The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy

by Mark D. Diehl

  His sister stared a moment, accentuating his inexcusable rudeness.

  “How can we be certain? I didn’t realize it was your job to audit my decisions, Sett.”

  Sett froze. He was supposed to acknowledge his chairman’s objection to his words and apologize for having spoken in that way. A reconditioned Unnamed would have done so instantly. He needed to clear away the insult before she decided to have him reconditioned immediately. Reconditioning would mean the loss of his ability to question authority once and for all.

  Instead, he remained frozen.

  His sister’s giant, heavy hand slapped across his face, the impact starting at his jawbone and continuing up past his cheek and temple. It struck again and again, the same hand connecting with the same part of his face.

  “How do I know? Because we are owners, that’s why! We will own 0.53 percent of the entire company! I have it in writing.” She brought her face centimeters from Sett’s and growled through her teeth. “You question my judgment again, even privately, and I will personally tear you apart. Slowly. Understand?”

  “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.” Sett said flatly.

  At last his sister turned away.

  Sett wasn’t sure what he was allowed to do. Could he simply leave the chamber? Would his team follow? He had to reconnect with Dok and Coiner.

  Suddenly he felt dizzy and nauseated, as if he’d just been whirled around while drunk. An unexplainable anger bubbled up inside him. He turned his head and saw three rats dancing next to the mine’s white gypsum wall.

  Dancing?

  Yes, that did indeed seem to be what they were doing, raising one foot and then another, over and over, in unison. He wanted to kill them. He needed to tear them apart and stomp the pieces into the floor.

  His sister whipped back to face him. Her movements were strange. Instead of pivoting her neck and following her body as most people might, she bent deeply at the waist and twisted her body, looking up at him. She approached, leaning far forward with shoulders hunched and arms bent to hold her hands in front of her, like a dinosaur. Chairman Two’s jaw was tight, and her nose oddly wrinkled. Her lips pulled back to reveal the front teeth on both jaws. Sett reeled backward. Was this some kind of a joke? His sister did not ever joke.

  Had she gone crazy?

  Chairman Two leaped at him. He scrambled backward, just enough and just in time to make her miss. She attacked again, this time pinning him against the wall. Her hands clawed at his face. She bit him on the throat, taking a mouthful of his skin and gnawing, thrashing her head wildly from side to side. He tried to push her away, but she held on with her teeth.

  He could smell his own blood. Her teeth parted as she tried to take more of his flesh into her mouth, but he struck her throat with his palm before she could bite down again, shoving her backward. He moved away from the wall and backed slowly toward the door. She stalked him, still hunched over, her eyes wide and twitching. He pulled his sidearm, aiming it squarely at her chest, but she continued to advance, showing no fear of the weapon. She lunged, her splayed fingers aimed at his eyes. He flinched and the gun fired its three-shot burst, dropping Two to the floor. Her blood spread through the thick white gypsum dust.

  The other three Unnamed of her team were standing now, moving toward him. Not walking, but moving, their shoulders curving downward as if they were four-legged creatures about to bound after prey.

  Sett ran back toward his team, who had clustered by the door during Sett’s not-so-private meeting. As he approached them, he saw all three were hunched over in the same way his sister had been. Their arms were bent upward and their faces were contorted. Together they looked at him and then raised their hands and watched themselves flex their fingers. They reached under their jackets toward their weapons.

  Sett ran for the closest mine tunnel.

  Outside the clinic

  The guards watched as Wanda dragged the body past them and over to the cart. Nobody had said anything about keeping the staff there by force, or even taken any action to indicate that she was a prisoner, yet it was perfectly understood on both sides.

  The war continued to escalate. There were more skirmishes, and higher numbers of wounded and dead, every day. The Saved seemed to be holding their ground against the Fiends, but even with their new weapons, they struggled to inflict as many casualties as they suffered. Their enemy had proven frustratingly elusive. Over and over, the Fiends would strike out of nowhere and then vanish at the first sign of armed resistance, leaving the Saved fighting nobody until they popped up someplace else.

  Wanda had been planning to leave the dead body next to the cart, rather than stacking it on top as she was supposed to. Would the guards try to force her to do it? Usually they didn’t watch her quite so intently. Stacking them was too big a job for Wanda alone.

  As she glanced toward them, the guards who had been watching her set off running down the street.

  Wanda sank to her knees as a wave of nausea overcame her. That was not an uncommon occurrence, since she spent every day surrounded by filth and gore and death. But somehow this experience was different. This feeling was something new.

  No! Not new!

  Wanda had felt this sensation before.

  She rose to her feet and turned, following the jagged waves of animosity that seemed to be flowing toward her. Her eyes locked on the rat, which was standing on its hind legs on a window ledge only an arms-length away nearby. She lunged, grasping for it with her bare hands, missing, then trying to crush it with her feet as it scurried away down the street. She chased it, only peripherally aware that perhaps two hundred Saved were chasing other rats in the same direction.

  Near Helper Leesa

  Ernesto worked the slide of the shotgun he was working on, observing how the little pieces inside moved the shell into position. The gun had been partially smashed, but he had reshaped and reassembled the pieces. Now it functioned again. It would not be perfect because he hadn’t been able to get one of the sidebars perfectly straight, but it functioned. That was what the Saved needed: only for the guns to function. Helper Leesa said that making it perfect would be a waste of time, and wasting time meant he was not doing his job perfectly.

  Leesa stood up from where she’d been sitting. She shouted loudly and ran off. Ahead of her, a rat ran down the street. Other Saved nearby all shouted and ran the same way, causing a terribly loud noise and commotion.

  Ernesto put his head through the shotgun’s strap so it hung down where his arm should have been. With only one arm he wasn’t able to cover both of his ears, so he yelled loudly to block out some of the crowd noise. He concentrated on keeping Leesa’s elbow in view as they ran with the rest of the shouting mob.

  The Williams Gypsum mine

  Coiner had snatched up his assault rifle before Lawrence even reached the room. Maybe he’d heard the running footsteps, though Dok certainly hadn’t. Now the three of them were running through a wide, dark tunnel with white gypsum walls that reflected the light from Lawrence’s glasses.

  There had been no time for Lawrence to explain. One minute Dok had been playing with the dog, and the next, they were all running for their lives. Given what Dok knew of the family and its business, he wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Lawrence’s sister had decided to kill the three of them. What was odd, however, was the fact she seemed to be having difficulty accomplishing the task.

  Dok tripped over something in the dark and heard the dog yelp. It had run out with them and had veered between his legs. He snatched it up and carried it.

  Coiner said nothing as they ran. He was the consummate soldier, his every decision rational, his every action flawlessly executed. He displayed no hint of human frailty, yet he had never been reconditioned or genetically enhanced.

  Guns fired behind them, three-shot bursts that ricocheted off the walls. No trained Unnamed would miss three men running with a light down the middle of a dark tunnel.

  Dok watched as Coiner tucked a shoulder and dove to the
floor. He rolled twice to stop himself, and landed facing backwards with the gun ready. He fired a quick full-auto burst, and no shots came in response. Coiner reached into a vest pocket and flung a few of his strange homemade plastic coins down the tunnel, and then he was up and running again, changing clips.

  “How does every Unnamed in this mine suddenly forget how to shoot straight?” Coiner asked. His voice was calm, as if he were asking a price in an open market.

  “I don’t know. It’s like none of them had any idea what a gun was until I drew mine when my sister was attacking me. When they saw me pull the trigger, it was like they were learning it for the first time, right there. Let’s keep moving. Go this way, and then to the left. We have to reach my truck.”

  The dog squirmed in Dok’s arms. He set it down and it darted off down the tunnel.

  The left tunnel curved upward and ended in the lighted parking garage, where the mine’s opening was sheltered by Grown white walls. They approached the truck, which sat undisturbed where they’d left it, and Lawrence opened the doors through his EI. Shots fired again, this time from up on some scaffolding along one garage wall. Coiner fell, but shot from the floor, and the Unnamed plunged from the scaffolding.

  “Drop the gun now, Sett, sir!” The voice was from behind them.

  Lawrence held onto the gun but raised his hands, talking over his shoulder. “Jack?” He shook his head, remembering the Unnamed protocol. “Thank the Lord it’s you, 190. Everyone’s going crazy.”

  “Drop it, sir,” 190 said. “I know what happened. I heard the shots and replayed the surveillance video when I found her body. I watched you kill Chairman Two. Even if you will be the next appointed chairman, which I don’t think you will, sir, I serve the Organization before you. Let go of the gun, sir, or I will put you down.”

  Lawrence let the gun fall. “190! Listen! If you saw me shoot her you saw how she attacked me. I shot her because she went crazy! Everyone is going crazy!”

  Shots fired again, this time from ground level, ricocheting around but missing. Coiner fired again and another shooter fell. Coiner’s head slumped.

  “See, 190?” Lawrence yelled. “Who was that? It was one of us, shooting randomly all over the place. You know we don’t do that.”

  190 slowly lowered his gun.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” 190 said. “Please, sir.”

  “I don’t know,” Lawrence said. “My sister attacked me like she forgot she was human. Look at my neck!” His Golden skin was torn and it pulsated pink and purple. “It’s not just her. Every Unnamed we’ve encountered, except you, has been the same.”

  “What do we do, sir?”

  “The four of us can escape in my truck. We’ve got to get away from this mine.”

  190 stiffened, pointing his nose straight up above him and sniffing, his lips curling back to expose his front teeth. His back bent forward and his elbows retracted. He examined the gun in his hand, turning it this way and that. Then he lifted it to his face and smelled it.

  Coiner was out cold. There would be no shot from the floor.

  190 pointed the weapon at Lawrence.

  Something growled next to 190’s feet.

  It was the little dog, shaking a rat vigorously from side to side and doing it significant damage, though there was little difference in size between the two.

  190 dropped the gun. Lawrence picked it up and shoved 190 a few steps forward, slamming him against the truck. “Now you, too, 190?” he said.

  “I don’t know what it was,” 190 said. Lawrence zipped 190’s hands together behind his back with one of the plastic strips Unnamed carried for such emergencies. “I was standing there, listening to you, and then suddenly I wasn’t in charge of my body anymore. I was aware of what was happening, that I was sniffing the air and even pointing the gun, but I couldn’t make myself stop it.”

  “It was that rat,” Dok said. He ran to Coiner and looked him over. “Shoulder wound. I can treat this.” He gently turned Coiner on his side. “The rat had 190 in some sort of…I don’t know, a trance, I guess. I don’t know how, but it seemed to take him over completely.” Dok gingerly felt around the wound and behind it. “There’s no exit hole. I’ll have to get the bullet out.” He nodded toward the dog, who sat gnawing on the rat’s head.

  “Whatever the rat did to 190, it stopped as soon as the dog attacked it,” Dok said. “I need to work on Coiner; can we just get in the truck now?”

  “Leave him behind,” Lawrence said.

  “No.”

  “Dok, we don’t have time for this. The security cameras show two big groups moving around, all with guns ready, and one of those groups is coming right here. Coiner is shot, he’s a liability to us, and he’s a damned Fiend anyway.”

  “Lawrence, I’m doing you a favor, here. Do you want to be the one explaining to Top Dog how you took one of his most trusted officers out into the desert and left him there?”

  Lawrence huffed and grabbed Coiner’s feet. The truck door opened and they stuffed him inside.

  “So, I guess we’d better stay away from the rats,” Lawrence said. “Everybody keep an eye out. If one gets in the truck with us we’ll all be dead.” He freed 190’s hands while Dok climbed into the back of the truck with Coiner. 190 got into the passenger side and Lawrence sat down behind the wheel, but then he opened the door again and got out.

  “I think you’ve earned a place with us, little guy,” he said, scooping up the tiny dog and dumping it onto 190’s lap. “You’re on rat patrol.” He started the truck, backed it up and cleared the mine entrance just as new shots sounded from farther inside. Several of them impacted the truck but didn’t penetrate its armor.

  Dok gently slapped Coiner’s face, trying to bring him back to consciousness. Coiner coughed.

  “Coiner! It’s me, Dok. Open your eyes. You’ve been shot and I need you to work with me now. Open your eyes.”

  Coiner’s eyes fluttered. Another barrage hit the truck.

  “Does it seem like they’re getting better at that?” Lawrence asked.

  “I think they are, sir,” 190 said. “Could they be communicating with each other somehow? Learning?”

  Dok found the truck’s first-aid kit beneath the rear seat. “Whoa! Look at all this!” The kit had more gear than Dok had kept in his clinic.

  The truck sped across the desert. Dok looked back toward the mine, but all he could see was a cloud of dust.

  Federal truck patrolling the newly sealed Zone

  Daiss peered up and down each cross street as Agent Lehri drove slowly along the area’s main road. For the first few weeks after the decree there had been constant attacks, with scathing people flinging garbage, bricks, shit, and even their own stinking bodies, at the Federal vehicles. He’d mowed down one after another while they watched, but it hadn’t stopped them. Nonsensical behavior like that was what had necessitated sealing them away from decent society in the first place.

  Daiss and Lehri were driving through Saved territory with the ostensible mission of keeping the peace. In reality, they hoped to bait potential attackers into doing something stupid, giving the agents an excuse to thin the herd. The truck turned a corner and crept along another deserted avenue.

  Suddenly a wave of human bodies poured from a side street, flowing around and, in two cases, over the Federal truck, so quickly that Daiss didn’t even have time to train his weapon. There were maybe a few hundred of them, which would actually have been dangerous to the Federal Agents if they’d been attacking the truck. Instead they swept past it and moved on down the street. Many of them were carrying guns, which looked to have come from the drop he and Lehri had made months before.

  “Should we follow them?” Lehri asked.

  “Yeah, we’d better.”

  The running mob approached an intersection, where another crowd of Saved rushed in front of them. The two groups merged. Lehri turned again and continued to track the expanded throng.

  “Idiots,” Daiss said. “We sh
ould’ve trained them as well as giving them weapons. How far do they think they’re going to get, just running straight into Fiend territory like that? And look, up ahead! There’s another mass of them.”

  He tried to point but found he could not. His body had suddenly stopped responding to his commands. His palm lifted by itself in front of his face and his fingers flexed, as if the way his thumb worked was the most fascinating thing Daiss had ever seen. His hand managed to work its way under his jacket and patted around until it found his Gloria handgun. Then, slowly, his fingers grasped it, with his thumb still mostly straight. His hand tugged at the weapon but it was held in the holster by a snap. Daiss’s hand tugged and yanked again and again, until eventually the snap gave way and it was able to draw the weapon. The fingers, no longer his own, clutched it clumsily but seemed to know how to aim.

  The blast instantly liquefied Agent Lehri and most of the door next to her, which now hung partway open. His body crawled through the mess and out into the street, hand still clenched tightly around the gun.

  Outside New Union Territory

  Rus moved silently through the Grand Hall, gently waving his staff over the fallen Elements that had been brought in. Lashed at the top of the staff was a battered plastic bottle of water. Its original seal was still intact. This water, sacred to the Subjects, had been bottled in the days when the Earth was pure and new, before the time of the synthesizers and the time of the Golds. It was now an important part of New Union post-battle ceremony. By waving the Pure Water over the bodies, Rus symbolically washed away the illusion between life and death, revealing true Unity.

  It had been decided that Divinators should do more than merely torment and terrorize the Elements. The New Union already gave them plenty to be afraid of. Therefore, the Divinators’ role had been broadened to include a “spiritual” element, whereby they also supplied hope and served as a source of common values and beliefs. With some adopted traditions, and a selection of stolen sacred artifacts from the Subjects, they were able to give the soldiers a sense of meaning the New Union hadn’t been able to provide them before. Rus had found it amazing how readily they took to the new message, even though it was presented by the same black-robed sect that had inflicted the torture necessary to determine whether they were worthy of acceptance into the New Union.