3:30 a.m.
The lights turn on. The alarm sounds off from the speakers. I’ve learned the loud noise comes from an instrument called a trumpet. It’s good to know the name of your enemy.
Trumpet. Corrections Guards. Wardens.
When I was small at Camp 1, a Warden told me I was an enemy of the state. When I asked why, he told me to open wide, and he spit into my mouth. He said I belong to the state and him and to shut my mouth and swallow it.
I never asked questions after that.
Before my feet hit the floor, a Corrections Guard is already on the row of bunks for Inmates X–Z.
“Assessment Checkup! Assessment Checkup!” the CG orders.
CG Hale, the other Corrections Guards call her. She holds another one of my enemies. The scanner that tells us if our bodies pass or fail.
“On your feet! Move, move, move!”
In this Camp, we don’t need to change. We sleep in our uniforms. Efficiency is a new word I learned here.
Every X, Y, and Z of my section lines up outside our bunks. All of us match in our bright-red uniforms. The kind of red you see when a CG goes too far and takes blood from you. “INMATE” is printed on the fronts and backs of our shirts in thick white letters. Inmates are easy to spot and shoot if we run.
No one runs from Camp 22.
CG Hale stops in front of the young girl who sleeps in the bed above me. Inmate Z-TX-558.
Pointed at her flat chest, the scanner beeps. Red dots of light move around the Inmate. Assessing the body for illness or injury.
Z-558 won’t make it past her fifteenth year. Her arms are thin. Like twigs. She cries in her sleep.
Ninety-nine percent of Inmates fail before twenty-five, but here I am. From what I can count, my body’s forty-five or fifty. The CGs call me an old hand.
Every Morning Call I think my time is up.
“Pass!” CG Hale shouts and moves on to me, Inmate Z-TX-11.
“Fail!” a second CG shouts somewhere down the line. There’s a cut-off scream. Then nothing. The failed Inmate is dragged from the room.
I spread my arms and legs to be scanned. The red dots light up my skin and uniform. Like when chicken pox took over the Camp last year.
“Pass!” CG Hale shouts. She sounds angry about it. The big Guard gets in my face, but I don’t step back. It would only make what’s coming worse. I stare at the floor instead.
The Guard hits me with the strength of a wave. For one second I’m confused. I think I’m tied down in the ocean. On one of the after-hours training nights for the new Guards.
But it was just CG Hale’s fist punching the air out of me. My face ends up between her boot and the hard floor of the Sleeping Barracks. Blood before 3:35 a.m. I’m too old for this.
“I hope I’m the one who takes you to the Gulf the day you fail,” CG Hale spits down at me. “It’ll be soon. Get ready.”
She wipes the sole of her boot with my long hair. Uses my back as her path to get to the next Inmate.
CG Hale and the other Guards have targeted me this past month. It’s normal for CGs to get bored with an Inmate after one week. But they never move on from me. They’re going to force my body to fail soon. I’m not ready to fail.
It takes me a full minute to get back to my feet. No Inmate helps. We’re not allowed to speak or touch. Inmates don’t even whisper in their beds at night. Like in some of the nicer Camps. Here, surveillance sees and hears everything.
It’s been three years and eighty-eight days since I last spoke out loud. I don’t remember the words. Yes, sir. Or No, ma’am. Goodbye to my old bunkmates.
3:40 a.m.
Morning Meal.
The other bodies that passed Assessment Checkup file into Mess Hall. At the entrance, we grab cups filled with a dark liquid off a tray. Suck the tasteless meal down by the time we reach the exit.
We have to walk by the CGs seated around big tables, eating a hot meal. Tallying scores before their shifts. Most mornings they add up the Inmates they hurt the day before.
The CGs have a point system. One point for every bruise. Two for a broken bone. Four for a drowning in the Tank. Ten for when a CG takes an Inmate to the Gulf.
Today the talk is cats, not Inmates. Several were found in a work shed. I hear the word litter. One CG gets sixteen points. The CGs all laugh.
3:45 a.m.
It’s Day Five of June.
Harvest season. The worst time of year for an Inmate at Camp 22.
Spotlights flood the gated grounds. Armed CGs march the X–Z bunk unit to Shift One Stations. It’s hot even in the dark. Come sunup it will be worse. Sticky and sweaty. Hard to breathe at all.
The X Inmates go to the fishponds. The Y and Z Inmates continue to the saltwater fields stocked with sea-bean plants.
Since my transfer to Camp 22, I’ve worked every Station. I can run this facility better than the CGs. For twenty-five months I was the Attendant to a Warden in a Camp like this one. Aquafarming for biofuel.
When I was young Warden Clove taught me to read and write. She talked to me. Allowed me to talk back. She told me the importance of the Inmate’s work. She told me the Inmates’ lives are not wasted. We are helping Texas survive. Warden Clove told me my “excess” life is not my fault and things had to be this way.
That was a long time ago.
Camps like 22 are step one in the production of biofuel. For the military’s airplanes and helicopters, Warden Clove explained. Growing plant-based aviation fuel and feeding the public at the same time, she said. That’s maximum productivity at its finest.
Pipes pump seawater from the nearby ocean into ponds stocked with fish. The pond’s runoff water fertilizes the sea-bean feedstock. The beans are next shipped off to step two in the biofuel production. Those Inmates get to work indoors. It’s still hot, but there is a cover over their heads.
There is no cover for Field Two work. I wade through a middle row in rubber boots. I begin to pick, three of the towers watching my every move.
CG Hale is the lone patrol for Fields One and Two. No need for more. There is no escape, and no Inmate ever refuses to work. Even Freshmates know that to work is the only way to live.
I don’t know why so much attention is on me. For seven days now. I have done nothing to earn it. I’ve kept quiet. Done the work. Still, a Sniper has been assigned to me.
A red dot from a rifle’s laser is aimed at my forehead. Same thing when I leave the Sleeping Barracks. Mess Hall. One word from a CG and the unmanned Sniper will fire. Take me out.
I pose little threat as an old hand. If I were a trouble causer, I would never have lived this long.
I continue to pick. To work, like I have my entire life.
Ten barrels must be filled with the bean plant by the end of Shift One. A night spent inside the Tank if an Inmate fails to meet the quota. Twelve hours standing on her tiptoes, water up to her nose. If the Inmate survives, she lives to work another day. But eleven barrels will be her quota tomorrow.
“Life Must Be Earned” is the motto above our Camp gate. I’m the only Inmate who can read it.
8:45 a.m.
I know it’s 8:45 a.m. because the strongest Inmates have completed their barrels. Fifteen minutes left to complete mine.
The air is different here on the coast. It’s thick. Wet. Makes the work much harder than at other Camps.
Sweat covers my body. My mouth is dry. I can’t swallow. Inmates only get water three times a day. I place my hand on my tenth barrel of sea beans. I’m going to faint.