Page 65 of The Compound

We were nearly there, now. The sun was hot on my neck; I had no sun cream on and would surely burn.

“Who did he fight with?”

“Andrew. They both thought that they should be the one in charge. It was vicious. They were swinging and tearing at each other. Tom was already in bad shape from the dog, but Andrew was merciless. Then we heard the voice, telling us that violence was forbidden. We were all stunned by the sound of it—no one could tell where it came from. I think we had forgotten, with the heat and the exhaustion, that we were being watched. We took some time to compose ourselves, and then we voted on who would lead us to the compound.”

“Who did they elect?”

“Me,” he said. I smiled, but I wasn’t surprised. “As soon as we reached the compound, it was like their fight completely went out of their minds, but none of us forgot it. I remember hearing some of the girls fret over the boys that first day. There was one less of us, and one more of you, remember? And they thought that they were at a disadvantage because of it. My God, if you could have imagined how glad we were to see you all, waiting there calmly, the house looming behind you. We were entirely at your mercy, though I don’t think any of you realized it.”

“The other man, the man who never made it here. What was his name?”

He had to think about it, his brow furrowed, eyes searching before him. “Alexandre,” he said at last.

“What happened to him?”

“On the second day, before Andrew and Tom fought, there was a suggestion that we split up and try two different paths. It wasn’t a popular idea, but Alexandre said he’d go and scout a different direction anyway. I think he wanted a break from the bickering, to be honest. We waited for him for a long time—half a day—but when night fell it was too cold to stay out in the open and we had to move. Some of us wanted to wait. We put it to a vote. The majority said they wanted to move on. We didn’t come across him again,” he said.

I wondered if he envied Alexandre, who had never made it here at all.

We were now standing at the boundary. I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say, but I knew what I wanted him to say to me. I had told him that I didn’t think we would work on the outside, and while it was true, I desperately wanted him to tell me he’d wait for me. Isn’t that what people said, when their loved ones went off to war, or when they left on some long journey—that they would wait for them?

“I don’t want to leave you this way,” he said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Hardly any of the couples ever actually make it.” I didn’t mean to be cold, though perhaps that’s how I came across. The situation had gone beyond my control so quickly, and it was easier to pretend that I knew what I wanted. But I knew that if he had asked me one more time to go I would have gone, without a fuss.Ask me,I thought.Ask me again.

A faint wind rippled across the desert, shifting the sand. “Don’t stay too long,” he said.

He didn’t kiss me goodbye, only moved through a gap in the barbed-wire boundary, and was gone. I thought: I deserved that. I watched him get smaller and smaller, but I could feel the top of my head burning, my hair scorching to the touch, and my neck was already tender. I went and sat in the shade, then walked around the compound for the rest of the evening. I stayed in a room at the back of the house that we had been using to store bed linens. It smelled of laundry detergent and must. I didn’t see anyone for some time, and that was fine withme.

Fourteen

A few days later the waterstopped working. It was Becca who told me; she was waiting in the kitchen when I woke up. It was a shock to see her. In a whisper she told me it wasn’t just the drinking water but the showers too, indoor and outdoor. It was frightening to think of, but somehow thrilling, too. The past week, or weeks, probably, had been nothing but endless dreariness. The water being turned off was at least something to focus upon.

“Have you told the boys?” I asked. I knew she hadn’t: they were asleep still. Without realizing it, I had fallen into my old habit of asking questions I already knew the answerto.

“No.” She hesitated, and then said, “I have water, stashed away.”

“Where?”

“If I show you,” she said, “you can’t tell the others.”

“Okay. Fine.”

“I’ll need you to swear. This will only work if the boys don’t have access to water.”

“I swear. Jesus.”

She started walking toward the maze, and I trailed uneasily behind her. While the edges of the maze had been burned, the general structure still remained. I didn’t want to go in—I had entered only a few times before, and I’d never stayed long. The maze had been a popular spot some years back—but two years ago, couples had started to go there when they wanted to have sex without being noticed by the others. At first it was just one couple, and it was quite romantic, the two of them sneaking away, meeting there in the middle of the night—until other couples started doing the same. It was awful; couples trying to find their way outwould have to pass other residents naked in the bushes. As viewers we couldn’t see everything, of course, but we saw enough. Residents in the following seasons had avoided the place entirely, and we had instinctively done the same. Becca, I supposed, hadn’t seen that season, and didn’t know the sordid reputation of the maze, or she did but was unfazed by it. She took the maze’s turns quickly, with a light step, and once or twice I thought I’d lost her. Eventually she stopped at an entirely unremarkable hedge, identical to all the others. She steppedintoit, and I saw something glinting there, though I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been staring. She reemerged with a gallon of water, her tiny arms struggling with its weight. I sat on the ground and took a lengthy pull from it. She sat down beside me and drank from it when I was done.

“How long will it last?” I asked. It seemed an enormous amount, but I knew how quickly it would go in the heat. It was blessedly cool in the maze, the enormous hedges providing much-needed shade, and I sagged against one of them as I tried to think of what this would mean.

“Not long. Three days, maybe four.”

“Did you check the big screen?” I said. She nodded. “And the reward is water?”

“Of course.”

In the final five, the screen stayed stuck on the same task until it was completed. Crucially, they weren’t tasks anymore, but competitions. Whoever came in last was banished. Like any task, we didn’t have to complete it, but we didn’t get a reward unless we all took part. I had never seen anything as extreme as the water being turned off, but I supposed that after weeks of inactivity they needed to trigger a strong response. Six or maybe seven years ago, after a particularly dull stretch where the five residents were living happily with no conflict whatsoever, the producers had released a box of rats into the kitchen and offered the reward of rat poison. For days it was like watching a horror movie; so many shots of them screaming, crying, literally shaking in fear. They were finding rat carcasses in every corner of the house for weeks afterward.

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