Fred and Barney, which meant that Larry and Curly would be making the evening rounds.
Barney glanced down at the clipboard he held in his hands and thumbed through the pages with bored detachment.
“Says here her last period was two weeks ago.”
Fred nodded and propped his sawed-off broomstick against the wall.
“Assume the position, Hips.”
In the beginning, she’d fought. She’d scratched and bit and kicked and ripped out clumps of hair. She’d been beaten until it hurt to take a breath, had been held down and forced to take part in the routine no matter how much she squirmed and writhed. She’d had breakfast and dinner withheld. Even though it was the temperature and consistency of warm puke, it was still food… and she’d gotten tired. So tired of the purple and green bruises, of trying to sleep when it felt as though her ribs had been kicked by a wild mule. No matter how hard she fought the result was always the same. Donnely had been right: it was much easier just to cooperate.
And so it was that she closed her eyes, bent over in a wide-legged stance, and gripped her ankles. She imagined that she was back in her little apartment: Lady Gaga was on the radio and Jeremy was bitching about some cock-knocking camper who’d just picked him off three times in a row. Outside, an ice cream truck called to children with its pied piper jingle and the scent of curry drifted from the Singh’s apartment next door.
She tried not to let the cold glass of the rectal thermometer shatter the illusion as it invaded her body, tried to convince herself that she was only gritting her teeth because Jeremy had launched into another curse-laden tirade against the sniper who’d become the bane of his existence.
The DJ on the radio was calling for sunny skies with a ten percent chance of precipitation; but then his voice melded with Barney’s nasal whine as she felt the thermometer glide out of her most secret of places.
“Congratulations, Hips… you’re ovulating.”
She heard one of them crossing the room, cursing beneath his breath as he picked up the waste bucket with a slosh.
“Hard to believe someone so pretty can smell so damn bad. Shit.”
She kept her eyes closed as she stood upright, continued envisioning her apartment, the potted plant by the door, the opening notes of
It had been Fred complaining about the bucket. Which meant Barney was currently bringing in the gruel that passed as breakfast. As if on cue, the smell of the meat and vegetable slop overpowered the curry of her dreamworld.
“Eat up, Hips. You’re gonna need your energy.”
They both laughed as if they’d heard the joke the DJ had just made about lesbians, potpourri, and open cans of tuna. And then her door creaked shut, there was the click of the lock, footsteps, and the entire scene replaying itself in Scar’s cell.
She bit her bottom lip and tried to take a long, slow breath but the air seemed to stick somewhere in the back of her throat.
She knew what that meant. Within an hour, there would be a stream of men coming through her cell. Each one having his way with her. Each one filling her with millions of tiny swimmers, some of which were destined to trickle down thighs that would soon feel raw and stingy. For the next few days, she would know practically every man in The Garden. Multiple times. Some would border on brutality with their savage thrusts and the twisting of her nipples; others would behave as if this were simply another chore, no different than cooking the slop or slaughtering the cats which went into it. A select few would be shy and apologetic, each telling her that she had to understand that there was a greater good.
They had to repopulate the world after all. They had to outnumber the dead. To have children who would grow into soldiers. To keep the gene pool as diverse as possible.
Within a few months, her fate would be decided. If their seed didn’t take purchase, if her belly didn’t begin to balloon out and her monthly flow come to end, then she would be declared barren. She didn’t know exactly how it would be done, but the end result would be the same: she would end up on the other side of this cell, in the darkness with the other rotters, just another subject for The Tree of Life to experiment on.
She opened her eyes and saw their hands reaching through the bars of the wall’s window.
Flaky skin, some deteriorated to the point that strands of muscle could be seen beneath patches that had been eaten away by time. They grabbed and grasped with mindless enthusiasm, seeking purchase that would never come.
But the living
To them, she was nothing more than an incubator, just another breeder in a long row of nameless women.
She walked over to the hands, keeping just out of reach and inciting them into a frenzy with her presence.
Those men had killed Jeremy. Had killed Mama.
They’d locked her up and humiliated her on a daily basis.
Raped her countless times all in the name of procreation.
And they’d kill her, too, if she didn’t produce a child soon. But what if she did? Nine months of respite? Nine months of being in the maternity wing before being transported back to this dingy cell? Wouldn’t it be worse then? Knowing that there was better food, more comfortable quarters with no chance of beatings for fear of damaging the fetus? It would all begin again. The daily inspections. Assuming the position. The monthly violations.
The hands were so close that she could see the little black specks beneath what was left of the fingernails. They clutched at the air, seeming to squeeze invisible stress balls with sheer abandon.
Even now Donnely, and others like him, were probably out there. Scouring the countryside. Searching for fresh stock. For new victims, for more women to defile.
How long would this go on?
“No more.”
Her voice was a soft whisper but was filled with more resolve than the loudest shout.
She could still fight back. She could bring the entire Garden crumbling down, could utterly destroy all they’d worked so hard to build. And it would serve the bastards right.
She extended her hand quickly before she had a chance to lose her nerve. Thrusting it into the darkness, through the bars on the little windows, squeezing her eyes shut.
It didn’t hurt as badly as she thought it would. The bite was quick and felt no different, really, than the time she’d been nipped by the neighbor’s chow as a kid. Wrestling her arm free from the rotter’s weak grasp she immediately wrapped the open wound in the hem of her dirty smock and applied pressure. Blood blossomed on the fabric like a rose in a dirty field of snow, but it had been nothing more than a flesh wound. Within fifteen minutes, the blood had clotted and she licked the iron tasting flecks from the tip of her finger. If anyone bothered to ask, she’s simply say she’d jabbed a splinter from the door into it. But no one would. She knew this as surely as she knew the contagion was flowing through her veins, poisoning her healthy cells with the infection of the walking dead.
“Bring it on, fuckers!.” She shouted so loudly that her vocal cords felt strained with the words. “Bring it fucking on!”
At the same time she heard another voice, this one echoing through the corridors of her mind instead of the hallway with its series of cells and captives: it was the voice of Donnely, culled from her memory.
“Did you know that any exchange of bodily fluids will do the same damn thing? You kiss someone who’s infected, for example, and get even the smallest amount of spit in your mouth and you’re done for.”
So let them come. Let the parade of rapists begin. She would spread her legs and would welcome them into her body, would take every single man in the colony if they sent him. She would exchange bodily fluids with each and every one and let them have their way.
She would have her revenge.
From down the hall she heard a door swing open. A male voice doing an off-key rendition of Snoop Dogg’s
Laying back on her sleeping bag, she closed her eyes and waited for him to enter her cell.
