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“Yeah. He was a Fec. A feces dweller—F-E-C. You know, the people with the sign of the beast who didn’t
go to the lab, and didn’t go instantly mad, so hide out in the sewers instead of turning themselves in?”
“What am I going to do with you?” He says it like he’s asking himself, his eyes never leaving the meat as it drips tiny beads of moisture onto the plate. “I don’t know. I could take you to the lab and get eight ounces of honey. And be well off for a year. Or I can sell you to the black market and get eighty ounces of honey. Eighty ounces of honey would buy me a life inside the wall. I could quit the militia.”
“The black market?” “Yeah. The black market runs the pit. Where they put people like you to fight to the death.”
He shakes his head but doesn’t look at me. “The pit is the best form of entertainment the wall-dwellers have.”
“Well, for one thing, there are seven living men for every one living woman. Being a woman outside the wall is the worst thing you can be. Women are hunted even more than beasts.”
“Each of those marks,” he says, motioning to the legs coming out of the circle, “represents a dose of vaccine. Ten months was the longest anyone took it. Because after ten months, every kid who’d been lucky enough to qualify for the shots started showing signs of insanity.” My brother’s
“She’d be over the government-enforced age limit. Most likely she’s—”
“Life inside the wall has rules.” His mouth puckers, as if the word rules leaves a bad taste on his tongue. “No one with physical disabilities is allowed inside the wall. No one’s allowed inside who suffers from any type of mental illness—even depression. If you are an unmarried male age fifteen or older, you are assigned to work in the militia unless you have an invaluable skill, like farming, engineering, or medical expertise. The inner-wall age limit is fifty-five. After that people are too old to be much worth, so they …” He sweeps his hand through his hair, moving it from his forehead.
...more
me. My
“Well, you’ve got to cut me a little slack, here,” he mutters, slowly lowering the remote. “Guardians don’t live all that long.” “Guardians?” “A guardian is the person in charge of taking the beasts to the lab. That’s me. I’m the guardian at the south gate of the wall.” He points to the lines shaved into the side of his head—four of them. “Four lines mean I rank higher than anyone in that camp except Micklemoore. And it’s because I’m a guardian.”
“I have a better chance of surviving as a guardian than out there. And besides, I want to live inside the wall one day, even if they do terminate their population at fifty-five. From where I’m standing right now, living to fifty-five sounds ancient.”
“First of all, the gate is locked. You can’t open it from the outside—a safety precaution. And then there’s the fact that I’m not allowed to live there. Not until I either make enough money to buy my way in; get an education that makes me potentially useful; or meet some nice girl, get married, and start helping the effort to repopulate the—”
says, “Blood draws beasts—the smell.”
“Look, it’s the crazy lady,” Jonah whispered. “Dad says if you look at her wrong, she’ll kill herself.” I tore my gaze from her and studied the purple plastic sled, wondering if Dreyden was embarrassed to have a mom like that—a mom who wore her bathrobe and slippers at four in the afternoon. A mom who left their Christmas lights on day and night. The sound of Mrs. Bowen crunching through the snow of her unshoveled driveway echoed across the street to our
house. A minute later a pair of pink bunny slippers matted with snowballs crunched into our yard and stopped beside the sled. Red dripped between those slippers, like the ticking of a clock … drip-drip-drip. “I need help,” she said. “I’ve accidentally cut my wrist.” Drip-drip-drip.
“She didn’t pass their health requirements. And if you aren’t healthy, you aren’t worth protecting.”
“No. These.” He scowls at the disk. “They’re for Fecs. And beasts. It is a flavored calorie tablet with an appetite suppressant, emotion inhibitor, and tranquilizer. And they’re mildly addictive.”
“Sixteen?” I squeak. Bowen laughs. “Yeah, sixteen. He loved her enough to wait a whole year for her. Fifteen is the new legal age. When you turn fifteen, you join the militia if you’re a boy, and get married if you’re a girl. The number-one priority right now is repopulation. Number two is to protect those repopulating the world, from the rest of the world.”
I lean
