by Sean Grigsby
“All you white girls are,” one of Shamika’s gang shouted.
The dwellers – all except the dirty, crazy-eyed ones under the Amazons’ protection – exploded with laughter.
Farica laughed along with them, and that was worrisome. “Now if I’m not mistaken, the truce says whoever’s lost a gang member most recently gets first pick.”
Oh, shit. Now Lena really had to spit. But her mouth had gone suddenly dry.
Grindy folded her arms. “What happened?”
“Tula found my lowest sheila’s cyclone on the bridge over the Sludge. Had a bad wreck, it looked like. Only thing left of her is a smear on the street.”
“Just curious, why wasn’t she with the rest of you?”
Farica smiled, then shrugged. “She forgot her knife and fork.”
The rest of the cannibals giggled softly, looking around them as if they weren’t sure it was right to do so. They’d just lost a sister, after all. On the receiving stage, the shippees shivered and looked over the crowd, probably wondering when they could just leave and find somewhere in the city to live out their sentence.
Grindy pointed from her place on the stage. “You better not be lying.”
“I respect the truce as much as anyone.” Farica winked at Lena.
“No,” shouted Shamika. “Give her a turn, but after Horror’s done. You can’t interrupt a pick like that.”
Grindy sighed. “I’ve got to stick to the truce, Shamie. Most recent loss goes first.”
Shamika shoved at her cyclone. It didn’t budge.
“Come on, Farica,” Grindy said. “Hurry the fuck up.”
“The baby,” Farica said, grinning and showing her disgustingly perfect teeth.
The pale girl, up until this point trying to stay silent, screamed. “You can’t take her! I made a promise.”
Farica sent two of her Amazons to the stage.
No. Lena squeezed her fists, so much the knuckles felt like they’d shatter. I’ve got to do something.
But what? The Amazons reached for the baby. Pale Girl pulled away and one of them backhanded her, catching the baby as they both dropped. The other shippees in line skittered away. They could smell the death on the cannibal’s jackets, no doubt. If the baby sensed anything, it didn’t cry.
“Farica,” Grindy said as an Amazon placed the child in Farica’s arms. “I sure as hell hope you have good intentions for that bambino.”
“Don’t worry, Grindy.” Farica made kissy noises at the kid. “I think I’ve developed a motherly instinct in my old age.” She was only thirty-something, Lena knew. But on Oubliette that was an inch from the grave. Farica looked up and realized everyone was staring at her, appalled. “You all act like I’m some kind of monster. All we Amazons have done is make the most out of a bad situation. None of you like that manna shit anyway. Don’t hate us ’cause we found an alternative. But you can cool your thrusters, my fellow scum. This kid is going to be treated like a princess.”
Lena left Shamika to piss and moan amongst her gang. No words could quite encompass what she felt on her way back to the Daughters.
“Poor baby.” Ava shook her head.
Those words seem to fit pretty well.
“Sarah Pao,” Lena called. She kept her eyes on the Amazons cooing over the baby, something Norman Rockwell would have painted if he were schizophrenic and dropping acid.
The blue-haired shippee took a step, but stopped and turned to Grindy as if asking permission. The older woman nodded. Sarah Pao clomped down as fast as she could and stood in front of the Daughters with her arms held tight to her sides.
Lena didn’t want to say anything to Sarah Pao, not yet. If Lena opened her mouth, she’d start screaming and wouldn’t stop until she worked herself up enough to rip Farica’s throat out. Make a show of it. Let every skinny-assed sheila on Oubliette see that, indeed, the truce was over, baby. Welcome to the killing fields.
But she didn’t.
“You can ride with me,” Hurley Girly said to Sarah. “What’s your name again?”
“Pao.”
“Oh yeah?” Hurley Girly laughed and raised her left fist. She threw some playful punches. “Like pow, pow?”
Sarah crossed her arms and took a step back.
“Well, if you don’t come with us, you can stay with those crazy bitches over there.” Hurley Girly pointed to the Amazons.
Sarah glanced at the cannibals and quickly climbed onto the back of Hurley Girly’s cyclone. Hurley Girly bobbed her eyebrows in victory to the other Daughters.
“You’re so weird,” Ava said.
Lena nodded to a dweller she’d put in charge of collecting the manna. The gang would retrieve their share after their dwellers divvied it up.
Riding her cyclone would be the only thing to take the edge off Lena’s boiling brain, feel the fake wind in her face, hit the streets and get back to the ganghouse. She didn’t want to spend another second in the quarterly circus.
Shamika finished with her pick of the shipment. She couldn’t select any of the shippees, but she sure as shit would pick something nice and shiny to make up for losing the baby to the Amazons, something that would probably piss Grindy off to make it that much better.
The dwellers hurried away from the receiving stage as the Amazons moved in with greasy smiles.
“What about the other shippees?” Sarah Pao asked as the Daughters engaged their bikes.
“What others?” Dipity said.
The Daughters of Forgotten Light rode off, parting the crowd of dwellers. Behind them came the blast of rangshots that brought the final screams of newly arrived shippees that never really had a chance.
Chapter 3
I can’t take this anymore.
Senator Linda Dolfuse guarded her lower abdomen, careful to make it look like she rested her hands in her lap. The pain had grown more annoying than abysmal, only turning up when she sat or moved a certain way, giving her instances where it disappeared and she thought, Ah! Now I can get on with my life. But it wasn’t so. And the discomfort randomly appearing and subsiding was somehow worse than if it just came to stay. That she could get used to.
She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. Sharp shoes clicked down the hall, sounding like a deranged tap dancer shuffling off to eternity. No-No, the janitor, sped toward her with a big grin on his face. They all called him No-No because anytime you asked if he was doing all right, he would respond, “No, no.” But he always kept his broad smile.
Dolfuse dug through her purse, finding a stick of gum. As No-No passed, the senator slipped it into his hand. They shared a smile, Dolfuse fighting the pain, and the janitor turned the corner.
Behind the door across from her, Vice President Martin’s aides bustled in, gathering numbers, making phone calls to cash in on favors with some people and offer them up with others.
Well, I’m here for the same thing, aren’t I? Dolfuse had known the vice president would come calling someday. She just didn’t think it would be so soon. But it was better than being on Martin’s bad list.
The chemicals of a newly waxed floor and the hint of coffee steaming from the office wafted under her nose as she waited for the ache in her gut to subside. The doctors had told her it would only hurt for a couple weeks at most. Nothing to worry about. It had all gone so well.
Yes, well, she’d paid them to say such things, and paid them even more to keep it all hush-hush. It had been three months since the operation, and she still felt miserable. A checkup the week before showed nothing wrong with her – not physically. Guilt, she determined. Guilt was slowly wrecking her insides.
Bobby, her husband, once had a short fad with spiritualism and had told her that the mind controlled the body. “Your thoughts are what make you sick, sugar bear. Change what you think about if you want to get rid of your pain.”
She’d thought it crap at the time, but now that she was experiencing it firsthand, she wished he would have told her exactly how to change her thoug
hts.
The door to her right opened, dispensing amicable but insincere laughter.
“Give our boys my best, General.” Vice President Martin said.
Linda couldn’t see Martin. The bulking shoulders of a general blocked the doorway. He smiled back at the vice president and then looked down to Dolfuse as if she’d crashed a private party. His hair, even the eyebrows, had been doped a dark brown. If Dolfuse hadn’t sat on various committees where General Rag, who stood over her now, had given reports of the war effort and had for the longest time been gray-haired and balding, she still would have spotted the awful charade atop his head with minimal effort.
For a second she had the compulsion to stand. Medals hanging above a breast pocket have a way of doing that to you. Instead, she fought the urge and remained sitting. She owed him nothing. Stirring up more pain in her gut, just to show him a little respect, wasn’t worth it. And there was no love lost between them. Over the years, Dolfuse had hammered him on his alleged treatment of prisoners of war, and she had never let up.
General Rag secured his hat under an arm and took off down the hall.
Vice President Madeline Martin poked her head through the door. She and Dolfuse shared similar hairstyles, shoulder length with a little bounce, except Martin’s was the color of hay colored by the sunset. It reminded Dolfuse of when she used to help her daddy roll up dead grass into big cinnamon rolls on their tiny Arkansas farm so many years ago. That’s what she’d always called the hay bales – cinnamon rolls.
“Linda,” Martin said. It was amazing how she could speak so well with her teeth bared between those thin, red-painted lips, like a veteran ventriloquist. But, Dolfuse guessed, that’s how she became vice president. “Come in. I appreciate you coming to see me.”
Better get this over with.
Martin disappeared into her office and, as she rose, Linda faked a cough to cover the groan of pain. The motion didn’t hurt as bad as she’d predicted. A throbbing swell just above her unmentionable zone and she was back to normal. Of course, another chair waited inside Martin’s office. A large, striped couch, in fact. To avoid it, Dolfuse would put on the role of proactive public servant, too busy to sit. Yes, that might work. Don’t think me rude, I’ve just got a lot of momentum and a constituency that won’t let me rest.
Martin cuddled up in the chair across from the couch and extended an arm. “Take a load off. Let’s dish.”
Dolfuse wanted to gag. She hated that term, and, frankly, never understood what it meant. It sounded even worse coming from someone she was indebted to, someone she’d never liked.
After shutting the door behind her, Dolfuse grabbed the back of the sofa like a podium. “Already used up my sitting quota for the day.” She forced a smile. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” Martin said. “I like it. You know I read somewhere that too much sitting can kill you?”
“I can believe it.”
Dolfuse made her ceremonial appreciation of Martin’s office. It had all the warmth of the desolate tundra Europe had become over the last few decades, but it was whispered knowledge the vice president liked her guests to gush over her workplace.
A small picture frame behind Martin’s back showed President Griffin smiling, at the edge of tears it looked like, and squeezing Martin across the shoulders with a long arm. Dolfuse couldn’t really understand it. She’d never been close to another woman like that. Never really had a female friend. Acquaintances, of course, people she snuggled up to in order to be where she was in the dog-eat-dog arena of Washington. But friends? Never. Maybe she could have changed that with her daughter. Well, that wasn’t to be either. The little one was in a better place – she hoped.
“One of my favorite photographs,” Martin said.
“You and her have always seemed so close.”
“The president is a very affectionate woman. That was taken after we got the news we’d won the election.”
Dolfuse nodded, continuing to look at the picture.
“You hide it well,” Martin said.
Dolfuse snapped back to the present. “Pardon?”
Martin nodded toward Dolfuse’s midsection. The senator hadn’t realized she was clutching her stomach. The pain had come back and her mind had taken her somewhere else while her body still reacted to it.
“Guilt,” Martin said. Her eyes blinked with concern, not judgment.
Dolfuse dropped her arm as the pain faded.
“It’s only human, especially in our line of work. Anything you want to talk about?” Martin leaned against her chair, resting her head against her hand. Her silver bracelet jangled as she did.
The vice president wasn’t the type of woman you went blabbing to, unless you wanted something in return. Dolfuse certainly didn’t want to give Martin anything to hold over her head. Dolfuse had gone against the vice president before, when she’d still just been Senator Martin. The shipping contract with Australia was up for renewal, and Dolfuse had promised Martin a vote in favor of it. However, Dolfuse’s conscience overcame her at the last second, and along with two other senators who’d promised Martin, she backed out and voted against shipping for the Aussies. The two other senators died six months later when their hover car crashed and dropped off a bridge. Dolfuse had been watching her back every day since. She’d considered running away to South America, being a teardrop in the flood of immigrants trying sneak past the Colombian Wall. But she’d been more afraid of that than her paranoid thoughts. Besides, Martin had never mentioned that voting incident since.
Dolfuse had been keeping her guilt fermenting for so long. Maybe talking about it would help.
“I was pregnant,” Dolfuse said. “Not any more.”
Martin smiled, pointing. “I thought you might have had one in the oven.”
“It’s been handled.”
She’d given the baby to a family that had been waiting to adopt for five years. But she wasn’t going to tell Martin that much.
“Hell, I remember considering keeping it, the first time I was pregnant,” Martin said. It’s what prevented me from getting rid of it sooner. Oh, the thought of filling out all those child request forms alone was enough to change my mind.”
“Do you ever regret it?” Dolfuse linked her fingers, rubbing them together.
“Burning it out?”
“Not keeping the baby.”
Martin breathed in slowly before she answered. “We have a country to run, Linda. Even if you were granted permission for a kid – which you could easily get, being who you are – you’d have no time for your career. Things like that should be thought out well in advance. You have nothing to feel guilty about. When you and Bobby are ready, you’ll be great parents.”
“I’m not telling him what I did. But it’ll all work out. I’m getting better every day.”
Martin stood and grabbed a thick file from the recesses of her desk. When she returned, she placed it on the couch by Dolfuse.
“What’s this?”
“What do you know about what happens on Oubliette?”
“Oubliette? No one knows what goes on there.” The room thickened, hot and wanting for air. Dolfuse flapped her collar and swallowed. “Not since the shippees destroyed all the cameras. That’s not really an area I know much about. Conspiracy websites and the counterculture are the only ones who seem interested in it.”
Martin tongued her gums. “Yes, we’re supposed to forget them, huh? The shippees. Do you think they’re surviving?”
“The whole of them could be dead for all I know. Every new shipment might arrive to a dead city. And the shippees may just as well strangle each other for the last piece of that gunk we give them to eat. What are you thinking?” Dolfuse eyed the file on the couch. It was thick and manila brown. Across its face, red blocky letters spelled out “CONFIDENTIAL”.
“Have you ever considered the possibility we’d lose this war?”
“No,” Dolfuse said.
Martin laughed, waving the se
nator’s words away with a limp hand. “You can tone down the zealous patriot routine in here.”
Just her saying it made Dolfuse regard the door, wondering if guards waited outside, ready to send her to the prison city in another galaxy. This was the day Martin would get her revenge.
“Honestly.” Martin stared deep into Dolfuse’s eyes. “Is there a chance we could lose? Worse, could our enviroshields shut down and have us go the way of those poor bastards across the pond?”
“That’s a lot of ‘ifs,’” Dolfuse said. “And honestly? Anything is possible with the right variables in place.”
Martin grinned, nodding.
“But I still doubt it,” Dolfuse added.
“The EA feels just as confident about their chances, I’m sure.”
The Eastern Axis will freeze to death if we hold them off long enough.
When Pakistan, India, and the rest of the Middle East had formed their alliance, the rest of the world laughed, thinking they’d argue and kill themselves out of the union they’d formed. The joke was on them when Russia and China joined the alliance and began pushing toward the inevitable – war on the United Continent of North America. The world was in the beginning of another ice age, and the EA wanted the Continent’s enviroshield technology, and would kill every last North American to get it. Never mind every last North American was struggling to put food on their own tables, living in overpopulated, stack-on-stack metropolises, or struggling to grow food from an uncaring soil in the more rural areas.
Dolfuse hated the EA. Because of them, Bobby had to go halfway across the world just so the land of the free could keep its borders shielded from the coming cold. But he’d been a soldier when she’d married him, one of the few to enlist on his own. That same patriotism had helped him rise above the ranks of those who’d been sold into service.
“The difference between us and the EA, though,” Martin said, “is we have the option of a contingency plan.”
“Contingency plan?”
Martin pointed to the file on the couch. “That’s everything I have on Oubliette. Read it. It’s all about the architecture and the original plan for the city.”