by Jack Bates
Rediscovering time is my first attempt to recreate the world.
After I eat the mystery meat sandwich and slurp down my brown soup, I pace. I don’t want to get soft. I walk from toilet wall to door. Ten paces. I use it to mark time. I start counting in my head. On the third trip to the door, I stop. Nick is staring at me.
“You okay?” I mouth the words.
He nods. “You?” he asks.
I tilt my head, scrunch my lips, shrug. He smiles.
“I saw Matt,” I say. He wrinkles his brow and shakes his head. I speak slower, maybe a little louder. I know he can’t hear me. In the last two weeks we’ve learned to read lips if the words are over exaggerated. “I saw Matt.” When he shakes his head a second time, I point at my eye, point two fingers at him, and then hold up the last three fingers on my left hand.
Nick nods his head and says, “Matt.”
I give him a thumbs-up. He returns the gesture the way Matt would: thumb-less. It looks like a fist. I don’t want to laugh, but I do. I want to tell him I saw Yuki, too, but I don’t know if I ever told him about her before.
“Where?” he asks.
“By the trees.”
Nick puckers his lips like I did on “trees” and kisses the air. He raises an eyebrow and tries to give me a smoldering look. I laugh.
Guard 13 passes by our doors. We both jump back. I bite my lip to stop laughing. Whatever was bothering him this morning seems to have gone away. When I look back out the window, though, he’s not there.
I’ve lost track of time. I guess it’s easy to do when there isn’t any to follow. I scoop my makeshift clock into the wastebasket and set it behind the half wall by the toilet.
Instead of pacing, I do a routine of push-ups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks. When I’m on the floor, looking up at the window, I can see the change in the sky. I imagine it won’t be long before dinner arrives. I wear myself out with my exercise and flop down on my bed. Within a few minutes the door opens and in steps LC Allison.
She stands in the door for a moment, her hands clasped behind her back. Nothing is said, but I can see that familiar flair of crazy in her eyes. She steps inside, but never moves any further into the cell. In fact, her eyes look around the room as if she’s remembering a time when she was locked away. It makes me uneasy. What if she wonders where my garbage can is? What if she finds the darts and rocks?
“What brings you here?” I ask her. The silence and the staring is creeping me out.
Her wickedly evil grin spreads over her face. She looks older in here. “It was a very stupid thing to do,” she says.
“Taking the Humvee?” I lie down on my pillow and put a hand under it. I wrap my fingers around one of the darts. My door is still open. Only Auntie Alice stands in my way. Unlike when I took the Humvee, I have a better idea of what to do with the dart.
“You need to understand, Robin. The world—”
“Has changed. I get it. But what is it changing into? None of the Superiors gave a crap about the runners. They’re concern is with the Guard.”
“Right now the Guard is a bigger threat than the runners.”
“Have you not seen what’s going on out there? You are completely ignoring the fact that the runners are changing. The Balzini fungus is working its way into our brains.”
“Before we can confront the runners, we have to secure our country.”
“No one thought to confront the runners to begin with. That’s why your country is falling apart.”
“Funny. You sound exactly like some of the Guard prisoners we’ve taken.”
My thumbnail clicks against the flat end of the dart. “I’m not Guard. And I’m not Elite Forces.”
“The day will come when you will have to choose a side.”
“I could just sit back and let your two sides battle it out, and pick up what you leave behind.”
She shakes her head and says nothing. It is the last time I will ever see Auntie Alice. After she leaves, I stay in my bunk. I keep the dart in my hand. Before I know it, I drift off to sleep.
I am awakened by a bang on my door. When I look over, the food slot is hanging open and a tray is being held there. I take the tray and the food slot door flips up with a bang.
I put the tray back on the fold down table and pull the pie plate seat out of the wall. It’s lonely in here. I take the picture of my sister out of my back pocket, crease the edges, and set the photo on end. I stare at it while I eat a boiled medley of peas, carrots, and beans, some white rice, and two chicken legs. The food really isn’t that bad. I don’t know how fresh the chicken is. It makes me wonder if there isn’t a free-range farm someplace within Camp G. At some point it would have to start being self-sufficient. The stockpiled food would eventually run out, like the fuel for the cars, or the propane for the generators, or the bullets in their guns.
My mind wanders over these thoughts. It’s like I’m sifting through the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, looking for the edge pieces to build the frame before I fill in the rest of the picture.
Maybe they have an outpost at a nearby farm. The southeastern and southwestern corners of the state had been selling off land for development for years. Generations of farmers were packing it in for a quick buck. I used to see bumper stickers that said “No Farm No Food” or “Who’s Growing My Corn?” or “Buy Local, Dammit!” The north was still growing produce, wasn’t it? Along what they called the Snow Belt?
Then I think about the dwindling supplies, and I wonder if that’s what the Superiors are the most worried about. There doesn’t seem to be as much concern about Balzini’s Rash or the mutation of the runners as there is about what is happening out in the so-called Safety Zone where my sister is supposed to be safe.
There were five Superiors. They each had to have been at a separate camp. If LC Allison runs Camp G, maybe it meant that Superiors Two through Six were at camps B through F. Camp A could very well be D.C., where the Prime Superior might actually be the president.
Maybe the camps were outposts located around the country, or outside of it, and they had all agreed to be allies. Maybe the real war wasn’t about defeating Balzini’s Rash. Maybe it was about the retaining of power, or seizing it. Maybe the real war was about who was going to control the new world.
Survivors were being rounded up, converted, trained to fight in these wars. You couldn’t be passive when so much was at stake. That’s what LC Allison has been trying to tell me when she says this is how things are. Balzini’s Rash and the runners aren’t the end of civilization—they have opened the door to a new one, with a chance to rebuild in their image. Some grand, final battle for ultimate control is brewing.
I discover I’m really not all that hungry.
Next to the main course is a small peach colored plate with a matching bowl turned upside-down over it. I lift the bowl and find a cupcake with a paper wrapper around its stump. It’s been so long since I had any kind of treat, and the fact that it is yellow cake with chocolate frosting just upped the appeal. I peel the paper away and practically shove the whole thing in my mouth. There are still some crumbs on the bottom of the wrapper, but there’s also something else. Someone has written me a message. It’s very small, but it’s there. Four letters. It’s a familiar warning, and the last time I got one like this I nearly died.
“B rdy”
Here we go again, I think.
Twenty
Night comes. I can’t sleep. The lights in the hall outside my cell have been dimmed. The lone bulb in my room turns on and shuts off automatically. Sitting with my back to the door, I use what little comes in through its window to work on my darts.
The handful of metal rods would make great darts. If I had an atlatl, I would be lethal. The sticks I’ve whittled into darts are too short. I’m not sure if I can sneak a longer one into the blockhouse.
The razor blade slips into the notch of the rod only so far. I tap on the non-sharp end of the blade with the Y shaped attachment to help wedge it into place. Th
e tapping makes a tiny ping sound. I do it only when I think the guard on duty is out of the hall or at the far end. The blades are trapezoidal in design. It seems a waste to have one tip inside the notch. I use one of the heavy bands and wrap it around the opening holding the blade.
The Y fits nicely in my palm when I grip it. It’s a crude handle or grip. I jab it in the air. I pull back the corner of my sheet and I jab it into the mattress. The blade wiggles, but it stays in the notch. When I tried it with a stick, the stick always broke.
The next one I make I slip the middle of the blade into the groove. This kind of makes it look like a T. The ends of the crossbar point down. I put the rubber band around it in an X pattern. I wrap the excess around the post. I could shave my legs with it this way.
I reverse the blade on the third so the tips point up and out. I don’t know why, but they remind me of the wings of a very skinny angel. I wrap the band around it the same way I did the other one.
The last one takes some time. I bend the blade so that both points will jut out of the end of the metal rod. I have to wiggle the blade to get it to fit snuggly into the groove. I wrap a band around the sides and bring it down through the center. This double blade looks particularly deadly.
I lay the four weapons out on my pillow and stare at them in the dimness of my room. Will they be enough? Will I need to use them?
Be ready.
For what?
The last time I got a message like this it was given to me by Leslie. Is she sending me another one? How is it she knows so much more than I do? I can understand how she knew more when we were back at Freedom House, but how does she know what’s going on here?
I pull the case off my pillow and drop my weapons inside it. I lay down on my side and tuck the pillow case in the space between my head and the wall, keeping one hand on the bunched up open end. After the message in the cupcake wrapper—which I tore up, dropped into the toilet, and flushed away—I decide to take it to heart and be ready.
No sooner do I close my eyes then I open them again. I sit up and look at the pillowcase.
“How stupid am I?” I ask no one in particular.
I shake the tools out and laugh. The double tipped jabber I leave alone. It takes me some time with the other three, but I eventually get the blades out of the grooves. The one with angel wings and the sloping T come out with a couple of taps. The single jabber on the pole with the Y handle is a little more stubborn. I have to keep tapping it with one of the other sticks until it finally starts to slide backwards. I wind up smashing it into the wall. The blade pops out and drops to the floor. In my room it sounds like a stack of pots and pans cascading out of a cupboard.
Instead of holding the Y attachment in my palm, I flip it so that I’m holding the grooved end in my hand. I put one of the other rods into one arm of the Y and another into the other arm of the Y. I hold it up so that it looks like I’m holding a large, metal Y in my hand.
I fit one of the large, thick bands into the groove of one rod, another into the groove of the other rod. I use a third thick band and loop its ends through the hanging ends of the other two bands. I hold up the Y again and pinch the center of the rubber band. I pull it back as far as I can. The rubber bands won’t have the same energy as the rubber tubing of my wrist rocket, but they’ll do just fine with the rocks I’ve picked up.
Just to be sure, I take one of the stones from the wastebasket. I set my pillow on the floor of the window wall and walk back to the door. I put a rock in the middle band, pull back, and let it fly. There’s a soft thump as the pillow puckers inward.
Bull’s-eye.
I’m like a kid at a birthday party. I dig the stones out of the wastebasket. After a second, I do the same with the sticks. It’s going to be a long night. I use the blades to cut a couple of notches into a thicker stick. Like I did with the rods earlier, I push the blades into the nubs and wrap the leftover rubber bands around them. These darts are crude, but they might come in handy. I put them in my pillowcase along with the stones and the makeshift sling shot.
Sleep latches onto me like a runner. I lie down on my pillow and I am out for the night.
Day fourteen brings me a new guard. She bangs her nightstick on my door in rapid-fire succession. The food slot door flips down and the tray floats in on the hand of the server. I look out my window before I bend down to get the tray, and I see Leslie. Her face is as expressionless as ever. I don’t give her any acknowledgment. I just take the tray and turn away from the door. Before the slot door snaps shut, I hear the squeak of her food cart as she wheels it away.
I check everything on the tray, but there is no further message. I settle in on my pie plate seat and eat my diced potatoes and peppers, the two mystery meat sausages, the two pieces of toast smothered in some sweet, sticky jam. The coffee I drink last. There is no note on the bottom of the cup.
I finish just in time. The food slot door falls open.
“You done in there, miss?” Leslie asks.
It’s a smart move on Leslie’s part. Neither of us knows whom we can trust and whom we can’t. If Leslie is delivering the messages, she has to be doing it for someone. She’s protecting all the interests involved.
“Hold on,” I say. I carry the tray over to the slot. Leslie’s hand juts in and there it is—my message. She drops the wad of paper onto the floor. I give her the tray just as the guard outside bangs the butt end of her nightstick against the metal door.
“Hurry it up in there,” the guard says.
Leslie takes the tray, puts it on the wheeled cart, and pushes off down the corridor. The guard walks behind her. I hear the pounding on the next door. I scoop up the wad and open it. It’s no bigger than a fortune cookie’s slip of paper. The message is even more succinct than what the cookie would have held.
Tonight.
It’s all it says.
I look across the canyon to Nick’s window, but he’s not there. I crane my neck and flatten my face against the window and try to see if there is anyone else in the hall. All I can see is Nick’s door and part of the one to his left. Regardless of the plans of whoever is trying to alert me, I am not going to go anywhere without Nick. He will not be left behind. Nor will Matt. Or Yuki.
I want to know what is going on now, who is involved in this latest plot, but I won’t know anything until it happens.
I do the same as I did with the cupcake wrapper. I rip it into shreds and flush it away.
I have nothing to do now but wait. My cell has never felt so small.
There is a loud bang on my door. Guard 14 sticks her face in my window. She’s wearing aviator sunglasses. She jabs a thumb onto a button on an exterior intercom. Her voice fills the box on my side.
“You drew evening yard,” she says. “Step back from the door.”
The door clicks and opens out. Guard 14 steps into the doorframe. She looks around the cell but doesn’t step any farther into the room.
“Can we go?” I ask. “I only get an hour.”
Guard 14 holds up her stopwatch. “Yeah, and it started five minutes ago,” she says. She gives me a smart-ass grin. Her jaw continues to move. She’s chewing gum and I am envious. I don’t realize how much I miss certain things until I am reminded.
There is no one outside when Guard 14 takes me for my hour of yard time. It’s a little cooler. The shadows are longer. All I can do is walk over to the fence and stare out at the trees. There is no Yuki, no Matt. I lie down in the grass and watch the clouds float by for a few minutes.
“Let’s go,” Guard 14 says. She’s having a cigarette over by the scaffolding. “You can nap in your cell. You’ve got thirty-five minutes left.”
She’s right, I think. I don’t want to turn soft. I start doing some sit-ups. Once I get the blood flowing, I take a look around the yard. It looks big enough, so I start running. Four times around makes a mile, I reason. Slow at first, I pick up the pace. I run for fifteen minutes, and only stop when Guard 14 holds up a hand and waves it at the open
door. I’m sweaty and thirsty. I walk for a few moments to slow my heart rate and get my breath. Guard 14 taps the door with her nightstick.
“All right, all right,” I say.
Guard 14 swings her nightstick out, barely missing my head. The club blocks the entrance. It freaks me out. Guard 14 leans in to me. Her breath reeks of cigarettes and coffee. All of it is stale. I want to turn away from her, but I stop when I hear her say, “Yano says you’re a sassy one.”
I don’t know what to do. The sun is going down, and all I can think about is Leslie’s message. Tonight. Something is happening tonight. I have no idea what it is or what to expect. I lower my eyes. I really don’t want to scrap with Guard 14. She lifts my chin with her nightstick.
“Remember this, honey,” Guard 14 says. I can see her name stripe. It’s J. Floyd. “You and me are going to be seeing a lot of each other. Yano might have been afraid to hit a girl. I’m not. Understand me?”
I nod.
“What’s that, sweetheart?” Guard Floyd turns her head sideways. She leans her ear closer to my face. “I can’t hear you.”
If I had the double-bladed jabber I think I would plunge it into her ear right now. She’s also put herself in a position where I could easily overpower her. Guard Floyd is not military trained. She wears a uniform. The nightstick gives her all the power she needs; she has no firearm on her. It explains why there are so few guards here at the detention center: There aren’t as many soldiers on base as I thought.
I try to reach out to her and ask, “What’s the ‘J’ stand for?” I ask.
“Jenetta.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
“Like what you see?” She gives me that same smart-ass grin again. She pops a fresh piece of gum into her mouth. The candied coating cracks. It’s bubble gum flavored. I drool a little bit.
