The Other Side of the Island (25 page)
Read The Other Side of the Island Online
Authors: Allegra Goodman
Tags: #Nature & the Natural World, #Social Issues, #Families, #Family, #Juvenile Fiction, #Individuality, #Fantasy & Magic, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #Family Life, #Weather, #Peer Pressure, #Islands, #General, #Domestic fiction
The orderlies wore no chains and they had no Safety Officers accompanying them. No dogs nipped at their heels. They didn’t even have managers, as they sometimes did at work, to guide them. But high above the Barracks stood four towers, tall and slender, with ladders on the outside and little glass rooms on top. The orderlies never glanced at the watchtowers, but they never made a false move either.
All that day, Honor and her father and the Pratts watched the Barracks. They watched until they grew still with waiting. The sun began to set. No one spoke. Honor held her bow and arrows together in her fist. Her palms were sweating.
The sunset was gold and then deeper gold. The fierce blue of the sky began to soften and darken. The air was damp and smelled of earth. The real moon appeared, small as an eyelash. Together Mr. and Mrs. Pratt, Honor, and her father began to creep down the mountain. They left almost all their belongings behind in the pillbox so that they could move faster. Honor carried only her bow and arrows. The others carried flashlights and big knives and machetes to cut away the thick branches blocking their path. Honor could not see the Barracks through all the leaves, but her heart beat fast because she knew they were coming closer.
They dared not leave the forest when they reached the valley, but through the trees they could see the black paved service road and the barren ground on either side. There were no flowers or plants in this place. There was only asphalt and hard-packed reddish dirt. Everything was neat and clean and bare. If they looked down the service road, they could see one corner of the Barracks with its tall watchtower.
Darkness came. The night was hot. Termites rose up from the ground and from the trees, and millions of them filled the air with tiny flimsy wings. Honor brushed them away from her sweating face. Her heart was pounding now; it was agony to stand and wait.
“Soon,” whispered her father.
In just minutes the stadium lights would switch on, illuminating the Barracks. The Pratts moved far to the left. Honor and her father moved to the right. They stood in two pairs at the edge of the forest. Honor held her bow and knocked back an arrow. Honor’s father took a box of matches from his pocket. It was a box of kitchen matches. His hands trembled as he shook out a single match. They were all waiting for Mr. Pratt’s signal.
Honor tried to calm her breathing, but her whole body was trembling. She could scarcely hold her arrow against the bowstring, but she forced herself to keep still. She forced herself to think about what she had to do.
The moment Mr. Pratt raised his arm, Honor’s father struck the match. The tiny flame jumped in the darkness, and Will touched it to the alcohol-soaked, gauze-wrapped tip of Honor’s arrow. He whispered just one word to Honor: “Run.”
Honor sprinted forward onto the service road. She held her bow with the lit arrow and ran as fast as she could toward the nearest watchtower. Close as she dared, she stopped and aimed. She sent her flaming arrow right toward the wooden structure, but she was so nervous that her arrow didn’t hit. The tip grazed the edge of the tower’s ladder, where the flame caught and climbed. The fire alarm sounded, pulsing, ear-splitting.
Then Honor saw them—a squad of orderlies dragging a fire hose. The stadium lights switched on, and the road and the Barracks and even the flaming watchtower were flooded with white light. The Watcher inside was standing, screaming, as flames licked up the sides of the tower. Was the Watcher going to jump? The drop was too far. Honor hesitated for a moment, horrified. The white stadium lights were so strong and the flames so sudden that the orderlies stopped in their tracks, confused about which light to seek. Then the Watcher jumped. He dove into the orderlies’ outstretched arms. Honor slung her bow and quiver across her back and ran.
She rushed to the door of the closest building and lifted the heavy metal bar securing it. There was no lock. The building was dark except for dim Energy Saver bulbs in the doorway. At first she could scarcely see into the triple bunks stacked against each wall. The beds were empty. She ran on. She knew her father was checking another quarter of buildings and Mr. Pratt was checking his quarter and Mrs. Pratt was checking her quarter. If she’d bought enough time with the fire, they could cover all the buildings.
Three Watchers were shooting their tasers, but the orderlies were busy fighting the fire on the fourth watchtower. A second group rushed out to help the first with the heavy fire hose. Honor dashed to the next building and got there even with the tasers lighting up the air around her.
She ran to the next building and the next. Each was empty. The orderlies in these must have boarded buses for the night shift in the City. The fourth building she tried was full of orderlies sleeping on their backs, arms outstretched on top of their thin bedcovers. They were not wearing their long-sleeved jumpsuits, but short-sleeved nightshirts. There was no way to tell the orderlies apart and no clue anywhere in the Barracks. No numbers on the bunks. Nothing. A new siren was sounding, a wailing alarm. Honor heard the running steps of more orderlies outside.
How could she find her mother among all these inert bodies? She’d need to climb the ladder on each bunk to look at the orderlies in the highest beds, and she had no time. No time at all. She ran through the building into an anteroom stocked with sheets and hats and jumpsuits. The orderlies’ footsteps were coming closer. Hundreds and hundreds of them were running in the open space between the Barracks. She crept to the doorway and peeked out. This squadron had no fire hose. They were running together in a thick pack from one building to the next in mute patrol. They were looking for interlopers, coming to find her. But what could they see? Honor pulled a white jumpsuit off a stack of freshly laundered uniforms. She struggled with the stiff material, trying to pull the suit over her clothes. There were no buttons and there was no zipper. The suit hooked in the front and hung too big on her. The orderlies were bursting through the door.
They charged for her. They saw that she did not belong. How could they tell? She almost screamed at the mass swarming her; she was surrounded by those pale, blank faces. Frantically she reached behind her and grabbed a white worker’s hat. She covered her head with it. The orderlies shrank back again. The uniform was now complete, and they recognized her as one of them.
The new wail of the siren keened above the pulsing fire alarm. She forgot which building she should enter next. She followed the orderlies out of the room and ran with them across the quad. She tried to match the orderlies’ steps. Desperately she tried to look like one of the pack, but her camouflage did not work. Far above, the Watchers could see that she was smaller and quicker than the others. They singled her out and shot at her again and again. A flash stunned an orderly at Honor’s side. He fell, writhing in pain on the ground. For a moment Honor stopped in shock, but the other orderlies kept running, tripping over the fallen one. Another orderly fell over the first and, in a flash, the Watchers shot him as well. Two stunned orderlies on the ground. There was no blood; their wounds were invisible, but the orderlies were dying, both of them. They had the crazed look of the rat Honor had seen the Watcher shoot in her old neighborhood. Their eyes bulged and their limbs stiffened, even as they crawled away to the Barracks’ huge compost bin and, one after the other, climbed inside.
Honor stumbled forward, trying to keep up with the squad. A stench of smoke and sweat filled the air. Her eyes smarted, and when she ran into the next building, she couldn’t see at first after the bright lights outside.
These orderlies were sleeping, even in all this commotion. Their upturned faces were pale as death, and only the slight roll of a head or the gentle rise and fall of their chests showed that they were breathing. Honor raced down the aisles between the identical bunks. She was panting, tripping over herself; her legs could not move fast enough; her mind raced ahead of her body. Through the high, barred windows of the building the blue lights of the Watchers’ tasers flashed. Dogs were barking outside now. That meant Safety Officers had arrived. All the while, the orderlies slept their deathly sleep. Were the Thompsons there among them? Were they sleeping near her mother?
Honor could not possibly examine them all. She had no time, and even if she’d had hours, she could not tell one sleeping face from another. She pressed on anyway. She ran down the last aisle toward the door. Should she make a break for it? Or wait? If she ran, the Watchers could shoot her. If she stayed, the dogs would track her. She could hear the animals barking and baying. She felt faint. The world dissolved for a second. She grabbed the frame of a bunk and steadied herself. Outside, the dogs were coming closer. New alarms were sounding, pulsing, screaming. Pierced by the sound, the orderlies did not awaken, but rolled and groaned, as if they were having nightmares.
A sleeping orderly’s white arm jerked ever so slightly above the covers, and Honor saw something dark and shadowy. A bruise, she thought, but she looked more closely and found a number. The number TH239 was tattooed on the orderly’s forearm. She whipped around to the next bunk and turned over that orderly’s arm. GB240. There were no numbers on the buildings or the bunks, but the orderlies themselves were numbered, and they were sleeping in order. That was how they were organized.
Honor closed her eyes. She tried to shut out the sirens and smoke and her own fear. She had to think where the one hundreds might be if the two hundreds were here.
She dashed outside, and the smoke was so thick now that she could scarcely see. Clouds and billows of black smoke masked the stadium lights. The fire from the watchtower had spread to a Barracks building and licked the walls. Were the orderlies still inside? Was her mother burning there? Instinctively she rushed toward the burning building and almost fell over the mass of orderlies crawling out. Hundreds were creeping on their bellies into the quad. This was the standard procedure to escape from smoky buildings, but the sight was terrible, the mass of bodies writhing and wriggling forward. Hairless heads and bony limbs were coated with ash and dust so that the orderlies looked like figures formed of clay, or half-dead, half-born creatures emerging from the earth.
“Get back; get back!” Will shouted. Honor couldn’t see her father. She could only hear his voice. She tried to get back or turn or run, but the creeping orderlies spread around her in every direction. Every move she made, she stepped on some head or back. She was mired in bodies, but even in the smoke, the Watchers would find her if she stopped. The dogs would hunt her down. She forced herself to step over and on top of the orderlies. She climbed over arms and legs and buttocks.
When at last she reached the edge of the crawling mass, she was disoriented and did not know which building she was entering or even if she had already looked inside. She checked the arms of the first sleeping orderlies she saw. Three hundreds. Outside again, she sprinted in the other direction. A black cloud of ash hung over the Barracks and another foul cloud thickened the air as well. Orderlies were spraying a new substance from their fire hoses: a yellowish gas that smelled like rotten eggs. Was that gas poison? Was it death to breathe? She ran from the thick part of the cloud and saw Mr. Pratt wrestling with a dog. Ears back, teeth bared, the dog was lunging, but Mr. Pratt had the animal by the throat.
“Check their arms. Their arms!” Honor screamed, but Mr. Pratt could not hear. They were all deafened by the sirens and half blind with smoke. And now another dog and then another raced around the corner and ran for Honor. She turned and sprinted for the nearest building with their hot breath on her heels. Just as she reached the door, the first dog lunged and grazed her leg. She was so frightened and she moved so fast that she felt the blood before she felt the pain. She ran inside and slammed the door. A long metal bar fell into place, securing the door against the animals.
She lifted the arm of the first orderly she found: SK430. She was in the four hundreds, and the dogs were scrabbling against the metal door outside.
Honor rushed down the long aisle toward the door at the other end of the building. Rolling carts of food were lined up here for the orderlies’ meal. The carts were like the kitchen carts at school, with trays stacked one above the other, but there were no dishes. The food was white mush poured straight onto the trays. Honor pushed a heavy cart in front of her as she burst out the back door of the Barracks into the open. The blue light of tasers flashed, and sparks flew off the cart’s metal frame as she pushed the cart like a battering ram before her and broke through the swarms of orderlies running, marching, crawling. Safety Officers were shouting through megaphones now, but the orderlies did not seem to understand. They could not learn new orders all at once. Those that marched kept marching; those that crawled kept crawling, until they piled up on the other side of the quad. And those in buildings as yet untouched by fire remained asleep.
Honor’s ears were ringing, her face streaked with dirt and sweat. She crashed the food cart against the wall of the next building and left it there.
Was this building the right one? Was this one possible? She felt as though she were running in a dream, and, as in a dream, she lifted the arm of the nearest sleeping orderly. TJ106. At last. The hundreds. She looked into the next bunk. SK103. The numbers were going down. She ran to the other side. IS109. She climbed the ladder to check the bed just above. Trembling, trying to balance, she touched the orderly’s slender arm. PG111. PG for Pamela Greenspoon. One hundred eleven.
She bent over her mother’s sleeping face. “It’s me. It’s Honor. I found you.”
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