It would provide a moment’s cover but nothing more. It was the only obvious hiding spot before the trees and, thus, would be a prime target for the hover jet gunners. He and Fletch were the first to reach the frozen shoots, which scratched across their faces as they disappeared into them.
“Stop, Dex, stop!” Fletch screamed over the whipping sounds of other prisoners dashing through the rows of dead corn.
“No, keep going!” Dex screamed.
“We can’t! They’ll see us on the other side!”
“Then we’re fucked either way! This is a bull’s eye for them!”
No other options. No time to think. Do it.
Dex slowed, waited for Fletch, then grabbed his arm. One of the hover jets grew louder, nearer. Its engines rumbled in Dex’s chest. The dried corn stalks bent under their generated wind, exposing all the fleeing bodies like roaches surprised by light.
More bullets, more screams. Men were falling.
And then Dex and Fletch were free of the corn patch, tumbling on confused feet into the field, toward the looming grove of trees. Behind them, the shower of bullets was getting closer.
“Fall, Dex! Pretend you’ve been shot! Count of three! One, two—”
“Three!” Dex screamed, forcing lifelessness into his legs and plummeting to the ground. He felt a sharp corn stalk puncture his leg, and he rolled three times, letting the frozen earth cut into his face. He could hear bullets raining to the ground around them, past them. Survival would be a gift of pure luck, if it continued at all.
Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Be dead to the world.
Dex was not much for classic television from the cinematic golden age, but once, he had seen an old program about plane crash survivors on a mysterious island. On it, a doctor character had described a botched surgery and how he had overcome the incapacitating terror his own mistake roused in him. He counted to five, letting the fear in, then willfully flushed it out when the count finished. At the time, Dex had seen little value in the arts and complained when his friend Milla forced him to watch the fictional series. Today, however, it offered him some unforeseen value. Today, he remembered that doctor.
One, Dex counted to himself.
More bullets.
Two.
The hydro engines were the angels of death, approaching Dex for the second time that day.
Three.
The spray of bullets had ceased, but—
Four.
The hover jet was flying away. Back toward the train.
Five.
Dex dared to open an eye, and the first thing he saw was Fletch’s foot, only inches from his face. They had not even touched each other while toppling onto the field, and their near-adjacent positions now were almost comical.
“Fletch. They’re leaving. It worked!”
No response came. Dex called for Fletch again but knew after that first silence that the man was dead. When Fletch Novotny was alive, he was talking. Dex waited five minutes, until he was sure the hover jet pilots had finished their immediate effort in the cornfield. Finally, he gathered the courage to move. He propped himself up, peered over the ruffles in Fletch’s dry, dirty clothes—the same clothes he had worn to Sterile Me Susan’s the night of the raid—and saw a blackish-red exit wound in the man’s face.
Play dead. Right.
An unexpected burst of tears followed the thought. “It was a good idea, buddy,” Dex said aloud. He touched Fletch’s leg, wishing his dead friend still had eyes to close, as they had always done on those old programs. But time was falling away. Dex took a moment to remember Fletch as he was, then set out across the field, sobbing, hoping he was far enough away from the hover jets to become a mirage.
A MEMORY (HER)
PULLING GRASS UNDER HER DAD’S crabapple tree, reading The Reserves by Alwyn Templeton, eating toasted pita strips and guacamole, all while paying little attention to any of it: that is what Grace is doing. It is lonely, and she is torn between being thankful for her life and wishing her dad had not forced her father to volunteer her to be a heterosterile. Had they engineered a child differently, the other one she might have been would have had a normal life, have been a normal person.
The long threads of grass tickle between Grace’s fingers, and she tosses them into the still summer air, then picks more, repeats. She has been reading the same page of words on her com for the past ten minutes. All she can think about is Linda after the movie, when they were balled up in her bedroom and watching the scene with the naked woman lying in the roses. Linda had been very vocal about how sexual she felt during that scene, and Grace could only shrug with an ill feeling. She was nowhere near as skinny as Linda or the girl in the movie, and all she could think about during that was the layer of fat building on her own stomach. It wasn’t normal for a fifteen-year-old girl to have fat, because everyone exercised. But then Linda asked Grace how she could know she was a heterosterile if she had never tried kissing a girl, and Grace hadn’t had an answer, because she just knew it to be so, and then suddenly Linda was leaning in for a kiss, and a lifetime’s lack of confidence and self-worth made Grace kiss back, because surely the fact that she liked boys could change, if she really wanted it to. But it was like kissing cardboard. Linda had pulled back, looking hurt and disappointed, and run from the room. They have not spoken since.
So here she is in the middle of summer with no friends, reading the only novel she has memorized enough to read without actually paying attention. It makes for a good way to look busy while really just wallowing in misery.
“Grace, what did I tell you?” comes her father’s harsh voice (still and always a snake, even though she loves him) from the patio. “No snacks between four and six o’clock! Do you really want to make us the family with the fatty? You know how that looks, especially nowadays!”
The Queen has been in office for only two years, but he has already spoken out against people with more than 20 percent body fat.
Grace misses Linda. Nothing is good.
The seconds drag by as hot embarrassment rises in her face, and she looks stubbornly ahead, toward the empty guest house, as she hears her father shuffling across the yard to confiscate her afternoon snack. He does, and she refuses to look at him or say a word. Not once has he asked why Linda Glass doesn’t come over anymore.
And then comes a coincidence Grace will never forget: her pocket com rings with a call. It is Linda, for the first time in over four months. Relief, disbelief, and humor flood Grace’s senses, and just as potently as she was moments ago hopeless, she is light as air and answers her best friend’s call. Perhaps there is goodness in her future after all.
CHAPTER 37 (HER)
THERE WERE TWO COMBATING FACTIONS here in Los Angeles: the New Rainbow Order’s armed forces, and the people they called “the natives.” As of late, the former were losing their claim of the land. The remains of LAX (as the airport had once been called, Grace learned) made up the area’s only operating military base. It was little more than an old airplane hangar that was, miraculously, still in working condition.
The settlement was only seven years old, but contrary to what Mandate 43 had implied, soldiers here claimed the government had no plans to rebuild over Southern California’s sprawl of deterioration. This was a hunting base, because unlike most other areas of the Unrecoverable Territories, the natives of Los Angeles were becoming a threat. It was the only Unrecoverable Territory where the population appeared to be growing, despite the government’s best extermination efforts. The natives, descendants of natural procreators who had survived the Bio Wars, had weapons from the olden days: bombs, guns, gases, and chemicals. They were unafraid to use them.
Sergeant Blake Linder, who led the ground crew at the dilapidated airport, was a particularly muscular homosexual. Shirtless and dressed only in tight rainbow faux-camouflage exercise shorts, he exuded potent masculinity as he led Grace and her cohorts to the hangar and described the military’s situation.
“They’re leftover
breeders whose ancestors survived the plagues and obstructer bombs back when this territory went up in smoke. We still know next to nothing about them, only that they have a better claim over the land than we do, and their old weapons have wiped out our automotive equipment more times than I care to admit. And they’re good at hiding. But we have our orders from the Queen: stay here until the job is done.”
Luke the failsafe, acting perfectly homosexual, approached Sergeant Linder and put a hand on the man’s buttock. “So, what do you boys do here in your spare time?”
Linder’s eyes flitted over Luke, and he smiled. “We hunt natives when things are going well, swim in the ocean when we’re hot, and fuck when we’re feeling horny. Can’t think of a better way to spend my time, can you?”
The soldiers on site were too preoccupied with the new collection of men to care about the truckloads of pregnant, irritable women invading their hangar. Not only were the failsafes effective at playing gay and luring the soldiers’ attention, but everyone was buzzing about the morning’s terrorist attacks. Three other hydro planes, all of which belonged to general civilian airlines servicing New Rainbow Order territories between the Americas and Oceania, had also been grounded at LAX. Unlike Grace and the other Cliff House refugees, these planes’ 204 passengers were leisure travelers heading to Sydney, Perth, and Fiji.
A crowd had gathered around the strip of wall coms lining the far end of the hangar, in what amounted to a mess hall. The pictures streaming over the coms were like videos from the old wars. Pillars of black smoke were rising over cities around the globe. There was Srinagar, one of the only western Asian cities still flourishing, one Grace had always dreamed of visiting. An entire complex of public housing was burning in the night; behind the blaze, the Himalayas stood outlined against the last of their day’s light. Even the soldiers were staring at the catastrophe with helpless expressions. WorldCom flashed again to video from Minneapolis, the home Grace would never see again. The IDS Center, the oldest remaining skyscraper in the city and the most recent to receive rainbow sun reflectors, was gone.
A pile of rubble, Grace thought. Just like that. Just like here.
She fingered the replacement com in her pocket. It was part of the Opposition’s effort to pass them off as civilians, as it was highly unusual for anybody not to be carrying one. The com was real, but it could only receive messages. Grace wanted nothing more than to call her dad, only now, she could not. Her anxiety had been on a high since that final goodbye from the Cliff House’s communications room. Had he listened to her warnings? Had he left the Minneapolis area? If not, surely these attacks would inspire him to act. Judging by their past behavior, her father, Abraham, and Lars would jump on the bandwagon of blaming remnants of God’s Army. Still, if her dad left them to die in the larger retaliation effort Albert Redmond had hinted at, what would that make him?
It would make him smart. Yet Grace was unsure how to reconcile that thought with the image of her father, brother, and nephew perishing in a nuclear attack.
Destruction unfolded on the com screens. Each one showed a different live video feed, and one, at the far right end of the mess hall, was showing a news hover jet’s view of a demolished stretch of winter cornfield. The camera was panning over a massive smoking pile of metal that looked to Grace like a derailed train. She stepped closer and stopped behind three soldiers, one of whom appeared to be in his mid-forties. By the way he spoke, it was clear he was of a higher rank than the other two. Apart from Grace, they were the only three people paying attention to this last wall com.
“They shouldn’t be showing this,” the oldest soldier muttered.
“Sure seems like a good way to raise a bunch more rebels, don’t you think, Major?” one of the younger ones replied.
“If civilians find out about the trains, we could have a legitimate uprising on our hands. Makes me glad we’re stuck out here.”
“So they got all of them?” the third soldier asked in a hushed voice.
The oldest one adjusted his crotch. “Every fucking track.”
The com screen suddenly cut away from the cornfield image, back to a confused-looking news anchor. He wore a blank expression and was looking off camera, as if listening to some order through his earpiece. Then, the screen cut to images of Chicago, which had suffered the worst destruction. Seven skyscrapers had dropped like children’s building blocks, leaving a cloud of smoke and dust strung along the city’s skyline.
The oldest soldier turned and saw Grace staring at the screen, which gave him a moment’s pause. With a quick glance at her breasts, which even homosexual men sometimes admired, he stepped around her. The other two guards followed.
“Every fucking track,” he had said. Did that mean the Opposition had succeeded? That the trains heading for the dumping pit had been impeded?
Grace jumped when a hand gripped her elbow.
“Just me, honey,” Marvel said, playing lesbian. She kissed Grace on the cheek, then hugged her, torn by the drama unfolding on the coms. The girl was crying. “My moms live four blocks away from the IDS Center. I’m so fucking scared, Grace.”
Grace clasped Marvel’s hand and squeezed it, wishing she could take the girl’s worry away. “We’re all in this together, hon,” she said. “You’ve got me.”
“Man, you really are starting to sound like a dyke,” the girl sniffed.
DESPITE OUTSIDE AFFAIRS, the soldiers seemed to be excited about their visitors. Most of the visitors were men, which meant new sexual conquests, but at a deeper level, they simply seemed enthusiastic to play host for people from the outside world. Over the next two days, they shuttled the new arrivals to and from the Pacific Ocean in two long buses, both of which were antique, pre-Bio War machines that ran on solar power. The soldiers were thrilled to act as tour guides. There appeared to be little else for them to do on the LAX base, as they had all been called in from hunting natives since the attacks. True to their pilot’s request, the pregnant women were always accompanied by the failsafes, all of whom were doing remarkable jobs of distracting the soldiers. As prominent as some of the developing baby bumps became when the daytime heat made it conspicuous for the women to wear multiple layers of clothing, nobody seemed to notice. The soldiers were too busy being human. It was a relief.
Grace’s first step into an ocean’s surf was like living a dream.
The same stretch of water that touches Asia, she thought, in awe. It was funny to think that the waves in front of her hadn’t once stopped, ever. No matter what happened in the world, nature continued on its course. Watching the bright, glittering bubbles wash over her bare ankles, Grace wondered if humans could be considered part of that cyclical, constant universe. Or were they some anomaly that rubbed against the grain? Life would provide no answer for that, she was sure. It was simply her responsibility to go on and see where the days took her. She would make the best of it. She had to.
The Queen’s declaration of martial law was immediate, and the length of resulting military rule was indefinite. The com screens in the mess hall remained on at all hours, and when backaches or the cot Grace slept on left her uncomfortable, she often walked back to the coms to watch the world tangling itself further, toward all the supposed answers. The Rainbow Charter had officially been suspended. The military patrolled the streets now, and all people were being scrutinized, especially those trying to travel. Commercial airlines were to remain halted for at least thirty days, in accordance with the global emergency lockdown. It was a measure to ensure the Rainbow Intelligence Agency a better chance of cornering those responsible for the attacks. Restricted travel would make it difficult for any of the terrorists to escape. But it would not last forever.
“This is a time when fear could make us bow to the heterosexuals who did this,” came the Queen’s speech over the com, late on Grace’s third night in Los Angeles. She was sitting awake in the mess hall under the blue LED lights’ dim midnight glow. The Queen’s press conference had been running on loop for two
days, and for the first time ever, his sequined dress, eye shadow, and lipstick were all a matching blood-red. “Peaceful society succumbing to fear is exactly what these heterosexual terrorists want,” he declared next. “Spreading discord is what they have done since the dawn of man, and it now has to stop. We will prevail. We will show them the errors of their ways. The colors of the rainbow will show them we are strong!”
His audience, a group of journalists made up mostly of fags, stood and cheered. Some of them were crying, hugging, and kissing each other, and the cameras captured it all. The Queen, with his makeup awash in camera flashes and praise, dazzled the world with a triumphant smile.
Of course, there was no mention of the New Rainbow Order being behind the attacks. This had nagged at Grace since her arrival at LAX. The horrific images gleaming out of the com screens made her realize that the chances of these attacks being masterminded by the government were just as strong as the possibility that they were orchestrated by legitimate remnants of God’s Army. Grace was hanging her very life on the words of people who had known about the attacks before they had happened—known about them, and blamed the government. But what proof was there? If the Queen’s spies had infiltrated God’s Army to instigate an assault against society and turn heterosexuals further into scapegoats for everything wrong in the world, how would anyone ever know? How could Grace know if Albert Redmond and other members of the Opposition had been telling the truth? What if, instead, the Opposition was creating a giant scapegoat out of the New Rainbow Order to instill fear in Theodore Bozarth’s specimens and further its own agenda? It was possible.
But I’m still alive, Grace thought. Pregnant, sitting in a mess hall in the Unrecoverable Territories with a bunch of NRO soldiers, and still alive.
The Breeders Page 19