“You don’t understand,” he said. “That’s not what it’s about.”
“And you know what’s funny?” she said. “You never seemed like the other crazies he keeps close, the ones who stare and swoon. You always appeared to be the most logical one. You seem sane, but then surprise! You’re willing to do anything he tells you to do.”
“United in faith we live, Wanda,” he said.
“Yeah, your mantra makes everything okay.”
“Listen to the words. It’s important. United, we live. I don’t think I have to tell you what happens here in the Zone if you’re not part of a group. Why is this group growing so fast? What holds it together and brings in stunning numbers of new recruits, every single day? It’s that magnetism he has, that uniqueness that only the One can provide.
“Nobody rallies around nothing, Wanda. I saw early on that people rallied around him, and that when enough of them joined together they would become a legitimate force here in the Zone. That’s exactly what they did. Sure, sometimes the One absolutely terrifies me. Sometimes he makes me do things that turn my stomach, like today. But I’m willing to do whatever it takes to be part of this group, no matter how psychotic and dangerous it is. This is the Zone. If you choose not to join with anyone, your life is down to maybe a few hours, a few days at best.”
She stared.
“I’m not looking for absolute truth,” he said. “Just security. It’s better to be Saved than to be a Fiend or to be dead.” He shrugged. “You don’t agree, fine. Go ahead and hate me for it. At least I’ll still be alive.”
Desert outside Des Moines
“There appears to be a signal now, sir, reachable through the truck’s booster,” Li’l Ed’s EI voice told him. The rather stuffy male synthetic vocal pattern he’d selected sounded eerily out of place, given his situation.
A signal!
“Open it, Edward,” Li’l Ed said. “Communication mode. Call my father.”
His father’s face appeared translucently before him, its features difficult to make out as Li’l Ed concentrated on driving straight toward the distant city lights. “I’m so sorry, sir! It wasn’t me. The Unnamed disconnected my EI.”
“Unnamed?” His father sighed sadly. “I was afraid of this. How are you talking to me now if they Departed you?”
“I’m not Departed, sir. It wasn’t McGuillian Unnamed, sir. I was taken to meet with Chairman Williams, of Williams Gypsum. He offered me a job as his Unnamed.”
“What?”
“I turned him down, sir, as it had already been decided that I would submit for voluntary.”
“And …” his father peered at something through his own EI that must have been a mapping and location program. “You’re traveling now. You turned down the unstable owner of a sovereign corporation, and he’s just giving you a ride home?”
“No, sir. His Unnamed tried to kill me in the desert. I stole this truck and ran away.”
“You stole a truck from an Unnamed? How did you manage something like that?”
“I’m out in the desert, somewhere, sir. I’m quite sure he was going to kill me. I jumped out, and he tried to shoot me, but I was able to get back to the truck before he did. There’s a lot of dust blowing around, so much I can’t see more than a couple meters in front of me. Maybe it messed up his tech? He fired at me but missed.”
His father smiled. “Oh, Li’l Ed, that’s wonderful news! When you turn in the truck, you’ll be a true hero! You’ll start off much better after reconditioning than you would have otherwise. Good job, Li’l Ed!”
“Thank you, sir. I wasn’t able to use my EI for communication until just now and I know you told me to submit for voluntary reconditioning right away. Shall I go and do that now, sir?”
“Yes, immediately. I’m proud of you, Li’l Ed.”
New Union School
“And cupping the chin,” the New Union instructor said, “pull backwards until your palm impacts the base of the skull—gently, now. Remember, this classmate is a New Union asset so I’m going slowly. When it’s not a training exercise, you’ll be using full force. Strike two or three times, quickly, and then slam him down the rest of the way to the ground. Ideally, he’ll be stunned and immobilized so you can walk him straight to the Divinators.”
Divinators.
Rus had a few quick flashes of memory—fire, noise, humiliation, terrible pain. The Divinators were damned good at making you see that you were nothing but a lump of shit for the New Union to mold into something better. Every time he thought of them, it was just a slideshow of the same few images, and then his mind filled with black again. Right now he was training—being molded—at the New Union school. That was all he needed, or wanted, to think about.
School was the second stage of training after new soldiers were captured. Rus had come here straight from the Divinators, starting as a class with others who’d been captured at the same time. Of the eight Bridges who’d been grabbed that day, Rus had only seen Pawley since, and only once. Pawley had started the school at the same time, but separated off into another group.
“A fist in the face will work, as well,” his short and wiry teacher, Instructor Jodo, said. “If you go for the face, there’s more chance he’s gonna fight you, because he can see it coming. Remember, we just want to capture them and turn them over to the Divinators with as little struggle as possible.”
Rus merely had to survive. There was no reason to question morality when he was powerless to enforce what he felt was right, anyway.
Somewhere in the mist
Addi was in some sort of cave. There was snow around the entrance but she was farther inside, where only a few wisps had blown. There was no sensation of cold.
The mist was thick in the opening of the cave, but lighter here, and the faint gray light allowed her to see the other girl. She recognized her instantly, but the appearance was still shocking.
Inti sat leaning against the wall, wrapped in rough blankets of red, brown, gray and orange. Her hair was so black it had a blue sheen, hanging in tight braids around her pretty, diamond-shaped brown face and wise, narrow brown eyes. She moved slightly, causing a necklace of tiny bells and metal trinkets to jingle a bit.
“Oh, Addi!” Inti said. “You are so beautiful!”
Addi raised a hand and touched her own face. The scars were gone. Even her missing toe was back!
“What is this place?” Addi asked, though she already knew.
“This is where I died, in this cave at the top of the mountain,” Inti said. “I will carry on from here.”
“But…why am I here with you?”
“Oh.” Inti sat quietly for a moment. “Maybe just to say goodbye. To share this moment together.” Her smile was sad but genuine.
“And what do you think I’m supposed to do now?” Addi asked.
Inti didn’t speak. She just gestured at the cave’s opening. They sat together in silence a long time. Addi leaned to hug Inti and they squeezed each other tightly.
“What will you do?” Addi asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll make my way somehow.”
“Maybe we can go together,” Addi said.
“This looks like the mountain, and it is the mountain where I died, but yet I do not think either of us has been to this world before,” Inti said. “We don’t know what the rules are, here.” She paused. “Maybe we can stay together. I don’t want to be alone.”
They sat a bit longer and then took each other’s hand. They crawled through the cave together, awkwardly making their way across the uneven stone without unclasping their hands, for which Addi was tremendously grateful. At the opening, they stepped out into the mist, and the mountain disappeared.
Some Zone street
Furius dropped another packet of Pink Shit and kept on walking.
Kym had said her General had nothing to do with the Saved, and it was pretty clear she was telling the truth since they’d nearly killed her, too. Now they were working together, and it seeme
d a pretty good match. She knew how to run the refinery, and he knew how to keep the place safe from punks.
One packet per block would generate a lot of new soldiers soon, at least around here. The business types in the entertainment areas never picked up drugs because their urine, blood, and hair was constantly tested, but that was okay. Mr. B.’s old friend had now agreed to a substantial bribe in exchange for dosing every last bottle of sodje, mostly bound for the entertainment district. Kym was churning out more dosed amino bricks every day, and the glut was apparently over so they were again being taken up for synthesizers. The salarymen would probably make shitty soldiers, but he was going to have legions of them soon.
Mikk’s new apartment
“As yet we’ve been unable to feed the poor at the stations you had us set up, Lord,” Porter said. “There is simply nothing to give, beyond our spreading of your word. Your Helpers are repeating your most recent message, that we shouldn’t judge others. They’re ready for any new messages you would like them to pass on.”
Mikk smiled to himself. Sometimes he really appreciated the other guy in his head. “That’s right,” he said. “I judge. Whatever the question, I’m the one who answers it. They go trying to figure shit out for themselves, it’ll be chaos. Keep ‘em humble.”
Porter opened his mouth to speak, but Mikk stopped him with a raised palm. “Wait. Before you tell me anything else, I want to know whether you’ve found that fucker you let get away, Mr. B. Did your people go back to the protein refinery?”
“Yes, Lord. The refinery was locked down tightly and nobody answered, even when we went with carbon recyclables and posed as customers. We believe they were out, but it could also be that they recognized us as Saved, Lord.”
“Stay on it. I want that fucker dead.”
“Yes, Lord,” Porter said. “There’s something else, Lord. We’re suffering increasing casualties. The Fiends are starting to attack more frequently, Lord.”
“We need more guns,” Mikk said. “The captured Fiend ones we got from the Horde are good, but we need a hell of a lot more of ‘em, and fast. To get guns we need money. What assets we got to work with?”
“Almost nothing, Lord. We are a collection of desperately poor people, as you know. We do control a good portion of what used to be Horde territory, though.”
“Okay. Here’s what we do. First, we push all the Saved to give up whatever they can. There’s your new message: Give us your stuff. Wait. No. How do we say it? Let go of material possessions.” Mikk shrugged. “Some shit like that.”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Then we implement some new policies. From now on, only Saved get access to the clinic. If they’re coming for treatment and either they or anyone with them has anything of value, tell them they’re not truly Saved if they’re keeping that for themselves instead of donating it to the cause.”
“Yes, Lord.”
“If I’m gonna start giving these people weapons, I have to be sure which ones’re truly on my side.”
“Yes, Lord. How will we know?”
“First, make damned sure they’re terrified of the Fiends, like constantly pissing themselves with fear. I want every grisly Fiend story repeated until every last Saved knows it by heart. If you got some way to write ‘em down, that’s even better. Pass ‘em on so everyone knows what’s waiting if they leave the Saved.”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Then, we gotta find the real zealots in the bunch. I want you to set up weekly meetings where the Saved are encouraged to fink each other out. Every time any of them second-guesses my orders or gets a little too assertive, I want to know about it. After a few weeks, you’ll know who to make into the group leaders. Start feeding and housing the leaders a little better; make sure they feel rewarded. Eventually, when we have some, the leaders will get weapons.”
“Yes, Lord.”
Amelix lab
The control the rats had over her should perhaps have been frightening, if Chelsea had been able to consider it much at all. More frightening by far would have been the fact that she wasn’t able to consider it, but that didn’t cross her mind often, either. The little flashes of thoughts like that she did have were coming with diminishing frequency.
It wasn’t a particularly puppet-like form of control, though they did certainly have the ability to move any part of her in any way. Puppet-like control would have trapped her inside a body that kept moving of its own accord, making her a stowaway consciousness tagging along as her stolen physical form marched off to do its new masters’ bidding. Instead, the rats made her want to do things. With increasing frequency, she found herself obsessed with activities she never otherwise would have considered, including many that should have horrified her.
Finally this task was finished. They would let her leave this newly requisitioned lab space to go home and sleep, and in a few hours she would be back, serving them according to…their plan? Yes, she reasoned, all this had to be part of a plan. The reasoning, and her ability to do it, vanished again.
She checked the seals on all ninety cages, making sure each one had remained properly sealed after she had injected air from the G2 cage in her office. She turned out the light as she left the room, letting the new generation of Rat Gods rest.
II
8
A Zone alley
Stab in from the side.
Cut the blade outward through the front of the throat.
The first few times he’d done it, Rus had used two separate motions, a stab and then a cut. Now he was much faster, accomplishing the kill in a fluid circular motion, while still avoiding the gurgling that trying to slice in from the front would have caused. The New Union had taught him hundreds of useful tricks like this.
Rus lowered the dead sentry quietly to the pavement. The Juice in his system flooded him with power and pleasure. Two Elements nearby stood over two other sentries who had been similarly dealt with. To his Juice-addled consciousness, sheathing the slippery blade felt like sex. The rifle in his hands seemed to vibrate, begging him to make it sing.
After a few weeks with the New Union, it had all become easy. Nobody gets out alive, so life becomes nothing more than a struggle for perfect compliance with orders. He existed solely for the advancement of this army, and it had the power to decide everything for him, even to the point of determining when he would cease to exist. The Unity, was what the New Union called this state of being. Outsiders and new recruits assumed the Unity was death, but actually it was the state of knowing that life and death are the same.
This street of abandoned storefronts was Saved territory, and the Saved had nothing worth taking. The last time the Round had worked the entertainment districts, they’d killed four Unnamed, and Rus had found himself in possession of a genuine blacksuit firebomb. There would be no spoils like that around here, but at least he could get the rush of a kill or two.
A stick swished through the air nearby—a signal from his Rounder to creep ahead slowly. The next sound, an imparter pop from tab one, meant that he should keep moving straight ahead and find cover wherever he could.
Rus ran forward, but there was no cover to be found nearby. Training dictated that he should continue farther ahead until he could comply, and finally he crouched down in a moon shadow next to some concrete front stairs, about half a block ahead of the rest of his Round.
A group of eight people emerged from a door across the street and headed directly toward the other Elements. Rus would now be the one behind them, tasked with fighting them alone if they ran back this way. At least with gangs you could pick up a decent knife or club, and the New Union could even capture a few new soldiers. According to the New Union Divinators, the Saved were already too brainwashed to be retrained as Elements, so they were just worthless. Their numbers were growing quickly, though, and they were no longer passive and fearful. The Saved had begun to claim new territory by force, instead of just waiting for everyone in it to die, like the Horde used to do. They were becoming a n
uisance, and the New Union would no longer tolerate their existence in the Zone.
Top Dog didn’t want any bullets wasted on these fuckers, though. It was all knife work in Saved territory, if they could help it.
As the only Element behind these eight, he would have the best chance at multiple kills. Rus’s breathing deepened and his face curved into a clown-like smile. Anticipating another kill made the Juice rush surge, bringing confidence, fearlessness, and the compulsion to take lives. He tracked back the way he’d come, trailing safely behind the eight Saved, who were walking down the right-hand side of the street. As he closed the distance from his Round, Rus lowered his rifle and drew his knife again.
Federal Administration Building
It hadn’t been terribly long ago that the Ricker boy’s killer had escaped to tunnels beneath the Zone. Daiss was still fuming about it. Politically motivated inefficiency had been fine until the little cunt had killed Agents Hawkins and Reda, but now even Instructor Samuelson just wanted her dead.
At least they’d collected a lot of important data from the debacle. Having to discuss his worst failure in front of this crowd today was almost unbearable, but other Zetas needed to be shown how powerful the new information was.
Instructor Samuelson finished introducing the topic and gestured at Daiss. “Brother, if you please?”
Daiss stood and shuffled past other hulking Agents to reach an aisle, then hustled to the front of the room. Twenty genetically tweaked, Golden, Federal Agent faces stared up at him: the local Zetas, each with a security clearance level in the top ten percent.
The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy Page 16