Gretel (26 page)

Anika opened her eyes and glanced around, instinctively keeping the rest of her body still, afraid that moving would somehow expose a secret hiding spot in which she’d been hunkering. But she hadn’t been hiding. In fact, her position was rather exposed and precarious, less than four feet from the pavement of the Interways. She quickly got to her feet and breathed deeply, rubbing the confusion from her eyes while giving silent thanks that her children, though she missed them terribly, weren’t actually with her.

Anika realized now that her energy levels were lower than she originally thought when she first started her journey home—she’d only walked a few miles by her estimate, and already was asleep. Exposed.

She peeked toward the horizon for storm clouds and saw nothing but dusky blue clarity. She was mostly pleased with this sight, though thirst was beginning to factor in, and the thought of rain triggered a lumpy swallow in her throat.

Then, as if keen to Anika’s inquisitiveness, the wind brought forth the low rumble of thunder from her dream. But the sound, she now realized, wasn’t thunder, it was the mechanical growl of an engine—a large engine by the sound of it—and it was getting louder. A car was coming. Finally.

Anika stood and began to walk down the middle of the road toward the oncoming sound, and then broke into a slow lope, her arms hanging at her sides. She hadn’t the strength to run properly, but she needed to get to that noise and confirm her miracle. Her mind was shrouded by hope to the actual danger of running toward oncoming traffic, but she absently figured that at the long stretch of road she’d started down, any car headed toward her would see her well before reaching her.

Anika squinted in desperation, trying to adjust the lenses of her eyes to the dimming afternoon light, hoping to catch the first flicker of metal heading toward her. She knew she’d been right about the sound. There was no question it was the sound of a car motor, or perhaps a motorcycle, and it was growing louder every second. In less than a minute she could be rescued, on her way home to Heinrich and her children, beginning her life again. She started to cry and began running faster. ‘Thank you! Thank you, God!’ she sobbed.

She ran another thirty yards before the sound that began as a subtle reverie finally materialized into reality. Anika stopped running and leaned slightly forward, hands on her thighs, measuring the distance and the validity of what her eyes were seeing. It was true. A car was headed straight for her.

She started laughing hysterically and waving her hands in front of her face in a frantic, scissor-like motion. The headlights grew larger as the car neared, and Anika could hear the downshifting gears as the car began its deceleration. Exhausted, she dropped to her knees and put her palms flat on the street, her head hanging as she simultaneously laughed and coughed and spat. It was implausible that she had made it to this place, free and unbound, seemingly in good health with her sanity still intact, though this last part she knew was yet to be fully determined. At no point had she ever completely given up hope, but, if she were honest with herself, at her core, she assumed she was going to die in that cabin.

Anika tried to will the muscles in her neck to raise her head to the approaching stranger, but it was useless; her exhaustion was almost absolute. A whispered ‘thank you’ was all she could manage before collapsing face down on the street, her arms no longer able to support her torso. She listened as the footsteps quickened and she elicited the trace of a smile when she felt the blanket fall across her shoulders and back.

But the cover didn’t warm the chill that flashed in her neck and spine when her rescuer spoke.

“Anika Morgan,” the voice said confidently, “so you’re not dead after all.”

Anika sat quietly in the front seat of The System officer’s car and held the woolen blanket tightly over her shoulders, sweeping it across the front of her neck and chest. The constant speed and steady hum of the tires on the road caused her to drift in and out of sleep, and with each brief awakening she brought the meticulously clean blanket under her nose to inhale the scent. She’d forgotten the smell of cleanliness, so accustomed had she become to the slaughter room’s gradual descent into filth and disgrace; and now, as she held the blanket to her face, the fresh fragrance of laundered fabric made her think of summertime as a small girl.

Anika felt the car slow dramatically and then turn sharply to the left, and she woke instinctively to brace herself from toppling toward the driver. She opened her eyes and glanced at the window where a wall of daylight confronted her.

Out of the front windshield Anika could see a narrow dirt road which had been divided down the middle by an overgrowth of grass and weeds. With some reluctance, she shifted her attention to the figure on the seat beside her, expecting either to be met by a face familiar to her, or else one not quite human, signaling she was in the midst of a dream. Instead, the smiling face she saw in the driver’s seat was as normal and unintimidating as any she’d see on a busy Saturday in the local market, though she supposed a bit more handsome. And not one she recognized.

Anika sat straight on her portion of the bench seat and rubbed her palms down her face to clear the grogginess from her head.

“You’re the man who helped me I suppose,” she said, her voice sounding raspy and timid. She cleared her throat. “I can never thank you enough.”

“You’re welcome,” the man replied, not taking his eyes from the road in front of him.

Anika vaguely remembered that the man had spoken her name as she had lain in the street, just before her last memory of the blanket being draped across her shoulders. “Do I know you?”

The man smiled quizzically and finally looked at Anika. “I don’t think so,” he said, “do I look familiar to you?”

“No, it’s just that…back on the street…I think you said my name. At least I think I remember that.”

The man’s smile straightened and a serious look emerged on his face, an expression which hovered between interest and concern. He looked back to the road. “Yes, Anika, I know your name. Every System officer in this area knows your name.”

Anika flinched at the man’s words, and an icy tremble trickled the length of her nape and dispersed across her blanketed shoulders.

With her eyes now adjusted, Anika slowly surveyed the car’s interior and immediately noticed the bulbous metal switches and steep buttons, as well as the standard two-way radio, which indicated she was indeed among a man of The System. This wasn’t the first time she’d been in a System vehicle, and she was deluged with thoughts of her childhood when, as a girl of twelve, Anika rode quietly in the back of a cruiser as she was shuttled behind an ambulance carrying her father to the hospital following a rather severe traffic accident. At the time that short trip had seemed like a dream—Anika’s mind protecting her from considering all the possible fates of her father, she supposed—and she’d been unusually distracted by the car’s interior. She’d seen nothing like it in her world before, the stark leather of the seats and door panels, the chrome lines outlining every hard feature, and the various multi-colored blinking lights that spanned the dashboard. There was an alien feel to the car that made Anika feel both helpless and safe, and now, as she sat rigid and wary in the passenger seat of this more modern, yet still familiar cruiser, that same feeling possessed her again.

“The System.” Anika was suddenly flooded with hope as she recognized her good fortune, and her mouth exploded into a huge grin. “You’re from The System! But how did you know it was me? On the street?”

The officer chuckled. “I know everything about you Mrs. Morgan: your age, your hair and eye color, even how you were dressed the day you disappeared.” He glanced at her again. “Which doesn’t seem to fit with what you’re wearing now by the way.”

Anika started to respond, but held back, deciding that an explanation regarding the difference in her attire wasn’t the proper place to begin her story.

“Besides, Mrs. Morgan, how many possible women do you think one would expect to find in the middle of the road, especially in this part of the country?”

Anika processed this reasoning as sound, though slightly off, but explored that notion for only a moment before the reins on her instincts snapped. “My family! You must have spoken with my family then? How are my children?”

“We have spoken with your family, Anika, on several occasions, and everyone is fine. Though your husband was quite ill for a while after your disappearance.”

“Ill? In what way? Who’s been looking after the children?”

Anika realized the rather one-sidedness of her concern, inquiring about her husband’s condition only to gauge the impact it had on Gretel and Hansel, but at the moment her children were all she could think of.

The officer stopped in front of what appeared to be a small warehouse and shifted the car into park. “As I said, your family is fine, including your children. In fact—and I don’t tell you this to upset you in any way—but your daughter seems to have thrived since you went missing. Shall we?”

Anika hadn’t noticed the warehouse or even that they’d stopped, and she stared baffled at the officer for a few moments before finally understanding his suggestion to enter the building standing before them.

“What? What is
this
place?”

“It’s a place for gathering information. Yours was a very complicated case, Mrs. Morgan, and there’s a lot we need to investigate concerning what happened. You’ll just need to stay here for a while, and I promise to get you home as soon as possible.”

“A while? How long is a while?”

The officer sighed impatiently. “I don’t know exactly, Mrs. Morgan. I suppose until we have the information we need.”

Anika glanced toward the stark building and then back to the officer. “Does my family know that I’ve been found? Has anyone contacted them?”

“Yes, certainly. Of course. We had an officer visit them as soon as I was able to verify your identity. They’ve been contacted.”

Anika noticed at a fairly young age that most men of power were poor liars, she imagined it was for the simple reason that they usually reached their ends through force or intimidation, and lying wasn’t a skill necessary to master. And she recognized this lie at once. The shift of the officer’s body, the loss of eye connection, the change in pitch and excessive affirmation: all obvious signs of deceit.

She could now feel the rise inside her toward hysterics, but fought the emotion, catching it in her chest and driving it back to her belly. Her nerves had been shredded in the slaughterhouse, and her psyche going forward in life would be as fragile as butterfly eggs; but the ordeal had also assured Anika that within her was an involuntary prowess of survival, a fundamental determination to keep her heart beating and blood flowing, at least until that final moment when it was no longer hers to decide. She’d always believed everyone possessed this strength to some degree, and over the last several months it had been revealed that hers was exceptional.

“I’ll take all the time you want to answer questions,” she said calmly, “of course, every detail. I would just like to see my family first.”

The officer stared at Anika for a moment, as if considering her request, and then said flatly, “Let’s go.”

“No!” she screamed, and then as if speaking an echo, “No.” Anika sat hugging the blanket around her torso, staring forward, looking as petulant as a four-year-old who’s been told to eat her vegetables. She could sense the officer considering whether the time had come to use force, but then, with a sigh, he continued the act.

“Listen, Mrs. Morgan,” he said, “the longer we wait to get the information from you, the better chance whoever did this to you will go free. Is that what you want?”

“What makes you think someone did anything to me?” she replied, her eyes wide and crazed. “I never told you anything about another person. Maybe I was just lost.”

The officer frowned. “If you had just become lost in the woods, Mrs. Morgan, you would have died weeks ago. Only the most skilled survivalist would have been able to find food in those forests. And I assume you didn’t sew a new set of clothes for yourself while wandering through the wilderness.”

Anika looked away, slightly embarrassed at her ‘Aha!’ attempt.

“Besides, some of the injuries I’ve seen on you don’t come from tree branches or a slip on a wet rock. Or even a wild animal. A person caused those wounds.”

“Then if I can’t see my family yet at least let me see a doctor. I definitely do need a doctor.” Anika softened her tone, sensing she had struck a chord of sympathy within the man.

“Your medical needs will be taken care of promptly. Once we’re inside.”

It was obvious The System officer’s intentions were deeply anchored, and that going anywhere other than inside the building was not a possibility for Anika. And though her will was steel, she simply hadn’t the physical strength to fight or run; that would have been tantamount to suicide. Her only choice was to obey.

The absurdity of the scenario nearly caused her to erupt in laughter. It was nearly impossible to imagine: not a full day had gone by since she escaped the most atrocious nightmare she could have conceived—being slowly harvested by a monstrous hermit for some obscene recipe—and now here she was again, being held without choice, and this time by a public servant under oath to protect her!

Anika tossed the blanket to the backseat and exited the car without another word, and then walked ahead of the officer to the front of the structure. The building wasn’t much bigger than a large house, but the design and lack of windows suggested it was used for something other than living, and its modern, utilitarian appearance was in complete opposition to the rustic road they’d just traveled. The officer followed Anika to the metal door which stood at ground level and then fished a single key from his pocket, inserting it into the deadbolt above the knob. Anika had one last thought to flee, but the bleakness of the perimeter was daunting and hopeless.

With a push, the door opened to a large, brightly lit room with high ceilings, though several rows of overhanging fluorescent lights made them feel much lower. Stacks of empty metal shelves lined the side walls, which were made of unfinished concrete. The floor was wood and dusty to the point of slick, and the holes between the planks were so gaping that Anika could see through to the natural ground on which the warehouse stood. And perfectly centered in the room, a couch and two brown, leather chairs had been placed on top of an area rug, and a small table and lamp set was positioned beside the couch.