I can hear Jake behind me walking, no
doubt completely upright and picking his teeth with a piece of grass. If he
starts humming I decide to shoot him myself. The grass on the side of the
highways is long. As I slip through it the wind plays with it, making it
whisper. The birds are not the kind who warn you of prey, they're scavengers.
They want you to die.
The long grass sways and plays with my
hair.
My heart is beating faster when my foot touches the gravel on the side of the
highway.
I look back at Will. He nods. Jake's lips
curl into a smile. I can't help but want to smile with him. I see myself back
at the cabin for the briefest of seconds. Images of he and I laying on the
couches fill my mind. I smile remembering the way we tried not to get caught
staring at each other.
My mind snaps back.
I close my eyes and listen to the wind.
There is no sound. I climb out of the huge ditch and walk quickly and silently
up onto the broken asphalt. It's started to crack from the weather and lack of
care. Where my foot steps first it crumbles. My eyes scan every inch of the deserted
highway. Burned out cars, sit staggered along the long straight road. The
people caught in the traffic jams when the tidal waves were coming or the bombs
were dropping to contain the sick. They fled from their vehicles. They left
everything and ran. I remember running. My father had waited too long in his
friend's bunker. It was the only mistake he ever made.
I shake my head back to focusing. I slip
between an old burnt SUV and the skeleton of a small car. The hood of the car
is lifted and the battery is gone. Not uncommon.
"Which way?" Jake asks louder
than I would like.
"Shhhhh." Will whispers
soothingly.
The gravel on the other side is a welcome
sight. When my feet touch the grass I break into a run. The bushes hit me in
the face when I enter the forest. I run until I see the tree I want. I climb it
and sit with my arrow pulled and at the ready. I scan the highway and the ditch
vigorously.
Jake is huffing and puffing like the big
bad wolf below my tree, "Oh man you can run. Holy shit. I thought your leg
was hurt. Whoa."
"Jake." Will is back to being
Business Will. There is no fun with him, only survival.
I don’t take my eyes from the road.
Nothing moves.
I am about to climb down but I wait one
more second. I see the bushes across the highway move. I pull the arrow back
tighter.
It looks like an animal. I can't see it
clearly.
"I see something." My voice is
low.
"What?"
I shake my head, "Animal. Dog
maybe."
"Shit."
I look down through the thick branches at
Will's look and raise and eyebrow.
"Trackers."
He doesn’t finish the sentence and my
eyes are scanning across the highway again. The animal is gone. Nothing moves.
I climb down fast and turn to face the dense woods, "That way."
Jake looks pained, "Seriously. We're
going to run some more?"
I look at him and nod, "Think about
what it's like for Anna right now. She's terrified. She thinks the breeder
camps are what we all think. She is waiting for her turn no doubt."
He flinches, "Jesus Em. Easy with
the visuals. She's my little sister for Christ's sake. I'm not bitching. My leg
is just killing me."
I glare, "Is it bleeding?"
He shakes his head and looks down at his
pants, "No but it hurts."
"Climb the tree and wait for
us." I hand him the water bottle from my belt.
He shakes his head and looks at Will who
is stoic.
"Will I'm not staying."
Will licks his lips and thinks for a
second, "You can't hold us up."
Jake rolls his eyes and sighs,
"Let's just go." He points into the woods.
I hold the water bottle out for one more
second but he doesn’t take me up on the offer.
I turn and start to run. My leg is sore
and my stomach is empty. In my haste I never stocked up. Anna has been hard on
my rules.
When the sun is setting, we are where I
want to be. Jake hasn’t complained and Will is starting a small fire. I take my
bow and find a nice quiet spot to sit and wait for something to make a sound.
The silence of the woods is alarming.
I've never been in the woods here. I'm exhausted but I focus.
I hear the crunch of a stick. I raise my
arrow in the direction I heard it. A large hare hops over a branch and sniffs
the wind. It's ears twitch. It smells me. I release the arrow anticipating the
hop it does. The arrow slices through the neck of the rabbit. It tries to move
for a second and stops. I wish this isn’t my life for the seconds it takes me
to retrieve my arrow. I gut the hare where I killed it. I never bring it back
with all its guts. Leaving guts outside the cabin proved to be a mistake. I
skin it quickly with the skinning knife my granny had always kept in the cabin.
I leave the animal's remains and carry the carcass back to the fire.
I hear the cracking of the wood when I
get close.
Will is standing over the fire and Jake
is sitting on a log next to him.
"So is there something between you
two?" Will asks but doesn’t move his face.
Jake shrugs, "I don't know. She's a
tough one to get to know. We kissed. It was a mistake."
Will looks at him and smiles, "I
hear that. You remember the Laura Croft movies where Angelina Jolie was all hot
and quiet but would kill anything that moved?"
Jake laughs and points, "Yes.
Exactly. Jesus, give her some pouty lips and bam, Laura Croft."
I feel my insides trembling. I don’t
remember the movies they're talking about. I can't help but want to cry.
Will laughs and shakes his head,
"But what a bitch though hey."
I grab a rock from where I'm standing and
toss it back a few yards. They can't see me if I crouch down.
"She's back. Manners." Will
speaks low and starts poking the fire. I stand and walk from the bushes. I just
want to throw the stupid hare down and leave them there, but my stomach is
growling. I am exhausted. I will stay as long as it takes to eat and then I'm
sleeping in a tree. Maybe if I'm lucky I will fall in my sleep and wake up in
heaven.
Will holds out a small sack, "I have
some potatoes from the camp and tinfoil."
I nod, "Okay." I feel awkward.
Kissing them both was obviously bad, but having them call me a bitch after they
kissed me is awful. Having Jake say it was a mistake is killing me. I can't
look in his eyes. I walk around him and find a good stick to make a spit with.
I search the ground around the fire until
I find a good branch. I strip the small branches and leaves from it. I smirk
and I shove the stick into the open neck. I am imagining it's one of them.
"You're a scary little thing."
I frown at Jake who is watching me get
the hare on the spit.
"It's a compliment."
I don’t stop frowning. It doesn’t feel
like a compliment. Even if it was it wouldn’t stop the pain of the kiss being a
mistake.
I build a spit with rocks and branches
and twine from my backpack. Will has sliced the potatoes and laid them in the
tinfoil. He places them high on a rock with a flat surface in the fires circle
of rocks.
Will glances at me, "So what's the
plan?"
"Get captured and free us both."
He laughs.
"I can do it."
He shakes his head, "I know you can
it's just funny that’s all. You're willing to sacrifice yourself to save my
sister?"
"She's the first person I've met
that I liked. Genuinely." It's a dig at them both. Fuck them.
He raises his eyebrows, "Fair
enough." He looks hurt. The image of the girl in the short shorts doesn’t
leave my mind easily.
Jake looks hurt, "What am I chopped
liver?"
I smile, my granny used to say that if I
hugged my grampy first. I hate that I'm smiling. I hate that he makes me smile
so easily.
He grins at me and I remember his hands
on me. I can't stop staring at his lips. It makes me feel sick.
Will clears his throat, "So how will
you get captured?"
I shrug, "Just act lost near the
area." I glance at Jake who is still staring at me. His grin hasn’t left
his face. I dig my stick in the dirt and draw a circle. I hit a rock and dirt
goes flying up at Jake on his stump.
I laugh. He wipes his face clean,
"Thanks."
Will laughs, "Stop being a
baby."
Jake shakes the dirt out of his hair,
"You did that on purpose."
I put my hands up with the stick in them,
"I didn’t, I swear." I wish I had.
"I don’t think you should go in
there, Em."
I dig the stick again, "I have
to." I don’t say that I led them straight to her. I don’t say that it's
all my fault. I don’t have to. We all know it's true.
Will turns the hare on the spit slowly.
The smells are starting to make my stomach make noises I haven’t heard since
before I found the cabin.
Will looks around, "When you get
captured you need a way out." He gets up from the fire and mutters,
"Jake turn the hare." He goes to a tree and rips off a branch. He
sits next to me on the log. The warmth of his body touching mine sets my nerves
on fire. I swear there is electricity where our arms and legs touch.
He bends down and draws a rectangle. In
each of the corners he makes small boxes, "There is a section that is for
the women who are pregnant or about to be impregnated. This is probably where
you'll go. Then this wing is for the younger girl who can't have babies yet.
This is for the women with the babies. This is where the little girls are kept.
Girls they raise to be breeders." He moves the stick to the other side and
makes a smaller box, "This is where the men are, if there are any men. Sometimes
they don’t have any there." He clears his throat nervously and draws an X
in the middle but off to one side, "This is the fertility lab. This is
where the lab coats and doctors and cleaners all stay. This is your only
chance. They will have a dump somewhere near the clinic. The garbage goes every
few days."
I frown at him but Jake asks the question
burning in my mind before I can, "Dude how do you know so much about the
breeder farms?"
Will blushes in the firelight, "I
lived there for a time."
Jake raises an eyebrow, "As a
cleaner or a doctor?" He laughs like he knows the answer.
Will laughs, "I wish."
Jake shakes his head, "Nasty dude.
Nasty."
I feel lost. I look blankly at them both.
Will's face looks like it's on fire, "I was forced to uhm, donate."
I don’t understand what they're talking
about.
Jake makes an odd motion with his fist,
"He had to wank his pud for the man."
I don’t know what this means but I nod
before they explain.
Will watches my face and laughs again.
Jake turns the hare, "So how many
little Willy's are running around?"
I feel my stomach drop. I understand. I
feel judgment burn its way across my face. He shakes his head, "I don’t
know. I wasn’t exactly in on the plans."
Jake pokes the hare, "How was the
life there?"
Will laughs, "Thinking about signing
up?"
Jake looks up, "Hey if there are
three square meals a day and I get all the, uhm, reading material I need to
deliver the goods, I'm in."
The humor falls from Will's face. He
almost twitches when he shakes his head, "No. No three squares and
material Jakey. It's more like milking a cow."
Jake ignores the terror on his brother's
face and grins from ear to ear, "Are there milk maids?"
Will nods, "Not the kind you're
thinking of. Mine was a guy named Dr. Angles."
Jake gags, "Oh shit. Never
mind."
Will looks down at the drawing again and
chuckles but I can tell he's haunted by it. "There is no human contact
Jake. It's all done by machines, the girls and the boys. Anyway this section
here has the surgeon's clothes and booties. Change and climb into the garbage
bin in the morning on a Tuesday or a Thursday or a Saturday. The garbage comes
around lunch and the best chance you have at not being noticed is then. They
will be looking for you after lunch."
I feel sick thinking about the plan. I'm
not as strong as the look on my face suggests I am. I gulp.
"I think this is done." Jake
pokes the hare.
I shake my head, "Always over cook
wild animal."
Will nudges me with his body, almost
playfully, "You sure about this?"
I nod and reach into the flames to turn
the potatoes. The fire licks at my skin but I ignore it. It hurts. It's a
warning of pain to come if I continue to stick my hands in the fire. Sitting
between the two men I can't help but feel like it's appropriate.