Citizen Second Class- Apocalypse Next

by Robert Chazz Chute

  Kirk was clearly bragging. All I could think about were all the people beyond the wall without a roof over their heads.

  “I have a farm up in Alaska. Every week, the family I hired to take care of the place ask when I’ll let them join our greenhouse workers here. Gave them jobs. It’s never enough. I take no pleasure in saying no but it’s a large part of my life. People are after me on all sides to do something for them. It’s almost a daily onslaught.”

  “Mrs. Rossi called it noblesse oblige.

  He made a sour face.

  I had no sympathy for Kirk. Almost every day this man was offered a chance to change someone’s life for the better, to be a hero. He refused as many of those opportunities as he could.

  “The logistics of maintaining this city extend far beyond our walls. This is a more delicate situation than you realize. If our security is compromised, the value of our community’s investment drains away. I’d appreciate it if you would keep this incident to yourself for now, at least until my wife can investigate. I assure you, Evelyn will get to the bottom of this. She’s at church with Eye and Wanda right now. Wanda prays for salvation, Eye prays for a pony and Evelyn’s prayers are all imprecatory.”

  “What’s that?”

  He smiled. “You’ve heard of fatwas? Imprecatory prayer is kind of the Christian version: praying for the deaths of one’s enemies. When I was courting Evelyn, I loved her uniform and couldn’t wait to get her out of it. When I close my eyes and picture her now, I see an angel with a sword, laying waste to God’s enemies.”

  “I thought the poor were supposed to be blessed.”

  Kirk guffawed. “Well, look around. Obviously not.”

  When he was done laughing at me, he took on a conspiratorial look. “Evelyn’s bent on claiming all of Atlanta for the Select Few one day. With my ticker missing some of its beats occasionally, I do all my warfare with spreadsheets and lawyers.”

  I managed to keep the revulsion from my face as I said, “Don’t worry. I can keep a secret.”

  “Can you?”

  “Certainly.”

  He smiled. “I appreciate discretion, especially among my staff.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Especially among my young female staff. You know, when you told me about your part in tracking down the man who stole your town’s communal rations, I was appalled at first. Now, when I look at you, I see Evelyn when she was younger and not so … well, Evelyn. I was very generous to her then, just as I could be very generous to you now.”

  I stood in a hurry.

  “Please don’t leave,” Kirk said.

  “I don’t think we have more to discuss, do we? I know what you want. I don’t know what kind of arrangement you had with my predecessor — ”

  “Tanya was very special to me. I was sorry to see her go but — ”

  “It would be better if you didn’t finish that sentence, Mr. Rossi. I’m not available for the games you want to play and you shouldn’t be, either.”

  He let out a long sigh, as if deflating. “Evelyn is a very strong woman, but cold. When we were younger, she always looked happy to see me. Now, she barely looks at me. I’m not a bad guy, Kismet. I’m just very lonely.”

  “Mr. Rossi, Eye thinks you’re a great father.”

  “I try.”

  “Try harder.”

  He looked hurt. I didn’t care. Kirk Rossi reminded me too much of Clayton Dobbs.

  “You say you’re lonely. Monsters are lonely creatures. They hide out in caves, under bridges … maybe even behind walls and desks and lawyers. You say you’re not a bad guy. Are you sure about that?”

  I left before he could answer.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  When I went for walks with Eye, I kept looking over my shoulder, scanning for my attackers. Before the assault in the arboretum, I hadn’t noticed how often men in brown aprons appeared on the street. Sometimes they’d be repairing a downed power line or a solar array. Sometimes they would suddenly appear opposite me on the narrow street. For a second, I was sure it was the man with the walrus mustache. Nerves, I guess.

  Walrus mustache or not, I wondered who else might have me under surveillance. “Eye, is that man who just passed us looking back? Is he watching me?”

  Sometimes Eye said yes and when I looked back to see the man’s face, he’d already disappeared and the girl would laugh, teasing me. “If they look at you, it’s because you’re pretty!”

  Not wanting to scare Eye, I’d explained away my bruised cheek. I told her I slipped on the ladder as I came down in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

  The situation was not good but I had hope and a new key card. I now had access to the Rossis’ living quarters.

  I dusted and vacuumed the house with no windows on the first floor. All the furniture was bulky and of a dark wood that did not brighten the gloomy interior in the least. I went about my duties conscientiously for, even in their home, I spotted surveillance cams that could be checking up on me. However, I detected no cameras in Evelyn and Kirk’s bedroom.

  My breath quickened as I dared to search their closets. In Evelyn’s night table drawer I found an M11 handgun. My mother wore the same sidearm every day she was on duty. I left the weapon where I found it. Though it was a tempting find, I worried it would be discovered missing before I had a chance to complete my mission. I went through the pockets of Evelyn’s spare uniforms. Each was pressed and perfect. No key card to the Security Center, no luck.

  Fearful that I’d set off an alarm, I went back outside into the punishing heat. As I vacuumed the Rossis’ pool, surveillance cams followed me. I wanted to jump in fully clothed, just to get a respite. Sweat trickled down my neck. Under my apron, the wet shirt sucked to to my back, cloying like a second skin. Salt stung my eyes. There was something about the feeling in the air, as if the heat was so intense that the Earth’s oxygen was burning away.

  Even the birds were quiet, like all of nature listened, waiting for the inevitable storm to strike and finally break the tension.

  Grammy would have called it tornado weather. I’d never seen a tornado but she had often described the eerie feeling before the weather turns deadly. When my grandmother was my age, she stood in her parents’ front yard in Jacksonville. She saw a waterspout pulling boats up from the marina. When a twister made landfall, she ran back to the front door of her house.

  “My ears popped,” Grammy told me. “The air pressure behind me was so much, I couldn’t open the front door to the house. My father staggered around from the back of the house and pulled me away. We jumped into the car. From the back window, I watched my childhood home get ripped up, nothing but splinters and shards, rags and tatters.”

  I missed Grammy and wondered how she was faring. If she fell, how long before Lisa came to check on her? If Grammy began to starve, would she be too proud to ask for help?

  With the failure of my mission imminent, maybe I’d never find out. The looming storm might come in the form of torrential rain or a hail of bullets.

  “Kismet?”

  Startled, I jumped. Evelyn stood in the doorway behind me. I was sure she knew I’d searched her room. Soon I’d be back in a CSS interrogation room. This time they’d use the fire hose.

  But I was wrong.

  “I’m very concerned,” Evelyn began. “On the day of your attack, someone in an AWE uniform tampered with the surveillance cameras in the arboretum.”

  “So there’s no way to find out who they were?”

  “Whoever it was, she was very careful. I’ve discussed your account of the events on Sunday with Kirk.”

  “Oh?”

  “You seem surprised.”

  “Since you didn’t mention it, I thought maybe you’d let it go.”

  “A member of my household staff was attacked within our walls. Of course, I’m not going to let it go. There are bigger security issues here than you and your bruised cheek, Kismet.”

  “What can I do to help?”

&nb
sp; “They disabled the cameras in the arboretum with a spray. As soon as they hit the exit, they split up. They seemed to know where to go to avoid our precautions from tracking them back to whatever hole they came from.”

  AWE. Always Watching Everywhere. Apparently not.

  “I need you to come over to the security center. I’ve got hours and hours of surveillance recordings for you to watch, first from Sunday and then each hour of every day since. We’re going to find this spy in an AWE uniform and her accomplices. As long as they’re free, no one in New Atlanta is safe.

  “May I go change first? I’m soaked through. This heat — ”

  “This may take some time. Hurry up, but have a quick shower. Meet me in the garage in twenty minutes.”

  CSS officers had searched my backpack. I assumed it was Evelyn herself who searched my bag again on my first night in the narrow house. If they’d found the tip of the spear then, Evelyn would have hanged me at the nearest gate as a warning to anyone who might contemplate betrayal.

  But the memory stick was always in plain sight, secreted inside the hair clip Chantelle had given me when I arrived at the rendezvous point.

  I began to tremble, not just because of what I was about to risk, but because of all that was at stake.

  A new thought occurred to me. My sister was working against the Circle as an Intelligence officer. Every day, she faced the possibility of getting arrested and executed. Sissy was up the chain of command. To open that impenetrable steel door for me, my sister might have given the order to have me beaten up.

  I stared at the little memory stick. “Maybe you did, Sissy. Maybe you didn’t,” I said. “This better work. If it doesn’t — and if they don’t hang us first — I swear I’ll kick you hard, right in the baby maker.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Evelyn waited for me in the garage by the door to the Circle’s Security and Surveillance Center. She pulled a key card hidden behind her wide white belt that was attached by a gold chain. No wonder I hadn’t been able to find a spare key card. She must have had it on her person at all times. So much for my dream of sneaking in where I wasn’t supposed to be after midnight.

  “Having the AWE center right next door is very convenient,” I said.

  The door swung open to reveal a short tunnel to the next building. “Its placement wasn’t a coincidence. Kirk is a very well-placed and powerful man. The house in which you live was an original, from before the wall. The wall was only halfway through its construction when I insisted this building be placed here. I’m never far from work. Do you know why I work so hard, Kismet? The world is full of moochers who would take everything from us.”

  Because you have everything and we have nothing, I thought.

  When I last saw my sister, she said, “The Select told us that to avoid a civil war, they had to take control. That’s how we got sucked deeper into this class war. The people will not revolt because they are poor. We’re used to that. We will revolt when we can no longer stand the distance between what little we possess and how much the elite hoard.”

  Evelyn ushered me through the door. I walked ahead of her through the narrow passage. I couldn’t stretch my arms to either side. The dark passageway between buildings reminded me of castles with built-in choke points, made easy for one swordsman to defend.

  Medieval architects had no inkling of cyber warfare, though. I just needed to get inside the surveillance hub. The tip of the spear would do the rest.

  At the end of the passageway, we walked up a steep ramp that emptied into the middle of a dim room filled with active screens. Every gate of the complex was monitored. The camera feeds flipped every few seconds, scanning faces, looking for troublemakers.

  I’m right here, I thought. No peeking.

  AWE Officers monitored their consoles for surveillance feeds. There seemed to be as many camera feeds from outside the wall as inside. On one screen, several teams of workers unloaded a train that was flanked by greenhouses. Another tracked begging children as they walked alongside a CSS truck somewhere beyond the concrete barrier. From another high angle, a guard absentmindedly picked his nose as he stood beside his guard shack.

  I froze in my tracks, transfixed. No wonder Evelyn felt like a god. Her wealth made her omnipotent. Her position made her very nearly omnipresent.

  Evelyn tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention. “This room is one of the Circle’s secure information hubs, the eyes and ears of Always Watching Everywhere. Somewhere in these recordings, you’ll find your attackers.”

  I looked around the cramped room. No fewer than a dozen AWE officers sat at their consoles, their eyes glued to the shifting images. I finally understood how deeply in the dark I’d been kept. My task suddenly felt like a suicide mission.

  When my sister handed me the tiny disc drive, she admitted my mission would not be easy. I would have to get close to powerful people. She claimed she didn’t know more details, either. I was to go to a bus stop on a specific street in Atlanta at a certain time of night. A woman named Chantelle would make contact and tell me where to go next.

  Looking around the control room, my confidence drained away.

  While my mother was in rehab, relearning how to walk, I asked exactly how she lost her leg.

  “Wasn’t lost,” she said. “It was taken. I was on patrol at the edges of a riot. Things seemed to be quietening down when I heard a girl crying. She called out for help. I went down an alley to investigate. I thought I was righteous as Jesus, out to save a civilian. It was dark, no way I could see the tripwire. When the IED blew, I got my eggs scrambled. That’s how they got me, but my unit crushed that rebellion. I am an outlier. When you pit a bunch of civilians against an army with a lot of ordnance, bet on the ones with the guns.”

  It was obvious AWE had all the power and all the weapons. How could the Resistance match their resources? The Circle looked awfully safe to me.

  In Campbellford, I had pressed Sissy for more information about what the hack would do.

  “For operational security, the less we know about Operation Jericho, the better,” Sissy replied.

  “Operation Jericho? Snazzy name. But is that really what they teach you in Army Intelligence? That less information is better?”

  Sissy smiled. “That’s how this world works. You only need to know what I tell you. Be the good little sister and just accept what I’m telling you, okay? Please?”

  Grammy needed money and supplies to keep living and my sister had promised both. “I’ll do it for Grammy.”

  “It’s for all of us,” she said.

  Going in with as little information as possible suddenly seemed amazingly stupid.

  I was startled as Evelyn raised her voice to address everyone in the room. “What’s our motto, team?”

  Every officer present replied with gusto and apparent glee, “We are AWE. We are what separates us from the animals!”

  That was the sort of talk that allowed people to become murder machines. When I closed my eyes, I saw children dead in their parents’ arms. The empty stares of corpses were burned into my brain. Those who perished in the ditch died in pain but they did not look surprised. That was the cutting detail that condemned humanity the most.

  All I had to fight AWE and the CSS was a memory stick hidden in a hair clip.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I sat in the control room for hours staring at views from surveillance cameras. The scans zipped through every facet of New Atlanta: the plazas, the quiet and empty streets, each gate, the bustle around the towers.

  A junior officer named Michael Baker was assigned to me. When Evelyn left the control room, his eyes followed her for a beat longer than was discreet.

  Baker noticed my stare and smirked. “What’s she like off duty?”

  “I don’t live with her in the same house. She’s two doors down. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s never off duty. She seems the same all the time.”

  “Awesome and terrifying,” he said. “She started
out as one of us, you know, worked her way up to Captain of the Guard.”

  “And married a billionaire.”

  “Incidental and an opportunity that came with her station. She would have risen through the ranks with him or without him. Everybody in AWE respects Captain Rossi. She has it all because she’s worthy and blessed. I once heard her husband admit she’s the brains of the operation.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “She’ll protect New Atlanta at all costs. May the Circle be unbroken.”

  “At all costs? You know you could be one of those costs, right?”

  Baker stared at me, his expression blank and stupid. “I don’t get what you mean. I’m on the inside and I carry a gun.”

  He gestured to a feed from beyond the wall. An old man was begging at the gate and getting turned away. “I got no problems, not like them.”

  I ignored him and went back to pretending to search for the man with the walrus mustache.

  Baker was not satisfied. “You want to know something about life here, Miss? When one of us is promoted, Captain Rossi gives a little speech. It’s the same speech every time. She always mentions that she wasn’t born into the Select but she earned her place. ‘We protect our betters. It’s how we become better.’”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You know what else she says?”

  “You’re going to tell me, I’m sure.”

  “She says she’d rather die than be one of you again.”

  “One of me?”

  “You’re a maid, right? You’re not military and you’re not rich so you can’t be part of the club. You’re expendable.”

  “My parents and sister are all military, Mr. Baker,” I said. “They served honorably and with distinction. My mother lost a leg. My sister joined up to save lives. My father trained hundreds of recruits to survive. What you really mean is they weren’t lucky enough to draw the same duty as you. Mr. Baker, you’ve got something in common with your masters. You think you’re special because of where you are instead of what you are. Must be comfy.”