“No.” I shook my head. “I wanted to, but I used to date a girl who thought pouring that powdered candy sugar you get at amusement galleries into her vodka was a good idea. There’s someone who likes everything, and I wasn’t going to be the one to interfere with somebody’s favorite drink.”
“That’s good,” said Jill. “Drugs, alcohol, chocolate, sanitary supplies, and meat are the big trade goods here. They can be used like cash, if you can get your hands on them. So the newbies are put in contact with the supplies as quickly as possible, to weed out the ones who can’t be trusted.”
It seemed like an underhanded method of testing loyalty, especially since “newbies,” as she so charmingly termed us, were motivated by fear and the hope of someday escaping from their new prison. Still, I couldn’t deny its efficacy. Someone who would steal eventually would probably steal at the first opportunity they got, because some things didn’t change with time. “Then I’m glad I didn’t start correcting the horrors before me,” I said. “Thank you, for bringing us here. I needed to know that she was still alive. That both of them were. Now what do you want?”
“Well, I tried asking Dr. Sung for a letter of recommendation to the CDC, but she said they weren’t likely to give it much credence, what with her being legally dead and all,” said Jill. “Then I suggested she team up with me to gather data on this place, and she said she wouldn’t do it unless I was willing to approach you as well. All of which brings us here.”
“Here being…?”
“A small, rarely used examining room. Mostly, this is where we take the really bad cases of gangrene, so no one else has to deal with the smell.” Jill said the words with a certain amount of relish. I tried not to turn green. “It’s amazing how long people will let wounds fester if it means they can minimize the potential for bleeding. Too bad they don’t realize that pus is an infection risk as much as blood is. Anyway, we’re unlikely to be disturbed here, at least for a while, which lets me make my recruitment pitch.”
“Recruitment pitch?” I was starting, slowly, to become annoyed. “If you have a recruitment pitch, why didn’t you give it to me before?”
“Because I didn’t know whether I was going to have anything to hold over you,” she said, with a bald honesty that I couldn’t help respecting, even as it made me want to introduce my fist to her nose. “You said she”—she nodded toward Audrey—“was really a doctor, but of course you’d say that, you were trying to save her skin as well as your own. You’d already managed to catch Clive’s eye, which meant I needed you to act as normally as possible for the first few weeks, if only so he didn’t catch on to the fact that I don’t really work for him. Once I knew Audrey was actually Dr. Margaret Sung from the EIS, and fully qualified to help us vaccinate pig farmers against their own fuck-ups, I knew I had something I could use. I just needed to wait before I approached you so that my separating you out from the others wouldn’t look so suspicious.”
“Please tell me you’re not working for the CDC,” I said wearily. “I’m getting a trifle tired of them jabbing their noses in all the damn time. It’s like being in an American spy movie, only somehow the doctors have taken the jobs that should have belonged to the CIA.”
“No,” she said. “I went through their base level recruitment program, but they refused to give me a field position because of my leg. I wouldn’t have expected the largest medical research organization in the world to be a bunch of ableist assholes, but there you are. Sometimes the world doesn’t live up to your expectations.”
“That’s the truth,” I said. “Who do you work for, then?”
“Someone I don’t feel like identifying by name while we’re still in here, and there’s a chance you could flip on me,” she said, with perfect calm. “I have access to your girl. I can get her out when I go. I can’t promise the same about your friend.”
“He’s my husband, actually,” I said.
Jill raised an eyebrow. “What happened to your whole ‘I’m a lesbian’ routine? Clive is not going to be happy if he finds out another man has a claim on you. And when Clive is unhappy, nobody around him gets to stay happy for very long.”
“I am a lesbian, and Audrey is the one I love, but Ben is the one I married when I needed a way out of Ireland,” I said. “I can’t go anywhere without him. I owe him too much. I wouldn’t be here if not for him.” I reached out and took Audrey’s hand, like I was trying to reassure her—or maybe reassure myself—that “here” was where I wanted to be. Oh, I could have done with a little less in the postapocalyptic warlord department, but we never get everything we dream of in this life. That would make things dull.
“You said your real employer would be very excited to meet me,” said Audrey. “I warned you Ash wasn’t going to go for leaving Ben behind. And I told you I’m not going anywhere without her.”
“This isn’t a choose-your-own-adventure salvation, all right?” said Jill. “This is a short-term, onetime offer that I am risking my own neck to make. I can get you out of here at the end of my assignment. I only have another two weeks to go, and then I’m a memory, and this place is just a bad dream.”
“So wait,” I said. “You’re offering to get me out, even though I seem like way too much trouble—especially given Clive’s interest in the contents of my pants—because Audrey won’t go without me, and you want Audrey. Probably due to her EIS connections, I’m guessing. You’re a real doctor. Whoever you work for must be one too, or they wouldn’t have been able to risk losing you. You’re looking for more data. Audrey represents data. Am I warm?”
“I told you Ash was proof that ‘Irwin’ wasn’t a synonym for ‘stupid,’” said Audrey mildly. She squeezed my hand. “We go together or we don’t go at all.”
“I swear, loyalty is going to get us all killed,” said Jill. She shook her head. “I don’t control where the work groups are assigned. I can’t set things up so you can talk to your friend. But I’ll try to pull him aside for an exam, and see whether he’s willing to risk it. Is there anything I can say that he’ll believe came from you? Any password or pointless in-joke that will buy me his attention?”
“Tell him the sunrise is beautiful over Newgrange this time of year,” I said. “It’s the truth, so there’s that going for it, and he’ll know it came from me.” Better still, he’d know it had come from me without my needing to be tortured. There were lots of things I might say while people were hurting me. None of them would be about the ancient monuments of Ireland—not unless it was in the context of where I was going to hide the bodies.
“All right,” said Jill. “I’ll do my best, but you may have to make a call as to whether your friendship is worth your freedom. Clive hasn’t lost many people from the Maze. It took us a year to plant me here, and I promise you that when I run, he’s going to tighten security to the point where you will never see the sun again.”
“Then we’d better act fast,” I said blithely.
Audrey and Jill exchanged a look before Audrey leaned up onto her toes and kissed my cheek, leaving her lips pressed there for a long moment. Finally, she dropped down onto the flats of her feet, and said, “I love you. Don’t be a hero out there. I want to get out of here together, all three of us. I’m tired of burying the people I care about.”
“You and me both,” I said. I tried not to think about Mat and Amber most of the time: Thinking about them meant remembering they were gone, and that we were never going to get them back, no matter what. I’d seen death before. I didn’t know anyone who had lived past the age of eighteen who hadn’t. But I had never lost people I cared about so deeply, and it still hurt. I was starting to suspect it always would.
“Audrey, you wait here,” said Jill. “I’m going to get Ash back to her work group. If anyone comes in while I’m gone, tell them I have you monitoring my vitamin D stores, due to recent pilferage. Try not to sound accusatory. They’ll fill that in themselves.”
“Got it,” said Audrey. She leaned up and kissed me one last time
, this time full on the mouth, before pulling reluctantly away. She was only doing it so I would be willing to leave. I knew that, and yet my heart ached anyway, even as I had to fight not to reach out and hold her.
Watching the door swing shut and block her face from view was one of the hardest things I had ever done.
Jill and I walked silently back down the halls, this time moving from isolation into greater population density. I would have needed to be blind or oblivious to miss the tension in her shoulders, or the way her eyes darted from side to side, taking in every aspect of the space around us. She was waiting for something to go wrong, that much was clear. I’d seen that posture before, on Irwins who knew things had gotten too quiet while they were distracted. I just wasn’t sure what she thought was going to happen.
Then Clive loomed out of an open doorway, filling the hall in front of us, and I no longer needed to question what she might be frightened of. The most terrifying thing in the world was standing right there, brows raised in seemingly innocent question, eyes cold enough to make it clear that there was nothing innocent about him.
This was the man who’d hurt Audrey. Who’d ordered Amber killed. I wanted to kill him for what he’d done. I wanted to run like hell and never look back. The conflict was enough to turn my stomach.
“Funny thing, doc,” he said. “I went by the liquor closet to check on my new pretty thing, see how she was settling in, and she wasn’t there. But Catherine was more than happy to tell me about how you’d swept through and carried my pretty thing away. I checked her records. You said she’d already been given all her vaccinations, and she’s not due for a physical. So what are you taking my toys for?”
The skin around Jill’s eyes tightened, a slight, involuntary betrayal of her panic. Whoever had been willing to send her here and risk her life hadn’t considered that some people are just shitty liars. There’s no two ways about it. “I don’t suppose you’d allow for doctor-patient privilege?” she asked.
Clive’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, now you’re just asking for it,” he rumbled.
“Um, actually, I am,” I said. Clive’s head swung around as he transferred his gaze to me. I broadened my brogue and spoke faster as I said, “I’m asking for it, not her. I asked her not to tell anyone. I was embarrassed, and it’s been a while since I’ve had reliable access to a doctor, and I didn’t want the other girls to make fun of me. Not that they’re nasty or anything, I mean, they sort of are, because I’m new so they’re standoffish and everything, you know how girls are…”
“Sweetheart, I like you, and I’d like to get to know you a great deal better, but that doesn’t mean you somehow get access to a dimension where I am possessed of infinite patience.” Clive stepped closer to me, looming like a mountain in my path. It was just this side of terrifying.
I swallowed hard, and asked, in a squeaky whisper, “Do you promise not to get mad if I tell you?”
“No. But I promise I will get mad if you don’t.”
“Um.” I slanted a glance at Jill. I didn’t need to fake my concern, just magnify it until it seemed like borderline panic. Returning my attention to Clive, I said, “We were on the road for sort of a long time, and we tried to keep clean, but hygiene wasn’t a top priority, and my, um, bits were, you know, starting to itch, and…”
“Are you saying you had a yeast infection?” he asked.
My cheeks flared red. It was nice to know that certain unwanted aspects of my upbringing—like my tendency to blush any time a man mentioned my genitalia—could still come in handy. “Yes,” I said. “I didn’t want to tell you, because well, you’re a man, and men don’t always want to think about that sort of thing.”
“Real men aren’t that easily disturbed, sweetheart.” Clive reached out and cupped my chin in his hand. It was an almost tender gesture, for all that it was intensely proprietary; he wasn’t just offering comfort, he was reminding me that out of all the men in the world, he was the only one allowed to touch me. “I’m sorry you were all itchy and sad. Did the doc take care of it for you?”
“She gave me a pill, and some ointment that I put on my, um, you know, and I’m supposed to go see her again in a week, to make sure everything is healing up okay.”
Clive glanced to Jill, who nodded. She was doing a better job of hiding her relief than she had of hiding her dismay, maybe because we weren’t out of the woods yet.
“It should clear up easily, but I want to keep an eye on it, just to be sure,” she said. “Those infections can cause extreme discomfort, and that sort of thing is disruptive.”
“Not to mention painful,” said Clive. He looked back to me, giving my chin a squeeze before he let me go. I took a half step backward, fighting the urge to scrub at my skin until all traces of his touch were eliminated. “I understand why you might have thought you were doing the right thing. Some men are awfully squeamish about perfectly natural things.”
I relaxed a little more. “Yeah, that’s—”
His open hand caught me across my right cheek, hard enough that my head snapped to the side before gravity caught me and pulled me to the floor, where I landed in a heap of limbs and agonizing pain. I raised a hand to feel my jaw, tracing the spot where the skin was already hot and swollen.
Clive loomed over me, and there was nothing of kindness or sympathy in him now. This man was not my friend. He was my jailer, and hoped to one day be my lover—but that wasn’t the right word, was it? The stallion doesn’t love the mare. He only mounts her. He hoped to one day be my master, and anything more than that was just so much romantic nonsense.
“Never lie to me again,” he said, in that same calmly measured tone. “I don’t care if you have diarrhea so bad you can’t feel your ass, when I ask you what’s wrong, you tell me. I am an understanding man. I am a patient man. I am a man who knows that we are all lucky enough to be in the possession of bodies—beautiful, temperamental bodies that sometimes do things we didn’t expect. But I am not a man who can forgive liars, or those who sneak around behind my back. Do we have an accord?”
“Yes.” I didn’t have to work to whisper this time: My voice refused to rise above a harsh rasp. I just had to hope Clive was cocky enough to take my fury for regret.
“Good,” he said. He turned to Jill, who flinched. He sighed. “I’m not going to strike you. You did a doctor’s duty, and I should be grateful. I will be reducing your rations for the next three days, to remind you of who’s in charge here. Nothing more than that. You can relax, doc, and you can treat her again next week. I want to be sure that nothing harms my newest guest.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“The CDC’s been sniffing around. Not close enough to worry about, but close enough that if you fuck with me, I’ll leave you for them to find. In pieces. Maybe that’ll send them a warning about getting underfoot.” He turned back to me. “Feeling better?”
“Yes, sir,” I squeaked, and my voice was so much like Jill’s that I was ashamed.
He knew it, too. He laughed as he turned and walked off down the hall, moving with the calm, self-satisfied stride of a man who knew exactly what he wanted out of life, and was confident in his ability to get it. I stayed where I was until he had gone around the corner. Then, slowly, I pushed myself back up to my feet and stood. My knees were shaking as the adrenaline began draining from my veins, leaving me feeling weak and terrified.
“Still want to wait for your friend?” asked Jill in a low voice.
“More than ever,” I said. “We can’t leave him here.”
“Then we’re going to have to move,” she said. “Come on.” She resumed her passage back down the hall. There was nothing I could do but follow her.
Translated from the Cantonese
I am expected to keep notes as part of my medical practice. No one reads them. No one reviews them. They are slipped into patient files and ignored, not consulted even when someone who has been seen before is brought in for a new consultation. The senior doctor here, a man named Cow
ell, sees all the patients with chronic conditions, I think because there’s little chance he’s going to lose one of them unexpectedly. The man is a coward. There’s nothing wrong with cowardice, under the right conditions. Here, it means that everyone who is not suffering from a slipped disk or sciatic pain is offloaded onto myself or Dr. Benson—Jill. She has been here a year now, and is finally afforded a small amount of self-determination in what patients she takes. The expectation seems to be that she, like he, will filter out those who are least likely to devour her, and leave the remainder for me. Junior doctors do not last long in this setting. Perhaps that is why I am expected to keep notes. But no one has said I must keep them in English, and as no one else here reads Cantonese, I feel I can write freely. Maybe someday these papers will be found, long after I am gone, and some peace can be offered to my family.
Aislinn is alive, as is Ben. Both of them have been put with work crews and set to slaving for the man who keeps us here. Dr. Cowell speaks highly of him, calling Clive a “visionary” and claiming that without him, all human life in this part of the state would have been extinguished long ago. I do not get the feeling, speaking to the good doctor, that he has been outside this compound in more than a decade. His is the fear of a man who saw the world burn, and did not dare to stay and help put out the embers. I would feel sorry for him, were he not so comfortably complicit in what happens within these walls. So long as the fire is not for him, it seems he has no concern with who is wounded.
We have to get out of here. We have to avoid the poison promise of the firebreak, and remember: This is not the world for us.
—From Wen the Hurly Burly’s Done, the blog of Audrey Liqiu Wen, July 6, 2040 (unpublished)
Twenty
The girls on my work crew were still in the liquor room. They shot me suspicious looks when I came back in. A few smirked at the bruise blooming on my cheek, apparently content with the mischief their tattletale ways had wrought. I wanted to hate them for what they’d done. I couldn’t work up the energy. Clive had me shaken and cowed after one encounter in the hall and one show of force. How many encounters had these women suffered through? How many times had the hand risen for them? I couldn’t hate them for being the victims he’d trained them to be. I couldn’t save them either. Maybe there was a time when I would have thought leaving them behind was punishment enough, but if that was so, then I hated the me who would have felt that way. She had no charity.