The Wounded (The Woodlands Series) (37 page)

He dipped his chin so our noses were almost touching, deep breaths
pulsing out from his body. “Rosa, not that you always made it easy, but you need to know something. You,” he pointed one strong finger at my heart and tapped it on the hard bone of my sternum once, “were never undeserving of love.” He kissed me gently on the forehead, sliding his hands down my arms and creating a shiver.

I tried unsuccessfully to squeeze the tear
s back in. “Ok.” I smiled grimly, no teeth, just my lips pressed together because the moment couldn’t last, even though I wanted it to. “You ready?” I asked, half-hoping he’d say, ‘Nah forget it, let’s go home to Orry.’

He chuckled softly
. “Nope, but we promised, right?”

We held hands and made our way to the closest checkpoint, rounding the ever-curving wall.

*****

By the time we reached the first surveillance point, the sun was cast
ing horizontal lines of light over the wall. I shook my head. Even with the beginning of the brilliant golds and pinks of sunset, it still looked like it was made of windowsill dust and crushed bones.

Joseph put his hand to his
brow and scanned the top of the wall.

“I don’t see anyone, do you?”

My eyes tracked the top of the wall, searching for the top of a hat, a head, but there was nothing. I bent down to scoop up some rocks to throw over and get someone’s attention. Joseph stood, legs parted, staring up at the sky. I rose next to him and turned to give him a handful.

Like a spot of blood, a pre-emptive
color of what was to come, a bright red light wobbled in the center of Joseph’s chest. He took a deep breath in, still scanning, not noticing the infrared kill mark.

I slid gently in front of him and put my hands in the air. I could almost feel the red light burning a hole in my forehead. Joseph had no time to
react, but he carefully raised his hands too.

“Don’t shoot!” I shouted to the black gun poking over the top of the wall. It slowly
rose, and the hands and face attached to it revealed themselves. A red-haired, freckled face with makeup lazily smeared over the cheeks appeared, his blue eyes frightened and hesitant, but his finger ready to pull the trigger.

“We represent the
Survivors, and we have a message for Superior Este,” Joseph said loudly, trying to sound confident but coming off a little desperate.

The boy with the gun pulled back a little
. I could see him weighing up whether to trust Joseph’s words or not. He thought about it, and then quickly re-trained the red light on my chest. The light wriggling and wobbling like a firefly scared to be bottled. I could feel Joseph stiffen behind me. His body wanted to react and get me out of danger. Then we’d both be dead.

I g
rabbed his wrists behind me, digging my nails in, forcing him to stay still. I found the young man’s eyes and stared into them. “We know why the babies are getting sick,” I shouted, watching my words sail up and slap the young soldier in the face.

His eyebrows moved
down, framing his eyes like apostrophes. “Don’t move,” his quivering voice demanded. He turned his head and shouted down towards someone on the ground inside. “We need retrieval near scorch spot nine.”

Joseph took a step sideways and the boy
’s eyes flicked up, a ping sounding out as hot metal whizzed through the air and landed deep in the ground at our feet. “I said, don’t move!” he screamed, his voice borderline hysterical.

We both nodd
ed and stayed frozen in the mud, our eyes dancing frantically in our heads.

*****

Salim’s description of wide, sweeping gates with foreboding sculptures climbing the spires didn’t exist anymore, at least not at this end of the circle. I expected we’d be going through the wall or, if we had to, we would have climbed over it. Not under. Salim never mentioned this. It must have been new. Or some of the information in that weird man’s head had come loose and fallen out of his ear like sand.

We were still frozen, the gun trained on my
chest, as the ground to our left started to shift. Leaves rustled and fell inwards towards an ever-widening hole.

Five
grubby faces popped up, and men clad in black and gold uniforms climbed out of the hole. They surrounded us, gripping our arms and jostling our bodies. “Don’t fight,” I whispered to Joseph through gritted teeth. His eyes were fierce, his body barely controlled. One of them shoved me towards the hole in the ground. I pitched forward into the dirt, landing hard on the heels of my hands and knees. Out of the corner of my vision, I could see a leg clad in black wind back like a cog in a clock to kick me

“Rosa!” Joseph yelled
in warning, straining against the weight and muscle of three soldiers trying to hold him back.

I rolled to the side and the soldier
kicked the air, losing his balance and falling on his butt.

I should have kept my mouth shut, but
that brain-to-mouth connection broke long ago. My mouth blurted out a laugh before I could stop myself. The soldier sprung up and his hand was around my throat, squeezing. I breathed in and out as calmly as I could and tried not to kick him in the groin, which he’d left wide open. I stared up at his black coil of hair, noticing the spatter of grey and the coating of dirt. The colors reminded me of the monkeys, and I snorted, thinking they were better trained.

“Something funny
, you Own Kind brat?” he snarled, his unnaturally blue eyes watering in irritation. I shook my head vehemently, rubbing the back of my head back and forth, deeper in the mud. He pushed my head violently into the dirt, which was thankfully soft, and then released my throat. He stared down at my shaking body in disgust, his eyes narrowed. “You know, your skin is the same color as the dirt. Get up before I lose you in it!” he spat, while the other soldiers laughed.

I scrambled up
, shaking the mud from my hair. Joseph’s eyes were wild with alarm. I caught his gaze and whispered, “I’m ok,” as we were pushed down a ladder and into the ground.

*****

We were in a wormhole, a thick, wet, dirty hole only wide enough for two people to walk down at a time. My back was peppered with round bruises from being cattle-prodded with the point of a gun and my shirt was covered in mud. It smelled like the earth did under layers of dead leaves: rich, moldy, and damp.

Joseph was silent. We both were. We had told them we would only speak to Este. Right
then, I would have rather been a worm, squiggling through the dirt with no other purpose other than to move forward and keep on wiggling. We were walking into a huge unknown, assuming the Superiors would be reasonable. We were counting on the others not to be discovered and hoping and praying Deshi was alive. My fingers wrapped around the fabric of my shirt and clenched in nervousness, as though gripping something, anything, would stop me from slipping down the flimsy ladder of hope. The current of all these unknowns was so strong, threatening to grasp us with frosty fingers and drag us away.

The ground underfoot abrup
tly changed from soft and spongy to hard, as our feet slapped against something firm and plastic. A light flickered on, and we found ourselves standing in front of shining metal doors.

One of the soldiers pushed a button with
the end of his gun, unwilling to let go of it for even a second, giving me a sideways sneer as he did. The button lit up, and the doors glided open noiselessly.

“Basement One
,” a creepy female voice uttered over our heads. My eyes slid towards the internal buttons as we stepped inside. G, B1, B2, B3. Cold pinched my shoulders. What was beneath us? I looked to Joseph, and his eyes showed the same amount of dread and confusion.

A pale finger
pushed the ‘G’ button, and I sighed with relief.

The elevator
shuddered, and the alien feeling of my stomach being left at B1 while the rest of me went upwards took over. I braced myself against the wall, glancing up at a poster of an All-Kind kid with a phone to her ear, with big, blue eyes and an unblinking, sinister expression. The slogan read, ‘What did you see? What did you hear? Report immediately.’
My God
. I caught myself mid-eye roll and stopped.

The elevator came to a
stop, and the doors opened with a ding. The silken voice overhead said, “Ground floor.” But all I could see was another metal door. This one was tin with a simple slide bolt, sunlight peeking around the edges.

One of the soldiers rattled the bolt, shov
ing his shoulder into the door while swearing, and lifted the door up so he could get it open.

The sun
hit us like a helicopter searchlight, and we poured out and onto the pavement. I turned around in time to see the last soldier closing the door to a rickety, old shed, similar to the one I’d seen the guards playing cards in front of in Pau. I squinted at the rusty, pale green structure and shook my head.

My head twisted around, trying to take in as much as I could.
So this was the Superiors’ compound. It was certainly more open, only the one exterior concrete wall. Small dwellings were squashed closely together. Servants and workers quarters, Salim had explained.

As if on cue, a
rough-looking woman poked her head out the door, her clothes simple but clean. She caught my eye, raised her eyebrows in alarm, and quickly slammed the door.

Two years
ago, I’d seen this place briefly from the air, and it had looked completely open. But now that I was inside it, I could see the divisions. My eyes stretched over the tightly packed homes and snippets of wire fence between the gaps as we were strong-armed down the street, the soldiers crowding around us like they didn’t want people to see. The one holding me squeezed my arm painfully when I craned my head over their gold-tipped shoulders to watch three people pushing a trolley full of cleaning supplies down the narrow street and chatting. It was like Ring Eight in size, but without the sad sight of baggy, boney old people shuffling around with no aim. I returned my gaze to the back of the soldier in front of me, when the one holding my arm shook me violently. “Eyes forward, Own Kind. You’re not on a tour.” I clenched my teeth to stop a remark flying out my mouth. This guy could be a comedian.

We were marched towards a
gap between two houses, dark shadows causing me to shiver with cold in my thin, white t-shirt. Another slide bolt lock, this time with a padlock on it, was opened, and we were in a field. High corn waved, back and forth like shaking heads, on either side of narrow path. So high that it skimmed the top of Joseph’s head. This was like some bizarre dream. I reached out to graze my fingers over the swaying sheaths and felt a nasty bite when my fingers connected with metal. This was not on Salim’s maps.

One of the soldiers laughed
. “Careful, it’s electrified.” I peered closer and noticed the fence, a few stalks deep into the field. I rubbed my hand against my pant leg and sighed. What next?

We walked for
half an hour, the setting sun glinting gold over the tips of the feathery hairs encasing the corn. My stomach growled when I caught the bright yellow kernels peeking out the top like teeth.

Joseph was behind me and every now and
then, he’d bump into me, just so we could touch. We didn’t know when we would be able to touch again, so every bump felt like the electric shock I’d received earlier.

The soldiers were quiet
and, with the eerie sound of the corn moving in the breeze and complete isolation and disorientation, it was hard to believe we were heading to the center of the Superiors’ compound. Which was maybe the point. Nothing seemed as I would have expected. It threw me.

We finally hit another gate
and, as a soldier drew out a large ring of keys and started flipping through them. The overpowering smell of rotten fish wafted through the wire and up my nose. It was like someone had booby-trapped the gate with a thousand tins of anchovies, which had been sitting out in the sun for days.

I wiped
my nose with my hand, trying to expel the smell from around my face. Joseph snorted in disgust. I turned to him, about to ask who’d been eating cat food, when I heard a sound I’d never heard before. A trumpeting roar. Loud and aggressive, sailing towards us over the edges of the red, ornate roofs that now grazed the top of the corn stalks.