"Evening," he says.
"Evening," I return, social and even. Head toward the back wall, toward coolers full of cold drinks.
I remove a soda and wipe the moisture from the bottle. It feels good in my hot hand. As the door closes, I see the man looking. He's watching me with drawn eyes. Wondering why I'm coming in so late, so close to his quitting time. Why I look so rumpled in my torn skirt and wrinkled blouse. Like I've been run over.
Keep it together, Harper.
The walls are beginning to shake some. Time to check out and leave.
"All set?" the man asks as I approach.
"Yes, thank you." I set my soda on the counter and pull out the pay card Lilly gave me.
He swipes the orange card through his machine. "Where you from?"
"Out east."
"Out east?"
I let my eyes wander, as if I'm considering a snack. "Wernthal."
"Long way from home, aren't you? Out here for family?"
"Business."
"What business might that be?"
He's trying to pull something out of me.
Remember the list, Harper.
I try. But can't. So we stare at each other over the small counter. Wait for the approval code together while I debate the answer.
"It's pretty boring stuff."
"Bore me." The Manager picks at his teeth with a pinky. They're nice and shiny white. Probably caps. Unusual for out here, where there's a paucity of rural dentists.
"I'm an accountant."
He pushes off the back wall. Catches me looking down at the reader now flashing the word
Approved.
"Really? Who you work for?"
I hold out my hand. "I'm sorry, but I'm in a bit of a hurry. Could I have my card back?"
The man holds it just beyond my reach. "I asked who you work for." His voice has dropped. It's a trap.
There's a word I shouldn't say somewhere in my response. A word I should no longer be able to squeeze out of my mouth without seizing up. It's new, one I won't know. Maybe released this evening, when I wasn't watching. And he's not going to give me back my card without an answer.
"For the people," I answer with a smile, spreading wide my collar. All cleverness and cleavage.
It does the trick. The man relaxes. Even smiles with me. It creeps up onto his stiff, pale face and forces his hand to drop the orange card into my palm. "I'm sorry about all this. We get these notices from the Department of Transportation telling us there's been some activity and you can guess the rest."
"It's okay."
The man sighs. "It's just, if we don't ask these questions, it's our asses on the line. You know?"
"Don't worry about it."
The man scratches his head. "These people they're looking for are on the move. They'll have to stop and get . . .
petroleum
." He laughs lightly. "I'm supposed to be watching . . ."
I offer him an out while backing through the front door. "That's the way it is when you're a government manager. I know."
The man's eyes narrow. I've said something wrong.
I work for the government.
Government
.
I turn and run through the front door to the car, hurry to hit the locks, get the damned key in the ignition. The Manager chases after me. He grabs my door handle as I tear away. In the mirror, I see him tumbling to the ground. He leaps up,
cursing, and races back to his office. To his phone, where he'll be calling a Blue Coat.
There's no choice about where to go. Anywhere that isn't a series of red arrows on the map leading back to the bunker will lead me too far away and get me lost. There's only one even playing field upon which to fight.
I head toward the farm slowly, without my lights on. I don't turn down the rocked drive as it's too quiet. Not even the cicadas are singing their night song, so I go on around, turn up the grass from a planed spot behind the bend, and pull into the deep cover of the field. Gently, I open the door, then press it closed even more gently. For the second time tonight, I bury Lilly's keys next to the front wheel and, keeping low, make my way to the crest of the hill. The thought strikes me that I might die here yet, in the farmhouse where I broke my slate.
It's pitch-black. Despite the stars, it's a moonless night and the knob leading from the porch to the kitchen doesn't move easily in my sweating palm. I bump into a chair on my way to the sink. Stand, shaking, at the basin. I look out the window and watch the tall grass along the drive wave in the wind. Far away, in some obscure place over the hill and the hill thereafter is a light that's reflecting this long, long way. It allows me a backward view of the kitchen, the top of the doorway leading to the porch, a nail driven into a wall on which some picture used to hang, a pair of eyes.
"You're home late, Harper." Jingo Skinner steps out of the darkness. "Got a call from Karl over at the petrol station. He thought you might be headed this way." I see his face reflected in the glass like the half-moon that's on its other side. The things he wants to do to me are in his eyes. "You came in like you knew I was waiting for you. Strange, you being out today. Just an hour earlier, and I would have missed you."
He's already behind me. Has a hand trailing up my skirt. With a flick of his wrist, my panty hose are torn, opened from
crotch to knee, and his fingers are digging against that soft flesh. They're leaving pink trails that should hurt but don't. It's like I'm not here.
This whole thing could happen without me.
I could evacuate my body, do it the painless way. But then I wouldn't be able to carry out my orders. Survive to bring back the information that Skinner knows nothing. To fight in the war.
"Do you want to hear the numbers?" he asks, working to give himself more space. I can feel the hard-worn fibers of his trousers on my leg. "I've been waiting for this too fucking long." His hands rip my blouse, the one I ran in. It parts easily, reveals my shoulders, my back, my waist above the skirt. "You fucking Monitors . . ." He's saying other things. How we live in ivory towers. How we like to do the easy part of keeping order and leave the muck and the dirt to people like him. "Fucking cunt." He kicks out my ankles so I'll buckle. And I do so beautifully. I imagine what Jingo Skinner must be seeing as I fall. My hips thrust out, my hands grappling for a better hold on the countertop, my chin hitting its edge, the skin there splitting over bone. They are actions of reluctant submission I perform for him. And my patron is pleased.
This isn't supposed to be the way it goes.
Ezra's been training me. I'm supposed to know what to do. My daughter isn't supposed to find out later that I was raped and murdered. I gave up too much for this.
No.
No more.
Skinner unzips his trousers, leaving them belted. He's going to pull himself free through the fly without lowering his pants. It's smart. He won't be encumbered by the material bunched around his knees, making him susceptible to a shove. It's obvious he's done this a thousand times before. He begins toward me. I don't wait for him to get here.
I grab one of Skinner's hands and spin, yanking him off balance. Infuriated, he comes back at me with a punch, his fist crossing my midsection on its way to my face. Centered the way Ezra taught me, and with all my weight sunk into
my heels, I whip up my left elbow while twisting my body quick. It catches him in the upper arm, diverts the thrown punch. And the bone.
Snap.
The sound of it breaking is awful.
"Jesus Christ!"
Jingo falls to the floor, screaming. He pulls out his pistol and fires.
The bullet rips my sleeve. Grazes the mounded rise of muscle beneath, but it's nothing. A scratch. Instead of pushing Skinner away, I pull him in, toward my open mouth. I find the meat of his hand and bite as hard as I can. The gun falls to the floor as Skinner screams. He tries to yank free, but I won't let go. I'm like a dog with a bone. Bite harder until something solid snaps and Jingo falls to his knees.
I spit him out. Make it all the way to the outer door before being stopped.
Jingo uses his good elbow to catch me in the side of the head. The world is doubled. Becomes loud, a clap of thunder. I crumble to the floor. Vaguely, I'm aware of being hefted onto his shoulder, then dumped down a basement stairwell and locked behind its door. I'm left lying on the steps as Jingo pulls out his phone and starts punching in numbers.
On the other side of the closed door, Skinner is breathing heavy, his speech gritted by pain. "Finally caught the bitch." It's a glib bit of boasting but he doesn't sound pleased. He sounds like someone about to pass out. He's talking to John Gage, asking for help. For "goddamned backup," he says. "I'm bleeding pretty good, partner. They tell me down at Antioch you're following me pretty close . . . good goddamned thing. Might need a ride to the hospital. Better get here fast." The phone is dropped and Jingo sits down. Not that much later, the front door squeaks open and is slammed shut. John couldn't have been more than five miles away.
"Skinner!" he shouts, stomping into the house.
"Jesus Christ, it took you long enough!" Jingo replies. He's close. Just beyond the basement door. "She tried to bite my fucking hand off! And she broke my goddamned arm!"
John sighs. "You need to get to the hospital." The door swings open and I see him there. A huge black form. "I thought you'd already finished her?" Except he says it as a question.
You didn't finish her?
Jingo is standing behind him, drained and pale. His arm wrapped in a beehive of bloodied sheets. "I haven't even carried out her punitives yet!"
John crouches down so my face is obscured from Jingo's vision.
Skinner's voice comes round from behind him. "I'm not leaving," he wheedles. "Not until I get my due, man. And that Monitor is my fucking due! She's not going to get away from me twice!"
John reaches out a hand and turns my head from side to side. He's being too gentle. I duck my head further beneath the prow of his head so Jingo won't see.
"Come on, man," Skinner wheedles, his voice dimming. "Let me get to it before I bleed to fucking death over here . . ."
"Harper . . ."
John whispers low, beneath Skinner's voice. His finger trails along the abrasions on my face.
"Christ, I feel weird, man . . ."
"Shut up, Jingo!" John barks suddenly, making me jump. He's angry about what Skinner's done to me.
I hold a finger over my lips.
Sssshhh.
Don't give us away.
"What's up your ass . . . just saying . . ." but Jingo doesn't finish his thought.
We both jump as his body hits the floor.
John moves and there is Skinner, laid out on the wooden slats of the old floor, head lolling to the side. For a few seconds, John holds two fingers around the Blue Coat's wrist, then nods down at me, still crouched in the darkness of the stairs.
"His pulse is pretty slow. I'm going to call in an ambulance for him while I get you back to the bunker."
The look on my face gives me away.
John takes me by the hands and gently pulls me up. "I'll
say you ran and I had to go after you. But we can't kill him, Harper. They'd tear this whole county apart."
I make it through the living room and out into the kitchen with only the slightest bit of help from John. Once we push through the door leading to the covered porch, I hear the rain. It stops me. My legs are unsteady enough on solid ground. Out in the muddy, heavily pebbled drive, I don't know how they'll do.
"You okay?" John asks.
I nod. "I didn't realize it was raining."
John opens the outer door and I go through. I make it all the way to the broken walkway, and then to the drive. Each drop of rain is like a little weight. All of them together are slowly driving me into the soft ground.
"You okay?" John puts an arm around my shoulders.
"Thank you," I say. I'm crying now. And not really sure why. "Thank you, John."
I don't want him to see and try to walk more quickly.
One, two, three, four . . .
Counting each step. I reach the car and bend down to pick up the key. But I never make it back up. Somehow the ground has come to rest on my chest, and the mud against my cheek. I can feel the rain on my back for only a few seconds. Then nothing.
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen
. . . What am I counting? Just a minute ago, it was footsteps. But now it's something else.
Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.
Pills. I'm sitting at my kitchen table, counting yellow and black Occlusia. I'm dreaming about before. About bees in my stomach, retching until my sides ache. I don't force myself to remember leaving Veracity. I've gone straight to the part where death snatches me up for just a few straight-line moments before rudely dropping me back in my body.
"Harper?" a woman is asking.
I look up and see a red-haired nurse leaning over me. I'm back in Chalmers. In a hospital bed with the rails put up.
The red-haired nurse is angry with me. She clucks her tongue while squirting a needle full of something into my IV tube. "I couldn't have children," she says, and gives the clear tube a flick to get it dripping. "Some people never learn to be grateful for what they already have, I guess." She's talking about me leaving my daughter. Trying to kill myself when there's a child to be cared for.
I'd be angry with her, but she doesn't know what's really going on here. I had to give my baby away like this. I had to swallow seventeen Occlusia in order to prove myself unfit. Have the Confederation take her away and put her with someone else so she wouldn't be used as bait, like Hannah.
"Harper!" someone screams.
The red-haired nurse is no longer here. Or the IV. Someone else bobs into view. Lilly.