Red Fox (13 page)

“T-the horses,” I tell him, pointing at the paddock the three horses are now locked in with a pile of hay between them. We never locked the cows on the property but the horses will surely starve if they are left.

Seiger understands me immediately although he can’t see the horses in the dark paddock. He tells one of the guards to go and open the gates. At least I can’t add animal cruelty to his list of horrible qualities.

When I hear the gate creak open, I climb into the van, trembling while I speculate where we will be taken this time. Seiger and three more guards climb in the back with us. The door is slammed shut and through the back window, I see one guard outside locking the door. If he hadn’t, I may well have jumped out of the van when it reached a good speed that would surely kill me. Although I am filled with strength because I’ve eaten reasonably well in the past weeks and slept soundly, my spirit is now broken.

We thought we’d escaped. We thought we were going to live there forever without being tracked or chased. I should have known better than to presume we were safe. After all, we Bs are so very precious and important that the government created those arenas and wasted all of those resources to transport and contain us. I should have realized they would stop at nothing to find us.

The back of the van is like an ambulance—minus the stretcher and the medical equipment. Everything is white: the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. There is a fluorescent light on the roof that hurts my eyes and a few sea-green chairs that fold down from the walls. I sit down on one seat while the world spins around me in the disorientating darkness caused by dread. I’m shaking violently from head to toe.

No anger consumes me now. All I want to do is curl up in a ball and die. Surely that would be better than anywhere they are taking us. This time when the tears come, I can’t hold them back, so I just let them roll down my cheeks silently. I don’t sob or weep. I’m still and quiet as the van’s engine rumbles to life and we begin another spirit-breaking journey.

14.

              No one speaks for the first hour of driving. Not even Seiger tries to explain where we are going or boast about his successful recovery mission. I have the strange sense that he understands how we are feeling and that we don’t want to talk. We just want to wallow in our own despair. Even Whil doesn’t seem able to find the words to speak. I expect him to say something or to move closer and comfort me, but he doesn’t seem able to. He sits with his face buried in his hands, just as miserable and defeated as me. Even when we were stuck in the arena he didn’t look like this. Even when his head had been crushed with that stone and he’d lost so much blood, he always had a bright, hopeful expression. All I see now is a perfect person destroyed by the horrific events of his life.

Finally, Seiger asks, “What happened to your head, Whil?”

I want to slap Seiger over the face for addressing him like they are friends. How dare he call him Whil when he loaded us into a van like prisoners and is more than likely taking us to a torture chamber. But Whil looks up, not looking angry in the slightest. His eyes are red but he isn’t crying. “A rock fell and hit it.”

Seiger grunts. “It looks bad.”

“It is,” I say. “He needs help.”

The least I can do in this bad situation is to try to get Whil help. I’ve done everything I can to keep his wound clean and cushioned, but earlier today it had looked worse than usual, seeping puss and mucus. It was obviously infected, which was my fear from the beginning. If Whil dies from infection after everything we’ve been through already, I’d never forgive myself.

“He’ll be treated where we are going,” Seiger says.

“Where are we going?” Whil asks huskily. I know that our phase of silence is over now, and I sit up straighter in my seat, trying to look strong when I feel so miniscule.

“To a compound where you will stay for some time,” Seiger says.

“And why are we going there? What are the Bs?” I mutter darkly.

The question makes Seiger visually slump in his seat, like he might have answered it too many times. But the same look he gave me three weeks ago, the sympathetic expression when I rightly blamed him for Clara’s murder in the caravan, also crosses his face.

“Have either of you ever heard of a silver fox?” Seiger asks.

The car hits a jolt and we all bump a foot in the air and land painfully on our rears. I may have preferred the horse and cart transportation. At least then we were making our way painfully slowly to our destination. Now we’re soaring towards a new, horrible place instead of plodding along.

“No, what is it?” Whil asks.

“The silver fox is a domesticated red fox that was bred by a Siberian scientist many years ago,” Seiger starts. He folds his arms over his broad chest and stretches his legs out in front of him so they nearly touch me. I pull my legs back with a snarl and tuck them to my chest. Seiger ignores me and goes on, “The scientist rescued common red foxes from fur farms around Siberia and brought all of the foxes to one establishment where he planned on domesticating the species. He found that if he bred two friendly wild foxes together, that is foxes that approached him happily like a dog might, their offspring would have lower levels of adrenalin. A few generations in, the foxes temperament and even their physical traits began to change. The scientist had bred the wild out of the fox by pinpointing which ones had lower levels of adrenalin: thus making a fox that was a pet. Well, we are trying to do the exact opposite of that experiment. We are trying to breed adrenalin back into the fox.”

I narrow my eyes into slits, staring at Seiger. “You… want to breed normal, wild red foxes?”

Seiger licks his thin lips. “Not quite. Wild people.”

There is a brief silence and I almost laugh at the absurdity of the idea, but Seiger is looking at me very seriously, as if waiting for something to dawn on me. Whil groans and when I look at him, wondering what the problem is, his hands are knotted in his hair like he is about to rip fistfuls from his scalp. I look back at Seiger with a questioning, malevolent expression and finally, the truth hits me like a rock.

B doesn’t stand for bad, or brainless, or even brutal, which we were at the rally. The Bs all exhibited wild, aggressive behaviour, something that most would view as unappealing, but the government sees as something good and natural and animalistic. Something to be sought after and even created.

I know now, and in the clutches of my disbelief, I feel a stab of overpowering terror in my heart.

B stands for Breeders.

I stare at Seiger, who doesn’t seem to be able to meet my eyes, and then jump to my feet. Pacing back and forth in the small space we have, my body becomes numb. I feel a chill sweep through it like ice in my veins. The ground gives a sickening lurch underneath me, and it’s not because the van just hit a massive road bump. Instinctively, my arms wrap around my shoulders, as if I’m already being violated. Bile rises in my throat and I feel the same uncontainable fury that overwhelmed me at the rally take hold of me again. I spin to face Seiger, and the force of my hateful glare is so strong that it seems to have a physical force that Seiger flinches against.

“You want to throw a bunch of violent people together and force them to breed!” I shout throwing my arms up as my voice cracks off in blind panic. Suddenly, the white walls of the van seem to close in on me, and I whirl around on the spot, muttering nonsensically to myself as I gasp for breath. Whil says my name many times, but I hardly hear him as something primal and instinctive within me batters to escape. Going wild right now would not help, so I suppress the urge to kill Seiger and his guards and rein in my rampaging emotions.

It isn’t the thought of having a child that petrifies me. It isn’t the thought of that child being uncontrollable and bloodthirsty. It isn’t even the idea that I might be thrown into a pen with a strange, hostile man to be bred like an animal in a zoo. It is the knowledge that
I
was chosen to be the parent of such a horrible creation. I always thought myself determined and strong, but never violent. Never wicked.

“What in hell is wrong with you, Seiger!” I snarl finally, spinning to face him. “What in God’s name could that possibly achieve? A race of violent, adrenalin high maniacs being bred!”

“That is what the government wants,” he says. He tries to keep a straight face, but the doubt that flickers across his features is unmistakable. Whatever he signed up for, this wasn’t it. Just like the town crier, Holland, who got involved with the government and had death threats delivered when he tried to resign. “They want to breed humans who can live in the wild and have primitive instincts to survive and protect themselves and their mates. The behaviour both you and Whil exhibited at the rallies showed you have high adrenalin levels, which most humans these days have lost.”

“But anyone would have done that for someone they loved!” I cry desperately.

But they hadn’t.

I think back, brain throbbing and mind whirring in confusion. Clara’s mother had watched her daughter get on stage and be shot and didn’t act out. Everyone in the crowd knew what was going to happen to the D group but no one tried to save them. No one tried to revolt even when they knew their own lives were in jeopardy—just like Clara’s father. Out of my entire town I was the only one with the courage, no, not the courage, the
high adrenalin level,
the animalistic instinct, to fight, whatever the cost, to protect my kin.

This can’t be happening. I can’t believe anyone, not even the government, could have such a sick idea. I’m eighteen years old and they expect me to give birth? How many times? Whil is older, he is twenty-one, but when I look at him the same expression of absolute disgust remains on his face. His lips are curled in a nasty way, and he looks at Seiger with bitter hatred now instead of that reserved judgement he normally saves for him. I could never imagine Whil doing anything as revolting as having sex with multiple women just so the government can use the children to do who-knows-what with.

Seiger licks his lips nervously. “If we had remained as people of the earth, both of you would be of age to mate. In the wild, animals—”

“Humans aren’t animals, Seiger! We are totally different. Animals survive and mate and hunt but humans
live
!” I shriek, trying to make him see reason. “That’s why we don’t naturally go around mating with every member of the opposite gender we see.”

I sit down, both exasperated and terrified for Whil and myself. This time, he does move closer to me and wraps his arms around my shoulders like a vice. Tears won’t come. I feel like they should, but they are stuck in my tear ducts. I feel like I should be battering the sides of the van, weeping for freedom, attacking Seiger, killing the other guards, but whatever energy I had when we got in this van is gone. Our situation worsens with every second we travel. My mind falls into a deeper, darker hole. I feel like a ghost, hollow and meaningless. Eventually, I bury my head into Whil’s shoulder, shuddering with dread when I think of what our future holds.

I don’t know how long we drive. A long time. Hours and hours. The van finally comes to a stop at daybreak the following morning. We didn’t sleep at all. The fluorescent light above us didn’t allow it, but we were watching Seiger and his guards all night anyhow. Seiger’s face is now one I associate only with danger. Danger and possibly pain. Like a horse shown a whip, I want to run.

I can’t run. Before the van’s back door is opened, one guard slaps a pair of handcuffs on both Whil and me. I strike at him, but he is too fast and too strong, and Seiger holds me still while the metal bindings are secured. Whil stands still. He’s much more passive than I am. Perhaps he knows that we can’t escape, or he’s just accepted that freedom is too hard and dangerous to fight for anymore. Though I feel beaten, as though the government will never allow me to live my own life, I will never stop fighting for my freedom. I’m scared. Scared because I don’t know how long Whil and I will be prisoners in the B compound Seiger talks about. Scared because I don’t want to live my entire life being forced to breed and give birth to children that I won’t ever be able to love given the circumstances of their existence. Will I be trapped in this place forever, perhaps never seeing the outside world again, never able to run and leap and revel in my youth?

With Whil and I controlled, Seiger opens the van door. I approach the exit of the van, my limbs feeling leaden, and warily peer outside. Well, it’s not
outside
exactly. We are staring down a corridor made entirely of concrete, lit with the same eye-searing fluorescent lights that are in the van. The corridor stretches for a good fifteen metres and ends with two heavy steel doors. I feel as though we’ve just pulled into an army bunker or secret facility. I can’t smell any vegetation on the stale, warm air. It has the odour of an underground supermarket or mall parking lot—stagnant, dirty, and lifeless.

The van is backed straight into the corridor entrance, so we don’t even have a chance of jumping from the van and running. There is just a thin slice of early morning light showing around the edges of the van but there are no windows in the corridor so our location remains a mystery.

I do notice one thing.

It’s warm. Not like the Alps where it was wet and refreshing. Wherever we are burns with a dry heat. I can already feel moisture beading on my forehead. Normally, I would strip off my heavy parka and jeans, if I could have, but not today. Not when I know the sick fate that awaits me at the end of this corridor. I’m glad to keep my multiple layers of clothing on for as long as I can. The guards clamber out of the van, stretching momentarily before taking up their rifles, saluting, and standing in formation along the corridor wall.

Standing in front of the parked van is a woman dressed in tight, pristine white clothing. She would be considered beautiful. She’s tall and slender with piercing blue eyes and flowing blonde hair tied back in a long ponytail. It’s the severe, dangerous look on her face, like she has just sucked on a lemon that makes her look ugly. Just by standing there with her arms folded and legs braced, she demands the authority from all people nearby, and I instantly hate her. More than I hate even Seiger. I feel myself bristle as I glare at her, that increasingly familiar feeling of rage and hatred flooding me. She doesn’t appear fazed when I bare my teeth and a snarl rips up my throat.

“Freya Walker and Whilliam Cliff,” the woman says. “You finally arrive.”

“Our best Bs,” Seiger says, almost proudly, like we are his children graduating from school. “It took some time to find them, but we did.”

“Yes,
eventually
. Well done, Seiger,” the woman says coolly. “Freya. Whil. My name is Cassidy Warden. I run this facility and am in charge of all activities to do with your group. The other Bs here will become like your family. We will treat you well if you behave, but bad behaviour will be met with serious reprimand. We don’t have the room for time wasters here, and if either of you cause trouble or try to escape like you did the arena, you will meet a very quick end. Don’t get any ideas about climbing the electric fence here. It is wired completely differently from the one in the Alps and will shock to kill you if you attempt to climb it.”

She stops, looking between us like we might have something to say. We don’t speak, though when I sneer at her, she simply looks at me with one eyebrow arched. The polite smile she wears corrupts into a smug grin.