Gray (Book 2) (21 page)

“Okay. Thanks, and Good luck.”

“Signing off. And if...” his voice cut out. Then it faded back in. “...in Boise, I hear.” Then it was gone.

“What?” she said into the mike. “What about Boise? Over.”

But the radio was dead. She climbed back on the bike, pedaled until the light was half bright, and jumped back over to the radio. “Alberta, you still there? Over.”

No answer.

“Alberta? Alberta?”

No answer.

What?
What
in Boise, he heard? Riots? Military law? Lots of food? A restoration of normalcy? She balled her fists in frustration. If only she could have heard that sentence—even one more word would have given her a hint if they should head for it or avoid it.

When she and Benjamin escaped, their hope of survival was slim. But if there was a place to head, if Boise was functioning, that would give them a goal, a reason to push on, a reason to hope.

There was no hope to be had here—not for her, at least.

And not for Benjamin either. He knew that, right? The warmth of her spark of hope fled.

What if Tithing hadn’t been lying about him simply to upset her?

Though she tried for much of the night, she raised no more voices from the dark.

As she tried and failed, her mood darkened. She worried more and more about Benjamin.

What if he had been converted? Maybe he didn’t want to leave this place. Maybe having four walls, three meals, and an armed group to protect against invasion by even worse people...maybe that was enough for him. She wished he would have written something else in his note, something that reassured her that he wasn’t being brainwashed, that they will still in this together.

She could almost understand him wanting to stay for the food and safety. The cost to Benjamin wasn’t so terrible as it was to her.

But she could not shake the thought that he’d been converted to the crazy cult. As she tried and failed, again and again, to raise anyone else on the radio, the thought took root and grew, and grew, until it filled her mind.

She tried to be logical in examining every brief interaction they’d had. There was the moment in the cabin, when Coral learned of the cult’s plan for her. Benjamin hadn’t spoken up in her defense, had he? He’d touched her, and she’d taken it as comfort then. He’d done something—shook his head?—that made her think to stop yelling back at Tithing. Then, she thought he was cluing her in that they were both in danger. But what if it had indicated something else?

He had helped stop her from hurting Pratt any worse. What if she had read that wrong too?

And his note. She thought he was giving her information, or making fun of the cult by saying they were building some space ship thing…but what if he had succumbed to their brainwashing and was excited about the idea?

No. Impossible. Not him. He was too solid. Moreover, he was her friend.

Right, a friend of a whole three or four months. Friendship forced by circumstance and need.

The more she thought about it, the more she despaired. She did not want to think it of him, but she had to. What if she had lost Benjamin?

If Benjamin had turned, she would leave anyway. She’d rather die out there alone, freezing to death, starving to death, than stay here and be forced into sex, marriage, and motherhood by the cult.

But how she would miss him.

When she believed it must be nearing sunrise, she set the radio dials back the way they had been, made sure she had disturbed nothing else, and went back into the kitchen. She untied her dish towel shawl, smoothing each rumpled piece of material out on the edge of the counter, folding each as it had been before, and returning the towels to their place. When the shawl was gone, she felt the bitter cold seep into her head and neck.

Turning off the lamp was hard for her. It was harder still because of her emotional state. But she couldn’t risk their knowing she had been awake or using the radio. She was so damned hungry, she risked taking two carrots from the carrot bin. Then she turned off the light and, by feel, made her way back into the dining room.

She shut the door and sat down to work at the lock. A clicking sound told her something in there had moved. She tried the knob, and it didn’t turn. Maybe it wasn’t normally locked, but it should fool them. And if she had broken something in there, they might not suspect her of having unlocked it.

Standing on legs beginning to ache from all the biking, she shuffled over to the table, and sat on the first seat she bumped into. Every night outside had been dark, with no moon or stars visible to light the landscape. But because the wildfire had burned everything away, there wasn’t much to bump into. It seemed darker in here than out there.

And then, she had had Benjamin beside her, too.

She ate her carrots, the crunching noise loud in the empty room. Her hands and ears and face were getting stiff from the cold. She pulled the turtleneck half over her shaved head so it covered her ears, too. Then she pulled her arms in through the sleeves and put her hands under the opposite armpits, hugging herself against the cold.

Thoughts of Benjamin haunted her. She remembered being up on the roof with him. She remembered rescuing him, the look of his battered face. Arguing with him. Eating across from a smoldering fire with him. The sound of his breathing at night.

She couldn’t help but think how awful life would be without him.

If he had turned, become a cultist, she didn’t know how she could go on. If he told them of her escape plans, they’d stop her. She wouldn’t be able to stand that. She’d make herself go crazy, one of those sorts of crazy where she dissociated entirely, became numb to the world. Catatonia, that was the word.

Maybe she could will it to happen.

* * *

The dawn came, gray light appearing at the edges of the shutters. She had been trying for many minutes to let herself give up, let herself drift into catatonia, retreat from the physical Coral, hide her mind and soul. Then they could use her body how they wanted, but
she
would not be there. She’d be off in a dark corner of her brain, cut off, safe, unaware of being raped, never having to look directly at the loss of Benjamin to this cult, if that’s what had in fact happened.

But in those last minutes before dawn, she had discovered something about herself. It was impossible for her to hide like that, impossible for her to break.

She possessed a terrible strength.

It was a strength that would keep her alive, and aware, and fighting, and sane, beyond a point where surrender or craziness would be a smarter choice. She could not retreat into catatonia, no more than she could retreat into complacency.

She would escape this place, or die trying, and in two days, on the night she had planned. If Benjamin met her at midnight, she’d be thrilled to have been wrong in her fears about him. If he did not come along but kept her secret out of a sense of loyalty, she’d be grateful. If he told them of her plans, she’d be devastated, heartbroken. But her mind, her will: those would not be broken, not ever.

It felt not like a relief to understand this about herself but like learning of a horrible curse. She was cursed to fight to stay alive right up to the instant of her death.

So be it.

The cold had stiffened her muscles. She stood and began pacing around the room, shaking out the stiffness, and then she started to jog, around and around the dining table. After a few minutes, she was panting. She sped up, going as fast as she could without banging into the table. When she escaped, she might need to run. A single practice session wouldn’t help much in making her fit enough to run for miles…but it wouldn’t hurt either.

When the door opened, and Brynn stood there in the morning light, holding her jacket, Coral drew to a stop, panting like a horse, steam billowing out from her face. “Morning!” she said with a cheery smile.

Brynn stared, gaping. She had probably expected to find Coral in much worse shape—maybe even dead from the cold.

“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” Coral said. She bared her teeth in a facsimile of a smile. “Cheer up, Brynn. It’s a new day.”

Brynn accompanied her outside, where Mondra was lighting a fire. “I’m going to get you into a dress. And no argument this time.”

Her knife. And the paper. Both were in her jeans pocket. She couldn’t lose those. “I really have to pee first.”

Brynn gave a weary sigh. “No nonsense.”

“I need a quick trip to the outhouse. I haven’t been since yesterday afternoon.”

“I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”

“Oh, I have,” said Coral. She was already thinking about the layout of the outhouse. The writing paper, she could tuck inside the stack of toilet paper, toward the bottom of the pile. But where to stash the knife so that no one could see it?

When they reached the little building, Coral went inside and closed the door. She only needed time enough to find a space, four or five inches long, not visible from the seat. As she used the toilet, she looked all around. The building was well made. She had been hoping for a crack between boards, maybe at the side of the seat. But everything fit perfectly. She tucked the writing paper away.

Brynn knocked on the door. “Don’t dawdle.”

“Half a second,” Coral called, looking around desperately. Over the door, there was a tiny ledge, only an inch wide. There was every possibility that a hard slam of the door would knock her knife off, but she could see nowhere else to put it. No way was she throwing it into the toilet, and putting it under the stack of toilet paper didn’t seem like a safe hiding place. She stood on the lip of wood in front of the toilet seat and leaned forward, catching the top of the door with her fingertips. She tucked the knife onto the ledge and, taking care to make no suspicious noise, pushed back and sat down. She could see the edge of the knife, but then she knew it was there.

If she was lucky, no one else would notice it. The light was dim in here, even at high noon. And it was only a day and a half until she escaped. Leaving the knife here was the best she could do for now.

She opened the door and joined Brynn, following her back to the women’s cabin, wondering how she’d be able to escape in a stupid dress, and how she’d be able to hike without freezing to death in one. Hmm—maybe that’s why they kept the women in skirts, to keep them from considering escaping, should one would-be bride think better of her servitude.

Expecting to be forced to stay in her burlap shift, she was surprised when Brynn handed her a new garment. “I made this for you. Put it on. Take your jeans off.”

Coral stripped naked, surprised to feel not a moment of self-consciousness. She couldn’t feel embarrassed in front of Brynn, for sometime during the night, she had stopped seeing any of them as people. They were obstacles, is all, and she’d go around them or through them the night of her escape, whichever was easiest.

Brynn folded the jeans and laid them on the bed. Coral was relieved that she’d hidden the pocket knife.

The cabin was cold, but she’d made it through the night in hardly any clothes and could bear a minute of this. Naked, she shook out the dress, which was a patchwork thing, made from discarded shirts of many colors and patterns. Brynn, knowing it was for Coral, had no doubt taken pleasure in putting the most clashing colors next to each other. It had a simple rounded neck, barely big enough to push her head through, elastic on half-length sleeves, and was far too thin for the weather. Coral slipped it on. It fell nearly to her ankles, with a wide enough skirt that she could walk and work in it.

Brynn followed it up with a pair of white men’s jockey shorts. “And these.”

Coral slipped them on under the skirt and pulled them up. She hoped they’d been washed before whoever had donated them to her.

“Tithing says to let you keep your jeans, to sleep in until I have time to make you a nightgown. But put them under your covers, where I don’t have to look at them all the time.”

Coral felt a warm wash of relief at that. She’d be dressed for the escape. Just grab her jacket and boots, sling her sleeping bag around her shoulders, and she could be out the door in seconds.

She either needed to find a pack, or to find rope or twine, some way to tie up items inside her sleeping bag and rig it around her shoulders. She added it to her mental list: meat and cheese if she could find that, a weapon, and rope. If she could find their old supplies—backpacks, fishing gear, hatchet, tools, drugs—she’d take as much as she could carry. If the sled was still intact…but no, she dismissed the thought. Probably she could move faster with only a backpack, so she’d have to limit her supplies to what she could safely grab and was lightweight. Food and a rifle would be worth their cost in weight, but beyond that, she’d have to be selective.

“Wait here,” said Brynn, “until Mondra comes for you.”

Coral put on her turtleneck over the dress, her sweater, and finally her jacket. She touched her bald scalp, then pulled out her scarf and wrapped it tightly around her head. She had a lot to plan today, but they’d be watching her pretty closely. Still, they couldn’t stop her eyes from searching out every possible aid to her escape.

All day long she kept her senses sharp. She watched every cult member’s movements, and by the end of the day, she was certain both the cave and the construction site were down the third path. The women never went out that way on errands. They stayed on the path to the outhouse and animal pen, or in the clearing. The men went to what she could only suppose was their alien landing site project.

She only saw Benjamin once in the morning, and only the back of him as he walked away. That was too little information for her to decide if he’d been lost to the cult or not. Part of her refused to believe it of him. He was too level-headed, and they’d been captive only a week. In a month, maybe he’d have been turned. Hell, maybe she would, too. But the seed of doubt had been planted, and she couldn’t help but worry.

Benjamin’s situation was out of her control for now. She went back to focusing on what she could control, today.

For dinner, Brynn split the remaining cooked meat into a larger and a smaller portion. The larger went into the night’s stew. The smaller portion was set aside for soup. It’d get used up the next night—the night of the escape—so if Coral wanted meat or cheese, she’d have to find the cave.

And as she’d never been there, she’d need a light.

To make sure she could get to the outhouse without a light, if need be, she closed her eyes the next time she walked there, Mondra walking behind as her guard. Immediately, she could feel there was a u-shaped path worn into the snow, from the daily tread of many boots. If she focused, she could feel herself straying up the side of it.

A rock tripped her. Her eyes flew open, and she tried to get her feet under her but failed. Her hands flew out to break her fall, but as they did, she thought, I can’t afford a broken wrist now, and she turned her body at the last second, so that she hit on ribs and underarms. The breath was knocked out of her, but she kept her relatively fragile hands from hitting the ground.

“Why so clumsy?” Mondra said.

She sucked in air. “Little tired. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Your own fault. Love the hair, by the way.”

Coral reached up. Her scarf and hood had been knocked off in the fall, her bald head exposed to the cold. She rolled over, sat up, and rearranged her scarf to cover her head. She felt along her ribs, which had taken the fall well. A broken rib would have been disastrous—but nothing could keep her from escaping tomorrow, not even that.

The stupid skirt had gotten twisted around her legs, and it took her some edging back and forth to untangle herself. She clambered to her feet and brushed snow off, rearranged her jacket, and marched on down the path.

At least she knew she could navigate this path in the dark—at least get far enough away so that a light wouldn’t be seen from the clearing when she turned it on.

As she helped fix dinner, she continued looking at the details of the main cabin as she hadn’t before. There was a pile of burlap sacks that the vegetables were hauled in. They were in a neat stack on the floor, and all of them had rough ties of maybe jute. There was her rope. It was too crowded right now, but maybe later, or maybe tomorrow, she’d have a half a minute alone with the bags and could yank out the ties or cut them off, whichever, and tie them together as straps for her sleeping bag, turning it into a backpack. Or would it be better to take the whole sack? She could sling it over her shoulder for now, fill it with supplies, and rig up something better for hiking later. If she got a chance late tomorrow, she’d steal one.