Vision In Silver

CHAPTER 5

Thaisday, Maius 10

The girl stumbled along the side of the road, looking for something, anything, she recognized from the binders filled with training images.

Highway. Two lanes, a wide strip of grass called a median, and two more lanes with cars going in the opposite direction.

Here, the keepers had said. This medicine will make you feel good.

It had made her feel good; almost as good as the euphoria. She and the other girls had floated while being packed into a horse trailer. They’d stopped and started many times during the night, and each time they stopped, a girl was left by the side of the road.

The farm is closed, the keepers said when some of the girls cried and begged to go back. Can’t afford to keep you anymore.

She’d seen something or heard something when they made the last cut, something she needed to remember. So important to remember. But she was so big and so tired and so alone out here. She’d never been alone except in her cell, and that didn’t feel like being alone because she knew there were girls in the other cells all around her and the keepers were always present and always checking on her.

No one here now.

Too many images, too many sounds. They beat at her—fists made of images and sounds. Belly too big, too awkward. Hurting. She tried to tell them about the hurting when they led her from the trailer, but the keepers didn’t listen.

The farm is closed. You have to go. Then the keepers said the last, and most frightening, thing. If the Others find you, they’ll kill you and the baby. They’ll tear open your belly and eat the baby right out of you.

Needed to find people, find the farm, find . . . something.

Police? No. Police wouldn’t help the girls at the farm. That’s why the place was a secret. When girls were taken away by the police, they were beaten so they would lose the babies. The keepers said so.

She stumbled on the gravel that made up the shoulder on this side of the highway. Taking awkward steps to avoid falling, she ended up in the right-hand lane. She saw the big truck approaching and took a step toward the shoulder.

Images of people and highways crowded her mind. Images of animals and highways crowded her mind. A word under the images of dead animals: roadkill.

She would stand on the shoulder of the highway and wave. Maybe the people in the truck would stop. Maybe they would give her a ride and take her back to the farm. Her belly hurt more and more. Rhythmic hurting. She needed to get back to the farm because rhythmic hurting meant something.

A blast from the truck’s horn scared her. Had to move out of the way, had to . . .

She heard howling. Terrible howling.

The Others were coming! They would find her and . . .

She ran straight into the path of the truck. As it hit her, she remembered that something from the last prophecy—the woman’s voice saying, “Don’t! It’s not too late!”

And then it was too late.