New Year’s Day
(I guess I was kind of a jerk to end “Transparency” on a cliffhanger. This is what happened next.)
When Eva lies down on her dirty cot in the workhouse, something pokes the small of her back.
She waits until she hears sounds of sleep all around her, and then she eases herself out of the cot and gropes around until she finds what’s causing the discomfort.
Someone has placed a padded envelope under her sheet.
She can’t very well open it up and read it right there, and besides, it’s dark. She slips it down the front of her sweatpants and walks towards the dormitory door.
“Where are you going?” The heavyset woman watching the door glares at her.
“Bathroom,” Eva replies, hoping the envelope isn’t noticeable under her thin top.
“Five minutes,” the woman snaps.
In the harsh bathroom light, Eva tears the envelope open.
It contains a note and a map of the entire compound, with the West Gate circled. The note reads “USE THIS AND MEET US AT WEST GATE TOMORROW. PATRICK CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOU.”
The envelope also contains a screwdriver.
In their days hiding out at her brother Bruce’s farmhouse, Tasha Johnson had always reminded Eva of everyone’s favorite grade school teacher. She was all warm eyes and soft hugs and kind words.
Nobody would have expected Tasha to turn into a badass, but that’s what she did when they were captured at the farmhouse and taken away. She escaped from the compound eight days later. And then she came back and broke her son Jamal and Eva’s son Patrick out of the compound’s “school”. Eva wanted to see Tasha Johnson one more time just to hug her for that, even if she never got out herself.
She can’t possibly go back to sleep, not now. What to do with a screwdriver? She could use it to take a door off its hinges. She could take the cover off of a vent and crawl inside. She could go into hiding there and then complete her escape when they gave up looking for her.
She could threaten someone with it.
Could she kill someone with it, if it meant getting out of here and seeing Patrick again?
When the squad members smashed down Bruce’s front door, Eva had just enough time to grab Philip’s last letter to her before the invaders were on her. She screamed at them to leave Patrick alone, to just take her.
She heard Maggie, that stupid, stupid woman, shout “You said the children would be all right!” as the squad dragged Patrick out of the house and up the hill. And Eva struggled against the grabbing hands bruising her arms, not just because she wanted to escape but because she wanted to beat Maggie senseless for betraying them all.
As she was being hauled up the hill towards a red van, Eva heard gunshots coming from the farmhouse.
She hadn’t seen Bruce, Maggie, or their children anywhere in the compound since she was taken there months ago.
She doubted the leaders would harm little children, but she worried about Bruce.
Maggie can rot in hell.
Eva’s job this day is to scrub the dormitory floors. It’s what people brought to the compound do day in and day out until they’re sufficiently broken down to agree to anything the leaders want.
The supervisor leaves. The door is supposed to lock behind him automatically, and Eva moves fast. She hurries over and sticks the screwdriver into the jamb to keep the door from closing.
Raenelle, a mousy, tired woman who blends into the gray cinderblock walls and smells of mop water, stares at Eva with listless eyes.
“It’s my son,” Eva says to Raenelle. “I’ve got to get to him. He’s very sick.”
Raenelle blinks at Eva a few times and then turns back to her bucket of ammonia and water.
Would Raenelle tell the supervisors about Eva? Eva will have to move fast enough that it won’t matter. She slips out the door, taking the screwdriver with her.
She decides that the thing to do is to walk confidently down the halls, as if she has every right to be out here.
The superiors would wait until Eva was exhausted and aching from a day of hard work and then haul her into their office while she still reeked of ammonia and sweat. They’d make her stand in front of them while they interrogated her. What did she know about Tasha? Who was helping her?
“Tell me where my husband and son are and I’ll tell you what I know,” she said one time, trying to ignore her burning lower back.
“Your son?” A thin dark-haired woman with glittering gray eyes smiled unkindly. “He’s fine.”
“And my husband?”
She knew what the answer was, even though they wouldn’t tell her. The taped-together letter was all she had left of him.
Tasha’s map confirms something Eva had always suspected: The compound is on what used to be the county fairgrounds. The lingering odor of livestock in the air wasn’t just her imagination.
She’d been cooped up in what was Exhibit Hall B. And she’s only stepped outside of it for a minute or two when someone calls to her.
“Excuse me?” The voice is a young one that sounds more tentative than tough, and when Eva turns, the kid approaching her looks only slightly older than Patrick. He’s got acne and patchy brown facial hair. But he’s wearing the silver badge that means he’s in the supervisory squad. It hurts to think of people that young being that far gone.
Then again, it probably means that this is not a top tier operation. Not yet. Not if they’re using kids like this as guards.
“What are you doing out here?” he asks her.
Shit. Shit.
She holds up the screwdriver. “Repair.”
He frowns. “Repairing what?”
“There’s a leak in the main building.”
“What’s leaking?”
“Well, they don’t know,” she says, trying to sound calm and friendly. “That’s what they sent me to find out.”
If this kid is even remotely bright, he’s going to put together that she’s heading away from the main building with a potential weapon. He scratches his head.
“Come with me,” he says finally.
Her stomach grows cold. This is it.
She moves up to him, grabs his shirt front, and holds the screwdriver to his throat.
“No,” she says. “You come with me. To the West Gate. Anyone stops us and asks, you’re taking me to fix something. If you yell for anyone, I’ll jam this through your goddamn brain.”
He starts spluttering. She lets go of his shirt and grabs at his front pocket, where he’s keeping one of the Tasers the supervisory squads use to keep people in line. Now it’s hers.
He really is still just a kid; he begins whimpering.
“Stop sniveling and move it,” she snaps.
She and Philip and Patrick went to the shore three years ago for what turned out to be their last family vacation. They’d relax on the beach during the day and enjoy candlelit seafood dinners, amusement parks, and drive-in movies at night.
One morning she came downstairs to see Philip’s laptop open. He was staring at a news site, and before she closed his computer and scolded Philip for breaking their “No outside world” rule for this vacation, she saw a headline: CULT LEADERS THREATENING TAKEOVER.
It seemed like such a small thing, something to roll your eyes at and chuckle. Something that could never actually happen.
That headline still floats through her nightmares sometimes.
She knows full well that there’s nothing stopping this kid if he really wants to fight her. He’s bigger than she is even if he’s as skinny as the screwdriver. He could knock her down and run off, or take his weapon back and use it on her.
But he’s a pink-faced glaze of tears and sweat as they head towards the West Gate.
“They’re not just gonna let you walk out,” he says finally.
“I’m aware.”
It’s cold out, but she’s sweating too. The West Gate is starting to pull into view. She can see the old wooden ticket booths along the fences. The entrance has been blocked off with sawhorses.
She has no idea what happens next. Where is she supposed to meet everyone? She pushes the screwdriver further into the kid’s back. He whimpers again.
And now someone else is coming towards them, an enormous man who looks like a walking slab of concrete wall.
“This area is off limits.” He’s scowling as he reaches them.
“Emergency maintenance.” The kid is still weepy and there’s no way the meat mountain before them won’t figure out something’s wrong.
That’s when tires squeal and a blue SUV crashes through the sawhorses blocking off the West Gate. The man turns around in shock as both Eva and the kid scream.
Two people in dark clothing, their faces covered by balaclavas, jump out of the SUV.
“Come on, Mom!” one of them shouts. Dear god oh thank you oh my god Patrick.
The other one has a shotgun trained on the heavy man. The kid with Eva is openly sobbing now, and something inside her aches.
“Come with us,” she says.
“I can’t,” he cries.
“I’m not asking.”
Patrick’s dragging her and she’s dragging the kid and they all pile into the SUV just as more people come tearing down the hill towards the gate.
“Hang on, hon.” Tasha’s at the wheel. Tires squeal again as the SUV spins around and Patrick and Eva fall against each other. Tasha tears out of the gateway. And then they’re roaring down the avenue, away from the compound.
Eva pulls the balaclava off Patrick’s face and for a moment she’s shocked at how much older he looks already, but then he’s hugging her and crying and she’s crying and he’s her little boy again.
The kid she’s just taken from the compound is wiping his eyes.
“What’s your name, honey?” Tasha says to the boy. Eva can see the kind brown eyes in the rear-view mirror.
“Kenneth,” he says after a pause.
“I’m Tasha. Happy New Year, Kenneth.”
“This will be a new start for all of us,” Eva says.
“Literally,” Tasha says. “It’s January first.”
There was a time when Eva and Philip would celebrate New Year’s by going to a party, or an elegant dinner, or a concert. Then Patrick was born and they were lucky to be awake to watch the ball drop on TV at midnight.
The ruined city is giving way to wooded areas, and Eva feels almost like she did on those nights when she stood under falling balloons and drank champagne and kissed Philip. Like the story is starting over, and she’s at the very beginning of something brand new.