The Expelled Read Online Free PDF Page B

to sit next to me, she told me that she was coming from Cazarzen, that's how she called the city from where she was escaping, a city I had never heard of.
    “I’m running away from the terror and from death,” she said, “so all this seems like a picnic to me. If I tell you all that I have lived through you wouldn't believe it.”
    “You could try.”
    I wasn't very interested in listening to the stories of each one of them, but I was sitting just above the can, next to the seat that was on top of it, and that gradually brought to my side all the passengers on the bus. Some told me their lives, others remained silent, but everyone did it with such a strange serenity.
    “At first,” she said, “we worked in a shoe factory, but they stopped buying and suddenly in the center of the city they opened an ultramodern transplant hospital, it gave good jobs and good wages to part of the population and the city began to flourish, and the housing prices rose, and other transplant hospitals were opened, before I took refuge in the forest there were five, but I think there are eight now. People from all over the world came to our city to get all kinds of transplants, the most difficult ones, but half the people in the city, or more than half, lost their jobs and sometimes their home, these poor people began selling their kidneys to be able to deal with the expenses of their families, but they always needed more and more donors, and the poor people were not enough, and they began evacuating families from their homes and they established a law, that those who lived in the forest were natural donors, those were the words, and then they began hunting those in the forest, sometimes they took out a kidney and released them back in the forest and sometimes they needed a heart and so they killed them, they took my kidney, here's the scar...”
    “And we have never heard of that around here. What did you say the name of the city was?” I really didn't want to see the scar and so I changed the topic.”
    “It was called Cazarzen, and every time they needed more transplants, they threw more people out of their homes so they would become natural donors. You see, they killed my husband and later in the forest we ate his remains, because if we didn't the wolves would eat them, so it was better to feed ourselves, the meat was hot. My two sons, children were preferred donors, you see, even old people's corneas or a pregnant woman's gallbladder. I don't know or understand how I escaped, but here I am... Well, it was my turn.”
    I think that put me off eating for a while. We kept going on the same road and we couldn't see anyone, it was like a dream. Many times I wondered if I was dreaming. I wasn't.
    We stopped near a lake surrounded by grass that looked artificial. There was nothing alive around there, not even flies. That didn't bother anyone. The back people sat together and the front people sat closer to the lake. We ate what we had, some had sandwiches and others cereal bars. Suddenly we saw a lonely lamb walking a few feet away from us. Severio took out his gun and shot it, I don't even believe he thought about whether to do it or not.
    “Here we go, that's lunch.”
    “Look, and I have here everything we need for a barbecue.”
    I believe it was Santos who went to the bus and grabbed a bag that had all the necessary tools to eat lamb. Nobody really knew how to prepare the lamb until the Tadeuz mother came and joined us. It wasn't a very simple task, she requested a knife and we didn't know what to do then.
    “She's a back woman and it can be dangerous.”
    “Yeah, but she has two children who are front people. A son and a daughter.”
    The Tadeuz were the only family on the bus, they were called Tadeuz son, Tadeuz daughter, Tadeuz father and Tadeuz mother. The children were front people and the parents back people.
    “I don't think she'll do anything, we'll give her a piece of meat.”
    It was a slow process and despite the hunger,