The Disappeared by C.J. Harper Read Free Book Online

Some of them are murmuring and moaning. One boy is banging his head against the metal partition. I lose count of the rows. What are they all so desperate for?
    I get to what I hope is row twenty-five and there, just where it should be, is an empty pod. I step in and lean gratefully against the metal grille of the wall. My pod. I found it all by myself. I straighten up and take a closer look at the nozzles. It seems that I’ve made it just in time, because a buzzer sounds and a red light flashes on the top of one of the nozzles. Then a thick stream of brown gloop pours out and all over my shoes.
    I try to turn the nozzle off, but I can’t. The brown stuff is all over the floor. What should I do? I look round the pod, but there’s nothing to catch the flow with. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. Is this slop my lunch? The brown muck just keeps coming and now there’s a disgusting lumpy pool on the floor. I look through the grille on my left at the boy in the next pod; maybe I can see what he’s doing.
    ‘Where do you get a bowl from?’ I whisper.
    He doesn’t answer. As my eyes make out his outline in the gloom I realise he can’t.
    His mouth is wrapped around a nozzle and he is sucking that brown stuff down.
    My stomach heaves. It’s not even that the gloop looks and smells disgusting; it’s the undignified way he’s gulping at that nozzle. Like an animal.
    And that’s when I realise that this massive warehouse is totally silent.
    I turn round. In the pod opposite is a girl sucking at the metal teat in the same way. Her eyes are closed and as she gulps her rigid body begins to relax. Next to her a boy is slurping so hard that the brown liquid is running down his chin. All around me the students are sucking hard on the metal nozzles, their eyes closed in pleasure. I look away.
    I won’t do it. I won’t eat like that. I’d rather starve. The brown stream stops. I hear a sigh of contentment from the pod on my left. The buzzer sounds again and the middle nozzle gushes with an orangey liquid. I can’t bear to turn back to the suckling students, so I’m forced to watch it mixing with the brown stuff. Finally, the last tap produces what looks like water. I use my hands to take a tentative sip – it is water. I have a couple more mouthfuls and then I try to rinse my shoes under it. The water thins out the puddle on the floor and it starts to run through the grille into the pod on my right. The room must be on a slight slope.
    I turn around slowly. The students are lounging against the walls of their pods. Their bodies are relaxed and their faces are smooth instead of pinched and angry. I can only think of one way that the food could have calmed them so much. Now I see why everyone was so desperate to get to their lunch.
    The food is drugged.

I am not eating drugged food. What kind of a place is this? No wonder the students are so weird. I need to find someone with a brain to talk to.
    I step carefully over the sticky mess on the floor and bang straight into a tall boy wearing the same yellow badge as the boy who pushed me about this morning. An impeccable. Finally, someone who might be able to help.
    ‘Would it be possible to get something to eat?’ I say.
    He stares at me without blinking.
    ‘I, um, missed lunch.’
    He lowers his gaze to the vomit-like puddle on the floor. I swallow.
    ‘Yes, ah, I think maybe the tap is faulty,’ I say. ‘I couldn’t get it to turn off.’
    ‘No mess in the feeding pods,’ he says.
    ‘I didn’t mean to. I’m new—’
    ‘No mess in the feeding pods,’ he repeats in a monotone.
    I look about for help. Why is it so hard to make anyone in here understand? The girl from the pod on my right is standing to the side and slightly behind the impeccable. She must have been watching the whole time. I open my mouth to ask her to help explain, but she starts to slink away. Without taking his eyes off me, the impeccable shoots out an arm to his side and grabs her,