Free A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) by Martin Leicht, Isla Neal Page B

bunkroom, where I sit down on one of the impeccably made beds.
    “I’ll have them send down some food for you,” Oates tells me from where he lingers in the doorway. “Jules makes a rather serviceable ratatouille.”
    “Thank you,” I breathe. The exhaustion has practically engulfed me now. I’m so zonked that Olivia’s screams are blurring into one mind-numbing siren wail. Oates doesn’t reply but tips his head in a slight bow to me, then heads back toward the canteen.
    I take in my new digs. Pretty spartan but definitely cozier than my hospital room back with Byron and his lot. There are seriously bunk beds, six mattresses in total. There’s a couch and a table with a few chairs and a lamp. A few older lap-pads strewn on the table—probably without network access, I’d wager. And that’s it.
    “Okay, girl,” I tell my shrieking daughter. “Let’s get you to stop screaming. Um, inner calm, inner calm . . .”
    “ ’Cause I love you, a bushel and a peck . . .”
    (Tired tired anxious tired we have no plan worried
    freaked out Cole just PUNCHED a dude hungry tired so so tired . . .)
    “You bet your pretty neck I do.”
    Baby Olivia is having none of it. I sigh and try to placate her instead with the end of the last gel packet Cole gave me. I should have asked Oates for something for Olivia along with the ratatouille, although he’s probably ten steps ahead of me on that one. I really am turning out to be the world’s worst mother.
    Olivia, unfortunately, refuses to eat the damn gel.
    “I know you’re hungry,” I whine, suddenly totally understanding the phrase “at the end of one’s rope.” “And you like gel! You practically gobbled it on the trip here! Come on, now. You have to eat something .” Olivia swats the packet to the floor. At the sound of the splat she launches into a new series of wails, grabbing with her tiny little hands at the zip of my thermal suit. “No!” I shout as her tugs become more insistent.“You can’t have milk. My boobs don’t work, remember? We just tried that. I’m past the point of producing milk, silly girl.”
    But you try reasoning with an infant.
    “All right,” I sigh, resigned. Maybe just going through the motions and being near a boob will calm this Goober down enough to actually eat the gel. I unzip my thermal top and fiddle with my shirt. “Let’s hurry up, though, before someone comes with that food. You don’t want your mommy to get a reputation as an exhibitionist, now, do you?” I shift Olivia into position, but like before she just squirms all over the place, her baby feet ninja-kicking in every direction.
    “You are such a little spaz,” I moan. “I don’t know where you get that—”
    “Whoa, oops! Hello there!”
    I look up. Standing in the doorway is a man with an enormous bushy beard and long hair.
    “What the hell ?” I squeak, doing my best to cover my half-exposed bosom.
    But the man seems not to even notice. He walks straight into the room and plops down on the bunk across from mine. “I heard there’d be new recruits today,” he answers. “But I never expected a baby.” He grins cheerfully, scratching his crazy-long, scraggly beard. “Man, this place is a trip, huh?”
    “Dude,” I say. “Seriously. What the hell ?”
    “Oh, don’t mind me,” the guy says casually, leaning down to peer under the bed, where he proceeds to root around for something. “I was just looking for my man Oates. Thought I heard him a minute ago. I was in the can down the hall. Was he just here?”
    “I, uh . . . think he’s in the kitchen.”
    There’s something weird about this guy, and it’s not just the fact that he seems completely unfazed to find a teenage girl attempting to breast-feed a baby in an Almiri prison camp.
    “Hey, you didn’t happen to see, like, a big book around here, did you?” he asks, his head buried underneath the bunk.
    “Who are you?” I ask at last.
    The man pulls his head out from