Citizen Second Class- Apocalypse Next

by Robert Chazz Chute

  Eye smiled and she waved for me to lean closer again. “Tanya would have done it, but you had to bring the tip of the spear. She wouldn’t tell me what it was. Did you stick it where it needed to go?”

  “Tanya told you?”

  Eye suddenly looked wise beyond her years. “To get you in, she had to go. It was a sacrifice, but after tomorrow, everything’s going to get better. Don’t worry. AWE may mean Always Watching Everywhere, but that can’t be true. The Resistance is everywhere. They can’t catch us all.”

  “But, your family! And the things you said!”

  “I’m a kid, not an idiot. If we don’t bend, we’ll break. My parents don’t understand this is for the best. If we don’t share, it’s all gonna get taken away, anyway.”

  Such a clever spy I was, outdone by a child. “I don’t know what to say anymore.”

  “You don’t have to say anything. I assume you’ve done your part by now.”

  She turned to watch New Atlanta slip by. I couldn’t fathom how casual she was about the upheaval that would soon come. She glanced at me, squeezed my hand and leaned in again to be heard. “I’m not betraying my parents. That’s what you’re thinking but you’re wrong. I’m saving them. When the revolution comes, the people who aren’t on the right side of history will get buried beneath its heavy tread.”

  “Is that a quote from something?”

  Eye shrugged. “Just quoting my mentor.”

  “Who?”

  “Juanita.”

  “Who?”

  “My parents didn’t raise me. Juanita did. She taught me everything, including the tough parts of the French Revolution. Juanita says this is my chance to save Father and Mother from the guillotine.”

  “Wanda?”

  Eye gave a huge smile, relishing my confusion and surprise. “Juanita is her real name. Father’s family insisted she change it. That’s our little secret. I’ve known her real name since I was nine. Wanda is her slave name.”

  The kid’s right, I thought. The Resistance is everywhere.

  The law of unintended consequences had struck again. Evelyn and Kirk allowed the help to raise their child. Their daughter was inoculated against indoctrination by the Select Few.

  Eye spoke with the confidence only idiots, visionaries and the innocent can possess. “When the time comes, I’ll explain everything to Mother in a way she’ll have to understand.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I’ll look her straight in the eye and say, ‘The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.’ Mother does love to quote Isaiah.”

  Little Eileen Rossi was not about to give up her princess status among the Select Few, after all. She planned to lead us all, rich and poor alike.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  As the day of the full moon dawned over New Atlanta, I worried the hack had failed. My nerves felt like they were stretching out, taut as guitar strings. Grammy used to call this condition “discombobulation.” I think that was one of the first words she lost as her marbles rolled away.

  Wanda appeared at my shoulder and whispered to me as I washed the dishes after lunch. “Eye told you about me.”

  I nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me you were one of us?”

  “You’re a maid. I’m a maid. We’re all ‘one of us.’ Doesn’t change the fact that AWE is everywhere.”

  “I saw all the screens they have to watch. There aren’t enough of them to catch everything. If they were as powerful as they pretend, there wouldn’t be graffiti on the Circle’s walls.”

  “The graffiti is on the outside. Do that inside the Circle and they’ll track you back to your house and drag you out for a beating.”

  “Maybe not after today.”

  “Don’t count your chickens,” she whispered. “Eye is good at keeping secrets but she got ahead of herself telling you anything. If the Resistance fails, our only hope will be that little girl, acting and talking like one of them until she can get into a position to make reforms and turn things around.”

  “You don’t think this’ll work? Did I risk my life for nothing?”

  She brought a finger to her lips. “Hard to say. Heard a rumor there’s big doings outside the wall today but it could turn into another Portland.”

  Don’t talk to me about Portland, I thought.

  “The storm knocked out all the power and two shelters flooded.”

  “Were people hurt?”

  “No more than usual, I don’t think, but it’s got people especially riled up. The weather’s clearing but they got themselves in a humid mood. Trouble’s in the air. Be ready for it.”

  “Ready how? What should I do? Make sure my bladder is empty?”

  “If you have to evacuate, that wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it? If it comes to that, I’ll drive you. There’s a seed vault across from Gate 12. If needs must be, wait in the alley beside it and I’ll come find you. I can get you out. Fair warning: If you aren’t there, I’m just gonna keep driving.”

  “Sounds like you’re expecting big trouble, Wanda.”

  “People are some riled, but the Select are motivated to hold on to everything they’ve got. It’s going to depend on the parrots. If they see there’s no way to continue, the battle might go our way.”

  “What about Eye and her parents?”

  “The Rossis got contingency plans.”

  Wanda surprised me by reaching into her apron and pulling out my knives. Without a word, she placed them in a drawer with the utensils. “If things go badly, I imagine you’ll want these should you find yourself on the other side of the wall.”

  Seeing the weapons my parents gave me made me tear up a little. “Thank you.”

  “This is the most I can do. If today goes sideways, Eye is my first priority. If you give her or me up, I’ll give up everyone I know in my cell. Do you understand?”

  I had a lot of questions but I knew better than to ask them. I nodded and went back to drying dishes. Wanda left to go about her work.

  I cursed my sister under my breath a few times, but there was no energy behind it, no real hate in my heart. Only fear.

  It wasn’t her fault that I found myself standing in the Rossis’ kitchen. “Dancing on the precipice of danger” is what Daddy would have called it.

  “It’s where the excitement is,” Mama would always reply. “It’s where the doers are.”

  That exchange came up a few times, always on the nights before deployment. I never wanted them to leave. They just shrugged their shoulders and asked, “If we don’t serve, how are you going to pay the bills, Kismet?”

  So I played the role of the dutiful daughter, stayed home to take care of Grammy and waved goodbye to my mother, father and sister.

  The last time, only one came back. I told my grandmother my parents were dead. I told her everything I knew about the Portland strike, sparing no details.

  The propapundits called it the Portland Uprising. Perpetrated by terrorists, they said. First, we were told that it was Resistance that set off the bomb that had murdered my parents. Then someone of the nuclear committee leaked an admission that it was our new government that did the deed.

  General Elliot Ramundsen was not a noble whistleblower. His announcement was not an apology. It was a warning to resistance groups and grassroots organizers across the country.

  “It was a tough call,” the general said, “but leadership is about making tough calls. With the blessing of the Select Few, I called in the nuclear strike. For the longevity of the Republic, Portland needed what I’d call a brushback pitch.”

  According to Ramundsen, the city’s tragic sacrifice at the hands of cruel people was worth the weight of sin and loss. The warning worked, too. Plans for more austerity protests were abandoned.

  “These seditious bastions of a failed governmental model must be excised from our national discourse,” the general proclaimed. “Weak liberalism is a pox
on our country and it is in its death throes. Let the erasure of Portland and its mistakes serve as a warning to anyone who ponders any challenge to our nation and our way of life.”

  Many people went quiet, waiting to see how bad the blowback might be before committing to what was right and what was wrong. As condemnations of the strike on Portland poured in from across the country and around the globe, Ramundsen doubled down. He even named the other cities at the top of his target list. He called Austin, Berkeley, Sacramento and Dearborn nests of traitors. My parents were not traitors. They were serving their country and got in the way.

  General Ramundsen was assassinated by his own bodyguards. As my sister observed, “The people in charge didn’t take that as a hint at constructive feedback.”

  Through the magic of propaganda, the general’s death was used to justify his actions. The Select made their monster into a martyr. His assassins, all decorated military personnel, went to their execution after a perfunctory trial. They never retracted the assertion they made upon their arrest: They were not part of some left-wing conspiracy. They’d killed Ramundsen for their fallen comrades.

  People abandoned their homes to flee those cities. For fear that the committee would strike again, all protests and marches were called off. The oligarch’s seizure of power seemed complete.

  It seemed no one could defy those in charge but my sister knew better. “The Resistance is not dead,” Sissy told me. “It just looks dead because it’s buried underground. When you go into New Atlanta, set your jaw and grit your teeth. When we dig ourselves out of the grave they put us in, they’re going to regret even touching the shovel.”

  At our parents’ graves, Sissy hugged me and said, “When we dared to complain that we were starving and dying and needed the basics of what governments are for, they said ours was a ‘grievance-fueled ideology.’ It wasn’t then, but it sure is now.”

  “When you call, I’ll do what you need done. For Mama and Daddy.”

  “For you, me and Grammy,” she replied.

  A thousand small decisions had led me to this day. If the government had not cut benefits to the families of veterans, maybe I’d still be in Campbellford. If Clayton Dobbs hadn’t stolen the town’s food supplies, I would not have condemned him to death. When I didn’t flinch at that traitor’s hanging, Sissy got her first inkling that her little sister might be useful to the cause.

  But the past didn’t matter anymore. There was no safe place. There was nothing for me in Campbellford except a charming old lady who might not even know my name when I saw her again.

  The second time I had to remind Grammy that Daddy and Mama were dead, I skimped on the details. The third time, I cried. After that, I humored her and pretended that they were still out west helping to fight wildfires, evacuating civilians and saving lives. Then I had to pretend they were still sending us enough money to feed us.

  Life was easier when I lied to myself. I often fantasized that Portland was just more lies meant to scare us. I told myself that one day I’d look up and Mama would limp into our little kitchen. She’d be carrying a big bag of groceries. She’d say. “Everything is back to bingo, bongo, tickety-boo.”

  Daddy would say, “You’re still dreaming, Kismet. Ask yourself, could any of this be real? Wake up, Kissy! Can’t be real, right? We’re right here.”

  But I wasn’t dreaming. The horror was real.

  I didn’t get a chance to escape New Atlanta before the next storm hit. As I put the last of the dishes away, two AWE officers appeared in the doorway.

  “Kismet Beatriz?” It was Michael Baker, the AWE officer I had annoyed.

  “You know who I am. Why play around?”

  “Because I don’t know you and I don’t want to know you. You’re under arrest.”

  My jaw went slack. I didn’t know what was supposed to occur when Operation Jericho went into effect. This wasn’t the end I pictured. I squeezed my eyes tight and asked myself, Is this real?

  I opened my eyes. The officers still trained their pistols on me. My parents’ gifts to me, so precious to me, stayed in the utensil drawer, useless.

  The AWE officers did not carry handcuffs. I hadn’t noticed that before. They had no use for them. They either beat their prisoners into submission, banished them or executed them outright.

  Baker and his partner grabbed me roughly by the arms and escorted me down to the garage. As we arrived at the door to the Security Center, sirens began to sound across New Atlanta. It was a long mournful howl, rising and falling. I took some small pleasure in the nervous look Baker and his partner exchanged as the alarm reached us.

  “Something’s up,” I said.

  “Whatever it is, I doubt you’ll live to see it,” Baker replied.

  Operation Jericho had begun too late to save me.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Evelyn waited for me in the Security and Surveillance Center. “Well, if it isn’t the social climber. Of course, your intentions were never really social, were they?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “An hour ago, a riot erupted at two detention camps,” she said. “Now the Circle is in lockdown. Whatever trouble is brewing, we’re going to quash it.”

  “I don’t know anything about trouble at the detention camps.”

  Evelyn stalked back and forth a moment. Everyone in the control room stared at me.

  “Tend to business,” Evelyn said in a low voice. Her staff snapped back to their duties.

  “Bad day?” I asked.

  “Punch up 27, exterior,” Evelyn ordered. She pointed at a nearby screen. “They say criminals return to the scene of the crime. He didn’t come willingly.”

  I stared. It was Picasso, hanging dead from Gate 27’s parapet.

  “The CSS caught up to this rebel last night. He shot and killed two officers before he was shot. He died of blood loss in an alley between burned-out apartment buildings in Chamblee.”

  “And CSS still hanged Picasso?” I asked.

  “They may not know art, but they know what they like,” Evelyn replied.

  A chuckle went around the room but I didn’t see the humor in it.

  “Thirty minutes ago, all the gates and security doors opened at those camps. As of about twenty minutes ago, it looks like all of Old Atlanta is on the march. They’re streaming our way.”

  “I’ve been washing dishes.”

  Evelyn slapped me across the face, hard. I’d been slapped a lot lately. My cheek burned but I pretended she’d had no effect.

  “Feel better?” I asked. “I don’t know anything about your camps opening up. If slapping improves the situation, I live to serve.”

  She gave an ugly smile. “I’m sure you didn’t have anything to do with the hack of CSS security. That’s a separate system from AWE.”

  “So what does this have to do with me?”

  “Where’s your hair clip? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without your little black hair clip?”

  “It broke,” I said.

  “I found part of it.” Evelyn held up the little memory stick Sissy had dubbed the tip of the spear.

  “When the security doors opened in the detention centers, I ordered a sweep of our systems as a precaution. Mr. Baker checked his station. It’s the only console where you sat to watch the surveillance recordings. You opened a back door to our systems. God knows what havoc you might have given us if we hadn’t found it in time.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe Baker put it there. He doesn’t seem like a very nice guy.”

  He growled behind me and punched me in my left kidney so hard I dropped to my hands and knees, gasping at the pain.

  “Who sent you?” Baker demanded.

  I had no illusions I could stand up to torture but I could mislead them and stall for time. “Two people who wanted to be peacekeepers, Rich and Kacy.”

  “Who?”

  “Rich and Kacy Beatriz … my parents.” It wasn’t so far from the truth.

  “A lie,” Evely
n said. “I read your scan. Your parents are dead.”

  “Their deaths brought me here. The Select Few murdered them. They were just collateral damage to you. Not to me.”

  Baker stepped on my left hand and pressed down with a heavy boot. I stifled a scream and bit down on my lip until I tasted blood.

  “I trusted you with my daughter, climber!” Evelyn yelled.

  “And I love her,” I said.

  “Climbers will say anything.”

  “My love is real. Do you know why Eye is so great? She’s not you.”

  Baker hauled me up by the hair as Evelyn drew back to slap me across the face again.

  “Captain!” An AWE officer rose from her seat in front of a bank of monitors. “Breach!”

  Evelyn straightened and turned from me. “Where?”

  “Gate 2 is open.”

  “Shut it.”

  “I already tried,” the officer replied. “I’m locked out.”

  “Gate 16 is opening, too,” another called out. “I’m shut out, too.”

  Another officer raised his hand as if he was in a classroom. “Gate 8, opening on its own.” He added darkly, “That’s the closest entrance to the horde coming from the refugee camp. The hack must still be active. She opened a door we can’t close.”

  Evelyn scanned the screens as more steel gates began to rise. “Gilhorn! Can we cut power to the gates to contain this?”

  “Not from here. It would have to be done manually at the gates.”

  “Do it.”

  Gilhorn picked up a phone and immediately put it back into his control board. “The lines to the gates are dead. As far as the guards on each gate know, their gate is open because we opened it from here.”

  “Radio them!”

  “It’s jammed, ma’am.” A murmur shivered through the control room. I wasn’t alone in my fear anymore and that was oddly comforting.

  “Get out there!” Evelyn shouted. “All of you, grab a vehicle and get to as many gates as you can to close them manually. Gilhorn, coordinate everyone’s assignment. We have to get back into lockdown before those climbers get inside.”

  Her staff rose as one to follow her orders but she held one AWE officer back and handed her the memory stick. “Brody, they’ve found an exploit in our system. Try to figure out how much damage they’ve done. I’m not sure how deep this compromise goes.”