The Rebel

by Gerald Brandt

  “How you doing?” she asked.

  I shook my head, staring at the ground as everything came into focus.

  “You took quite a hit. It took three soldiers to stop the one soldier from tearing you apart. I’m still not quite sure why they did it.”

  “I tried to get out. I thought I’d broken her knee.” The line moved forward and I shuffled my feet to keep up.

  “That explains the woman, but why would the other soldiers stop her?”

  “Quotas,” I mumbled. I tried to put some more weight on my feet. My legs shook, but they held me.

  “What?”

  “Quotas.” My voice was stronger. “The soldiers have draft quotas to fill. If they don’t fill them, they get extra shifts.”

  The woman stared at me, squinting. “How do you know that?”

  Shit. How did I know that? Only because I’d heard it before dinner at the insurgents’ building. The fact that it wasn’t common knowledge didn’t even occur to me. Until now. “Umm, I don’t know. I overheard some guys talking on Level 5 before they closed it off. It may not be true.”

  “Huh.” The woman shifted as I took more weight off of her. “You okay to stand on your own now?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  She lifted my arm from around her shoulders and took a small step away, her arms still outstretched to catch me in case I fell. I wavered, but stayed up under my own power. I wasn’t sure about moving yet.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’m Kris.”

  “Carlene.”

  “Thanks, Carlene.”

  “Don’t thank me. Those bastards threw you onto us. We didn’t have no choice.”

  “Thanks anyway.” I finally got a good look at her. She was a larger woman, and her face showed signs of age with the hard lines of a difficult life. Despite that impression, her eyes were soft and concern flashed through them. She seemed to be too old for SoCal to want her. Why hadn’t she been separated out with the others?

  “You’ll be okay,” she said.

  “I’m about to be drafted in a war I don’t believe in, made to fight for people I hate. I don’t think it’s going to be okay.” With the words came a deep-rooted fury. I swallowed it, hoarding it for later. I would need everything I had if I wanted to get out of this. I couldn’t stop the tears.

  Carlene’s looked softened and she put a hand on my arm. “You’re young yet. They don’t draft no one under eighteen. How old are you, sixteen, maybe?”

  “Seventeen, but my birthday is at the end of August.” Looking younger than I was would have helped me if I didn’t have this damn tracker ID. I should have set to an ID younger than I really was.

  “Maybe they’ll let you go and hope to catch you in the next one, when you’re older.”

  “Quotas.”

  “If they’re real,” Carlene said. There wasn’t much hope in her voice.

  The line shuffled forward, the soldiers keeping us tightly packed. Carlene and I stood in silence. I watched the soldiers. They weren’t young, and they had the air of people who had been doing their jobs for a long time and knew how to do it well. The ones at the perimeter of the ad hoc drafting station stood in a rough circle with their backs to the tables and waiting trucks, trusting the ones monitoring the line to keep us in our place. A few of them were chatting with the soldier next to them. Relaxed. Like they’d done this many times before.

  It was obvious they didn’t use draftees for this job; they used professional enlisted men and women, veterans. Maybe they were worried anyone drafted would have too much sympathy and wouldn’t do a good job. Maybe they thought the draftees would try to escape. I knew I would if given the chance.

  The line shuffled forward again.

  Carlene sighed. “This is your first draft, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re pretty skittish, always looking at the soldiers and fidgeting with your hands.”

  “You’re not,” I said.

  “Nah. This ain’t my first time. Won’t be my last.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been in five of these now,” Carlene said. “I ran at the first one too, but these old, fat legs don’t carry me too far or too fast. Not anymore. They let me go every time. Old and fat ain’t what they want. I don’t know why they even bother with me, unless it’s quotas, like you say. Maybe I’m just borderline fat.” She chuckled at that. “Now I wait for them to come and get me. I don’t run no more, but I don’t help them any neither.”

  Five? I’d seen a couple of drafts and managed to avoid them, but if one person had been in five, they were a lot more prevalent than I thought. “You’re lucky.”

  “I don’t feel lucky. I’m fifty years old, worked hard my whole life to give my kids the best I could. Two, sometimes three jobs to keep them in school with clothes on their backs and food in their bellies. Worked too! I got two boys, both done better than me or their old man ever did. They went to college. One was a plumber, the other wanted to be a teacher. They’re both gone now, lord knows where. Both caught in the same draft. I haven’t heard from them since, and it’s been over a month.” Her voice hitched and she took a quick wipe at her eyes. She grabbed my arm and her voice became harsh. “Never let those bastards know they’re getting to you. When we get to the front of the line, you stand as tall as you can, and don’t you blink. Show them that you ain’t scared. Show them that they got no power over you, over who you are.” She paused and glared straight ahead between the few people left between us and them. “It’s what I do. I wish I could do more.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I stayed quiet and grabbed her hand, giving it a tight squeeze before letting it go. We were one person away from the front of the line when she spoke again.

  “If you see my boys, Dwane and Markell Porter, you tell them I love them and think about them, okay? Dwane and Markell Porter.”

  “I will.”

  “Say their names so you remember them.”

  “Dwane and Markell Porter.”

  She nodded fiercely and looked forward again, pushing me behind her as she stepped up to the table. Her back stayed ramrod straight, even as they led her past the circle of soldiers to her freedom.

  Then it was my turn. I did as she said, looking the man sitting at the table right in the eye. He was the first to turn away. It was a hollow victory.

  “Name.”

  “Kris Merrill.”

  “Age.”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Take off your jacket and hold out your arm, with your sleeve rolled up.”

  As I moved to do what he asked, I noticed a woman off to the side, about three meters away. She held a scanner in her hands and moved it up and down my body. “What’s she doing?” I knew, of course. She was scanning my ID. I just wanted to see what they would say.

  “Jacket and sleeve.”

  “Not until you tell me what she’s doing.”

  Two soldiers stepped from the sides of the table and stood facing me, one on either side. One of them smelled like he hadn’t showered in a week. Was this the fight I wanted to pick? I reached for the zipper on my jacket.

  “She’s scanning for weapons. Jacket and sleeve, or these two will make it happen for you.” He couldn’t have sounded more bored.

  I shrugged and took off the jacket. It would be obvious to anyone who knew about the IDs what she was doing. I didn’t want to be caught with knowledge I shouldn’t have.

  Once she had a scan, the information would be shown on the display on the table. What would have happened if it didn’t match what I’d said? I rolled up my sleeve and felt the jab of a needle in my arm. They didn’t take much blood.

  Carlene had been told to go left. I was told to go right. They printed out a wristband and wrapped it tightly around my arm. It had a single barcode on it. No text, no numbers. I
walked around the corner of a van and stopped. The line in front of me was shorter than the one I’d left, and by the looks of things, the age of everyone in it was younger. Men and women in worn-out suits, boarders in their protective gear, the jackets removed and carried in their hands. I seemed to be the youngest here. No one cared.

  We were grouped in batches of twenty and herded into the backs of the large trucks. There were no windows, and the only way out was the same way we had gotten in. Two soldiers followed us and closed the doors behind them. I heard a bar drop.

  We were on our way.

  LOS ANGELES LEVEL 3—TUESDAY, JULY 4, 2141 4:29 P.M.

  “They’re gone.” Pat closed the link on the comm unit and threw it onto the dashboard. They were still a kilometer away from the draft site. Her insides churned and she thought she might throw up. It had taken them too long to get a team and a truck. Kai had heard what was happening and managed to get a ride with them.

  In the back of the tarp-covered truck sat eight men and women. Seven of them had K-3700s, fully prepared for an extraction. The last one had a C14 Timberwolf, an old Canadian sniper rifle. Sandy was the only person Pat trusted, besides Kai. And she wasn’t about to send him out with a sniper rifle. Sandy was also the only person that had orders to take out Kris if they couldn’t get to her. Orders that wouldn’t be followed. Pat would be in debt for a long time to pay off the favor.

  “What do we do now?” the driver asked.

  “Wait for an update. There’s no way we can get her out of a SoCal base. Our best bet is to ambush them on their way to wherever they’re going.” Almost impossible, she thought. They already had a head start. “There are two places they could take them: southwest to Hawthorne, or north to Burbank.”

  “My guess is Hawthorne,” said Kai. “There is no place big enough to train all the people they are grabbing in San Angeles, so they have to be shipping them out of here. The air base is the quickest way to do that.”

  “That means they’re heading through Level 6 security,” the driver said.

  “We won’t even get to Level 5 with the new checkpoints in place. Our only chance is to stop them from going through. Let’s move,” said Kai.

  The driver stepped on the accelerator and the motor whined in response. He swerved around a slow-moving car, throwing Kai into Pat. “We’ll never make it.”

  “Just fucking drive. Faster!” said Pat.

  The truck sped up, the worn and pitted Level 3 road tossing it on its suspension like a rag doll. From the back, Pat heard a curse. Even strapped in, the people back there were all being thrown around pretty good.

  They slowed down again as they approached the up-ramp. Traffic was thin. News of the ramp draft had gotten around pretty quick, and people were scared of getting trapped. No one wanted to be in SoCal’s army.

  If SoCal was trying to limit movement, what they had done had worked. The truck nosed up the ramp, passing one or two cars on the way, and sped up again. Pat’s comm unit rang.

  She grabbed it off the dash, reaching almost in front of the driver to where it had bounced. “Pat here.” She listened and hung up, gripping the phone tight. “They’re heading toward Hawthorne.”

  Kai smiled, though there wasn’t any humor in it.

  Traffic was heavier on Level 4, and drones hugged the roof below the Ambients. The driver slowed to the speed of everyone else. Pat knew why he did it—they were already conspicuous with the damn truck as it was. Speeding on top of that would draw more attention. Each person in the back had a temporary blocker under their clothes so they couldn’t be tracked. That helped a bit. If the drones scanned the truck and found eight IDs, they would have been stopped and arrested already.

  Each slow kilometer that passed drove Pat deeper into frustration. Kai gripped her shoulder, trying to give her some extra strength. A headache was starting to form behind her left ear from clenching her jaw so tight. They stopped the truck less than a kilometer from the Hawthorne Level 5 up-ramp. Pat banged on the back, and the sniper jumped out, running into a building that almost touched the ceiling. Someone inside held the door open and closed it behind her.

  Everyone else waited in the truck. After what felt like an eternity, Pat’s comm rang again. She put it on speaker.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve got them. Five trucks heading toward the up-ramp. They’re bypassing the checkpoint.”

  “Can you see anyone inside?” Kai asked.

  “No. The best I can do is take out a tire and stop the line.”

  Pat didn’t hesitate. “Do it.”

  Her driver left the curb and continued to the up-ramp just as Pat heard a sharp crack.

  “This is going to be suicide,” he said in a shaky voice.

  A half a second later the voice came over her comm unit again. “Shit. Missed. There’s a pretty stiff breeze coming down the ramp.”

  “Can you compensate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then try again.” Pat knew why she was trying so hard to get Kris back. Kris had become the only family she had. Jack’s goal was the safety of the insurgents. Even if it cost Kris her life.

  If they got close enough, the extraction team would get her out. It’s what they trained—what they lived—for. The real question was how much did she trust the sniper? There was only one answer that worked: she trusted her with Kris’s life.

  “Missed again. They’ve mobilized vehicles. Two battle drones heading our way.”

  Fuck. “Get off the roof. Now. We’ll pick you up later tonight.” The comm link closed. She turned to the driver. “Get us off the street.”

  “No can do, no place to go.”

  “Fuck. Then let’s get rid of our cargo.”

  “I had better go with them,” Kai said. “I will see if I can find out what they will do with her after Hawthorne. It is not a training facility, so they won’t be keeping them for long.”

  The truck slowed and seven people jumped out the back, their K-3700s jammed under jackets and stuck down pant legs. They dispersed, each heading in a separate direction. As Kai climbed out of the cab, she gave him a quick smile. How did he keep his cool so easily? The door closed and the truck picked up speed again until the next corner, slowing to turn away from the up-ramp.

  “We’re going to be stopped,” Pat said. “They’ll want to know what we’re doing. Stick to the story. There’s no way for them to tie us in with shooting at the up-ramp. Hell, they may not have even figured out it was a sniper yet. Hopefully we’ll just be a mandatory check for them.”

  The driver’s face had gone white. He had a death grip on the steering wheel.

  “Breathe, and stick with the cover. We’ll get out of this just fine.”

  A battle drone dropped from the ceiling and hovered in front of the truck, its dual .50-caliber weapons pointing straight at the driver. Its speakers came to life. Stop the vehicle and get out with your hands up.

  Pat’s door was open before the truck had stopped. They both got out and stood between the drone and the truck’s grill, waiting. She could hear the driver’s raspy breath. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to pass out. At least it would still be realistic.

  It took only a few minutes for the SoCal ground crew to arrive.

  “Lay on the ground, hands behind your back.”

  The driver responded so quickly, he scraped his cheek on the rough surface of the road. Two men approached and zip-tied their hands and feet. Four more went around the back of the truck.

  “Clear.”

  Pat and the driver were rolled over, staring into the deadly end of machine guns.

  “Names.”

  “Pat Nelson.” She added a slight waver to her voice, trying to appear meek and scared.

  “D—Dave Fowler.”

  “What are you doing with the truck?”

  “Scavenging,” Pat repl
ied. “The lower levels are hurting pretty bad. We figured if we found anything up here, we could sell it to them.”

  The soldier’s boot lashed out, hitting Dave in the chest. “Fucking profit mongers. Willing to rake over your own people for a dollar. If I catch you up here again, I’ll shoot you.” He turned away. “Let them go.”

  Pat lay still as they cut the zip ties. These guys were idiots calling her and Dave profit mongers. The corporations ravaged the common people every day, and they’d been doing it for decades. Their bosses were the assholes here.

  Before she got to her feet, the soldiers had piled back into their truck and drove off. The drone was nowhere to be seen.

  Pat sat back in the truck as Dave slowly picked himself up off the road. She could see he’d been rattled by what had happened. Good. It was experience he could use later. They didn’t have near enough of it in the insurgents.

  When they rounded the corner she picked up her comm unit again, connecting to the sniper.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Yup. Just packed up and ready to head home.”

  “Good. Thanks for sticking around.”

  “No problem.”

  Pat closed the link and slipped the comm unit into her pocket.

  “Who was that?” asked Dave.

  “Sandy.”

  “She’s just getting out?”

  “Yeah. She covered us during the stop.”

  “She was watching the whole time?”

  “You bet. Never leave anything to chance. If we got into serious trouble, she was ready to cover our escape.”

  “We would never have made it.”

  “We had less of a chance without her.”

  They both got quiet as they drove back down to Level 2. Pat was lost in her own thoughts.

  Kris was gone.

  LOS ANGELES LEVEL 3—TUESDAY, JULY 4, 2141 4:11 P.M.

  The van had no windows, no way to view the outside world. I sat in the semidarkness created by a single strip light along the center of the roof, protected by a thick black cage, stopping anyone from using it as some sort of weapon. The truck was otherwise bare, save us and the seats we sat on. We’d been driving for ten minutes and gone up a level before the people around me began to whisper to each other, trying to find comfort in the sound of voices other than the ones in their heads. The voices harbored the same fear and uncertainty I felt.