Rachel stared long and hard at her reflection in Charles's broken bathroom mirror. The same familiar face stared back at her- blue almond-shaped eyes that were a little too far apart, a small nose, round at the tip and lips too big for her face- but it seemed different somehow, older.
Gone where the laugh lines produced by her happier moments with Jed on the mountain, replaced now with lines of worry and fatigue.
The purple eye Charles had given her several days past during his lunatic training was in the final stages of healing. The bruises around her arms were fading to yellow and her red hair remained a tangled mess no matter how many times she combed through it.
Charles had finally agreed to mark them.
It felt like a turning point in their lives, but why then did she still feel so much dread?
Deciding that she'd stalled long enough she splashed some cold water onto her face and stepped out into the room, mustering up as much courage as she could.
Now, twenty minutes later, sitting in a chair inside Charles cabin while he dilly-daddled on her forehead with an assortment of sharp instruments, Rachel couldn't help but cringe.
She tried to convince herself that what everyone had been repeating to her over and over for the past few days was true. This was the most sensible thing to do, the smart thing to do. Maybe the fake mark wouldn't fool anyone, Hector had said, but if it could make the poachers hesitate for even one minute then that was one more minute they could use to their advantage.
But getting the fake mark was excruciating. Rachel didn't even want to think about what getting the real one would feel like.
Her forehead felt on fire and she could feel blood running down over her eyebrows each time Charles pricked her skin. She was the last of them to do it and she kept glancing at Hector who was standing beside her, wiping the blood from her forehead with a blue rag.
He and Juan had gotten their fake mark the day before and it still gave Rachel a pang of shock each time she looked at them- shock mixed in with a little bit of fear in those few seconds when her self-preservation instincts told her that a mark on the forehead meant she should run.
But no, this was still the same Hector with the dimpled chin and brown, brooding eyes, the same sarcastic, impatient Juan with messy curly hair. There was nothing to be afraid of here except for Charles seemingly unsteady hand over her skin.
"You can hold my hand if you want to, Ray," Simone offered. She was sitting across from Rachel. Her eyes were big and wide with her own little barcode nestled between her eyebrows.
"Just talk." Rachel said through gritted teeth.
Mercifully, Juan obliged. "Okay so let me get this straight. You didn't pull these barcodes straight out of your ass? They belong to dead people?"
Charles made a little disapproving sound and turned his glare on Juan. Rachel wished he wouldn't keep working on her while he was looking away, especially with a sharp needle so close to her eyes.
"You're darn tootin I aint got these out of no where. There is a method to my madness, I assure ya."
"How do you even have access to these things?" Rachel asked.
"Well just b'cus we's in the middle of nowhere that don't mean we's cut off from the rest of the world girly. I've got me ways." He replied. "Now sit still or you's gonna make it come out wrong."
Rachel stared at the place between Simone's eyebrows again. For a moment she imagined her as one of them- heartless, cold, a killer. But then Simone's face lit up with a smile and the mirage was broken.
"Remember when I tried to convince you to get matching tattoos with me from Ross's place on the mountain?"
"Yeah," Rachel lips twitched. "I told you you were out of your mind."
"Well look at us now. Matching tattoos and all," Simone stuck her tongue out at her and they both laughed.
"Technically they don't match," Juan interjected.
"Shut up, Juan." Simone retorted.
"Once all this is done," Hector began after a moment's silence. "We have to start thinking about a plan to get us into the city to save the compound children. Each day that goes by, their chances of being marked increases."
"You're right, brother. We can't wait any longer. Lena and Mari need us." Juan agreed.
Lena and Mari must have been the two younger girls Rachel had always seen Mrs. Hernandez carting around on the mountain. One was just a toddler and the other no older than ten.
An idea had been forming inside Rachel's mind ever since she had run across the poacher in the forest and if it could help get their kids back then it was worth a shot to mention it.
"What if we go underground? There has to be a sewer system of some sort." She offered.
"Yeah smart guy, a sewer system that is probably mined with traps to catch people like us." Rachel shot Juan an irritated look. He was always so negative but as much as he annoyed her, he did have a point.
"There could be. But what if there isn't?" Simone said.
"How would we even check?" Hector remarked. He was standing with his arms across his chest, leaning against the kitchen doorway. A look of deep concentration wrinkled his forehead.
"Yall laddys are a hoot!" Charles cackled. He had been silent up until then but now he took a moment to remove himself from Rachel's marking to go and rummage through an old desk drawer in the cramped, rustic kitchen. He came back with something that looked like a crumbled map. "This, my laddys, is the blueprints to the city. They is over fifty years old so's I don't think they be much help. But knock yerselves out."
Hector rolled the papers up and tucked them under his arm. Something about his expression told her he didn't want to discuss anymore in front of Charles.
Later, Rachel thought. Later I'll ask him what all that was about.
When the mark process was over, Rachel's forehead was on fire and so unbearably itchy. She had to sit on her hands to keep from scratching and making the scar worse.
Her group gathered in the wide living space in the center of Charles cabin and allowed themselves to be amazed by the small, flat screen in front of them. Back in the compound, they had never had tvs but Rachel had read about them.
Before leaving, Charles had popped in something called a DVD before he told the kids he was going out hunting and that it was his private time so he shouldn't be interrupted. Not that anyone had protested. Charles had been kind to offer them shelter but he was crazy and loud and overbearing and with him gone it felt like they could finally relax.
"I need to talk to you guys about something," Hector pulled up a chair, flipped it around and sat down, his arms splayed over the top of it.
"You make it sound so secretive," Simone mumbled as she disengaged herself from the couch and sat up.
"I think we should be cautious with Charles," Hector replied. "Last night I followed him out into the woods."
"Why would you do that?" Juan asked.
Hector eyed him and then spoke, "Because I think he's hiding something. Every night he leaves at the exact same time and doesn't come back for exactly two hours. And last night, didn't you guys hear the radio going off again? Even though the damned thing went off for hours, he still didn't answer it."
"Yeah, I did notice that," Simone quipped. "Who in the world could be radioing him, anyway? Who even has access to radios nowadays?"
"The poachers do," Rachel said.
Across from her, Simone drew her eyebrows together, making the fresh tattoo on her forehead crease.
"I'm not saying he's talking to poachers," Hector straightened his back and fixed each of them with a meaningful gaze. "But something's up and I don't like it."
"Where did he go when you followed him?"
"I don't know," He said to Juan. "I lost him in the stream. The old man went into the water and didn't resurface so after a while I just came back."
"So let's follow him again. See what the old fart is up to. It could be nothing." Juan offered. "Look man we have a good thing going here." He said to his brother, gesturing around the cabin. "Let's not screw it up by accusing Crazy Charles of things we're basing off of assumptions. He's crazy- he could just be doing things because he's crazy."
"Sure," Rachel interjected. "But why all the secrecy? And why are there traps leading to the door from the inside? At first I thought it was for extra protection, you know? In case poachers made it past the outside traps-"
"But now, in light of all of this, it could be that he's not trying to keep something out, rather he's trying to keep something in." Hector finished for her.
"If you mean us," Juan began. "Then you're crazy. He taught us how to disarm the interior traps so we could go outside."
"Not all of them. Not the ones outside the windows."
"Guys," Simone was wringing her knuckles-- a trait they both had in common and one that was a tell-tale sign of their nervousness. "Do you hear yourselves? All Charles has done is help us. He's protected us and offered us a home and food. Sure he's nuts but he's a good person."
"I'm with Simone on this one. I think we need to stop seeing shadows where there aren't any." Juan agreed.
"I don't know." Hector mused. "I still have a bad feeling about this."
Rachel did too.
.............................................................
Rachel tossed and turned in a fitful sleep. Images of burning, moving things haunted her dreams and the faceless faces of little children from the compound wove in and out of her consciousness. In her dream, Rachel was running from two kids, no older than eight or nine years old who chased after her with knives. When they reached her, Rachel held her hands up to stop them but one of them slit her throat.
Rachel sat up gasping, fingers searching for a wound that wasn't there. The others were asleep around her, wrapped like burritos in blankets- all except Hector who was beside her and looking at her with blood-shot eyes.
"Nightmares," He whispered. "I get them all the time too."
Rachel sat up and pulled the blanket around her tight in the hopes that it would make her feel a little bit better. Her heart was still pumping out an erratic beat but her breathing had slowed down to a normal pace.
"I dream about my sisters," Hector's voice was soft and wistful. He was propped up against the couch with his elbows resting on his knees. His chest was bare and glistening with sweat. Rachel wondered why in the world he would be sweating if it was freezing inside.
"In my dreams, they are these happy little girls. They're running and playing and raising hell just like they did on the mountain. But then...then Jose comes and he marks them and after he marks them he kills them and then he kills himself."
A sense of worry began to creep up on Rachel. Hector didn't seem like himself--his eyes looked red and he was breathing too fast.
"Hector...are you okay?" Her hand reached out to touch his forehead and as soon as it made contact, the heat from his skin scorched her.
"You're burning up!" Rachel kicked herself out of her blankets and made her way to the kitchen. She grabbed a white bowl and filled it with water from the kitchen sink and after rummaging through a few cabinets she found what she was looking for- a few old rags.
Making her way back to Hector, she busied herself with dipping the rags into the cool water and placing them over his forehead and chest.
"I think you've caught something. Maybe a virus," Rachel murmured. As she placed more rags over Hector's burning forehead, he reached up to catch her wrist with his hand.
"Rachel," He groaned. "He insisted I go first...he made me go first...he wanted that to happen...for a reason."
An image flitted before her eyes. She and the others had been out gathering food in the forest and when they'd come back Charles had had his table set up with an assortment of instruments and something that looked like a milky liquid. He had announced proudly that he was ready to mark them. When they'd asked what the milky substance was, he'd said it was just a lubricant to dip the needles into.
And then he had insisted that Hector go first.
"He's the strongest out of all of yous. He needs to go first." Juan of course, had resented that with a grunt but eventually Hector had agreed.
Rachel gasped and met Hector's eyes.
"You think Charles did this to you? But why...?"
"I don't--we--we have to get out of here." With what seemed like a great effort, he lifted one of his hands and tried to reach for Rachel. She caught his hand in hers and righted him as he started to slide to his left. "Something is wrong, Rachel. You need to get the others out."
Rachel nodded her head furiously and went to Juan. She shook him by the shoulders but he didn't wake so she tore through his blankets to reach him. As soon as he was unwrapped, a wave of heat passed over her.
"No. No, no, no. Wake up, Juan. You need to wake up." Panic was beginning to set in, and her fingers were shaking by the time she reached Simone.
"Ray..." Simone mumbled. "Ray, I feel so cold."
"Damn it!" Rachel stood, glancing around her in all directions trying to figure out what to do next. She pulled Simone's body to the door and propped her up near the entrance while she went back for Juan.
He was so much heavier and she had to roll him onto a blanket to be able to drag him across the floor. The entire time she kept glancing down the hall towards Charles room willing for his door to remain closed.
Hector was suddenly beside her. His body was shaking as he reached out to her to steady himself.
"Rachel..."
"It's okay, Hector. It's okay. I'm going to get us out of this place, just stay here." Rachel helped him lean against the wall and then she went to the assortment of wires and cables that Charles kept tethered to an anchor beside the wooden door. She began to unwind them one by one careful not to let them spring apart or else a weapon would come flying down from the ceiling at one of their friends.
"Come on Rachel, hurry!" She whispered to herself.
Finally the last of them were unwound and she went back for Simone. She lifted her best friend up and hung her arm over her own shoulder. By now Rachel was breathing hard too and she prayed it was from exertion and not from the effects of whatever Charles had put into them.
She hooked her foot into the door to push it open, pivoted around to face the lawn and came face to face with Charles.
"You going some where girly?"