Page 22 of All Your Days
I’m not any more excited for my second night sleeping in the tent. I do get a little thrill when I realise that once again, mine and Jacob’s tents are set slightly apart. I thought I was imagining things this morning when we packed up the tents, but no, our tents are much closer to each other and just a bit further from everyone else. I don’t know what it means, but I like it.
It’s going to make it really difficult to rub one out tonight, though. I swear I heard one of the guards last night. There was a telltale ‘grunt, grunt, grunt, nrgh’ from the other side of the camp. It wasn’t quiet.
It’s not hard to stick close to him, not that he tries too hard to get away. Jacob seems more than happy to show me how to get things set up. For a guard, he knows a lot about grunt work, and he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. Guards are the most protective of the pecking order back home. Probably because they’re on the top of the bottom of the pile—they gotta hold tight to their position.
By the time we’re all sitting around the camp stove eating our dinner of spicy canned mystery meat in gravy with vegetables, everyone is exhausted. We’re silent, too, until Cale breaks the peace.
“What was with the station back there?” He asks, mopping up the last of his food with his fingers and licking them clean.
“Well, for a start, it’s not ‘back there’. It’s just the other side of the track. The station is huge.” Jacob nods in the general direction of the station. “They’re one of the few cattle stations that survived in this area that sided with the Union. The rest are all west and Federation, or too far east for transport to this area.They made a deal—the Union leaves the station alone, and the station provides the Union with meat and leather.”
“That’s not so bad.” Ryan mumbles around a mouthful of food.
“What’s the catch?” Lou wisely sounds skeptical of the deal.
“They run the place like their own little kingdom. The ones that make it out of there, they ain’t right. If you can get a story out of them, it’s pretty fucked up.”
“Like what?” Cale asks, enthralled by the story.
Jacob expels a long breath, rubbing his hands on his pants.
“They round up kids, take the ones who are causing problems at the settlements and old enough to work. They take others, too, people lookin’ for work, people who are desperate, you know? Offer them ‘shelter’ and a place to stay. The punishments for slackin’ off are severe. The punishments for takin’ more than your due are worse. I’ve seen people that lost their hands or feet for crossin’ the leads there.”
“Well, there’s gotta be rules, right?” Ryan says, with all the confidence of a man that’s never known a moment of true fear or hard work in his life.
He’s immune, and a guard to boot, in one of the safest—if notthesafest—places in the Union. He’s even the son of a former Ag scientist who lived to a ripe old age before he passed, and a Union official who lived to retire from their administrative position. Even at The Facility, to have one family member live such a long and healthy life is rare, let alonetwo.
The silence around the campfire is different from a minute ago, everyone looking between Ryan and Jacob, who are locked in an intense stare-off. Tension radiates off Jacob, the muscle in his jaw flexing furiously.
“They starve ‘em, Ryan. Work ‘em to the bone, and starve ‘em. And then brutalise ‘em when they complain.” Jacob holds Ryan’s eyes, refusing to back down, even when Ryan eventually caves, looking away in embarrassment. “They use the zombifiedagainst ‘em. Once their staffers turn, they get chained up like rabid dogs and used as a threat against the others. And the threat isreal. They let their infected attack the people in their care. I’ve even been told they do it just for the sport of it. Just because they’rebored.”
“That’s fucked up.” Cale breathes into the stony silence that follows Jacob’s announcement.
“And on that note,” Malcolm says, clapping his hands. “I’m on first watch. You losers better get some sleep. Ryan, I’ll wake you when it’s time.”
I never thought I’d be grateful for Malcolm, but here I am, grateful that he’s finally stepping in before his friend can say something awful, like he’d pay to go watch if the station allowed it.
A shiver runs down my spine at the gory details Jacob hinted at, my mind unhelpfully filling in the rest of the details. Is there a chance that the men from the station could be at the outpost? Are we safe even being here? What if they wanted to just take us? Ryan would probably use us to barter his freedom, the grimey asshole. Ryan and Cale head to their tents without a word for the others, while Malcolm sets himself up on top of the metal roof of the trailer with his rifle and Union issued night vision goggles to keep watch.
While the other guards leave us grunts to do the clean-up, Jacob is back to helping us get the camp packed up for the night. Being the most useless, I’ve been stuck on dishes duty. Watching the efficient way Lou and Jacob work, restacking the trailer and getting things ready for the morning, and getting the camels all safely sorted for the night, the dishes kind of feel like the busy work you give a child who insists on helping but is just in the way.
But I don’t mind, it just means that I can watch Jacob go about his chores without having to think too hard about what I’m doing.
When he stripped off his hat and scarf earlier, he retied the knot of his hair, pulling it right to the top of his head to keep it off his neck. A lock fell down at some point, and he keeps tucking it back behind his ear. For some reason, I can’t stop smiling whenever he does it. It’s the strangest thing to find endearing. People don’t look attractive tucking their hair back.
But Jacobdoes. And every time he does it, I get this giddy urge to giggle like Jessica does when she’s had too much to drink at fire pit nights.
I’ve been silently obsessed with the man since the first day we met. Even if I was far too young to realise why I so desperately wanted to be his friend back in those first days, and why it hurt so badly that he didn’t want a bar of me.
It’s easy to blame whatever strange watching thing has been happening on Jacob. But it’s not like I’ve been entirely innocent—I have dozens of hidden notebooks in my room where I’ve learned to perfect the curve of his lips, or the flare of his wide nose. I’ve mourned not having paints to learn how to recreate the brown of his skin, and the shadows in his eyes.
I’m so busy watching Jacob brushing down the camels I accidentally splash water all over my front.
“Ah, fuck!’” I shout, stepping back from the pot I’ve already washed three times without realising, to look down at my sodden front.
Lou and Jacob stop what they’re doing and look over at me in unison.
“I’m gonna go deal with this.” Lou says loudly, over the top of Malcolm’s snickering laughter, gesturing to the camels’ gear they just finished with for the night. “I’ll be in the trailer. Well over there. Makin’ sure it’s all secure. I’ll probably be awhile.”
