Untaken (16 page)

Some folks had bad dreams, and would wake up shouting for people they’d lost. When that happened, it was polite to pretend like you hadn’t noticed. We were all pretty good at ignoring anything upsetting by then.

The sound of boots echoed towards us down the corridor just after eleven a.m. that morning. Everyone’s eyes flicked to the big clock on the wall, then back to the door. Breakfast had been at eight. It wouldn’t be lunch for another hour. Hearing that many cops out there likely meant one thing: new people. We’d heard the busses go out several times over the past few days, but they’d come back empty each time.

I slipped from my bed and crept over to the door, joined by a good crowd of people: the two young guys, Mrs. Ostrinsky, and some others I didn’t know so well yet. I managed to duck and shove my way to the front and put my ear to the door, straining to hear through the thick wood. Liam never could keep quiet for more than three seconds. It was him I’d hear first, then Mom, telling him to settle down. Dad would be joking with Liam, putting on some silly voice….

“You hear anything?” asked an old man behind me.

“Shhh!” hissed about a dozen of us at once.

I pressed my ear to the wood.

“You wanted to do it the hard way, so suck it up, Officer.” I recognized that voice as one of the guys in the suits, the young one with the glasses.

No one said anything, but I knew they all listened as intently as I did.

“Some of us think the easy way ain’t so easy.” I recognized that voice as Frank, the nice, older cop. “Put her in an office on her own. We’ll look in on her. If we put her in here she’ll get them all acting out.”

“I need her out of the way. One way or another. Those bastards will be here before the week is out. They have the papers. It’s official. They’re shutting us down. And after they shut us down, there are gonna be questions. I have three other centers to deal with. I don’t have time for this.”

“She’s Untaken. You can’t just—”

“Shut it, Frank,” said the guy in the suit.

The footsteps came closer.

“Get back,” Mrs. Ostrinsky told us.

“What is it?” asked one of the women who’d stayed sitting on her bed, but Mrs. Ostrinsky hushed her. Usually at least one of those Center people would have had to argue with her, but everyone moved away from the doors as they opened, exchanging worried glances.

The door swung open and the suit came through it. His eyebrows shot up when he saw half of us still gathered by the entrance.

“What’s this, a mother’s meeting?” he asked, with a fake-sounding laugh.

When I’d arrived at The Center, he looked like he’d just stepped out of a business meeting, but now his face was grey with stubble and he had dark rings under his eyes.

“We thought there might be some new folks coming in,” said one of the young guys—Marty, I thought his name was.

“Got that right,” said the suit, coolly. Behind him, Frank stood rigidly, his usually-smiling mouth set in a grim line. His hand kept going to the butt of his gun. The lady cop, Jean, was coming down the corridor, half dragging, half leading someone behind her. The woman had her arms cuffed behind her back. I didn’t even recognize Mona ‘til they hauled her over to a camp bed near mine, and dropped her on it like a sack of coal.

Her clothes were crumpled and dirty, and hung off her in folds where they’d fit snugly before. Her skin was white, with ugly yellow bruised patches, and great purple rings under her eyes. Her hair was shaved off, and there were bandages wrapped around her head and her arms.

The room fell silent. Not the lazy quiet of people trying to make the days slip by, but the alert, twitchy silence you get before something bad goes down.

People were sure paying attention now.

“She sick?” asked Mrs. Ostrinsky. Her eyes darted back and forth between Mona and the suit, her hands were clenched into tight fists. I thought she either looked very scared or very mad.

“A routine treatment for injuries sustained. There’s nothing for you folks to worry about,” said the suit. That smooth voice sounded weird coming from his pale, twitchy face.

“That true, Frank?” asked Mrs. Ostrinsky. “‘Cause she looks like hell. I got a kid with me. Don’t want her getting sick.”

“She’s not contagious,” said the suit.

“She just needs rest,” Frank added. “She’s on some pretty strong painkillers, she’s just gonna lay down here and take a nap.”

“So, what’s this about getting shut down?” asked Mrs. Ostrinsky.

Frank shot a look at the suit, whose face flushed. I guessed he hadn’t realized we’d all been eavesdropping through the door.

“Nothing for you folks to worry about. You’ll all be quite safe here.”

There was a babble of voices as the people who hadn’t been at the door started asking the rest of us what was going on.

The suit ducked back out through the door, and Frank and Jean followed. We heard the jangle of keys and the clunk of a lock sliding into place.

“They ever shut us in like that before?” asked Mrs. Ostrinsky.

No one answered her. No one could remember.

Folks huddled together in little groups, talking in low voices. Every now and then, one of them would glance over to where Mona lay on her camp bed.

“Mrs. Ostrinsky?” I had to tug on her sleeve before she turned away from the two guys she was talking with.

“What is it Helen, honey?”

“It’s Gracie. I was just thinking about what you were saying to suit guy.”

She laughed. “Suit Guy. I like that. It wasn’t anything for you to worry about, hon.” She glanced at the men with her eyebrows raised in a way that made me pretty sure that it
had
been important, and she was waiting for me to stop bugging her so she could go back to gossiping with the other adults about it, like I was a little kid Marie’s age.

“Okay,” I said. “Don’t tell me. But that woman? I came in with her on the bus and she was just fine then. She didn’t have any injuries.”

That wiped the patient smiles off their faces, which pleased me, but by the time I got back to my bed, the feeling had faded.

If they were shutting down The Center, then where would we go? How would my mom and dad find us? And what had happened to Mona and Stephie?

I looked over at Mona again. Her eyes were open now, so I guessed she was awake, but she lay real still, staring up at the ceiling. I figured I should go over and talk to her. At least I’d be able to save her the trouble of counting the girders herself.

“Mona?” Her eyes rolled around, her gaze finally settling on me. She blinked a few times, trying to focus.

“Mona, are you okay? Can I get you something?”

She squeezed her eyes shut again.

“You come away from there,” said one of the other survivors—that fussy old man with the bald head, the one who always yelled at the little kids when their games got too rowdy.

I started to explain myself, then changed my mind.

“She’s my friend. I can do what I want. Why don’t you just go on and mind your own business?” I’d never talked like that to a grown-up before, but it felt pretty good. The tone was my Mom’s, but the words were all mine.

The old man muttered to himself, but he didn’t seem inclined to interfere. Good! I was about done with all these people who thought that because I was fourteen I wasn’t worth talking to.

I sat by Mona’s side all morning long, while she drifted in and out of sleep. Her lips sometimes moved, but no words came out. Her collar bone poked through the dirty skin above her T-shirt, and her bruised arms were like little sticks, wrapped with bandages at the wrists. A long cut, stitched up with black surgical thread, crept out from under more bandages wrapped round her head. I wondered what could have happened to her. A fall down the stairs, maybe?

And where was Stephie? Still sick in bed with the flu?

I could
almost
believe that, but not quite. Things weren’t adding up somewhere. I chewed on my lip, as I thought about Frank locking the doors. I’d never wanted to leave the sanctuary of the warehouse the whole time we’d been here, and I didn’t really want to now, but knowing I couldn’t even if I chose to made things different.

At noon, Frank came in with stew on a trolley. He wouldn’t answer anybody’s questions, and a few people started to jeer him.

“Just tell us straight. We getting sent away? How we gonna find our folks if you’re sending us somewhere different?”

I felt bad for Frank, who was the nicest of the cops. His face was bright red, and he acted like slopping stew onto plates was the only thing that existed in his world. Jean came in to check on Mona while everyone was eating.

“Is she going to wake up soon?” I asked.

“Soon enough. Then you all will wish she was sleeping again,” Jean grunted.

“Should I save some lunch for her?”

Jean shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”

“Is The Center getting shut down?”

Jean stared at me. “Where you hear that?”

“The guy in the suit.”

Jean snorted. “He’s full of hot air. Nothing’s getting shut down. Just one more excuse to bust our balls, is all.”

“But—”

“You hush and eat your stew.”

I took two bowls of stew and carried them back to Mona’s bed. I set her bowl of stew on the floor while I dove into my own. Yelling at the grouchy old guy had let out some of my worry, but Jean was scary.

They locked us in again after lunch. Some of the guys made a half-hearted rush at the door, but Frank had it shut before they could stop him, and they looked more relieved to avoid a fight than mad, really. The adults drifted back into their whispering huddles, but I stayed with Mona. I felt bad for her laying all alone on her bed, the other folks in there treating her like she was some unlucky omen. When her stew started to get cold I ate it myself, just to feel like I had something productive to do, although I had to force down every greasy chunk of meat. My stomach felt like a clenched fist, and not from overeating.

The sun was going down outside. There was a long row of narrow windows running all the way along the top of the warehouse just below the roof that let in a little bit of natural light. The grownups had gathered in a group by the wall, some of them were gesturing at the windows. I was all set to go see what the commotion was, when a hand grabbed my arm.

I yelped in surprise.

“Help me.” Mona’s voice was strangled and dry. “Please, I have to get help. They’re killing her.”

I looked around for help, but Mona gave my arm a tug. She was stronger than I’d thought.

“Killing who?” I asked.

Mona started to cry. “I could hear her screaming. They lied to us.” Her hand was clamped so hard around my wrist that the trapped blood tingled in my fingers. Some of the other survivors began to drift over to the bed where Mona laid, Mrs. Ostrinsky at the head of them.

“You ought to leave her alone, Helen, hon. She needs to rest.”

“My name is Gracie, and she’s trying to tell me something. What is it, Mona? Is it about Stephie?”

“Stephie! Please, I have to help her. They cut her up. I saw it. She was crying and they wouldn’t let me go to her.”

“What’s this? What’s she talking about?” asked the grumpy bald man.

“Shut up, let her speak,” snapped Mrs. Ostrinsky. “Who did they cut up?”

“Stephie. My poor Stephie. They cut her up and hurt her… I think she’s dying.”

“You don’t look so great yourself, lady,” said one of the young guys, but he didn’t say it in a mean way. His voice was high and trembling.

“They wanted me to get her to tell them stuff,” Mona whispered, bringing my attention back to her.

“What sort of stuff?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It was crazy! They cut her.”

“You already said that.” Grumpy sniffed.

“She’s just a girl. She couldn’t tell them the stuff they wanted to know. So they hurt me.”

“What do you mean they hurt you?” asked Mrs. Ostrinsky. “You’re telling us those guys in the suits did this to you?”

“They made Stephie watch, but she couldn’t tell them anything! Mother of God, how could she? She didn’t know what was happening. We have to help her. They’re taking them away.”

“Them?” I asked.

“All the others. The other cut up ones. Some of ‘em died, I reckon, but Stephie can’t be dead, can she? She’s just a girl.”

Mona trembled, and her skin was so pale the little blue veins showed right through it. The others were pressing close to the bed, and I wondered…could I persuade them to leave her alone, to give her a break?

The locks rattled, and we all turned to the giant double doors. Most of the survivors rushed over there, hurdling camp beds and leaving the little kids crying and confused in a huddle on the floor.

“Hey, I want to talk with you,” yelled Mrs. Ostrinsky. “What do you mean by locking us in?”

Jean and Frank entered the room, accompanied by a new cop I didn’t recognize.

“Back up folks, back up now. No need to get all excited.”

“We’re not going anywhere until you let us know what’s going on.”

“Look,” began Frank. “I know how you folks feel—”

“Like hell you do!” said Grumpy. “You ain’t locked up in here!”

“The doors are locked for your own safety,” Jean added. “Things ain’t so great out here either.”

“What’s that sick lady talking about?” Grumpy demanded. “All kinds of bullshit about people being cut up!”

“Just the painkillers talking,” said Frank, tugging at his collar. “She’s on some pretty heavy opiates. I’m sorry she’s got to be in here with you, but we’re…well, we have a lot to do right now. She’s not in any danger, but you guys don’t need to listen to what she says. We’ll up the dosage. Jean?”

Jean hustled off to get Mona’s medication.

“It’s not just her,” said Mrs. Ostrinsky. “Something’s going on, isn’t it? That other guy said we were closing down.”

Frank looked at the new cop, who shrugged. “We’re moving you guys is all. Taking you to the Boston shelter. They’re better equipped there. We’re not finding any new folks out this way no more, so it’s safer if we combine shelters. Nothing to worry about.”

“Why couldn’t you have just told us that in the first place?” Grumpy asked.