Page 30 of The Compound

“…greedy littlebastard,” Candice was saying. “You disgustingpig.”

Seb was sitting in the corner of the gray room, a jar of strawberry jam in his hand. The jar was huge, the kind you got if you were preparing for the apocalypse. My mother had a whole room of similar-sized jars, alongwith tins of dried food. The longer my father was away, the fuller it got.

Seb had other things, too. A packet of almonds, and a box of donuts.

“I earned it,” he said. “It’s forme.”

“Bastard,” Candice said. “Bastard.”

The jar was half full, and there was jam on his face and on his right hand. There was no spoon or fork, and I supposed he had been eating it with his fingers.

“Stuffing your face,” Candice said, “while the rest of us are starving.”

“We ate last night,” he drawled. “We aren’t actually starving.”

“And what did you have to do with it?” she snapped. “Did you take out the ducks’ organs, Seb? Their guts, and livers, and hearts? Did you get your hands bloody?”

By now, most of us were there, watching. Andrew was hovering close by, and I thought that he might be afraid, as I was, that Seb would get to his feet and strike Candice.

“I’m sick of this,” Seb said. “We can get what we want from the little screens. We’ve been doing stupid tasks for days and not a morsel to eat. How do we know that they will actually give us food again? We have no guarantees. But I’ve noticed, yes,I have noticed,that if you speak about something that you want, sometimes you’ll get offered it as a reward on your little screen. But the big screen? That’s just so people can laugh at us. Don’t you see? They’re all laughing at us!”

I no longer thought that Seb would go for Candice, but I wondered, with genuine trepidation, if she would attack him, rules or no rules. But when she spoke, she was calm.

“We’re going to do the Communal Task now,” she said. “And we’ll do as many tasks as it takes until we all eat again.”

“I’m not doing it,” Seb said.

“You are,” she said. “You will. Who has the rope?”

Evan ran out of the room. We waited in silence until he came back. Seb continued to spoon jam into his mouth with his fingers. I had never felt so disgusted by another person in my life.

Evan returned with the rope. He placed it into Candice’s hand, and Seb stared her down, though he sat on the ground. Seb was pathetic, buthe was strong and tall: he wasn’t frightened of her. Candice made no move toward him.

“Tom?” she said.

Tom stepped forward and took the rope from her hand. Seb’s eyes swung from Candice to Tom, like the pendulum of a clock.

—

Ryan and Iwon the three-legged race. He had taken long strides with his arm around my waist, lifting me a little when I couldn’t keep up. We would have been faster if we’d had more food in our stomachs. As it was I was out of breath when we crossed our makeshift finish line, and my leg was cramping. Jacintha and Carlos were only inches behind us, and we might have engaged in some good-natured taunting under different circumstances, but none of us were in the mood. When we crossed the finish line, Ryan let me lean against him, but I only stayed in his arms for a few moments, until I felt that I could stand on my own, then stepped away. I couldn’t deny that I was increasingly unsure how I felt about Ryan. He was gorgeous, but there wasn’t much else that drew me to him. There was a part of my brain that couldn’t quite understand that I wouldn’t want a boy so aesthetically perfect, but I found myself tracking Sam and Becca’s journey to the finish, her arm wrapped around his waist, tiny and slim compared to him. I admired the veins that stood out on his arms, the appealing slope of his shoulders.

We watched each couple cross the line, and then finally Tom and Seb, who finished last by quite a margin. Seb had struggled, at first, and their legs were bound with a great deal more rope than the rest of us had required, and far tighter too. Three quarters of the way to the finish line, Seb had fallen to the ground, crying out. Tom didn’t hesitate: he kept walking, slowly, slowly, moving his left leg, to which Seb’s was still bound, and dragging the other boy along after him, though Seb shouted and wailed. His leg was bent at an awkward angle, and I saw his arms scrape against the concrete, leaving blood in a trail behind him, as red as strawberry jam.

As soon as Tom lumbered past the finish line, Seb limp on the groundbehind him, the rest of us went back into the house. Candice and Andrew reached the living room first, and before I had caught up I heard Candice’s laugh, like the ring of a bell. I could hear it as I moved from the kitchen to the hall: she was still laughing when I reached the living room. Andrew and Candice were wrapped in each other’s arms, Andrew grinning into her hair, his lips pressed against her forehead. I thought that they looked like a couple in love.Task,the big screen read:

Banish a resident of the compound

Reward: Meat

—

Once Seb hadlimped away into the desert plains, we went out back to get our reward. There was a case of meat—lamb and beef and veal and mutton. Enough to last us for weeks, maybe months, depending on how many people we decided to keep in the compound.

We were safe for now, but we knew what it was like to be hungry. The fear still lingered, though for lunch we ate lamb cutlets until the juice ran down our faces and our stomachs were straining against our waistbands. We had food now, yes, but we knew that we needed more.

Andrew was wearing the new whistle around his neck, and we understood that when he used it we were to meet in the living room. On another day there might have been some eye-rolling at his carrying-on, but we were too jubilant to complain. We carried out tasks for the rest of the day with committed zeal, and when we were asked to banish another person in exchange for bread we voted quickly and painlessly. Before the sun was down, Sarah was out on the desert plain, too. She had cried when she read her name on the stones. “But the food,” she said. “I’m Food Organization and Preservation!”

“I can do it,” Vanessa said to her, crying as well. “I can do it.”

---