Savage Drift

^{CHAPTER TWELVE} JOSIE

“Took you long enough, but you got the mess cleaned up,” Venger says.

As if he could see the spot anymore in the dark night. As if the spot hadn’t dried up two hours ago.

The last shift had returned from dinner. The nine o’clock bell had rung.

“Get on back to your room, now,” he orders me. “Lights out in a few.”

I can’t get up, not at first. My joints are too sore, too cold.

He drags me to my feet, and even then, I can’t get my knees to firm up and support my weight.

Venger releases me and I stagger, trying not to fall over.

A little spark of conscience must have caught in his black, cancerous heart because his eyes flicker to mine, and away.

“Maybe this seems uncalled for to you,” he says. “But everyone who saw you cleaning here knows I won’t take disobedience from anyone, man, woman, or child.”

There’s nothing you can say to a man so stupid he thinks that publicly punishing a fifteen-year-old girl will earn him respect in people’s eyes.

And I have bigger things to think about.

There is a curfew and everyone is supposed to be locked in their rooms after 9 p.m. And they usually are. But since the riots, some of the doors don’t work right.

There is a chance I am about to run into some animals in the Men’s hall.

Venger unlocks the front door for me and holds it open.

I guess I hesitate.

“Go on,” he says. “They’re all locked up for the night.”

“But some of the locks are broken,” I say.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Venger grabs my arm and pushes me through into the vestibule.

In the front hall, where the co-eds had once checked their mail and gathered to watch live events on the bigtab, two skanky-looking guys are squatting against the wall, trading a cigarette back and forth.

Venger pushes me in and says, “You two leave this girl alone—she’s just crossing through.”

They look up at me. One of them smiles.

“Yes, sir,” says another one. I see he’s missing his two top teeth. I edge toward the hallway as Venger turns to leave.

If these are the only two guys out—I can outrun them…

They wait until Venger is gone.

The skinny creep opens his mouth. I expect him to say something ugly to me.

Instead he yells, “RABBIT! Rabbit on the hall!”

My heart starts hammering and the adrenaline pumping. My joints instantly lubricate. Muscles ready to spring. O blood coming to my rescue.

Thank you, biological warfare compounds—the sports-enhancement energy shot that I carry in my DNA now and forever.

I take off at a sprint down the hall.

The two behind me come lumbering along like snarling undead.

“Rabbit on the hall!” the one repeats.

Most of the doors are locked, and inside I hear the men shaking the levers, trying to bust free.

But there are some doors open and several men come lurching from their rooms in front of me.

One of them is sweating and bald, and he works his huge hands like I am already in them.

“Easy now, girly,” he coos.

“Leave her alone,” says a man, coming out of another room in front of me. “She’s just a child.”

“Shut it, Patko,” one of the men behind me snarls.

The man named Patko grabs the smaller of the two men in front of me and that is my moment to push forward.

Two from behind, one from in front, and another coming, now, down the hall—they swarm me.

The bald guy. Elbow to the gut. Stomp down on shin.

Wired, bug-eyed loser from front hall. Bash his nose in. Blood spurting out.

A bare-chested skinny maggot reaching for me and catching hold of the waistband of my pants.

He pulls me into his body, pressing his groin to my backside. Men swarming behind him and dragging me back.

I shift my hips and grab the maggot’s male parts and pull hard.

He screams and falls. I turn and a hand is holding me. Pry myself loose and scramble over bald-headed giant on the floor in front of me.

Released, I hurl myself forward, almost to the stairs, almost.

Then out comes Brett, the teenaged Union Man, ahead of me. God help me, ahead of me and I brace myself to hit him with my body.

He smiles and steps aside.

“Go, Josie, go,” he says as I fly past. I slam into the stairwell door.

It is locked, it is locked, it is locked, of course, it is locked.

Now I will die, hopefully quickly, but suddenly the door opens.

Mario and Lori are there and they pull me through and slam the door behind me. Somebody’s hand is in it, and a foot, and they slam it again, harder, and those parts are withdrawn and the door locks closed.

Lori pulls me to her, sobbing, and we sink to the ground.

Mario and Lori help me upstairs.

Adrenaline spent now, I am like a rag doll.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” Lori is on repeat.

“That SOB,” Mario fumes. “He set you up—that monster!”

“I don’t know,” I say. Someone had hit me in the jaw, I am realizing. It is sore.

We get to our room. The kids are all waiting at the door.

They see me and burst into tears.

“I’m sorry, Josie, I’m so sorry,” Aidan cries and hugs me. Heather and Freddy join in.

“Stop. Stop!” I growl. “Don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t! Get OFF me!”

It is too much. Their embraces are too much. Fear grips me—I’ll suffocate—I will hurt the children.

I push them away.

“Don’t get attached to me. Understand? I don’t care about you and I don’t want you. Any of you!”

I don’t look at their stupid faces to see how they feel.

I am dead, don’t they see it? I am dead meat. I am bait. I am a rabbit, tossed to the wolves to keep them at bay.

I don’t want HELP. From a bunch of KIDS?

I pull away from all of them, even kind, loyal Mario and shut myself in the bathroom.

I run water in the tub.

Sometimes there is hot. Usually there is at least warm.

Tonight there is hot and that means steam. Hallelujah.

I take up our shard of soap. I am going to use some. I am going to use my share of lather tonight.

I realize I am shaking and I sit down on the toilet before I fall down.

“Hey!” and a rap at the door.

“Leave me alone,” I say.

I feel bile in my throat. I make myself slow my breathing.

“Yeah, yeah. I know, you’re too tough to need help. And none of us is allowed to talk to you or try to help you or even like you,” Mario quips. “But you need to see something.”

I open the door a crack.

“What?”

He slides me a quartered sheet of newsprint.

THE MONUMENT 14, reads the title. It is a letter to the editor.

They made it.

I am glad for the running water because I cry.

I feel joy for them and I miss them and I feel sorry, so deathly sorry for myself and I feel angry at myself for feeling so sorry for myself.

I am presumed dead. My name is set down from theirs. Separated. Of course it is.

I remember our times in the Greenway. All the funny things the kids would do. How Chloe was always pissing off the other kids and how small and precious the twins were. Max’s stories and Ulysses’s front-toothless grins. And I cry to be missing being locked in a superstore.

I hadn’t known how good I had it before we got locked in. And I hadn’t even known how good we had it when we were locked in.

Now my whole life before the clanking shut of the gates around the Virtues seems like a fairy tale.

I cry at Alex’s voice, laying out the story like a little salesman. Trying to get the editor of the paper to bite.

Alex would have known the letter was the best way to find their parents.

Since we have no TV, no radio, here at Mizzou, newspapers are like money. They are circulated, coveted, borrowed, and lent. It must be so in all the camps.

And have they found their parents by now? I cry for that, too.

Have they all met up with their parents and I am stuck at Mizzou?

Dead. Alex presumes I am dead.

I reach out of the tub and across the floor to my filthy jeans. I reach into the pocket and take out Niko’s note.

I read it one last time.

Then I tear it to confetti.

I put my hands into the water and open them up, letting the pieces float out into the water.

I am lost, Niko. I pull my head under the water. I am lost to you forever.

The bits of paper rise to the top. Confetti scum.

My knees bleed into the gray tap water and I cry like the stupid orphan I am.