My mother threw herself in between us, scowling at Mr. Baker. “You leave my daughter alone. You hear me, Mark! Don’t you lay another finger on her!”
Mr. Baker threw my mother out of the way and lunged at me, his hands open, aiming for my neck. My father jumped off the stage and picked Mr. Baker up by his collar. “You and your family, you’re done here! You’re officially cast out!”
“You can’t make that decision,” Mr. Baker growled. “It has to be decided according to a vote.”
My father glared over his shoulder as the council members appeared lined up along the stage. “All in favor of casting out the Bakers?”
One by one, each council member raised a hand. Except for Mr. Martin and Mr. Edwards, of course. Then, my father still holding onto Mr. Baker’s collar lifted his left hand in the air. “We voted,” my father said, sternly. “You’re out.” My father looked back at the council members. “Would anyone else like to join Mark?”
In unison, I watched all of the council members shake their heads. Including Mr. Martin and Mr. Edwards. Wherever the Bakers were going, nobody was too keen on following them.
Mr. Baker pried himself away from my father’s grasp. “You’re going to regret this! All of you! I can promise you that!”
It wasn’t until that moment that I stepped forward and tapped Mr. Baker lightly on the shoulder. He faced me, his breathing heavy, teeth grinding and his fists balled up. Reaching into my back pocket, I pulled out the piece of paper with my name, grabbed his palm, pried open his fingers and slapped the piece of paper down.
Mr. Baker, knowing what the piece of paper was, closed his fist around it, crumbled it up and dropped it on the ground. And then, I leaned in, my lips right next to his ear and whispered, “That was for the Vickers girl.”
Chapter 19: A Kept Promise Isn’t Always Best
Until the daybreak, and the shadows flee away, I will get thee to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense.~ Song of Solomon 4 1:6
Owen told me to meet him in the middle of the mess hall at 11:00 pm. I was there five minutes early, pacing back and forth across the floor, in the darkness. I had faith in Owen. He made me a promise and according to him, he wasn’t the type to break a promise that he’d made.
There were so many questions I had that I felt needed answered. Owen, was my only hope if I ever wanted to hear those answers. He knew things—secretive things—about the cannibals, the colonists, and Monica Vickers’s death. He’d told me that he wasn’t responsible for killing her. I didn’t think Owen was lying, because if he were, then I would have wound up dead too. In the end, I didn’t think anything would go back to normal until Owen filled me in on some of the things I needed to know.
One thing I knew for certain, was the we, the colonists and myself, were like lab rats in a cage, always being monitored, every one of our movements carefully documented. And the worst part of all of it, none of us knew that the monitoring was going on. We walked around blindly, assuming that we were lucky to be alive, while the rest of the human population rotted and withered away.
At least if I was starving to death, I’d still have my freedom. I’d probably die a horrible and no doubt painful death, but no one would be peeping in on me, tracking my every movement, and at the end, I’d finally be at peace.
I’d seen helpless starving people before, in the streets of the city, during the beginning stages of The Great Famine. Most of the inhabitants had only gone weeks without eating, yet they knew what the future held for them. They hit their knees, begging and pleading with hopelessness in their eyes for someone to come along and put them out of their misery. They’d rather have someone blow their brains out than live through the devastation of pestilence and famine.Sometimes, I thought that way too, but not now, not anymore.
Giving up was way too easy. I’d fought out the last two years, starving, overcoming obstacles, and watching people die. And even though it hurt to see the human population, especially the children, fade away, it made me stronger as a person and it made me want to keep fighting.
The minutes began to dwindle down. First, there were five, then four, now only three minutes remained until it was eleven o’clock. Mid-pace, I stopped and squinted up at the ceiling as my eyes adjusted to the blackness. I was anticipating the lift coming down through the center of the mess hall, even fabricating the illusion of the sound it made in my mind.
An eerie silence crept up on me like a venomous cobra with its back arched, preparing to strike it’s victim. I couldn’t even hear the sound of my own breathing because I was pretty sure that I hadn’t breathed for an entire minute. That led me to believe that even though I still had time left until eleven o’clock, that maybe Owen was going back on his word.
Now it was one minute to eleven o’clock and I was really beginning to worry. The last time I saw Mr. Baker, the rage inside of him was clawing at his insides, eating him alive. What if he showed up and did something terrible to Owen? The sound of his earlier slap echoed in my head. “Oh, no,” I gasped. What if he killed him?
After what Mr. Baker did to Monica, and what he tried to do to me, I wouldn’t have put it past him. I imagined that he was in an extremely bad mood after everything that went down at the council meeting. I, in particular, enjoyed the last few words I’d shared with him and the look on his face that accompanied those words.
I had no regrets in exposing myself to him in those final seconds. Even though he assumed I was the one that switched the ballots, he would have never known for sure until I mentioned it to him. I might have set myself up for some kind of act of revenge, but I doubted that. And even if I did, I felt like somebody owed it to Monica Vickers to bring her murderer to justice. Thankfully, justice was served out properly at my hand.
Wherever Monica was, I hoped that she was somewhere smiling and happy. I hoped that she could move on knowing that her death had been avenged.
It was officially eleven o’clock. Still no Owen. I resorted to sitting down, on the floor, Indian style. Silently, I told myself that I would wait until 11:05 and not a minute later. If Owen didn’t show up, I could kiss any answers to any questions that I may have had goodbye. “Please come, Owen. Please.”
To pass the time, I swirled my finger around on the concrete floor, thought about tomorrow, and thought about Owen and his stunning, violet eyes. In the two years that our colony had been established, we’d never cast anyone out before, The Baker family would be the first.And even though I despised Mr. Baker, it was still going to be difficult for me to watch him and his family being escorted from the colony.
Also, the fact that I would probably never see Owen again haunted me. He did trick me, let me believe he was a flesh-eating monster ready to devour me at a moment’s notice, but in my short time knowing him, I’d grown fond of the guy who I could now call my savior. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be walking around with a censor inside of my brain, my every movement being tracked.
And….
If it wasn’t for Owen, I’d most likely be dead.
Whenever I thought about death, I always wound up frightened. Death was final. There was no coming back from it. Even living in the kind of world where people dying every day was the norm, death was still a tough subject to think about.
At four minutes to eleven, I’d given up on Owen. The dutiful part of me wanted to wait another five minutes, but the logical part of me consumed the dutiful part and swallowed it whole. As much as I hated to admit it, Owen was a no-show. He wasn’t coming.