MY FACE FEELS like it was beaten mercilessly.
Oh, right. It was.
I can barely touch it without wincing, and it’s hard for me to open my eyes, though I was able to see long enough to notice the light coming through the doors at the end of the corridor. It’s the sun coming in through the east entrance.
Morning.
I had been knocked out cold in the mess hall and now I’m on the floor of my cell. It’s doubtful I was seen by someone in the infirmary. It’s doubtful there is an infirmary here at all.
As for the pain, I can obviously manage. I just hope there aren’t more severe, permanent injuries I don’t know about yet. I sit up, my head pounding. A deep breath escapes my lips, and I keep my eyes shut like I’m about to go into a deep meditation.
I focus on the areas where the pain is the worst. My face. The top of my head. My left ear. Slowly, the sharp pain begins to dull, numbness pouring over me as though from a pitcher of cold water. I’m able to breathe more easily. I can open my eyes without wincing. The morning light in the corridor doesn’t split my head with the intensity of an ax.
This is my gift. I can move around. Talk. Breathe. I can do what I need to do easily, though my injuries are not healed. The gift, wherever it came from, can be a dangerous one. It would be easy to will my pain away and ignore a contusion or laceration that could potentially kill me. It could save (and has saved) my life, though. If the pain of a broken leg would hinder me from getting to safety, my ability to ignore it would allow me to move. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t further damage my leg by running on it, but in some cases it would be worth the risk.
Now, it’s just difficult to keep my right eye open because of the swelling. I wish the cell had a mirror so I could see the extent of the damage.
It’s difficult to remember what happened yesterday. I was sitting alone and slurping my broth. Then I was approached by two men. Twins. One was named Alex. I didn’t get the other’s name. They talked to me, then jumped me for no reason.
I know the reason. I just happened to be in their vicinity, and they needed to assert their power. To me, that’s less disturbing than the lack of response from the guards, though I can’t be sure if they intervened or not. Judging by the way I felt before I numbed my whole head, it at least took the guards a while to stop the attack.
I imagine I will run into the twins again—something I don’t want to have to contend with while I’m trying to figure out a way to escape.
A banging noise along with a drawn-out echo sounds through the corridor followed by footsteps that gradually grow louder.
I stand to my feet and lean against the cell wall, not wanting to draw attention to myself, but it seems my efforts are in vain. Two guards flanking a man stop in front of my cell. The man’s wrists are handcuffed in front of him, a chain dangling between his legs. He looks older than me, his head newly shaven with droplets of blood beading on his scalp. Thin red streaks slither down his neck from a close razor shave.
The cell door opens and one of the guards wordlessly releases the prisoner from his chains. The man steps into the cell and the door shuts.
“You’ll start work after lunch,” the guard says through the bars. He looks at me. “I’m surprised you’re even alive, much less standing.”
A response isn't necessary. The guard chuckles at me and walks away from the cell.
Looking at my new cellmate, I feel nervous, but only because of the guard yesterday talking about him being a monster. The man doesn't look ferocious other than for a scar running down his face from his ear to his chin.
“What happened to you?” the man says walking over to the bottom bunk and plopping down.
“Got beat up,” I say.
“That much is apparent,” he says. He slowly winks his right eye, his face almost making a grimace when he does it. “Know who did it?”
I shake my head. “I think one was named Alex. They were twins.”
A look of recognition spreads across his face, then another wink. A twitch or a tick. “Ah, the twins, yes. It's too bad you're on their radar.”
“Am I still?”
“Probably. They like to target a newcomer whenever there's a new batch. The bright side is, whoever they were terrorizing before will probably get some reprieve.”
“When's the next new batch?” I ask, sadly hoping for a busload of newcomers today.
“Hard to say. Before your lot, it had been two months. Before that, two weeks.”
I have to be on my guard a little better if I plan to survive two months of targeting.
“Alex is the quiet one,” he says. “Carver is the loudmouth.” He grunts. “That boy has a fire in him. Only gets quenched with violence. Some say they aren't even prisoners because the guards let stuff like this happen.” He motions toward me when he says this. “Theory is they are just undercover guards.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
He shrugs. “Doesn't really matter either way. No one trusts them, and they don't trust anyone but each other. I started working with them once, thinking they would be an asset in an escape. I finally came to the conclusion that it wasn’t a good idea.”
A moment passes in silence. So much to take in. So much to think about, yet so few answers.
“Your name is Rusty?” I ask.
“That's what they call me,” he says, his right eye shutting. His lip curls at the top when he does it.
“A guard yesterday talked about you like I should be afraid of you.”
“What you should be afraid of is a concussion,” he says. “With that much of a beating I don't know how you're sitting up talking to me.”
“I'm all right.”
Rusty sits up on the bed and scoots toward the edge. “You a runner, a criminal, or a rat?”
I swallow slowly. “I don't know what you mean.”
“Well, if you're a runner, then you were just picked up trying to get out of the Containment Zone. If you're a criminal then you actually deserve to be here. Murderers, thieves, you know, people like that. But if you're a rat, that means you're a regular inmate, but you've been placed here to learn inside information so you can report it to the warden. Lots of perks to being a rat, but the inmates here will gut you the moment they find out.”
“If that's true then I wouldn't tell you if I were a rat, would I?”
“You could be a rat and not know it yet,” he says. There's a wild spark in Rusty’s light brown eyes. It's the look of a man who has been here far too long and is desperate to get out.
“Well, I'm not a rat as far as I can tell, and I'm not a criminal.”
“Where’d you get picked up?”
“Outside some tunnels near the North Gate,” I tell him.
One of his eyebrows shoots up. “That far away?” He lets out a long whistle. “I didn’t even know they picked people up that far from Vulture Hill.”
“What sort are you?” I ask.
A grin forms at the side of Rusty’s mouth. “Criminal,” he says.
For some reason, I knew that would be his answer. There’s a look in the man’s eye, a wild look. It could be the result of years of living in horrible prison conditions or it could be because he’s a deranged killer.
“I’ve made it no secret I'm a thief and murderer,” he says. “Though I'm probably not as scary as the guard made you believe.”
“You were in solitary,” I say. “Is it because you killed someone?”
Spit flies when Rusty lets out a wheezing laugh. “You really don't know anything do you?”
It's difficult for me to stare at him with indignation with one eye swollen shut.
“I was put in solitary because they found me with a piece of string and a needle,” he says. “They tore the cell apart looking for contraband, then I was sent to solitary for a month.” He shrugs. “I suppose that’s not too bad a price to pay. They could have killed me for it.”
“For a string and a needle?”
“Warden Black likes to make dramatic examples,” he says. “I have to say, though, even I was surprised when he said I would be in the hole for a month.”
“What were you doing with a string and needle? Why would Warden Black consider that a threat?”
“Everyone’s looking for a way out of here,” he says. “Every person has his own method. If you’re not trying to escape, you’re suicidal. That’s the saying around here. You have anyone here or are you a loner?”
“Loner,” I say almost too quickly.
“That’s best,” he says. “It’s a lot easier to think about escape when it’s just you than trying to think of a way for yourself and someone else. Getting out alone? Probably never happen. Getting out and taking someone with you? Impossible.”
His reasoning would be a discouragement if I put any stock into what he says, but this is just another inmate with nothing to lose and everything to gain. If I can stay on his good side, he might be an asset.
“What about collaboration?” I ask. “Does anyone try to work together?”
“It depends,” he says. “Mostly, people go it alone because it’s hard to trust anyone. If I know Jim is going to make an escape attempt tonight, and telling a guard is going to get me extra bread for dinner, well, I feel bad for Jim. I may not be a rat, but if turning you in might benefit me somehow, I just may.” His eyes rest on me until another burst of laughter and spit flies from his mouth. “If you’ve found a way out of here, I want to know about it before the guards find out.”
There is something about Rusty that half makes me nervous, half puts me at ease. I can’t read him and I think that might be his aim.
He rubs his eyes with his palms. “You know, I don’t hate solitary like some people do, but getting used to the light is rough.”
“You’ve been in the dark?”
“For thirty days,” he says. “Pitch black except for when they give me a meal. Sometimes they skip a day or two. Figure I don’t need it, I guess, since I’m not working.”
Solitary sounds like the ultimate torture. Rip me to pieces, burn my skin, but don’t put me in a dark room for days and days.
“How do you stay sane?” I ask.
“Who says I’m sane?” he laughs in his wheezing way again, as if to reiterate that he most certainly is not sane.
“Seems like a harsh punishment for a needle and thread.”
“Well, it would have been worse if they figured out what I was doing with the needle and thread, but what I accomplished with it was giving myself hope. When you’re in that dark cell, all you have to cling to is hope. Yeah, they caught me, but they didn’t figure out what I was up to.”
I resist the urge to ask what he was up to for fear of being considered a rat. Besides, I don’t care what he was up to. Any plan he has of escaping doesn’t involve me. Even if he wanted my help getting out of Vulture Hill, he would never agree to help my daughter, too. And I’m obviously not going anywhere without Sky.
“What’s your job here?” Rusty asks, changing the subject.
“I don’t know. The paper just said I’m in sorting and that I need to see the cell block leader for more details.”
Rusty winces and shakes his head. “That’s rough. Well, I guess I can go ahead and say it was nice knowing you. You’ve been a splendid cellmate for the last four minutes.”
“What’s the job?” It has been a week of bad news and unfortunate situations. It doesn’t surprise me that the sorting crew is something difficult and dangerous.
“The one you don’t want,” he answers. “Though I can see the advantage of having it. You get access to some pretty good stuff. Might be our ticket out of here if you can survive long enough.”
Rusty seems to be half talking to himself when he says this. I can feel my skin flush. “What’s the job?” I repeat.
Rusty sighs and looks up at me, this time with what seems to be genuine concern. “Greyskins,” he says. “Your job is to wrangle the new greyskins and weed out the weak ones. It’s the most dangerous job in the camp.”
“I don’t understand.” I say the words, but as the seconds tick, I understand more and more, the dots connecting in a way they never have before.
I’m silent as Rusty paces the floor and tells me about how Vulture Hill is little more than a greyskin sorting facility. It’s the kind of place the government doesn’t want the common person to know about. Rusty explains his theory of the Containment Zone and how the entire 500-mile radius is a giant greyskin manufacturing ring meant to be used as a tool for keeping power everywhere else. That’s why no one can get out.
His words come out quickly and his mannerisms are disconcerting. He rubs at the back of his neck, hardly looking me in the eye as he talks. I would think he is a mad man if what he said didn't make sense—if I hadn't already come to the same conclusions already.
Everyone within the Containment Zone is meant to die. It’s just us who help facilitate the process. All of us were sentenced to death when the Containment Zone was created.
I knew all this. Sort of. I had never had at-length conversations about it. I had never dwelled on it a lot. I just knew I wanted to get my family out of here as soon as possible and I have failed miserably.
“Any idea how many greyskin shipments we get through this prison?” I ask.
“A lot. Couldn’t put a number on it, but it’s a lot. They come in, they go out. Except for the ones used as experiments and ones that aren't worth using at all.”
“What about prisoners?” I ask. “Are they ever forced to become one of those monsters?”
Rusty snorts. “That’s one of Warden Black’s favorite punishments. It’s not infrequent to see a poor soul in a cage in the yard. Going to and from the cafeteria or your job you see them getting sicker and sicker as the day progresses. You wake up the next morning and they’re growling at you, foaming at the mouth to get a taste of your skin. Their eyes are black, snot drips down their faces.”
I want to vomit. As disgusting as the stories about this place may be, they serve a useful purpose. They give me the motivation to find Skylar and get out of here. But if Rusty is right, that’s going to be impossible.
When the guards realize I’m not too beaten up to work, I’m told I’ve got a nice day ahead of me. I let one of the guards know that I’m supposed to see the cell block leader about my job, and in a few minutes, I’m chained at the wrists and led down a long hallway to an office.
Davis sits at a small desk in the corner of a dark room. He stands when I enter, but not out of respect. It’s to show me his large, bulging muscles and towering height.
“What happened to you?” he asks.
“Had a disagreement with a tray,” I tell him.
“Yeah, that happened last night,” he says. “You think you can work?”
“Yes.”
“You’re 3,333, right?” He looks down at his desk and sits, staring at a piece of paper in front of him.
“Yes.”
“Ah, right, sorting.” Davis looks up at me, his eyes going up and down.
“Anyone on this crew has to be in good shape,” he says. “You have to be strong. You have to be agile.” He shakes his head. “You don’t look like you can hold your own that well.”
“Yet, I’m standing here, ready to work,” I say. “I wouldn’t say no to laundry.”
I don’t really know what kind of attitude I should take here. I want to seem confident without being defiant. Having seen Davis beat someone to a bloody pulp already, I don’t want to be on this man’s bad side. Yet, here in his office, he seems nicer. Calm. Less like he needs to assert himself.
The room has no windows. No exit at all save for the door behind me. This office is set apart from the main corridor that houses the inmates, but it’s not far, and it is connected to the guard station. All this, precisely 230 paces from my cell.
“I’m supposed to assess anyone’s physicality and experience before they take on this kind of job,” he says. “We don’t care much if you live or die, but it’s a hard enough job that we like to keep experienced individuals in there. The fact that you’re coherent at all is impressive to me,” Davis says. “If you can last the next few days I think you’ll be a great asset to the sorting crew.”
I don’t know whether to thank him or to snarl. My expression easily hides behind the bruises and swelling.
Davis looks at the guards standing behind me.
“I think he will do for the vacant position at the west gate,” he says.
The guards nod and Davis looks back at me, smiling. “You have someone here?”
“No,” I say. “Is it common for inmates to have families here? You’re not the first person to ask me that.”
His smile widens. “Oh, yes. It works out nicely when there are families here.”
“How so?”
“People are happier. Harder to escape. Leverage for us.” He taps a finger on the side of his desk. “We always find out when someone is related.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah,” he says. “And it’s so much worse for the inmate if they’ve lied to us.”
“You kill them?” I ask. The question seems bold, but Davis doesn’t seem alarmed by it.
“No need for that,” he says. “No need for that at all.” He turns away from me and waves us away.
The guards grab me by the arms and pull me out of the room. It takes all the concentration I have to focus on my pounding head.
I didn’t think the prison camp could smell worse than it already did. Then I was taken to the west gate. My job wasn’t so much located at the gate per se. Instead, it’s the west gate region of the camp, which is little more than a field and a large warehouse with a loading dock. The gate itself is some distance away from the loading dock.
There are no greyskins within my view, but the potency of the rotting smell makes my eyes water. The hot sun only intensifies the scent in the air, and the guards on either side of me seem like they want to let me go as quickly as they can.
We are met by a man who wears the same inmate outfit as me, though streaked with mud and dark, dried greyskin blood. The man is shorter than me, thinner than me, but the muscles he does have are pronounced.
“This is Justin,” the guard on my right says. “He will be your crew leader.”
Justin nods at me, his eyes studying my bruises. “You sure he’s ready to be out here?”
“Boss says so,” the guard answers.
Justin sighs loudly and murmurs something to himself that I can’t hear.
“From what I understand, the twins did this to you?”
“Word gets around quickly here, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah it does,” Justin says. “Especially when you’re in charge of the twins.”
I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. “They’re on your crew?”
Justin shakes his head. “I’m Crew A. Booker is in charge of Crew B. The twins are on Crew B, but we often have to work with them.” He looks at both guards. “I don’t want to have to deal with conflicts all day. We already have to deal with greyskins. I can’t worry about inmates fighting inmates.”
A guard shrugs. “This comes from Davis. Nothing I can do.”
Justin clenches his jaw and breathes deeply again. It’s apparent that he has a position that affords him some respect from the guards. At least, enough respect to be able to question their orders, though not enough to override what they say.
A guard releases me from the chains, and the two of them walk away quickly, leaving me with Justin.
He looks me up and down again. “They really did a number on you,” he says. “They did that yesterday? How are you walking right now?”
With a lot of concentration.
Justin holds out his arms gesturing to the open field behind him. “Welcome to the worst job in the camp,” he says. “Hope you’ve got no delusions of making it out of here alive because chances are you won’t make it through the day, much less a week or a month. The average new worker makes it about a day and a half.”
I wish he was just making a joke, but the look on his face tells me otherwise. He turns slowly and stomps in the opposite direction as he beckons me to follow him.
“The job is pretty simple,” he says. “Truck comes in full of greyskins, unloads them into the holding bay, then we let them go into the field.” He points to a fenced in area beyond the loading dock. “From there, we determine which ones meet certain criteria. The ones that don't, we decommission and load onto a second truck, which is then taken to another field.”
“By decommission you mean kill, right?”
Justin shrugs. “We do what we can, but we see so many coming through it would be impossible to kill them all with the tools we have.” He shakes his head. “It's our job to weed out greyskins, and all we get are blunt weapons. No guns, obviously. No knives or long blades.” He looks at me over his shoulder. “You can see why it's so dangerous.” He waves for me to walk next to him. “We’re separating a bunch of healthy skins in the field right now.”
“Healthy?” I ask, lifting an eyebrow.
“Not already hacked to pieces or half rotten,” he says. “I guess fresher works too. The more recent they’ve been infected, the better.”
The thought is sickening.
I decide not to tell him that I would know better than anyone on how to look for a fresh greyskin. How many of them had been locked in my basement over the years as I performed tests on them? Never more than two at once, of course, but after a certain amount of testing, they were useless to me. This job wouldn’t be my first time to decommission greyskins.
However, when we get to the fence, my face drains of blood and I want to run away to a dark hole and hide. There has to be a hundred of them or more.
To the right, three trucks have dropped their ramps, and the greyskins are piling out. To the left, some twenty or so men hold them off with long wooden poles, each with a curved end to catch a greyskin at the neck. Next to each person with a pole is someone with a set of chains meant to subdue a greyskin.
In the middle of everything, however, is a group of about seven small pigs, fat but not too fat to run. Each of them squeals and sprints in a random direction. The ruckus of the pigs keeps the greyskin’s attention off the mostly silent men who mean to capture the healthy greyskins.
In one area, three men wrestle a greyskin to the ground. One man holds it down while another carefully chains its wrists behind its back. The last man fastens a chain around the greyskin’s head, sliding a metal bit into its mouth like a horse. Once the greyskin is secured, the three men let it go and it stumbles around the compound fighting as hard as it can to be released from its bonds. Now I can see that there are quite a few greyskins bound like this, unable to claw or bite a victim.
“The hard part is getting the chains on them,” Justin says. “Taking them off for their going away party is easy.”
“Won’t they attack once their chains are off?” I ask.
“Not if they’ve got something more interesting to go after,” he says, nodding toward the pigs.
Given what I know about this place and what I’ve heard, I have an idea about what Justin means when he says going away party. I am now part of the government’s operation of control. Where they get these new greyskins, I have no idea. I’m actually afraid to know the answer to that question. Where they go, I don’t know specifically, but I understand the premise. I understand that the leadership sets them loose on small villages and towns. Those townspeople think the attacks are random, but they aren’t. They wonder why they keep getting attacked and attacked. We must be in a hot zone, they’ll think. But it’s not the truth. The truth is, they are in the hot zone because greyskins were sent there. Because that town or village has resources that the government wants.
If the government takes the town by force, people will start an uprising. If the people go to the government and willingly hand over everything in exchange for protection, then the government has them in its grip forever.
Oh, if people outside the Containment Zone only knew about this operation! If they could see what was happening. Soon, there would be no government to fight, because the people would burn Screven to the ground.
I fear it will take too much time for that to happen. If the Screven government has a program set up like this, then it might already be too late. They are already too powerful to stop. The best we can do is escape. Escape and never look back.
As I watch the workers fight the fresh greyskins to the ground and realize that I will be down there to join them in a matter of minutes, I can’t help but think about Sky.
My thoughts are almost always on Sky. I pray she isn’t assigned to a job that involves greyskins. We are all here to eventually die, but surely someone has some compassion for a small girl and will give her a job washing dishes or even digging in a mine somewhere. Anything so long as she doesn’t have to be a part of something like this.
I look behind me toward the north part of the camp as though I would somehow be able to see my daughter walking in the distance. I would hope for a smile, something to let me know she was still all right.
I don’t even know if she’s still alive.