“It’ll be easier if you do.”
She turned her head toward the source of the words and it seemed as if it took the world a fraction of a second to catch up with her. But when it did, she saw Donnely. He was on the other side of the door, looking in through the little window with his hands wrapped around the bars. For a moment he became nothing more than a blur before snapping back into sharp focus.
“You should feel honored, really. They don’t select just anyone.”
He seemed to be looking everywhere but directly at her. As if he couldn’t bring himself to meet her gaze.
“Wh… where am I?”
Her voice sounded as if it were coming from the end of an infinitely long tunnel and only the stabs of pain that accompanied the movement of her jaws convinced her that it was her own.
“The Garden. You’re safe now.”
Something about his tone sounded almost apologetic. Or as if he were trying to convince himself of his own statement.
She closed her eyes for a second and was suddenly back on the hillside. She saw Jeremy and Mama lying in the grass, their blood mingling in a collective pool below them. Unmoving. Silent. Dead.
Her eyes snapped open and, even though it hurt like hell to do so, her brow furrowed as she glared at the man on the other side of the door.
“You bastard. What they hell have you done? What the fuck….”
But then she was sobbing, her back heaving with tears as her fingers pressed against her temples and bubbles of snot erupted from her nostrils.
“I’m… I’m sorry. It had to be done. For the good of all. For… humanity. See? There’s a greater good. A higher purpose. But for what it’s worth… I am sorry.”
That was the last time she’d ever seen Donnely. In the beginning, she’d entertained fantasies of him returning in the middle of the night; dreams of keys rattling in the lock and the door swinging open to reveal him silhouetted by torchlight , ready to whisk her away from this place and make amends for the evil he’d brought upon her.
But that was so long ago and she now knew he would never return. On some level, he probably did feel bad for his part in what had happened; but she couldn’t help but remember the look in his eyes as he’d described the work done here. What she’d rightfully identified as the passion of a true believer. Any guilt that kept him awake at night was undoubtedly overshadowed by the zeal of his belief.
The door to her cell swung open and two men shuffled inside. This morning it was the ones she thought of as 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 The Entertainer as her cellphone lit up with Mama’s number.
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.
Ovulation.
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 would come. And come. And come.
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.