When All is Lost

Chapter 46

Not this.

Never this.

I felt bile rise up my throat as I took a reactionary step away from both Gertie and the door. It didn't matter how much death I'd seen or how many people I'd killed, I wasn't able to stomach my discovery. I could feel myself about to heave when Gertie grabbed me by the elbow.

"Don't you dare." She shoved me in front of her, pushing me towards the house. "Not here."

Robotically, I moved forward even as my mind spiraled. We only made it a few steps when Jaquan came sprinting up from what I assumed was the gas station. He looked between me and the door and his eyes widened in horror.

He knew.

"We'll speak about this later," Gertie told him in an eerily calm voice.

Jaquan blanched but said nothing as we passed. The rest of the walk to the greenhouse was silent as I spent the entire way trying to make sense of what was happening. Gertie went to her usual spot by her plants, but I could clearly see that she was keeping her gun aimed at my stomach.

"What was that? What is this place?" I asked, hearing the revulsion in my own voice.

Gertie glared at me. "I keep people safe here. I give them a shelter – a home – where they are safe, and warm, and-"

"Fed?" I asked in borderline hysteria.

"There are forty-two people here. Look around." She waved an arm at her small, sad-looking, herb garden. "You think they can live off of this? How did you think we have managed all this time?"

I thought they'd been lucky with trade or had all the food in the gas station. It was only now that she was pointing it out that I realized how unreasonable those possibilities were. The sheer number of people should have made surviving the peaceful way they'd claimed impossible.

"This is..." I couldn't even finish my sentence.

Gertie's nostrils flared. "Wrong? Sick?" She spat the words out as if she'd heard them before. "Do you think any of us want this? Do you really think we want to live like this?"

I crossed my arms around my stomach wishing I had my ice pick. "Do you even tell them?"

Gertie looked mortified by my question. "Of course I do. Everyone here knows exactly what they are agreeing to. We don't hurt anyone or kill anyone for food, we just-"

"Don't let anything go to waste?" I shook my head at her in disgust.

"Don't you judge me." She pointed a finger at me before finally lowering her gun and slapping it down on the table in front of her. "I'm doing everything I can for these people and come spring, we'll never ever have to do this again. We have every seed we need to make this farm thrive, but we have to survive until then."

It was as if everything began to fall into place in my brain. Gertie's obsession with her little herbs was all in hopes of something bigger later. In her twisted way, she kept a hard moral code so she could live with the reality of her own choices.

And yet she still judged me for my choices.

Gertie was right about one thing – everyone would eventually have to find their bottom line. Thanks to her, I found mine.

I would rather starve.

As if reading my mind, Gertie's lower lip quivered a little with emotion even as her gaze stayed cold and steady. "Making the choice to... do what we had to do, it wasn't easy. We lost a lot of really good people before making this decision and every person that joined us afterward knew exactly what they were getting into."