The Wanted (22 page)

JOSEPH

I followed Nafari through the outer ring of Palma where old people sat together on their porches, talking, drinking, and pointing at the stars. Someone began to sing and other voices joined in. A guard yelled for them to stop. They did for a moment, and then they laughed and started up again. Palma was where the Superior’s iron grip was loosening. The people were not as afraid as they should be. It was only when a warning shot was fired into the air that the old men and women ceased their music.

There was defiance around every corner.

I glanced back to see pipe embers floating in the dark, lighting up the worn faces, mischievous eyes that shouldn’t be so bold. My heart felt less heavy, my hope more realistic.

We got to the gate, and it was already hanging open. I didn’t ask. We passed through every gate easily and were in Ring Four.

Drums like bells, is the only way I could think to describe what I heard.

It was about eight o’clock. At this time, in Pau, everyone was inside, doors locked, curtains closed. Guards always patrolled the streets, but there was never anyone to catch.

Not here.

Soldiers guarded the streets but they had to wind their way through the groups of people—the children playing in the street, the parents sitting on their lawns, clustered in groups, clapping along to sounds I’d never heard before.

I watched as a soldier tried to stop a man from dancing. They warned him, he bowed, and stopped only to start again as soon as their backs were turned. It was only when they grabbed him and dragged him off that people calmed. But then we’d turn the bend and more music and dancing continued. They were clinging to what little freedom they had and risking their lives in the process. I kept tightening my jaw to stop my mouth from falling open.

Nafari relaxed more and more as we passed through these groups. Some people he knew or seemed to. He joined the dancing for a moment, and then side stepped out and kept walking. I kept my distance but found myself relaxing just a little too.

We walked up the path of a plain, standard-looking house. Nafari turned and said, “Wait here,” in a sinister voice.

He turned the knob and went inside. The room was dark, but I could hear voices.

Turning around, I ran my eyes over all the Palma I could see. I took it in and held the possibility of it in my heart. They were bright. Color hung off the people like dumped paint. But they wore it well. They were more ready for this than any other town. I patted the disc in my pack. The firework would go off soon.

Nafari came back quickly; he was still talking as he passed through the door, bobbing his head and talking in a strained tone. “Yes, yes, all right, woman.”

A woman’s voice muttered in the dark. I couldn’t quite make out the words.

“Who were you talking to?” I asked as I watched Nafari kick off his shoes and swing himself up into the palm tree that grew in the front yard, leaning towards the roof.

Between grunts and heavy breathing, he said, “My wife.” Then he chuckled as he paused and held out his hand, beckoning me to follow.

I took off my shoes and climbed after him, my soft feet getting cut up on the rough bark. The tree struggled under my weight but luckily, it just leaned closer to the roof. Nafari held out his hand, and I grabbed it. The palm tree sprung back into place as I met the roof. “How are we going to get down?” I asked, my skin prickling from sweat and the cool wind that ran over the tin roof.

“We jump.” Nafari jumped high and landed firmly on his feet, while the roof vibrated from his impact. His wife shrieked and swore inside the house. The door swung open and a small, dark woman with her hair swept into a colorful rag stomped down the path with a bag on her back. Nafari watched her leave in silence.

I put my hands out to steady myself and followed him to the apex where we sat down to wait. Nafari placed his hands down on either side of his body and leaned his head back to gaze at the stars. He sighed, the sound like an empty water tank.

“Do you miss
your
wife Rosa?” he said, his round eyes still staring at the sky.

I miss her like someone performed open-heart surgery on me and forgot to sew me back up. They cracked my chest and left me that way, gaping and in danger of infection.

“I’m not married,” I replied.

He punched my arm. “The way you stare at her face in the sky. How you feel about her in here,” he punched his chest, “you are joined even if you’re not married.”

I know.

“Have you missed
your
wife?” I asked, desperate to change the subject. At this, he laughed hoarsely, a whistle coming from his gappy mouth.

“I don’t miss her. We are not joined. We are married, but I don’t love her. We were forced to marry. The one thing I do miss is our child.” His head fell between his knees. “I don’t even know where she is or if she’s alive.”

“What was her name?”

“Zawadi.”

“Beautiful,” I whispered.

“It means ‘gift’.” Nafari clasped his hands tightly, and quiet floated between us for a few minutes.

“Joseph, when we start the playback, I will run to the gate. You can stay here if you want.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m coming with you.”

He nodded.

We stared up at the sky and waited for the firework.

I placed the disc on the chimney of Nafari’s home, my finger hovering over the play button. Once I pushed it, we had five minutes before it started.

In Pau, on Signing Day, everyone was forced from their homes. Kids stood in their pajamas in the street, shivering. We lined the sidewalk like mannequins arranged to look awed. The firework went off, we clapped, and then we were told to go back inside.

Here, the firework popped and shot into the sky. I watched the streets for the peoples’ reaction. But they continued to talk and sing as if nothing had happened. Shuffling around their fires, their hands and faces reddened from warmth. No one even looked up.

I pressed the button on the video disc, and we skidded off the roof.

Nafari took off running.

Just as we passed through the first gate, the playback started. I didn’t look up tonight. I followed Nafari’s dark form through the streets, the lights catching us in quick snapshots of action. My legs burned to keep up with him. He was a small ball of muscle, fast and determined.

“If you want to see your girl, look up,” Nafari urged, barely panting. I couldn’t answer; I was so out of breath. I just shook my head, which he couldn’t see. I couldn’t look at her now. Whatever this was, this risk, this action, was keeping her under my thoughts. It was making it easier to smile, easier to laugh. I wasn’t ready to give up on that. So I had to keep moving. She would slow me down.

By the time we reached the next gate, the streetlights were flickering on and off. Noise was building. Voices, wails, broken glass.

Halfway to the last gate, the lights went out permanently.

People streamed past us. Angry people carrying boards and shards of glass. A woman pushed past me to get through the last gate and slashed my arm with a broken bottle. I put my hand to my bicep, glanced down at my blood-covered fingers, and stopped.

I lost Nafari in the crowd.

I knew where he was going, so I kept on towards the gate, the swarm of people thickening around me. The angry shouting was a mix of oppression and freedom forcing its way out the end of a bottle, squeezing and then bursting.

A shot fired.

Emergency lights flooded the Outer Ring with amber light.

I thought,
This is where it stops
. Fear would stop them. But people followed the shot, poured over the soldiers holding the guns until suddenly they were the ones putting their arms up in surrender. I watched one soldier, still holding on, blinking desperately, moving his gun frantically back and forth as he was forced against the wall. A woman stepped towards him, her palm up.

“Put your gun down. We don’t want to hurt you,” she shouted.

I started running towards her. I don’t know why. Before I had even taken two steps towards them, there was a crack and she crumpled. The people surged towards the soldier, and he was swallowed by tearing arms and grieving screams.

My heart knocked on my chest wall, reminding me I had to find Nafari. My eyes scanned the area near the gate. There he was, pulling his pack from his back. He plunged his arm into the bag and a shot rang out. His arm jerked and fell limply to his side. I could do nothing, only twenty meters from him, but about a hundred people deep in the crowd. Doggedly, Nafari gripped the explosive with his other hand.

I searched for the gunman and found him, hiding behind a brown, velour lounge that had been dragged into someone’s front yard. I swam through the crowd to get to him as he lined my friend up in his sights.

This bomb was about to go off. I could see it in Nafari’s steely eyes. I could get to the gunman and stop him from firing at Nafari or I could try and clear the area of innocent civilians.

We hadn’t expected this. This amount of people, this response.

I screamed, “Clear the gates! They’re going to blow up the gates!” Over and over, as loud as I could.

People started to move away from the great iron gates. They pulsed and surged backwards, spilling over furniture and soldiers. The smells of sweat and copper-tasting blood filled the air, mixed with a waft of smoky, fragrant spices I’d never smelled before. The gunman aiming at Nafari was lost in the sea of people.

The crowd pushed me back until I was pressed against the front wall of a house.

My eyes picked out the tip of a gun still aimed in Nafari’s direction. It shot again, hitting him in the leg. My heart dove into my feet.
I couldn’t stop this.
I was going to watch him die.

“Nafari!” I screamed as I pushed against the crowd and tried to get to him.

His eyes found me. He put his hand up,
stop
, and yelled, “Call me Naf!” Then he grinned and turned away. He pushed the button twice for instant detonation, and the air around him flashed white.

ROSA

From my blind position, breathing my own fear-scented breath, I guessed we had driven for about thirty minutes. I couldn’t hear anything over Denis’ loud, thumping music. The only thing I could tell was that the journey had been mostly in a straight line until this sudden jerk to the left. Now we were still. The engine running, the music decreasing in volume.

The guard yanked the bag off my head so violently that my neck did that painful snap you felt when you turned too suddenly. Pain coursed through me like a hot rod was shooting up my spine and poking my brain.

“Ow!” I shrieked, rolling my neck from side to side to ease the lava-like pain. The guard sniggered. The Superiors truly chose their soldiers well. Most of them seemed to truly enjoy inflicting pain. I rubbed the back of my head gingerly.

“Rosa, are you all… ahem… Kinesh, that was unnecessary.” Denis covered his concern for me poorly, and I shot him a warning glare.

I blinked my eyes and tried to adjust to the streaming, harsh light pouring over the black sedan. It was sleeting, the light picking up every drop of rain clashing with every snowflake as it rolled over the black metal of the car. I gazed up at the long, metal poles holding up the lights and followed them around a semi-circle of high fencing back to where we were parked. Automatic gates swished closed behind us, pulling lumps of mud with them. I inhaled the rich, mushroomy scent and let my brain fool itself that we were somewhere else for a moment. But then I had to open my eyes. Illusions were smashed to splinters as I stared in front at the muddy path, pockmarked with pools of freezing water leading to a glass door splattered with rain and dirt.

Denis pulled up the handbrake. “Time to get out.”

The holding cells reminded me of the underground facility in the most vivid, lacerating way. From where I stood, gripping the car door like an anchor, all you could see were two windows and a door punched into the side of a slick, green hill. The difference being we were not surrounded by towering forests and birds didn’t circle above. I couldn’t hear the rustle of creatures scratching their claws through the undergrowth.

Squeezing the car door harder, I cocked my head to the side, my body rigid with cold and reluctance. I was inside one of Addy’s babushka dolls. A prison within a prison within a prison. No escape.

Kinesh pried my fingers from the door and slammed it. I startled at the noise and blew air out my pursed lips trying to calm myself.

“Kinesh, you can stay with the car,” Denis ordered, squinting through the frozen rain.

You didn’t have to tell him twice. He was in and starting the engine before I could blink.

Denis beckoned with one arm. I shivered. My clothes ballooned around my skinny legs, and I instantly regretted my choice of outfit for dinner: A formal dress so long and a little too big that it dragged across the floor. Although a smile did tease my lips as I remembered Grant’s horrified expression when he watched me tugging the sleeves up and his aggravation when they kept falling down to reveal my bra strap and bony shoulder. Denis watched me curiously as I hiked my dress up, tucked it into my underwear, and walked towards him, allowing myself to be cradled in the bow of his arm.
He’s not going to leave you here,
I told myself in short, puffy breaths.

Muddy water had soaked into my dress and frozen my ankles. I shuddered. Denis pushed a code into the door handle and it opened. Fingers of warm air and light reached out and grasped us, pulling us inside. The shiny white tiles were mussed by my dragging, dirty dress.

“These are the holding cells. Follow me,” Denis announced grandly, as if he was giving me a tour of a palace ballroom and not a clinical, bleach-scented room used to process criminals, people like me.

The small receiving room was lined with red-cushioned chairs. A small cubicle sat in the corner with a window perforated with small holes like gunshots. Denis went to the window and spoke through the holes.

A person’s face appeared. “Yes?”

“We need two passes to go downstairs, level four,” Denis demanded loudly, like she wouldn’t be able to hear him from her fish tank.

The woman nodded and typed something into the computer, looking up and appraising me once, narrowing her eyes around my dirty, frozen blue ankles.

“New inmate? I’ll need processing papers,” she said, taking her thick headband off, plucking hairs from it and dropping them on the floor, then sliding it back over her dark blonde hair.

“No. Visitors’ passes.” Denis held up his wrist and pressed it against the glass. “Do you need anything else?” he asked, irritated.

She flustered like a cat being brushed backwards. “Oh no, no, that won’t be necessary, Master Grant.” She hastily printed out two barcoded tickets and passed them through a slot under the glass.

I smiled at her, trying to assure her she wasn’t in trouble, but when Denis turned his back to her, the woman scowled at me.

So she should, I guess.

I wonder if sunlight is the fundamental thing that keeps you sane. When it’s snatched away, you start to feel less human. You can’t remember. You’re a starved plant that can’t grow.

We entered the lift and Denis scanned the passes. When the buttons lit up, he pushed four.

“What’s on level four?” I asked, my hands seeping nervousness and dripping from my fingers.

Denis kept his eyes forward and said, “It’s who. And I don’t know.” But his hand flicked and flattened like he was telling me not to ask any more questions. He knew something, but the cameras froze his tongue.

I rocked back and forth on my heels as my stomach bottomed out and my heart refused to calm. The lift so fast, I thought maybe my organs were sitting in a disgusting pile at ground level.

Within seconds, the lift stopped abruptly and the doors slid open with a chirpy ding.

I stepped out, expecting moldy, rock corridors and single bulbs swinging in cages. Instead, clean, white halls glowed before my eyes. Long, fluorescent lights shone overhead. To our right, in front of locked glass doors, a plush, green lounge the shape of plump lips faced a bunch of screens. The small, carved-out area was painted in soft colors like beige or cream. The only way to describe the color was ‘blah’, as if they had mixed every dull color together to create one super-dull one.

A guard sat on the couch, his legs spread wide. His attention was on a book rather than the screens. When he saw Denis, he shot up and saluted him.

“Master Grant,” he said, flustered. He looked from me to Denis in confusion, and then he chose to ignore me. “Haven’t seen you in a long time. Are you taller?”

Denis gave an easy laugh. “Probably, it’s been two years, Solomon.”

Solomon laughed with him, his dark, bald head catching the light as he dipped down, grabbed a remote, and blacked the screens.

“Yes. Not since Superior Grant brought you down here to scare you straight.” Solomon winked as he spoke. The wink too long, too familiar.

Denis swallowed uncomfortably and fiddled with his earphones. “Ah, yes… anyway. Similarly, Miss Rosa is in need of a wake-up call.”

I scowled at the guard; his jolly exterior was as unnerving as his thin face and nonexistent eyebrows. In their place were two bulges of skin like he’d stuck brown dough above his eyes.

“Doesn’t look so bad,” I lied, trying to appear blasé. “It’s nicer than my actual home!” It was nothing compared to my home. The home I would never return to.

Solomon snorted and I wondered whether you could fit a Ping-Pong ball up his nose, his nostrils were so large.

“Tickets, please.” Denis held them out, and Solomon scanned them with a reader. There was a shake to his hands. “Do you want the tour?” Solomon said, waggling his soggy brow.

Please no!

“No thanks, Solomon, just open the doors, please,” Denis said, tipping his chin.

Solomon pulled a chain from around his neck and lifted a small, numbered pad that was dangling from it. He punched in a code, and the doors opened.

“Have fun!” he said, waving dorkily.

We stepped over the red line painted in front of the doors, and they closed quickly after us. As soon as they did, I felt squeezed, like someone’s hand was around my throat. We were sealed inside a corridor smelling strongly of chemicals that barely masked other horrid odors like sweat, urine, and things I didn’t want to think about. Denis put his sleeve to his nose and started placing his earphones in, then he glanced down at me, remembering I was there, and muttered, “Sorry.”

I breathed in deeply and repressed the urge to gag. This might be my home soon, if they let me live. I guessed I’d better try to get used to it.

The thick, metal doors, spaced every few meters, were plastered with giant barcode stickers. You could see the tears and leftover paper from previous inmates underneath the current barcode. When you were a prisoner, they took your name as well as your freedom.

We walked hesitantly down the aisle, and my eyes caught glimpses of the inmates through the wire-infused glass. Huddled in dark corners. Lying with their backs to the door, their knees pulled to their chests. They were shadows, thin and barely human.

My skin shuddered over my frame loosely, like it was trying to escape my body.
This could be my life.

“There are no mics in here,” Denis said as he ran his hand along one of the doors and rubbed the microscopic dust between his fingertips. “I think they got sick of listening to all the screaming.”

I imagined the desperate pleading of shadow people scratching at their last shreds of humanity.

My dry mouth spat out a curse, making him flinch.

How many people did they keep down here? It went on for at least twenty doors on both sides but not all were filled.

A sharp bang made me jump.

“Git, git, git, me out of here!” A muffled voice came from my left. I walked closer and saw a raring face pressed up against the glass, his eyes bulging with need.

“Please, please, please…” he whispered softly like a song, like a prayer no one would answer. When I put my hand to the window, he suddenly head-butted it. “Devil bitch!” he screamed. I pulled back my hand like he might bite me through the glass or infect me with his insanity and shook my head in shame. Denis placed his hand at my waist and pushed me past the door. We increased our pace, the sad thump of his head hitting the glass continuing as we moved away.