Chapter 4
Early the next morning, Elle dropped off some clothes and told Wendy to get ready. Matt had received permission to take her to the greenhouse.
Matt arrived just a few minutes after she changed. He knocked on the door, and then stuck his head in. “How are you feeling?”
The look of concern in his eyes almost caused Wendy to tell the truth.
“Fine.”
“Are you sure?”
Wendy tried a small smile. “I’m sure. Elle said we're going to the greenhouse.”
He grinned—which put an end to his questioning. “If you want to.”
“I want to,” Wendy said. She took a step forward then hesitated. She hadn't been outside this room since she’d been brought here, and although she needed to get a better idea of what this place was all about, she suddenly felt that safety only resided here, in this little spot.
Matt reached out and grabbed Wendy’s wrist and tugged her forward through the door. “Come on, before Elle comes and gives us a lecture.”
The invisible threshold of the door hit Wendy like the shock of a cold stream. Her heart sped up, and her body tensed. Her mind began thinking of three different ways she could get out of the hold Matt had on her wrist, and only one of them left him mobile enough to walk.
If Matt noticed her discomfort, he ignored it. He pulled her forward and they started down the hall. “We have two hours before we have to be back, so we need to hurry.”
Wendy's internal alarms started to wail. The hallway was deserted—lined with a handful of closed doors like hers. Most of the rooms were dark. The floor consisted of beige tile and the walls were dirty white. No pictures hung to provide a splash of color.
Matt looked down at her with a stern expression. “You have to promise to tell me if you're not feeling well. Elle and Doc will have my head if you come back in worse shape than when you left.”
“Okay.”
They moved down the hall, around a few corners until they came to a set of heavy metal doors. A card reader and a keypad hung on the wall nearby, but Matt simply pushed on the doors and they opened.
Before them stood a hallway almost twice as big as those in the medical section. Cinder blocks painted white made up the walls, while cracking, yellowing tiles that should have been replaced years ago lined the floor. Out here the air smelled musty.
“That was the medical wing,” Matt said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “It's not very big, but Doc has turned it into a real hospital.”
Matt spoke as if he'd given this speech a few times. “This is where most of the people here sleep.” He gestured at the doors lining the walls. Ahead of them two men emerged from a room, laughing. When they saw Matt they waved and said hello.
They kept walking and Matt kept talking. “Each person here has at least one assignment. This is where our electrical team is housed. They keep this place going, and are situated near the center of the complex so they can get anywhere quickly.” He pointed out where the farmers lived, the kitchen staff, those who ran the marketplace and about a dozen other occupations.
Wendy had to appreciate the organization.
“How many people do you have here?” Wendy asked.
“Almost three hundred.”
The resources alone to keep that many people fed, clean and healthy meant this place was big. She wondered how extensive the greenhouse was.
The hall ended, and as they turned a corner Wendy saw a bright light before her.
“This is the marketplace,” Matt said, leading her out onto a balcony. It overlooked a huge cavern, dotted with work stations, tables, booths, a large open space at one end. The space could easily hold five hundred.
“Wow,” she said.
“This is the social hub of the complex. A lot of the daily tasks get done here, and twice a week it opens up for business.” He gestured with a hand.
“Business?”
“Well, we don't have currency. No money,” he added.
Wendy nodded. She knew what that meant.
“We share everything we need.” He looked over the edge and pointed at a nearby table covered with shoes in various stages of old. “If you need a new pair of shoes, you just go ask Brach.”
Below, a grizzled man with long, blond hair was stacking shoes by size. Farther down the same aisle two women folded clothes. A machine shop took up the far corner. More booths than Wendy could count stood in a maze-like pattern. Dozens of people were already inside.
In the Den, they had also shared everything, but not on this scale.
“It'll be open in an hour or so. We'll come back for breakfast after we go to the greenhouse.” He led her over to a set of stairs and down onto the main floor.
Wendy took in the cavernous space. Smooth walls ran up to a rough ceiling. The stone floor shone in places where thousands of feet must have walked over it. Mismatched materials made up the tables and booths: wood, plastics, stone and even some metal. There were a lot of places to hide, and four ways out that Wendy could see from here. Good to know.
Wendy took a breath and inhaled the scent of tanned leather. “How long has this place been here?”
“I'm not sure. Before the Starvation, at least.” Matt led them through a corner of the marketplace, through a wide archway and into a low, squat hallway.
The smell of food filled the air, and Wendy's mouth started to water.
The hallway came to a T intersection. The sound of clanging metal on metal came from her left.
“The kitchen is right over there,” Matt said. “They're gearing up for non-rationed day.” He walked beside her, not going fast. He swiveled his eyes to look down at her every dozen steps or so.
Only every third light was on in this section of the complex. It was enough illumination to see by, but the slow, strobe effect caused Wendy's vision to blur. Faces that weren’t there swam before her eyes. She shook her head. Now was not the time for another meltdown. After a few steps, the vision faded. Wendy glanced at Matt and found he wasn’t watching her.
After two left turns, Wendy saw a bright light coming through a small window in a doorway. Just like the square of light that came into her room from the hallway, only much brighter.
“Here we go,” Matt said. A small pad with numbers on it sat nestled in the wall. Matt keyed in a five number code. A click sounded. Matt reached out, twisted the metal handle and pulled. He gestured for her to go first. His blue eyes sparked as if he knew a secret she didn't.
Wendy stepped through the door and into the large, bright room beyond.
The space had to measure sixty feet in each direction. Far overhead, a combination of skylights and plant growing bulbs provided the bright light she'd seen from the hallway. The floor remained tile. The walls looked like glass or plastic. Ten feet from the door, wooden boxes—six feet square and a foot high—were laid out in a grid pattern across the floor. Green and red and yellow leaves and stalks poked out of the boxes, reaching for the light coming from above.
The rush of air hit her, and Wendy inhaled the combination of stale, recycled air from her room, and the earthy tang of dirt and plants. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed the smell of outside. A deep breath pulled the scent in through her nostrils, filling her with a thousand memories of working and training in the woods.
“Do you like it?” Matt asked. The excitement in his voice was almost contagious.
Pelton had always said that smells held a close relationship to memories. He was right. The dark earth and the green leaves combined to bring back a sunny day so long ago Wendy hadn't even realized that she still remembered it.
Kenzie had decided it would be fun to climb the tallest tree they could find. Never one to be outdone, Wendy had taken up the challenge. They'd spent all morning getting to the top of a pine tree that shouldn't have held their weight. But kids didn't care about that stuff.
Their mother had come looking for them. A good thing too, because both girls had gotten stuck. Up was easy, down not so much.
It had taken three men and Wendy's mom to talk the girls back down. And in the end they'd had to get a blanket and had Wendy jump into it.
The feel of the wind through her hair, the scent of her mother as she had scooped Wendy up in her arms.
Wendy's throat tightened up. The weight of the memory caused her to stumble.
Matt's smile faded, and he placed a hand on her back. “Hey, are you okay?
She didn't like to think about her mother. Now she couldn't think about the rest of her family either. Too much pain.
“Do you want to sit down?” Matt asked.
Wendy nodded. It took her a second to get her legs working. Matt guided her to a nearby wood bench and they sat.
“It's always so quiet here in the mornings,” Matt said.
Wendy pulled her mind from sorrow and distracted it by asking Matt questions. “Do you come here often?”
“Sometimes. It's faster than going outside, and until the morning crew gets here, it's always quiet. A good place to think.”
“Do you grow crops here year round?”
“We do. It's the only way to keep fresh fruits and vegetables coming in all the time. If we don't, then people start to get sick.”
“Yeah, we had that problem too,” Wendy said.
“What was your home like?” Matt asked.
The innocent question roused Wendy's suspicions. More probing. But she'd already come up with the generalities she could share that wouldn't give them too much information.
“We were in the forest, up pretty high in the mountains, so our growing season was short. I never really worked with the growers, but I did help harvest a lot.”
Matt frowned. “Did you have problems with your food becoming corrupted?”
“Yes,” Wendy said. But the stuff in the small greenhouse they had mostly came out okay. It was true that she hadn't been involved with the growing, but she heard all of the reports. “We had a simple test that we could do to check it.”
“A test?” Matt shifted to face her more directly. “To check for the Starvation?”
“Yeah,” Wendy said. “I'm not sure what was in it, but I know we always checked every batch of food we cooked with or ate.”
“I'd love the list of ingredients,” Matt said. He rubbed his hands together.
Wendy knew exactly what was in the test, and she needed to get it all together so she could use it on the food here. She assumed if they'd wanted her to be a Skinny they wouldn't have bothered to save her. Which meant that the food she was eating now should be good. But what if it wasn't all good?
“So what do you grow here?” Wendy asked. Her legs had stopped shaking, so she stood.
Matt followed suit. “This room is separated into different areas. Right here are our underground vegetables. Over there we have tomatoes and peppers—stuff that grows on vines. Sort of." He started to walk while he pointed. Wendy tagged along, noting a few plants she didn't recognize.
“The bigger crops are on the other end.” Matt led her into the grid of plant boxes. Some had stalks and leaves that almost touched one another. The soft hiss of her shoulder brushing a leaf sounded as she negotiated between the larger plants.
“Back here we have some wheat. We tried rice, but it's hard to keep enough water on it.” Matt pointed to some larger boxes. “But we have had a great deal of success with barley and corn.”
Wendy's feet stopped moving, receiving a command from her brain before she consciously sent it.
“Corn?” Wendy asked out loud, before she meant to. Her mouth went dry, and she wanted to pull her shirt up over her nose.
“Yeah, it's over here.” Matt walked away from her.
Wendy didn't follow. Her feet stayed riveted in place.
In the ten years Wendy could remember at the Den, they'd never managed to get a strain of corn clean of the Starvation. Every single one had been poison. They'd even tried to get it to grow in the greenhouse, but in the end it started corrupting the other crops, so they gave up.
Corn was the first plant that had mutated. It had killed over half of the world's population.
Sweat coated the inside of Wendy's palms.
Why did they have it here? Corn only lead to one thing: Skinnies.
Which meant Wendy had been right. She was trapped with the people who had destroyed the Den and killed everyone she had ever loved.