by Sean Grigsby
“A boy,” Sarah said again, “and the baby he gave you.”
Silence. For a minute, Sarah thought she’d pissed Lena off or they’d all gone to sleep without listening to her. But then there was the sound of lone, slow applause.
“Wait,” Hurley said. “She’s right?”
“She’s not getting my shit if she is right,” Ava said. “She didn’t bet.”
“Lena?” Dipity asked.
“A rough guess,” Lena said. “But she’s gotten closer than any of you.”
“Oh, I’ve got to hear about this,” Dipity said.
Hurley Girly gasped. “You had a kid?”
Lena sighed. “I guess I might as well tell you, since there’s a chance we’ll all be dead soon.” She’d spoken softly, but the next thing she said rose in volume and anger. “But I don’t want to hear shit while I’m speaking. I hate talking about it, and I’d rather just get it out and be done with it!”
“OK, Horror,” Ava said. It was the kindest Sarah had ever heard her speak. “We’re listening.”
“I grew up with a boy named Jeff,” Lena began. “My mom didn’t like me hanging out with him at first. He was black, and his family were devout Catholics, and she would have rather gutted me for a sacrifice than see me date some ‘negro gentile.’ But since we were just friends and his parents were the only company she’d had since my dad died, she got over it pretty quickly.
“Me and Jeff spent all our time together. He was taller than a lot of the other boys and had gray-blue eyes, like the Atlantic Ocean on a rainy day. That’s the picture I always saw when I looked into them. We were never official as far as boyfriend and girlfriend, but we never dated anyone else, even when we got to senior year.”
Sarah figured they all knew she meant high school. It sucked that none of them knew what Earth was like as a legal adult. No cigarettes or alcohol. No voting. No choice. They were never given a chance to grow up. Just get older.
“We were satisfied in our relationship,” Lena said. “It was perfect how it was, whatever it was. Then came that night in the back of his pickup.
“We were out in some field in the boonies. He told me his parents were selling him to the military. I thought he was joking at first. He liked to pull that kind of shit with me just to see how I’d react. But then he started crying, and I knew he was for real. He never cried. I couldn’t believe it. His mom was so nice, I never would have thought she would do something like that.
“I hugged him for a long time. When he finally quit sobbing into my shoulder, he lifted his head and kissed me. One thing led to another. Don’t even ask me for the details. I can barely remember, it just happened. I didn’t have any hesitation, either. It was like he was always destined to be my first – and I guess my last.
“I found out I was pregnant a month later. We told his parents first. They decided against sending him off to war, told him we had to get married and they would handle the paperwork for getting a child allowance. I was ecstatic. We both were. We’d accidentally found a loophole that would keep him at home, and we could start a life together after we got my mom to sign off on it.
“But she wasn’t so keen on the idea. Didn’t speak to me for a week after I told her. I swear she didn’t even let me finish. Just got up in the middle of our conversation and locked herself in her bedroom.
“Then one day she comes to me smiling, saying she’s excited to be a grandmother and she wants to take me shopping for a wedding dress. I was so surprised and happy I jumped in the car without a second thought. I asked her when we could have the wedding, something small and quiet. She said we would take care of it right away.”
Lena made a sound like she was going to vomit.
“You OK?” Ava asked.
“Shut up and listen,” said Lena. “When we pulled in to this blank, gray building, I thought we’d arrived at some swank dress shop that didn’t even need a sign on the door. I strolled ahead of my mom, but knew I’d walked into a clinic as soon as I saw the ugly nurse behind the window.
“My mom blocked the door and screamed for help to restrain me. I slapped her across the face, but two big guys in scrubs pulled me to the back before I could run.”
Sarah stifled a gasp. She knew what was coming because all stories were like that. The ending came inevitably, like a train chugging toward a cliff, no matter how much you hoped for a happy conclusion. Lena hadn’t always been crazy. She’d just been through hell even before coming to Oubliette.
Lena must not have heard Sarah’s gasp because she kept talking. “I was stripped and strapped to a table, my feet in stirrups. It was obvious what they were going to do, and it was legal since I was still seventeen, and that gave my mom right over me and my baby.
“I fought as hard as I could against those men, against the restraints. I lost my voice from all my screaming. But they were able to get a needle in me. When I came to I was still tied down but in another room. My mom was nowhere around. Sometime later, after I’d cried for the hundredth time and screamed for my baby and for someone to get me the hell out of there, a doctor came in and told me the fetus – that’s the word he used – had been burned out, and that the shippers were on their way to take me into custody.
“My bitch of a mother had signed the papers while I was unconscious. See, she knew. She knew she had to send me to Oubliette, because I would have hunted her down and killed her the first chance I got. I’d burn her out the way she’d had them do to my baby. But I was robbed of that, too.
“And that’s why I’m here on this hell hole with you fine ladies.”
No one said anything. It was a long time silent in the dark, and Sarah fell asleep before anyone spoke again.
Chapter 43
“I’m having the worst case of déjà vu.” Beckles tapped her fingers against the top of the desk, her knuckles dry and red.
Dolfuse could understand what Beckles meant. Beckles wore the same outfit from their last rendezvous, and Dolfuse could have sworn the same cold, neglected steak sat on the warden’s desk.
“I don’t know what this is all about,” Dolfuse said, “but I am a senator of the United Continent, and I have seen enough evidence to make your life a living hell.”
“Shut your mouth, you uppity bitch.”
Dolfuse’s insides caught fire. She wanted to say a whole lot of things to this bear of a woman, this bully.
Beckles grinned, apparently aware she’d gotten a reaction from the senator. “I have even more evidence against you. And I’m the one who can make your life a lot more complicated, even without turning you in for smuggling an infant out on one of my shipments. But no matter. We both know we’ve reached a point way beyond looking the other way.”
“The baby? I had nothing to do with tha –”
“Save it.” Beckles raised her palm. “That poor child. If I’d been more vigilant, squeezed my fist tighter, it would have never happened. It’s not right. But neither you or anyone in that cesspit of Washington have to worry. I’ve learned my lesson.”
Dolfuse breathed so hard through her nose, it made a whistling sound. “Let’s talk about something else, then,” she said. “What are you doing with all the shippees who should have already been sent to Oubliette? And don’t tell me there was no room or they weren’t broken in yet. I can sling bullshit as deep as anyone else, you included.”
“It’s my business.” Beckles patted the sides of her hair, turning to the enormous window behind her. “And none of yours. The only reason you’re still here and breathing, my dear senator, is that I haven’t quite decided what to do with you. I can’t let you go. You’ll run off to your superiors and that would speed things up. And I don’t want to eliminate you, since you might be valuable… should something happen.”
Who did this woman think she was? God. She’d said as much. At best, she had a messiah complex. There was no bargaining with her, then. Dolfuse’s best option was to make nice and wait for the cavalry to show. She looked around the warden’s offic
e and wondered, not for the first time, why she’d been the only one the guards had brought in here.
“Where’s Spangler?” Dolfuse asked.
She heard a scream, muffled by glass. Then Spangler’s body fell past Beckles’ window, arms and legs flailing on his way to the pavement five stories below.
“I’m afraid we had to let him go.”
Dolfuse punched and kicked at the guards beside her, yelling and clawing to get a hold of Beckles. She tried for the steak knife on the plate, but before she could grab it thousands of volts of electricity ran through her body, sending her to the ground in a convulsing mess. She felt saliva run from her mouth, her hands and feet clench, her teeth clamp down. She could do nothing about any of it.
All my fault. All of this. The words kept repeating in her mind.
When the guards quit prodding her with their stun sticks, she sat up slowly, waiting for her head to stop spinning. Her mouth had gone cottony.
A buzz came from Beckles’ desk.
“Yes?” the warden said.
A woman’s voice told her police had arrived out front. Dolfuse eased a bit.
Beckles glared at Dolfuse, as if it was her fault. The warden hit a button.
Push all the knobs and switches you want, Dolfuse thought. You’re finished.
Outside the window, a large metal sheet lowered to block out the day, and an electric screen came to life where the window had been, showing hundreds of boxed images from the shipping port’s cameras. One image showed police in SWAT gear running to the front door just before another metal piece slammed down to keep them out of the port. Elsewhere, the cameras showed every exterior window and door being sealed just the same. The port had been locked down. No one could get in.
No one can get out either, thought Dolfuse.
The police beat on the metal, searching for a way to breach. One of the policewomen in a bulky vest signaled part of the group to go around each side of the building. They scattered like ants.
How did they know to come? Dolfuse hadn’t told Martin or anyone else where she’d be. She’d never told anyone about the army of stockpiled shippees.
Beckles picked up a microphone and sat on the top of her desk. “Broadcast me outside,” she said into the microphone. There was a click and Beckles cleared her throat. “You are out of your jurisdiction. Leave now or we will resort to deadly force.”
“We have a warrant,” the lead policewoman shouted, though she looked all over as if she didn’t know where to direct her cop-smug directives.
“I will give you thirty seconds, beginning now.” Beckles began counting down from twenty-nine.
The policewoman backed up, raising her rifle. She spoke into the radio microphone at her shoulder, calling the other officers back to the front. Dolfuse wondered what Beckles planned to do if the police didn’t leave. Keep the door sealed until they found a way in? And then what? Send guards against the police with nothing but stun sticks? This whole thing would have been amusing if Dolfuse hadn’t been stuck in the middle of it. If her actions hadn’t cost Spangler his life.
Guns drawn and heads bobbing in every direction, the police huddled at the front door in full force. Dolfuse considered grabbing the microphone from Beckles – she was only at eighteen… seventeen – and tell the police to come back with the army. But she was too weak, muscles still twitching from the stun sticks.
When Beckles reached the end of her countdown, she pressed another button. Guns lowered from the front awning, aimed at the police. Laser cannons. It was so sudden, so unexpected, Dolfuse could only watch, not fully comprehending what was happening on the screen. The lasers bit into every police officer, cutting their armor and their flesh like tissue. Only one officer was able to get a shot off, straight into the air. Then she dropped like the rest.
Beckles pushed the button again, and the guns retracted.
Dolfuse stared at the pile of bodies outside the port. This must be what Bobby sees every day. How could you repeatedly see such terrible things and not go a little crazy. She even thought she might be losing her own head. But it couldn’t be. This wasn’t how things happened. The good guys were supposed to win.
“Follow me,” Beckles said to the two guards holding Dolfuse by her arms. “And bring the senator. We’re going to have more heat on us soon. We’ve run out of time.”
They took her through countless plain white doors, down plain white halls, deep parts of the shipping port Dolfuse had never imagined. It went on forever, and she thought about going to sleep so later she could wake up from this nightmare. But one of the guards kicked Dolfuse in the back of the leg and told her to walk or leave the same way Spangler did.
She walked.
Motors hummed behind the last door they came to. Unlike the other doors, four guards stood in front of this one, carrying rifles.
“We’re giving a tour,” Beckles told them with a chuckle.
The guards saluted her and broke for Dolfuse and the others to pass. When the door slid open, the industrial churning escaped and filled Dolfuse’s ears. The massive room reminded Dolfuse of a factory as they walked on a railing that crisscrossed from one end of the room to the other, all above rows upon rows of gigantic, open vats where metal blades mixed off-white muck.
“Welcome to manna production.” Beckles had to yell. “We can survive inside this port for the next hundred years with what you see below you. Besides it tasting like cardboard, it’ll never go bad.”
Dolfuse stared at her, imagining if she could get a hold of one of the rifles and end this coup before it started.
“But that’s not the best part,” Beckles said.
Her oversized boots clanged as she moved to the middle of the manna room and turned right. The guards hurried Dolfuse along, and when they’d reached the wall, another door opened to a similar space, albeit much quieter. The guards held Dolfuse off to the side as Beckles walked on. Fifty feet below, gathered in square formations, stood hundreds of shippees.
A microphone attached to the railing shrieked feedback when Beckles stopped behind it, looking onto her horde of shippees. The warden raised her arms. “Do you want to go to Oubliette?”
The shippees stayed quiet. Not an army. Not some overwhelming force, but a bunch of girls who had no clue why they’d been kept behind. Some shook their heads, shifting nervously in their white uniforms.
“I asked you,” Beckles said, louder, more angry, “if you want to be sent to Oubliette.”
This time the shippees screamed in unison, “No!”
“For many months,” Beckles said, “some of you over a year, we’ve trained you, separated you from the chaff being shipped out. Held you from being forgotten. Why?”
She paused. None of the shippees tried an answer.
“Because I don’t want to ship you away.” She pounded a fist against her broad chest. “I want to give you a second life. Those sanctimonious bureaucrats out there couldn’t give a damn if you were never heard from again. To them, you are nothing. Are they right?”
“No!” came the shippees’ answer. Now they sounded more like an army. They even stood straighter.
Dolfuse’s head swam.
“Then take up your weapons.” Beckles spread her arms.
At each side of the room, guards poured in with carts stacked with guns – rifles. Dolfuse thought she even saw a cart of grenades. The guards handed a weapon to each shippee. Handling the weapons like professional soldiers, the shippees performed a quick, uniform check of the rifles and methodically placed them butt to ground, resting against their leg.
“You’re going to have to fight to stay on Earth,” Beckles said after the guards returned from where they’d entered. “Are you with me?”
The shippees cheered in the affirmative, raising their rifles to the air.
“Then so be it.” Beckles beamed, proud of herself, proud of the twisted moral code she’d infected into these desperate women. “Get ready, ladies. This is where we make our stand.” She raised fist
s above her head.
The shippees chanted a grunt.
Dolfuse shook her head. Even as deluded as Beckles was, the chances of the warden succeeding looked quite high. Most of the military fought overseas. At home, only a scattering of Continental Guard and a few police remained.
Dolfuse could have laughed herself to death.
Beckles had played the system against itself, masquerading as some modern Julius Caesar, savior of the continent. She wanted to burn society down and rebuild from the ashes, using the shippees to do her dirty work. It was all so clear now. Dolfuse just wished she had figured it out while she was a long way away from where the revolution would begin.
Chapter 44
“Fuck this fucking thing!” Ava slammed the drone sensor onto the glass table. Most of the green in its center had been charred black after passing through the Veil.
“You’ll figure it out,” Lena said, trying to restrain herself from slapping Ava for almost destroying the only hope they had.
Grindy’s shop was alive again, bustling with dwellers and gang members from the OC and the Daughters. It was what Grindy always wanted – everyone working together. Who knew all it would take was killing off most of the Amazons and an impending threat of no more shipments?
“Just try to relax,” Lena told Ava.
Look who’s talking.
“It’s stuck in there,” Ava said. “The thing’s been melted to the casing.”
“Most shit just needs a little time and finesse.”
“We have neither of those.”
Lena zipped her jacket. “This is your priority. You’re our sheila on this, so take Grindy’s office if you need the quiet.”
“It still smells like blood in there.” Ava shuffled to the office, looking at the sensor like a frustrating puzzle.
Lena sighed as she watched her go. She hadn’t been blowing smoke up Ava’s ass. Her second-in-command was the best around at that sort of thing. Whatever she needed to get the sensor fixed, Lena would see that she got it.
Taylor stood at the back door, guiding in dwellers and members of the OC who were carrying large pieces of glass and cyclone engines from the dead Amazons’ discarded bikes. Two of them were stuck in the door and unable to follow directions, much to Taylor’s annoyance. When she yelled for them to stop, the line bumped into each other and a dweller dropped a cyclone engine on an OC’s foot. The black woman screamed curses and not-so-idle threats at the dweller, who was smart enough to back away into the crowd.