Read Online Where by Kit Reed - Free Book Online Page B

surface exactly as we found it when we filed in.
    Shivering in the desert night, I ask. “What are we going to do?” My voice is a lot smaller than the space. I’m not scared, exactly, although there’s that. I am struck by the enormity.
    That we really are cut off from life as we knew it, alone in the dark in strange terrain, stranded in the great unknown.
    That we have to find our way back to where we were— shit, to who we were— before it’s too late, and they’ve forgotten us. Or everybody we’ve left behind has changed.
    That we’re being watched, probably recorded.
    Jerking his head at the camera, Ray mutters, “We have to meet.”
    â€œWe have…”
    Ray grips my arm: shhh. He forms the words: “To figure it out.”
    It makes me shudder. Not another meeting . But this is Ray, so I mouth, “When?”
    When he speaks his voice is so low that I can just hear it: “I’ll be in touch.” Then he says aloud, as though none of this had happened, “Are you tired? I’m bushed.”
    This, I don’t have to fake. “Me too.”
    He makes a broad grin for the unseen, all-seeing world, addressing the cameras like a third-rate actor. “Best money says, go home and get settled in.”
    â€œYou got it.” Big smile for the audience. “Night, Ray.”
    â€œNight.”
    We exit in tandem, two practiced hoofers leaving the stage. In the plaza we part company like two strangers and leave on two of the diagonal streets leading to the four corners of the camp, compound, whatever this is. It isn’t hard to find my way back to the designated house. The ground plan is a lot like the one on Kraven island. As though the intelligence behind this— removal — mysteriously learned us, our patterns and our habits, mapping our small town down to the floor plans of our houses, before we came here.
    We’re not a random sample, no way. We were pre-selected for this … This disruption without a name.

 
    9
    Ned
    Another night
    Back home Father was The Power, but last week or ten days ago— whenever the real power came down and dumped us here, his power reared up and bit him in the ass, and dammit to fuck, I don’t know when that was!
    This place is so weird that I don’t even know when this is. No clocks. I tried marking the days on my closet door but in the morning the marks are gone. OK, so. If that’s how it is  …
    Patrice would love this place. It’s, like, weirdly neat and anal-retentive clean. Necessaries like food and utensils come in by kitchen dumbwaiter as needed, and dirty dishes go out the same way. We get fresh scrubs every morning in the bathroom hatch. At least I’d have somebody here to talk to, you know?
    The hell of it is, there are no books, no magazines, nothing in this terrible flat, white place to take your mind off it, no calendars, no clocks to watch. Our electronics are all broken and to make awful even worse, there’s no TV!
    And it’s all Father’s fault. This. Me, stuck in here with him. When Mr. Powell broke up the riot back on our first day, everybody from Kraven was like, Damn you, Hampton Poulnot, with your big mouth and your Explain , like the only person in this universe is you.
    OK, when it started I thought somebody would come out and explain and that would be the end of it. Yeah, right.
    After the great Whatever killed our electronics, it broke up Father’s riot with a blast of white sound like one of those whistles only dogs can hear, except this one exploded deep inside my head. Then one of those CG voices boomed orders from all the speakers: What to do. Who did what. Which ones went to which houses. Where. And wherever they put you, you weren’t allowed to move. Your hand print is your door key. You’ll find the site map on that wall. They all ran like ants holing up in an ant farm, a hole for every ant, everybody into