by J. S. Carter
“I know.”
*
I opened my eyes.
I was on a cot in the corner of an empty tent, but the thought of my family was still fresh in my mind. The aged, white cloth walls around me were stained with dirt and something else I didn’t recognize.
Blood.
Something had happened.
I tried sitting up and immediately an inflexible part of my shoulder pulled me back like a rubber band in dry cement, the pain making me wince reflexively. I had almost forgotten about that.
I redoubled my effort, this time rolling onto my side first and sitting up while trying to keep my back straight. By the time I managed that, the small blanket that had been on top of me had slipped off and I noticed a narrow tube embedded into my arm which was connected to a bag of clear liquid hanging above my head. I tried pulling the line out, but the tube tugged on my skin and hurt too much.
“Don’t do that.”
I looked up to see the same woman who had found me earlier now standing at the entrance.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” She placed down a bundle of clothes and hurried over. “It’s just that you might hurt yourself.” She crouched down next to me and pulled the tube out of my arm in a single, quick motion without making it hurt at all. “How are you feeling?”
She stared at me, studying my face, and I returned the favor. Her hair was curling at the tips from constantly being damp and had lighter streaks from countless hours of sunlight. Her face was worn and she had large bags under her eyes, but she was surprisingly beautiful.
I cleared my sore throat and tried to think of something efficient to say in as little words as possible. “Fine.” I motioned to stand up, but she put her hands on my shoulders and gently lowered me back down onto the cot.
“Honey, hold on. You’ve been through a lot. You’re gonna have to take it easy. I wouldn’t go pushing your luck as it is.” She put a hand on my bandaged shoulder and checked to see that the wrapping was still dry. “You were already half way dead from dehydration when we found you. You’re lucky you didn’t lose too much blood, not that there was much to hit, anyways. When’s the last time you had anything to eat?”
I would have told her, but I couldn’t remember. She ran a hand through my hair and looked at me that way again. I felt like I was eleven years old.
Zoey was eleven...
“Listen to me.” I brought my focus back to the woman as she grabbed my hand. “What you did was incredibly brave, but really, really stupid.”
I thought back to the guns, the shooting, the little girl, and I had to clear my throat again. “Where am I?”
“You’re safe, that’s what’s important.” She gave me a quick reassuring smile and a little squeeze. I guess I didn’t mind the feeling, but I had to break it.
“I was with someone...”
She nodded slowly, patiently expecting me to continue, but I couldn’t. The pit in my stomach got heavier and it made me nervous just thinking about it. I let her finish the thought.
“We didn’t find anyone else.”
I could feel the knot in my belly twist over itself again. I had to convince myself that he was probably okay. He should have been. There had to be at least a million reasons why Zach would be better off than me and I was still alive.
“What about the guys…” I started. “With the guns?”
The woman’s eyes darted to the side for a moment, then back onto me, but this time I could tell that she wasn’t sure of what to say. “They’re... still here…”
I didn’t understand. She was scared of them when I saw her. They had the guns. They were threatening us. They were the bad guys. Why were they still here?
Before I could even get a chance to ask, somebody called for her. “Martha!”
She quickly threw the blanket back over my chest. “Whatever you do, don’t fight them. Please, just trust me.”
I let the blanket fall off of me. With everything that I had been through over the last few days, I was too tired to lift it back up. Being half naked in front of a stranger just didn’t seem to matter anymore. She quickly pulled it back onto me and forced my hand on top to keep it from falling.
“Martha!” A middle aged man with a short beard and worn suit stormed in and stopped halfway through, about to yell again when he noticed me.
I blinked right back at him.
“She’s awake?”
Martha turned her back to him, pretending the clear bag of liquid above us was more important. “I would say so.”
The man took a step closer to me, sizing me up and down, but it was different, almost like he was looking at a car. I pulled the blanket closer to my neck. It was uncomfortable.
“How is she?”
He kept staring and Martha turned back with pursed lips. “It was a small caliber and I didn’t have to dig it out. I patched it up as best as I could. She should be fine.”
I waited as the man took a moment and walked on over. “What’s your name?”
I didn’t say anything. As far as I knew, I didn’t have a reason to.
He eyed me curiously and clapped his hands, looking around for something. “Okay…” I could see Martha steal a glance at me as the man walked over to a chair, but I couldn’t tell if she approved or not. He started rummaging through a pile of torn, dirty clothes until he pulled out a wallet.
“Jessica Carter,” he said, staring at my driver’s license. He paused, looking back at me to say, “It’s a pleasure, by the way.” He referred back to the card. “Twenty-one years old, green eyes, organ donor, and…” He put my wallet back. “Beautiful. You’re a long way from home, Miss Carter. I can only imagine what you’ve had to go through to make it this far on your own.”
Actually, he couldn’t, because I was never on my own.
“But,” he said, “Where are my manners? You must be starving. If you’d be so kind as to get dressed and meet me outside, we can go get you something to eat. How’s that sound?” He looked at me, smiling.
I couldn’t tell why I didn't trust him, but I still didn’t say anything.
He clapped his hands again. “Lovely. Martha, would you care to join me?”
I looked at her. I didn’t want her to leave, at least not until I could have asked her about him, but she stood up, only pausing at the entrance as the man held the tent open for her.
“There’s fresh clothes for you on the chair, honey.”
They left me alone and not sure of what to do.
I looked at the entrance and thought about running the opposite way. I could have slipped underneath the side of the tent and been gone before they could realize what had happened, but just the thought of bending over like that made my shoulder hurt. I put a hand over the spot and tried to massage it a bit. I needed to eat. I needed water and they were offering it to me. I was still alive, after all...
How bad could they be?
I stood up, light-headed, and tried not to fall over as I hobbled on my scarred feet. I wouldn’t be putting miles on them anytime soon. I put on my new clothes and noticed that I could think clearly enough to tell what was wrong with me. At least that was progress.
I reached over to my wallet and pulled out an old monochrome photo strip of me and an ex-boyfriend taken on a date when we had been at the pier. It was stupid. We had split up a long time ago, but I had neglected to get rid of it and I was always too embarrassed to carry around a picture of my family. For some reason that was supposed to make up for it.
I crammed the picture back and grabbed my dead cell phone. If I could find a charger, then I could at least use it as a light. I reached into a pocket and it dawned on me that at that point my life had boiled down to a phone that I couldn’t even turn on and clothes that I had just gotten from a complete stranger. I grabbed my driver’s license on a whim. Everything else I had was useless.
By the time I stepped outside, Martha was gone. I looked around and tried to keep the sun out of my eyes, but all I saw were a
series of white tents like the one that I had been in. I felt like an ant stuck in a checkerboard.
The man in the suit looked down at me, already having put on a pair of sunglasses. “Don’t you worry about Martha. There’ll be plenty of time for you to thank her later.” He held out his hand. “The name’s Ryan, by the way.”
I could see a gold wedding band on one of his fingers. There was still a small tan line in front as it had slipped closer towards his knuckle over time. He must have been human, after all. I shook his hand.
“I promise you’ll be safe here, Jessica. I have men patrolling the perimeter every hour.”
Just like the guy I shot earlier?
He peered down at me through the lenses. He must have known what I was thinking. “They told me what had happened, by the way.”
I couldn’t see his eyes, but for some reason it intensified my guilt.
“He’ll be fine. Fact of the matter is, they should have never raised their weapons. You were delirious, alone, scared, and it just made a dangerous situation even worse.”
I looked past his face, not really sure how to respond to that, but he gestured towards a dirt path.
“Please, after you.”
Out of everything that could have bothered me, the only thing I thought about was that he had called me by my whole name. My little sister had seen to that. I was utterly conditioned to hate it. When we had both been younger and she had been too cute for her own good, she could never pronounce it right. ‘Tess’ had always stuck. Even my friends and family were used to it. Sarah's vengeance would not be bound by neither time nor space.
I followed Ryan along a barbed wire fence and instantly regretted peering through the chain links to see the vast fields that I thought I had gotten away from, while on our other side were rows after rows of the same tents. We stopped at another one, this one twice as big as the rest, and he led me inside. It looked like an empty mess hall with tables and chairs barely organized into columns. It was always felt strange for me to walk into a place like that when it was meant for so much more. I just felt like the last person on earth.
Ryan walked around and pulled a chair out for me in the middle of the room, holding his arms out to either side. “Welcome to Camp Maxwell.”
I could feel my heart skip a beat. It was exactly what Zach and I had been looking for. I had to fight the words out and clear my throat. It was still too dry and felt like gravel. “Where is everyone?”
“Fucked if I know. They were gone by the time we got here. Didn’t stop them from leaving most of their shit behind, though.”
I slid into a seat as he went off to the side and searched through a few crates. Coming to terms with the idea that Zach had gotten me so far alive only to be too late was daunting. “Did you find anyone else?” I could feel the question hang like a loose thread as I waited for Ryan to come back with his arms full.
“No.” He flopped plastic bags and water bottles down on the table in front of me. “But I’m guessing this was all military, maybe FEMA. It would explain the MRE’s, the tents, everything.”
“Why'd they leave?”
He shrugged. “My guess? They’re cowards. They couldn’t take the heat or stand up to clean their own mess.” He offered me food and a bottle, and stared as I inhaled a prepackaged muffin and took the longest, most amazing drink of water in my life.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. As far as I was concerned, acting feminine or chivalrous went out the window with paying taxes, but I still had to talk to people. At least a little. “I don’t know...” I tried to think of something else to say without making prolonged eye contact, but I didn’t want to tell him that I thought he was wrong. “Thanks for helping me.” Hopefully that was good enough.
He nodded. “So what did you do?” He waved a hand through the air. “Before all this, I mean.”
I played with the piece of plastic in my hands, listening to it crinkle instead of talking. For some reason I almost felt embarrassed about my past, not even because I regretted doing anything, but because I felt like I could have done more. “School...” I smiled, not really sure of what else to say. I hadn't even known what I went to study for. “I worked retail, but...” I shrugged. “I wanted to be a writer.” I peered up at him sheepishly and was surprised to see him smile.
He knocked on the table. “You make it through the next few years, Jessica, and I’m sure you’re gonna have a lot to write about.”
He actually had a point. I had never thought about it that way before. Too bad I wasn't any good at it. “What about you?”
“Nothing terribly worthwhile, I’m afraid.” He shrugged the question off and handed me an apple. “Still hungry?”
I grabbed it, not entirely sure if I wanted to eat or if I just felt sick, but my hand stopped with it half way to my mouth. I slowly lowered it back down and the familiar knot in my stomach followed it like a shadow, my eyes setting back onto Ryan. “Where’d you get this?”
He locked his fingers together and rested his hands, his ring clinking against the wood. “I’m sure you knew we aren’t the only ones out here.”
I looked at the piece of fruit in my hand. It seemed perfect. It was completely smooth and the only vivid source of vibrant color that I’d seen for miles, but it wasn’t just food that I would be able to taste. It was like I was holding onto a piece of something bigger. For the past few days, it was a sign of life, of water, of food and maybe even of other people. As long as someone I knew had a chance of finding the round piece of life in-between my fingers, then I couldn’t give up on them. Not yet. Even if it was just a chance. If Zach...
I had to try.
I slid the apple back over to Ryan and stood up. “Look, thank you—for everything—but I have to go. I’m sorry.” I turned without looking back and starting making my way to the entrance.
Zach had to be alive. What if he was still out there, barely strong enough to move? I pushed that reality aside. It was almost overwhelming. I couldn’t bear to think about the possibilities, but my mind started racing. Every motion that I would have to go through to find him started rearranging itself in my head like a giant jigsaw puzzle, though I didn’t need to see the whole picture. I only needed to get to him. Yet just as fast as it had manifested itself, the loose pieces were torn apart and thrown about into an unrecognizable mess.
“Jessica...”
I froze. I had stopped just in front of the entrance when a familiar pounding started to race through my neck. Would he try to stop me if I made a run for it? I slowly turned back to look at Ryan and saw that he hadn't moved an inch. It didn't help to calm me down.
“How long do you think you'll last out there by yourself?”
I opened my mouth and he immediately cut me off.
“You know what I think?”
I barely shook my head. I wasn't sure if I would be able to answer him even if I wanted to.
“I think you don't have a choice...”
I had barely turned around by the time I ran into a chest. I craned my neck up to see a man wider than the entrance with a rifle slung behind his back. I tried to squeeze past and he grabbed me by the waist. I fought against his grip and screamed for help as loud as I could, but nobody came.
Or nobody cared.
He shoved a hand over my mouth and I bit into the flesh of his palm, forcing him to curse and throw me back into the center. I scrambled to my feet and brought my head back up just in time to catch a fist with my skull, the world quickly crashing back down to meet me until it ended in a dizzying blur. My face hit the dirt. I couldn’t get up, not after that.
The warmth immediately began to wash over me as my body went into overdrive to react to the blunt force trauma. I stared at the ground with the taste of blood in my mouth and could hear feet step around me. I could see Ryan come closer through my peripheral until I closed my eyes from the pain. I wanted to cry. I really just wanted to give up and ball like a baby, but for the second time in a row, the water works j
ust wouldn’t run. It made the physical pain worthless. I felt so helpless.
“Turn around, Jessica.”
I didn’t.
“Please…”
I turned and opened my eyes to see Ryan straddling a chair that he had dug into the ground around me, narrowly missing my arms and legs.
He stared down at me blankly. Then finally, “Why do you think you’re here?”
I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. Hell, I didn’t even want to say anything. At that moment I just wanted the world to disappear.
“Jessica…” He paused. “You’re going to become a whore.”
I closed my eyes. Now the tears were coming.
“I promise you won’t get hurt if you do what you’re told, but I can’t promise you anything as long as you don’t do exactly as I tell you. Do you understand?”
I let the tears run down my cheek and burn my skin. I must have gotten cut. I sobbed and tried to wipe the salty water off, nodding my head.
“Good.” He sat there for a moment, just a few inches above my body as I’d long gone lost my composure and let my nose run, my tears now fresh on a worn-out face. “We leave in three days.”
Wounded
I thought about my mom. I thought about my dad and Sarah. How had they seen me? Daughter? Sister? I realized how effortless it was to lose sight of my own identity within daily life, but when I became grounded to my past, it always seemed to come back. And at that moment it was simple: I was not a sex slave.
I wiped my nose with the back of my hand and got up from my cot. My eyes and nose felt puffy, probably still red, and a burning pain continued to throb through the side of my face. I felt emotionally spent, like a void had built up inside of me as soon as my insides came crashing down and absorbed into oblivion. It was an interesting feeling and I’d always been surprised at how clearly I would be able to think afterward. It didn’t matter if it was because I’d gotten yelled at for stealing a pack of gum and balling my eyes out at the mature age of twelve or getting into a heated argument after school and slamming my door shut, crying, being pissed off. Once it had all drained away, my actions had become clear. So it was clear to me that I had to leave. I had to find Zach.
