Extinction (4 page)

I clutched the loaf of bread, covered in
a checkered tea cloth closer to my body and continued down the street. Near the
kitchen area I heard a commotion around the corner.
A woman’s high pitched shrieks sliced the air. I dropped the bread on the
sidewalk - Maria was going to kill me. I rushed around the corner and saw a
soldier towering over a woman lying on the pavement. She was frail and dirty
blonde hair framed a tear streaked face. She was curled into herself, screaming
and sobbing hysterically. The soldier’s hand was lifted in the air holding a
baton and I went ice-cold with fury.

“Stop it!” I positioned myself between him and the
sobbing woman.

“Stay out of this Miss Miller,” he snapped at me. With
my streak of bad luck it was of course, Sargent Benson, father’s most trusted
soldier. 

“Don’t you dare hit her again!” I clenched my fists
at my side. I might be a lot smaller than him, but this was one fight I was not
backing out of. 

“She stole food from the stores. She must be
punished as our law states.”

 I shuddered as he glared at me with cold grey eyes.
He proved to be merciless on more than one occasion and I was aware of the immense
cruelty he treated the slaves with. He was only seventeen, the same age as me,
but somewhere along the way he lost his humanity - if he ever had any. In a
totally normal situation he would be unimpressive. All of his features were
plain and ordinary. In a crowd you wouldn’t even notice him with his mud
colored hair, pale skin and round baby face. 

“Your father won’t approve of you interfering in
official business,” he added icily and his look held a challenge. He knew it
was the one thing he could dangle above my head that terrified me.

“I don’t care what he thinks. You can’t go around
beating a defenseless woman. Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

“Like you?” He clenched his jaw and for a moment I
was sure he was going to strike me. A gathering crowd of slaves surrounded us
and I was aware of the rising antagonism emanating from them. Benson shifted uneasily.
The crowd was getting angrier by the minute and very soon he would have a mutiny
on his hands. The soldiers would come to disperse them if a riot broke out, but
until then he would be solely at their mercy. He grudgingly dropped his arm
holding the baton and with his other hand he seized my upper arm in an iron
grip and dragged me down the street after him.

 “You can explain this mess to your father.” He spat
on the bricks on the ground. His fingers bit into the soft flesh of my arm. 

“You’re hurting me.” He ignored me and kept dragging
me down the streets. I stumbled several times and he roughly jerked me upright,
not caring if I got hurt in the process. 

We reached Robert’s office in the two-story grey
building a couple of blocks from our house. Benson pushed me through the glass
doors and dragged me across the lavish marble entranceway. He shoved me onto one
of the wingback chairs lined up next to the solid teak wood door of my father’s
office.

He gave a quick rap on the door and entered, closing
it behind him, leaving me to simmer in my chair. I sighed and pulled my knees
to my chin. I didn’t look forward to a confrontation with Robert. They never
ended well. The minutes ticked by and I scrutinized the shiny marble floor and
the intricate grey patterns embedded in every tile. The door finally swung open
and Benson appeared.

“You can go in,” he said and gave me a sadistic smile
that sent shivers down my spine.

I stood, straightened my tunic and checked that all
my hair was in place in the ponytail on my head. Robert sat behind a broad desk.
He drilled his podgy fingers impatiently on the lacquered desktop as I came
in. 

“Will you care to explain your behavior to me?” His
voice thundered through the office and two spots of red appeared on his chubby
cheeks. He wasn’t alone. Nuevo hovered in the corner.

“Sargent Benson already told you what happened.” 

“We want to hear from your mouth.” He pressed his
fleshy lips into a thin line.

“He was beating a defenseless woman.” I answered and
lifted my chin higher.  There was no chance in hell I would show him how scared
I was of him.

“He was doing his job!” he bellowed from his chair
and if he wasn’t careful a vein would burst in his head.

“The last I checked his job was to protect the city,
not to assault the slaves.”

Robert rose from his seat and came round his desk to
stand before me. The shirt of the tunic stretched tightly across his huge belly
and his brow glistened with the sheen of sweat, drawing attention to his
receding hairline. He kept glancing nervously at Nuevo. He wiped the sweat from
his forehead with a white handkerchief.

Nuevo floated across the room, closing the space
between us.

“You do not interfere with the duties of the Guard,
Miss Miller.” His voice was calm, but I saw the glint of anger in his eyes.

“Even if those duties are wrong and include hurting
innocent people?” I was pushing them and the voice in my head warned me to
stop, but I shoved it aside. 

“Your behavior nearly incited a riot today.”

“Master Nuevo is right. Your behavior is
unacceptable. How can the Vandelrizi trust me to run the city when I can’t even
control my own daughter?” Of course Robert would side with the Vandelrizi. He
was too spineless to ever stand up to them.

“Is that the only thing you care about – what the
Vandelrizi think of you? You don’t care that the humans,
your people
,
are starving in the streets.” He clenched his fists at his side.

“That is enough, Miss Millar. You are forgetting
your place. You will obey us and our rules.”  The threat was unmistakable in
Nuevo’s voice.

“Mom would never have…” I didn’t get to finish my
sentence. A fleshy hand struck me as fast as lightning across my cheek. The force
of it sent me reeling backward.

“You don’t mention her in my presence.” Robert
lowered his hand huffing in anger.

“Mom would never stand for this,” I said through
gritted teeth. My face stung and I swallowed back the lump in my throat. I
would not give him the satisfaction of crying. I turned on my heel and walked
out the office with as much dignity as I could gather.

“Don’t you dare walk out on Master Nuevo…”  Robert’s
voice roared down the hall behind me, but I kept going, heading home. 

I ignored the inquisitive looks of passersby, staring
at the red mark blooming across my cheek, emptying my mind until I reached the
safety of my room. I locked the door and slid to floor giving in to the tears
building inside me. I hated him with every fiber of my being. I would never
understand why Mom married such a weak man. Why did she leave me with him? My
cheek was swollen and tender and I was sure it would leave a huge bruise on my
face. It was only one of many I had to wear in the past couple of years. I’ve
had to bear the brunt of Robert’s anger every day since Mom left.

I sat there for a long time, just staring at the
wooden floor. I could run away, but where would I go? I always assumed Mom
joined the group of rebels after she left, but there was a very real chance
that they wouldn’t want me in their midst, even if I were able to find them. I
didn’t have anywhere to go and I knew I wouldn’t make it on my own. No one
could survive in the desert and the jungle was too dangerous. I sighed for the
hundredth time. 

I remembered the bag under my bed. I would take the
medicine to Rosa; at least Robert couldn’t take that away from me. I would keep
on helping our people, which is what Mom would want me to do.

I washed my tear-streaked face and looked at my reflection
in the mirror. An angry red bruise tinged with blue covered my swollen cheek. There
was no way to hide it. I hated that everyone could see what Robert did to me. It
made me feel weak. 

I grabbed my backpack from underneath the bed and
headed for the door.

     
At
the slave quarters
I headed to the nearest building. It
looked more like a derelict warehouse than the home of hundreds of humans. The unpainted
cement floor was lined with narrow cots occupied by exhausted men and women. I
navigated my way through them, searching for Rosa. I spotted her dishing out
soup to the slaves returning from the day’s work. Three times a day they
received the same watery broth. Rosa was the heart and soul of this place and
reminded me of a mother hen taking care of her chicks. She saw me and waved,
her ample bosom heaving. 

 “I’m so glad you’re here, sugar.” She held me at arm’s
length and inspected the bruise on my cheek. “Someday I’m gonna give that
bastard a piece of my mind,” she said and clucked her tongue, before hugging me
again.

“It’s nothing, Rosa.” I smiled weakly. 

“It’s something alright. Your daddy’s actin as if he’s
possessed by the devil himself,” she said and solemnly made the sign of a cross
in the space in front of her. “Your momma would turn in her grave if she knew
how he treats you.”

The accustomed ache spread through me at the mention
of my mother. I wished she was here to give me the advice I so desperately needed.
Who was I kidding – a hug from her would be great too.

“I brought you a present.” I handed her my backpack
and she peeked inside. She gave a whoop and looked like she was about to dance.

“How on God’s green earth did you get this?” She
eyed me suspiciously. “What kinda trouble did you get yourself into this time?”

I chuckled and gave her a shortened version of what
happened yesterday. I purposefully left out the details of Chai overpowering me
and how scared I was. There was no need for her to know in how much danger I
put myself in to get the medicine. Some things were better left unsaid.

“You could’ve gotten hurt!” she scolded me and
muttered something about Mary and Jesus under her breath. She put an arm around
my shoulders and ushered me to her cot. She emptied the contents of the
backpack on the stained sheets of her bed and divided them into groups of
antibiotics and pain medicine, before she turned to me.

“You’re not telling me everything.” I smiled, Rosa
was always very intuitive. “You like this boy, don’t you?” For a moment I
didn’t know what to say and I opened and closed my mouth like a fish on dry
land.

“I barely know him,” I finally answered. It was the
truth. Deep down I knew that I did like him, much more than I should, but how
could I have feelings for someone I just met. It was insane. 

“Is he a looker?” Rosa asked and I giggled at the
eagerness on her face. “Don’t be shy now. At least give an old woman like me
some pleasure in life.”

“You’re not old.” I rolled my eyes and sat down on
the edge of the bed and studied my white sneakers. “He is…he’s gorgeous. He’s
the stuff you read of in books – tall and strong and very handsome.” I blushed
as I recalled his muscled body. “And he was actually very nice.”

Rosa gave a sigh of pleasure. “It’s high time you
met a nice young boy to look after you.”

“I don’t need anybody to look after me and besides
he’s a rebel and I am…I am here. The chances that I’ll ever see him again are
next to nothing.”

“You’ll see him again,” Rosa said with conviction
and put her hands on her hips. “What have I told you about fate? When fate
decides something, nothing you can do will stop it.”

I shrugged. I didn’t believe in fate, but arguing
with Rosa would bring me nowhere. 

“Where’s Emily?”

“You know that daughter of mine. Probably somewhere
with a boy.” I didn’t miss the undertone of worry in her voice. I was concerned
too. I knew Emily – the girl she was before her father died a year ago in an
accident at the power plant, but not this person she had become since.

I found Emily in the alley behind the dilapidated
building. She was draped across the arm of a soldier, giggling uncontrollably
at something he said. Somehow she managed to make the white tunic look sexy. It
was a couple of sizes too small and accentuated every curve of her sensual
body. The soldier snapped erect when he spotted me and disappeared down the alley.
Nothing was more of a mood killer than seeing the Prime Minister’s daughter.

“Finally! I thought you weren’t coming.” Emily
twirled a strand of her dark hair around a finger. 

“I thought you’ll be helping your mother.” I
couldn’t help pushing in the hint that her mother needed help, in my words. Emily
shrugged.

“I hate the smell in there. Besides Mom is always
nagging me.”

 “Who’s the boy?” I should have asked who the flavor
of the week is. Emily went through boyfriends like they were toys.

 “He’s kind of cute, don’t you think?” She eyed the
bruise on my face suspiciously. “What did you do now?

“Nothing much. You know I attract trouble. I got the
medicine. There’s more enough for everyone.” Emily sharply sucked in her breath.

 “You stole from the Vandelrizi! I didn’t think you
were serious when you said you planned something.” She made it sound like I
committed murder.