The Woodlands (15 page)

Lights out.

Clara’s voice was crackly as she spoke, “I know what you’re going to ask me but I didn’t see very much.” I couldn’t see her face very well but it sounded like it was an effort to speak.

I wasn
’t going to ask her that, well, not at first anyway. I held my tongue from saying anything defensive and asked, “How are you feeling?”

She laughed
. “Oh, wonderful,” she said with unfamiliar sarcasm. “At least the baby is safe.”

Luckily
, she couldn’t see me rolling my eyes in the dark. “Yeah, there’s that I guess. I’m glad you’re safe, Clara.” I gulped and said the words that would give me away, “I was really worried about you. What happened?”

“
I don’t really know,” she whispered. “All I remember was that horrible pain and then being rushed out of here. They took me up, Rosa. There were real windows, a real sky, not just pictures of the real thing. I don’t think we are that far underground. We got in an elevator and the numbers read B6 to Ground. They covered my mouth to stop me from screaming and then jabbed me when I got to the top. When I woke up, the pain was gone and the baby was fine.”

I absorbed this new information. Critical information. If we were only
six levels underground maybe there was a way to get out. If there were elevators maybe there were stairs, maybe… my mind was running away with the idea of escape.

“
What else? Anything else you can tell me?” I said urgently. I think she sensed my desperate tone when she replied.

“
Calm down. There was something else.”

“
What?” I was barely keeping my nerves contained. I felt like I was jumping out of my skin.

“
There were other girls up there. Most were pretty dopey. But there were two that were out of control, screaming and carrying on. One of them yelled ‘how could you do this to me?’ The other one was just crying hysterically. She was so scared. I wanted to run to her and hold her. Rosa, I think they were the girls that moved into my old room. Someone said that these were the crazy ones from room 112. That was my room.”

I felt a shiver of dread run through me. I wasn
’t sure I could even ask her the next question.

“
What happened to them?” I could hear Clara sniffing. She was crying, a choked, crackly sound.

“
I heard two of the people in white talking while they were cleaning my room. Something about a waste.” She hesitated and took a breath before imitating the conversation she had heard, “What a perfect waste of time and money, a waste of two perfectly viable fetuses and two good breeders.”

I could hear her wiping her face with her arm as she uttered,
“I think they killed them. No, I’m sure they’re dead.” For the first time, she sounded as hopeless as I felt.

I felt the need to protect her, to preserve that shining light
. “Maybe they didn’t, Clara. Maybe they just moved them to another place. Gave them another purpose.”

“
Maybe,” she said breathlessly, but I don’t think she really believed me. I didn’t believe it myself. If life in Pau Brasil had taught me anything, it was that the Superiors were not merciful.

“
You need to sleep. Shut your eyes and we’ll work it out in the morning,” I said, trying, unsuccessfully, to sound soothing. Trying really hard not to sound petrified. Because I was. If the girls were from Clara’s room, it wouldn’t be long before the white coats worked out what we’d done. And once they did, acting dopey wasn’t going to save us. I was sure they would be coming for us soon.

I woke up coughing, tears filling my stinging, itchy eyes. Clara was coughing too. The lights were still off, but as I watched, strips of light started illuminating the floor like miniature airstrips. It felt like my lungs were on fire. It wasn’t like smoke from a fire. It was odorless but leaving a bitter taste in my mouth when I exhaled. I couldn’t see where it was coming from and it was filling the room fast. I thought—
this is it
. They have finally worked out that we are aware. They were going to gas us to death. I fumbled around, trying to disconnect the leads to my machines and monitors they had reattached to me after Clara’s episode. I quickly gave up and just rolled to the floor, feeling the machines towing along behind me. A convoy of sounds—metal crashing against metal, emergency beeps and blips.

I could breathe a little better
, down on the cold, linoleum floor. I called to Clara, my voice raspy and hoarse, “Clara get down on the floor.” I could vaguely see the shadow of her awkward form climbing carefully out of bed as the photo wall flickered images I’d never seen before, a window with grey wool curtains, a desk with a photo frame on it, stacks of Woodland textbooks dog-eared lying in the corner. An old wooden chair projected over Clara’s back as she used the wall to support herself as she got down on the floor. I cursed her careful movement and wished she would move faster.

We started crawling towards the door, an oppressive cloud of smoke hovering just over our heads. The machines started disconnecting and setting off alarms. Ignoring them
, I stood up and went for the door handle. I lost my balance and slipped in some kind of liquid. What was it? It was slimy and thick. “Clara, are you ok?” It felt like blood. I shuddered involuntarily. “Are you…bleeding?”

“
No‚” she responded quickly. “I think it was my bag of fluids.” Relieved, I reached for the handle. I was about to open the door when it slammed into me from the outside and knocked me to the floor. Someone strong picked me up under my arms, dragged me out the door, and then went back for Clara.

What I saw in the
poorly lit hall was absolute chaos.

It
was a war zone: girls coughing and screaming. Disoriented and frightened. The white coats were trying to get them into a line, but they kept wandering off, banging into walls, into each other. Each of them lost in their own foggy panic. Clara and I were pushed towards a wall that had a long bar running along its length. We held onto it and followed the strips of light. It stayed dark as we walked in line, collecting more confused, coughing girls as we went. Whatever this smoke was it had infiltrated the entire place. Some of the staff were wearing masks, but I could still hear them coughing. They pushed us through doors and upstairs, through another door, up some more stairs until I started to lose count.

Finally
the darkness lifted; I could see Clara in front of me. I put my hand on her shoulder, determined not to lose her in the crowd. Now that I could see better, it was apparent the gas was a curious, dark purple. I held my breath for a minute but buckled quickly, watching the gas move into my mouth as I breathed in and seeing it, as it came out, like it was almost solid. Clara’s breath was the same. Other girls were mesmerized by the same phenomenon, but when they breathed out the smoke was tinted pink.

We walked passed a window.
A real window. Clara was right. We weren’t that far underground. Sunlight was streaming through it like an invitation. We were on the surface. One of the people in white went to the window and tried to open it. He heaved and strained, his face showing his panic and exertion, but it didn’t move. “It’s no good, it’s sealed‚” he said to the one that had a hold of my arm. “We’ll have to take them outside.”

I felt the grip on my arm tighten as I was st
rongly guided to two large, locked, security doors. One of them typed in a key code and spoke into a microphone while the other one pushed his fingertip into a jelly-like substance. There was a sharp beep and then a voice said, “Prints incomplete”.

“
You’re too sweaty,” one of them said in frustration, girls squashing him up against the wall. “Wipe your hand and try again.” I could see the purple cloud thickening around us. Bubbling and pushing into the corners. Some of the girls were on the floor, survival instincts telling them they could breathe better down there. The coughing was deafeningly loud. The room kept filling with girls as more and more of them came up from below. Just when you thought no more would fit, more would come, and you were forced to compress yourself further.

“
Verification complete,” the computer voice said and the doors swung open. The men repeated the process again, at the second set of doors, swapping who used their fingerprints and who used their voice as verification. The second set of doors swung open but the first set of doors we had walked through was trying to close, banging against hapless girls. Continuously knocking them over, as they were carried through on a wave of bodies. I saw one of the white coats take off his shoes and shove them under one of the doors, jamming it, so the girls could get through. It creaked and groaned as it tried to pull back to closing.

I
stumbled into the outside world, turning around to see purple smoke billowing out the doors and into the sky. Fighting its way into the air, like a hundred purple worms, intertwining, squirming, and pushing out in different directions. Girls were spilling out, some crawling, some being dragged, some kicked along by impatient white coats. There were hundreds of them, they just kept coming and coming.

I looked down at my feet
, registering the squelchy, wet feeling between my bare toes. I inhaled deeply, enjoying my first taste of the sweet, fresh air. Delicious. Scanning the area, I could see we were in the Wilderness. From where I was standing, all that pointed to the immense dwelling below was a grassy mound with doors in it and a few windows puncturing the sides of the hill. The clearing we were pouring out into was only as big as my old school courtyard and soon, it was completely packed with coughing, panicking girls.

Heels of hands
pushed us backwards, as far away from the doors as we could get, so we were right up against the rough, puzzle piece bark of towering trees. I was eased down onto a moss-covered log. The smells of damp, decomposing wood made my heart do little flips. Clara was right next to me and was guided to the ground as well but by pale, willowy arms. It was Apella. “Stay there,” she said, fanning her hands and then she disappeared into a sea of girls. We sat and watched, as all the girls were planted on the ground, some not very gently, by the extremely stressed people in white.

For a
moment, it was quiet. I heard birds off in the distance, a flutter, a foreign scampering sound of some unknown, forest-dwelling creature. We sat there for about an hour, pushing our toes into the mud, looking at the endless sky, the odd cough breaking the stillness. As I watched, little puffs of pink smoke were being exhaled by the girls. They floated up, carried by the breeze, dissipating into the atmosphere.

Then it started, very slowly.
At first.

It
began with restlessness—girls moving, shaking their heads, and touching their stomachs. Then we heard a girl shout out, then another, and then soon there was an immense chorus of wailing girls. I realized then that the purple smoke was some kind of quick working antidote to the fog. Some of them were screaming, “What have you done to me?” Some were crying, some were calling out for help. One thing was clear—these girls had woken up. The drugs were wearing off. The people in white were exchanging glances, nervously. What they had said before was true. There was only one of them to ten girls. One man was bracing himself, his fists clenched, his chest puffed out, as if ready for a charging stampede. I saw one, with a face as white as her coat, drop her gear and run for the trees. Action was necessary but they all stalled. Then the decision was made for them, as girls started to stand and run. Some pushed through, parting the bodies like they were swimming through a fleshy sea. Some just ran right over the top of the others. Most of them were trying pull themselves out of the fog still, and they were the first ones that received the needle to the arm.

It was pandemonium
—girls dropping to the ground unconscious, girls fighting, girls screaming hysterically. One girl was louder than most, yelling, “It’s coming, it’s coming.” I stood up to help, but Clara was holding my arm, not allowing me to step forward. For someone so small, she seemed immensely strong, her iron grip making an imprint on my forearm.

Soon the needles were too time-consuming and the bigger men started walking through the
crowd, knocking girls out with large, rubber batons. Swiping and chocking them in the temples like they were knocking posts into the ground. There was blood and pain all around me. I felt my nerves about to fray and spark into a thousand tiny threads, each one pulling at me, hurting me—burying hundreds of shocking, violent images in my memory.

A few
girls who were not far along, their stomachs showing little or no bulge, turned on one of the men. He was hitting out at them desperately as they scrambled and scratched at his face, their eyes feral. They took him down and grabbed his satchel, needles falling to the sodden ground. One of the girls picked up a needle and plunged it into the man’s eye. Her reddish hair swung around her face as she whipped it from side to side quickly. She crouched over him like a deranged, wild creature protecting its prey. I have never heard a noise like that in all my life—a gurgling, strangled scream like a stuck animal. Just for good measure, the girl elbowed the man in the face, ceasing the screaming. She then sprung from her crouched position into a full sprint, her long legs carrying her gracefully to the edge of the woods and beyond.

Then I was dragged into the play. A man, badly bleeding from his
leg, was limping towards me. At first, thinking he needed help, I moved towards him, not noticing the baton in his hand until it was too late. He raised it above his head, his eyes showing no mercy. He was as delirious as those girls, caught up in the craziness. I put my arm over my head and shut my eyes. Not even thinking to run or fight back, just sitting there, an easy target. I heard the deadening thwack of wood against flesh and opened my eyes to see him fall to the ground. Clara stood above me with a blood-stained branch in her hand.

“
We have to go,” she said as she jerked me to my feet. Where she was pulling this strength from I’ll never know, but I followed her into the forest, leaving behind me a mess of panicked souls on both sides. To my left and right there were girls running, tripping, falling. Some were being chased.
Someone must be chasing us
, I thought.

Clara kept charging through, never letting go of my hand, never looking back. I
, on the other hand, was fervently looking backwards, forwards, and sideways, wondering how long it would be before someone caught up with us. Anticipating rough arms grabbing my shoulders and pulling me down. Suddenly Clara stopped dead and listened, her head cocked sideways like a wolf.

“
What are you doing?” I shivered as a breeze blew through my thin, cotton gown.

“
Shh!” she said, pressing her tiny, dark finger to my lips.

I didn
’t want to stop. I could barely hear the girls anymore. I didn’t want to think about why that was. I was hoping against hope that if we kept going, maybe we wouldn’t get caught, that we could escape this nightmare. I started tugging on Clara’s arm, figuring the horror had just hit her and she was temporarily incapacitated.

“
Get down,” she hissed. But it was too late. I felt the sting, and then warmth coursing through me, before I dropped to the ground.