The Bleeding Crowd (6 page)

The first gate opened, admitting the car into
the camp. The guards let Ben out, walking him into the imaging
equipment used to detect anything metallic the men might be tempted
to smuggle into the camps. Ben stood in the man-sized box without
complaint, waited for the beep that showed he was clean, and moved
through the final set of doors into the camp.

Like the walls surrounding it, the camp was
dreary to say the least. Men were something dangerous, something to
be contained, but the women worried most about keeping them inside
the walls. In the camp men were all but left to their own
devices.

Ben skirted the main yard and moved to his
barrack near the far wall.

Jude looked up from some homemade cards he
appeared to be playing with. “Have a good time?”

Ben shrugged, rolling his pant leg up so he
could get to the inside pocket he had had sewn into all of his
pants.

Jude just waited, watching him pull out a
sheet of paper and stick it under the mattress of his bunk situated
on the far wall near the window.

“Who’s winning?” Ben motioned with his head
at the cards.

Jude shrugged, not acknowledging the
joke.

Ben sat down. “So...”

Jude glanced at the door, lowering his voice.
“She anyone important?”

Ben took a second to respond. “Doctor.”

“Not that important then.” Jude looked back
at the cards.

“I don’t know,” Ben said. “She has a book
filled with hundreds of plants and what they do. Some are
poisonous. That could be helpful.”

“She just left that sitting around?” His
friend raised an eyebrow.

“Well, as far as she knows I’m
illiterate.”

“Ah. Right.”

“A pretend lack of knowledge is power.” Ben
rested against the wall.

“Dan ZD just got assigned to a politician of
some sort.”

“Anyone we need?” Ben asked.

“All I know is it’s some forty-year-old who
has a taste for younger men.”

“Well, I got lucky there. Pretty
twenty-year-old.”

“Nice.” Jude didn’t look up from the
cards.

“Are you back in rotation yet?”

“No, but there’s another lottery coming up.
I’ve got some of the younger guys tickets lined up for that.”

Ben nodded, glancing back at the door.
“Where’s everyone else? You chase them out?”

“They’re having a rugby match in the yard,”
Jude said. “I didn’t feel like tackling people today.”

“Any issues with Eli and his boys?”

“Things have been pretty quiet.” Jude shook
his head. “What’s going on outside?”

Ben moved a card for Jude without thinking.
“Nothing big as far as I can tell.”

“Thrilling. We’re looking to get you
reassigned again, I take it.”

“I don’t know.” Ben shook his head. “I think
there’s some potential with this one.”

“What? She can get you meds?”

“I think she might become a convert.”

Jude raised his eyes slowly, quirking an
eyebrow. “Are you serious?”

“We have some women working for us,” Ben
said.

“Yeah, but the guards are easy. They’re
treated only marginally better than we are.”

“I bet I could get her,” Ben replied. “She’s
just ignorant, not misanthropic.”

“What if you don’t? You can’t just go up to
her and say, ‘Hey, we’re a men’s rights group, want to join? No? Oh
well, have a nice day.’”

“So little faith in me.” Ben crossed his
arms, amused.

“You’re so confident?”

“She’s a novice, just turned twenty. How hard
can messing with her mind really be?”

Chapter Four

Ben let himself be scanned at the end of the
underground passageway they used to allow men in and out of the
villas without being observed. Waving the humming baton over the
chip under his collarbone, the guard recorded his information and
reprogrammed the chip to restrict him to Dahlia’s room. The guard
opened the door, made sure the hallway was clear, and then
shepherded him into the room at the end of the hall.

The door closed behind him and the lock
clicked, like every other lock that clicked behind him. He looked
around. No one appeared to be here. He moved towards the desk
before pausing. “Hello?”

“One second,” a voice called from the
bathroom.

He released a breath and sat down on the desk
chair.

Dahlia stepped through the doorway, glancing
at him before turning to pull open her closet to look at the
mirror.

He ran his eyes from her strappy sandals to
the short emerald dress she was cinching with a gold belt. He
studied her legs for a moment and then brought his eyes up to look
at the side of her face. “This all for me?”

She scoffed. “Why would I spend the time for
that? It’s not like you have a choice whether or not to be
here.”

“Well, you’ve spent some time doing...” He
eyed her up and down.

“I’m going downtown to put in an appearance
at a party my friend is having.” Dahlia scrunched her hair up in
her hands quickly before studying it again.

He frowned. “So why call me here?”

“I figured it was about time again.” She
shrugged, not bothering to look at him. “I needed an excuse to
leave early. I’ll be back in thirty, forty minutes tops. There are
some anatomy and what-not books if you’re interested. The herbology
one has a lot of pictures. It’s the one with the picture of a big
leaf on the front. Or there’s the TV. I’ll be back soon.”

Ben nodded, watched her wipe off a smudge of
lipstick, and move towards the door. She didn’t stop, but opened
it, pulled the door behind her, and shut the curtains as the door
clicked.

He waited for a few minutes, making sure she
hadn’t forgotten anything that would make her turn around, and then
moved to the desk. He glanced over his shoulder, and then felt
under the edge of the desk until the screen lit up on the,
seemingly, wood panel.

He looked at it the screen that sat empty
besides the block letters PASSWORD: He sighed. Beyond all their
talk of compassion and peacefulness, a surprising number of women
had their information guarded far beyond its real value. He’d have
to have Jude give him a refresher on how to hack into the
system.

He slid his hand under the desk again,
finding the button and pressing it gently so the screen turned off
before settling on rummaging around her desk. One drawer was
locked, but easily enough picked. Still, there was nothing really
of note—a couple of personal letters, what seemed to be work
papers, nothing truthfully worth locking up—unless she was very
worried that whoever Mackenzie was would find out they were
discussing her by passing notes. He slid the drawer shut and did
his best make it lock again.

Women really made no sense sometimes.

He took the map she had in the back of one of
the drawers and slid it into the compartment in his pants leg
before moving away from the desk. He sat down, smoothing out the
all but an imperceptible square protrusion along his calf so it
wouldn’t shift or crinkle too much when he moved. Strange sounds
coming from pieces of clothing were never good.

Picking up one of the textbooks at the end of
the bed, he flipped it open to a random page. A picture of a plant
sat at the top and he scanned the page. The word
poisonous
made him pause.

Nerium Oleander: an
evergreen
shrub
(top
left) in the apocynum family. Unlike dogbanes, however, Oleander is
highly
poisonous
, even in small
doses. Where dogbane contains cymarin, which in improper doses can
cause arrhythmia, Oleander contains a myriad of toxins, the most
deadly being
oleandrin
and neriine
both of which are potent cardiac glycosides. These toxins are
present in all parts of the plant; the sap is known to cause severe
irritation and inflammation.

He scanned the rest of the entry, looking at
the page for a long moment before setting it down. He picked up the
anatomy text he had looked at before, turning to the index to look
for
cardiac
. His finger ran down the list stopping at
cardiovascular. He flipped to the page, finding a detailed picture
of the heart and lungs and the veins and arteries branching out
from them. He pursed his lips, mouthing
glycoside
a couple
times, finding nothing that would give any clue to what that meant.
He’d just have to assume it did something to the heart. Something
bad.

The door slid open, making him jump, changing
the page, not that there was logically any reason to do so.

Dahlia glanced at him, slipping off her shoes
and tossing them in the general direction of the closet. “Anatomy
again?”

“It’s that awkward place somewhere between
disgusting and completely fascinating,” Ben said, glancing down at
the page now exposed, the word
brain
jumping out at him.
“That’s the brain, yeah?”

She rolled her shoulders, moving to look at
the book. “Yeah, you’re in the central nervous system. See there,
that... well, first it says encephalon, but it means brain.”

“Just trying to make things sound confusing?”
Ben smiled.

“Just being technical.” She sat down.

He nodded, closing the book and setting it
aside, hoping he didn’t look guilty. He was generally better about
that. “How was your party?”

“Not horrible,” Dahlia said. “Music,
cavorting, general merriment.”

“Then why did you need an excuse to leave?”
Ben asked.

“I’m in a less than gregarious mood,” she
said.

“Are you ever in a gregarious mood? You don’t
seem, you know, bubbly.”

She snorted. “I’m impressed you know what
gregarious means. I was gearing up to define it.”

“I may not read English, but I do speak
it.”

“Incredibly well,” she agreed. “Your lot
isn’t supposed to be the most verbal of creatures.”

“I listen. The guards follow the same basic
curriculum you do.”

“The lesbians?”

“The guards.” He shrugged. “You’ve used that
term before.”

“Oh.” Dahlia frowned waving her hand like he
could complete the thought for her. “It’s the general term for
women who are homosexuals. You know, women that like women.”

“You’d think that’d be all of you then.”

“Well, sexually, not socially.” Dahlia shook
her head. “Women that find women sexually attractive.”

Ben nodded, studying her. “Do you prefer
women?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Excuse me?”

“Well, just thinking about it, it would
explain your aversion to sleeping with me.”

“Sleeping with you,” she repeated. “I take
that’s a colloquialism for having sex.”

“Well... yeah,” Ben said, not ready to launch
into a full explanation.

Dahlia shook her head. “We have a brain scan
at fourteen. I’m lacking the necessary wiring up there to be a
lesbian. Can’t say I’ve ever had the urge to sleep with a girl
either. Maybe I’m just asexual.”

“From what you’ve told me, you have a sex
drive,” he said.

“Fine. Maybe I’m autosexual. I prefer my
sexual activities to take place purely with myself.”

Ben smiled. “Sexy.”

“I’m so glad you approve of my sexual
practices. I feel so validated.” Dahlia frowned. “Why are you so
interested?”

“Well, I happen to prefer sex with a partner,
and, since I’m obviously heterosexual, you don’t get laid, I don’t
either.”

“That’s another colloquialism for sex?” she
asked. “Get laid?”

“Yeah.”

She nodded for a moment. “Well, sorry for the
inconvenience, but I’m sure you’ve had to wait longer than this for
sex. In two weeks you can be put back in the lottery and maybe get
someone who does want to use you purely as a sex object.”

He looked at her. “What if I don’t want to be
put back into the lottery?”

“Excuse me?”

“Even without sex, sitting around here is
better than sitting around the camp. Who knows when I’d get called
up again. Or what sort of woman I’d end up with. You can be bitchy,
but at least you leave things at verbal abuse.”

“I’m not abusive.” She frowned.

He smiled. “Lighten up. I’m teasing. You’re
actually much more intellectually stimulating than anything
else.”

She paused, considering that. “Well, I
try.”

“You succeed,” he said. “No one else I’ve
talked to, no other woman I’ve ended up with, has ever let me look
at anything remotely educational.”

“Well, I don’t know how much you can really
learn without being able to read those.”

“There are pictures.” He shrugged. “The
brain... ence―whatever it was.”

“Encephalon.”

“Encephalon,” he repeated. “Any reason you
can’t just say brain?”

“You can,” she said. “Encephalon is just more
technical. Brain means the part of the nervous system that sends
signals to the rest of the body. Encephalon means that, but that
it’s in a vertebrate. Since humans are vertebrates—”

“Important distinction I’m sure,” he cut her
off.

“Words are important,” Dahlia said.
“Cassandra, my friend who works at the hospital with me, likes to
say I went into homeopathics because of my name. Like being named
after a flower is what made me like plants.”

“It’s a flower?”

“What?” She frowned.

“A dahlia.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Dahlia Hybrida. It’s a
perennial plant.”

“Perennial. I’ll pretend I know what that
means.”

“Oh, it means it blooms season after season,
doesn’t die off.”

“Bodes well for you,” Ben said. “Can’t say we
have a lot of flowers around the camp. Gardening terms aren’t my
specialty.”

She picked up a book, turning to the Ds. She
showed him a picture. “That’s a dahlia.”

He nodded. “Pretty.”

“Not repulsive.” She shrugged off his
compliment.

“It suits you,” he said.

“Yes, because the flower has a lot of effect
on my appearance.” Her dismissal of that was evident.