Running Red (22 page)

Lately, the nights are at least a little better. There’s been a new moon so it’s been pretty dark. It makes it easier to sleep. It also makes it easier for me to work on and hide some little tools I’ve been making from the razor blades I pocketed and some of the supplies they bring me with each meal.

We are given one hour a day out in the yard. There is never anybody else out when I am. I have to walk past the scaffolding. The bodies are gone, but the smell of death lingers. Maybe it’s all in my head.

I have found a footpath that leads out to the fence immediately around the detention center. Beyond it is another fence. I’m sure there is another beyond that. I’m afraid to touch the fence when I get out to it because there is a rubber coated wire snaking through the wire diamonds along the bottom. For all I know it could be a ruse, but I don’t feel like testing it for electricity.

It’s the morning of my thirteenth day of incarceration when Unknown Guard 13 opens my door. I have had a new guard every day since being locked up. Guard 13 presses the button of the intercom that feeds into my room and instructs me that it is time for my hour in the yard. Even though there are no clocks anywhere that I’ve seen since arriving at Camp G, the detention center guards all carry stopwatches.

Guard 13 is a square-jawed young man with curly, brown hair. The color of his hair matches the color of his eyes. Unlike some of my other guards, he wears a sidearm on his hip.

He hands me a fresh set of clothing. It’s the same basic fatigues, but they’re fresh. They smell like they’ve been washed. Camp G is a self-sustaining environment full of propane powered generators. The constant hum of the units on the roof and around the camp blends in like soothing white noise.

Guard 13 leaves the door open, but steps in front of the opening, turning his back to me. I’m still a little uncomfortable changing with the door open. In the middle of pulling on my pants, my stomach rumbles. I haven’t had breakfast yet. I’m about to tell him this when I see Nick’s door is open and there is no one in his cell.

“Where’s Nick?” I ask. Guard 13 says nothing. Unlike my previous twelve guards, the white rectangle over his left pocket bears no name.

Outside, the morning air is cool, a little damp. There is no one around. I shake my arms and throw them around my chest a few times to get the blood flowing. I keep them wrapped around me as I stroll out to the fence. The sun is barely over the tops of the trees. I shield my eyes from the morning rays and that is when I see her.

Yuki sits on the other side of the far fence. Her brown eyes do that dancing thing. She stands up, wags her tail. Please don’t bark, I think. My eyes sting with tears.

Something makes her turn her head. Her tail stops wagging, then starts again. A second later, Matt steps out from the thickness of the trees. He ruffles her head, rubs her behind the ears. When he looks up at me, his smile is as bright as the morning sun. He holds up a hand and waves at me. I wave back, and then it hits me. He’s not just waving; he’s showing me his hand, both sides. It’s as if he’s grown a new thumb and forefinger on each.

I want so much to ask him how it’s happened, but he’s too far away to shout to. Besides, I don’t want anyone to know either of them is there. I’m so relieved to see the two that I lean forward against the fence, wrap my fingers through the diamonds of wire, and press the side of my face against it. The stress of the last few days has worn on me. Matt’s alive. Yuki is here. I feel the tears slip down my cheeks pressing against the fence.

The fence.

Nothing happens. There’s no electrical shock. I jump back from the fence all the same, as if 10,000 volts have just raced through my nerves, looking to explode my heart. Matt gives me a startled look. I smile and shake my head, covering my face with my hand for a moment to hide my reddening cheeks. I laugh behind it, shaking my head. When I look up again, Matt is giving me his big, dopey grin. It doesn’t last long. He points at his wrist like he’s telling me it’s time for him to go, even though he wears no watch. I wave goodbye and watch until he and Yuki disappear behind the trees.

So the mutt made it here after all. I don’t know how. The only thing I can think of is the soldiers patrolling around the Velodrome must have found her in the trees. They would have known I traveled with her from the photos the woman I rescued took of me. I slip my hand into my back pocket and pull out the picture of my sister and niece. The photo is getting creased and I try to smooth it out.

Before I start my walk back to the detention center, I do what I’ve done every day since I started my walks. I bend down and look for sticks. Not just twigs, but thick, short rods. I put them in my pocket, along with a couple of stones.

As I pass the scaffolding, Aubrey—Nick—is coming outside. He shields his eyes from the sunlight. He looks pale and little thinner.

“Nick,” I say.

He stares at me.

“It’s me. Robbie.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. Sun was in my eyes.” He doesn’t seem like Nick. He seems out of it.

“You okay?”

He looks over his shoulder at the guard in the doorway. When he looks back at me, he tries to smile. “Yeah.”

“Come along, miss,” Guard 13 says.

Nick and I stare at each other for a moment. “You’d better go,” he says at last.

I stop at the door and look behind me. Nick leans against one of the legs of the scaffolding. He wraps his arms around himself and drops his head like it’s full of lead.

“What have they done to him?” I ask the guard.

“I don’t know what you mean, miss.” Guard 13 does not look at me. He leads me up the metal stairs and puts me in my room. A tray of steaming powdered eggs, dry toast, and a bowl of plums is sitting on the small fold down table across from my bed. The stool has been pulled out of the wall, the round, metal seat that looks like a pie plate has been flipped into place. I’m hungry from my morning exploits and I sit down on the cool metal. I scoop up some of the egg onto the toast, making a sandwich.

Just before Mystery Guard 13 closes the door, I him see drop a bundle of something into my wastebasket.

“Hey,” I say. The door closes with that echoing bang of metal.

I go over to the wastebasket and reach inside. He’s left me four metal rods about as long as an ink pen. One rod has a Y-shaped attachment over the non-grooved end. There is a notch cut into one end on each of the rods. They are held together with what I think is one thick rubber band, but find out are actually several thick bands overlapping one another.

My appetite is gone. I go to my toilet and reach behind the pipes. I pull out the bundle of crude darts I’ve made with the razor blades and the sticks. Each night, before I go to sleep, I sit over the toilet and I shape the ends of the day’s sticks into sharp points. I’ve done two a day since I got locked up.

I sit down on my bed with my back to the door. I know I should wait until night to do any work, and it takes every ounce of will power not to lay out my arsenal and begin to build it. I don’t know who Mystery Guard 13 is or why he has offered me these tools. All I can think is that something is going to happen, and I can’t risk it by being impatient.

I stow my supplies under my pillow. I don’t even know if they check my room when I’m not there. When I am finished eating, I arrange the sticks and stones into a clock on the table. It means nothing, but I point the sticks at the eight o’clock position. I lie down on my bunk and begin counting in my head: 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour. When I reach 3,600, I move the hand to the nine o’clock position. I do this until my lunch arrives, and I find that I am only off by about fifteen minutes.

Rediscovering time is my first attempt to recreate the world.

After I eat the mystery meat sandwich and slurp down my brown soup, I pace. I don’t want to get soft. I walk from toilet wall to door. Ten paces. I use it to mark time. I start counting in my head. On the third trip to the door, I stop. Nick is staring at me.

“You okay?” I mouth the words.

He nods. “You?” he asks.

I tilt my head, scrunch my lips, shrug. He smiles.

“I saw Matt,” I say. He wrinkles his brow and shakes his head. I speak slower, maybe a little louder. I know he can’t hear me. In the last two weeks we’ve learned to read lips if the words are over exaggerated. “I saw Matt.” When he shakes his head a second time, I point at my eye, point two fingers at him, and then hold up the last three fingers on my left hand.

Nick nods his head and says, “Matt.”

I give him a thumbs-up. He returns the gesture the way Matt would: thumb-less. It looks like a fist. I don’t want to laugh, but I do. I want to tell him I saw Yuki, too, but I don’t know if I ever told him about her before.

“Where?” he asks.

“By the trees.”

Nick puckers his lips like I did on “trees” and kisses the air. He raises an eyebrow and tries to give me a smoldering look. I laugh.

Guard 13 passes by our doors. We both jump back. I bite my lip to stop laughing. Whatever was bothering him this morning seems to have gone away. When I look back out the window, though, he’s not there.

I’ve lost track of time. I guess it’s easy to do when there isn’t any to follow. I scoop my makeshift clock into the wastebasket and set it behind the half wall by the toilet.

Instead of pacing, I do a routine of push-ups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks. When I’m on the floor, looking up at the window, I can see the change in the sky. I imagine it won’t be long before dinner arrives. I wear myself out with my exercise and flop down on my bed. Within a few minutes the door opens and in steps LC Allison.

She stands in the door for a moment, her hands clasped behind her back. Nothing is said, but I can see that familiar flair of crazy in her eyes. She steps inside, but never moves any further into the cell. In fact, her eyes look around the room as if she’s remembering a time when she was locked away. It makes me uneasy. What if she wonders where my garbage can is? What if she finds the darts and rocks?

“What brings you here?” I ask her. The silence and the staring is creeping me out.

Her wickedly evil grin spreads over her face. She looks older in here. “It was a very stupid thing to do,” she says.

“Taking the Humvee?” I lie down on my pillow and put a hand under it. I wrap my fingers around one of the darts. My door is still open. Only Auntie Alice stands in my way. Unlike when I took the Humvee, I have a better idea of what to do with the dart.

“You need to understand, Robin. The world—”

“Has changed. I get it. But what is it changing into? None of the Superiors gave a crap about the runners. They’re concern is with the Guard.”

“Right now the Guard is a bigger threat than the runners.”

“Have you not seen what’s going on out there? You are completely ignoring the fact that the runners are changing. The Balzini fungus is working its way into our brains.”

“Before we can confront the runners, we have to secure our country.”

“No one thought to confront the runners to begin with. That’s why your country is falling apart.”

“Funny. You sound exactly like some of the Guard prisoners we’ve taken.”

My thumbnail clicks against the flat end of the dart. “I’m not Guard. And I’m not Elite Forces.”

“The day will come when you will have to choose a side.”

“I could just sit back and let your two sides battle it out, and pick up what you leave behind.”

She shakes her head and says nothing. It is the last time I will ever see Auntie Alice. After she leaves, I stay in my bunk. I keep the dart in my hand. Before I know it, I drift off to sleep.

I am awakened by a bang on my door. When I look over, the food slot is hanging open and a tray is being held there. I take the tray and the food slot door flips up with a bang.

I put the tray back on the fold down table and pull the pie plate seat out of the wall. It’s lonely in here. I take the picture of my sister out of my back pocket, crease the edges, and set the photo on end. I stare at it while I eat a boiled medley of peas, carrots, and beans, some white rice, and two chicken legs. The food really isn’t that bad. I don’t know how fresh the chicken is. It makes me wonder if there isn’t a free-range farm someplace within Camp G. At some point it would have to start being self-sufficient. The stockpiled food would eventually run out, like the fuel for the cars, or the propane for the generators, or the bullets in their guns.

My mind wanders over these thoughts. It’s like I’m sifting through the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, looking for the edge pieces to build the frame before I fill in the rest of the picture.

Maybe they have an outpost at a nearby farm. The southeastern and southwestern corners of the state had been selling off land for development for years. Generations of farmers were packing it in for a quick buck. I used to see bumper stickers that said “No Farm No Food” or “Who’s Growing My Corn?” or “Buy Local, Dammit!” The north was still growing produce, wasn’t it? Along what they called the Snow Belt?

Then I think about the dwindling supplies, and I wonder if that’s what the Superiors are the most worried about. There doesn’t seem to be as much concern about Balzini’s Rash or the mutation of the runners as there is about what is happening out in the so-called Safety Zone where my sister is supposed to be safe.

There were five Superiors. They each had to have been at a separate camp. If LC Allison runs Camp G, maybe it meant that Superiors Two through Six were at camps B through F. Camp A could very well be D.C., where the Prime Superior might actually be the president.