The Watch (The Red Series Book 1) (9 page)

“What’s wrong with poultry?” I asked. “Did they have disease
issues?”

“Nope. Predators
.”

“Raccoons?”

Meri
frowned. “No,” she said. “Something’s coming in from the woods.”

“What, a wolf? A fox?”

“I don’t know.”
Meri
glanced up at the camera. “It isn’t a secret,” she said. “It’s just that nobody
likes to talk about
it. It’s creepy. Last week they started posting a
round-the-clock watch, but whatever this thing is, it’s slipped past them twice
already. And it doesn’t just steal a chicken or two—it rips the heads off
dozens and dozens of them.”

“Sounds like a weasel,” I said, sitting down beside her, the
thin mattress sagging beneath my weight.

“Except weasels don’t paint pictures on the walls using
chicken blood.”

I shivered.
Meri
was
right—that was very creepy.

“What sort of pictures?”

Meri
glanced around warily, and I found myself doing the same. “Stick figures
fighting, chasing each other, cutting each other’s throats. And lots of sketches
of eyes.”

I lowered my voice to a whisper. “It doesn’t sound like a
Guardian.” If such things existed.

Meri
nodded. “Too random. And too stupid—the Guardians are supposed to be
smart. Smarter than we are.”

“So if it isn’t a Guardian, what is it?”

Meri
shook
her head. “I don’t know.”

“So the streets aren’t safe at night.” I was thinking about
the night workers, about
Cynda
. About my own forays
into the darkness.

 
Meri
eyed me narrowly. “I don’t want to scare you,” she
said, “but listen—whatever it is, it’s awfully good at getting into
secured areas. Indoors might not be much safer than out.”

I thought about the gap in the western wall, only orchards
and beehives between it and the dormitories where the girls and children slept.
Lovely.

Now I could add insomnia to my growing list of problems.

That evening after supper I was
standing out in the eastern wasteland, just beyond the slaughterhouse, huddled
against the city wall. We usually met later than this, but at eight we’d have
to go to the city meeting, so I was hoping
Meritt
would come now. This was our preferred meeting spot because, although the
slaughterhouse camera was active, it had been malfunctioning and
Meritt
, conveniently, hadn’t had time to fix it.

While I waited I pressed against the city wall, my eyes
fixed on the woods fifty yards away, dark and ominous in the fading light. The
path the fishermen took to the sea cut an insubstantial gap into the gloom
of undergrowth and overhanging trees. Staying on it wasn’t
enough to keep you safe, not in those dark woods. You had to go in the
daylight, and travel in company.

“Hey,” a voice said softly,
and
Meritt
was beside me.

He joined me against the wall, bracing one foot on it behind
him as if at any moment he might push away and be gone. His dark hair fell over
one eye and he shoved it back as if it irritated him. It was getting too long,
but it wouldn’t occur to him to cut it until someone ordered him to, and fewer
and fewer people were ordering
Meritt
to do anything.
He was too valuable to the city, too crucial to
electronics—indispensible, really, if the Watchers wanted to keep
watching. Only the wardens and maybe the genetic counselors ranked higher than
Meritt
these days.

The collar of his coat was turned up—he had a coat,
though it was patched in two places and pulling loose at the seams—and he
was wearing his boots. He didn’t wear them when we ran, not usually, because
they were heavy and noisier than bare feet. He was already tall and the boots
made him taller still, so that when I leaned a little against him, using his
body to block the wind, my head was below the top of his shoulder.

For a long moment we were silent, standing there side by
side. I don’t know what
Meritt
was thinking, but I
felt almost faint with relief. He was here; he was safe. I could feel the rough
fabric of his coat against my cheek, sense the pent-up energy humming in him.
He burned fast, old Louie once said, fast and bright and unpredictable. And he
had made it through that entire terrible day without getting himself locked up
or whipped or shot. He was here and we were alone, away from prying eyes, away
from the Watchers and the wardens and all the people who stared at me because I
was a freak, and at
Meritt
because he was not.

I was so glad to be there with him that all the things I’d
thought to say, all the questions I wanted to ask, seemed suddenly unimportant.
All that mattered was that he was safe and there with me, leaning against the
wall with his hands in his pockets, breathing the same air I was breathing,
looking out into the woods where we couldn’t go, not if the Guardians were
real.

Though—and this was a new thought for me—
Meritt
might be able to get what he wanted. It was true he
was increasingly important to the city, and there were ways—everyone knew
there were ways. Surely somehow we would always be together.

Thinking about that, I shifted away from his shoulder and
looked up at him. He was gazing out at the trees, the angular lines of his face
etched stark in the dying light. The bruise beneath his eye was a purplish
blue. His expression was remote, intent; but he didn’t have the anxious air of
thinly veiled panic that so many were wearing that day.

I couldn’t read the thoughts passing behind his gray eyes,
of course, but as I watched him I realized I knew that expression. He was
planning. He was strategizing three moves ahead, as he always did in any game
we ever played. He wasn’t a victim. He wasn’t prey. He wasn’t afraid. And as I
stood there studying him, some of the fear ebbed out of my own blood.

 
“
Meritt
?” I said, and waited until he glanced down at me.
“Is it all going to be all right?”

It was the question I always asked him whenever anything big
or small was troubling me.
Meritt
looked at me for a
moment, first absently, then really seeing me, the taut lines of his face
easing as if he’d just remembered I was there and was glad of me.

“Depends on your definition of all right,” he said. Then he
smiled at me, not quite his usual jaunty grin but almost, and I smiled back at
him. It was the answer he always gave, and he finished with the rest of the
formula. “According to my definition, sure. One way or another, it’ll all be
all right.”

And then he reached out to tug the end of my braid, and
Farrell Dean’s words came rushing in on me.

Farrell Dean was wrong—I knew he was wrong—but I
had to make sure. And anyway I wanted answers; I wasn’t going to be left in the
dark, not at such a time as this.

“
Meritt
, I need to ask you
something,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows, curious but unconcerned. “What?”

“Do you know why
Rafe
wanted you
to meet him that night?”

Meritt
held
my gaze for a moment. “Not exactly,” he said, and then bent to pick up a small
rock.

“Inexactly, then.”

Half smiling, he shook his head and flung the rock toward
the woods. “If I can’t be exact, I won’t be anything at all. Speculation’s a
dangerous game.”

“So is ignorance,” I said. “I got arrested for being out
that night. Don’t you think I have a right to know why we were there?”

Meritt
didn’t answer. He was watching the woods, where a handful of birds were
fluttering up, twittering protests, disturbed by his stone.

“I know what’s been going on,” I said. “I know that
Rafe
was conspiring against the Watchers, and that you are,
too.”

At that he turned, his face startled and amused. “Me?” he said.
“Come on, Red. You know I always play to win, you’ve complained about it often
enough. Mere mortals against the Watchers are not what I’d call winning odds.”

I stared at him. “This isn’t funny,
Meritt
.
Rafe’s
dead
.”

A flash of pain crossed his face. “I know.”

“I can see why
Meri
needs to hide
food,” I said, laying all my cards on the table. “I can even see why you and
Farrell Dean need to spy on the Watchers, if the only alternative is starving.
But I can’t figure out why
Rafe
wanted those
painkillers.”

Meritt
actually looked a little worried; I knew more than he’d expected.

“Did he tell you?” I said. “Do you know why he had them?”

“Maybe he didn’t have them. Maybe he was set up.”

“No, I think he had them,” I said. “I saw his face. But I
can’t figure out what painkillers have to do with keeping us from starving this
winter.”

Meritt
picked up another rock and flung it into the woods. He didn’t say anything.
Every time he threw a rock something clinked softly as he moved—the tiny
screwdrivers he always carried in his pockets, the tools of his trade.

“I saw
Rafe’s
face,” I repeated.
“I was right there, just a few feet away. And you know what was odd? He didn’t
look worried until they suggested someone else might be involved.”

Meritt
reached for yet another rock and I stepped between him and the trees, blocking
his aim, the scruffy grass and sand shifting unevenly beneath my feet. “Do you
hear what I’m saying?
Rafe
didn’t want to give anyone
away. He didn’t want to give
you
away. You were the one he was meeting the night he got arrested.” I hesitated
and then went on. “He died protecting you.”

A shadow passed behind
Meritt’s
eyes while he stood there looking at me, tossing that stupid rock from hand to
hand. His expression was unreadable, but I knew I was right.
Rafe
had died protecting him.

My legs began to feel shaky and I sank down to the ground,
turning so my back was toward
Meritt
and the wall,
not the looming trees. I could smell them, the pines and the cedars—a
smell I always associated with
Meritt
, with our
secret forays outside the city walls.

After a moment
Meritt
dropped the rock and sat down beside me. He pulled up a few tufts of rough
grass, tossed them up to see which way the wind was blowing.
“
Rafe
knew he was going to get punished regardless,” he
said, watching the dry blades go spinning away. “All he did was choose not to
take anyone else down with him. He was practical.”

I shook my head. “He was brave. He didn’t try to sell you to
buy mercy for himself.”

My voice trembled on the words.

Meritt
propped
his elbows on his knees, observing me as he did from time to time, as if I were
a particularly curious alien from another world. The wind stirred his dark hair
and he shook it out of his face, his eyes still on me. Then he reached out and
tugged gently at my sleeve.

“Tell me about your interrogation,” he said.

I ran my fingers across the
nubbly
brown grass. “It wasn’t bad,” I said, pushing away the memory of the warden
with the scarred lip. “They gave me warm milk and took me up in the watchtower.
I pretended to be a silly girl.”

 
“Which you’re
not.”
Meritt’s
expression darkened. “It could have
been much worse, Red, and it was my fault. I led you right into trouble. I
didn’t mean to, but I did, and you kept your head and got out of it, and got me
out of it too. You did good.”

“I didn’t get you out of all of it,” I said, and let the
implicit question hang in the air.
Meritt
met my gaze
but I couldn’t decipher his expression. He could make his gray eyes as blank as
slate.

When he didn’t speak, I tried again. “How did she know you
were going to be there?”

“She didn’t.”

“Someone knew,” I said. “At least, someone knew
Rafe
was going to be there. The wardens were waiting for
him.
Meritt
—why didn’t they arrest both of
you?”

Meritt
shook
his head. He started to say something, then stopped, his lips pressed tightly
together.

“I can take a hint.” I braced my hands on the rough grass,
started to get up. “If you don’t want to talk to me, I don’t want to be here.”

Meritt
reached out and grabbed my sleeve again, pulling me back down.

“I always want to talk to you,” he said. “Sometimes I can’t,
that’s all.”

“Won’t, you mean.”

“Shouldn’t. Or can’t, because you won’t stop arguing long
enough to listen.” His grin flashed and then was gone, and he began speaking
quickly, the way he sometimes did, so quickly and in such a low voice that I
had to listen hard to keep up.

“I knew there might be trouble the other night. There always
might be trouble when we’re out, you know that, it’s just the way things
are—but not that, never that. I had no reason to think the wardens were
that sort of threat, no reason to think
Rafe
would
get killed. The Watchers don’t do things that way. Or they didn’t.
 
A healthy man is a valuable resource,
not something I’d expect them to waste.”

He still had hold of my sleeve, but he was looking out at
the dark trees, not at me. The fading light washed his face of color, deepened
the darkness of his near-black hair and brows. Light and shadow, a study in
contrasts. My
Meritt
.

“I wouldn’t have taken you with me if I’d known what was
going to happen, and I was glad I was way ahead of you, glad you stopped in
time and didn’t get caught. I was thinking about that, about you, hoping you’d
have the sense to stay out of sight.”

He shot me a quick glance and I knew he was thinking of how,
at the city meeting, I’d failed to do just that. “So I was distracted, and it
took a minute to catch on that the warden was stalling me. She didn’t want me
out in the wasteland when
Rafe
got arrested. She
didn’t want the other wardens to see me. That was when I knew something really
bad was going on—” he met my eyes again, looked away. “Otherwise she’d
have let me take whatever I had coming. Flogging, a few days in prison,
whatever. And then she said—”

He broke off abruptly and dropped my sleeve, still turned
toward me, but with his gaze fixed somewhere over my shoulder. This was
quintessential
Meritt
, quite capable of vanishing to
chase some mental rabbit trail, right in the middle of his own sentence.

“Go on,” I said after a moment. “Tell me what she said.”

He looked at me, his eyes unreadable. “Just that someone
like me could get in a lot of trouble unless he had connections.”