The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy

by Mark D. Diehl

  Li’l Ed felt his stress melt away. It had been decided. His father outranked him at the company, and the company was God. His father’s word was law.

  “Yes, sir. I should probably let you get back to your work sir, and ma’am.”

  His EI suddenly slammed off! They would think he’d terminated the connection before they’d given him leave! Li’l Ed scrambled to reopen the function but found he was unable.

  A black truck pulled up directly in front of him. The doors opened and two Unnamed stepped out. Jack was inside, wide-eyed and pale. “Get in,” one of the Unnamed said.

  Someplace dark and underground

  “Yes, go ahead, one more!” Rus screamed. “Another!”

  He was seated naked on bare concrete with his arms and legs bound around an oil drum. The hooded Fiends called Divinators were working him over. There was a plastic bag over his head that sucked against his face when he inhaled too fast, and the electrical cord whipping across his back made him involuntarily gasp and gag.

  It didn’t matter what they did to him. He deserved all the pain, desperation, and suffering the Fiends could administer. Let them torture him to the end. There was no life worth having in a world like this, anyway.

  A hand roughly grabbed at his head, pulling the plastic off his face as it closed into a fist. It yanked him backward, pointing his face at the ceiling as his lungs tried to suck in the whole room’s air supply.

  A hooded face appeared above his, but Rus’ unfocused eyes stared blankly into the space between them. The vomit-stinking breath stung his eyes.

  “What are you?” a voice growled.

  “Nothing,” Rus said, meaning it. “I’m nothing.”

  The hand released his hair and the muscles that had tightened to counterbalance his tilted head flexed, slamming his nose and brow ridge against the oil drum.

  “This one’s ready,” the voice said.

  At a Hotel

  Arrulfo said this was a hotel. Ernesto had never been to a hotel before. A hotel was a sour-smelling building with concave stairs and too many people in it. And noise, too much noise. Ernesto did not like the hotel.

  “Arrulfo, let me take him instead,” Rosa said. “He needs to learn to be apart from you.”

  Rosa took Ernesto’s hand. He yanked it back away from her, holding the lighter close against his chest. “You see?” she said. “You see what he does? You protect him so much he’s overwhelmed by everything.”

  Arrulfo appeared, smiling at Ernesto from a close distance. “It’s okay, amigo,” Arrulfo said. “Don’t worry. It’s me. I’m here.” Arrulfo turned his face away again. “He is overwhelmed by everything, Rosa, and so, I protect him so much.” Then the face was back in front of Ernesto, saying, “Let’s go down the hall together to try and get some gas for the lighter, okay?”

  Ernesto nodded. Arrulfo stepped back. Ernesto liked that Arrulfo didn’t offer to help him up. People sometimes put their hands on Ernesto and thought they were helping, but that was terrible; it was not helping at all. Arrulfo never did that.

  They went out into the hallway together. It smelled like ashes and rain. It was too narrow to walk next to each other. Arrulfo went first and Ernesto followed, seven and one-half steps from the door, to the closet where there was a toilet. There was still some gas in the lighter from before. That part had not been broken in the fight, the part holding the gas. So little gas was left that the lighter might not light for Arrulfo’s friend with his big hair in a tube, but Arrulfo said maybe they could get some from this toilet.

  Ernesto worked the tube and crank, trying to get some gas out of the pipe he could access through the toilet. The little piece on the tip had a membrane that let only gas pass through it and not water and the membrane had not been broken. He couldn’t get the tube to where he wanted it because there was something inside the pipe that was blocking it. Ernesto found a tiny pocket and turned the crank, meeting resistance as the membrane kept out water, but finally a tiny bubble formed inside the lighter’s internal tubing and then slowly worked its way to mix with the rest of the gas inside.

  “You got it?” Arrulfo asked. Ernesto nodded. “Okay, good, amigo. Maybe you can give it to Kel, maybe practice talking to someone new, huh?”

  Ernesto shook his head like he did when he was tasting something bad. He pushed the lighter into Arrulfo’s hands, but Arrulfo didn’t take it. “You can give it to him,” he said as they walked the seven and a half steps back to the room.

  Arrulfo talked with the new girl, Eadie, and had Ernesto show her the lighter and its gas level. “I don’t want to give it to him, Arrulfo,” Ernesto said. “You do it.”

  “She can give it to him, Ernesto. Just give it to her. It’s good practice for you.”

  She took the lighter and said something to him in English. Ernesto went back and sat down. Now there was nothing to fix, nothing to do. People were talking and making too much noise.

  Outside the door a voice yelled, “It’s Dok! I’m coming in!”

  Rosa opened the door and three people came in, slamming the door again behind them. Rosa worked the big metal rod through the loops and the door shook with some tremendous impact. Others ran to push against the door.

  So loud!

  Some huge noise sounded outside, painful and shocking. One of the people here, Lawrence, pulled an arm away from the door, dripping blood onto the floor.

  Now the loud sounds were everywhere, and especially coming from the window. Guns. The sounds were guns. Someone was shooting guns. Sometimes the sounds were different from each other and sometimes they were the same, but all the sounds were much too loud, painful and shocking. Ernesto covered his head with his arms.

  Arrulfo grabbed him.

  “I don’t like to be touched, Arrulfo!” Ernesto said, pulling back.

  “We have to go now, Ernesto,” Arrulfo said. “We have to run from the bad men.”

  Arrulfo had taught Ernesto to run from bad men. Bad men would hurt him unless he ran away from them. The change was so hard to do, as if he was tied up and trying to stand on his own, but Ernesto forced his arm and leg muscles to work, and he made himself stand. Arrulfo released him and he went into the hall with the others.

  There were dead men there in the hall he had to climb over. They wore black suits and sunglasses. The word for the people who wore black suits and sunglasses was Sinnombres. Arrulfo said Sinnombres were bad men, but he only knew some of them, not all of them. These two Sinnombres were dead, which was what happened when their bodies stopped working and they went away to leave the bodies behind. Bad people did bad things, and these Sinnombres weren’t doing anything bad; they were just lying there, or gone. These Sinnombres were not bad men. There was also a dead one who had no black suit or sunglasses. He had a little glass vial on a string around his neck. Those were called Demonios. Arrulfo said Demonios were bad men, too, but he didn’t know all the Demonios. This one wasn’t doing anything bad. He was just lying there, dead.

  Coach V’s Clinic

  A few days ago, Wanda had become Coach V’s “girl,” and the Saved had assassinated the Directorate. Since then Wanda had been subjected to Coach’s cruel punishments, and the Saved had converted a quarter of the Horde’s members. The Horde had withdrawn, and now the clinic was a strategic asset for the Saved.

  The job was just as she’d been told it would be. She was a slave, with every task, movement, and even thought, controlled and prescribed. The only rest she got was during lectures from Coach that were part of her “training,” but even then she had to sit on edge, listening. Coach took so many bactrostimulants that her words came fast and often through a clenched jaw, and the punishments for failing to register and recall what she said were severe.

  Coach didn’t seem ever to sleep, and the schedule she kept her girls on already had Wanda begging, literally, on her knees, for pills of her own. The begging was Coach’s idea. “Once you’ve become what I want you to be, then you get speed to lock it in place,” Coach had sa
id every time so far. “Keep begging for now. Keep trying to prove you’re fine-tuned enough for me to rev you up.” Quickly, desperately, and for perhaps the thousandth time today, Wanda forced her thinking back to the task at hand. She was with Sula in the sealed, windowless room Coach used as a lab, mixing up a suspension of blood and other fluids to sterilize for the production of bacteria. Nothing went to waste here.

  “In our old world, the corporate one, people just go to synthesizers for their medical needs,” Sula said. “For Golds in the CBD, a doctor is a computer network manager. The only real medical thinking going on is in labs like the one you worked in at Amelix, or like I worked in at Ipoh, where we work on experiments that result in new programming for the machines to diagnose and treat different conditions. That’s why Coach gets her girls from the Horde, from each of the big biotech firms—we’re the ones who still use scientific thought processes. Our minds still have the capacity that many have lost due to atrophy.”

  A capacity Coach fills up with her own agenda.

  Wanda cringed. That thought would be revealed to Coach in her confession later, under chemically induced trance, and it would earn her a punishment.

  This time, I will choose pain.

  Would she be punished for thinking that? It was what Coach wanted her to do, wasn’t it? Why else make her choose between a painful punishment and a humiliating one?

  “Coach has decision trees mapped out in the books,” Sula said. “We’re not allowed to answer any question on the decision tree with anything but ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ If there’s any gray area at all, that is, if there’s ever a time you want to say, ‘Yes, and,’ or ‘no, but,’ it becomes an issue for Coach to decide. Coach does not allow anyone else’s attempted logic to create interference with her practice.”

  Sula stopped talking and stood staring at the door, where a small group of Saved had entered. Three men and two women stood gazing, awestruck, at a central figure who had apparently led them to the clinic. He had a scab all the way across his forehead and bandages on his neck and under his shirt, but he didn’t seem to be seeking medical attention.

  “Coach said to stay away from that guy,” Sula whispered. “She said he’s actually a dangerous criminal they call the Garbageman, and we should not believe the front he presents. She told me to get rid of him if he came back, and I have authority over you. Go get rid of him. Just…tell him this clinic is too small and we can’t have him in the way.” She turned and busied herself with something on a cart, pushing it away in the opposite direction from the group that had entered.

  “Yes, Sister.”

  As Wanda approached the man, his followers blocked the way with relaxed bodies and tranquil smiles. She had almost failed to notice them, having been so focused on the central figure. Now that she was close to him she felt giddy and nervous. His actions, and his presence here, seemed natural, correct, and ordained by something wiser than herself and more powerful than Coach. She found she couldn’t make herself address him directly. Yet Wanda had to speak. She had been given a direct order.

  The people between them were a blessing; she could talk to the group instead of the individual. “I’m sorry, folks, but you can’t be here right now. We’re busy and the clinic is just too crowded.”

  The followers held their same positions and facial expressions.

  “We certainly don’t mean to interfere in your important work,” one of them said. “We wish to assist with it.” The central figure turned slightly and bent down to one knee next to a bed, gently touching a patient’s forehead and whispering to her. As Wanda watched between two of his followers, the woman’s eyes widened and she smiled broadly, sitting up in bed.

  The leader rose to his feet and took a step toward Wanda. The ones standing between them moved off. Her feet felt stuck to the floor. The man had a wide, bulging scab cutting across his forehead that could have made him seem ugly and dangerous had it not been for the look of peaceful benevolence on his face.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but this is Coach V’s clinic and she alone is responsible—”

  He cut her off, not with words or even a gesture, but simply by looking at her. She tried again. “They said you’re here to assist. Are you…are you a doctor, sir?”

  He smiled slightly. Wanda’s eyelids drooped.

  Wanda felt a warm glow spreading out from the point where his eyes had met hers. “What…what may I call you, sir?”

  He had gentle and knowing eyes. “These friends call me the One Who Returned,” he said.

  This was Porter’s group, the Saved. How could she kick them out of their newly captured strategic asset?

  Still, the order had been clear, and she would rather challenge these gun-wielding psychopaths than subject herself to more of Coach’s punishments. Yet she stood transfixed, unable to form the words.

  Wanda sniffed and shook her head. There truly was something different about this guy, but that didn’t mean she should just let herself be taken in by it. The Saved had just assassinated the Directorate and all its guards, and now here he was, acting concerned about the patients here. His presence made her feel irresistibly compelled to do what was right and good, but his influence was clearly more complicated than that. How could she trust the feelings of virtuousness and compassion he exuded when the people he surrounded himself with were so brutal and callous? How many had they killed in his name to build their power base?

  “Coach!” Judee cried from the back room. “Coach? Are you all right?”

  Wanda stayed still, uncertain what she should do. The One returned to his rounds, touching patient after patient. “Piyumi, help me start CPR,” Judee said.

  “Sir?” Wanda said finally. “There’s an emergency and I may be needed in the back. I need to ask you to—”

  The One looked at her. She forgot what she’d been saying.

  “You won’t be needed there,” he said. “Your Coach is gone.”

  “I …” Wanda said. “You don’t …”

  The One nodded, slowly and benevolently. “I know.” He took her hands in his. “I am sorry you were separated from the love of your life. You will soon be raising a new child. I sense that you still have doubts, but you will raise this new child to believe. He will be Saved.”

  The One turned away again.

  There was a commotion in the lab, sounds of glass breaking and items falling to the floor.

  “Coach!” someone shouted. This time the voice belonged to Chi Sun. Wasn’t Coach already back there? “Coach!” Chi Sun shouted again, this time sounding more distressed, even panicky.

  “Sisters!” Chi Sun called. “Please come to the back. We need to figure out what to do. Coach is dead.”

  Wanda felt a wave of relief begin to build but she refused to let herself experience it until she was sure. Indulging in the belief that she had been freed from Coach’s obsessive and tyrannical control would be catastrophic to her psyche if it were not actually so.

  Wanda headed for the back. Someone followed her. Porter. Had he been part of the group surrounding the One?

  “I want to help,” he said.

  Wanda’s mind barely registered the comment. Could Coach really be dead? How would the clinic run without her? What would happen to the girls, now that the Horde no longer controlled the clinic?

  She reached the door to the lab, held open by Sula leaning against it. Coach’s pale, still body lay on the floor in front of the lab bench, her eyes staring at nothing.

  “What now?” Judee asked.

  “We can’t run this clinic by ourselves,” Sula said.

  “She taught me more than she taught anyone, and I can’t take her place,” Chi Sun said.

  Porter pushed past Wanda. “This is a hospital and it has to be kept clean. I’ll take the body out so you can gather yourselves. I know what a shock this must be.” He knelt and gingerly picked up Coach’s frail remains, draping her over his arms. Everyone backed away to give him room.

  “Each of us only knows a little bi
t,” Piyumi said. “Coach made sure none of us could replace her. But together we did all of the work to keep the clinic running, and between us we’ve seen everything she used to do. Can we try to keep it open without her, just by each doing what we know how to do?”

  “We have to keep it open,” Wanda said. “There’s nowhere for us to go.”

  “Don’t worry,” Porter said over his shoulder. “The Saved will help you.”

  The place called Dobo Protein Refinery

  Inti lay on the floor, staring dully at the man who stood over her. Furius, he’d called himself, though he didn’t seem particularly angry. This world’s language often made no sense.

  She hurt everywhere. There were no words for what her kidnappers had done to this body, neither in her language nor in this new, strange, often obscene one.

  No. Not to the body. They did it to me.

  Had it been just a body, they wouldn’t have enjoyed tearing, beating and fucking it so much. What had really motivated them was that she was inside that body, experiencing the helplessness, the pain, and the shame. What they had taken, what they had been so thrilled to destroy, was the part that had not come from Addi.

  Addi’s memories showed she had been to this place, the protein refinery, before. She had been abused here. Both of the broken spirits sharing this body had suffered too much abuse to keep such memories sharp, but Inti was pretty sure this man talking was not the one who had abused Addi.

  “Hey!” Furius said, leaning closer into Inti’s face. He adjusted a red shawl around his shoulders. “You listening? Kym here says this Garbageman guy is now the General I’m supposed to follow. I’m bringing my things here to wait for his return.”

  The Garbageman! That was the abusive one. He was coming back?

  Inti thrashed and moaned. The deep cuts covering her body throbbed as the scabs loosened but she couldn’t stop.