by T. K. Malone
Kelly shrugged. “There must be somethin’, else why would a load of folk go to a whole load of trouble to keep it quiet. No, Teah, there must be somethin’ down there.”
Teah sighed, “One day, we might even find out.”
Kelly reached for the bottle of whiskey and refilled Teah’s mug and then her own. “So, I’ve answered your question about the mine. You wanna unload on me? Tell me what’s really been troublin’ you?”
Squeezing her eyes shut, Teah tried to focus, tried to work out if she really wanted to share. Jake had said she’d remember, he just hadn’t told her the price. She opened her eyes and looked across at Kelly.
“I remembered why I left Black City.”
“Is that so bad?” but Teah couldn’t answer at first. What had happened was somehow too fresh, even though it was now ten years old.
“I was on a mission with my partner, Boz,” she said, her voice now hushed, the room quiet apart from the crackle of the fire. “Orders from on high—from Josiah Charm—had been sent down to us. We were tasked with shutting the smuggling tunnels—one after the other. Carnies: we called the smugglers Carnies. We killed them, blew them up, locked them up, and then moved on to the next.”
“So, you were a cop—a stiff?”
“Yeah. Then we went on this one raid—the Bay View Hotel. Boz had a bad feelin’ about it. We were set up and they all died—Boz, all of them…no, I think maybe one survived. I was taken hostage, though. They… They tortured me.”
Kelly reached out and took Teah’s hand, then placed her whiskey on the hearth. Drawing Teah down onto the floor, she positioned her so they were both facing the fire. “Go on.”
“A woman called May; she was a sort of liaison type. And there was a man called Roy. He was real mean. Had a cosh—that was his favorite—and a friend who’d wheel me around once they’d…”
“Did they rape you?”
“No, no, just beat me with the cosh. A man called Sumner, he…” Teah picked up her mug and took a huge gulp. Her hands were shaking. Tears welled and trickled down her cheeks. She gasped and took a deep breath. “A man named Sumner went to work on me: scalpels, nails, electricity. They broke me, Kelly, broke me bad. But Roy, the other fella and Sumner weren’t the worst.”
“Oh, good God,” Kelly hissed.
“There was a doctor—Jevans was his name. He gave me drugs, drugs that knocked me out.” Teah looked away from the fire and at Kelly. “I don’t know what happened when I was drugged. I think it was shine, something like that, because it gave me a thirst fer it.”
“How did you escape?”
“That’s the thing, I don’t think I did. They kept me drugged. One day, I was being moved—they’d kept me underground—and all hell broke loose. I couldn’t see nothing because they’d put a hood on me, but I heard shots, felt blood, and the next thing I knew, I was in the back of a Jeep headed to the State Defence’s camp.”
“Jesus, Teah,” Kelly gasped. “And you didn’t remember any of that?”
“Nothing; not a thing. No flashback, no nothing, but the thing is: I know my memories were all suppressed. I was never supposed to remember it—at least, not while the grid stood.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know who it was who supressed them.”
“Who?”
“Josiah Charm,” Teah whispered.
“Why would he supress a memory of you being kidnapped by… What did you call them? Carnies? Was that it?”
It was Teah’s turn to grab the whiskey. She slid away from the fire and sat back against the rocker. Stretching her legs out, she rested her feet on the hearth and lit another smoke. “A young soldier opened my eyes to it all. He was barely…no, he wasn’t even old enough to be a soldier. He’d snuck in, been ‘napped or somethin’.”
Kelly lit herself a smoke. “What’d he say?”
“Sticks—his name was Sticks. He asked me where I’d been held. I said some underground complex. Then he told me…told me that there was no way it was carnies. Roy, May, all of them had been far too organized, too slick.”
“So, if not them, then who?”
Teah shook her head. “And that’s where it gets stone-cold ridiculous. A woman called May turned up dead in The Free World Park. The place where they’d held me turned out to be an old rail terminus under the toxic belt of land—Oster Prime’s spies, by all accounts. Charm bombed them six ways till Sunday.”
“So, you went back to the city?”
Teah again shook her head, tears welling once more. “No. You see, I’d found out two things by then. First, I heal real fast, and second, I was pregnant with Clay.”
“So...” Kelly ruffled her hair, looking up at the ceiling of the cabin for inspiration. “So, and I know kids are just not a thing on the grid, but couldn’t you have stayed in the—”
“Shit-bit,” Teah blurted out. “Sticks called it the shit-bit—I remember that now. No, Josiah Charm had scrubbed my memory, the bombs were dropping on the toxic belt, and I had to run for my life. I had this dream of living here—with the preppers, but it was just a drug-addled dream. A couple of shots of the shine is all it takes. Anyway, long story short, cos there’s more, but I stumbled into this valley and bumped straight into Lester and Jake.”
“Convenient?”
“Way too convenient. And coincidence has haunted me ever since.”
“Funny thing about coincidence,” Kelly mused, taking a sip of her whiskey. She looked straight at Teah. “It goes by more than one name.”
Teah stared at the waning flames. “Yeah, I know it.”
“Manipulation,” they both said together, and then Teah remembered something else, and a fire grew in her belly.
She saw Sumner’s face: Roy’s, Kin’ell’s, and Jevan’s. A dark smile adorned her lips as she whispered, “I made a list. Each one of them was on it, each one destined to die by my hand. I’ve got to find them, Kelly. Ten long years they’ve lived on notice, and it’s time they died.”
“The ones who tortured you?”
Teah nodded. “And a couple more who recently joined that list.”
“How will you find them?”
“I’ll start with the two I know: Roy and Kin’ell.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “You see, they left me for dead on the side of a mountain, and then went over its ridge to Walter and Irving Meyers’ retreat. I remember it so clearly now, and I’ve heard those names recently.” Teah stared at her enrapt companion, who then only shivered, as though the Devil himself had walked over her bones.
They’d slept where they’d talked, and they’d talked well into the night. Now, as the morning sun shone through the room’s dirty windows, it cast shadows as long as Teah’s yawn. Her head thumped and her mouth was as dry as gridders' bones. She reached down, picked the cattleman up and dumped it on her head.
“That the first thing you do in the morning?” Kelly asked, poking her head around the back door.
“Figured it’d stop my head explodin’, and the shade’d be a little more gentle on my eyes.”
“We sure sank some whiskey. Your best bet? The stream out back’s colder than a witch’s tit; should freshen you up some.”
Teah pushed herself up, gently, and stumbled out the back.
“If you don’t mind me sayin’,” Kelly hollered after her, “you don’t smell like queen material. I’d have a good old wash if I were you.”
“Don’t much feel like it, either,” she shouted back.
Crouching by the bank, she stripped her long shirt off and stepped into the ice-cold water. Sitting, letting it flow around her, she took a deep but shivering breath. “Today,” she whispered to herself, “today I start. Today, I get Clay back.”
Determination coursed through her. She focused on the water as it jostled past her. In some strange way she felt stronger for her new memories. She had been pregnant when Roy had beaten her, and she had been pregnant when Sumner had tortured her. She had been pregnant, and Clay had survi
ved it all. Somehow, she understood that he would have endured and lived through all of this, too.
“You planning on getting’ out?” Kelly shouted from the stoop. “Used the last of the coffee.”
“Yeah, won’t be long.” Teah got up, using the shirt as a towel, and walked back to the cabin. “Twice I’ve been here, ‘n twice you’ve scrubbed my clothes. Did I smell that bad?”
“Bad, nope, if you like the smell of stale tobacco and dried blood. But hey, I figure it’s a while since you’ve had your own place, so, I thought I’d help out. Anyhow, you got a lot on yer plate, being queen ‘n all.”
Teah stared at her for a moment, then went inside and got dressed. Soon back out on the stoop, she sat next to Kelly and took the offered coffee. “It don’t feel real,” she muttered.
“What don’t?”
Teah scoffed. “Everything? How about that for starters?”
“I get that, ‘n I can’t offer you much help, there.” At which Kelly fell silent and gazed off into the distance.
“You ain’t coming, are you?” Teah whispered.
Kelly put her coffee down on the deck. “I would, but… And I know I promised, but… It’s just that…”
“What, Kelly? Spit it out.”
“There just ain’t no good way of saying it. You know, without offending.”
“I highly doubt—” but then Teah realized Kelly was shaking. “Are you scared?”
Kelly took out a smoke. “Scared? What of?”
“Going down there? Going back to the village?”
Kelly smiled a rueful smile. “Fuckin’ petrified. But that ain’t the problem—not the real problem. The thing is… The thing I’ve been hidin’ so well these past couple of days is…”
“Is what?”
“I can’t stand people.”
“What?”
“I know, I know, but there’s the truth of it. Can’t trust ‘em—none of ‘em.”
Teah scoffed. “You’re tellin’ me.”
“Well, that’s part of what I wanted to say. You have the right to hate them, far more than me—to hate the world. Yet fate has charged you with saving it. What I’m trying to say is this: if you win, if you survive, come live up here with me—you, Clay, and that man of yours.”
“But you hate folk; you just said that.”
Kelly shrugged. “You’ll be a few days. I’ll work on it.”
“Why don’t you work on it with me?”
“What part of what I just said don’t you get?”
Teah shuffled along and leaned in to her. “You say you don’t trust anyone. You say you can’t trust anyone. Have you thought, you might be just what I need?”
“How so?”
“You’ve heard them, the way they muddle and confuse everything. You’ve sat at the table where they plot and plan. Do they even know the difference between right and wrong? Or have those lines blurred so much they’ve faded to gray?” Teah jumped off the stoop and whirled around to face Kelly. She grabbed her hands. “Don’t you get it? I need you. The fuckin’ world needs you. You gotta help me see the shit fer the trees. You gotta help me sift through their bullshit.”
“But how?”
“By being yer fuckin’ self. By hating all of ‘em. By not trustin’ a one of them. You ‘n me, Kelly, we could do it together. Sift through their bullshit and try to forge a better way.”
Kelly pulled Teah back up onto the stoop and then stood up. Looking straight into Teah’s eyes, she brushed her fingers down Teah’s cheek.
“I just—”
“No, not ‘I just.’ Say ‘Yes.’ Men have buggered this world up from day one. Now, we got a chance to put a woman in charge.”
“Even if it’s an AI?”
Teah shrugged. “Better than nothin’”
Kelly frowned. “Guess she can’t do a worse job than Oster Prime.”
“So?”
“So…”
“Just say it.”
“You promise I can be an asshole to whoever I want?”
“And whenever you want.”
Kelly shook her head and sighed. “Shit, the last few days were bad enough, what with Cornelius and all that.”
“You get to shoot the bad guys.”
“Nah, I get to kick the world’s ass into shape. Like you said: it needs a woman’s touch.”
5
Teah’s Story
Strike time: plus 11 days
Location: Preppers' Compound
Teah took a breath and looked down from her horse at the preppers' land in the valley below. Even though she’d only left it a few days before, at that time she hadn’t looked back, hadn’t seen it from this lofty vantage point. Spike Briscoe was a genius, a dead one, mind, but if this had been his design, a genius nonetheless.
The stockade in the distance was like a reservoir’s dam, holding back the bountifully lush, green farmland filling the valley below Teah, keeping its color hemmed in from spilling into the drab and rocky, gray land just beyond. The spot—no doubt handpicked—was perfect. The valley sides holding in check teeming fields that butted against the stockade’s wall where it stretched across at the valley’s narrowest point. The settlement itself lay in the shadow of the stockade’s nearest side, perhaps a few hundred yards deep, and then bordering a road that led toward her up the valley, the river its close companion.
Despite how impressive it was, Teah felt only anguish as she surveyed it, knowing that in all likelihood it would soon be destroyed, the government no doubt laying waste to it when they came to pick over the bones of its carcass. Had she been given an impossible job?
“A wooden palisade to stand against an army?” she whispered under her breath.
Kelly drew beside her. “On the surface it looks impregnable, but then it’s just there to keep livestock in and looters out. That’s what you’re supposed to see, but it’s a bit more than it seems.”
“Kelly is quite correct,” Jake said, pulling his own horse up and dismounting. “Things are not always what they seem. Remember: preppers, historically, were not just a bunch of farmers. Sure, there are some—as there are also some engineers—but they aren’t a bunch of idealists playing scout camp.” He offered Teah a hand and helped her dismount. “Walk with me,” he said, making it more of an order than a request.
He took her a little way off the trail and up a rock-and-scree-littered slope until it leveled enough for him to dump himself down with a grunt. He patted the rock next to him.
“Getting too old fer this shit,” Jake muttered.
“You ‘n me both,” Teah said, slumping down, wondering what was coming next from this mysterious man.
“So, preppers; how much do you know about ‘em?” Jake asked. “Not much, I’m guessin’. To me, they can be simply summed up as guns, shelter and essentials; guns, shelter, essentials, and whiskey… Or is whiskey actually an essential?” His head angled from side to side as he tried to make his mind up. “Who can tell, eh? But you get the picture. Guns, for to prep is to arm, and these boys and girls have been prepping their whole lives. What you have in this part of the valley is an army that not only knows how to kill, but how to make and grow, as well. We need as many of these folks kept alive as possible.”
He rooted around in his coat and pulled out a hip flask. “Slug?”
“No, no thanks.”
“Suit yerself,” and Jake took a long slug. “So, what we need to do is put Cornelius’ convicts in the… How can I put it? In the more adventurous quarter of the battlefield.”
“You mean sacrifice them?”
Jake shrugged. “Gotta pay fer your lodgings—the good ones’ll survive if we manage an unlikely win. They’d have earned their keep by then. The bad ones, well, they won’t be missed. Now, what you need to do is study the battlefield—remember its layout, because when they come, and although the battle will be fought down there, it’ll be won up here.” And he spread his arms wide. “The Free World army is used to picking on grunts and poorly armed fa
natics, but up here, well, up here you’ll see the fireworks set.”
“So, they have a plan—the preppers?”
Jake laughed. “They’ve had a plan for more years than you’ve walked the earth. Most can’t bloody wait—the nutcases.”
“So...” Teah ran her fingers through her hair. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”
And Jake laughed again. “I’ve told you, win the war. A general knows which troops need leadin’ and which don’t. Get the vics on yer side, don’t ruffle the prepper feathers, and use those biker boys fer what they are—berserkers.”
“That’s it?”
Jake shrugged. “Well, things have a habit of changing, don’t they?”
“Is Zac with them?”
Getting up, Jake brushed himself down. “Zac? Now, how would I know? I’ve been with you; I know what you know.”
He made his way back down to his horse, leaving Teah to sit there for a moment, looking down the narrow throat of the valley beyond the preppers’ wall: the view now seeming somehow more daunting. Yet again, Jake had given her just a sip of the information contained in its cup of confusion. She got up and made her way back down to where Kelly was holding her horse.
“Well?” Kelly asked.
“That,” Teah said, “was exactly the kind of bullshit I needed you to decipher.”
“Then you shouldn’t have followed him.” She mounted and nudged her horse into a walk, and Teah now realized the others were already on their way.
“So, what should I have done?” she called after her.
“Asked me.”
Teah caught up with her and brought her horse back to a walk beside Kelly’s. “Asked you?”
“Sure. I bet he told you about the preppers, and all that. Well, I’m telling you: I know a damn sight more about ‘em than he does. Take charge, Teah; take it away from them. All the while you follow them like a dog, they’ll treat you like a dog.” She grinned. “So, what d’ya need to know?”
“About what? That preppers like guns? Preppers are good at fighting? Preppers have long prepared?”