I sighed. Chaddock was the lowest security prison in Sector X. Conditions were bad, but they couldn’t deny prisoners their basic human rights.
“They’ll hold him there until they can be sure he isn’t infected. And then —”
“And then he’ll just disappear like the others!”
The PMC told the media that undocumented illegals were only held for a short period of time until they could be vaccinated and identified as a matter of public safety, but most people who were brought into the prison system were never heard from again. It had been like that for almost a year — ever since the Collapse and the PMC takeover.
The government didn’t offer any explanation; people were simply unaccounted for. If their families went to the press, they faced threats of violence and imprisonment. My dad knew a widow whose young son had gone missing from the prison system. When she vocalized news of his disappearance, our paper ran a feature on other locals who had been wiped off the map after failing to comply with documentation. A week later, the widow’s house burned to the ground.
Some undocumented illegals were fugitives or people who had come into the country illegally before the Collapse, but most were just regular people, like Greyson, who resisted the mandated documentation. Illegals suspected of treason or conspiracy against the government were often tortured and detained indefinitely at Waul Penitentiary, the supermax prison in Sector X designed to hold the most dangerous criminals and rebels. This included defectors — documented citizens who broke the law and resisted the PMC. The thought gave me pause. If they identified me as Greyson’s documented accomplice, I was considered a defector. My punishment would be worse than his if I were caught.
Nora was pacing the living room.
“Sit down,” I said. It was making me feel sick.
But she seemed to have lost her tenuous grasp on reality. “They’ll come here, you know. They’ll come arrest us for helping him. This is all your fault.”
That stung. You have no idea, I wanted to yell, but I just sighed. “You’ve been vaccinated and identified. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I’ve been helping you hide him for months!”
I was beyond caring what my sour roommate thought of Greyson’s imposition. All our friends migrated north months ago — including Greyson’s former roommates — but he needed a Citizen ID to hold a lease. Nora’s grandfather was a wealthy alumnus, and he owned the apartment building where we lived. She worked in the leasing office part time and fixed the paperwork so it would appear as though Greyson had vacated the apartment. As far as our landlord knew, Greyson’s unit was empty.
“They’ll get me as a conspirator,” Nora murmured. “Aiding and abetting — that’s what it’s called, isn’t it?”
“Just say you didn’t know he was living there and that you had no idea I was a defector nutcase.”
“That won’t work!” Her lip was trembling, making her look more than ever like an overgrown cherub. I wasn’t taller than average, but Nora was absurdly doll-sized. “They’ll get you and take me down, too!”
A red banner running along the bottom of the TV screen caught my eye, and the news anchor cut to a reporter standing in front of the grocery store. My stomach lurched.
“I’m standing outside Greenbrier Grocer, where an alleged undocumented illegal has been taken into custody. The PMC is still searching for his documented accomplice. She has been identified as twenty-year-old Haven Allis. Officers suspect she has defected and will face —”
Nora’s jaw dropped, and her already big doll eyes widened.
“Are you serious?”
“Nora, I’m sorry!”
“Are you insane? You didn’t tell me there was a full-blown manhunt going on! They’ll be here looking for you any minute!”
She strode out of the room, and I heard the rattling of her accordion closet doors. A moment later, she emerged dragging a hot-pink polka-dotted rolling suitcase. Always the excitable type, Nora had packed an emergency getaway bag weeks ago.
“I’m leaving,” she said. “Going north to meet my parents. If you’re arrested, please tell them I was gone when you got here.”
I knew I should protest — or offer to give myself up — but I couldn’t bring myself to ask her to stay. I watched her fill a backpack with all the food that was hers from the pantry — cookies, pita chips, and granola bars mostly — and I nearly laughed when I realized she had no idea what was in store for the journey north.
Though the government tried to make the public believe that everyone who set out for the New Northern Territory made it safe and sound, plenty of people went hungry along the way stuck in traffic jams or had to rely on their own devices when they ran out of fuel along the highway.
In its heyday, the interstate was a lush, rolling oasis of fast food and cheap fuel. Now it was a wasteland since workers abandoned their jobs in the states and the fast-food suppliers could no longer deliver what they needed to sell.
Nora packed up her cereal bars, chips, and peanut butter. It was obvious she didn’t think she’d actually have to feed herself along the way. Guiltily, I remembered the sack of rice and nuts I had stowed in the hedge outside our building — the remaining bounty from our run-in with the law.
If I needed to, I felt sure I could feed myself with the supplies I’d hoarded over the last several weeks. Greyson and I had been planning our escape for over a month — as soon as it became clear that I would be arrested if I didn’t comply with mandatory migration and the raids searching out undocumented illegals began.
“I’m going.” Nora was standing by the door, dressed as though she were hopping a flight to Chicago: banana-yellow peacoat, polka-dotted suitcase, and carry-on.
It wasn’t as if she had to worry if she were stopped, but even citizens operating within the law had to be able to feed themselves. It occurred to me that she had no idea what awaited her outside.
“Nora —”
“I’m sorry. I want to stay here to help you. Really. But I can’t risk my life for you and Greyson anymore. You should leave, too. It’s dangerous for you to be here.”
I swallowed a derisive smile that threatened to bloom on my lips. She thought she was taking care of me.
“I know. I’m sorry,” I said. It sounded lame, even to me.
Luckily, she didn’t seem to notice. Nora’s smile was steeped in pity. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?”
“Sure. I’ll be fine.”
She turned and took a few steps toward me, squeezing my arm with a cold, clammy hand. “I’m sorry about Greyson. I always knew he’d get you into trouble.”
I watched her go, still feeling the slap of her words. Her Mazda roared to life on the street. Somehow, I knew I would never see her again, and I didn’t care.
Chaddock. If I had a name of a place Greyson might be, I had to try to get him out. I didn’t have any idea how I would get to Sector X and break him out of prison, but if anyone knew, it was my dad.
Now that I had been identified as a defector, I wouldn’t be able to procure more food in the city. There was no point in waiting around until I had fewer provisions for the journey. Besides, the sooner I reached Greyson, the better chance he might still be alive.
I didn’t know how long I would have before the PMC showed up looking for me. I quickly took stock of my supplies: an ultra-compact thermal sleeping bag, a tarp, a small tin kettle for cooking, a flint fire starter, iodine tablets, a canteen, a length of rope, a small hatchet, and a serrated knife for sawing.
Greyson and I managed to stockpile plenty of food for our journey, but I knew I would not be able to carry it all with me. I took only the essentials: rice, beans, jerky, dried fruit, and nuts. With the meat shortage, jerky was quite the luxury item, but Greyson had managed to find it months ago by chance.
Once I loaded the essentials into my backpack, I looked around my room, realizing how little I was leaving behind. I had returned to school in August with a heavy sense of foreboding. I kept only
the bare minimum of belongings in this apartment, as if I knew I would have to run away: lots of clothes, mismatched running shoes, a few pictures of my parents, books, and an old-school landline phone.
Not having a smartlens was an inconvenience at first. I couldn’t optisearch or video message anyone, and I had to do all my schoolwork on the old computers at the library. But since your CID pulled the data from your smartlens and analyzed it in the cloud for illegal behavior, it was too risky to carry one when Greyson was around. Even in sleep mode, your smartlens was still recording, and the PMC spied on everything.
The Citizen Identification Device didn’t just upload your conversations and Internet history. Each tiny microchip had its own unique signal that was linked to your social security number, location, immunizations, passwords, bank accounts, and transaction history. When the CID was first introduced, the president called it the most intelligent piece of technology ever to be implanted in a human being.
Yanking my sleeve down to cover the perfect square scar, I pulled on a warm pair of black running tights, a light waterproof jacket, and my newest running shoes. Unlike the bright neon sneakers I usually wore, I’d chosen these for the journey because they were black and nonreflective. I yanked my unruly chestnut waves into a ponytail and felt their comforting brush against the top of my spine.
I was methodical and unsentimental as I zipped up my pack and prepared to leave. I wouldn’t miss this place. After I moved in with Nora, I pretty much lived on Greyson’s couch to avoid the loud sighs and judgmental stares I got whenever he came over. Even though Greyson was like a brother to me, she’d always thought he and I were “together.” Nora took in his shaggy curls and social justice T-shirts and scowled. He wasn’t her idea of boyfriend material.
I didn’t care what she thought. Nora and I had never been friends exactly, but after the U.S. passed the mandatory migration bill in June, most of my real friends never returned to school, and I had no one else to live with.
As I left, I slammed the front door on a corner of Nora’s god-awful polka-dotted welcome mat. It was oddly satisfying. This place had felt more like a prison than home, and I was leaving for good.
There didn’t seem to be anyone else left in the building. I didn’t run into anyone in the stairwell, and the hallways were completely deserted. The dim lights along the walls flickered over peeling burgundy wallpaper, illuminating the fake gold number on each door. I reached Greyson’s apartment. There was no sign that officers had been there yet; the PMC always left its mark as a warning to others that another illegal had been captured.
I found Greyson’s spare key on my key ring and slipped inside. Although the rooms were dark, I half expected him to stride out of the kitchen in a huff about something he’d read in the paper, the way he usually did when I materialized in his living room. But the place was quite empty.
The blinds were closed, throwing very little light on the beat-up orange couch and the horrible ringed coffee table. On the way to his room, I passed the two open doors where his roommates used to sleep. The rooms were empty except for bare mattresses and the generic desks that the apartment furnished.
Greyson’s room still looked unnervingly inhabited. The bed was rumpled and unmade, his clothes strewn everywhere. The walls were papered with posters of famous revolutionaries, and stacks of worn books toppled over one another across the floor. He subscribed to more print newspapers than I’d ever heard of, and the corkboard over his desk was plastered with clippings he’d marked with runaway streaks of red, circling clues to a conspiracy and notes I couldn’t decipher. Greyson had his own horrific set of theories about the mandatory identification bill, the spread of carriers, and how it was all connected.
I upended the laundry hamper by the bed to reveal his army surplus rucksack full of food and supplies for the journey. A “Say ‘No’ to Mandatory ID” button on the strap caught my eye, and I felt a pang of loneliness.
While I kept my extra stores of food in the pantry, Greyson was convinced that it wouldn’t be long before people started breaking into homes to steal food. He hid it like money under a mattress. He used to say food was the real currency and that it was only a matter of time before the U.S. dollar was useless. But that didn’t stop him from withdrawing all his savings and hiding the cash throughout his room.
His mom once told him about the recession that happened before we were born, and he trusted banks even less than he trusted cash. As it turned out, he was wise to withdraw his money when he did; nobody could access a bank account without a CID. But then again, most stores no longer accepted cash either.
I spent more time in this room than in my own apartment, so I knew a few of his favorite hiding places. There was a wad of cash stuffed inside his old baseball glove, rolled up in socks, and even stowed away in his old toy safe from when we were kids. I wanted to take the money in case I got the chance to barter on the run. It was possible some poor illegal idiot would trade food for cash. Greyson used his lucky number as the combination: thirty-two, thirty-two, thirty-two. He wasn’t as mysterious as he thought.
I collected the rolls of cash I found and added them to the rucksack, taking a final clean sweep of the room for anything we could use. I left his sleeping bag behind. I would have a better chance of reaching him with a light load. He would just have to rough it if and when I rescued him.
If. No, there couldn’t be an “if.”
Finally, I grabbed the military knife from his bedside table his father had given him and the carefully preserved photograph of his family pressed between the pages of a bible he never read. As far as I knew, it was the only picture in existence with all four of them: Greyson, his mom, his dad, and his little sister Dani.
I tried not to look too hard at his room as I left. I couldn’t let myself think that it could be the last piece of Greyson I ever saw. As I turned up the street, I had the fleeting thought that I should burn the place to the ground. If the PMC officers looking for me came to his apartment and saw his books and posters, they would brand him as a rebel and lock him up in Waul — or worse.
But since Greyson was an undocumented illegal with no record, they likely wouldn’t bother building a full criminal case against him. They didn’t have the manpower to do that for every illegal they captured. Besides, with Greyson, Nora, and me gone — the last stragglers in the building, as far as I knew — the apartment would soon be ravaged by a gang of carriers.
I decided it would be best to stick to our original route. We planned to make our way to my parents’ house and then go west, but now I had to hope my dad could help me get to Sector X out east to rescue Greyson. Admittedly, it wasn’t a very solid plan, but I couldn’t think of another way. I had no car and no idea how I would break into Chaddock.
It was eerily quiet on the street. Once a vibrant downtown district alive at all hours of the day and night, the abandoned buildings now looked shabby and dilapidated. The lights outside the indie movie theatre no longer flashed, and all the restaurants had closed their doors. Even the man who played jazz flute on the corner packed up and left weeks ago.
As I passed the empty parking garage at the end of my block, I heard a scream echo off the concrete walls. I ducked behind a parked car. Its meter was empty, but there were no city police left to give the driver a ticket. I strained my ears to listen, and I heard a woman’s voice — begging, pleading.
Cautiously, I crept out from behind the car and crawled across the sidewalk to peer over the low concrete wall on the first level. A woman was sprawled out on the ground with her arms over her head — the woman who took payments from the parking kiosk. She wasn’t wearing her reflective orange vest, but I recognized her just the same. She always wore bright pink lipstick.
Blood ran freely from her nose and the corner of her mouth, and her eye was starting to swell. Two PMC officers stood over her in their sterile-looking white uniforms, one rubbing his knuckles with relish and the other brandishing a nightstick. It was slick with blood.
/> “Please!” she whimpered. “I was just f-filing the plate numbers of the cars that were left.”
“We need those numbers,” one of the men said. His eyes were cold and unsympathetic.
“T-take them,” she cried. “P-please. They just have to go on r-record with the city for towing.”
“What about the others?” yelled the officer. “I know these buildings are infested with illegals.”
“I d-don’t know,” she whimpered. “All t-the regular tenants are gone!”
The officer brought the nightstick down hard, striking her across the shoulder blade, and spit on her face.
Anger and fear coursed through my veins. I couldn’t just sit there and watch this happen.
“Don’t lie! We know there are still illegals living here.”
“I wouldn’t know!” she sobbed. “I just monitor the garage!”
The officer struck her again, and I heard a sickening crunch as if he’d broken her collarbone.
“Please!” she cried. “I’ll tell you anything.”
“Where are they?” the man yelled, kicking her in the gut.
She moaned, curling into the fetal position to protect herself.
I couldn’t take it anymore. A sickening hatred was bubbling in my stomach like poison, and I felt sick. I backed slowly down the sidewalk, thinking hard.
It didn’t matter what she said. They were going to kill her. Those men with their nightsticks and their cold eyes — they knew she didn’t have information, but they were torturing her for sport.
I stumbled into the grass, and the landscaping around the garage caught my eye. The once well-tended bushes had plastic bags and bits of trash caught in their branches. The mulch, which was mixed with old fast-food bags and gum wrappers, was contained by a row of bricks. I grabbed one, looking around for a white PMC cruiser.
It was parked just around the corner: a white SUV with enormous wheels and a polished chrome grill guard. My heart thudded against my ribcage. I couldn’t believe what I was about to do.
The Defectors (Defectors Trilogy) Page 2