“You look tired,” she said. “That trek in is a bit much for women our age. I do apologize.”
“The trek was fine,” Marta managed to say. “The treatment we received wasn’t.”
June continued holding Marta’s hand. Marta’s palm prickled with sweat.
“I’m afraid,” June said, “that prisoners of war don’t often get the red carpet rolled out.”
“What war?” Marta asked.
June shook her head and exhaled in an exasperated way. “Good lord. That you even have to ask that.” She turned to Andy. “Enlighten me. What sort of poor treatment did they get?”
“We had a loss of life, ma’am,” Andy said.
“Ha!” said Lee, again from the back of the group. “Loss of life! Ha!” He waved a finger at Violet. “That—that thing right there, she shot my friend in the head.”
June pushed between Wes and Wendy Tanaka to get to Lee. The mild smile—the slight upturn at the corners of her lips—flattened. Her jaw stiffened. “What did you call her?”
Lee had well over a foot on June, but he dropped his chin and fixed his gaze on his twisting hands. “Nothing. I’m just angry. I saw my friend murdered.”
“I gave the order,” Andy said. “The man was dying anyway. He wouldn’t have made it here.”
“He was not dying!” Lee said. “That’s a lie! He got bitten but we Stamped him.”
“We didn’t do shit,” Andy said. “You stood around with your thumb up your ass and I Stamped him. But it wasn’t quick enough. He had an infestation. He came and showed me the rash after the rest of you bedded down.”
“That’s a lie,” Lee repeated, but with less fire. “You couldn’t know if he’d caught Shreve’s. It had only been a few hours.”
“The bite was right over the jugular,” Andy told June. “He’d have bled out after the hatching. We didn’t have the time or the resources to patch him up. I made a judgment call.”
“A good and necessary call,” June said. She looked at Lee. “Mr.—”
“Flannigan,” Lee said. “Lee Flannigan.”
“Mr. Flannigan, my people haven’t been on the receiving end of much fairness and humanity, but we’re a decent sort, and I think you’ll find I’m a pretty reasonable woman. Tonight you’ll sleep under a real roof with food and even liquor in your belly, if you’re inclined to a nip. We even have a decent little bluegrass trio that’ll play. That sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
He nodded, hesitantly.
She drew closer to him.
“But if I ever, ever hear you talk about Violet that way again, I will shoot you in the head myself. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” Lee said hoarsely.
The quiet mirth was back on her face and she craned her head to the left and right, taking in the rest of the group. “And you? We’re all in agreement? We understand one another?”
Marta nodded along with the rest of them. Her horror, embarrassingly, was kept in check by the promise of food. Liquor. Rest.
“That’s good,” June said. “Well, now that we’ve dispensed with all that ugliness, let me show you where you can take a load off.”
Nine
Ruby City had a central gathering structure built, at a first glance, in the pleasingly haphazard fashion of its other major public spaces. A second look, however—and this second look, for Wes, happened as June and Curtis led the OLE group across the river and steeply uphill, to a grassy, flattop mound upon which the building perched like a porkpie hat—revealed a more surprising, even ingenious use of cast-off and repurposed materials. The outer walls, which formed a cylindrical base for a conical roof, were log columns connected by an assembled puzzle of mulled-together windows—single, double-hung, clear-paned, stained glass. Some of the windows were open, slid up or pushed out.
“We call it Town Hall,” June said, breathing easily despite the steep climb, “but it’s a bit of everything for us. Meeting space, church. Dance hall. You name it. We finished the major construction work ten years ago. It took a year, and that doesn’t count all of the time we spent making scavenging runs and stockpiling salvage.”
“What’s with the hill?” Wes asked. He sensed that there was betrayal in his interest—that his fellow hostages saw it this way—but he couldn’t help himself. He was exhausted and terrified and so hungry that even those barbecued squirrels back in town verged on tempting, but he’d be truly lost if he ever gave up his curiosity about the world. It was so central to who he was, to how he’d made his fortune. And the more he knew about the place—the more he understood—the likelier he’d be to recognize a way out when he saw one.
“It was a Cherokee mound. It would have had a roundhouse structure on it similar to this one, so we decided to base our design on that.”
“Fascinating,” Wendy Tanaka said. Her voice was brittle.
June considered Wendy. “It is, actually. The Cherokee interest me very much. I feel a kinship with them. I’d say ‘for obvious reasons,’ but I suspect that they wouldn’t be obvious to you.”
Wendy’s temple was a blue-black bruise still crusted with dried blood, so tender-looking that Wes winced an apologetic look each time his eye caught hers. She shrugged dully, apparently unmoved by June’s reproof.
“You might not be surprised to learn that nearly a quarter of the Ruby City citizens are of Cherokee descent. Most of the residents on the reservation didn’t get the zone vestments they were promised.”
“Neither did the rest of us, for that matter,” Curtis said.
“True, true,” said June. They had reached the top of the mound. The Town Hall had a beautiful, almost grand entryway: large, wooden double doors, which had been sanded and oiled to a creamy luster, flanked by sidelights of a multicolored glass mosaic. Above the doors, a transom, also in mosaic glass, spelled out “Ruby City.”
June ran her hand down the filigreed carving on one of the doors. “These came out of an Episcopal church in Asheville. I don’t like to ransack lovely old architecture, but plenty of other people are willing to, so it becomes a matter of sifting through what’s left. I hear there’s a pack of folks living at the Biltmore who’ve more or less trashed it. Pity.” She unhasped the brass latch and threw the doors open. “But we’ve all got bigger things to worry about now, of course.”
The Town Hall from outside was impressive; from inside, it stole the breath away. Wes, filing in beside Marta, craned his head left and right in wonder at the view through the many-sized windows into the river valley and the Smoky Mountain range beyond. The Little Tennessee below them gleamed silver in the strong midday light. The fall foliage rivaled the color of the intermittent panes of stained glass, which threw rainbow light on the plank floors. Beams climbed from each log post to join high above them, and from this central point dangled a large wagon wheel hung with five unlit lanterns. It was only after taking all of this in that Wes noticed, on the far end of the roundhouse, a table laden with what appeared to be some kind of food and a large, bright orange insulated water cooler—the kind you saw at football games (not that Wes ever went to football games). His throat clenched, tacky with thirst, at the sight of that cooler.
“There’s beans and cornbread,” June said. “Plenty of it. Help yourself, then we’ll talk. All of this’ll seem more bearable on full stomachs, I’d wager.”
They rushed the table as if it could disappear at any moment. Jesse Haggard made it to the cooler first and grabbed a glass with a shaky hand. He pressed his forehead against the cooler as he filled the glass, and when it had reached the brim, he took a long swig, shuddered, and handed the rest of the glass to Edie. Then he got another glass and proceeded to fill it, too. Anastasia and Berto started at the food, grabbing the cornbread with their dirty hands and piling it high in bowls, ladling in brown beans. The others—their armed kidnappers, too—pressed in behind them, grabbing bowls and spoons, postures rigid with
anticipation. Wes, who had always been food-neutral—an aspect of his constitution, this lack of passionate appetite, that he saw as emblematic of, perhaps even responsible for, the single-minded focus that had led to his successes—recognized what he’d come to think of in more comfortable times, smugly, as “buffet stress.” Back home, Sonya had always had a bad case of buffet stress. If they went to a barbecue or a cocktail party, she filled her plate with enough food for two people, returned to the line for seconds after complaining of being full, spent time later in the day reflecting on her choices: Should she have gone for the brownie rather than the pie slice? Why hadn’t she eaten more of that great casserole? Buffet stress had even informed some of Wes’s updates to Pocketz. Twice he’d invited Pocketz Prime members to an App Buffet, with all of the most popular add-on packages offered, for an hour, at steep discounts. These events were hugely popular, hugely successful. Participants filled their shopping plates as quickly as possible with cheap apps, afraid of missing out on something good before the buffet ran out, blowing credits on Line Cutz and Xtra Helpingz.
Wes would pay good credits for a Line Cut right now.
“I guess we waited this long,” he said to Marta, trying to tamp down the stress, the fear of missing out. “It won’t kill us to wait a little longer.” They were a problematic match in this way—neither of them aggressive enough to demand their share, their partnership enabling the other’s passivity.
“It could kill us,” Marta said flatly.
But June had told the truth: the food and water were plentiful, and a woman, the one they’d seen earlier, with the bag of squirrels, came in with a big steaming kettle of beans when the first kettle ran low. The others had taken their food and drink and retreated to the outer edges of the building, staking out seats on the sun-warmed boards next to the east-facing windows, and so Wes and Marta were able to fill and refill their glasses undisturbed. The water was cold, with a delicious, bracing mineral quality.
His thirst quenched, he grabbed a bowl from the top of a rickety, mismatched stack. It was chipped, yellowed porcelain, with a dainty daisy pattern, and he followed the lead of those who’d gone before him, crumbling a chunk of cornbread into the bottom of the bowl and pouring a soupy spoonful of beans on top. He’d resigned himself to giving up veganism during the OLE tour, but the appearance of a pink, fatty rind of mystery meat in the bean broth made his stomach roil. It had been seven years since he’d eaten even fish.
“It’s better than it looks,” Marta said, noticing his hesitation. She had spoken around a mouthful.
His stomach settled by the third bite, and Wes felt then a surge of energy, a lifting of his mood. He gulped down another draft of water, then tucked into the food as eagerly as the rest of the group, spooning around the strip of meat as best he could manage. His stomach filling, he could appreciate the other luxuries of this moment: the relief of getting off his feet, of having space to stretch out his legs in front of him, of seeing Andy and the other guards put their guns down long enough to lift their bowls and shovel food to their lips. Now would be the time to make a move, if there were a hero in the group. But making a move would require movement, and what Wes wanted—and hey, no one had forbidden it yet, so why not—was to free his tender feet of these hot, stiff lace-up boots, then lie on his back and let his eyes lower to half-mast, so that only a little golden light filtered through his eyelashes. He went at his shoelaces with shaking hands, needing several tries to loosen each double knot. His bare feet were shriveled and damp and lined with the imprint of the boots’ seams; his heels were stripped raw, the soles quilted with thick, watery blisters. He bent his toes, luxuriating in the pain that radiated up into the metatarsals, and groaned as he lowered himself to his elbows, then his creaking back.
The floor was hard, so he put his pack under his head. Better.
Didn’t seem anyone else was plotting heroics, either.
“This is where you’ll sleep tonight,” June said. “You can pitch your tents as you normally would, if you’re paranoid about ticks or you want the privacy. But I can’t remember the last time I saw a tick up here.”
“What if we don’t want to sleep in here?” Berto asked. “What if we want a little more breathing room than that?”
“I’m afraid it’s not negotiable,” said June.
Berto nodded. “Just so we’re clear. And no one misunderstands all of this hospitality you’re showing us.”
June had perched on the floor in the center of the large room, her boots and socks off, legs pulled into a tight pretzel and forearms resting on her knees. She looked like she might be about to begin leading a yoga class.
“I wouldn’t want you to misunderstand me. You’re hostages, not guests. Let’s not pretend it’s otherwise. Your comfort here will be contingent on your willingness to contribute to a few—well, Andy, what would you call them?”
“Operations?” Andy said.
“I was going to say ‘projects,’” said June, “but I like that better. Operations. Yes. And Mr. Feingold, you’re going to be especially critical to these operations.”
Wes’s tentative good mood fled him. He had been trying to talk himself out of the sense over the events of the last day that he was watched—noticed—in a way that wasn’t true of his fellow travelers. He could guess easily enough why this would be true, in a general way, but he couldn’t actually imagine what they’d demand of him—what he’d be able to do in the face of their demands. If June and her clan thought he could hack Pocketz, do any redistributing of credits, they’d be in for a bad surprise. The system—by design, by absolute necessity, by law—was protected by layers and layers of safeguards. The only account Wes could access, legally and also in practical fact, was his own. Would that satisfy them? He found that the prospect of surrendering his fortune (in fact, only a quarter of his fortune, the rest of it being tied up in property and investments) didn’t bother him as much as he would have expected it to. He had never done any of this for the money.
“I’m not sure what you think I can do,” he said.
June gave him her serene, yoga-instructor smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll fill you in soon enough. In the meantime”—she pointed to Andy, and he and the guy with the bandolier, Randall, jumped to a stand—“these boys are going to escort you each to the privy, and then we’re going to have story time.”
Within a half hour, they had all visited the outhouse—a roomy, pin-neat structure with a padded seat and a single roll of toilet paper sealed in an old plastic food storage container. A mirror hung above a dry sink, upon which rested a bowl, a jug of water, and a rough-cut bar of soap the cloudy yellow of earwax. It wasn’t what Wes had expected. He wasn’t sure what he had expected.
Upon returning to Town Hall, they each took seats on the floor in a semicircle around June. Wes was very, very drowsy, but it was clear that an afternoon nap wasn’t an option. He pulled up his legs, wrapped his arms around his shins, and rested his chin on his right kneecap. Perhaps story time would be brief.
June lifted a hand and beckoned at someone. She had her head tilted and chin tucked, her lips pulled wide in a closed-mouth smile. It was an expression of loving indulgence, and Wes sensed that this was the closest they had all gotten so far to seeing what lay under her veneer of calculated geniality.
The person who answered her call was Violet. She dropped to the floor beside June—flopped down, like a child, or a puppy leaning into a belly rub—and placed her head in June’s lap. June brushed strands of long, light brown hair off Violet’s scarred forehead. “Tired?” she said softly, looking down into that horrifically disfigured face, and Violet said “Yes” out of her mangled mouth.
“Where to start?” June said. She was still gazing down at Violet, but her voice, louder now, was addressing the group. “I could begin with the extermination or the rezoning. I could begin with my parents, how it was they gave up their vestments and decided to raise
me out here. Or I could start with the day we founded Ruby City. They’re all good stories. They’re all part of the big story.
“I’ve been thinking about this moment for a month. Ever since Andy got me the manifest for this OLE group and told me what he knew about this excursion. Why it’s special. And that very day, I imagined us all here, and I pictured what I might say to you, how I’d begin to tell our story and what I’d say to make you see why this is how things have to be, and again and again I return to Violet.”
Now she looked up.
“And what I’ve said, each of the times I’ve begun this speech in my mind, is this: If you want to understand what the world is like these days, you should look at Violet.”
Violet’s Story
I know some of what you know about life out here. What you’ve been told. We have occasional feed access. There’s a spot we know a few hours northeast of here, and it’s close enough to a gap in the TerraVibra to pick up a faint signal. So we check in now and again, and Andy’s filled us in over the years, too. Sometimes you’ve got to laugh about it. We sit together just like this and have fellowship just like this, and we look around at each other and ask, “Are you sure you’re here? Are you sure I’m here?” Because the feeds say we’re not. Or you dig a bit deeper, you go into the web’s backwoods, and there’s whispering—satellite footage of villages like ours posted on Chinese IPs, or maybe some agri-contractor comments on a message board that he got held up by a band of outlaws and the company hushed it up. But this is all part of the lie. A way of enabling the lie. Most people won’t believe the surface story that hardly no one lives out-of-zone. Not if you’ve got a lick of common sense. But there’s a second layer of story that’ll satisfy most people, and if you don’t think your government and the people who control your government shape that narrative, too, you’re a fool. And the way it works is that they let slip just a bit of what’s bad and scary, and they know that most people will stop there and won’t want to see the rest of it. It’s hard enough imagining that anyone is trying to survive out here. It’s scary to think that a pack of masked men could overcome a cargo truck, that there are men enough out here to form a pack that could form a plan like that. Imagine if your people back home knew what you all know now. Imagine if they could see this town. Imagine if they could see the life we’ve made. They might be afraid, or even angry. Or they might feel hope. And it’s the hope that’s dangerous.
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