The Bleeding Crowd

by Jessica Dall

  “Are you back in rotation yet?”

  “No, but there’s another lottery coming up. I’ve got some of the younger guys tickets lined up for that.”

  Ben nodded, glancing back at the door. “Where’s everyone else? You chase them out?”

  “They’re having a rugby match in the yard,” Jude said. “I didn’t feel like tackling people today.”

  “Any issues with Eli and his boys?”

  “Things have been pretty quiet.” Jude shook his head. “What’s going on outside?”

  Ben moved a card for Jude without thinking. “Nothing big as far as I can tell.”

  “Thrilling. We’re looking to get you reassigned again, I take it.”

  “I don’t know.” Ben shook his head. “I think there’s some potential with this one.”

  “What? She can get you meds?”

  “I think she might become a convert.”

  Jude raised his eyes slowly, quirking an eyebrow. “Are you serious?”

  “We have some women working for us,” Ben said.

  “Yeah, but the guards are easy. They’re treated only marginally better than we are.”

  “I bet I could get her,” Ben replied. “She’s just ignorant, not misanthropic.”

  “What if you don’t? You can’t just go up to her and say, ‘Hey, we’re a men’s rights group, want to join? No? Oh well, have a nice day.’”

  “So little faith in me.” Ben crossed his arms, amused.

  “You’re so confident?”

  “She’s a novice, just turned twenty. How hard can messing with her mind really be?”

  Chapter Four

  Ben let himself be scanned at the end of the underground passageway they used to allow men in and out of the villas without being observed. Waving the humming baton over the chip under his collarbone, the guard recorded his information and reprogrammed the chip to restrict him to Dahlia’s room. The guard opened the door, made sure the hallway was clear, and then shepherded him into the room at the end of the hall.

  The door closed behind him and the lock clicked, like every other lock that clicked behind him. He looked around. No one appeared to be here. He moved towards the desk before pausing. “Hello?”

  “One second,” a voice called from the bathroom.

  He released a breath and sat down on the desk chair.

  Dahlia stepped through the doorway, glancing at him before turning to pull open her closet to look at the mirror.

  He ran his eyes from her strappy sandals to the short emerald dress she was cinching with a gold belt. He studied her legs for a moment and then brought his eyes up to look at the side of her face. “This all for me?”

  She scoffed. “Why would I spend the time for that? It’s not like you have a choice whether or not to be here.”

  “Well, you’ve spent some time doing...” He eyed her up and down.

  “I’m going downtown to put in an appearance at a party my friend is having.” Dahlia scrunched her hair up in her hands quickly before studying it again.

  He frowned. “So why call me here?”

  “I figured it was about time again.” She shrugged, not bothering to look at him. “I needed an excuse to leave early. I’ll be back in thirty, forty minutes tops. There are some anatomy and what-not books if you’re interested. The herbology one has a lot of pictures. It’s the one with the picture of a big leaf on the front. Or there’s the TV. I’ll be back soon.”

  Ben nodded, watched her wipe off a smudge of lipstick, and move towards the door. She didn’t stop, but opened it, pulled the door behind her, and shut the curtains as the door clicked.

  He waited for a few minutes, making sure she hadn’t forgotten anything that would make her turn around, and then moved to the desk. He glanced over his shoulder, and then felt under the edge of the desk until the screen lit up on the, seemingly, wood panel.

  He looked at it the screen that sat empty besides the block letters PASSWORD: He sighed. Beyond all their talk of compassion and peacefulness, a surprising number of women had their information guarded far beyond its real value. He’d have to have Jude give him a refresher on how to hack into the system.

  He slid his hand under the desk again, finding the button and pressing it gently so the screen turned off before settling on rummaging around her desk. One drawer was locked, but easily enough picked. Still, there was nothing really of note—a couple of personal letters, what seemed to be work papers, nothing truthfully worth locking up—unless she was very worried that whoever Mackenzie was would find out they were discussing her by passing notes. He slid the drawer shut and did his best make it lock again.

  Women really made no sense sometimes.

  He took the map she had in the back of one of the drawers and slid it into the compartment in his pants leg before moving away from the desk. He sat down, smoothing out the all but an imperceptible square protrusion along his calf so it wouldn’t shift or crinkle too much when he moved. Strange sounds coming from pieces of clothing were never good.

  Picking up one of the textbooks at the end of the bed, he flipped it open to a random page. A picture of a plant sat at the top and he scanned the page. The word poisonous made him pause.

  Nerium Oleander: an evergreen shrub (top left) in the apocynum family. Unlike dogbanes, however, Oleander is highly poisonous, even in small doses. Where dogbane contains cymarin, which in improper doses can cause arrhythmia, Oleander contains a myriad of toxins, the most deadly being oleandrin and neriine both of which are potent cardiac glycosides. These toxins are present in all parts of the plant; the sap is known to cause severe irritation and inflammation.

  He scanned the rest of the entry, looking at the page for a long moment before setting it down. He picked up the anatomy text he had looked at before, turning to the index to look for cardiac. His finger ran down the list stopping at cardiovascular. He flipped to the page, finding a detailed picture of the heart and lungs and the veins and arteries branching out from them. He pursed his lips, mouthing glycoside a couple times, finding nothing that would give any clue to what that meant. He’d just have to assume it did something to the heart. Something bad.

  The door slid open, making him jump, changing the page, not that there was logically any reason to do so.

  Dahlia glanced at him, slipping off her shoes and tossing them in the general direction of the closet. “Anatomy again?”

  “It’s that awkward place somewhere between disgusting and completely fascinating,” Ben said, glancing down at the page now exposed, the word brain jumping out at him. “That’s the brain, yeah?”

  She rolled her shoulders, moving to look at the book. “Yeah, you’re in the central nervous system. See there, that... well, first it says encephalon, but it means brain.”

  “Just trying to make things sound confusing?” Ben smiled.

  “Just being technical.” She sat down.

  He nodded, closing the book and setting it aside, hoping he didn’t look guilty. He was generally better about that. “How was your party?”

  “Not horrible,” Dahlia said. “Music, cavorting, general merriment.”

  “Then why did you need an excuse to leave?” Ben asked.

  “I’m in a less than gregarious mood,” she said.

  “Are you ever in a gregarious mood? You don’t seem, you know, bubbly.”

  She snorted. “I’m impressed you know what gregarious means. I was gearing up to define it.”

  “I may not read English, but I do speak it.”

  “Incredibly well,” she agreed. “Your lot isn’t supposed to be the most verbal of creatures.”

  “I listen. The guards follow the same basic curriculum you do.”

  “The lesbians?”

  “The guards.” He shrugged. “You’ve used that term before.”

  “Oh.” Dahlia frowned waving her hand like he could complete the thought for her. “It’s the general term for women who are homosexuals. You know, women that like women.”

  “
You’d think that’d be all of you then.”

  “Well, sexually, not socially.” Dahlia shook her head. “Women that find women sexually attractive.”

  Ben nodded, studying her. “Do you prefer women?”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Excuse me?”

  “Well, just thinking about it, it would explain your aversion to sleeping with me.”

  “Sleeping with you,” she repeated. “I take that’s a colloquialism for having sex.”

  “Well... yeah,” Ben said, not ready to launch into a full explanation.

  Dahlia shook her head. “We have a brain scan at fourteen. I’m lacking the necessary wiring up there to be a lesbian. Can’t say I’ve ever had the urge to sleep with a girl either. Maybe I’m just asexual.”

  “From what you’ve told me, you have a sex drive,” he said.

  “Fine. Maybe I’m autosexual. I prefer my sexual activities to take place purely with myself.”

  Ben smiled. “Sexy.”

  “I’m so glad you approve of my sexual practices. I feel so validated.” Dahlia frowned. “Why are you so interested?”

  “Well, I happen to prefer sex with a partner, and, since I’m obviously heterosexual, you don’t get laid, I don’t either.”

  “That’s another colloquialism for sex?” she asked. “Get laid?”

  “Yeah.”

  She nodded for a moment. “Well, sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m sure you’ve had to wait longer than this for sex. In two weeks you can be put back in the lottery and maybe get someone who does want to use you purely as a sex object.”

  He looked at her. “What if I don’t want to be put back into the lottery?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Even without sex, sitting around here is better than sitting around the camp. Who knows when I’d get called up again. Or what sort of woman I’d end up with. You can be bitchy, but at least you leave things at verbal abuse.”

  “I’m not abusive.” She frowned.

  He smiled. “Lighten up. I’m teasing. You’re actually much more intellectually stimulating than anything else.”

  She paused, considering that. “Well, I try.”

  “You succeed,” he said. “No one else I’ve talked to, no other woman I’ve ended up with, has ever let me look at anything remotely educational.”

  “Well, I don’t know how much you can really learn without being able to read those.”

  “There are pictures.” He shrugged. “The brain... ence―whatever it was.”

  “Encephalon.”

  “Encephalon,” he repeated. “Any reason you can’t just say brain?”

  “You can,” she said. “Encephalon is just more technical. Brain means the part of the nervous system that sends signals to the rest of the body. Encephalon means that, but that it’s in a vertebrate. Since humans are vertebrates—”

  “Important distinction I’m sure,” he cut her off.

  “Words are important,” Dahlia said. “Cassandra, my friend who works at the hospital with me, likes to say I went into homeopathics because of my name. Like being named after a flower is what made me like plants.”

  “It’s a flower?”

  “What?” She frowned.

  “A dahlia.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “Dahlia Hybrida. It’s a perennial plant.”

  “Perennial. I’ll pretend I know what that means.”

  “Oh, it means it blooms season after season, doesn’t die off.”

  “Bodes well for you,” Ben said. “Can’t say we have a lot of flowers around the camp. Gardening terms aren’t my specialty.”

  She picked up a book, turning to the Ds. She showed him a picture. “That’s a dahlia.”

  He nodded. “Pretty.”

  “Not repulsive.” She shrugged off his compliment.

  “It suits you,” he said.

  “Yes, because the flower has a lot of effect on my appearance.” Her dismissal of that was evident.

  “Will you just smile and say ‘thank you’ like most people when they’re complemented?”

  “I don’t need you to artificially bolster my self-esteem.” She placed the book on her desk. “Especially when you have a vested interest in trying to win me over.”

  “I might have ulterior motives, but it doesn’t make everything I say a lie. You are pretty, and obviously the name suits you and your profession.”

  Dahlia rolled her eyes. “Thank you. However, you don’t need to spend time complementing me.”

  “So what do you want me to say then?”

  She shrugged. “You talk about anything in the camps?”

  “Depends on the person I’m talking to. Some of my friends are actually very deep.”

  “You have friends?” Her eyebrows rose.

  “No,” he deadpanned, “I’m a complete social outcast.”

  “Sorry.” She moved to her closet, pulling her dress off and throwing it into the laundry chute. “I’m still working out how you all deal with each other socially.”

  He let his eyes rove over her before speaking. “We’re still social creatures like you are. We might be a little more violent, but even if it is a genetic predisposition, I think this system only perpetuates that. The more limited the resources, the more people are going to fight for them. And not just men.”

  “They give you what you need, don’t they?” She turned to study him. “You’re healthy.”

  “Yeah, but there’s always inequality. Even you haven’t found a way to get around that. Not all of you can have and do the same thing.”

  “No, but we know our places and have come to terms with that.” Dahlia turned to her closet, unsnapping her bra and pulling out a nightshirt from the closet.

  “Can you stop that?”

  She looked over her shoulder. “Stop coming to terms with—?”

  “Changing,” he said. “It’s really distracting.”

  Frowning, she faced him. “Why?”

  “If you aren’t going to sleep with me, it’s sort of like showing a starving man a steak and then eating it in front of him.”

  She blinked, pulling on her nightshirt. “Sorry, I didn’t know it was that significant. The first ten years of my life, I lived in a room with four other girls. I’m used to changing in front of people.”

  “Men are very visual,” Ben said. “Especially when it comes to erotic images.”

  “I wasn’t being erotic.” Dahlia shook her head.

  “Getting naked is erotic enough when you don’t see women that often.”

  She frowned, moving into the bathroom. “You should work on writing a manual about men for us... well, dictating a manual.”

  “Maybe I will,” Ben said and waited for her to finish. “Is this a hint that I’m supposed to make up a spot for myself on the floor to sleep?”

  “I’m not going to sleep.” Dahlia shook her head, reappearing in the doorframe. “This is just more comfortable than that dress.”

  He nodded.

  “I suppose if you really wanted to, you could sleep on the other side of the bed. There’s space.”

  “Moving up in the world, am I?”

  “Well, sleeping on a mat seems so... primitive.” She shrugged. “You don’t seem completely bestial. I think you could manage to sleep in a bed with some basic sense of decorum.”

  “Now I definitely want to stick around more than the next two weeks.” Ben smiled.

  “Well, it’s three months before I have to switch. If you want to stick around it will keep me from having to deal with that damn choosing ceremony thing again.”

  Ben nodded with a smile.

  She stood beside the mattress and motioned for him to move over. “You’re on my side of the bed.”

  “Isn’t it all your bed?”

  “I always sleep on the left. I usually have books and things on the right when I’ve been working in bed.”

  “So, I’m a thing?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Do you want to sleep on the floor?”

>   “I’ll be good.” He held up his hands in innocence, dropping them to shift to the other side at once.

  She studied him for a long moment, sitting on the bed a little self-conscious. “What are the camps like?”

  “What?”

  “Well, we never hear much about them. I can’t say I’ve ever spent the time hypothesizing how you live. What are they like?”

  He shrugged, but said nothing.

  “Completely horrible?”

  “Not completely.”

  “Sort of horrible?” she continued.

  “Well, it isn’t a day at the spa.”

  “How many people... men...” she amended. “How many men live there?”

  “Men aren’t people?”

  “Are you constantly going to be doing that?” She frowned.

  He shrugged all innocence. “Well, I don’t have an exact number, but there are generally twenty men to a barrack, and twenty or so barracks around the camp, so whatever that comes out to.”

  “400,” she said.

  “Did you do that in your head that quickly?”

  “Twenty-squared is 400.”

  “You’re sort of scarily smart.”

  “It’s why I’m a doctor,” she said

  He nodded.

  “So there are only 400 of you?”

  “Only?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “Just, there’s something like 30,000 of us in the metropolitan area. I know some of those are under twenty, but all the same, it seems a little imbalanced.”

  “Well, we aren’t all at the same camp. Boys, anyone under fourteen, are in a children’s camp. The rest of us are split up so we can’t organize.”

  “Organize what?” She knotted her eyebrows.

  “A revolt, I’m guessing.”

  Dahlia recoiled before recovering. “You would revolt?”

  “Me personally? No.” He smiled. “In general, I think that’s what your government is worried about happening, though.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, it’s not out of the realm of reason, is it?” He shrugged. “Like I said, I have no plans of any malicious intent, but we’re all locked up and used purely as studs. Some people might resent that.”

  “I thought you liked sex.”

  “Yeah, I do,” he said, “but I’m talking in general.”