State of Chaos

Prisoners start flooding towards it. Sophia and I hang back, cautious. Until we see that there’s a huge plastic water tank on the back of the pickup bed. We approach slowly and I watch while prisoners fill old milk cartons, thermoses and plastic water bottles. Sophia licks her lips.

“Where do we get some of those?” she says.

“I don’t know.”

Prisoners push and shove to the front of the line, filling their containers and gorging themselves with water. My dry mouth is very jealous right now.

“Hey.” Grease is marching up from the side of the field. He tosses a plastic milk carton at my chest before giving an oversized orange juice can to Sophia. “You’re welcome.”

I open and close my mouth a few times before blurting out,

“Thank you.”

But he’s already gone.

“That’s not right,” Sophia observes. “He wants something from us.”

“I don’t care. I’m thirsty.”

I work my way to the pickup bed and pull the lever on the container. Cold water comes rushing out. Probably ditchwater. Not long ago I would have rolled over and died before I drank out of a ditch. Today I don’t care.

Fu

I fill the container to the brim and screw the lid tight just as I’m roughly shoved aside by a male prisoner. I hit the ground on my shoulder, wincing with pain. I get to my feet. My cheeks flush with anger and embarrassment. I feel like crying. Or kicking him. Maybe both. But nobody even notices I was knocked down. I’m invisible. Sophia rushes up behind me and places her hand on my shoulder.

“You okay?” she whispers.

I nod.

“I’m going to get some water, too.” She squeezes through the crowd, gets her own water, and the two of us head back out to the trees. Away from the crazy prisoners pushing and clawing their way to the water.

“Next time we’ll just go last,” I say.

Sophia agrees, then we pop the lids off our cartons and chug down half of the water inside. It’s cold and refreshing, even if there are flecks of dirt and god-knows-what floating around in it. It does what it’s supposed to do.

It keeps me alive.

“How long do you think our workday is?” Sophia wonders.

She climbs to the top of the ladder. I work my way up behind her, swinging onto the trunk of the tree. After just a few hours of working out here, we’ve already got a system down. She picks at the top of the ladder, because she’s taller, and I bend down and get the oranges underneath the canopy of branches that she would have a hard time reaching. “Probably from sunrise to sunset,” I sigh. “And I’m doubting we get a dental plan.”

Sophia snorts.

“I’m doubting we get anything.”

“I wonder when we eat.” I drop a couple of oranges into my bag. “Kamaneva said we get ten minutes for di

“Ten minutes? That’s not enough. I need an hour. At least.”

“An hour? It doesn’t take that long to eat.”

“You’ve never met my family.”

I grin for the first time since arriving.

The rest of the day passes slowly, and the by the time evening hits, I’m exhausted — mentally and physically. Every once in a while Sophia and I will hear the boom and rattle of distant gunfire, reminding us that we’re working in the middle of an active warzone. It’s chilling.

“Hey, listen.” Sophia pauses, cocking her head. “What’s that?”

I stop. The school intercom is emitting a piercing tone. It sounds like a heart rate monitor that’s flat-lined. All around us, seasoned prisoners stop what they’re doing, grab their ladders, and take off.

“I’m guessing we’re done,” I say.

Sophia takes one end of the ladder and I take the other. We haul it to the end of the field and heave it into the back of a pickup. We grab our water containers and watch as other prisoners drop their shoulder sacks into a bin. Sophia and I follow suit and blend into the crowd as armed Omega troopers close in around us. It’s not long before we’re moving back into the complex. We march down the long corridors before making a sharp turn into the cafeteria.

Sophia and I are clueless about how to proceed, so we let the other prisoners surge in front of us while we bring up the rear. They line up at a long, low table. Stacks of bowls are piled at one end. Everybody grabs one.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” I mumble.

I take a bowl and file down the side of the table. I hold my bowl out as a woman — a fellow prisoner, by the looks of it - spoons out something hot and steaming into the container. I stare at the contents. It looks like muddy water.

“What is this?” Sophia hisses.

“I don’t think I want to know.” We’re given a piece of hard bread at the end of the line and Sophia and I sit down at a plastic table in the corner. “This bread is ancient.” I try to break it in half, but it’s too stale. It won’t even bend. “That’s it. My teeth are screwed.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Sophia says. “…I think.”

The Mystery Soup is nothing but water with a few spices, some chunks of unidentifiable meat and a little flour thrown in. I soak the bread in the bowl to get it soft enough to eat. Honestly, I’ve had better meals. Then again, I’ve had worse meals. I did live in Los Angeles, after all. There are some pretty nasty places to eat down there. I went through a lot of trial and error in high school to find the restaurants that were worth the time and money.

This is not worth time or money. Or caloric value.

I don’t see a rosy, healthy future for myself if this is the only food we get around here. It’s nothing more than thickened gruel and a piece of stale bread. It’s not enough to keep an anorexic canary alive, let alone a human being.

Maybe we’ll get more food tomorrow.

Keep dreaming, my little voice says.

In the end, Kamaneva is right. We only get ten minutes to eat, which is more than enough time considering the fact that our meal has less mass than bottled baby food. Afterwards we’re marched back to the LAB. The doors are shut behind us and locked tight. Armed Omega troopers are stationed in the hall and outside the windows.

Sophia and I press our backs against the far wall and drop to the ground, watching other prisoners crawl into their own spaces. Some squeeze underneath the lab counters and curl up inside the big storage cupboards. Others literally sprawl out wherever they are and close their eyes. Arms and legs are everywhere, and the women don’t seem to be embarrassed to prop their legs up on each other’s backs or stick their head in somebody’s face.

I, on the other hand, am embarrassed. I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes. I’m too stressed to analyze anything. I’m too exhausted to think about the fact that just last night, I was searching for Chris at the trailer park.

Just last night I was still a free person.

“Goodnight, Cassidy,” Sophia yawns.

“Night.”

I fall asleep.

I’m too tired to do anything else.

Whether or not it’s normal, everybody falls into a routine. Even if you’re a prisoner at a slave labor camp, picking oranges and being bossed around by a Russian soldier with a long, confusing name. That’s what happens to me: I get familiar with the routine at camp. Our schedule is simple, so it’s not hard to do:

1. Get up at sunrise. Eat breakfast. Mystery Soup and Concrete Bread. Ten minutes.

2. Get to work. Harvest the orange trees as fast as we can. The fields are huge and there are oranges everywhere.

3. Sunset. More Mystery Soup and Concrete Bread.

4. Head to the LAB aka our cellblock. Group 13 shuts down and rests for the day.

It’s the same thing day after day. There’s never any change, and despite the high stress environment and the fact that, hey, we’re enslaved, I actually get used to the lifestyle here. Hard, grueling work. Borderline starvation. Bullying, taunting and humiliation from the soldiers. It’s not a pretty picture. But that’s the beauty of being human, right? We adapt to even the most difficult situations. Plus, I’m smaller than some of the other prisoners, so the paltry amount of nutrition we receive here goes a little farther with me. Big, muscular men quickly become weak and emaciated, but smaller people like me? We last a little longer.