by Glenn Beck
“So,” I said, “why do you think she saved what she did?”
“I guess you save what you think you’re going to lose. I saved salt.”
“You did?” I remembered the little salt packets he used to give me with the eggs.
“I once heard a rumor they were going to outlaw salt. You know how those rumors are. Nine times out of ten, before you know it, it’s a fact. Things can happen so fast. So I saw this little box of salt packets in the storage area. You know, where the Gatekeepers pick up the cubes for their Compounds. I grabbed a handful. Guess where I hid them? In my sleeping mat.” He smiled at me. “You liked it on your eggs, didn’t you?”
I nodded. But I was still thinking about what he said.
You save what you think you’re going to lose.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
I was running late for work. The sun had slipped down far enough that dusk would soon become dark. I bicycled as fast as I could, my heart racing and my headscarf fluttering around my face, sliding across my eyes. If I was late, I could be reported. I didn’t want to even think about that. The Children’s Village was directly across from my Compound, separated by the great area of land the Authority used for Social Update Meetings. I could get to the Village in no time if I were allowed to cross that area. But all Citizens had to stay on the path. All activities, all movement, had to be tracked.
Finally, out of breath and sweating, I was at the Village.
Oddly, there was no one at the gate. I had never seen a gate or a Compound without a Gatekeeper. It was quiet, too, as though the dusk muzzled the birds and breezes.
I kept looking over my shoulder as I fastened my energy bicycle to the download bar. Still no Gatekeeper. I was completely alone in the yard, though somebody surely had to be watching me.
Indeed, Lizzie leaned against the doorway. On the other side of it was the day-shift Caretaker. They stood with their arms crossed over their chests, thin-lipped and narrow-eyed, like angry sentries. They didn’t speak, but fumbled with their torches. Still, there was no torch for me, it seemed.
“You’re late,” Lizzie said. Her voice was thick. The other one made a little snorting sound.
“Where’s Randall?” I asked, moving closer.
Again the snorting sound.
“Where’s Randall, she wants to know. Where’s Randall, as if she doesn’t know,” Lizzie said, looking at me. “You tell me. Where’s Randall?” Her words ran together.
“I don’t know. That’s why I asked.” Something was wrong, seriously wrong. I heard a child coughing inside, a faraway sound.
“Shouldn’t we go in? Shouldn’t we get a change-of-shift report?” I asked. “And what about a Gatekeeper? We need a Gatekeeper.”
They looked at each other. Lizzie’s face was shiny and unwashed, her eyelids swollen over bloodshot eyes. The other’s face was without emotion, flat and hard. Her headscarf was loosely tied and tangled with the straps of her torch.
“Is there a flag we can hang?” I asked. “Something to let the Authority know?”
“Let the Authority know what?” Lizzie gave a little laugh, as though I had said something that was just short of funny. “There is no Gatekeeper tonight. Haven’t you done enough with the Authority?” Lizzie asked. “Who is going to see a flag? Hang a hundred flags. No one to see them. Fool. No one to see anything here tonight.”
She was right. It was just me, the two of them, and the children. Again, the faraway cough, and now the cry of an infant. I wanted to go inside. What if that was Elsa crying? I took a step toward the doorway.
The day-shift Caretaker turned to Lizzie. “I’m going to the barracks. See what I can find out. If I hear anything, I’ll be back. I’ll try to get some more . . . you know.” She ignored me and walked away.
I followed Lizzie into the building and down the hall. She walked in an unsteady way, her hand against the wall, as though afraid she might fall. Her narrow torch beam lit a path straight ahead but made the corners seem darker.
At the supply cupboard, she turned on me. I had to take a step back.
“You!” she said. “You did it, didn’t you?”
I took another step back.
She raised her arm as though to slap me. She swung but missed. Off balance, she started to stumble but caught herself on the door frame.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked. “Where’s Randall? What’s that smell?”
“You’re what’s wrong. You. They took Randall away. You must have said something, done something. You’re not one of us. Not Village-raised.”
“What do you mean, they took Randall away. Why? Where did they take him?”
“You should know. You must have said something. Reported something.”
“Why would I do that?
Another baby was crying. A shrill, sharp sound like a knife in the air.
“Citizens who report others get rewarded. What’s your reward, huh?”
She stumbled into the rocking chair.
I said firmly, “I reported no one. I said nothing. What’s that smell?”
“Shut up, special friend of Joan. Special home-raised know-nothing. Just shut up.”
She was making no sense, answering no questions. I took a deep breath. I had to take care of Elsa. Elsa and the other children.
“Lizzie, I’m very sorry about Randall. We have to work now, or it will only get worse,” I said.
“Go ahead. Do useless stuff, waste-of-time stuff. Those babies won’t even be here tomorrow.” She pulled a container of something out of her pocket, took the lid off, and took a drink of whatever it was. There was that smell again.
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. They won’t be here tomorrow.” She drank some more from the container and dragged the back of her hand over her mouth. “Relocating them. All of them. That’s what I heard.” She stumbled into the supply cupboard and sat down hard on the rocking chair.
My heart jumped. “Relocating them? Relocating them?” The words came out as though squeezed through thick fog. I felt like my throat was swelling shut.
“That’s what I heard.” She paused and looked up at me. “Baby Six goes, too. Or maybe they’ll just recycle her. You never know.”
The container she was holding fell and the little liquid that was left spilled onto the floor, making a dark puddle. Lizzie leaned over, ran her fingers across the puddle, and then licked them.
“They can’t do that!”
“Fool,” she said. “You are so stupid.” She leaned her head back against the rocking chair and closed her eyes. “They can do whatever they want. Have whatever they want. Don’t you get it yet?”
She hiccupped and her eyes seemed to wander, searching the darkness beyond. “But I got some. Some of their good stuff. Don’t ask me how.” She hiccupped.
The day-shift Caretaker appeared out of the darkness of the corridor. She bent over and tried to whisper to Lizzie but her words had no softness to them and came out at near full volume. “I got some more. Here.” She held a container out to Lizzie, then took another one out of her pocket, sat down against the wall, and started to drink from it.
I pushed past them and started taking diapers and nourishment bottles from the shelves. I left with my arms full of supplies but then realized I had no light, no torch. I let the diapers fall to the floor, piling up over my shoes and ankles, and clutched the nourishment bottles tight to my chest.
A baby began to cry.
I cried, too.
Oh, dear sweet Jesus. Save what you think you are going to lose.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
I don’t know how long I stood there, leaning against the cold wall. A heartbeat, a minute, a lifetime? Time froze in the dark.
The baby still whimpered, a bleating, breathless cry, wearing out and then stopping. But there was another sound now. Raspy, rattling, coming from the supply cupboard.
I forced myself to look inside. Two torches fanned light onto the gray ceiling and cast shadow
s over Lizzie and the other. I could see them both asleep, snoring. Lizzie sprawled in the rocker, legs spread, head thrown back, mouth open. The other one lay curled on her side, one hand holding an empty container.
All I thought about in that moment were Elsa and David. If the children were relocated, would I be relocated, too, or would I be separated from Elsa forever? What about David? I had no answers, only questions.
I touched Lizzie’s shoulder. She didn’t wake. I took the empty container out of the other’s hand. I held it near my nose, trying to figure out what had been in it. It smelled like Lizzie’s breath had smelled earlier.
With shaking hands, I slid Lizzie’s torch slowly over her headscarf. I barely breathed. My pulse throbbed in my temples. My heart was beating so loudly that I thought it would wake her up. I put on the torch. I had light. Quickly I gathered up the diapers from the corridor floor and hurried to the nursery, my arms full of everything I needed to keep busy, keep moving, to think.
I moved from crib to crib, removing wet diapers, cleaning tiny round bottoms, propping bottles into small, searching mouths. I kissed the head of each baby and swaddled their blankets around their shoulders and legs. I was aware of feeling as if I were saying good-bye to each precious bundle. Elsa was last so I could hold her as she ate. Awake and watchful when I approached, she reached one tiny hand up to me, fingers spread like pink flower petals, the most beautiful hand I had ever seen. A shiver ran across my skin, along my arms and legs and the back of my neck with urgency I had never felt before. They would not take Elsa.
Holding her, I quickly made rounds through the other sleeping rooms. First the girls. All was quiet. The smell of girls. Sanitizing solution. Quietness. Then the boys. One was awake, sitting up, facing the doorway, small and still. It was the same child I had taken to the washing-up area the night before.
“Hello,” he whispered. What a shy, wistful voice he had. “You came back.”
“Yes, I did.”
“I was hoping you would.” He sat still as a statue, hands folded in his lap.
I knelt beside him. He looked at Elsa and smiled.
“She’s pretty.”
I nodded.
“You’re the only one I ever knew that could break a rule.”
We were both quiet for a moment. Elsa sucked on her bottle, her eyes wide open, looking at me.
He spoke again in that same shy voice. “You must be really important.”
“Why?”
“Like I said, you broke a rule.”
“Maybe I broke the rule for you because you’re important.”
“Me?” he said.
“Yes, you.” He smiled shyly when I said that.
He reminded me of the drawings in The Little Prince, with his pale hair spiky and on end. Elsa had finished her bottle and was asleep in my arms. I reached out and ran my hand over his hair, smoothing it down.
“Is it true?” he asked at last.
“Is what true?”
“Moving. The big boys were whispering about it. Is it true?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are they moving you with us?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
He lay down on his side and pulled his blanket up over himself. So vulnerable but still able to hope. I tucked the blanket tightly over his shoulders. He kept his eyes closed.
Even the children had heard the rumor. Even they had accepted it as inevitable. I tightened my arms around Elsa.
Back at the supply cupboard, Lizzie and her friend still slept. I grabbed an extra diaper and I walked to the main doorway. Still no Gatekeeper. I let my torch sweep across the packed earth, over the toy energy boards lined up along the fence, the pink and blue entry flags, the bus-boxes parked along the fence and straight ahead toward the Central Stage. I stood with Elsa in this doorway of the Village. Somewhere across the dark open space was David.
I had to get to him. The corridor behind me was empty. No one could see me, no one could stop me from passing through the door. Holding Elsa, I stepped out of the Village and breathed in the night air. I wouldn’t follow the required path. If I did, Gatekeepers along the way would stop me. No, not the required path. Not this time. I would walk straight across, through the forbidden area, past the pompous stage of the Authority, straight to David.
I switched off my torch. Walking quickly, Elsa against my shoulder, my hand against her soft, silky hair, I took a step, and another, and another, each one taking me farther from the Village, deeper into the blackness and closer to David.
The stars sparkled. So many! What giant hand had scattered them across the sky? The moon, low on the horizon, was a curved sliver like the tip of a fingernail; a small cloud slid over it, then out of sight.
The stage loomed ahead, forbidding. Grass had grown close to it, where Citizens weren’t permitted to stand. I walked on the grass and felt the cool dampness through my shoes and around my ankles. How slippery and soft it felt!
Then, the largeness of the stage, now to my right, overwhelmed me. Might there be guards protecting it? I walked faster, expecting any moment to be stopped by an Enforcer in a black uniform.
Finally, when the stage was well behind me, it no longer looked as threatening.
In no time I could see the lean silhouette of David at the gate to our Compound. He peered my way, alert, vigilant, doing his job.
“It’s me,” I whispered.
It’s me. It’s me. It’s me. A rhythm to my footsteps and my words.
“Emmeline?”
And then I was in his arms, arms big enough to hold both Elsa and me.
“What are you doing? Why are you here? Is this Elsa?”
His questions were rapid, words against my cheek, against my ear.
With blinding clarity I knew what I was doing, why I had broken so many rules. If there was to be a relocation, it would be my relocation, my choice.
“We have to be like them, the ones who slipped away.”
He looked at me, his eyes wide with alarm. He stepped backward.
“What are you thinking? How can we do that? Do you have any idea what the Authority might—”
“What they might do? I know what they’re going to do, what they can do, what they’ve already done. I know they’re going to relocate the children. And I’m done living like this. Done.”
As he shook his head, his hair fell across his forehead. Elsa stirred in my arms, her knees pushed against my chest, and I shifted her to my other shoulder. I felt wet drool against my neck.
“We don’t have much time. We have to hurry.”
He looked at me with that same alarm. “What about Randall? And Lizzie?”
“They took him away.” Like he was a nothing. Like he didn’t even matter. “And Lizzie and the other Caretaker drank something and now they’re asleep.”
“Drank something?” He shook his head again.
“It smelled funny. It made them sleep really deeply. We have to go before they wake up.”
I ran toward our Living Space. Elsa bounced lightly against my shoulder.
I heard a thud and knew, without looking, that David had thrown his clipboard to the ground. All that mattered was escaping with Elsa and taking what Mother had saved. She had hidden these things for a reason. She may have hoped to use them again, make those recipes, display that picture of us, read the New Testament, follow the map to a new home, all of it. The coin. The knife. The matches. I don’t know. It only mattered that she saved them. She couldn’t use them anymore, but I could.
David followed me into our space. He was breathing hard. I could almost smell his fear.
I told him: “Take everything out of the mat. Put everything in this diaper and roll it up. We’re taking all of it with us.”
“Taking it where?”
“The other side of the fence. Come on. Hurry up.”
“Emmeline, are you crazy? What about all of the Gatekeepers? What about Lizzie and the Authority?”
“I told you
. . .” I paused and could feel my jaw tightening, my shoulders squaring. “There is no Gatekeeper. Not tonight. Randall’s gone. We’ll stay off the path and cut through the stage area. If Lizzie’s awake, we’ll deal with her. End of discussion.”
“But—”
“Please, David. Please. Take everything out of the mat.” How could I make him see how important it was for us to leave?
He began to reach into the mat but I could see his hands were shaking. I paced back and forth, willing him to hurry, hurry.
He stopped and stood up straight, rigid.
“We’re not doing this,” he said.
“Yes, we are!”
“Stop and think, Emmeline! We don’t know what’s out there. We only know what’s here. We know how to deal with what’s here. It might be dangerous out there. Animals. Shadow people. And how will we eat? Where will we sleep? Besides, we’ll never get away with it.”
Elsa stirred, opened her eyes briefly, and then closed them again.
I told him, “There is nothing out there more dangerous than what’s in here. This is the most dangerous, evil place on Earth. Mother is gone. And Father and George? If they’re dead, it’s because of the Republic and their monitoring and eavesdropping and rewards for reporting on our own neighbors. And if they’re alive and have somehow gotten away from here then they can help us.” My brain ran with the thought, however improbable it may have been. “Maybe that’s it, David, maybe Father telling me about those grain bags and an escape plan was a hint, a clue! What if they are out there, just waiting for all of us to join them?”
David just shook his head. He looked sad for me. “It wasn’t a clue, Emmeline. Your Father and George had no grand plan and they aren’t out there living with the shadow people and waiting for us. They’re dead. Deep inside you know that.”
His words hurt, but at that moment I realized that David had fallen into his own trap. In trying to temper my hope he’d inadvertently admitted that life had absolutely no value to the Authorities. If they could kill my Father and George without so much as a second thought, then what else were they capable of?
