When she came to, it was darkest night. They were still driving, a bump or deep rut having jarred her awake. The car air was humid and smelled of mildew and chain oil and of the two counties people, who didn’t wash as regularly as B-Mors, their clothing as well as themselves. Their odor was so keen and alive it was as though they were twinned and sitting on either side of her. Plus, everything was damp where she lay because of her soaked clothes and the steady drip coming from the top of the tailgate. Her right leg felt like a twenty-kilo sack filled with broken glass but it was her head that hurt even more, the whole side of her face clanging with every mar in the road. She told them she was going to be sick and the woman cursed her but the car braked and the man opened the hatch and tugged her by the hair so she could throw up onto the ground. She splashed his boots but he didn’t seem to care. When she was done, he shoved her back in and Fan fell again into a daze as they drove on in the steady rain northwestward, up and through the lightless hills, toward where once Maryland had become West Virginia had become Pennsylvania, a huge swath of open counties land where no B-Mors have ever gone.
Their destination was the hilly, sparsely populated “county” referred to as the Smokes. We did not know about it then but of course do now. The origins of the name are unclear, but most say that it derives from the name of a once prominent local family, Smolk, whose people used to own a great deal of the land and many various small businesses; others simply point to the fact that nearly every present inhabitant, whether adult or child, smokes a locally cultivated weed that is supposedly a powerful antioxidant; the rest will note the prevailing practice of cookery there, which is to smoke everything they eat, and even drink, the favorite beverage being a homemade beer made from smoked grains.
The drive that night took longer than even Loreen had estimated due to their having to take detours around impassable roads, and it felt to Fan, drugged by an injection that Quig administered mid-trip when she could not stop moaning — and then shouting — from the sawing pain in her thigh, that it was a journey of days. For someone born and raised exclusively in B-Mor, there’s really no occasion for making trips of such duration, and it’s amazing to consider that this was the circumstance of her first true venture beyond the gates: sopped to the core, a ringing in her ears, perhaps a hairline fracture in her hip or leg, and being taken by strangers to a place that promised only hardship, or worse.
And enveloped in the strange, cool oil of the man’s drug, Fan must have dreamed. She dreamed hard and vividly, as we have, that the thick ropes on which she lay were the fronds of a sea plant that ensnared her as she drifted to the bottom, this willowy tangle of arms that now cradled and fed her. Kept her alive. There was a taste in her mouth like sour almonds. She nestled herself down even deeper, her leg now right again, and as one will, she had a welling of gratitude for the nurturing, this feeling that erased all thoughts of B-Mor behind her and of the open counties ahead, momentarily erasing even thoughts of Reg, whose voice and images she’d loaded onto the album card she’d sewn inside the pocket of her vest, plus some of his favorite oldies songs, which she would play in the card’s tinny voice, just to make out a chorus, “Only the young…” In a word, she was alone for the first time in her life, as if she were in a state of nature like the girl who lived by herself on an island in that ancient movie Fan once saw, hunting and fishing and swimming. What was her name? Fan could not remember. Could she have been called Fan? This Fan who could take care of herself, who could wield the spear, dive from the high rock, who could plunge into the deepest waters and hold her breath for as long as she wanted? But beneath her, the kindly fronds suddenly ossified, turning into muscled shoots. Chattering blindly at first, they found her. These ravenous eels. And as they gnawed at the flesh on her back, they lifted her, pushing her up and out of the water, all the weight returning to her and collecting in her leg. She was frantically wrestling the creatures when the woman reached back and hit her in the head with the tail end of a large flashlight. Fan fought some more and she was struck again, hard enough this time to take her breath away.
When Fan came to, she was in the man’s arms, being lifted from the car. She may have been drugged again for she could only move her eyes. She could not quite speak. A strong breeze crossed them and, aside from the man’s animal odor, the air was damp but smelled green and fresh with what she didn’t yet know was the scent of young pines. She could hardly see a thing. There was complete cloud cover and it was as black as night gets, for out in the counties after sunset the settlements go wholly dark, the roads and buildings unlighted, the few shops shuttered and closed. They had driven up and around the peak of a hill, finally stopping in a cleared patch of flatter land. Around her she could make out the shapes of other vehicles and in the background the outline of a structure, a house built low to the ground and with wings on either side, one of which the man entered after the woman opened a door. The woman lighted the way and he brought Fan inside and laid her on a table.
I’m going to sleep, Loreen said.
Crank on the generator, he told her.
She turned the light on his face and he squinted, his expression one of limited tolerance. She flashed on Fan.
I don’t know what you mean to do with her but I’m so fed up and tired I don’t care. I’m hungry! So I’m getting myself something and going to bed.
Get the generator on. Then come back.
Get it on yourself!
Do it.
She cursed at him and left. For a while, Fan and Quig were just there in the dark but then a distant whirring could be heard and Quig pulled a chain and a shop light above her flickered twice and then came on. When her eyes adjusted, Fan could see in the penumbra that they were in a kitchen of sorts, fitted with a short run of cabinets, a freestanding utility sink, a burner plate, a large microwave on the counter. He asked what her name was and she was surprised that she wanted to tell him, though she wasn’t able. But he was a frightening-looking man. He was big, much taller and broader than most of the men in B-Mor, probably in his fifties, darkly bearded and mustached but with wild streaks of gray. When he removed his cap, he was balding, the smooth, wide dome of his head bulbous and very pale, as well as tattooed with many fine jagged lines: a pattern of cracks. Her extremities began to itch and prickle, and when he reached for her leg, Fan jumped, bringing on a hot shear of pain. He placed his large hands on her ankles, but gently, his touch oddly pacifying as he removed her wet sneakers, her wet socks. She bucked and tried to twist away when he unbuttoned her trousers but he pressed his hand on her hip and said, Don’t move. He then lifted her with the other hand beneath the small of her back as he inched down the soaked, binding fabric. He did not touch her underwear. When her trousers were off, he examined her injury, pressing gingerly as he probed the splotchy, deep bruise on the outside of her thigh. He was as serious and focused as any nurse practitioner in B-Mor. He bound it tightly with a bandage and then left.
Loreen reappeared while he was gone. She scrounged about a drawer and found a quick-eat pouch of pork and beans. It was dim in the room and she looked older than Quig but maybe it was because she was heavier, her hair long and scraggly. She had a mouthful of gray crooked teeth. She cut off the top of the pouch and ate little spoonfuls out of it cold as she stared at Fan, talking to her between chews.