Read Online The Watch (The Red Series Book 1) by Amanda Witt - Free Book Online Page B

coming.
    When Farrell Dean stepped away from me, cold rushed in and
settled right down into my bones.

Chapter 7
    By suppertime the city’s
uneasiness was palpable. In the crowded cafeteria, anxiety rose around me like
smoke, filling my lungs, choking me. Several times I heard “city meeting” and,
once, “reprisals.” The word lodged painfully in my mind, sharp and hard like a
shard of glass. I looked up and down the tightly packed rows of Optica gray and couldn’t see a single face that was
smiling, a single person who didn’t look worried or tense.
    The line for food was still quite long, so I went to stand
by the conveyor belt, watching for any trays with leftover scraps, more out of
old habit than from any real hope that the trays would be anything but scoured
clean.
    After a dozen or so bare ones passed by, I returned to the
back of the line and waited and tried not to think about the fact that the
cafeteria’s dangling bare bulbs looked just like the ones in the interrogation
room, tried not to think about the warden with the scar. Instead I focused on
what Farrell Dean had told me and tried to study the cafeteria with a fresh
eye.
    The water marks on the ceiling were getting worse. The roof
needed to be repaired—had needed it for awhile, judging by the layered
patterns of stains. Routine maintenance took backseat to routine emergencies —a broken pipe spewing water, an electrical outage
threatening to compromise food storage, a fence disintegrating so that cattle
wandered the city streets. The roof would be repaired when rain dripped into
our supper, and the yellowing walls would go right on waiting for a new coat of
paint. Farrell Dean was right; Optica was declining.
It wasn’t hard to notice really, just hard to want to notice.
    A little boy picked his nose and then
wiped his hand on the longsuffering wall beside the children’s tables. The
square floor tiles were crumbling around their edges. The metal serving table
was dented and scratched. Unusable metal folding chairs leaned in a great
precarious stack against the back wall.
    By the time I collected my food tray I was thoroughly depressed, and apparently it showed,
because o ne of the cooks—Alice, a woman with a calm air about
her—caught my eye and nodded deliberately, reassuringly. “Everything seems worse on an
empty stomach,” she said. I tried to smile at her, but my face didn’t want to
obey.
    I made my way up one aisle and down
another, looking for Meritt or at least for a place
to sit, listening for Rafe’s name. But the muttered
bits of conversation I caught were all on the same
topic—the mysterious impending city meeting. All we knew was we were to
gather at the city circle at eight that night and every night thereafter, until
further notice.
    A warden sitting across from Cynda got up and walked away, and I slid into the empty seat. Waiting for food,
jostling for a chair, that was normal. What wasn’t normal was the people
gathered in little knots all around the cafeteria, ignoring the cameras and
talking openly about why the city meeting had been called. A few men huddled
together at a nearby table, gesturing angrily. I strained to hear what they
were saying, but the hum of the room blurred everyone’s words.
    Cynda leaned across our table and clasped one of my hands in both of
hers, her long fair hair falling forward over her shoulder in delicate curls.
“Ignore them,” she said. “There’s no point in worrying. It doesn’t help.”
    Another warden passed nearby, eyeing her. She
gave my hand one more squeeze and then let go. “Good evening, warden,” she
said. “Will I be seeing you tonight after the meeting?”
    The warden froze, his ears turning pink, and
without answering moved away. She gave me a conspiratorial wink, and then
resumed eating in her quick neat way. I took a bite as well, but the
meal—I can’t even remember now what it was, soup probably, or a thin
stew—was tasteless in my mouth.
    Across the room