The Wanted (5 page)

She marched me down a hallway, lights glowing along the floor, and carpet the color of bruised lips and blood sinking between my toes. I looked up to see a large painting of a can of tomato soup and laughed. The squeeze got tighter, and her expression pulled her face in like purse strings. We came to a polished, wooden door with copper wall lights on either side. The woman, Red, as I had already nicknamed her in my head, punched in numbers on the keypad and scanned her wrist. The door unlatched, and I was dragged towards the bed.

My bony butt sank warily into the most comfortable mattress I had ever touched. A satin bedspread swirled around my dirty legs, which were striped with dried blood, the patterns almost wanting to eject me so I didn’t sully their beauty. I gazed down at my hands, clasped over the heavy canvas jacket. The tarnished buttons and frayed pockets were almost a comfort. I put my hand into one of the pockets and fished out a folded piece of paper. Hope flowed through me too quickly, warm and golden. I had to clamp down on these feelings before they destroyed me because as I opened the paper, while Red was busy locking the door behind her, the short list of items caused my heart to shrivel inside me along with my faith. I remembered the last time I’d read a list like this. Black words scrawled on lined paper encompassed death, love, hope. This was just a grocery list: Tinned tomatoes x 2, rice, beef, tampons. I quirked my eyebrow at the last item. The soldier had a wife and maybe a daughter. It was something I needed to remind myself of—everyone had a family. Something,
someone
to lose.

Red huffed, standing over me with her hands on her hips. She held out her hand for the note, and I gave it to her. She scrunched it in one hand without reading it and shoved it in her pocket, her skirt so tight on her hips that I could see the little ball of paper bulging under the fabric.

Eyes wide and critical, she drew a breath and lunged at me.

I leaned back on the bed, frightened of this enormous woman pressing her breasts into my face. She dragged her fingers through my hair, and I struggled not to suffocate.

“Sit up!” she barked impatiently. “I’m not going to hurt you, child.”

Still naked under the jacket, I felt vulnerable to say the least, but I sat there like a good girl, like someone else, and let her run her hands through my hair, inspect my eyes, and pinch at my skin like I was an animal on show. Because I promised. Even though every part of my dark, scrawny body wanted to smack her so hard I’d leave a bony handprint on her cheek, I knew I wouldn’t get far.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice muffled through a curtain of my own hair.

She looked over the top of my head as she replied, “Getting your colors right.”

“My colors?”

“Yes. What you need to change, what you can keep.”
What I could keep?

I gripped the quilt on either side of me like it was cement that could hold me in my place. Maybe I could hit her a little?

She seemed indifferent to my reaction and continued inspecting me, but when she made a move for my jacket, I put my arm up to block her, pushing back at her assault. I wasn’t doing this again.

Her large head gave a tiny shake. I didn’t have time to react before she whipped her hand into her breast pocket and tapped a black device to my arm. My body jolted, feeling and sounding like it had cracked in half like a dry branch.

My eyes rolled, my speech thick in my mouth. “Wha… why…?”

Her fuzzy image became larger in my eyes until she filled the whole room. Her thunderclap voice slammed against the walls.

“You didn’t do as you were told.” The words ‘do as you were told’ echoed and ran down the walls like dripping paint.

My arm stung with the familiar prick of a needle. My body slumped and gave in to a familiar feeling. I was right back where I started.

GRANT

I watched her treading or rather storming towards my garage. The look on her face was not what I had expected, and it irritated me. She should be afraid, trembling. Uncertain. Instead, her large, uneven, young eyes took in my home, my world, seeming more curious than afraid. That would soon change.

I cursed my inability to escort her myself. I imagined my hand clamped around her thin arm, my legs strong and quick. I would have dragged her here and heard her whimper. My ghost foot stamped and of course, there was no impact, no sound. But soon, I would walk again. I could almost feel my height growing. I would look down on everyone. Never again would people stoop to meet my eyes. It had not been so long that I couldn’t remember what it felt like to stride through my own garden, to stand above most. Now, I looked up and despised my view.

She dragged her bare feet through my perfectly raked stones, her head up, proud. Stupid. She didn’t know. She would soon understand. I was not Este, crazed, obsessive, and I certainly wasn’t Sekimbo, a drunk, or Poltinov, stupidly agreeable, old, and clueless. My turn was coming. My way was the only way.

The chair moved awkwardly over the carpet as I wheeled right up to the window. They had recommended I change my home, lower it to the ground. But I knew this was temporary. They even suggested an electric chair, but I needed to feed my own movement. My toes bumped the glass; I couldn’t feel it, just the resistance. From here, I could look down on them, but it was a pathetic victory. The girl’s jacket swung below her knees, and I was reminded that she was a child. A foolish, insignificant child.

I clenched my fists on my chair arm when her eyes met mine. She didn’t shy away from my gaze. She glared directly into them, those odd eyes, that spirit. It fueled me because it was begging to be broken. I wheeled back from the window, unused to anyone giving me such extended eye contact and smiled to myself. There was so much I wanted to show her.

JOSEPH

I thought about her always. She was just there, in my mind, by my side, smirking, frowning at me. Because she was a ghost. I tried not to think of her broken, bleeding body surrounded by dead soldiers, toppled like Orry’s blocks, but it was a flashcard wedged permanently inside my brain. I tried to bend it, push it aside, and think about Orry and what she had done for me. But the strongest feeling was wishing with every part of my hopeless body that she hadn’t done it.

We sat around a campfire, except for Rash, who was standing as far away from me as he could. I was the plague to him, and I kind of agreed with his assessment. He glared down at me from behind the circle of crouching people. His face was pure hatred glowing behind the fire. It didn’t sit right on his usually jovial face. He should be smiling, joking, and I took that from him.

For twenty-four hours, we’d done nothing but walk in silence. After they found Rash and convinced him to stay with the group, there was nothing to do but continue with the mission. I came because they wouldn’t let me go back to the Superiors’ compound, and they wouldn’t let me return to Orry on my own. They didn’t trust me.

Now, we were resting briefly before more walking.

Matt came and sat next to me, his whole form heavy with grief and responsibility. “How are you?” he asked warily.

“Do I need to answer that?” I replied as I drew circles in the dirt with a stick.

“No… you don’t,” he whispered, his voice small and broken into pieces. “So… we’re heading to Birchton first.”

My shoulders were set. I didn’t want to talk. So I didn’t. Matt sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He wanted to get through. I didn’t know how to tell him there was no point; there was nothing on the other side of this wall I’d put up.

Desh nudged my leg with his knee as he sat down on the other side.

“Give him a break,” he pleaded. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to Matt or me, but silence followed, which was fine.

After about five minutes of awkwardness, Desh finally started talking again.

“I’m nearly finished adapting the projectors,” he said to Matt over my dipped head. I continued drawing. An image of Rosa’s dark face pushed out of the dirt, her forehead creased with pain and then suddenly peaceful. Even in sleep, she never looked peaceful. Only when she was dead.

I let out a huge sigh, trying to breath out the hurt.

“Great,” Matt said. He turned and grabbed the bag of image discs behind him. The plastic rattled around like shell casings. “Here are the images. Will you be able to get this done by tomorrow?”

I saw Desh nod his head in the corner of my vision. He grasped the bag and put it by his feet.

“Easy,” he replied confidently. Something other than the mush of crappy emotions I’d been feeling surfaced, just for a second. Pride. Desh was the smartest guy I knew.

Matt leaned across me. “Easy?” I tilted my chin up to see his eager eyes full of wonderment. “Can you talk me through it?”

Matt was almost as bad as Alexei when it came to new technology, new information. He ate it up like a hearty meal. I pictured Alexei holding Orry’s hand and leading him ‘up’. That was all she’d said,
Take him somewhere ‘up’
. I shook my head. Somehow, everyone knew exactly what she’d meant. When her words failed, her eyes, the emotion in her voice, did the rest. Grief was as heavy as a backpack full of lead bricks. I slumped down further, my fingers swirling in the dirty pattern in front of me.

I don’t want to forget her. I don’t want to remember her.

Desh laughed, and I was pulled back to their conversation.

“Sure…” He put his hand on my back, and I flinched. “Do you need anything before I go?”

My back muscles tensed, and I stood up suddenly. I pulled my hands through my hair, scanning the group of people. They were all watching me, waiting for me to do… something. Rash mirrored my movements and moved around the circle away from me as I tried to exit it.

“Joe?” Desh questioned.

I grunted and made my way to a gap in the trees, leaving the smell of sweet tea and smoke behind.

Sharp, grey rocks tried to trip me as I climbed away from the group. Leaves rustled in the background and I swung around to Pelo’s face, lit up by my torchlight. “Where are you going?” he asked, concerned.

Stop being nice to me,
I wanted to scream, holler, punch into the ground, and wear across my chest. My fists vibrated at my sides. I wanted to do more than shout. I wanted to push him back towards the campsite, hard. Violence lived in me like a virus. I breathed in sharply though my nostrils. The shock of pine and crushed grass swirled around me like a memory I wanted to keep and forget.

“I’m not running away,” I said through gritted teeth. “I just want some… space.”

His eyes were so hard to look at. His sad, grieving face even worse.

I need space from everything and everyone except you, Rosa. Space between us is like a wall of knives.

I stormed away from him. I heard the branches snap back and his footsteps fade away.

Do you want me to be there for your father, comfort him? I shouldn’t ask because I can’t do it. I’m hollow. There’s nothing left inside me to give.

My breath felt like a hard ball in my chest. Cold and concrete. Panic kept rising and subsiding with thoughts of her. Was she angry with me for deserting her? Was she suffering?

Putting a hand out, I grabbed at a jutting piece of rock to steady myself. I gulped back tears. If I started thinking about what they were doing to her, it would kill me. It
was
killing me. This guilt, this fear, was living and growing inside, trying to take over. I didn’t know how to stop it. If it could just ease for a second, maybe I could breathe. Keep moving. Live. Like she wanted me to. I gripped the rock so hard I felt I could almost rip it from the ground.

Voices carried to me from below, a small, orange glow visible through the trees. Someone laughed. I couldn’t stand the way everything just went on. Without her.

I kept climbing, desperate to escape their noise, until all I could hear were the leaves bristling against each other and the echo of wind deepening the curves of the stone.

My palms were roughed up by shards of rock. I was sweating even in this cold. The breeze picked up as I got higher, and I shivered. Her arm wrapped around my back, stretching to shield me. She could never quite reach, but her hand always found my heart. She patted it once. I put my hand through her ghost.

I climbed a few meters more, and was at the peak of one of the many rocky hills surrounding Birchton and Radiata. In front of me, swept with moonlight, were the craggy mountains we would have to climb over to get to Birchton and further below, the sleeping town lay nestled into the side of a cliff. Each ring shone softly.

Rosa’s hand slipped from my heart to my palm. Her thin fingers threaded through mine.
Not that way
, she used to say. She hated holding hands like this; she always said my fingers were too large and forced hers apart painfully.
Like this,
she would say, placing her palm against mine. I sat down and shook it off. The feeling that she was here with me, that she was actually a ghost, was not true. It couldn’t be.

“I won’t give up,” I whispered to the air.

The tower lights of the compounds glimmered like weak candles. We weren’t far. I narrowed my eyes, imagining the walls exploding, people running through the gap. I would focus on that. Destruction. It matched my insides well.

I sat there for an hour. Breathing. Thinking. Remembering. Trying to suppress her and revive her at the same time. I looked to the sky, knowing she was probably boxed in. White, swirling flakes streamed towards my eyes.

Snow.