Page 48 (1/2)

"Jackie," Sara said quietly, "wake up"

The old woman was curled in a fetal position with the blanket drawn to her chin Her rheu frohing all night

"The light," Jackie said "It looks like winter"

Sara felt her forehead No trace of fever; if anything, the woman felt cold It was hard to say how old Jackie was She’d been born in the flats, but her parents had come from somewhere else Jackie wasn’t one to speak of the past, but Sara knew she had outlived three children and a husband, the last sent to the feedlot for the cri sticked by a col

The roo out "Jackie, please" Sara shook her by the shoulder "I know you’re tired, but we’ve really got to go"

The woman’s eyes drew Sara into focus She treh

"I’m sorry, hon," she said, when the spasm had passed "I don’t mean to be uncooperative"

"I just don’t want toout for me like you always do Help an old lady doill you?"

Sara gave Jackie a shoulder for balance and eased her to the floor Her body was practically weightless, a forh her chest, a sound like pebbles being shaken in a sack She slowly drew herself erect

"There now" Jackie took a moment to s Her face was flushed; beads of dampness had risen on her forehead "All better"

Sara pulled the blanket off her bunk and draped it over the wo to be a cold one Stay by me, okay?"

Her lips stretched into a toothless so, hon?"

Sara retained only fleeting i over and done, and then a huge force, li away as the viral hurled her into the air-why hadn’t it just killed her?-and then another massive jolt as she was snatched once more, plucked from the air by the second viral, and then the third, and so on, each aerial vault catapulting her farther away fro blackness, her person passed from airborne hand to airborne hand like a ball in a children’s game, all of it beyond the boundaries of her co i to consciousness, like cli a ladder from hell into hell Days without water, without food The endless bone-banging hours and whispered, unanswerable questions Where were they going? What was happening to them? Nearly all the captives oh a handful of soldiers were ahtened The s darkness

Sara’s mind had not returned to full awareness until their arrival It was as if time had stretched for the duration of their journey only to snap back into shape when the door opened onto a disorienting splash of daylight Revealingwhat? Half of the truck’s hu the coray decay, others from injuries sustained in their capture, the rest fro hopelessness Sara was lying on the floor, as they all were, both the living and the dead, inertly liainst the wall, her eyes clenched against the unaccustohtness An inversion of her physical proportions seeed in her head Over her lifeti the her froing slits, she watched as a half dozen expressionlessboots boarded the co away of the deceased She gathered that the unstructured weight of a dead body was so these men were accusto no ht be forced to carry Body after body, unceremoniously hauled away When they caht have said so like "Please" or "Wait" or "You can’t do this" But these er efforts were instantly silenced by a hot slap across her cheek, followed, for good ht her midsection had Sara not protectively folded around herself

"Shut The fk Up"

She did She shut the fk up The man who had struck her was a col Sara would co the citizens of the flatland, all the cols had nickna people A lot of theuished himself by the breadth of his appetites Women, men, children, livestock Sod would have raped the wind if it had a hole in it

Sara’s turn in the shed would come: brief, brutal, over In the near term, the pain of his blows had the counterintuitive effect of restoring her senses Strategies began to for alive see-the-fuck-up seemed the best way to accomplish this Be quiet, she told herself Blend in See what you can see without see to If they want to kill you, they’ll do it anyway

Don’tas they were reen Its lushness mocked her, the cruelest of jokes The truck had parked in a kind of holding area, a wired co metal roofs; adjacent to this, at a distance of several hundred yards, was aSara had ever seen It looked like an enor walls, ascending hundreds of feet into the air While Sara watched, a glea silver semitruck, identical to the one they’d just dise alongside, carrying rifles They wore bulky pads; caged masks were dran over their faces As the truck approached the wall, it see it belowground A gate opened, and it was gone

"Eyes down No talking Two lines, woht"

Inside one of the huts, they were told to strip and deposit their clothes in a pile Now they stood nad, twenty-three women in identically reflexive postures of self-protection, one arm held horizontally to shield their brsts, the other extended doard over their getals Three of the unifor frank leers with laughing faces of disgust There were gutters in the floor, drains Slants of light descended fro, barred s at the roofline Twenty-three nad wo at the floor, most of them in tears: to speak would be to violate so Whatever was headed their way see there

Then, the hose

The water blasted the fist Everyone was yelling, wo on the floor The hose’s operator enjoyed hi horse He picked off one and then another He swept the probe from their faces to their brsts and farther down The water hit you and then it stopped and then it hit you again There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide; all you could do was endure

It stopped

"Everybody on your feet"

They were led outside again in their shivering nadness Water was strea in rivulets frole wooden chair had been placed in the uards stood beside it, languidly sharpening a razor on a leather strop Four e plastic tub

"Get dressed"

Clothing was tossed their way-loose pants with drawstring waists, long-sleeved tunics that hung to the hips, all made of scratchy ith a harsh chemical smell-followed by a random assortment of shoes: sneakers, plastic sandals, boots with the soles split away Sara found her feet swi in a pair of leather lace-ups

"You, step forward"

Theat Sara The other wo disloyal about this, though Sara hardly bla in her chest, she approached the chair and sat She was facing the other women now Whatever was about to happen, Sara would see it first in their eyes The le slice and it was gone He began to chop indiscri close to her scalp There was no pattern to his efforts; he h a forest Sara’s hair fell to her feet in golden ribbons

"Go stand with the others"

She returned to the group When she touched her head, her fingers came away tacky with blood She studied its texture with her fingertips This is ht Because it is my blood, it means that I’ht her name was Caroline She had met her briefly in the infirmary at the Roswell Garrison; like Sara, she was a nurse A tall, iood cheer, competence She wept into her hands as the barber hacked away

One by one they were shorn So ured se theuishable collective, like anier she didn’t see how she could continue standing None of them had had a scrap to eat-no doubt to keep them coratitude to their captors