Sifters

by Shane Scollins

  There was so much going on. Even though the sun was sinking, it was so bright. Dia was not used to this artificial light all over the place. It was disorienting and gave her a bit of a dull headache.

  The smell from the cars and buses was something she wasn’t used to either. After all, she was just a kid when most people stopped driving cars every day. Her parents gave up their cars almost right away. Her father said it was not worth killing a man for five gallons of gasoline.

  Dia glanced at Chloe. “Were you born in the city?”

  “I was born in New Mexico. My dad was active duty in the military, so we moved a lot. I’ve lived in California, North Carolina, Ohio, Germany, you name it.”

  “My dad was in when he was young, just one tour. So you got moved here right away when all hell broke loose.”

  Chloe laughed. “Yeah, we were in Germany when the grid crashed. But Germany was almost all solar powered even back then, so they were fine. But my father got called in, so we hopped a military flight the week after and went to Ohio. But then the whole meteor thing happened. The first hit and boom, we were in the city in one of the bunkers. That was a crazy time.”

  “It’s amazing. It seems so long ago now, but it really wasn’t.”

  “Not at all. But I guess they jammed so much change into such a small box of time, it seems like it was longer ago. You know?”

  Dia nodded. “You’re right.”

  “What about you?” Chloe kicked a small plastic juice container off the sidewalk into the street.

  “I was born in New Jersey. We got kicked out of our house. It was in the annex zone, and we didn’t make the initial list. We hoped that since my dad had served, we’d get in. But no such luck. We got a new house a few miles away, just outside the annex walls. I could see the wall from my bedroom.”

  Chloe turned to her. “So how’d you get in here?”

  Dia cursed herself for having loose lips again. She didn’t mean to slip, but Chloe set her so much at ease. It was like hanging out with an old friend, even though she didn’t have any old friends.

  Chloe opened her mouth wide. “You’re illegal, aren’t you?”

  Dia sighed. There was no point in trying to deny it. She shrugged. “I have a work zone card.”

  “Ha, I knew it!”

  Dia looked at her, narrowed her eyes.

  Chloe hit her arm playfully. “Hey, it’s cool, girl. I’m not going to say anything. I hate the freaking cops. I hate all this. I’m on your side.”

  Dia sighed in relief. “Thanks.”

  “So I’m hanging out with one of those Sifters?” Chloe chuckled.

  Dia shook her head. “No way! Well, I mean, I think all the people in here call everyone out there Sifters. But really, the people you think are Sifters, the lawless bunch, killers and thieves, we call them Preppers. They live in these little clans and like to kill for fun. People like me spend their time defending themselves against the Preppers. But, technically speaking, I guess I am a Sifter.”

  “To us, Sifters are anyone out there. As they said in that documentary, they’re spending their lives sifting through the wreckage of what used to be America.”

  “Wait, what documentary?”

  “You’ve never seen Searching and Sifting?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, we have to watch it. It’s riveting, and it might be cool to actually see it with someone who has experienced it.”

  “What is it?”

  “They show it to all the kids in schools now.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “It goes way back. Some college filmmaker did it a couple years after the collapse, about life on the outside. He’s the guy who coined the term Sifters. He called it the new American gold rush. And the gold was basically anything that was left behind by the people who moved into the city or died.”

  Dia shook her head. “I had no idea where the phrase came from. I mean, I’ve heard it and I know all about what people think, but I didn’t really know where it came from.”

  “Everything people think about what’s going on out there comes from that documentary. And it didn’t paint a very good picture.”

  Dia made a face. “It’s gotten better. It was much worse in the immediate aftermath, as you could imagine.”

  “We don’t know what’s going on out there. It’s all rumors and stuff. They have a few shows on the news that warn us of the dangers. All we know is there are all kinds of diseases and things out there that will kill us.”

  “There are?”

  Chloe frowned. “That’s what they say.”

  “There are doctors and stuff. You can get help if you know the right people.”

  Chloe nodded. “It’s kinda risky coming in here though, right? I mean even with the work pass.”

  Dia shrugged. “I guess.”

  “A few years ago, when I was still in school, we had a girl who showed up from nowhere. She managed to sneak in. She was cool as hell. We were fast friends, and her name was Bethany. She had such a sweet personality. But when they found out, they jailed her parents and threw her out of the city all alone. She was sixteen, skinny little thing. I hate to imagine what happened to her.”

  Dia shook her head. “Poor girl probably didn’t last a week by herself.”

  “How do you?”

  Dia shrugged and cocked a playful smile. “I’m a badass.”

  They came up to an old fire station. Chloe pointed. “This is home.”

  Dia stopped her bike and jumped off. “You live in a fire house?”

  “Sure do. We converted this baby to four full apartments. I share mine with my brother. But he works all the time. He’s almost never here.”

  “Where can I park my bike?”

  Chloe opened the heavy front door. “Right inside… C’mon in.”

  They walked into the large open concept living space. Dia looked around and was amazed. The place was so nice inside. It was painted in white and light blue with modern looking furniture and light, slate gray floors that were in fact actual slate pieces set into concrete.

  “Impressive, huh?” Chloe asked, shutting the door behind them.

  “Wow, this is like a luxury apartment.”

  “It is a luxury apartment. And it’s free.”

  Dia twisted her lips. “Free? How do you manage that one?”

  “Well, we own the building. Like I said, we turned it into four apartments, one at each corner just like this one. So we get rent from all of them, except one is empty right now. The old lady who lived there moved to a retirement home. My brother did all the work himself, so it’s not a bad deal.”

  Dia leaned her bike against the wall by the door. “You have money. Why are you eating free pizza?”

  Chloe turned her palms up. “I’m not rich, this place just breaks even. We don’t get a profit, and I don’t have a job. My brother makes a lot, and he gives me some spending money, but I don’t like to take his handouts. My father taught me to live cheaply, to save money if you can. And hey, the pizza is good. The fact it’s free is just a bonus. Most of it would get thrown out if not for people like us. And twice a week I run it to one of the shelters.”

  Dia stripped off her fingerless leather gloves and draped them over the handlebars of her bike.

  Chloe said, “The bathroom is over there under the stairs. The bedrooms are upstairs over the kitchen. You can stay in my room. I have a futon you can sleep on if you want. I’d let you stay in my brother’s room, but I never know when he might pop in—and trust me you don’t want to surprise him in the middle of the night. He’s kinda scary.”

  “Thanks for letting me stay here. It’s really cool of you.”

  Chloe met her eyes, looked away, and shrugged. “It’s no problem. It’ll be nice to have some company. And you’re a cool chick. I like you. I think we’re going to be good friends.” She smiled.

  Dia surprised herself by saying, “I like you too. It’s funny, I feel like I’ve known you forever, like we’re old friends o
r something.”

  “I know, right? I was just thinking that. It’s weird.”

  “Maybe we knew each other in another life.”

  Chloe made face. “Do you believe in that reincarnation stuff?”

  Dia bit her lip. “Dunno, never really thought about it. I guess that’s just something people say.”

  “Yeah, guess so.”

  “Do you believe in it?”

  Chloe looked to the ceiling in thought. “Maybe, I mean there’s a lot of stuff about the world we don’t understand. You know? I mean every time science thinks they got it figured out, they discover something new that sorta makes what they used to know look pretty dumb.”

  “Yeah, sure… they thought the earth was flat at one time.”

  Chloe pointed a finger at her and said, “Right, and you never know what they might know in a few more years about things like quantum physics.”

  Dia nodded, impressed. “You’re pretty smart, huh?”

  Chloe laughed. “Naa, not really. I barely made it out of school. I like to learn. But on my own terms.”

  A strange warbling siren suddenly cried in the distance, screaming and then cutting off, then repeating.

  “What is that?” Dia asked.

  Chloe’s eyes grew wider. “That’s not good.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “It might mean nothing, but… How’d you get into the city?”

  “I got a white sector card.”

  Chloe nodded thoughtfully. “White… and today is…” She looked at her phone. “Who’d you get it from?”

  Dia didn’t answer.

  “C’mon, Dia, where’d you get the card from?”

  “I stole it. They can’t be coming for me. Right?”

  Chloe looked panicked. “I don’t know. It would be nice to know who the card belonged to. If it was a corporate card, they usually don’t flag them for days. If it was a transporter card, they’re only good for a few hours. We can’t take the chance. Give me your card.”

  Dia fished the card from her pocket. Chloe took hold of it and ran over to the microwave oven, popped the card in, and started cooking it until it exploded inside the oven with a flash of blue light and green sparks.

  “There, that’s the end of that. We should get you out of here for now. I can’t risk them locking this place down—my brother would kill me for allowing a refugee into this place.”

  Dia grabbed her bike and hurried out the front door.

  Chloe yelled. “Pedal your ass down to the docks. Just keep going west until you get there. There’s an empty fishery, wait there. I’ll come for you in like an hour.”

  Dia rode as fast as she could, pumping the pedals until she came to a downhill where she just tucked low and coasted until she could see the water ahead.

  She sped across a thin strip of gravel and onto a wooden platform of connected piers in front of a long, low-slung building with a sign that read McDuff’s Fishery. Dia had no idea how long ago this had been a fishery, but it must have been very long ago. The building was rusted and tired, and no trace of fish smell lingered.

  But the ocean did smell, and it smelled like memories of her trips to the Jersey Shore as a kid. Back when things were normal, her family would go out to the shore at least twice a summer to visit her grandparents and several aunts and uncles from the Demarco family. Those were great times.

  The siren continued to pump off in the distance, but then it stopped. She got off her bike and pushed it up onto the platform. Sitting on the edge, she let her legs dangle over the side a few feet above the water and waited.

  Chapter 10

  Standing in the hush of night, Tallon waited to see if the gunshots had attracted unwanted attention. He looked down at the body of the dead man and then back to the long path of gravel that led both directions.

  After nothing but silence for a solid three minutes, he bent and searched the pockets of the man. There was nothing remarkable, a few bucks and a handgun. But then in a rear pocket there was a card. It was not unheard of to find a sector card on a Sifter, but it was odd to see this one. This was a golden resident card.

  Tallon turned the card over in his hand, making sure it was not a counterfeit. It wasn’t. Counterfeit sector cards were popular with the Sifters. The cards would get them into the annex or city, but once the numbers ran through the databases, the fraud would be flagged. The counterfeit cards were the tools of the drug dealers and arms dealers. They only needed enough time to snake into the city annex and back out. They were usually long gone before the fraudulent card was flagged.

  The government had banned all guns and drugs inside the city limits. Yet there was still demand for those things. So it was big business for the Sifters and other types to traffic that stuff inside and out.

  This card, however, was legit, and that was odd. Out here, this card would be worth a fortune and beyond. This was a permanent resident card, and the only way to get one of these was to kill a resident or somehow get lucky enough to find a resident willing to give it up, which was almost unheard of. Even if you kill a resident and steal their card, it would eventually be deactivated once their death was reported and on the official ledger.

  Tallon slipped the card into his cargo pants and ventured out toward the main driveway. He still had a job to do. In a brisk walk, he headed down toward the far buildings.

  Creeping along the wall, he pressed his ear to the steel. Muted voices carried on in conversation. He looked up to the door, which sat halfway down the corridor between the last two buildings.

  With confidence, he opened the door and surprised the four men inside. One of the men pulled a gun, and Tallon shot him dead with a single bullet to the head. “No one else moves,” he said calmly.

  Another of the men snarled, “He can’t shoot us all.”

  Tallon saw the man’s fingers twitching nervously. There was a silver revolver on the table. He was going to reach for it. “Don’t do it.”

  The thin, toothless man looked to the other two men standing in front of the table with him. “C’mon boys, grab yer piece, he can’t get all of us.”

  Tallon wasn’t about to play this game, so he shot the bearded man in the head, and then shot the thin man in the red T-shit twice in the torso, leaving only the mocha-skinned man standing.

  “I should kill you too,” Tallon said, and in fact, the whole reason he was here was to kill this man.

  The man raised his hands. “I’m unarmed.”

  “No one is unarmed out here.”

  “I am.”

  Tallon pointed with his gun. “Sit in that chair.”

  He complied, keeping his hands up.

  “You’re Alex Simmonds.”

  Alex nodded. “Yeah, so who the hell’re you?”

  “It doesn’t matter who I am.”

  “It matters to me, especially since you just killed three people in front of me. And since you got past Sterling, I assume you killed him too.”

  “They’re lawbreakers.”

  “So you’re a cop?”

  “I need to know who you’ve talked to.”

  Alex laughed, lowered his hands. “Shit, I should’ve guessed they’d send some henchman to rub me out. I’m just surprised it took them this long. You can kill me, but in doing so you’re killing thousands.”

  “What kind of desperate bluff is that?”

  “That’s not a bluff.”

  “Sounds like a desperate plea for your life.”

  “You’re just another corrupt piece of garbage swimming in the sewers of the city, another one of the corporate vermin. A mindless drone, they pull your string and send you out to do their killing. Is this because of the movement? Is this because of the truth? Because it’s too late. You can kill me, but it’s too late. As a great poet once said, you can put a bullet in my head—but you can’t kill a word I’ve said. This meeting was a celebration, see the stogies?” He pointed to the table, but Tallon didn’t take his eyes off the mark.

  “You’r
e trying to distract me into a mistake. It won’t work.”

  Alex laughed. “You stupid—ignorant sonofabitch. Did you hear a word I said? It’s too late. The word is out, the uprising is going to happen, the masses are going to know all about what’s going on. So you can kill me, but go back and tell your bosses the damage is already done.”

  “You’ve got nothing. You’re bluffing, and I won’t fall for it.”

  “No, I’m not. I don’t bluff. Everyone is going to know the truth, and it’s not going to sit well. I know about what’s going on, and you can’t hide it anymore.”

  Tallon lowered his gun. “Do you think people care? They don’t.”

  “They will when they hear about the undiagnosed.” Alex smiled slyly. “That’s right. I know your bosses didn’t know we knew about that little island of misfit toys. And I know what they don’t want anyone to know.”

  Tallon took a step toward him. “How’d you learn about that?”

  Alex smiled. “A little birdie told me.”

  “You know about Westerberg?”

  “You bet your muscled-up white ass I know about it. And the moment something happens to me, everyone’s going to know about it. That’s going to put a big old damper on that plan to expand the annex border.”

  Tallon wasn’t even supposed to know about the plans to expand the annex. The kids who went undiagnosed were a problem. He knew something was up with them, he just didn’t really know what. They had to deal with them somehow to keep them away from the kids on the path.

  “Killing me is easy. I don’t matter. Just like you don’t matter. We’re just two sides of the same coin. So you can kill me, but that one bullet will kill thousands of people. Live with that on your conscience.”

  “I don’t have a conscience.” He put the gun to Alex’s head and took a deep breath.

  Chapter 11

  Nighttime in the city was strange. It was taking Dia a long time to adjust to it, and it still felt weird. Some of the brightest lights from earlier were now dark, but it was still nothing like the familiar darkness.

  She felt a little bit of uncharacteristic anxiety over the fact that Chloe hadn’t come to meet her yet. It had been well over an hour, so she crept out of the building. Looking out toward the street, she didn’t see a sign of anyone around. After debating it, she finally decided to go back to the firehouse. It was risky. If she ran into the cops, she’d have no identification, and that wouldn’t be a good situation. They would certainly arrest her.