All of a sudden, I found myself at the top. I was in what we later called a cabin, three walls and a door, also open, the plain spreading out before me. I bounded forward and looked. It was the world.
It was daylight. The sky was grey, but not the lifeless grey of the bunker walls. Huge masses of subtle hues glided gently in a light breeze. I recognised them as clouds; they were tinged with pearl, lit from behind by the sun. A strange emotion choked me, more restrained and exquisite than the exuberance that had borne me up the stairs. I wished I could linger, but there were too many other things to discover. It was drizzling. Fate would have us emerge on a rainy day. Later, we realised that rain was rare in this season. I stepped forward, raised my face and arms to this extraordinary wetness, which I’d heard about but had been unable to imagine. A few drops fell onto my hands and I licked them, enthralled. My dress was soon soaked through and the breeze, light as it was, plastered it to my thighs, and I found that wonderful.
‘But where are we?’ asked a voice behind me.
It was a breathless Dorothy, supported by Anthea. They both looked around, and so did I. There was nothing but a gently undulating plain stretching as far as the eye could see, from one end of the horizon to the other.
‘We’re outside,’ I replied, laughing. ‘And there isn’t a single guard. They’ve all gone.’
‘We’re a long way from a town, there’s no sign at all of any housing. I’d always thought we must be near some big city,’ said Anthea.
Dorothy frowned.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it. This plain is vast, it’s unbroken. We are not in my country, you could always see mountains.’
Anthea seemed so puzzled and anxious that I felt sorry for her.
‘What does it matter?’ I said. ‘The main thing is that we’re outside, free, and there are no guards.’
The other women began to arrive, out of breath and stumbling, and we moved away from the cabin to make room. Soon, they were all there, looking around in amazement, trying to fathom where they were, repeating, one after the other, that they’d never seen anything like it, almost terrified at being in such a strange place. I couldn’t understand why they weren’t rejoicing wholeheartedly at the miracle of being outside, released from the cage, at seeing the sky and feeling the wind and the rain. They’d wanted something all their lives, but now they had it, they didn’t recognise it. Perhaps, when someone has experienced a day-to-day life that makes sense, they can never become accustomed to strangeness. That is something that I, who have only experienced absurdity, can only suppose.
‘I’m frightened,’ said Annabel.
They huddled together, a small, terrified group in the middle of an unknown land. After the familiarity of the cage, the forty women clung to one another, disorientated by the vast stillness from which nothing emanated.
‘What if they come back?’
I realised they were trying to justify their fear. We scanned our surroundings; all we could see was the stony plain where nothing moved except the scant grass gently swaying in the breeze.
‘We mustn’t stay here, we must leave, hide,’ said Annabel.
‘Go where?’ muttered Frances. ‘There’s nothing. Not a building, not a shelter, not a road, just …’
She looked at the small building from which we’d emerged.
‘Just this sort of cabin, in the middle of nowhere.’
‘We’re lost,’ said a voice.
There was a murmur of unfinished phrases, one picking up from where the previous speaker had trailed off, their words colliding and tumbling over one another. I suddenly lost my temper.
‘Then go back inside! The cage is still down there, if you’re so frightened of being outside!’
‘Oh, you and your …’ retorted Annabel, exasperated.
She stopped short. I think she was going to say insolence, or rebelliousness, but she quickly realised that I was right, that this panicking would get them nowhere. I tried to control myself too, for I sensed that an argument was brewing, and that would have given them an outlet for their anxiety and set them all against me. Anthea, who’d remained calm, backed me up.
‘The child’s right. We must think, and organise ourselves. I don’t understand where the guards have gone, or why they’ve disappeared, and I’m frightened too. It’s not long since they left the bunker and there’s no trace of them.’
‘Eleven minutes,’ I added, ‘since the siren went off –perhaps a little longer, because I lost track of time for a moment. It took us eleven minutes to open the door, get out and climb up the stairs.’
‘Eleven minutes? With a helicopter or small aircraft, that’s plenty of time for them to vanish from sight, I suppose. But what about us? We can’t disappear like that. To get over there, to the horizon, will take us a good two or three hours on foot. If they’re planning to come back and catch us, we’ll be captured in no time.’
‘Not me,’ said Annabel. ‘I’d rather die, I won’t go back. They can drug me as much as they like, I’m sure I could turn the most carefully dosed drug into a lethal poison.’
‘Same here,’ said Greta. ‘I’ll stop breathing. It must be a matter of willpower, I’m sure you can stop your heart from beating.’
These words hardened their resolve, they began to chorus: ‘Me too’, ‘Me too’. Rebellion was stirring, it was plain that this time, they would not be caught unawares, as must have happened in the past, that they wouldn’t allow themselves to be overtaken by events like terrified creatures who could be led to the slaughterhouse, because they could not conceive of the slaughterhouse. They drew themselves up and gazed at the strange landscape. They planted their feet more firmly on the ground, and there were smiles.