The Undesirable (Undesirable Series) (7 page)

“I don’t think you should stay there,” he cautioned through clenched teeth. “It’s not a good idea.”

“What? Why? That’s my house,” I replied. I raised an eyebrow. “It’s all I own.” I took a step back.

“I know,” he said. He closed the space between us. “But it just seems like you’re tired all the time from work. I hate thinking about you walking all the way out here just to get home after a long day.” He paused. “And there’s something else. I overheard some information the other day during shift change.” He sighed. “A couple of Party members talked about some roundups they’re going to do soon. And they want to start with the outskirts of town.”

“What?” I whispered, even though I wanted to shout at him. “What the hell? Roundups?” I threw up my hands. “What does that mean? Is this going to be like when they killed my mother and everyone else?” I glared at him.

He nodded yes, and my mouth dropped open.

“You can’t be serious,” I said, unable to process the words. I closed my eyes for a brief second as a headache started to pound in my ears. “And why should I listen to you anyway? You didn’t talk to me for days. Why tell me this now?”

“I know, I thought about that, but it’s all true. They mentioned it at drill.” Fostino’s jaw tightened. “I just—I tried to tell you. I did. I came to the house one night a few days ago while out on patrol, but I couldn’t stop to see you because I had other people with me.” He put his left hand on his forehead and I heard his exasperation. “Charlotte, you don’t know what’s going to…”

I cut off his words and tried to focus. “Roundups? Really? This makes me sick!”

“It’s necessary,” he replied. Fostino’s left hand chopped through the air. “We’ve been through this. Some people among us don’t believe. They chose to become Undesirables. And The Party must find them and stop them.”

“But what about—”

He held up a hand to stop me from talking. “Undesirables want to destroy us. They want to keep us down. What will it take for you to understand?”

“So my mother counted as an Undesirable?” The words came out like machine gun bullets. My eyes widened in anger and my heartbeat sped up.

“That’s not what I meant,” he implored, and put his hand over his eyes. “I’m not saying things always make sense. But we will soon go house to house, finding people who would try to destroy our way of life.”

Then he paused.

“If there’s anything in your house that’s not good, not what they allow you to have, it’s going to get bad.” He raised a hand to stop my reply. “I know you don’t want to believe me. I know how stubborn you are. I see it in those eyes.” He shook his head. “Jesus, Charlotte, you have to believe me.”

I swallowed. I knew all too well the meaning of “bad”. My mind wandered to all the things the soldiers might not like. Thanks to my mother and her past, I couldn’t be sure our house was safe. 

“So what do you think I should do?” The muscles in my back tensed.

Might be worth it to hear him out. 

“I’ve thought about it and I have an idea.” He pointed down the alley to a crumbling, ancient apartment building a half block away. “My parents own that. As a kid, I helped my mom clean it on Saturdays. I know the place pretty well.” Fostino’s eyes bore into mine.

“Aren’t all the apartments taken?”

“Not now,” he admitted. “Not since, well…”  His voice trailed off because he didn’t need to say any more.

Not since the massacre.

“I can’t pay for an apartment,” I said, incredulous. “I don’t have any money. No what… I mean… I don’t have any stamps. I can’t pay anything.”

Fostino looked up and down the alley to make sure we were still alone. “It won’t be a big deal if you move in,” he said. “Mom and Dad stopped collecting rents a few weeks ago because they’re so distracted. God, they just worry about Farrah. She is not doing well. I think she’s been having nightmares. I wish she would talk to me.” Again he trailed off and his eyes grew hard. “It doesn’t matter about the rent, anyway. The building is theirs. They own it.

“I cleaned out one of the studios the other day. It has a crawl space under the bed. I think it will be a good place for you.” Fostino grabbed my shoulders once more. “Closer to work, and safer, maybe.”

“Why should I trust you?” I wondered aloud again. My eyes searched his face. “How do I know you won’t turn me in, that you won’t tell The Party that I’m an Undesirable?”

“Come on. I would never do that,” Fostino responded.  His eyes darkened further. He moved one hand from my shoulder to the nape of my neck. “I’m trying to show you even though…” His words trailed off as he held my gaze.

“So if I did move in, how would you suggest I do it?” I murmured. I broke away from his stare and studied the back of the apartment building. “It won’t be easy to move much over here.” I sucked in a tentative, unsure breath.

Fostino answered me first with a deep exhale; the medals rode up and down his chest. “I’ve thought about that, too. You won’t be able to bring much… a small backpack, I think. And you’ll need to bring it in the morning, on your way to work at the factory. You could leave it on the back steps over there. Then I’ll slip it into the apartment.” He moved his left hand off my right shoulder and it found a place in my tangled hair.

“Will The Party let me move?” My thoughts turned to the soldier I watched beat the woman in the square on the day of the massacre.

“I think so,” he said as he ran a hand through his hair. “It’s worth trying.”

He had a point. What could I lose?

Nothing. I had nothing.

Even so, the thought made me unsure. “When do you think the roundups will start?” I looked down. My hands turned clammy. 

“Soon,” he asserted. “Maybe even tomorrow.” Fostino leaned closer to me and put his forehead on mine. “Look,” he added. “Please do this.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

I shut the door to the shack and whirled around. My eyes swept the room before my body sank into the tattered loveseat. I stared at the floor for a long time and didn’t move.

Could I do this? Leave this place, the only home I’d ever known?

Around 9:00 PM, I heard the screams. Right after, I heard the unmistakable sound of a dog bark. My blood froze. My eyes watered. My lungs heaved with dread.

What was that?

The screams came from outside the house, on the street. I heard one and then another. Two voices pierced the night like long knives.

“Don’t! Please!” the first one wailed in a sharp staccato. “I promise we didn’t do anything! I promise!”

“We’re loyal, I swear!” yelled the other, a man’s lower voice.

With catlike movement, I crept to the small window my mother had long ago covered with a curtain fashioned from an off-white sheet. I reached over next to the window and flipped off the light switch so the room plunged into blackness. I waited 30 seconds before reaching up my hand to pull back the lower corner of the sheet.

Across the street, I saw it.

Two soldiers stood outside the Mon Swayne home; a shack similar to mine. One stood next to a large wolf dog on a leash with a pointy collar. The dog didn’t bark. It growled behind a clenched jaw and waited for orders. The other soldier reached up and fired his gun in the air.

“Enough!” he shouted. “No more talking! We have all the proof we need!” He picked up something from the grass and shook it in Mrs. Mon Swayne’s face. She answered him with a horrified, loud cry.

“Our dog found this,” he said. “This!” He threw it on the ground again and stomped his boot on it. The other soldier threw a flashlight on it, but I couldn’t make it out at first.

“It’s not ours,” Mr. Mon Swayne pleaded. “I’ve never seen that money before in my life!”

“Nonsense,” said the soldier with the flashlight. “We found a box full of Canadian dollars underneath your bed! Along with a Canadian passport!”

I gasped.

Everyone in Harrison Corners knew the government forbade Canadian passports. And Canadian money.

The soldier took what resembled a passport out of his back pocket and threw it on the ground, too. Then he pulled out a pair of handcuffs and ordered Mrs. Mon Swayne to turn around. When she didn’t right away, he fired a shot into the air again and then hit her on the arm with the butt of his gun.

“You are under arrest!” the first soldier screamed into the face of Mr. Mon Swayne. “You are guilty of high treason! You are an Undesirable!” The second soldier made the move to handcuff Mr. Mon Swayne. Husband and wife dissolved into hysterics now. My tears came, too.

As the wolf dog barked, the soldiers forced the Mon Swaynes into the open flatbed truck on the street next to their home. The door to the house hung open. They stood alone on the flatbed. Then the soldiers signed the dog to climb in the back of the truck and loaded themselves in the front. The high beams of the truck flooded the street like syrup over a pancake.

They drove down the road. Something inside me told me I would never see the Mon Swaynes again. Seconds later, the flatbed truck stopped at another house three doors down.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Five minutes after 8:00 AM the next day, I rounded the corner to the alley behind the convenience store and headed toward the 16-unit apartment building. Earlier, I’d packed a small black messenger bag with the few valuables I decided to take with me. The weight of the bag hung off my shoulder like a cinder block. I marveled at being able to make it to the back steps of the apartment building undetected.

I shrugged off the messenger bag and left it where Fostino had told me to place it. Then I exhaled, and headed to the factory.

*

After work, I came back to the alley and knocked on the door at the back of the apartment building. No one answered. My messenger bag was gone.

What about the bag? Where did it go? Did Fostino pick it up as he promised, or did someone else, someone from The Party find it?

Panic flooded my body. I pressed myself against the brick of the building, buried my hands in my face. I tried not to cry or panic, and sat there I heard the distinct sound of the crunch of boots on gravel.

“Charlotte,” said an out of breath Fostino. “I’m sorry I’m late.” He gave me a reassured grin.

“They had the roundups last night,” I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my thin sweater. “They came and took the Mon Swaynes like they were criminals.”

Fostino gave me a curt, no-nonsense nod. “I know.” Changing the subject, he said, “I put your bag in the apartment.”  He held out a hand to help me up. “Want to see it?”

“Sure,” I whispered.

He led me down a long hallway with four doors on either side. A musty smell filled the hallway. To the right of the back door, a few steps led up to the second floor. We didn’t go up. Down the hall, two of the doors hung off their hinges. At the sixth door, he stopped. 

“So, this is it,” he announced as he pushed open the wooden door.

Inside the door, I saw a ten-foot-by-ten-foot square room that seemed surprisingly cozy. A folded up Murphy bed sat in the corner. A bathroom broke off from the north side, across the room from a small couch and a flat 4-D TV programmed to play state propaganda nailed into the wall. Ages ago, someone had covered all the walls in sea foam green paint and I saw a place where it peeled away from the wall. A bare coffee table completed the room. My messenger bag lay beside the bed along with a stack of folded white sheets and a blanket.

“Thank you, Fostino,” I said, taking in the room.

“Come here. I need to show you this.” Fostino shut the door and walked towards the area where the bed was. He motioned and then knelt down. He ran his hand along some of the floorboards until he caught what he wanted. As I watched, he lifted up the boards with some force and grimaced.

“Holy crap!” I jumped back a little, startled by the transformation of the floor.

“It’s an old bomb shelter.” He beckoned me to look. I saw a five-by-ten foot room dug into the earth and lined in concrete. The room had enough space for people to stand up straight and not hit their heads. Someone had placed a small cot, lantern, table, and chair inside the secret room.

“Why is it so big?”

“The building has four of these. I guess they were supposed to protect people who lived here if a nuclear bomb ever hit. You know, from way back in the 1950s or whatever. I guess that’s when someone built this building. I never really bothered to find out. A couple years ago, my dad converted the rooms into tornado shelters instead of filling them in with concrete. I’d forgotten these were here until I found this one last week. Maybe it’s a good thing.”

“Yeah…” I whispered, overwhelmed.

“You should be able to stay here for as long as you want,” he continued. We still crouched on the floor. He sat less than two inches away from me. Slowly, he reached over and brushed some hair out of my face. “God, I am drawn to you like some kind of…”  Even as he trailed off, his words covered us like a warm, thick blanket.

“Did you tell your parents about me?”

“No.” He didn’t take his eyes off mine. “And my parents don’t ask a lot of questions.”

My mouth turned dry, so I just changed the subject. “Patrolling tonight?” I asked, and thought of the time.

“I patrol most nights, Char.” Fostino raised his eyebrow.

“Of course,” I replied and breathed in his familiar smell.

Then he leaned in and kissed me.