The Trap Read Free Page B

Civilization?
Without fail.
Please.
”
    The boys break out in cruel, mocking laughter.
    “Brother?” says Cassie.
    And just like that, the laughter stops. One of the taller boys steps forward. He’s all bones and sharp angles. His cheekbones jut out.
    “Is that you?” she asks. “Matthew, is that really you?”
    His lips tremble. “Cassie?” The name comes out hoarse, as if long unspoken.
    The other boys move away. Quickly, as if they know what’s going to happen next and want no part of it.
    Cassie takes a tentative step toward Matthew. Her eyes are shaking in their sockets, glistening over. “You’re so tall now.” She reaches up, is about to touch his face, then
withdraws her hand. “And skinny. How long has it been? Since you were . . . sent here?”
    “One year.” Softer and with sadness, he continues. “Three months, twenty-three days.”
    “Where’s Timmy?”
    His eyes cast downward.
    Cassie’s lips wobble as tears pool in her eyes.
    Matthew rubs his arm. “Come with me. I’ll get you some clothes to change into.” He looks at the rest of us. Maybe it’s the change in light, but a softness touches his
face. “Bring your friends, too.”

Five
    I T IS A world of metal and garish light. With only narrow, low-ceilinged corridors to maneuver within. Every corridor we walk down is
identical to the previous: metal and light, metal and light. On each side of us, recessed into the walls, are enclaves, rows of them stacked three high in perfect alignment and spaced apart with
mathematical precision. Each is the size of a large coffin, steel plated and embedded deep into the wall.
    But it’s the other humans we gape at the most.
    They mill around aimlessly, or gather in small groups of three or four. All young, mostly boys. Pale, gaunt, emaciated, often staring off vacantly at the walls. They blink as we pass, gazing
back at us with neither hostility nor warm hospitality. Just mild curiosity bordering on indifference, as if the arrival of newcomers is commonplace. Occasionally, Cassie would gasp with surprise,
her face paling at the sight of yet another familiar face from the past. But none call out to her or acknowledge her. They only avert their stares quickly.
    Matthew leads us to the end of one corridor. Inside an enclave are stacks of clothing. All the same drab garb worn by everyone else, brown and bland, mildewy. I slip into the clothes quickly and
approach Matthew as the girls get dressed.
    “My name’s Gene.”
    He regards me with narrow eyes.
    I point to the boys. “And that’s Epap—”
    “No names,” Matthew says curtly.
    “What?”
    “We don’t have names down here.”
    “But you’re named Matthew.”
    He shakes his head. “That’s . . . from before.” He purses his lips. “Listen, we just don’t do names here.”
    “Why not? You all—”
    “We all disappear. Inevitably and suddenly. So there’s no sense in giving names. No sense in forming bonds.” He turns his back to me, starts walking away.
    I take his elbow. Gently, but with insistence, I stop him. He flinches but does not snatch his arm away. “They take you for food, don’t they?” I say, remembering what Krugman
had told me about this place. “Randomly, you never know when you might get taken.”
    Matthew doesn’t say anything, but he gives the slightest nod.
    “Tell me how,” I whisper. “How do they take you?”
    He resists at first. Only after the girls join us, Cassie standing closest to him, does he speak, mechanically, with only the slightest tremble in his voice.
    About once a week (at least they think it is a week; there is no way to measure the passage of days and nights in these underground catacombs), an alarm goes off. You have one minute, he tells
us, to climb into one of the enclaves in the wall. Only one person per unit. Then a glass window will snap down, sealing you inside. That is a good thing. Because it protects you. The lights go
out—the only time they ever do—and the