by Kirk Dougal
“No. I wanted to wait until you arrived, sir. After I talked to the nearest neighbors I sent them to the building’s common area. No one has been on or off this floor since we got here. No one has left the building either, except for one guy who had to go to work. We checked on him and he was at the factory on the line.”
“And yet, the boy appears to have eluded us.” Ludler shook his head, blowing out a breath of disgust. “Find me something. Show me who and what he is.”
“Yes, sir.”
Martinez barked orders into the hall and within seconds three men entered the room and began tearing it apart. Feeling confined, Ludler stepped out and waited. The apartment, although small, still took several minutes for his men to search. Ludler was feeling impatient when he heard a yell and Martinez came into the hall.
“Sir, have a look!” he exclaimed. “This was hidden underneath the boy’s tube.”
Martinez held up a slim metal box, about the length of a finger. A tiny screen lit up and a man’s photo shined out. He touched another button on the front and music began playing softly through small bits of plastic attached by a cord to the box.
Ludler stepped back as the pieces swung toward him and then away, increasing and then decreasing the volume of the music.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A music app.” Martinez’s eyes shined and his voice sounded breathy. “And it works.”
Ludler’s eyes lit up at the thought of purifying the two boys. Even if one of them was not a fixer he could do whatever he wanted to people in possession of this kind of equipment.
“Very good. Let’s see what we can get out of the neighbors.”
They turned and walked down the hall.
“Who else lived with the boy?” Ludler asked.
“He shared the apartment with an uncle but one of the neighbors said he didn’t believe they were kin. Said they didn’t look anything alike.”
“What is this uncle’s name?”
Martinez hesitated.
“I didn’t write it down, sir. I think it was Ferguson.”
Ludler hesitated at the mention of that name. They had just entered the common area but he grabbed Martinez by the arm with a grip that brought a wince from the lieutenant.
“Name…first name. What is this Ferguson’s first name?”
“Jahn,” said an elderly resident sitting at a nearby table. “Jahn Ferguson. Everyone called the boy Tar. Can I go back to my room now?”
Ludler felt the blood drain from his face. For a second he thought was going to lose his balance. He ignored the old man’s question.
“Don’t you know who that is, Lieutenant? Jahn Ferguson was the Faithful who burned down the building after The Crash. This man is THE traitor! And this boy with him must be one of the fixers. We must find them. We must!”
“Wha-what should I do, sir?” asked Martinez.
Ludler felt the room spinning. He looked at the residents, most of them staring at him after his outburst.
“Question them all,” he said. His voice dropped and a smile slowly spread over his face. “Before we leave here we will know where they were going or they will all be taken in for purification.”
He started to walk away, but then stopped.
“And everyone in the other apartment building, as well.”
Chapter 14
They moved from shadow to shadow but fear and the dark made for slow going. At least that was what Tar kept telling himself. The sun was still a long time from rising over the buildings when he could no longer convince himself it was their attempts to avoid the Black Shirt patrols that kept them from covering ground. His uncle stumbled from spot to spot, his steps faltering over the sidewalks. When Tar stopped to study the street in front of them, all he heard was Jahn gulping air behind him. Once he reached out to help, grabbing his uncle by the elbow and a cold sweat clung to the man’s skin.
“He doesn’t look very good,” Toby said while they waited for Jahn to cross the empty street behind them. “What do you want to do?”
“I can’t leave him,” Tar said. “Do you want to go on without us?”
Toby hesitated, looking back at Tar’s uncle shuffling closer.
“No. We’re in this together. But we’re not going to automagically get out of the city.”
“I know.” Tar waited a few seconds for Jahn to join them. “We’re about fragged for the night, Uncle. Can we stop and get some sleep?”
Jahn looked at both boys. A distant streetlight illuminated his pale face and his hands shook when he reached up to adjust his backpack. Deep, dark circles under his eyes made it appear like he wore a mask. Most curious of all he kept moving his left arm and feeling his fingers, as if his hand had gone to sleep.
“We should keep going,” he said. “But if you boys need a rest we can stop for a little bit.”
Toby glanced up and down the street. They were in a block that had once been stores and office buildings before The Crash. Now, most of the structures stood empty, boarded windows and low lights adding to the feeling of desolation.
“Tar, do you think you can get us into one of these shops?”
Tar looked at his uncle who nodded weakly. After a few minutes of searching they came to a deserted clothing store. Tar opened the lock and they stepped quickly inside, the door closing behind them and shutting out what little moonlight had aided them this far. A few blind seconds of fumbling and he had his flashlight out of his backpack.
Empty clothes racks scattered over the showroom floor stood like skeletal reminders of ancient animals. In the changing rooms they found dust-covered benches and one beat-up recliner that leaned to one side. Jahn plopped down in the chair while the boys lined up the benches to lie down, as well.
“I’ve got a little food in my pack,” Jahn said as he unzipped the bag and rummaged around. He pulled out pieces of dried fruit and some of Mrs. Schumacker’s homemade cheese and handed it over to the boys. He also tossed them a bottle of water. “Go ahead and eat. I’m not hungry right now.”
The boys plowed into the food. Tar had not realized how starved he was until the first piece of cheese went into his mouth.
“Mr. Ferguson?” Toby asked after a few minutes. “Where are we going?”
Jahn’s eyes fluttered open.
“I don’t know for sure, son. I want to get as far away from other people as we can but we don’t have enough food or water.”
“Maybe it would just be good enough to go 404 where nobody knows us,” offered Tar.
Toby shook his head.
“I don’t think so. Those Black Shirts don’t never give up pinging for somebody once they start. At least that’s what Dad always said. They’ll find some sock puppet who’ll turn us in for food or a little money and then they’ll swoop in and grab us.”
Tar looked down at the floor.
“He’s probably right,” Jahn said. “You boys will do well to remember that. You know this much, Tar: you never know who you can trust, so don’t trust anyone. Least ways in letting them know what you can do.
“It’s not the regular people you’ve got to worry about. Sure, they’ll turn you in for a little bit of nothing, but if you can show that you’re worth more to them than coin they’ll let you go. It’s the true believers you gotta watch out for. Those are the ones that help the Black Shirts the most. The people who believe that the world was better off without the machines and the tech and the Mind—even if it meant that they got sick or somebody they knew died—those are the ones who will turn you in no matter how bad it gets for them.”
They looked at each other in the flashlight’s fading light. The battery was going dead and Tar knew he should switch it off to save what little was left but he was afraid to have this conversation in the black.
“Is that how it was before The Crash?” he asked. “The Black Shirts running around and making people give up their tech?”
Jahn coughed. It might have only
been from the dusty chair but to Tar the noise sounded dry and rattling. He did not like it.
“There were no Black Shirts before The Crash, at least not how you know them. Back then, the government in Washington D.C. and the statehouse in Sacramento were in charge. We had police and the army. And tech was everywhere. It was in our homes and on the streets and in our jobs. Doctors used it in hospitals and musicians and actors used it to make people forget about life for a while. Some jobs said you had to be tied into the Mind to work, like the police and the Army. You could barely do anything without using tech.”
“Is that what happened to them, the police? They all went hard boot at The Crash?” Tar knew he had heard some of this before, even as he asked the question, but he saw Toby lean in close while Jahn talked, drinking up every word about the past.
“Yes,” Jahn answered. “And that’s when Father Eli and the Black Shirts stepped in. After The Crash everybody who was somebody was gone. So he took control and made sure food got pushed out to the people and the gas was rationed and the tricity was turned back on. He gave them the power to see the laws were followed.
“You see, before The Crash, Father Eli was dead set against the Mind and people being hooked up to computers. He thought it was wrong, something against God, against nature. So he…” Jahn paused and closed his eyes tight, squinching his face up as if he was trying to forget something. “Well, never mind what he done. Then The Crash came and you know the rest. It wasn’t until later that the Black Shirts began hunting down fixers and telling people what they could and couldn’t do. That’s when some of the people who were true believers began doing things like what happened to your friend.”
Tar swallowed hard. “I saw a moving show in Mr. Keisler’s apartment from before The Crash. It showed Father Eli talking to a crowd of people. He was real mad about the tech. The man that hard booted Shovel was there, too, standing behind him on the stage. He had this creepy smile on his face and the sun was shining off his bald head, just like today.”
“Ned Ludler,” said Jahn, his eyes still closed. “That’s who you seen. Ludler’s a bad one, maybe the worst. He’s been with Father Eli since near the beginning. He’s mean, vicious, and believes everything tech is bad.”
“He had a beard…” Tar stopped and he felt his mouth drop open. All the Black Shirts standing behind Father Eli had beards in that show, including the man three spots down from Ludler, the man he thought he recognized and now knew for certain who had stood there. He just could not make his mouth work to say the name.
“You know a lot about the Black Shirts, Mr. Ferguson. How’s come?” Toby asked.
“Because…because he was one of them,” stammered Tar. “You were there, too, standing just down from the man who killed Shovel.”
Jahn’s eyes flew open and he sat up quickly. His jawed moved back and forth but no words came out of his mouth.
“You had a beard then, just like all the rest of them. You were a Black Shirt, weren’t you, Uncle Jahn.” The way Tar spoke, what he said was more an accusation than a question.
“Yes,” Jahn finally answered. “I followed Father Eli.”
The boys looked at each other. Tar wondered if the fear he saw in Toby’s eyes was mimicked by his own.
“What happened? Why’d you quit?” asked Toby. “You quit, right?”
“Of course I quit! I couldn’t stay with them, not after Martha.” Jahn’s voice cracked and he closed his eyes again. “I joined up with Father Eli not long after I lost my job to a shiny machine. I worked at that factory for almost fourteen years and then one day, poof, my job was gone to some piece of metal that ran around the clock with no breaks and no pay. Father Eli gave me purpose again, showed me that machines were sucking the life out of people.
“So Martha and I joined the cause. She helped run the rallies and the kitchens for the other out-of-work folks, while I went with Father Eli when he was making the rounds, talking to masses of people. By then he was becoming a pretty big name, going to Washington and all over the country to spread the word about the evil of tech. We were afraid that someone in the government or at one of the MentConn companies might try to hurt him so that was our job, to protect him. Ned Ludler was in charge of making sure Father Eli was kept safe.”
“What made you quit?” Toby asked.
“Martha,” Jahn said. “Or at least what happened to her…made me do what I did.” He stared into the shadows. “She got sick. Cancer in her brain. The doc said it was all in one spot and they could go in and get it out. But by then the doctors were all using machines to do the operations. Martha and me, we both told them no and the doc should do the surgery on his own. He wouldn’t do it. She kept getting sicker and sicker—must have dropped fifty pounds, and she wasn’t very big to begin with—then the pain came. She’d sit in the dark and cry all day.
“So I went to Father Eli and asked him if maybe in that type of situation if tech was a good thing. He told me that if she died because of the cancer it was because God wanted her to.” Jahn wiped tears from his eyes. “She went in the spring before The Crash. Ned and some of the others carried her coffin and Father Eli spoke at the funeral. Everyone told me how sorry they were. But she didn’t have to die and we all knew it.”
Jahn looked at the boys and smiled.
“I knew then what I had to do. So, on the day of The Crash, I came and got Tar to keep him safe.”
#
Toby snored softly on two benches pressed together along a wall. Sunlight filtered between plywood sheets nailed over the store windows, letting in just enough light to see by. Tar lay on his own benches, trying to sleep but unable to quiet his mind after everything Jahn had said. Although they had decided to start moving as soon as the sun came up his uncle looked even worse in the dim morning light so the boys decided to let him sleep. They would wait and bug out later.
“Tar,” Jahn said, his voice not much more than a breathy whisper. “Are you awake?”
The boy rolled over and looked at his uncle.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I always meant to, when you got older, but the time never seemed right.”
Silence sat heavy and awkward between them for a few moments.
“But you still haven’t told me everything, have you?”
“No, I haven’t.” Jahn tried to sit up in the recliner but, after a few seconds, stopped. His breathing was erratic and sweat ringed the top portion of his shirt, making it dark. “Give me my backpack.”
Tar stood up and walked over to Jahn, picking up the pack on the way. He sat it gently on the old man’s lap. His uncle smiled and waved at him to sit down on the box beside him.
“I was waiting for a chance to be alone.” His smile wavered but he kept it going, forced and rigid. “I’m sorry, Tar. Sorry I couldn’t do what I wanted to and keep you safe. But I wouldn’t change anything I did.”
The boy never took his eyes off the old man.
“You’re not really my uncle, are you?”
The smile dropped. Jahn’s breathing grew in strength for a moment, then dropped back to a ragged rhythm.
“No, I’m not.”
“Then who am I?”
Jahn sighed.
“Your real name is Taro Hutchins. Your parents, Martin and Hisa Hutchins, worked at the same place where they kept the Mind. They were tech programmers.”
The ground felt like it was suddenly moving underneath him. He wanted to make it stop but thought if he stood up he would either fall down or puke. He wiped sweat off his forehead.
“Then who are you? A neighbor? A friend of my parents?”
“I never met them, your parents. And I never laid eyes on you until the day I carried you out of your apartment. You see, what I knew, what I believed, was that Father Eli and Ned and all the rest had killed my Martha, just as sure as if they had walked up and stuck a knife in her. So I decided then and there that I would do everything I cou
ld to make sure they never got what they really wanted: to shut down the Mind forever.
“But I didn’t know what they were planning. So I stayed quiet and kept doing my job, kept my eyes open and my mouth shut. Finally, I overheard Eli and Ned talking and Father Eli said he had sent Polly riding inside her horse. But that didn’t make sense because none of the women in the inner group were named Polly and how in God’s name could a woman ride inside a horse?
“But then Father Eli told Ned it would all happen soon. On October 29th Polly was going to destroy the Mind. So I spent every minute of every day looking for this Polly. I never saw her. But, just like he said, on that day, The Crash happened and people all over the world started dying…or worse.
“But while I was looking for Polly I found out through Ned that a group of kids, some of them little more than babies, had been part of some sort of test project at the university where the Mind was. They were the kids of people who worked there. So I tried to find out more about them while I looked for Polly.
“October 29th came and I still hadn’t found her. That day after lunch Ned called a few of us together and told us that we would be going to the university later that night, and we would be looking for some information in an office.
“I didn’t have any time left to keep looking so I skipped out and went to that office while everyone else was still eating supper. Inside was this young woman, just a student, and I told her what I was looking for, told her what I had to have. She didn’t want to tell me, wouldn’t say…so I hit her. I punched her and pushed her and…oh, God…”
Jahn stopped. His chest heaved up and down, tears flowed in rivers from his eyes. Tar could barely breathe, his chest pushed on by the weight of the old man’s confession.
“She finally gave me this,” Jahn said once his breathing was under control. He reached into his backpack and pulled out an app. It was a small machine, about four inches tall and an inch wide. Tar had never seen anything like it. As he watched, Jahn flicked his wrist and the machine folded out from itself, unwrapping and snapping into place until a six-inch screen was attached to the black plastic end.