Total pages in book: 182
Estimated words: 171288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Blood, she thought, feeling sick. That’s his blood they’re pouring down the drain!
But even worse was what she saw when the conveyor belt began running at the far end of the machine. A long hairy thigh, neatly cut just above the knee and below the hip, came out from under the plastic flaps.
Like a piece of luggage on an airport conveyor belt, Penny thought faintly.
The thigh was followed by an upper arm and then a forearm and then…
But Penny couldn’t watch anymore. She knew if she saw the nice man’s head come rolling out from under the long plastic strips, she would go crazy and start screaming.
No, she thought. No, no, no, no, NO!
Turning away from the grizzly sight, she skuttled through the rows of tables and towards the door. Luckily, the loud roaring of the machine covered the sound of the door opening and closing behind her and then she was standing out in the corridor, heart pounding and stomach twisting.
“Oh God,” she whispered in a low, trembling voice. “Oh God, we have to get out of here!”
“Have to what, dearie?”
Looking up, Penny saw Nurse Zoone coming towards her.
“Sorry I took so long,” the NeverBreeder nurse said. “Those pesky—why dearie, are you all right?” She looked at Penny in concern and Penny realized she must still have a look of grief and horror on her face.
“Oh, uh, fine,” she said, straightening up and trying to paste on a smile. “Just, um, worried. I don’t want to be too late to work, you know.”
“No, of course not! That’s why we gave you a note. Come on then.” And Nurse Zoone set off at a fast pace, leaving Penny to trot after her.
As they went, Penny concentrated on having a normal look on her face though inside she wanted nothing more than to break down and cry. Poor Claudette!
“Well, here we are at the door, dearie,” the NeverBreeder nurse said at last, escorting Penny back to the entrance of the building. “I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to old Mother Toone. I know she was a real favorite with all the breeder girls she watched over and trained here in the dormitories.”
“Yes…she was.” Penny nodded distractedly. “She…she really was.”
“Well, you’d best get on to work now,” the nurse told her. “And go as fast as you can, for you don’t want to miss anything—I’m told there’s to be a bit of excitement today.”
“Excitement?” Penny asked faintly. “What kind of excitement?”
“Oh, you’ll see.” The nurse winked one yellow eye at her and gave her the jack-o-lantern grin that was so like Mother Toone’s again. “Get along with you, now. And next time you come see us, hopefully you’ll have a baby in your belly for the Glorious Cause!”
“Uh, hopefully,” Penny agreed, though the idea made her feel sick. The thought of sacrificing baby after baby to become NeverBreeders was still deeply repellent to her. Though it was somewhat eclipsed by the thought of being killed after years of producing and turned into so much chopped meat. How horrible!
“Goodbye then, dearie,” Nurse Zoone said brightly and closed the door behind her, leaving Penny to stand there in the sunshine filtering through the atmosphere dome as she tried to get a handle on her emotions.
“We have to get away,” she whispered to herself again, shivering helplessly. “We have to escape!”
Sixty-Eight
“Excuse me, your attention please, workers!” The self-important voice of Head Gardener Poone rang through the greenhouse. V stopped trimming the fleezum tree he’d been working on and turned reluctantly to see what his supervisor wanted.
He’d been on edge all day, he admitted to himself. It was getting close to quitting time and he just wanted to go home and see Penelope and make sure she was all right. In fact, he’d wanted to go check on her during their lunch break but that little orange asshole Poone had gotten a hair up his ass about the placement of the partha roots, which were on the East side of the green house. He had demanded they replant all of them on the West side so they could get better light.
The replanting had taken all but ten minutes of V’s lunch break and he hadn’t had time to get to the Marketplace and back without being tardy and receiving another black mark on his permanent record. Normally, he wouldn’t give a fuck for black marks, of course, but he already had two of them and a third meant instant recycling.
Since he was trying to stay alive until he and Penelope could get out of the Compound, that meant he had to be careful and mind his Ps and Qs in a way he hadn’t had to worry about since his early gang days.
But black marks weren’t on his mind right now—Penelope was. What had they done to her at the Breeding Center, he wondered distractedly? Was she all right? Would she be there when he got home?