At first, there was no answer, and I thought of Nina and Paula Noyer. I didn't want to think of them, but Doe and Tori Mora were 14 and 15—far from babyhood. If they weren't here, where were they?
Then a very small voice said, 'I'm here. Get off me.'
'I'm trying to get off you,' a stronger voice said. 'There's no room in here. I can hardly move.'
Tori and Doe, alive, and as well as the rest of us were. I shut my eyes and took a long, deep, grateful breath. 'Nina Noyer?' I asked.
She began to answer, then coughed several times. 'I'm here,' she said at last, 'but my little sisters ... I don't know what happened to them.'
'Mercy?' I called. 'Kassi?'
No answer.
'May?'
No answer. She couldn't talk, but she would have made a noise to let us know she was there.
'She had Kassia and Mercy with her,' Allie said. 'She's strong and fast. Maybe she got them away. She loved them like she gave birth to them.'
I sighed. 'Aubrey Dovetree?' I asked.
'I'm here,' she said. 'But I can't find Zoe or the kids ……….Zoe had all three of them with her.'
And Zoe had a heart condition, I thought. She might be dead, even if no one meant to kill her. Not knowing what else to do, I went on with my role call. 'Marta Figueroa?'
'Yes,' she whispered. 'Yes, I'm here, all alone. My brother.... My children--------- Gone.'
'Diamond Scott? Cristina Cho?'
'I'm here,' said two voices at once, one in English and the other in Spanish. Cristina's English was good now, but under stress, she still reverted to Spanish.
'Beatrice Scolari? Catherine Scolari?'
'We're here,' Catherine Scolari's voice said. She sounded as though she had been crying. 'Vincent is dead.' she said. 'He fell against a rock, hit his head. I heard them say he was dead.' Vincent was her husband and Beatrice's brother. He had only one arm because of an accident that happened before he joined us. He was, perhaps, more likely than most of us to be off balance when the gas collapsed him. But still...
'He might not be dead,' I said.
'He is. We saw him ' There were more sounds of crying. I didn't know what to say to them. All I could think was that maybe Larkin was dead too. And what about Bankole? I didn't want to think about death. I didn't really want to think at all.
'Channa Ryan?' I said.
'I'm here. Oh god, I wish I wasn't'
'Beth Faircloth? Jessica Faircloth?'
There was no sound at first, then in nearly inaudible whispers, 'We're here. Both of us are here.'
'Natividad?' I said. 'Zahra?'
'I'm here,' Natividad said in Spanish. Then, 'If they've hurt my babies, I'll cut their throats. I'll kill all of them. I don't care what they do to me.' She began to cry. She's strong, but her kids mean more than life to her. She had a husband and three kids. Now, they're all gone from her.
'All of our babies are gone,' I said. 'We have to find out where they're being kept and who's guarding them and... and what's going to happen to them.' I shifted, trying to get more comfortable, but that was impossible. 'My Larkin should be nursing now. Right now. We have to find out what we can.'
'They've put slave collars on us,' Marta Figueroa said in almost a moan. 'They took our kids and our men, and they put slave collars on us! What the hell more do we need to know than that?'
'We have to know as much as we can,' I answered. 'They're not killing us. They could have wiped us out. They separated us from the men and from the young kids, but we're alive. We have to find a way to get our kids back. Whatever we can do to get our kids back, we have to do it!' I felt myself falling toward hysteria, toward weeping and
