The Final Trade

by Joe Hart

  “You know I wouldn’t let you go alone,” Merrill says.

  “You’ll stop me?” She looks in his direction as he drifts the Suburban over to a hidden path below the leaning pines on the side of the road.

  “It’s obvious now that I can’t stop you from doing anything,” he says, bringing the vehicle to a halt under the canopy of branches. Eli and Tia climb out, grabbing gear and making every effort not to get involved in the conversation. “I want you to think long and hard about what you’re going to do, because like it or not, it affects everyone.”

  “That’s exactly what they pounded into us in the ARC. If one of us broke the rules the next closest woman was punished as well. They kept us bound to each other.” Lily’s smiling face comes back to her then, the excitement radiating off her after pronouncing a word correctly. She sees Lily raising her arms up and down in the light of the flames from the downed helicopter, pretending to be a bird. One of Zoey’s hands strays to her stomach and touches the healed bullet wound. Amidst the memory her anger rises even as she tries to quell the emotion.

  “You know what I mean. All I’m asking is you not make a snap decision. Things aren’t the same as they were before. Chelsea and Tia have been hunted for a long time. They still are. Now there’s you, Sherell, and Rita to think about. If any of you were taken or hurt, I . . .” He stops himself, and she knows he’s thinking about his daughter Meeka, her best friend and one of the women she failed to save.

  “What?”

  Merrill’s voice softens. “I get that you want to know your heritage, find out what your last name is, see the place where you and your parents lived before all this. And I know you want that for Rita and Sherell too.” She says nothing. The pines whisper and creak in the late autumn air. “I’m not asking you to give that up. But always remember you already have a family you’ll never have to go looking for.”

  The darkness hides most of his features, and as she looks at him something bends, nearly breaking, inside of her before coming back into place. She swallows the knot in her throat and is about to reply when he climbs out of the vehicle.

  “Let’s get this old pig covered up,” he says.

  After concealing the Suburban with camouflage netting, they begin the hike to Ian’s cabin. They move single file through the forest that covers the side of the mountain like a maze. There is little ambient light from the cloud-smothered moon to see by, but Zoey could find the cabin with her eyes shut.

  Here is the rock that looks like a dog lying on its back. Here is the broken tree that fell in a storm two months ago. Here is the scent of food drifting down through the forest. Here is the only true home she’s ever known.

  Dancing firelight appears in the dark, and after they wind through a section of crumbling rock and bramble, the cabin appears.

  Built into the side of the mountain, its original structure is hidden almost completely from sight. The addition that’s been constructed over the last four months looks native to the surrounding forest, with its supports of unfinished pine and steel roof thatched over with needles and boughs. In front of the dwelling a small fire burns in a pit and four grouse cook above it on a spit. A low growl comes from their right and a large, black dog appears, eyes reflecting the firelight.

  “Seamus! Come here!” Zoey says, setting her bag down and kneeling. The dog’s growling ceases and he bounds over, nearly knocking her flat as he runs into her. “Fat dog. You gained weight since we left,” she says, scratching him behind the ears.

  “He’d eat all our food if we let him,” Eli says as he passes. “Big bastard needs to go on a diet.”

  “You’re just pissed that he’s in better shape than you are,” Tia says.

  “I’m a specimen of fitness. Look at this,” he says, flexing both biceps so that they bulge in his shirtsleeves.

  “That really does nothing for me.”

  “Admit it, I’m wearing you down.”

  “I’ll turn straight the day you’re not black anymore.”

  “Workin’ on it, baby. I haven’t tanned in nearly a month.”

  Their banter pulls laughter from Zoey as she gives Seamus one last pet and grabs her bag. A tall form stands beside the fire as they approach. Ian’s smile lights up his entire face and even with his smashed and crooked nose, the old man is handsome.

  “The wanderers return,” he says, gathering Zoey into a hug. He is the only person unabashed about doing this. Everyone else in the group is always hesitant to touch her. For the longest time she assumed it was out of respect for her ordeal and paralysis, but now she’s not so sure.

  Ian holds her shoulders, studying her. “You’re all safe?”

  “Safe and sound.”

  “So good to have you back. Was the trip worth it?”

  She glances at Merrill, who gives her a sidelong look. “I think so.”

  “Excellent, even better having risked and gained,” Ian says. “Come sit by the fire; the birds are almost done.”

  As she’s settling onto a wooden chair next to the fire pit, the cabin’s front door bangs open, accompanied by a short squeal of happiness. Chelsea sprints down the stairs and leaps into Merrill’s arms, kissing him hard on the mouth.

  “You were gone so long,” Chelsea says when she’s separated herself from him.

  “It was only ten days,” Merrill says.

  “That’s long enough.”

  “Tell me about it,” Eli says, settling into a chair opposite Zoey. “My ass is flat as a pancake from sleeping on the damn ground.” He gives her a wink.

  “That thing’ll never flatten out,” Tia says, pouring herself a glass of whiskey before handing the bottle to Eli. Three shadows detach from the addition that’s still being constructed, and a second later Newton’s and Sherell’s faces appear in the dark, followed by Rita. Zoey notices with some amusement how close Sherell walks beside Newton. Rita and Sherell draw two more chairs to either side of her and immediately begin asking questions.

  “Did you find any?”

  “How about the chopper, did you see it? We heard it two days ago.”

  “How far did you go?”

  Zoey grins. It had been all she could do to convince Rita and Sherell to stay behind. Both women are fully capable of taking care of themselves, but there is no denying she has an edge on them when it comes to fighting and shooting. She made it her sole purpose during and after her rehabilitation to learn everything Merrill could teach her about weapons and the ground fighting he calls jiujitsu, even with Chelsea’s constant chiding about re-injuring her bruised spinal cord.

  “We never saw a chopper, but we found a reconnaissance group.” The low chatter around the fire stops. Zoey looks at Merrill for approval and he tips his head. “We caught wind of them southeast of here near the edge of the desert. Merrill and Eli heard people talking about three armed strangers asking about recent births and younger women. When we caught up to them and saw they were heading in the direction of the ARC, we set up an ambush to disable their vehicle, but it didn’t work exactly how we planned.”

  She pauses, takes a sip of water, then finishes the story about chasing and interrogating the surviving spy. When she’s done there is only the crackling of flames and the constant whisper of wind in the pines.

  “So are we going there?” Sherell asks. “Do you think there’s a chance we’ll find out who our families are?” Zoey realizes the question is directed at her, not at Merrill or Ian or the rest of the group. She glances at Merrill.

  “Everyone’s agreed,” Merrill says. “This is important enough to you three that we’ll help you any way we can. No one in the group was given an ultimatum. Each person decided for themselves. If Meeka had escaped I would’ve wanted someone to help her find me.”

  Zoey looks at the people ringing the fire and the same choking sensation returns. Chelsea, the doctor and mother to them all. Eli, always there to make her smile. Ian, never without a kind word or encouragement. Newton, mute but so gentle and intelligent. Tia, gruff
but insightful. And Merrill, another name for him she can’t quite get herself to say yet.

  They all gaze back. Her family.

  Forcing away the tears that threaten to spill out, she says to Sherell and Rita, “If they’re all in agreement then we should probably have our own meeting.”

  “I’m going,” Rita says. “There’s nothing—”

  “After dinner,” Ian interrupts, standing to retrieve the dripping birds from over the fire. “First we eat.”

  The grouse is perfectly done and Zoey has to restrain herself from eating more than her share. After ten days of subsisting on cold meals out of cans, dried jerky, and water, the warm dinner is luxurious. When they’re finished, the rest of the group begins to clean up while Zoey leads Sherell and Rita into the addition that consists of four new rooms, three of which are theirs. The bedrooms are simple and not entirely finished. There is still insulating to do, locks to be installed, more camouflage to be added, but each is a space of their own that reflects their personas: Sherell’s walls plastered with her drawings, Rita’s table stacked with books, her appetite for reading almost as voracious as Zoey’s. But her own room is less adorned than those of the other women, a little bleaker, and she realizes that it mirrors her better than she thought. Regardless, the rooms are so much different than the cold, impersonal quarters they lived in at the ARC.

  Prison cells, Zoey thinks as they enter her room. Call them what they were. Sherell and Rita take positions on the modest bed that Ian constructed out of scrap lumber while Zoey sits on a chair in the corner of the room.

  For a second they are silent, merely looking at one another before Zoey says, “I know I don’t have to ask either of you what you want to do because you feel the same as I do. But there’s something to think about before we make a decision. This really is no longer their fight. They’ve taken us in, fed us, protected us, and now we’re asking them to put themselves in danger again. It isn’t fair, especially to Tia and Chelsea. They’d be hunted the same as us the moment someone saw them.”

  The other women seem to digest this before Sherell says, “I don’t want them to have to go, but we need them if we’re going to get there.” She adjusts her dark hair behind her ear. “It’s funny. I shouldn’t care about people I’ve never really known before. I don’t remember my parents at all. Can’t bring up their faces or the sound of their voices, nothing. By all rights they’re probably dead, but . . .” She shrugs. “I can’t get away from that feeling. That need to know. It’s there every day like a bruise that doesn’t heal.”

  The room grows quiet again except for the slight hiss of wind that sneaks into and out of the rooms through the cracks in the walls. There is so much work to do here. There is life in this place. Potential. They could stay here, forget the past completely and forge ahead. Always remember you already have a family you’ll never have to go looking for.

  But Sherell’s words are still there, hovering in Zoey’s mind like a fog.

  “My mother has a scar over her right eyebrow,” Rita says, jolting Zoey from her thoughts. Rita stares at the floor between her feet. “I remember touching it once, tracing the line. It was like an L laid on its side. I asked her where she’d gotten it and she told me to be quiet. I think maybe my father had hit her. She wasn’t pretty. She had big hands and a wide forehead like mine. But I thought she was beautiful and that the scar only added to it.” Rita looks up and Zoey is surprised to see a shine to her eyes. “I think that’s maybe why I was so angry all the time before. Because I envied everyone who couldn’t remember anything. If you’ve never had it, how can you miss it, right?” She looks down at her hands. “Halie and Grace were like that. No memories of where they came from, so they were in no hurry for their induction. I’m not sure if they even minded being at the ARC. Halie asked me to walk around the promenade with her one day, a year before her ceremony, and I spit on her. She was just trying to be nice, but I was so angry at everyone because each day that passed was a day I couldn’t get back to the only person I knew who truly loved me.” She wipes at her nose and blinks rapidly. “I’m going no matter what.”

  Zoey feels the ghostly slide of soft hair through her fingers, the only memory she has, and the ache is there.

  The bruise that never heals.

  “We’ll leave in two days,” she says.

  3

  I am a comet, Wen thinks.

  She sits up in her cot, early morning air creeping in through the broken zipper of the tent. More than cool, it is cold. Always moving, never stopping. She hears the sounds of the trade breaking down. The rev of an engine, tent poles rattling, men cussing at one another, at everything, at nothing. She’s never gotten used to how early they leave. It isn’t yet dawn.

  She rises and pulls on her dusty cargo pants and stained blouse, fingering the tear near the collar. A man grabbed her as she was moving between two of the game stands last night, even though it’s expressly forbidden to touch her. Before she could stick the sharpened crochet hook she typically carries into his stomach, he’d torn her only decent blouse. She’d left him lying and moaning in a spreading pool of blood while the fluting calliope music played obscenely on the midway. And she hadn’t cried this time after closing her tent for the night.

  She undoes the tent’s flaps and peers outside.

  The flatness of the Nevada desert is still startling to her even after seeing it dozens of times on the trade’s routes. The scrub that stretches for miles is a muted purple, glimmering with frost, in the predawn light. The dry, packed dirt, cracked and veined beneath the low brush, fades into obscurity outside the borders of the town they camped near. To the west is the smudge of the Sierra Nevadas, their grandeur struck down by distance.

  She sees this all past the jutting outlines of the carnival tents and fifteen-foot chain-link fence that acts as the trade’s border. Even now the fence sags as it’s deconstructed, poles being pulled by the dark shapes of men, a hauling truck trundling before them.

  Wen breathes the air, the cold burning her lungs. They’ll want their food soon. There isn’t much time.

  She dons her heaviest coat and heads toward one of the few buildings that is solid wood, instead of fraying canvas, keeping the image of a comet in her mind. The trade only pauses, never stops for good, and she is no different. What was the book she read in school? The one with the two boys who go to the carnival that arrives in the middle of the night? She can’t recall the name but it was eerie and haunting, as were the forces that ran the carnival itself. That parallel isn’t lost on her.

  She passes a dozen men, all armed and huddled around a pot of coffee steaming over a fire. They give her looks but don’t say anything. They’ve learned how far they can go and where exactly the lines are. It’s the only thing she’s grateful for in this place.

  The mess building sits in the northern part of the camp near the fence line. To the right is the coliseum, a construction of wooden bleachers that circles what most of the men refer to as “the dance floor.” The smell of blood is strong even outside the structure, but her gorge has ceased to react to the scent. Desensitization, she thinks the word is. Too much of anything causes it to lose its meaning.

  Beyond the coliseum is the square shape of the nest, two stories, its upper windows lit no matter what time of day or night. A generator hums beside the building and a dozen guards stand near its base, talking quietly, several embers of hand-rolled cigarettes flaring in the gloom.

  Wen walks through the open front of the mess area, its rows of seating empty at this hour. In the back she passes through a flimsy door and leaves the serving window’s awning shut.

  Two fluorescent tubes buzz to life in the ceiling when she flips a switch, and by their glow she begins to work.

  She loses herself in the preparation of food. Lighting the stove, pans warming, oil out on the counter, refrigerator open, ingredients gathered. She does this without thinking, only moving, always moving. She’s about to stir everything together when the kitchen do
or flies open and bangs against the wall.

  Vidri stands in the doorway, his hunched, muscular shoulders giving away his identity even though she can’t see his face. And even if she couldn’t see him at all, she would be able to smell him. His body odor is the worst she’s ever encountered, and that’s saying something since showers and baths are rotated biweekly.

  “Morning, sunshine,” Vidri says. He motions with his head and an unfamiliar figure appears beside him, much thinner. “Tristan, this is Wen. She cooks and makes the sweets.”

  Tristan stares, dissecting her from across the kitchen. “Where’d she get a name like Wen? She don’t look Chinese.”

  “It’s short for wench,” Vidri says, stepping through the door. Tristan follows behind him. When he stops beneath the fluorescent light she sees he’s been drinking already. Without a word she turns to the fridge and retrieves a covered container, spooning a dollop of chocolate pudding into a bowl before sliding it to Vidri. He doesn’t look at the dessert but continues to stare at her.

  “It’s more than last time,” Wen says. “It’s as much as I can spare without someone noticing.”

  Vidri places a dirty index finger into the chocolate and dips some out. He looks at it for a moment and licks the chocolate away before sauntering around the counter.

  “Here, let me thank you,” he says.

  Wen shakes her head. “No.”

  “Come on, it’s rude not to say thanks.” He corners her and she leans away, the cabinet behind her pressing into her back. Vidri moves closer, his odor overpowering. It coats the back of her throat and nasal passages. If she weren’t so used to it she would vomit all over him.

  Vidri leans in and presses his mouth against hers. The touch of his lips along with his stench makes her want to shudder.

  Vidri’s lips part as he pushes his tongue against her teeth. After what seems like hours he steps back. “That’s my love,” he whispers. “You know I’ve been talking to them about us. Think I’m wearing them down. Soon I’ll get permission and you’ll stay in my tent at night.” He brushes her cheek with one finger, rubbing it against her lower lip. The urge to bite him is almost too much. She can imagine the satisfaction of her teeth coming together, skin parting, bone cracking, Vidri screaming and dropping to his knees.