Ascendant Unrest

by Matthew S. Cox

  Maya stepped onto the soft dirt and let the door close behind them. Corrugated steel on the outside held some mismatched pipes and scrap metal, making the exit appear like an impassable wall. She studied the area until spotting a potential route to the top, beginning with a giant transoceanic shipping box half-buried in the rubble. From there, a pathway formed of ruined furniture, concrete slabs, trucks, and other junk spanned almost halfway around the circular basin on its way to the surface.

  She held her free arm to the side for balance while descending the hill, and hurried to the cargo box. Sarah released her hand for the climb since she didn’t want to let go of the Hornet.

  Maya shimmied up the ladder to the top, then scrambled over a few concrete slabs to a dumpster. After crossing that, she traversed a ‘bridge’ made of three office desks in a row with short jumps between them. Another concrete slab formed a ramp up to the roof of a half-buried box truck it partially crushed, the vehicle’s nose long ago vanished under the collapse. At the front end, she climbed the dirt burying the cab, crawled through a scary maze of sharp rebar spikes jutting from concrete fragments, and dropped down onto a debris-free dirt path that spanned the last thirty feet to the surface. She paused to catch her breath, winded from the arduous climb. Sarah seemed to appreciate the break as well. A few minutes later, they walked side by side along the soft trail.

  At street level, Maya entered a ‘room’ formed by three crumbling walls without a roof. Their height varied, but the lowest point reached about the middle of where a second story would’ve been―too high to go over. Copious amounts of graffiti decorated the naked cinder blocks. The smell of burning wood and burned meat hit her hard enough to draw forth a cough.

  A group of older boys sitting around an array of old chairs, sofas, and benches all looked at the two of them.

  Glints and spots of color from the ground brought her attention to hundreds of discarded autoinjectors and plastic sheets used to hold drug derm patches. The youngest had to be about eighteen, the eldest perhaps a few years older. Four of the seven wore bright yellow jackets with hoods; the others sported the mismatched scraps of Dead Space dwellers. One man’s clothing consisted entirely of a jock strap, a football helmet, and pink sneakers. Most had a half-awake glaze to their eyes, and two suffered persistent full-body twitching.

  All of them looked like trouble.

  Sarah climbed over the edge of the broken floor slab and stood behind her.

  The walled-in area had once been the ground floor of a building. Other than going back down into the crater, the only exit sat to the right, where a former doorway (sans door) had been enlarged by someone bashing out a few cinder blocks.

  Don’t even talk to them. Maya offered a polite ‘excuse me’ smile, grabbed Sarah’s left hand, and started moving at a brisk pace toward the doorway.

  A man in one of the bright jackets drifted into her path. The right side of his head had been shaved bald. Black hair from the left half hung down to his belt. “Well, look at that.”

  Maya halted, gaze darting between the doser and the doorway behind him. “Sorry for walking into your place. We’re lost. Just going to go home now.”

  The others ambled over, forming a human wall in front of them.

  Jock Strap hefted a metal baseball while staring intently at Sarah. He sniffed, huffed, and took on an almost dog-like posture. “We fightin’ ’em?”

  “Take their shit,” said another man in a yellow coat.

  “We ain’t gonna get much. Just a shirt and a rag.” One of the twitchy guys, with short blond hair, rubbed his finger back and forth under his nose. “Almost ain’t even worth it.”

  “If we can sell it, it’s worth it. We’ll get a couple bucks for their shit.” A guy with a scraggly sorta-beard and a permanent nosebleed took a step closer, making a ‘give it here’ gesture at Maya. “Come on, rat. Let’s have it.”

  “Wait, wait.” A tall, skinny man with no shirt, prominent ribs, and a milked-over left eye pointed at Sarah. A few scar lines left hairless trails in his four-day beard. “Let ’em keep the rags. We can sell them bitches to DeeDee.”

  Twitchy laughed. “Hah. Take the rags too. They won’t need ’em at DeeDee’s.”

  Half-Hair scrunched up his nose. “DeeDee? Naw. That redhead’s flat-chested. Don’t even have fuckin’ bee-stings yet.”

  “You sick bastard.” The oldest, a ginger-haired man with a beard down to his crotch, threw a bottle at Milk-Eye. “Even that crazy bitch won’t make these two work yet.”

  Jock Strap grunted, clenched the bat, and kept eyeing the man next to him. “Fight? Fight?”

  “How old you is?” asked Milk-Eye.

  “I’m nine, and she’s eleven. Too young for prostitutes.” Maya glared at them.

  “Ehh, DeeDee might take ’em. Keep ’em ’til they old ’nuff ta work,” muttered a guy with a shaved head.

  “Redhead’s close enough,” said the youngest of the dosers. “I’d hit that.” He raised a small device to his mouth and inhaled hard. Once a momentary convulsion passed, his eyes crossed. All the veins in his face and neck stood out as his skin reddened. “Oh… yeah.”

  “Dude…” Twitchy stared at him. “That ain’t cool.”

  A handful of the other dosers edged away from the youngest, varying levels of disdain in their glares.

  Jock Strap glanced back and forth between the group and the youngest. Wild eyes and a confused expression made him look like he really wanted to wallop someone with his bat.

  “I’m gonna be sick,” whispered Sarah. “Let’s run back down.”

  “I have some money at home.” Maya tried to tap into Vanessa’s haughty confidence to stop herself from shaking. “I’ll make you a deal. You let us leave. One of you comes with to make sure we get home safe, and I’ll give you ten NuCoin. That’s way more than you’d get for selling our clothes.”

  “Bullshit,” said Half-Hair. “You had that much coin, you’d ’ave more than a ratty old shirt on.”

  “We’re wearing crap so cretins like you don’t rob us. I know who DeeDee is, and I don’t want to become a harlot.”

  “Not gonna be no harlot.” The youngest kept staring at Sarah. “You’s gon’ be a pros-a-toot.”

  “They’re the same thing, idiot,” said Maya. “And I don’t want to be either one.”

  “Too bad for you then, eh?” Half-Hair lifted a handgun from his belt. “Now, you two are gonna do what you’re told. Don’t make me have ta get nasty. DeeDee’ll take nice care of you ’til you’re old enough to earn your keep.”

  Maya looked at Sarah, fear plain in her expression. How much do they think that woman will pay him for us? “All right. Fine. I’ll pay you thirty NuCoin.”

  The dosers laughed.

  Half-Hair gestured around at the others. “Hey, Possum. You still got those cuffs? These two look like they’re gonna try an’ run, deprivin’ us all of our finder’s fee.”

  “Possum gets caught so much he’s got a private cell,” said Milk-Eye.

  Some of the men scowled at the girls, as if their refusal to be sold to DeeDee equated to stealing the dosers’ drugs.

  “Uhh.” A skinny twenty-something in a shredded black coat patted himself down. “Think so, but I ain’t got a key.”

  Half-Hair laughed. “Key’s DeeDee’s problem. Fix ’em together at the ankle so’s they can’t run.”

  “Over here, sweetness,” said the youngest doser, waving at Sarah. His eyes vibrated from whatever drug he’d taken, seeming ready to pop straight out of his skull. “I’ll carry that one. She won’t get nowhere.” He winked at her. “Lemme see them bee stings.”

  Half-Hair fidgeted, looking decidedly uncomfortable. A man in a yellow coat behind the youngest muttered something to him, which seemed to frighten the man. He took a step back from Sarah.

  “I don’t wanna show you any bee stings.” Sarah ceased trembling and stared at Half-Hair. She let go of Maya’s hand and reached under the folds of her curtain-dress. Her expre
ssion hardened. “But I’ll let you see my Hornet sting.”

  She yanked the stunner pistol out from under her dress and shot Half-Hair in the face. The glow-tipped silver dart embedded itself a finger’s width to the left of his nose, glowing and sizzling. Sparks wrapped around his entire head; foam sprayed from his mouth as his eyes rolled up, consciousness lost before he even started to collapse. Sarah fired another dart at the man beside him, catching him in the right pectoral. Electric blue flashes danced across his fluorescent yellow jacket. Body rigid, he slammed into the ground like a board, flat on his front, and convulsed.

  “Fight!” roared Jock Strap, raising the bat.

  “Go!” shouted Sarah as she took off running.

  Maya sprinted after her, leaping the stunned doser and ducking away from grabbing hands. Seconds later, another guy in a yellow coat caught up to them. He grabbed a fistful of Maya’s T-shirt at her back and got his other hand on Sarah’s hair. She twisted around and jammed the Hornet into his arm, triggering the contact-stun electrodes. The doser careened over sideways into a rolling wipeout, cradling his arm and wailing.

  With open space ahead, Sarah poured on speed and ran screaming down the street.

  Hoping someone with a scrap of decency might hear, Maya followed suit, letting off a loud, clear shriek but not quite managing to turn it into the word ‘help.’ She strained to go faster as Sarah pulled a frightening distance ahead. Having spent her life surrounded by danger, her friend’s body was no stranger to hauling ass. Maya had done more running in the weeks since her abduction than the preceding nine years put together and struggled to keep that pace for more than a few minutes. Only her desperate panic at being sold into prostitution kept her going.

  Scenery blurred by in a meaningless haze. She pushed, motivating herself by combining the memory of when Genna’s mercs handcuffed her leg to a bed frame with the nightmare scenario of Mr. Mason finding her like that. What awaited her at DeeDee’s sounded much the same. Maya belted out another scream and ignored everything except for the patch of red hair in front of her.

  Sarah slowed a little, allowing Maya to catch up, but kept going for two cross streets before veering around a dead car. She jumped over what might have been a fridge and swerved around a hard left turn into an alley, startling a group of pigeons to wing. Frags sleeping or drinking booze occupied a row of large plastiboard boxes lining both sides of the alley. Few of the men and women paid attention to Maya’s screaming.

  At the end of the block, Sarah grabbed the corner of the building to go left, ducking under a huge neon sign full of Chinese symbols. They darted through a cloud of steam billowing from a metal shroud on the wall into the scent of chicken broth. Sarah hesitated at the door as if she contemplated going in for help, but a cluster of young Chinese men with guns gave her warning stares, as if the girls had interrupted some secret meeting. She leapt away with an “Eep! Sorry!” and sprinted off down the crumbling sidewalk.

  Maya glanced back at the crash of the dosers barging past the Frags in the alley. She let out a frightened shriek and ran into Sarah’s back, pushing her to run faster. Four blocks later, her friend made a sudden left turn into another alley where her stride broke; she loped to a halt against a crumbling building, gasping for breath and choking. Maya stumbled up beside her and slumped against the brickwork, wheezing. Sarah trudged a few steps more to scoot around behind an old washer/dryer unit, where she collapsed with her back to the wall, Hornet in her lap, and hands over her face.

  Maya flopped next to her, barely able to breathe.

  They sat for a few minutes, trying to muffle their desperate gulps of air. Eventually, Sarah’s expression brightened from ‘about to cry’ to ‘trying not to laugh.’ “Did you see the face that guy made?”

  “Yeah!” Maya giggled into her hands. “I bet he shit himself. I can’t believe you shot him.”

  “It’s just a stunner.” Sarah coughed, gagged, and choked a little. “I can’t believe I did too. He had a real gun. He could’ve killed me.”

  Maya coughed into her hands. “My lungs are on fire.”

  Sarah nodded, wheezing.

  The clamor of men running echoed off the walls.

  “Shit,” muttered Sarah.

  Maya overacted a gasp of shock at her friend using a swear word.

  In the span of a second, the hide-or-run decision flashing in her eyes went in favor of run, and she sprang to her feet, dragging Maya along. The dosers had entered the alley, alarmingly close to where they’d been hiding. Fear destroyed the pain in her legs, and on a burst of second wind, Maya scrambled to keep her balance. Sarah’s hand closed around hers like a vice, a silent affirmation that they’d either both get away or both get caught.

  At the end of the alley, Sarah headed left.

  The girls rounded the corner and stumbled to a stop in the middle of another crowd of older teens lounging around on derelict vehicles or car seats set up in the middle of the road. Maya’s attention leapt to a young man with cherry red hair, the same man who’d killed a guy in the apartment they’d been scavving, the one who joked about shooting Pick―little kids make the hardest targets. On the left, leaning against an upside-down pickup truck, stood the man with a tattoo of a grinning horned skull over his sternum. He still had the airbrushed violet strip across his eyes and the leather jacket. At the sight of the girls, he grinned.

  Sarah stared around at the gang punks before glancing at the Hornet, but didn’t raise it.

  The dosers spilled into the street behind them.

  Maya glanced back over her shoulder at the druggies, then at the punks in front of her. Trapped between men wanting to sell her to a woman who’d force them into prostitution and men who’d probably shoot them for target practice, she pressed herself tight to Sarah’s side. Every ounce of her wanted to scream “Mommy,” but Genna couldn’t hear her.

  9

  Cherry Red

  Staring from dosers to gangers and back again, Maya squeezed Sarah tighter.

  The guy with the purple across his eyes had to be over six feet tall, and more than one handgun lurked in the space under his black leather jacket.

  “Hey there.” Cherry Red tilted his head back in a brief nod of greeting, his gaze on Maya. His raspy voice reminded her how he’d berated the man they’d bound with duct tape, the man they’d killed after the kids had left the apartment.

  The big guy with the tattoo pushed himself off the car and stood upright. “I ’member these two. Hidin’ in our place.”

  A faint whine leaked from Sarah’s nose.

  Half-Hair stumbled around the corner behind them, staggering up to the rest of the dosers. Blood ran down his cheek from where the Hornet dart had nailed him, and he still didn’t appear to have full control of his legs―the left wouldn’t bend at the knee. He clutched his handgun in an arm as stiff as a two-by-four, twitching and emitting gurgles while glaring at Sarah.

  Jock Strap raised the bat and started to rush at her, but two other dosers in yellow coats grabbed him.

  “No, man,” said one. “We need ’em alive or there ain’t no money. There ain’t no money, there ain’t no Fume.”

  “Oh…” Jock Strap lowered the bat and inhaled hard, as if taking a hit. His face twitched as the daydreamed rush of drugs washed over him. “I like Fume.”

  Maya thought back to how the gang punks let her and the other kids leave before they murdered Dave. She decided to take a big chance and darted forward, pulling Sarah by the arm, scrambling up to stand in front of Cherry Red. “Help us, please. These guys want to steal our clothes and sell us to DeeDee to be prostitutes.”

  “Huh?” Cherry Red looked from Maya to the dosers. “The fuck’s wrong with you? They’re like little.”

  Hope bloomed in Maya’s heart. She scooted around behind him and pointed at the youngest doser. “That one wanted to have sex with Sarah, and she’s only eleven.”

  “Back off, street meat,” said Half-Hair, shuddering as he raised his paralyzed right arm
, the gun held mostly sideways. His body jerked and trembled. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep himself from swaying.

  Cherry Red—and all eight of his friends—pulled guns, except for the big guy with purple on his face, who whipped out a pair.

  Sarah gawked at Maya, glanced at the gang punks, then stared back at her with a ‘holy shit’ expression. The dosers had one gun, Half-Hair’s, to the ganger’s nine. Dosers who only carried bats, pipes, knives, or hammers appeared to lose some confidence, except for Jock Strap (who held his bat up as if he could swat bullets out of the air with it) and Half-Hair, who struggled to point his gun at Cherry Red.

  “This ain’t your shit,” said Half-Hair. “Them bitches is ours.”

  Cherry Red glanced down at the girls. “They ain’t bitches yet. Look like a couple little kids to me.”

  “We found ’em first,” said the pervert, pointing at Sarah. He flinched, swatted at nothing, and wiped his hand over his face several times fast. “Money’s ours.”

  “Hmm. I don’t see any tits there.” Cherry Red leaned closer to Sarah.

  She leaned back and whimpered, “Please don’t.”

  He shifted his gaze up to her eyes, winked, and whispered, “You two get down,” before raising his voice. “End ’em.”

  Maya dove to ground as gunfire exploded overhead. She crawled a short distance to the left and hunkered down for cover behind a rusting derelict car, hands over her ears. Sarah scrambled over and clung to her. They huddled as low to the ground as they could get, screaming as a fusillade of pistol shots thundered. Maya shrieked (not that anyone noticed over the gunfire) when a hot, spent casing landed on bare skin a few inches above her knee. She swatted it away and looked up. A puff of dust burst from Cherry Red’s left arm as a passing bullet gouged the sleeve of his leather jacket.

  Another shot hit the car with a clank, sending bits of white glass washing over them like a rain of small diamonds.