We Had Flags (Toxic World Book 3)

by Sean McLachlan

  “She’s busy with sheriffing stuff. She told me to go meet her for breakfast.”

  The guard let go. “Well, all right.”

  Pablo was out of the gate like a shot. As he ran across the empty ground between the New City wall and the edge of the Burbs, he scanned the shantytown ahead for signs of Mom or her deputies. If they spotted him outside the walls he’d get it for sure.

  His luck held and he hurried to the market. Hong-gi was already setting up the stall. He looked tired and glum.

  “Hey, you OK?” Pablo called out as he ran up to him.

  Hong-gi shrugged.

  “What happened?” Pablo asked.

  Hong-gi snuck a look around. “Mr. Fartbag kept me up half the night burying all his stuff. He thinks the Chinese are going to take it.”

  “They’re probably going to attack today! You got to get inside the walls. Stay with Greg and me. Greg says hi. He couldn’t come because his dad is picking him up first thing.”

  Hong-gi stuck out his lower lip and kept arranging the sacks of grain.

  “Mr. Fartbag is making me work all day. I don’t even have time for baseball.”

  An unwashed scavenger came up to the stall.

  “How much for half a kilo of wheat? I got salt to trade.”

  The man opened up a package and showed them.

  “It’s from the salt flats,” he said, “not the sea. It’s clean.”

  Hong-gi studied the salt. “Looks like sea salt to me.”

  “I said it’s from the flats,” the man growled.

  Hong-gi didn’t flinch. Sometimes grownups tried to scare kids into giving them better trade, but Hong-gi had been doing this too long to back down.

  “Half a kilo of wheat for a hundred grams of salt.”

  “My friend got it for fifty grams just yesterday!”

  “My boss says the price has gone up because of the ship.”

  “Yeah, but this is salt flats salt, not dirty sea salt, I told you.”

  The woman running the next stall said, “You heard the kid. Trade or don’t.”

  The man scowled at her and turned back to Hong-gi.

  “Fucking Asian.”

  He turned and walked off into the market.

  Hong-gi looked at the ground, his lower lip trembling. Pablo put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t listen to that turdball. Come on with me. Mr. Fartbag can take care of his own stall.”

  “He’ll kick me out if I leave. He said so!”

  Hong-gi looked like he was about to cry.

  “He wouldn’t do that,” Pablo said.

  “He totally would. He’s always saying how lucky I am to have someone to take care of me. Yeah, right. I work harder than his field hands and get less. But he says there’s lots of orphan kids who’d take my place and he’s right.”

  “You could live with Uncle Marcus and Aunt Rosie.”

  Hong-gi slumped his shoulders. “They’d take me for a few days but they wouldn’t take me forever.”

  “But you can’t stay here. The Chinks are going to come and kill everyone.”

  Hong-gi stamped his foot and shouted at him. “No they’re NOT!”

  “They will! They eat babies and blow up cities and—”

  “Shut up! Shut up! You don’t know anything! Go away!”

  “But—”

  “GO AWAY!”

  Pablo backed off, stunned. What was the matter? Hong-gi looked like he was about to slug him.

  “I said go away!”

  Pablo hurried off.

  He walked around the market, wondering what had gotten into his friend. Hong-gi must be scared of the Chinese and got mad when Pablo reminded him how dangerous they were.

  Yeah, that must be it. With Mr. Fartbag keeping him outside the walls, of course he’d to be scared. Pablo was scared and he got to stay at Uncle Marcus and Aunt Rosie’s house.

  Something weird was going on back there. Jessica hadn’t come home last night. She was in New City, though. He’d seen her walking into the warehouse with two guards. He had started going over to her when she had given him a look that made him keep away. It was like a signal or something.

  Pablo stopped and nearly got knocked over by a grownup who was walking right behind him. As the grownup grumbled and passed by, Pablo thought about what had happened. He had radioed the ship with the coordinates Jessica had given him. Her dad wanted to bring the ship somewhere else but she wanted it here for some reason. Why?

  “To stay.” That’s what she’d said. So if the ship had gone where her dad wanted it to she would have had to leave New City? Maybe her dad would have come and taken her away. She’d always been scared of that.

  She seemed so happy and proud to see the ship come in. Jessica wouldn’t have brought the Chinese against them, would she?

  No. She wanted to stay and she loved Uncle Marcus and Aunt Rosie and him and that loser Zach too. She wouldn’t want a Big One to drop on New City. So why bring them here?

  Maybe she didn’t know they were Chinese. If she had never seen them before, how would she know?

  But what if her dad did? That guy was crazy, Pablo had seen him. Lots of the scavengers were crazy, but this guy looked extra crazy, like he’d do just anything. Maybe he hated New City for having better stuff than the scavengers and wanted a Big One to drop on it. Maybe he was working with the Chinese.

  That must be it!

  So why were those guards walking with Jessica? To protect her from her dad?

  That wouldn’t do much good if a Big One dropped.

  Pablo started walking again.

  He still needed to help out Hong-gi. How could he get him into New City without Mr. Fartbag kicking him out of the house?

  He passed Lupita’s stand and noticed it was empty. He went up to a red-nosed man selling whiskey at the next booth. His still bubbled away right behind the counter and Pablo reached out his hands to warm them.

  “You trading or just getting in the way?” the man asked. His breath stank.

  “Have you seen the Sanchez family?”

  “They packed up and headed into the wildlands. I’m planning on doing the same once I trade for the stock I have. You should tell your parents to get out too.”

  Pablo walked away. He hated it when his scavenger friends left for the season, and those stupid Chinks were going to make everyone leave. He probably wouldn’t see Lupita until next winter.

  He noticed a crowd in an open part of the market. A group of men and women stood in a line with guns sloped across their shoulders. A second line behind them was made up of people with bows and spears. A man facing them shouted directions and they all turned right or left at his command, or got to one knee and pretended to shoot.

  “What are they doing?” he asked another kid standing nearby.

  “It’s the new militia. They’re getting ready to push the Chinks back into the sea.”

  “Cool. What’s that cloth?”

  Pablo pointed to a man standing next to the guy shouting orders. He was holding a pole. On the top was tied a colored cloth with stars on it.

  “That’s a flag.”

  “Whose flag?”

  The kid shrugged. “I dunno.”

  A hand on his shoulder made him turn around. It was Jackson Andrews, one of Mom’s deputies.

  “What are you doing out here?” Mr. Andrews asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, I’ll take you back to the gate. Stay inside where it’s safe.”

  They started walking back to New City. Pablo noticed Mr. Andrews walked slowly and kind of stiff.

  “Does that bullet still hurt you?” Pablo asked.

  Mr. Andrews got shot by the cultists and The Doctor had saved his life. He was a hero.

  “Yeah. Probably will for a while too.”

  “Can I see?”

  “What do you want to see a bullet wound for?”

  “Pleeeeaaase?”

  “You can’t see anything, just a bandage.”

>   “Can I see that?”

  “Oh, all right.”

  Mr. Andrews pulled up his shirt. There was a bright white bandage stuck with tape to his chest. The bandage looked funny. The material wasn’t like any type of cloth he knew. Once Greg Miller had cut his arm real bad and The Doctor bandaged it. That bandage looked like normal cloth. This stuff was all shiny.

  “That’s a weird bandage.”

  “That’s because it’s from the Old Times, not one of the ones The Doctor makes himself.”

  “Wow! He must really like you to give you that,” Pablo said.

  Mr. Andrews laughed the way grownups do when they think you’ve said something cute and stupid.

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Are the Chinks going to attack?” Pablo asked.

  “They’re called Chinese.”

  “Are the Chinese going to attack?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why do they want to kill everybody?”

  Mr. Andrews stopped and turned to him. Crouching so he could look him in the eye, he said, “Pablo, there are a lot of bad people in the world, but you can’t tell who’s bad and who’s good by how they look.”

  Pablo thought for a moment. “Oh, you mean Asians? I have an Asian friend. But I wasn’t talking about Asians, I was talking about Chinese.”

  “The Chinese are Asians.”

  “Yeah, but they’re bad Asians,” Pablo said.

  “Not all Chinese are bad,” Mr. Andrews told him.

  “Have you met any Chinese?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Then how do you know they’re not all bad?”

  Mr. Andrews grinned. “You’re almost as annoying as your mother, you know that?”

  Pablo’s face fell. He didn’t want to be compared to his mother.

  “Just joking, kid,” Mr. Andrews said, tousling his hair. “Look, what I mean to say is, you can’t judge someone based on where they’re from or even the company they keep. Remember the Righteous Horde? They were all bad, right? But they were white and black and even Latino, just like you. So you couldn’t tell who was in the Righteous Horde just by how they looked, could you? And then it turned out not everyone in the Righteous Horde was bad. The refugees aren’t bad, are they?”

  “And neither was Mitch!” Pablo said.

  “Um…”

  “He wasn’t!”

  “OK, kid,” Mr. Andrews sighed, leading him to the gate. “What I’m trying to tell you is you can’t judge someone until you know them. Look at Suzanna Waites, she came from the Righteous Horde and now she’s doing all sorts of good stuff for the refugees.”

  “They’re starting to call her The Liberator,” Pablo told him.

  Mr. Andrews looked surprised.

  “Who?”

  “The refugees. Some work on the farm where my Asian friend works and he told me.”

  Mr. Andrews shook his head. “Just what the world needs, another person going by a title instead of a name.”

  “People are saying a lot of bad stuff about Asians.”

  “Yeah, they’re beginning to Blame too. Everyone’s pointing fingers and claiming someone else caused the wars.”

  Pablo stared at him. Mr. Andrews got branded for Blame a few years ago and still had a big scar in the shape of a “B” on his cheek. Mr. Andrews must have noticed him staring at it because he smiled at him in kind of a sad way.

  “Blame is wrong,” Mr. Andrews said.

  “But you Blamed.”

  “Not the Asians. I Blamed the people who really screwed up the world.”

  “Who was that?”

  Mr. Andrews looked away and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Nobody listened to me anyway.”

  They found Aunt Rosie waiting for them at the gate with a worried expression.

  “There you are! I heard you’d run off into the Burbs. You know it’s dangerous. Come with me. We’re making some apple pies. If you’re good I’ll let you lick the spoon.”

  Pablo spent the whole afternoon in the kitchen with Aunt Rosie. That evening as they were finishing up dinner, Mom finally showed up.

  “Hey kiddo,” she said, sitting next to him and giving him a hug.

  Pablo stiffened. He didn’t like Mom’s hugs anymore.

  Rosie hurried into the kitchen to get some leftovers. In a minute she had served a steaming plate of food and a glass of goat’s milk.

  Mom dug in.

  “Thanks,” she said around a mouthful of food. “I haven’t eaten all day.”

  “Is it bad out there?” Aunt Rosie asked.

  “A lot of hate speech going around. People are picking on the Asians.”

  “A scavenger swore at Hong-gi,” Pablo told her.

  Mom shook her head. “Everyone’s scared of the ship and they’re taking it out on the good Asians.”

  “Mr. Andrews says not all the Chinese are bad.”

  Mom snorted. “Mr. Andrews says a lot of things.”

  She put a hand on Pablo’s shoulder. “Hey, I’m going to need to get back to work soon. Want to read? We hardly ever read anymore.”

  Pablo pouted. “You’re too busy giving people necktie parties.”

  Mom sighed. “Not that again. I explained it to you.”

  “You let other people from the Righteous Horde stay.”

  “They were slaves. Mitch wasn’t a slave, he was—”

  “He wasn’t bad!” Pablo shouted and stormed off to his bed.

  He buried his face in the pillow. Why do adults always think they know everything? They think they can tell the good cultists from the bad, and they think Hong-gi is a Chink. Jessica was right, adults messed up everything.

  Pablo lay there for a long time, hoping Mom would show up so he could shout at her again.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Let us pray.”

  Yu-jin bowed her head and stared at the little silver cross hanging from her neck. Randy sat next to her on the rough wooden pew of the New World United Church. They and a hundred other parishioners followed along as Reverend Wallace led the prayer.

  “Oh Lord, protect us, your faithful, in these trying times. We strive to do Thy will and keep Thine covenant. We keep the faith when so many others turn away. We still praise You when others curse you. When the unbelievers gnash their teeth at the fallen world, we call out ‘Thy will be done’! Amen.”

  “Amen,” Yu-jin and the others intoned.

  The church was a simple frame building. Spare and scrupulously clean, the only other furniture other than the pews was a wooden altar covered in a clean white cloth. On the wall behind hung a beautiful steel cross that was more than a hundred years old.

  Reverend Wallace was a short man who, despite being in his early fifties, had jet black hair. Yu-jin suspected he dyed it. He wore thick, horn-rimmed glasses from the Old Times. Like many people with bad sight, he hadn’t been able to find glasses with quite the right prescription and they made him squint and blink constantly. He wore a loose robe of purest white.

  He stretched his arms wide like he was going to hug the entire congregation.

  “Brethren. I see we are fewer in number this Sunday morning. That is as it should be. Many fine young men and women are in the hills protecting us from the greatest danger our community has ever faced. Others have chosen to come to the Lord’s house at this moment of crisis, and that is good too.

  “And a crisis it is. While we can all see that it is a military crisis, a cultural crisis, we must remember that this crisis goes even deeper than that. It is a spiritual crisis.”

  Reverend Wallace pointed a finger to the sky to emphasize his point.

  “Yes, my friends, a spiritual crisis. We all know the Chinese are a danger, but even now there are those who try to negotiate with them. ‘Why haven’t they attacked?’ they ask. ‘Perhaps they are here to trade.’ Perhaps they are indeed. Many would like that, wouldn’t they? My grandfather, a good man, one of the Lord’s men, remembered a time when we bought much from China, back when
our society was a great Sodom worshipping at the altar of Mammon. The Chinese helped us onto that wicked path. Oh yes, they were crafty. Selling us cheap baubles that made us happy only long enough for us to save a little money to buy their next trinket. On and on it went, a gluttonous consumption that wrecked the environment and drained our coffers. We were left with a poisoned world and a bankrupt nation.”

  Yu-jin tensed. The Reverend had never talked about the Chinese before. This had been a place to go to be accepted, a place of hope, and now she was hearing the same bullshit she’d been hearing all over the Burbs.

  The Reverend went on.

  “Oh yes, they were wily, as all minions of Satan are. They came to live among us. They worked hard, paid their taxes, appeared to obey the law, all the while plotting our downfall. They were everywhere, saluting the flag and joining the government and running our schools, but were they really loyal? Oh no, my friends. Behind those expressionless faces there lurked evil thoughts. Some even pretended to be Christian. My Lord, what a travesty!

  “We all know what happened next. Once all the money was gone, once those yellow vampires had sucked all the wealth from our great republic, they demanded payment of our debt, a debt they had tricked us into, they and their corrupt lackeys in the government. At first we placated them by giving them ports, and mines, and forests. But they always demanded more. At last we would give them no more. At last some true patriots rose up and overthrew the puppet government they had installed.”

  Yu-jin seethed. Lies. Propaganda from a country that had collapsed more than a century ago to justify a war both sides lost. The Reverend’s face grew red as he continued his tale.

  “The Chinese showed their true face then. Yes, the mask came off! We all know what happened. The greatest war the world had ever seen. And not just one war, several. Nations banded together into a dozen different factions and fought each other over a hundred reasons, but it was all to achieve one goal. It was all planned by the Chinese and their agents. Divide and conquer.”

  The Reverend paused. Sweat was coursing down his face and his chest rose and fell as he sucked in great gulps of air.

  “But it didn’t work quite as they planned. They were destroyed too, the fools. What they didn’t know was that they were mere tools of the Evil One, and when the Devil is done with his tools he casts them aside. They died by the hundreds of millions.”