'd soon be free.
His own voice, mumbling this promise to the girls, woke him up. He jerked awake to a pitch-dark room filled with unfamiliar shapes. Sleep had let him forget where he was for a moment.
Laughter and music sounded somewhere outside. Not live and played on handmade instruments, but recorded music. Eli didn't recognize the song: a woman's voice crooning to swirling violins.
He rose and walked to the windows, pulling back the curtains on a dark night. Olive's glass house glowed white and large in a sea of black; light spilled across the front lawn and cast an eerie spotlight on the guest house. Silhouettes drifted past her windows. The song finished, and the hush revealed a chorus of Parasite voices, calling into the night from beyond the wall. Another song began and drowned them out. Eli didn't recognize that one, either, but it was melancholy and oddly beautiful. He listened and his breath fogged the glass; when it cleared, he spotted two men strolling up and down the road. They met in the middle at the lowest point between the hills — the night patrol, doing its rounds.
Olive's watchful eye never rested. What had made her so paranoid, so controlling? Was she afraid of her own people?
Something moved outside, right below Eli's window — a black figure crouching in the shadows between the cabins. The figure seemed to be watching the patrol. As one man plodded down the hill and away from Olive's, the figure edged nearer to the road. When the patrol was out of sight, he sprinted from his hiding place.
He ran across the road to Olive's, skirting around the light pooled across her yard. He vanished into shadow, then emerged in the dim halo of light around the guest house. Eli squinted at the building as the figure crept close to the house and gazed up at a second-floor window. A small figure craned outward from its black depths, her form limned in the light spilling from Olive's house.
Music and laughter continued to narrate the sparsely lit scene. The girl flailed her arms. The figure below gestured upwards and pointed to the woods behind the house. He thrust his hands downward, as if trying to convince her to jump. The girl leaned out a little more. The figure below opened his arms. She froze, motioned down the road. Her rescuer whipped around. She slipped back through the window.
The patrol was coming back up the hill.
The man left the window and hid in a strip of shadow beside the guest house. It was too late: the guard had spotted him and covered the distance between them at a run. He cornered him at the side of the guest house and pulled the figure from shadow into the light.
Eli couldn't hear the fight that followed, only the laughter coming from Olive's backyard and the music drifting into the night air. But he could imagine it.
The grunt as the guard leapt on the girl's rescuer and landed on top of him. The smack of fist against jaw. The victim's yelps of pain. Eli flinched with every punch as one man — larger, armed, angry — pummeled the helpless one beneath him.
Eventually the smaller figure on the bottom stopped moving and lay on the grass with his arms sprawled. The larger man flipped him over onto his stomach and bent over him for a few moments. He then yanked him up from the ground, draped him easily over his shoulder, and walked back to Olive's.
As they disappeared inside, Eli remembered the peaceful girls in white, plucking tomatoes in the garden. Roger and Anna were right — they weren't the only girls in Grant's Hill.
We've heard rumors there's more inside. Girls no one sees.
Eli wondered what horrors this victim — or rebel, according to Olive — was trying to escape inside.
Chapter 26
The next morning, Eli paced in front of Olive's fireplace, waiting for her to arrive. Two guards stood at ease on each side of the French doors, watching his every move while fingering the knives sheathed at their hips.
"Bet you a pouch of tobacco she kicks him out," said one.
His companion shook his head. "Dumb brute looks useful. I bet your precious Playboy collection she keeps him."
The first man sighed, stared Eli up and down. "Fine. But if I'm right, I get to slit his throat."
"Fair enough."
Eli stopped pacing in front of the fireplace and turned his back on the guards. He was faced with a row of photos lined up along the mantle.
Olive overlooking a sweeping Mediterranean coastline, wine glass in hand.
Olive with smiling friends, her face stony.
Olive with an older man. She stared at something off camera, her arm limp around his waist.
Olive sitting alone on a bench, the Eiffel Tower in the backg
round. She was grinning broadly.
She had the same white-blond hair, the same flowing, elegant clothes, the same clear, glowing pale skin and orb-like blue eyes.
The Fall hadn't changed her at all. Her life had been perfectly preserved, like a dead thing in murky liquid.
"Good morning," a breathy voice called. Olive strolled into the living room from a hallway, clothes fluttering behind her like feathers in a breeze. She gestured to a plush chair. "Sit."
Eli sat, silently praying that she'd let him stay. Olive fluttered beside him and eyed her guards, a delicate scowl furrowing her pale brows.
"I like obedience," she began, as if completing a thought. "Nothing pleases me more than a need fulfilled, an order followed. Nothing angers me more than incompetence." She pointed at the guards with a casual flick of her finger. "Most of the people who claim to serve me just disappoint."
The men cleared their throats and their grins faded slightly. Olive flicked her eyes to a vague spot over Eli's shoulder.
"What do you think keeps a society running properly?"
Eli felt like a mouse under a cat's claws; the back of his skull prickled with anger. "I couldn't say, ma'am."
"Order." She thrust her arms out straight, palms facing each other. "For everyone to understand their place, do as they’re bid, follow the rules, and remember who's in charge." She raised an eyebrow at Eli. "I want you to help me do that."
Eli nodded, fearing what this "help" would entail.
"A rebellion has been simmering here for a couple weeks. People are forgetting their place, defying the rules." A muscle in her face twitched. "I'd like you to be my punisher. I'd prefer to kill them, but then I'd have no one left to grow my food and make my bed." She laughed, a soft, tinkling sound. "Help me remind these people who is in charge."
A dark dread spread through Eli's chest at the thought of the girl stretching out the window the night before, and the man who couldn't save her.
"Yes, ma'am."
Olive stretched one arm over the back of the couch and stroked her thigh with the other, gazing at him with narrowed eyes. "You seem like the perfect man for the job. You have a lovely" — she twirled her fingers, searching for the words — "pliability about you. The kind of man who does as he's told and never gets any ideas of his own. The world needs unambitious people like that. Followers."
Eli's heart sunk at the truth of her words. Jane had called it weakness. Frank, cowardice. Eli called it uncertainty. Was he the good guy who delivered wood in Hope every week? Or the one who shot a man through the heart at someone's order?
"One thing remains to be done before I officially install you in this position, Mr. Stentz." Olive stood suddenly; Eli peered up at her. "After all, actions speak louder than words, and my impressions may be wrong. Follow me."
Eli followed her through a large kitchen to a locked door. Olive removed a ring of keys, unlocked the door, and padded down into a basement. The cold space below smelled of metal and earth, its floor laid with hard flagstones. The basement's isolation, darkness, and quiet made Eli's skin prickle with an instinctive warning of danger. The air pressed in on him.
He passed a cavernous basement lined with shelves, stocked half full with huge cans of beans and vegetables and sacks of grain. Then they slid through a narrow hallway, dim yellow light spilling across the floor from a room at its end. Olive stopped there and extended an arm.
"After you."
The room was small, lined with bare drywall and a hard cement floor; a single bare light bulb swung from a chain. To Eli, the scene inside was familiar: a man knelt in the middle of the floor beneath the pool of light. He was hunched over, so Eli couldn't see his face, and his hands were tied behind his back. Two men stood behind him.
The last time Eli saw such a scene, he'd shot the man in the chest.
"Good morning," Olive said to the guards. She spoke with the tone of a polite host.
The prisoner flinched and his head rose up slowly, as if it was full of lead. Eli recoiled at the sight of him — his face was swollen and his lip split, and a line of dried blood was smeared across his chin. Dirt soiled his cheeks and forehead and his clothes were grass-stained.
It was the rescuer whose beating Eli had watched the night before.
"This man was caught traipsing about my property last night like a thief." She looked at him as if he were a bug under her shoe. "And now he's going to answer some questions."
The kneeling man glanced at Eli. Fear, dread, and defiance blazed from the narrow slits of his eyes.
Olive backed up a few steps and crossed her arms. "I understand you're organizing a little rebellion. To undermine me, to lure our guests from their comfortable home."
With a flushed, sweating face, the man bore his eyes into Olive's and bared his teeth. He didn't speak.
"Who else is involved?"
The man said nothing.
"Break his jaw please, Mr. Stentz," Olive said casually.
The kneeling man glanced up at Eli, waiting for him to follow orders. Olive breathed lightly beside him. What would happen if he didn't obey her? They'd shoot him in the head. And if he did follow orders, Eli would lose an ally.
He prayed he'd find another one.
El launched his arm back. He didn't need to think — his muscles remembered what to do. He made a fist and swung it at the man's face. Knuckles crashed against jaw. The act was routine, easy, an old habit. The captive grunted and fell forward, his palms smacking against the cement floor. He stayed there a minute, breathing deep, then spit blood and stood back up on his knees. He pulled back his shoulders and stared at Olive.
"There may not be many of us, but you can't crush us all." His voice was thick but firm. "Your secret's out..."
Olive’s jaw clenched. "Enlighten me."
"We know what those girls are for. Who they're for. What you've been hiding."
Red patches bloomed on Olive's pale face. "You're not as smart as you think you are." Her blue eyes caught Eli's.
With the violence and obedience came anger, indifference, and excitement. Eli's muscles jerked into action. Bone met bone, cracking under his knuckles. Pain jolted up his arm. The prisoner plunged to his hands and knees. Then came a familiar voice — Seth's, taunting him from a forgotten memory.
Again, until he tells us where his camp is.
Eli felt the old rush of power and respect. His helplessness and sadness were gone. He had purpose, control.
Another voice echoed in his ear. Olive's. "Kick him!" it said.
Eli obeyed.
The captive coughed and dry heaved over the floor. He pushed himself back to his knees and swayed as though drunk. Olive stepped forward and squatted gracefully in front of him, studying his face with mild interest.
"When we're done with you here, I wonder if you could do me a favor," Olive whispered. "Tell those friends of yours not to repeat ignorant rumors. Tell them to never mind who our guests are. They don't need your help."
She stood up and faced Eli. He spied something new in her eyes — a softness, perhaps — but couldn't place it.
"One more punch should knock him out, I believe." She retreated to the shadows.
How easy it was to obey, how ordinary and almost comforting. Kill him, came another voice. We have what we need. The captive stared at the floor, unaware of Eli standing over him. Eli struck him on the ear and blood wet his knuckles; the man crumpled to the floor in a messy heap.
"Well done." A small smile curled Olive's lip.
Eli had passed the test; he swallowed down vomit at the thought.
"When he wakes up, drag him home," Olive said to the guards. She turned to Eli. "Come with me."
Eli plodded up the stairs heavily behind Olive. He could still feel the man's bones crunching beneath his fist — the price he had to pay to save the girls.
Rooney. Megan. Dana, Lynn, Bonnie.
He prayed it would be different this time. That he was making the right choice.
Upstairs, Ol
ive ordered a guard to fetch the doctor and floated to her French doors as if on air.
"Dr. Ghrist's services are just one of the many perks you'll enjoy here, Mr. Stentz. You'll have a room as well. Joel will show you where once your wound is patched up." Gray Beard nodded. "Relax, Mr. Stentz. Enjoy the luxury."
Eli cleared his throat to loosen the false words. "I will, ma'am. I'm happy to serve."
Olive nodded. "I'm glad. But don't forget: I require your obedience at all times." She smiled with victory. "You're my weapon now."
Eli didn't know which was worse: ordering someone to commit evil or doing it yourself.
"Yes, ma'am."
The door creaked open. Olive's face brightened as a man walked into the living room. He was well over sixty, wore horn-rimmed glasses, and was bald except for a fringe of white hair above his ears, soft like summer clouds.
"Dr. Ghrist, this is Eli Stentz." Olive's voice was airy and girlish again. "He has a wound that requires your expertise. I'll leave you to it. Outside, please." She disappeared down a hallway.
The doctor was a small man. He craned his head back to look into Eli's face with a warm smile and kind eyes. Eli calmed.
"Welcome to Grant's Hill. When did you arrive?"
"Last night."
"And what is it that ails you, Eli?"
"Stab wound." Eli wondered if Dr. Ghrist knew Bill, the man who gave it to him.
"My word." The doctor shook his head. "Well, let's take a look."
Eli followed the little man to the terrace. The doctor sat on a bench and motioned for Eli to stand before him. Gently, he lifted Eli's shirt to reveal the wound. Eli studied a patch of purple orchids wilting in a terra-cotta pot.
"Mrs. Grant can be a little intimidating." The doctor probed the wound with cold, soft fingers. "But she's a fine woman. Keeps this place in tip-top shape."
Eli only nodded and fought the urge to flee. He didn't want this man to take the pain away, didn't want his kindness and understanding. He didn't deserve it.
"You did a fine job keeping this clean. Just needs to be stitched." The doctor gazed up with an impressed smile. "You look like a tough guy — shall I go ahead right now?"
The Human Wilderness (A New America Trilogy Book 1) Page 21
