Astrid’s face falls. “Wait,” she says. “You lied to us?”
“Seems only fair,” says Bathsheba, “since you lied to me.”
Astrid looks away, doing the math, the investment that they’ve made, her worth to them as the mother of his child.
“So you’re what?” she says. “Some Tallahassee mall rat?”
“I’m from Lake Mystic,” says Bathsheba, “and we weren’t allowed to go to the mall, because of the police state, surveillance cameras, facial recognition software. We had a generator and a septic tank. Our water came from a well.”
Astrid smiles. “How novel,” she says. “You’re one of those survivalists. And here we thought you were just another artist wannabe.”
“Oh no. I can live in the woods for weeks, eating berries, collecting rainwater. I know how to build a lean-to and make weapons.”
She holds up her biodegradable spoon.
“Like how, with a dull tool, you wanna scoop out the eyes first, blind your opponent. Then, while they’re screaming, you crush their windpipe with your fist.”
Astrid blinks at her, all the color draining from her face.
“Well then,” she says. She slides her chair back, stands. “That’s—I’ll leave you to it.” She takes a step toward the stairs.
Bathsheba grabs her hand. “You made a mistake,” she tells Astrid. “When you picked me.”
Astrid pulls her hand away, eyes wide. “Boaz will be down shortly to collect your tray,” she says, hurrying to the stairs. “Try to get some rest. You must be exhausted after all that travel.”
She runs up the stairs, slams the door behind her.
Bathsheba, now Katie, reaches for her tray, and this time the meal tastes good. She eats every bite, even the vegan brownie, licking her fingers when she finishes. In hindsight, she shouldn’t be surprised to find herself here. Just look at her mother, who rose before dawn, making breakfast, chopping wood, folding laundry until long after her kids had gone to bed. What was she if not a captive? Avon wouldn’t let the children go to school—government schools, he called them, where kids are programmed to be a cog in the machine—so their mother taught them how to spell, how to add and subtract. When she was tired, which was always, their mother sometimes lost the ability to watch her tone of voice. Her reward was the back of her husband’s hand or a blow from a rolled-up newspaper, the way one might discipline a dog.
Samson was the firstborn, named for the strongest man in the Bible, a favorite of God’s, betrayed by a woman. Bathsheba came second, named for a biblical object of lust, wife of David, mother of Solomon. A woman whose sole value was in her service to men. Bathsheba, now Katie, was a girl in a family that valued boys, that viewed the female sex as duplicitous. This presented her with a choice, either act like a boy or be owned by one. So she learned, first to wrestle, then to fight, then to shoot. She learned that there is power in a woman’s voice, but only if she is willing to take a beating to be heard.
At night she would lie in her bed reading old National Geographics with a flashlight, dreaming of faraway places. She would climb the Himalayas, sail the Mediterranean Sea. Her friends would be great apes and snow leopards.
During the day her father taught her to survive in the wilderness, how to build a lean-to and set an animal trap. He taught her how to hide and stay hidden. When she was twelve, she spent two weeks living in a ravine, drinking rainwater and eating squirrels she shot with an air rifle. Even then she was practicing, planning her escape. Except this time it wouldn’t be government men hunting her; it would be her own father, scouring the ground for footprints, sniffing the winter air. But she would beat him at his own game, vanishing like a snowflake in a storm.
Bathsheba cleans her plate, turning it upside down on the table. To fight off leg cramps, she walks around the empty basement, memorizing the terrain, looking for weak points.
She has been a fool, lured into a trap by the promise of a better life. But she has been trapped before. She escaped once. She will do it again. And then she will burn this place to the ground.
*
The storm comes in the middle hours of the night. A hot wind slams the shutters closed. The pressure drops. Lightning ignites the ridgeline. Bathsheba wakes to the sound of running feet upstairs. Her door opens, three men come down, bundle up her suitcase. Boaz Orci throws her clothes at her.
“The mountain’s on fire,” he says. “We’re moving again.”
They hustle her out to an SUV and blow through the open gates, spraying gravel. The air is heavy with smoke. Bathsheba sits in back between two guards. Did I do this? she wonders, still only half-awake, set fire to the world? Boaz is up front in the passenger seat, chewing Nicorette gum. He speaks into his wrist, listening to inaudible patter through an earpiece.