Talker 25 (21 page)

Eighteen takes a bow to applause and congratulations, which only end when the music shifts to the dirge that accompanies the In Memoriam. Pam leads a prayer for the dead.

The next episode starts. Seventy-two, “Kissing Red Rover.” A rerun. Not a very good one, either. Most of us watch anyway.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

They
come when it’s dark.

The door closes softly, flashlights turn on. A tablet activates, its eerie glow illuminating the faces of Whiskey Jim, Lester, and an A-B I don’t recognize. They strip off jackets and hats and gloves.

I close my eyes, steady my breathing, and drool onto my pillow.

Footsteps approach.

“You bring my minis?” Lorena asks.

Glass clinks.

“What about the new one?” I don’t know the voice. But it’s close. Too close. Stinks of alcohol. Light shines through my eyelids. “Cute.”

I tense.

“I don’t think she likes to play,” Lorena says. “Leave her alone.”

“Doesn’t hurt to ask.” A hand pushes aside my hair, blistered lips press to my ear. “Twenty-Five, you home in there?”

“She’s awake,” Lester says. “No point faking it, Twenty-Five. If it makes it easier, you can pretend he’s James.”

“Get away from me,” I say.

“Feisty ragger.” The unknown soldier runs his tongue along my earlobe. “You might like it. Never hurts to have a friend in these parts—”

I thrust my elbow toward his voice. It connects with bone.

“Bitch!” His hand clamps around the back of my neck, and he jams my face into the pillow. I struggle, but he’s got a death grip on me.

Whiskey Jim laughs. “Guess she doesn’t like to play. Back off, Corporal. There are plenty of other willing participants.”

“The bet was for—”

“I don’t care what it was for. We can’t afford another Twenty-Three.”

The corporal releases me, and I start breathing again. “Bitch could use a good reconditioning.”

He slaps my ass, laughs, strides away.

I bite my lip hard until the threat of tears passes. I duck beneath my blanket, pressing it tight to my ears. It’s not enough to block out the noise that soon comes from the bathroom. Pam starts reciting verse. Others hum the
Kissing Dragons
theme song.

For the life of me, I can’t remember another tune, so I join in.

We’re on our third refrain when somebody lifts the blanket off my feet. I stifle a scream as a small hand pats my ankle. “It’s just me, silly.”

I unclench my fists, squint into the blackness. “Twenty-One?”

“Yes, yes.” She crawls up onto me, drapes an arm over my stomach, settles her head on my chest. “Don’t worry, Twenty-Five, the fuck vultures don’t stay long. You want to come to my island with me?”

“Your island?”

“It’s pretty exclusive. No vultures or dragons can come. We allow monkeys, though. They’re part of this killer bongo band. . . . They tend to get a bit sulky, though,” she adds in a hushed voice, as if she’s afraid the monkeys might overhear.

“Is it warm?”

“The warmest. Coconut trees everywhere. The dolphins swim right up to the beach and carry you into the ocean. You want in or not, Twenty-Five? This is a one-time offer,
yes, yes.”

I laugh. “Yeah, I want in.”

As she tells me about her island, I close my eyes, picture it my head. The sounds of sex and humming fade. Her voice carries me to sleep.

“Wakey, wakey, everyone.”

It’s Monday. I think.

Technically, I’ve been here a week.

Feels like forever.

James isn’t at breakfast. Every time the door opens, I look up from my food, but it’s always somebody else.

When I arrive at the call center, I check the bottom of the board.
25
, but no
26
. At the end of the day, I ask a couple of the boys about him. They pretend not to hear.

Lester laughs. “This is getting old, Twenty-Five. You’ll see him soon enough, but I promise you, he won’t see you.”

He’s not in the cafeteria for dinner.

“You need to let go,” Lorena says, not for the first time.

I nod, push at my spaghetti, wait for the door to open.

It’s never him.

That evening, Lorena takes me into the bathroom and shares a bottle of whiskey with me. Jameson. Figures. I turn the label away and drink.

“Thought you were running low.”

She winks. “Yeah, but I’m Jim’s favorite customer.”

I grin. “Whore.”

“On my good days.”

“How long’s it take?”

“Don’t think about it, Melissa. He won’t be the person you remember.”

“How long?”

She drinks. “Two weeks. Three max.”

“Maybe he’s stronger than the others.” I drink. “Maybe it’ll be forever.”

“Maybe.”

The thinscreen runs a clip of Reds destroying Denver.

“My mom was there,” I say. “After the attack. I miss her—”

Twenty-One bursts through the door, her fist clenched around the dragon brooch. “How many died, how many died today?”

“Nobody,” Lorena says. “It’s old footage, Allie.”

“Doesn’t look old, no, no.”

“Yesterday, today, does it make a difference?” I say.

Lorena snatches the bottle from me. “Quitting time.”

I give a bitter laugh. “Running low on Jameson.”

Twenty-One stares at me like I’m the crazy one.

“Go away!” Claire bellows from the main room. The wall shakes with her pounding.

Lorena rises. “Duty calls.” She takes the bottle with her.

When she returns with Claire a few minutes later, a rivulet of blood’s running down the side of her face, and she’s singing the bigger girl a lullaby. She dresses Claire’s bloodied hands with excessive slowness until the screen switches from the news back to
Kissing Dragons
. A season one rerun, episode twelve, I think. Lorena ties off the bandage and whispers something in Claire’s ear.

Claire claps her hands, spins around, plops to the ground. She points at the screen. “J.R.”

“J.R.’s her favorite,” Lorena explains as she applies a Band-Aid to the gash over her right eye. “Thankfully they don’t play episode thirty anymore. . . . I’m not sure she realizes he’s dead.”

We sit on either side of Claire, who stares wide-eyed at the screen, smiling from ear to ear whenever J.R. and his cowboy hat appear. Twenty-One, using my lap as a pillow, counts her fingers with the tip of the dragon brooch, happily whispering, “Burn, burn, burn.”

Tuesday, a new episode, number one hundred seven, of
Kissing Dragons
premieres. After Evelyn takes credit for the slain Green, we get our nightly message board reminder—Reds bombarding Moscow. Claire goes into psychopath mode. Lorena gets her into the bathroom.

“How many died today, how many died?” Twenty-One
asks me.

The Moscow video’s several years old, but there’s no convincing her of that. “Too many.”

“Burn, burn, burn.” She points at the smoky remnants of the Kremlin. “Is that a circus?”

“No. It’s the—”

“I read about circuses, yes, yes. Mom said we could never go because it was too far away. Can I put it on the island?”

We spend the rest of the night deciding what attractions our Kremlin circus will include.

Wednesday, Twenty-One ties a call center record, earning herself a bag of Kit Kats and our barracks a day off from our duties. That night, the fuck vultures return. She and I huddle together and decorate the Kremlin’s beachfront. She opts for rainbow-colored huts. I almost go with vulture guillotines, but decide on pink beach umbrellas instead.

Thursday, we get to sleep in. After breakfast in a nearly empty cafeteria, they bus us to the rec center. The attendant at the front desk glares at us, gestures dismissively at a nearby bin full of T-shirts and athletic shorts emblazoned with U.S. Army logos.

“Always a pleasure to see you,” he grumbles to Lester as we collect clothes. He waves at the screen behind him, which reruns episode ninety-eight, where the fab four head to Mexico in search of La Chupacabra. “The Yanks had the
bases loaded, too.”

“Yanks?” I whisper to Lorena.

“They’ve got a strict policy on what we can see,” she whispers back.

“Two outs?” Lester asks the attendant.

“Don’t you know it?”

“I’ll save you the suspense. They choked.”

“You serious?”

Lester shrugs, laughs.

“Asshole.”

“Yep.”

A stocky man with a skin graft across his left cheek and a droopy eye jogs over from the basketball court. He feigns a punch at Lester, who flinches, then grins and hits him twice on the shoulder before looking at us. “Who can we blame for our topside freeze this time?”

“Me, me, me!” Twenty-One says.

“Overachiever.”

“Yes, yes. You have chocolate?”

The man smiles. “Maybe. You better bring your A game. Don’t make me wait too long.”

“No, no,” she says, and hurries past our guards toward the locker room.

“Already causing problems,” Lester says with a half grin. “One and Two. You have five minutes.” Evelyn and Lorena
follow after Twenty-One. A pair of soldiers take up position outside the door.

Twenty-One emerges no more than a minute later, tugging at Lorena’s hand. Only Twenty-One’s wearing shorts. The bruises on her knees stand out in sharp contrast against her pale skin. “Hurry it up, Talker One, yes, yes!” she bellows into the locker room at least ten times before Evelyn comes striding out. Like Lorena, she’s kept her scrub bottoms on.

The next three numbers are called. Twenty-One exhorts them to hurry, to the chagrin or amusement of everybody within earshot.

Twenty-Two and I are the last to dress. I don’t know much about her. She’s one of Pam’s crowd. Never talks, except for polite yes, sirs and no, sirs to the soldiers. After hanging her coat in locker twenty-two, she strips out of her scrub top. I notice a tattoo on her ribs. Three names, each listed with date ranges. None older than twenty-five. The death dates are identical, little more than a year old.

“Why don’t you take a picture?” she says with more sharpness than I expected.

“Must have hurt.” I strip out of my scrub bottoms and show her my tattoo.

She shrugs, slips her T-shirt on.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

She turns to me, eyes narrowed. “What’s my name?”

“What?”

“Do you know my name?”

Based on her tat, I’m pretty certain her surname is Hernandez, but I can’t recall her first. Did she even introduce herself the day I arrived? I can’t remember.

She purses her lips. “That’s what I thought. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. It’s easier for everybody if we keep it that way. Got it, chica?”

She sweeps past me before I can respond.

“Hurry it up, Twenty-Five, yes, yes!”

As I exit the locker room, I hear a couple of snickers from the other girls, a few whispered jabs about Bigfoot. Besides the reconditioned, I’m the only one who decided to don shorts. Claire, whose hairy legs could be very well belong to a sasquatch, thrusts a fist at me. I recoil. Then I see that she’s extended her pinky and thumb. It takes me a couple of seconds to realize why that looks so familiar. It’s J.R.’s signature celebratory move.

I give her the expected fist bump. Twenty-One joins in for a three-way.

I catch Evelyn smirking at us. I smirk back. “Got your eye on somebody out there, Talker One?”

Evelyn nods at my stubbled legs, arches an eyebrow. “Some of us have standards, Twenty-Five.”

Lorena nudges me. “Let it go.”

I ignore her. “Last I heard, your standards led to a trip to the infirmary and a prescription for some antibiotics.”

A couple of girls laugh.

Evelyn reddens. “Story time, is it, Two? Should we inform your little sidekick of your daddy issues?”

“Leave it alone,” Lorena says.

“Oh, yes, can’t drink or blow your way out of that, can you?”

“That’s enough,” Lester says. “Go on, gals, go enjoy your day.”

“Yes, yes, I gotta kick Julio’s ass,” Twenty-One says, and sticks out her tongue at our escort, who responds with a smile.

“Language, Twenty-One.”

“I’ve got to kick Julio’s ass. Better, yes, yes.” She laughs, flicks off Pam, then rushes past some cardio equipment before disappearing around a corner.

Lester grabs my arm. “Stay here.”

“Weak links break chains,” Evelyn says on her way by, with a little wave. Her minions echo the gesture.

I expect him to shock me for all the violent thoughts running through my head, but he doesn’t.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say once we’re alone.

“Maybe. I know these first couple of weeks haven’t been
easy on you. They never are. But if I was you, I’d be very careful with Evelyn.” He looks away, blows out a breath through his nose, looks back at me with pursed lips. “She’s not anybody’s friend but her own.”

I squint at him.

He darkens. “It’s not like that. Never mind. Get out of here, Twenty-Five.” Again I expect him to shock me, but he merely shoos me. “It’s your day off. Go have fun.”

Fun?

A few of the girls are working out on cardio equipment, but most have congregated in a game room at the back of the rec center. I find Twenty-One hunkered over a chessboard. She controls the white army. The guy with the droopy eye plays the black side.

“I’m killing the dragons, yes, yes,” Twenty-One hisses to me, then swipes a black pawn (a smallish dragon with folded wings and red ruby eyes) with her white pawn (a soldier with a machine gun strapped across his shoulder). Licking her lips, her gaze darts to the three large Snickers lying on the table in front of her opponent.

“Not yet, little one,” he says. He kills her pawn with a larger dragon (this one with green eyes).

“Burn, burn, burn,” Twenty-One says, and makes her next move.

Back and forth they go. Soon pawns are dying left and
right, and the board’s rather empty. I rise from the couch, look for something else to do.

Five, Ten, and Eighteen are playing hearts at a poker table with a couple of our guards. Claire lounges in a recliner, watching
Kissing Dragons
. I wander to the other side of the room, where Lorena and Pam fling taunts across an air-hockey table.