When the bus returned Sam was ready to blend back in with the rest of the women. This time they returned with two extra women. Terla explained that these women would be staying with them to help with the multiple impending births. There were several women who were within days of their due dates. Apparently if your work camp had enough pregnant women you were rewarded with your own midwives. Sam wondered if their overseer got an award too, maybe a medal he could wear around his neck. Sam decided it was in her best interest to avoid all contact with the midwives.
Now that Sam knew the guards expected a few women to be gone each night for their conjugal visits, she was more apt to take off to the woods to read and listen to the radio before everyone went to bed. Her absences actually made Terla and the other women feel better about Sam, since they assumed she had been selected for breeding. It helped her fit in a little better and it gave her more time to read and listen to the radio channels.
Sam was limited to only listening to the radio at night, which wasn't when most of the work was being done. Knowing she was missing key information drove her to use some of the other equipment she had liberated from the barracks to build a crude tape recorder. It could only hold about a day's worth of information, but it allowed Sam to review the highlights of the day's communiques, even though she had to pick and choose what she listened to each night. She was also pushing herself to stay up later each night, to read and listen to more. Thankfully sneaking back in was usually easy. She'd come close to being caught a couple times but even if she'd been seen most people would assume she was returning from a conjugal rendezvous.
Sam was rubbing her eyes, trying to focus on the headlines while listening to her recording for that day. She would fast forward, listen a little and if nothing piqued her interest fast forward again. The headlines were the usual, heat wave, drought, birth data, and a plane crash, which wasn't seen as an issue since most of the passengers were women who had not birthed a healthy male. According to the story the biggest loss was the pilot and co-pilot who had both fathered multiple sons. Sam shook her head and fast forwarded before continuing to listen. Suddenly, something else caught her attention.
"They are demanding the return of her body."
Sam looked over at her tape. She was reviewing the government channel.
"Well, that's too bad. Tell them no."
"We have told them no, but they are quite insistent."
"Find a way to get rid of them."
"Yes, sir."
Sam scoured the government audio tape for more, staying up much later than usual, but she didn't find anything else related to this conversation. She knew she was grasping at straws. There were lots of bodies these days so it shouldn't be unusual that someone was looking for one, although Sam's gut was telling her it was out of the ordinary. Death was just so common on this planet. As she tried to go to sleep, she couldn't shake the conversation from her synapses. She spent the next week staying up late and searching for anything else that could possibly be related to her but there was nothing.
Six days later there was a headline that finally gave her hope. Sky Vessel Over Myran
Myran was often in the headlines because it was the capital of this continent. Lots of decrees were released from the central authority and Sam had been listening to broadcasts from there for weeks. The picture below the headline was clearly of the Hammond. Sam scoured the government audio channel recording without finding anything of interest. Sam switched to one of the military channels, striking gold after just ten minutes.
"The aliens will be escorted to camps 81 and 83. They can search for her themselves. I am tired of their demands, and I will not dedicate any more resources to this fruitless search."
Sam hunted for information about camps 81 and 83 but didn't find anything. The death camps had regional names, not numbers, at least on the maps released to the general public. Sam was still astonished that the location of death camps was even common knowledge. Sam went back to the maps, finding her work camp's location. She couldn't have traveled too far given her condition when she crawled out of the mass grave so there had to be a death camp in the vicinity. Sam searched the map and hit pay dirt, there was a camp a few miles away. The government report she used to locate it said having a death camp centrally located between multiple work camps was efficient. It made Sam nauseous.
She threw off her disgust and shifted into planning mode. She could break into the main house and try to signal the Hammond, or she could leave the work camp and hope the closest death camp is where her crew would be looking for her. It was an easy choice for Sam.
