by Schow, Ryan
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
When he stopped to think about it, Kim was no different than Skylar. To them, Logan was just a dick and a place to stay. That was okay, though. He wasn’t bothered anymore.
In the distance, he heard hammering, sawing, general carpentry. “How’s it going up there?” he asked.
“Good, I guess.”
“This person you have…” she prompted.
“It’s a roommate from the Resistance. A training partner from Krav.”
“Can’t he just get here on his own?” she asked.
“I didn’t give her directions.”
“Oh,” she said, responding to the word her and all its implications.
“It’s not like that,” he replied.
Frowning, like his response was stupid, she said, “You can do what you want, Logan. I tried to get laid last night. It’s not like the things we used to hold dear to us even matter.”
“You tried to get laid?” he asked.
She waved him off and said, “Orbey and Connor will be happy to see you.”
“What happened?” he asked, smiling.
“Same thing as always,” she teased. “The Princess found another frog.”
“There’s a Princess here?” he joked.
Turning she slapped his arm, then smiled and then she said, “Having you back here really is the best surprise.”
Orbey was absolutely tickled to see him. She hugged him the way his mother would have hugged him if she were alive. And Connor? Logan reached out to shake his hand and the big man pulled him into a hug and said, “None of that formal crap here, son.”
When the stew was in the last fifteen minutes of simmering, and the table was set, there was a knock on the door.
Stephani said, “I’ll get it.”
“You expecting company?” Logan asked.
Orbey shook her head. He looked down and she had a small pistol in her hand. He got his pistol off the side table and joined Stephani at the door. There was a scrub on the other side. Some redneck clown. He was twenty-two, maybe twenty-three, really self-important.
“I want to talk to the gunman!” he barked.
“There are five gunmen here, Craig,” Stephani warned. “You need to go back home before things go bad here.”
Logan joined Stephani in the doorway and said, “What do you want?”
“You the resident muscle?” Craig asked.
“Friend or foe?”
“What do you think, tough guy?” he sneered.
“Well then, foe, what do you want?” Logan asked. He felt Harper behind him. He also knew Orbey was there, packing heat and not afraid to use it.
“You killed my friend right over that hill and I want to know where his body is,” he said, the sneer gone, his voice amplifying.
“Nobody killed your friend,” Stephani said.
“I saw him get shot,” Craig snarled, each outburst putting him closer to the edge. “Right in the gut. He couldn’t have survived that.”
“You shouldn’t have been trespassing,” Orbey warned, a gun in one hand, Cooper by the collar in the other.
“Oh, there’s the sweetheart,” he hissed.
His eyes were looking over Logan’s shoulder, past him and past Connor.
“Your friend’s not here,” Connor said.
The scruffy, knuckle dragger named Craig opened his mouth to speak. Logan threw a punch, catching the chin just right. His head rocked back, his feet loose for a second.
Logan burst through the door, grabbed him by the front of his pants and his throat and ran him off the porch, launching him off the edge where he landed on his ass. Logan chased him down, started kicking him relentlessly.
For a second, he didn’t see this white punk; he saw the Chicom who harassed him earlier. He felt the sting in his face and somehow, in that moment, it was Craig’s fault. In his mind, Craig was now the enemy, every bit as bad as the Chicoms.
“Get up!” he roared.
Craig scrambled to his feet and Logan went after him. He ran, but not fast enough. Logan hurled a fist-sized rock at him, nailed him square in the back.
The redneck staggered forward, obviously in pain.
Logan took chase, catching up to him at the edge of the slope that would take him down to the cul-de-sac. At the crest of the hill, he gave Craig a solid shove, putting his shoulders over his feet too quickly.
The redneck went down on the palms of his hands, skidding down the hillside where he landed in a heap. Plumes of dust rose into the air, marking his body’s path.
“Come back here again and I’ll kill you,” Logan yelled.
When he got back to the house, Harper was waiting for him on the porch. “Who are you and what did you do with the Logan Cahill I knew?” she asked.
“I hate guys like that,” he said.
“Yeah, he’s going to be a problem,” she said. “I made a list.”
“What kind of a list?” he asked.
“A kill list.”
“A what?” he asked.
“You heard me,” she replied. “A kill list.”
Shaking his head, he said, “After dinner, you and I are going to talk about this list.” Then: “Are you losing weight?”
“Gaining muscle,” she said. “Don’t get cheeky.”
Holding his hands up in mock surrender, he said, “Yes, ma’am. This cracker’s on his best behavior.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Riding the paddy wagon into what she would later learn was San Quentin State Prison, Skylar woke and found the pedo dead at her feet and Ryker watching over her protectively.
“What happened to him?” she asked.
“Someone hit back.”
“Is he dead?”
“Hope so,” Ryker mumbled. “You want to see if he’s breathing?”
“Not particularly.”
When the truck came to a stop, Ryker said, “Home, sweet home.”
“Why are we here?” she asked.
“Refugee camp.”
Guards hustled them out of the paddy wagon, marched them inside, then separated the women from the men. A female guard ran Skylar through the showers, put her in new clothes and read her the rules.
“No sex with the other detainees, no fighting, you do exactly what the guards say, and if you steal anyone’s blanket, pillow, shoes or clothes, you will be shot on sight. Is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good,” she said. “Now walk the line.”
That line eventually took her to the cafeteria. There they watched the other prisoners being fed slop before being told to report to the main yard for cot assignments.
Looking around, there were so many people, she could hardly move. The air was hot with the stink of sweating, stinky bodies.
Then, somehow, she managed to see Ryker. His was taking in the scene like a guy wanting to know which way the war was coming from. Was he looking for people like him, or was he trying to find her?
Probably the former. This was prison after all. That meant cliques. In the joint, race ruled everything. But if there were gangs among these somewhat self-segregating men and women, she couldn’t find them.
She caught up with Ryker who said, “You look better now that you’re clean.”
“I’m happy to see you, too.”
At a small window, they were assigned a cot in the yard and given a blanket and a small pillow. After moseying around the yard uselessly, the last of the daylight burned out and they were told through the PA system to go to their respective cots.
Because Ryker was in line with Skylar, they were assigned cots next to each other. “Why are you here?” Ryker asked as he got settled in.
“Same as you.”
“I doubt it,” he said. “Be honest.”
“Why else would I be here?” she asked. “I got caught.”
“You’re Resistance,” he said.
“There you go.”
“Really?” he as
ked, surprised.
“Yeah.”
“They should have killed you,” he said.
“I know.”
“Why didn’t they?”
She took a deep breath, then leaned sideways on her cot and whispered, “I infiltrated the Ministry of Propaganda. Got info on a transmission.”
“Are you kidding me?”
She nodded her head, proud, then said, “I hope my contact understood it.”
“You don’t know what intel you got?”
She shook her head.
“So it could be a grocery list?” he replied, all his enthusiasm shrinking. “Or a love letter from fake Mao to the missing President?”
“The President is dead,” she said. “He’s hanging for all the world but America to see. And when the time is right, we’ll see it, too.”
Ryker went really still, laid back in his cot. “Are you sure? About the President, I mean?”
“Saw him myself.”
Just as she was drifting off, as the sounds of snoring began to create a soft white noise among the prisoners, he said, “How did you infiltrate the Ministry?”
“Seduced the Minster himself.”
“Wow,” he said.
“He spared me so that I can feel the pain of a Chicom torture camp,” she said. “At least that’s what he told me.”
“This is a refugee camp,” he said.
“Don’t bet on it.”
“My brother is in here,” he said. “I came here willingly.”
“What? Are you insane?”
“We all have our purposes,” he said. “Mine is just less…sexual than yours.”
“Family is a good reason,” she said, ignoring the jab.
“Where’s your family?” he asked.
“Gone.”
A few minutes later, when he didn’t say anything and she didn’t say anything, she closed her eyes to the night sky, shuddered against the cold night, then drifted off to sleep.
The peace ended way too soon.
Skylar woke the next day after a cold night and a string of nightmares. She was in an incredible amount of pain, she was scared, and had she not been there with Ryker, she might’ve lost her mind.
Breakfast was the same slop as dinner, and she was quickly pulled aside with several other women and a young man.
“Pick up gravel,” the Chicom guard said to them, giving them a medium sized cup. Everyone looked at the guard, unsure of what they were supposed to do. “Come now, I show you.”
The guard walked them through the crush of people, out into the yard where other refugees were breaking down the cots, taking them to the sides of the huge yard and washing them.
“Pick up gravel!” he said. He bent over, picked up a booger sized pebble, then put it in one of one woman’s plastic cups and said, “You see?”
Everyone nodded in acknowledgement.
“Whole yard,” he said, extending a hand, palm up, and sweeping it over the width of the field.
With a long section of the yard cleared for them, the group got on their hands and knees and got started. As she was crawling over the dirt field, a packed-dirt yard that was easily the size of a baseball field, she realized this was not necessary.
This was punishment.
After a few hours, one of the women got up and asked for a cup of water. She was beaten down and told that for every cup she filled with granules, she’d get one cup of water.
Skylar filled hers up just before lunch, then stood and handed it to the guard. “A cup for a cup.”
He took it and said, “Turtle position until you get your cup.”
She frowned, then she understood.
Getting down on her hands and knees, she pulled herself into the turtle shell position and waited. The sound of the zipper horrified her. What the hell? The piss hitting her back let her know just how bad it was going to be.
When he was done, he zipped up and said, “I gave you two cups of my water. You owe me a cup of dirt.” He handed her an empty plastic cup for granule collection and said, “Fill up, then we even.”
Lunch was watery soup. One of the pieces of meat she was eating had part of a tail on it. It was just this nasty piece of meat in toilet water broth.
She gagged over her dish, pushed it aside.
Finally she got up and was escorted outside to finish her work. All day long the sun beat down on her back, her neck, her exposed arms. When she was told it was time for dinner, her lips were chapped, her skin was fried and everything ached. Especially her knees and the palms of her hands.
She got a bowl of slop, located Ryker after a long, panicked look, and together they found a table. They ate quietly together, her breaking the silence first.
“How was today?” she asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, looking thoroughly spent. “What about you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it either.”
“You smell like piss.”
“I know.”
“Is it yours?” he asked, his look serious.
“No.”
“I found my brother,” he told her.
She turned and said, “That’s great! I bet he was happy to see you.”
“Yeah, and no.”
“What do you mean no?” she stammered. Lowering her voice, she said, “But you got caught so you could get him out.”
“He’s dying of prostate cancer.”
After that, she didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. That night when they went out to the yard, the yard she’d cleaned on hands and knees, all the cots were in position. She didn’t expect to see her blanket or pillow, but it was there. She and Ryker walked to them in the near dark, and without a word, settled in for the night.
Lying in relative comfort (as opposed to picking up bits of dirt and getting pissed on), she gazed up into the night sky and tried to comprehend what Ryker had gone through to get there. How he walked right into an enemy run concentration camp only to learn it was all for nothing.
“What is his prognosis?” she asked. “Your brother.”
“I…I don’t know. We only had a few minutes to talk. At least he’s inside, though, you know? Not out here in the cold.”
She reached her hand out to this total stranger, who was lying close to her. He didn’t see it at first. There was still a lot to get used to. Like how everyone was sleeping next to everyone else in the entire field, with only a foot of walkway between them.
When he did see her hand, he took it reluctantly.
“I’m so sorry, Ryker,” she said.
“This world is teeming with disappointments,” he said. “What’s one more?”
“Sadly, this is true.”
“Shhh,” someone said.
The two of them had no more to say.
Skylar finally took her hand back when her shoulder started to ache, and that’s when she closed her eyes and was swept into yet another nightmare.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The next day, Ryker and everyone else woke to the blaring screech of overhead horns. He snapped his eyes open and sat up fast. Looking around, everyone else was getting up. Next to him, Skylar was having the same reaction. She looked cold. Like she’d been freezing all night.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded, her bruised and beaten face looking better. In contrast, though, her lips were blue and her teeth were chattering.
It was an icebox outside, and their blankets were thin and smelly.
“Everyone out of bed!” the voice in the overhead PA system finally screamed. Everyone got up. “Food is waiting!”
“I don’t think there’s anything in this place resembling real food,” Skylar grumbled.
He soon realized that there was no such thing as talking, or instruction. Everything important was conveyed to the refugees through screaming. This was designed to keep you rattled, locked in fear, practically in shock from the trauma.
The bodies crushed against one another as they headed
for the cafeteria. The food the night before was bad, so bad, but this looked worse. When they got a bowl of something pasty resembling oatmeal, Skylar and Ryker sat together and looked at each other.
She leaned a little closer to him and said, “I heard there was a countdown.”
“To what?” he asked.
“An EMP,” she said. He now looked over at her, stunned. “I don’t know when it’s going to go off. That’s what I needed to get from the Minister of Propaganda. That was my mission.”
“When is it supposed to go off?” he asked.
“I told you I don’t know.”
“I thought you said—”
“I said I heard of the countdown. I’m not sure when it is because the countdown is being hosted on the dark web, run through multiple servers in SocioSphere. I found one of the servers. It’s like a drop site. I was able to get the word out before I was captured.”
“So your job is done?” he asked.
“This one.”
“What’s the next one?” he asked. “Because unless you’re giving yourself orders, this is like a body farm where no one gets to live.”
“I don’t know. What I can say for sure though, is that I should have died. They should have killed me after they found out about my treason.”
“Meaning?”
“They’re going to torture me here,” she said.
“You’re one in thousands of the worst malcontents these sorry bastards could find. We’re here to work. What did you do yesterday?”
“Picked up pebbles on the lower yard.” She showed him the raw tips of her fingers, then turned them sideways, highlighting all the tiny red fissures in the skin. “See?”
“And they pissed on you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“If that’s the worst of it…”
“They said it wasn’t,” she told him. “If I can just blend in, though, maybe they’ll forget about me.”
“Did they scan you?”
She knew what he was asking and though she didn’t want to tell him the truth, she needed to. “My Cyberlink is still active.”