The Breeders

by Matthew J. Beier

  CHAPTER 34 (HIM)

  THE TRAIN SLOWED with a sudden, volatile jerk, sending Dex and Fletch flying into the car’s front wall. A shooting pain tore into Dex’s shoulder on impact, but a low-pitched moan from under the train swallowed the ache and spat back something much worse:

  Terror.

  We can’t be in Tennessee yet, Dex had time to think before the bass whine of the car’s electromagnets disappeared into the deafening grind of the train running off its course. Bodies tumbled forward, crushing Fletch against him and the wall, tighter and tighter and tighter. Men screamed, grappling at nothing as the momentum sent them into a struggling cluster. Dex fell to his knees, shielding his head. He pressed himself into the corner as an avalanche of men piled onto him. The corner provided an odd sort of protection, but Dex’s head was pressing hard into his arm, which in turn felt as though it was breaking against the hard metal barrier. The men’s body heat stuffed up the air at the bottom of the pile, and in his collapsed state, Dex struggled to fill his lungs.

  This is how it ends. This is where my fear brought me.

  The train car overturned with a violent, downward lunge. From outside the shroud of bodies came the muffled sound of feet, heads, and hands bracing against the rotation. Only exclamations poured from the men’s mouths, no words of sense.

  Suddenly, Dex was on top. The world moved beneath him; men who were now crushed against the train’s upturned ceiling wiggled for all they were worth. But the angles were all wrong. Most of them were sprawled on their backs, tangled with one another, hopeless victims of gravity. Dex stood up to move but found he was balancing on top of screaming men’s faces, chests, and hands. Their squirms almost brought him down into the fray, but he maintained his balance. If he could get off the pile of men and find a bit of free space, perhaps they could right themselves.

  “Fletch!”

  “Dex!”

  “Where are you?”

  “I can’t see anything, man! I’m here, I’m here!”

  A flailing arm smacked Dex upside the head, and he grabbed it. “Fletch! Is it you?”

  “It’s me! What the fuck is happening?”

  “Derailed!”

  “Holy Christ—”

  Screeching against the ground outside, the train car bounced Dex forward. He dragged Fletch with him, and they tumbled toward the back of the body pile. Their darkened world jerked to a sudden stop. The men who were buried in the unlucky position Dex had just escaped shrieked under the force of it, but the nightmare was completely invisible in the car’s pitch darkness.

  For a moment, everything was silent.

  The air pressure suddenly shifted in Dex’s ears. He looked up. Behind what used to be the car’s base but was now serving as its ceiling, something was glowing red. He could see it through the tiny holes he and Fletch had felt earlier. They could not be more than a centimeter in diameter, but thousands of them now dotted the entire overturned floor with red light. It looked as though there was another ventilation system at work. A warm breeze was blowing out of the holes. Dex’s eyes began to burn.

  The other men on top of the pile and closer to the glowing vents voiced it first, initially letting out shocked yelps, then clawing at their eyes under the devilish light with tortured bawls. Dex squeezed his eyes shut, but whatever was causing the ghastly sensation found its way through his nostrils, into his lungs. The agony was immediate, almost enough to distract him from the rising temperature in the car. He dared to open his eyes and find his way forward. Behind the ventilation holes, the car’s glowing innards were now a fiery orange. They were getting warmer. Hotter.

  The car is an oven.

  “Fletch!”

  Through his searing tears, Dex could see his friend in the dull light. Fletch was holding his eyes shut and screaming, shaking his head at the pain, clambering over stretching, waving limbs, toward the door at the back of the car. Though they had been commanded onto the train and then stuffed down through the chain of compartments, the door was identical to that of their entry car.

  Of course, it was air sealed, and the air was now burning up.

  Fletch screamed, jumping off the heap of men piled at the far end of the car. He landed on the ceiling and approached the upside down door, which was merely a metal outline. No handle, no windows. And it was getting hot.

  Following three other failsafes, Dex climbed across the fumbling bodies toward Fletch and the door, avoiding heads, being as careful as possible to step on the most robust-looking limbs he could find. But seeing through his tears and sweat was almost impossible. He jumped off the pile and landed next to Fletch, then doubled over. His eyes, throat, and lungs were on fire, overpowered by the sour, industrial pungency of some synthetic chemical. The hellish sting burrowed into his skin and his insides, feeling as though it were undoing the flesh in its path, dissolving it in a wash of burning agony.

  It was the first time Dex had ever heard himself truly scream. A real scream, the kind he could not control, the primal human response to a corporeal nightmare.

  “It’s sealed shut!” Fletch screamed back, choking over his words. “I can’t find any sort of emergency release—!”

  “There’s not supposed to be an emergency release, you fucking idiot!” one of the other men yelled. “It’s gotta be the backup plan in case of an accident!”

  Fletch heaved himself against the metal door. Rationality was disappearing. Dex guessed the door was a sliding door, and even if it was not heavy duty and air tight, his friend would never get it open.

  Here you are, one of the many, came a voice fully within Dex and, dually, fully without him. It was a voice made less of language than of light; his knowledge of this was potent, immediate.

  He smelled the singe of hair, then felt the top of his scalp bubble under the heat.

  Was there a God? Was there anything to be gained from dying, having been a coward but at least now facing the repercussions head-on?

  Stop screaming, the light said. Stop screaming, and you won’t feel the pain. You’re a gift, as is everyone, and you’ve always had a purpose. You have nothing to fear.

  The failsafes in the tumbled pile were righting themselves one by one and rushing to the door. Now, Dex found himself once again being pressed between the metal walls and a tumult of desperate souls. Only now, the metal burned.

  Are they hearing the voice too? Dex wondered, losing himself. Are they hearing the voice of God?

  CHAPTER 35 (HER)

  GRACE PEERED OUT THE WINDOW, through the morning haze. The plane taxied slowly over the cracked, overgrown runway of Los Angeles’ forsaken airport, and soon her window revealed three other hydro planes parked near the remnants of what could only be an old terminal.

  Just like the ones in Minneapolis, Grace thought. Only here, the shelf life was cut a bit short.

  Once the plane came to a stop, a motorized stairway wheeled toward them. Controlling it from the top step was a middle-aged government soldier, complete with a rainbow band around his bulging, uniformed arm.

  “Remember, passengers, you are homosexuals on a funded holiday to New Zealand,” the captain said across the video com once more. “I don’t think we’ll run into any problems. From what I hear, the team at this station is somewhat . . . lax.”

  “Hopefully these faggots’ll be too interested in getting with that hot captain to notice us,” Marvel whispered to Grace.

  The pilot exited the plane, kissed the soldier on both cheeks, then walked down the steps, onto the ancient runway. They stood and talked for ten minutes before walking toward a large collapsible bunker near the old terminal.

  Grace turned to Marvel and shrugged. “I guess we wait,” she said.

  “Yeah, but I don’t like it. Like, if this is some kind of military base now, won’t they totally know what’s going on?”

  “I think it’ll depend on Frederik Carnevale and what kind of story he spins to make an excuse for us,” Grace replied. “If he even has to answer to them. At least w
e have his status on our side.”

  Grace looked past Marvel, out the opposite window. There were hills in the distance, and they were mostly green. It looked positively inviting, as if nature had finally found its edge in reclaiming this expanse of shattered civilization. Closer, across a field of cement, the deteriorating remains of structures were visible: a control tower, hangars, and what must have once been office buildings or hotels. If the obstructer bombs had not fully demolished the surrounding area, it was safe to assume there might still be houses standing. Grace wondered if there were human remains in them. At most, they would be skeletons now.

  “What if we run?” Marvel whispered. “Escape this place if they find us out, and just go make our way into the wild?”

  “Fences,” Grace whispered. “I saw some when we were flying in.”

  “Yeah, but I’m sure they’re broken in spots. I’m sure we could get through.”

  Grace regarded Marvel with as much earnestness as she could muster, and her surprise came at the serious expression on the girl’s face. She was even more pale than usual, with shaky hands clasped in her lap, as if she were holding onto herself for dear life. Marvel meant it, her idea of escape. If their stop in the City of the Dead went sour, they could cut and run. Try to have their babies the old-fashioned way. Live off the land.

  Maybe she’s the smart one for thinking of a backup plan.

  Five minutes later, the captain returned.

  “Off the plane,” he told them. “It looks as if we might be here a few days.”

  The anxious passengers, Grace included, did not move. Explanation, please, she thought.

  “There’s a hangar on the north side of the old terminal, and they’re bringing out trucks to drive you there. I told them the situation, that you’re an entourage planning to meet Frederik Carnevale in New Zealand. They followed up on the plane’s registration and flight path, and the story checked out. If Carnevale was the actual one to charter this flight, he covered his bases. Now, failsafes: we need one of you in each truck load, if possible. Flirt like hell with the drivers. Instigate handjobs. You need to keep them as uninterested in these women as possible. If there’s one thing that can distract any man from reality, it’s sex. So play your parts!”

  As Grace stepped off the plane, a salty, warm breeze hit her face. Somewhere close, hoards of exuberant sea birds were greeting the new morning. Even in the mess of broken, overgrown cement surrounding the intact runway, Grace could see the appeal of Los Angeles as it must have been once, long ago. The green cropping up from the ruins signaled a paradise in the process of rebirth. She had always imagined the Unrecoverable Territories as hot beds of filthy, smoking destruction, horrors frozen in time by stories of the Bio Wars, the ones that colored every facet of the New Rainbow Order’s checkered history. But no, this place was not dead. Far from it, in fact.

  Because the universe rights itself.

  Inside her, the baby suddenly kicked. Grace smiled.

  CHAPTER 36 (HIM)

  AND THEN THERE REALLY WAS LIGHT, not just a voice. Blinding, dazzling, beautiful, a breath of hope.

  It’s the light you always hear about from people who have died and come back, Dex sensed more than thought. The light from the other side. But there was air, too. Ice cold, whooshing into the train car, bathing the dying failsafes with life. Like fish to water, they took to it, following their instincts more than intellects. Dex was lucky to be one of the first men out, scrambling across a smoking ditch of earth and twisted metal.

  Train tracks. Somebody bombed the train tracks!

  Again, there were many things he would never know: that Abel Johns, sitting at his encrypted desk com 250 miles to the west, had experienced more difficulty than he had hoped in hacking the train’s remote-control system; that, in the end, the man had found his way into the Department of Transportation’s digital infrastructure and located the override to open the doors and shut off the ovens; that those Opposition members who had exploded the track were now running for their lives, fleeing the Bio Police and their hover jets, due to a tip-off from a rat within their trust circle; and that Grace, at this very moment, was experiencing a kick hello from their growing child.

  As the stacks of blasted ground and mangled tracks flew under Dex’s feet, he risked a glance backward. The surviving prisoners were scattering out of the open train doors like ants from a hill under attack, dispersing over the wreckage in flowing tangents. And the train was much longer than Dex had realized. Twenty cars at least. Now, it made sense why they had stopped six times, why there had been more train than platform space for their boarding in South Minneapolis. The Queen had devised his jailing system to coincide with methodical extermination.

  Dex’s rage fueled his navigation out of the burning crater. Right under our noses, he thought. They planned this right under our fucking noses!

  “Dex!”

  It was Fletch’s voice, yelling.

  “Dex! They did it! Somebody fucking did it! They must have hacked in and done something! Who the fuck knows?” His friend was whooping with joy, dancing his way out of the trench left by whatever explosion had taken out the track.

  As soon as they were clear of the damage, Dex turned around to survey the derailed monster. Men were still emerging from the smoke, some struggling to move, others stopping like Dex to look at the wreckage, to breathe in their pure luck.

  Then, Dex saw Exander. He was fighting his way out of the ditch, struggling to find air in the plumes of smoke. Moving, but only in a struggle. He was stuck. Dex jumped back into the mess to help his cellmate. Closer, he saw what was trapping Exander. It was not a lack of oxygen or an injury; it was a foot stuck somewhere between a pair of twisted steel beams—not crushed, by the look of it, just fallen into an awkward spot.

  “Come on, let me help!” Dex screamed. “Move so I can get your foot loose!”

  “Dex!”

  “Move over and let me down so I can see how it’s stuck!”

  “Dex, your Opposition! It had to be your Opposition that got us out of this!”

  “Still doubting them now?” Dex yelled, fighting tears from the smoke but laughing just the same.

  Exander doubled over in a fit of coughing. His foot was lodged at an odd angle between the blown pieces of railroad track and two large boulders. Dex heaved one of the boulders off the ankle. “Pull it out! Go!” Exander yanked his leg up, cracked his knee on one of the steel lines, and swore.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m going!” he bellowed.

  And once they were free of the rubble, surrounded by a dome of pristine blue sky and miles of harvested winter cornfields, Exander kept moving. He passed Dex and Fletch without a second glance.

  “Dude, Dex just saved your fucking life!” Fletch said, still gasping in the clean air. His eyes, Dex noticed now, were red. When Exander turned in response, Dex saw that his too looked the same, as if all the blood vessels were broken. Surely, his own were no different.

  “Better me than somebody who’s going to stand around and wait for the NRO’s cleanup crew to fly in and pick up this mess!”

  Dex jumped into a run after Exander. “Hey, wait! Wait up! Where will you go?”

  “You know where I’m going!” his cellmate hollered. “Unrecoverable Territories! Somewhere warm! I’m getting out of this hellhole and living out my life where these faggots don’t have control!”

  “Wait! Think about it for a second. How are you going to—”

  “Don’t think, Dex, just act. Go with your gut, like you didn’t do last time. Come with me!”

  No. I can’t.

  “What are you, a coward?” Exander said, still walking backward over the winterized cornfield. He was shaking his head with an incredulous smile. Haven’t you learned your lesson yet? the smile implied.

  “No, not anymore,” Dex said.

  “What, then?”

  Grace. He was going to find Grace. “I have someone who’s waiting for me,” he said. And now it was blooming
inside him, pure and unscathed: courage, untainted. Perhaps it was the type of valor one could feel only after fear was finally frightened into nothingness.

  Exander smiled, knowing. “Then good luck, Dex. I hope you find her.”

  “You too, friend. Be careful.”

  Dex watched Exander bolt into the vast, snow-dusted field. Soon he was a bobbing dot against the sky. Beyond him, less than a mile away, was a grove of trees. Part of Dex’s broken heart mended at the site of Exander escaping, daring to hope.

  And now you go and do the same thing. Do what you couldn’t do before.

  Was this the voice from the train? Dex could not know. Perhaps it had been his own all along. He leaned over, hands on his knees, and hung his head. Neither the yells nor the metallic groans from the derailed train could take away the sweet peace enveloping his heart. In that moment, clarity found him. He closed his eyes and breathed in the odor of smoke mingling with raw, cold air.

  But in the distance rose the low hum of hydro rotary engines. As the seconds passed, it grew louder and separated into multiple drones. Hover jets. Exander had been right.

  For God’s sake, run!

  The other men who had stopped to bask in their freedom were turning their eyes to the sky. Expressions of joy turned to horror as they registered and recognized the noise. Louder and louder the bass vibration became, and Fletch was screaming. “Run, Dex! We gotta get out of here! That dickhead was right!”

  They ran.

  We can’t have escaped just to die, Dex told himself over and over, willing his feet to carry him over the broken, harvested corn stalks toward the trees Exander had disappeared into. An icy wind pushed them north, across the field. Two hundred other men were running the same trajectory in a line the length of the train.

  Three hover jets, each bearing the government’s rainbow insignia, appeared in the sky over the smoking train like monstrous dragonflies. Streams of bullets, the old-fashioned metal kind, ripped up the ground first behind Dex, then in front of him, leaving him no time to think. But three hundred feet ahead was something he had not been able to see from the wreckage: a long patch of yellowed corn stalks, left uncut. For the winter animals, Dex thought. Food and refuge.