Zone 23

by Hopkins, C. J.

  Her body wanted to stop for a moment, but the Specialists walked her relentlessly on. Squinting out at the conflagration, she could make out the menacing shark-like shapes of remotely piloted aerial vehicles, and choppers, which looked like dragonflies, darting in and out of the columns of smoke. She saw the orange flaming tails of air-to-surface missiles streaking down from somewhere up in the stratosphere, and she heard their distant rumbling booms, and she saw the fiery mushrooms they made, like miniature suns, or sea anemones, and she saw the tentacled midair bursts of the dust-white blistering phosphorus bombs ... the Security Specialists tightened their grips, and turned her away from the fireworks show.

  They walked her to another station, exactly like the one where she had just been processed, except that part of this one was an outdoor booth where a sweaty, red-faced, bored-looking man was waiting under the metal awning with a duffel bag and a rolled-up futon propped up on the counter for her. The red-faced man was an A.S.P. He was wearing a pair of old mirrored sunglasses, the lenses of which were flaking badly. His hair was buzzed like a Security Specialist. Silk-screened across the front of his T-shirt in big block letters ...

  COMMUNITY WATCH

  “Look into the scanner,” he said. An out-of-date-looking iris scanner mounted on the counter scanned her iris. Stacked on racks in the depths of the booth were other duffel bags and rolled-up futons. Something behind the counter beeped.

  “That’s it. You’re done.”

  “Hold out your arm.”

  This was one of her Security Specialists. She held out her arm.

  “The other arm.”

  He meant the one with the ID bracelet.

  She held it out. He snipped it off ... the ID bracelet, not her arm. He slipped it into a pocket in his pants. The Specialists turned and walked back through the gate and out of her life forever.

  Valentina watched them go. Then she turned back to the man at the counter, who had stepped back into the darkness of the booth and was sitting on a metal stool back there watching some sort of archival Content on the screen of an ancient desktop Viewer. She leaned in over the top of the counter.

  “Excuse me.”

  “Step away from the counter.”

  “I was hoping you could …”

  “What are you, fucking deaf? Step the fuck away from the counter.”

  Valentina stepped away from the counter. She stood there, awaiting further instructions. The man went back to watching his Content. It looked like the Archeology Channel. After a moment he turned and glared at her.

  “The fuck you waiting for?”

  “I’m sorry. I just ...”

  “Get your shit and get the fuck out of here.”

  Valentina did as instructed. She gathered the canvas handles of the duffel and pulled the duffel off the counter. Objects shifted around inside. The duffel weighed six, maybe seven kilos. She stood there staring at the rolled-up futon, which was tied at the ends and the middle with twine. She set the duffel down on the ground and wrestled the futon up onto her shoulder. Then she squatted down and picked up the duffel. She stood there, judging the weight in the heat.

  Along the side of the access road that led to the gate was a blacktop path that led down to a four-lane avenue that followed the course of the Security Wall to the east and west as far as she could see. Across the avenue were rows of tenements, on the ground floors of which there were various stores ... stores she knew, like Big-Buy Basement, Content City, and CRS, and other stores she’d never heard of, like Lilly’s Late-Nite Liquor Emporium, Ray’s Original Famous Pizza, Chaim’s Footwear, and ConCept Drop-In, and here and there were just boarded-up storefronts. The avenue itself was lined with stalls and booths and tents and crowded with people. It looked like ... yes, it actually was. It was one big endless outdoor market, like the ones they had on Main Street on Sundays, only ten times as big, and completely revolting. The stalls, and the vendors running them, were filthy. Garbage was strewn all over the avenue. People were blithely wading through it, dragging these horrible wobbly carts, which also appeared to be full of garbage, and some of them were balancing sacks on their heads. They were pushing, shoving, and otherwise physically moving each other out of their paths, attempting to get to the heaps of produce (which were clearly past their expiry dates) that the vendors were stuffing into plastic bags (or some bio-material that looked like plastic) with their bare (as in ungloved) dirty hands, shouting the prices of things per kilo in an inexplicably aggressive way ... a woman, who was bidding on some kind of orange vegetable that conceivably could have been carrots, pressed her finger against one nostril, and strenuously blew her nose on the shoe of a man beside her, who appeared to be blind. Other indecencies were occurring elsewhere. An unnecessary amount of spitting was involved. Everyone was shouting. People were smoking. An inebriated man was stumbling in circles, moaning incoherently. His head was bleeding. No one was paying him any attention. Across the avenue a parade of people in colored pajamas was apparently in progress. Two old women were slapping each other with bags of some kind of leafy vegetable while a group of old men stood by and laughed and spat and scratched and pulled on their scrotums. People on bicycles were trying to ride through the throngs and were getting knocked to the ground. It looked like one of those reenactments of the way people lived in the Middle Ages that you saw sometimes on the history channels, except that the props and costumes were wrong ...

  She made her way down the path in the heat, futon draped across one shoulder, duffel clutched in her other hand, down the slope of a gentle incline that ran down to a row of stalls, sat down on a plastic crate that was stacked on another plastic crate, wiped the sweat off her face with her sweat-soaked sleeve, and bent over and unzipped the duffel. The first thing she found was a ConCept brochure, on the front leaf of which was a glossy photo of an actress she thought she vaguely recognized, extolling the virtues, convenience and ease of “permanent surgical contraception,” available at any ConCept Clinic around the clock on a drop-in basis. The next thing she found was a booklet entitled “IntraZone Waste & Security Services – Codes of Conduct & Community Ordinances,” which was printed in some ridiculously miniscule font-size that you needed an electron microscope to read. Next were a variety of corporate fliers advertising various two-for-one specials and half-off deals at the corporate stores, some of which included coupons. At the bottom, buried under all this literature, were some yellowed bedsheets, a miniature pillow, and what looked like a personal hygiene kit. She fished all around among the contents, but she couldn’t find anything that looked like a map. She took out the paper with her new address, and memorized it fairly easily. Her short-term memory appeared to be working. It was more that most of her past was a mess. It wasn’t that she couldn’t remember anything ... there were pieces, scenes, names, faces, and she definitely remembered her old address ... she just couldn’t seem to fit it all together, or not in any detailed linear way. And yes, there were definitely gaps in there, days, or weeks, or months she had lost, and ... whatever. She could deal with her memory later. At the moment she needed to get out of this heat.

  She tugged out a corner of the sheet from the duffel and used it as a towel to dry off her head. When she’d finished, and extracted her head from the sheet, a disreputable man was standing over her. He looked to be in his early sixties, but something told her he was really much younger. He was wearing a pair of greasy lightweight trousers that were several sizes too big, and flip-flop sandals, and a tank-top undershirt. He smelled like he hadn’t bathed for weeks.

  “Jew look like jew could juse some help.” He smiled. His upper incisors were missing. The rest of his teeth were brown or yellow.

  “Thanks. I’m OK,” she said.

  “Where they put jew?”

  She didn’t answer. Other people were walking past.

  “Jew one or two?”

  “I’m fine, really.”

  “I know jew fine. Is not what I ask. What jew name?”

  She hesitate
d.

  “Catherine.”

  He held out his filthy hand.

  “Domingo.”

  She reached up and shook the hand.

  “Mírame Catherine,” Domingo said, “relax, OK? I not gonna hurt jew. I gonna help jew.”

  “I’m really OK.”

  Domingo pronounced his Ys like Js.

  “No, chica, jew not OK. Check jew head out. Is all focked up. Jew don’t even know where the fock jew are, forget about where the fock jew going.”

  “I do.”

  “What, jew think I a rapist?”

  He also dropped his auxiliary verbs.

  “No.”

  “Jew think I a focking rapist.”

  “I don’t.”

  He squatted down in front of her. He leaned in close. She could smell his breath. “I not a focking rapist, OK? If I a rapist, I take jew back there, to one of those alleys ... jew see those alleys?”

  Valentina looked. She saw the alleys.

  “I take jew back there. No one would stop me.” He gestured toward the Security Specialists, or possibly all humanity in general. “They no care. They no give a shit. If I take jew back there and focking rape jew. Is that what I doing? ”

  She shook her head.

  “Scumbags left and right who would do that. Fine looking piece of ass like jew. But I not one of those focking scumbags. My name is Domingo. I gonna to help jew. Jew understand me?”

  Valentina nodded.

  “OK, good. Jew got a little paper is got your housing. Jew got that paper?”

  Valentina nodded.

  “Show me that paper.”

  Valentina, who suddenly felt she needed a toilet more or less immediately, shook her head.

  “Jew don’t want to show me.”

  She shook her head again.

  Domingo spat. There was blood in his sputum. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Fock it. Jew see that CRS? The one over there?”

  Valentina nodded.

  “Jew get up, now, jew go in there. Right by the door is a screen with a map. Jew put the address in. It show you the place. This,” he gestured east and west, “this is focking Jefferson Avenue. Sector A, Northwest Quadrant. Jew housing is probably close to here. Or else jew in Sector B somewhere ... but jew don’t look like no two to me. Jew see that shit?” He pointed to the south where the sky was now a wall of smoke and the drones and choppers were banking and diving and GodSend missiles were raining down.

  Valentina nodded.

  “Jew don’t go there. Motherfockers wasting the sector. Jew go to jew housing. Don’t talk to no one. Don’t go in no focking alleys. Jew go to jew focking job like they said. Jew brain all scrambled. That shit will pass. Couple weeks and jew be OK. Jew need something, anything, jew come here and find me. I out here almost every day. Say my name.”

  “Domingo,” she said.

  Domingo nodded. “Now get the fock out of here. Jew can’t stay out in this focking heat. Jew got like thirty, forty-five minutes ... then jew brain is gonna fry like eggs. Here,” he handed her an IZD Five note, “buy jewself a bottle of water. ”

  She took the note from him ... some kind of currency. Domingo stood up and extended his hand. Valentina took it. He pulled her up. They stood there a moment, looking at each other. Then he hoisted her futon up onto her shoulder.

  “Go ... get out of here.” He coughed tubercularly. “Don’t get raped.” He turned and spat again. She wanted to thank him, but her head was spinning, and before she could speak he had walked away.

  Duffel in hand, futon on her shoulder, IZD fiver in her front pants pocket, she gazed across the endless river of sweat-soaked Anti-Social humanity that was flowing both ways up and down the avenue. She looked for anything resembling a crosswalk, or any kind of designated place to ford. There wasn’t anything remotely like that. It was every man for himself down there. The CRS was across and roughly thirty meters off to her right ...

  She stumbled down the last of the path, squeezed through a passage between two stalls, and waded out through the ankle-deep garbage and into the bedlam that was Jefferson Avenue. She elbowed her way through the streams of shoppers, and bikes, and quasi-rickshaw things, being cursed and jostled and spun as she went, and across the avenue and up through another narrow passage between two stalls, and made it into the entrance vestibule of the CRS, and found the map. There was one of those digital “you are here” things, which, OK, good, that’s where she was. She put down the futon and used the keypad, found her address, in Sector C, made a mental note of the major arteries, estimated distance and time, and quickly determined she would never make it. Not before she died of heatstroke. No. She would have to shelter in place ... somewhere in the immediate vicinity.

  She stepped out the door of the CRS, futon back up on her shoulder, and now she spotted the Public Viewer, an enormous monitor across the street, just to the east of Gate 15, on the screen of which some redheaded Clear was informing the inhabitants of Zone 23 that the time at the tone would be 0720. Down in the lower right corner of the screen a window was running what looked like footage of the lawn of some Cartwright country estate, upon which members of the corporate media were breathlessly jabbering into their cameras. Valentina stood there, stunned. No one had told her that “ Jimbo” was dead. She also wondered how she had failed to notice this humongous outdoor Viewer, which was less than fifty meters from where she’d sat on the crates and talked to Domingo. What else had she failed to notice? She turned abruptly, to find that out, slapping some female Anti-Social Person full in the face with her futon. The woman pushed her out of the way and into the path of another Anti-Social walking the other way behind her, who pushed her back the other way, into the path of someone else, who was dragging a cart, who also pushed her, and so on, for ten or fifteen seconds.

  After she had finally regained her footing, she headed west down Jefferson Avenue, humping her futon, clutching her duffel, sticking to the sidewalk behind the stalls, her mouth all dry, her hair a mess, her entire body just dripping sweat. She wove through the streams of oncoming 1s, noting their color-coordinated work-clothes, but of course she didn’t understand who they were, or where they were going, or how anything worked here. She stopped at a little outdoor kiosk and bought some water with Domingo’s money. She took a swallow, then one more, then she capped the bottle and put it in her duffel. She pushed on, heading for Collins Avenue, where the map had said she should take a left, catching dirty looks and elbows in her ribs, and being touched by sweaty hands, and occasionally having her toes run over by the wheels of shopping carts heavy with groceries. And now, to her right, just off the sidewalk, she noticed a passage the vendors were using to move back and forth between the stalls, where they had stacked their crates along the sidewalk to form a kind of protective wall. She scanned for an opening between the crates, saw one, and ducked into this passage, where before she could even get her footing in the mud and muck and cauliflower greens some enormous heavily-muscled person moving at thirty kilometers an hour slammed into her like a crash-test vehicle, knocking her backwards off her feet and down onto her back in the gutter.

  She pushed herself up into a seated position, found and pulled her duffel toward her, and sat there in the sludge and leafage, staring up at him, gasping for breath. He stood there, straddling her, squinting down at her, his forehead furrowed, looking perplexed. His knuckles were covered with crude tattoos. There were scars in his brow and down the side of his face. He was wearing one of those colored uniforms, an unfortunate shade of taupe, or ecru, that was dripping sweat and did not fit him. His biceps were pulling apart the seams. Valentina was terrified of him. He shook his head and stepped on over her and disappeared down the narrow passage.

  After a moment, she pushed herself up, retrieved her futon, which was covered with muck, wrestled it back up onto her shoulder, and made her way west through the service alley. She pushed on that way for a couple of blocks, dodging the occasional surly vendor, until
the path dead-ended at an intersection, and she had go back out to the sidewalk. It seemed like the crowds were beginning to thin now, and the stalls were fewer and farther between, and she passed a place called Haloumi Heaven where a group of old men with thick mustaches were drinking hot tea out of little glasses, which were all the shape of hourglasses, and she passed some sort of auto parts tent where the vendors, whose arms were covered with grease, and several of whom were smoking cigarettes, which it looked like maybe they had rolled themselves, were shouting at each other in Chinese and Spanish, and she passed a string of perfumed soap stalls, and palm oil stands, and she flowed along with the streams of shoppers with their plastic bags, and the packs of scoliotic old women with their bags and carts, and the people on bikes, and everything was new and strange, and her brain was skipping like a blown transmission, and her scalp and the back of her neck were frying, and people were spitting and shouting and sweating, and the sun was rising, and the sky was brightening, and off to her left she heard the rumble of the bombs exploding, and here she was ... here, all alone, in the Zone, where she realized now she had always been headed. She thought she’d been headed to ... she couldn’t remember. Where had she believed she’d been headed? She didn’t know, but wherever it was, it wasn’t here, to this horrible place, where she could hardly breathe for the heat and humidity, and everything smelled like sweat and feces, and her head was pounding from the heat and the noise of the cars and the scooters and people shouting and music blasting out of the doors of stores and people’s windows and banging metal bins and shattering glass and all around her were sweating, stinking, coughing, spitting, nostril picking, dirty, toothless, lice-infested Anti-Socials, and now she was one of them ... and yet she wasn’t .